by Guy Antibes
“The lodestone?”
Pol nodded. “Create a ward on the wall.”
Shira tweaked a blue blob. Pol grabbed the lodestone, and the blob faded away. “Wards are defeated by lodestones.”
“That’s right,” Shira said. “We talked about the fact that you can’t walk around a battlefield carrying a lodestone. It’s just as easy to tweak a ward away and at a farther distance.”
Pol sat on the big bed. He smiled. “It’s even firm, not soft.” He bounced twice. He lifted the lodestone. “What if an arrowhead is made of lodestone or magnetized?”
“It should fly…” Her eyebrows shot up. “Anyone could defeat a warded soldier!”
Pol nodded. “I could tweak splinters into fleeing villains,” he said. “Any weapon with a lodestone face would at least pierce the ward. We’ll have to test it, of course, and see how little we can get away with. The mountains separating East and West Zasos are filled with it, but that won’t do us any good.”
“Pentor or Queen Isa might know of sources in South Salvan,” Shira said.
“Or the monks at Tesna.”
“Could it be that easy?”
“What is easy? Even without wards, an army of thousands of men isn’t easy to stop. The Shinkyan horses worked only because they outnumbered the enemy. It doesn’t give us an edge, but it takes away one of the Winnowers’ great strategic advantages.”
Shira yawned and sat next to him on the bed. “I will go to my old room. It’s just across the corridor.” She pecked him on the cheek and left Pol alone in his chambers.
He put his hand to his cheek and sighed. Their time would come, but not now. He forced himself to think about the next innovation to work on.
~
Twenty people stood sixty feet from a large tree on the manor’s grounds.
“First an arrow without a protective ward,” Pol said.
He nodded to Shira, dressed in Sister garb. She nocked an arrow and shot it in the middle of the trunk. Pol walked to the tree and tweaked the arrow out. He laid a protective ward, one that mimicked the Winnower one, and stepped away.
“Now,” he said. “Do you see the ward?”
The Shinkyan Elder nodded along with Shira and a few other Shinkyans and Jonness, who had just returned from Tesna Monastery.
Shira drew back another arrow. It landed in the same spot as the other, but it bounced off. She shot three arrows before Pol had her stop.
“Now the arrow with a lodestone tip.” Pol had spent the previous night hardening the lodestone and then shaping it into an arrowhead.
Everyone watched the arrow plunge through the ward and into the tree. The ward gradually dissipated. Pol smiled at the applause as he rejoined the group.
“It doesn’t take a magician to shoot a lodestone arrow, or use a lodestone-tipped pike.”
The Shinkyan Elder raised her finger. “The attraction properties, we call them magnetism, will transfer to iron and steel, but the effects don’t last long. Can we try a magnetized arrowhead?”
Pol smiled. She led him to his next demonstration. “Shira says the effect lasts a day or so. We experimented yesterday, after leaving some metal bits on the lodestone overnight.”
This time Shira created a ward on the same tree. Pol pulled out four Shinkyan throwing knives.
“You know how to use those?” Elder Harona asked.
“I am an expert in their use.” Pol smiled and threw a non-magnetized knife at the tree. It clattered as it bounced off the ward. He threw another that the ward repelled. “This one is magnetized.” The knife sunk deep into the tree. The ward dispelled, but not as quickly as the lodestone arrowhead.
“Swords, lances, iron catapult balls,” Val said, rubbing his chin. “The Emperor needs to know.”
Pol nodded. “He already does. As soon as we successfully transferred the magnetism, we notified Malden. The question is how much lodestone is available.”
“Can you tweak something that way?” Paki said.
“I wasn’t able to duplicate a lodestone, but I didn’t try particularly hard. I wanted to prove the efficacy of the magnetic weapons. I can move a lodestone without difficulty. When I tweak a shield, not a warded shield but a personal shield, the lodestone weapon is no more effective than steel.”
“There is lodestone in the mountains,” Pentor said. “Above Tesna. There are large boulders of it. We need to make haste to harvest it.”
