Black Coven (Daniel Black Book 2) Page 4

  Carl frowned. “I see. No luck with healing elixirs?”

  “Are you kidding? No one is going to ‘waste’ an irreplaceable resource like that on the mutt. They tried some of that medicinal shit the junior alchemists make, but when it didn’t do anything they just threw up their hands and decided she’s a lost cause. They’re basically just waiting for her to die now.”

  He gave her a considering look. “I see. I take it you’ve been keeping her company?”

  Mara shrugged. “Trying to. She’s a prickly bitch, but it’s not like I can complain about that.”

  Prince Caspar’s servant discreetly cleared his throat.

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry, guys, but I need to go see this plot of land the prince is giving me and get some kind of shelter up before it gets dark.”

  We said our goodbyes, and Carl went off to talk more with his sister while I led my party towards the door. When they were safely out of earshot Cerise leaned into me with a sigh.

  “Ooh, yeah. Did you see the ass on that girl? I’ve got to get me some of that.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Poor Avilla, abandoned already. What will she do when she finds you’ve thrown her over for another girl?”

  Cerise snickered. “Are you kidding me? The second she gets a whiff of that girl’s power Avilla’s going to need fresh panties. Besides, we’ve always wanted to seduce hot sorceress bitches together. It’ll be a bonding experience.”

  I chuckled. “You do realize she’s probably straight?”

  “As much fire magic as she has? There’s no way she’s going to care about shit like that once she gets going. I’ll have her eating out of my hand in no time.”

  “If you say so, Cerise. So, on a more serious subject, do you know anything about grendelkin?”

  “Not much. They’re a rare breed, and the descriptions in stories all contradict each other. Big, misshapen, lots of teeth, live in swamps and eat people. I think they might be shape shifters, actually.”

  Oh. Grendelkin, as in Grendel, the monster from Beowulf.

  “Lovely. Now I’m not sure whether to feel sorry for the poor girl, or wonder why the Conclave is keeping a cannibalistic monster in the middle of a city.”

  “Can we go with both? Why do you care, anyway?”

  I shrugged. “Partly I’m just a sucker for girls who need rescuing, and it sounds like she’s got a pretty shitty situation. But powerful healers are a rare resource, and I don’t want to end up being the only one in the city. We’ll be better off if there’s a well-known local healer that people will go to before bothering me, so I can spend my time making weapons and fortifications.”

  “Oh. In that case, should we try to recruit her? It sounds like they treat her like shit here, so it might not even be hard.”

  I shook my head. “It’s tempting, but I don’t want to piss off the Conclave by poaching their people. I’ll need to get a better feel for the situation before I can decide anything about that.”

  The prince’s servant directed us back into a less wealthy part of town, where we took a turn towards the river. The harbor district was a little run down, but it bustled with activity despite the cold. There were dozens of inns and taverns packed with customers, hundreds of shops and businesses selling everything from sailcloth to compasses, a shipyard, and some surprisingly large warehouses just inside the city wall.

  Like Lanrest, the docks themselves were outside the wall. But Kozalin’s harbor wasn’t undefended. There was a high embankment faced with stone along the waterfront, pierced by ramps that descended to the level of the piers. A battlement along the top of the embankment made it fairly defensible, protecting a strip of buildings a block or two wide that filled the space between the shore and the stretch of city wall facing the river. Several companies of troops manned the battlements and aggressively patrolled the streets, keeping a watch for goblin raids or more exotic forms of trouble.

  The harbor itself was filled with ships of every description, from large three-masted cargo vessels to little river boats with a single collapsible mast. But it was also frozen over. Most of the smaller boats had been pulled out of the water, and here and there I saw work parties shoveling snow off the decks of the larger ships or hauling loads of firewood about.

  I surveyed the scene for a few minutes, considering how to tackle the problem. Most of the piers were stone, which conveniently meant I wouldn’t have to worry much about damaging one with a badly placed heating stone. But it was a big harbor, and the river at this point was easily a couple of miles wide. I wasn’t going to thaw the whole thing with any reasonable amount of effort.

  Maybe free up two or three of the larger docks first, and clear a channel to the sea? That would give the prince most of what he was looking for. Then just clear the water around the docks themselves, and maybe a patch of river big enough to serve as a turning basin? I wasn’t sure how much room sailing ships would need to maneuver in and out of the docks, but there was bound to be someone I could ask. A harbormaster, or something like that.

  “I can see why High Adept Steelbinder didn’t want to take on this job,” I told the prince’s servant. “This is going to take some doing. Well, we’re getting short on daylight so I’d better see where I’m going to put my people.”

  The man bowed slightly. “Of course, Adept Black. If you’ll turn left and head off towards the east end of the harbor, I’ll show you your land.”

  I hid my surprise. Not the breach after all, then? Well, I suppose if there was an empty spot on the river bank that would work almost as well. More work to expand, but I could manage.

  We came to the last ramp down, flanked on one side by a large inn and on the other by a space filled with upside-down boats that a crowd of refugees were using as improvised shelters. Beyond that an extension of the city wall ran down to the waterline, with a spur of wall projecting a bit into the river to ensure potential attackers couldn’t just circle around it to get into the city. Not that it did much good with the whole river frozen over, but if I melted the ice around it that would go a long way towards preventing goblin raids.

