Spellcasters
A storyteller is the most ancient kind of spellcaster, insidious and omnipotent, you hear his words and they stick on the inside of your brain, and something of himself is planted there forever, not quite the speaker himself (never fully) but one of his creations, invisible and yet springing to life on the stage of inner image, emotion, and sound. Once the spell of his words has entered your mind it can never be undone – or unheard – or un lived . You can but hope his words are those of a soothsayer, and not those of a sorcerer. For with tongue and throat and mind he wields the imagined power of words: the power to soothe, to please – or enrage. And the means too by which we occult and enthrall and enslave. It's impossible not to think the thoughts they command, these symbols, and once we have thought a thought we've in some very real sense also lived it – the actuality of the experience is utterly irrelevant, for it has happened . Stuck now in...