It was a large task, since it meant she would have to create enchantments to protect each room within the castle, but it would effectively limit them to communication distances as small as whatever room they were in.
Was it overkill, especially considering we didn’t have any known enemy in the castle? Damn right it was. As I said earlier, I’m paranoid, and for good reason.
I would have had Conall assisting her, but Matthew had already appropriated his younger brother to help with the antennae that he and Gary were building.
Since I was finished with the portal, I decided to check on them and see how they were progressing. I found Conall in Matthew’s workshop in the castle yard, but his older brother and Gary were absent.
When I entered the building, which had at one time been my father’s smithy, I saw that Conall was hard at work. A modest pile of copper nuggets sat by on one side, while still more had been loaded into a crucible that was just coming out of a newer furnace that Matthew had built the year before.
My father, Royce, hadn’t done much in the way of smelting, but Matthew’s projects often required considerable volumes of fresh metal and occasionally an alloy.
As he brought the crucible out, Conall immediately began siphoning out the liquid metal using his aythar. The copper began to cool quickly as it left the crucible, and he stretched and formed it into a wire that was nearly a quarter of an inch thick. As it solidified, he looped it and shaped it into a coil on the ground a few feet away.
To be fair, we could have bought copper wire from the foundries in Albamarl, but the cost was high, and the supply was small. There wasn’t a lot of demand for it, and if we had made an order, it could have taken months for them to fill it. Copper itself was very valuable, so purchasing the raw material would have been exorbitant as well, even if we planned to produce the wire ourselves.
Fortunately, precious metals were not a problem for me. Many years before, when my children were still young, I had nearly been bankrupted after agreeing to pay a vast weregild to the survivors of the Duke of Tremont’s estate.
Prior to that I had been trapped the body of an undead monster, my actions controlled by an alter-ego that was slowly going mad. My alter-ego, aptly named Brexus, or ‘payment’ in Lycian, had sent a horde of shiggreth to the Tremont estate with horrifying results. Thousands had been murdered and the lands there were still uninhabited. People thought they were haunted.
In any case, the weregild, or payment for the wrongly murdered, had been massive. Lady Rose had defended me in court and had found a loophole that would have allowed me to avoid punishment, but I refused to take that route. After my conviction and subsequent flogging, paying the fine had used up nearly all the wealth I had inherited from both the Cameron estate and from the Illeniel family. Before that, I had been one of the three richest men in Lothion.
These days I was only in the top ten, but that was mainly by choice. As an archmage I had used my abilities to manipulate the earth, and it had provided whatever I desired. If I had wanted, I could have brought forth enough gold to wreck the market.
Instead I had varied which metals I produced and how much of each I released into the market. Initially I had been a bit malicious, releasing quantities designed to ruin a few of my nastier political foes who relied on mining for their fortunes, but after that I had moderated myself.
Now I only produced small amounts, and only rarely, except for instances like this, when I had a particular use in mind.
Matthew and Gary had told me they would need a substantial amount of copper, so I had provided it, but from the look of what remained, they might need more soon.
“How is it going?” I asked Conall as he finished his current batch of wire.
Wiping his brow, he gave me a look that said ‘pity me.’ “It’s awful,” he complained. “I’m just slave labor here.”
I grinned at him. “What you’ve done would have taken dozens of men and many hours to do in the normal fashion.”
“At least they would have been paid for it,” he said with a sigh.
Contrary to popular belief, wizardry is work. It might be much easier, more efficient, and capable of wonders, but using one’s power all day long was exhausting. Which is why it’s good I have four capable children.
“You are being paid,” I told him. “Your work is helping to protect not only you, but your family, and hopefully the entirety of Lothion. Isn’t that sufficient reward?”
“Heh,” he muttered. “There are one or two in my family I am starting to rethink protecting. In fact, I have a particular brother I might be willing to sell to the enemy if they offered me a decent price right now.”
Nodding, I sighed and looked off into space. “I know what you mean. I was once offered a vast sum by Nicholas of Gododdin to adopt one of my children. You were just an infant at the time. I’ve often wondered if I should have taken the money.”
Of all my children, Conall was the most gullible, and while he had learned to mistrust the things his older brother told him, he still treated most of my pronouncements with quick belief. “Really?” he asked, astonished.
I waved my hand at him. “A lot of noble houses would kill to have a wizard in the family. You would have been very valuable to them.”
“I would have been a prince!” exclaimed Conall.
“Should I send him a message and tell him you’re interested in a late adoption?”
He heard the hidden laughter in my voice then and his eyes narrowed. “Dammit, Dad! It’s bad enough when Matt does it.”
I hugged him as I laughed, ignoring the dirt on his clothes. “Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.” In fact, I probably could have sold my children. There were a lot of wealthy families that would have paid for the opportunity to have such power in their grasp, but none of them had ever dared offend me by making such an offer.
And I would have refused…probably.
“Where have Matthew and Gary gone off to anyway?” I asked him.
