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.
Stepping carefully, he opens his door and almost collides with Roland. In a whisper, he asks, “Chickens?”
Roland nods his head, “Yeah. Ezra heard them and woke me up to take care of it. Sorry you were disturbed.”
“That’s okay,” he says. “Let’s get this over with.”
Moving through the house, they make their way to the back door in the kitchen. Suddenly, James feels the familiar prickling sensation that always coincides with someone doing magic. Grabbing Roland’s arm, he quickly stops him. In a barely heard whisper, he says, “Magic is near!”
