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A December Night 1537: the greatest magus in the world packs everything up and heads down to the harbour. He's booked his passage to England under a new name, heading for a new life. But it is a stormy night, and when the jumble of rags that follows him, speaks in the voice of one he once loves loved and demands back what he took from her, he refuses. Inside the box he carries, wrapped in wool, in a calfskin pouch warded with every spell he could conjure is a ring apparently made out of wood. ''Inside the ring was all the magic in the world.''
John Fiste doesn't make it to England, and he takes the magic with him.