  We went down the ramp, and ended up on a wide stone pier next to a wooden structure that projected out over the water a good ways.

  “This used to belong to the Royal Navy,” the prince’s man explained. “It doesn’t see much use since the new piers down on the seaward side of the harbor were finished, but we may need the dry dock if you can clear the harbor. If you’ll head down the pier a bit?”

  Now mystified, I drove the transport out onto the pier. The column of wagons followed along behind me, and I spared a moment of thought for how we were going to get them back. The pier was easily wide enough for two wagons to pass side-by-side, but there was about a four-foot drop to the frozen river on each side. I wasn’t quite sure I trusted any of the drivers to manage a three-point turn under those conditions.

  “Where exactly are we going?” I asked. I was starting to get that sinking feeling.

  “Ah, we’re here,” the man said. “A courier should arrive with the deed in an hour or so, but the bounds are easily described. From the end of the pier, a square plot of ten acres extending out into the river. For access the prince generously grants you the pier itself as well, with the proviso that the dry dock must be left intact and access to it must not be blocked.”

  I stopped the transport, and stared at him. “The river bed?”

  “Indeed. The prince is confident that creating an artificial island will be no great challenge for a man of your abilities, and once the river is thawed it will be quite a defensible position.”

  I blinked, and looked again. The pier extended maybe a hundred feet past the end of the covered dry dock, putting the end barely within bowshot of the city wall. Beyond that was nothing but the flat expanse of frozen river, thick ice covered in two or three feet of snow.

  Was there movement on the far shore? The trees there cast long shadows in the late afternoon sunlight, making it hard to be sure.

  �
��If you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my other duties now. I’m sure the prince will send someone to check on your progress tomorrow.”

  With that the man disembarked from the transport, and hurried off down the pier towards town. Cerise and Avilla immediately emerged from the back to peer over my shoulder.

  “Well, this sucks,” Cerise commented.

  “Oh dear,” Avilla fretted. “Now what are we going to do?”

  Chapter 3

  “You know, I’m not sure whether to take this as an insult or a compliment.”

  Cerise frowned. “What do you mean? He’s trying to screw us, right?”

  “Well, if I were lying about my earth magic this would be a serious problem,” I agreed. “But then I’d be trying to swindle the prince, so paying me with a worthless patch of water in the middle of the river would be a reasonable response. On the other hand, if I’m really some kind of super earth wizard then raising an island should be no problem for me, and thawing the harbor will turn this into a nice defensive position. Not to mention it means that if I build some kind of giant castle it’ll strengthen a weak spot in Kozalin’s defenses while still being conveniently outside of the city.”

  “You really think he came up with all that on the spur of the moment?” She asked skeptically. “I bet he’s just a giant dick.”

  I chuckled. “Important people usually are. But he struck me as the devious type. Not the kind of man who goes around randomly screwing with people for no particular reason.”

  “Can you do it, Daniel?” Avilla asked worriedly. “I thought you had to touch the earth to work magic on it, or at least be close to it.”

  “Yeah, this is going to take some doing. Cerise, I want you to organize a shopping expedition while I’m working. Take at least four guards with you, but see if you can find a shop that sells any of the things Avilla needs.”

  “I should do that,” Avilla protested.

  “No way,” Cerise replied. “You need to rest, sweetie. You’re not up to walking all over the city.”

  The pretty blonde sighed. “I suppose. I hate being so weak.”

  Cerise hugged her. “Hey, it won’t be for much longer. You just need to get some sugar and a little honey in you, and you’ll be back to normal. Right?”

  “Right.” Avilla smiled weakly.

  Technically they could have used one of the transports, but I didn’t mention the idea. I wanted Avilla where I could keep an eye on her until she recovered, and if there was trouble Cerise was safer without a noncombatant to worry about. Not to mention that she wasn’t exactly a cautious driver, and sending her out to wander the city in a transport was just asking for someone to get run over. So instead I saw her off with an escort of liveried men at arms and a couple of the peasant women who knew their way around a kitchen, and turned my attention back to the problem at hand.

  I had maybe an hour and a half until sunset, and once the light faded anything might decide to sneak across the frozen river and take a shot at us. It was pretty windy out here too, and the temperature would drop fast at night. Not to mention that the overcast sky could deliver another snowstorm at any moment. So, what could I do quickly?

  I had Captain Rain set up sentries, and retrieved a tool I’d been working on to make setting up a new home faster. A rod of polished granite six feet long, enchanted with a structural reinforcement spell I’d worked out when I was trying to make the transports lighter without sacrificing protection. It also had the warmth effect I’d been putting on the transports, and a neat spell I’d found in one of my stolen tomes that made it conduct my magic. That last was intended to be cast on a staff, so you could use spells that normally require a touch on things you don’t want to get that close to.

