by Zack Finley
Erik wasn’t going to punish them with guests in the formation, but his displeasure definitely landed on those who disappointed him. My DI would have approved.
“Gera, why weren’t you in the PT formation with the guard this morning?” I sent.
“I usually take part in their afternoon session,” Gera answered.
“I think from now on you should join the morning session with Argon and me,” I sent. “It is early enough it shouldn’t interfere with any of your other classes or duties.”
“Yes, sir.” Gera sent.
“Find me the lead blacksmith and have him meet me in the dining hall this morning. I want him to watch out after Klid,” I sent.
“I’ll let you know when I find him,” Gera sent.
Argon knew I was messaging Gera and smiled when I finished. “You shouldn’t take such glee in tormenting the lad,” she said.
“It is part of toughening him up,” I claimed.
“Seems like unnecessary torment to me,” Argon said.
She had a point, but he was so naïve.
“We don’t really need a farseer to find a ship,” Argon said. “We can expand the mind-reading app for many miles further than we can see. I suspect it will work even better on the ocean without any hills or valleys to mask the signal.”
If you turned off the mind reading part of the app, it could indicate the presence of someone a lot farther away and use less magic.
“I’ll consult with Inoa, I suspect we can use your pulse idea to locate mind groups, such as on a ship a lot farther away than we’ve ever tried. We won’t be able to read them or tell if they have a mage until we get closer but that shouldn’t be a problem. Our biggest unknown is locating a ship on an empty ocean. I’ll also work on my invisibility spells. I should be able to hide a ship with fog and mist rather easily. We can probably read their minds, sentence them to death and sink their ship before they ever learned we were there. The only real problem arises when they have slaves on board. That is when we will earn the big bucks,” Argon said.
“Is there any reason why Jaloans don’t eat fish?” I asked.
“Besides their poisonous meat and nasty dispositions? No,” Argon answered. “From time-to-time, someone will announce he has found a way to remove the poisons. People with too much money and too little sense flock to eat his food. Until he kills either himself or several diners by failing to remove all of the poisonous flesh. No government allows such stupid behavior, but people flock to the shadows for dumb thrills.”
I guess I wouldn’t suggest fishing as a way to feed our growing tribe.
“I’m worried about Maude,” I said.
“That is vague,” Argon responded.
“She seems to have everyone assigned there under some kind of thrall,” I said. “The farmers and foresters are mesmerized by her. They act like she is a type of goddess. She even has her claws into Jestn. We sent him over to help water the plants. Now he is part of her entourage. She withdrew him from mind magic training at the com hub.”
“How wonderful for him,” Argon said.
Not what I expected.
“Wonderful? I think he may need rescuing.”
“She is a renowned plant whisperer. If she is helping train his talent that is wonderful,” said Argon. “Jestn isn’t a very strong mind mage, but if Maude thinks he has plant whispering talents, we will all benefit.”
“I guess I still don’t get it,” I confessed.
“Maude communicates with the plants and they respond. Your farmers and foresters are attuned to the plant’s responses, not Maude’s messages to the plants. I suspect they have never tended such happy plants,” said Argon. “There is your young man, he deserves to be treated better.”
She nodded at Gera and the large man he was with.
“Your grace, this is Blar, a blacksmith. He says there is no head blacksmith,” said Gera.
“Blar, nice to meet you, thank you for coming. I have a problem I hope you can either help me with or point me toward the appropriate person,” I said. “The Duchy has acquired a tinker, is there someone in the blacksmithing ranks who would be amenable to working with him?”
“I’ll put him to work if that is what you want, hope he can handle a sledge,” Blar said.
This wasn’t going the way that I hoped. “Can you introduce me to the rest of the Duchy blacksmiths,” I asked hopefully.
I had Blar introduce me to the next smith. I released Blar to get back to work wherever Gera found him. Each smith was busy, fabricating parts for carts and other devices. Everyone was happy to put the tinker to work, stoking the fire or pounding on the anvil. My last hope was Jeek, the smith and militia captain from the Asme area of Augun. While he was more willing to talk, he had no patience for the foolishness that Klid represented.
I was about to despair when I recalled a young smith had arrived the day before from Klee. I sent Gera to locate him while I finished chatting with Jeek about militia training.
Gera ‘ported back, telling me the young smith, named Flmo was unpacking his gear near the port warehouse. I bid goodbye to Jeek and started running to Flmo’s location.
By the time we arrived, Gera was breathing heavily. I suspected Gera might have missed a few more PT sessions than he admitted to.
Flmo turned out to be just what we needed. He was well versed in traditional blacksmith assignments, but he was open to other possibilities. Flmo agreed to take Klid in hand and help him make new things. I was confident we’d be spending time together after Flmo got his feet under him.
I told Gera to find Klid and help Flmo get his workshop set up.
I ran back to the Keep HQ, showered and checked with Argon before dressing to see if she wanted to go to Surn, the last country left on the east coast. She declined due to her first classes in air and water magic scheduled for this morning. I checked the assignment board and decided to spend the rest of the morning hauling items from the Klee warehouse to the Keep. I handled the transports in fewer batches and was done in only an hour.