~
Pentor led a contingent of Shinkyan magicians and local townspeople with wagons back into the mountains by Tesna.
When Pentor left to recover lodestone, Pol decided to travel to Covial. He left General Axe in charge of the army, and Kelso would attend to any emergencies that might happen in Redearth while they were gone.
Visiting his liege, Queen Isa, was overdue. His traveling companions wore warded protection, just like the Winnowers. Shira had told him of the ambush she survived when entering Covial a few years ago and Pol certainly did not want a repeat of that. Darrol, Ako, Fadden, Paki, Nirano, Shira, and he rode into the courtyard of Covial Castle eight days later in the pouring rain. Now that he had been to Tishiko and to Kitanga, he could easily understand why the architecture bothered Shira.
Queen Isa stood just inside the large castle doors. Horker stood next to her on one side and a dour-faced man on the other.
Pol hustled up the stairs and knelt in front of the Queen. “My Queen, I have returned at long last.”
“Long is the right word,” Queen Isa said. “Five years is a long time. I have even noticed gray in my hair. You’ve made me worry. Rise, Pol, Duke of Redearth.” She looked at the others standing on the steps. “Come in, come in.” She motioned them into the castle.
“I can’t stay long, but there are some matters to discuss, and I did want to see you in person,” Pol said.
“Two days. Two days and you can be back on your way. I’m glad you brought friends that I have met before except for the Shinkyan Sister.”
“This is Nirano of the Fearless Faction,” Shira said. “She and Paki are friends.”
“And all of you are accomplished in defending Redearth. I will make room in my study for you all, but first, you must refresh yourselves.” Queen Isa pointed to a row of servants. “Since you warned me so effectively of your visit, I have laid out clean clothes in your rooms. When you are ready, ask the waiting servant to take you to my study.”
Pol quickly put his things away and changed clothes. Queen Isa stood up to greet Pol in her personal study.
“I’m glad you returned. Shira is a dear, but I will be frank, you are dearer. I loved your mother as I would my own sister,” she said. “What will you do now that you’ve taken up residence in the manor at Redearth?”
“I’ll wait for the others to arrive. My own feeble attempt at expressing my appreciation for how you helped Shira pales in comparison to the actual deed. It gave her purpose while I was away, and she proved to be an exceptional commander along the western part of the North Salvan border.”
Queen Isa smiled. “I knew she would rise to the challenge. She is a good match for you, Duke Pol.”
“My Queen, Pol should be sufficient for you.”
She nodded, maintaining her smile. “Perhaps I might be looked upon as an aunt. You never had one, did you?”
Pol shook his head. All my parents were only children. Even Hazett.” Pol’s real Teriland father had no brothers or sisters, either. “So the office of aunt is all yours,” Pol said.
“Good. When are you going to marry Shira? It is going to happen. I’d rather it be sooner than later.”
“There are some issues left to be resolved.”
Fadden, Darrol, and Paki entered the Queen’s study.
“The Shinkyan Sisters are taking their time?” Queen Isa said. “They should be given all the time they need.” She laughed and asked them to draw up seven chairs facing her desk.
Once everyone arrived, Queen Isa welcomed them to Covial. “We all know about the state of t
he war from our ongoing communications. I’d like to know what each of you will be doing to personally help South Salvan.”
Fadden, Paki, Darrol, and Nirano said they would be working with General Axe in Redearth. Ako spoke about creating rune-books.
“Will you show my magicians how to do that?” Queen Isa said.
“I will be happy to. We need to have all of South Salvan’s defenders use them, including the scouts.”
Pol smiled. “You already have magicians who can do so. Monk Jonness traveled to Tesna. He spent a few days with Monk Edgebare and the remaining monks, training them to create the books, and left two magicians behind who have made them. As for Shira and me, we will return to Tishiko to settle some unfinished business. I seek your concurrence to do so.”
“You are an Imperial Prince. You don’t need my concurrence for everything you do, but go with my blessing, Pol Cissert Pastelle. I only have one request. Don’t take five years before returning to grace me with your radiant presence again.”
