by Guy Antibes
The lodestone didn’t work at all from within the pot at any distance. The experiments rolled around in his head, and when Pol returned to his room, he began to work on a pattern of lodestone interaction with wards.
The lodestone did not affect spells by normal tweaking since it did not work on mind-control. It did work on disguises, so something about disguises had to be like wards. Could it be the constant physical manifestation? Pol didn’t know, but now he could not only see a disguise, but he could now also remove it.
Anyone could remove a ward if they knew about lodestones. Was that a particularly bad thing, Pol thought. Not many used wards in the Empire. He put a glamor on his face and found the lodestone had no effect.
The most important piece of the pattern clicked into place. Was there that much lodestone in the world? He looked deep into the lodestone and saw something glinting in its structure that he didn’t see if he looked into his knife. He set his knife down, and it moved on its own to attach itself to the lodestone.
What had Farthia called such a thing? Magnets and magnetism. Pol tore into his childhood memories. He remembered playing with magnetized metal that would attract other metal objects.
He pulled out his splinters and stuck them to the lodestone. He took one off to examine but did not see a glint in the structure. Maybe his idea was not practical, but the lodestone was interesting.
Pol put his one hat over his whitish hair and stepped back out into the streets. Whoever had been through Barna’s capital had left hundreds or thousands of spelled citizens in their wake.
Pol found a compelled woman arguing with a fruit seller on the street up ahead. Pol opened the cloth bag and pretended to examine apples, smiling as the arguing stopped.
“What was I saying?” the woman said.
Pol saw her shake her head. “I’m sorry.” She hastily selected some fruit and walked away.
The seller took a coin from Pol, who held out the apple.
“Funny thing, she’s been arguing with me for the last two weeks and all of a sudden…” She gave Pol a gap-toothed grin. “Life is funny isn’t it?”
“Sometimes,” Pol said just before he took a bite of his purchase.
~
The Seekers and a Sister assembled at the inn for dinner to report their activities.
“We did too good a job, I think. I sneaked into the palace and found plenty of mind-controlled individuals, but only a few compelled individuals, generally lower-level functionaries,” Hay said. “I couldn’t get close to the King, but I don’t think he is affected from talking to some servants. He is very skittish about his northern neighbor. When we came through here as Winnowers, they instructed us to ignore the palace because the risk of exposure was too high without a Winnower in place to guide the King.”
Pol let them talk before he shared his day’s revelation. “I found out something very interesting. I’m pretty sure there is a foil to the protection ward,” Pol asked.
“Magicians,” the other two Seekers said.
“No. Anyone can defeat it.” Pol pulled out his lodestone rune eraser. “We’ve been waving it under our noses.”
“Lodestone?” Shira said, smiling.
“Our erasers are too small to affect us, but I bought a large chunk today, and it removed my disguise.”
“Balderdash,” Hay said.
“We can test it. It eliminated wards that I wove on my door. Since wards are physical objects that bind tweaks, I think lodestones destroy them. Runes are very simple wards.”
“So a soldier would be able to defeat a protected Winnower soldier with a lodestone sword?”
“A stone sword? We should check it out. Let’s go to Pol’s room and experiment,” one of the other Seekers said.
They crammed into Pol’s room, where he turned into Buck and walked to the lodestone, sitting on the tiny table.
“Amazing,” Hay said.
Shira built wards on the door. Pol gave her the bag.
“The ward will go away if you are within two feet,” he said.
Shira gasped as her wards faded away. “It’s so easy.”
“Hey, you’re a girl,” one of the Seekers said.
The other Seekers laughed. “Just figured it out?” the other Seeker said. He had obviously deduced that Shira was a female.
After touching her face, she laughed. “Pol warned you the lodestone will break up a disguise.”
“Now for a protection spell.” Pol looked at Hay. “Create a protection spell.”
Pol saw the shimmer appear around Hay. He thrust out the lodestone, and the tweak disappeared.
“Now all we have to do is have each soldier carry around a lodestone the size of a fist and reach out and touch an enemy before the enemy kills them with a sword.” Hay shook his head. “Not practical, yet,” Hay said. “Keep thinking about it, magician.”
“He is more than a magician.” Shira took Pol by the upper arm. “He is brilliant.” She kissed his cheek. “And he is mine.”
“You two?” Hay said.
“We are the best of friends,” Pol said.
“More than friends,” Shira said, poking Pol.
“I need a protective shield. You aren’t magnetic, are you?” Pol looked at Shira with mock dismay.
“In some ways I absolutely am,” Shira said.
~
They spent another day cleansing the city and decided that was all they could reasonably do. Running around with the lodestone rock was impractical in the city. Pol found it just as easy to use the pattern and tweak things away.
It was time to slip into West Huffnya. All three Seekers had worked in the country before, so they knew alternate ways to cross the border.
Rain made their exit out of Barna’s capital a bit soggy. Fewer people were about to notice their departure. They bought a packhorse arranged through the inn, and Pol put the lodestone on the packhorse to keep it away from them. Shira reverted back to Dale, and Pol rode Demeron in Buck’s guise. The three Seekers wore their own disguises.
