She rolled her eyes. Only Sarsen would dare to tease her in a room full of people. Several patrons at nearby tables stopped abruptly and looked around with interest, no doubt curious about what she had to say to that. “I did not lose,” she retorted with a sardonic look at the grinning Master. “I have a witness to prove that, too.”
“Your witness is bribable,” Master informed her. “For the sake of two helpings of blueberry cobbler, he confessed that I did beat you. By a good five feet, too.”
“That’s because you threw the log five feet!” she riposted, slinging herself into the only empty chair at the table.
Master, not at all ashamed of such reckless behavior, chuckled and shrugged.
Sarsen, glancing between them, dared to ask, “Threw?”
“I ask you, what kind of an idiot throws a twenty-foot log? Any kind of distance?” Just remembering it made her heart thump harder. “I mean, he was about ten feet away from the workers, granted, but it’s still nearly six thousand pounds, you know? It left a huge dent in the ground and made a sound loud enough to shave off five years of everyone’s life.”
“No one came even close to being hurt,” Master defended himself. “And I still won.”
Sevana felt justified in her reaction when Sarsen raised both hands to his temples and rubbed, trying to stave off a headache just mentally picturing this scene. “Clearly, the next time I enter a competition with this old goat, I’m going to have to put some safety rules down first. Is it just me, or is he getting more reckless in his old age?”
“Right here at the table,” Master said mildly, pointing at himself.
Sarsen ignored him. “No, he was always reckless. He was just more careful in front of you because you tended to be reckless and he was trying to set a good example.”
“Really? Why do you suppose he’s abruptly stopped doing that?”
“Maybe because he’s old and he doesn’t care what people think anymore? Or maybe he’s figured he’s set the example already and you know to follow it?”
“Surely he’s not so naïve as to believe that,” Sevana disagreed.
Master cleared his throat meaningfully. “Still right here.”
Their banter got interrupted by Sky, who’d fallen into a helpless case of giggles.
Her eyes crinkling at the corners in a silent smile, she inquired dryly, “Are we entertaining you, Sky?”
He nodded, unable to say anything because he was laughing too much. “D-do you al-always do this?”
“When you live with people for ten years, you get warped by their twisted sense of humor,” she explained mock-dolefully.
“Don’t believe her,” Master warned Sky. “She came to me twisted. If anything, she warped us.”
Sevana made a scoffing sound, which for some reason made Sky burst into a whole new round of giggles. Kid must have his own warped sense of humor to find all this so funny. “Changing the subject—I’m no expert but Hube’s plans looked fine. I think we can start building the timber doohickey tomorrow while the men finish digging the hole.”
“Doohickey?” Master objected mildly.
“Well, what do you want me to call it?” Sevana countered half-absently, twisting in her chair to try and find a server. The place was busy, heaven knew, but she’d been sitting here a while without anyone coming to the table. “It’s not a timber dam, although Hube calls it that half the time.”
“It’s a pool,” Master informed her patiently.
“Oh? Every pool I know of is either decorative or intended for swimming. You going to hop into it, Master?”
Far from discouraged, he perked up, eyes shining with interest. “Oooh. Now there’s a thought.”
Sarsen let out a groan and slumped. “You just had to suggest that, didn’t you?”
Sevana spared him a glance. “I guarantee that it would have taken the children in this village a whole minute to have the same thought after they saw two standing bodies of clean water.”
“Point,” he acknowledged ruefully. “Judging from that longing expression…Sky, you want to join in, don’t you?”
Sky looked away from the table, toward the floor, and said in a small voice, “I can’t swim.”
Every adult at the table snapped around, staring at him incredulously. Although really, this shouldn’t have surprised any of them. As ridiculous as it seemed, most sailors didn’t know how to swim. Sevana had always thought it stupid in the extreme to have a career in water when you didn’t have the faintest idea how to stay afloat in it, but that seemed to be the norm. Rubbing her hands together, she stared at that bowed head thoughtfully. The Fae no doubt had their own ways to deal with water, and they would teach him, but in the meantime it seemed foolish to leave him exposed to a possible danger without teaching him anything.
“Right.” Turning to Master and Sarsen, she asked, “Who’s going to drown-proof the kid?”
“Since I fully intend to go swimming in it anyway, why don’t I do it?” Master volunteered with a selfless smile that didn’t fool anyone at the table. “Besides, it’s dangerous if you two do it. Your teaching methods are something else.”
“No one has ever died on me,” Sevana defended herself with a wounded hand over her heart.
“Or me!” Sarsen objected good-naturedly.
“Yet,” Master grumbled under his breath. “Don’t worry, Sky, I’ll make sure you can swim well. You can leave it to me. I taught these two, and they do just fine in water.”
Sky’s grin stretched from ear to ear. “Thanks, Master!”
“Not at all, not at all.”