“Malvern,” responded Conall. “They’re starting work on the antenna there.”
“So old Malvern agreed,” I commented. I hadn’t heard that news yet.
My youngest son nodded. “You’ll have to take the World Road if you want to check in on them, since we don’t have a circle there.”
“Where will they be?”
“Lord Malvern is letting them put it atop his keep.”
“I guess I’ll go check on them, then. I haven’t been to Malvern in a long time.” I headed to the transport house and took the circle that would put me on the World Road. After that, it was just a short walk to the Malvern portal.
Chapter 21
Malvern was a sunny, coastal city. It wasn’t as big as Albamarl of course, but it was significantly larger than Washbrook. There were at least ten or fifteen thousand people living in the city and surrounding areas.
The city itself wasn’t walled, and it was a long way from the border with Gododdin, so war had never been a problem for the inhabitants. It was a modestly prosperous port, but the Count that governed it kept a strong fleet to protect it.
Count Malvern’s keep stood on a hill that overlooked the city. To the west the keep looked over a steep cliff that plummeted straight to the sea, and to the south of it was a small road winding its way into the town proper.
The castle wasn’t particularly impressive. There was no outer wall or towers, just a tall square keep that rose perhaps eighty feet in height with battlements at the top. A wide flight of stairs led up to a heavy oak door broad enough for two men to enter side by side.
From the portal that opened near the city, I flew to the keep. From my height, I could see activity on the roof, and my magesight confirmed it as soon as I was within range. Gary and Matthew were there, constructing something.
Unfortunately, I didn’t want to insult the lord of the castle, so I needed to pay him a visit before heading to the room. The Count, Stephen Malvern, was a decent fellow, close to my age. I had met him on several
occasions. He had lost his first wife during the first year that the shiggreth had plagued Lothion. In fact, while I had been ‘dead,’ Penny told me that he was one of the suitors that Rose had tried to convince her to marry.
I didn’t hold that against him, though. He had since remarried, and he had always been polite when I had met him. Now, I was glad we had no bad blood between us, since his keep was apparently an ideal spot for the antenna that Gary wanted to build.
A servant ushered me in to see the Count, and I found myself being escorted up a series of stairs. It turned out my host was already on the roof, watching Matthew and Gary’s work. He greeted me as I stepped out into the stiff, salty breeze coming from the shore.
“Lord Cameron! It is good to see you again,” he said, offering his hand to me.
I shook it, replying, “Malvern, you’re looking well.”
“Call me Stephen,” he insisted.
I agreed and returned the offer, and then he began peppering me with questions. “Can you explain this thing to me, Mordecai? Is it some sort of wizardry?”
Gary and my son were mounting a long wooden support pole, and next to them they had several substantial coils of Conall’s heavy copper wire.
“There’s no magic involved in this, Stephen, not as far as I can tell. As I understand it, the copper wire will enable us to capture signals that our strange enemy uses to communicate. You’ve been informed of what went on in Dunbar, correct?”
Count Malvern nodded. “Yes, some sort of mechanical foe, I heard. I’m not sure how this relates, though.”
“They use an invisible type of light to communicate,” I began.
He interrupted me almost immediately. “If it’s invisible then it isn’t light.”
I sighed. “Whatever you call it, it’s the same sort of thing light is; you just can’t see it. The metal will resonate and produce an electrical current when the signal strikes it…”
Stephen frowned. “What kind of current?”
“Electrical,” I repeated. “You’re familiar with lightning. This is the same sort of thing except…”
“How dangerous will this thing be?”
The rest of our conversation was frustrating, and it was mostly incomprehensible to the Count of Malvern, but he did at least accept my assurance that we weren’t endangering his castle. He gave up trying to understand after a while and left me to talk to Gary and Matthew.
Gary smiled at me, his android face almost perfectly imitating the human expression. “I listened to your conversation. It is impressive how quickly you’ve learned the principles of electromagnetism.”
Still irritated from my talk with Count Malvern, I ignored the compliment. “What I’m really curious about is how you plan to locate the enemy with this. I understand how you’ll detect the signal, but from what you’ve said you won’t be able to determine a direction. If that’s the case, you can’t triangulate.”
“Correct,” said Gary. “However, we will have multiple receiving antenna and the signal strength will be different at each location. Using that information—”
I interrupted him, “Even if you had accurate signal strength, that would only give you an approximate distance, but you don’t have that, because you don’t know how strong the signal is at its source.”
“Very true,” he answered. “But, I can compare the signal received at each point and get a ratio, that, when combined with the known distance between those points, will give an approximate distance.”
Clever, I thought. With three approximate distances, he can create circles and trilaterate the source. “That only works if the signal originates between receivers, though, and you’ll need three signals to determine a rough location, assuming it is inside the area of the triangle.”
“That is why I would like to create more antennae at other locations, such as Surencia,” said Gary. “But I also have a method to determine location even if the signal comes from a place beyond the outer boundary between receivers. If I measure the difference in time of arrival of the same signal at widely separated locations, I can also get an approximate distance, even if the source is not between them.”
