novelraw Chapter 105: Borrowed Power
Chapter 105: Borrowed Power
’It would have to involve my mother?’
Darion put his fork down.
He thought about what Seren had told him during the walk around the castle.
Her mother, a minor sorceress who used what she had when it suited her and didn’t concern herself much with what it cost other people.
She wasn’t powerful enough to be genuinely dangerous at scale, she had said. Just powerful enough to make things difficult for the people around her.
That had been the description of a woman living in a small house with three daughters, getting by through moral flexibility.
But.
A sorceress was still a sorceress.
What the actual—
"My mother used to help baronies going into small wars," Seren said, looking at her plate rather than at them. "When I was young I saw it a few times. She had these dusts, different from the ones I use. Not for soil, but for people." She paused. "One type, tied up in a bundle and thrown into a group of soldiers, could incapacitate fifty men at once. Maybe kill them, depending on the dose." She looked up. "She had other things too. I don’t know all of it. But she was useful to people who needed an advantage they couldn’t get through numbers alone."
Darion’s expression had changed completely.
"Supernatural tools," he said. "Things that could actually compensate for the size difference between us and Valdenmoor."
"Yes," Seren said.
Garren made a sound that might have been a laugh. For Garren, it practically was.
Darion sat back in his chair.
He had been thinking, minutes ago, that there was no configuration of reality in which a hundred knights beat three thousand. He had thought it firmly and with conviction. No dimension, no multiverse, no version of events where the arithmetic bent that far.
Magic would.
(A large dragon or dinosaur would also work, he thought, but he would take what he could get.)
He had almost forgotten. He lived in a world where a woman could sing to dead soil and make it grow. Where a man could reach into the ground and pull dead soldiers back to their feet. Where venomous snakes existed specifically enough to have a name and a classification in a system that tracked what his undead could carry.
He had been so focused on the material problems — coin, farmland, knights, deadlines — that the fundamental nature of the world he was operating in had been sitting in his peripheral vision unnoticed.
Magic. Actual magic. In the hands of someone with experience using it in exactly this kind of situation.
"Before I get excited," he said, "would she help us?"
"Probably," Seren said. "With the right incentive."
"What does she want?"
Garren leaned forward slightly. "Why would she help at all? What’s her interest in Percvale?"
Seren looked at Garren, then at Darion.
"She likes justified conflicts," she said. "Wars where someone smaller is being bullied into a corner by someone larger. She finds those worth participating in." A pause. "Also she’ll want payment. Something concrete, not a promise of future goodwill."
"How much?" Darion asked.
"I don’t know exactly. Enough to be worth her time." Seren shrugged slightly. "A successful engagement against Valdenmoor should put coins in your hands one way or another. You’d need to promise her a specific amount and swear to it."
"Swear to it how?" Darion asked, raising a brow.
Seren looked at him. "A binding oath. Magical. Not just words but actual commitment with actual consequences."
Darion felt something shift in his chest. "Consequences meaning?"
"If you break it, you die." She said it casually, like she hadn’t just mentioned death. "I don’t know the exact... way it works.. That’s how she operates."
Garren looked at Darion.
Darion looked at the table.
If he didn’t keep his words he would...
Let’s say he took an oath that he would pay her 500 silver Coins if they won the battle with Valdenmoor and they did but then, he didn’t keep to his words, or perhaps wasted small time before the payment, he would die?
Damn!
Was he willing to take the risk?
He needed some motivation!
And so he thought about the farmland. About Seren’s work on it, the dark restored soil, the green showing in the rows. About the livestock on the eastern fields breeding in the morning light. About forty-one knights who had raised their hands and said they knew how to plant. About the people who had lined the streets when he came back from Gonnb and called him a messiah, which had been embarrassing but had also been real.
About what would happen to all of it if Valdenmoor’s two hundred knights rode in and took it.
About many... many other things, some irrelevant but were sure motivating...
"Fine," he said.
Garren’s eyebrow moved.
"The risk is worth it," Darion said. "I’m not going to break the oath. If she helps us and it works, she gets paid. That’s not a complicated commitment to keep."
Seren nodded slowly. "She’ll also want to meet you before she agrees to anything. She doesn’t help people she hasn’t assessed herself."
"Where is she?"
"Two days’ ride, roughly. Southeast."
Darion looked at Garren. "We leave tomorrow morning."
Garren absorbed this. "And if Valdenmoor moves before you’re back?"
Darion looked at him for a moment. Garren had been running Percvale’s daily operations since the first week, had organized every hunt and managed every crisis and briefed every knight and done it all without needing to be told what needed doing next.
"You face them with what we have," Darion said. "If they come before I’m back, you hold as long as you can and you don’t give up the farmland without a fight." He paused. "But I’ll be back before they come. Aldric needs to prepare his force, give the order, organize the march. That takes time."
"Some time," Garren said. "Not a lot."
"Enough." Darion stood. "Two days there, meeting, two days back. Four days. They won’t move that fast."
He said it with more confidence than he felt.
Garren looked at him for a long moment, then nodded once.
Darion turned to Seren. "Tomorrow at dawn."
She picked up her fork again. "I’ll be ready."