Over the next several weeks, I stayed in the keep at all times. Between my work with the armor I was making and my research, I was very busy. While I was working most of the day in an incredibly hot forge, I still made time to check on everyone in the mornings and evening with the Throne, and then create portals to my old bedroom close to my footlocker, where I could reach through and grab the plate of food my mom would leave at breakfast and dinner, and I would leave my empty plate in its place. Nora usually made a sandwich for me at breakfast time, and she’d leave a plate with both meals in the morning. Elle would usually be there talking with Bran at dinnertime, and I would have Elle try on the chainmail shirt I was making to be certain it fit well, then we would talk for a little while about the happenings of the day, then they would go back through another portal to the Smith house. By the time they departed I’d be physically exhausted, and I would spend a little time reading about the most interesting topic on my mind. One of those things was my goal to learn more of the Arborean language and customs so I wouldn’t make such a fool of myself again.

  One thing I noticed acutely was the growing distance between Mira and me. She was friendly with me, but she didn’t stick around with me or keep me company. I didn’t know what the problem was, either. I hadn’t even said anything insensitive, much less insulting. Maybe Mira was trying to learn new things and it took up a lot of her time, much the same as I was doing. Maybe she just wanted a little space to do her own thing. I didn’t really know, but I missed her. Bandit’s pranks, not so much.

  We kept this routine when making Elle’s chainmail leggings, then a pair of chainmail leggings for Mira, then Bran’s adamantine plate armor. I even made adamantine chainmail pieces that attached to his new gambeson and quilted pants in the places where the plates left gaps. Bran didn’t want a symbol or anything on his armor, but I did put some nice-looking curves and a tiny bit of gilding on the pieces. There was nothing that would catch a blade or arrow instead of making it deflect away, and it looked very nice when I was done. It was just what he needed, stylish and impenetrable. The same way I laid an enchantment on each link of Mira and Elle’s chainmail to blunt kinetic force, I also did for Bran’s armor. I wished I could make more shields like the Reflector that Elle carried, but I didn’t know how to do that yet, and there was nothing in the keep’s library on the subject. My research was going in another direction for now, so that was going to have to wait.

  There was still no activity from either Kromwell, Raynold, Bermin, Mordon or Ismaera. Scrying attempts on all of them always resulted in a gray haze. Since I lost track of Kromwell and Bermin at Fell Keep, the closest I could get to them was to keep an eye on the place to see who came and went. I didn’t get much information from that, though. I did use the Throne to see what daily life in Fellton was like, and it was bleak and miserable. Fellton was a city of about the same size as Mithram, which was two or three times the size of Stonekeep, so there must be at least two hundred thousand people living there. There were very few families. Men of influence, who were mostly gang leaders or drug dealers, had harems of women, but they didn’t keep the children around. They either sold them to slavers or sacrificed them at obscene shrines to Amagor as people had done in Seacrown. Life in Fellton was wretched and miserable, completely without hope. People lived for their own gratification, or they lived in slavery to perverse and cruel masters. Both men and women prostituted themselves in order to sustain their drug habits. The soldiers of King Karnas were thieves and rapists, and they abused everyone around them. There was no justice to be had, and as a result, many people either lost the will to live or turned into sadistic monsters.

  I studied Aerie and its society as well because that was the seat of power for the Church of the Overgod. Aerie was a city on top of a steep plateau that was protected by strong walls. Even the fields were protected. I estimated the city to have around thirty to fifty thousand souls living in it. The buildings there were faced with white stone of some sort and had roofs of several different colors of tile. The effect was very beautiful to the eye. I found that though I couldn’t scry into the temple complex because of some sort of magical warding, I could follow those who left the temple easily enough. Those people were predators, and not in a figurative sense. I saw one actually hunt the streets and suddenly kill a man who walked alone. The Xerith then carried the victim away and ate him in a secluded place. Despite the fine architecture and beautiful surroundings, the people of Aerie lived in fear every day. Unlike in Fellton, the people of Aerie had large families, which I guessed were to ensure that someone would take care of the parents if they were fortunate enough to live to old age. The people of Aerie seemed to have a sense of hope, or a zest for life maybe, because of the high mortality rate. The people I spied on didn’t really know who was taking their loved ones or why, and I firmed my resolve to do something about the situation in both cities.

  Finally, I began working on my own armor again after Bran, Elle and Mira were taken care of. I put the same stylized curves into the edges of my armor, but I made a couple of changes from what Bran had wanted for his. The first was a fair amount of gilding on the edges of the plates, especially on the pauldrons. Bran didn’t want to stand out so much, and he had simpler tastes. I thought it would be better to do the opposite. If I were the one in the most elaborate armor, then I would be the first choice of attack for enemies. I felt I could take the punishment better than anyone else, and I didn’t want to see my friends and family hurt while I stood unnoticed somewhere close by. I put a clasp on each side of the top of my breastplate where my pauldrons would not be interfered with so I could fasten a cloak or cape onto it. That was a bit of flair that would make me stand out for certain, as only nobles wore capes while armed.

