The Fire and the Storm - Metric Pro Edition: Fiction, Dragons, Elves, Unicorns, Magic (6 page)

“Excellent.” Theramin nodded in return as he re-cast the model Illusion on the beach beside them.  “All right, I’m assigning at least one person who can cast a good Illusion to every planned building.  The building’s proprietors will work with them to finalize their interior designs, while we of the construction teams will start on the gathering hall.  By the time we’re done with that, everyone on the construction teams should be steady with the spells, and we can divide into ten building teams to hurry the work along.”

With that he set out for the site of the hall, his Illusion moving along the ground beside him. The dragons and many of the elves took to the air while the unicorns ran ahead, and everyone else strolled along in a big loose group.

They gathered around the circle of fourteen great trees that would become the gathering hall.

“All right,” Theramin called, “Quewanak has compiled a list of those of you who are qualified to cast this spell, and he will now call you within these trees where we will form a circle.”

Mark and Talia ‘heard’ Quewanak psionicly call their names, and stepped forward with the rest.  Only nine humans including Mark were called, but all the elves except twelve stepped up.  The unicorns and dragons took part except Karzog, the infant black dragon that Povon and Kragorram were caring for.  And interestingly, Quewanak.

“You will not be casting with us, Eldest?” Talia asked as she went past him.

“I think not.  You are well capable of doing it without me, so I will observe.” he responded, and psionicly added;
“Which is the way of the gods, after all.”

“Mark, would you cast the Link?” Yazadril asked when the casters stood in a great circle just inside the ring of trees.  “And would the rest of you either hold hands, or stand close enough together to touch the person on each side?  Thank you.”

There was a bit of shuffling and the circle closed up a bit, as Mark cast the Link and drew them all into it.

“Now then, Yazadril has the design of the building, while I will direct the horticultural aspects of the spell.”
Theramin psionicly instructed.
  “We will use a song to co-ordinate and unify our efforts in time and frequency.  Mark, could you make sure everyone has everything?”

Mark took the song, the spell, and the design, made sure that he was certain of them, and placed them in the minds of those who weren’t capable of grasping it themselves so quickly.  That took almost three minutes.

“Source above, but it is wondrous how you can do that!”
Theramin remarked with a smile and a metal chuckle, and most in the Link added their heartfelt agreement to the sentiment.

Povon and Kragorram were well used to casting with Mark and Talia, as were Silaran and Equemev, who had to ‘translate’ the elven wizardry spell into the ‘language’ of unicorn sorcerers for their eight companions.

They all followed Theramin as his awareness encompassed the fourteen huge fir trees they would be working on, and examined them in fine detail down to each individual fiber of root, wood, bark, or leaf.  Some in the circle were incapable of holding such a huge mass of information in mind all at once, and were told by Yazadril through the Link;
“You’ll have to work as assistants for now, I’m afraid.”

Theramin then superimposed his mental pictures of the trees as they were over Yazadril’s finished design, considered the changes they wished to make, and planned the flow of material from it’s present shape to it’s finished form.

It was actually far more difficult to change the shape of the existing trees than it was to grow new material in a desired shape, so the existing trees would be modified first to form the rooms, windows, and doorways in the trunks.  After that the walls and the roof of the structure that would connect the trees would be grown.

Having finalized his procedure, Theramin mentally rehearsed it again as the rest followed his thoughts, then he asked Yazadril; 
“Is everyone ready?”

Yazadril checked. 
“They are.”
he reported.

“Then we begin.”
Theramin stated with satisfaction. 
“Four, three, two, one.”

They all began to sing as Theramin and Yazadril cast the spell, while the rest observed and supplied power.

Mark had never cast in this traditional elven way before, and it was wondrous to feel how the notes of the wordless song resonated perfectly with the frequencies of the energy of the spell, though the notes of the song were many octaves lower in frequency.

