Published at 24th of February 2024 10:33 am

Chapter 53

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Fixing the ward stone was just about as easy as I’d expected it to be. Someone got me a bucket of dirt to use as raw materials, which I quickly poured into the cracks and transmuted into new stone to fill the holes. That took a bit more mana than I wanted, but it only took a few minutes before I had a smooth, unblemished surface.

Removing all the problems Noctra had caused with his own attempts to modify the rune structure so it would work again took a lot longer. I ended up filling in almost a third of the runes with a mud paste that I then transmuted to make fresh, new stone.

Luckily, stone shape was a versatile spell. It wasn’t meant to be used to carve runes, but if the caster knew exactly how the whole structure would look and could envision it all at once, it was possible. It still took me six casts to finish carving the new runes, but when I was done, the ward stone was whole and operational again.

“That took closer to an hour,” Shel said. She’d been standing in the corner observing the entire process.

“I underestimated the amount of damage Noctra did that I would need to repair,” I told her. “But it’s done. I’ve triple checked for any errors, and while you can never be certain until you’ve turned it on, I’m fairly confident this should work without issues.”

Considering that the wards the stone generated were barely better than basic level spells, it would be an embarrassment if I’d messed something up. Truthfully, I was more concerned with interference caused by my stone shape patches not adhering properly than I was by miscut runes. It probably would have been easier to junk the ward stone completely and carve a new one, had I the spare mana to devote to the task.

This was for the best. The villagers might not understand exactly what I’d done, but they knew what it looked like before and what it looked like now. The visible damage was gone and new runes had been carved to fill in those blank spots. Their minds could comprehend that it was repaired, that this ward stone, which had supposedly protected them for many years before it broke, would once again function the way it had for their parents.

“Alright, this is done. Just needs some mana to power it.”

“Are you going to do that?” Shel asked.

“No way. This is a communal project. If you want it going at full power without interruption, you’d need, hmm… Five or six apprentice mages devoting all their mana to it. Figure half the village powering it directly. It’ll take the entire village if you’re going through draw stones and the person handling them knows what they’re doing. Transference loss will probably cause you problems. Better to train a dozen people with ignited cores on how to keep the ward stone going.”

“How long will that take?” Karad asked from the door.

“Two or three months. Depends on how smart the people are. Some people pick things up quicker than others.”

“And in the meantime?”

I shrugged. “Hasn’t worked in years. What’s another few months? If a monster does wander in, let me know and I’ll kill it for you.”

Karad grunted and looked back out of the room where the others were waiting. I didn’t hear either of them say anything, but they must have been satisfied, because he turned back to me and said, “Alright, let’s get you to your parents. I’ll make the announcement in an hour when everyone comes to the square for the tithe.”

***

It wasn’t hard to hear Karad from the Garrison cell. He’d given the order to release my family, and after filling them in on our deal, we waited with our escort of one Garrison soldier whose name I was almost certain was Wilbur.

“Hey Thavin, how long do we have to wait here?” Father asked.

Thavin? Where had I gotten Wilbur from?

“Until Karad says to let you go,” Thavin said.

That wouldn’t happen until after the speech, but since I was back to pretending to be a normal kid, I’d kept my mouth shut while being escorted to the Garrison headquarters. While we waited, I caught snippets of Karad’s speech.

“-betrayed us all from the start. The draw stones-”

The outrage from the crowd drowned out the next section, and I could tell I wasn’t the only one here annoyed by that.

“-ward stone is cracked like someone smacked it with a hammer. I don’t think it’s worked since-”

Karad hit all the relevant points, exposing what we knew of Noctra’s plans. He didn’t go into details about Iskara’s role, other than to say that evidence suggested she was in on the whole thing. Not once was my theft of mana from the draw stones mentioned, possibly because it wasn’t public knowledge to begin with.

Then, at the end, he went off script. I wasn’t particularly surprised, and honestly, it was probably a clever bit of improvisation, but it also served to tell me that Karad still thought of himself as in charge. We’d made a deal, and he was making executive decisions without consulting me first.

“-in what I can only describe as a true miracle, our ancestors have blessed a child with the gift of magic and knowledge of its ways. He uncovered these nefarious schemes and confronted-”

Then again, from Karad’s perspective, maybe he really did consider it a miracle. Either way, he wasn’t sticking to the facts. He knew damn well where my skills came from, but he was spinning it like I was some sort of gift from the spirits sent to protect the village. Maybe that would be easier for the villagers to swallow, but it was going to be hard to sell me as being under house arrest if I was an avenging angel instead of a murderer.

The speech wound down, leaving the villagers with mixed reactions. Some people were upset to find out what Noctra had been doing, others that their illusion of security had been stripped away from them. A few times, I caught Father’s name coming from people, but even using sharpened senses, it was impossible to really sort out all the conversations going on at the same time.

