by Frank Morin
Verena said, “I like that idea a lot better, if we can build it.”
Kilian said, “I’ve never considered exhausting all of the available affinity power. Before now I would’ve said it wasn’t possible, but maybe there’s a way.”
“There’s a great deal of power imbuing affinity stones already. How would we use all that?” Mistress Four asked.
Connor wasn’t sure, but the idea excited him more than anything else they had considered. It finally offered a chance to move beyond conjecture and wild dreams. This idea might actually have a slim chance of success. He glanced at Evander who did not look convinced, then at Kilian who was looking thoughtful.
Kilian said, “My greatest concern is how short we are on time.”
Shona said, “If no one has any better ideas, we have to try something. How fast can we build something to test?”
“How fast can you get me that notebook?” Verena asked.
“Two minutes,” he promised. He wished he had an affinity for calling objects to him from a distance. That would be a neat trick.
Kilian nodded. “Get on it. If we can indeed make it work, there’s no reason not to try. Destroying sandstone affinity is definitely not the preferred option, but if we can’t come up with anything better we might have to make the attempt. We’re facing the fight that could very well define all of our lives and the very future of our nations. We cannot fail.”
He held each of their gazes in turn, little points of white-hot flame in his eyes. Kilian was extremely good at motivating his people, and Connor felt his resolve stiffening.
Kilian added, “Evander and I can challenge her elemental dominance.”
“Hamish and I can distract her,” Verena promised. “Maybe we’ll even get a glimpse into why she fears us so much.”
Connor was feeling pretty confident in the plan until Ivor declared, “Then we activate our healing drought, and Connor goes in for the kill.”
82
Sugar-saturated Creativity
Verena exited her bedroom, carrying the leather-bound notebook where she’d recorded everything she could remember from the amazing experience activating Kirstin’s Defense. Hamish waited for her in her plush sitting room. Verena liked the suite assigned to her by General Rory. Situated in Dougal’s tower, it had once belonged to Craigroy. The master spy might be an evil, conniving villain, but he hired excellent decorators.
“Do you really think we can create a mechanical to suck up all the healing power?” Hamish asked, glancing up from the notebook that Christin had given to Connor.
She settled into one of the plush chairs beside the one where he sat close to the warm fire and tucked her hair behind one ear. “You were there, you talked with Nicklaus. What do you think?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted after a moment’s thought. “I wish we’d looked into it more right away, but I hadn’t realized it might be so important.”
“We didn’t know about convergence points or the queen’s ramverk construct that filters sylfaen to create affinities. It’s crazy how much this knowledge changes things.” Usually she loved to savor the sense of wonder she experienced when learning new things, but this time they were just too rushed. Why couldn’t they have learned about these deeper truths three months ago?
“I wish I’d gotten to experience Kirstin’s Defense with you,” Hamish said with a sigh. “I feel like I’m trying to build a new sightstone when I’m blind.”
She held up her notebook. “How about we swap? You study my notes and I’ll study the instructions Water gave Nicklaus. Then we’ll compare.”
“Deal.” He took her notes and began reading, absently pulling a hard breadstick from a chest pocket. He’d left his battle suit in his rooms and wore trousers and a cotton shirt, with a many-pocketed denim jacket over it.
“Have any more of those?” she asked.
“Silly question,” he grinned. “You should have asked how many varieties I’ve got handy.”
He extracted another one and handed it over. She took a bite and was surprised by the rich, honey flavor. He wasn’t holding back the good stuff. She appreciated that Hamish understood the importance of proper encouragement.
She eagerly opened Christin’s notebook and began reading. Nicklaus had repeated everything he heard from Water, and many of the lines were short and rather cryptic. She wondered if Nicklaus had accidentally spoken aloud some of his own random thoughts, like the line that only said, “No missiles on the pantry door.”
Or, “No one’s awake after the second midnight bell.”
She ignored the random or gibberish-sounding commands, scanning the pages to pick out the meatier communications. She’s spoken with Water and immediately recognized the different tone from Nicklaus’ other rambling. At first they were short, sounding more like Water was probing the communication channel, trying to understand the boy she was speaking with, almost as if she was surprised he could hear her.
The directions for building the water purifier were the first meaningful messages, and Verena instantly recognized the brilliance of the suggestions. Water had communicated a very clever use of Builder powers in simple terms that the boy could grasp. Verena longed to establish another connection with Water herself. What more could she learn from the elemental personage?
“Did you read this,” she asked Hamish after turning the page and reading another line. “You are a child of exceptional perception, thus I will teach you higher truths.”
“Yeah. Water seems to like Nicklaus. I’m just impressed that he actually took her advice. He doesn’t like obeying commands.”
“He does like learning new things,” Verena pointed out.
“And he was pretty bored in that cottage. Christin really enjoyed collaring him for regular schooling. He must have hopped at the chance to build something new.”
“I was hoping to understand how he speaks with her, but I get the sense the connection surprised Water, as if it was more an accident than anything,” she said, feeling frustrated.
“Me too. I wonder if breaking his affinities heightened his Builder powers or something?”
