What the Fire Kept

What the Fire Kept

The Keeper had signed permission for an inspection and was busy managing the regular scheduled charges as well as now arranging for a high level visit that it would be best if citizenry never knew about. The permission had been easy to give. It was that or have Stenor publicly reveal the origin of his new villa by the southern sea wall. From its terrace, he could see the whole harbour. He had paid considerably less attention to what could be seen of him.

The apparatus being carried through his door required six guardians some of whom were masked, which was unusual for a Guardian. They were typically proud of their actions and outwardly recognizable to anyone witnessing their actions. These Guardians wore a full blue mask or a half face mask hiding their identity with that and a hooded cloak. Some were still obviously Sylvan and some wore the blue cloaks and white robes of the ascetic Aystryx Acanum but all were just uniforms, masks and muscle.

He watched them lower the final section onto felt pads beside the charging gallery. Two curved lengths of metal enclosed a narrow channel lined with crystal. A third lay across a workbench, its ends marked with small white strokes that did not quite meet the marks on the others.

“Nothing is to be connected directly to the Heartwell,” he said.

Ilyne placed her authorisation on the bench. “Measurements and preliminary alignment only. Those are your words which we have been told to follow by the Ambassador herself.”

“They are. Preliminary alignment does not mean drawing power.” The Keeper was obviously nervous and sweat was forming in beads on his temple.

Delrona entered with her body Guardian in tow and the Keeper reacted viscerally, not sure if a bow or a deferential lowering of the eyes was appropriate. She slowly removed her travelling gloves.

“Then we shall begin with something upon which we agree.”

Rahkhan remained beside the entrance. Beyond the inner rail, light pulsed through the charging cradles and into the crystals resting within them. The attendants spoke softly and checked every fastening twice. Beside such carefully maintained equipment, the visitors’ apparatus looked cobbled together: curved metal joined to ancient fittings still carrying dirt in their grooves.

An Astryx Mage in long white robes that ran in pressed cloth down to his sandals was bent over the open channel. His robe was pinned above his wrists, and a magnifying lens hung against his chest. His Astryx tome, a clear symbol of their devotion to their Crestrealm, was strapped with leather belts to his waist. He was an obvious scholar and he carried with him tomes, crystals and a band around his arm that signified he had access to the Astryx Arcanum library.

“The third segment here,” he pointed at a misaligned portion of the cradle, “will not retain the alignment.”

Delrona examined the marks on the device they had constructed and the arms that would drop onto them from the cradle.

“You set them to the Heartwell’s present intervals?”

“It is the interval we measured based on the documents available to us in the Astryx library.”

“Measure the returning arm from the center point to the bottom of the cradle.”

He looked up.

“From where?”

She opened the leather case Fateese had set on the bench. Inside lay an old Crysalite tablet, its cloudy blue surface scored with silver lines. Beside it were several sheets in Delrona’s hand.

She selected one and covered its lower half with her palm.

“You have aligned the receiving channel as though it were the source. The return is to be measured against the connected installation.”

“Which installation?”

“That,” Delrona said, “is what you are here to help establish.”

The scholar studied the portion she permitted him to see. Then he moved one of the white marks.

The third segment settled into place.

Fateese leaned towards Rahkhan.

“An encouraging beginning. We have persuaded three pieces of metal to agree.”

The Keeper did not smile.

* * *

They used a small blue power crystal for the measurements and had calculations on hand for scale in math that Rahkhan thought he would have trouble doing unless he went back to his academy in Amazania.

The scholar fitted it into a small cradle on the workbench, clear of every Heartwell connection. A pale line appeared inside the apparatus and travelled as far as the second joint.

There it divided.

One thread continued along the channel. The other returned towards the crystal, flickered, and disappeared.

“Again,” Delrona said.

The scholar adjusted the interval. This time the line reached the third segment before breaking into an uneven tremor of blue and white lines that mirrored a small lightning strike within its structure.

The measuring needle struck its stop.

He disconnected the crystal.

“We cannot attempt an opening from this supply.”

“That was never the proposed supply.”

Delrona looked beyond him towards the charging gallery.

The Keeper stepped between her and the rail.

“Your calculations first.”

The scholar drew his figures together. He checked them against the translated sheet, then began again on a clean page.

Fateese watched the second calculation grow. “I preferred it when he was moving marks,” he commented to Rahkhan who stood now completely confounded by the growing tally and numbers.

“This is only the initial demand,” the scholar said. “It excludes losses in the Lines and the energy needed to keep an opening stable which would allow transfer of energy.”

He turned the page towards Delrona.

“Sixty million kilojoules, delivered within the first minute. If the translation and the scale are correct.”

Fateese read the figure. Then he counted its zeroes.

