Next he worked on the swords. He used dwarfish spells to reinforce them and to maintain their sharpness after adding a small line of gold to hold the spells. He enchanted their rubies with shell skin to protect the hands.
They were now as strong as he could make them. He then transformed into a Great Ki Eagle and used dwarfish strength to fly it all back to Black Sand Beach. After distributing it to the Cooper brothers and asking them to take the extra large set to Jim, he said goodbye and flew back to his camp near Broken Arrow; exhausted he slept for ten hours.
Chapter 38
Michael rode south each day, made camp at dusk, transformed into a Ki Eagle, and searched the surrounding area for manna sign. On the fourth day late in the afternoon, Michael detected strong fire mage manna coming from an inn in the town of Marigold Meadow. Michael decided to investigate. The innkeeper’s son, Peter, took his horses to the stable and agreed to bring his trade goods and supplies to the large room Michael agreed to rent. Michael was surprised at the odd name of the inn, the Safehold Saga, written in Elfish letters. It was the name of a very valuable book in ancient Elfish in his mentor’s library. Since the saga had never been translated into the common tongue, he was surprised that it could be the name of a small southern town’s inn.
When Michael entered the common room dressed in his finest merchant clothing, he saw the source of the strong fire mage manna. A knight protector with the rank of cohort commander, the leader of two hundred knight protectors, was sitting next to the fireplace eating a whole chicken, one of a dozen dishes on his table next to four bottles of fine wine. The man was huge, as large as his friend Jim Neville, and he had a bushy red beard and a bald head. He had a jagged scar across his forehead, and looked like a man who’d known many battles, but who was now tending to corpulence.
But what caught Michael’s attention was not the size of the man but the purple cylinder that was attached to his chest. It was normal for the church and king to send messages using a series of horse and rider stations that were positioned about a day’s ride apart along major roads. It was the fastest communication in Glastamear and not available for any other use. What the commander carried in the purple cylinder was a message that came directly from Most Holy Son of Perry Ascendant. A message that was so confidential that it was only trusted to a senior knight protector, not to the normal royal post. Michael wanted to read it.
Such an important messenger was granted special status in Glastamear. He was entitled to take any horse, eat any food, and stay for free at any house or inn, and by informal custom, sleep with any woman while he was doing the Holy Son’s work.
The innkeeper came over to greet Michael deferentially because at least he would be a paying customer. Michael ordered a substantial meal because he had grown tired of his trail food. He used hear the heart mummer to better eavesdrop on the crowded inn.
Of course he heard no treasonous conversations or mention of the deaths of healers while a senior knight protector was in the room, but Michael detected a real sense of dread about the coming winter without healers. People quietly discussed old folk remedies and useful herbs. They took sidelong glances at the knight and seemed to resent his presence. The deaths of the healers had produced an undercurrent of both anger and fear in the town.
Virtually every man, woman, and child in Glastamear had been healed sometime in their life. The healing magic really worked to cure all contagious diseases and many injuries and other maladies. While most people could fashion a splint for a broken arm or leg, a master healer could knit the bone back together perfectly to cure a condition and have a person on his feet in a few days. Those skills had been lost to these people and they were afraid of both the diseases of winter and of the church. While every small town had an herbalist, true healers were always rare; most people regarded the herbalist’s wares as a poor substitute for a real healer.
Michael realized if he were ever to shatter the hold of the church of Perry Ascendant on the kingdom of Glastamear, it would involve channeling this anger and fear. He couldn’t afford a battle between healers and both the church and crown, for that would be the end of healers. He needed a revolution among the common people of the kingdom.
After midnight, Michael could hear the knight protector snoring. He used transparency and crept quietly into the hallway between his room and the knight’s. With open all locks he easily entered the room, and using his lightest possible touch he opened the purple cylinder with the same spell. He took one long glance at the scroll, rerolled it, and returned it to the cylinder, which he relocked. He returned to his room without being discovered, and sat in the position of memory and cast the spell perfect recall so he could read the message he had glanced at in the knight’s room.
The message was addressed to the High Priests of Snowport, Northport, Southport, Hearthshire Town, and Briarton.
Dear Brothers in the light of the eternal fire of Perry Ascendant, I send you tidings both good and ill.
The good news includes proof that a healer, taken at a young age, can be made a true priest of Perry. The youngster Toby was our first attempt, and he is now firmly in support of our necessary actions in consolidating healing magic into the blessed arms of the church. With the success of our test case, we have now gathered sixteen youngsters who we will train as healing priests, thanks be to Perry in all things.
This process will take time, and none will be available to minister to the clergy this winter. Because in many cases, their parents resisted the honor of priesthood for their young offspring, our knight protectors had to discipline the parents, and in one case the whole village. These necessary actions were traumatic to the children, and it will take time to overcome that unpleasant introduction to the sanctified church.
