Caladin’s Climb—Part 14 (Patreon)

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          Lenny gave Caladin a quick nod, then ran into the houseboat, through the door, and came out on the other side. He jumped down onto the wet shore and immediately continued up the bank before disappearing into the woods to the North. If anyone would be capable of catching up to Jaeryl before he found his rebel king, it would be Lenny.

          “I’m sorry!” Maggie said, wringing her hands in distress. “I’m such a screw up.”

          “Not at all,” Caladin told her. “The mistake was mine. If I’d managed my mana reserves better, this wouldn’t have even been a problem.” As it stood, Caladin couldn’t afford to waste mana chasing after Jaeryl or he’d never get his teleportation circle running. He suspected Jaeryl must have realized the attack by the local city militia had put a strain on Caladin’s mana stores. He’d probably even suggested to Lenny that I needed his help and that Maggie could watch him. It was a mistake to underestimate the man.

          The best thing Caladin could do to help track down Jaeryl was to finish his teleportation circle. Once it was operational he could replenish his stores of mana and fly after Jaeryl. He might even be able to subtly ask Brorn for a tracking spell that worked on zombies, though that would be risky. Brorn could be incredibly insightful once his interest was piqued.

          Caladin snatched up the enchanted shackles that had been on Maggie’s wrist, then herded his two new undead servants inside the store. The undead were done with the roof and walls and had moved on to constructing shelves under the direction of the carpenter. He was really quite accomplished at that sort of thing and had organized the zombies into a line where each of them only had to do a single simple task before moving their shelf down the line. “Don’t stop on my account,” Caladin said as his carpenter looked up to see what he needed. He continued past them into the back corner of the store, which he planned to turn into his office once more important things were done. At the moment it was just a large empty room with an open doorframe where the door would later go and two open holes on the outward-facing walls where the windows would later be installed.

          With a simple ferromancy spell, Caladin turned the silver shackles into liquid metal then got to work shaping the teleportation circle and the requisite runes into the floor. The shaped mana in the shackle’s enchantments that was intended to restrain a powerful wizard was able to be reshaped to cut down on the mana requirement for that first part of the project.

          It only took Caladin a few minutes to get the basic circle down and calculate the necessary runes to use for incoming teleportations. He also had to add a bit more extra wiggle room to account for the shifting of the water since the store was technically a boat. Once that was done, Caladin added in Brorn’s custom security measures that were designed to kill incoming wizards that tried to come in from outside his network. The basic upside-down flip defense wouldn’t work over water, so Caladin modified two of the runes so that the target’s body would turn inside out instead. It was only a small adjustment, and one he thought Brorn would approve of considering it would leave the target just as dead.

          The bothersome part was the outbound enchantments to connect to Brorn’s network. They had to be incredibly accurate to work. Except Caladin was on a houseboat. The level of accuracy normally required would be impossible on such an unstable surface. Instead of spending the better part of an hour doing boring measurements that wouldn’t matter anyway, Caladin just fudged the distances a bit, widening the area the circle would pull from so that even if the boat moved around a bit, it would still work. In Caladin’s opinion, Brorn’s insistence on doing things the “right” way didn’t always make sense. Often there was a method that would get 80% of the results with 20% of the effort, and his teleportation circle was a prime example. He didn’t even understand why accuracy was supposedly so important with teleportation circles. It wasn’t like he had a neighbor in the house next door whose teleportation was going to get disrupted by Caladin’s enchantments.

          When he was finally done it was dark out. Caladin came out of his office to find Maggie placing simple peasant’s rush lights around the massive room for the others to see by while the zombie crew continued to build shelves. They’d already filled in a quarter of the space and appeared to have no plans to slow down. Pretty soon Caladin would have to start coming up with valuables they could start manufacturing. “Oh. Are you done in there?” Maggie asked when she saw Caladin emerge.

