I saw him off. But first I want to hug both of you.'
And he did, one by one, starting with Paul, since 'he'd already hugged me today.' As we sat at the kitchen table for our coffee and breakfast, Lukas skipped the coffee but ate like an athlete.
'Tell us about it,' Paul said, 'Hermes first, I need coffee before I hear from my parents.'
And Lukas started his account: 'When I arrived, I had already had my run, and Jonathan was just leaving so I waved. Then I went to the house and was shown in to the guest-room where my father was staying.
George and him were in bed together, like lovers after an intimate night I may add, and they both welcomed me with a hug. My father looked much better, in less pain especially, and he had more colour, but he couldn't leave the bed yet, he was still weak.
He did not look a bit older, so that's probably fine as it is. He was still on painkillers. I promised we'd check him out this afternoon,' looking at me he paused, 'if that is all right by you, Melissa, I forgot about, well, what you told us last night.
I can make do with George of course, but I'd rather not take power from him as long as he's involved with my father. That feels awkward.'
He was turning into a Victorian, I knew it. Convinced as I was of my own control over my feelings, I said: 'No, it's fine. Both of you will be there with me after all. I can't start avoiding him, that'd give him power over me, and besides, he is my father-in-law in a certain way, so I have to be respectful to him.'
The guys acknowledged this, and they had as much confidence in me as I did myself, and besides, Hermes would have someone else to think about with George so close.
'So what did Paul's parents want?' I asked, seeing that Paul wasn't going to.
'Right,' Lukas said, 'of course I didn't speak to them myself, they went back home yesterday, this is something Frances told me. She had given them a tour of her greenhouse and told them about the one we were going to build for her, and she showed them the plans Melissa had drawn up. And they loved it, they want one just like it, and they want the three of us to build it.
Frances was amazed, she'd not expected them to ever accept your love for
crafting, and now they want you to do it in their formal garden.'
I could see that this affected Paul as much as it had surprised Frances. He sat staring at Lukas for a moment, then he turned towards me and observed:
'Remind me not to let your dad try to convince me of anything, for if he has gotten my parents to accept my craft, he must be the best talker ever. But that does bring me to the subject I wanted to discuss with you: the greenhouse.
I have cast large iron parts in my own workshop, my own stairs in fact, but it is a tight fit, and with the two of us using it now even more so, and with so many other commissions and the demand for bicycles rising as well, I'd prefer to make only the ornamentation ourselves.
My proposal is, to commission the iron frame of the glasshouse to Mr Jones.
I like him, I trust him, and he can probably produce them faster and cheaper than we can ourselves. If we don't commission, building a second glasshouse will be out of the question, especially if we want the boiler to be worth looking at as well as able to heat the whole thing.'
That was a radical idea, commissioning ourselves, but it made total sense.
Paul's craft was way too refined to waste time on casting large iron pieces, Mr Jones had better resources and cheaper labour, his cast iron pieces would be delivered more quickly and at a much more reasonable price.
'I'm for,' I said, and Lukas said: 'Me too.'
'You'll be inspecting a site again, if we commission,' Paul warned me, but as I'd have to inspect Lukas and him as well if they were to do it, there was little difference to me.
'I'd rather you both spend your time on what you are really good at, like to do, and which is worth your while,' I said.
And that was that, we'd commission the iron from to Mr Jones, provided he was interested in making an offer for the job.
After breakfast we went to the workshop, where Lukas started work immediately, and Paul explained several ideas of his, which he wanted me to contemplate on and make concrete for him. I made notes of his explanation and started to sketch the first idea, asking questions whenever I got stuck or was in doubt.
It was much more challenging than inspecting, I had to use all the theoretical knowledge I had gained during my studies, to give Paul's ideas a thorough reality-check if they were viable, and if so, to make a few sketches and mentally test those against their intended purpose.
If they stood the test, I'd make a precise drawing, which we would try to write off together.
If the drawing withstood the test, Paul would make a prototype that we could test in practice. This method would cost me a great deal of time and effort, but it would save him more, for so far he had always started out with the prototype, not able to theorize as I could, discarding at least nine out of ten of his ideas.
I would try to reduce that number to one viable prototype against two failures. It was an immense task, and I loved it. I had never been tried like this, not even in my final year of my studies, and I relished the challenge.
It is not hard to imagine, I think, that we had a really enjoyable morning, even though we were all hard at work. For me it was really special to be an active partner in the workshop, I was used to come here as a spectator only, and now I had my own role to fulfil I loved it.
We were all together, we were all busy, and if we needed help or a second opinion there was someone at hand.
I could imagine Lukas feeling relieved, having faced his father first, and having seen him on the mend and busy with someone else later. And Paul was just thrilled, talking about his ideas, cutting corners off his process of development and, I hoped, having married the woman he loved and secured her future.
Because it was my first day, I allowed myself to ask Paul anything I didn't understand or wasn't sure of. In a few weeks this would be routine, but now it was still new and I wanted to know exactly what he expected of me.
