Trail of the Gods: The Morcyth Saga Book Four (5 page)

“We were told you could help us,” she
replies.

“Who told you that?” he asks
incredulously.

“I don’t rightly remember his name,” she
tells him. “You see, I need a charm for my daughter here,” she says
as she brings forward a comely looking girl of about fourteen. “You
see, she’s infatuated with the butcher’s son but he has his eye on
another.”

“Despite what someone may have told you,” he
says to her, “I don’t do charms or anything else like that.” When
he sees the disappointment on her face, he softens his voice and
says, “I’m sorry.”

The girl seems almost on the verge of tears,
he dismounts and comes to her. “You shouldn’t need a charm to
ensnare a man’s heart, your beauty should be able to get you anyone
you desire,” he says. “Where I come from, the girls don’t rely on
magic, but on their own charms and abilities. There’s a saying
where I come from, ‘The way to a man’s heart is through his
stomach’. Maybe you should try to impress him with your charm and
cooking abilities. Find out what he likes to do and tell him how
well he does it, how impressive he is, that sort of thing. You’d be
surprised how much you can turn his head with the simplest
things.”

“Do you think so?” she asks, hope springing
to her eyes.

“Never know until you try,” he tells her.
“Besides, if this boy is blind enough to not want one such as you,
then he’s probably not worth your time anyway.”

She gives him a shy smile and says, “Thank
you.”

“You’re welcome,” he replies and then gets
back up on his horse. To the mother, he says, “A good day to you
ma’am.”

As he goes by Illan, he leans over and
whispers, “Keep them out.”

Illan gives him a brief nod.

Turning to Jiron he says, “Let’s get back.
Still lots to do.”

“You got that right,” he tells him.

He glances back to the end of the lane after
riding a dozen yards and he sees that Illan has moved them along.
The man and the ladies are walking back toward town.
This could
get irritating. No wonder all the stories of mages and wizards
always have them living in far away and inhospitable places.
Probably move there just to get away from this sort of
thing.

Before reaching the house, Sean the master
builder comes over from the construction site and waves him down.
Slowing down, he says to Jiron, “You go on ahead and I’ll be up
shortly.”

“Alright,” he says as he continues on while
James stops and talks with the builder.

“Sir, if you have a moment?” Sean asks. He’s
the one who’s overseeing the entire construction project.

“Sure,” he says as he gets down from his
horse. Holding the reins in his hand, he follows him over to where
the house is being constructed.

“The cistern you wanted us to put in on the
second floor is going to need more support than we had originally
anticipated,” he says.

James ties his horse to a wagon parked
nearby loaded with lumber and other building supplies while he
follows Sean within the skeletal construction.

He shows him where the additional support
beams are going to need to be placed. “I’m afraid it will shorten
your reception area by a foot, but I don’t think we have a choice,”
he says.

“Very well,” he tells him. “If we need to
sacrifice a foot, so be it.”

“It won’t be completely wasted, however,” he
explains. Bringing him closer, he shows where the pipes are being
set to allow the water to flow from the cistern above to a smaller
tank below. “We can reroute the pipes to run within the new support
area, so will save some room there.”

“Good thinking,” James says, agreeing to the
idea.

“Never seen anyone do this before,” he tells
him.

“Well, the idea is to have water in the
house without having to go outside to fetch it,” James says. He had
to explain this several times before Sean was able to understand
the rationale behind it when he first started the construction
project. He wanted at least partially running water, and a way to
heat it for baths in the winter time.

“Other than that, we’re running right on
schedule,” he says. “We should be able to finish the main house by
fall and the rest before Solstice.”

“Excellent,” comments James. “You’re doing a
great job.”

“Thank you sir,” Sean replies.

James leaves him to his work as he goes back
and retrieves his horse. The barn not being too far, he decides to
just walk him over to it. Jiron has already taken care of his horse
and has gone to the house by the time James enters the barn. His is
the first stall, being master of the house definitely has its
perks. Of course in the winter time, he may want the last stall to
be as far from the cold as possible.