  The other thing I needed to do differently was far more important, and it centered around a gemstone. The gem would be desirable because certain protective enchantments had to be cast in one place and were stationary once cast. They were rooted to the ground. Unless, that is, that ground was mobile. It just so happens I learned a large enough gem was considered the ground by forces of magic, and I could anchor those protective enchantments to my armor if a big enough gem was set into it.

  In my research, I’d found a way to make gems larger by fusing together smaller ones and bringing their crystalline structure into alignment throughout the whole gem. I used much the same trick when I was forging armor, and I found a way to adapt this magic to gemstones. In this way I could make very large, flawless gems, which was what Mordon must have done when he created the Amber Throne.

  I used some of the gemstones in the vaults and made the icosahedron on my cuirass out of a diamond to mimic the worldstone. I made it two inches thick and around four inches in diameter. On the cuirass I made a raised design that looked like the front side of the twenty-sided Icosahedron. I then set it into the adamantine cuirass while I was forming it.

  Once my new diamond was set, I enchanted the gem to layer and retain protective spells I would cast into it so I could concentrate on something else. Specifically, they were my projectile shielding spell, a magic shielding spell like the one Vengeance projected, a kinetic shield that took the force out of blows, and the fire shield I used when superheating adamantium. These spells were not in effect all the time, but I could cast them very quickly into the gem in my cuirass and they would stay in effect until they were either drained of energy or until I dispelled the effects. Then I finished the piece off with as strong of protective enchantments as I could manage and made everything permanent.

  When I finished, I was rightfully proud of what I’d created. Kings would drool over this armor. Just in case I didn’t want to use Mordon’s helm, I crafted an adamantine helm that went well with the rest of the armor. It had a horizontal slit for the eyes and a few vertical slits for the mouth. I didn’t know how to put a magic detection or true seeing enchantment into it, but at least it would keep me alive if I ever found Mordon and gave him his helm back. One day, maybe. I had to stay positive.

  Even after all this crafting, there was still no sign of Kromwell and the others, so I began to research something that had been on my mind recently, which was extradimensional spaces. It was something that was very, very difficult to create, and I learned that only the most gifted of the High Magi could create them. The mithril cube the Pirate King gave us was created by one such mage, though I couldn’t find out who. The reason I was researching extradimensional spaces was that I had a strong need. Specifically, the need to be armed and armored instantly in case of a Xerith ambush. I thought that if I could make a little item like a bracelet or something that was imbued with the same magic the cube had, then I could store a suit of armor in there and arm myself in the blink of an eye when it was needed. I had already been ambushed by those shapeshifting dung beetles twice now, and I was lucky to have survived. Despite the power I recently acquired, I wasn’t so foolish or arrogant enough to think that I could survive if ambushed at an inopportune moment.

  Once I had learned all I could from reading, I chose an old shirt to practice on. When trying to send it into an extradimensional space, I failed dozens of times, many of which burned holes into my shirt. At these times I just repaired it and tried again. Sometimes I teleported my shirt to random areas of the world and had to use the Throne to find it. That turned out to be a happy accident, though, because I may be able to use that trick later. I finally had some success after days of effort when I sent my shirt into a place I couldn’t scry on with the Throne. I couldn’t help but do a happy dance when it finally worked.

  Getting it back out was another problem, I discovered. It took a great deal of concentration on the feel of the magic I used to put it there, wherever there was, but I eventually succeeded. As I turned the unharmed garment over in my hands, I theorized that attaching those spells to a specific item would be a lot easier and safer. Now that I’d learned the basics, I tried to use the new magic on items I was currently wearing. With some spectacular failures, I eventually learned to shift everything I was wearing into an extradimensional space and retrieve it again. I wasn’t about to test that out in a social setting, of course. Now that I thought about it, however, it would be a really great practical joke to play on someone to make all their clothes disappear as they addressed a crowded room of people. Lorond Washman came to mind. Then Mira came to mind. She’d kill me if I did that to her, but it was fun to think about.

