"...and price of iron, coal, rations, boiled leather and canvas have all doubled in the past two days, while luxury good prices have dropped by one fifth," Tregar informed us. The merchant prince looked frazzled, with dark circles under blood-shot eyes, an oily sheen to his skin that had not come from scented oils but sweat and stress, and the frown lines around his mouth and eyes were a little bit deeper than before. His golden-trimmed robes were crinkled and sported more than one wax drop while his hands were ink-spotted and ever so slightly shaking. Whether due to the changes in the economy or the pressure of his bond to me was anyone's guess, but he no longer looked the pristine pampered prince of a powerful and wealthy House. "Carpenters, leather-workers, smiths... none of them are available for hire; their services have been reserved by Houses Rogare, Haen and Orthys. Transport ships are also being reserved by the Magisters, while several of the Captains we worked with are now demanding exorbitant sums for their services."
I frowned then took a bite of fried cheese and chased it down with a red Myrish wine that burned like fire and was sweet like honey. It had high enough alcohol content to catch fire, that fact whispered to me by my Pyromancy as I sipped at it. The sudden arrival of the Golden Company had shifted the economy of the city towards a war footing, derailing some of my immediate plans. The ramping up of military preparations was faster than I'd expected, even with the ships "lost" at sea. The mobilization was too fast, especially since moving an army of ten thousand into the city would have taken time - several weeks for messages to reach them in the absence of messenger ravens, at least another month for the army to get here, never mind the discussions at the Temple of Trade that should have preceeded their arrival. Discussions that none of my winged spies had picked up.
"What about the House of Jewels?" I asked, more for time to think than anything else. Why was the greatest sellsword company in history here so early? Who had paid them to come? Tregar had also been surprised by their arrival; that much I could feel through the mind-link. As for Jorah, he'd been away from the city so he'd known nothing until I sent a message via Featherball to him. Who else did I have who could be tapped for military-political knowledge? No answer being forthcoming, I drank some more and tried some of the fried flatbread with ground cheese. It was good, great even, but the combination was somewhat lacking. I made a mental note to "invent" pizza and thus forever make my mark as a goddess of food, among less pleasant things. Then I noticed that nobody had answered my question yet.
"What about the House of Jewels?" I asked once more. Tregar smirked, shrugged, and nodded at the other side of the table. I turned to look where he indicated and snorted. Across the table, Jorah and Lynesse were caught in each other's stare as if the rest of the world did not exist. The appropriately bear-sized knight was looking at the much smaller, younger, far prettier blonde woman with such longing and puppy-eyed soppiness he almost had me cackling on the spot. Lynesse on the other hand was looking back with just as much fondness, except she was also tense, her back straight as a board, her arms folded under her breasts and her delicate nose ever so slightly tilted up. Despite the sheer white dress of Lysene silk she was wearing she looked less like a pretty doll and more like an angry tiger. I'd bet anything that Jorah had entirely missed all those warning signs and was tempted to sneak a winged spy into their room tonight because their reunion promised to be hilarious.
But no. Events were already moving faster than expected, so better to combine schnaudefreude with business, as the saying went. Scraping my nail against one of the candles shedding light over our late night planning session and/or dinner, I shaved a bit of wax and pressed it into a pea-sized bead. That I flicked across the room at the mostly happy couple while shoving as much magic at it as I could via Pyromancy. There was a bright flare and a hollow boom as the bead of wax burned as quickly as flash powder and both Lynesse and Jorah yelped and jumped off their seats. If anything, the older knight yelped louder than the Hightower girl; she just glared at me.
"As Tregar was saying, the arrival of the Golden Company has been... problematic," I said without commenting on their behaviour. Jorah at least looked both embarrassed to have been caught and grateful for my not speaking further about it. I picked up another slice of cheese, let it sizzle between my fingers, then scarfed it down. The taste was miles ahead of my first attempts back in White Harbor's prison. "How did that affect the House of Jewels?"
