Chapter 15

We spent nearly an hour examining the mine. Finally the Master Wizards were ready to return to the hiring hall. By the way, I noticed that all four of them had picked up an opal. At least that proved that they were not yet too senile!

Pete went home to change back into regular civilian clothes after the Master Wizards were transported back to the capitol city of Isbard. I don’t know where they went from there. Pete showed up shortly after they left, and we were sent back to that same town to kill any more demons and monsters that we could find. Nothing more was said about the opals or the mine, so I wondered what was going to happen next, if anything.

*****

Synopsis of Master Wizard Humbolt’s staff meeting:

Ladies and gentlemen, we have just returned from our inspection of the opal mine just outside Ergon on level #6. That is the only item on the formal agenda, but I would like to bring up an additional subject before we adjourn.

We have studied the operations at the Ergon mine, and we believe that the demons plan to take over the town permanently. They have already begun to operate the mine there, and there is no way to know how many opals are still left in the ground.

Some of you are not fully aware of the recently discovered properties of the opal. Only a cursory scan of the gem has shown that it is a spectacularly useful base for all sorts of magical devices. We do not yet know what the demons have discovered about those special properties of the opal, but we have discovered that the basic opal structure is capable of absorbing any magic spell cast upon it to date, and the opal can amplify this magical property manyfold times. The limit has not yet been found.

For example, a piece of opal can be given the property of casting a beam of fire, and this fire will instantly reach a temperature of 921° F. However, when a large chip of a ruby is mounted on the opal and included in the enabling spell, the temperature rises to something on the order of 10,000° F. That is enough to melt the test instrument, so we do not know how much the actual temperature is increased.

Topaz with increase the intensity of a bolt of electricity in a similar manner, and turquoise will do the same for a cold spell, but, of course, there is no way to go below absolute zero. The upshot is that we must begin devoting a significant amount of effort to determining the limits of just what the opal is capable of and which gems work best in conjunction with it.

However, it appears that the opal is not capable of being fabricated into a mechanically sound ring simply because it is too brittle. Furthermore, it is also probably too brittle to be fashioned into an amulet without significant backup. This, too, needs to be investigated.

On the other hand, preliminary studies have shown that it works well as a charm worn on the chest as if it were a piece of decorative jewelry. One of the Wizards working on the problem has proposed that a standard metal backing made of steel with a jewelry pin attached would make an excellent backing for a charm made from a slice of opal and a suitable gem fastened to it by a magic spell. That may also be the best way to attach the opal to the steel backing plate. That is something else to be developed.

The opal is available in a multitude of grades and colors. The variability in the grade of opal used for a charm could be what controls the limit to its activity—another factor needing research. In fact, the amount of research that needs to be done is almost astronomical!

Master Wizard Marzil, I now yield the floor to you to present your proposed resolution.

Thank you, Chairman Master Wizard Humbolt. My resolution in its initial form is that we form a committee immediately to oversee the development of charms based on the opal. Speed is of the essence. We know by logical reasoning that the demons must have the same kind of project, and we do not dare let them get ahead of us in developing magic charms based on the opal’s great adaptability.

The purpose of this committee will be to push the development of opal-based charms and get them into the field as soon as possible. We already know how powerful some of the ancient charms are, and our preliminary work indicates that the opal can duplicate this action in virtually a wholesale manner. Once a specific charm has been developed, it can be manufactured in mass quantities at low cost and distributed to our Heroes in the field.

I will have written copies of my resolution distributed to each of you by 5:00 o’clock this afternoon.

Thank you for your attention. That is all I have to say at the moment, Chairman Master Wizard Humbolt.

Thank you, Master Wizard Marzil. My next item for your consideration is that we enlarge our efforts to recruit Heroes from places other than Isbardia. As all of you know, Master Wizard Shuttman suggested that we bring in a person from Earth to try to give a boost to our operations. Our problems with controlling the invasion by demons of over 70 dimensions in our multiple universe has become apparent to all of us.

Master Wizard Shuttman was able to bring over to our prime dimension one individual known as Jim Bonner. He has joined the Hero Guild and has reached level #5 of apprenticeship. The significance of this is that he has done that in only five weeks of membership. Rising to that level normally takes a minimum of 6 months, and even that is very rare.

