Fortress Al-Mir

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Recruiting,” Zullie said.

Zullie stood in a recently emptied storehouse within Langleey Village, hands clasped behind her back as she paced back and forth in front of twelve villagers. Each of the villagers had a magic circle on the floor in front of them. They were simple circles, all of which were the same. Arkk easily recognized the spell to create a temporary, stationary light source. Despite the looks of concentration on most of their faces, only two circles were lit up.

Lips quirking into a frown, Zullie shook her head. “Well, determining whether anyone is worth recruiting. It isn’t looking good.”

“Of course it…” Arkk pressed his fingers to his forehead, rubbing away the headache. “Langleey is just a simple village. We’re not known for our spellcasters.”

“Not known for anything,” Zullie mumbled. “Still, there is some promise,” she said with a motion toward the two lit circles.

One was dim. Jorgen, surprisingly enough, sat in front of it with a scowl on his face. Not quite as big of a scowl as Hurtt, who glared with undisguised envy from the darkened circle one over.

Hale sat in front of the other lit circle. The young girl managed to coax a bright white light from her circle. She was one of the few without that intense focus on her face. Arkk wasn’t too surprised given her ability to use the teleportation circles without being contracted to the [HEART].

“You aren’t thinking of roping a kid into this, are you?”

“We need spellcasters and you haven’t had any luck.”

“I have plans,” Arkk said. “If those inquisitors weren’t buzzing around, I’d have gone to the gorgon mines already.”

Zullie looked over, eyebrow quirked above the rim of her glasses. “Really? You were going to go in there? Do you have a death wish?”

“No. Of course not. I wasn’t going to go in, just toss a message in and run away.”

“Great plan,” Zullie said, tone flat. “I’m not sure that one of these can take a corner position. I’ll have to do a few more tests. This whole charade was just to check on who was worth spending more time on.”

Arkk just sighed. “How did you even get here? And how come you didn’t mention anything about going.”

“I do have two legs,” Zullie said. “I wasn’t aware that I needed your permission to do my job.”

“I could have saved you the time it took to walk. And…” Arkk dropped his voice to a whisper. “I could have saved you the effort of testing this bunch.”

“Would you have mentioned her?” Zullie asked, pointing to Hale. When he didn’t say anything, she continued. “If she had been born in a proper burg or city, she would have been taken in as an initiate. I’m surprised the local abbess didn’t report her.”

Arkk frowned, thinking. “I haven’t been around the village much in recent weeks. But… I don’t think I’ve seen Abbess Keena in months. Huh.”

“She was spying from the door not too long ago. Disappeared just a bit before you arrived, actually. I tried to invite her in to test her as well—any proper abbess should be capable of taking a corner spot in the ritual—but she rejected me. Probably for the best given her profession.”

“I don’t think she likes Vezta much. Or me for bringing Vezta to the village.” Which was probably why the Abbess had been avoiding him. It… did sting a little. Especially because half the reason he had gone back to Vezta for help was that the Abbess reassured him that he wasn’t making a deal with a demon. “Speaking of Vezta, she was looking for you. Which was why I was looking for you.”

“Oh? Did she make any progress on her task?”

A half-smile spread across Arkk’s face. “Oh? You’re giving her tasks now?”

“I thought she was happy to be ordered around. As she keeps reminding us, she is a servant.”

“I don’t know that she is happy to be given orders… Maybe. What did you have her working on? More ritual work?”

Zullie waved a hand, dismissing the notion. “That project is effectively frozen until we’ve got enough personnel to proceed. No, I asked her to write down everything she knows about the older magic used by her former master. Every instance she could recall of him using it, what the effects were, incantations if possible. The evocation ritual was an interesting distraction but I came here to uncover the mysteries of your short incantations.”

Arkk couldn’t stop his sudden laugh. Reversing the Calamity and opening portals to other planes of reality were distractions.

At his laugh, the looks of concentration faded from most of the villagers around. Like a trance broken, everyone looked up to him all at once.

“Arkk’s back!” Hale chirped, only to steel her features in a sudden bout of embarrassment.

“Well, well, well. Look who deigns to visit us mere peasants.”

Arkk turned away from Hale to shoot Hurtt a flat look. He had thought they had been getting along better after the barrows. Seeing that same envious look from earlier directed at him now just made Arkk sigh. “Hello. Harvest went well?”

Higgens made a show of looking around the empty storehouse. “Well enough that the taxman felt he could take the entire stock we had here.”

