Crystal Throne (Book 1) (19 page)

Thad took the offered hand and did his best to keep the look on his face natural. “This must be the lovely wife you keep talking about.”

The young lady flashed Jarrod a warm smile. “Yes, though I think you are lying for the sake of my husband. Now why don’t you sit down so that we can have a nice meal, and you can tell me all about how you and my husband got to know one another?”

Thad found Jarrod’s wife to be funny, beautiful and completely wasted on her husband. Life was seldom fair, but Thad was glad that this time it was the underdog that had won out. She was wasted on Jarrod, but seeing her on the arm of one of the dressed up fops would have been a true tragedy.

Her father, on the other hand, was as different from his daughter as could be. Thad had never had a father, nor a real father-in-law, and seeing the plump use of space across from him, he was silently glad of it. It took every effort to keep a smile on his face and from the looks of Jarrod and his wife, they understood the effort he was putting in.

As soon as the meal was over, Jarrod pulled him away from the table with an excuse about a young lady that was searching for the hero of the arena. The plump man scoffed and looked to his daughter and they took that as an excuse to quickly make their exit.

Thad said his farewells to his friend and made his way back home. Thankfully, the two would still be able to talk since rank two and three shared the same floor, though in different areas. Jarrod helped in both though he preferred the lower ranks. He said that it was before the fighters got too full of themselves. When Thad arrived home, they had already learned of his win. One of the benefits to being in the city was that magic could be used without fear of being overwhelmed, though the magic acted a bit different than normal and it had taken the gods awhile to get the hang of it. Now though, they could change the color of their skin by laying a thin layer of illusion over it and walk among the city.

Thad wasn’t in the mood for another celebration, so he retired to his room to work on one of his projects. He still had many ideas and wanted to start putting them to crystal and metal.

CHAPTER XXI

The days passed quickly to Thad. During the morning he trained and in the evening he worked at the forge. It didn’t leave him much time, but what little was left he used to work on enchanting.

The work on the sword was moving slowly. Thad had to fold the metal numerous times, but to make it harder he had to fold both metals, that in the end would become one, but that was still a long ways away. The one thing Thad didn’t like was that after arriving at a new rank, they wouldn’t let him fight for thirteen days and there had to be the same amount of days between each fight. It seemed that each rank had longer breaks between fights. That little bit of news would mean endless days of listening to Belaroan complaining.

Back at the home, things were going well as long as he didn’t have to spend too much time with Belaroan. Bren was starting to talk more, but it was hard to find much to talk about so Thad had nudged him to talk about his childhood which was one of the things Thad missed while he was stuck in the void. Thad still didn’t know what to think about his son, but he was starting to like him as a man, if not a son. Thad was proud of what he had learned about his son and felt some pity about how his mother had treated him. If anyone knew how controlling she could be, Thad did.

The days continued on and the fights still were easy. The biggest event was when he was afforded a chance to watch a fight between rank five fighters. Unlike the other fights, the ones between rank five and champions, you had to have a special pass to get into to, so that only the most prestigious in the city could watch, that was unless you wanted to rent one for five gold marks. The fight was great and after the show Thad wasn’t sure that he could have beaten either man without the aid of his magic, but that was something else he had learned. Magic was outlawed even among the fighters. If someone was found to have magical powers they were to be brought before the great lord and they either joined her service or were killed outright.

When Thad talked to Jarrod, he had to be careful not to give away that he wasn’t from their homeland. In the end, Thad had to get most his information from Seth and his wife who were more than willing to talk to him. It was the only place in the city that he didn’t have to keep his guard up all the time. Even at his house, he had to walk on egg shells as Belaroan would look for any reason to complain and sour the time for the rest of them.

The armor was finished, leaving Thad only having to enchant it and that would be a problem on its own. Thad had learned that the people of Seth’s homeland had magic, though it was different that his own. They didn’t enchant like he did. From what he learned, the magic smiths would soak items in ether while they chanted spells over it. Thad was sure that if he could train for a bit he could reproduce the effect, but he didn’t have time to experiment and if he messed up he might destroy the armor.

