Commander Teasdale In the Dragonlands, page 30
"No Peter, I am not a rickshaw that you can order up at your convenience. I am a working wizard of the KOTC."
The students didn't hear Sir Peter's answer.
"No, we aren't playing cards. We are discussing the magic of laminar flow at high temperature and pressure."
The students didn't hear Sir Peter's answer. But a couple of them hid grins anyway.
"Oh very well, but I will expect you to discuss laminar flow over magical surfaces while you're here." John hung up the phone and returned to the discussion.
"What's up?" asked Jakanti.
"Sir Peter wants me to teleport him here so that he can have a chat with Kaggluk and Hilda Kruger about the phone system. Now about the effect of ongoing magic and heat on the enlays in the pipes."
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It was several hours later that Peter Banyon arrived at the factory where Hilda Kruger and several orcs worked making and loading phones, by now they had a decent stock. Most of the phones weren't aged enough to be of much use. Elbert had invited himself along so they headed for the chosen orcs barracks area.
Tom Green met them with a smile for Hilda and Peter wondered what was going on. Peter spent most of his time thousands of miles away in the Kingdom Isles. He hadn't heard the rumors about Hilda and Tom.
They had dinner in the O-Club while Peter tried to convince Kaggluk to age more exchanges, one for the Orclands, one for the Kingdom Isles Preferably some for Centriaum.
Hilda supported the idea. "Frankly, I think that we would all be better off if King Aurther VIII and Emperor Napalalto could speak to each other directly. It might prevent a war."
Kaggluk agreed to think about it but made no promises.
During the dinner Elbert complained about Peter using him as a rickshaw service. By now rickshaws were commonplace on the island, some of them powered by batteries, some by pedaling and some by an orc pulling them along as he or she walked.
"I could do that, you know." Hilda offered. "I can load the Amulets of Teleport, If I had one for wherever Sir Peter wanted in the Kingdom Isles and one for here, Research Isle I mean, maybe one for Drakar. I could load them and Sir Peter wouldn't have to bother you."
"That's a good point, Hilda," Elbert acknowledged. "For that matter Peter you ought to be able to load your own amulets of teleportation."
"Maybe, if I had some amulets of teleportation," Peter said. "For that matter, what happened to that Amulet of Teleport that you gave Tensy, the one that took us to the Townhouse in Londinium?"
"Sorry, that was a one off device. I made it and Chips used necromancy to age it a few weeks but once Tensy used it, it became useless, it wasn't strong enough for repeated use. If an item isn't aged enough, it is damaged by the spell being cast through it, so that it breaks and can't be loaded a second time. It amounts to a fairly expensive way of giving a wizard a spell that they aren't up to crafting."
"So we're back to aging magical items," Hilda said, "that's always the hold up."
"And the real drawback of magic in comparison to technology." Peter agreed.
All eyes turned to Kaggluk.
"I am not your personal magical aging service," Kaggluk said. Then she sighed. Fine, bring me the Amulets of Teleport. One for Peter's townhouse or Tregon Park, one for a teleport room here on the island," Then with a sly look at Peter she added, "and one for Drakar. I will age them enough so that Hilda can load them." She grinned. That way Peter can take dongles to Drakar and you won't need more exchanges aged.
Location: Research Island, The Orclands
Time: 8:34 AM, 4 Justain, 1274
Elbert carefully used the carving chisel to push the magic moss into the carved line, making sure that the line of moss was unbroken, but also that it didn't have any loose bits of moss to connect that line to the lines above or below it. Making an Amulet of Teleport isn't done in an hour. It's days of work to craft the thing then, normally, years in a spell safe. Making the ones for Hilda Kruger to load was more difficult because they couldn't be general amulets of teleport. The target location had to be built in. defining that location was one of the most difficult parts of a teleport spell. Easiest to load but most difficult to build was a matched set of teleport chambers that way you had both the target location and the departing location locked in. Which also meant that the creator of the magical item had to integrate the destination and starting point into the matching chambers.
