My recent rise to the nobility was likely to attract attention, too, and then there was the Royal Censorate of Magic who, if they didn’t have a price on my head already, were merely delaying until the debate about how high to set the bounty was concluded. And at any time my erstwhile allies at court could decide to stick a knife in me. Goblins were a concern, but they weren’t my immediate concern.
When I was finished it was easily the most secure part of the castle. I celebrated by eating supper and then continued. The tower was now strong, but it wasn’t quite useful enough to me yet. I needed more. I went back into the stones and began erecting the magical architecture necessary to support the kind of heavy enchantment I wanted it to bear. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, and I’d never done this level of enchantment before.
Imagine trying to keep your favorite thousand-phrase poem in your head while simultaneously remembering the Sacred Number of each of the lesser elements, in order, by name . . . while examining a rock collection to the point where you can identify each specimen by sight at a distance. I wasn’t able to maintain that level of focus as well as I would have liked, but luckily the forces I was playing around with weren’t dangerous or overtly powerful. I made mistakes, but I quickly learned from them.
The abundance of power made the execution much easier, but in some ways it actually made preparation more difficult. Hard to explain, unless you’re a High Mage. For instance, sometimes a hotter fire will cook something faster, but most of the time it will just burn it up.
I took my time. I was careful. And I was lavish. I began with plying the forces of the greater elements. I ran a central line of force from base to peak, grounding it thoroughly in the earth. The water table was near enough the surface so adding its influence was easy. Tendrils of power lashed out like spokes of a wheel, fostering divisions of force and separation of purpose. Seen with magesight, the tower appeared as a kind of bizarre tree, a lance of energy for a trunk and an ever-branching tangle of lines of magical force for the boughs.
The fruit of that tree was every protective spell I could think of. Glyphs of warding against fire, flood, rot, insects, and vermin. Spells of comfort for the sitting room, peace and passion for the bedroom, and my lab had the usual arsenal of wards every competent mage invests in his private space to keep the risk of accidental explosion at bay. Passive and active defensive spells were the final touch, anti-spying spells, anti-dust spells, anti-intruder spells, I cast every glyph and rune I could to cover as much area as possible.
I ended by surrounding the entire thing in a magical cone of force which, when activated, would insulate the drafty old place from wind, weather, dampness and keep it pleasantly heated, too. I’d have to power the spell myself, for a while – but eventually I could procure a piece of thaumaturgic glass tuned properly to make the spell permanent, even when I wasn’t around.
When I was done, near to dawn the next day, I had the most secure tower attached to the shakiest castle in the Five Duchies. My tower was tight against the elements, against fire, against gravity itself.
I stumbled into the rickety travel bed downstairs to snuggle under the covers with my increasingly large bride. We’d managed to wrap our bed in furs and quilts which, with the help of magic and a well-laid fire, kept us warm and toasty against the chill of the winter’s night. As I drifted off, bone tired, I couldn’t help but give a deep sigh of contentment.
This beat the hell out of fighting goblins.
Chapter Four
Affairs of State
I slept most of the day that followed, and indulged in a massive lunch of bacon and toast and dried fruit delivered to my room by my very anxious wife. Alya’s face was lined with worry when she woke me. She wasn’t used to the physical costs of doing magic, yet. It was a little easier in some ways, with irionite, but I hadn’t done that kind of power-heavy work since Timberwatch.
I took her up to the lab and tried to explain what I had done to our new home, as best I could to a layman. She understood the sudden lack of draughts in the place well enough, and was appreciative of the vermin and pests which had infested the tower suddenly being anxious to be elsewhere.
I also inspected the result of my enchantment. The spells were still in place and functioning properly. I should be able to tap into that font of power, should I need to, and it would help keep the simple enchantments I’d laid going indefinitely. Possibly even without the need for thaumaturgical glass.
I had impressed myself. It was painstaking work, and required long periods of intense concentration but I was reasonably happy with it. It wasn’t artful by any stretch, but it was thorough.
