[This story begins a few months after Ben acquires Grarnihorn's library, and about three years after the rogues arrived in Uslar.]

Duncan, Tania, Joan, Arthur, Walter, and Mandy. Plus the less experienced students at the Temple.

Walter and Mandy were young townsmen, talented, eager, and poor. Walter was from Lubbenau, down the Hart River from Uslar. Mandy came from Fenny Stratford, several days west of Uslar. Their parents were small shopkeepers, not wealthy, with too many children. When scholars in their towns started asking about people with unusual talents, people who could do things others couldn’t, and weird children, their parents pointed to Walter and Mandy.

Walter had been barred from dice games by his friends, neighbors, and every innkeeper in Lubbenau. He always made a winning roll. No one else had his luck with dice. His dice, someone else’s dice, even rigged dice, rolling against the way they were rigged.

Mandy had exceptional hearing. She could hear someone a hundred yards away speaking as clearly as if she was next to him. She could hear whispers at almost as long a range. She could clearly hear a shout half a mile away. In a crowded room, with many people talking all at once, she could focus on one person’s conversation, and follow every word.

Ben welcomed them, trained them, and learned how to do their feats. Their parents couldn’t pay for their training, but they worked around the mansion and school to pay their way. As they became more expert in magical feats, they began to think of the day when their studies would be over. What would they do then? They had decided to get married, but how would they support themselves? Was there work for wizards?

Mandy told Walter, “We should ask Ben to take over the portal project. He’s stymied by it, but there are so many other things he’s working on, he can’t devote enough of his attention to this one. I think we can make money for ourselves and others if we can solve the problem. Ben says there’s always a solution to a problem, if we just think hard enough about it. What’s the point of learning how to increase our mental powers if we don’t use them.”

Ben preferred the “small” dining room in the family wing of the mansion. It wasn’t really very small, but the Great Hall was much larger, too large for Ben’s modesty. He didn’t like to look like some rich nobleman hosting his feudal dependents. The dining room had seemed large itself when the rogues first moved into the mansion. Over time, as Ben’s students started to join them for dinner, the table had been replaced, and replaced again.

Now the Great Hall was the only place to feast all the students, and Ben emphasized his modesty by sitting at the center of the long table, instead of the head. But tonight was a “family” dinner, served in the dining room. Only the rogues and the fully trained wizards attended.

Polly sat at Ben’s right hand, with Horace and Betsy beyond her. Vince and Jenny sat to Ben’s left. Across the table were the first six products of Ben’s school of magic: Duncan, Tania, Joan, Arthur, Walter, and Mandy. All fully trained wizards, suddenly sent back to school to read through all forty volumes of Grarnihorn’s library. Also on the table was Fearless, wandering around looking for scraps and petting.

“Polly and I had a wonderful trip,” Ben described their recent journey as they pushed away their empty plates. “We left jump disks in every city we visited, all the places we’ve been since leaving Ongar years ago. This will make it easy for any of us to revisit these towns. We went all the way north to Ochtrup. Amos and his men are doing very well, and send their best wishes to everyone.

“The scholars we talked with are happy with the grimoires they had bought from us. They are interested in buying copies of Grarnihorn’s library, dependin’ on the price. They’re also very interested in seeing a practical use of magic. That’s what I want to talk about tonight. Fingertip flames look nice, but aren’t all that useful. We can do illusions, but what use are they? Fake guards in a shop or house. Fake defenders on the walls of a city or castle. Elf lights. Well, those are very useful. A bright flame that won’t burn down the house.

“Grarnihorn’s library will pay for the Temple to Humoparmia I want to build. Even just a few copies will cover the cost of the Temple and school, and their expansion over time. Polly and I will have no worries about money, ever. Nor will our rogue friends, because we’ll share with them. That leaves our students, you here who are already very proficient wizards, and those still learning.

“I’m generous and quite willing to share my good fortune with my students. But at some point there’ll be too many students, and not enough money. You’ll want to use your training to make your own fortunes, and not just take my gifts. So tonight, let’s talk about how to make money being a wizard. Don’t leave, Vince, and you other rogues. You might have ideas of what a non-wizard might want to buy from a wizard.

“There are all sorts of things that will add to our income, and provide work for our wizards. I never thought before about the practical uses of simple magic, but some feats can be used for several purposes.

“Think about a knife. If I trap a rabbit, I can kill it with the knife, then gut it, skin it, and cut it up for the stew pot. All with the same knife. One tool does many jobs. It’s the same with magic. One feat can be used in many different ways. We just have to think about new ways to use the feats.

