“I’m going to have to send out scouting parties to bring back more wood,” Dorull complained. “Just filling this wagon has made a larger dent in the castle wood supply than I’d supposed. And if I’m right, it will take more than this wagon load to get that thing charged up enough to use.”
“Do you really think it will take that much?” Eril asked.
“Truthfully, I don’t know. But I suspect it will be quite a job for us to do this in any circumstance. And there’s no guarantee that getting it charged will be enough to get it to work.”
§ § §
For the next three days, they took turns working around the clock to charge the arch. The amount of magical energy it required was so far beyond what had been required to charge any of the other magical artifacts as to make their earlier efforts seem trivial.
The reservoir filled painfully slow, but it did fill. When it was over three quarters capacity Dorull addressed Eril, while Zeldar was taking his turn to direct the charging energy, “Eril, we’re getting close. I think another day and it will be fully charged. Do you have any idea how to activate it?”
This was the question Eril had been dreading. While he had been charging the arch, he had also been trying to connect with it and figure out how to operate it. With the other devices, they had been either simple in their operation, or there had been something in Dorull’s collection of books about artifacts to give him enough of a clue where to begin to activate the device. With the arch, he got no intuitive feedback from the device, except for the impression that the arch and the magic which powered it was orders of magnitude more complex than anything he’d ever encountered before.
“No, Master,” Eril replied with a sigh, “I can’t figure it out. It’s just so, so, immense. This is magic like nothing I’ve ever even imagined.”
“Well, I have to say, Eril, I’m not surprised. The gates were supposed to have been the zdrell master’s greatest achievement. We’ve lost so much knowledge from the time this was created. I was just hoping that you would perceive some sort of magical operating switch, something that you could work, even if you don’t understand the whole thing.”
Eril grunted. “Yeah, I was hoping for something like that too, but if it’s there, I haven’t seen it. But I’ll keep trying. I’m hoping it is something like the viewer. I couldn’t figure it out at all until I did. Maybe this will be like that.”
Eril paced, staring at the outside edge of the arch. “Master, I don’t see any sort of writing anywhere on this thing. Wasn’t there something written, somewhere, when you found it?”
“No, nothing. Nothing at all. And believe me, I looked.”
Eril went back to looking for the answer when he wasn’t charging the arch.
§ § §
The next day Dorull was taking his turn charging the arch when he suddenly stopped.
“Eril!”
Eril looked up from his continued examination of the arch. “Master?”
“Take over charging and tell me how it feels to you,” Dorull said, stepping away from the spot between the fireplace and the arch they stood in to charge.
Eril moved into position to begin charging. They had been doing it so much that the process was familiar to the point of boredom. Once Eril initiated the flow, he could feel roughly what the charge capacity was. On his last turn, it had been at roughly nine-tenths, and as he moved back into the flow of it, he was shocked to notice that it didn’t feel any greater. His last shift had been over three hours earlier and it should have felt at least a bit greater, but instead, it felt as if it hadn’t increased at all. In fact, it felt like it might have even decreased slightly.
This scared Eril. If the arch was somehow losing the energy put into it, they might have real problems on their hands. It was taking so much effort as it was to charge it, if it was losing that charge faster than they put it in, they might never get it to work.
“The charge isn’t increasing, Master,” Eril said as he continued to channel energy into the arch.
“That’s how it felt to me. I wanted to see if it felt that way to you too,” Dorull replied, scratching his chin.
“Eril, stop adding charge to it.”
“But Master, I know it isn’t full. I know what it feels like when something doesn’t have room for more charge. This doesn’t feel like that.”
“I’m aware of that, Eril. Stop charging anyhow. We need to find out if the arch is losing charge faster than we can put it in, if it is broken, then all our efforts have been wasted.”
Eril stopped charging and allowed his body to recover from the channeling experience. “What do we do, Master?”
“I say we call it a night and come back in the morning and see where the charge stands. If it has lost even more charge, we may have to give up on this project until we can figure out why.”
“But, but, we’ve come so far . . . “
“I know, Eril. I hope I’m wrong, but we’ll see in the morning.”
Chapter 27
The next morning, a refreshed, but anxious Eril walked with Dorull and Zeldar into the room with the arch. Eril was afraid to touch it and find out if it had continued to lose charge, but he was equally afraid not to know, so he stretched out his hand and almost immediately let out a sigh of relief.
Dorull reacted to Eril’s expression. “So, it hasn’t lost any more?”
Eril shook his head. “Only a little, and I can’t even be sure of that. It isn’t leaking charge anything like what we saw yesterday.”
“We’ll have to leave it and keep checking to be sure,” Zeldar said, as he too laid a hand on the arch, grunting with satisfaction.
“So, the most important work is back to you,” Dorull said grinning ruefully at Eril.
“Yeah, I was afraid of something like this. I just can’t figure this thing out. It is so complex I can’t even tell where to start. It’s like someone explained the concept of reading and writing to me, then handed me a book to read. I don’t even know the alphabet, let alone the rules of spelling. Arrrgh!” Eril growled.