When our new bed arrived by wagon from Sashtalia over the pass that afternoon, Alya and I tested both the magical and erotic capabilities of our bedroom, and were well-satisfied.
Twice.
After so pleasant an interlude with my new bride I felt guilty enough to catch up with what Sir Cei had been doing with my fief during my lengthy enchantment.
I found him at the big table in the Great Hall, where he chose to handle accounts and documentation. The big table was actually a huge stone trestle I’d magically sliced off of a boulder and had carried inside, to rest on two massive rocks. It was close to the fire, at the head of the hall, and it was reserved for members of my immediate household and senior retainers. We had four wooden trestle tables as well, now, but usually only two were in use at any time, with the others packed away until needed. As it was, the garrison and house staff ate first, and quickly, early in the morning before the senior staff and nobility broke their fast.
Eating at the castle was an important economic issue, with different classes of folk having the right automatically, periodically, or as a special favor or payment. And since the main Bovali column had arrived with more food and Goody Nanily now had the help of a dozen experienced Bovali wives, that had started to mean something again. The big table was impressive-looking, fourteen feet long, with space around it for a score or more, if they were cozy. And unlike the wooden trestles, it was just too damn heavy to move around much, so it pretty much stayed there.
Cei had taken to handling the estate’s business at the great table every morning after breakfast. He claimed it was both warmer and quieter than his room/office, which looked out to the militia’s practice yard. It also allowed him to keep an eye on everything going on in the castle, since you pretty much had to go through the great hall to get anywhere else.
We’d started having these Lord-to-Castellan meetings regularly, every couple of days. He’d report progress of various projects, bring me items of interest about the domain, and take instruction from me as to its governance. The meetings were almost always casual affairs, “no one here but us aristocracy”, often over a pint of beer or cider. It was the one time he felt entitled to speak with candor to me, and without excess politeness.
While I had been seeing to the magical architecture of the castle, he had been tending to my affairs quite admirably, I found. He had a wax tablet with his notes written neatly on it and ran down each point with meticulous precision. I valued his literacy – plenty a country knight saw such a thing as a foppish waste of time, an unmanly and un-chivalrous pursuit.
But then again most country knights are idiots.
“The village population has now more than doubled,” he reported patiently. “Six new families have begun work on the foundations and framework of new homes, chosen by lot from them all. I persuaded four families in Sevendor Village to relocate to the abandoned cots in Genly – that cost us a goat apiece, but it put four more Bovali families under a real roof.
“With your permission, I’d like to continue the effort. Genly is half-populated, as it is, and has less potential than Sevendor. But it is actually closer to the fields the villeins work, though not the freemen. Railan the Steady protested. He does not like having folk in his village that do not automatically respect his authority.”
“It’s my village, not his,” I reminded the knight.
“By all means, continue the program. See if you can’t persuade as many Sevendori as possible to relocate to Genly – offer even more incentives, if you must.”
He made an approving noise and a mark on his tablet with his stylus.
“We seem to have enough tents prepared for the Bovali on the commons, but its cold, Sire, and getting colder. I can order more firewood issued, but even if we fell a hundred trees now they won’t be dry enough to burn until summer. We’ve already depleted the deadwood on the castle grounds. And we need the Westwood for timber. Gods willing, it will be a mild winter and we can get the lumber we need for proper homes long before spring. But until then . . .”
“We can’t let people freeze any more than we can let them starve,” I decided. “This, at least, I can do: if the temperatures go below freezing and stay there, I can cast a spell that will give them some protection for a short time. Say, keep it above freezing. I won’t be able to do more than that, but if they keep their fires tended, they won’t freeze. So issue additional wood to the commons, but remind folks that it’s a scarce commodity at the moment. Let me know if you see anyone wasting it. But the spell should make it bearable, at least.”
“Sire, you can do that?” Sir Cei asked, startled.
“It’s actually a simple spell,” I assured him. “I just have to convince the air not to be cold. But only in one spot. And only for a night, at least for now.”
