Chapter 2

Every time I washed up in front of the mirror my eyes were drawn to the figure on my chest and the huge emerald it boasted. Why was it there? What was its purpose? Supposedly wizards didn’t do anything without a reason and that sawed-off little guy that put it there was definitely a wizard.

I realized that I’d been ensorcelled to not forget, but ignore that I’d been through a gate and all about that short little fucker that jump started my abilities. I ran through my memories with a fine sieve until I had a handle on exactly what I’d experienced. Then I took a little side-trip to where the gate had been. I wore full war garb, including a gambezon, my ensorcelled mail hauberk, several talismans and my spell-breakers. After careful consideration I sat down with my helm to do a little more work. By the time I was done the wearer would breathe nothing but clean, cool pure air. A viewer would see nothing of the wearer’s face but black deep as night and two small red dots where the eyes should be. I further bespelled my boots and gloves to resist piercing, cutting crushing, heat and cold. I wore my afraid-of-itself Timex and carried my innocuous-looking spell-breaker dagger at my hip. My pack held a small sack of Kruggerands, a steel canteen, field rations, a good hooded cape that sufficed for a poncho, a large hank of cordage, spare under-daks, spare socks, an oilskin tarp and a wool blanket. I hadn’t needed a fire-starting kit in years.

I teased apart the remnants of the gate spell from the residue, then re-cast it. I didn’t worry about immediate danger as I’d transited that gate before. After stepping through I recalled the feeling of the place. The way the air tasted. The colors and textures of the greenery. I felt for the mesh of life around me. It snapped into focus easily--much more easily than it did at home. This place had more power ‘saturation’. I could feel the curious sylphs around me. My scythe blade must have been shining like magnesium torch to those with magical sight.

I tasted the deep currents of the planet. They weren’t identical to those of earth but were easily similar enough to use. The characteristic note the planet sang out was slightly different to that of Earth’s. The sun--the sun was a flowing jigsaw puzzle, almost identical to Sol. The solar system was remarkably similar, up to and including the gas giants and the moons.

I searched out the center of the galaxy. The presence of the impossibly huge black hole there somehow comforted me. I bathed in its potential and tasted the enormous plumes jetting from its poles. I was fully empowered and locked into that place.

There was nobody around. I felt animal life, but nothing human. I recalled what direction lay the old farm with the forge. I started jogging. When the sun set I drank from a stream, ate a handful of parched corn and jerky, wrapped up in a blanket and oilskin then leaned against a tree to sleep. My awareness was tuned so that anyone approaching would wake me soon enough.

The air was wet and chilly at sunrise. The land was covered with drifting mists and a heavy dew. I collected the dew from my oilskin for a morning drink, tied everything back to my pack and resumed jogging. There’s a peculiar shuffling gait that the Roman legions mastered, as did the American Airborne. Your feet barely lift from the ground as the miles fall behind you. It leaves quite a trail, though. The American Indians and the Incas used a longer gait, in which only the ball of the foot contacted the ground. It was best for messengers and those less burdened.

I reached the farmstead on the morning of the third day. I had seen no-one. It had been over forty years as I experienced time but I had no idea of how closely linked this place was to my home. It could have been twenty years or sixty. Not much more than that, though, as the condition of the buildings should have told me that.

There were still some bits of the alloy and a bit of silver which I had worked with in the smithy, as I had hoped. I crooned a chant of similarity as I forged a miniature lance head as I had prepared long before. I imagined it acting as a compass guiding me to its brothers as I completed my work. Once cooled I suspended it from a cord and held it before me. It swung about for a few moments then locked into one direction, dipping slightly below the horizon. That meant my goal was some distance away. The distance to the horizon is roughly 3 and 1/4 miles away for a six foot person. That distance quickly grows by the square as the angle dips. I estimated that my goal was on the order of two hundred to three hundred miles distant.

I felt badly prepared for a trek of that distance. I had no way to attack at any real range. However I certainly had a way to create a defensive shield and a glamour that would blur my presence. They both came directly from the Elven scrolls I’d studied. I called up a mix of rare earth metals from deep beneath my feet. When I had just over four ounces at hand I formed the alloy into a disc and engraved a different spell on each side. I slipped it into a little bag that once held parched corn and placed its cord around my neck so that it lay on my chest.

