Demesne 162 - The Mill Stone (Patreon)

After breakfast, and reluctantly putting away the almanac in her room so that it wouldn't be damaged by the rigors of a day's work, Lori met with the pair of stonemasons who would be needing her assistance in making the mill stone so it would be done sooner as the rest of the threshing was being finished. Rian did the talking, introducing them to her—why did he do that? He knew she didn't care nor would she remember—in one of the alcoves on the second level of the Dungeon as she inspected the stone they had apparently chosen for this. From what the almanac said, the stone for the something like this needed to be one that was sufficiently hard so that she wouldn't end up eating sand with her bread, which was something the almanac warned of for demesnes that didn't have a Deadspeaker who knew how to fix teeth.

There has also been a note reminding Whisperers that, no, they shouldn't use earthwisps and mass from the teeth of dead beasts to repair your own teeth without proper training and experience. It was followed by a list of very painful-sounding complications from attempting to do so, ending with 'and you'd still need to see a Deadspeaker anyway'. As Lori didn't want to have to deal with a Deadspeaker, and she wasn't sure if Shanalorre's savant-healing extended to teeth and repairs thereof, she decided to do her best to make sure it wasn't necessary.

They began once Lori had satisfied herself as to the suitability of the rock. She softened the stone and reduced its viscosity as she could, making sure to keep it solid so that there weren't any bubbles to weaken their structure, then reshaped them to be reasonably round and thick. Round was much easier to make then flat. All she had to do was reshape the stone to be taller than it was wide, alter the viscosity, and then released her hold of the structure without releasing the binding. This made the stone ooze out more or less evenly in all direction on the flat ground. She did this twice, and ended up with two round stones a little over half a pace wide and half a hand thick at the edges, and somewhat thicker in the middle.

After that, the stonemasons took over as she sat nearby, keeping the stone soft by reducing its cohesion, at least near the surface of the material. It wasn't a binding she had a lot of practice in, as she had never worked anywhere there was any call for it, but she knew the theory, and more importantly she knew the practice thanks to the flow diagram in the almanac refreshing her memory. Lori had to maintain the binding, adjusting it as needed to account for what the stonemasons were doing and having the binding's effect extend deeper into the stone as they removed material from it.

If she had merely bound the entire material and then walked away—which was the kind of lazy thinking a Whisperer who'd never done this sort of work would conceive—then the entire stone would have reduced structural integrity. This method allowed for a softer, more malleable outer surface that could be worked while having the rest of the material retained the structural integrity to not be damaged. She had read about the process in an old biography about how the walls of Dungeon Binder Lamses Dungeon, Dendilys, had been decorated with finely detailed artistic works using this method, the flow diagram included in the almanac was much better than what she would have come up with to do it. In the privacy of her own head, she had to admit her initially conceived method of doing it would probably have resulted in a hard rock with a coating of stony sludge.

Thankfully, she wasn't bored. Watching the two stone masons work was fascinating. The two used an assortment three different and a wooden, round-headed hammer to shape the stone with a speed that Lori would have called rushed had she not been used to how fast a skilled worker at their craft could get something done. Well, after the first few hammer strokes revealed the altered consistency of the stone and they managed to adjust, anyway. As the men who had picked the stone, they had known and expected it to be much harder, but once they had adjusted to its altered properties from Lori's biding, they worked quickly.

Lori was almost jealous at how quickly they flattened the respective stones there were working on, using only changing angles of their chisels and a straight-edged metal rule to measure. She knew better than trying to replicate it with her whispering. It seemed almost easy and casual the way they did it, so it was probably a skill the two masons had worked for years to master. Soon, the two stones were level except for a fist-wide, thumb-thick upraised area in the middle of one that was match by an almost equal depression in the middle of the other, and Lori adjusted her binding as the two men stacked the stone on top of each other. The two pieces almost stacked perfectly, and after a little readjustment they soon fit smoothly.