We drank tea only once, and when it was time for lunch there was a knock on the door. Lukas stopped work for a second to open it, and he came back in followed by Tristan, who had a lovely woven basket hanging from his large hand.
'We have a visitor,' Lukas announced, and Tristan said: 'I brought lunch with me, hope you haven't had any yet.'
Delicious smells were coming from that basket, and we were all hungry by now, but Paul and Lukas wanted to finish one tiny detail on the pump they were working on, so I showed Tristan the sketches I had made today of Paul's ideas.
I had proof that two of them would not work, even before the sketching-stage, but to explain the physics the sketches would be handy.
Two had seemed viable until I sketched them and started to calculate for the real drawings.
And another four would become drawings after a lot more calculations from me, and then we'd all try to find fault with the drawings.
Tristan seemed to find the ideas almost funny, but I thought some of them had real potential to make life easier for a lot of people. I guess having staff for all household tasks would make a machine that would do the laundry seem superfluous, but I sure saw its use.
By now the guys were ready and we went upstairs for a lunch with food that came out of the kitchen of a noble house.
It was the best food I ever had eaten, and even Paul and Lukas seemed impressed, though they must have been used to quality cooking in their youths.
After dinner we went to the wasteland, in Tristan's carriage, for he was not supposed to walk the streets by himself, being a council member.
He also had quite an arsenal of stuff with him, too much to carry easily, apparently he needed all that to perform magic and I wondered how he would be able to use that in full sight of passers-by. Since the evil mage had been removed, people had started using the road beside the wasteland again, clearly mundane people had felt his influence to some extent, or maybe it h
ad been the lost children who had frightened them away.
The little girl who had wandered over and had been left there had never been claimed. She had gone with Louise to the orphanage where Louise would be taught to become a nurse. Tristan gave us regular updates on Louise and the girl, who had had no trauma, but who had remembered her name only when Lukas found it in her memories.
She had just been too young when she arrived, and no-one among the children had a name, so they never asked her and she had forgotten. Her full name was Priscilla, but everyone called her Prissy now, and we guessed she had been around three years old when she arrived making her around four now.
Of course we were there in a moment, and we climbed over the rubble again and soon reached the sickening node.
We all shielded, and Tristan started to unpack some of the stuff he had brought with him. There were stones engraved with pentagrams, and there
was salt. Several bottles of herbs, and a few intricate silver objects. Paul apparently knew what they were all for, for he helped Tristan put them in their rightful places around the spot where the stone was buried.
I checked the ley-line if there was enough charge, and it was fine, I supposed it must be a different one from the one on the estate, that George had emptied yesterday to save Hermes' life. I didn't take hold of it though, I wanted to start out using my own power, to build up some magic stamina of my own, instead of using power from an outside source.
Soon, the men were ready, and Tristan gave instructions, which Paul listened to with as much interest as Lukas and I did. The wards, for that was what the silver objects and the stones were, would first be activated, by Tristan and Paul, sharing the cost and the awareness of someone passing one of the wards among the two of them.
Then I would lead all of us to the stone that was the node, unless Lukas was afraid to get sick from the negative energy it was stuffed with. In that case, he'd better stay back as anchor. Once there, Paul and Tristan would keep the stone from exploding, whilst I would try to enlarge the natural cracks in it, to let the corrupted energy out.
One set of wards would warn us if someone approached, the other wards would ensure that the power would escape towards the ley-line, or down into the ground, where its taint would be removed by exposure to the soil, and not towards the surface or worse, to the river.
Lukas decided to shield extra tightly against the emotions still clinging to the stolen magic, and to join us in our exploration.
Tristan and Paul sat opposite one another and started to hum in a very low monotone voice. I immediately felt the power around us, as it shifted out to the wards. Soon, there were two lines of defence around the site, one from the silver and one from the stones. I could follow the one down into the ground for almost two yards, the other was on the surface, circling the node at a distance of fifteen yards. Both were purple, reminding me I had forgotten to ask why Tristan's power was purple instead of blue.
It would have to wait, just like Lukas' age: suddenly I remembered his father had mentioned he was fifty, more than twice our age, which would mean he was older than Tristan and even older than George, probably.
Why would he look and behave like a twenty-year-old then?
But of course I had enough training, dating back to my years as a student, to
empty my mind of irrelevant subjects, and I did so now, thinking only of the magics. I reached out for Paul and Lukas, connecting easily, and had some hesitation connecting with Tristan, fearing inappropriate intimacy, but we weren't going to share power after all, so I connected to him as well.
Then I activated my sight and directed it into the soil, towards the basalt column. It was still whole, still pulsating with sickly red power.
I could feel Lukas' revulsion, and then I felt him lock it down. Good, he was getting the hang of this as well as I had, though of course he perceived emotions much stronger than I, as I saw the inner structures clearer. I led the party into the stone, studying the cracks one by one, until the mages had an idea of the situation and we were ready to act.