Thankfully, Seth had an enchanted hammer that had belonged to his father. It didn’t take long for Thad to understand how the enchantment worked. It made the hammer harder and added force to strikes that the smith made. The only real different was that it wasn’t so much enchanted, but enspelled, though Thad wasn’t sure how it stayed powered for such a long period of time. The main thing was that Thad had to make sure that any enchantment he made didn’t pulse, but kept a steady outlook of ether. He didn’t know if the scion lord had mages watching the fight, but he didn’t want to risk using the armor if it destroyed his plans. The second problem was how to explain how he had gotten the armor. Seth was able to give him a good reason for that. It seemed that during major crossings people were allowed to bring their possessions and Thad’s imaginary father, if he had been a soldier, could have brought them with him.

The sword could have been explained in much the same way. For all purposes, he had hired Seth to make it and Seth would tell anyone who asked that he used metal that he had brought over from the homeland. In the end, Thad decided to keep it simple, but the way he had to make it work was anything but simple. Most the time when he enchanted an item, he only had to engrave a spell on the item and link the gem to the spell so that it could power it. If he did it that way, then as the spell was used, the power in it would weaken momentarily as the gem drew in more energy. Thad couldn’t keep that from happening completely, but by linking many smaller gems to the main one he could make it such a small fluctuation that no would could see it. Beside the simple protection spells that would push against any force directed at it, Thad added two other spells that would mask the ethereal energy that the armor used and one that linked the armor to Thuraman. That took a long time to figure out as the staff’s ethereal lines had been long since set in how they moved.

Thad was amazed every time he looked upon Thuraman with his magical sight. He didn’t think that if he tried for a thousand years that he could reproduce the effect. The staff had moved past a normal enchantment and become a life of its own. As Thad watched the staff’s pulsing lines of energy, it reminded him of the veins in the body that carried blood. In the end, Thurman had to make the initial connection and Thad just had to use his mind to reinforce the connection. The connection to Thuraman didn’t add anything to the armor itself, but would allow the staff to act in a limited manner, through the armor, to heal Thad if it was needed.

Once the armor was completely finished, Thad went back to work on the sword with vigor, hoping to have it finished before he moved up another rank; but having to work on two pieces of metal at once was taking much longer than he would have thought. About the time of his fourth battle in the third rank, the metal was ready to be combined. Just like when he folded the metal, Thad pored magic into the metal as he shaped it. Once the softer metal was shaped to look like the sword, Thad started to work the harder and more brittle metal where the blade would be. That would make the blade itself more flexible and allow it to move with the power of the swing without worry about breaking, but also allow a sharp blade that could cut through a tree without losing its edge. The blending of the metal also gave the edge a beautiful look like when oil spread across the surface of water in the morning sun. The blending was a slow process and took far longer than Thad would have expected, but one started he couldn’t stop without making an inferior blade.

When Thad finally set down the hammer, the sun had long past set and the moon hung high in the night sky. He had no fight the next day and there was no rule about having to practice daily, though he felt bad about missing one, but given the state of his body he doubted that he would be of much use with any weapon for a few days.

Though completely worn out, Thad lifted the blade to his new sword so that he could look at it in the moon light. The blade was just short of four feet long and it had a slight curve to it. The tang of the blade was smaller than was common, but Thad knew that it wouldn’t break… at least not without great force. The hilt had been finished for days and had been done by Seth since it didn’t require any magic. It was a simple design and was a foot long and had a circular guard to protect his fingers and hand.

Thad took the armor with him, but left the sword with Seth so it could be delivered to the arena since he still wasn’t high enough level to carry it with him.

The walk back to the house felt much longer with his body pushed past the point of exhaustion. He was proud of what he had accomplished and he felt his chances to get into the champion level fights would come, though not as soon as he wished.

