The Strength of Elder Days
Sixteenth Day of the First Month 293 AC
For a long moment you hesitate in speaking, not wishing to risk confirming any tales of demon calling before one who is not naturally inclined to be sympathetic... but on the other hand could you truly justify denying knowledge that may save lives or souls on such a pretext? "There is naught unusual about the sword. However, you may have some sorcery of your own..." You watch carefully as an expression of appointment changes to one of surprise, but not fear,
good.
"I spoke no words and worked no sorcery that I know of," the First ranger replies, confused. "Mayhap there is some power in the blood awakened at great need?"
"So it was for me, but magic once woken does not slumber again," Waymar offers sympathetically. "It was wildlings in the Vale," he adds at Stark's searching look.
"There are some harmless tests we could do to see the manner of it if you wish," you say in turn, cautiously.
"I swore my myself body and mind to the Watch, I suppose that includes whatever strange power I may hold," comes the reply after a thoughtful silence. "I'm willing to try, if it is as you say."
You would have preferred the statement without the final words and the lack of trust they implies, but you will take it over blind hostility any day. With a painful mental twist you shape your power into an imitation of a spell you saw Vee cast many times before, a calling of one of the lesser genies.
"What the hells is that?" comes the expected and wholly reasonable question upon having an blatantly inhuman stranger materialize in the chamber.
"Think of this as... a living dream," you explain. "This is a spirit of distant places not truly present and not affected by any harm that might befall his form."
"Your will I serve, lord of the Burning Blood," the genie says with a bow, thankfully in the tongue of dragons.
The First Ranger takes some persuasion to strike a defenseless... being, but once it becomes clear that he does not have to cause any serious harm, merely swing his sword through what seems like empty air, he acquiesces to
interesting results. As the plain castle-forged sword passes through the janni now treading the edge of the spirit world, the blade abruptly comes alive with ghostly blue flame and you can see for just an instant the power bound to it, a magic meant to unravel and
banish.
"That's exceedingly odd..." you muse.
"There was no blue light when I fought the specter." Stark sounds shocked by the blatant show of sorcery, looking at his own hand as though he cannot quite recognize it.
"Little wonder, that," you explain. "That would have done little good against one of the dead, as they are still creatures of this world, however unnatural their presence. You did not so much harm the spirit as send it back whence it came."
"Did any words come to mind, any odd gestures that somehow felt right in the moment?" Waymar asks after a moment.
A shake of the head confirms what you already suspected. With every moment this looked less like magic, which was consciously directed in the service of the caster and more like some odd blessing that came out in times of need, but who could have gifted such a thing? Not the Old Gods, for Bloodraven would surely have told you, and not the Seven for they would have no business blessing a northerner who paid them no homage...
"What if its
that?" Ser Richard interjects, pointing out the window to the looming presence of the Wall. "You said there is still great magic in it. What if it does more than lie there like mortar binding brick."
"Of course..." you shake your head at the revelation. "Much would have changed since it was raised, the names of the lands, the tongues its people spoke, but the oaths would have been held sacrosanct by their very nature, perhaps close enough to serve as a spell of sorts, an invocation of its slumbering power."
"The others couldn't hurt the ghost," Stark says, not so much in denial, but wishing to understand.
"The others were not First Ranger," you counter. "Perhaps something within the Wall recognized that. I confess I could not tell you how its inner workings turn. It shines so bright to mage-sight that to attempt that would be like trying to decipher writing upon the face of the sun."
"Or perhaps it is merely that you kept to your oaths more closely than any other present that night," Waymar adds thoughtfully. "There is great worth in an oath kept."
The ranger shakes his head not in denial but weariness, suddenly looking much older then his years. "I suppose in such days one should be grateful for whatever blessings we may find, even strange ones."
***
Not long after all four of you seek out Maester Aemon, finding the old man looking over the ledgers Alinor complied. He seems cheerful at his work, undaunted by the fact that this is only one of several heavy tomes before him.
"Is that not the task of the First Steward?" you ask upon offering greetings.
"He is... busy for the moment," Aemon replies, looking a trifle embarrassed, with perhaps a spark of disappointment in his eye. At a guess the man does not want anything to do with 'witch steel' without the Lord Commander here to make him do his job.
Still you do not press for Aemon's sake and speak instead of other matters, how one may be warned of the presence of unseen foes and the signs that mark enthrallment as well as what mundane means there are to counter both. You also cautiously propose the notion of Black Brothers being sent to Sorcerer's Deep to take part in the Scholarum and learn magic.
"We have few enough men as it is... though likely to receive more now with the new steel," the old man says between optimism tempered by many decades of privations on the Wall.
"Green boys drawn in by the promise of magic," Stark snorts. "Ser Thorne might swear hard enough to blister stone if that happens," he adds a hint of his natural good humor coming through in spite of your presence.
How many men do you offer to train for the Watch?
[] Write in
OOC: Ser Richard's luck with wisdom rolls strikes again.