The sound of Roland splitting more firewood
can be heard while he removes the saddle and tack. A quick brushing
and his horse is set. Leaving the barn, he checks in with Ezra and
finds lunch still an hour away so he heads over to his
workshop.

The ruined workbench has been removed,
probably chopped into kindling. Not good for much else now anyway.
Inside he takes out another of the crystals and sets it on the
workbench before him. The spell he applied last time had worked
beautifully, as long as there isn’t another crystal in close
proximity.

Maybe I could incorporate a ‘signature’ of
some kind within each of the crystals that would prohibit another
from leeching from it. If so, that would solve the problem.

He finally comes up with an idea. When the
crystal feels a drain on it, it will send a signal to the source.
Each crystal will be set up to recognize that signal and when they
receive that signal from a source of power they’re attempting to
leech from, they’ll stop.

When he has it set in his head exactly what
he wants to do, he releases the magic. The crystal on the workbench
before him begins to leech from him. He again sees the now familiar
red glow that will eventually deepen into a crimson color.

Allowing the crystal to leech power from him
for a minute, he then sends the signature signal to tell it that it
shouldn’t leech from him. And sure enough, he feels the leeching
abruptly stop. The glow within the crystal stops growing and
remains constant. Without the primary source from him, there’s not
very much else close at hand to draw from.

One of the many flies in the area lands on
the crystal and James watches in wonder as it seems to shrink in on
itself and then stops moving. Reaching his fingers to it, he
discovers it has died. All its magic has been sucked from it.

Maybe magic isn’t just magic, but the
world’s life force? And when a living thing loses all of it, he
dies? May have to keep that in mind.

He reaches down and pulls out another of the
crystals out of the sack. Flicking the dead fly off the one sitting
on the workbench, he picks it up and then heads outside. Moving
away from the buildings, he enters the forest and walks further
into it another dozen yards or so before stopping.

For his next experiment, he doesn’t want to
be too close to anyone or anything. He sets the crystal that’s
already glowing on a stump and then walks over to a fallen log
several feet away and sets down the other crystal.

Backing away to a safe distance, he casts
the same set of spells on the new crystal as he had on the previous
one. When he’s done with the spells, he watches as the second
crystal begins to glow. At the first feeling of it leeching from
him, he sends the signal telling it not to leech from him and in a
moment, it stops.

He watches the two crystals for several
minutes, until neither seem to be behaving erratically as the two
earlier had just before they exploded.
It worked!
Grinning
to himself, he turns to leave the forest. He’ll come back tomorrow
to see what’s happened, he needs to find out the effects of leaving
them active for a prolonged time.

Back at the house he finds lunch almost
ready so he washes up and goes into the front room to relax until
it’s ready.

Illan comes in through the front door and
sees him sitting in his favorite spot by the window. “I’ve left
Uther and Jorry out by the road,” he tells him. “We may have to
have a permanent presence there to keep people away.”

“More showed up?” he asks him.

“You could say that,” he says. “A bunch of
kids who heard you were here wanted to come and ‘see’ the mage.
Like it or not, you’re attracting a lot of people.”

“Maybe we could sell souvenirs,” he says,
jokingly.

“Souvenirs?” he asks.

“It’s something people can buy to remember
coming here,” he explains. “Maybe we could make a shirt that says,
‘I came to see the mage but only got this lousy shirt’.” He starts
laughing at the picture of a farmer wearing it as he leads a team
of plow horses.

“Maybe,” he says, actually sounding
interested.

“No!” James blurts out. “I was just kidding.
We start doing something like that and they will flock here from
all over. No, we will turn them away nicely, if we can.”

“Okay, you’re the boss,” he says with a
smile.

About that time, Ezra calls them in to the
dining room for lunch. “Where’s Miko?” he asks as they get up to go
eat.