While the exterior was a bit rough—from her experience with carpentry, perfectly smooth surfaces were the very last thing you applied to a work, literally why it was called a 'finish'—the stones were beginning to look like they were a single piece cut in half. It was hard to tell if it was a purely aesthetic step—it certainly made the whole thing look more pleasing—or something that needed to be done to make a later step or a function of the tool more efficient. Lori had seen a lot of that in carpentry, things that had been done that had seemed excessive or pointless that were later shown to be very necessary, and would have been inefficient or inconvenient to add at that point. Well, they were the stonemasons. Until she'd observed then enough to at least be able to reasonably internalize their construction logic, she'd keep her mouth shut and focus on the Whispering aspects of the project.

The two worked so fast that Lori had to shift her seat several times already to keep both stones in view, so that she could see where they were working and anticipate where she had to alter the binding. One was carving out a channel inside the rim of their stone, while the other was making his stone a bit smaller, removing material from the edges. Thankfully, they soon learned to be mindful of not positioning themselves to block her line of sight, though she still had to move in any case when the work in question needed their complete focus or could only be access from such a position. Well, she was used to that too, at least the situation was far better than it would have been had she merely been a Whisperer and not a Dungeon Binder, or else she'd need to keep touching both stones to be constantly in contact with the binding. At best she'd have been touching metal contact points connected to whatever work surface the stones were one. At least this way she could move anywhere she needed to without having to worry about someone getting entangled with her contact wire. At worse, she wouldn't have had a mobile contact wire, and be stuck in one spot, trying to see….

None of them spoke, all of them concentrating on their work, and Lori was personally proud she was able to keep up with the two craftsmen. Neither had to obviously change their pace to adapt to her not being able to adjust her binding quickly enough, and the stone didn't break or fracture in any way that wasn't intended. Speaking would have been difficult anyway, since between the hammers, the threshing going on elsewhere in the second level, and the work being done by the carpenters—they seemed to be in the midst of producing a lot of shutters for the windows of the houses above—the alcove was full of the sounds of productive activity. While the individual sounds were different, the din they caused was, if not exactly comforting—her times employed in workshops had been full of labor, exacting requirements, the need for speed without losing exactness, and she always felt like she wasn't paid enough beads for her work—at least familiar.

Then the call for lunch came in the form of Rian, she waited for the two craftsmen to finish what they were doing and put away their tools before reaching out with her will to deactivate the binding. It was standard workshop procedure that the wizard was always the last to take their hands off whatever was being worked on, though it was a bit more literal in the workshops. After all, a binding being removed before it was safe could be disastrous, while it was usually always safe to stop using your tools on something. Unless that tool happened to be tongs holding hot metal, but that was just be facetious.

Lori rose and headed up to the dining hall as they began putting away their tools, both to get out of their way and because she was hungry. But then, she always was after she came from the workshop. Ignorant people joked that all wizards did was breathe deeply and touch things, but that was like saying all accountants did was sit and write numbers down. Concentrating was tiring work, which was something those uneducated jokesters never seemed to understand, and concentrating to respond to the actions of other people was wearing. Compared to that, just willing stone walls to get runny and moving them out of the third level was simple. The only moves she had to account for her own, and she could fall into an efficient rhythm. It would take many, many more millstones before she could reach that state, and so she was tired.

So when Lori sat down at her usual bench, it was to a heavy, tired sigh despite the fact that technically she'd been sitting for most of the morning, closing her eyes as she leaned forward on her elbows.

"Difficult morning?" Rian said.

"It was a difficult morning fixing your glaring oversight, yes," Lori said, maintaining her pose.

"Wow, you went straight for that. You're really tired."

"Such great skill at observation. How long did it take to you realize the women sitting next to you have been flirting with you?"

"Do you want me to get you two bowls of stew for lunch instead of just one?"

That question finally made Lori open her eyes and stare blearily at her lord across the table from her. "What?"

"A second bowl," he said. "You obviously need the energy if you're this tired. You went straight to the table instead of going up to get your sunk board." Next to Riz, Mikon looked disappointed. "Or the almanac, for that matter. If you're too tired for either, you're too tired, end of sentence."