"Not at all, lady Belaerys," Lynesse defaulted to politeness, though her tone was cooler than usual and with an underlying sharpness. A little kitten showing her claws; if it wouldn't disrupt the discussion - and be taken entirely wrongly by my current company - I'd squee at how adorable she managed to look. "In fact, there is a rise in the demand for novel gems and jewelry of moderate prices." She huffed and pulled at a stray lock of silver-gold hair in irritation, though whether it was in affront to her "delicate" sensibilities or some bit of theater at how she had been taught to behave I could not tell. The only times I could read the woman clearly was in her interactions with her husband. "The pleasure gardens need new enticements to go with the new clientelle."
"What about our ongoing trade deals?" I asked and the biologically older woman started filling me in in detail. Cheap, low-quality imports were going on steady but the sales of yellow synthetic gems were slowing down. The green sapphires still sold very well, especially when marketed as a higher-quality alternative to emeralds due to their greater hardness, toughness and clarity. That idea was neither mine nor Tregar's and if I didn't have my little spies the development would have caught me by surprise. In retrospect, Lynesse being good at taking some of the increasing business load off Tregar's shoulders should not have been surprising; in the canon timeline she had ended up running his House, after all. But... was this really the direction I wanted her to take? This required further testing.
"Tregar, what of House Ormollen's own ships? I thought they were more than sufficient for our new trade ventures?" They'd better be. If the mere presence of the Golden Company was hurting our ability to expand quickly beyond just hogging all the smiths and military supplies... well, we'd have to do something about it, wouldn't we?
"The council of magisters have... strongly suggested all House fleets limit their voyages to council-approved routes and only travel under escort from Golden Company forces, either as guards or as escorts with their own ships." The merchant prince scowled. "First Magister Orthys believes the safety of the city's navy is paramount in these troubled times."
"Convenient," Jorah commented gruffly. Apparently, he had overcome his mortification and was eager to contribute to the discussion. "The Golden Company has what, sixty, seventy ships? They can't escort every ship for a city the size of Lys, not against raiders skilled enough to ambush ships in the open sea then disappear with no witnesses to their attacks. If everyone tries to do as your First Magister suggested, you'll strangle your own trade." Huh... so Jorah knew enough about ships and pirate attacks to comment on the situation. Unexpected but not unwelcome. "Hiring an army the size of the Golden Company for any length of time is expensive. If it's mainly House Orthys that is behind the militarization, they might be trying to cut down on the costs by having the other Houses pay for the escorts."
"Yes, escort prices were quoted to me during the last council session," Tregar snarked and gulped down way too much wine at once. "Unfortunately, there's not much to do. The First Magister is 'concerned for the city's lifeblood' and with his allies they hold the majority vote."
"How narrow a majority?" I asked, thinking through several options to deal with this issue, some of them promising.
"Magisters Orthys, Haen and Rogare are allies in this. Dagaeron is running scared like he always does," Tregar snorted in contempt, "so he folded after the second ship his House lost. Pendaerys and Moraqos hate Orthys' guts and aren't much into the slave trade in any event, while old man Saan will cheerfully murder anyone who tries to tell him where he can and can't sail." The prince refilled his glass with some Arbor Gold for a change, the glass immediately fogging over from the cold drink. Cooling spells were useful for more than just armor. "That makes it four to three, with none of them willing to budge."
"I see..." I thought about it some more, leaning towards action. Then again I always did. Plus there was one more question that needed to be answered. "How soon do you think the war will start?"
"Orthys wouldn't hire the Golden Company if he didn't have a goal in mind," Tregar said immediately. "They cost too much and getting other Houses to share the cost via council edicts? The city would rebel before long." Now if only we knew that it was Orthys who had hired them.
"Two months, three at the outside," Jorah added with surety. "Disciplined or not, an army is still an army and men are still men, especially sell-swords. Such a large force cannot be kept in the city for long without causing problems. You use them or you lose them or you might lose the city." His prejudice against sell-swords was showing but he was not wrong.