In a separate matter, I caution you to avoid any contact this winter with anyone infected with the coughing sickness. Do not let them near you or your priests. You must forbid anyone with a cough from entering any temple in your province. Keep both your priests and holy knights safe; do not let them help the sick or bury the dead.
The citizens of Glastamear are at the mercy of holy Perry this winter, and for next winter we will only have enough healer priests for the clergy. We expect the population to suffer about a three in ten decline before enough healer priests are available in four years. Remember that all the property of those who die without children or spouses belong to the holy church. DO NOT LET THE CROWN OR HIS AGENTS GRAB THESE PROPERTIES.
In other good news, our reports indicate that over one thousand healers have met justice for the murder of King Justin. Although many escaped because of incompetence in Snowport, we believe they fled north where they could not possibly survive the coming winter. More troubling is what happened in Northport. Four of the murderers were freed from inside the very temple itself. We are confident that apostasy was the act of naiads from Black Sand Beach.
Old Kingdom accounts indicate that they can quench the fire of our knights, hide their own manna, and become invisible. These spells were used in the escape, and we fear that the spell to hide manna may have been enchanted into a ring or amulet for each of the prisoners.
If the most powerful naiads can enchant rings with this spell, then healers could be hiding among you without detection. In the future, every body search must also include removal of all jewelry in addition to all clothing. Modesty is no excuse. Remember to insist that no jewelry be confiscated unless it has been enchanted and that fondling is prohibited in most cases. I do not want to make enemies of the gentry or merchants merely because some priest fancies their ring or has a wandering hand. Of course, peasants are not a problem since they shouldn’t be wearing jewelry in the first place, and they are used to being fondled.
In just retribution for their duplicity, may Perry curse the lot of them, we sent our finest cohort to discipline the naiads at Black Sand Beach and to determine if any healers were hiding there.
My Brothers in the light of the eternal fire of Perry Ascendant, the news is grav
e. My closest advisors and I assumed our actions were necessary, but I’m afraid we unleashed a danger to the very core of the church.
Since the gift of fire magic to holy Perry by the red dragon at Min Mountain, no dragon has involved himself in the affairs of men. At Black Sand Beach, an enormous black dragon attacked our cohort, destroyed our supplies, and carried our catapults off to drop them in the sea. Hundreds of arrows simply rebounded without effect. It was a complete rout of our force, and the whole cohort fled from the beach into the dangers of the Great Black Thicket where half of them perished.
As the speaker for holy Perry I hereby order that no priest or knight go within five thousand paces of Black Sand Beach. I have passed this information on to King Richard in the hopes he will reach the same conclusion. The best result we can hope for is that this dragon will ignore humans as long as naiads are not directly attacked again. We have no way of fighting it, and the damage it might do in a city is incomprehensible.
My final advice to all province High Priests is that you lay in sufficient supplies to feed your priests and knights over the coming winter. It may be necessary to bar your doors to all others. This will not be popular with your townsfolk, but it may keep you and your priests alive to tend to their future needs.
May Perry’s fire light your way to truth, justice, and virtue.
Steven the Fifteenth, Most Holy Son of Perry Ascendant
Michael sat on his bed and thought about the missive. It concerned him that rings would be removed in any future searches. That would be extremely dangerous for any healers who remained behind in Glastamear to help the population through the winter. He needed a better answer for hiding manna.
He was glad the church would stay away from Black Sand Beach, but he worried about the prediction of an epidemic. Many thousands would die if the coughing fever became widespread. He could conceive of nothing more certain to anger the general population than for the priests to bar the door of the temples, buildings that population’s tithes had paid for. If the priests hid inside, well fed and free of disease, there would be total fury in areas hard hit by any epidemic.
The clergy clearly assumed that fire magic would keep the anger at bay. Maybe he could do something to reduce the risk of fireballs to the general population. He knew that the naiads had blocked all fire magic within a huge area at Black Sand Beach with a powerful cast of quench fire manna. If he could enchant objects with that spell and hide them near temples, it might greatly reduce the risks to angry citizens if they defied the priests. It would also mean that the sacred fire of Perry Ascendant would no longer light the temples during the weekly services. That would be quite a shock to both priests and common citizens. He smiled at the thought of shaking things up.
The death of a hundred of the knight protectors who fled into the Great Black Thicket bothered him a little. He wondered if he was losing his way and becoming something other than a true healer, but if his destiny was to oppose the religion of Perry Ascendant, he saw no other course. He decided to sleep and think more about it in the morning.
Chapter 39
Michael slept until long after dawn. He dressed, went down to the common room for breakfast, and told Ivan the innkeeper that he wanted to stay at least another three days. Ivan insisted that he move to the larger room that had been used by the knight protector the previous night because it was more suitable for a man of Michael’s status. It had a separate bath alcove and a small dining table as well as a balcony that overlooked the inn’s courtyard.