“For instance, Grarnihorn used the invisible wall feat in a new way. The grimoire describes it as a way to defend yourself while traveling. The feat makes a wall of magically solidified air. The wizard bends it around his camp and can sleep safely. Grarnihorn used this feat to make solid, see-through window shutters. Small pieces of solid air fixed in a wooden frame and stuck in a window like a regular shutter. Think how many nobles and rich merchants might want this. And it’s easy to do.

“Grarnihorn mentions something he says every wizard did, and no one ever wrote down in a grimoire. I guess they thought it was so obvious they didn’t have to record it. Wizards made what Grarnihorn calls “wall sticks,” ordinary poles about two feet long. They sold them to anyone who traveled a lot. They were easy to carry and use. The wizard created an invisible wall of a certain length and height, using these poles as the corners of the wall. His feat was now built into the poles.

“Anyone who had a set of these poles could set them out around his camp and the magic air wall would form. In the morning, the traveler just pulled the poles out of the ground, tied them together for travel, and the wall disappeared.”

“Couldn’t some hostile party pull them out during the night?” asked Betsy.

“No, they could only be pulled out from inside the protected area. Very clever. There must have been hundreds of these, maybe thousands, in the old days. All probably used as kindling by people who didn’t know what they were. And nowadays lots of merchants will pay well for a set of these poles.”

“You’ve already mentioned those illusory lights you made for the elves,” suggested Horace. “Ah think they’re wonderful. Ah kin see a lot of people wanting ’em. Safe, permanent lights. Cities might use ’em to light their streets and keep thieves from robbing people at night. Miners would use ’em. Travelers could have light at night in their camps. Kin you make it possible to turn ’em on and off?”

“No, only a wizard could do that,” explained Duncan. “I could dismiss the illusion and then recreate it later when I wanted it again. We’re making them portable for travelers with Grarnihorn’s air wall shutters. Small bits of air wall make a box to contain the light. We put a handle on the top, like a regular lantern, but there’s no heat from the illusion. Any non-wizard could simply drape a thick cloth over the lamp and hide the illusion.”

“These are good ideas,” added Arthur. “The magic in these items is not difficult to do, and the benefit is obvious and great. I could make, oh, I don’t know, probably several dozen of these elf lights in a single day. Who wouldn’t be willing to pay a moon for one? We can make a very nice living just from this one thing. Not just one thing, either. Small lamps, very large lamps, all sizes, whatever someone wants.”

“One of Grarnihorn’s feats I saw in his third volume is simple to perform,” continued Ben. “It’s called a “portal.” It requires a pair of door frames: sill, lintel, and the two side jambs, all attached to a base to hold them erect. The doorway could be of any size, although he said wider ones tended to be unstable and needed more support.

“The wizard puts the two frames together back to back and magically fuses them into one doorway. To all ’pearances, nothing has happened. But the frames can be pulled apart, and when they’re separated, the magical link continues.

“One door frame can be left in one place, while the other is carried elsewhere. Anywhere else. Stepping into one door frame results in stepping out of the other, however far apart they are. It’s a great, simple, easy way for anyone to do the magical travel we do for ourselves. No knowledge of magic is needed, one just walks through the doorway. There has to be a way to make money from this.”

“Make money? Ha! Make more money than anyone ever has before!” exclaimed Vince. “Think of the time saved in traveling long distances. For merchants and ordinary people. Messengers could go anywhere in Orilon in an instant! Set up your portal on both banks of a river, and there’s no need for a bridge.”

“Grarnihorn describes this feat, but he didn’t use it himself,” remarked Ben. “I’ve been back to his castle and tried every doorway in it. If he relied on a magical jump, he wouldn’t need it. It does have a disadvantage: it’s an open door into your house, available to everyone. We lock the doors to our houses because we know there are thieves in the world. Havin’ a door that can’t be locked seems a bit foolish. Perhaps he couldn’t figure out how to use it safely, either. Or maybe he felt he didn’t need one since he could jump wherever he wanted to go.

“I set up a portal between this mansion and my parents’ house, so they can come visit me and their grandchildren whenever they want. They were extremely happy when Polly and I used our magical travel to visit them. Now they can visit us just as easily. And I know they’re not gonna use the portal to attack me. Who can you trust that much? Making this work safely for ordinary people is gonna take some thought. I just wish I had time to think about it now, and I don’t.”

“Ben, could you let Walter and me work on this?” asked Mandy. “You’ve talked about portals to us before, and we’ve been thinking about them a lot. We’ve finished your training, except for Grarnihorn’s books now. They will take us some time to read through. But when we’ve completed our studies, we need to make a living. We want to get married, but magic is the only skill we have. Tania is already a healer. Arthur wants to make elf lights and wall sticks. Duncan and Joan are good at teaching. Walter and I aren’t very good at training others, but we can organize things well.

