Prologue: The Tree by the River

The water glistened in the warm afternoon sun, and the light sparkled and glimmered on its surface, stirred by the soft summer breeze. Sparrow walked on her unsteady little legs towards it, arms out and a big smile on her face. Her parents had fallen asleep under the apple tree where they had taken their lunch.

Sparrow had slept too, but woke and began to explore, first the soft grass and the flowers that grew nearby, then the slowly swaying leaves of the apple tree above her head. She giggled and laughed softly with the joy of it, and then she saw the sparkles.

Even her inexperienced, innocent thoughts were stymied briefly by the riverbank when she came upon it. She stood, weaving forward and back unsteadily as she eyed the shine and sparkle of the water. Just a moment's unbalance, as she turned her head to look at her momma and papa for reassurance, and she was falling towards the water below her.

A large pair of arms, covered in a white, woven fabric caught her and lifted her high into the air.

"Careful little one. You don't want your parents to wake to tragedy, do you?" Came a voice, whisper soft and reassuring. Sparrow was carried softly back to the grassy shade of the tree, beside her parents.

"Here baby, play with this a while." The tall figure said softly, pulling a necklace from around his neck and placing it over the toddler's head. "You will need this some day, precious one. Goodbye for now. Grow tall and strong and beautiful."

Hobby Dambro stirred, her eyes opening and saw her husband Bane asleep beside her. She sat up in a panic looking for her daughter, only to spot her sitting in the grass, idly playing with something, a bright smile on her face and a happy twinkle in her eye.

"Oh thank the Spirits!" She said out loud. "Bane! Wake up! We fell asleep!"

A kick in the ankle got Bane up, grumbling at first.

"What?" He asked.

"We fell asleep. Sparrow was awake before us!"

"Is she safe?" Bane Dambro asked, ready now to panic himself.

"Yes, she's right here, sitting in the grass and playing, happy as can be."

"Thank the Spirits!" Bane said. Hobby laughed.

"What?"

"I just said that myself." She answered.

"What's that she's playing with there?" Bane asked as Sparrow put her plaything in her mouth, as infants will do.

"I don't know lets see." Hobby said, moving over beside her daughter. "Bane! This is a necklace. Look at this stone!"

Bane Dambro got up then and came over to his daughter, picking her up in his arms. The little girl giggled at that and dropped her bauble, distracted, as she wrapped her arms around her daddy's neck. He reached a hand down and grabbed the cord around Sparrow's neck and pulled it up.

"Bear crap and the Spirits take me!" He stuttered. "That's a Skystone! One of the biggest I've ever seen!" He began to pull the cord over Sparrow's neck when Hobby said "No!" rather forcefully.

"What?" Bane said again. It was his most often used phrase with his wife. She outclassed him in a lot of ways, and he knew it, and always felt like he was catching up just in time to be left behind again.

"You know my gift." Hobby said. "I think there's Magic here. Let me touch it."

Hobby Dambro touched the stone lightly, with just a forefinger. The sensation was unmistakable. That was her gift, minor though it was. She had a sensitivity to magic, and often had insight into it that others couldn't see.

"This is powerful magic Bane. It has been gifted to our daughter and it watches over her."

Bane Dambro did not have his wife's cleverness, or her sensitivity to magic, but he did have an innate sense of when Arbor was stepping into his life, and when to leave things well enough alone.

"Good enough then." He said with a smile. "Let the Spirits guide us then, and this bauble never leave our precious Sparrow. Now, the afternoon sun tells me we'd better be heading back to the farm, or it'll be supper time before we have the afternoon chores done."

Hobby smiled at her husband and slid up beside him to nestle under his free arm. He was tall and lean, hard as stone and just as enduring, and it felt good to be in his arms.

