Enchanter (Book 7) (22 page)

It wasn’t a perfect system, but after working with Gareth and Rael for a few days our first crew of enchanters was able to produce simple items in quantity.  For now they were being stored in Banamor’s warehouse, but eventually we’d begin distributing them much farther afield.  Master Andalnam placed orders for dozens of items he felt he could sell in Sendaria, and there were other outlets for the wares – including Castabriel. 

We began with lightwands, more heatstones, really powerful insect repelling charms, the sort of simple but useful enchantment just about anyone could use.  The enchanters we hired were mostly spellmongers themselves who had given up private practice to come to Sevendor – almost all were Imperially-trained and certified.

Gareth worked it so that for every hour they spent toiling on our behalf they got an hour with the stone for their own use – or seven ounces of silver.  That was a princely wage even for a spellmonger.  We had to hire a few guardsmen to make certain no one disturbed them while they worked.  By the time the first frost of the season fell the enchanter’s workshop had become a real arcane manufactory.

As fun as it was setting up the shop, that winter the real work was going on in my own workshop in the castle – and in Dranus’ smaller workroom in his tower.  Even with the additional room gained by moving my bedroom had provided the place seemed crowded most of the time.  There was always someone using a corner of the shop, or reading in the lower room, or using the top of the tower to test some enchantment or another.

Taren had spent the free time familiarizing the other wizards working on the effort with how to use the pocketstones and other specialty enchantments of Sevendor.  That had led to an intriguing few days of experimentation, as they tried various essays with the pocketstone. 

Taren demonstrated a crossbow he as working on that produced an iron bolt from an arcane pocket – a
hoxter,
according to the ancient enchanters
– the moment the string was drawn over the nut.  Planus created a silver wine goblet that he could fill with gallons of wine and refill with a word.  The Remeran adept enchanted the amulet that held his witchstone so that it would also produce a comfortable chair when he desired.  Rael used the stone to make a magical bracer for her left arm that could contain dozens of sacks of supplies and samples to be called upon at need.

Master Andalnam made a cloak pin that could hold just about anything . . . but the enchanter was getting restless as the first late autumn snowflakes fell on the vale.  He wanted to start on the more elaborate projects, particularly the thaumaturgical baculus he was designing.

“That should probably be our first endeavor,” he counseled, after everyone had shown off their early experiments at the group’s regular odeum, where we showed off our work for the week.  “Tools to make tools.  We all have our specialties – if we are able, let us create them according to our needs.”

“Lanse of Bune and Master Cormoran are still on their way here, but I suppose we can get started on the basic enchantments,” Taren pointed out.  “Thaumaturgical wands, in particular.  We’ll need a lot of them.  Banamor has the finest supply of weirwood and other materials in the Riverlands.  Anything we want from his stock we can put on the castle’s account.”

“That could get expensive,” warned Planus.  “Good weirwood is dear.  Great weirwood is priceless.”

“Priceless is a relative term,” I chuckled.  “I’m funding this enterprise, remember?  I’ve had more than a dozen of the finest staves brought to the shop upstairs.  I suppose we should get this advanced concillibule started by having everyone pick out the one that they like.”  A concillibule, for those who don’t know, is a group of enchanters convened for a particular purpose, like a working group.  Don’t feel bad.  I didn’t know, either.  I added it to the list for indexing.

I let them all poke through the long reddish staves, sanded smooth and ready to enchant, because I had already secured the absolute best piece for myself.  Or at least the one I thought best suited my purposes.

What makes one piece of wood better than another for enchantment?  Without delivering a technical lecture on the subject, it’s mostly about durability and capacity.  Most woods make fine conduits for arcane power, thanks to the organic structure of the cellulose, but beyond that things get complicated.  Some woods channel energies better than others, and some aren’t very good for much more than minor cantrips or very short-term spells.

But weirwood is different.  The cellulose in the wood is well-tuned to arcane power as the plant requires it to grow and propagate.  It can bear very strong magical energies without degrading, and do so over and over again with little loss of effectiveness.  There are varieties that do better with some channels than others, but often it comes down to the character of the individual piece of wood.

The rod I’d chosen was about five feet long, an inch and a half thick and it had faint streaks of green running through it.  The grain was very fine, which usually indicates an especially delicate ability to control power – important in a thaumaturgical baculus, less so for a warstaff.

The difference is important.  I had created other powerful enchantments on my own with weirwood, namely my warstaff Blizzard and my traveling staff Trailblazer.  Both were very powerful, each in their way.  Blizzard was designed to kill people and break stuff, while Trailblazer was the most useful travel tool any mage had ever carried.

A thaumaturgical baculus is designed to be used to aid a thaumaturge in his work.  Instead of channeling huge amounts of power, its utility lay in its ability to discern and manipulate the smallest of energies.  There are a few things one expects any such tool to perform – taking etheric density readings, for instance.  Usually a mage will use a
savistator,
a fairly simple and inexpensive device if he’s assessing etheric density.  But with the base of a well-made baculus to work from, there were much more accurate and finely-tuned spells that could do it better.

There were other enchantments that could be set that would gauge the arcane conductivity of a substance, for example, or powerful magesight augments that could allow you incredible perception.  Detection and determination spells, enchantments to regulate power flow, spells to convert or entrain energies, spells of containment, spells of banishment – a good thaumaturgical baculus can do a lot.

These were better than good.  The elementary enchantments everyone agreed upon for their own device, based on my notes from Pentandra’s baculus, were quickly supplemented by other spells as each mage’s staff began to reflect their enchanter’s personal idiosyncrasies.