“Setting up portals connecting towns all over Orilon is a great idea, and it will take a lot of organizing. You worry about household safety, but the same applies to towns. Do they want bandits swarming in through a portal, and then running away through the same portal before the watch can catch them? We can figure out some solution to the problem. You’ve taught us there’s always an answer. Once we do, we can build portals all over, charge a small fee to use them, and get rich. Maybe not as rich as Vince thinks, but rich enough for us.”

“I would prefer all of my students to open new schools to spread the use of magic,” commented Ben. “Still, teaching is a skill, a talent, like using magic. I think you train the other students well, but if you aren’t comfortable with this, you should do something else. Putting magical devices, like portals, in front of the eyes of the world is also useful for making magic well-known.

“Grarnihorn has a long section in volume three on portals. I’ve only studied it enough to build some simple portals. Finish reading his entire library; everything in it is important for a successful wizard. Then go back and study volume three over and over until you understand every word in it. Grarnihorn was a great wizard, but not always a clear teacher. (You can recognize your own problem there.) He wanted to be, and often was, good at teaching magic. But sometimes he assumed his readers knew things he hadn’t explained well enough.

“This will take you a long time. Forty volumes to read, pouring over volume three constantly, making experiments to test what you’re learning, and what you’re adding to his lessons. Don’t worry about the cost of your studies, or other work. From now on, you are both on my staff. I’m gonna have to learn to delegate some of my work, and this is a good place to start.”

***

Ben set up the first public portal in Uslar. The town docks were at the bottom of the bluff, forty feet below the market square in the town. Ben set the dock doorway up against the wall of the bluff, which made it look like a door into the solid stone. The upper doorway was placed against the blank wall of a building in the market. The portal let the porters who carried goods between the market and the docks do their work in less time, and with less effort. Merchants appreciated the faster deliveries, and the porters liked the easier work.

“Can you give me a portal like this?” asked Natamurk, looking at the new installation. “It would be nice to be able to travel to see the king in an instant.”

“Indeed it would,” agreed Ben. “Nice for you. Nice for a rebel who wanted to overthrow him. Nice for an assassin who wanted to kill him. The portal is a tool, available to anyone who happens upon it. My magical feats are mine, and mine alone. I can travel magically to the king the same way this portal would. But you can’t use me to travel to him, unless I agree to take you. This portal is like the river down there, open to all who want to use it.

“I set this one up because I can’t see any harm in it here. People want to go down to the docks, or up to the town. I put a lattice-work door on the portal to keep stray animals and children from goin’ into it accidentally. But no one can use this to sneak up and attack anyone. An invader who got to the docks could get to the town with it, but he could also just go up the road.

“But where would you put a portal in your castle? In your bedroom? You’d never have a private moment with your wife. In the courtyard? Now someone can send troops through your walls. Why have a castle if they can do that? If I gave this to King Topinarien, he’d need a portal for every major noble in the realm to have easy access to them. And any rebel would also have easy access to him.

“I was thinking of setting up portals between two towns, for use by merchants. They want a safe way to carry goods from place to place without risking bandits and brigands. It’ll make more people aware of my school and the benefits of magic as well. And that is no small thing to me.

“I suggested this the other day to Salvador, Pronustio’s priest. He thought it’d be good for the traveling merchants, but wondered about the boatmen and caravan workers who delivered their goods. If all the goods just get carried through a portal, how can these men make a living?

“I never thought about that. I’ve been so interested in finding uses for magic, that I didn’t think about the consequences. This is too good and useful a magical feat to throw away, but I don’t want to put people out of work. My folks were never poor, but there were dry years when the crops didn’t come in very well, and we barely got by. I know what it’s like to be hungry. I should use magic to help people, not to harm them.

“I’ve got too much to do now, trying to learn from Grarnihorn’s books, teach my students, and run a Temple. I’ve given this project to two of my students to work on. Students. Ha! They’re full wizards, almost as good as me. I think they’ll figure out how to make these work for merchants and for nobles.”

***

Two years, and the invasion of Taril, had passed before Mandy and Walter solved the portal project. The additional study had taken as much time as Ben had suggested. They also spent a long time breaking the problem into bits to work on individually. How to make a portal safe for a nobleman or the king? How to set up a lot of them all at once for travelers, and where?

