After the meal was over Blackstone pushed Harlan to Sable and took everyone else to tour the grounds.

He didn’t like being separated, but he figured he would have a good chance to get away if it was just him, while Redmond could get the others out if needed.

Sable and one of her older brothers led him to a room that Harlan thought might be an armory at first, but the addition of a couch and its proximity to the dining hall left him confused.

“What room is this?”

“A guest waiting room, which has been filled for the sake of Sable’s desires. Should you go along with them.”

“Sorry to ask, but what is your name?”

“Onyx.”

“Like…”

“Yes, the stone. Blackstone Blackstone. My mother has a sense of humor.”

“Better than being joyless.”

“That is one view of it.”

“Onyx, I want to talk now.”

“Of course.” He moved to a corner of the room and stood watch.

“I bought all of these items, they are soulsmithed, but don’t have spells in them. Teach me how to put spells in them, Redwall refused to send someone to teach me.” Onyx rolled his eyes at her.

“Did he say why he didn’t want to send someone?”

“He said it was your work and I should ask you. But my people couldn’t reach you for a week.”

“You have people? And yes, I was working on things. I couldn’t really leave.”

“It couldn’t have been that important.”

“It was.”

“Moving on, start teaching me now.”

“What about negotiating?”

“You are living in my mothers lands, think of it as a favor to her.”

Onyx flicked her ear.

“Don’t use her name to try and force people into work, it makes you look like a brat.”

“I am not a brat.” She started hitting him, but he didn’t react.

“I was told to offer you an official favor and then negotiate price from there.”

“Right. A favor is good. But I do have a question.”

“I will answer to the best of my ability.”

“Where do I buy spatial items? I have seen people use them, my uncle has had one for years so I assume people in the army just have them but I’ve never seen anyone selling them.”

“Trade of spatial items is on a to order basis, mostly they are used by the army since moving items to the frontlines is important. Due to certain limits in production, personal spatial items are prohibitively expensive.”

“What limits?”

“I do not have the answer for that question, manufacture is a closely guarded secret, as far as I know only the kingdom and the academy have this knowledge.”

“Thank you. Alright then, Sable. I have taught other people how to do this, it shouldn’t be hard. Unlike soulsmithing anyone should be able to do it. You should have some spellforms memorized.”

“I am a prodigy, of course I know some.”

“Great, now just hold the item, think as hard as you can about that spellform, maybe even do the movements to cast the spell before grabbing the item. And just hold that in your mind, don’t do anything else. A clear mind is the biggest thing I think.”

“You think?”

“This all came naturally to me. Teaching is trial and error, no one is quite the same. My sister Ava kept trying to force the spell into the item which kept messing it up. My friend Zella didn’t have that problem but still took an hour to learn it.”

“Then I should be able to do it in less time than that.”

After an hour had passed she had yet to properly implant a spell, attempting to cast an imperfect spell after her first try nearly had dire consequences, but it was luckily a dud instead of an explosive failure.

“You must be teaching me wrong, these stupid souls don’t want to learn the spell right.” She huffed and puffed, putting a spell into an item was effectively no different than casting it, and she had been trying nonstop for a while already.

“Wrong. Souls love learning new things, are you keeping yourself calm? You aren’t trying to force it, right?”

“These must be defective. That is it.”

Harlan picked up a dagger that she had already failed to put a spell in, and after a few minutes it was able to make a fog roll out from it.

“This one is definitely working. What spell are you trying to put in?”

“A cloying acidic crystallization fireball cluster.”

“That sounds like a big spell. Maybe try a normal fireball?”

“What is the point if I can’t put my biggest spells in the item?”

“You can’t put anything in it so far, work your way up from something simple.”

“A pointless waste of time.”

“And pouting because you can’t do something isn’t a waste?” Onyx spoke.

“I am not pouting, these just don’t work well enough.”

Onyx grabbed another item she had failed to put a spell in, and after 5 tries he put a simple fireball into it, firing it off at the wall and letting the wards stop the damage.

“His advice seems solid to me. Maybe it is an attitude problem? Not everything is combat magic, aggression doesn’t seem to translate well to this.”