"That is going to be interesting..." I muttered, remembering a fake Chinese proverb from Earth. "Tregar, send a message to Captain Khorane Sathmantes of Shayalla's Dance. I'm feeling confident he'll at least listen if you use my name and he's in the employ of Salladhor Saan. I'm feeling even more confident that the Prince of the Narrow Sea is very displeased at the council's current decisions."
"So that is why the Old Man suggested I listen to the 'up and coming gem merchant' when you first came to Lys," Tregar said, my bond with him bursting with realization, chagrin and more than a little annoyance. Tough. If he did not want the joke to be at his expense he shouldn't have tried to have me poisoned and take over my gem business. "I'll see what I can do."
"Oh, and try to find me someone who knows how to reforge Valyrian Steel." If war was to start, I was going to need a proper weapon. "Between your contacts and the Saan family's, it shouldn't be impossible in a city the size of Lys."
"That is unlikely, my lady. The Qohoric masters hunt down anyone that tries to steal their secrets." He countered.
"But do they kill them or do they make an example of them?" The merchant prince's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Find me an example, Tregar. Then we will see whether I can make an example of my own." With that, I turned to my other two bashful conspirators. "Jorah, pick up any supplies or support staff the company still needs. If the men are to see action in a few months everything needs to be ready... or as ready as we can make it." Because there was no way the new heavy armors were going to be finished. At best we could equip the sergeants and half dozen of our best fighters. At least weapons would not be nearly as much of a problem. "Lynesse I have a new project for you, if you are willing."
"More gems, Lady Belaerys?" the slim, pale-skinned blonde asked. "I understand that wars are expensive."
"Well that, too." In fact, it was time to start introducing some larger, more expensive gems now that the market for low-quality stones was being fed a steady stream of synthetic sapphires. "But as useful as more gold would be, I had something else in mind."
"Oh?" the twenty-something woman gave me my undivided attention. That I couldn't tell whether it was real or feigned was annoying, and a touch of Greensight only picked up polite interest, any other emotion buried under a wall of practiced discipline. But I had just the right tool to shake that wall a bit and see what fell out.
"Would you like to learn some real magic?" I said, lighting a ball of purple fire in the palm of my hand while forcing all the candles and torches around the room to match its color.
The luxuries of the room beyond the bed made little difference in the dark. The lamps of crystal were dark, the silver inlays barely gleaming in the moonlight, the hand-carved furniture of mahogany and ironwood little more than black blobs in the darkness. The curtains of scarlet broadcloth and thread-of-gold indistinguishable from the rest. Chests upon chests of the sheerest dresses and most finely spun lace yet none of them mattered at that moment. Only the silk sheets over a mattress so soft one could almost swim in it were relevant at all, yet not nearly as important as she might have once thought.
The large form spread over half the bed was fast asleep now, the worries of past and future not burdening the man's calm face and relaxed body. She had no such luxury. For years now she spent much of her time thinking, weighing, considering. It had started after their first serious fight almost three years ago now, when the young, spoiled, lovestruck rich girl and the poor, loyal, naive bear of a knight saw their dreamed-of romance crack and harsh reality balefully glow through. Lynesse looked at her Jory's sleeping form and sighed fondly.
Alas, it does not do to dwell in dreams and forget to live, so she got up, the silken sheets slipping off her bare skin. The day had been hot, a veritable oven compared to the creeping chill of Bear Island, but the night was only nicely warm instead of the lethal, bone-gnawing frozen darkness of Jorah's homeland. For a moment Lynesse shivered at the memory of it, then shrugged off the past then picked a dress that looked grey and featureless in the dark but would be sheer golden silk come morning. She slipped into it, then reached for her sandals by memory. Supple leather almost as soft and delicate as the silk flexed between her fingers and stretched over her ankles and calves as she tied them up. Then she got off the bed entirely. Jorah did not stir, still content with their dream and the temporary reprieve they had been given, no matter how many cracks shone through with ugly truths now.
