“Why’s it illegal for you to change the function of one of your runes?” Max asked.

“It’s not illegal,” Cal said firmly. “It’s just a bit of a gray area.”

“All right, then why’s it a gray area?”

Cal was leaning over the broken rune, holding a candle close to it so he could see it more clearly.

“Ugh, this is no use,” he said as a gobbet of wax dripped onto the wood of the enchanting table near the rune. “Where’s my spirit light?”

“I think I saw it under the counter at the front. Do you want me to get it for you?”

“Yeah, if you wouldn’t mind,” Cal said.

“Sure.”

Max darted through to the front of the shop, and a moment later Cal heard the sound of him rummaging in the shelf under the counter.

Cal put the candle back on the mantelpiece above the hearth and regarded it with distaste. The candle was stuck into one of the old bottles that Darkworth had left, a greasy, unsightly bottle with a film of old dust sticking to the grease and the layers of wax. The nice ceramic candle holder that Max had been carrying when he’d first come into the shop was also sitting on the mantelpiece, and Cal resolved that as soon as he’d brought in some money from the current crop of enchanting, he’d go and buy some of the robust, brightly colored clay candle holders that he’d noticed in Tom the potter’s shop.

“Here’s your light,” Max said, holding out the portable spirit light.

“Thanks,” Cal said, taking it from Max and activating it. He laid the light on the enchanting table and leaned in to look more closely at the broken rune.

“You asked why it’s problematic for me to attempt this magic,” Cal said as he found a rag, damped it in some water, and began to rub at the glassy edges of the broken rune. “The fact is that the magic involved in creating these is something that’s taught at the Level 5 exam. As you know, I’m only qualified to Level 1, so technically I shouldn’t know how to do this magic.”

“But you said it’s not illegal?”

“Not technically, no,” Cal said. “It would be illegal for me to sell my services enchanting a rune, but since I’m only going to be making this rune for my own use, it’s less of an issue.”

“What about selling products made with the rune?”

“So long as they’re only Level 1, that wouldn’t be an issue. There’s some pretty cool Level 1 scryer enchantments you can do - things to improve insight, quicken instincts, that kind of thing. Even at Level 1, they can go for very good prices because the cores are less common.”

As he was speaking, Cal finished working at the broken rune with his cloth. He had worked his way carefully all around the edge of the rune where it met the wood of the table, and he’d successfully loosened the rune slightly from where it was inlaid.

“Is it glued in or something?” Max asked as he watched. “Are you loosening the glue with the water?”

“It’s not glued,” Cal replied. “The runes become inlaid into the table like this when they’re enchanted to their desired function. It’s part of the magic. Getting a bit of water in between the rune and the wood interferes with the magical bond. You’d never be able to lift it otherwise, but if you carefully dampen the edges the water weakens the binding spell, and you can lift the rune out of its setting.”

Max watched in fascination as Cal laid the cloth to one side and took his knife from his belt, then carefully slipped the tip of the blade into the small gap that had opened between the glassy substance of the rune and the wooden body of the table.

Working with great care, Cal moved the tip of the knife methodically along all the edges of the rune, pushing slightly every now and again where the rune was thickest, carefully beginning the process of levering it up from its setting.

“This stuff isn’t glass,” Cal said, tapping the surface of the rune with a finger as he worked. “It’s a rare kind of crystal that the dwarves mine from their holds in the Iron Mountains in the south. It’s very strong and impossible to carve in any detail using regular tools. There’s a very secretive group of specialist mages called crystal singers who live in an old castle near the Iron Mountains. I don’t know much about them, but it’s said that they’re all elves, since no other people are able to do such fine work. They make a few different things, but their main product is runes for enchanting tables, and they charge an immense amount of money for them - thousands for each rune. The dwarves mine the crystal, and if you want a new enchanting table built you have to contact the dwarven miner’s guild, because the crystal singers won’t trade with anyone else. The dwarves take the order, mine the crystal, and then take it to the crystal singers to make the runes. Then they deliver the finished product to the customer.”