“For one transmission or transfer or whatever this is?”

“Before anything passes through.”

The Keeper took the page. He read it without speaking, walked to his schedules, and laid it beside the day's charging record.

“No.”

Delrona followed him.

“We have reserve crystals.”

“You have crystals charged over many days. This requires their energy to be released together, through fittings that have not been tested for that load. If you intend to draw the difference here, I would have to interrupt the charging sequence and isolate the cradles.”

“For how long?”

“I cannot promise when I could safely restart them.”

Ilyne glanced at the schedules.

Delrona noticed.

“You have an opinion?”

“The revised departures depend on those cradles remaining in service,” Ilyne said. “A suspension now would require new instructions to every transport office.”

The Keeper kept his hand on the calculation. “My permission does not cover this.”

“Come now we all know that can easily be amended.”

“The equipment would remain the same and at those levels the system would collapse.”

For a moment, only the charging pulses could be heard.

Delrona looked back at the incomplete ring.

“Pack the segments,” she said. “Keep the measurement crystal separate. No connection to the Heartwell.”

The scholar let out a breath and reached for his tools.

Fateese retrieved the authorisation before the Keeper could write anything more upon it.

* * *

That evening, Delrona spread her papers across the table in her private workroom.

The diagram she placed beside the tablet showed channels descending from mountain heights, water passing beneath an installation, and several unfamiliar devices set where the drawings indicated heat being funneled into metal and crystal structures.

Fateese waited while she arranged them.

“There is something I have wished to ask for a considerable time.”

“How unusual that you waited.”

“Well if it were a sweetcake or fresh oysters I would not have but three hundred gold pieces encourages reflection.”

She looked at him.

“The book in Helion,” he said. “The man brought it, I paid him, and you burned it before I had finished counting. Today you produced drawings that appeared to explain what our expensive tablet could not.”

“The tablet is a close record of instructions and details for operating a power not seen in a long tim it appears to be unaltered by time.”

“And the book?”

“The book was written based on memories of the tablet and it explains its own part as best it could with the limited knowledge that was given its author some several thousand years after the fact. There were however many things within it that were still useful to us.”

Fateese glanced towards the fireplace.

“You must have read remarkably quickly.”

“I had studied the library's plans before that copy reached us. I had already retained what I required.”

He drew out a chair.

“Then we purchased a book you did not need?”

“We purchased the only other surviving copy anyone has ever heard of.”

His hand remained on the chair back.

Delrona placed the cloudy tablet over one edge of the larger drawing. Its silver lines met the copied channels at several points.

“The book showed the design. How power was gathered from moving water, from heat beneath the ground, and could do so from air. It showed how those sources fed the same system, and how the Heartwell regulated the flow of all that energy into one interconnected system at a constant flow. The Mystral curator's tablet gave me the sites and the operating relationships. Locations. Alignments. The Crystalline Lines between them.”

She moved the tablet slightly. “Neither was sufficient alone.”

Fateese sat.

“So the fire did not destroy the knowledge.”

“Well not the knowledge but it did destroy someone else's opportunity to acquire it.”

He remembered the painted figures curling into the flames. “There were eleven people around a crystal.”

“My research has them as representatives of the Crestrealms.”

“And in the image they were all taking part in the system that controls this power?”

“According to an artist’s account though I have never been one to allow artistic propaganda sway my convictions.”

“An inconvenient illustration for the people to whom you were giving a toast and who didn’t know you were preparing for a new age.”

Delrona smoothed the drawing beneath her fingertips.

“Well, it conveniently no longer exists.”

Delrona smoothed the drawing again, though it already lay flat.

“They have been quite content to admire Sylvan marble while keeping us outside the rooms where decisions are made. Our Guardians may defend their roads. Our scholars may instruct their children. But let one of us presume to direct them, and suddenly there are concerns about ambition.”

Her fingers stopped upon the outline of the Heartwell.

“Do you remember what they called me when I questioned Kefar? How readily they repeated it? Every failure was evidence that I had reached too far. Every success was something the veyl dammed High Council had graciously permitted.”

She looked up at Fateese.

“I have spent years learning what they neglected, obtaining what they buried, making myself useful to men who could scarcely understand the questions I was asking. And now I am expected to place it all before them and wait while they decide how much authority I deserve?”

Her voice had risen. She seemed to hear it herself.

“No.”

She drew the plans towards her.

“The Sylvan Watch will have its rightful place. Our architecture, our learning, our disciplines will shape the age that follows this one. The other Crestrealms will come to us for guidance, for power, for permission. Their children will grow up knowing whom to thank.”

A small smile returned to her face.

“And when those children’s children have forgotten that Kefar ever governed them, what I have established will still endure. An age, Fateese? I am preparing for eons.”

