Chương 332: On the Importance of Witches

Ch. 332 - On the Importance of Witches That winter was a hard one for Charia, though Simon didn't know it until the spring, because communication between the clanholds fell almost to zero when the roads were more ice than soil. He didn't blame them for that, not after he'd gone out in it last year. The lives of the messengers were almost certainly more important than whatever news they might bring. For him, at least, his second winter in Adonan was quite a bit more comfortable than his first had been.

Not only did he not risk life and limb to hike down the mountain, but after spending a year getting to know people through the course of his business dealings, people were much more receptive to his presence, and he was a frequent guest at various clanhalls for reasons that were often related to pleasure as much as business. Even when he wasn't being asked about some new venture, or helping someone with a particularly bad case of white fever.

Though he wasn't allowed to attend the clan moot this year for obvious reasons, he heard much of the goings-on from Eddek and was invited to plenty of other celebrations after the fact. Several clans tried to get their hooks into him with arranged marriages and other trysts, but Simon declined all of those awkward moments as politely as he could.

Winter was the season for celebrations, since there was little to do besides drink and tell stories to pass the time on those short, bleak days, but he had his projects to work on. Still, he did get some things done. He designed some mirrors that one could theoretically use to communicate with at any distance, so long as that communication was done in writing and pictures. He hadn't yet figured out a way to make a speaker or a microphone, though he was sure it was possible.

He also found a couple of woodworkers skilled enough to start working on his printing press. Though they didn't understand why he would want to build such a system, they were happy to work on the pieces and carve the letters as long as they were being paid to do so.

"Wouldn't it be easier to just hire a scribe to copy the book you want?" one of them asked when they initially discussed the project.

"Sure," Simon agreed.

"If I just wanted one copy, or maybe even five copies, but what about the tenth copy or the hundredth?" Simon thought for sure that would clarify things, but instead the woodcarver looked at him like he was stupid and asked, "What would you need a hundred copies of the same book for?" Simon hadn't bothered to explain any further after that. He'd just focused on the specifications, like how tight the tolerances needed to be and how many copies of each letter he wanted.

It was a process that would take at least half a year, and given how extortionately expensive paper was in the mountain lands, he was probably going to have to build a paper mill before he started printing as well. He was in no hurry, though, and instead found ever more ways to fill the time. He'd only had to think about printing books for a few days before he figured out how easily he could print spells as well. The person who cast such a thing wouldn't even need to read it.

They'd just need to hold it right, or perhaps bleed on it. The idea was frightening enough that, for a time, he questioned whether embarking on this road was really a good idea; he'd definitely found Pandora's Box, but he hadn't yet opened it. For now, that distinction was enough for him to keep going, though as soon as spring started, he was distracted by new developments. A clanhold or two was lost almost every winter.

It was a tough time in the mountains, and a hungry ice troll or worse could decimate a community. That was normal enough. This year, though, as news began to trickle in from travelers it became clear that more than half a dozen communities had been crippled or killed by causes that ranged from violence to disease. As place names trickled in one at a time, though, it became clear that he was in part to blame.

Of the nine clanholds that had not survived the winter, he'd visited eight of them and purged them of their witches, which was concerning. Despite the fact that he bought enough drinks in the weeks that followed to make sure that he heard every version of every story, things didn't entirely add up. None of them seemed to devolve into terrible cycles of vengeance against suspected enemies or resurgences of angry cults.

Most of them simply fell to unchecked disease or a series of unfortunate events rather than monsters, even. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. It took him a long time, perhaps too long, to fit those pieces together and come up with what he felt was the most likely solution. The witches were a parasite most of the time, but in hard times, a little magic goes a long way, he decided.

They might not use fire and lightning to strike down monsters as he would, but after this, it was obvious they played some vital role. He couldn't ask them, of course, but based on the stories he heard, he guessed that it mostly involved tending to sickness and both men and animals, keeping the worst of famine and disease at bay.

Simon hadn't felt bad about what he'd done to cripple the covens until now, not even when the oldest of the women had turned into crones before his very eyes and withered into a husk as her borrowed vitality vanished. This was different, though. It was hundreds of lives that had died because he hadn't adequately considered the consequences of his actions. He'd thought what he was doing was an unmitigated good, but as always, it was more complicated.

Instead of bemoaning it or mentally flagellating himself, though, he got to work. His penance would be making sure this didn't happen again. Rather than going out and purging more coven's as he'd planned, he decided that he first had to mitigate his losses. So, he spent time sand casting bronze copies of his healing medallion. Then, when he had enough copies for every village he'd already scourged of witchcraft, he got to work writing a short treatise on the prayers involved in making them work.

Those prayers were nonsense, of course, and he felt like a White Cloak for writing them, but they were a necessary disguise. Almost no one would willingly use witchcraft, but almost everyone he'd encountered would use prayer if they were desperate enough. When he was finished, he'd created what would turn out to be the first document his press would copy.

He had to buy a lot of paper, and half of it was spoiled by poor quality prints, but eventually, with enough trial and error they solved all of their issues, and mass produced a thin, twenty page cloth bound hymnal, which, when paired with the amulets he'd made, would become a perfect solution to common diseases in the area. It looked authentic, too.

Though he didn't know everything about Dionia, he knew enough about her to make it sound right, and when he showed it to some of her worshipers, they praised him for his genius.

"Truly, the Goddess has inspired you!" one widow proclaimed. Simon smiled, but he didn't think that was very likely. He was pretty sure that the only Goddess he knew of wouldn't be very happy with what he was doing. Helades didn't get a say, though. He was solving levels as he went now, and as far as he was concerned, that was all that he owed her. When the time came to deliver this bounty, he didn't do it himself.

Instead, he paid devoted worshipers, as well as survivors who'd been healed previously by his efforts to do that. It was summer by that point; he should have been sending aid the day he heard the news, and some communities probably no longer existed in any meaningful way after the delay. He still financed and sent a caravan to every community he'd visited the previous year.

Those who went to the places that had been worst affected took tools, lumber, and medicines, or sometimes even small herds of goat and sheep if they weren't too far. Other communities that were still doing just fine were given simpler gifts along with the relic. It was Simon's first attempt at releasing magic into the wild, so he tried to keep his name out of it as much as possible, and he framed the whole effort as a missionary effort.

I probably won't even find out if it worked this year in most cases, he told himself as he eagerly awaited news of his efforts, which was glacially slow in coming. He was loath to go out and purge new villages of their witches until he'd found a way to mitigate the damage of doing so. He wanted to do good, not just feel good about what he was doing. The result was that instead of adventuring further afield, he spent almost the entire year within the walls of the capital.

While Simon wasn't quite willing to call that time wasted since he accomplished a lot, it certainly felt like it some nights, and he was frustrated that all of his grand plans had been pushed back a year. Still, it was nice to spend more time with Eddek and Kayla. Both of them were growing up so fast, and practically on the cusp of adulthood, and Simon no longer feared that some terrible future awaited either of them.

The only other benefit of staying in Adonan so much was that he was able to study the people with his glasses more often. Those efforts combined with a little research on some of those he saw with witchmarks on made him certain that there was a coven somewhere within the city, though so far he'd made no progress in finding them or where they gathered. Somehow, they even managed to avoid his divination magic, and clues were slow in coming.

You can't hide forever, he told himself one afternoon when he investigated the ashes of a forest bonfire not far from the city. Although he'd found the location by chance while looking for places along a river to build a waterwheel, nothing remained to tell him what had happened there. Still, the scent of sulfur told him something had. Somehow, no matter how many mysteries he solved and how much he learned about the world, there were always more mysteries waiting to be unraveled.