“That should bring solace to some, Sire,” he agreed, making a mark on his slate. “Food stocks are adequate for our numbers, at the moment, but we are expecting the last of the Bovali in the next few weeks, and then they will not be.”
“Then we have a few more weeks to worry about it. I’ll have Rondal pick up some more provisions along the way, too,” I nodded. My junior apprentice was traveling with the main company of the Bovali peasantry as they rode up the Bontal in a string of hired barges. “Another hundred head of cattle, two score sheep, maybe some goats. And more grain. We’ll be fine, barring complications,” I assured him, taking a bite of a breakfast roll that was barely passable.
“Magelord,” Sir Cei said, quietly, “will the state of your treasury permit it?”
“I’ll go penniless before I let one of my subjects starve,” I declared. Many lords used hunger as a means of keeping their people docile and dependent. I wasn’t going to be that kind of lord. “It would be helpful if we had a real bakery, too.”
I’d rebuilt the ovens, passably enough for Goody Nanily’s use, but that wasn’t nearly a large enough oven to bake for the whole Vale. We needed a baker. I had to send to my father for assistance on that front. Dad was a master baker who had intended me to take up his craft before I went and got all magically talented. Luckily, I had five gorgeous sisters who had all attracted husbands who were into the bread business, one way or another. Surely they could spare someone to rescue me from the cruel fate of mediocre baked goods.
“As you wish, Sire,” Sir Cei said, inclining his head slightly, and making another note. He continued. “The carpenter has surveyed the wood, the one they call the Westwood, and has agreed that there is good timber there aplenty. He does add that the wood has been poorly managed, and is choked with underbrush and diseased trees. Even if some of the older, straighter, and easier to reach trees would be cut, they would still not be dry enough to build with before summer.”
I thought about that. I didn’t know much about lumber, but I knew that green wood had to dry before being used. I’d seen shipyards on the coast use giant kilns to do the trick. I didn’t see why that couldn’t be tried here, albeit on a smaller scale – only with magic. I was pretty good at the thermomantic spells. It would certainly cut down the expense of importing the lumber, and get homes built much faster. It looked like I’d have to learn the carpenter’s trade as well as the mason’s. I scribbled a note on my own wax tablet and motioned for Cei to continue.
“Word has spread of your ascension to the seat of Sevendor,” he said, respectfully. “So has your openhandedness and your need of labor. Peasants are already starting to arrive from neighboring domains seeking employ. Both villein and free. I’ve hired a gang of workers from the surrounding fiefs to permanently repair the bridge and road, and it’s just possible that some might not find their way home again after their term is up. Some may have been bandits, afore now, but I cannot be certain . . .” he said, cautiously. Obviously he was feeling me out – some lords were strict about hiring outlaws, but I just shrugged.
“If their crimes were not in Sevendor, why should I care? Pay them an honest day’s pay for their honest work. If any particularly catch your eye as industrious and smart, tell them they can make a home here, even.”
I could tell by his eyes that that was the answer he had wanted. He nodded again, almost a bow, and continued. This fief was still sparsely populated, even with the Bovali arriving. There were plenty of bandits by misfortune who would be happy to give up the romance of the road for a secure cot in Sevendor. Anyone who started trouble . . . well, they could be dealt with.
“I’ve toured the outlying lands, the old village site and its fields, and they are quite deserted,” he reported, unrolling a well-sketched map of our vale and holding it to the table with his dagger. “Here is the castle in the southwest, the village of Sevendor below. There are seven yeomanries under our control: The Westwood, Caolan’s Pass, Gurisham Hamlet, Jurlor’s Hold, Farant’s Hold, Southridge Hold, and Genly.”
When you think of a feudal domain, you usually think: Lord, castle, peasants. But that’s not where the community of a well-run fief ends. In between the free peasants was a class of bondmen, the poor cottagers who usually got a hut and a couple of rods of garden plot or meadow. These villeins were day-laborers, usually a penny and a loaf a day. Most of the year they did odd- jobs – it was only at plowing and threshing that their labor was really essential. The rest of the year they did whatever they could to survive.
