Trail of the Gods: The Morcyth Saga Book Four (2 page)

“Not a bad idea,” agrees James.

The sound of a rider approaching the house
can be heard before they finish their meal. Illan gestures for Yern
to go and see who it is.

From the front room, they hear him call out,
“It’s Shorty.”

James gets up and heads for the front door.
As he enters the front room he asks, “Is he by himself?”

Yern turns from the window and nods, “Just
him.”

Opening the front door, he steps out just as
Shorty pulls to a stop. “Anything wrong?” he asks him, worried.

Shaking his head, he pulls a sack filled
almost to capacity off his horse and hands it to James. He can see
Jiron and Tersa standing in the doorway behind him. “Everything’s
fine,” he assures them. “We picked up a shipment back in Bearn that
had to be in Wurt first thing in the morning, so she sent me here
to drop off your stuff.”

James opens the sack and finds it stuffed
with crystals, the common ones he’s been working with. Smiling, he
says, “Tell her thank you.”

“Will do that,” he says as he pulls out a
letter. “This is from Thelonius back in Cardri.”

Taking the letter, he asks, “Would you like
to stay for lunch? We have plenty.”

“No, she told me to get back fast before
they moved much further down the road,” he tells him. Pulling
himself back up on his horse, he turns to leave.

“You tell her to stop by when she passes
through next time,” he says to Shorty.

“I’ll do that,” he replies. “Goodbye,
James.”

“Bye Shorty,” he says. “And thanks
again.”

Giving him a brief wave, he kicks his horse
into a gallop and races back down the road to rejoin the
caravan.

As he turns back to the house, he sees Jiron
and Tersa standing there. Holding up the sack, he says, “At least
she dropped these off before she headed north.”

“She wouldn’t forget about you,” Jiron
assures him.

“No,” adds Tersa. “She knows how important
those are to you.”

Coming back to the dining room, he takes his
seat and pulls out some of the crystals and sets them beside his
plate. While he finishes his meal, he closely examines them. As far
as he can tell, they’re exactly the same as the one he took from
the underground complex. It has to be with how he’s doing it. It
has to!

Once he’s through eating, he gets up from
the table and takes his plate and cup into the kitchen where he
sets them on the counter. He knows it annoys Ezra that he does it,
the master should not have to clear his own dinnerware. But he just
can’t leave it there, his mom and then his grandma had ingrained
that in him too well.

He returns to the dining room and puts the
crystals back in the sack. Illan and the others are beginning to
leave for the hunt, “We’re going to take Miko with us.”

“Good idea,” agrees James. “He’s pretty good
with that crossbow of his.”

“So he keeps telling us,” Illan replies with
a grin.

Miko stands up, all six foot two. He’s quite
the man physically, but inside, he’s still a boy. Giving James a
grin, he goes to his room to retrieve his crossbow and bolts.

“Be back by dark,” Illan tells him as he
leads the others out through the front room. Miko quickly joins
them before they get too far away from the house. James watches him
as he walks with the others. They’ve really taken a liking to him,
sort of taken him under their wing so to speak. Their initial
wariness back at Lythylla has long since worn off.

Ezra and Tersa are busy in the kitchen and
dining room, getting everything cleared off and cleaned up. Roland
grabs an axe and heads out to lay in some firewood. Though fall is
still well over a month away, he needs to get busy so they’ll have
plenty when it does arrive. James tells them that he’ll be going
into town for a few hours to see Alexander.

Taking his sack of crystals out to his
workshop, he sits them down by his workbench. Then he heads over to
the old barn where his horse is currently stabled and prepares him
for the ride into town.

A smile comes over him as he remembers that
time with Corbin when he first mounted a horse. He’s come a long
ways since then.

When his horse is ready, he leads him out of
the barn and then mounts. Riding out to the so-called road that
passes by the end of his lane, he passes where the workmen are hard
at work on the new buildings. They wave to him as he rides by.

