Chapter 45

Fenard swallowed the stomach medicine, which was mostly liquid chalk, and waited for it to take effect. Ever since Tom had revealed that he was on a system quest, Fenard’s stress level had increased several fold over and beyond what it had been before.

At least the system didn’t seem to be sending Tom on a suicide mission, he reflected. Too many Controllers had been lost in the fools errand of finding the World Core in the last several centuries. Not all of them took up the charge, but those that did not would sometimes find their powers being restricted by the system for their lack of compliance.

And then the boy had dropped the second bombshell on Fenard, that of his Seed ability! Something like that would had the power to change the world, at least for the duration of Tom’s lifetime. Possibly beyond, if the dungeons Tom managed would continue to Seed the same materials indefinitely without further input from the young Controller.

He sighed and handed the glass which had contained the stomach solution to the servant who had brought it to him, then dismissed her. He was in one of his apartments, and a moment later Yecha joined him.

“Feeling any better?” The spymistress disguised as a courtesan asked.

“No, but that’s hardly reason to delay,” Fenard admitted. “I wished that we could have kept this matter under wraps for longer, but now that Tom will be moving throughout the kingdom it will be harder to keep his location secret. We must formally announce him to the other kingdoms.”

“They already know, you know,” Yecha pointed out.

“Yes, of course they do. They probably learned of him within a week of his class awakening,” Fenard agreed. “Still, there is a difference between being aware of something and having it formally announced.”

“Of course there is,” Yecha agreed. She glanced at a clock on the wall and announced “It is the appointed time.”

“Of course it is,” Fenard agreed, and he followed her out of the apartments into a heavily warded room. He watched as the wards around the five mirrors were lowered, and one by one the image of one of the other kings and queens of the world appeared on them.

“Fenard! Dear! It has been so long since we last chatted like this!” Gloracia said as he stood in the center of the mirrors, which were arranged before him in a semi-circle. “To what do we owe the pleasure of this moot?”

“Of everyone invited to this summit, you have the least cause to play ignorant,” Fenard reminded her. “I know that you have been having late night discussions with him, trying to lure him away from his motherland right under the nose of its ruler.”

“Ah, so that is the topic to be discussed,” Gloracia said, snapping her fan shut. “Excellent. I was getting tired of beating around the bush. How much do you want for him?”

“He’s not a mule to be bought or sold, Gloracia,” Fenard said.

“Of course not! I’m simply inquiring what it will take to make you stand down on your own claim to him! Convincing him to visit Koratia remains my own responsibility, and that of my loyal subordinates.”

“So it is true then, that a Controller has emerged in Welsius?” Phaino, the Warrior King of Loracai inquired.

“Yes,” Fenard admitted. “His name is Tom Weaver. He is currently in the application stage of joining the Royal Knighthood of Welsius, and is engaged to my Niece, Rowena.”

“Oh? Those are not the rumors I’ve heard,” Gloracia teased. “I heard that he’s been balking at the knighthood, and that you sprung the engagement on him as a desperate ploy when he refused to be cowed into saying vows which he is too young to understand. You have no claim to him, Ferdy, except that he happened to be born within your borders. Until he is bound to the service of your kingdom in some shape or form, the rest of us are free to court his services. You simply have the home field advantage.”

Fenard gritted his teeth, but the other ruler was not wrong. He had hoped to have secured an oath of fealty or loyalty before announcing Tom to the other kingdoms, but it was what it was.

“I’ve also heard rumors of a new Controller,” Arom, the Mage King of Petosh said. “There are a number of Cores in Petosh which require urgent maintenance. How long before the boy is trained? Petosh will pay greatly for his services in stabilizing our land.”

“You say that,” Fenard said, “And I believe that you would allow him to leave once he has performed the service you ask of him, Arom. However, in order to reach your lands, Tom would be forced to cross through Loracai or Velund, or travel directly through the central blight. Phaino, Galya, would you pledge safe passage to this controller for such a purpose? Both to, and from Petosh?”

Phaino laughed. “I pledge him safe passage into my lands! Yes, into my lands I pledge him safe passage.”

Galya sighed. “We would host him most pleasantly, Fenard. Until he had serviced all of the cores of Velund. Then we would send him on his way.”

“And there are, if I am not mistaken, three thousand or more cores which you would have him service?” Fenard asked.

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“Petosh is not the only land in urgent need of maintenance,” Galya agreed, the queen shifting a lock of her hair out of her face.

“It is not fair that you have both the new Controller and the Vanquisher, Fenard,” Clovea, queen of Regalis objected. “Send one or the other on a mission of mercy to your neighbors, Fenard, so that we might enjoy some of the same stability as Welsius.”

“It is not fair that your ancestors mismanaged the foundation laid down by the ancient kings, Clovea, I do not dispute that my inheritance put me in a stronger position than many of the others in this council of equals,” Fenard admitted. “However, the fact remains that the Welsian tradition of training Controllers surpasses that of any other land. Tom is but level fifteen, he is not ready to maintain any of our kingdoms yet. He will require years of training before he is ready. I am formally asking for the privilege of that responsibility.”