Second was the teleportation amulet which could be used from anywhere but only went to a specific target location. That was still a lot easier than a general Teleport Amulet because the amulet could be made to "know where it was" relative to the target location and it was held by the user.
That was the sort that Elbert made for Hilda so that she could travel to his townhouse in Londinium and back to Research Island.
The easiest Amulet of Teleport to make was also the hardest to load because it had to have the ending point defined by the Amulet Wizard who was loading it and the starting point defined by the location that the amulet was when it was invoked. Which meant that less of the function could be defined in advance.
Elbert had several of the second sort that he had made with his house in Londinium as the target years ago, so that was what he had initially given to Hilda. She could load one of that sort with some instruction.
He had also made some with Research Island as the target as soon as they had gotten established there. Specifically a room next to his quarters in Fort Research. Those had been aged by a combination of spells of sacrifice, normal ageing and occasional favors from intercessors of various gods.
The new ones were the amulets for the Temple at Drakar which was still the only place outside the townhouses where the magical field was smooth enough to craft spells.
Elbert had considered Teleport Chambers which would have been more work for him and required even more ageing, but less ability from the person loading them. He decided a set of amulets that had Pago's temple in Drakar, Tregon Park and the Teleport Room at Research Island, as the destinations would be easier for him to make. Hilda was good enough to load them if she was given instructions. So that was what Elbert was doing. If Peter wanted to visit Tensy he would have to learn to load the Amulets.
Location: Research Island, The Orclands
Time: 9:44 AM, 9 Justain, 1274
"Here they are." Elbert handed the small devices to the orc woman with fur so dark a green that it seemed almost black.
Kaggluk took them and said, "be right back," then froze in place. Wherever Kaggluk was, there was a temple of Kaggluk.
A moment later she handed him the well aged amulets. They weren't self loading but they were aged long enough so that they would hold the spell for months after loading. Not that they were ever likely to be allowed to sit so long without use.
"So we should apply to you when we want to travel to Drakar or Londinium." Tom Green asked.
"Heaven's no, I'm much too busy."
"Who then?" Kaggluk asked.
"Hum. I have several apprentices but I keep them rather busy. Hilda Kruger is probably underused at that phone shop Peter set up here. We can use her as a taxi service. Most of the trips there will be to take phones anyway.
✽✽✽
Later that day Elbert gave the three amulets to Hilda Kruger aka Paulette Lambert. With instructions that she was to register any use she made of them and keep them loaded at all times. Tregon Park wasn't actually in Londinium. It was about thirty miles north west of Londinium a couple of hours on a good horse or a warg. Big Boy, Peter Banyon's mount, was the only riding warg in the Kingdom Isles. Wargs are normally fiercely independent and though two idiots had managed to capture wargs and ship them back to the Kingdom Isles, both had died when the wargs got loose and went on a rampage. Each of them had killed several people before they were brought down.
What this meant for Paulette was that she was inconveniently placed to visit Londinium and transfer things to contacts in the city. She explained this to Marie Devenu the next time she talked to her. The good news was she could expect to be making regular trips to the Dragonlands and would be able to get phones activated in Kaggluk's phone system. Getting the phones aged and getting them to Marie or getting their dongles from Marie was going to be the problem.
Kaggluk, showing a preference for the Chosen Orcs, had aged phones for them and Paulette's first trip to the Dragon Lands contained dozens of dongles for phones of the Chosen Orcs.
She had no opportunity to visit the Parisens though she was told that they would receive phones. Beauregard Stanchion and Glorious Golden Sunrise in the East had insisted. It was part and parcel of this being neutral territory.
Paulette turned over the requisitioned phones to Ambassador Stanchion.