“Only one storehouse to get us through the winter,” Jorgen grumbled. “Going to have to tighten our belts. Especially with you and Ilya not bringing any meat in.”

Arkk grimaced at that. True, he hadn’t been hunting. The sudden freedom and ability to travel that came with even a modicum of wealth had him focusing on other matters. Things that felt more important. Especially because Fortress Al-Mir provided food on its own.

“I might be able to help with that. I can get some chickens and pigs.” Arkk wasn’t quite sure how but a small portion of gold could be turned into living chickens and pigs within the pens and bread and vegetables in the kitchens. It was an entirely automatic process, providing plenty of meat for Larry to butcher up into passible if not good meals.

“Isn’t that mighty gracious of you, your majesty.”

“What Hurtt means to say,” Higgens said, shooting the larger man a glare, “is that help would be appreciated. We’ve been doing our best but no human can match an elf at hunting.”

Arkk gave the village tailor a flat look, knowing well that he had kept up with Ilya just fine. Mostly. He did have to wonder at just who they had been sending out in his place. Some of the younger boys, probably. Maybe he could have Ilya take them out for some proper hunting lessons when she got back.

With a quick glance through his employee link, Arkk checked on Ilya. The elf had been on her way back with the other orcs for a few weeks now. It did not look like they had accomplished their objective. They only had two new members of their group. Both were elves but they both looked like children. Elves did age a bit slower than humans, so they might have been as old as twenty rather than the ten to fifteen they looked. Even with that consideration, they did not look old enough to be master tailors.

That was a failure on two fronts then. Both his attempts at rapidly increasing Al-Mir’s renown and Ilya’s attempt to get them nicer clothes than the lesser servant could provide. At this point, it was looking like he might have to visit Cliff once again, this time with a sack of gold specifically for fancy attire. He was wealthy enough to simply purchase clothing outright.

All the fancy clothing in the world wouldn’t get them into one of the Duke’s parties, unfortunately.

Visiting Cliff again would give him a chance to meet with Hawkwood. Maybe Wolf as well. They might have some connections he could use.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Zullie said. She lifted a small wooden wand with a handle capped with a violet glowstone that looked like it had been pried off the walls or floor of the fortress. A small wave of the wand created a controlled gust of wind that swept away the magic circles. The only one she skipped over was Hale’s circle. “Come collect the pay I promised and get out,” she said, reaching into a pouch at her hip and pulling out a few silver coins.

Arkk’s eyes were stuck on the wand, however. He recalled something similar at the Cliff Academy. The spellcaster helping Zullie with her shield spell had used a large staff to fling the rocks at her and then later to collect them after the demonstration.

“How does that wand work?”

Zullie glanced over, perplexed even as she handed out coins to the departing villagers. “Right. I keep forgetting you have no magical training or even general knowledge.”

“Sorry. Your lessons are helping.”

“I should hope so. I would hate to think that I’m wasting my time.” Between handing out coins, she held out the wand for Arkk to take. “It is possible to imbue single spells into limited-use items like this wand. Well, mostly into large staffs. Not too popular considering how heavy they are. The glowstones in the fortress are of exceptionally high quality, however, so I was able to craft that. It has a simple wind spell inside that I made as a test.” Her voice dropped to a hushed whisper as she leaned over, tickling Arkk’s ear with her breath. “Nothing impressive to any initiate with the basics of magic down. More than enough to floor some backwoods bumpkins.”

Arkk opened his mouth, about to object to her insult. Keeper of the Heart of Fortress Al-Mir though he might be, he had still started out here with the rest of Langleey Village. Before he could, however, Zullie pulled away to chase down Hale, grabbing the younger girl by the shoulders.

“Not you. You stay.”

“But John wanted me back by—”

“You really want to go back to…” Zullie started waving her hand in a circular motion, grasping for a word. “Peasanty things,” she settled on, “instead of learning magic?”

Hale’s eyes widened. After a quick glance at Arkk, who just sighed, she looked back to Zullie and offered a hesitant, “No?”

“No, you don’t want to learn magic?”

“No! I meant no to the other thing. But John…”

“I’m sure he would be happy to know that you’re moving up in the world, not bound and tethered to this… slovenly place.”

Hale crossed her arms, pouting a pout that said she didn’t understand the word but still understood that she had been insulted. She didn’t get much of a chance to continue her pout, however, as Zullie reached out and grabbed her head.