She stormed out of the room.

“Thank you.”

“What?”

“You were never supposed to teach her how to do this. Redwall already tried to have someone teach her, our mother wasn’t impressed with her attitude during this. She learned how to do it herself from the same teacher, guessing at why Sable couldn’t learn it at all. Sable is a prodigy with efficiently using esoteric and advanced elements. But she has an inflated ego as a result, you were brought here to knock her down a peg. She isn’t being sent to the academy until she can grow up a little as well.”

“Oh, well then..”

“Now, I will guide you to your people if you would like.”

“Yes, I would. And I need to get something to eat as well.”

“Very well, follow me.”

Harlan followed him to the kitchen, picking up a sandwich to eat on the way to the garden.

There he found Blackstone sitting and drinking tea with Redmond, he didn’t see the others around.

“You took longer than I expected, did she learn her lesson?”

“I taught her, but I don’t know if she learned what you wanted or not.”

“There is always more time to teach her. She never put any spells into the items though?”

“Not fully, and if she wasn’t lucky she would’ve killed herself.”

Harlan could hear the teacup shatter in her hand.

“Explain exactly what happened. Now.”

“If you mess up when putting a spell in something, the item will miscast it every time. But it isn’t your spell, so it can easily hurt you. She said she was trying to put in a cloying acidic crystallization fireball cluster into the sword. I don’t know exactly what that spell does but I can’t imagine it would be good if it blew up in her face. She is lucky her incomplete spell just fizzled out instead of overloading into something worse.”

“It isn’t luck. I taught her to make spells with safeguards, I am glad her ego hasn’t stopped that lesson from sticking with her at least. But you seem to not even know about safeguard runes for spellmaking?”

“I am often learning that I have been running far before someone told me how to walk. I have paid that price more than once already.”

“Some lessons are better learned in blood. I hope you find a balance and don’t start fearing magic because of a few bad situations.”

“I lost my arm up to my elbow.”

“Most wouldn’t admit it, but I am quite sure any experimental mage has mangled a body part or two in their pursuit of knowledge. I once tried to make a layer of blackstone on my hand as armor. As soon as it broke the shards cut into my flesh, the doctors decided it was easier to cut the hand off and regrow it rather than try to get each fragment out.”

Harlan had to ask a question, one which he had been thinking about for some time.

“Is everyone who gets into magic… not all there mentally? When I talk about certain things people look at me like I am crazy. But I don’t see what is all that wrong.”

“Would a sane person devote days to the things which we do? I have heard about your exploits, your home is run by few people and many golems, you mentioned losing half your arm and you don’t seem too upset about it, you surely have many more things which you haven’t told anyone about. I also heard you made some kind of abomination.”

He wanted to defend himself, but she was right. He wasn’t normal, Ava reacted very poorly to his testing with transformation magic, many people in the village thought he was making an army in the woods, Redmond didn’t seem to care much about the thing he made.

“Huh. I guess I am crazy.”

Blackstone let out a howling laugh, but added no comment.

They sat for a time simply drinking tea, watching the sun lower in the sky. Eventually a servant told her that she should be getting ready for the party.

Then it was just Redmond and Harlan.

“Where is everyone else?”

“Blackstones other children took them away. I think they are looking for marriages to connect them with you.”

“Did they seem like good people? I am not going to be adding more names to my list, am I?”

“They seemed alright. But I couldn’t tell really, not in such a short time. Also, probably don’t mention lists like that, I don’t bring up mine for a good reason.”

“Why would they be trying marriages anyway? I am still nobody to most people, the royals already have my unique talents translated for normal use. And the royals haven’t granted the rest of you my last name anyway.”

“I think Blackstone expects a lot from you, and she wants to keep you connected to the county. You could eventually move out of here and into the frontier, there might be a real worry of you ending up as a hermit even deeper in the woods away from people. And those kinds of people who disconnect from the world are dangerous or completely Harmless. Sometimes something happens and they go from one to the other. I’m not worried about you doing that, but… if something happened.”

“Yes. If something happened… I am going to look for the others.”

Harlan’s words lingered without reply.