Mat sat on the blanket, watching his mom spoon the potato salad onto his plate. There was a nicely roasted sausage already on the plate, and some pear and peach slices. If it wasn't for the promise of food, Mat might have preferred to spend the sunny afternoon back at the bottom of the valley with Hawk and Juniper. Even Den would have probably been willing to do something fun on a day like this.

"Here you go Mat." His mom said, handing him the plate. "You can have another glass of the fruit juice too, if you want."

"Can I have a glass of wine?"

"We didn't bring any wine with us for lunch sweetie, sorry." His mom said. "Andy! Lunch is ready, come eat!" His mom said loudly.

"Sorry, I was busy thinking about something." His dad said as he came around the tree they were sitting under. "Mm! That looks very good! Don't you think so Mat?"

"Yea Dad. The potato salad smells like Grandma Liz' too! Yummy!"

"Your Mom is a very good cook, Mat. But she won't disagree that Grandma Liz is the best cook in the known universe."

Mat thought about that while he chewed a bite of the still hot and almost sizzling sausage. His dad was the High Wizard of Arbor. If he said someone was the best at something, it was probably true.

"Are we going to be going back down to the tower after lunch?" Mat asked.

"Don't talk with your mouth full dear, and yes, we are, why?"

"Hawk and Juniper wanted to go swimming at the swimming hole this afternoon, once the sun was high enough."

"Who was going to be there to keep an eye out?" his Dad asked.

"I think they were going to get Ketch. He's been promising to show Juniper how to do a back flip off the diving rock."

"That'll be fine." His mom said, distractedly. Dad had sat down next to her and kissed her cheek as he took his plate.

"Of course it will, with Trellis off visiting her parents for the next month, Ketch might actually be able to concentrate on something."

"You'll be home for dinner on time though, Mat. No being forgetful this time."

"I promise. 'n we might be done early if Hawk's dad gets back. He warned us he's not sticking around if he does."

"Winter should be back sometime tomorrow afternoon at the earliest." Andy said.

Little was said for a while after that as everyone dug into the meal in front of them.

"Mat, sit up please, and wipe your hands, I want to give you something." Cor said when they were down to the last of their meal.

"Okay." Mat said, sitting up on his knees and wiping his hands on his napkin. He had just managed to resist wiping them on his jersey.

"My seven year old boy, your birthday is not for a while yet, but today is the day for me to give you something. I want you to promise me you will wear it always and never take it off, okay?"

"Okay." Mat said, wondering what was up.

Cor reached for the necklace she always wore, the one with the skystone on it and pulled it over her head. She reached out and placed the loop of the cord around Mat's neck and gently placed the stone that hung from it on Mat's chest.

"Tuck that in beneath your shirt so it doesn't flop around, and remember how special it is and to never remove it."

"Yes Mom!" Mat said, fingering the stone, holding it up to examine it closely, as he had done many times in the past. This time it seemed different, with the stone hanging from his neck instead of hers.

"Your Dad once wore a necklace just like this one, but he gave it away to someone who needed it. Perhaps some day you will find it where you least expect it."

"Okay. Thank you for the necklace. I won't take it off." Mat said, giving her a kiss and a hug.

"You two wander off for a moment and let me get things packed up."

Mat and Andy walked along the brow of the hill to where they could see the tower and the river running below it, heading for the narrow, almost impassable mouth of the valley.

"Show me something new." Andy said suddenly.

"Okay." Mat said, holding up a finger and pointing to the air in front of them. A small, shiny speck glistened in the sunlight. The speck quickly blossomed into a thin disk that grew slowly larger and larger, spinning in midair, until it was three feet across.

"Is that gold?" Andy asked.

"Yup!" Mat said, letting the disk sink slowly to the ground.

"Where did you get it?" Andy asked.

"Its in the ground around here. All over the place, but mostly there's a bunch of it over there about a hundred feet and down about twenty feet, under a bunch of mud and rocks."

"What did you do to get it out?"

"I just told it to come here, and to get together."

"Good job, son!" Andy said. "What do you plan to do with all this gold?"