They talked to the drivers of caravan animals, guards, and boatmen about their work and how much they would be hurt if merchants didn’t need to use caravans to make long trips. They asked them about the dangers of their work, not just the risk of bandits, but other problems. They heard of having to portage boats around waterfalls and rapids; the long hours unloading the cargo, carrying the boat past the dangerous spot, carrying the goods by hand along the same path, and finally reloading the boat. They heard about difficult mountain passes, and rumors of distant deserts with no water.

They rode out to towns and villages on all the trade routes leading to Uslar. There they talked to the innkeepers about how much they depended on the traveling caravans, and to the local merchants about how much business they did with the merchants who passed through.

They talked to the big merchants in Uslar about their trade with the local towns and villages on their travels. The merchants told them how much they made from the small trade on their routes. Walter and Mandy asked them how much it cost them in delays waiting for a portage to finish, or how much a steep mountain trail slowed them down.

Walter and Mandy were surprised to realize that the war had given them the final clue to solve the problem. They realized that Ben was trying to give merchants easy travel over very long distances. They had done that with the portals that brought Leptarisk’s army to the battle. Thinking about this, they saw that merchants didn’t want to travel hundreds of miles, the way Leptarisk did. They wanted to go a day’s travel down the road to the next town.

Suddenly they knew the merchants would still need their full crews of men to move their donkeys and wagons. Even the guards would keep their jobs, because all towns had thieves, and some small towns didn’t have watchmen. Ben’s concern for the merchant’s employees turned out to be unnecessary. All that remained was to solve the security problem, keeping portals from being unguarded access points to towns and homes.

They were talking with Arthur one day about the wall sticks he was selling and Walter told Arthur, “You’re thinking of just using these to defend a camp at night. You shouldn’t forget the other uses for wall sticks. Any farmer, rancher, or stable owner who needs a temporary pen for his animals can use the sticks. Tie a strong cord to one of the sticks, and the user can pull the stick out, even if he’s outside the walls.”

“Gods above! How I am going to miss this school!” declared Arthur. “So many good friends, all with good ideas. I should have thought of that myself. Thank you for it.”

“Miss the school? Are you leaving?” asked Mandy.

“Duncan is finally going back to Olpe to open a school there. I’m going with him to give him some help to start it up, and to begin selling the sticks and the elf lights. If you had your string of portals working already, I could do business from anywhere. But I’ve been selling these for a couple of years in Taril now, and I need to find new customers.”

“Radalis is a good place to sell the sticks,” advised Walter. “Ben said there was a lot of wild country there. And we won’t be going that far for some time.

Suddenly, Mandy got an inspiration. “Walter, this is what we need for the portals.”

“Wall sticks? How will they help secure the portals from bandits?”

“No, not the sticks. The idea. With magic, it’s always the idea that’s important. Arthur casts the air wall feat and includes the walls into these sticks, right, Arthur? The sticks can be moved and the wall disappears, and reappears when the sticks are put into the ground again. It’s the relationship between the sticks that re-enables the magic. They are bound to each other, like the two halves of a portal.

“Now, if we make the portals with a removable piece, we can have a portal that can be locked and unlocked. Suppose we make the lintel on one door frame removable. As long as it’s in place, the magic is working. Take the lintel off, and the magic stops. Put the lintel back, and the magic works again. Anyone with a portal can now control it. Open it to all, or keep it closed.”

“Wow! Can that actually work?” asked Walter. “Let me think this through. The door frames are just two pieces we’ve pushed together and bound magically. We can pull them apart and the magic connection still works. The wall sticks need a little bit of extra magic to let them be moved and reset. We would have to adjust the portal feat the same way. So, taking one piece off, without actually breaking the frame, could leave the magic intact. Replacing that piece should also work to restore the magical function. We need to test this right away.”

The idea worked very well on a normal, man-sized door frame. It was easy for someone to reach up and lift the lintel off the jambs. But a portal designed for wagons was wider and taller than a normal portal, with a much longer lintel, placed higher. It was hard to reach and awkward to take down, or put back up. Mandy and Walter worked for days with the carpenters to make an easily removable lintel for the wide portals.

On the tenth day of their frustrating attempts it was Charlie, the master carpenter, who saw the answer. He was standing with his buddies, scratching his head, as they tried to think of something that hadn’t already failed. He walked around and around the large door frame, looking it up and down. Suddenly he stopped, his gaze lowered, and pointed down.

“There’s your solution, Walter. You’re tryin’ to replace the lintel, and you cain’t reach the lintel on a door this wide and tall. Replace the door sill instead. It’s just lyin’ there, doin’ nothin’, easy to grab. Removin’ it won’t make the structure weak, either, the way takin’ down the lintel does.”

