Visions: Knights of Salucia - Book 1

by C. D. Espeseth

  He might be able to get a scribe position with the Chroniclers. Heck, they took anyone who was willing to believe in what they were doing. He’d be able to study Jendar relics, and might eventually work his way up to a full Chronicler and get to spend most of his time in a chosen field of research. He might even be able to go out with a Romak caravan heading into the wastes every now and then.

  Wayran sighed at the idea. Chroniclers were notoriously poor. They devoted everything they had to their research and relied on the meagre earnings from selling Jendar trinkets. He winced thinking how long it would take to pay back all those smashed santsi, working with the Chroniclers.

  He watched the people in the busy market below as they bartered and sold goods. Most of them seemed happy, content with their lot in life as they tried to eke out a decent living, thankful for the peace and stability that High King Ronaston’s reign had brought.

  Why can’t I be like that? Wayran thought, yet deep down he knew he wasn’t like them. He had always been a dreamer, looking to the future, longing for some just and noble cause to be part of. His father had always said he was like his mother in that sense. She had believed in Ronastan Mihane before he had become the High King, believed in what he was creating, and saw how it could be great. Wayran had never thought this to be a fallacy until now.

  He turned from the window and flopped down onto his bed. He stared up at the thick wood beams crossing the ceiling of his room. Today they reminded him of the bars of a cage; a cage which grew smaller and more suffocating with each passing hour.

  Finally, he had had enough of his moping and slapped his hands down on the bed. “Enough,” he told himself, and stood up. There was another option open to him, albeit one that he had never wanted to take.

  He could apprentice under his father, making trisk for the military and anyone else who had enough money to commission one of the metal and fabric woven suits. But it was a path Wayran had always resisted because to him it felt like standing still, and the easy option.

  He looked at himself in the mirror and saw the new stripe of white hair running across his head. The skin had scarred from where the piece of the roof had struck him, and the shock of the blow had turned the hair above it white.

  I’ll always be reminded of my failure, he thought. That bloody white stripe would always be there, taunting him with what could have been. If only Matoh hadn’t … But Wayran stopped that train of thought. It was he who had followed Matoh out to those spires; he could have let the other Storm Chasers retrieve his brother, but he had decided it was his responsibility to chastise him. It had been stupid, and now he had to pay for that stupidity.

  He sighed and pulled on a set of work clothes and headed downstairs to begin swaging metal wire to be woven into trisk. If he was going to sulk, he might as well do something useful while he did.

  ***

  Wayran pushed down the long handle of the crimping pliers to secure the swage, which was used to bend the metal, onto a length of copper wire. With the swage set, he rotated the threaded end into the drawing crank, and then clamped the die into place over the copper wire. He double checked that everything was secure, and then began to turn the handle.

  His shoulders burned from the effort but the pain felt good. Over and over he turned the crank handle, each click of the gears pulled the copper wire a bit further, forced the wire to thin as it came through the die. This wire he was drawing would need to go through another three dies before it was thin enough to be woven into a trisk, but it was all part of the process.

  Sweat dripped from his brow and he wiped it away without a thought. He was in a rhythm now and the beat of it absorbed his mind. The crank of the handle spun and his body pushed it forward and back, forward and back, forward and back, until the length of thicker wire being pulled through the die popped through or the spindle was full of thin copper wire.

  He felt the release of pressure coming and slowed his cranking to let the end of the thick copper wire pull through the die. He cut off the last bit of the wire he had pulled through, as it wasn’t as uniform as the rest of the wire. He picked up the small piece of waste copper and put it in a pot with the other clipped ends.

  Wayran popped the locks on the crank and pulled out the now heavy spindle of thin copper wire. His biceps ached as he hefted the wire out of the crank and turned to go and put it on the shelf with the others he had swaged.

  “That’s probably enough wire, son,” a deep, gravelly voice said beside him, making him start in surprise.

  It was his father.

  “Sorry, didn’t see you there, Dad,” Wayran huffed between breathes as he grunted to heft the spindle onto the shelf. His father stepped over and grabbed one end of the spindle, helping him shift it into position.

  “I believe this shelf was empty this morning,” Harold Spierling said with a nod. “Appreciated.”

  “It’s grunt work,” Wayran said, only now noticing how heavily he was breathing. “Helps clear the mind.”

  Harold Spierling nodded again, his thick grey and black moustache jutting out in thought. “I thought the doctor told you to rest until those headaches of yours went away.”

  Wayran hung his head slightly; his father had his arms crossed in the no-nonsense manner Wayran and Matoh had grown to recognise so well. “I know,” he said. “It’s just sitting around all day is driving me insane.” He looked up to meet his father’s eyes. “I don’t know what to do with myself, and the exercise feels good.”

  His father’s moustache hitched up on one side in a sort of half-grin. “You’re like me in that sense, son. I never could sit still for too long either.” His father looked at him for a moment, narrowing his eyes as if deciding something. “Come with me. I’ve got something you can do that won’t countermand the doctor’s orders too much.”