Lynesse tied her long golden hair back in a simple Essossi braid and gave her husband one last fond look. She loved him fiercely, fiercely enough to have followed him into outlawry and ruin and exile, the outlawry, ruin and exile he had committed for their shared dream. But she had also received a high noble lady's training about the truths of the world and her dream had always been grander than Jorah's. Being an outlaw and exile she had been willing to accept for love, but ruin? It had not been until they had come to Lys, a city of true civilization, prosperity and power that the rich girl had fully realized the lovestruck girl had been wrong to accept ruin for love. It had taken a reminder of what she had given up for love to remember that one could not live for or with love alone. Or perhaps others might but Lynesse realized she could not.
House Ormollen was not entirely silent even in the dead of night. Even then did servants work tirelessly to prepare for the coming day of business, to support their lord's handling of power. Or perhaps it was the lady's handling now? Lynesse had been given her share of both authority and duties for months now, from Tregar yet not. She was not blind to who ultimately gave everyone marching orders, even though the answer had been so shocking when she'd first noticed. She had fallen back to old lessons and her father's teachings in response to both the tasks and the reality behind them. Months in which she had found the handling of power... not easy exactly, but familiar. A dance she had seen many times, that she'd admired in others, but never tried herself. A dance that a small, poor House in the freezing distant North knew little of.
The path to the last warehouse to the South, the one farthest from the waterfront, was dark and quiet and empty. Where other storage spaces saw both servants and patrolling guards, the old, round building that must once have been a granary saw nought by silence and empty darkness. The offer she'd been made had led her here and for the first time in years Lynesse felt both decisive about what to do and uncertain of what was to come. She had discussed the offer with Jorah in the privacy of their own chambers and he had been... annoyingly receptive to it. Lynesse had never even considered her loyal, naive bear capable of straying before... but she'd never met a girl as pretty as their magic-dabbling host. But her naive husband had only talked of healing, of armor that did not heat up in the sun, of witchcraft who could give a girl the strength of a knight, or a knight the strength of a monster. For a time during his speech Lynesse had been angry, as angry as back when he'd asked her to sell her jewels. Yet she'd held her tongue and her calmness and she'd weighed and considered.
The result of those considerations was her standing before the iron-bound door of a granary that held something far more dangerous than grain...
xxxx
For all that the repurposed granary had a large, cavernous interior, Lynesse's first impression of it was that it was cramped. Dozens of shelves and cupboards, four workbenches full of various tools, several barrels full of weapons, or trinkets, or rusted scrap. Her second, much stronger impression was that it was unnatural. The lights were not torches but glowing crystals. The tools were not things she recognized but oddly shaped tongs and strips of metal, long strands that were not silk but spun glass, drums of hollow black stone filled to the brim with acrid-smelling substances thick as honey but glowing orange or red-black sludge that reeked of rust and old blood. Papers full of strange diagrams and sums that did not make sense, a lump of ice suspended over a candleflame and yet would not melt, candles that burned green and blue and indigo, birds hopping inside cages yet making nary a sound. In the middle of it all was the Valyrian girl with hair like spun silver fanning out as she bent low over a table of black glass where a handful of rubies no larger than grains of barley glowed and melted like snow under the noonday sun before the resulting lump flowed together into a single, almost fist-sized gem.
The heavy door behind Lynesse slammed shut seemingly by itself, causing her to jump. She'd just been standing there, staring for who knew how long. Worse, her jolt of surprise had her hitting a nearby shelf, one full of egg-sized glass orbs with a dark red core like freshly spilled blood. One of the orbs was knocked loose but despite her earlier blunder Lynesse had the presence of mind to grab it before it fell off. Then, curiosity getting the better of her, she turned the strange orb in the palm of her hand, looking at its crimson core. Was it some strange gem from Yi-Ti or Asshai? A decoration? A tool?