          He rubbed his eyes, trying not to stave off the exhaustion of the day for at least a few more hours. “Yup. Got the circle working,” Caladin announced, opting not to mention he hadn’t actually tested it yet. He’d originally been planning to send a zombie through first but he’d long since burned through the extra mana it would have taken to do a trial run. Either it would work or he would die. And if he died he figured he’d just wake back up in Brorn’s lab to a lecture about not completing his studies properly. “I’m just going to pop over to Brorn’s to recharge my mana. I’ll be back soon. You’re in charge while I’m gone, Maggie.”

          “Me?” Maggie said. “But I—”

          “You’ll be fine,” Caladin assured her. “Mr… uh, Carpenter isn’t going anywhere. And the rest of these idiots don’t do anything they aren’t told to do beforehand.” Caladin didn’t actually know the carpenter’s name.

          “My name is Carlos,” the carpenter said from nearby. Apparently, he’d been in earshot.

          “Fine,” Caladin said. “Carlos isn’t going anywhere.” He gave the place a final once-over before returning to his office. Once he left, he couldn’t guarantee Brorn wouldn’t immediately want to come by to check on things. The two new zombies he’d made looked conspicuous. He covered the runes carved into their skin with a quick pair of illusions that would last a few hours. Even dipping into his mana stores for that tiny bit would trim the margins on his trip back to Brorn’s manor, but he considered the tradeoff worth it for the peace of mind. The last thing he needed was for Brorn to come by unannounced and notice—

          Pop. The unmistakable sound of a vocomancy spell going off sounded from Caladin’s office. He turned around, heart racing. If he’d screwed up the security enchantments and someone else had gotten into Brorn’s network, he wasn’t in a position to have a fight. He crept up to the door and peeked inside. Standing in the middle of his empty office, Caladin saw a tall man in a three-piece suit stroking his goatee as he inspected the teleportation circle. It was a face he recognized. Brorn.

          “Uh, hi,” Caladin said. “I wasn’t expecting you so… soon. How did you even know I’d finished the teleportation circle?”

          “You didn’t check in,” Brorn said. “I gave you that sending stone for a reason. Where is it?”

          Caladin patted his pockets, not finding it. “I know I had it somewhere…”

          “Here,” Brorn said, leaning down and finding the stone among a pile of discarded books on the floor. Caladin vaguely remembered taking it out of his pocket while he was studying because it kept digging into his thigh.

          “Sorry about that,” Caladin said. “Honest mistake.”

          Brorn leveled a flat, unamused look at Caladin as he handed the stone back. “Be sure you keep it on your person in the future. Have there been any problems?” Brorn looked around the office, not appearing overly impressed.

          “Uh, nope,” Caladin lied. “Everything’s fine here. And look. The new store is already coming together.” He stepped to the side of the door and gestured for Brorn to come out and look around.

          Brorn walked out of the manager’s office and into the main room. He looked over the undead servants all pounding away at shelves. “Eight, nine, ten. Very good,” Brorn said, then he hummed to himself in a disapproving way. “Caladin?”

          “Yes?” Caladin responded.

          “Tell me… why do those two have illusions covering up the shoddy resurrection runes on their skin?”

          Caladin swallowed. “Um, uh, I uh…” He trailed off, not sure what kind of lie would get him in the least trouble but also not willing to tell the whole truth.

          “We had a slight… hiccup,” Maggie spoke up, saving Caladin from having to come up with anything himself. “Some of the locals from Jakarta arrested me. They forced me to lead them back here, but Caladin saved me. He ran them off with his magic, but then he had to fix two of the zombies that we lost.”

          Brorn frowned. “Caladin?” he said. “Why is this servant talking to me?” Maggie put a hand over her mouth in embarrassment and ducked her head.

          “Her name is Maggie,” Caladin said. “And I told you I was going to Repair a few of them so they could help on the project. Thank you, Maggie.” He gave her an encouraging smile, trying to impress that his thanks was for more than just answering Brorn’s question, but also for coming up with such a plausible lie that was close to the truth. He knew there was a reason he liked her so much. He turned back to Brorn. “Like she said,” he continued. “Some bureaucrat tried to come in here with maybe half a dozen soldiers to force me to pay for permits and probably also extort a bribe. When I refused he tried to have me arrested, so there was a fight.”

          “Interesting,” Brorn said. “And you defeated these soldiers?”