“You are the one who is radiant, My Queen,” Pol said, smiling.
“Keep that up, and I’ll marry you myself,” Queen Isa said, looking at Shira.
“Did you bring a rune book to show me?”
Ako brightened. “Actually, I brought two.”
She drew two slim rune books out of a bag she carried, and the rest of the meeting consisted of delighting Queen Isa.
~
Shira and Pol let the others ride a bit ahead. “Are you really prepared for Tishiko?”
“I am. I will need papers with a Shinkyan name. I have a Shinkyan face that I wore for four years to use as a disguise,” Pol said. “The essence is truly gone, so I am my own person.”
“The Great Ancestor?”
“As much as Shinkya will ever get,” Pol said, looking out the window at the green fields of South Salvan. “I would prefer to stay at Redearth, but just as I confronted and put the alien behind me, we need to do the same for Tishiko.”
“Tishiko?”
Pol nodded his head slowly. “We can’t cast off Tishiko. We need to change it. Shinkya is part of you and Amble and Demeron. That is part of you and to a much smaller extent, part of me. It will always remain that way, but Shinkya needs to change.”
“For the better?”
“We can only hope.”
~
Pentor waited with two wagons of lodestone lined up outside one of the barns inside the manor walls. Elder Harona stood with General Axe. Pol had arrived only a few hours before.
“It works,” Harona said, “but the steel weapons must spend a night near the lodestone. Even then, they can’t penetrate the enemy’s protection ward for more than eight hours before the magnetism fades.”
“As we suspected,” Pol said. He looked at General Axe. “You have heard back from Yastan?”
“I have. The Winnower Army penetrated all the way to southeastern Lake, but with brave magicians removing the wards, they were driven back.”
“We lost a lot of magicians?”
Axe nodded. “The ward is harder to dissipate than the compulsion spells the Tesnans used in North Salvan.”
“Then should we protect our own soldiers with protection wards?” Pol asked.
The General looked disturbed. “I don’t think that is a good idea. I do not like wards; I’ll be honest with you. If we protect our soldiers with wards, what would be next? I see an unpleasant future if we permit general use of wards. I prefer to defend against wards than to use them.”
Pol had to agree. “They are easily misused as is mind-control and the wards the Winnowers use. So maybe we don’t think about wards, for now.”
“How can we use lodestone? It can’t be worked for use in the field.”
Pol looked at the rock. “You can line wooden containers with lodestone and magnetize them in batches.”
Pol grabbed a lodestone rock and pulled a normal stone from a garden border. “I’m going to think about the problem before Shira and I leave in two days.”
After dinner, Pol and Shira retired into his suite on the second floor. He stared at the two rocks. “I have to find out what makes lodestone different before we leave.”
“What do you think you will find, magic? A new pattern?” Pol could hear a mild scoffing tone in her voice.
“A pattern.” Pol smiled. “I remember playing with a lodestone when I was a boy in Borstall. Paki and I picked up tiny pieces of metal from the smithy. The blacksmith called them filings. They would cling to the lodestone, making it look like it grew black hair. I wonder if we can see a pattern.”
He took a few metal splinters and tweaked it into a pile of tiny metal filings. He plopped the lodestone on the filings and saw the filings orient into curved rays.
“There is the pattern,” Pol said. “I remember the arcs. Now to look into the stone to see if I can sense it somehow.”
Shira looked over his shoulder. “I never played with such things with my sisters.” She tickled his ear. “It must be a boy thing.”
“You probably never played with a commoner,” Pol said. “Paki and I did a lot of things that princes usually don’t, especially the way we did them. Those were the happiest memories of my childhood, time spent away from the castle.”
He stared at the whorls and closed his eyes. Maybe something like the locator spell would work. He relaxed as Malden had taught him long ago when he first learned to detect patterns by looking at colored dots. Force lines suddenly resolved in his mind. Pol opened his eyes to see them match the patterns of the iron.