"I would be careful with that if I were you," an amused, crystal clear voice warned and Lynesse paled at having been caught holding on to the... whatever it was. She looked up at the younger woman that was suddenly not five feet from her. And up, and up... the girl was taller than Jorah and she hadn't even stopped growing. Lynesse remembered being as thin and slightly awkward as her host now was back when she'd first flowered. She'd been between child and woman in body and Lady Belaerys showed many of the same signs of early maturity... somehow without being any less unfairly pretty.
"Why?" The word sprang out of Lynesse's mouth without her permission or intent. What was wrong with her?
"Because if you dropped it I would be very annoyed at having to replace my clothes," the Valyrian girl said, gesturing at the revealing traveling leathers she wore, "Tregar would be cross at the expense of replacing this warehouse... and you would be dead." The girl shrugged. "Such things happen when you drop the likes of a wildfire flask."
With exaggerated slowness, Lynesse returned the glass orb to the shelf, next to the two dozen other nigh-identical orbs that rested there. Her heart was hammering in her chest but she refused to show weakness. She would not be cowed by a girl near a decade her junior making a joke of one of the worst deaths Westerosi knew of... a joke obviously at her expense.
"At least you can grasp the consequences of errors here," Belaerys said and nodded. Then with a single step she was next to the table at the center of the room once more... twenty feet from where she'd been an eyeblink before. "It is often said that magic is a sword without a hilt. This is erroneous. Such a sword would hurt the wielder nearly as much as the target and would hurt every time. No, magic is like a flask of wildfire. A little expensive and risky to make, usable if you are careful, a deadly threat to you, to your foes, to evereryone if you are not." She leaped back without looking, sitting on the table of black glass before smiling. "You still want to learn, yes?"
Lynesse thought of her eldest sister, Malora, called by many the Mad Maid. Locked for nearly a decade now in the Hightower's ancient library, poring over ancient tomes and mumbling nonsensical things. Looking into her sister's wide yet unseeing eyes, listening to those mutters, Lynesse had always felt both sorry for and disquieted by her. And now here she was about to do a lot more than read mouldy scrolls with someone that made her eldest sister seem the paragon of propriety and common sense. Then she remembered her naive, loyal, happily sleeping bear, the dream full of cracks, the exile and ruin. Wealth would not be enough by itself, but power? She had seen how a mere girl could bend a merchant prince to her will. Her Jorah had braved exile and condemnation for their dream of love. Lynesse would brave blasphemy for the power to keep them safe and content and in the luxury they deserved.
"Give me your hand," the young sorceress asked. Lynesse did not; she instead eyed the strange instrument that had suddenly appeared in the young woman's hand with caution. It was a round, hollow stick of clear glass with a strange black disc inside it and a steel needle for a point. The sorceress just rolled her eyes at Lynesse's apprehension, as if Lynesse was some fearful child jumping at shadows and not a woman grown with legitimate concerns. "Before I can teach you sorcery, I need to know whether you have the natural capacity for it. That is mostly a matter of bloodline and can be substituted with effort and sacrifice, but there is no point if it turns out you'd need a century to develop - hence the test."
"People don't live that long," she protested, but the Valyrian girl rolled her eyes once more then grabbed her arm as firmly as a steel vise.
"You'd be surprised. There are sorceresses pushing three hundred that don't look a day older than thirty." Then after leaving Lynesse agape with that impossible declaration, the bitch stuck her with the needle. There was barely any pain at all as the hollow glass contraption filled with the dark red of Lynesse's blood. The vise around her wrist disappeared and one eyeblink later the sorceress was standing next to the candle with the purple flame, a sizzling sound and acrid smell filling the room as she poured drop after bloody drop into the flame. "Mostly Hightower with more than a little Targaryen and, surprisingly, Gardener. Not bad. Not bad at all."
"Any properly educated noble back in Westeros could tell you as much," Lynesse muttered skeptically, rubbing her arm.