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  All mirth aside, it was time to make the items I had in mind. I knew that mithril was the best material to anchor this particular magic to, as evidenced by the mithril cube we’d been given by the Pirate King. The maker of that cube knew of this property of the metal as well. I thought it would be best to make bracelets of mithril with some kind of flexible band that was thin enough to be worn under armor without discomfort. The only problem was that I didn’t have the skills or the tools to make such small, intricate items. Whizzbang did, though. He was an artificer of great skill and making some items of jewelry like this would be something he’d be very good at. I went to the vaults near the great conjuration room in Stonekeep and selected four emeralds that were cut in oval patterns about a half an inch long each. They were big enough to hold the enchantment, but not so big that they attracted undue attention, I thought. I picked up an ingot of mithril from the vaults, also.

  I decided to go to the throne room to see what Mira was up to. She might be studying under Whizzbang’s teaching at this very moment, which would allow me to have an excuse to see her and also to ask Whizzbang if he would mind helping me. On the way there, I went to my chambers and retrieved a bag of money for a few other things I had in mind. I left Mordon’s helm under guard here in the castle and activated the Throne on my own. It was more difficult to do it this way, but I didn’t want to take the helm outside the castle unless necessary. That helm was too important to risk as well as being extremely distinctive and noticeable. There was no one alive that had a helm with gemstones that revolved and spun around it, and besides being worth a king’s ransom, it controlled the golems of the Adamantine Legion, something I would entrust to no one.

  I was in luck. Mira, Bandit and Whizzbang were all in Whizzbang’s living room, where he seemed to be teaching Mira the proper hand gestures for some spell or another. I searched outside the house for an unnoticed place to put a portal. Finding a suitable place in an alley, I used the Throne to focus a portal on that spot then walked through. The portal closed behind me as I walked around to the front of the house.

  I knocked on the front door of Whizzbang’s artificer shop because it appeared to be closed today. Maybe it was Sevenday. I didn’t really know, as I had lost much of my sense of time with the passing weeks. The late afternoon sun felt good on my skin as I waited for Whizzbang to answer. The door opened to reveal Whizzbang peering up at me. He was a middle-aged Seeker about three feet tall with rich brown skin and a full head of white hair that was swept back away from his face. He had almost human features to his face, but his nose was a little large. Today he was wearing brown woolen pants, a white shirt, brown boots, and a vest of brown leather with lots of little pockets sewn into it.

  “Jeron, my boy!” Whizzbang said with a happily enthusiastic greeting. “Welcome! Please come in!”

  “Thanks, Whizzbang,” I said as I stepped inside his shop. “It’s been too long since I’ve seen you last. How are you?”

  “I’m finer than a frog’s hair,” Whizzbang said happily as he shut the door behind me. “Glad to see you alive and well. Mira has told me much. I hadn’t seen you since you acquired that aura of power around you, though. That’s very distinctive and impressive, you should know. Very impressive. Very noticeable to wizards like me, too.”

  “Thank you. Did Mira tell you it almost killed me to acquire it?”

  “She may have left that part out,” Whizzbang said. “There’s always a price for power, you know.”

  “Yeah, I’m beginning to learn that,” I admitted.

  “Well, come on up! I was just about to make some tea, and now’s a good time, I’d say.”

  Whizzbang led me through his shop, which had glass cases filled with lots of shiny and expensive inventions. I could see things like toy soldiers and animals of various kinds that looked like they could move, little lenses and spyglasses, and all sorts of things that only a Seeker would think up. Everything glittered. I would have liked to spend some time looking through his inventions and things but now was not that time. We went up the stairs and into his living room on the second floor. Knowing Mira was here, I brought up a projectile shielding spell before I got to the top of the stairs. Sure enough, a little bag of chalk an inch wide hit my shield right in front of my face, which erupted with a puff of white chalk. Shielded or not, the chalk still made me sneeze. I heard Bandit giggle from her perch on top of an armchair. Her little dress made of tulip flower petals made her very noticeable.

  “Very inventive,” I said.

  Mira laughed as I stepped further into the room and crossed her legs in the little chair she sat in. I couldn’t help but notice a tiny smudge of chalk above one of the pockets on her vest. It looked like there was still a lump inside that pocket, too. As she sat there grinning, I flicked a little bit of magic at that pocket, which made a puff of chalk come out, hitting her right in the face.

  “Why, you… ACHOOO!” Mira said as she sneezed.

  Then it was my turn to laugh. “Maybe store it in a lower pocket next time?” I suggested.

  All four of us had a chuckle at this exchange as Whizzbang began making tea in the little kitchen at the end of his living room.

  “Learn anything new?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I was just working on a spell to keep multiple people invisible all at once. It’s pretty taxing, and I can only make it work in a five- or ten-foot radius. Any hostile action ends the spell, too. It still has its uses, though,” Mira reported.

  “That’ll come in handy one day,” I said earnestly.

  “So, what brings you out of your cave? It must be important.”