“I have him monitoring the smokehouse,”
Illan replies. “Have to make sure the fire stays constant so the
meat smokes evenly and cooks just right.”

“I bet he loves that,” comments James.

“Actually, he’s been very interested in the
whole process,” Illan tells him.

They sit down to a quick meal of cheese,
bread and some meat off the carcasses they’ve been smoking. James
savors the smoky quality to it.

James slices off two pieces of bread and
makes himself a sandwich. Everyone else has begun to copy him ever
since the first time they saw him do it. They like the idea they
can make it anyway they choose from the selections Ezra has
prepared.

It being so hot, James has been trying to
remember how his grandparents had made homemade ice cream, but
hasn’t had any luck. He usually showed up about the time to crank
the handle. Once he asked his grandparents why they didn’t just buy
an electric one, they said it never turned out as good.

After lunch, he returns to where he left the
crystals and Jiron decides to tag along. When they get there, they
find both of the crystals have reached a deep crimson glow. Also,
around each is an almost perfect circle of wilted vegetation.

“It’s just like back near those skull
pyramids,” observes Jiron.

“Yes, it is,” agrees James. A quick look
shows that the degree of withering is greater among the vegetation
closest to the crystal. Both crystals seem to have a radius of
about four feet. Outside that area, everything looks normal.

“What’re they doing?” asks Jiron.

“Rather not say, if you don’t mind,”
counters James. Glancing at Jiron, he can see the confused look on
his face. “It’s just that, what you don’t know can’t be tortured
out of you.”

Nodding, he says, “I understand.” Then in a
whisper he asks, “The Fire?”

“In a way, but that’s about as much as I’ll
tell you,” he says. Each of the crystals has several dead bodies of
insects upon and around them.
Gonna have to slow down the rate
of leeching so as not to alert anyone who may pass by that
something is going on.

As James turns to go, Jiron asks, “Are you
just going to leave them here?”

“I’ll check back on them in the morning,” he
explains. “I want to see to what extent the wilting will increase
in that time, if it does at all.”

“I see,” Jiron says as they work their way
back to the main house.

Throughout the rest of the day, James stays
in his workshop and fine tunes the spells he’s been using on the
crystals. Over the course of the afternoon, he’s been able to
reduce the rate of leeching to only a minimal amount.

During one such experiment, he wonders what
would happen to the crystal should the spells be removed from it
while it held power. Not willing to risk further damage to his
workshop, he takes one of the crystals out into the forest, far
from where he’d left the other two earlier.

Setting the crystal down on the ground, he
backs away thirty feet and cancels the active spells. Nothing
happened, and the glow remained constant. He leaves it where it is
and plans on coming back to it sometime in the morning to see
whether or not the glow will still be there. See if it loses power
over time.

Ezra soon calls them in for dinner and
afterward they settle into the front room. Most evenings they spend
here, swapping stories, some true others highly suspect.
Occasionally one will sing a song but for the most part, they just
use it as a chance to wind down after the day and spend time
together.

James is usually one of the first to bed,
the efforts of the day’s experiments often leave him feeling
drained and exhausted. The leeching of the crystals takes a lot out
of him, at least he’s found a way to shut off the leeching so as to
preserve his own reservoir of power.

He lies in bed listening to the others
who’ve remained out in the front room. They quiet down for his sake
but he’ll be glad when the other house is built and he can have his
privacy. The last thing he hears before falling asleep is a story
Uther is telling about how he and Jorry had taken a job to escort
this princess and…

Bwaaak!

A noise from outside wakes him up. At first
he doesn’t even realize he is awake until he hears the chicken
squawk again.
Damn those chickens!
Turning over, he tries to
go back asleep.

Bwaaak!

There it goes again. Must be some animal
disturbing them again. Knowing he’s not going to be able to go back
to sleep until he deals with this, he gets up from his bed and
throws on some clothes.