“So all enchanting runes are made to order? There can’t be that many enchanting tables around, if the crystals are so expensive.”

“There’s more than you might think,” Cal said, “but most of the runes that you find in enchanting tables these days are old and have been handed down from master to apprentice over generations. It’s very uncommon for a full table of twelve runes to be constructed all at once. Most enchanters either inherit their tables from a parent or a mentor, or if they want to create new tables they build their collections rune by rune over the course of years.”

“Wow, so the runes in this table must be worth a fortune! More than the shop itself!”

Cal shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said. He finished working the knife round the edges of the rune, carefully squeezed a little more water into the newly widened gap, then laid the knife down and stood back.

“You see the big symbol on the floor of this room?”

“The enchanter’s seal, yes,” Max said.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“The runes in the table are bound to the seal. They’ll not work anywhere else, and the seal can’t be moved. A fresh enchanter’s rune, unbound to a seal, is worth a fortune, because it can be placed wherever the enchanter chooses. Once the runes are laid into the table and bound to a seal, they lose a lot of their value to anyone else, since they’re only usable in that specific location.”

“I see,” Max said. “Wow, I had no idea! So if we were to move the enchanting table out of this building, wouldn’t it work?”

“It probably wouldn’t even work if we moved it out of this room, never mind out of the building,” Cal said. “And I wouldn’t want to try, either. If we were to put pressure on the bond between the enchanter’s seal and the runes in the table, it’s likely that the runes would shatter, and that really would be disastrous.”

He took up the knife again and, with meticulous care, began to ease the rune up out of the setting. As it came up, Max gasped. The wood into which the crystal had been set flowed like thick liquid for a moment then solidified as flat and featureless as if it had never been disturbed.

Cal moved the crystal carefully into the center of the table. “That’s stage one complete,” he said with satisfaction. “That went better than I’d expected it would.”

“Was there a chance that you’d break the rune by shifting it?” Max asked anxiously.

“Not really,” Cal said. “Not unless I tried to take it away from the table and from the seal on the floor. But I expected that it would take a lot longer to weaken the inlay bond before I could lift it. The spell must be pretty old and weak and…” he leaned close to the table again and peered at the wood. “Yes, the wood itself isn’t very good. I think Darkworth hasn’t cared for this table anymore than he cared for the rest of the shop. When I get a chance, I’ll sand the table down and get a coat of oil into the wood, that’ll help.”

“It seems bizarre that Darkworth would take so little care over something so valuable,” Max said.

Cal shrugged. “I guess some people are just like that, you know? You met him, and he sounds like he was as bad as his reputation. Not exactly the kind of man to take good care of nice things.”

Max shuddered involuntarily. “He was a horrible man,” he said. “Secretive, distrustful, and he took as little care of himself as he did of his shop.”

“I wonder how long he was here?” Cal mused. “I wonder if we could find out anything about his background, or who had the shop before him, if anyone.”

“I don’t know,” Max said. “He never told me anything about himself, and I never heard anything about his past from anyone else. What are you thinking?”

Cal shrugged. “It would just be interesting to know, that’s all. I mean, he must have been here long enough for him to have built up all that clutter, but it’s strange behavior for an enchanter. Talking about the table and the runes just now made me wonder. Did Darkworth buy the shop with the table and the seal in place? It’s hard to believe that he would have bought and paid for such a table himself and then given so little care to it, but if he didn’t then that means there must have been another enchanter here before him.”

“I wonder if Alyn might know, or Maddie Turner?” Max suggested. “They’ve both been here for a long time, they might be able to tell you. If we knew a bit more about his background, maybe we might even be able to learn where he disappeared to?”

“Good idea,” Cal said. “I’ll need to see Maddie soon anyway to let her know about the progress with the spider webs. I’ll ask her about it then. Anyway, enough about Darkworth. Pass me two of those Level 4 scryer cores.”

