Jorun didn’t do anything to suggest a change to Narlin.

He had learned enough from playing chess to understand how to read Narlin’s mood. He knew that Narlin would pick up on something, but he hoped that the old man would just assume that it had to do with wanting to be a doctor.

He had continued working with Narlin on making the oil extract. The process at the end was a little more complicated than what they had been doing, but he had a small jar of the ointment.

He had also begun studying math and writing with Narlin, who insisted that they study something Jorun had never heard of.

The Holy Text.

It was a strange book, made out of the finest materials, but also surprisingly small. The content was simple enough. It lay out the tenets of what was natural and acceptable to the world around them.

Fire burns. Water is wet.

It might sound silly to expect something more, and the book did address more complicated notions about time and fate. However, the principles of the book were pleasantly straightforward. All Jorun new was that he hated the book. He wasn’t exactly sure why, but something about it’s rather beautiful exterior felt revolting.

At first he hadn’t wanted to study it, until he got past some of the introductory materials and into the mathematical laws of the book.

“This is the core component of learning how numbers work,” Narlin explained, “These are laws that are established for every field of magic. They are critical to ensure that the balance is maintained and the world’s order isn’t disrupted.”

He pointed to a section of numbers that Jorun couldn’t quite understand, “These numbers are the ones about fate. They dictate the rules in regards to who dies and who lives, among other things.”

“I can’t understand it.”

“You can recognize some fo the letters and numbers, right?”

Jorun nodded.

“That’s enough for now, you will eventually be able to read them on your own. Everyone should learn to read. I am surprised your parents didn’t teach you these things. Almost everyone in the world learns them.”

Jorun wasn’t surprised. He had learned one interesting thing from the list of Divine Aspects. There wasn’t one missing power, the one related to death, in the book. There were two.

There was absolutely nothing about witchcraft in it.

Jorun’s ability to read the witch’s tome had improved since he began the process of refining the plant oil. It included things about the uses of the various salves that he could make, and it also included a much more efficient process to extract oils than the one that Narlin had used.

He was certain the dead girl had been a witch.

He was also comfortable in his ability to understand it’s text. He couldn’t read pages and pages of information, but he was more than able to understand a lot of the principles and guidelines. The critical part was the refining process, as it would allow Jorun to continue improving his knowledge and experience in the craft.

His only problem was the extreme lack of any interesting plants in the area. He wouldn’t be able to do anything but make more of this one plants’ ointment until he left the area.

The potions served an incredibly useful aspect that Jorun was coming to appreciate. Everyone assumed that they were medical in nature. For now they were, but the tome had already suggested that there were a variety of uses he could add to the potions. That wasn’t important though.

What was important is that everyone assumed Jorun was practicing medical knowledge. As long as they assumed his fascination with potions was related to striving to become a doctor, he was protected. There was one profession in the world that spent a lot of time around the dead.

Doctors.

He also happened to have realized his knowledge was reasonably useful in healing injuries. Combined with the knowledge in the witch’s tome, he would be able to heal a wide range of injuries.

“Don’t be in a hurry.” Narlin muttered snapping Jorun back to the present, “It is tempting to see the end goal and think that you are already there, but you need to work your way up to it.”

He nodded, and went back to studying the numbers of fire, which had a lot to do with metals for some reason.

“I’m bored.”

It had been an hours since Jorun had started reading the numbers on flames, and he wasn’t even half way through the table.

“Eat up. You try out your oil yet?”

“Not on anyone hurt, but I am reasonably confident that it will work. It really helped and I think the stuff I am making will work as well.”

Narlin looked surprised, “You made more?”

“Yes, I am going to be leaving here before too long, and I don’t think that the plant grows elsewhere. So I need to build up a reserve of it.”

The old man’s eyes dropped as he thought about this, “Right, you are going to leave.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Don’t worry, I wont be leaving anytime soon. I need to finish up learning numbers and words, and I haven’t really even begun to make more oil. So it wont happen tomorrow or anything.”

“Got to get enough jars, right?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what will work well from that perspective. I don’t think I want to go around handing out huge jars of the stuff…”

“Sell lad,” Narlin interrupted, “You want to sell them. Once you get into a bigger town, everyone will be expecting you to sell your skills for money. Here it is alright, but most of these people don’t have much money.”

“I would be one of those people. I only have a few coins left from my family.”

“You have a safe place to store them?”

“No, why?”

“Pickpockets and thieves are a real problem. If they believe that you are holding something valuable, they will try to cut it off.”

“So I need to hide it?”

Narlin nodded, “I would. You should also consider how you will carry everything. That sounds like a lot of weight.”

“I am having Mrs. Hodges make me a new travel pack in thanks for what I did for her husband.”

“Packs are fine, but you should look at getting a wagon again,” here he held up his hands, “I know you are worried that everyone will just see a target and attack you, but you can’t carry everything that you will be needing.”

“Does that mean I need a horse?”

Narlin laughed, “Nah, just a donkey or a mule will do fine. Horses are expensive. No one likes dealing with a mule, so they aren’t nearly as bad.

