Champion of the Ages
Copyright© 2026 by SummitMan
Chapter 13
Marguerite’s hand found her shoulder at the seventh bell, and for once Frances let it.
“Good morning, my lady,” Marguerite said. “The day is fair, and you have the ninth bell to keep.”
“Morning.” Frances sat up and stretched. “I’m up. I’m up.”
Frances ate her breakfast for a while in comfortable silence. Marguerite moved around the room straightening things that did not need straightening.
“So,” Frances said at last, tearing a piece of bread in half. “How did the bet go?”
Marguerite stopped as color climbed slowly up her neck and into her face.
“I must confess a thing to you, my lady,” she said. “When you told me to lay a wager only if I had confidence in you, I took you at your word.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “I wagered all of it. The whole of my savings. Four golds, put by since I first came into service at this castle.”
Frances put the bread down. “All of it?”
“All of it, my lady. The odds stood at one hundred and fifty to one.” Marguerite drew a breath. “I collected my winnings last evening. I have now six hundred golds.”
Frances stared at her.
“I believe,” Marguerite went on, with great dignity and very pink cheeks, “that I am now one of the richest persons in Castle Ironwatch. The steward is said to have laid his coin on Sir Gareth, and is in a foul temper this morning.”
Frances laughed. “Marguerite, that’s wonderful. Honestly. It couldn’t have happened to a better person.”
Marguerite’s composure cracked, and she smiled. “I thank you, my lady. I confess I have not yet decided what one does with six hundred golds.”
“It’s your choice, it’s your money,” Frances said. “Keep it somewhere very safe and don’t tell anyone how much it is.” She picked up her bread again. “Six hundred golds. If I’d had money I would have bet on myself.”
At the ninth bell, the four mages gathered at the door of Lucien’s Study Pocket. Frances took them inside.
She had decided on that the night before. She had promised them a real meeting, several bells long, and there was no sense spending a whole morning of outside time on it when the pocket would give it to her for the cost of a few minutes. Lucien had reset the air to normal after the two months of altitude training, and the study felt almost luxurious now: the couch, the cluttered shelves, the desk cleared of everything but a jug of water and five cups.
Magnus took the chair nearest the hearth. Lucien and Giovanni shared the couch. Benjamin sat at the end of the desk with a wax tablet in front of him, clearly intending to take notes whether or not anyone asked him to.
Frances stayed on her feet.
“Thank you all for coming,” she said. “I’m going to call this meeting to order, and I’ll tell you up front what it’s for. I have big gaps in my knowledge. You can fill them. But I don’t want this to be a set of private conversations between me and each of you. I want everybody in this room to hear everything, so that as a group we’re all aware of what’s happening and nobody is working from half a picture.” She looked around at them. “The agenda’s simple. Magnus will tell us about the Foretelling of the invasion. Lucien will help me understand portals. Giovanni will help me understand healing. That’ll be enough for today.” She glanced at Benjamin. “Benjamin, requirements and the making of workings deserve a session of their own. I’ll come to you another day.”
Benjamin inclined his head, and looked, Frances thought, faintly relieved.
“Magnus. Go ahead.”
Magnus folded his hands in his lap and was quiet a moment, gathering his thoughts.
“A Foretelling,” he said, “is not a vision, my lady, though the common folk speak of it so. It is a reckoning of likelihoods. The Oracular working surveys the many ways the future may unfold and weighs how often each comes to pass. Where a thing is already in motion, and is great, and is difficult to turn aside, such as the plans of a kingdom for war, the Foretelling gives us strong assurance that it will indeed come. Where a thing is small, or not yet decided, the Foretelling is weak and shifting.”
“So it’s a probability distribution,” Frances said. “Go on.”
Magnus blinked at the phrase but did not ask. “That there will be an invasion is very nearly certain. That it will be exceedingly large is likewise certain. The size of it is held at lesser confidence, for the enemy is very likely still deciding it. We reckon it presently at a hundred times the host Eldrenmark brought against us fifty years past. Some hundred thousand men.”
The number sat in the room. Frances had heard it before from Benjamin, but it landed differently from Magnus, delivered in the flat, careful voice of a man who had stared at it for months.