A few minutes later, Karad walked through the door and glanced over at me. “That went about as well as we could have hoped,” he said.

“Interesting twist you added there. If I’m the savior of our people, protecting us from the evil machinations of that scoundrel Noctra, how am I supposed to be under house arrest?”

Karad waved my question away with a quick answer. “You’re in seclusion instead. Same thing, different name.”

It was theoretically better for my family. Despite the grumblings and the unavoidable connection between Father and Noctra, this explanation gave the impression that the whole thing was more than the murder of an enemy. I didn’t know how heavily religion factored into the village’s overall mindset, but Karad would hardly be the first person to use excuses like “the spirits decreed it should happen” to justify killing someone.

I doubted any spirit had manifested anywhere on this island since it turned into a mana desert, nor did I find it likely that the ancestors of anyone living in this village had ever been magically gifted enough to form a sapient spirit upon their death. All of them together merged into some sort of gestalt entity wouldn’t have the mana needed to form a spiritual presence.

“Where’s this house of mine supposed to be, anyway?” I asked.

“Shel said there is an extra house at the Arbor we can use for now. Come with me.”

We filed out of the building with Karad in the lead and Thavin following up behind us. Senica and I were in the middle with our parents bracketing us. Two more people I thought might be Arborists were waiting for us on the street.

“You’re still doing a tithe?” I asked when I spotted the tables set up. Most of the village had already left the square but there were still about twenty people in lines waiting for their turns.

“You said we needed the mana to power the ward stone,” Karad told me. “Besides, if you let people stop doing something they don’t like, it’s a nightmare forcing them to start again later.”

“You won’t get enough even from the whole village,” I said.

“If you can make it work at night, that’s a good start. Everyone’s already used to that idea. It’ll be nice that it’s true.”

“There are going to be people who can feel the difference,” I warned. “Not everyone, but some people like my father.”

“All the better. It’ll lend credence to the idea that Lord Noctra was lying to us about the barrier. We all assumed it felt different because it had been broken and repaired. Foolish of us to just believe him, but how were we supposed to know the difference?”

“He had us all fooled,” Mother said. “Did anyone suspect him, in all these years?”

“I think a few of us might have,” Karad said. “Knowing what he did to my nephew, and what you’ve told me a few other of my people have been subjected to, I can’t help but look back and wonder how many times someone who died ‘accidentally’ over the years just got too close to figuring out what was going on.”

“Belthin,” Father said.

“Exactly,” Karad agreed with a nod. “That one never sat right with me. Belthin was a creature of habit. Work, a beer, then home. Every day. It was rare to see him go anywhere else if he didn’t have to. And then one day he just doesn’t show up and we find the body torn to shreds a mile out past the fields?”

“Was he the one that kept the braids in his beard?” Mother asked.

“That’s him,” Karad said.

“Shame what happened,” Father said. “More so if he just stumbled across Noctra doing something evil and ended up dead over it.”

“Speaking of Noctra’s victims, I’ll need Nermet nearby so I can work on the subjugation enchantment,” I said. “It’ll be a delicate process, but I think I can get rid of the enchantment without causing any additional brain damage.”

Karad blinked a few times and cleared his throat. “That… That would be nice.”

I got the feeling that my father’s insistence on saving the man might have been the thing that really convinced Karad to side with me. He’d probably gone back over his nephew’s behavior and identified all the signs he’d dismissed over the years as things got worse.

“Father is supplying the mana that Nermet needs right now to keep the spell from catastrophically collapsing. That means Nermet will listen to anything Father says as a side effect,” I explained. “He should be the one to bring Nermet to me if you want to avoid causing a scene.”

“I understand,” Karad told me. “I’ll get it taken care of tonight.”

“Mom,” Senica whispered beside me, “what are they talking about?”

“Oh, all sorts of boring grown up stuff,” she told my sister. “Life’s going to be a little different now, but we’ll be alright. You were so brave for all of this, I think I’ll need to find a way to reward you. What do you think?”

“I want to learn magic too,” Senica said immediately.

Mother glanced at me, and I shrugged back. “We’ll have a long discussion about what spells she is and isn’t allowed to learn if you want her core ignited,” I told her.

“That’ll have to wait,” Karad said. He stopped at the tree line we’d been steadily approaching and said, “You’ve got a few people of our choice to train first.”

I waved away his concern. “It won’t hurt anything for her to sit in on the basic lessons. Father can supply the mana I’ll need to ignite her core if she reaches that stage.”

I didn’t expect her to. The average six-year-old didn’t have the discipline needed to master mana manipulation to the degree needed to complete the ritual. It happened, but rarely, and Senica hadn’t even been able to pay attention to more than one of Father’s lessons when there was literally nothing else to do.

“A topic for tomorrow anyway,” Shel said. “Let’s get you settled into your new home first.”

“Lead on,” I said as we walked into the trees.

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