          Caladin shrugged. “It wasn’t that hard. I had a lot of spells prepared. I think I may have intimidated them into leaving us alone for good.”

          “Were they just a simple militia, or were they trained in combat magic?”

          “Combat magic,” Caladin said. “At least a few of them were. Not that it did them any good. Only one of them even managed to get a spell off. Their equipment was also lightly enchanted. I managed to recover some and put it on display.” Caladin pointed to displays by the door where the armor and weapons were already sitting out.

          Brorn smiled. “You will sell their own equipment back to them? I like it.” He looked over at the two new additions. “What about those two? How were they destroyed? You said your foes only got off a single spell.”

          “Uh,” Caladin stalled, trying to come up with something that would make sense. Lying wasn’t something he was particularly experienced at. “There was…”

          “Fire magic,” Maggie volunteered. “Caladin protected himself, but two of the others were caught in the blast. I was so scared. I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t been there. He was worried you would be cross with him for not taking better care of your property. He did his best to replace them.”

          Brorn scowled at the undead woman. “I do not like her speaking up like that,” he said. “Is it really necessary she be self-aware?”

          Caladin slid between Maggie and Brorn real quick. “Yes actually,” he interjected. He wasn’t about to let Brorn dismantle the woman after she stood up for him. Twice. “She has been extremely helpful. I have found that keeping a small number of reliable servants intelligent improves the productivity of the others. They can supervise for complex tasks. You should try it more often. It’s not as dangerous as you seem to think.”

          Brorn hummed to himself in a disappointed way. “Very well. I will allow you to do things your way in the store, but only as long as it makes money. If I don’t start seeing returns on this investment soon, I’ll have to step in and start managing the project myself.” He stopped and sneered at the two zombies Caladin had created. “I appreciate you trying to help,” he said, “but next time you need to replace one of your undead, I prefer you use a better method. Binding the soul to their bones is an intermediate technique you might be ready for. Those two are going to stop working as soon as their skin starts to rot. Which won’t be long, believe me.” He tsked, more concerned about Caladin’s attempt at necromancy than by anything related to the store. “I can’t have you out here embarrassing me like this. The store has my name on it! What will people think when they see zombies here that a child could have made? I thought I taught you better than this.”

          “What?” Caladin sputtered. “No you didn’t! You barely taught me the basic version of that spell. I even had to come up with my own way to harvest the souls I needed. For a master necromancer you’ve taught me surprisingly little actual necromancy. If I embarrass you, it’s your own fault!”

          Brorn stared at Caladin for a moment with his cold, sickly-green stare, lips pressed in a hard line. It was enough for Caladin to regret his choice of words. Then his features softened. “You remind me of myself when I was your age,” Brorn said with a slight smile. “That is both a good thing and a bad thing. You are lucky I am a patient man. We will discuss your study of necromancy later; when you have proven you can be more responsible. For now, be grateful I am unwilling to repeat the mistakes of the past. Next time you feel you must create new zombies, enchant their bones, not their skin.” He stroked his goatee again. “Now tell me… where did you get their souls from? They are… peculiar.” He trailed off. “Tell me, boy. How did you make them?”

          Caladin was a little confused. It seemed like there was more going on that Brorn wasn’t telling him. He seemed to have that habit of keeping secrets though, so Caladin doubted he was going to get anything out of him by asking about it. He opted to answer the question directly. “Mosquitoes mostly,” Caladin answered. “I used an aeromancy spell to gather them up, then pulled out their souls with that spell you taught me. I had to modify it slightly to target a lot of little souls instead of one big one, then I used an astramancy barrier to keep them inside the bodies and used lithomancy to inscribe the necromancy bindings.” He shrugged. “I was just kind of improvising on-the-fly.”

          “Mosquito souls,” Brorn repeated. He chuckled. “Ha! What a wonderful idea! I never liked the things when I was alive either. I always wondered why nobody ever wished them away in their little wizard tournament. Bigger problems in life, I suppose.”

