"Magic?" Maester Theomore scoffed. "A mummer's farce, for children to dream about and the uneducated to be deceived by."
"I suppose you've never been to the Wall then, or Dragonstone," I shot back as Lord Manderly watched our argument with that genial smile of his but refrained from speaking up. "Because one was built of ice piled up so high it can easily be proven it should have shattered under the weight immediately let alone lasted for millennia, while the other was made of molten stone shaped in exacting detail."
"And those are the only two examples you will find," the plump blond man immediately argued. "What signs and evidence of magic we have is all in the past. Even the last dragon died centuries before. Perhaps magic was once a mighty force in the world, but no longer. What little remains is no more than the wisp of smoke that lingers in the air after a great fire has burned out, and even that is fading. Valyria was the last ember, and Valyria is gone."
"That's odd... I've heard those words before," or rather read them in a book in another life and world. "Does the Citadel have a class on how magic does not exist from which you're now quoting?"
"Of course we do," he scoffed again. "The world the Citadel is building is one of learning and fact, of knowledge and its applications. It has no place for tall stories of glories long since faded, distorted in retelling to make them seem more wondrous and fantastical!" He was really picking up steam in his little tirade, safe behind his arrogance and self-righteousness. "That we leave to gullible laymen and the charlatans that exploit them while we explore the reality of the world with the light of Truth!"
"That is indeed a noble purpose," I nodded seriously in agreement. "But servants of Truth should hold no place for arrogance in their hearts. For arrogance leads to preconception and preconception leads to dogma. And dogma is nothing more than wilful ignorance," I cautioned him. I could have shattered his claims and denials with a demonstration but I wanted to see how calcified his beliefs were before doing so. "Take heed that light you shine in the darkness is turned on you as well lest knowledge turn to sophistry and the search for truth indoctrination."
"Arrogance?" Theomore demanded sharply. "For five thousand years the Citadel has stood for knowledge and Maesters have pursued its spread. We have been the Knights of the Mind, the sole bastion of learning in the Seven Kingdoms and instrumental for their continued existence. Every wise lord has had a Maester since before the Doom of Valyria and while all that remains of magic are children's stories our knowledge and understanding of the world has only grown." He scowled at me, trying to stare me down despite me being the taller between us even while sitting. "From what tradition of learning you come, to question us? It is your arrogance to question the wisdom of the Citadel with nonsense claims of magic."
"I see," I said and I did. Of the Maesters' many flaws Theomore had just displayed some of the worst but it was good that he had. Twice the pride, double the fall, to quote a certain space wizard. "Allow me to make a small contribution to that ancient, towering bastion of knowledge," I told him with a smirk. Then I lit a fire in the bare palm of my hand and to make it more obvious that it was unnatural I made the flames purple.
"What?!" Theomore stared. Wyman Manderly did as well, and so did the guards. But institutional arrogance is not so easily dispelled with a small light. "Powders and trickery!" the blond Maester hissed angrily. "You think the Citadel is so easily deceived? Such a simplistic deception is part of the very lecture of seeing magic for the mummer's farce it is."
I smiled wider and then shaped the flame into a miniature dragon. A little purple lizard all of a foot long, shedding purple radiance between that of a large torch and a small campfire as it stretched and preened on my upraised palm. It flapped its wings once, twice, and then it flew. It soared around the food-laden table at a leisury pace in near-total silence, the only sounds interrupting it the crackle of its flames and the awed gasps from some of the people watching.
"As you can see," I told all those transfixed by my little display, "the reports of magic's death were greatly exaggerated." The little dragon started going through somersaults and barrel rolls and other maneuvers that would have been utterly impossible for a physical being of its size, shape and speed, but as it was merely flame shaped by my will such things were hardly an obstacle. The complexity of the shape made manifesting it a considerable effort but as long as I limited the pyrotechnics to within fifteen feet it remained a small strain that could be handled for a long time.
"That's... impossible!" Theomore finally found his voice, but his first instinct was denial. "It's a trick! An illusion!"
"Even if it were an illusion, it would be no less real magic for its intangible nature," I told him as my construct kept up its aerial ballet. "But as it so happens, illusions are a form of magic I've yet to get to work." I shrugged. "They're supposedly easier than real fire but I think that's a trick of perspective. Those that rely on trickery and deception might find them simple, whereas I who've mostly been a practical individual find more tangible spells coming easier."
"Can it do anything more than just fly?" Lord Manderly asked, leaning forth with the eagerness of a little kid shown a new toy. Even with foreknowledge of his character and looking for it, I could not tell how much of his demeanor was real and how much of it was feigned.
"Appearances aside it's a spell, not a living creature." Making those, or facsimiles thereof, was another sphere of magic entirely. "It is me and my magic doing things, not someone else. But if you wish to see something different..." My mental commands to the flames changed and the little flame-dragon dived... straight towards Theomore. The blond Maester yelped and leaped back, his instincts far less convinced than his mind that this was just an illusion.