“I understand your frustration only too well, Eril,” Dorull said, coming up to lay a comforting hand on Eril’s shoulder. “I have devoted my life to trying to puzzle out artifacts that I only understood in the most cursory fashion. Sometimes perseverance and creativity are enough to figure some things out, sometimes not.
“Our problem lies in that we do not have the luxury of years to study this arch and puzzle out its function. Having eliminated one Charzen, it is only a matter of time before another one arrives. It could be as little as weeks we have left, but no more than months.”
“I know, Master,” Eril groaned. “I just don’t know what to do. I need something to guide me. Isn’t there anything in your archives?”
“No, sadly there is not,” Dorull said, shaking his head.
“Maybe we need to search beyond the arch itself,” Zeldar said, pointing to the wall. “The surface is clearly worked. Might it contain some clue?”
Eril didn’t look happy but shrugged and began to examine the wall. The more he opened his zdrell sight and looked, the more he realized the truth of Zeldar’s words. While the wall didn’t have obvious runes like the arch, it was not just smoothed stone. It also had been magically worked. It, somehow, was linked to and part of the whole arch.
His initial excitement quickly turned to frustration, as the magnitude of the magic involved in creating the arch grew in his mind the more he examined it. It seemed that the magic of the arch was somehow tied directly into the mountain, if not the whole planet. Eril was both amazed by the scope of it and depressed by how puny his understanding of it was.
After some time, Dorull came up to him. “Eril, take a break and eat. You are only going to make yourself sick if you keep this up.”
“But you were the one that said we had no time. I’ve got to figure this out.”
“You’re right. I did say that, and it’s true, but if you keep on like this, you’ll kill yourself and be n
o closer to the truth.” He put his, surprisingly youthful, hand on Eril’s shoulder and turned him away from the wall. “Biruell’s here with a feast of Mayla’s best. Come, sit and eat and ease your body and mind for a bit.”
Eril sat reluctantly at a table that Biruell had setup. The young boy was continuously peppering them with questions about the chamber, the arch, and what the arch was supposed to do. His youthful enthusiasm did much to lift everyone’s mood while they enjoyed the break that the meal provided from the frustrations of the search.
Biruell continued to buzz around the chamber, looking and poking at things, before he would be required to take the remains of the meal back up to the kitchen. Eril did feel somewhat better but was reluctant to go back to examining the wall and was just starting to trudge back to it when one of Biruell’s questions cut through his funk.
“What is this box on the wall by the fireplace for?” the boy asked innocently.
“What makes you think that’s a box?” Zeldar asked, as both Dorull and Eril turned to see what the boy was pointing at. It was a rectangular feature of the wall carving just to one side of the fireplace. Eril had paid little attention to it as it had seemed just one more decorative carving around the fireplace, which sported quite a number of geometric shapes as well as animals carved in bas relief around it.
“It’s got hinges on the lower part,” the boy said pointing.
The three crowded around and saw that there did appear to be hinges, nearly invisible, in the bottom edge of the feature. Looking closely, Eril saw that there were two slight indentations just above the “box.” He pressed his fingers into them and with a tingle and a slight click, the front face of the box hinged forward to reveal a shallow cabinet, inside of which there was a single item, a stack of metal plates held together by oblong rings.
Eril picked up the book, as he assumed it to be. It was lighter than it at first appeared. There were at least fifty plates, they were very thin, completely uniform and dull silver in color. There did not appear to be anything engraved or otherwise marked on the plates.
Eril brought the book back to the hastily cleared lunch table and they each took turns leafing through the strange plates.
“Someone obviously took great care to preserve these plates in here,” Zeldar said. “What I can’t understand is why they would go to all this effort if they’re blank.”
“Why indeed,” Dorull mused. “Metal plates like these are known to hold the oldest and most valuable archives. Any other substance decays quite rapidly, but properly preserved; these plates could stay legible for thousands of years. That is if there is something to be read from them . . . .” His eyes were very far away.
“Eril,” he said sharply. “Have you tried looking at these plates the same way you look through that viewer of yours?”
“No, uh, hmmm, oh, oh wow!”
“What do you see?” Dorull snapped.
“I, I don’t know how to describe it, but these plates are full. They’re . . . . amazing. I don’t know how they do it, but there are multiple levels of text on each plate. It’s like each one has ten or twenty pages of information on it, but I can move back and forth between the levels just by concentrating. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“So,” Zeldar said, anxiously, “do they say anything about the arch?”
“That is everything they talk about,” Eril said breathing heavily. “The cover says ‘Operating Manual and Emergency Procedures for Jorell Extra-dimensional Transit Gateways.’ I don’t know all of what that means, but this is exactly what I needed. I think it will tell me what we need to know to make this gate work.”
Continuing to leaf through the pages, Eril said, “This is going to take some time, though. There is a lot here.”
“Well, don’t let us stop you, boy,” Dorull said, enthusiasm back in his voice. “Why don’t you take this up to my main study. You can work comfortably there, and you can dictate some of this so that the rest of us can be enlightened as well.”
Biruell piped up. “Did I do good?”