Then I approached the problem of combat at a range beyond an arrow’s reach. I considered equivalents to grenades and mortar shells. First I designed the shells themselves. I called up copper, tin and nickel. Then I called up white clay. It was a pleasurable exercise to create a heavy refractory crucible that would hold perhaps three gallons. I teased a fire sprite into helping me do something new in the world. Together we brewed up a white bronze mixture which I dipped out and made little oval eggs with heavy walls which were about the size of a hen’s egg and held perhaps a marble. The sprite was bemused to watch me dip the molten metal out of the crucible with my bare hands, shape it and set the finished forms aside. Then that crucible was put aside. Next I created two concentric clay forms. The inner one had the diameter of the eggs. The outer form confined a heavy tube, with walls perhaps an inch thick. I called up beryllium and more copper. The smelting required a much higher temperature. I loaned the sprite some sun-stuff to keep it healthy. When I thought that the alloy was uniform I poured the mix into my pre-heated mold and released the sprite to let the tube cool naturally. While that occured I trapped a bit of water within each egg. I then scratched the runes for a quick little catastrophic heating spell on each one. At that point they were quite dangerous. I used flexible green wood splits to weave a pair of deep slender baskets to hold them. With the use of a little yoke I carried them close by my sides, quick to hand. I had perhaps sixty of them.

When the tube had cooled I broke clear the clay. I did a little polishing to get the bore corrected and expanded it a bit, then carefully carved a series of long spirals into the inner walls. Finally, I chamfered the muzzle and carved a shoulder stock for it. It was only a twenty-four inch barrel, but its thickness gave it quite a bit of weight. Finally I carefully applied one eighth of an inch of tungsten to the entire tube, top to bottom, inside and out. Then I re-trued the grooves. Upon try-fitting my grenades I found that I had to pressure-roll them a bit to get the diameters of the projectiles to match the bore. Lastly, I carefully etched several runes into the metal of the breech for extra strength and a spell that would push a projectile down the bore from about 200 miles an hour to just over two thousand. ( 2300 mph is about Mach 3.) Since I wasn’t using an explosive or steam technique to fire it there was no reaction, hence there was no kick. Other than the weight of the barrel I thought it was an elegant solution. Late that night I tried out one of my shells. I fired it straight up at full speed. After about a minute I triggered the heat spell on it. The flash of light temporarily blinded me and the pressure wave knocked me to the ground. Crap! That was a megaton-plus release! I did the math, figuring 2300 miles an hour for a minute and a half. That detonation was roughly fifty miles away. In the morning I set about adjusting most of my shells. I left a dozen of them at full strength but marked them with flattened ends.

With my new offensive weapon protecting me I travelled with my helm secured over my pack. I grew quite fatigued that first day on the trail from the extra weight. I made camp early. After resting and eating a bit I brought up some nickel and iron then massaged them into a mechanical solution, then heated it to an alloy. I discarded my wood shoulder yoke with would not take a spell and replaced it with a metal one, then bespelled it to negate the pull of gravity by over ninety percent. I hooked my pack to the back of the yoke and wove a basket to sheath my blunderbuss. The next day I jogged on as if I were in running shoes and shorts. All I felt was the weight of my glaive. The miles flew by.

I smelled the characteristic miasma of a village up ahead--the fug of mixed smoke and shit along with the sour smell of unwashed bodies. I strode down the ‘street’ with a wrinkled nose. The smell was damned foul. The place needed a good torrential rain to clear the air. That was a bit above my pay grade, though. I didn’t do weather magic as a policy due to all the preperatory research it required. Still, I was quite tempted to cause a mile-wide cylinder of cold air above the village late at night, and set off a smoke bomb for the particulates. Instant cloud burst.

It had been a much larger, busier place once before. I saw many abandoned store fronts and houses. Entire streets were dis-used and green things were pushing up through the packed clay surfaces.

