The Greatest Discovery

The Talk

By the time Pattis reached his rooms, it was all he could do not to curl up on the floor then and there. He managed to kick off his shoes and coat but removing the rest turned out to be too much work for his exhausted mind. He collapsed, dressed, on the bed and must not have moved a muscle since - the belt buckle was stinging his right thigh exactly where he fell on top of it at night. The sun, the only thing that kept its usual schedule in Dumadari after the Everstorm, was already stubbornly poking his eyelids with its sharp claws.

He wanted to crawl back into the oblivion of dream, away from this ruthless sun and the waking nightmares that shattered his peace the day before. Away, far, far away, from the feeling of disconnect and confusion that now permeated the sad but once simple story of his loss. Eleven years were enough to learn to function after the death - or murder? - of his father. But to heal? No.

It was the emptiness in his belly that eventually pulled him on his feet. His room was not the only one in Dumadari, where an empty stomach would be heard growling today. It was his job to try to silence them.

Pattis didn't even stop by the little cupboard where he and Jamsiou stored foodstuffs: those shelves were emptied days ago. There would be no food distribution line today either. Well, more time for work, he assured himself and walked out of the building, chose the direction opposite to the one leading to the tower, and headed that way. Time. He needed time to think.

First, he thought, trying to organize his questions in a resemblance of a list, there is the issue with the soulcaster spren involvement. If the spren did manipulate the stormlight into healing those gemstones somehow, my father... he swallowed hard but forced his deduction to keep up with the rhythm of the steps, my father would have to feed the spren the corresponding Intent. Was that certain? Could he trust what Juliyah said about the soulcasting mechanics? He decided he would. Her story of a dim sun, etched into the onyx sky, and a sea of inanimate souls seemed too bizarre to be anything but true.

But that would imply that my father would have to know how a soulcaster works. Not only that, but somehow, he would have to make it work on gemstones. That would imply that his father - even as well-connected among the ardentia and as well-read as he was - not only knew the secrets of a clandestine soulcaster order, but improved upon them in a way that a trained crystallographer like himself could not figure out after eleven years of work. Even knowing that the precedent did take place. Even paired with a soulcaster who told him of those secrets.

Pattis increased his pace. Second, assuming my father knew how to heal the emeralds, why would he not share the knowledge? He could become a world-famous scholar for just this discovery alone. Pattis turned a corner to find a group of seven solemn-looking men uprooting an old dalewillow. He wanted to tell them that the roots were no more edible than the rest, but one look at their faces told him they would not even stop to listen. He turned around and left them to it.

Third, what try healing the emeralds in Kostanari? The village was starving but there was not a single trained soulcaster available in a radius of at least a hundred miles to use them for the device. With father dead, they would need someone else who knew how it worked to produce even a single longroot. A single longroot...

Something tickled at his memory and he stopped short in the middle of the street. A man, carrying a water barrel almost walked into him, but Pattis didn't notice his sullen curse. He repeated it almost exactly, though. Kalak's breath, but should have seen it! The answer was staring him in the face all night. And that would mean... Storms! How did he not see it immediately?

Pattis whirled around, squarely running into the barrel-carrying man this time, mumbled an apology, and sprinted back to the tower. He was glad for his brother's scouts' training with all the running and staircase climbing he had to do these days.