“You did better than good, Biruell,” Eril said, enthusiastically grabbing the youngster’s shoulder. “You may have just saved us all.”
§ § §
After they reached the study, Dorull made Zeldar and Biruell leave the room. “Eril, I’m going to sit here and read. I won’t say anything unless you need help or clarification. I want you to spend the next couple of hours getting a high-level view of what is on these plates. Don’t get too deep into anything until you know where to look. I know the temptation to get lost in a large archive like this. I’m sure we’ll have more time later to look at it in depth, but for now, we need to focus on just the parts that will help you to get this gate working.”
Eril nodded and started his study.
In what felt to him like only a short time, Dorull interrupted him.
“Well, do you have a fair idea yet?”
“Yes, Master, I think I understand the broad outlines, but I thought you said you’d leave me time to look into it.”
“Eril, it’s been over three hours since I last spoke to you.”
“That can’t be. It hasn’t been more than half an hour, I’m sure of it.”
“Nevertheless. . . . . I only interrupted you when I saw that you had scanned through the plates a couple of times and were now starting to concentrate.”
“Yeah, I think I understand how the manual is laid out and how it works.”
“Good,” Dorull said, standing up. “Let’s get something to eat and bring Zeldar back in and you can explain it to all of us at once.”
As he stood, Eril suddenly realized that he was both hungry and in need of a trip to the privies. “Great idea, Master.”
§ § §
An hour later, feeling much more comfortable, Eril was back in the study sitting in front of ‘The Manual’ as he now thought of it. Zeldar and Dorull were seated, clearly anxious to hear what Eril had learned. Biruell was leaning against one of the bookcases trying, and failing, to look like he was unconcerned. Dorull had initially tried to keep him out, but both Zeldar and Eril were starting to think of him as their good luck talisman.
Eril cleared his throat, “This book says it contains everything we need to know to operate the gates. It is clear that it contains only instructions for using the gates. In fact, it says on the first real page, in really big letters that it is only an operating manual and that any modifications or repairs to the gates should be only be attempted by a level five zdrell master or higher. I didn’t even know that there were different levels of zdrell masters at all. Did you?”
Dorull sat back and thought for a moment. “Hmm, I seem to remember reading something long ago that referred to a second level zdrell master, now that you mention it. At the time I had no idea what it meant and didn’t pay too much attention since I never figured to meet any zdrell masters.”
“Anyhow,” Eril continued, “it says in really small print below that,” he paused and squinted at the plate in front of him. “’For Arch creation and repair, see Jorell Gates, Theory and Practice, volumes 3 and 4’.”
“Ok,” Zeldar began, “We know that we won’t be creating any gates with this ‘manual,’ but what does it say about operating one? That’s what we really want to know.”
“Right,” Eril continued, flipping metal plates. “The first section contains an index to all the rest of the manual. Then it has a diagram of the entire system of gates with annotations on each one. There are listings for every gate on this continent and even for the ones in Grimor. It lists two primary gates in Skryla and two more in Grimor, which, I think were the ones that were supposed to power all the rest. There were four secondary gates in Skryla and two more in Grimor which were supposed to be used if the primaries failed. I’m pretty sure the gate in this castle is one of the secondary gates.
“Secondary gates were supposed to be able to power themselves and any other gate they connected to, but not power all the gates like the prima
ries were designed to do. I think this manual and the fireplace were put there because this gate is supposed to work in emergencies when the primaries are not working.”
“That makes sense,” Dorull said, steepling his hands. “The gates had stopped working before the end of the Great War. The zdrell wizards must have known that a system like this was vulnerable and built secondary gates like this one to allow limited travel, even when the primaries were damaged or destroyed.”
“Where were these primary gates located?” Zeldar asked.
“I’ve never heard of any of these places, but there is a map,” Eril said, pointing at a plate.
“Too bad you’re the only one who can read it,” Zeldar grumbled.
“Master Silurian taught me a spell to copy documents,” Eril said, hopefully.
“Yes,” Dorull said, chuckling. “Leave it to Silurian to make sure you knew a spell to copy documents. Though, if it is the same one I know, it isn’t easy to master.”
“It did take me a couple of weeks to get it right.”
“Enough. It took me over two years to master that spell. Bah. Your talent mocks me.”
“Sorry.”
Dorull looked like he’d sucked on a rotten lemon. “No matter. I’ll get a sheet of vellum and you can show us this map of the gates as they were over a thousand years ago.”
Dorull went to one of the cabinets and extracted a large roll of vellum and rolled it out on the table just above where the metal manual was sitting.
Eril struggled to remember exactly how the spell was formed, then looked in the manual and then at the vellum sheet before him. After moments the lines began to form on the vellum, just as he saw them in the ancient text.
Ten minutes after he began, Eril sat back and said, “I think that is as close a copy as I can make.”
The two continents were clearly drawn. Within each of them was a series of symbols with names by them denoting the various gates. There were over two dozen of them in Skrayla, and eighteen on the continent of Grimor. The two primary gates on each continent were marked by larger circles. The secondary gates were denoted by triangles rather than the small circle symbols used for all the other gates.
The Journeyman for Zdrell Page 15