Chapter 22: Orders
Location: HMS Duke Aragorn, Dragonlands
Time: 7:42 AM, 8 Justain, 1274
As it happened Tensy Teasdale didn't have a phone. There was the phone in her room in her townhouse. Each of the staterooms had a phone. But she didn't have one of the little hand held magical devices that Peter, Chips and Elbert had developed after HMS Duke Aragorn had left for the dragon lands. But the phone and the phone system was new and mostly the phones were still quite rare. Much above the paygrade of a commander. So it wasn't till they got back to the Duke that Tensy was informed that they were ordered back to Drakar.
She turned the ship around and headed back to Drakar, not at all sure she liked the changes in the navy.
Location: Research Island, Orclands
Time: 6:35 PM, 8 Justain, 1274
Paulette Lambert was less ambivalent. She knew perfectly well that she didn't like having Marie Devenu able to call her at will. She had instructed her phone not to accept calls while she was at work. Justifying it by pointing out that she might be overheard. Marie had accepted that, but seemed to be taking it as proof of Paulette's "willfulness."
So Paulette was unsurprised when she had a message from Marie that she should call as soon as she was alone. Sighing, she called.
"You need to get to Londinium." Marie's voice was even more intense than usual.
"That's not so easy." Paulette said. "The new Teleport Amulet is set to Tregon Park."
"Can't you reset it."
"No. Even if I knew how to craft a spell that let me choose the destination, it would require a different Teleport Amulet. The ones that Captain Corninth crafted were specific to destinations. One to Tregon Park, one to here, the Teleport Room in Fort Research and one to the Temple to Pago in Drakar. Why do I have to go to Londinium anyway? It's not like I need to go there to deliver a report or get orders."
"It's about the phones. We have developed our own phones. And we need you to put them into Kaggluk's Switchboard Center. Rosalvo Corbin's dongles are the same size as the slots in the phone you sent me."
The dongles that Peter had put in his phones had eight little bumps that matched eight tiny depressions. Peter had explained that it was an eight bit system so that an eight bit byte could represent a number from 0 to 255 but he hadn't explained how eight little bumps could make a number from 0 to 255 instead of a number from 0 to 8.
So Paulette was not confident that Corbin's phones would work with Peter's system. When she'd been training to act as an operator she'd had a screen that showed her the phone's identifying number, who the phone was registered to and any messages that that phone's file held. As well as a list of phones that were blocked, that is phones or other devices that the phone wouldn't accept calls from. How the information got to the screen was something Paulette didn't know. Something she couldn't tell Marie, and through Marie, Rosalvo Corbin.
"Well you will just have to arrange something."
"And how am I supposed to explain what I am doing there in the first place? The Teleport Amulet for Tregon Park comes out in a guarded room."
"Go after hours."
"It's guarded day and night because they might get visitors at any time. One of the Teleport Amulets I have is for the Dragonlands which is on the other side of the world from here."
"Think of something, but you need to be in Londinium on the sixteenth of Justain. You are to go to the pawnshop where you sold the watch and ask for a box of amulets for a hundred gold pieces."
"I don't have that kind of money." A gold piece was a hundred copper pieces and you could buy a basic meal for a copper piece. A hundred gold was close to a year's pay.
Location: Navy House, Londinium
Time: 2:36 PM, 13 Justain, 1274
Commodore Gladstone waved Sydney to the chair across from his desk. It was a crowded desk with files and papers stacked in corners. The cabinets along the walls held more.
"Morning Charlie," Sydney said, yawning as she settled carefully into the chair.
"It's the middle of the afternoon and I'm Commodore Gladstone unless you have something for me."
"Well woop te do." Then she stopped and put both hands against her head as though trying to stop her brain from moving about. "I have something Charlie, but it's not much and you aren't going to like it. Filix Holmes received a package from someone, a box of amulets worth a hundred gold pieces. Filix doesn't have anything that expensive in his shop."
"Who is it for?"
"I don't know and my source doesn't know. It's in a box under the counter and I spend half the night trying to convince my source not to risk his job and his life by stealing the damn thing." Her source was Ron Smith, a former soldier and sometimes mugger who acted as a part time clerk and bodyguard for Filix.