The next class up were the poor, free peasants who by tradition and right had a share of the common fields, usually ten to fifteen acres, in addition to working my third of the fields. They paid their rents to the reeves, who in turn paid tribute to me.
Then there were the free peasants who owed especial allegiance and service to the lord of the manor in exchange for their own bit of land or a special commission endowed with privilege. These were the Yeomen, and their rights and privileges were usually far in excess of the common freeman, including the right to sup at the castle’s table once a week, if they chose. Yeomanries were districts, and their exact nature varied somewhat across the duchies.
In the Wilderlands they tended to be more military in nature, with a Yeoman being a commoner capable of raising a couple of dozen husky woodsmen to rally to the lord of the land. In the Riverlands, Yeomanries were more of an administrative and economic post, although they were usually tasked with common military matters as well.
In agricultural communities, he was usually also the Reeve, as Goodman Railan was for Sevendor Village. In woodland communities, he was often also the Woodward, and in ranching Yeomanries he was often the Hayward, as well.
Other times, it was a more direct grant of privilege, much like my father’s purchase of a baking license from Baron Lithar. Sometimes a Yeomanry was just a farmstead with enough of a plot for a vegetable garden and a couple of small fields of millet or oats. But the Yeoman was his own master, sworn to bear arms if he was able, render service upon demand, and act in the lord’s stead to protect the lord’s interests. Sometimes the yeoman was also granted special rights associated with his yeomanry, such as hunting or fishing rights or keeping bees or doves, and would be obligated to supply a portion of his take to the lord as tribute.
In larger castles and more sophisticated fiefs it was possible to be raised to a Yeomanry without any land being involved. It was not uncommon to have Yeomanries centered around a marina, for instance, or a busy toll road or bridge, a frontier gate or a mine. And some lords appointed a Yeoman to fulfill a
special function, like a particularly skilled smith or woodsman.
A Yeoman was essentially a free commoner or petty noble who had accepted a set of specific responsibilities from the sitting lord, and who in turn was accorded more respect and greater privileges than a regular commoner. And wealth usually flowed along behind. Consider it feudalism at the lowest end, where a family could agree to take your arms and support you in war time in exchange for protection and land or rights.
But the Yeomen were essential to a well-run estate. They were a social step above common peasants (though usually below real artisans) and were seen by the peasantry as the lord’s men. They even had their own badges in most places, associated with an animal or something that went with their lands.
Most prosperous fiefs had a few dozen Yeomen. You didn’t want too many, Sir Cei explained to me, else petty politics would intrude overmuch on the system. But too few meant that a lord could only rely on his personal household for organization, administration, and arms when there was need. Fiefs with few Yeomen had a tendency toward peasant uprisings. I didn’t want that. I had been accused of leading one, once, by Sir Cei’s old master. No one likes a peasant uprising, even the peasants.
Sevendor’s Yeomanries were a mixed bag, Sir Cei went on to inform me. Three of them were out-right freeholds, small compounds of peasants who tended the Yeoman’s land in addition to their own and my portion. Jurlor’s Hold, Farant’s Hold and Southridge Hold were all farming communities each run by a Yeoman who owned or leased the croplands or pasturelands.
Gurisham Hamlet was more of a communal organization, with Headman Brandine, the reve, standing for the Yeoman. Gurisham was a hamlet where the majority of the folk were bonded villeins, not free men. They couldn’t do much at all without my permission.
The tiny Genly hamlet, right under the castle walls, also had a majority of villeins. It had no Yeoman currently: it was run by Railan the Steady from Sevendor, and only had a few families in its circle of tiny waddle-and-daub huts clustered around a common well and silo, surrounded by a fence and low hedge to keep the critters out.
The Spellmonger Series: Book 03 - Magelord Page 6