  “I was going to ask Whizzbang for his help,” I said loud enough for Whizzbang to hear. “I’m not very good at making small things, and I had an idea for making an item for each of us.”

  “Oh?” Whizzbang asked, clearly intrigued. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Bracelets that serve as an anchor for a very small extradimensional space,” I replied. “You see, I thought if I could store a suit of armor inside that space, then I could switch out a set of normal clothes for the armor in an instant with a command word.”

  “You can do that?” She looked impressed.

  I couldn’t help but be a little bit proud of what I’d learned to do. “I can. I’ve been working on it for a couple of weeks now, and I think I’ve got it worked out. It’ll even work on clothes someone else is wearing.” I adopted a very conniving grin.

  “Don’t you dare,” Mira said as she crossed her arms over her chest.

  I laughed. “Anyway, all I need is a bracelet made of mithril to anchor the magic to.”

  “I can certainly help with that,” Whizzbang said. “Small things are what I do best.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “I have the materials right here. What would you require as payment?” I asked as I set the ingot of mithril and the four oval emeralds on his kitchen table.

  “Well, what are you planning to do with the rest of that mithril?” Whizzbang asked.

  “I didn’t have any plans for it. You want to keep whatever’s left?” I asked.

  “I certainly would. It’s very rare, you know.”

  I nodded. I certainly did know. “I was thinking of something else as payment, also. How would you like to have access to the library in Stonekeep?”

  His eyes lit up and he got a big smile on his face when I suggested that. He almost danced in excitement. “I would find that most exhilarating,” Whizzbang said. “Most exhilarating, indeed!”

  “All right. When you’re ready, I’ll show you around the keep. There’s a lot there that you’d be interested in seeing,” I said.

  “I have to admit, I’ve been wanting to get in there since the invaders were obliterated,” Whizzbang said. “I just can’t contain my Seeker curiosity.” He licked his lips distractedly as he thought about it.

  “Speaking of that, we’ll have to go over the places where there are death spells and golems guarding certain doorways. You won’t be able to teleport inside the keep, so quick getaways won’t be possible in certain places if you aren’t careful,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s never stopped a Seeker before,” he said.

  “Yeah, that’s why I’m telling you now. There are some extremely dangerous places in there, and I don’t want your death on my conscience.”

  “Serious business, then. All right, all right. I’ll be careful to contain myself, Jeron. What did you have in mind for the bracelets?”

  “There will be one for Mira, me, Bran and Elle. I thought some sort of hinged or adjustable band to keep the bracelet on but flexible would be in order. The emeralds need to be set into the top face of the band, of course. They need to be thin enough that they’re not uncomfortable to wear under armor,” I stated.

  “I can work that out. Don’t you worry,” Whizzbang said.

  Whizzbang took a measurement of each of our wrists, then we sat down and had tea. I spoke briefly about what I found in Aerie and Fellton through my scrying, which turned our conversation a little darker. I could only speculate about the rulers of those places, but based on the condition of their cities, the kings of Aerie and Fellton must be monsters. Maybe literally.

  “You certainly have your work cut out for you, my friend,” Whizzbang said. “I wouldn’t want to have those kinds of enemies.”

  “They made the choice for us to be enemies, and there’s not much I can do about that. It’s not going to be easy, but I have a responsibility to do something about it.”

  “Indeed. If no one does anything, that darkness will spread. I’ve long noticed that it’s self-interest that rules this world. That’s why I live here. Stonekeep’s not as full of the bad people as other places are.”

  “That’s certainly true,” Mira said. “This is a good home.”

  We had finished our tea. “I need to be going for now,” I said. “Thanks for your help, Whizzbang. Thanks for the tea, too. It was very good.”

  “You’re always welcome, my boy. I’ll get to work on those bracelets soon.”

  I turned to Mira. “It gets a little boring in that keep all by myself. Now that I have our armor made, all I have to do is read and spy on our less wholesome neighbors. I was thinking a nice trip to Havanalil would do us both some good. What do you say?”

  “I’d really like to see that!” Mira said with excitement.

  “Oh, me, too! Me, too!” Bandit almost shouted in her musical little voice as she hovered over the table.

  I laughed softly. “How about tomorrow?”

  “It’s a date,” Mira replied. She was smiling from ear to ear.

  “See you tomorrow.”

  Almost skipping as I left the shop, I had a few errands I needed to run to be ready for the big day tomorrow. Unlike most people, I liked spending time alone. It gave me time to think. I’d thought a lot about ways that I could court Mira, what she liked, and how I could show her I cared. I had a few surprises in store for her tomorrow, and I hoped that she liked them. It required some preparation, so I was off to the market district now to get things started. I found myself smiling, then whistling a jaunty tune as I walked.