Lori waved a dismissive hand. "Fine, fine. Go ahead." A second bowl of stew sounded… temptingright now, actually.

"Take a rest while you wait, then," Rian said, and what had he thought she'd been doing. "There's nothing to report anyway, and the most urgent stuff, how far along the millstone is, is something you'd know better than I would."

Lori frowned. Did she know that? The stones had changed substantially over the morning, but she couldn't exactly say how complete it was… "Find out how complete the millstone actually is," Lori said. "It seems to be progressing well, but I want to know how much progress was actually made, and if it can be finished by tonight."

Rian, thankfully, just nodded instead of making some quip. "Yes, your Bindership," he said. "I'll be back with the report and your food. In the meantime, just rest."

Lori gave him an annoyed look, but leaned on her elbows again and closed her eyes. Just closed her eyes and let the sounds of the dining hall wash over her…

Having two bowls of stew did, in fact, help her mood and her tiredness. The report that the millstone would probably be done by tomorrow morning was slightly less helpful for her state of mind.

"Pellee and Markes say that's already very good time, thanks to you," Rian answered her impatient scowl. "A lot of time would otherwise have gone to shaping the stone and getting rid of excess, but you saved them a lot of time with that, and what you're doing to the stone is letting them go even faster. They say they can do it by today, but the millstone would be very crude, and aggravating to operate, and would cost us later in wasted flour."

"Fine, fine," Lori said, eating quickly. She swallowed. "Tell them to make the best millstone they can so we only have to do this once."

"No changes to what they're doing, then," Rian said cheerfully. "Apparently some of the things they'll be making carving into the stones are a catch rim and a built-in hopper to make grinding a lot of flour easier." Oh, was that what that thing was? Now that Rian said it, she could see it in the work that had been done. "The carpenters have already finished the wooden rods for the dowel and the handle, I'll bring it to you after lunch so you three can start fitting it in. They say it might be better if you fit it with Whispering."

"Rods?"

"The things have turn around something, and the person doing the turning needs something to hold," Rian shrugged.

Lori nodded, tucking that away for later.

"I should probably tell you this is unlikely to be the only millstone you might need to make," Rian continued. Her gaze on him sharpened. "When the demesne gets bigger, or at least when we have a bigger harvest, we might need to make a millstone that's connected to a waterwheel, for proper mass production."

"Why can't we simply connect the one we're making now to the one powering the lathe?" Lori demanded.

"We could… but it's frankly not necessary yet." Rian shrugged. "Someone would need to operate it, but with the right setup they'd be able to do it by themselves all day, and while connecting the millstone to a water wheel is relatively simple, we'd need to keep spray from the water part of the wheel from getting on the floor, which in the case of the downstairs water wheel means either raising up a wall between the wheel and the millstone to prevent spray, or using a really long axle. Both would take a lot of time to build. At this though, point there's nothing bad about a manually-operated millstone. And you did say we couldn't have the harvest celebration until the millstone was done…"

Lori rolled her eyes and went back to eating.

When she finished her lunch, she didn't linger, heading back down to the temporary stonemason alcove after using the latrine. The two stonemasons were already back, and she almost felt like she was late… but pushed that thought away. Instead, she sat back on her bench as she checked the bindings on the stones, then activated them, softening the surface layers again. "You may begin," she said, sitting down for the next shift of work.

The millstone took shape over the afternoon, and by the time they stone for dinner, both halves were looking more distinct and different. The stone that would serve as the base had channel all around it now, as well as a spout, presumably for the flour to flow down to a container. The other half had a large bowl-shaped indentation on one side, with a hole at the bottom, which by the illustration in the almanac was where the vigas or any other grain would be loaded for milling. There was also a central hole through both stones, into wish the rod that Rian had mentioned rested, acting as the pivot point for the stones.

It was nice working with professional craftsmen who knew what they were doing. It looked like they actually would finish tomorrow. It seemed Rian would have his holiday soon after all.

She'd still have to make sure he didn't find any further excuses to ask her for more holidays. They still had a Dungeon farm to get started on building.