“Alba, could you use a healer for a few hours? I know we have been shorting you,” I sent.
“We can always use healers,” was the prompt response.
Alba assigned me one of the other healers at her hospital so I could see how others worked. He was easy to work with. We moved quickly through the unit’s backlog. I got more experience in healing diseases. The other healer was intrigued with my use of automated healing pulses timed to trigger as soon as the last healing magic faded from the patient.
Back to the Keep for lunch. This time I ‘ported to the pier and ran up the ramps to the Keep level and on to the Keep HQ. To say my legs were quivering when I got to the top level might be understating my experience. I decided to try it a few more times alone before suggesting it to Erik or Cleon.
Expending all that flesh magic had whetted my appetite. That hunger warred with the queasiness of over-exertion. Hunger won, figuring the queasiness would pass. Clive dropped off a leather bag full of possible lenses as I was eating.
While some missed the mark, I felt several had potential. I embedded a large lens in a larger tube I conjured out of iron, thinning the tube walls and polishing the interior. I repeated the process for the smaller lens, but this time I polished the inside and the part that would slide into the large tube.
The whole thing was heavier than I’d hoped but the tubes were as thin as I dared make them. The small tube slipped into the larger one with significant room to spare. I considered beefing up the smaller tube but decided I could use a rag to block any light.
I looked through it and had to pull the inner tube out more than I’d expected but I had a rudimentary telescope. Of course, everything was upside down, and it really wasn’t suitable for indoor use. Everyone at the table took a turn with it, but the interest waned pretty quickly. With a little fine tuning, I thought it would help in our search for pirates.
Argon slipped in beside me, sending “you probably shouldn’t do heavy magic in the dining ha
ll, it sets a poor example.”
She was right, as usual, I tucked the evidence of my misdeeds into my pockets, without actually agreeing with her. If I needed a workshop, I’d set up in the corner of Klid’s.
“Will you be free to head to our desert training area?” I asked.
“Oh yes, I have some frustration I need to release,” she said.
“Com hub, I need a long length of rope,” I sent. It took a little forth and back to settle on how much and how stout the rope needed to be. I had them leave it for me at the front door of the Keep HQ. I knew Argon was curious, but she wasn’t going to give me the satisfaction of asking.
All sorts of small things got settled at lunch, but no issue rose to the level of a crisis. Ellte found an animal herder with a herd in rural Klee willing to relocate to the Keep. Inoa agreed to prepare Maude for their arrival and to soothe any fragile sensibilities ruffled by bringing food animals into the Keep.
While Tobron and Clive were predicting fireworks, Inoa had no such concern.
The team disbanded. Argon and I headed to our desert playground.
I left Argon slamming rocks into targets as I played with a concept that had come to me while considering ways to take out pirate ships. I wanted a portable jetpack.
My first attempts were pitiful. I conjured a sphere of iron, put a cleat on it, then banished nearly all the metal. A huge crump echoed over the thump sounds Argon was making with her assaults. The sphere was too thin. By the time I had a shell thickness that didn’t collapse, the sphere was in no real danger of floating away. Since a vacuum was the best, I could do with this design I had to consider a more active process.
I was sure if we could obtain enough cloth I could craft a hot air balloon. The only active magic it would require would be a small magic flame. But even if I had a way to steer it and prevent it from tearing, it wouldn’t provide the pinpoint accuracy desired. Tethered to the ground, it might prove a reasonable observation point.
Using force magic to create a sphere to hold the vacuum would probably work, even if all those I attempted this afternoon flattened like a balloon the second I banished the air inside them. I needed to make the force walls stiff enough to withstand the crushing force of the air around them. While using hydrogen or helium would make that problem go away, it created another one—where to get the lighter gases? Also, a vacuum would have better lift.
Argon and I both tried to make rigid force magic objects without much success. The magic was slippery and pliable by nature. I even tried wrapping it around a frame, but none of the iron frames I made was strong enough. Each collapsed when I banished the air. Iron just wasn’t a good material for building a lighter-than-air machine.
I did have some success with hot air blobs. Heating the air inside a force field sphere caused the sphere to expand and lift off. I decided this was a magic version of a hot air balloon. Before experimenting with it as a personal flying machine, I needed to obtain a sail cloth or rope net to secure it with. If I could control it, this could put me above a pirate ship with a chance to save any slaves on board. Or not, if the winds decreed otherwise.
I also didn’t know whether the cost in force magic and complexity made sense compared with just using telekinetics. While this might not bear fruit for our pirate hunt, I felt sure it was important research to discover better transportation for goods and people.
Argon shared her progress with our area-of-effect stun spell with me. She’d demonstrated it for Inoa and Cleon, and they helped refine it. The revised spell was more efficient and could be broadened to engulf a large area or dialed down to target everyone in a small, well-defined location.
Inoa cautioned us that targets with mind shields would have some resistance. She had tested it on several Duchy members, mage and mundane. Neither Duchy group was affected. Inoa had intensified the spell to target some areas of weakness she’d discovered in the dark sect’s mind shields. She wouldn’t guarantee they would be totally stunned, but she believed they would be disoriented for a short time.