“We don’t even need to take up the whole sill,” realized Mandy. “Taking out a short piece from the middle will be just as good to break the magic. Thank you, Charlie. We owe you a lot for this. I hope you don’t mind waiting until we start making some money from this to pay you.”

***

“I was trying to do too much? Go too far?” asked Ben. “Well, that’s me, always trying for something more. I’m glad you figured out how to make the portals useful.”

“We intend to start with the common trade routes from Uslar,” began Walter. “South to Lubbenau, west to Fenny Stratford, our home towns. We’re not ashamed to want to be famous at home. From there, there’s Offenburg, the capital, the Free City of Horb, the big port of Hennef, north to the Free City of Wyk.

“We bought a map of Taril from one of Maurice’s scholar students. Students helping students. We worked the preservation feat on the map to protect it. Then we started to mark out where we want to set up portals, and drew lines on the map in water soluble ink. As we did this the lines began to look like a fisherman’s net. So we’re going to call our system of portals a ‘network.’ And every place where we’ll have several portals clustered, bigger towns, you know, we’ll call a ‘knot.’”

“We’ll put a portal every twenty miles or so, about a day’s travel for most merchants,” continued Mandy. “At every town, we’ll talk to the mayor or important people. We need their cooperation to make this work. If they don’t want a portal, we’ll have to skip that town. We can always add them to the network if they change their minds later.

“We also have to ask where they’d like to have the portals set up. There’ll be at least two portals, one coming in from one town, another going out to some other town. Some towns may want several portals connecting them to neighboring towns.

“We’ll have to get an attendant to handle the portals,” added Walter. “If they want the portals locked at night, he’ll have to pick up the sills. He’ll also collect a fee from people who use the portal. We’re thinking of charging a mug per man, animal, or wagon that goes through. It’s cheap enough to be attractive, we think. And a merchant will find that his animals and wagons are not wearing out so fast, which will save him money.

“The collector keeps some of the money for his pay and deposits the rest in the Temple of Pronustio for transfer to us, as our pay. The attendant will have to have a bit of literacy, and know how to handle numbers. He’ll give us a record of how many people used the portals, from each direction. That let’s us know if an attendant is cheating us. His record of users has to match the record from the other attendants in the network.”

“We think we’re going to make a lot of money, and do a lot of good for travelers,” claimed Mandy. “We want to provide for ourselves and our children, of course. And we want to help others. The job of attendant can be done by almost anyone, even someone who’s crippled and can now be employed again.

“And this can be done quickly, we think. We will pay the expenses for the first year at a magic school for some kid with no money. The student learns the Treatise, the basics of how to do magic. Then we teach him how to make a portal. You recommend that for a later point in the student’s education, but we want to get more portals built. Two students are given an area to fill with portals, they’re taught how to sell the towns on the usefulness of portals, and are sent on their way to make a bundle of money, for themselves to pay for the rest of their schooling, and for us. Every year we add more student wizards to our crews, and the network keeps growing.”

“Messengers will be able to save weeks of travel time by using these portals. Orilon will have something like instant communication for the first time in its history. Even before the Big War, there was nothing like this.”

“I’m not sure about that,” argued Ben. “There are no records of portals or portal networks, by any name, in the old days. However, we learned about them from Grarnihorn’s books, so he knew about them. As I’ve often said, this is too useful an idea not to put to use for travel. I think the portals were too common to be mentioned in the old documents. How often does a scholar mention the chair he sits on?

“The old portals were probably destroyed during the Big War. With no wizards to replace them, they became forgotten. But it will be a great thing for Orilon now, and I’m happy that you two have made it possible. My congratulations to you both.”

***

Emmet walked into Ben’s study in the Temple school carrying a large wooden box, about two feet on each side. Its dimensions made it difficult to handle, though it did not seem too heavy. Looking about the room, he placed it on a table near Ben.

“What is that?” asked Ben expectantly.

“This is my graduation project,” bragged Emmet. “You haven’t required us to create some wonderful new magic feat before you would declare us fully qualified wizards. Some of us had new magics before ever coming here, like Duncan and Pondalon. But I always felt like a junior wizard, not having any special skill to share. Silly, I know. I could do everything all the others were doing. I had no reason to be embarrassed about not being great.

“But I wanted to prove to you, and to myself, that I could do something special. I heard your story of Grarnihorn’s castle and how it is preserved forever. I went there with you once, and marveled at the way everything is perfectly preserved. Even the wine in the cellar. The elf king let me taste a sip of that wine, and it was as good as any wine from a current vintner.