"Did you convince him?" Charlie
"I think so, I pointed out that the person he would normally go to, to sell the thing was Filix Holmes, and even if he went to one of the other fences in town and they didn't tell Filix. He still wouldn't get a fraction of what it was supposed to be worth. So it wasn't actually worth that much, not to him."
Location: Tregon Park, Near Londinium
Time: 8:33 AM, 16 Justain, 1274
It turned out to be fairly simple for Paulette.
It might come back and haunt her later but for now she wasn't asked for an explanation. She was wearing her uniform as a warrant officer in the Royal Orclands Navy. The green furred orc who had the guard duty just had her sign the log book. He filled in the date and time and even arranged a horse to take her into Londinium. The trip took three hours, because the horse was old and slow and because Paulette wasn't any great shakes as a rider. On the other hand the road was good and the weather was nice.
There was a stable near Filix Holmes' pawnshop. She paid the stablehand to give the horse some grain and a rub down. Then she went to the pawnshop. Making a stop in a dark alley, she took off her navy coat, folded it and put it in a bag. She did the same thing with her bicorn hat, then she took out an old ragged coat and put it on.
The pawnshop was a dingy place on a side street where the buildings had overhangs that extended out over the filthy street. It made Paulette feel right at home but not in a good way.
Her childhood had been spent in a pawnshop rather like this one in a back street in Ifle.
Opening the door rang a bell and she recognized the large man behind the counter. It was Filix Holmes, he apparently recognized her too. Which meant that he had an excellent memory or had known she was coming. He waved her over and said he had some items she might be interested in. It was a box of junk but a bag in a corner of the box had dozens of the little wooden dongles with amber protrusions. They did look like the ones that Paulette knew so well from her work in the phone factory.
Filix insisted that it was worth a hundred gold and Paulette laughed out loud.
"You'd know if you had magic sight." Filix insisted.
Paulette pulled out her Spectacles of Magic Sight. She'd stolen them when she was twelve and learned to load them by the time she was fourteen. It hadn't been easy. Her dad hadn't even started to teach her about the loading of magical items and she hadn't told him about the spectacles. She had been convinced that he would have taken them and sold them if he'd known. He would have too.
She invoked the spectacles and was surprised. The dongles weren't the only thing that glowed with magic. There were a dozen other small magical items. None of them were fully aged but there were amulets of Flavor, three mugs of Heat Liquid, several boxes of Preserving, the small ones that would hold a single serving of food. There was a stone of Sharpening. There were also two items that she didn't know what they were. They had dongle slots and were aged more than the rest of the stuff in the bag. They looked something like the glasses of See Magic but they were opaque in front rather than having the magical lenses.
It looked like someone had cleaned out the spell safe of an amulet shop in Ifle with little regard to what they were taking.
Among all this not quite junk no one would notice the dongles. They would be just one more bit of meaningless magic.
It probably was worth fifty gold excluding the dongles. The dongles if they worked and once they were in Kaggluk's exchange were worth more than a hundred gold by themselves. That of course was what the other items were for, so that if someone intercepted the package it would look like nothing more than the gleanings of the burgling of an amulet shop.
"They aren't fully aged." Paulette insisted. "In twenty years the contents of this box might be worth a hundred gold. Now they're worth nothing. As an investment for my retirement they might be worth ten gold pieces."
They bargained for about five minutes and Paulette got the box and its contents for sixty-three gold pieces that she didn't have. Any more than the hundred gold that Filix had initially demanded.
Using sleight of hand she pretended to pass over the money while giving Filix the same coins several times. It wouldn't have worked if Filix hadn't been in on the gag.
✽✽✽
Sydney Georgina Reilly was in the coffee-shop across from Filix's pawnshop. Ron Smith had informed her that Filix expected to be rid of the stuff by today. While he was insisting that he should burgle the place last night. Again she had talked him out of it but he was still planning to mug whoever bought them once they left the shop.