I found it odd yet strangely comforting that some early traditions known from home were used where I was. At the far edge of the village I saw a large sprawling complex complete with a house with benches before it and a pole with a bush tied to the top anchored next to the door. It was the universal sign for a tavern or ordinary, back in the day. I walked inside a cavernous hall and sat against the wall, where I could set down my pole arm and take a weight off. I smiled tiredly at the barkeep, who was looking at me as if a war elephant had just walked through the door. Well, I was twice his height. The place was pretty quiet, being before noon on a midweek day. (No street traders were active, so it wasn’t the weekend.)

“What do you have to drink for a tired, thirsty man?” He scrambled around behind the bar, then came up with a brown glass onion bottle, covered in dust, with a waxed wood cork. It had a hole through the cork with a cord running through it, which was embedded in an impressive wax seal. I figured this was going to be expensive. I dug down into my pack for the little poke full of Kruggerands which I’d stashed away. Then I pulled out a cased eating kit I’d found on a high-class British antiques site. It held a pair of white china plates, china bowls, two heavy cut glass drinking cups and two sets of cutlery with bone handles. I motioned for the man to sit down with me, wiped off the bottle and poured an ounce or so in each cup. I slid one over to him and tapped his glass with mine. I toasted him with “May you find yourself in heaven an hour before the devil knows you’re dead!” and took a sip. It was a nice porto--deep and rich. It no doubt was the best he had! His hand shook a bit as he picked up his cup, but he relaxed with a smile after a sip. “Ahh, winter wine. There’s nothing like it.” I offered my hand. “Tony.” He grinned. “Fred.”

I slid a Kruggerand over to him and had another sip. He quickly looked for anyone watching, then hurriedly shoved the coin into his purse. He’d instantly burst into a sweat. “What’s the problem, man?”

He leaned over and tried to whisper, “You’ve just given me the price of this devil-be-taken duchy! Who--or what--are you?”

I poured myself another healthy shot and leaned back. “I’ve got a bit of a story to tell. A ways back now, there was some sort of battle going on. I got invited to come here...” and I ended with “Then this little ugly sawed-off rat-bag of a guy put his hand on my chest, said some sort of gobbledygook and I woke up at home with a brand on my chest, an apprentice wizard!”

He goggled for a bit. “That was over a hundred years ago! How can that be?”

“It’s been thought that different worlds lay close by each other, like stacked plates, but some age faster than others. That certainly would explain things.”

He grew quite serious. “May I ask what your brand looks like?” I nodded. Why not? I held up my hand to him with my fingers straight, thumb straight up. “Like this, with wings to either side.” He grinned and relaxed. “If it were a claw I’d be runnin’ so fast right now neither hound nor hind could catch me.” I remarked, “Bad guys, eh?” He nodded. “The worst kind. The grave robbin’ kind. The blood drinkers. They suck the very life from the land.” He looked through his window, remembering. “I spent my time earning my silver from the lord. I’ve seen the results. Nothin’ grows. Nothin’. He turned to me again. “You see ‘em, you kill ‘em. They’s got no respect for nothin’.”

I don’t to this day know why, but I raised my hand to him and said, “By my very honor.” My chest felt warm. I looked down to see that damned emerald fastened to my keel bone shining like a lighthouse, right through my armor. “By the crone! Yer a knight!” I shrugged my shoulders. “If you say so.”

I decided that I needed some local specie to work with, and I needed to know their relative values. “Would you lay out a sample of every kind of coin you usually see?”

I soon saw before me a square copper bar of perhaps an ounce, a silver disk with milled edges and a profile struck on one side, then last a tiny little gold piece the size of a baby’s thumbnail. I pointed to the gold. “How many silvers?” “Thirty.” I pointed to the silver. “How many bars?” “Fifty.” I pointed to a copper bar. “A day’s wage?” He nodded. “A good day’s wage. Few give so much anymore.” “Twenty pounds of flour. How much?” “Ten bar.” So. Two pounds of flour for a handsome day’s wage. A man could live on that. “A pound of good meat?” “three, four bar.” “A good knife?” He shrugged. “a silver.” “A well-made sword?” “Oh, at least three silver.” So. Now I had a general idea of values. I sought below the surface for copper, tin, nickel, iron, silver and gold. I brought up raw materials and cooled them, then quickly fashioned forty pounds of silver pieces and twenty pounds of their little gold pieces. I got a couple leather pokes from my innkeeper and stashed a couple pounds of silver and the same of gold in my pack. I left the rest for Fred.