Inoa shared a much stronger stun spell, but she cautioned that the target might not survive it. She used it very seldom because there were easier ways to kill someone.
We practiced a variety of stun combinations until it was something we could execute with a word. Practicing stuns on rocks lacked the element of feedback, but it was all we had.
Smashing rock pillars with plasma whips and a fire swarm was a lot more satisfying. Argon also thought we’d finally found the right opponent for a lava flood. Filling a ship with lava would certainly sink it, and we wouldn’t have to get very close.
We not only practiced our new spells, but Argon had us run through some of our more successful combinations. Most of the practice featured a combination of bad guys and hostages. Taking out the bad guys without harming nearby good guys was seldom easy especially when Argon set up a target site. By the time we were done, I had learned to rely on smaller rocks. More accuracy, less overkill, better magical efficiency. Just not more satisfying. I could live with that if it meant fewer chances to injure a hostage.
Satisfied we had jumpstarted our preparation for the pirate hunt, we ported back to the Keep pier. We ran up the port spiral. Argon swore she had discovered running up the port spiral to the main level was fun all on her own. She’d even suggested it to Cleon. My legs were still very wobbly by the time we made it to the top and Argon seemed unaffected.
Kill me now.
Argon proceeded to the Keep HQ. I turned off to see Klid. He was pounding away on some heated metal in the blacksmith shop with Flmo. They seemed on the same wavelength, chatting about refinements to certain future projects.
I saw the steamer appliance I requested from the com hub had arrived. I was lucky they could find one, Marfo said it was made for high-end furniture, leather, and clothing shops. It came with wands and other attachments, but I was mainly interested in the tiny boiler powered by fire and water magic. I was glad it came with a relief valve, in part for safety and in part because it is easier to replicate something than design it from scratch.
I set up the steamer to operate on an empty workbench. Neither Klid nor Flmo had seen a steamer before though boiling water was no mystery. Neither man had paid any attention to steam as a possible motive force.
They still weren’t convinced but decided to humor me as I sketched out a schematic of a steam engine. I drew primitive versions of mechanical linkages to use the moving piston to synchronize the slide valves admitting and releasing steam from the piston chambers in the proper sequence.
I was a dreadful artist, but by the time we were done, I thought Klid and Flmo had the concept. Whether they could turn it into a working prototype was still to be seen. Of course, I had an advantage they didn’t, I knew the concept worked.
I also left them my primitive telescope and the rest of Clive’s lenses. Klid was a lot more interested in my telescope than he was in my steam engine.
Flmo was more interested in my conjuring of cylinders and tubes of iron. I made him samples of most of the basic shapes. He said every blacksmith was backlogged making hinges for doors. I made him scores of different sizes once he showed me a template. I left him with a large supply of raw material for his blacksmithing efforts and told him if he needed more to contact Clive.
I resisted the urge to return to my quarters and checked where Clive was working. He was back at the farming area. With only a short time to dinner, I decided teleporting made sense.
Clive was getting the new facilities ready for our new animal herder. The new buildings looked like many I’d seen near Flom. A two-story barn was the biggest building. The modest home next to it was a lot smaller. A tower on the roof would supply water to the complex. Clive was installing piping from the roof tank to several water troughs and water stations. He had several valves lying on the ground in front of him.
None of us was happy that the new residence was outside the Keep walls, but herders needed to be near their herd. As we expanded
the farming area outside the Keep walls, being able to protect these facilities and our people was becoming an issue we needed to address.
Clive put me to work on the piping as he put glass in the windows.
“These valves are great,” I said. “Do you have one of your apprentices chained to a workbench making them?”
“One of my guys has a knack for making them. He is a lot better at that kind of work than heavy stone work, so it makes sense to have him pound these out,” said Clive.
“Could you assign him to work with Klid and Flmo at their workshop and the other blacksmiths for the next few days. He can still do valves there, but all our blacksmiths have a huge backlog of hinges to make. I’d like for him to find ways to use magic to help our blacksmiths and vice versa. I’ve also got Klid and Flmo working on a prototype that has the potential to do great things, if he could help with that it would be good, too.”
“We are in good shape with construction,” Clive said. “I’m not sure what our next big project is after finishing the armorer's place, but I’m leaning toward a secondary wall around our farming area. I don’t like leaving them this vulnerable. I’d rather have them safe behind some strong stone walls.”
“Any of your apprentices interested in becoming battlemages?”
“I don’t think so. I was recruiting builders, and that is what I got. Some of the trainees Jord is sending me might be candidates, though. So far none of them have shown a serious interest in building and construction. That can change as they become more skilled, but they might be your best bet.”
As we finished, Clive caught sight of Maude heading our way.
“See you at dinner,” Clive said before teleporting away. We were outside the dome, so it wasn’t clear where Clive had gone.
It was tempting to disappear as well, but I walked toward Maude instead. It was unusual to see her without her entourage.
“When will these herders be arriving,” Maude asked without preamble.
“They are due with their herd sometime tomorrow,” I said, having checked the assignment board.