But the Maester had never been the construct's target. It dived at the man's dish like I'd seen dragons do in the TV series, tiny clawed feet of solid flame snatching at a silver fork. The extra complexity and power pressed down on my shoulders like an invisible weight and an uncomfortable warmth followed the exertion, but the flame-dragon lifted his prize off the dish and into the air, carrying it away from Theomore and closer to me.
As the distance diminished the demands of the spell eased, then cut down to no more than a trickle the moment the construct dropped the fork into the nearest empty plate and no longer had to be tangible. Now just another bit of shaped flame less than a yard away, it left me with the majority of my power to wield towards what would happen next. The dragon-shaped purple flames opened their imitation jaws and a stream of bright yellow flame came out and bathed the silver utensil and the plate it rested upon with heat and radiance.
Drawing the majority of said heat into the metal, melting that bit of silver was an easy trick after working with larger, much harder to melt pieces of quartz. Once it had turned into a small puddle of molten, silvery liquid, I had the dragon-construct's breath cut off as I extended the mineral-shaping aspect of Valyrian pyromancy. Silver, it turned out, was much harder to work with than quartz. Trying to shape it was like trying to work with clay while wearing a particularly thick pair of leather gloves. But the amount was very small, it was practically at touching distance and my audience did not interrupt. Shaping it into a vaguely humanoid statue while maintaining the dragon was a chore but as it slowly cooled and maintained details more easily I managed to turn it into a rough, hollow statue of Neptune two inches tall, complete with trident.
"Damn, I need to practice more," I muttered as I examined my latest creation. Its artistic value was dubious at best, its features akin to a wax statuette that had been left out overlong in the sun. I picked it up, and with direct contact making fine control so much easier I started making corrections until it became properly presentable as artwork and not as a little kid's mud cake. At that point I realized my hosts had been silent for quite some time, so I looked up to them only to find both them and the guards staring in awe or shock. Theomore and some of the guards were even gaping.
"That was very impressive, young lady," Lord Manderly told me. "To melt and shape metal without touching it... 'tis a wonder made real."
"Eh, it still needs work," I said, frowning at the two-inch statuette. Its features were more realistic now but though its body remained that of an Olympian, its face now looked suspiciously like Wyman Manderly. Maybe my subconscious or my magic were trying to tell me something. "Compared to the Old Valyrian stone-shapers that raised entire castles out of molten rock I'm still a little girl playing with toys."
"Be that as it may," the older man said with the sigh of someone tired of dealing with younger people, "I'd be willing to buy this piece at a considerable premium." Maybe with all my shenanigans I was close to overstaying his welcome? Eh, I could tone it down now that my shattering arrogant Maesters' entire worldview was done for the day.
"Sire, no! That's a work of sorcery!" Theomore protested before I could respond to Lord Manderly's generous offer. "We don't know what it could do! It could twist our minds, ensnare our senses."
"I thought that magic was dead and gone, according to you?" I snarked, satisfaction and vindication blooming at seeing the blonde man so shaken. Maybe he wouldn't discard the evidence staring him in the face from the safety of his arrogance any longer. "Haven't you been listening? I've little skill in trickery or illusion, all my magic is very real."
"That's what a witch seeking to ensnare a noble for her own purposes would say," he shot back angrily. From his furious demeanor and absurd accurations, I guessed he'd moved on to the next stage of grief at reality not catering to his beliefs? "This is all a plot to gain power in White Harbor!"
"May I remind you that it was you who brought me here?" I refuted his claims with the logic Maesters supposedly loved so much but apparently discarded when it did not fit their beliefs as much as any other man. "I just wanted enough coin for the trip to Essos but one of your men confiscated my goods, your guards confiscated my equipment and attire, and you wanted to confiscate my knowledge as much as you could."
"Hah, more of your tricks," he retorted angrily, illogically. "All a plot tailored to get a cursed item in my Lord's hands but we saw through you!" Theomore was obviously grasping at straws now. Because if he had been thinking clearly he'd have seen the glaring flaw in his theory. But far be it from me to leave him in ignorance, especially when the truth was so much fun to share.
"I suppose you think you were terribly clever for outfoxing little old me," I told him, smirking widely. "Of course, that discounts all the other objects of my make you already got your hands on. If merely touching one little piece of art worries you so," I mockingly waved the silver statuette in his direction, "How about the other five dozen? You know, like the one you've been carrying in your pocket for a day now?"
Maester Theomore blanched, recoiled, his hand reaching towards said pocket before freezing halfway. I could practically read the thoughts forming in his mind from his rapidly shifting expressions, the struggle of two diametrically opposite but equally powerful urges there. The first to discard the possibly enchanted item as soon as possible, the second to not touch it ever again.