          “It does seem like a waste of a wish,” Caladin agreed. “I actually read about a wizard in one of your books who claimed to have invented a spell to kill every mosquito within a league in an instant, but he couldn’t find any king willing to pay him to use it so he destroyed all copies of it. There are some written descriptions of the one demonstration he did of it in Findalion’s Oddities and Strange Stories. If you want, I could try to figure out how he—”

          Brorn cut Caladin off with a curt gesture. “I assure you I do not,” he said, guessing at what Caladin had been about to suggest. “Come. You have been gone for days. I am sure you are low on mana by now and you need a proper meal. I have food ready for you: venison with wildberry sauce. It is a delightful combination of flavors. You must try it. The tartness of the berries is something I expect you will enjoy.”

          Brorn could be scary sometimes with the way he flip flopped between terrifying master of death to eccentric noble. He was back to more comfortable topics now. Caladin had dodged the proverbial arrow. It wasn’t as though Caladin actually knew what punishment Brorn would subject him to if he was caught blatantly disobeying orders, but everything he imagined seemed gruesome. The worst thing Brorn had done to Caladin directly so far was force him to watch the slow decay of one of his repaired undead. It had been intended, Caladin was told, as an object lesson on the cruelty of forcing the dead to come back to consciousness in a dead body, but Caladin still saw the whole thing as a waste. Rotting wouldn’t be a problem if he just repaired his undead regularly. Sure, it was a lot of extra effort and mana, but when it came to Lenny and the rest of his family Caladin would be more than willing to go to that effort.

          With necromancy sufficiently mastered Caladin thought death ought to just be a choice, not an inevitability. He wasn’t sure why Brorn of all people didn’t seem to agree with that conclusion.

          “Coming,” Caladin said. He followed Brorn back into the manager’s office where the necromancer triggered the teleportation circle and disappeared in a pop of displaced air. Before he left, Caladin leaned around the corner and gave Maggie a thumbs up. “I owe you big time, Maggie!” he said. “Thanks for covering for me.”

          Maggie chuckled. “Oh, don’t you worry about it. I don’t have to understand all that magic nonsense to know you were doing something you weren’t supposed to. You remind me of my kids. I was always protecting them from my husband’s temper too. He was much worse than master Brorn. You’re probably worrying more than you ought to.”

          Caladin nodded, not really sure what to think about being offered life advice from an undead zombie he’d awakened. He thanked her and followed after Brorn, triggering the teleportation circle and using the last of his mana in the process. It worked exactly as intended. He appeared in Brorn’s study with a pop. Brorn was already halfway out of the room.

          Even though Caladin desperately wanted to fill up his mana and hurry back to check on Lenny and his runaway eldrin soldier, he couldn’t afford to appear to be in any kind of rush. Brorn had seen how things were over there and would know there wasn’t anything pressing going on that would require Caladin’s attention. He ate with Brorn and chatted about the new store as though everything were normal. Brorn was impressed by how boldly he cut off access to the river and planned to extort any who tried to ship goods up or down stream. He also agreed that building the store right in the middle of a river that was supposed to act as the border between Setsya and Eldesia was a brilliant move. “Of course, it’s not enough to have the law on your side,” Brorn said between sips of a deep red wine.

          “Yeah,” Caladin agreed. “I found that out pretty quick. But I expected it and dealt with it. The only thing I really want to improve is how active the Setsyan side of the border is. If I get the dryads to start using our store too, they’ll be more likely to back me up if the eldrin try to move in again. I just don’t know how to get their attention. They rarely leave their forests and they’re apparently busy with some kind of domestic issue. I ran into a dryad on my way there, but she didn’t elaborate much on what the issue was or how long it would be going on.”

          “Hardly surprising,” Brorn commented.

          “I guess not,” Caladin agreed, “but that doesn’t change the fact that the dryads aren’t even patrolling all their forests regularly. A fire broke out to the Northeast of the shop. Took out all the trees for a few leagues.”

          “Hmm,” Brorn said. “Normally the dryads can be counted on to prevent those kinds of things from getting out of control.”

          “I assumed as much,” Caladin continued. “I guess the point is that until something changes, we can’t actually count on the dryads to step in if an army is rallied to come kick us out. I tried to imply we were on good terms with the Setsyan Empire, but I’m not sure what we’d do if they decided to call that bluff.”