“Grarnihorn tells of the trouble he had preserving his castle, how he had to preserve some parts in sections so the doors would move, and so forth. But the wine is still preserved, and freely flowing, after hundreds of years. If the wine was preserved the same way as the doors had been at first, it couldn’t be poured from the barrels. The feat must treat some things differently somehow.

“You said Humoparmia told you no other wizards ever managed to duplicate Grarnihorn’s preservation feat, despite his instructions. This was a challenge to me. I wanted to experiment with this feat. I wanted to see what it could do, what it couldn’t do, what different things I could do with it.

“I learned how to do the feat. You’ve done it, and shown it to us students. I never realized how hard magic could be until I tried this feat. You made it look simple. So many little details to keep track of all at the same time. I was impressed by Grarnihorn before. Now, I am deeply in awe of his mind.

“I worked the feat on a full wine bottle. Thinking of Grarnihorn’s trouble with the hinges, I left the cork out until I had done the feat. I dropped the bottle and it didn’t break. I hit the bottle with a heavy sledge hammer and it didn’t break. I dropped it from the market square in Uslar to the docks down below. It bounced but didn’t break. I went down to the dock, uncorked the bottle, and nothing came out.

“The wine was still in the bottle, but fixed in place. It was the same as the door hinges that couldn’t turn to open the door. So, maybe Grarnihorn preserved the bottles and casks, and then filled them with wine. Maybe the preservation feat then protected both the container and the contents.

“I made this box for my next experiment. I preserved this box and put a slice of raw meat inside it. I closed the lid on the box and put it under my bed for a month. I kept sniffing the air in my room, checking for a sign of the meat going bad. I smelled nothing. When the month was up, I pulled the box out and opened it. The meat was still as fresh as when I had put it in.

“I put another slice of raw meat and some of that runny cheese you like so much into the box. I sealed the box and took it into Uslar, and Henrik the smith let me put it next to his forge. That was three months ago. I just brought it back today. I haven’t opened it yet. I want to share this moment with you, my teacher. You’ve taught me all you know about magic, and encouraged my to believe in my own abilities. I’m sure the contents will be as whole and fresh as when I put them in here. Here goes.”

Emmet broke the seal and raised the lid. He and Ben peered into the box, seeing a slice of fresh meat, and some soft cheese. Fearless the cat walked into the room, jumped onto the table, and looked into the box. He fished the slice of meat out with a claw and began eating it. Ben turned and looked at Emmet, smiled broadly, and hugged him tightly.

“Congratulations, Emmet! This is marvelous! You mastered a very difficult feat, and found a new use for it. I was going to chase you away from the school soon. You’ve been here way too long, and have mastered everything we’ve taught you. Now I want you to stay on for a little while and teach this to other students. It is very difficult, but you’ve just shown how useful it can be for non-wizards.

“My mother always complained about food spoiling in hot weather. Every farm wife does. And every innkeeper. This is your invention, Emmet, and you should profit from it. I am so happy to see another of my students expanding the edges of magic successfully.”

***

“You always told us there are all sorts of ways to use a magical feat,” observed Carl. “This is the simple ‘float’ feat, expanded a bit into something really useful.”

“It’s just a very tall pole, a rope, and a platform,” noticed Ben. “What’s so useful about it?”

“The pole provides the framework for the whole device. I should probably have more than one pole to make it sturdier, but this is just to show the idea. There’s a pulley at the top of the pole that the rope goes through. With the rope and pulley, I can raise the platform up to the top of the pole and pull it down again. It’ll make it easier for masons to lift bricks and stones up to an upper floor they’re working on.”

“They do that already with a rope and pulley,” countered Ben.

“Yes, but this uses the float feat, built into the platform. The rope is not actually to raise the platform. It pulls it down. The float feat makes the platform go up on its own, even with a heavy load. It’s easy to pull the empty platform down and tie it in place, waiting for another load. I’ve talked to some of our local masons, and they all complain about the labor involved in hauling the bricks and stones up. Now, they have a little magical help.

“It’s not a huge invention, like portals or elf lights, but it will help some people. I’m going to call it a ‘raiser’ because it raises things up to a higher place. I think it could be used to move things from one floor of a house to another. Say, the kitchen is under the dining hall; this would let someone bring the food up without having to use the stairs.

“A crippled person could use it to go up to an upstairs bedroom, and come back down for dinner. An army could use it to lift troops to the top of a wall when it’s attacking a castle or town. Portals can be used for some of these things, but not all of them.”

“Ingenious,” congratulated Ben. “What are you going to charge for them?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” admitted Carl. “I need to do a proper full scale sample. It will need more support than this one has, which means more lumber. The materials will determine the price, I think, since the magic is easy. The nice thing is that it can be built anywhere, as long as pulleys are available.”