“The path of the invasion,” Magnus continued, “is held at the lowest confidence of all, for it cannot yet have been settled even in the minds of those who will command it. The time, likewise, is uncertain, save that it will be more than two years hence and most likely less than three. And the Foretelling shows that the invasion will come from at least two of the realms that border us, Eldrenmark and Rathmere. It may come also from Serath, though that is held at lower confidence.”
Frances considered that. “Serath’s the small one. To the northwest, on the coast.”
“It is, my lady.”
“Then that’s the weak link in the alliance. If Serath’s joining is less certain, it may still be undecided.” She looked at him. “Could we use political means to discourage Serath from joining? Diplomacy, trade, a treaty, pressure, whatever it takes?”
“We may try,” Magnus said. “It is not within the power of the Academy. But it is not beyond the power of the Crown.”
“Noted.” Frances began to pace a slow line along the bookshelves. “The other thing that strikes me is that all of this is coming from magic. Which is useful, but I’d like physical sources of information too. People on the ground. What does our external espionage look like? Who do we have inside Eldrenmark and Rathmere right now?”
Magnus looked at her blankly. It was the first time she had ever seen him without an answer ready.
“That would be the charge of the army, my lady,” he said at last. “Or of the Crown. It is not the business of the Academy of Arcane Sciences.”
Which means probably nobody, Frances thought, and filed it for Prince Corin.
“All right. Let me summarize what we know, so we’re all clear on it.” She ticked the points off on her fingers. “An invading force of something like a hundred thousand men. Multiple invasion points, from at least two countries and possibly three. A minimum of two years from now, and probably within three. The routes of attack are unknown and can’t be known yet.” She looked at Magnus. “Is that fair?”
“It is the best that we have, my lady.”
“Then it’s what we’ll plan against, and we’ll update as we learn more.” She turned. “Lucien. Portals. I’m especially interested in the military uses of portalcraft, and I’m very interested in pockets.”
Lucien leaned forward on the couch, and the diplomatic smoothness slipped a little, the way it always did when he was asked about his own craft.
“Then I must disappoint you a little at the outset, my lady, and I would rather do it honestly. Portals demand a great deal of time and energy to set in place, and in truth, we believe their uses in war may be small. Let me explain why.”
He held up one hand, fingers together, as if holding a thread.
“We tether one end of the portal in a place of our choosing. The other end must be tethered also, and it must be fixed. Fixed in space within its universe, and fixed in time within its universe. That is why a Champion returns to the precise instant from which he departed. The far end of the working is pinned to that instant, and we cannot move it.” He lowered his hand. “We cannot tether the far end to a moment that moves forward with time. When scholars have attempted it within our own universe, with both ends here, the working produces what we call a paradox of time. One end stands fixed and the other does not, and the working fails. It simply does not hold. And so every portal must cross between universes, with its far end fixed in time in the other.”
“So you can’t open a door from here to the far side of Valdoria,” Frances said slowly. “Because both ends would be in the same universe, and one of them would have to be frozen in time.”
“Just so, my lady.”
“What about summoning?”
“Summoning is the other face of portalcraft. We may summon persons, or things, from another universe. But we must set down in the requirements what it is we seek, and what we receive is decided by some manner of intelligence in the working itself that we do not understand. We name the qualities. The working chooses.” He spread his hands. “And summoning is ruinously costly, my lady, and must be paid for by the Crown. We conduct one or two in a year. Champions are summoned, most often, decades apart.”
Frances stood with that for a moment, turning it over.
“I need to think about what you’ve said,” she told him. “My first instinct is that you’re right, and portals aren’t going to win this war on their own. But I want to come back to you about the other summonings, the ones that aren’t for a Champion. What you’ve summoned, and why, and what it cost. There might be something there.” She stopped pacing. “Now tell me about the Training Pocket.”
Something changed in Lucien’s face, a kind of reverence.
“The Training Pocket,” he said, “is older than the Academy as it now stands. It was made by a summoned Champion, in the early years after Aldric the Unifier first bound Valdoria together. The mages of that time sought to summon a mage rather than a warrior, believing that a sorcerer from another world might give them some great advantage over their enemies.” He paused. “They were right, though not in the manner they had hoped. The mage who came through was so far beyond Valdoria, in magic and in the arts of making both, that he threatened to destroy the Academy entire. And he had the power to do it.”