Townsmen from Trendle, they’re happy to have
this work. Seems there are many who are barely able to make it
around here and those that got this job are sure thankful. The
buildings are going up fast, they should be done before fall gets
here. At least that’s the general consensus.

As he rides into town, the people on the
street pause as they call out a greeting or wave to him as he goes
by. Ever since that situation at the estate in the forest, he’s
become some sort of celebrity around here. He waves back
cheerfully, taking it all in stride.

He pulls up in front of Alexander’s shop and
ties his horse to the post outside. Going in, he finds the same
guards as had been there the last time. One opens the door to the
back and tells Alexander he’s here.

James moves to the window in the wall and
Alexander’s head appears just as he gets there. “Ah, James,” he
says. “I take it you’ve heard back from my brother?”

Pulling the letter out, he hands it over to
him.

Taking but a moment, Alexander opens the
letter and reads the contents. “Seems you still have quite a sum
here,” he says. “Do you wish to have the same type of account you
had last time?”

“Yes, that would be fine,” he replies.
“Could I have a hundred golds of that broken into smaller
coinage?”

“Not a problem,” he says. “Just give me a
moment and I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” replies James as Alexander ducks
back inside. He waits there only a couple minutes before he
reappears at the window with two bulging sacks of coins.

He sets the sacks of coins down on the
window’s counter along with several papers. “Here,” he says. “I
just need your signature on these and we’re all set. After taking
out what I’ve already loaned you and the hundred you’re taking with
you, you still have three hundred and ten golds left.”

Nodding, James takes the offered quill and
signs where he’s told to. Once done, Alexander takes the papers and
says, “You’re all set. In the sacks there, I put 60 gold coins and
397 silver and 600 copper. That almost wiped me out of what smaller
coins I had.”

“Sorry,” James says.

“Don’t worry about it,” he assures him. “I
still have plenty.”

“Thank you,” he says to him as he bends down
to pick up the heavy sacks. The guard takes one and escorts him
back out to his horse. Alexander says, “Come again if I can help
you with anything further.”

“I will,” he replies as he exits the shop.
Securing the sacks behind his saddle takes some doing but with the
guard’s help, he manages.

He tells the guard thanks for his help and
then mounts. So as not to over tax his horse, he takes it slow all
the way back, the sacks of coins jingling behind him.

Once back at The Ranch, he goes to the main
house and removes the sacks from his horse and takes them into his
bedroom where Hern’s old money chest sits. It’s barely large enough
to accommodate the coins but he manages to get the lid closed and
the lock secured. Hern had only had two silvers and a handful of
coppers in it when he found it.

He’s going to have to have Delia acquire him
some writing materials so he’ll be able to keep a ledger of his
spending. It would also be nice to be able to keep notes about his
experiments with the crystals.

Sighing, he knows he should go back out to
his workshop and try to figure this out. As he passes through to
the back door, he finds Ezra there in the kitchen baking bread for
the evening meal. The aroma smells good.

Arkie is sitting in a highchair he bought
for him. He’s got a piece of bread in one hand that he’s happily
gnawing on. His cup is resting on its side on the floor, the milk
within it spreading in a pool.

He gives Ezra a nod and pats Arkie on the
head as he leaves through the back door. The sound of wood being
chopped reaches him from over where Roland is splitting them into
the proper size. He can see he’s already accumulated quite a pile
since he left for town.

Tersa is out in the garden they planted when
they first arrived. He can see many shoots coming up out of the
ground. He was worried that planting so late in the season wouldn’t
yield much, but he left it to their judgment. Ever since pulling
the new shoots out of his aunt’s garden when he thought he was
successfully weeding it, he’s known he has no clue about
gardening.

Back in his workshop, he reaches into the
sack of crystals and pulls out several, setting them in front of
him on the workbench.
C’mon guys, what am I doing wrong?

