The Mayor sat up straight as the prisoners were brought before him. Two men. One old, serene and self composed despite the manacles he was wearing on his wrists, the other young and glaring his anger and outrage at the entire hall. “We have done nothing wrong!” he cried as the guardsmen raised their crossbows warily. “We are innocent travellers...”

   “You are wizards,” said the Mayor. “Your companion was seen casting a spell.”

   “Being a wizard is no crime! Wizards are welcomed in all civilised countries...”

    “Easy, Jame,” warned his older companion. “We’ll get nowhere if we allow emotion to control us.” He looked up at the Mayor. “If wizardry is illegal here then we will simply leave. We want no trouble.”

   “No trouble?” said the Mayor sceptically. “We’ve had your kind here before. We know what to expect from such as you. Plagues, curses, foul summonings...”

   “Perhaps they objected to your treatment of them,” suggested the younger man. “If you treated them the way you’re treating us...”

   “Silence!” roared the Mayor, rising to his feet. “I take that as an admission. A confession that you are both, indeed, wizards. This trial is over. All that remains is the sentence. As Mayor of this town it is within my authority to Impose such sentence as I see fit, and the sentence I would normally impose is death by public execution.”

   “Normally?” said the older wizard hopefully.

   “Some months ago, another of your kind passed this way, and as is your custom he left behind a conjuration of unimaginable horror. A conjuration that has lain waste to vast areas of our beautiful town. It defies all our efforts to defeat it. It was conjured by magic, and it may be that only magic can defeat it. If you destroy this thing that your colleague left behind we may be persuaded to commute the death sentence and allow you to go free.”

   “Once we defeat it you’ll kill us anyway!” protested the younger man.

   “You have you word that we will not,” replied the Mayor. "Defeat the conjuration to our satisfaction and I swear it the name of the Gods that we will let you go free.”

   “Unharmed, and with all our possessions?” asked the older wizard.

   “I swear in the name of the Gods,” repeated the Mayor.

   “Very well. Tell us of this conjuration. Is it some kind of demon? I have little experience with demons but...”

   “It is a tree,” said the Mayor. “Maybe it is a demon, in tree form. It first appeared the day after the wizard left and grew with appalling speed. It’s roots spread everywhere, sucking all life from the ground, leaving only barren wasteland, and new shoots rise from them to spread the devastation further. We chop it down and it grows again. We burn it and it produces new shoots the very next day. Only the very wickidest of creatures could have conceived such a thing, ample proof that all wizards are evil.”

   The older wizard looked thoughtful. “Does it have leaves in the shape of a wolf’s claws and a trunk resembling a column of intertwined snakes?” The Mayor nodded, looking hopeful. “I have never seen a tree of this kind, but I have heard of them. They can be destroyed by poison, a special magical poison that I can brew for you. It will take two days and will cost you one hundred silver crowns.”

   “Your lives will be payment enough.”

   “No they will not. Many of the ingredients are rare and expensive. Fortunately I already have them among my possessions, but they will need to be replaced before I can continue pursuing my profession. Agree to this, or kill us and deal with the tree yourselves.“

   The Mayor glared at him, but then nodded. “One hundred silver crowns,” he said. “Agreed.” He turned to the Captain of the Guards. “Take them away and give them what they need.”

☆ ☆ ☆

   Two days later, the two wizards stood in the middle of a bare, muddy field and stared up at the tree. It was huge, the size of a mansion, with a central trunk that seemed to almost pulse with its own malign life. A small forest of smaller trunks grew up from its roots to join the spreading canopy. On the way from the courthouse the wizards had seen many other trunks throughout the town, each one in the middle of a patch of lifeless ground, the plants that had once grown there now dead and decaying. Farmers had been staring in dismay at rotting crops, terrified by the prospect of a cold, hungry winter, and farm animals had been lowing and bleating their own protests at the rapidly shrinking patches of remaining grass.

    “Well,” said the Captain of the Guard angrily. “Here we are. Do it.”

   “First you must cut open the bark,” said the older wizard. ‘Just hack away at it with your swords.”

   “We tried that. It heals within minutes.”

   ‘Minutes are all we need. If you please?”

   The Captain gave the order, and the guardsmen attacked the tree with vicious enthusiasm. With each blow the tree seemed to shudder, as if it was feeling the pain of the injury, and thick, red sap ran from the wounds.

   The wizard stepped closer to take a look, the guardsmen backing away, and he produced a small bottle from inside his robes. He pulled out the stopper and poured the yellow liquid onto the wounds, which immediately turned black and curled away as if they were being consumed by fire. The blight spread up the thick trunk to the higher branches and down to the ground. Soon the whole tree was sagging and dying, forcing the guardsmen and the two wizards to back away or be crushed by heavy, wilting foliage.

   ‘Will that get all of them?” asked the Captain in delight.

   ‘Yes,” replied the wizard. “They remain connected by the roots. All the trees are one single plant, and the poison will spread to them all. They’ll all be dead within the hour.”

☆  ☆ ☆

   The Mayor was equally delighted when he found out and toured the whole town, inspecting the dead trees and basking in the praise and gratitude of the townspeople. “And now,” said the elderly wizard, “we would like to leave, as you promised we would be able to.”

   “And good riddance to you,” replied the Mayor. “Be on your way then, and warn any other wizards you might meet to stay away from our town."

   “You owe us a hundred silver crowns, if you remember.”

   “I owe you nothing. A wizard did this to us. You owed it to us to undo his curse. Be gone and be thankful for your lives.”

   The younger wizard started to protest, but his older colleague took him by the arm and guided him away, along the road out of town. People jeered and threw things at them, which the two wizards stoically endured until they’d left the last house behind them. It wasn’t until they’d put a line of low hills behind themselves and the town that they finally allowed themselves to relax.

    “So,” said the younger man, looking at his wrists that were still red and chafed from the manacles. “What do we do now?”

   “About what?” asked his older colleague.

   “How are we going to get our revenge on them?”

   “Revenge is an unworthy motive for gentlemen such as ourselves. I don’t doubt that things will balance out without any help from us.” He looked up into the cloudless blue sky for a moment. “A fascinating plant that, you know. It has very tiny flowers that go almost unnoticed, and the seeds are as small as dust. The tree dislikes competition from its own kind, though, so the roots produce a chemical in the soil that prevents the seeds from germinating.”

   The younger wizard stared at him in delight. “But now that the tree is dead...” he said.

   “Indeed. Mother Nature never ceases to amaze me. I suggest, though, that we be far away from here before dawn tomorrow.”

   They both laughed for a few moments. Then the older man cast a spell and they turned into two hawks that leapt into the sky and flew towards the horizon.