Penny glared at him, “It will go to someone who will defend their home.”
“You would leave me defenseless on the roads?” he asked me.
“I think you will find the roads clear,” I graced him with a cold smile.
We were almost back to Washbrook before Marc spoke, “You understand what this will mean when he reaches the king?”
I kept my eyes forward as I replied, “I have a fair idea.”
“You’ll be called before the council. He may even strip you of your title,” he informed me.
“I know, but I can’t in good conscience leave those people to the mercies of fate. Do you think I should have done otherwise?” I asked.
“You could have waited till after he had left. Then you would have been doing him a favor, protecting his people in his absence. He’d have been in your debt, rather than branding you a thief.”
I glanced at him, “Is that what you would have done?”
“It was never my decision, but if it had been… I don’t know. A year ago I might have killed him rather than let him return to the king, but now… I’m not sure. The goddess has shown me a new path, one open to all men. As I am now I probably would have waited until he was gone, though that might not have been the most tactically sound choice.” My friend paused for a long minute. If I had not known him so well I might have spoken, but I knew more was coming. “You still aren’t comfortable with my vocation are you?” he asked.
“I wish I could say I was. I trust you and I trust your intentions, but the more I learn of magic and the nature of the relationship between wizards and gods the less I trust them,” I answered carefully.
I had piqued his curiosity, “What have you learned lately?”
I studied him carefully before I continued. At last I decided to trust my friend and told him what I had read in ‘The History of Illeniel’.
After a long pause he spoke, “According to what you read the gods were once weaker than they are today? That goes against all current theological knowledge. What makes you trust it more than the words of the wise?”
“History is written by the victor,” I said simply. I didn’t need to expand on the statement; we’d had enough debates with his tutors over the years for him to understand my meaning immediately.
“According to what I’ve learned the victors of the sundering were the wizards of that time,” he responded.
“That is true in the most technical sense, but they were left diminished and vastly outnumbered. The religions of the shining gods, by contrast, had risen to much greater power. The wizards that remained had lost the trust of kings and men, while the gods had gained it,” I replied seriously. “I think that the bond was as much a political contrivance as it was a safeguard against another wizard opening a world-bridge.”
“Your own experience nearly drove you mad,” he answered.
“It may have appeared so… but I truly think I was simply adjusting to a new level of awareness. The wizards of old survived for more than a thousand years without a bond to protect them from madness,” I said earnestly.
He shook his head, “You seemed like you were losing your mind my friend. Even if I believe that, you can’t deny the bond protects you from being taken by one of the dark gods.”
“The operative word is ‘gods’, not dark gods,” I said. “When I met your goddess I got the distinct impression she would just as likely have ‘taken’ me as left me to my own devices.”
“I can’t believe that, you must have misunderstood her intentions. Besides it puts them at cross-purposes. If the shining gods want you as badly as the dark gods why would they have striven to create the accord that forces you to take a bond-bearer. If they wanted a wizard to create a world-bridge for them that would defeat their own purpose. Why would they do that?”
At first his argument struck me as logical. I hadn’t considered it from that angle before, but then a new thought occurred to me, “Perhaps they were afraid. As you pointed out at the start, technically it was wizards who defeated Balinthor at the end. More specifically it was one wizard that killed him, the archmage Moira Centyr. If you were an immortal deity wouldn’t you be afraid of someone who could slay a god?”
Marc laughed; the idea that the gods might be afraid seemed plainly ludicrous. “You mentioned the archmages in that history you read, yet you don’t even know what one is, do you?”
I had to admit my ignorance on that point, “Not a clue.”
“Then why bother thinking on them?” he asked.
“Because I think I was becoming one perhaps, and this bond, which the shining gods helped force upon me… has stopped whatever was happening to me.”
Marc gave me an empathetic look, “I think you should be grateful for it. I’m certain it was for your own good.”
I didn’t reply to that, I had made my argument knowing he couldn’t accept it. Still I couldn’t help thinking to myself, I’ve never liked anything that was done to me for my own good. It sounded like an excuse. Nevertheless it was an excuse I would have to live with.
A week had passed since my ‘visit’ to Arundel and things were proceeding smoothly. The area for the dam had been cleared and dug out so the foundations could be laid below ground level while a large amount of rough stone was being brought in to supply material for construction. At the rate it was progressing my father estimated we would finish within a year… perhaps two.
The problem wasn’t raw materials. The surrounding mountains and hills meant stone was available in great supply. We needed more timber but even that wasn’t our main issue, it was a lack of sufficient laborers.
I spent several days during the week assisting as much as possible, using magic to do things that were otherwise extremely difficult. Ironically it was the simple tasks that were the hardest for me. I had initially suggested forgoing the use of mortar, thinking I could more easily fuse the stones myself, creating a tighter bond and saving time. How wrong I was!
My idea might have been practical if the stone blocks were much larger, limiting the number of interfaces between separate stones. Unfortunately the blocks were limited to a size of no more than a foot or two on a side; otherwise they took far too much time and effort to move them from where they were cut to the construction site. I could use magic to facilitate cutting and moving much larger blocks, but then I had little time to spend joining them.
As it was there were a vast number of blocks to be joined, and there was only one of me. Whether I spent my time helping to cut, move or join didn’t matter. My father, being the practical man he is, chose to stick to building methods that the workers could manage with or without my assistance. “You won’t be able to spend every day here helping… you’ve got too much else to do,” he had told me. As usual he was right.
Since they were doing things the normal way, they needed mortar, and that meant some of the work force was occupied producing it. I hadn’t realized before then how much work was involved in creating mortar, but I soon learned. Creating mortar first required quicklime; this was made by baking limestone in a kiln. Limestone was in ready abundance, but given the amount of lime needed they were making it by baking the stone in covered pits near where the dam was being built. Apparently plain limestone wasn’t sufficient either. One of the masons explained to me that because of the water involved with a dam, a special lime was required; otherwise the mortar would erode quickly.
The details were more than I wanted to learn about the stone-mason’s art, but the end result was that fully fifty of our workers were tied up producing the mortar. We had slightly less than two hundred men on a good day, so that slowed things down considerably.
I spent the last few hours of each day producing my new iron bombs. I had perfected the amount of energy to put in each one and the glass jewels had proved excellent for setting them off, but I had other troubles. Although I could produce a similar effect instantly with a few words and a moment’s concentration it required a lot of energy. Despite my great potential as a wizard I could only manage it a few times before I was exhausted. Making the