  Wayran hung up his swage and replaced the die in its holder beside the workbench and followed his father into his smaller private workshop. More than a few of Harold Spierling’s apprentices on the shop floor watched him enter the room with both reverence and fear, yet to Wayran this private workshop had been part of his life for as long as he could remember. After long days of working, the three of them would quite often have their meals in this room; they would sit on chairs eating a thick pasty from Mrs. Gilchrest down the road, and would watch as their father put the finishing touches to whatever project he was working on. To Wayran and Matoh, their father’s office and workshop sometimes felt more like home than the rest of the house sitting above them did.

  He entered and noticed for what must have been the thousandth time how amazingly stuffed full of tools it was, yet at the same time wasn’t cluttered. Everything had a place, and Harold Spierling knew exactly where that place was, often without even looking. His father’s often quoted words came to him then: “When you need to lay hands on a tool, you want to know where it is, and that it’s there.” It was good advice for any potential layman, and it was a quality he respected in his father.

  It was then Wayran noticed the black outline of a suit as it stood on a wooden dummy in the centre of the workshop. “What is that?” he asked in wonder.

  “It’s a new design the High King commissioned,” his father said with arms crossed over his chest as he studied his creation. “It’s taken me most of a year to make, and I haven’t let any of those dough-heads out there see it yet.” Harold Spierling hooked a thumb back towards the door indicating the room full of his apprentices.

  Wayran rolled his eyes at the comment. He knew full well the apprentices outside were anything but dough-heads: most of them were excellent craftspeople, they had to be, to get an apprenticeship in his father’s shop. But he also knew his father was the one who had invented the trisk, so when it came to trisksmithing, Harold Spierling had no equal.

  Wayran stepped up beside his father to study the creation. It was incredible and looked almost flawless. Patches woven into the suit flashed with a purple and blue sheen that he thought he recognised. “Is that … co
vellite?” He leaned in closer to study a nearly translucent glassy line running along the middle of the suit’s chest.

  “It is,” his father said with that half-grin on his face.

  A spiderweb of gold, silver and copper wire radiated from the centre line out into the rest of the suit. Two more lines were stitched into the forearms and another, wider line of the shimmering material ran along the spine. It was a work of art. “It’s amazing,” Wayran said shaking his head. “How did you get covellite that thin? Won’t it shatter?”

  Covellite crystals were used primarily in the production of santsi globes. Wayran had never seen it applied this way before.

  “It’s a new process they developed up at the Academy; Professor Attridge figured out how to coat the covellite in a resin which allows smaller covellite crystal structures to stay intact while also being somewhat flexible and pliable. Soon as I heard about it, an idea hit me like a thunderbolt. I started working on a design and went straight to the High King with it. He commissioned a suit on the spot. Which was lucky, as the High King is probably one of the only people in all of Salucia who could afford a suit like this.”

  And you probably know the High King will fund anything you put in front of him because of what happened to Mother. The thought snapped across Wayran’s mind, and he felt immediately guilty and would never voice it. His father’s relationship with the High King was … complicated. There was history there that neither would ever talk about, but both Wayran and Matoh knew it had something to do with their mother.

  “No kidding,” Wayran whistled as he banished his gloomy thoughts and focused once again on the marvellous trisk. Covellite deposits were exceedingly rare. A fistful of it would make any copper miner rich for the rest of his life. “So … what will this trisk be able to do?”

  His father’s smile widened. “I don’t quite know yet.” It was then Wayran noticed him looking at him expectantly. His father continued, “That’s what I was hoping you could help me with … if you’re feeling up to it?”

  Wayran’s jaw dropped. “You want me to wear the High King’s trisk?”

  “I’m sure the High King could find someone to test it, but with something like this, well, a craftsman wants to know his creation works before he gives it to a king.” His father shrugged. “I’d test it myself but I don’t have the strength or control of siphoning that it needs. The High King is a bull of a man, and he can pull in more power than I’ve ever seen. Matoh probably has enough siphoning strength to give it a good run, but you have the control, and I trust your judgement.”

  Wayran didn’t know what to say. So he just said, “Yes,” and had his shirt off in a heartbeat. His father let out a throaty laugh.

  “Don’t be too eager!” His father clapped him gently on the shoulder. “If the High King hears about this he’ll tan both our hides.”

  Before long Wayran had the High King’s trisk on and a charged santsi globe strapped into a holster on his back. The trisk was far too large for him, but they had compensated by carefully synching the covellite patches closer to his skin with a series of belts and ropes.

  “Now don’t get crazy with it. That much raw covellite could do some wild things. Don’t draw too fast on that santsi, and make sure you are pushing with everything you’ve got into your conduit here.” His father tapped the practice hammer with the lengths of copper running through it. “As a matter of fact, just put that hammer straight onto the copper contact point there on the dummy’s chest. And for Halom’s sake, take it slow.”

  Wayran could see the concern on his father’s face. “I’ll be careful. Don’t worry, I’m in no rush to destroy another fortune’s worth of equipment.”

  His father grimaced slightly, then took a step back, nodding for him to begin.

  Wayran took a deep breath. Alright … here goes.

  He focused his mind and started to siphon.