Sevana went back to trying to catch a server’s eye, and finally managed it a few moments later. She put in an order for anything that was ready to dish up right this moment before she sat back in her chair and properly faced the table again. “Alright, let’s come up with a timeline for this. Hube isn’t sure how long it will take to build the two timber pools, since we’re capable of lifting all the logs in place, which apparently is the most time-consuming part of the job. But he said if we can lift them so easily, he thinks we can put a pool together in a day.”
“So two days for two pools?” Master cocked his head, eyes on the ceiling as he started calculating things. “Alright. With a fountain of this size, it will take about three days for the water to evaporate, especially in this heat. I think this might work out to where everything will be done about the same time. We can finish digging by lunch tomorrow, or thereabouts. The first pool will be put together by evening. So the day after tomorrow, we can put the dam into place, and while the pool fills, we’ll build another one.”
“While that pool is being built, the fountain will be draining dry,” Sarsen picked up the topic as Master slowed, becoming distracted by his own thoughts so much that he forgot to speak. “So, we’ll have a two-day wait or so until we can do anything.”
“During that two-day wait we need to keep an eye on the pools to make sure they won’t overflow,” Sevana reminded. “Which I suppose Master can do, since he’ll be swimming in them anyway.”
He gave her a benign smile. “It’s best to combine work with pleasure.”
Sevana, not disagreeing with this philosophy, said seriously, “It is.”
Sarsen, well used to this silliness, kept going without trouble. “So what are we going to do for two days while waiting on the fountain to dry?”
“I vote we make preparations.” Sevana braced her forearms on the table and leaned against it, tone and manner completely serious. “I do not want this thing in the village any longer than it needs to be. I don’t want to run the risk of activating some other feature to it that we don’t know about yet. I want to seal this thing up in a metal box and send it immediately to Jacen for study.”
“He would be the best choice,” Sarsen admitted.
“One of us, at least, has to stay here and put everything back in order once the gadgick is out,” she continued. “Since I originally took this job, I think that should be me. So it’s up to
the two of you—which one wants to leave immediately for Jacen’s once the gadgick is out?”
Master and Sarsen shared a speaking look for several seconds. Then Master’s mouth quirked up in a slight smile. “I wouldn’t mind going,” he admitted frankly. “I haven’t seen Jacen for quite some time. Also, I’d like to stay a few days and help him research the gadgick. I want a better understanding of how it works.”
She nodded in satisfaction. “Then that’s settled. Sarsen, you’re stuck with me doing the cleanup.”
“Fine, fine. Should be the easier job, leastways.” He rubbed at his chin for a moment before asking, “What about Goffin and Roland? Should we send them home tomorrow? I don’t think they can help us much from here on.”
Sevana blinked. “Wait, they’re still here?”
“They weren’t sure if taking all those stones out would actually do the trick,” Sarsen confessed. “We decided to wait a day or two and see how things went.”
Ah. Well, true, none of their previous theories had proven to be exactly correct. It made sense to play it safe for a day or so. “They can go home tomorrow as far as I’m concerned.”
“Then I’ll tell ‘em. You were the last to go, anyway. I don’t think we have to worry about people disappearing in their sleep anymore.”
She should hope not, for pity’s sake.
~ ~ ~
By the time that Sevana had rolled out of bed the next morning, dressed, eaten breakfast, and gone back to the worksite, three men had already beaten her there and resumed digging. Sky chose to follow along again and stayed faithfully at her heels like some sort of hunting dog. The metaphor became more accurate than she intended when she realized he had a wolf on his heels.
Hube arrived on scene shortly after she did, along with Master and Sarsen, so they went to work.
Making a timber pool, as it turned out, didn’t differ much from making a log cabin. The ends of the logs had to be notched out in a particular way so that the logs would fit together tightly. For every two logs saddled and stacked together, Hube would use either small trees or saplings to bind everything, preventing anything from slipping or slowly spreading apart under the force of the water. She found it interesting that he didn’t strip the branches off before he used them. He said it would add strength and a little “filler,” whatever that meant. He did this routinely, binding layer upon layer together. After watching him do this once, Sevana and the rest felt they could do the same and started helping him. It wasn’t as easy as it looked—nothing ever was—but Hube patiently taught them the finer tricks, and within the course of an hour, they had the hang of it.
With all four adults working well together, and a judicious amount of magic, they had the first level of the pool built by noon. Sevana had never worked physically harder in her life. She felt drenched with sweat, her clothes sticking to her back and waist, tendrils of hair clinging to her temples. She had a whole new level of respect for anyone that built dams for a living. After all, they did this without magic.
Maybe she should come up with some sort of product to sell to them…hmm.
They took a break for lunch at noon, which Sky had eagerly gone and fetched from the inn’s kitchen in the form of a picnic. Sevana didn’t want to do anything more than take a nap after eating, but unfortunately, the rest of the work beckoned. With a groan, she forced herself back to her feet and went back to it.
For some strange reason, building the second level of the pool went faster than building the first. Perhaps because they all knew what they were doing at this point and weren’t waiting on Hube’s directions? Because they were now used to how the others worked? Or more likely a combination of the two. Regardless, they had the second level up in a matter of three hours.
