Michael Manning - The Line of Illeniel

“I wonder how high it is,” I mused looking at the rock walls on the northern side. I walked closer and spotted some sage growing a few feet from the river. Never one to waste an opportunity I decided to take some back for my mother. She always needed extra seasonings for her cooking. I was embarrassed to discover I had forgotten my knife. “Hey Dad, do you have a knife on you?”

“I’ve got my pants on don’t I?” he snapped back. I should have seen that one coming. He grinned and handed the blade to me. “Can’t believe you forgot your knife. I thought I raised you better than that!”

I cut a large section off and tucked it away before handing the knife back. “It has to be over a hundred feet high on this side,” I said looking up again.

“Yeah but it’s only thirty or so on the other side,” Royce pointed. “We’ll have to extend the length once we get over that. Still, it looks promising.”

Penny gazed eastward into Shepherd’s rest, “The river doesn’t look big enough to fill that up in the time we have.”

“You’re forgetting the spring thaw. Once the mountains warm up the river will be swollen with snow-melt,” Royce reminded her. “It’s getting dark. I guess we’ll have to camp here tonight.”

“I can see in the dark,” I told them. “If you don’t mind riding a few more hours we can sleep in our beds. Besides, I want to be there when the visitors start arriving tomorrow.”

The next day moved slowly at first. I was anxious to see what help we could expect from the Lancasters. When I had last seen James he hadn’t yet decided what his response would be to the King’s call to arms. He had planned to meet with King Edward the day after we left and I was nervous about the outcome of that meeting.

Chances were high that he hadn’t returned yet from the capital, which meant that Genevieve would be forced into making decisions that could possibly go against his wishes. Either way it had the potential to become an awkward situation.

Since I had nothing else to do with my morning I decided to work on my new idea. Our planning session had highlighted the fact that we needed a way to force the enemy to avoid the road and march through the low part of the valley. We also would need a way to destroy our new dam when the time was right. I thought I had something that might achieve both goals.

Last year, during the battle against the cultists in Lancaster Castle I had used a spell I lovingly called a ‘flashbang’. I know… the name could use some work, but I had yet to find a better term for it. In short it involved creating a small focused point of energy that would flash outward, producing an intense light and a thunderous sound. It wouldn’t actually damage anything nearby, there wasn’t any explosive force involved, but it would blind and deafen anyone within a short distance of it.

Of course what I needed now would require explosive force as well. That would be easy enough, my command of Lycian was much better now. I could easily craft any number of variations on the spell, adding fire and a physical explosion would be simple, even if they did require more energy. The big problem was that I couldn’t possibly be everywhere I would need to be when the enemy arrived. Driving the enemy from the road would be done primarily at the western end of the road, while at the same time someone would have to be destroying the dam on the eastern end of the valley. I couldn’t be in two places at once, and it was at least a six hour ride from one end to the other.

This also ignored the fact that I had a fair idea that so many violent uses of power would exhaust me before I had completed either task. What I needed was a way to set the explosions up in advance. My previous experiments with enchanting had given me an idea though. I had created a paring knife that drew in heat energy and stored it. Unfortunately it had exploded spectacularly after drawing in more energy than the enchantment could contain. I thought I could replicate that feat by removing the ‘heat absorbing’ component. Essentially I would set runes upon a small object to store energy, which I would provide, and then release it at the appropriate time. Depending upon the runes I used I thought I could manipulate the type of release, fire, light, etc…

I tried it first using a small block of wood. I inscribed it with simple runes to contain the power and encircled those with a second set of symbols. Hopefully those would channel the energy released into a fiery explosion. Once I had it ready I began focusing my will upon it, pouring as much energy into it as I thought it could contain.

Fortunately I had the sense to try my experiment outside while holding a strong shield around myself. Before I had managed to get half the energy within it that I ‘thought’ it could contain it blew up in my face. I was sent tumbling back almost twenty feet while flames raged around me. My shield protected me from the worst of it but two trees nearby lost most of their leaves. I made a note to have them cut down. We would need the lumber anyway.

I tried again, this time maintaining a more respectable distance. It was a bit harder charging it with power from twenty feet away, but I managed without too much difficulty. This one also exploded at about the same time. Although the explosion was impressive, even at twenty feet it knocked me down, it was still nowhere near what I hoped to achieve.

I used a larger piece of wood for my third test, reasoning that perhaps the overall size of the object might be related to the energy it could contain. It did hold a bit more before it blew up, but still I wasn’t satisfied. Finally it occurred to me to use a different material, so I tried using a rock the size of my fist.

This time the explosion was powerful enough, even at twenty feet to send me flying. The force of it threw me into a tree and caused my shield to collapse, a shard of stone tore a lovely gash in my cheek. I won’t go into what I said when that happened, but I had been studying my swearing diligently ever since the day Cyhan had inspired me with his nautical prowess.

By this time my ‘show’ had drawn some spectators, my father among them. “You nearly killed yourself that time,” he said clapping me on the back. “Keep working at it and you’ll succeed I’m sure.”

“Thanks Dad,” I said sourly.

“Try doing it downhill over there, there’s a big boulder you can shelter behind. That way you’ll have something stronger to shield you from the blast,” he suggested.

I could have kicked myself for not thinking of that already, “Good idea, but I’m still not getting what I want out of this thing.” I explained what I had been doing. Although he knew nothing of magic my father was very experienced in many other ways. I thought he might have a better idea. Turns out I was right.

“Sounds like the strength of the material is the key, or maybe the density,” he mused, “either way you won’t find anything stronger or denser than iron around here.”

“I don’t want to destroy your bar stock,” I told him.

“Nah… just use some of the slag left over from when we made those necklaces of yours. I probably have twenty or thirty pounds of the stuff waiting to be re-smelted,” he offered. Slag was the bits of melted iron and dross left over from casting objects. Unless it was re-used it was nearly useless.

After a short search I found a piece the size of a child’s fist. It was highly fractured and would probably shatter the first time a hammer struck it but it might do perfectly for my test. This time I gave myself a thirty foot safe zone and hid behind the boulder he had pointed out. I poured power into it for almost fifteen minutes without results. I had already put in twice what I thought I would need for a decent explosion and still it was holding it. That suited me fine since I planned to stop and create a second spell to release the energy on command later, but I thought I should find out what the tolerance was before doing that. I didn’t want to have any accidents later by trying to put more in than they would hold.