Wizard's Price

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"Chaz, show me the most current map of the Iifa's course," Rune ordered, partially focused on the book and partially on the sand he was pushing around on a little black marble tray.

"You want just the one or a conglomeration of different ones?"

"Whichever is most accurate."

"All right...An-n-d...Here you go."

Lucia lifted her head from the task that Rune had set her to take a peek into Chaz's open pages. Her hands stopped moving on the clay that she was working. When she looked up, to her disappointment, she could still see nothing. Chaz's pages were as clean as ever.

But when Rune leaned over it, he ran his fingers down over something winding over the pages. She saw his mouth moving as he spoke to himself – something he did often – while he perused whatever information that Chaz was giving to him. In the marble tray, about the size of his two hands together, Sen was pushing around some of the sand herself.

Lucia wanted to ask what he was doing. She wouldn't get an answer. When he was working, Rune tended to tune out everything around him. By necessity, she found. Chaz and Sen could and often would get into vicious verbal battles. The first day Lucia had seen it happen, she had literally begged them to stop fighting. In return, she had received two blank looks.

Simply, they didn't consider their 'discussions' to be arguments. They were just talking in their minds, getting along in their own odd way. So there was nothing for them to stop. Lucia would just have to learn to tune them out as Rune did.

The last few days had been little more than this. Lucia would appear in the workroom with breakfast, usually of sliced fruit that she picked from the garden. Rune would already be hard at work. He would thank her, but they didn't stop to sit and eat as they had the first time.

Lucia didn't know why, but she used to think that Rune only worked occasionally. She had assumed that he had done big works every so often but in between those great works he would relax and recover and prepare for the next great work.

That was not at all true. In between the great works that she was used to seeing, he was doing a great many small works. He created potions that hedge wizards could not. He worked on something he called the barrier around Luceria Ostia. He saw to the general health of the land. Most importantly, he saw to the constant care of the Iifa River. To sustaining the life that lived within it, to ensuring the water remained pure, to making sure the floods that occurred did so only when the people were prepared, and to keep it flowing properly on course so Luceria Ostia didn't go without. The Iifa River was their ultimate source of life. Without it, they would all die very quickly. Rune, without once bringing it up to her father and mother, kept track of it daily to make sure it thrived.

Just in that moment, he was creating a replica on the black marble tray that would mimic the bottom of the river from the sand he had poured onto it. There was a delta building under the water that was threatening to split the river. It was already disrupting the fishing boats. He needed to smooth it back down so that the river wouldn't be impacted.

It wasn't just as simple as smoothing it down and being down with it, either. He was studying the current course of the river, the records of the course of the river. He was reading reports from fisherman about the water bottom and the behavior of the current. He had been preparing for nearly an hour now just to cast this one spell. It wasn't nearly as simple as waving his hand.

In contrast to him, Lucia was busy molding a piece of clay that Rune had created for her. He had infused it with magick and told her to make something with it. If she visualized it properly in her mind while working the clay, it would begin to become the object she wanted. He had recommended something simple because she couldn't manage anything complex yet.