Accompanied by the song, there began a long series of deep and muffled cracking and snapping sounds from deep within the wood of the trees.  That diminished as the openings were established and began to enlarge.  There was so much power available to the spell that it only took just over four minutes before the rooms in the trees were fully formed.  As transparent plant matter began to grow over the windows from the bottom sills upward, and the doors separated themselves from their frames with more loud cracking sounds, the new walls began to grow between the trunks.  These were formed as the living palace had been; sprouts appeared in neat straight lines that grew into saplings in only moments, then each young tree grew together with the ones beside it, and they all joined their wood with the trunks of the existing trees at each end of the wall.  The leafy branches at the top arched over toward the center of the clearing until they joined in a great domed roof with neat concentric rings of leaves from the center to the rim, only interrupted by six huge round skylights.  Finally the many big windows and three huge pairs of doors formed in the new walls, the three entranceways spaced evenly around the perimeter.

Then Nemia took control of the spell.  She considered nine of the wildflower plant species that grew next to the walls, grew them up the walls in tiny tendrils within the bark of the wood, and had them produce white, blue, and orange flowers in artistic rows and swirls along the building’s window frames, doorframes, and eaves.  Inside the walls, wondrous tapestries of beautiful landscapes done in living flowers grew on the walls between the large windows.

The song ended, there was a long silence, and all the doors and windows slowly opened wide.  The entire construction had taken less than eleven minutes.

Then Mark’s grandfather called; “Well done!” and began to clap his hands.  Those observing the spell joined him in this applause, and Mark saw when he glanced over that his grandmother Sana had tears in her smiling eyes, so moved was she by the beauty and wonder of what she had seen.  And she was certainly not the only one affected.  Even many of those who cast the spell were struck dumb with emotion by the beauty and scale of what they’d done.  The hall was almost ninety-two meters wide and forty meters high.  It’s main entrance doors were over twelve meters high and just as wide.

Everyone took a few minutes to look the new building over, both inside and out.  It was so huge that all could comfortably gather inside at once, including Kragorram and Povon.  It had a strange asymmetry, since it was nearly round, but not quite.  The fourteen great trees that grew in its walls were not in a perfect circle, nor were they evenly spaced, and to move even one of them a few meters would have been more work than all the rest of the construction.

Yazadril cast Speaking and called them all to order.  “All right then everyone, pay attention now.  I’ve reconsidered your talents and capabilities, and I think this would go fastest if we formed sixteen teams for construction, rather that the ten we originally planned.  Collectively, you’re a bit more capable than we had realized. Complete your own homes first, to hone your competence with the spells, then work on the rest of the buildings.  You thirty wizards will be assigned as Illusionists to help finalize the planning of all the buildings, and I’ve divided the rest of the buildings between you.  You’ll work with the proprietors of those buildings while the first sixteen are being constructed.  When each building is completely planned and ready to build, pass the plan to the nearest unoccupied construction team, and move on to the next.”

“We will begin to have shaped stones available in a quarter-hour.” Kragorram announced, needing no augmentation of his mighty voice to be heard by all.  “We will cast a partial Levitate on each one, removing most of the weight, so those of you who are not engaged in constructing wood can easily place them.  Once we are done our dens, we will visit each of your stoneworks and fuse them with spells and fire, so no mortar will be needed.  You can simply stack them in place until we get to you.”

“Excellent, that gives us something practical to do.” Markhan the senior said with a grin as he clapped his hands together and rubbed them.  “Everyone who’s not casting spells and has tradesman’s or crafter’s skills gather to me, and we’ll get you sorted out.  We’ll follow behind the construction teams doing stonework, interior finishing, and any extra furniture that we won’t be bringing from our present homes.

“Mark, can you assign us a Translocator to fetch our tools and materials?”

“I’d be glad to do it myself, Grandfather.  Talia and I will get our house done while you get organized, then bring most of what you need.  Then we’ll do the next house, and check with you again as soon as we’re finished it, and so on.”

“That’s fine.  And one more thing; when all you spell casters are done, we’d appreciate your not offering to help us with what we’re doing.  I think it’s better for our community if a fair share of the work gets done by muscles and hands.  I want my new grandchildren to appreciate that kind of work as much as they do the magic that gets done here.”

