Ruins seldom sleep.

You could look from the rise above Antrahil over to a higher rise, and see the ruins: hefty escarpments and a massive tilting tower. Between the two rises flowed a river that the oldest inhabitants claimed had never been there in their youth. Few crossed the rises and that river to explore the ruins. The old-timers never went. Of those who went, even fewer returned.

Everyone in Antrahill knew about it. The Sorcerer's Point. Sixty some years ago, the Sorcerers' War had come and gone, wrecking devastation across continents, tearing civilizations asunder, and, not incidently, wiping out every last vestige of magery and magic. There had been other sorcerers' points and towers and keeps and caverns in other places, but not a one remained intact. Not a man nor woman came forth to claim any of them, and those who went to explore never came back.

In Antrahil, the transition from a society based on sorcery to one based on ordinary trade and barter had been relatively smooth. The brother of the late Head Sorcerer had claimed all this larger region for his own kingdom, and no one had been inclined to argue. Antrahil and the neighboring towns had been collections of farmers and tradesfolk, with no true dependency on magic, anyway. The only effectual change in this region had been an increased insularity and quietude.

Only one broke the informal taboo on speaking of Sorcerer's Point.

Chara the charwoman lived in the back room at the smithy's. Handrus the smithy had lost his wife to a plague; his son to a misbegotten exploration of those infernal ruins; and his daughter to the current King, Rivulan III, who had a few years ago been a prince combing the townships for suitable mistresses to while away his hours. She'd not come back, although she sent him a letter every year which he could not read but could not bear to allow anyone else to read to him. He kept them all unread in a box near his pillow.

Sometimes he thought of asking the charwoman to read them to him. He wondered if she could read. But he never asked.

Chara was perhaps old enough to be Handrus' grandmother. She'd moved into the town ten years before; and in the last three years she'd shared Handrus' domicile. It kept him less lonely, having someone around. She cooked well, and kept after him.

She spoke quite a bit of that escarpment and tower.

She used to be a sorceress there, she'd claim.

"Aye, a beautiful place, with tapestries on the walls. All ashes and mold, now. I used to spin them, with golden thread woven straight from the ore by magic. And the festival balls! We'd dance in swirling spirals in the air, our feet never alighting on the stones. Sometimes, I would fly higher than the rest -- I was quite young then, you know."

Or: "We brought the rains, during the droughts. Aline would direct the clouds this way, and I would open them up to the life-soaking torrents. Once, when we called up too much rain, the Head Sorcerer himself sent the excess roiling clouds away to the south."

Or: "We worked on the mental chain that linked one edge of this continent to the next. We could relay information of the approach of trading caravans or trading ships -- you imagine that the sea is so far away, but then it was only as far as the nearest thought."

Or: "The war was violent and fierce. We thought we could protect ourselves as well as you. But a new spell was created that destroyed -- everything." She would never say exactly what that spell was. But she would spell out her role in that final battle. Sometimes her role would differ from one telling to the next. No, she played no crucial part, but she froze a basilisk in mid-jump. Or, she set the sparks to fire pumps. Or, she'd help Aline and others with the illusion webs, spun of sorcerous silk, designed to hide weaknesses in their defenses.

The tellings varied.

Not the most reliable of storytellers, but the children of Antrahil loved her. She spun her fables for them, lighting up glowing faces, creating nuances of messages, bringing the gift of light and imagination and myth into the best of them. When they spoke of running off to the ruins, she brought them back down again.

"Nothing there anymore. Nothing. Nothing but death."

It discouraged most of them from exploring.

Until Tanil came back.

"There are books there," he told the townsfolk. "Books and ashes."

Books! The ancient knowledge! Never mind that most of them could not read. Material gain was more useful to Antrahil's people than the magical. They could sell those books for quite some profit, to offset bad crop years. Tanil, a young man of twenty-two, would return to the ruins to fetch them. Few jockeyed for the honor of accompanying him. But one was close enough to the dreams of childhood, being a child-dreamer himself, the blue-eyed Iliar, the blacksmith's son. He was fourteen, and old enough and far-eyed enough to accompany Tanil. And they found a third they could entice away who knew something of the art of reading.

"No." Chara had pleaded. "There is nothing there. No books. Nothing. You must not go."

"Then, show us your magic. You claim sorcery," the town alderman had asked perfunctorily before allowing the three to leave for the ruins, knowing well how the sands of her mind shape-shifted.

She shrunk back. "You know that the magic is no more."

"Therefore, there can be no harm if I send these three, other than the hazards of falling masonry." The alderman knew her tales to be the mere wisps of inconstant imagination. Perhaps she had once been employed there, but she had never been a sorceress. And if she had -- it didn't matter. All knew that the magic was no more.

Show us your magic. Show us your sorcery. Then, we will believe you, that there is danger even in no magic. In her more lucid moments, she knew what truth would cost. The death of her illusion. Better not that.

The three never returned.

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