He thinks about the last time. What he’s
been trying to do is create a spell in which the crystal will draw
and store power from the world around it. Taking only minute
quantities from each individual living thing within its radius at a
time, they would store it within themselves. They would also use
the stored power to keep the ‘leeching’ spell active, always
maintaining the maximum amount. Sort of like a continuously
recharging battery, a magic battery you could say.

But the problem he’s been encountering is
that at some point, it explodes. That’s what he has to figure out,
a way to keep it intact. There has to be a way to have it ‘charge’
to a certain point and then stop.

Perhaps along with a spell that leeches
magic from its environment, there should be one that checks for
internal integrity. One which ensures the crystal never reaches the
point where it shatters by shutting down the other spell which is
drawing in the power. Then allowing it to resume drawing in power
once the amount of stored power has dropped below the maximum
capacity.

Might work,
he thinks as he carries
the largest of the crystals over to the table where the previous
experiments have been. Brushing aside the shattered remnants of
earlier experiments, he sets the crystal down and then moves back
to a safer distance.

After a moment’s contemplation to work out
the spell needed, he concentrates on the crystal and slowly lets
out the power. This time when he’s completed the spell, he holds
his breath as once more, it begins to glow red with the power being
drawn from him. When the crystal has begun to glow a deep crimson
color, he senses a gradual diminution in the power being leeched
from him until it all but disappears.

Using his magic, he examines the crystal
down to the micro level. A smile breaks across his face as he
realizes that it’s working. It’s still drawing power, but it’s such
a slight amount that he can barely feel it.”

“Excuse me,” a voice says as a hand taps him
on the shoulder.

Abruptly breaking his concentration, he
inadvertently sends a wave of energy toward the crystal, causing it
to shatter into a hundred tiny fragments. His head begins hurting
and he feels almost as if he’s about ready to pass out.

Turning on the intruder, he comes to a stop
when he sees it’s a stranger standing there. Something in his eyes
must’ve given the man pause, for he takes three quick steps
backward and backs out the door

“What!” James yells at the man as he follows
him outside.

Jiron must’ve heard him all the way from the
house and he sticks his head out of a window to see what’s going
on. When he sees James standing there in anger in front of a
stranger, he quickly rushes to his side.

“Uh,” the man stammers, his voice failing
him. Clearing his throat, he glances backward as he hears Jiron
coming and then turns his attention back to James. “Are you James,
the wizard?”

“What?” James asks him again, not exactly
understanding what he just said.

“You okay?” Jiron asks as he arrives, one
hand on a knife hilt.

Indicating the man, he replies, “This idiot
interrupted me, almost got me killed.”

Taking the man’s arm, Jiron says, “You
better leave.”

Wrenching his arm out of Jiron’s grasp he
says, “But I need your help! And I’m willing to pay!” He glances
from one to the other and back again as they take in what he
said.

To Jiron, James says, “Take him to the
house, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

The man says, “Thank you,” as Jiron leads
him over to the house.

He returns back inside to the shattered
crystal, angry that it was destroyed. But at least he’s on the
right track, it didn’t explode until that idiot disturbed him.
It had been working!

He finds Jiron and the stranger sitting in
the front room, Ezra having already given the man a small bite to
eat and something to drink.

“…only hope he can help me,” the man says.
When he sees James enter the room he quickly comes to his feet,
almost causing the cup holding his ale to tip over.

Jiron catches James’ eye and rolls his eyes
as he gives a sidelong nod at their guest.

“Thank you for taking the time to listen to
my dilemma,” the man says to him.

“I am very busy,” replies James, as he sits
down in one of the chairs. “Say what you came here to say.”

Sitting back down, the man begins, “I shall
be brief then.” Glancing to Jiron, he continues, “I was telling
your friend here somewhat of my problem and am hoping you might be
of a mind to help me.”

James glances to Jiron and then asks, “What
sort of problem?” Jiron gives him a brief, amused smile.

“Well, it’s like this,” he explains. “I own
a small business in Osgrin.” When James doesn’t respond to the
name, he adds, “It’s a town just a little south of here.”