          Brorn waved a hand. “That’s not a problem,” he said. “Don’t concern yourself with patrols or lack of patrols. If the Eldesians march on us, I can send an anonymous tip to Queen Rusalia that her forests are in danger of being destroyed. When they see the army approaching, whatever little domestic dispute is going on up there will dissolve. I promise. There is nothing to unite dryads like a threat to their forests. That recent fire you mentioned will be to our advantage. It will make the threat seem credible.”

          “And what if the commander of the Eldesian army just tells the dryads they’re after us?” Caladin asked. “Is there anything we can do to keep them from passing on a message like that?”

          “No need,” Brorn said. “Let the Eldesians tell them they’ve mobilized an entire army to evict a single merchant shop. Rusalia will see it as a pretext to get their armies close to the border. No. Your placement on the border is a stroke of genius, Caladin. We’ll be able to escalate any attempts to govern us into a political dispute.” He took another sip of his wine, then reached up to stroke his goatee again. It seemed to be an ingrained habit of the body he was currently wearing. “Unless… you aren’t trying to start a war between Eldesia and Setsya, are you boy?”

          “And if I did?” Caladin asked with a shrug. “Wouldn’t that just be a business opportunity? We could sell weapons to both sides and we’d be uniquely placed to collect any bodies if there’s a battle nearby. Just wait till I start selling extra mana from your well to the local eldrin population. I was thinking we could slash the price on that one product to half or less of the price in the nearby town. Use it as a way to get people in the door. You’re not even collecting what you have here, so all it would take is a little effort to assign some servants to load in mana potions, then swap them out when they’re full. You could still use the well whenever you need, but it could be making us money on the side. Just think what will happen if all the local eldrin start buying their mana potions from us. They’ll become dependent. If anyone threatens to disrupt our business, the locals will advocate on our behalf.”

          “It sounds like you really put some thought into this,” Brorn said. “I am impressed. I thought this was just an excuse to get out of the manor and get up to no good.”

          Caladin laughed. “I can still get up to plenty if I stay around here.”

          “True,” Brorn agreed.

          “Speaking of no good… what happened between you and the dryads? It seemed like there was some history between you. That dryad attacked me when she thought I was you. She mentioned something about… Halidor Field?”

          “Ah, that,” Brorn replied waving it off as though it were a minor annoyance. “You have to remember I was younger back then. Still trying to make a name for myself. I had a small legion of zombies I was trying to pass through Setsyan land. The Tree Wardens tried to make me go around. Some words were said, some people were killed. It was really all so tedious. I assumed they would leave me alone after that, so I continued on my way only to be ambushed a few days later by a sizable force of dryads. I had to kill them all, of course, but not before they destroyed the very army I’d been trying to transport. You see? The whole thing was such a waste.”

          “I don’t get it,” Caladin said. “Where does the field come into that story?”

          “Oh. I think their little ambush might have happened on a field or something. I didn’t pay attention to the name at the time. I only found out later when an official letter of condemnation was delivered to me from Queen Rusalia. Ironic, don’t you think?”

          “Ironic how?” Caladin asked.

          “Well if she’d responded to the petition I sent her asking for a Rite of Passage the whole thing could have been avoided. Anyway. That’s old news.”

          “Not to the dryad I met,” Caladin said. “She seemed pretty upset about it. I got the sense that it was personal to her. Why would that be?”

          Brorn seemed to think about that. “I suppose that could be because of the way I killed the dryads that fought against me. You see… dryad souls don’t normally go through the same cycle of death as everyone else. When they die, they either get replanted and wake back up a few weeks later like nothing happened, or their soul wanders off and finds a tree to settle down in. I have never been one to waste a perfectly good soul, so I put them to more useful purposes. They didn’t like that. That’s actually how I came to own this manor.”

          “What, by killing dryads? Did they give it to you out of fear?” Caladin was aware the manor was on Setsyan land; he’d just never thought the dryads would have been involved in giving it to him.