"Well, I never claimed to be good at divination," the sorceress said with another dismissive shrug. Lynesse couldn't help but note she was doing that a lot. "Maggy the Frog could tell you the future with a single drop of blood. Like, not vaguely. She told Cersei Lannister she'd marry the king, exactly how many bastards both the king and her would have, that Cersei would outlive her bastards and that she'd be killed by her little brother." The young sorceress chuckled darkly. "Funny thing is, Cersei forgets she's older than both her brothers."
And with that disquieting revelation, Lynesse's foray into sorcery began.
"Lady Belaerys, you honor us with your presence!"
Unlike the more centrally located, Manderly-controlled slaughterhouses of White Harbor, Lys had numerous stockyards in the periphery of the city, where slaughter occurred in the open air or under cover such as in wet markets. The term they used for such open-air slaughterhouses was shambles, and there was a whole street named "The Shambles" beyond the city wall to the south, as far as possible from the noble Houses or the pleasure gardens of the waterfront without causing problems with meat distribution. The stench of blood, offal, sweat and fear hit like a wall the moment you entered, then hung heavy in the air. The ground and walls were spattered with blood and bits of flesh and however much the dozens of slaves tried to keep the place relatively clean, it still would have sent most nobles running. That I could smell it at all meant I'd been out of the Neck long enough for my sense of smell to recover, though unlike most people I did not find it unbearably unpleasant. Besides, there was quite a bit of improvement since the last time I'd been to the place.
"Honor is earned, Martin," I told the ageing, balding, somewhat overweight butcher. The cheerful, if annoyingly servile man was proof that my entire foray onto this deathworld was someone's idea of a cosmic joke... but that was neither here nor there. "Did it work?"
"Like the Lady of Lys' own blessing, milady," he nodded immediately. "no wasps, no crawlers, no midges, not even a single bloodfly. Yer blessing did them all in!"
"I told you it would work, Martin," I reminded him. Blessing? Hardly. I'd made a few steel spikes with a core of ironwood soaked in blood then tied a bit of magic to them to repel animals. The magic was so weak I doubted even rats would be affected. But insects were hundreds of times smaller than most anything else. Much like my direct attention through Greensight fried them, a very weak spell that bigger animals would not even notice would work to repel them. Given how the Bloodflies of Essos were known disease carriers, the workers seemed very enthusiastic with this improvement. "Now show me to the latest shipment. There is work to be done."
"As ye say, lady," he cheerfully agreed, guiding me to a long line of pens in a low-ceilinged stable with solid stone walls. The building must have been some sort of barracks once upon a time but nowadays it served both as extra animal pen as House Ormollen's cattle business expanded and for me to carry out experiments out of sight so as not to disturb the new hires. "Here ye are, milady," Martin drawled, pointing at the very full line of pens with eagerness. In it there were huge black oxes with long legs, thicker and longer horns, and a more muscular build than your usual domesticated cattle. "Two dozen aurochs ta feed yer dark sorceries! Will ye be guttin' 'em right now?"
"Not quite," I told the excitable old butcher while unstrapping two bags from my back. The guy's annoyingly wide smile faded somewhat and the crazy gleam in his black eyes became slightly less pronounced. If he wasn't crazy I'd eat Balerion's bones without ketchup. Ever since I'd started my work in the animal pens I'd caught him spying on me dozens of times and not in the way of most men. Every time I slew an animal his eyes dilated as if he was on drugs - the larger the animal, the greater his reaction. Plus he stared at the blood way too much. "I need to first make a proper vessel for the ritual."
...why was I explaining things to him again? "Go back to your business, Martin. You and the boys should come back to process the bodies in an hour or so."
"But..."
"This spell will be dangerous," I lied. "The slightest distraction could burn the whole stable so keep everyone away from here, all right?" This and similar level of help was his actual job, after all, not the constant gawking.
"As you command, my lady!" he botched his way through one of the military salutes I'd been teaching to Company recruits and his spine went rigid with intensity even as he tried not to fidget. "None shall disturb yer dark sorceries! Ye can count on me!"