“Maybe. Connor speaks of affinities like bridges, and Water mentioned a bridge when I spoke with her. Maybe his mind was prepared for the connection better than ours.”
Hamish tapped Verena’s notebook. “I just read that bit. She actually said there’s some kind of bridge we can establish if we can reach that threshold that will allow us to connect with them more like how Connor does?”
Verena smiled at the awesome memory. “She was magnificent, but hadn’t expected to speak with me. When I activated Kirstin’s Defense, it unleashed so much power it pushed me right to the threshold, but something blocked me from getting through it.”
“What?” he asked eagerly.
“I have no idea.” If only she’d figured it out! Ascending through that threshold might have unlocked even more truths that they needed so desperately. She sighed and added, “We’re right on the verge of so much, Hamish! I was starting to feel proud of how much we accomplished this past winter, but we’re barely scratching the surface.”
He nodded. “In here you said you felt multi-layered commands in Kirstin’s Defense. Water’s instructions to Nicklaus include some complex structure too, but it’s way beyond what we usually use.”
She wasn’t surprised Hamish had picked up on that. Verena felt it held the key to making their new, ambitious attempt possible. “There was a lot about what I sensed in there that I didn’t fully understand, dozens of ideas and insights that flashed through my mind in an instant. They were like fragments of a remembered dream. Those notes are my attempt to piece them back together.”
“I noticed,” he said with a grin. “You jump around so much, I suspected you might have taken my advice to sugar saturate yourself more often, but forgot you also need to give all that energy physical outlets too.”
“I’d be willing to try sugar saturation if it would help us figure this out,” she admitte
d.
Without a word, he pulled a cream-filled pastry out of another pocket. It was still soft. “How do you keep it warm?” she exclaimed.
“I drop tiny pieces of marble in my pockets and activate them just a bit. Sort of like mini heatstone ovens. Pretty neat, huh?”
She couldn’t argue with that and saluted with the pastry before consuming it. It was delicious.
“Tell me about the layered commands,” Hamish urged.
Verena took a moment to gather her thoughts. Christin’s notes helped, since Nicklaus had used similar principles, if on a far simpler scale. “Some things I still can’t explain, like how those soapstone sculpted stones were already partially activated, but hadn’t run out of power despite remaining active for three centuries. Or the fact that there were no pieces of active obsidian placed beside each one.”
“I didn’t even notice that when we first touched it,” Hamish admitted.
“Those eight stones were linked together by those complex commands, which were triggered and controlled by the keystone of the construct, the stone due south of Merkland.”
Hamish nodded. “I get that part. Even Nicklaus’ water-hogging mechanical used a keystone concept like that. I’d thought we were getting pretty complex in our mechanicals, but I’d never realized we could layer commands over each other.”
She hadn’t either. The easiest way to release a stone’s power was to simply reach into it and wrench open the crack, allowing its power to flood forth in a wave. Every Builder could do that instinctively. Next came more subtle applications that pushed a stone’s power out through the mechanical or out to the rest of the world in a more controlled manner.
The most complex mechanicals they’d built to date included commands to link to additional stones, or to release a stone’s power in a focused way, like the new shieldstones they used, crafted to generate shields of specific size, shape, duration, and intensity. Sightstones were even more complex, combining image and sound transmission, but were still pretty straightforward.
Hamish added, “Water’s instructions to Nicklaus made it seem so simple, as if creating higher forms of commands was as easy as layering various flavors of cake over one another.”
She smiled at the analogy. “To me, it felt more like invisible parchments, each containing a single command, built upon each other. Only when I activated Kirstin’s Defense did I understand. It was like flipping each page past my mind, one after another, and only together did the entire plan make sense.”
Hamish nodded thoughtfully, glancing back down at her notes. “It’s making more sense now. So we need to define the full scope of what we want and figure out how to break it down into a string of simple commands that we then have to layer together to create the final program.”
“I think so,” she agreed, impressed that he could grasp it so quickly when he hadn’t experienced it. “I like that word for it. Programming sounds right. Kirstin’s Defense included secondary command groups that didn’t activate until the first set was finished and the defenses were in place. I’m not completely sure how to do that, but I don’t think for what we’re trying to do we’ll need that.”
“I can’t wait for the time to practice the whole process,” Hamish said, voice soft with wonder. “Kirstin was amazing. Sometimes I wonder what else we’ve lost from her that we may never get back.”
Deep thoughts like that from Hamish often caught Verena by surprise, even though she knew him so well. He loved to project a goofy persona, but she shouldn’t get fooled by that. Under that goofy exterior and bottomless appetite was a brilliant, creative mind.
So of course he added, “I just got a great idea how to build a higher-level mechanical to deliver sweetbreads to my rooms every twenty seconds, all day long.”
Verena laughed, feeling her confidence growing. With Hamish’s help, she felt convinced they could build a mechanical to absorb healing power.
She turned to a blank page and extracted a pencil from her satchel. “Then let’s get to work.”
83
Bash Fighting for a Good Cause
Connor landed on a flat, rocky plateau a few miles northwest of Merkland where the rest of the team waited. As he touched down and he released Air, the two invisible chairs faded away, rousing Kilian from the doze he’d fallen into on the return trip.