They traveled cross-country for three days, and finally took a farm track into a wood. On the other side, they emerged into West Huffnya. Pol couldn’t tell the difference from the farm buildings that they had entered a different country.
A day later, they rode into a town.
“The inn here used to be very happy about Hazett. There is no telling what mood they are in or their overall mental state,” Hay said.
“We can change that,” Pol said. “We are lost soldiers, right?”
The Seekers all nodded.
They entered a nearly empty stable yard. No grooms emerged to help them with their mounts. Inside, the place would have looked deserted if it were not so clean.
An old man walked into the lobby. “You boys are off track, aren’t you?” the man said through whistling teeth.
Pol sensed mind-control and remedied that situation. He had to catch the innkeeper when he lost balance.
“What did you do to me?”
“A spell. You were under a spell,” Hay said.
The closer Pol looked, the older the man looked. He must have been eighty.
“Is that what it was? I wondered where I picked up such strange notions. Every able-bodied man in the village is out with the army, mustering northeast of here. They left the farmers. Soldiers have to eat. My son’s business is about to fail without any customers. I wasn’t bothered about that until you came and messed with my mind. I sort of resent your removing my bliss.”
“I don’t do mind-control,” Pol said. “I just remove it. Can we help you?”
“Take care of your horses. We still have fodder and hay in storage. My son’s wife is working out at a farm. She thinks it’s all lovely like I did until a moment ago until you interfered. My own wife isn’t with us any longer. Perhaps she’s happier than anyone else where she is now.”
“Would you like to get your son back?” Hay said.
The man nodded. “War’s coming, so that might not happen.”
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“We’ll do what we can.”
“You are Imperials, I take it?”
Pol nodded. “We are trying to see what the Winnow Society is doing.”
“They’ve taken over the country, that’s what they’re doing. Ruined everything with their single-purpose minds. They aim to break up the Empire.”
“And remake it in the Winnower way?”
“Whatever that is. I don’t think they have a clue how to rule, just exercise power. They want to strip the land of people and think they can put everything back when they’re done. Life doesn’t happen that way,” he whistled.
“It doesn’t,” Shira said. She looked around. “The inn is spotless.”
“My daughter-in-law is always hoping for a customer or two.”
“You’ve got five. Can we fix our own meals?”
“If you brought your own food. There’s not much variety out in the town. Market dried up since everyone older than fourteen has left for the army.”
“We have enough. It would be nice to use your kitchen.”
The old man cackled. “I was just kidding about your own food. When there are only farmers, women, and children, we don’t starve.”
The daughter-in-law showed up. Shira promptly removed her mind-control. The woman took a deep breath and sat down.
She looked at them all through narrowed eyes. “Magicians from the Empire? What do you call yourselves…Seekers?”
Pol nodded. “We are here to see what’s going on in West Huffnya.”
“Poppa told you everything, I suppose?”
The old man nodded, leaning against the wall across the common room. She burst into tears. “My husband and our two boys are gone.”
“To the northeast?”
“Does anyone even come to check on you?”
“Of course. Who is it who takes what our farmers produce? The soldiers don’t come into the village very often. They deal direct with the farmers.”
Pol sat down. “We want to help, but I’m not sure five of us can help an entire country under mind-control.”
“Do your best, laddie,” the old man said. Take ‘em on one army at a time. They claim they’ll have six armies, three to head through East Huffnya and down through Tarida to join with them rebels in North Salvan.”
“What about Yastan?”
“That’s where the other three are headed. I’ve talked to magicians who think they’re soldiers often enough. I can remember everything, even if you did remove the spell.”
“Did they say anything about Daftine?” Pol asked.
“That is a nuisance army built to draw off the Imperial forces. Daftine was taken over first.”
“Not first,” Shira said. “Tarida fell first. North Salvan just joined the Winnowers’ army. South Salvan has withstood attacks for a few years now.”
The simple strategy could succeed, Pol thought. They had to bleed out part of the army without killing thousands of West Huffnyans. Perhaps if they eliminated the mind-control, many soldiers would just get up and wander home. He didn’t know what else to do from here.
“We’ll do what we can. How far is the army from here?”
“A week, no more. They can’t take food that is too perishable, but they accept eggs, and those go bad if not used for a week,” the daughter-in-law said. “The animals they cart or drive and then slaughter them on site, so Sim’s been told. I work for Sim. Maybe you can start by freeing up the minds of the village folk.”
“We can do that,” Pol said. “If you want to come with us, they won’t be defensive.”
“I’ll go with you,” the old man said. “Misery loves company.”
~
They took the one private room at the inn. Malden suspected much of what Pol had told him. All five of them added their own messages as they talked about strategies with Malden, Akonai, and a few others back in Yastan.
They decided that the Emperor would send out birds to the duchies, warning them of the Daftine army. They would be left on their own. The Imperial Army would march northwest from Yastan to fight the West Huffnyans, while groups of Seekers and magicians would head east to stall Grostin’s North Salvan forces.
