We were awoken the next day by a young woman at our doors. She looked pale in comparison to her hazelnut skinned kinsmen, her hair was long and thin, her fingers delicate and her clothes in a rather good condition compared to the worn rags many children had instead.
“Excuse me, guests.” She spoke with a determined but quiet voice, eager to hold protocol it seemed. “I have put food on the table by the hallway, please eat up, the steward wishes to see you in the great hall soon.”
We did as she had suggested. The meal consisted of the same coarse bread as the evening before. I have to admit that I would have preferred dry Vrata biscuit and water to that, but we had already seen that the village was stretched thin.
The steward welcomed us in the hall. “Good rise, dear guests. Today we shall discuss what you will do to repay your debt to us while we take care of your injured companion.” He wore a knowing smile and I knew why. He would get to make demands we could ill refuse in our predicament.
The Professor puffed up his chest and took a step forward in determination. “Where is my niece? I want to make sure she is fine first!”
“Very well, you shall see.” The steward led us down another tight corridor and we soon came to a rather large room with three beds, in one of which Anne lied, next to her sat an older woman appearing not quite as old as the eldest lady or the steward, as well as a much younger woman, comparable to Anne’s age.
“Lieschen, are you well?” the Professor hurried to Anne’s side, ignoring the gestures of the women.
Her face was red, her eyes barely open, she weakly tossed her head from left to right, looking her uncle not directly into the eyes but some place behind his head. A weak “yes?” escaped her with her heavy breath.
The older woman tried to get the Professor’s attention. “She has a fever, very high.”
But he did not take his eyes of Anne and took her hand. “Lieschen, these people will take care of you, get rest, you hear?”
Anne breathed slowly and heavily, as if her ribs were a hefty mass to heave with each breath. “I want to go home.”
The Professor’s eyes turned teary. “Do not worry, we will set things here right again, build that ramp and then we can go back home.”
Anne smiled, then closed her eyes in exhaustion.
The younger woman put her hand on the Professor’s shoulder. “She needs rest now. You can come at dinner if you wish.”
The Professor nodded and got up. He tried his best to not let his emotional constitution shine through to us, a futile endeavour. We all had to look forward to our task, as the Professor had said: we would set things right again.
The Professor raised a warning finger to the steward. “You better take good care of her!”
“As long as you take good care of repaying your debt, we will. Should you try to cheat, steal or flee however, we cannot guarantee any such thing.”
I could see that the Professor was about to explode in anger at that thinly veiled threat, but somehow caught himself before that. There was work to do.
Next up, we visited the old pile of wood that used to be a ramp. It was all useless, even as firewood it would not do. It was obvious we would have to build an entirely new ramp.
Given we were surrounded by rock and the Professor as well as I were already proficient in the manipulation and transmutation of it, it would be our primary building material, but with our limited work power and time, it would have to consist of only the most basic necessary components.
I had almost eighty feet width to work with and a tad more than a hundred feet to scale. I quickly calculated that if I made each sloped section at a fifteen-degree angle, I could scale that distance in seven ramps meandering like the ones we had torn down. It was acceptable in my mind.
The Professor and I inspected the surrounding rock and found it lacking in stability, rather loose schist that flaked easily. If we had much more time or an endless army of mages, we could have transformed each cut block into much more stable rock, but like this, it was uneconomical.
We asked the steward for different rock and he led us down various tunnels to a new layer of rock that seemed to be gabbro; strong, dependable and widely used in surface world architecture. I concluded it to be the perfect material for the ramp. The path from where we could gather gabbro to the construction site was less than a quarter hour to walk and consisted entirely of gentle slopes, so the stones could be loaded onto a sled or similar and pulled by Chrysita even without her arms.
While my companions were put to clearing the rubble, I was given a table in the large hall that would be my desk. I quickly started drafting various designs, ignoring the public eyes of scrutiny and curiosity on me.
I focussed on my duty but could not avoid noticing the people around me. I saw few men of strong age, many children wore old clothes that was several sized too big, instead tied and fixed with sashes and remnants of once colourful ribbons. Many kept to small groups, being mistrustful even towards each other, the women had all their hands full with milking cattle, bringing in small scraps of scavenged food from the wilderness or just herding the children to be of use. The few old men stood guard at gates and tunnels, seeming to be more like childminders armed with crudely sharpened sticks than actual guards, but all in all, enough eyes were upon me that I had ample reason to focus on my paper and compass.
The first designs I came up with would all require large amounts of gravel or soil to fill up as a solid basis to carry loads. I finally decided on a design using merely stone arcs, similar to the ancient aqueducts of the Pliranti empire. The actual floor would be wooden planks, much easier to repair and replace for the people of the village.
It was on the second day of designing that I ran out of graphite pens. I saw the pale looking woman in the hall and addressed her to acquire more. Her eyes looked at me from distrustful sockets.
“I think there are some in the old Magus’ office.” She beckoned me to follow her down a corridor.
“You have a magus? Why did he not take care of all of this?”
“No, not anymore. He died just recently and we had no time to send anyone to his cadre for help, his apprentice is away on a caravan and overdue as well.” We arrived at a wooden door much sturdier than the ones I had seen so far. She pulled a key from her pocket, a rather complicated one with an accuracy and intricacy to its design I had barely seen before. She unlocked the door but before stepping through, threw a determined glare back at me. “I used to be in charge of his demands, so I kept the key for now, do not dare to touch anything.” she said that last word with a spurning look in her eyes, I did not object. “And don’t tell anyone either. This is purely a thing of necessity.” She opened the door and stepped into the chamber.
The magus’ chamber was tall and spacious, almost luxurious compared to the cramped and rough chambers the rest of the settlement seemed to consist of. A desk was covered in loose sheets of parchment, some sort of alchemical chart was drawn onto the wall with chalk and a standing blackboard was scribbled with formulae and notes. The woman went straight to the desk, where she retrieved for me inkwell and quill, a few graphite pencils, then handed them to me. I thanked her and turned around to leave when a sight struck me.
In the corner behind the door stood a bolt of cloth. I could barely see it in the dim light, but what I did see was an intricate pattern of fine lines, curves and dots in bright and glittering dye. It was unmistakably the pattern of a cadre of mages. Other tall objects leaned in the corner with the bolt of cloth, like pipes or rolls or spars, all of which I ignored, but the bolt was such a sudden sight it almost forcibly imprinted itself on my eyes. I restrained myself from stopping or staring and instead went out into the tunnel as the woman locked the door behind her. This could be the solution to our problems.
"Do you need anything else?” She asked, before locking the door behind us.
“No, not that I can think of.”
“Good.” She turned the key in its hole. “Get back to work, the steward gets impatient quickly.”
But getting back to work after seeing that bolt of cloth was not as easy as she demanded it to be. If we could grab it and run, then we could blend into society a lot easier. But yet another theft and run, I was tired of it, not to speak of the that fact that we could not run until Anne’s leg had healed completely, and the village might soon send someone out to tell the cadre, I was sure they would take possession of everything or send a new magus to clear things up. Taking the bolt was quite the daring move and we would risk far too much. It was not a viable option.
A lunch time bell was rung and tore me from my contemplations. The hall quickly filled with the villagers, the children swarming around a woman carrying a pot of stew.
The Professor elected to take his bowl of thin stew to Anne to be at her side and feed her as he had done the day before. He was truly worried for her. It made me think of my own family. My older sister would certainly take care of our parents, but she was a mere seamstress and my parents had always looked forward to me taking care of them, plans that now had to be postponed indefinitely. I missed my parents dearly that night, like I had not in a very long time.