Not only that, Jim Bonner has advanced several ideas for reorganization of our Guild that result in greatly heightened performance from our members. So far, his most significant achievement has been creating what he calls a trio that has three Heroes acting together on a single project. If you want to know more about Bonner, look him up in our memory file. Of course, like all apprentices, he does not know that his every move and thought are recorded for study and evaluation.

Bonner is nominally a Monk, but he has many of the characteristics of other orders, and I wish to encourage him to continue coming up with innovative ideas. There is one thing to keep in mind, Bonner is progressing so fast that he will surely become a journeyman and probably a master long before any of us ever accomplished that. We are open to any ideas from you as to what we can do to push him to develop as fast as possible. I have a feeling that we are going to need him and his ideas very soon.

What I want from you right now is a vote of confidence that what I am doing with Bonner is a good idea and is to be encouraged and supported in any way possible. Furthermore, I want to encourage Master Wizard Shuttman to continue his work to bring over more such individuals. At the moment the transporting of an individual from Earth to Isbardia is fraught with problems. So far, Bonner is the only success out of seven tries.

May I have a vote of your support? Please raise your hand if you want us to continue this work ... Ah, thank you. I will keep you posted on how this project advances.

This meeting is adjourned. Thank you for attending.

*****

When the shift was over, we had cleaned out some more of the town. That was when Pete told me that the name of the town was Ergon. Naturally, the only thing learning the name of the town did for me was to shut off one of my curiosity circuits.

At that time I had no idea of the use or the opal in magic devices nor did I have any idea of how versatile the opal could be when operated on by a Master Wizard. All I knew for certain was that the demons wanted it and did NOT want us to have it. Therefore, the obvious thing for us to do was to work with the opal to learn as much as we could about it and to keep the demons from getting enough of the opal material to become an even bigger problem for us than they already were. That was where the Hero Guild came in.

The first indication to me of just how seriously the Hero Guild’s upper echelons were taking this was that they just would not get off my back about what caused me to form the trio of Heroes. I kept telling them that the formation of the trio was a happy accident in response to an attack by a large number of demons and monsters, and it seemed at the moment to be our only hope of living through the experience.

I can’t understand why they wouldn’t accept that our response was nothing more than a happy accident to a situation for which we had no other solution. The first week since the visit to the Ergon opal mine has seen four intensive questioning sessions by the Guild’s psychologists pounding at me for answers that I don’t have!

I am ready to conclude that the basic problem with them believing that I am telling them the whole truth is in the way the Guild does things. Their normal way of reaching a conclusion is to study it from all possible angles, and to follow that massive study with committee after committee submitting ideas for a best solution to the problem. Weeks, months, or even years are spent following up on the ramifications of each and every idea, and then selecting the solution that satisfies the most people.

Of course, following that routine on the day I called for the use of the defensive triangle by the trio would have resulted in our deaths and nothing good would ever have been heard from any of us again. Isbardians just don’t work that way, and I doubted that they ever would in the next 10 millennia, assuming there were any Isbardians still around after that time. The demons certainly did not have the patience to wait around while the Isbardians made up their collective mind about how to react to an emergency.

I talked with Pete about this hypothesis, and he was amazed when I told him that the people of Earth often did things of great importance on the spur of the moment. He flatly did not believe me and thought that I was playing some sort of practical joke on him. Oh, well, I expected that the opal question would run its course the same way as all other Isbardian conclusions, and I was not going to wait around for the eventual solution. Instead, I and hopefully Bill and Ed would go down fighting in the field against an overwhelming number of demons with an overwhelming number of new and spectacular magical devices all based somehow on opals.

Two weeks later, I was visited by a delegation of four Master Wizards, led by Master Wizard Marzil, who were waiting for me at the hiring hall when our shift ended in the field. We had been fighting a gang of demons who were were trying to take over the opal mine after we (notice the pronoun) Isbardians had reoccupied it and had set up defenses designed by me, with suggestions by Bill and Ed. Actually, the basic defense had been designed by the US Army as the way to beat off attacks on trading posts and such by Indians in the Wild West. It worked for them, so I figured that it would work for us, and it did.