It took days.  We took turns in the workshops (our
mirabiliaries
, for those keeping up with the jargon), or worked with our rods in private – and yes, I realize just how dirty that sounds.  The phallic nature of the item was referenced several times.  We were a bunch of adult professionals playing with long thin sticks.  Penis jokes abounded.

Then Master Cormoran and Lanse of Bune arrived, and it turned into a
real
party.

Both enchanters had brought most of their magical households.  Cormoran picked up two eager apprentices, while Lanse’s troupe of miniature-making specialists arrived with two entire wagons containing his traveling workshop. 

Lanse’s work as a dioramic mage was one of the few specialties that encouraged a large retinue.  It took a lot of work to get the representations looking and feeling just right to the operator, or something like that.  Detail was essential to the success of the spell, and that mandated a lot of time-consuming work . . . just the sort of thing a bunch of apprentices were useful for.

I put them up at Jurlor’s Hall, at my expense.  Both men – and all of their entourage – were fascinated by the town and the mountain and the castle and the Alka Alon tower, and the Karshak works, and the Everfire . . .

But they weren’t truly impressed until they saw what we had been up to.  It took them all a few days to catch up, but soon around twenty dedicated enchanters were each creating a thaumaturgical baculus of great power.  Work was expanded by necessity to the Enchanter’s Guild’s moderate workspace to contend with the overflow.

It was a merry time, as if a bit of the Magic Fair lingered in Sevendor through the first early chill of winter sleet. 

As the leaves turned a brilliant scarlet and burnished gold, besmocked enchanters wearing the colete – a skull cap associated with the profession - walked between town and castle in ones or twos, or sometimes in larger groups . . . and if the taverns along the way prospered as a result, no one was unhappy about it. 

Many magi who were not officially a part of the effort frequented the taverns and halls to discuss the efforts or share their own research.  The enchanters who staffed the manufactory were frequent colleagues, and many of them ended up joining the effort in some small way. There was always more cleansing and examination of raw materials than we had the personnel to complete.

Those excursions into drink and theory were perhaps more important than the actual enchantments we were casting.  They were actually a recognized part of the old process, called
cenacules
in antiquity.  It was recognized by our professional ancestors that often the best work was done not over a workbench, but over wine and food.  So each working group met regularly, if informally, and invited enchanters from outside the group to listen to the progress and share their perspectives. 

As each of us encountered problems, or tried to achieve a particular result, we’d toss around ideas and solicit advice from specialists or bullshit-opinion from the bystanders at large at these cenacules.  With enough ale, wine, and spirits the discussions could get quite lively, and could occasionally lead to demonstrations or even theoretical breakthroughs.

While there was no set group of us, I noted that particular magi tended to congregate in specific areas for informal cenacules.  Lanse and his men tended to drink at the
Spark and Scroll
, the dive that catered to the Enchanters Guild and the magi who tended the Mirror array at the Order Chapterhouse (the
Entropomants
who tended the
Entropiary
, according to the texts).  Cormoran didn’t drink there, but his apprentices and servants did.

While Planus technically lived closest to the
Spark and Scroll
, staying as he was at the Secret Tower, he preferred the atmosphere and the wine of the High Street tavern Banamor owned, the
Alembic
.  It was half the size of the
Spark and Scroll
but Banamor had stocked it with pricy wines and spirits suited to a Remeran palate.  He’d founded it while I was off marching so that he and his business associates could have a quiet place to drink and negotiate without the noise of the market or a busy tavern around them.  He kept the prices high enough to discourage casual drunks, but the wealthy magi had no trouble affording the fare or the privacy. 

The
Alembic
drew Dranus on many nights, as they had a basic set of Rushes, as well as chess and that game with black and white stones I never bothered to learn how to play.  Master Cormoran also favored its more refined atmosphere.  Master Ulin could be found there occasionally, drinking the cheapest of beverages, unless someone else was buying. 

The
Alembic
had the advantage of reams of parchment lying around, something Banamor supplied as a service for the patrons.  Many late night conversations by magelight and brandy fumes culminated in intriguing work that was captured on those sheets.  Lorcus also liked writing dirty poetry and hiding it among the leaves to scandalize the other patrons.  It was part of the charm of the place.

But the real intellectual free-for-all ended up being at an old shed in the outer bailey someone – I still don’t know who – had turned into a clandestine drinking establishment, right under the very nose of the baron. 

The place was an old shed that had been used variously as a barn, a byre, a storehouse, a temporary kennel, and had been left to languish empty or cluttered as needed in the far corner of the outer bailey. I had always figured we’d eventually get around to knocking it down, but we just hadn’t, yet. 

Some enterprising soul had taken a hogshead of beer into the place and started serving there.  Mostly castle folk who didn’t want to walk all the way into town for serious drinking, at first, but by the time I’d returned from Kasar the tiny tavern had blossomed.  One of the Tal, a portly fellow called Radish who worked in the stables during the mornings, had assumed the role of tavernkeeper.  He made a few coins a week selling strong beer that way, and seemed well-suited to the task. 

Eventually it became clear to Sire Cei what was going on, but despite my castellan’s regulatory nature he saw little harm in the secret public house within stumbling distance of the castle.  He even stopped in once a month or so to inspect the technically illegal brew – Cei likes strong beer as much as any knight. 

Once the visiting magi discovered the place they chased most of the other patrons away and adopted it as their own, visiting it before or after enchantment sessions in my tower or Dranus’.  I didn’t even know the place was really there, until Planus introduced it to me one evening.  I was, in a manner of speaking, enchanted with its rustic charm.  The broken furniture, the poor lighting, the slight scent of mildew . . . it made the perfect little dive to loiter in between spells.  By the end of the night I had drunkenly decreed that the place be officially allowed to continue operations without my official notice, which confused the hell out of everyone.