Cal had moved the extracted rune to the center of the table, placing it in the space between the two recesses where he’d normally put a core on the left and an item to be enchanted on the right. This time, he did it differently. He placed two cores down, one in each recess on either side of the empty rune. Then he picked up the knife, the cloth, and the spirit light and stood back.

“The magic should just work,” he said. “There’s no more input required from me in this magic except placing the materials.” He put a hand on Max’s arm. “Come on, step right back so you’re not standing on any part of the enchanter’s seal.”

Nothing had happened at first when Cal had placed the cores on the table, but as he and Max stepped back, an eerie, many-colored light started to flicker and glow above the cores and the rune. The glow intensified as they moved away, and the seal on the floor started to glow.

The enchanter’s seal was big, nearly nine feet in diameter. The seal was a twelve-pointed star with very thin, narrow arms, each arm decorated with an immensely detailed pattern of strange characters in a language neither of them recognised. Usually, the seal’s coloring was a dull gold, and you had to look very closely to see any details. Most of the time, neither of them noticed the seal at all. It was just another feature of the room, like the desk, the mantlepiece, or the cracked window on the back wall, and the dull gold color didn’t draw the eye.

Now, however, the enchanter’s seal glowed like heated metal and then suddenly exploded into a glorious profusion of light. Green, red, gold, and purple blazed from the seal, lighting up the room as if the floor was alight, burning with magical fire. The lights danced and flashed, casting crazy shadows on the walls of the room.

At the same time as the seal exploded into vibrant life, a cloud of rainbow mist gushed from the cores in a sudden rush, hissing like snakes, covering the cores, the rune crystal, and obscuring most of the table from view. The lights from the floor cast beams of vivid, dancing light through the cloud of many-colored fog, and both Cal and Max involuntarily took another step backward as the fog began hissed and sizzled like water on a hot plate.

“Is this meant to happen?” Max asked nervously as the noise got louder and the light got brighter, but before Cal could answer the display hit its peak. A blinding flurry of lights in every color imaginable filled the little space like a madman’s vision of a firework display, and Cal and Max both raised their hands instinctively to shield their eyes from the glare.

There was an immense whump, then a bang, like the sound of the Core Collector 1000 harvesting a monster core, but much louder. The building shook, and the two friends leaped back as they felt the noise through the very boards under their feet. A physical shockwave passed over them.

Then it was over.

Max and Cal stood blinking into the gloom, their eyes blinded for the moment by the intensity of the bright lights, and their hearing deafened by the noise. As his hearing returned, Cal heard a tapping at the door. He turned to look and saw that Alyn stood outside, peering into the shop through the glass and looking concerned.

“Just a minute,” Cal said to Max. He moved to the door and unlocked it, opening it a crack.

“Are you two okay?” Alyn asked. “I heard a sound like an explosion, I thought you might have had an accident or something.”

“We’re fine, Alyn,” Cal said. “Thanks. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. It was just an unexpected side effect from a bit of enchanting, nothing to worry about.”

“Okay,” Alyn said, then he grinned. “I think it’s better if I don’t ask too much more,” he added with a conspiratorial wink.

Cal laughed. “Hey, don’t suppose you could bring us a bit more coffee? I’ve got a busy morning ahead.”

“Sure,” Alyn said. “Tell you what, I’ll just leave it on the ground here and knock on the door when it’s ready. That would be best, I think.”

“Probably,” Cal admitted. “Thanks, Alyn.”

Alyn winked again and went off chuckling, and Cal went back into the workshop to find Max standing over the table gazing down at it in awe. Cal joined him.

The rune had moved. It was no longer sitting in the middle of the table, between the two enchanting grooves. Neither was it sitting in its former place as the rune of metal. Now, it glowed with a deep, steady purple light, in the space for the rune of scryer cores, the first of the rare elements. The curved edges of the rune were deeply inlaid into the wood as if the rune had been there forever.

The Level 4 scryer core that Max had placed in the left hand depression on the table was there still, looking unchanged, and as if nothing had happened.

The other core had vanished without trace.