I thought of how a block of basalt would weather in nature, the cracks would fill up with water, then freeze, shattering the block in a matter of thousands of years.
Or differences in temperature would cause it to enlarge and shrink again minutely, enlarging the cracks. Chemicals from the soil could dissolve minerals inside the rock, weakening the structure. I could also imagine a crowbar or wedge inserted in the crack, using leverage to widen it.
I had never consciously tried to influence anything yet, I had always just observed structures, which made me unsure what to do.
Also, the realization that everything I could think of would take thousands of years in a natural situation impressed my own inexperience on me. But my companions were much more experienced than I, and they had observed the situation through my eyes.
Paul, as my teacher, suggested I try all of them, see which one worked best, so I started with water, which was already there. I wanted to freeze it, and Paul suggested I shape a grid like a metal out of the components of the water.
The components moved fast, so it wasn't easy, but I managed, with my own energy, which was running out fast now.
Paul fed me some of his, and with it I stopped the internal movement of the water in the rock. I could see a grid forming, and the water did indeed expand, putting pressure on the rock. I could see the cracks widen, and more corrupted power leaked out.
But then the water ran out, I had frozen all of it, and the stone was still whole, so I decided to warm the stone, quite suddenly, expanding it with a bit of a shock. Seeing the dense grid of the stone, I tried to get the parts to move ever
faster, but that was just too difficult for me, I lacked the power, even with Paul's help, so he took over.
As a smith, he did not decide to work with nature, but he applied chemicals.
More water was flowing into the cracks by now, and with the acids that are naturally present in the water and in the organic part of the soil, he transformed it into an etching fluid, eating away at the stone at a steady pace.
Then he did what I had tried, move the grid of the stone faster until the stone heated up and the weakened parts around the cracks started to crack as well.
More sickly red power rushed out, draining away in the soil, but most of the power was still left in the stone, and though the stone was damaged, it was by no means close to being destroyed.
Now Paul went for the raw magic again, shaping it into a wedges that he rammed into the widened cracks one by one. When all cracks had a wedge of power in them, he applied one burst of power to all of them, and the cracks widened even more.
I could feel his determination to break the stone, it was primed to contain power and it had to be broken, or it would call other black mages to it by its nature. But this was a tough job, and Paul could only see his actions through me, which tired him a lot, so he had to take a breather.
Now Tristan asked politely if he could have a try, and of course we were happy to let him have a go, eager to see some show of force from him.
But it was clear our friend had a totally different point of view, for he did not use nature's laws, nor the tools of the craftsman. He used subtlety, reflecting his position in life, always having to connect people and seeing every side of everything.
With a ritual formula repeated over and over, he applied a purple shield around the entire block of stone, shutting it off totally from the rest of the soil and from us.
I could still see into it, and through me Tristan could see what he was doing, though it was not clear to us what he did. It seemed he could handle the filthy red energy without letting it touch him, for the sickly red stuff started to gather around the cracks, and it started to whirl a little.
When all the cracks had the surrounding stolen power whirling around them, and with a large tornado of red power inside the block of stone starting to come to life, he pulled us all outside his purple shield, and told us to stay clear a
nd wait.
Afraid of the corrupted stuff as he didn't seem to be, I came back into the now unsure whether we would be safe sitting nearly on top of the block. But Tristan just looked at us mysteriously, hugely enjoying himself.
We talked about the plans the council had for the site for half an hour, and then he told us it should be ready, so we joined up again, and they followed me inside, where the purple shield was still intact. With a word of command, Tristan dismissed his shield, and inside, there was nothing but soil and a patch of black sand.
After we had seen this, Tristan took us back into the now immediately, and explained: 'You applied natural processes, and Paul applied his craft, and both worked, but because the stone was so hard, it would have taken hours to wear it down that way.
So I decided to apply some time to the process: I protected us from the spell, and created pockets inside the stone where time went a hundred times faster than normal. I used the corrupted power to fuel the process, using it up and cleaning it without having to touch the filthy stuff.
That is the advantage of ritual, you don't have to wrestle the power, or lead it through your own body. With the chemicals still present and the damage you and Paul had already done, half an hour was enough to totally weather the stone to the sand it would have become after thousands of years of exposure.
No-one will ever claim that stone again, and most of the power is used up, the memories dissipated, no longer able to taint anything.'
Now he set to work to remove the wards, and we collected all the stones and the silver objects, returning them to Tristan's bag of components.
We walked back to the carriage, Lukas feeling a lot better with the disappearance of the polluted magic, me dreadfully worn with the new magic experience, and Paul in a bit of doubt, it seemed. I could imagine him being glad Tristan was true to his word, clearing up the magical taint if not single-handedly, certainly more hands-on than one would expect from a council-member.
On the other hand, Paul was used to being the prodigy of his family, magic had come very easily to him.
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