He stalked away with a purpose and I couldn't help but roll my eyes at his theatrics. Then I put the crazy butcher out of my mind and started mixing two powders, one glittering white, the other dark grey. The first was powdered quartz, as fine as workers crushing it for hours could make it. The second was powdered coke from Florian's forge. Once the two were properly mixed, I enclosed them in a thin, almost transparent construct of solid flame, pressed them into themselves, then infused them with as much heat as I could bring to bear.
The mixture heated up, first becoming a dull red, then brighter and brighter orange, then in some places it started to glow yellow. The air around it hissed at the rising temperature and I actually began to sweat. The weight of the spell's demands grew and grew until the blood in my veins felt like it would boil at any moment. But the material did not melt and the process was not complete. So I reached out not with further heat but stone-shaping, coaxing the superheated dust mixture to flow. One minute, two, three... my bones hurt and my hands started to minutely shake even as I started gasping for breath. Finally, finally the mixture melted, oozing reluctantly like honey in winter. The lump was a mass of blindingly bright yellow heat now, like an incandescent lightbulb's tungsten filament except a thousand times more massive.
Sweat drops vaporized against the glare with angry hisses, the animals in the pens so terrified they were rooted on the spot. Then the process was complete, the magic cut off, and I slumped into the ground. In my arms I cradled a rapidly cooling bowl of a black glasslike substance that gleamed even more than diamond under the light coming in from the windows. It had no cracks, no seams, no defects, even though I had been too tired to regulate the heat during the cooling process.
Once I'd caught my breath - and calmed down the aurochs with a bit of warging so they didn't destroy the building - I drew my meteoric iron and bronze ritual dagger and tried to scratch into the bowl. Naturally, I failed. It had been the expected outcome, the one whispered by my magic the moment the finished object was in my hands, yet that did not stop me. I then tried an edge of fused quartz, and then one of corundum. Both failed, leaving the bowl unmarked. If I'd done this properly, only some diamonds would be able to scratch the new material with difficulty. Then again, had it been done properly, the result would have been completely colorless and all but indistinguishable from the highest-quality diamond with the methods available to gem experts in this world.
This first sample had too many iron impurities, hence the black color. On the other hand, it resonated with my Pyromancy even more strongly than dragonglass and slightly echoed my Sorcery as well. Blood and iron went well together, did they not? Struggling to get up, muscles almost locking together into painful cramps and the stitch in my side stinging with every breath, I approached the first auroch. It was good I wouldn't have to fuel the next part with my own magic. I was about to cut the overbrown bovine's throat when I remembered the step I'd almost skipped and fumbled for my pack.
The one-pound, strawberry-jam-colored stone was full of fractures, dull whitish brown inclusions, veins of impurities that made it almost completely opaque. Ruby, way below gem quality. Such stones were far more numerous than actual gems and while they weren't entirely useless they were used more in gemcutter's tools, sculpting, or as abrasives when ground to dust. They were also vastly cheaper than gems which made for good base material. I threw the ruby into the bowl then went back to the pens full of sacrifices.
A touch of Greensight numbed the aurochs' senses, layering a dream of the pen without my presense over the truth of reality. It was halfway vision and halfway illusion, both and neither. The animal died with its throat cut without even noticing. With a tiny spark of my will, I linked myself to the the lifeblood of the aurochs.
Zālagon I commanded the blood-filed bowl in Valyrian, and it ignited into purple fire. The blood burned and was consumed, its power not used up but infused into the contents of the bowl. For fire does not only consume but also purify and forge and empower.
Zālagon I commanded again when the second aurochs died. Then for the third and the fourth and the fifth as the ritual continued. The crude ruby melted amid the purple flames, its impuritues seared away even as the vitality of the animals was infused to it, priming it for what would follow. Despite the renewed heat, the bowl did not melt. Much like the armor Florian was forging, a bit of fire-resistance had been infused into it. Unlike said armor, it was not made of mere steel but something that endured merely steel-melting temperatures with ease. Back on Earth, the same material had been used for crucibles where steel was poured again and again for years with no damage whatsoever and that had been without magic. So I added the blood of each aurochs in turn, letting the blood burn low between sacrifices.