“What stopped him?”
“He was ill, my lady. As you were. The mages of that time calmed him with a promise of healing. And it proved that healing was the single art in which Valdoria stood ahead of his own world.” Lucien smiled faintly. “He was healed, and he was grateful. When the invasion came, he destroyed the invading army in a matter of minutes, by some joining of portal magic and fire magic that no one has understood since. And before he returned home, he left the Training Pocket behind as a gift. We do not understand how it was made, and we cannot make another.” He hesitated. “The records say he spoke of it as having an intelligence within it. He said it was made, and not born.”
“Artificial intelligence,” Frances muttered. “That makes sense.”
Lucien looked at her curiously, but went on. “How the Training Pocket fashions the enemies it sends, and how it restores those who die within it, has never been reproduced and is not known to us. We understand that the making of energy lies at the heart of it. Mana is drawn from that energy and stored, and the creatures are made and sent forth from it. The summoned mage said that the energy of a pocket comes from the same source as the fire within the sun.”
“Wow,” Frances said under her breath. “Fusion.” Then, louder: “Does that mean your Study Pocket runs on the same energy source?”
“It does, my lady.” Lucien gestured around the study, a little ruefully. “Though we do not understand the working. We use it as a cook might follow a recipe for a dish he has never tasted, with ingredients he has never seen. We follow the procedure precisely, and we do not know why it works. But we have learned to set the controls for the conditions within: the rate of time, the warmth, the quality of the air, as you know. What the working gives us is a flat ground with a round bubble rising over it, and nothing else. Whatever is to be used inside must be carried in.” He smiled. “This house was built stone by stone, within the pocket, by masons my father hired.”
Frances looked around the study with new eyes. “So, to summarize. We can use the Training Pocket as it is, but we can’t make another one. We can make smaller pockets for any purpose we like, as long as we’re willing to pay, and the cost is high.”
“Correct, my lady.”
She was quiet for a moment, and then turned to the couch.
“It’s strange, though. A mage that far ahead of Valdoria in everything else, and he was behind you in healing.”
“I can speak to that, my lady,” Giovanni said, before Lucien could answer. He sat forward on the couch, and Frances saw the same look on his face that had come over him at breakfast a few days ago, when she had first explained altitude.
“Healing is the eldest of all the disciplines,” he said. “It is older than any written record. The lore of our discipline tells that, long ago, a ruler of this land found a person who could perform simple healings, and rewarded that person with his protection. They made a pact between them. The ruler would support the healers, so long as the healers would serve the ruler’s family.” He smiled slightly. “This was here, at Ironwatch, though the castle as it stands today did not exist then.”
“Here,” Frances said. “Interesting.”
“The first written records set the pact down plainly. The ruling family shall support the healers, so long as they heal the ruling family, and heal the nobles upon request, and, should their numbers suffice, heal the peasants who labor. Through the Crown’s support, the discipline grew in numbers over the centuries, and its workings grew in complexity, until in time even the rejuvenation working was devised, which was developed several centuries ago.” He spread his hands. “The House of Solmar maintains our seat here at Ironwatch, and funds the Academy entire. In short, my lady, healing is the most ancient of the arcane sciences, the largest in its numbers, and the furthest developed.”
Frances pulled out the desk chair and sat down, because this was going somewhere she wanted to follow closely.
“Do you heal childhood illnesses?”
“Of course,” Giovanni said, as if mildly surprised by the question. “Most children live to grow up. That would have brought about a great swelling of the people beyond what the land could feed, and so we also provide workings against conception to every woman who wishes them. Most families now have two children, or three.”
Frances sat back. In her own world’s tenth century, she thought, half of all children never saw their fifth birthday. “Do you understand the difference between illnesses caused by bacteria, and ones caused by viruses, and ones that are genetic?”
