with a single finger and flew that direction as well as he could using a flying rig and hoping he didn't get too disoriented. After a minute the muddy water glinted enough to see pretty clearly, so Tor just followed it, hoping it was the right branch and he wasn't going to end up over the North Pole or something. It was tense flying, desperate and as fast as he could go.
When he found it, Tor understood why the men had come in clearly frightened. The thing was huge, almost two hundred feet high, set between two small mountains of well rounded stone and it's gray material was cracking as water poured over the top.
Tor considered the situation and realized he just couldn't build a new one fast enough. Given a week, or better, a month, he should be able to do it. Right now, all he could do without dying would be watch it fall. The thing was huge and must have been the size of the King’s palace in the Capital. A little smaller than his own magical place had been during the King’s week festival.
That got Tor thinking.
Could he use one of the new forms of magical house for this? Would it hold? Well, it was basically a shield, no matter what it looked like and if he layered walls closely together inside, it might do. Windows lined up from front to back so the water could spill out? Shrugging Tor pulled out the right amulet and hovered in front of the dam, not a foot over the water. Then he activated the glowing house sigil with a single thought, not having a spare hand to physically tap it.
The house was small to start with, like always, so he focused his mind and filled the space completely. The building grew and shifted, altered in creative ways, so that it got bigger at the top and slowly formed a wedge that was smaller at the bottom. Focus and desperation made it solid, filling the interior with walls and removing any air gaps. It looked like the house was crying from its windows when he stopped. Keeping his mind clear, Tor tried to feel the structure with his eyes, tried to find out if it was holding or not. So far it seemed all right, but he needed to be sure it didn't get away from him any time soon.
Having nothing better to do then, still waiting for it to hold or fail, he turned the hundred plus foot tall, three hundred foot wide house a lovely purple color. It looked bizarre, but it was backing the dam well enough for the moment. Tor moved to the bank and waited. If this was going to fail, he needed to be on hand to try and fix it. After half an hour, a bit of water leaked past stone on the left side, almost imperceptibly. Before anything bad could happen Tor expanded the whole thing until the feedback from the device actually hurt his head a little inside. It was a burning in the back of his mind, a low thing he almost didn't recognize, until it got worse.
Hoping it was a sign off a tight fit he waited again. For hours.
As it neared noon, the sun directly over head, white and gold beating down, he got up, to just start back to the base. This wasn't a permanent solution, but hopefully it would get them through the worst of the flooding and a ways beyond. Possibly years. Once above the tree line, mainly evergreens like he grew up with, but smaller and a bit more twisted by the wind near the coast, Tor saw the nearly twenty people flying in, at what had to be top speed. It took a minute but everyone slowed eventually then dropped slowly, so he did the same. It wasn't like he had more pressing business, right?
Rolph had been the first one there, but wasn't the only one of his friends in the group. Most of them were. Including Sam and Guide. He nodded to everyone, smiling a little.
“Tor! Gods above. I thought you'd be dead by now, trying to hold back a river with your mind. It's exactly what you're not supposed to do… is that a house?” The voice went from worried and slightly scolding to incredulous in three words. Not a record, but the best he'd ever gotten from his friend.
Running over to him Sara jumped into a hug. She'd been crying for some reason, but seemed happy enough to see him at least. Hopefully it wasn't anything major.
“You blocked the river with a house? I… that's brilliant!” Trice tried to hug him too, but had to share with Sara, since she wasn't letting go.
The explanation didn't take long, but Kolb set a detail to watch it for leaks or anything else that might go wrong. Baron Havor got the job along with David Derring and Gersh's brother Johan. Apparently the snap judgment he'd made about the man, that he could be a combat giant, wasn't lost on Kolb either. Tor had worked with him when they were organizing the younger students training. He was decent with a blade, better overall than Tor, but nicer too, letting the smaller man win about half the time, so that Tor wouldn't feel bad about himself or look bad in front of the others. He'd made Tor work for it, but not so hard it was impossible.
On the flight back they didn't push as fast, so Tor remembered a few things. Like the fact he hadn't bothered to eat or drink any fluids for nearly a day. Almost two days. That would start to show soon. Even if food was scarce, he needed something to drink. And a shower. But water, check on Ali and then food and bathing. He had to keep his priorities straight, didn't he? So far he kind of feared that he was sucking horribly as a husband. Tor had barley even told her he loved her in the last week. That should happen at least daily, shouldn't it? It was hard, because, well, it was a lie.
They'd married for a reason, and it was a good one, but that didn't make him love her. She was good and sweet, and doing her best to hold up her end of things, so it was up to him to do his part too. That was all. He did like her at any rate, which was a good enough start. A lot of married people just kind of tolerated each other.
The drinking water was easily enough arranged, and he got a shower at the same time. It was clean filtered water, cold and rushing out of a four inch pump line hard enough to nearly knock him down when he stepped under it, and outside where people could see, but no one seemed to mind when he started drinking from it and there was a pump to carry the waste water away from the drain below. Someone had been pretty cleaver about the arrangement really. Using soap from his gear he showered under it, his amulets all off, then shaved hunkered down next to the water. It was inconvenient, and cold, but it worked and he didn't have to borrow anyone’s house. When he fixed his clothing he felt clean and ready for the rest of the day, even if he did look like a first year school student.
Ali, thank goodness was fine, and smiled brightly when she saw him enter.
“Honey! This man,” she gestured to an older fellow sitting on the end of a bed in a nearly empty room, he wore gray clothing in three shades, a button up jacket with vest under it in a darker color and nice looking black shoes. It wasn't high born clothing, but it looked like the man made enough to live on.
“Is Doctor Kincaid. Charles Kincaid I think it was? Anyway, he'd like to buy a healing device from us. I didn't know the price, but he decided it was worth waiting for.” She smiled up at him cutely, since she still sat on the next bed and hadn't gotten up.
Walking to the box that held the gear Tor sorted through and found that they had about forty or fifty of the things left. The man was a doctor, so it might actually be useful to him, right?
“Well…” Tor knew better than to give the thing away for free. Everyone from the King down to servants had warned him against doing that unless he was personal friends with someone. They like it at first, but over time it would wear on their spirits and invite people to take advantage of him.
“Alright, the cost. Half of what you make in the first year you have it.” That was about the same deal he offered everyone and so far most people found it worked well enough.
Smiling, but looking a bit troubled the doctor shook his head after a few seconds.
“I doubt that I make as much in a year as you might think. This is probably worth ten times that. Don't get me wrong, I'm more than willing to send you the gold, this is worth it, if only for my patient’s well being, I just don't want to mislead you.”
The man felt honest enough, mostly. It was a bit of a low thing to do, reading his field instead of trusting the man on his own merit, but Tor couldn't just trust everyone anymore, could he? Still, he seemed an all right guy in the end. Tor shrugged.
“I'm not asking you to send me gold. Instead treat half your patients for free. I don't even care if they're the poor ones that would ordinarily pay in chickens and goats. I'm also not going to loom over your shoulder checking your work. You're honest enough. Is it a deal?” Tor had to fight not to stick out his hand to shake and was mildly surprised when the doctor did.
“Deal. I give my word that I’ll treat half my patients for free for the next year.” He cleared his throat. “Of course I already treat half my patients for free…”
Laughing Tor told him that still counted, obviously, and pulled his wife away greedily. Kissing her gently once out of sight he held her for a while.
“Really I just came to tell you I love you. Now I can get out of your hair.”
“I love you too! You're so good to me. When we got married I figured that you'd park me out in the country or