===

“It would be nice if you could pull it,” Jorun was speaking to Latty about the wagon, “Animals need food and rest. That means I need to bring even more stuff that I don’t want to deal with.”

“I could if you gave me a body.” Latty replied, “You promised me a body, and I still haven’t gotten one. I don’t think I have even see you make one.”

Jorun had been avoiding those sections of the book. Everything involved with creating a creature was incredibly complicated and it just didn’t seem to be worth the time and energy.

“I guess I should try something out, shouldn’t I?” Jorun wondered about creating a mule. He wanted it to look like a real animal, and he wanted it to seem alive. If people suspected that it was actually dead, that would be obvious to anyone who was worried about ‘heresy’.

He pulled the book out of it’s hiding place and began reading through the process of animating a body.

It was complicated.

“Latty, I don’t think I can do this. Nothing here is easy. I need an easy way to move a cart.”

“What do you mean?”

He flipped a couple of pages back, “Well there is this part.”

He pointed to an offending line, “It says that the body must be kept cool.”

“Why is that a problem?”

“Well, if it gets warm, the body will start to rot and smell. If it is cold, anyone who touches it will instantly know that there is something strange about it.”

“So what is the solution?”

“I don’t know. Get a donkey I guess.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

Jorun held up his fingers as he counted, “One, they eat. Two, they sleep. Three, they get sick. They are alive after all.”

“I don’t think I see the problem.”

Jorun’s head hit the table with a thunk, “You never do Latty. I just was hoping for a way to create something that could move the wagon and not spend hours taking care of it.”

“Oh! Like me!” Latty clapped her hands.

Jorun had seen enough to know that she was effectively at the end of whatever conversation he could hope to get out of her.

He flipped through the pages, searching for inspiration; and found nothing. The book had numerous references to things that could work, but never once did it present the information in anything that seemed reasonable to Jorun. It was always vague, unclear, and abstract. Like with Latty looping, that meant the book wouldn’t reveal any solution.

Then it hit him. He had been forced to come up with a solution for the oil. The book hadn’t explained that to him. It had simply expected Jorun to figure something out or fail to ever find a solution.

He tapped the page, as he struggled to figure out what he was looking for.

“The body feels wrong or rots.” He muttered, and thankfully Latty didn’t respond.

He flipped to the section about corpse preparation, and found something promising.

Bones don’t rot.

He tapped the page, he didn’t have a great idea, but he knew enough to know how to clean the bones. The problem was that the bones wouldn’t be connected together. He needed the tendons, at least, to get mobility.

He stood up, and went out looking for bones. He didn’t have a full carcass and he wanted to prepare it carefully, even if he did.

It took a while, but eventually he found a snake. He killed it easily enough, and set about cleaning the bones. He was almost done, when he realized a solution was looking him in the face.

“Latty, are there any carts pulled by lizards?”

“Lizards? I think so, but I haven’t ever seen one.”

----------------------------------------

The next time that Jorun met with Narlin, he asked him.

“Argurs? Yea, they exist to the north of here, were it gets warmer. So they are supposed to be common enough in the central regions of the world.”

“What are they like?”

“They change a lot, just like a horse and a donkey, there are more options to pulling a cart than one or the other. Some are low and slow, crawling on the ground with stoic ease. Some almost stand upright and run as fast as a man. I don’t think any of them ever can run quite as fast as a horse though.”

“I could have a lizard pull my wagon.”

Narlin just laughed, “Yeah, if you want to get one. No one would stop you.”

----------------------------------------

He set everything up carefully following the instructions that the tome set down. He arranged the bones of the snake so that they looked like the creature it had once been.

He set up the ritual site and poured energy into it.

The bones wriggled to life, crawling around the floor like an actual serpent.

He pulled the power from it and it crumbled to the ground.

He had already gathered some chicken bones, and he arranged some of them like legs for a snake. Then he poured energy into it again. This time the snake-like creature wriggled to life and stumbled around on the bone like legs.

Again he pulled power from it, and the pile of bones flopped to the ground.

“Did you just make a lizard snake?” Latty startled him.

“Yes I did.”

“What is that for?”

“I want something that can pull my wagon around.”

“You have a wagon?”

“No, I am going to get a wagon. If I can make enough of the medicine, I can make it look like we are a traveling troop.”

“Won’t people notice a skeletal lizard walking around?”

“I am going to cover it so it doesn’t look like a skeleton.”

“How” She asked, but he just ignore her. He needed to find a way to make sure that it seemed realistic.

He draped a cloth over the pile, and charged it again. It came to life and crawled out from under the cloth. Jorun started to pull the power from it, and then realized what he had been missing. He picked up the cloth and tied it off around each of the legs, the head and a couple place along the body.

Then he allowed it to start skittering around, and the cloth didn’t flop off.

“Now it looks like a weird little ghost. That is really neat.” Latty clapped.

Jorun tinkered with a variety of things in an attempt to figure out the limits of the strange little creature. He learned that it would slowly drain the energy the longer he left it walking. If he put a lot of weight on it, it seemed to speed up the rate it drained.

He cleaned up the experiment and sketched out a rough idea of what he wanted it to look like. It would need to be almost the size of a horse.