“I can see them!” he said. “Now I have to see if I can tweak something.”
“Wards won’t work,” Shira said. “You can’t ward magnetism.”
Pol nodded. “It’s a natural phenomenon, but maybe I can change the pattern of steel to be like a lodestone. Something more permanent.”
It took some tries, but Pol finally tweaked a pattern into a splinter. He didn’t quite know how the tweak worked, but when he tweaked from the outside in, he saw particles line up in a straight fashion. “The splinter is magnetized.” He showed Shira that it attracted another metal splinter.
“Let’s see if this works on something larger,” he said. He took two of his Shinkyan knives and touched them together. “Not magnetic.”
He focused on one of them and imprinted the pattern into the metal. He could feel the forces in the metal align. “Now, watch.” He picked up the magnetized knife from the table surface with the non-magnetized knife.
“How many magicians can do that?” Shira said. “I doubt if I can.”
“Try it by imagining the power lines mimicking the ones on the other side of the table,” Pol said.
She gave him a doubtful look, but took the non-magnetized knife and stared at it for a while.
“Relax. It’s about changing the metal itself, and aligning the lines of magnetism,” Pol said.
After taking a deep breath, Shira closed her eyes and clapped her hands. “I’ve done it! I can see through something. After all this time, I didn’t think I could do it.”
Pol could not help but smile at her excitement. “Did you do the tweak?”
“Tweak? Oh.” She quieted down and took another breath or two. “Align the fields. Ah, I can see them. They…” she turned the metal around, “they radiate. There is some kind of relationship between north and south,” she said. “I don’t know how that works, but if the knife is set up that way, I can see the pattern better. The tweak is easier for me.”
She opened her eyes, grabbed the non-magnetized splinter, and let the knife attract it. “Not so hard, but it does take some getting used to the tweak. It is a subtle realignment.”
“I’m glad others can be taught how to do it. It’s probably an Elder-level tweak,” Pol said.
“Not quite. I’ll bet that Gula, your nomad healer, could do it. You need to sense the inside, don’t you?”
“I hope,” Pol said. “Now let’s see how draining a sword is.” He took his old-Shinky
an style sword from Kitanga and tweaked it. “Now it’s magnetized.”
Pol held the non-magnetized knife. When he got the two blades close, they snapped together.
“It would attract the opponent’s sword?” Shira said. “That means using magnetized weapons will be a challenge.”
“We will leave it to others to figure out. I could have tweaked less magnetism into the sword.” Pol lifted the sword up from the table and closed his eyes. “Now it’s much weaker. Put a protective spell on the table.”
“But you’ll damage it.”
Pol grinned. “It’s my table isn’t it?”
“It’s your furniture,” she said.
Pol used the blunt side of his sword and gently touched the back to the ward. The magnetism faded, but not quickly. “I think we can give Elder Harona some ideas. She can certainly tweak the magnetism, and there are probably others in the village of Honor that can do the same. Arrowheads and pikes. Now we can head to Tishiko.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Shira said.
“We are running out of time,” Pol said. “The Winnowers could attack South Salvan in force any moment, but first it’s time to have a distant conversation with Malden.”
Shira grabbed Pol’s rune book and gave it to him. Pol described what he had done, and how he felt about what worked and what did not. Malden didn’t reply for another hour, and then Pol’s wristband lit up.
The older magician seemed excited by Pol’s innovation and said he would work on it with Imperial magicians.
“There,” Pol said. “It’s out of my hands now. We will show everybody tomorrow and leave for Shinkya in two days. Who should come with us?”
“I’ll see what Elder Harona thinks tomorrow,” Shira said. “Do you have any preferences?”
“Karo will need to come, and maybe Ako, but not Fadden. I don’t want anyone who can’t pass for a Shinkyan.”
“What if Val wants to join us?”
“Does he speak Shinkyan?” Pol said.
Shira shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll ask him. Who knows what his current assignment is? Perhaps he needs to be along the South Salvan border to give the Emperor his impressions.”