"Why are you so worried about magical items anyway?" I asked when it became clear he could not decide between the two. "I know for a fact you people have several in that Citadel of yours."
"Because they never worked," the former Lannister man blurted almost reflexively.
"Of course they didn't," I told him with a roll of my eyes. "You just have initiates sit in the dark with them overnight with zero training in how to use them. Even if they had innate magic - which one man in a thousand does - they wouldn't be able to use them any more than giving a farmer a mechanical clock and asking them the time of day in Stygai would get you a correct answer." I smirked again. "Pro tip; there is no day in Stygai."
"I believe this argument is meaningless," Wyman Manderly silenced Theomore before the Maester could dig himself in deeper. "It is clear the young lady is a true sorceress," the overweight noble nodded in my direction. "It is also evident that she means us no harm. Your fervor in protecting me does you credit my friend, but I believe it is misplaced."
"As you say, my lord," the Maester sourly agreed.
"I also believe that collecting her works from wherever they were... misplaced and bringing them here would be the duty of any well-meaning host," Lord Manderly continued. "Would you see it done for me, Theomore?"
"We're giving all the... artwork back then?" the Maester asked in a tone I could not quite place.
"Nonsense, Theomore. Such exquisite art and mirrors! We will buy them all!" Wyman Manderly added with a loud laugh, confirming how subtly vindictive he could be. "Unless they are, indeed, magical?" he asked me, one thick grey eyebrow raised in question.
"They were made by magic but are not magical in themselves any more than a loaf of bread is a baker," I told them. "Baking machines are possible of course, and so are magical artifacts, but for now barely artistic statuettes are my limit," I added, putting the miniature silver Neptune down for emphasis.
"Excellent!" the aging noble chortled. "See it done, Theomore."
"As you wish, sire," he agreed with obvious reluctance then he stiffly rose from the table and walked away. The moment he was no longer in the throneroom, Wyman Manderly's genial face turned serious.
"Leave us," he ordered the guards around the chamber and the few servants loitering in the corners. "All of you. I wish to converse with my young guest in privacy." The guards did so with only a couple of suspicious looks thrown my way while the servants seemed almost as reluctant to be away as Theomore had been to search for my... misplaced glasswork. But they all did follow the obvious order just the same.
"Not afraid I'll put you under a spell while the guards are away, Lord Manderly?" I asked conversationally.
"Maybe if I were twenty years younger and ten stone lighter," he joked softly, his tone more serious than not. "Besides, you just gave us that wonderful little dragon display and none of my guards reacted despite my face being far more delicate than silver."
"You're just as shrewd as my visions foretold," I complimented him. "Your man Theomore is too blond for trust, I take it? It was very well done, sending him away like that."
"In a better world the noble ideas of the Citadel would hold more weight but alas, the world is what it is," he agreed as he set his winecup away. "I am curious. What did those visions show you of me?"
"That you're one of the Starks' most loyal banner lords. In a time of the North's greatest peril you would confund enemies both without and within to come to their help." The older man's face remained unreadable as I continued. "And when another House murdered men of the North under guest right, your own son included, you did not react thoughtlessly as many other lords at the time would do. You pretended to accept their lies when they came in strength, welcomed their people to your table. When you went to the betrayers' wedding you even brought them pies. The best pies they'd ever had. You feigned ignorance of the peoples' disappearance, had set everything up well enough that no evidence would lead to you. And while some of them did suspect you of their people's murders, none of them ever realized they'd just eaten their own people in the pies you'd brought."
"...yes," the overweight noble admitted with a thoughtful expression. "That does sound like something I would do under such circumstances." He took a good, long sip of wine, wiped his lips with a napkin, and sighed. "Which House?"
"The Freys," I revealed. "But that future should not come to pass if the Lord Stark of the time does not trust them, or the current Lord Stark prepares adequately for the war to come."
"I see we have much to speak of," Wyman Manderly acknowledged. "But why come to me in this way? What do you want?"
"To live," I told him. "The most likely outcome of that future is all of us being dead in less than twenty years."
In its couple of square miles of area, the city of White Harbor had over fifty thousand inhabitants. It was not quite the size of late medieval London but it still was a significant city and despite being built in the cold of the North it was very active, with well-fed people, extensive markets and almost every type of good or service available to whoever had enough coin. As my purse hung heavy from the deal I'd made with Lord Manderly, I looked at the busy streets without really seeing them while internally cursing the customs man that had started this whole mess to begin with.
To make up for the difficulties I'd had to face and reward me for my information - his words, not mine - Wyman Manderly had made me several offers. First, he bought my entire stock of decorative glass spheres and mirrors then and there, at ten silver moons each. That had come at a bit over twenty golden dragons to begin with. Then he had offered me another hundred gold dragons, a fair ransom for a young noble, on top of that as "expenses"... and that was just his apology for my treatment by his men. It was a very large sum, far more than I'd need for passage across the Narrow Sea.
