Free The Way of Wyrd by Brian Bates

glimmer of pride in my voice. It had not been an easy decision to make.
    Wulf nodded, sucking berry juice from his fingers.
    ‘I know. We shall begin today by hunting, before the sun rides high.’
    Slightly irritated by his pretence of already knowing my decision, I sulked in silence for a while. But I was intrigued by the prospect of hunting, I had not hunted since I was a boy, not even for rabbits, for the monastery gardens provided barter for all our food needs.
    ‘What will we hunt, Wulf?’ I asked, feigning indifference.
    ‘Plants.’
    I looked at him blankly.
    ‘I always hunt the early summer plants,’ he said, as if his statement explained the strange proposal.
    My enthusiasm drained away. Many back-breaking hours spent shuffling up and down the monastic herb gardens, weeding between neat rows of rosemary and fennel, had left me a less than avid collector of plants.
    I pulled a long stalk of grass and chewed the moist end to cleanse my mouth of the bitter taste of the berries.
    ‘What plants do you collect, Wulf?’ I asked listlessly, thinking that the information might be useful to the Mission.
    Wulf leaned forward and ran a freckled hand thoughtfully through his beard.
    ‘Well, there are many. Sometimes I collect the root-beds of wild iris, hunting especially for those in full purple flower, with veins of deep colour running through the petals. Also, I dig the jagged-leaf wild radish and the carline thistle—taking the whole plant, roots, petal-shaped bracts, white flowers and stems. Also white cowbane and dropwort are useful, especially when collected from mossy stream banks. I have taken yellow celandine for particular purposes, but only plants with four-petaled flowers on long stalks. The grey stems give an orange-coloured honey which is very powerful medicine. The blue, pink and purple hooded hounds tooth have especially potent leaves, which when crushed smell of mice. But the root, when prepared for sorcery, is very powerful indeed.’
    Wulf paused, cocking an eyebrow at me. I was trying to commit to memory as many plants as possible.
    ‘Then there is hassock,’ he continued, smiling, ‘and yew berry, lupine, elecampane—preferably cut when it is at man-height—dwarf-elder, the heads of marshmallow, fen-mint, dill, lily, cockspur grass, horehound, bitter wormwood, starry stitchwort, woodruff, honey-scented crosswort...’
    Wulf started to laugh at me and I realized that my face was twisted into a grimace of concentration. He had been talking so quickly that I was having difficulty in following his dialect, let alone recognizing and memorizing the plants.
    ‘The names of these plants mean nothing,’ Wulf chuckled. ‘They each have to be specially prepared, with plants known only to sorcerers. Even to begin to learn about the plants of power, you must collect and prepare them with me, not memorize their names.’
    I laughed with relief. I could remember only about five or six of the plants he had listed and these were plants already known to the Mission. Indeed, for the monastic library I had transcribed sections from volumes of the classical Greek herbals. But I was interested in Wulf’s reference to plants of power.
    ‘Plants of power are important allies for a sorcerer,’ he said, as if reading my thoughts. ‘With their aid I can influence the life-force of a person.’
    ‘Life-force?’ The term meant nothing to me.
    ‘Life-force permeates everything, It is the source of all vitality. In a person it is generated in the head, flows like a stream of light into the marrow of the spine and from there into the limbs and crevices of the body. Power-plants help to control the channels through which the energy flows.’
    I was intrigued by the idea, but could not conceive of its material essence. I tried to picture it as a liquid substance.
    ‘Is life-force like blood?’ I asked.
    Wulf shook his head. ‘Life-force is visible only to a sorcerer. However, you do not need a sorcerer to be aware