          “If only it were so easy,” Brorn said. “No. I traded for it. You see, I didn’t use up all the dryad souls I captured right away. When the queen found out I had them, she negotiated for the return of the remainder. A pity, really. I learned a lot from those experiments. Dyrads really have the most fascinating souls. Wish made. Did you know that?”

          “I didn’t,” Caladin answered. The meal was over now and the conversation was dragging. Caladin was starting to feel a sense of urgency, though he didn’t want to let on. He tried calling a servant over to take away his empty plate.

          “Mine too, I suppose,” Brorn said to the servant. He downed the last of his wine and placed the empty glass on the plate before it was taken away. “It was nice catching up, Caladin,” he said. “But I have some books to sort and file. We can talk later.”

          “I thought you already sorted your entire library,” Caladin said as he stood up from the table.

          “My broker came by this afternoon with a deal that was simply too good to pass up, so I made a little purchase,” Brorn explained. He patted Caladin on the shoulder on his way out of the room. “Not to worry. Your new store is going to make plenty of money. That’s what you keep telling me, isn’t it?”

          “Yes,” Caladin said with a rigid smile. He could feel his eye twitch involuntarily as he watched Brorn head up to his study. It was too much. Brorn was down to eating meals entirely foraged from the local swamp and he was spending the last of his money on a useless collection of rare books? He was impossible! Caladin didn’t need that kind of pressure with everything else going on. Brorn would be sure to start visiting constantly now that he was broke and believed Caladin was the solution to his money woes.

          As soon as he was sure Brorn wasn’t watching or listening, Caladin made a break for the mana well. He leaned over the side of the well when he reached it to soak in mana as fast as possible. While his mana bars charged, he started furiously producing any scrolls he thought would be useful in tracking down Lenny and Jaeryl, then a few extra in case more trouble showed up at the shop. That gravimancy spell had seemed like the one the soldiers had been least prepared to defend against, so Caladin made a bunch more of those. It checked all the boxes for an aspiring necromancer: remove the threat from the battlefield instantly and kill it without creating a huge mess.

          Once that the scrolls were taken care of, and his mana bars recharged, Caladin hurried back to Brorn’s study and used the teleportation circle. When he returned to the Brorn-Mart he found things mostly as he’d left them. The undead workers were still pounding together more shelves despite how dark it was outside. In another couple hours they’d be done, then he’d have to worry about what to put on those shelves.

          “You’re back,” Maggie said cheerfully. “Did you eat?”

          “Yes, yes,” Caladin answered distractedly. “Do you remember which way Jaeryl and Lenny went when they ran off?” Maggie pointed towards the door on her right. Caladin walked briskly to the indicated doorway and sat down at the threshold. He pulled out a number of blank papers, still freshly charged up with mana from Brorn’s mana well and got to work casting every scrying spell he knew. He started with a simple one that used luminomancy and allowed him to specify parameters for the thing he was trying to see. He filled that section of the spell with a full paragraph of details describing Lenny. When the spell released all Caladin saw was a circle of darkness suspended in the air in front of him. There were only two pinpricks of green light moving around in the darkness to suggest the spell hadn’t just failed outright.

          Of course. It was dark out. Lenny could see in darkness because of his zombie vision, so he wasn’t using a light source to track Jaeryl. Scrying with light magic at night didn’t seem to be likely to work. He tried floating a globe of light in front of the image just to see if there was maybe a chance the image he was seeing could be illuminated on his end, but it didn’t work. He had to try something else.

          Next, Caladin tried a version of scrying that used cerebromancy. The vision he got this time was a mental one, but the result was exactly the same. He could make out snatches of movement on occasion—enough to be aware that Lenny was moving quickly through a dark forest—but not enough to make out any details. He gave up on trying to see Lenny’s location before morning. Instead, he cast a spell that would temporarily connect their minds. It was a different cerebromancy spell that was supposed to be cast while both targets were in the same room. Caladin just made a small adjustment to the suggested distance between targets section of the spell so that it would still work, then allowed it to pull as much mana as it needed from his supply.