Unfortunately, the two ships that had been heading off to Tyrosh and Lys had departed while I was locked up in the Wolf's Den. Lys, with its primarily Valyrian population, open trade, great climate, and many sell-sword companies had been my destination, and while Tyrosh would have done as a second choice, other destinations were far less desirable. Myr was straight out for obvious reasons. Volantis had too strong a presence of Red Priests that I didn't want to get involved with so early in my plans. Pentos would be important in the future but I'd need more power and recognition to tackle the challenges there, and Braavos was lousy with Faceless Men and anti-Valyrian sentiment, not to mention too far from critical events I wanted to get involved in. More ships heading to Lys and Tyrosh would turn up, of course, but there weren't expecting one for at least another tenday, probably closer to two weeks.
Enter the bigger offers Wyman Manderly had proposed. One option was him offering another five hundred golden dragons and both his table and the guest quarters of the New Castle being open to me until another ship arrived. I wouldn't have to do anything else or offer any more of my time and effort, just enjoy his hospitality and comfortable castle life for all that time; it was the least he could offer for the services I'd given him so far. The other option was more like a business deal; he was willing to offer any resources needed for whatever projects I wanted to pursue for those two weeks of my stay, as long as the laws of the Seven Kingdoms were not broken or his honor and authority challenged by my actions. In addition, he would offer fair price for whatever marketable goods I produced in said projects. In either case he would also owe me a favor, something I could ask him of in the future, one significant enough to balance the scales between us.
Looking around at the busy city, the thousands of people hawking wares and plying trades in both the marketplace and the mile-long harbor, I was leaning strongly towards the business proposal. It was an unbelievably, stupidly open-ended deal by modern standards. Yes, what I had already offered these people was significant, yes, I'd dealt with Lord Manderly fairly despite my treatment by his vassals, but it was still far too generous. So generous I kept looking for that hidden clause, the not-so-obvious scam, the trick that would cheat me out of everything I had to my name. There was nothing, and that alone almost made me take the five hundred gold dragons and wash my hands off the whole mess.
An old woman stood behind an open stall heavy with little tarts smelling of fresh-baked fruit, that heady sweet tang of a Christmas bakery I'd never smelled in all my years in Westeros. Only three pennies each; I bought a dozen and dropped a silver stag at the old woman's palm, leaving before she could offer any change. What was overpaying by half when just the coins in my purse came at twenty-five thousand times that much money and represented less than a fifth of my minimum current worth?
I sat by the Seal Gate and enjoyed the morning light over the harbor, the tang of seawater and fish in the air, the glorious taste of apples and cinnamon on my tongue as my plans shifted yet again. If Wyman Manderly wanted to be generous I would take him up on his offer. Not to the point of abuse that would ruin our budding alliance, but with the kind of projects that would be far too expensive to do without the backing of a major lord. Projects that could potentially benefit House Manderly too in the long run, but should benefit me far more directly in the present. I could delay my trip to Essos in exchange for a head start in acquiring more personal power. The only questions were how much Lord Manderly and his people would be willing to accommodate me over the coming weeks, and how much effort I was willing to put into this.
Screw it. Being cooped up in the castle would have bored me to death anyway.
xxxx
We set up shop in an old tannery in the city outskirts by the North Gate. It was the access point for anyone reaching White Harbor by land and also close to the White Knife river, perfect for our purposes. The old building stank but a bit of smell never hurt anyone and it had both the open space and the storage we'd need while also being away from the eyes of busybodies with no need to know of what we'd be doing. First order of business was to send the dozen men the Manderlys had assigned me down the riverbank to harvest flint stones and pretty flowers while I prepared the place.
For my basic works there was no need for tools or other aids beyond my Pyromancy but if I wanted to make something truly impressive there would be at least one thing needed; a level, smooth area to work on. The issue was one of materials. Glass, especially the fused quartz I worked with, had a high-temperature working point. While a fire-resistance spell might work with small projects, attempts at particularly impressive works would push the limits of my power, attention and stamina, leaving nothing to spare for the fire-resistance. Which left making a heat-resistant bench.
When most people think of common, relatively easy to get in a medieval setting heat-resistant materials, they usually think of Asbestos. Contrary to popular belief though, Asbestos melts at a lower temperature than many common rocks, granite included. Granite itself has the same melting point as normal glass or brick; many a world-hopping protagonist should have burned themselves when trying to make their own steel from their furnace literally melting. The fire-bricks Westerosi used in their forges could handle molten iron, if barely, but pure quartz melted at even higher temperatures than that so a more refractory material was needed. Options were limited further by the required level of smoothness, non-reactivity with the open air, and availability of materials. Thus I was left with only one option, really.