Mat hadn't any plans, and realized his Dad would be disappointed to hear that.

"Umm... Christmas presents?"

"I think that's a fine idea, but since you took this from the ground and made the plan after, I think you should make sure that you make each present yourself, okay?"

"Okay, thats a good idea." Mat answered. "Sorry Dad."

"That's okay, you were responding to my question, but you always have to be thinking of the consequences of your actions when you use the Gifts, or when you work Magic. Its our burden and our responsibility."

The Shadar River Valley ran from the snow-capped and rugged rise of the Kataline Mountains to the white sand shores of the Summer Sea. Misty Creek was a small stop along the winding and ever-changing banks of the Shadar. That it was a stop at all was due to the presence of a mineral hot spring that flowed out of the hills behind it. It was the waters from the spring that gave birth to the name Misty Creek. In the cool days of winter the surface of the creek swirled with steam as it slowly gave up its heat during the short quarter mile run to the Shadar.

The hot spring was really a series of springs, spread across the hill, all within about three hundred yards of each other. They varied in temperatures from the mildly warm to boiling hot, and over the course of many centuries a series of baths had been built to take advantage of them, combining the various springs into three main baths, there was a warm bath, more of a swimming pool than a bath, a hot bath that was what most folks used for a good therapeutic soak, and there was the 'really hot' bath, that only the died-in-the-wool bathers could handle.

A wizard, Greenwish the Wanderer, had worked some magic on the stones of the baths some centuries ago, and the minerals of the spring did not stain or clog the baths, but no equivalent miracles had been worked to allow the citizens of Misty Creek to have the convenience of hot running water in their homes, and the few who tried eventually gave up after the heavy mineralization began to show its effects. Despite the presence of the spring, the local folks' homes were mundanely furnished with their water in the same ways as the rest of Arbor.

A few hundred miles downstream from Misty Creek, Three Falls was one of Arbor's premier wine growing regions, but here in the upper valley, they grew carrots, turnips and strawberries, and in the hills, they cut timber. In particular there was a small industry associated with the cutting and seasoning of the Shadar Knotted Pine. The wood was dense as softwoods went and had a distinctive burling and internal knotting that made it sought after by cabinetmakers.

Bane Dambro was a forester, and one of those who harvested the Knotted Pine exclusively. He had a small drying shed and his own cutting rig. He didn't have the money to afford his own band saw, but he did have a horizontal box saw rig that he powered with a mule driven wheel that let him cut his raw logs into timbers. He hunted the smaller, slower growing trees, and hand-crafted all the lumber he produced. It was a specialty market that he catered to, but the prices they were willing to pay more than made up for the extra time and effort. The extra efforts had moved Bane into the upper tier of the society in miniature that was Misty Creek. Despite this, his wife Hobby seemed to hover at the edges of Misty Creek's social happenings. They had discussed it and decided it was probably a combination of her minor talent making most folks a little uneasy, as well as some resentment of her quick wit and sharp mind. Hobby Dambro did not suffer fools gladly, and there were a few in Misty Creek, just a few.

Sparrow Dambro walked, almost unknowingly, a fine balance between the two positions. She was a ten year old tomboy, one of the kids, and mostly unaware of the opinions adults, beyond her parents, had of her. Bright, energetic, outspoken Sparrow — that was the community's unspoken opinion, and all that was fine for now, while she could remain one of the kids.

At the moment, Sparrow sat in the crook of a tree, fingering the stone of her necklace and watching the river flowing past the tree and the riverbank beneath it. Flare Bindon had thrown a mud cake at her and gotten her shirt dirty, and she had come up the river to her favorite spot to clean it. The warm sun soon had her shirt dry enough to put back on, and she climbed into the crook of the big branch that hung out over the waters and stared at the sun-dappled flow. It was almost hypnotic, the way the lights danced throwing light through the warm, still air.

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