I thought about that a while, digesting what he had said, before finally asking, “What about speed?”
“Pardon?” said Gary.
“To estimate distance from time, you need the speed the signal travels,” I clarified. “Right?” I was in over my head, but I was determined to understand.
Matthew spoke up, “That’s the easy part. The signal is composed of light, so it travels at the speed of light.”
“The what?” As far as I knew, light didn’t have a speed; it was instantaneous. Then again, it hadn’t been that many years ago that I had thought the same thing regarding sound.
Matthew grinned. “I did some reading back in Karen’s world, and Gary’s explained a lot more since. We can go over this later, but trust me for now, it does have a set speed. The problem, for us mere humans, is that it is so great that it seems instantaneous, even over large distances. Luckily for us, Gary can measure time in very tiny increments.”
Things got more interesting from there, and I was amazed at the precision and scope of the knowledge people had possessed in Karen’s world. After a while, though, it was obvious that I was slowing them down, so I curtailed my questioning and bid them goodbye.
Gary stopped me. “One moment, Mordecai. I wonder if I can get your help with a small experiment.”
“Sure.”
A moment later, the android handed me a straight metal rod. “Today the weather is clear, and visibility is almost perfect. Since we are by the ocean it’s the perfect place to do this.”
“What do you want me to do, exactly?” I asked.
“Take this rod, which I’ve measured to exactly two meters, and fly out over the water. Matthew will stay with me on the beach at the water’s edge, and communicate with you telepathically. When you are nearly over the horizon, I’ll have him ask you to stop and place the bottom of the rod at the point where the wavetops are just touching it. From there I will have you keep moving away until I can no longer see the top of the rod.” Then he handed me the small rectangle that I had first talked to him through.
The rectangle was a device from Karen’s world that she called a ‘PM.’ It was an item of technology, just as Gary’s body was. In the past, he had spoken to us from it. “What’s this for?” I asked. “And what’s a ‘meter?’”
“A meter is a unit of measurement from my world, one much easier for me to work with. This will help me determine our exact distance to you. I cannot communicate with you through it from that distance, but I can measure the signal it emits to determine distance. Ideally, that would be unnecessary, but I have a hunch I may need the extra information,” answered the machine.
“What are you trying to figure out?”
“The exact curvature of your world,” said Gary.
I laughed. “I have that information in my library. Mariners and navigators have already done all of this. I can show you the charts tonight.”
The android was insistent. “Nevertheless, I would like to do this. We can compare the figures from your charts with my results this evening.”
***
When I got home a few hours later, I took a bath. I hadn’t really gotten dirty, but the sea spray had left me feeling sticky and smelling funny. Penny was feeling stronger, and everyone else was out of the house, a rare quiet moment. She was moving around the house, which I took as a good sign.
I had just finished drying off and had donned a long tunic when I heard a yell from the direction of the kitchen.
Running, I was there a few seconds later, and I found Penny sitting on the floor by the counter, crying, carrots and turnips scattered around her. Her favorite kitchen knife was embedded in the mantle over the door.
“What happened?” I asked worriedly.
Her head was down, staring at the floor tiles. “Go away,” she said quietly, a warning in her voice.
<
br /> Ignoring years of marital experience, I approached her anyway. “Talk to me, Penny.”
My wife’s answer came in a growl, “Go away!”
“I can’t help if you don’t talk to me.”
“Isn’t it obvious!” she yelled. “I only have one damned arm! I’m useless! I can’t cook. Do you know how many things you can do with only one fucking hand?! I can’t even peel a gods-be-damned turnip!” There were tears of rage and frustration in her eyes.
I wanted to get closer, to hold her, but she jerked when I started to move. “Don’t!” she warned. “Leave me alone. Can’t you see my hand? I’m holding it up to tell you to stay the fuck away.” She was pointing at her missing arm with her right hand. “It’s still there. I can feel it. Do you see it now? I’m waving at you.”
“It’s hard, I know,” I said soothingly. “It will take time to adjust…”
“Adjust?” she croaked. “I can’t dress myself. I can’t undress myself! Do you know how humiliating it is to have to ask Moira or Irene to help me when I have to relieve myself? How am I supposed to live like this?”
Without a good answer for that, I simply sat down myself, across the room from her. What could I tell her? Was this the right time to suggest I could heal her?
“I think there’s a way to restore your arm,” I said finally.
Penny didn’t look at me. “Matthew told me. It sounds better than this at least.” Her voice was flat, empty. “Who knows how long it will be before either of you have time to waste on something like that…”
“First, you aren’t a waste. You’ve never been a waste. You’re far more important to this family than I am. You’re far more important to me! And second, I wasn’t talking about a metal arm. I think I can restore your flesh and blood arm.”
She looked up, and her face shifted through a range of complex emotions. First, hope, and then suspicion showed in her eyes. “What does it cost?”
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