I sliced my palm with my new knife, splattering blood all over a stone bench the tannery had come with. The sacrifice was significant enough I used healing spells to avoid passing out, though not to the extent of the burning island ritual. Once the stone surface was covered sufficiently, I unloaded the contents of the cart I had brought with me; dozens, even hundreds of pounds of pottery. Not just any pottery though, but the gleaming glazed white of porcelain. Without caring about artistic quality, the size of individual pieces, or making a good bargain, it had taken a mere half-thousand silver stars and a couple hours of shopping to fill the cart with the material that was now forming a small mound over the bloody bench.
Unloading complete, a flick of my finger repeated Berric Dondarrion's old trick of using a sacrifice of blood like wildfire. The spell was a bit more involved than setting it alight, including a fire-resistance component that both prevented the blood from being burned away in seconds and what had been anointed with it from melting away in the heat. The pottery had no such protection and the potency of my blood was quite a bit higher than your typical fire-wight; in the blazing heat of the purple flames it first turned dull red, then a brighter orange, then a radiant yellow as it began to melt.
Shaping several hundred pounds of molten material was at the limits of my ability even without actively supporting any other spells. Fortunately, all I needed to do was prevent the melted porcelain from dripping off the stone bench until the flames burned themselves out and the glowing yellow liquid settled, before draining the heat away. Gravity acting on the liquid ensured an almost perfectly smooth surface in the same technique as used in float glass, and the resulting fused alumina-silica mix produced a translucent glassy surface with an even higher melting point than pure quartz for me to work with. Then, working with much smaller, individual pieces of porcelain, I added an one-inch rim all around the new table.
The perfect frame to make door-sized quartz panes in the future without needing more sacrifices or to strain myself to exhaustion.
xxxx
The knife bit into flesh for the hundredth and twenty-seventh time, slicing all the way through a throat and letting warm blood spill freely into the basin. As with the previous four dozen times this was done, a small trickle of power ran up my arm like an electric current, energizing my body and adding the smallest sliver of lasting vitality to my inner well of power. The body under my arm kicked once, twice, thrice, then went still so it was set aside for other hands to collect.
I dipped the colorless, candle-sized bit of fused quartz into the basin with my off-hand, draining the heat and vitality from the blood with my magic and trying to push it into the glass rod. The blood immediately coagulated like week-old curdling milk, while the rod grew warmer and warmer under my fingers until it was glowing orange. For a moment there there was a faint echo, the dimmest shadow of something intangible yet present, but then it was gone and the glass started cooling like normal. Instead of settling into the glass material as it had done with the bronze on Keera's gift, the power of the sacrifice winked out and the glass cooled. Another failure.
"Bring in the next," I told the men waiting by in the sidelines.
"I beg your pardon, m'lady," a stocky, well-muscled man in a thick apron heavy with bloodstains almost stammered, "but that was the last one."
"Oh?" I looked up from the crystal and my fiftieth failure in a row to find the bloody chamber dim and several men working on rendering the latest addition to the pile of corpses. I was surprised to find it was late evening. Compared to my morning work in the glassworks, the ritual attempts felt like they'd gone by in the wink of an eye. "These were all of today's-" I stopped myself before talking about sacrifices; for some reason talking about it made the men very nervous. "-animals?"
"Yes, m'lady," the butcher nodded, eager to finish the job. Gathering all the animals that would have been killed around the city for either local consumption or trade in the same slaughterhouse for the express purpose of being killed by me personally had taken no small amount of both organization and physical labour. The whole point of the endeavor was for me to avoid all the time-consuming bits, to have other people bring the goats and pigs and sheep in one place so I could kill them as quickly and efficiently as possible. For me, it had been a bit over a hundred cuts and a few hours total of small rituals between kills. For everyone else the work must have been grueling.
"Very well. Throw away the blood but everything else can be used or eaten like normal," I repeated my instructions from earlier. The Manderlys would be far less willing to accommodate my experiments had they ruined hundreds of animals' worth of meat. "Rest and we'll meet again tomorrow."
As for me, I had more work to do.
xxxx
The fire-resistance enchantment preserved the wildflower within the conjured flame but the conditions still sped up its drying considerably. It was like suspending it in a highly hygroscopic material such as silicon gel or even better; in only a few minutes the flower was completely dried out. Unlike many of my earlier attempts it didn't crumple as it dried, nor did it lose its color. This was partially due to the protection from the heat's effects but the species of flower played an even larger role; I'd learned that the hard way but now knowing what flowers could better handle the process sped everything up considerably.