  His entire body seemed to buzz. The dummy exploded away from him as a giant blue spark erupted from the hammer’s blunt end.

  Wayran stood shocked. The dummy, now burning as it flew through the air, slammed itself off a workbench and crashed to the floor.

  “I said take it slow!” Harold Spierling jumped forward, a blanket somehow already in his hand, which he tossed over the dummy snuffing out the flames.

  “I did! That was slow!” Wayran protested.

  “Lady take me,” his father cursed under his breath as he pulled the blanket off the singed wooden dummy. “Are you alright?”

  “Yes.” Wayran shook himself, finally lowering the hammer. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  His father turned to look at him; they met each other’s eyes and looked back down at the dummy his father was now straddling with a slightly burnt blanket.

  “Well,” his father said, “that was unexpected.”

  They both burst into laughter.

  “Wow,” Wayran said after they had stopped laughing, “I think you might just be the High King’s new best friend. He’s going to love this.” He looked down at the covellite strip on his chest in wonder.

  ***

  After three more equally explosive tests, they decided the rest was up to the High King. Wayran had taken off the trisk and replaced it on the wood dummy. He and his father stood looking at it, somewhat awed at what it could do.

  “You don’t have to stay and work with me at the shop you know. You have other options,” Harold Spierling said.

  Wayran turned to see a sympathetic smile on his father’s face. “What do you mean?”

  His father clapped a hand down on his shoulder. “I know this thing in the wastes is a significant setback for you, and that the thought of staying here in the shop rankles like nothing else, despite the fact we both know you’d be an excellent trisk maker. I remember what it was like to be young. You need an adventure more than money sometimes.” His father smiled as his eyes went distant, no doubt recalling some of the tales he had told his two boys.

  “It’s not the work, Dad, it’s just –” Wayran struggled to explain.

  “Don’t worry, son, I understand.” His father gave him another reassuring clap on the shoulder. “Now listen, your uncle can be as stubborn and ornery as an old mule, but that old mule is run by his pocketbook above all things. If you pay him back, that ultimatum of his might just soften a touch.”

  “It’s a lot of money, Dad.” Wayran looked down at his hands. He didn’t like admitting failure to his father. He always wanted to make him proud, and this complete bungling of his chance made him feel small in his father’s eyes.

  “Well … I just might have a solution to that.” His father hesitated. “Though you will probably not like the sound of it.”

  Wayran was curious now. “What is it?”

  “You can go to the Academy, train as an officer, try to be a Syklan, like Matoh,” his father said; his hands were up almost defensively.

  The statement almost made Wayran retch. He didn’t know what to say, it was like his father had chosen the worst idea in the world to taunt him with. “You can’t be serious.” He shook his head and could feel anger and frustration building within.

  “Now, I know it’s the last thing you want to do.” The look of sympathy returned to his father’s face. “You’ve always said the military wasn’t for you. We’ve talked about it before, and I’m not going to bring up old arguments, so I’m going to lay it out for you logically, just like in some of those science books you like to read.”

  Wayran started to object, but his father held up a finger. “Just listen, Wayran, and if you can think of a better plan, then we’ll discuss it.”

  “Alright fine.” Wayran crossed his arms. “Let’s hear it.”

  “First of all, you can always come back to work at the shop later; there is always a place for you here, you know that. However, you probably already know as much about trisk making as any of my apprentices so you wouldn’t be learning that much, and right now the last thing you want to do is spend your young adult years tending shop with
your father.” His father smiled.

  Wayran grinned reluctantly. They were accurate observations, and he had to admit his father the point, so he nodded.

  “Second, even if you did work with me, I wouldn’t be able to pay you much, as most of my apprentices, I’m only slightly ashamed to say, work for a pittance. They all want the chance to work for the High King’s trisk maker, which is a fact I use ruthlessly against them.” His father winked at him. “Keeps my operating costs down. Plus they know when they finally get out from under my thumb and start making trisk for themselves they’ll make back ten times over what I’ve withheld during their apprenticeship. If I paid you more than them, and it would be quite a bit more to repay your uncle in a short amount of time, resentment would grow within the shop. Also, I’m fairly sure, as you’re my son, that you would rather eat glass than have your father step in and pay back his brother-in-law for you.” His father paused, watching him, seeming to know that he had struck true again.

  Wayran rolled his eyes and nodded. The thought of his father paying off the debt made him cringe. Uncle Aaron would never respect him again for as long as he lived if that was how he chose to pay off the debt.

  “All of which means of course that working here in the shop is not the right option.” His father paused, letting him mull his words over.

  “So that leaves us with a few goals when deciding what to do: make money quickly, and find a job which might teach you something useful, while still having a chance to provide you with some sort of adventure. Yes?”

  Wayran shook his head as a sudden anger began to rise within him. The arguments were good but he just couldn’t get over how he felt about it. “It’s logical but I just can’t go to the Academy.”

  His father held up his hands. “Peace, son. I know we’ve talked about it before, but it would meet those goals. And the Chroniclers are right there in the Academy; you would have access to all the Jendar gizmos you could get your hands on when you were off duty. Maybe even meet a girl?”