She straightened the edge of the tablet against the drawing.

“Surely our people deserve a future that cannot be taken from them merely because someone objects to me.”

He looked at the sheets on the table. They contained the channels, the measurements, the arrangements needed to make the apparatus work.

There was no copy of the eleven figures.

* * *

In Delrona’s private workroom, the lamps had burned low enough for Fateese to smell the heated oil. Beyond the closed windows, the harbour bells marked the late hour. Most of the Exchange had gone quiet, though occasionally footsteps passed outside the door.

The table between them was crowded with drawings, calculations and the cloudy blue tablet. Its translation lay beneath a small bronze weight. Fateese slid the sheet free, careful not to disturb the plans beneath it.

“Our little Astryx curator was quite firm about this part,” he said.

Delrona remained seated opposite him, studying the alignment drawing.

“He was firm about his price as well until he understood the actual conditions.”

Fateese tilted the translation towards the lamp.

“‘It says, “No single point can safely command the entire network.’”

He read the sentence slowly again so as not to miss anything. After her declaration about the future of the Sylvan Watch, its plain wording seemed almost impertinent.

Delrona did not reach for the sheet.

“I remember.”

“The Keeper’s figures seem to favour him,” Fateese said. “We could scarcely begin the trial without interrupting the work of the Heartwell.”

“The figures establish that the Heartwell cannot supply this trial with adequate power while performing its present duties,” Delrona replied. “They do not establish what another installation can do with its own sources and a prepared reserve.”

Fateese lowered the sheet.

“And the warning? Does that also depend upon where we conduct the trial?”

Delrona turned towards a second leather case resting beside her chair. Its clasps were newer than the worn straps securing it.

“You are assuming that we must operate the system exactly as they did.”

She opened the case and lifted out two books. Both were smaller than the tome she had burned in Helion. One had lost its original cover; its exposed first page was darkened where generations of fingers had held it. The other had been rebound so tightly that Delrona had to support its spine while easing the pages apart.

Fateese moved the drinking jug to make room.

Delrona found the passage she wanted and laid the open book beside the alignment drawing. Small diagrams crowded its margins. Several had been corrected in a different hand.

“These works are attributed to Syterra,” she said. “Their account of combined casting goes beyond what the curator understood.”

“Attributed by whom?” Fateese asked.

“The people who preserved them.”

“Are they the same people that sold them by any chance?”

Delrona looked up from the page at her doubting servant in disgust.

“My people that I trust obtained them. I have tested enough of the methods to judge their value.”

Fateese glanced at the cramped annotations. He could not tell whether they supported the original writing or disputed it.

“Well it's nice to know you trust someone at least. Tell me what sort of methods?”

Delrona touched the crystal at her wrist.

A bead of water rose from the jug.

Fateese watched it climb until it hung above the open space between the books. Its surface trembled, catching the lamplight. Then a narrow current of air began turning it. He felt the movement against his knuckles.

Dust stirred in a crease between the floorboards. It rose in a thin stream and gathered beneath the suspended water, forming a small, uneven rim. A spark appeared within it.

Fateese pulled his sleeve back.

The spark brightened. For a moment, the water, the turning air and the ring of earth held together above the table. Delrona’s fingers moved slightly, correcting something he could not see.

Then she lowered her hand.

The water fell into the jug with a soft splash. Dust scattered across the tabletop. The spark vanished, leaving a faint smell of scorching.

Delrona watched Fateese brush his cuff.

“Water, air, earth and fire,” she said. “A correction applied where each is needed. The original arrangement distributes those responsibilities between separate operators. One measures, another adjusts, another compensates for what the adjustment has disturbed within the subject.”

She placed her hand beside the diagram.

“I need not wait for eleven people to agree before making a correction.”

Fateese looked from her crystal to the translation he still held.

He had seen enough to believe that she could perform the combined movement of elements. He had also stood beside the apparatus that morning when its measuring needle struck the stop.

“The tablet may be warning against the correction itself,” he said carefully, “rather than the time required to agree upon it.”

“The tablet describes the capacity available to its builders,” Delrona replied.

Fateese turned the sheet towards her and put one finger beneath the sentence.

“It says safely, my lady.”

Her eyes settled on his finger.

He withdrew it.

Delrona took the translation from him, read the warning once more, and laid it beside her calculations.

“Then our work will establish the margin of safety as decided by us.”

She replaced the bronze weight. The warning remained visible beneath it.

Fateese drew his chair a little farther from the table. Delrona had already returned to the book.

* * *

Delrona drew a fresh sheet towards her.

This diagram had no water channels. It showed an opening, a space beyond it, and a row of small marks.

“How many men?” Fateese asked.