“When you are dying of thirst, a half of a glass of water is better than sand,” Arom said, his voice filled with irritation. “The people of Petosh do not have decades to wait until this Weaver boy is fully trained and ready to make a circuit through the kingdoms. The monsters plague our fields, destroy our harvests, and slaughter our livestock. Our children go hungry because there is not enough food! We require a Controller today, not twenty years from now.”

Fenard sighed. This was going better than he hoped. Which is to say, poorly. “There is another matter which this council of equals must be made aware,” Fenard said. “Tom has been issued a quest by the system.”

The other rulers, on their sides of the mirror, went silent.

“How?” Gloracia inquired. “He is fifty years too young for the great quest!”

“I said a quest, not the quest which has claimed so many of his predecessors, but a lesser one,” Fenard explained. “The system, for some reason, requires him to conquer one hundred wild dungeons. That, I believe, is a much more realistic goal than reaching the World Core in the deepest part of the World Dungeon. The entire reason I requested this meeting, and the reason I am announcing his existence to my fellow rulers now rather than waiting until I have stronger ties to him, is that I have pledged my support for his mission. I formally request that everyone present pledge the same, that they will not interfere with Tom Weaver’s Quest until he has successfully fulfilled all of the conditions set forward by the System, and he has completed his training in Welsius to become a fully fledged Controller.”

The room was silent for a moment.

“I, Gloracia II of Koratia, pledge my support to Tom Weaver in fulfilling any system generated quest which he may have been issued,” Queen Gloracia said eventually.

Fenard’s eyebrow twitched. Her words implied a measure of doubt in his voracity. Further, it was not a pledge to refrain from interfering with Tom’s training, which was what he was truly hoping for today.

“I, Phaino of Loracai, pledge the same,” Phaino said.

One by one, the other leaders made some variation of Queen Gloracia’s vow. None of them pledged to leave Tom alone. None of them pledged not to interfere with his training. All of them were likely planning their own methods of seduction to lure the boy away from his native Welsius.

That said, none of them would dare break their word. A Quest from the system was the highest calling. Kings and Queens were honor bound to aid such individuals. Failing to do so, or actively impeding a system generated quest, had been known to cause a system to revoke the title of King or Queen in the past.

Tom did not realize it, Fenard knew, but whatever he was doing to those Cores in linking them was likely far more important than he thought. He just wished that he knew why the system was sending Tom on this quest now. Couldn’t this wait ten years, until the boy was properly trained and competent?

Once the oaths were extracted from each of the leaders of the six great countries, the topics moved on to what would happen once the boy had completed his quests. It devolved into a bickering contest, as each of the kings or queens presented their case for why Tom should visit their land and solve their problems for them.

Fenard was forced to admit that Welsius was better off than her neighbors. It had fewer wild dungeons, and the dungeons that it did have were well balanced, with their monsters seldom spilling out and causing trouble. Or, if they were prone to breakouts, then they were easily culled.

That did not mean that he was simply willing to give Tom up. Welsius was better off, but it was far from perfection. And Fenard was not the king of Petosh, or Regalis, or any other nation. He was the king of Welsius, and it was Welsian matters which he must prioritize.

He would see to it that Tom was trained. Then, he would ensure that the Cores of Welsius were stable. Only then would he entertain thoughts of sending Tom on a foreign tour.

He expected it to take decades. Possibly, it would be Fenard’s successor who negotiated the order in which Tom would visit the other great nations. The others knew as well that Fenard would not simply allow them to pry Tom’s services away from his country, and that the bickering they were engaging in now was just so much sound. But it was all that they could do, and so they did it.

Fenard did not know whether or not they were exaggerating the poor conditions of their lands. He suspected that they were, but with the scarcity of Controllers over the last few centuries it was entirely possible that, while Welsius had remained stagnant, the other great nations had been in a steady decline. In fact, Fenard knew that it was more than possible, it was a fact. But still he suspected Arom in particular of hyperbole, and Clovea’s insistence that Regalis was on the edge of collapse was the same claim that her predecessors had been making for two hundred years.

An hour passed before Fenard was able to draw the meeting to a close. When the last of the mirrors went silent, showing a reflection instead of a far off place, he let out a long sigh. Yecha, who had stood in the background, approached and gave him a drink.

Worthmus brandy, he noted.

“Are you certain you got everything you needed from them?” Yecha asked.

“They vowed not to interfere with his quest,” Fenard confirmed. “That is as much as I can hope for. It’s fortunate that none of them knew of his Seed ability. If they knew of that before I’d extracted the pledge, then I doubt I would have managed that much. They probably think that he is an Inheritor, Yecha. We still know almost nothing about his subclass, except for the obscure ramblings of that ancient text.”

“Yes, well, we’ll figure out what makes a progenitor tick,” Yecha assured him. “Tom isn’t likely to abandon his home country, for all that he’s been reluctant to swallow the fishhooks you’ve been dangling in front of him. We have time. All the time in the world.”

“No,” King Fenard said. “I fear that we do not.”