The realization that his connection to the future was tied to a physical location changed the way Thomas looked at the horizon. He spent the morning on the battlements, staring toward the southern pass. According to the digital maps he had cached, the nearest major trading hub was a journey of nearly thirty miles. If the signal drop he had experienced at the barn was a sign of a larger pattern, he needed to know the exact range of his lifeline.
"I am going to ride to the southern boundary," Thomas told Victoria as she joined him on the wall. The wind was pulling at her hair, and she looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and the constant, underlying concern that had become her shadow.
"The southern boundary?" she asked. "There is nothing there but scrubland and a few charcoal burners. Why waste a day on the road when Hamo is still prowling the halls?"
"I need to know how far the voice of the glass carries," Thomas said, patting the pocket of his tunic. "In the barn, it grew weak. I need to know if it dies entirely, or if it is merely a matter of the hills being in the way."
Victoria leaned against the stone. "If the glass fails you, Thomas, do you fail as well? Or is the knowledge already in your head enough to keep us from the rope?"
"The ideas are in my head," Thomas admitted. "But the details—the exact mixtures for the medicine, the blueprints for the machines, the history of what is coming—that is all in the glass. Without it, I am just a man with a few strange stories."
"Then go," she said. "But take two men-at-arms. The roads are not safe for a lord riding alone with a distracted mind."
Thomas took her advice, though he kept the guards at a distance as they rode out. He kept the phone in his left hand, resting it against the pommel of his saddle. He watched the signal bars like a navigator watching the stars.
The first several miles were steady. The signal remained a solid five bars, the battery unchanging. The landscape was a repetitive blur of dense oak forests and rocky clearings. He crossed the small stream that marked the edge of the manor's immediate lands, and for a moment, nothing changed.
Then, at the ten-mile mark, exactly as they passed a twisted, lightning-struck willow by the road, the first bar vanished.
Thomas pulled the horse to a halt. He sat there for a long minute, watching the screen. The battery, which had been a flawless one hundred percent, flickered to ninety-nine. It was as if the bridge that powered the device was stretching thin, the energy dissipating into the ancient air of the twelfth century.
"Is something wrong, my lord?" one of the guards called out, trotting his horse forward.
"Just checking the path," Thomas replied, his voice tight.
He pushed the horse further. It was another ten miles of rugged terrain before the next change. Near the ruins of an old Roman watchtower, twenty miles from the keep, the second bar disappeared. The battery dropped to ninety-seven percent. The screen felt slightly warmer in his hand, as if the device were struggling to maintain the link.
He felt a cold sense of relief mixed with dread. The signal wasn't tied to the specific stones of the manor, but it was decaying over distance. He had a radius—a bubble of modern influence. If he traveled fifty or sixty miles, the phone would likely go black, becoming nothing more than a useless piece of glass and metal. He was not a prisoner of the house, but he was certainly a prisoner of the valley.
He turned the horse back. As he crossed the twenty-mile mark again, the signal bar flickered back into existence. At ten miles, the battery surged back to one hundred.
The tether was real.
When he returned to the manor, the sun was low, casting long, orange shadows across the courtyard. He found Victoria in the solar, standing by the fire. She didn't say a word; she simply looked at him, waiting for the verdict.
"Ten miles for every bar lost," Thomas said, sitting heavily in a chair. "I can go maybe fifty miles before it dies. I can reach the city, perhaps, but I cannot stay there long. I am rooted here, Victoria. The bridge is anchored to this ground."
"Then we make this ground the center of the world," Victoria said, her voice firm. "If you cannot go to the city to find your scholars and your glass, we will bring the city to us. We have the silver. We have the hill. Let the world come to the man who holds the light."
Thomas looked at her, moved by her unwavering pragmatism. He pulled the phone out and saw a notification he had missed during the ride. It was a photo from his father—a picture of a sunset over a lake in Ohio.
The colors were brilliant, a digital perfection that made the grey stone of the solar look drab and lifeless. He stared at it, his thumb hovering over the image of a world he would never see again.
"He sent a picture," Thomas whispered.
Victoria moved to his side, looking at the empty air where his gaze was fixed. "What does it show?"
"Home," Thomas said. "A lake. The sky on fire."
"Is it beautiful?"
"It was," Thomas said, closing the screen. "But you are right, Victoria. This is where the work is. This is where the foundation has to be."
He looked at the dark corners of the room, thinking of Brother Hamo and the secret furnace beneath the chapel. He had a limited range and a limited time.
"Tomorrow," Thomas said, "we start the work on the schoolhouse. And I want Wat to begin the designs for the first printing press. If I cannot leave this valley, then I will make sure the ideas I have can travel where I cannot."
Victoria nodded, her hand resting on his shoulder. Outside, the bells of the village church began to ring for vespers, the sound ancient and heavy. But in the solar, the only light that mattered was the one Thomas kept hidden in his palm.