“That will depend on how long we need to control and maintain passage.”

“You intend to send Guardians.”

“Equipped and fully charged.”

He followed her pen to the far side of the drawing.

“And they will... what... suddenly be inside another Crestrealm?”

“At a site connected to the Lines. Near its centre, if the old locations have survived.”

“And if they have guardians of their own waiting at these sites?”

“A garrison conserving the last of its charge cannot hold against an overwhelming force arriving with fresh crystals and replacements.”

Fateese sat back.

“No siege?”

“No need, we will arrive at the very heart of their Crestrealm with power and surprise like lightning.”

“The guardians will appreciate that a swift and overwhelming force arriving that subdues them. The people being conquered may require an explanation.”

Delrona set down her pen.

“Once the Guardians are there, we shall have time to provide one.”

Fateese looked again at the lines of blue on a map of Aethorian Crestrealms. There were no roads leading to them or connecting them. No ships that could provide escape. But crucially no approach upon which a guardian might see the force coming.

“Have you established that a guardian can actually pass through? I mean its sounds like a type of mage work that is beyond anything we have encountered.”

“The operating account describes transport of many souls.”

“That is not quite the same answer, one has to end up dead to reveal one's soul.”

“Which is why we are preparing an experiment.”

She passed him a separate sheet.

“Have Drell calculate the reserve for successive companies. Carrying frames, equipment and replacement crystals as well as the men. Separate the journey to the testing site from movement through the installation.”

Fateese took it.

He had arranged ships for men whose destination was secret. This was the first time he had been asked to arrange a destination without a journey.

* * *

The next afternoon, Rahkhan collected the escort equipment list from the stores office.

Maerith was checking it against Drell's revised requirements. She gave him the sheets concerning the journey north and returned to a second schedule.

“Your inspection copy includes the frame weights,” she said. “Check them before the loading party signs.”

One narrow leaf had been folded into his copy. It carried the same revision number as the equipment list, but its columns concerned something else.

Receiving site. First company. Following company. Crystal reserve on arrival.

Below the headings was an instruction to omit coastal transit stores from the receiving-site calculation. Each company was to arrive with its defensive charge intact. Replacement crystals would follow after the receiving space was secured.

The destination column had been left blank.

Rahkhan read the leaf again.

“Is this part of the escort list?”

Maerith looked at it.

“No. That belongs with the provisional calculations. It should not have been folded in.”

“Receiving-site calculations for Alfadin?”

“Ask the officer preparing them. I have been asked for weights.”

He returned the leaf.

In the corridor, he took out his notebook and recorded its number before he could forget it. He wrote the headings he remembered and the instructions concerning defensive charge.

He had not seen an approved deployment order. He had no destination, no date, and no explanation of how companies could arrive without consuming their travelling reserve.

But the calculations concerned armed men arriving ready to fight, followed by more power once they had secured a place.

He left space beneath the entry for the officer's name.

* * *

Delrona summoned the Astryx scholar after supper.

The dismantled apparatus remained in its travelling crates. He brought the calculation with him and placed it on the table as though it might have improved in the intervening hours.

She ignored it.

“The Alfadin installation,” she said. “Its original channels. How much of the local gathering system could be restored?”

“We would have to examine it.”

“You will have full access to it and as much power as you need.”

He looked towards the copied plans.

“The scholars there may have records we lack. Measurements made over time. The monks may know which parts have remained active.”

“Then prepare the questions you require answered.”

“And their cooperation?”

Delrona opened the Council commission.

“Access has been authorised.”

“There is still the question of a return alignment. Until we measure both ends, we cannot know whether the reserve....”

“You will make your measurements before I order an opening.”

The scholar nodded, relieved to have obtained that much.

Delrona called Fateese to the table.

“The reserve already assigned to Alfadin is to support the gateway work. The apparatus goes with the expedition. The scholars are to examine the local sources before any trial.”

He began writing.

“And the Heartwell?”

“Continues charging unaffected by the goings on in Alfadin.”

She laid the copied design across the commission and placed her finger upon Alfadin Monastery.

At the Heartwell, every interruption had required an explanation to people standing close enough to see the cradles stop. In the mountains, she would have her reserve, her officers and the scholars she had selected.

“We shall conduct the experiment there,” she said. “We have reports from two sources that there are towers there that once powered could allow us to utilise our ring to allow access to any of the other points on the line.

The scholars gathered his unanswered questions.

Fateese recorded the decision.

Delrona closed the case containing the tablet. The bronze weight remained on the translation, holding the warning flat against the table.

Thy Quest: What the Evidence Supports

Delrona reads the network's warning but believes she can overcome it. Identify two reasons for her confidence and explain what the aborted Heartwell trial actually establishes.