I made a snap decision to become his silent partner. “Okay, Fred. Here’s your investment fund. Send away for the best wine, the best ale, the best distilled spirits. Send away for entertainers--minstrels jongleurs, story tellers.”

Since I’d entered this plane I’d gained a new confidence in my arts. It all centered around visualization. My arts boiled down to whatever I could imagine in detail I could execute.

I walked around the building, taking a good look. The place had been well-built of heavy stone blocks, but was showing its age. I waved away the crappy bottle-bottom windows that no doubt he’d painstakingly cemented together by hand. I brought up a flat plane and formed a thick silica window glass on it, some four feet by six, two inches thick. I set it aside to cool slowly, then heated it up and cooled it again. I didn’t want any hidden stresses to fracture the thing in the cold of winter. It took about thirty hours. I trued up and fused together the stone walls with a pair of force planes pressed against each other. It was simplicity itself to true up the floor, shaving off the lumps to a smooth surface. I stripped off the ratty shingled roof. It didn’t take but the work of a morning and afternoon to pull trees from the forest, trim them down to beams and compress the water out of them, then set and peg together a strong new support structure, then sheathed it with an underlayment of boards compressed until they were hard as stone. I contemplated the wavy form of a spanish clay roof tile, then decided to try something simpler. I formed stone shingles about a foot wide by a foot and a half long, with a one inch top lip on one end facing down and a similar bottom lip facing up on the other. To make it work right I had to add a second ridge to the tiles, one foot from the bottom to catch on the tile below each one. I sank two holes behind the top lips and pinned the tiles to the underlayment. A nice heavy copper flashing covered the crown.

The second floor consisted of individual sleeping rooms built around an open center space. I tore out the old nasty, leaky central chimney and replaced it with a heavy sculpted brass tower that would keep the place much warmer come the cold rains of spring and fall, not to mention the gales and sleet of winter. It wouldn’t smoke out or asphyxiate the customers either.

I replaced every window in the place, fried the bugs to death, dug out the basement an additional three feet, reinforced the foundation with thicker walls made out of newly quarried stone blocks, trued the new stone floor and sealed the cellar against water. He had several barrels that had caught a bad strain of yeast, thereby skunking the brew. I sterilized the cellar with a misting of bleach (made from salt water and a little DC current), then sulfured the barrels. I was surprised that an old brewer like him didn’t know that trick.

The outhouse was a stinking mess. I cleared the whole thing down to ground zero and rebuilt it in stone with a deep, clean pit.

The kitchen was a medieval hazmat site. I cleaned it down to the stones then fused the stones into a glazed surface. New pots, new pans, new cauldrons, new knives, new forks, new spoons, new ladles, new everything. The old redware pottery plates and bowls went away. High-temperature glazed china went in. I supplied heavy glass mugs by the dozen. Not a rat, a mouse, a flea or a roach was around by the time I finished. I looked around the kitchen with my hands on my hips wondering what I’d missed. I knew there was something. Then I realized what it was. There was no cold house, no spring house. What the hell did they do to keep the milk fresh, the meat sweet? Nothing, that’s what! What a cluster-fuck. I sat down at the new kitchen work table and thought about a solution. An outer wall kept drawing my eye. Two doors lay next to each other. One led outside, the other led to a small pantry. There wasn’t a damned thing in that pantry that wouldn’t take to cold. They could store the fresh fruits and vegetables elsewhere. I laid an open cubical frame of mixed silver and copper around the room and surrounded the doorway as well. Then I sheathed the door in tinned sheet steel. I ensorceled all the metal to be more refractory than any firebrick, tougher than any blade and anchored it to the bedrock. Fred told me where the old stone quarry was. I surrounded the outside of the room with freshly cut stone piers. Each one was two feet thick, two feet high and ten feet long. The roof was replaced by more stone beams cut to interlock. An elephant could have danced on the thing. Then I cast a heat siphon spell on the room with the other end dumping Kcals in the fireplace. Finally I cast a very tough spell on that room that would reflect any spells cast upon it back onto the caster. Nobody, but nobody was ripping off my freezer. It was ten feet wide by thirty feet deep and held its temperature to ten below zero.