Connor couldn’t blame him. He felt exhausted, despite the noticeable increase in his strength and endurance, even when not tapping any affinities. The ascension had changed him at a fundamental level, but he’d been pushing the limits in the last couple days. While Verena and Hamish were busy creating new mechanicals, he’d spent every waking hour training hard with Kilian, Evander, Aifric, and Ivor, exploring every aspect of his altered affinities that he could.
He’d learned some fun things, like the fact that he could hold his breath almost indefinitely when tapping pumice, and he’d dueled both Kilian and Evander together and actually held his own. He still couldn’t touch Kilian with a blade, but his elemental powers were noticeably stronger. He only hoped the huge improvements he’d made would be enough. He wished he could spend another year training that hard.
Verena jogged over from the Swift that she’d been tinkering with. She’d gotten it repainted, and it looked fully restored from that battering it suffered fighting the swarm. Hamish stood nearby in his battle suit, talking with Evander and Ilse. General Wolfram and Lady Briet exited the Albatross parked nearby, while Rory raised a fist to signal the halt to the bash fight he’d been enjoying with Anika, Erich, Ivor, Shona, and Tomas and Cameron. Aifric raced up on fracked legs from around a pile of boulders. The other Mhortair followed, the entire group sliding across the hardscrabble ground.
“Did you find a good spot?” Verena asked after greeting Connor with a kiss. Her black hair was braided for flying, and she wore flying leathers. He loved how cute she looked snuggled into that fur-lined jacket.
“We did,” he said loudly so all could hear.
“Good. We’re ready for the test,” she told him happily, pointing toward a cluster of three windriders parked in a loose circle nearby. Each one held a large, square block of sandstone as tall as Connor. They were committing enormous resources to the attempt to destroy Queen Dreokt. If they succeeded, it would be a tiny price to pay.
“Perfect timing,” Kilian said, giving Verena a hug and a warm smile. “We’ll lay our trap on the opposite side of the river from the convergence point Connor sensed.”
“It’s about a dozen miles upriver from Crann and another ten inland to the east,” Connor explained. “It’s rough, with no population to speak of.”
“Good. I’m glad we can try this without putting a lot of people at risk,” Verena said.
“Just us,” Hamish pointed out.
“We know the risks, and if today’s test is successful, we’ll have a better chance than maybe anyone has ever had,” Kilian said.
Everyone turned to Verena and Hamish expectantly. Hamish gestured toward the parked windriders with their sandstone loads. “Those blocks are twenty percent of the final mechanical we’ve got planned. They’re enough for the test. We’ll add the other twelve blocks for the final trap.”
“We should have the sculpted stones we need by then,” Verena added.
Shona said, “We’ve already committed three sculpted sandstone. I don’t understand why we need fifteen.”
The idea of so many sculpted stones potentially sacrificed in one mechanical was hard to grasp. Luckily Gisela and the other two sculptors working in New Schwinkendorf were generating a lot of sculpted stones. They might not be as powerful as a finely crafted piece that Aunt Ailsa would produce, but they didn’t have to be. Many of the rough-sculpted stones were small obsidian pieces, needed for all of the remotely-controlled mechanicals, but as the Builder mechanicals grew ever more complex, they needed more and more other sculpted stones. Plus, with war brewing, they’d wanted to give Healers as much power as possible.
They had half a dozen sculpted s
andstone in Merkland already, but had contacted Gisela to rush production of the rest. She’d promised they’d gather every available stone in New Schwinkendorf and sculpt more, if needed. Usually such a concentration of sculpted stones would have been illegal and would have represented enormous wealth, but Connor wished they had twice as many and that his Aunt Ailsa had been free to assist in perfecting them over a period of weeks.
“The sculpted stones are vital to this new mechanical construct,” Verena explained. She and Hamish had worked tirelessly through the two full days, their work fueled by buckets of sweetbreads and crates of smashpacked desserts. They claimed to have worked out the sequencing for the mechanical to create a dearth of healing power, and had spent the entire next day working with a huge team to put the plan into practice.
Hamish added, “They’ll link together and will be the focus of our command sequence, but they can’t contain all the healing power we hope to capture. Simply deflecting the healing power away from an area might have worked, but this approach gives us far better coverage. We need the big sandstone blocks to act as reservoirs.”
Aifric grinned. “Think of how much healing we could accomplish by sculpting pieces of those blocks afterward.”
Great idea. Verena said, “We’re already planning to try. If this works, we should be able to suck all the healing power away from everyone, although some will remain locked into the sandstone pieces you have on you. One of the goals for today’s test is to get a sense for how quickly that power will drain away.”
“Should we place the healing-sucking vortex mechanical at the point where we spring the trap, then?” Ivor asked.
Verena said, “We’re calling this mechanical Sucker Punch.”
“My idea,” Hamish announced proudly.
Verena said, “I thought to call it Primal Health because healing’s still there, but not available to anyone unless we choose.” She hesitated and Hamish eagerly gestured her to continue. She sighed and conceded, “But for once Hamish’s idea is better.”