“Open, tongue out,” Zullie said, pinching the sides of Hale’s cheeks.

“Wha—”

“Chin up,” Zullie said, lightly tapping Hale’s chin closed. “Look at my eyes.”

“Bwah—”

Hale, now trying to shove Zullie’s hands off her face, squeaked in surprise as Zullie leaned over and started peering into her ear. With a slight grunt, Hale squirmed out of her grip. “Can you read?” Zullie asked, undaunted by the look on the twin-tailed girl.

“A few words,” Hale grumbled, rubbing her cheeks.

“We’ll work on that too. Now, sit and—”

“It’s late,” Arkk said. “Let her go back today and talk about it with John. There isn’t any rush given that we still need several others.” Looking at Hale, Arkk nodded his head toward the door. “Go ahead and get back to John. We’ll… get back to you tomorrow, I guess.”

Hale nodded twice. Spring in her step, she started toward the door only to pause and switch to a more serious style of walking. She kept her hands at her side without swinging them in the slightest as she marched out of the warehouse.

“Who is John? Her father?”

“The local carpenter. Treats her like his daughter. No one knows who her actual parents are. She just showed up on the Baron’s doorstep one day as a baby.”

“Really? Odd. Or is it odd? I don’t know how these peasants work. Does that happen often?”

Arkk shrugged. “A number of us don’t have parents. Not everyone just shows up in the middle of the night but pretty much everyone in the village is missing at least one parent or, failing that, a grandparent or two.”

“Mhm. I never knew my parents.”

“Oh. Sorry?”

“Doesn’t bother me,” Zullie said, her tone as clinical as when discussing the difference between a rune and a stave. “If I knew my parents, we wouldn’t be talking now.”

“How so?”

“When the church identifies someone with the potential for spellcasting, they’re taken away as initiates. A propensity for holy magic results in an acolyte. I showed promise for the arcane and was shoved into one of the academies. If I had been left with my family…” Zullie stared after the door Hale had just vanished through, shaking her head.

“I… barely remember my parents,” Arkk said slowly. “Ilya’s mother raised me, taught me to read, and showed me that I had the capacity for magic—even if I only caused explosions at the time.”

“That is the woman you’re trying to rescue from the Duke?”

“Yeah.”

“And she knows magic?”

“I don’t think…” Arkk paused, considering the question. “Actually, I don’t know. I don’t remember ever seeing her cast a spell, either through ritual or incantation, but it is a bit strange that she knew enough about magic to identify me as a spellcaster.”

The conversation lapsed into a few moments of silence. Arkk thought about Alya and the small ritual circle she had drawn to get him to try. It was a faint memory. Something he had thought that she had come up with as a way to get his mind off his recently deceased parents. He couldn’t remember the ritual circle or even what its intention was, only that it had turned into a bright burning fireball that Alya had then used a wet rag to beat out before it could spread through their house.

She had ordered him to never try magic indoors again.

“Perhaps she would be willing to take up a position around our ritual then.”

“Maybe,” Arkk allowed. He wasn’t so sure about that. When the subject of rescuing Alya had first come up after finding Fortress Al-Mir, Ilya had mentioned something about how Alya had been living in the village to keep watch on the Cursed Forest. If that translated to keeping watch on Vezta and the [HEART], she might not be so enthusiastic. “We have to get her out of the Duke’s manor first. With everything else I tried ending up poorly, I had been hoping to use this ritual to do that. Vezta says we will be able to find allies on the other side of the portal. If we need her, then we’ll have to find another way.”

“That sounds like something for you to figure out,” Zullie said, stiffening her back. “Now, as long as you are here…”

“What? Don’t want to use your legs to get back to the fortress?”

“I’ve done enough physical exertion for the day.”

With an amused snort, Arkk ripped both of them through space. They reappeared just outside Zullie’s room, down the hall from the library.

Vezta stepped out from the latter room the same instant that they appeared. “Master, there you are,” she said, walking closer. “I was just about to call for your attention.”

“Something wrong?”

“I have an update on the task you assigned to me,” she said, holding out the crystal ball.

Arkk leaned in, peering at the image already on display. A familiar dirt road, roughly halfway between Smilesville and Langleey. Arkk, Ilya, and Dakka had camped on it while on their way to Cliff. At the moment, there was just one small black carriage traveling along the bumpy road.

“The inquisitors are on the move.”