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.Waln knew he had won for now, but he didn't dare alienate Longsight not just yet.He made a show of lowering his gazeas if the concession had been forced from him.In reality, he had never intended to take Citrine away from the lighthouse.Shewas much more secure there than any place he could hide her."Of course, Longsight.However you wish."Longsight was pleased.Without fully standing, he managed to twirl the chair under him so that he could lean against theback."Tell me now, Baron Endbrook, what size package do you need to send?""Nothing very large," Waln assured him, "just a lock of hair and a finger or two."Five days had passed since the comb, ring, and mirror had been taken from their boxes before the witnessing Primes.Inthat time, initial optimism that the wisdom of New Kelvin would force the three artifacts to quickly reveal their secrets hadvanished.Five days had passed if you counted the actual day of the unboxing as those who opposed Lady Melina's involvementdid, four days if one only counted the subsequent days.Grateful Peace was among those inclined to reckon that four days had passed.Certainly nothing productive had been donethat first day.Oh, the artifacts had been weighed and measured, the materials of their construction subjected to minute, ifcautious, examination, but no real, practical work had begun until the next day.Testing had begun with the ring, for there wasn't a single New Kelvinese who had grown to adulthood without hearingwonderful tales of enchanted rings that held within their compact shapes magics beyond imagining.The gold from which the ring was crafted was not the purest a piece of information that, while it had disappointed thepoets among them, had given Peace reason for hope.As he saw things, who would want a ring made of pure gold? Pure goldwas soft, so malleable that it could be bent beneath the slightest finger pressure.A ring made of pure gold would never holdan inscription; settings would fall from the prongs bent to hold them.The metal itself would become easily scratched orscuffed, thus diminishing the very beauty for which the metal was valued.Tollius, of the Sodality of Smiths, argued that the Founders could have enchanted pure gold to unusual hardness, but Peacewas not convinced.Why waste enchantment if a less pure alloy would do? Many of the writings implied that a single artifactcould contain only so much magical force.If this was the case, then an enchantment to harden pure gold would take up spacethat could have been used for something much more interesting.No, never mind the arguments raised by his associates, Peace found the quality of gold used for the ring a reason for greatoptimism.The carved stone in the ring's setting proved to be as it had seemed under casual observation a moonstone.This stonelived up to the expectations of those who believed that only the best and purest would be used in an enchanted artifact.Pearly white touched with mysterious hues of blue and pink, the gem's color shifted with the light.The moonstone gavethe impression of shining from within, as if it soaked up light and gave it back from within its secret heart.Unhappily, this was just an illusion.Carried within a darkened room the gem failed to shine at all, but this did not makeanyone lose hope.The ring remained a promising artifact.Already factions were quietly politicking to forbid Lady Melina totake the ring as her promised reward.The mirror was nearly as satisfactory as the ring indeed there were those who found it more so.They recited tales ofmirrors used for scrying, for communication with distant places, for magnifying the heat and light of the sun (as in the tale ofthe Star Wizard's battle against the Dragon of Despair the very dragon who was said to be bound beneath the city ofDragon's Breath and to heat with its fiery breath the waters that steamed from beneath the earth).The reflective surface of the mirror proved to be polished silver, not glass.The frame had been fitted together fromintricately interlocking pieces of ivory.There was some debate as to the source of the ivory, for it seemed to hold a moredelicate color than the whale's teeth that were the usual source, but no one questioned that it was ivory.Posa, the thaumaturge who represented the Illuminators and was one of Peace's oldest friends, created a small stir whenshe declared that there were minute particles of ground gem-stones in the pigments that had been used to tint the ivory.Somedeclared that these were necessary elements of the sorcerous formulation and so a clue to how the Founders bound magic intoan artifact.Others, like Peace himself, wondered if they might not have been included simply because they were pretty.Even the comb, upon more detailed inspection, showed more promise than it had initially.After scrupulous inspection andmuch arguing and calling for yet one more specialist, no one, not the wood carvers, the botanists, nor the antiquarians, couldidentify the wood from which it had been made.Moreover, this wood proved to be surpassingly hard and amazingly heavy.Yet there was no doubt that the material waswood, for it possessed a definite grain never found in any other material.Traces of bark were evident along the edge oppositethe tines.Unhappily, these initial discoveries were not followed by some quick revelation of how to activate the magic the artifactsmust hold within them.To facilitate investigation, Apheros appointed a conclave of sorcerers from those sodalities that seemed to have the most tocontribute to the investigation [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]