With a simple short-term strategy in place, they would disrupt what they could and then return to Yastan through Lake.
“Those orders seem simple, but the task is beyond us,” one of the Seekers said. “Perhaps the old man is right, and mind-control ignorance is bliss.”
Hay narrowed his eyes. “Giving up?”
The Seeker raised his hands in submission. “No, it’s just we can’t stop the entire Winnower army.”
“Those aren’t the orders,” Pol said. “What if we rode through a few encampments messing with the spelled soldiers? Do you think they are going to want to fight?”
“Not unless the magicians get them again.”
“We take out the magicians among them. We have the means now. Magnetism.”
“Disrupt, and then flee?”
Pol smiled. “I don’t characterize it as fleeing when we are deciding when to leave. Retreat strategically. We will live to fight another day.”
“That we will,” Hay said, glaring at his fellow Seeker.
The next day, Pol and Shira rode with the innkeeper’s wife, while the Seekers all accompanied the old man, who was indeed eighty-two.
Pol and Shira stopped at the farm where she worked. Another village woman helped the farmer, along with his wife. The Winnowers had drafted the farmer’s oldest son and daughter into the army. They did not complain about it until Shira removed compulsion.
Why compulsion? Pol thought. He had no idea, unless the Winnowers wanted to draft him at another time.
The farmer invited them for a quick snack. “It’s the least I can do. I can’t actually ask you to save my children, but do what you can,” he said.
His wife clung to him and nodded. “The Winnow Society is evil. I never did like them, all high and mighty. We were always Imperial supporters until the Winnowers forced us to do otherwise.”
Shira clutched the woman’s hand. “We will free all those we see, but we can’t go through the entire army. Do you think they will drift home if they come to their senses?”
“They will if they know what’s good for ‘em,” the farmer said. “The Winnower’s can’t stop a bunch of deserters.”
Pol didn’t want to dispute the farmer, but he had a different impression of the rogue magicians. They were so power-hungry, the Winnowers were capable of anything.
They spent the rest of the day reaching all the farms within easy riding distance. On the way back to the village, Pol asked their escort. “Do you have any lodestone in the village?”
“Magnets?”
Pol nodded.
“There is a bookshop that has one. The magnets attract the kids, and the kids attract parents who might buy a book or two.”
Shira nodded. “Good. The kind of mind-control on the farmers was a different kind of spell called compulsion. If any farmers come into the inn, have them touch the lodestone. It sometimes works to eliminate the spell.”
“The same goes for soldiers with protection spells,” Pol said. The lodestone will eliminate those, but don’t spread the word. We don’t want the enemy to find out.”
“I remember the magicians coming into town. A few of our more rambunctious boys threw rocks at them. They just bounced off.”
“How much for the lodestone?”
“Nothing,” the woman said. “The bookseller’s been drafted, too. The store hasn’t been opened since he left.”
~
They left for the army. The old man said they would run into two more villages along the road that would lead them to the army. The road was not much more than a track. Most of the traffic was wagons. He could guess the soldiers traveled this road, but no one else.
Two more villages were freed from mind-control. The same pattern repeated itself. Anyone vital to the army had been under compulsion. The track intersected a road leadi
ng north to a large manor’s fields where the armies camped.
When they reached the road, they ran into a group of mercenaries heading to the camp.
“You come from an odd direction,” the Winnower magician said.
“Thought we’d see some of West Huffnya. Is that a problem?” Hay said.
“It is if you haven’t been introduced to the army.” The magician waved his hand.
Pol felt the pressure he usually did. He threw out a spell to cancel mind-control and then eliminated the compulsion spell. A tall, very skinny rider fell off his horse.
“What did you do?” the magician said, looking down at the fallen man.
Shira tried to put him to sleep, but the protection spell stopped her tweak. Pol concentrated and nodded to her. This time the magician fell to the ground.
Along with the other Seekers, Pol drew his sword. “Who of you really wants to serve in the Winnower army?”
None of them said a word.
“He’s a magician?” Pol pointed to the first man who had collapsed after he removed the compulsion ward.
“He said he was, but look what you did,” one of the men said.
Hay looked the recruits over. “Do you want to hear what the Winnowers wanted to do with you?”
The men all nodded, still a bit disoriented by what had transpired.
Hay jumped off his horse and put a truth spell on the Winnower. “You are recruiting men to the Winnower cause?”
“I am,” the magician said.
“How are you doing that?” Hay said.
“I put mind-control spells on the infantry and compulsion spells on magicians and those who might be officer material.”
Hay put the magician back to sleep and looked at each one of them. “Only one of you was compelled, so what does that make you?”
“Infantry?”
Pol joined in. “Do you want to fight without your horses?”
“I wouldn’t last long doing that,” one of them said. “But I have to admit, I was about to do anything they told me.”
The others nodded their heads.
“I’ll put shields on your minds, so they can’t repeat what they just did. Don’t fight the magicians; just walk away. Watch.” Pol replaced the protection spell and poked the magician with his sword, and the new protection spell stopped his blade. “See? They have a protection spell that means you can’t win in a fight.”