The stable was a broken down wreck. I tore it down to the foundations and rebuilt it out of freshly called-up stone with walls two feet thick. The second floor overhung the first and boasted a wide outside door with a swing arm gantry and pulley. A chute at either end of the stable was cut in to drop hay below. I reserved one manger below for a granary, tightly built. Across from the granary I put in a small office with a bed, and spent some time installing three iron stoves to keep the beasts warm in the winter or after coming in during the cold rains the country was known for.

The place was shaping up. I spent a little time expanding and tending to the vegetable garden. Then I viewed the operation as a whole. It needed a couple more wells, a bath house and another wing of higher class rooms to attract the gentry. I told Fred about my plans and I saw nothing but smiles and teeth.

I built a two-story wing much as I had the stable, then roofed it over as I had the rest of the inn. Every suite had a pair of bedrooms. Every two suites above and below shared a chimney with back-to-back fireplaces. The bath house and laundry facility went in behind the wing, with a warming room (read dry sauna) for chilled travellers to recouperate. Once I saw that Fred was stocking the place with high quality foodstuffs and liquor I made him promise to hire a big, tough stableman to act as his muscle and a cook that didn’t think that grease was a food group. I left a thoroughly rattled village behind me as I took to the road once again.

Four days later I found a larger town. I found a caravansary that looked fairly clean where I rented a room for a week. After I electrocuted all the bugs I spent some time figuring out how to ward a room. I used ideas from several spells to make nine short, thick iron screws with thumb tabs in place of the heads. On each one I scribed similar parts of the spells except for the last one, which keyed the whole thing. All eight corners got a tabbed marker. The center of the floor got the last sigil. Then I charged it up. Nobody and nothing was getting in or out without me, including the bugs. If they tried I’d find them frozen in place. Not a moment would have passed for them.

Quite frankly, I was tired of walking. I’d seen mules in the caravansary’s paddock. I was going to buy or make a four wheeled cart and find a pair of mules. I knocked together a small buckboard wagon with a sprung seat over three days of solid work. There’s a lot of finicky little parts to a buckboard, and there’s a few tricks to getting the wheels to dish properly so that they cast off the mud.

At first you’d have thought that mules were made of gold, for all they were available. I finally got a lead on a breeder. I managed to pry two big jennies away from him for six silvers. The rest of the day was taken up by teaching them that pulling a wagon--that wasn’t a lot of work. I made short work of creating a rasp and cleaned up their hooves. They didn’t want any part of horseshoes at first, but I calmed them down and got the job done. It was amusing to watch them lifting their feet and putting them down again as they got used to the extra weight.

The next day I went shopping. I was low on trail food and I needed supplies for the mules. I found dried beef and parched grain easy enough--trail food is trail food everywhere. The vendor also had smoked fitches of bacon for sale. I bought a couple. For the mules I needed a curry comb, ropes, bagged grain and a barrel of water. The old man that bred my two sisters said not to over-feed them on grain, just let ‘em browse. I couldn’t fault that. I decided to carry a campfire oven, a cast iron fry pan, a fifty pound barrel of flour, twenty pounds of salt and a couple big jugs of cooking oil. I also bought a large waterproof oilcloth and some rope. On slow mornings or rainy days a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea would make me happy.

Before leaving town I paid a visit to a mapmaker. For a silver I got a look at his idea of my road ahead. it was mostly forest path and mountain trail but it eventually came out to an estuary and a town of significant size.

After breakfast I pulled my wards and loaded up the cart. We were out of town by dawn.

Each night I cast wards about the camp. They were designed to pick up hostile intent and zap the intruders out of a year of their lives. Well, it would feel like it. I had to work at keeping the shocks light enough so as not to quick-fry anyone, but it would leave some impressive blisters.

The land rose. Soon we were out of the broad river valley and into the foothills. We were surrounded by evergreens. I stopped for a break whenever we came upon a grassy glade or stream-side so that the mules could eat some green stuff. The girls were muscling up after spending some time on the trail. They seemed healthy and happy.

It had been several weeks since we’d left the last town. The trail rose and fell. Where I was dubious about the trail I led the mules. We finally came out onto an elevated grassy plain where two streams came together. The grasses looked untouched. I decided to take a rest day.

