The Lich Without a Soul Vessel

The next afternoon the six of them arrived at Robin's camp. It was deep enough in the forest that you wouldn't find it unless you already knew it was there, situated in the borderland between the Duchy of Taemir and the Duchy of Purei where neither administered anything. A stockade enclosed it, and inside was more than Evan expected: a proper community with women and children, most of the housing built up in the trees — platforms between the broad-spreading oaks, connected by rope ladders — and tents on the ground beneath. There was a blacksmith's forge, and an enchanter's workspace beside it. The enchanter wasn't a mage but a specialized alchemist who inscribed magical arrays into weapons and set magic cores into them, producing enchanted blades that functioned as magical weapons until the cores ran dry. Different from Evan's sword-cane, which had no core and drew on spiritual force instead.

"What do you think?" Robin asked, and sent Andrea to show Evan around.

She was different today. More settled in some way he hadn't seen before. They walked and she talked, and eventually she told him about her parents — a human adventurer and an elven mother who had come down from the forest for love and couldn't go back, because elves were conservative about that sort of thing. They had died when a band of raiders hit their town. Andrea had been seven. Robin had gotten there in time to deal with the raiders afterward, though not in time for what mattered.

"Count Normandy's men," she said. "This kind of thing happens all along the border. Both sides do it. I used to think about revenge. You see enough of it and it starts to feel less like a reason." She shrugged with the practiced ease of someone who had reached this conclusion a long time ago. "The raiders are gone, at least. Robin handled that."

"I'm sorry," Evan said. "I didn't know."

"It was a long time ago." She moved on without letting it become a longer conversation. "What about you?"

"Not much to say. Some magic, some swordwork. Neither one is everything it could be."

"You practice death magic, don't you? I don't like death magic as a rule — there's usually a smell that comes with it, that decay quality. But you're strange. You don't have it. You have something else. Something more like growth."

Evan took this in quietly. He had smelled the death-scent on Boniface and knew what she meant. He had not smelled it on himself, but he also couldn't smell himself the way others could.

"I'm not handling corpses day to day," he said. "That keeps things cleaner."

"It's not residue. Half-elves are sensitive to this kind of thing. The elemental character of a person reads differently to us." She let it go without pressing further.

They reached the blacksmith's area, where a forge was running and an old man was directing the work. A second man was preparing casting molds, and Evan could see from across the workshop that the mold interiors were inscribed with runic patterns.

"Uncle John, this is my friend, the adventurer Evan Wang."

"Little Andrea. Your sword is finished, by the way." The old man turned to Evan. "Good to meet you, sir."

"Those molds — are you casting enchanted blades?"

"We are. The pattern transfers to the blade during casting, then we work in refined mithril and set the core. The enchanter does the final work after that."

Andrea had spotted her new sword and was already holding it up to the light. "I wish it were an enchanted blade instead of a plain one."

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Evan's eyes had gone to her sword and then to the sword-cane in his own hand. Andrea followed his glance.

"Can I see that? Your sword-cane. It's magical, isn't it."

He handed it over. She drew the blade, and the workshop went quiet as the array inscribed on it caught the light. John's expression changed. The man preparing the molds set down his tools.

"Uncle John. Uncle Yuri. Could you modify my new sword to match these patterns?"

Yuri shook his head with the specific regret of someone who genuinely wishes he could say yes. "These lines — finer than wire. This is a real magical sword, and it has no core. I don't know how it works. We can't replicate it."

Evan had studied the array on this blade many times and had it memorized completely. "I can inscribe the patterns," he said. "I'd need an engraving pen and the blade heated."

Yuri opened his tool chest and searched for some time before finding a pen — the specialized instrument with a mithril-fiber nib and a fire-element magic core at the tip, which when activated melted the mithril into a controllable flow for inscription work. He added a length of refined mithril thread to the nib.

The blade went into the forge until it glowed.

Evan took the pen, activated the core with his intent, watched the mithril begin to flow, and started working. He didn't speak while he did it. The inscription had to be continuous — any break in the flow of the mithril while it was cooling would disrupt the pattern's integrity — and he had one pass to complete the entire array before the blade cooled too far to accept it. He moved steadily, the lines going in without hesitation, following the pattern he knew as thoroughly as he knew anything.

When the last line joined its beginning, the array closed. The elements in the surrounding air responded — they always did when a gathering array completed, the nearby elemental energy orienting toward the new structure like water finding a drain. Andrea's new sword pulled at the ambient cold, and ice crystals formed in the air around it, hanging for a moment before drifting down.

Evan exhaled. "Done."

He thought for a moment, then melted a silver coin in the forge coals and spread the liquid metal evenly over the blade's surface as it cooled, concealing the array entirely under a mirror-bright layer. The sword would show as silver-bright iron. What was underneath would not be immediately obvious.

Andrea took it before it was fully cool. Across the camp, Sam had looked up from whatever he was doing with the expression of someone who has registered an elemental event and can't quite locate its source. Robin, who had been working with his horse, turned his head.

Yuri reached for the blade. Andrea pulled it back. "Mine."

"I just want to look at it."

"No."

Cecilia's voice carried from somewhere behind them. She had felt the elemental surge and come to investigate, and arrived to find Andrea clutching a sword to her chest like something rescued from a river.

"What are you not giving him?"

"Evan inscribed the patterns on my sword. I have a magical sword now. Uncle Yuri wanted to take it."

"He wanted to look at it."

"Same thing."

Yuri appealed to Cecilia, who appealed to Andrea, who eventually surrendered the sword with the expression of someone doing something unreasonable under duress. Yuri ran his fingers along it and directed his spiritual sense into the surface. The concealed array shimmered to visibility under the contact, and he lost himself in it for a while — an enchanter's professional absorption, reading something in a tradition he hadn't encountered before.

"No core," he said. "How does it work?"

"There's a gathering array underneath the main inscription. It collects ambient elemental energy slowly over time and stores it in the blade's structure. When it's used, the stored energy releases." Evan kept the explanation to what could be observed. The deeper principles of how he'd designed the array were his own to keep.

Yuri returned the sword without pushing further. Andrea immediately clutched it again, her expression pure satisfaction. "Robin has one and he won't let me touch it. He can't touch mine either."

Cecilia looked at Evan with a tired fondness that had nothing to do with him specifically. "She's always been like this. Thank you for your patience."

"She's exactly who she is," Evan said. "There's nothing to be patient about."

Cecilia looked at the sword again and then at Evan, and Evan understood that she was thinking about something she didn't quite know how to say yet.

"In a war," he said, before she could find the words, "weapons like this don't change much. They help individuals. They don't change outcomes. What changes outcomes is people."

She didn't argue with him. But she didn't look entirely satisfied either.