***

Two months later Ben saw Carl with an unusual four-wheeled cart. The structure was that of a typical wagon, but it had no shafts to hold the horse, nor any horse. A tiller like one at the stern of a small boat pointed out from what Ben assumed was the front, connected to a small pair of wheels. As Ben watched, Carl and the cart started moving forward at a moderate pace. The cart bumped on the uneven surface of the road, jostling Carl on his seat by the tiller. He pulled the tiller, and the cart moved in a new direction, into a field, where it bounced even more.

After half an hour careening around the field, Carl returned to the road, near to the place he had begun. He noticed Ben watching him, and greeted him.

“Like my new invention, Ben? I call it a ‘horseless cart’ because it doesn’t need a horse. It gives a rough ride, even on a proper road, but I wanted to test its strength today on a rough field. It survived, but I’m not sure about myself.”

“What’s the purpose of it?” asked Ben. “Horses aren’t rare or that expensive, you know.”

“Oh, I know that. I’m trying to make a cart for peasants, people who can’t really afford a horse. Nobles and merchants can buy horses, and they use them all the time. Peasants may not need a horse often enough to pay for its feed and stabling. This will help them. Or it will if I can figure out one little problem.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, right now, only a wizard can control it properly. The tiller steers it just fine, and anyone can do that. I can do a feat that is permanent and will make the wheels spin. However, it still takes a wizard to make it stop. I tried to use a block of wood pressed against the wheel to slow it to a stop, but the wheel keeps spinning. The block of wood got hot from the friction and burst into flame. It’s still a useful cart for wizards, I guess.”

“Wizards, who don’t need a cart,” replied Ben. “Any wizard can just float any objects he wants to move. He doesn’t need a cart.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. Drat.”

“Don’t get discouraged. An awful lot of our magical devices have been discovered by trial and error. Let your errors help guide your next trial. If there’s a solution, you’ll find it. If there isn’t, maybe you’ll find something else useful.”

A week later Ben saw Carl again, with the same cart, pulling it forward with a light rope. The cart was loaded high with blocks of stone, at least a ton’s worth Ben guessed. Carl stopped when he saw Ben, and the cart stopped as well.

“I see you figured out how to control the wagon. Good work,” congratulated Ben.

“No, I had to give up the other idea,” replied Carl. “Making the wheels turn constantly was easy, but I never found any way for a non-wizard to make it stop. The movable door sill of a portal doesn’t work for a turning wheel.

“This is a new idea, or variant of the old one actually. The wheels aren’t magical, the cart body is. I’ve put a flotation effect on the box of the cart. A high amount of floating power will carry a lot of weight, like this. The wheels aren’t really needed, but some users might want a cart that looks like a cart. It’s really just a floating sled, pulled along by a simple rope, with hardly any effort.

“Merchants can use these, especially in their warehouses. Peasants can use them. Anyone can use them, without any knowledge of magic. I can combine this with my ‘raiser’ to make it easy to bring bricks to a building site and hoist them up to the top of the wall.

“I got the idea for the change in design the other day, watching some men try to get a big wagon out of a muddy stretch of road. The wheels were axle-deep in mud, and the horses were straining with all their might. Nothing was happening. I floated it up a bit for them, and they finally got free. They thanked me rather excessively, but it gave me this idea.

“Uslar is growing. Has been ever since you opened the school, I’m told. Anyway, builders can use both of these inventions, and that means I can earn a living with my magic. That makes me happy. I’ll be even happier when I open a shop in Offenburg. The king’s capital has to need my services even more.”

***

“Ben, I’ve got to…. I’m so embarrassed. I can’t stay here any longer,” wept Dolores, one of his senior students. “I can’t afford to pay you any longer. I’m broke. Oh, this is so awful, so disgraceful.” She burst into tears and cried uncontrollably.

“Dolores, you know my rules. I never turn away any serious students, no matter how little money they have. I want everyone who has talent to learn magic. And you do have talent. You have a strong mind, and an inventive one. These are prime skills for any wizard. I won’t let you quit. If you can’t pay, you can work for your training. Lots of others do. You know that.

“There’s nothing disgraceful about poverty. I may be wealthy now, but I began as a peasant, a sheep herder at that. Many of the people I’ve trained started out with little or nothing. Don’t feel bad about being broke. Once you’ve finished your training, you’ll be a full wizard, and a good one. That will give you any number of ways to earn your living, or even become rich.”