When he reached his house, Thad found that only the scions were still awake. Then again, the scions never slept. He gave them a slight wave before heading back to his own room to fall into a deep sleep.

He was so tired that even in his dreams he didn’t notice the darkness swarm around him and pull him off. Like many times before, he found himself in the room he had shared with his wife in the Farlan palace. He expected to see Maria when he turned around, but he was surprised to see both his wife and Sandra sitting there.

“What honor brings the two most beautiful women in the realms to see me?” Thad asked with a bright smile.

“Such flattery,” Maria said with a weak smile. “In my youth I might have stood beside my daughter, but I fear age has not treated me as kindly as it has you.”

It was true that there was a little more silver in Maria’s hair and lines had started to find their way onto her face, but she looked as lovely today as she had when he had first met her. In many ways she was much more beautiful as when he had first met her; she was more a spoil child who flirted in awkward ways. “Nonsense dear, you’re lovelier now then you have ever been,” Thad said, meaning every word of it and bringing a slight blush to her face.

“If you two are done trying your best to turn my stomach, we are here for a reason mother,” Sandrea said with a dour face, though Thad could have sworn he noticed a smile shining in her eyes.

“That we have,” Maria said, her face turning as emotionless as stone. Thad always shivered when he saw her do that. Not just because he liked her smile, but because she only used it when she was talking about business. “Crusher has gotten ahold of enough of the black glass, but he needs to know what you want done with it. He wants it ready for when and if you return. We have also started sending forays through the portal to retrieve crystals, but the doorway is still unstable and as you said, only mages of decent power may go through and only then for no more than a few hours. Thankfully, crystal is easily gathered as it is everywhere from what the reports say. The real problem is that tower of yours.”

“Are they causing trouble?” Thad asked, though from what he saw when he was watching Bren and from what other news he had received from these dream meeting, he was sure of the answer.

“Trouble would be an understatement father,” Sandrea said with a scowl. “Bren has been gone far too long and his proxy is finding it hard to keep the peace with the tower. Mother has already sent a contingent of guards to help him, but the tower grows bolder with each passing day. I am sure that soon they will try to break away.”

“That is not the worst of it,” Maria said, the hate in her voice evident. “They are sending mages to all the rulers. They claim to offer their service and knowledge, but in truth they are trying to push the kingdoms into their own vision. The fool Joren they sent here was thrown out after a few days. Tried to order me not to aid you or protect my son’s throne. He tried to convince me it was only a ploy of Bren’s to take my throne as his own.”

“That will have to be dealt with, but there is little that I can do from here,” Thad replied as he thought about the situation.

“I know you can’t do anything, but if they keep pushing it I will,” Maria said sternly. “I know you didn’t want kingdoms to interfere with the tower, but if they insist on interfering with mine, I will knock them down a few levels. When you return, you might find a hut instead of the tower you built.”

That sighed internally, but there was little he could say. He had tried to build the tower in such a way this wouldn’t happen, but men had twisted his rules and laws to fit their own ends. He should have known it would come to this. He could only hope that the peace lasted long enough for him to straighten the situation before it turned into another bloody war. “Have you talked to Bren about this?” Thad asked, hoping that his son had found a better solution than he had.

“Yes, though he didn’t seem that interested,” Maria said, the annoyance in her voice evident. “Since he doesn’t plan to come home, he said that it would be you that would have to deal with them and luckily that you were far more qualified. They only saw him as your son looking to build his own name. You, on the other hand, were their hero and founder. They would have to heed your words. In some ways, he is as naive as you were when you sat down the laws of the tower.”

“Then, I would suggest that you were and are my queen and I support your commands,” Thad said with an inward clutching of his chest. “Just don’t take it too far… Please dear.”

Maria smiled, though it was nothing pleasant, it was the kind of cold smile one saw on his killer before his death. Thad did his best to direct Maria’s wrath, but he knew that it was useless and soon he found himself being pulled back to himself.