Once it was completely dry, I used my Pyromancy to submerge it in molten quartz like dozens of others before. The glowing yellow translucent fluid surrounded the delicate flower completely and formed into a two-inch floating orb. The last bit of the process was draining the heat rapidly enough that the material would not crystallize. It was another thing I'd learned in my prior work with glass. Allow it to cool too slowly and quartz crystals would form, messing up the transparency. Cool it unevenly or anneal it incorrectly and the damn thing would devitrify, the glass metamorphosing into tiny crystals that formed a material very close to flint, sometimes within hours of solidifying, others after a day or two. I'd lost a third of my earlier attempts to this phenomenon but now I knew how to avoid it; rapid cooling. At least fused quartz had extremely low coefficient of thermal expansion and did not shatter in the process. It didn't really need to anneal either, not unless I was aiming for the best possible toughness and my magic could not guide its formation for some reason.
And with that last orb, another hundred were ready for transport.
xxxx
The knife bit into flesh for the four hundredth time, slicing all the way through a throat and letting warm blood spill into the basin. As with the hundreds of previous sacrifices, a small trickle of power ran up my arm like an electric current, energizing my body and adding the smallest sliver of lasting vitality to my inner well of power. Said well was full by over a third now, despite farm animals contributing far, far less power to the total. Compared to lizard-lions or even bog-pigs even cows were mere trickles, just larger trickles than sheep or pigs. I suspected it was the animals' lack of importance to me. I had not hunted for them, they had been brought to the slaughter by others. I had put no effort into them at all besides that last stroke of the knife cutting their throats; maybe to someone that had personally raised them they'd offer greater benefits but I had no time to become a farmer.
I dipped another colorless, candle-sized quartz crystal into the basin with my off-hand, one made for this purpose earlier, right after my glass-making session. Making the single crystal into the desired shape and size rather than an amorphous bit of glass was a bit harder but as glass had failed before I wanted to try something new. I drained the power from the blood harder, faster. Instead of coagulating blood I left behind a nearly dry solid while the crystal glowed in my hand from the concentrated heat of several liters of warm blood. Instead of letting go I kept a hold of both the warmth and the vitality, keeping them inside the crystal for longer instead of letting them dissipate, in the hopes that this experiment would go differently from all the others that had come before.
Unfortunately, the heat started dissipating the moment I relinquished my hold on it. Once again there had been something missing from the process, but try as I might to think of what it was as the crystal cooled, I had no idea. I was about to discard the crystal as yet another failure when I finally noticed; it was still giving off very faint heat, barely above the temperature of a normal human body... but it was not cooling any further. Suddenly excited, I blew at it like trying to cool a bite of too-hot food but there was no change. Moving in almost unseemly haste while wary workers rendered the last few animal carcasses, I dropped it into a bucket full of water and waited with bated breath for the several minutes it took the water to become ever so slightly but noticeably warmer before taking out the crystal and examining it once more.
It was still warm - exactly as warm as when it had stopped cooling. Moreover, there was a faint, so faint you'd only find it if you were looking, hint of power in it. Not even close to the bronze wristband I'd made for Keera, it was still unmistakably supernatural. It was far weaker than what I'd been intending to make, hardly of any use with how faint the effect was, but it was a start.
xxxx
The near-molten, thick as molasses quartz expanded into a thin disc a bit over a foot across as I used my Pyromancy to press it against the heat-resistant bench. Without letting it cool, I cut a sliver out of the silver stag coin I'd been using and dropped it into the disc's center. Silver having a much lower melting point than quartz, the sliver immediately melted. Splitting a fraction of my power and directing it to maintain the quartz disc's heat and shape, I used the majority to melt another handful of flint stones, burn away or extract the impurities then stretch the result into a second disc.
Something I'd found out with my very first mirror almost a week before now was that silver and quartz did not mix. The metal would not bond properly to the surface and could be scraped off the back of the mirror in strips with one's nails. A particularly jarring blow might not be enough to break quartz but it could make the layer of silver fall off in flakes. In both cases the mirror was easily ruined by everyday occurrences, an unacceptable flaw in its construction. Unfortunately, fixing it was not easy. Making the surface rougher ruined it as a reflective medium. Trying some sort of chemical treatment either messed with the surface as well or ran counter to the point of having a simple, quick method of making high quality mirrors. After several rounds of trial and error, there was only one solution I'd come up with.
I lowered the second disc into the first, pressing its carefully flattened surface into the one below it. Caught between two panes of fused quartz, the drop of molten silver expanded into a highly reflective disc but I'd measured the amounts properly and said disc was smaller than the two much thicker layers of quartz. The quartz discs came together in the inch or so of silver-free rim and fused seamlessly. The whole thing rapidly cooled as I drained the heat from it and soon turned solid.
Two buns of high-quality glass and one slice of silver made for a mean mirror sandwich.
xxxx
I drew hard upon the basin of warm blood, draining its heat and vitality until I left nothing but dust behind as if the blood had been left to dry then be ground down by the elements for long months, maybe even years. That energy, both physical and magic, I concentrated into the handful of flint I held. The heat melted down the rock and with the aid of my Pyromancy burned away the impurities, leaving behind molten, glowing yellow quartz.