When the last animal's lifeblood was drained, I set the bowl into the ground where it rested with a hiss. Then I sliced across the underside of my left arm, pouring blood into the flames as they sizzled and hissed and the tang of iron and burning blood changed to something headier and thicker than the essence of mere animals. What vitality I had left from slain slavers and pirates from the last ship sent to the bottom of the Narrow Sea more than a week before I channeled into my blood and from there into the brightly burning pot.
Giēñagon
The cut across my arm sealed itself, the line of blood around it sizzling and burning both injury and pain to nothing. There was a thin whitish line left for a few moments then that scar too began to fade. The pint of my blood in the pot was already burning but it, too, reacted as my wound did. Yet there was no wound for it to heal, only molten ruby that had been infused with a touch of vitality two dozen times over. The spell of healing, similar to what I had used to make Lord Manderly's healing amulet and to restore his Castellan's eye, flowed into the molten ruby and held. The sacrifices were weeks old, their power almost used up or faded, but they had also been far, far more numerous than the death row prisoners in White Harbor and the magic's purpose was not the same.
I drew a bar of steel and pushed one end into the purple flames until it began to droop. Stone-shaping caught the bright orange goop of molten metal, only a little wider than a thumbnail. It hovered over the palm of my hand as said hand rose higher and higher... and with it came a drop of molten ruby from within the burning crucible. I spinned the two molten drops together, sealing a thin line of enchanted corundum within an elongating body of steel. Then I mentally twisted and pressed just so and the thin molten line became a slowly cooling ring.
Soon, there was a ring of seemingly plain steel resting in the palm of my hand, cheap yet strong metal hiding exorbitantly expensive yet relatively fragile ruby, an almost imperceptible trickle of healing passing from it to my skin. If Keera's bracelet or my ritual to help the Old Man had been the equivalent of being in the emergency room with a modern hospital's doctors and resources doing their best to keep someone alive and Wyman Manderly's new amulet was a good doctor providing long-term care, the ring was being on bed rest with a roommate reminding you to take your medicine and providing the occasional aid.
The ring wouldn't save someone from mortal wounds or deadly illness. It wouldn't stop strong poisons, set bones, heal large injuries or even get rid of scars. What it would do was delay them, much like first aid could do, alleviate the pain a bit, disinfect, plus ensure the wearer got the equivalent of rest. In a medieval battle that might last hours before anyone could get evacuated, let alone get competent medical help, it might be the difference between life and death.
I could not afford to give everyone artifacts, not unless some Dothraki khalashar lined up to pour their lifeblood into the cauldron. What I could do was hand around first aid kits that worked by themselves, while at the same time not being impressive enough to abscond with. Who would steal rings of simple steel, after all? One hour later when Martin and his fellow workers came to claim the carcasses, I was rather pleased with my work. Martin on the other hand seemed to be both impatient full of restless energy, looking every which way and scanning the stable again and again.
"What are you looking for, Martin?" I couldn't help but ask, my own curiosity getting the better of me.
"Beg your pardon, milady," he dithered bashfully, "Been hoping yer next spell would do away with the smell like ye did the bugs."
"Not even the mages of Old Valyria could do that!" I laughed. It was... probably a lie? I could think of a couple of ways to deal with it, the easiest being just to smother Martin's sense of smell. "I'm afraid you will just have to do better at cleaning up. If magic could fix everything, none of us would need to work." I patted the beaming guy in the back - he was so eager he looked more like an abnormally rotund golden retriever than a slaughterhouse worker - then left the carnage behind.
Tonight, the nobility of Lys and their most wealthy patrons would dine on aurochs meat. Tomorrow, my new Company would be one step closer to ready for the war that loomed on the horizon.