Using their carrying and lifting spells, the three Artifactors gathered up the stripped branches from yesterday and the dirt that had been dug up to get to the underground stream, and used all of that to fill the space in between the two layers. Sevana hadn’t been sure that it would be enough to fill the space, but it turned out to be fine. Barely. She had no idea what they would do about the fill-in for the second pool, though.
Now came the fun part.
According to Hube, there were several possible ways to construct a sub dam. But because they weren’t in the dry season—far from it—they were limited on what they could build with. He had also been unsure of what kind of rock or soil surrounded the water. If it was some sort of impermeable rock around it, then fine. They could build a masonry dam. If not, well, then they would probably have to resort to a sand dam. But Sevana didn’t like Option B whatsoever. Unlike a masonry dam, the sand dams had to be built in stages, over several days. A masonry dam could be built in one go, and right now, that’s what everyone preferred to do.
Now that the soil was out of the way, the water exposed, they could finally get a better idea of what they were dealing with. Sevana extracted her see-through glasses from her pouch (a special invention of hers that let her see through everything) and put them on before peering over the side of the hole.
“Hmmm. I’m seeing bedrock.”
“Impermeable?” Hube asked hopefully.
“It certainly looks that way. I cannot see any water in the rock itself.”
All the men standing around her let out long sighs of relief.
Sevana raised her head and took a good look at the sky. She estimated another three, perhaps four hours of light left. “Hube, you think we can put the sub dam in today?”
He lifted his eyes to the sky, making the same calculations she had just done. “I think we might can, if you’ve got spells to harden cement with.”
She gave him a cocky smile. “Actually, I do.”
He grinned right back at her, revealing crooked teeth. “Then let’s get crackin’.”
The spring did not prove to be particularly large or fast-moving, so the dam they built was more than adequate for the job. The pool they’d constructed held up as well, although Hube calculated that it wouldn’t be quite large enough to hold more than two days of water. They spent most of the next day constructing another timber pool and linking the two with a pipe to deal with overflow.
After that, of course, it came down to a waiting game.
Well, Sevana waited. Everyone else seemed intent on playing in the pool. Granted, with that crystal clear water coming straight from the ground, it was perfect to play in. But half the draw had to be Master’s “toys.” Not only were his toys floatable, but they were animated. He had dolphins, sharks, and even one miniature whale in there thrashing about. The kids had a heyday trying to ride them.
Not quite trusting Master to remember he had an eight-year-old “hammer” in the water with him when toys were about, Sevana sat in the shade of a large weeping willow, kicked back in her favorite portable chair, and just watched the show. If Sky started drowning, she’d levitate him out.
The two wolves, not interested in playing in the water, seemed intent to lay in the shade of a tree and catch a long nap. Sevana had no idea when they’d been introduced to each other, but considering the way that Gid had pillowed his head on Hinun’s stomach, they were friends now. She laughed softly to herself when Hinun’s feet started twitching. Now, what did he chase in his dreams? With him, it could either be rabbits or children.
Since she had nothing else better to do, she pulled out her Caller while she sat there. “Pierpoint.”
It took a few seconds—judging from the sounds, Pierpoint had been startled by her call and dropped something breakable, or at least the crashing sounds and cursing made her think so. But he picked it up with only a huff and a slightly disgruntled look. “Sevana.”
“How expensive was it?” she couldn’t help but ask, evilly amused by his frustration.
“Quite expensive, thank you ever so much for asking,” he growled sarcastically, brows beetled together. “And to what do I owe this honor?”
“I’m waiting on something so I thought I would update you.”
/> Pierpoint’s expression showed a mixture of relief to get an update and sardonic amusement that she only called because she had nothing else better to do. “Pray, do continue.”
She skipped the failed attempt and her interesting excursion to the other end of Kindin, starting with the solution they’d thought of and what they’d done so far. The two magicians had packed up and gone home already, and almost as an afterthought, she passed along the message that Aren needed to pay them. Pierpoint reached over and scribbled down a note to make sure that was done.
“So at the moment you’re waiting on the water to drain out of the fountain completely so you can remove the—what did you call it?”
“Gadgick,” she supplied.
“Wherever did you get that term from?”
“Jacen.” Seeing his blank expression, she elaborated with a sigh, “Jacen Windau? Artifactor? Specializes in ancient artifacts?”
“Ahhh. I know the man by rumor and reputation, but little else. You consulted with him, I take it?”
“We did. In fact, I fully intend to give the gadgick to him once we’ve removed it. He’s the one most qualified to deal with it.”
“Heaven knows I wouldn’t really know what to do with it either. I’ll assure the king that it will go to an expert. He was talking about destroying the thing.”
As tempting as that idea had been for her, “No. We don’t dare. For one thing, we’ll lose valuable information that we’ll probably never have a chance of gaining ever again. For another, I’m not sure how tough that thing is. For all I know, it’ll take throwing it into a live volcano.”
The Dreamer's Curse (Book 2) Page 17