All of those features made it more suitable for the project that Michael planned, so he agreed after a few minutes of price negotiations. After a big breakfast, he asked the chambermaid to prepare his bath in the new room and to send up a big platter of cured ham and hard sausages. He also wanted enough picked vegetables and flatbread for two or three meals, and a pitcher of brandy. He explained to Ivan that he needed to do some complicated merchant calculations that required intense concentration. He didn’t want to be disturbed until after lunchtime tomorrow.
Like all apprentice healers, Michael had spent much of the first two years of his study in learning about the human body, including dissecting cadavers. He knew the function of every organ, its location, and what could go wrong with it.
Before starting his experiment, Michael took his extra clothing to a local washerwoman, shopped at the local market for supplies, and asked a local leather worker to repair some of his worn tack. He went to the local apothecary and purchased a variety of useful medicines as part of his cover. Any merchant would do the same since there were no healers available for the oncoming winter. This was the first time he’d been in the same town long enough for normal maintenance and resupply.
Once he returned to his room and barred the door, he fashioned an extremely thin film of gold. It was a circle somewhat larger than his hand but only a hair width in thickness. There were no signs of fire mages within range so he removed his submerge manna ring and cast a powerful version of that spell onto the gold film. It worked. The spell was a passive one that would be permanent, hiding manna so long as the film touched the mage who wanted to hide his manna.
Michael stripped and got into the warm bath. The most difficult spell known to healers was cancer reach. It was part of the test to achieve master status within the guild, and four of every five healers never learned to cast it. It involved two steps, visualization and magic reach. The first step required intense concentration so that the healer could actually see the cancer within the patient. The second step was to insert the hand holding a small blade and cut out the cancerous growth. With the proper concentration the hand would pass through the open spaces that made up most of the things people considered solid. It was similar to fairy magic’s ability to alter matter. When the growth was removed, there was no sign that the healer’s hand had reached into the body. Although he had only read about the spell, he understood that if done properly, it was painless.
Michael was going to try this difficult spell on himself, but instead of a blade his hand would hold the enchanted golden film and wrap it around his spleen. From his studies he knew that gold would not contaminate the body; that was why it was used in teeth. He also knew that many of the internal organs moved too much for the film to stay in place, but wrapped around the spleen it should stay in place for a lifetime. If it worked, it would provide submerge manna on a permanent basis in a way that could not be detected. It would neutralize the manna detection spells the church had used to find and murder so many of his fellow healers.
He dipped his right hand into the pitcher of brandy, and he was ready to begin. The first step was easy for Michael since he knew his own body better than any other. It took three tries before his hand could penetrate his own abdomen and reach his spleen, but once the gold film was in place, he could not feel it. There was no pain in the process. He tried again, removing the gold film and replacing it three times until he was master of the spell and could do the whole process in a few seconds. Michael didn’t know exactly how the spell worked; one ancient text had referred to eleven dimensions, but that meant nothing to him.
He spent a long time enjoying the bath and sampling the brandy. He needed to wait until dark for the next step. He would convert to a Giant Ki Eagle and fly to Swamp Ford to provide the manna protection to Sir John Neville. Tomorrow night, he would do the same for Kate at Iron Pick. The third night he would fly back to Black Sand Beach to provide the protection to Lady Marsha and the other Snowport healers who wanted remain at Snowport over the winter. After that it would be time to search the province and city of Southport looking for healers.
An hour after dark, Michael fashioned and enchanted another gold film, put it and his black clothing in a leather pack that he could carry on a Ki’s back as he flew. He added a bottle of brandy and a wooden bowl to use for cleaning his hands before the surgery. Since his other clothing was all being washed, he walked nude onto the balcony and climbed up to the roof after casting transparency. It was a
strange feeling to stand on a breezy roof in the middle of town as he converted to a Giant Ki and took off.
It took about two hours to fly to Swamp Ford, but Michael didn’t know where John would be staying. Perhaps he would feel safer out of town in a remote cabin; in that case he might not be easy to spot in the middle of the night. He landed on the roof of the small temple, hopped down to a flat roof that covered the rectory, converted to human form, and dressed. He climbed down after recasting transparency. The temple was small, suitable for a village of two hundred people. If Sir John had reached here, most people in town would know where to find him, but it was the middle of the night and no one was around.
Michael saw a light in the window of the small inn across the square and walked over to peer into the window. The innkeeper was serving a couple of drunken locals who were the only people in the common room. Michael removed his transparency and entered the inn.
The innkeeper approached and said, “What can I do for you good sir? We have only one private room, and it’s taken, but we’ve plenty of mead and a common sleeping room with only two other men as guests in it tonight.”
“I don’t need a room, but do you have any south slope wine? I’d like a bottle of it and some information to go with it.”
“Well good sir, you’re clearly an intelligent gentleman, and you know that things like wine and information both have a price. The wine is half a crown and the information’s price depends on what you want to know.”
“I’ll take the bottle and as to the information, the brother of my best friend was traveling this way. Do you know John Neville?”
The Pogrom of Mages: The Healers of Glastamear: Volume One Page 19