“I agree whole-heartedly, Grandfather.” Mark chuckled.

“All right then, wizards, here are your assignments.” Yazadril called as he psionicly passed out instructions with unthinking ease.  “Proprietors, here are the Illusionists assigned to your projects.  Let’s get to it, shall we?”

Everyone separated to go to their first projects.

Mark and Talia were the only two on their construction team, and she ran off laughing toward their new homesite while Mark playfully chased after her.  Faster and faster they raced through the deep grass and wildflowers that grew between the widely-spaced trees, until Talia let him catch her just as they arrived at their destination.

“Damn you’re quick!  But I’ve got you now!” he laughed as he scooped her tiny form up in his huge arms.

“Mmm, you sure do!” she giggled as she hugged him around his neck, then turned in his arms to consider the three great trees they would work with.  “This is going to be so fun!” she laughed.

“It is!  We don’t really have to sing for this, do we?  It’ll go faster if we don’t.”

“It would, but we’ll sing anyway.” she insisted with a smile.  “The act of creation seems more…  More spiritual, I guess you’d say, when done in the traditional way with the accompanying song.  Besides, it’ll still only take us a few minutes, and we can spare the time, and I just love hearing your voice!  Especially when you sing.” she giggled.

“All right, you’ve convinced me!” he laughed.

Far to his left, they faintly heard Dalia and Bezedil’s team begin their song as they started on their new home.

“Let’s get started.” she prompted.  “I want to see if we can do more constructions today than the other teams.”

“All right, my beautiful little love.  I’ll follow your lead on this one.”

They deepened their Link, closed their eyes, reviewed the spell, considered the trees, began their song, and cast.

They almost went too fast and caused a split in one of the trees, but Talia detected the strain building up just in time, and relieved it before the tree could lose it’s structural integrity.

They fell silent and opened their eyes upon their new home.

“Beautiful.” Mark softly remarked.  “Bigger than we need, even if we have four kids here, but we’ll have room for a few guests to stay over if they want.”

“Yes, and Dalia’s team is only a quarter finished.” Talia said with a nasty little giggle.  “Lets get our next assignment and do another one!”

With that she psionicly checked for the nearest site that was waiting for a construction team, and Translocated them there with hardly a thought.

Her competitive fire was fully ablaze now, and Mark let himself get swept up in it.  By the time another three hours had passed, all the construction spells were finished.  Talia and Mark had done twenty-three of them, including the second largest construction in the settlement; that being Nek and Reen’s pub.  It was large enough to comfortably accommodate most of their neighbors at once, or all of them when the outdoor ‘seating’ was utilized.  Its most distinguishing feature was that its entire front wall was hinged at the top so that it could be swung completely up and open in nice weather, making the indoor and outdoor areas into one big party space.

Having completed their work, Mark and Talia strolled around, looking at the new buildings and chatting with others who were also finished.  They had indeed done far more than any other construction team, even though they’d had to pause several times to Translocate in tools and materials for the tradesmen.  Having ascertained this fact, they kept it and their smug satisfaction to themselves, seeing no need to boast about it.

Everywhere now there were improbably huge stacks of black and dark gray stones being slowly carried from the sites of the dragon’s dens to everywhere else.  That was a tricky task for strong men, since the stones retained all of their mass, and thus their inertia or momentum, even though the partial Levitations cast on them reduced their weight to only a few grams each.

“That’s what it’ll be like working in the void, or on the moons.” Yazadril thoughtfully pointed out.  “Everything will have all its momentum, without its weight.”

“Yup.” Mark agreed.  “That’s what it was like in Quewanak’s cavern on Blenda, when we took our training with him.  It was pretty awkward just trying to stand up straight without bouncing around.  At least here, these men have their own weight, so they at least have some traction.”

“I notice those men are using mortar between the stones, though Kragorram said they wouldn’t have to.” Nemia pointed out, indicating a fireplace that was going up near them.