“It is disgraceful, Ben. My father is a thief! He is a wealthy merchant in Ralo, at the tip of the Chimix almost-island. Or, rather, he was a wealthy merchant. He talked some other merchants into joining him in a business venture. They were going to import a large number of pearls from Phada. We don’t have pearls in Ralo, but everyone loves their beauty.

“Father put up all his wealth, and persuaded the others to make large investments, too. He sailed off, supposedly for Phada, and that’s the last anyone has seen or heard of him. He took mother with him, and left a pile of debts behind. His partners and creditors got a letter a week after he left. He laughed at their trust and thanked them for his new, richer life. Our house has been sold to pay his debts. I have nothing. Not even a memory of an honest father. I’m so ashamed.”

“Yes, I can understand how you feel about him,” commiserated Ben, “but you’ve done nothing wrong. His crime is not yours. If you go home to Ralo, you should offer apologies on his behalf. If you have money in the future, you can redeem your own name among them by repaying what he stole. Right now, you’re a student, with no way to do that, so comfort yourself by resolving to make some compensation, even partial, when you can. Don’t let this destroy you.

“Vince has warned us of the dangers of letting our minds destroy us. He warned about letting revenge drive us to dangerous acts. He warned us about guilt robbing us of happiness. Shame could do the same to you. Don’t hide your father’s guilt, but don’t make it your guilt, either. Let me talk to Polly. She runs the household, and can find a place for you. I don’t work my student servants hard, it’s just a token payment. I think my students should offer something in return for their education.”

The next day Polly came up to Dolores and took her aside for a private talk.

“Ben says you need a job around the mansion or the Temple to keep paying for your classes. I know your background, wealthy, spoiled, given everything you’ve ever wanted by your parents. I came from almost the same place. I didn’t get everything I wanted, but nearly.

“You may not think I can from a merchant’s family because my name is Polly. My father named me Pollyanna, which he thought a sufficiently high-sounding name. My mother was from a lesser merchant family and wanted a simpler name, so she called my Polly. I’ve preferred Polly, too. So I have a similar background to you. When Ben and I started out, I cleaned out stew pots, groomed our horses, washed our clothes. All the chores my servants had done for me. It didn’t bother me. What I did was helping all of us, and that made me feel good, like I was contributing my share.

“I tell you this because all I have to offer you for a job is hauling water from the well into the house. The servant who did this married a townsman last week, and moved into town with him. We use a lot of water every day and it’s not easy work. I know because I’ve done it. On the other hand, it’s not dangerous, or terribly hard to learn. And it will give you time for your studies.”

“Thank you, Mistress Polly, I am so grateful to you for this favor. I didn’t know how I was going to live. I was ready to do anything.”

“One last word, Dolores. Don’t call me ‘Mistress’ or Ben “Master.’ We may teach you now, but some day you will be our equal, maybe even better than us at wizardry.”

***

Six months later, Dolores came up to Ben and Polly after a class. She had a couple of objects in her hands, and held them out to display them.

“This is my new invention, and I owe it to the two of you,” she announced. “I wasn’t thrilled when you put me to work hauling water for the mansion, Polly. However, I needed a job, and you pointed out how pride was not going to help me find work. That work is now going to make me rich, I think, so I want to thank both of you.

“This is my new water spigot. I took an ordinary spigot from a beer barrel and adapted it. This part is just a small piece of pipe, with a fine mesh screen over its ends to keep junk from entering the pipe. I placed them together the same way we build portals, so they stay connected even when I pull them apart. The pipe can be placed in a lake, river, well, even a rain barrel. The spigot can be mounted on a wall in the kitchen over a sink. Turn the handle on the spigot, and water comes out. Close the spigot, and the water stops. It’s just like a portal. The water flows naturally through the pipe and out the spigot.

“I think I can sell these to everyone in Orilon. Who wouldn’t want to have easy access to all the water they can use? It’s simple to make, so even poor people can afford one. Nobles and merchants have servants to fetch their water, but this is easier even for them. I want to get rich and go back to Ralo and repay those merchants my father cheated. I’ll always have more money coming in from this.”

“This is a wonderful invention,” exclaimed Ben. “Another way to use the portal concept. Another way to help ordinary people with everyday tasks. This is what I have always wanted to do with magic. Find ways to help people live more comfortable lives. Thank you for your creativity. And congratulations on finding yourself a way to get rich.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t stay on, having such a drudge job to perform,” confessed Polly. “I hoped it wouldn’t harm your magical talents. I’m so glad it had such a great result. Congratulations, Dolores. I think you’ll be able to do well for yourself, and repay those men. That is such a noble thing to do, too.”