After setting the wards I made quick work of knotting together a useable casting net. The streams were fast flowing and had a couple pools. I was in the mood for a fish dinner.

For some reason there wasn’t a fish to be found. I tasted the water. It was good--sweet. I dumped out the water barrel, gave it a good scrubbing and refilled it. I settled on a simple stew of cracked grain, some wild carrots, wild onion and a bit of bacon.

I woke long before dawn. the mules were crowding close to me, shivering. I looked about to see a pulsing red glow covering the dome of the warding.

I flattened several silver coins into one tissue-thin sheet and supported it with my frying pan. Then I gently poured an inch of water over the silver, then ever so gently poured a tiny bit of oil over the surface--just enough to cover. Then I lit a candle to illuminate my improvised scrying bowl.

I saw my camp from above. Then I lifted higher to see the entire valley. Three sites glowed a dull red. The valley was a trap. It had already sprung, though, and my wards had overcome its best. I marked the directions and stayed up with the mules the rest of the night, drinking sweet tea while petting them.

Come dawn I dressed for battle. I followed one ray I’d traced to my first target. I found a very old barrow-style crypt constructed out of huge stones. I got back twenty paces, unlimbered my grenade launcher and fired off a low-powered round into the narrow hole between the rocks. I felt as much as heard it hit. Then I triggered the steam bomb. Huge bloulders flew all around me. Whatever had been hidden beneath the stones sure didn’t like sunlight. The screeching was horrible. I saw something try to stand up, then spread its wings. Whatever it was, I slapped it down, hard and fast. The noises stopped. I got up to take a close look at ground zero. When I punched it, I had put some real power into it. I saw dark red at the bottom of the hole before it collapsed in on itself. I cleaned up after myself by jamming all those boulders down the tunnel I’d punched into the valley floor. To seal it, I concentrated heat on the stones until they lost their shape and bubbled a bit. Nothing was going to come crawling out of that hole.

I did the same thing, twice more. I made sure to write down all my impressions of what I’d seen.

We had one final push over a mountain pass before the path started to descend. Just over the pass a pack of large wolves tried to break through the wards. They had some power behind them as I felt the ward strain a bit before I added more energy to it. It was time to take the battle to the enemy. I weighted a dirty shirt with a rock and threw it through the ward. They scrambled to attack it, biting each other in a frenzy to get a piece of it. Once they were bunched together I stood tall, opened my arms, called power and clapped my hands. Two planes of force came together like steam engines colliding. There was a roaring wind, then an enormous thunderclap. The wolves were reduced to a red mist that filtered down over the bushes and trees.

Both mules rubbed their heads against my chest at least twice a day after that. I petted them to let them know I appreciated them. They were big healthy mules, and when they wanted affection it was easy to tell! They about knocked me over.

It was smooth going for the rest of the trip. While still in the forest we took a rain day. I camped at the edge of a grassy glade. I put up the large tarp to keep out of the the incessant rain and started a cooking fire. It was getting later in the season. The fire felt good. I took the opportunity to heat some water in a bucket and took a bath. All my underclothes stank and my socks could walk away on their own. I heated another bucket of water, dashed in a bit of salt and made a diluted bleach. In went my small clothes and socks, along with my last sliver of soap. I used a sapling to beat the filth out of my clothes, then wrung everything out, rinsed them in more hot water and hung it all to dry over a bush. I didn’t worry about anyone coming up on the camp while I was naked. Even an unclothed wizard is still a wizard...

I knew that my goal was within sight. My compass pointed directly at the city on the horizon. There was no sense in rushing as it would just tire the mules. We got to the town gates a little after dark. I told my glaive to glow a little bit. It slowly became a milky blue-white crystal with tiny blue flames running up the edge. Now that was impressive. The gates were closed but I could feel the eyes on me. “A weary traveller asks for shelter.” I jingled my bag of golds. “I can pay.”

I heard “Open the damned gate, Jerry. That’s always been the password and you know it.” I grinned. I could get along with these guys. I passed around a few silvers after they closed the gates behind me. “I’m new around here. I’m looking for a top quality caravansary with a keeper that will stay bought after he’s paid off.” Several of the troop laughed among themselves. They knew the score.