          Who’s there? Lenny’s voice said in Caladin’s mind. He could feel Lenny’s state of mind in addition to his thoughts. Lenny was surprised and a little confused. He was sure he’d felt someone behind him but couldn’t see anyone.

          It’s me, Caladin said. I connected our minds with magic. You can hear my thoughts and I can hear yours.

          Oh, Lenny thought. I take it you got more mana then.

          Full up, Caladin told him. Did you track down Jaeryl yet?

          I’m working on it, Lenny thought. He’s good, but I’m at least as good. I actually think I’m better at this now than when I was alive. I don’t get tired anymore and I can see perfectly no matter how dark it gets. I couldn’t even tell the sun had set until I looked up.

          Yeah, Caladin told him. Your eyes don’t work the same. Just keep in mind that Jaeryl is going to have all the same advantages as you.

          I’m well aware, Lenny replied. Caladin could feel the frustration in his thoughts. I’ve been going as fast as I can but I’m losing him. I can’t track him as fast as he can run. Or, well, I could, but he keeps trying to lose me. He made four false paths by retracing his steps already. I fell for one of them and lost nearly half an hour. Then he walked down a creek bed for a full league. That was slow going figuring where he came out. He’s really making this difficult for me, Cally.

          Don’t worry, Caladin said. I can tip the balance back in our favor. Hold on. I’ve got an idea for something I should be able to use from here.

          There was a spell Caladin remembered reading from a book of cleaning spells, one of the first books Brorn had given him. It used nidomancy to track a bad smell to its source. It was intended to be used on things like finding a dead rat under the floorboards that was stinking up your house. Jaeryl and Lenny were perfect candidates for a “bad smell” spell, since they were both animated corpses. It certainly didn’t hurt that they actually had started to stink these last few days. Repairing them back to fresh corpses would be added to his list of priorities now that he had a reliable source of mana. He cast the spell and dumped what was probably more mana than anyone had ever dumped into it before. A blue-green haze of smoke erupted out of the air and flew off into the woods.

          You should see a cloud of blue-green smoke in a minute, Caladin told Lenny through their mental link. It will lead straight to Jaeryl no matter where he goes. That should make tracking him much easier.

          Blue-green smoke? Lenny asked. You know I can only see the color green, right? Oh! What’s that? A feeling of sudden surprise filtered back through their connection. I see that! A trail of smoke, just like you said.

          Good, Caladin thought. That means you were on the right track. Just follow that trail now. You should be able to move faster. Don’t worry about any more tricks. If he tries any, they’ll just slow him down now. I’m going to try to think of anything else I can do from here that might help. It was really a shame Caladin’s vocomancy wasn’t yet advanced enough to seek out specific targets across distances that large without a teleportation circle.

          Caladin quickly thought through some likely spells that could work from so far away. There weren’t really any others that came to mind. Spells like Hasten or Enhance Strength required at least line of sight and that wasn’t the kind of thing that could be cheated with a scrying spell. If he was going to help Lenny, his best bet was probably going to be modifying an existing spell. After dismissing a few possibilities, he landed on combining elements of the nidomancy spell he’d just cast. That nidomancy spell was able to target the object being tracked, so if he just used its targeting parameters he should be able to hit Jaeryl with something to slow him down. Entangling Roots seemed like the easiest option, since the roots could just hijack some existing fauna he was already walking over. There were other more lethal options to target Jaeryl with, but his goal was to recapture him, not—

          Wait. I just thought of something, Caladin projected to Lenny.

          What? You need me to stop running?

          Yes. I mean no, Caladin thought. I was just wondering why we were trying to capture Jaeryl.

          Because he’s gonna go tell that king of his about us, right? Lenny asked.

          Yes. Exactly, Caladin replied. He’s on his way to rejoin Philipus Haedril and we don’t want Jaeryl telling him about our family.

          I don’t get it, Lenny sent back.

          You don’t? Caladin asked. It’s obvious once you realize it. We shouldn’t stop Jaeryl. Once he’s recaptured, he’ll never help us find that base. He’d sooner die. But if he thinks he’s in control he’ll lead us right to it! We won’t have to spend months tracking it down, we can find it tonight!

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