Giovanni frowned. “Your words are not clear to me, my lady, but I believe I take your meaning. We certainly understand the difference between the small hostile cells that live everywhere and cause sickness, and the small packets of the coil of life that force their way into our own cells, and the deviations within the coil of life itself.” He shook his head. “The last, alas, we cannot heal. We may sometimes ease their symptoms. But to heal an illness of the coil of life, we would need to replace every coil in every cell of the body, and that is beyond any working we possess.”
“Wow,” Frances said under her breath. “You really are advanced.” She looked up. “What about military applications?”
Giovanni’s face closed, gently but firmly. He shook his head.
“Every healer swears to heal and not to harm, my lady. We will stand behind the battle line and tend the wounded, and gladly. But we refuse any working that could result in injury. That oath is older than the pact with the Crown. It will not be broken.”
“I understand,” Frances said, and she did. “I wouldn’t ask you to.”
She sat for a moment longer, letting all of it settle: oracles that were really statisticians, portals that only worked across universes, a training ground built by an alien intelligence and powered by fusion, and a medical science that knew about viruses and contraception in a world without plate armor or gunpowder. It was lopsided in a way that made her historian’s brain itch. She would need to think about it properly, later.
“All right,” she said. “I’m going to call the meeting to a close. I think I have enough information for now, and I’d like to sit with it before I ask anything else.” She stood. “One more thing. Until I’m called to Aldricspire, if I am, let’s hold these meetings outside the pocket as normal. We’ll only come in here when we need to save time.”
They nodded, rose, and filed out through the door into the Academy beyond, where barely a quarter of a bell had passed since they had gone in.
Haldor found her at lunch.
She was eating alone at a small table in the corner of the hall, because she had wanted half an hour to think about the morning, and he came across the room in his forge apron with the look of a man who had something to say and wanted to say it before he thought better of it.
“My lady. A word, if I may.”
“Sit down, Haldor.”
He did not sit. “Do you recall one of the knights you spoke with yesterday afternoon? Sir Ulric. The sergeant of the shield wall, with the scar.”
Frances nodded.
“He has been talking in the barracks.” Haldor’s beard moved in something that was not quite a frown. “He says that though you won the Trial of the Champion, the greater part of it was shield work and footwork, and that your swordwork was poor. That you won with your shield and your feet, and that a true swordsman would have made short work of you.” He shrugged. “I think it is mostly wine and boasting, my lady. Ulric is a proud man, and Gareth was his friend. But it may be of use to you to hold a friendly bout with him. With blunts.”
Frances’s eyes gleamed. “How about we do it without armor?” she said. “Just a gambeson and a helmet.”
Haldor studied her. “Can you hold your own in such a bout, my lady? Without mail or shield?”
Frances smiled. “I can hold my own. Let’s do it this afternoon.” She set down her spoon. “Please send a message to the Captain of the Guard. Tell him the Commander would like a friendly bout with Sir Ulric at the thirteenth bell. Blunts and gambesons only. Helmets, but no other armor. No shields.” She picked the spoon back up. “Let’s see if he’s as good as he thinks he is.”
Haldor grunted, and this time it was very nearly a laugh.
Frances arrived at the training ground just before the thirteenth bell wearing her boots, her gambeson, and a plain open-faced helmet, with a blunt in her right hand.
Haldor had brought her the blunt himself an hour before: a rebated arming sword, edges left thick and rounded, the point rolled back into a dull knob. He had checked its balance against her own sword and adjusted the pommel twice until they matched. It felt light in her hand without the shield on her other arm. It felt, she thought, almost exactly right.
She was delighted, and had to work to keep it off her face. This was the closest she had come to fencing with an épée in seventeen years.
Giovanni walked beside her, in case of injuries.
Sir Ulric was already waiting in the yard in similar gear, the scar running pale from his ear down into the collar of his gambeson. Prince Corin stood near him. So did what looked like most of the Guard. They had packed themselves along the edges of the training ground three and four deep, and more were climbing onto the walls.
Corin came forward to meet her.
“Commander,” he said, keeping his voice low. “When Sir Ulric made his remark yesterday, I confess none of us expected you to answer it so swiftly.”
“Why wait?” Frances said. “This is going to be fun.”
She walked out to the middle of the training ground, turned a slow circle to take in the whole crowd, and raised her voice.
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