That I shaped while keeping the stolen power from the blood within, guiding it through the slow cooling process that would result in a crystal. The moment liquid became solid, the very instant the gleaming transparent facets took shape, the magic from the burnt offering of blood was locked into the crystal, separated by the environment and my own magic as if by some invisible door snapping shut. It became part of the crystal, its very structure, and when I opened my hand I was holding a crystal rod a few inches long that was clearly warm to the touch. Far more obviously, one of its ends gave off light like a small candle.
The spell was similar to the sustenance magic I could cast on a living being except instead of sustaining a body's functions without fuel it would sustain the heat trapped in the crystal despite the warmth and light it continually gave off. The magic worked because the heat itself came from an animal to begin with; it was merely focused into making the crystal glow. The whole ritual had been far too elaborate and power intensive for a result that was much, much simple than sustaining an entire body but the tradeoff was permanence. Yes, I could already put a lasting sustenance spell on a living being with a good enough ritual... but living beings eventually expired while the crystal would last far, far longer in comparison.
My first true magic item without human sacrifice was a mere glorified candle but Valyria was not built in a day and Wyman Manderly had many more farm animals to use as materials to try more things and improve on my skills...
xxxx
Melting enough flint for a door-sized mirror took a temporary heat-maintaining spell on my fire-resistant workbench and two dozen batches of flint stones melted and refined into quartz before being dropped into the frame. The silver for the mirror's reflective surface took an entire silver star coin, then the second layer to seal it in also had to be added in two dozen batches. Then came the shaping which, due to the mirror's size, could not be done in mid-air and had to be slowly worked in while it rested half-molten on the surface.
After the mirror sandwich had been sealed properly and the reflective surface scratch-proofed, after the whole thing had cooled down and some few flaws - from bulges to air bubbles - fixed with stone-shaping, after the proper annealing to ensure durability, I actually had to get the new mirror off the bench. It had shrunk while cooling, obviously, but it hadn't shrunk nearly enough for tools to fit between it and the bench's rim, let alone fingers. Hell, there was barely enough gap for a hair. After several failed attempts at a clever solution and lots of whining about having to break the rim like some blacksmith doing mold-casting, I'd had the idea to use my fire-constructs. I'd never tried them for something so thin and precise and it took nearly half an hour to form the dozen or so tiny hooks through the gap and around the mirror.
And the mirror still wasn't done! I'd used my Pyromancy to melt down some basalt and build a thicker frame and legs of stone around the mirror. This allowed the thing to stand upright on its own and would somewhat protect it from incidental blows. Someone could still shatter it with a hammer but they would have to actually work at it. Compared to normal mirrors that could break if you looked at them funny, it was a huge improvement. Especially since the fused quartz and silver inlay made for better mirror quality than even the modern one I'd had back on Earth.
In the end, the entire process took four whole hours, forty times as long as a foot-wide oval mirror. Lord Manderly had been buying the small ones for ten silver moons each so for matching my profits for the same work hours the big one needed to go for at least thirteen and a half gold dragons. I'd ask for twenty just to see what happened; he had gold to spare.
xxxx
The balding old man in the black leather and chain of a prison guard slowly took me through the Wolf Den's lightless corridors at a slow limp. I'd offered to let him lean on me - I'd even carry him just to make everything go faster - but like some crippled people I'd met back on Earth he was too proud to accept the help. To hear him tell it, he'd lost his leg and eye in Robert's Rebellion, fighting the good fight to save worthy people and put down tyrants and he'd never feel ashamed of his choices.
There was probably a great deal of bitterness and a good helping of anti-Valyrian sentiment under the pride, so I could not blame him for not wanting my help - but I could blame him for not assigning the task to a younger, sprier, faster-walking guard while he sat in his office in the Gaoler's Tower and drank his mulled wine. That would have saved him all the discomfort and me the extra half-hour of going through the prison at a crawl. Finally, after many a dark turn, splashing down corridors with at least an inch of saltwater pooling beneath our feet and descending too many narrow stairs we reached a line of ancient-looking underground cells with much newer, heavy iron gates.
"That's them, then?" I asked, my vision cutting through the gloom to peer at the slowly wasting men behind the bars.
"Aye, lass," old man Bartimus grunted. "Outlaws, slavers, traitors, worthless bags of flesh the lot of them."
"Everyone is worth something to someone," I muttered softly. "Were they offered the black?"
"Nay, that's too good for these scum," the one-legged castellan grunted. "The law says they get the noose or the axe."
"Very well," I said with a sigh, still not believing Lord Manderly had made the offer. It had come up after I'd presented him with the first magical candle and we'd discussed what other lasting magic was possible. Keera's wristband had come up and the overweight noble had been very excited despite me cautioning him I could not reliably produce such items. He'd insisted and thus, here we were.