  The tricky part, though, was the meta-magical effect that would cause the enchantments to automatically expand if I used earth magic to make the rod bigger. I’d originally been thinking I could just plant the thing in the ground and make it grow into a building, with the reinforcement spell covering for any gaps in my limited knowledge of civil engineering. But trying to put a heavy stone building on top of an ice sheet was just asking for a disaster.

  Instead, I held the rod out over the end of the pier and made it grow until one end touched the ice. Then I heated the bottom with fire magic.

  The rod slowly sank into the ice, melting a hole towards the bottom of the river. I made it longer as it sank, and added a few more feet of length above my head to increase the weight. How thick was this ice, anyway? A foot. Two feet. Three.

  Finally the end of the rod broke through, and sank rapidly towards the river bottom. Not being an idiot I’d been waiting for that to happen, and caught it with force magic before it fell more than a couple of feet. Then it was just a matter of extending the pole until it rested on the bottom of the river.

  Hmm. The bottom was probably mud. Not a good foundation material, but not hard to get out of the way. I made the pole expand until it was a good six inches thick, and lengthened it until the top was well above my head again. That made it several times heavier than I was, so I had to use force magic to keep it pointed straight up. But sure enough, over the course of the next few minutes it sank several feet.

  Alright, now for the hard part.

  I expanded the side of the rod that faced me first, turning the curved surface into a pointed one and then elongating it until it touched the end of the pier. The trickle of power I’d been drawing from my amulet swelled rapidly, and the crack of shattering ice filled the air. Pushing the mud of the river bottom out of the way took a lot of power as well, but expanding the enchantments on the stone was by far the hardest part of this exercise.

  Fortunately I wasn’t going to run out of magic. Not with the enchantment on my amulet turning its mass into energy, constantly recharging my own relatively modest reserves of magical power. Three more pushes, and I had a cross-shaped mass of stone that was wide enough to be relatively stable. Then I threw the whole energy output of my amulet into making it grow.

  It was a much slower process than just summoning ordinary stone, but it worked. By the time the sun touched the horizon I had a solid block of enchanted granite that was big enough to support a house, and extended all the way from the stone beneath the river bed to a point about eight feet above the top of the pier. That would be high enough to give goblins and trolls problems getting at us, if not giants.

  I threw down a ramp of ordinary stone leading up to the top, with low walls along the sides to act as guard rails. Then I walked up and made a slow circuit of the top, using Grinder’s plasma jet to melt the ice in a wide stretch around the stone. It would re-freeze, of course, but I doubted it would be thick enough to support anything heavy before morning.

  “Alright, Oskar,” I called down. “Send the transports up here one at a time. I think we’ve got just enough room to park them in a circle, after we unhook the cargo sleds.”

  “Will do, milord,” he called back.

  It took a considerable amount of careful maneuvering to accomplish that, and a couple of times I had to use force magic to push one of the bulky transports sideways to get it into the right spot. But by the time it was fully dark we had our vehicles parked, with canvas strung over most of the space between them and the heaters set up to warm the encampment. It was pretty crowded, with a hundred-odd people all wanting to disembark from the transports and stretch their legs at the same time. But it kept most of the wind off, and it was a lot safer than camping on the plains outside the city.

  Cerise returned triumphantly from her shopping trip about then.

  “Mission accomplished!” She crowed. “We got, like, twenty pounds of sugar, and three big jars of honey. I found a spice merchant who had cinnamon, and even a couple of bottles of faerie wine.”

  Avilla clapped excitedly, and swept her into hug her. “Really? That’s wonderful! That will last me for months, if I’m careful. I hope it wasn’t too expensive?”

  “Three crowns and change,” Cerise admi
tted. “But hey, nothing’s too good for my girl.”

  “That’s right,” I agreed. “We can get more money. There’s only one of you.”

  She blushed prettily. “Well, thank you. I’m sorry to be such a bother.”

  “You’re never a bother to me, honeydew,” Cerise purred. “Come on, let’s go inside and get you fixed up. I’ll even open the wine for you.”

  “Um… you know how I get after a few sips, kitten,” Avilla said uncertainly.

  “Exactly. I think we can kick the maids out, and have the transport to ourselves for one night. You getting in on this, Daniel?”

  “Ouch. That’s tempting,” I admitted. “But no. I’ve still got a lot of work to do, and you lovebirds haven’t had any time alone since we left Lanrest. You go have fun, and I’ll see if I can’t have a few surprises ready before morning.”

  “I like this plan,” Cerise agreed with a grin. “Alright, see you guys in the morning.”

  She swept Avilla up into her arms, and carried her into the transport.

  “Eek! Um, but, what about dinner? And there’s the washing and mending still to do, and…”

  The door shut behind them. I chuckled.

  A moment later it opened again. Beri and Tina, the two peasant girls we’d hired on as maids a few weeks ago, emerged with blankets in hand. Beri looked rather disgruntled, but Tina just smiled cheerfully.

  That was typical. Beri was a slender brunette, rather cute and surprisingly clever for an illiterate medieval peasant, but she had a tendency to see the worst in any situation. Tina was a spectacularly endowed redhead who came off as a bit simpleminded most of the time, but she had a remarkable talent for making the best of her circumstances.

  “I think it’s sweet,” Tina was saying. “They always look so happy together.”