I put my hand on the first cell's door and reached out into the metal of its lock and the echoes of the heat it had been cast with. A moment later it clicked open, confirming that after long days of constant practice forged metal was almost as easy to move as igneous rock. The prisoner within did not react beyond some feeble attempts to get up, but he'd been left without food or clean water for way too long. When my knife stabbed up his jaw and into the roof of his mouth there was almost relief in his eyes.
I drew out the power of the human sacrifice, more than a lizard-lion but less than the bandits I'd killed on the road. Still dozens of times more than the farm animals, even the cows, the more lasting weight of the kill pushed my already mostly-filled well closer to fullness. That done I moved on to the other cells. The next prisoner did not react at all; he was either sleeping with is eyes open or there was nothing behind those orbs that stared at nothing, not anymore. The power from him was still significant, but less than the first prisoner's had been.
The third prisoner was a small man, almost as slim as a child but no less fierce for it. He tried to stab me with a makeshift shiv, a sharpened piece of stone more than an actual weapon. He was fast and deadly accurate still, but either his stay in the cell had made him weak or he'd never been particularly strong. I caught his arm by the wrist and twisted, bringing him to his knees. Then I stabbed him in the base of his spine and warmth and energy coursed through me, very nearly sending the accumulating power in my mind overflowing.
The last prisoner was sleeping, like the second. He was also a meaty, overweight man that snored loudly, which meant he couldn't have been in those cells for more than a few days. I was about to stab him through the heart when he jolted upright and threw a rock at my face. I blocked it with my arm, which hurt, then he was falling on me, trying to ride me down with his bulk and choke me with meaty fingers while cursing in some foreign tongue. He was very surprised when it didn't work despite me not being a small woman. I was taller than him in fact and I suspected that under his bulk he actually had less muscle than I did. We wrestled but while he was by no means a novice, I had the experiences of ancient warriors and been trained by a swamp ninja. I soon had him locked face-down with an arm twisted behind his back and seconds later my knife put an end to all his struggles.
In my mind the vision of the Fourteen Flames burst to life for the first time since I'd last said goodbye to my adopted aunt, but I suppressed it, pushing it aside for later. I got to my feet, only to find old man Bartimus just inside the cell, the door closed behind him, his sword off its scabbard and already raised. Slow he might have been due to his injuries but neither stupid nor craven.
"No need to risk yourself on my account," I told him, pushing the corpse aside. "Letting down my guard was a mistake, but an unarmed prisoner wasn't much of a threat."
"Protecting people is my job, lass," the old Northman grunted, then fumbled with the keys after seeing the prisoner was dead.
"I'm curious," I asked him as I melted the quartz in my hand and started channeling the excess vitality and warmth from the sacrifices to it. "Does Lord Manderly have a lot of criminals killed?"
"The scum get what they deserve," Bartimus told me with a shrug. "Normally we off them before the prison's Heart Tree. That thing's enormous, it needs a lot of watering, doesn't it?"
Huh. Now that he mentioned it, the local weirwood was, indeed, large enough to extend past the keep's crumbling walls and overshadow the small godswood. Given what weirwoods were and how they grew... no wonder Lord Manderly had no problems with letting me kill his worst prisoners. Then again, this was the guy who had baked his enemies into pies and made their family eat them in canon.
The crystal solidified, locking much of the vitality of the sacrifices in itself. There was no light though there was a bit of warmth; similar to Keera's gift the main effect was rapid recovery. Not nearly as much as hers but still an entire extra person's worth of stamina and natural healing to whoever carried the crystal, maybe a bit more. It hadn't absorbed all the vitality of the dead men though, so I turned to Bartimus.
"Some people get what they deserve, old man. Most of us get what we can grasp with our own efforts but for tonight let's balance the scales a bit more."
"Eh?" he asked in confusion and almost recoiled when I grabbed his face with both hands. He could never have dislodged me though, not even back when he'd been young and hale. My power flooded his head and body, fixing tiny little injuries, but also dragging along the much stronger temporary boost remaining from the sacrifices. That I focused in the smaller of two gaping holes of Bartimus' presence in my awareness and through Sorcery forced old, scarred-over flesh to shift and be molded, pushing and pushing until my mind felt on fire and my every muscle threatened to lock up. Working with a wound so old was incredibly hard and exhausting but by the time I was done and barely standing the old guy had two eyes once again.
"There," I said with a gasp. "Now you can see as well as the rest of us." I gave him a tired smile which faded as soon as my gaze turned down. "Your missing leg, I'm afraid, is far beyond my ability to restore." And with that I left the speechless and crying old castellan behind.
I still needed to set the healing crystal in a chain and make a proper amulet out of it...