Chapter 2

Ned led his students back home, listening with half an ear for any mention of Cadmin’s running, or anything else of interest.

It was a pleasant day in the wilderness around the school. It was summer, but not too hot at the moment. What heat there was got blown away by a stiff breeze that caused the trees to sway and rustle and clack their branches together like they were applauding the wind’s efforts. It hadn’t rained for a week and a half so the ground was dry and everybody’s footing was sure. All felt right with the world. Ned had friends in the trees above looking after him and students in his school that he’d built himself. Ned now had a lot to lose.

It had started off life as Bettigerd’s hideout, the orcish bandit chieftain more infamously known as Red Betty. He’d reinforced the rough wooden palisade that surrounded the compound, mainly to develop the woodworking and carpentry skills that he needed to renovate the rest. He worked until the wall still looked pretty rough from the outside, but was much sturdier on the inside. It now had a firestep almost five feet below the top of the wall with a number of ladders interspersed so that the walls could be manned and archers could fire through the snaggletoothed gaps the sharpened tips the logs made.

The bandits' longhouse was now a dormitory, with the quarter nearest the front door reserved as a barracks for his student adventurers.

One of the two original cabins had been spruced up and turned into a smithy. The other, tucked into the far northeastern corner of the little community, now had three floors. The first floor was his office, the second his living quarters, and the third was his study and laboratory. Stairs ran around the outside of it and the crenellated roof served as a lookout tower.

Three more cabins had been added. One for the smith and her family, two more for important guests.

The last structure to go up was the two-story inn where there was always one room of the eight reserved to be a classroom. By the time Ned was ready to tackle that particular project, he had some student helpers learning carpentry and woodworking and could afford professional assistance. He had a wonderful working relationship with the merchant’s guilds of the kingdom, all of which were grateful that Red Betty was gone and that there was finally a safe place to rest on the road between Forth Smith and Laggisport where they used to have to travel all day with a heavy escort.

Seven months of work had resulted in a new home where Ned felt proud to live and work. He’d even had time to improve the road going up the switchbacks to the top of his hill, breaking rocks, smoothing the grade, and widening the way.

Of course, he was being spied on by the nobility of the kingdom. The squirrels had warned him he would be, and they would know seeing as they had the preeminent intelligence-gathering apparatus in the kingdom. Oh, Ned checked each prospective student’s references, and he even caught a couple of clumsy attempts at infiltration himself. Attempts they'd meant for him to catch, of course, while the other, more professional agents were detected by the squirrels, who had all been left in place.

To the outside world, Ned taught woodworking and carpentry from a workbench behind the smithy, first aid, anatomy, medicine, botany, geology, and farming in the garden behind the inn. Adventuring, scribing, and accounting he taught from his room in the inn. To a select and secret few, he taught history, literature, and rhetoric.

Technically, he wasn’t supposed to have a school at all. Technically, he’d been specifically forbidden to do so by the Duke of Laggisport and the Count of Fort Smith, but Ned’s new home lay in a legally gray area between those two borders. Neither nobleman had wanted to deal with Red Betty for two main reasons. Both were receiving kickbacks from her thieving for years, and Bettigerd was the mother of the countess! So, each had proven in their own courts countless times by their own lawyers that this particular geographic area belonged to the other, which, in practice, meant that it belonged to neither, allowing for one Ned Cartwright to claim it for himself.

The squirrels, and Lord Kax in particular, who was their king, warned him it couldn’t last. The more successful the place was, the more money and notoriety it brought in, the more likely it was for the Duke or the Count to try and seize it. They might do that through the king, their father. They might show up with an army. They might try to do it through the courts they controlled. In the meantime, they were determined to keep an eye on Ned to make sure he wasn’t doing anything untoward. Which he wasn’t. As far as they knew.

He recruited primarily from the people who stopped there from the road, most of which were merchants. That’s where he found Gritta Stone, the sister of Grig Stone, the student adventurer. She was a journeyman smith traveling with old Miss Dara, the lady that helped Ned escape Fort Smith all those months ago. Dara recommended them both to each other and once Gritta learned her shiftless brother could learn a profession there, it was a done deal.

One of the first things Gritta had done after setting up her shop was replace the heads of Ned’s warhammers, which he'd made himself and were little more than heavy canes. Now, each was topped with a bearded dragon that shone like brass, though it wasn’t. Gritta wouldn’t tell him what the material was. Some dwarven secret passed down from smith to smith. It was hard as steel, but very light so that they weighed much the same as they had before. The beard was thick and long enough to serve as a hook, but back far enough from each muzzle not to detract from the striking power of the hammer. The curving ram’s horns on the dragons’ heads jutted up two and a half inches, so that if Ned grasped the hammer by the head, he could punch it like a tonfa stick. In short, they worked like they always did, just better, allowing him to do all that he did before only more so.

He loved them.

Gritta also taught classes in blacksmithing that Ned sometimes attended.

The only other teacher Ned employed at the moment taught cooking and herbalism. She showed up three months ago. Magrid. The orc. Formerly of Red Betty’s band.

She showed up alone, her belly swollen with child.

Ned’s child.

“I’m carrying your son,” she told him by way of greeting.

They were in the road just out of earshot of the front gate. He’d been called there by the lookouts. An orc traveling alone was a rarity and often served as a distraction for raiders. Ned's knees wobbled and he nearly fell in the dirt. A son?

“My….”

“Yes,” she said. “My first. An orc’s first child is always a boy.” She didn’t seem glad to see him. She didn’t seem tired. She didn’t seem anything at all. She inclined her head. "It is our way."

Ned didn’t know much about orcs but he knew that they were either stoic or they were very much not. Magrid stood there like she was made of wood. Her long, wavy, brown hair with green highlights lifted a bit in the breeze. The points of her ears jutted out. Her brown eyes were huge. Two tusks jutted out a tiny bit from her lower lip.

“I remember you, Magrid,” he said. “You were very kind to me.”

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“You were very gentle,” she said and smiled. “It is the orcish way to return to the father when this happens.” She patted her belly. “To give him the option to help father the child. Some do. Some return with the mother to the hunting party. Some refuse and the mother returns alone.” She shrugged.

She waited.

“A son?”

She nodded.

Ned laughed. There were tears in his eyes. Too much air in his throat. “I’ve only had girls.” They were back on Earth with their mother. Lost to him. Inaccessible except for news and video Hughie could show him of their lives without him. He hadn't asked for awhile. He told himself he was too busy.

Magrid nodded. “I remember. You said.”

“Do you want to stay here, Magrid? I mean, I won’t presume. I, uh… we’re not. Okay, well, shit.”

“Humans,” Magrid sighed. “I am the mother of your child. I like you, Ned Cartwright. I think you are a good man. I will stay if I am welcome. That is all.”

And so Magrid came to stay and despite what she said, sometimes she shared Ned’s bed. She was the only orc there and he ran the place. Their positions were lonely and they comforted each other. From time to time.

So, Ned set up his school. Schools really. The one that people knew about and the smaller one that people didn’t. He taught. He worked to maintain the compound. He patrolled the surrounding area, keeping it safe for travel. He traded with the merchants that came through. He prepared for his son and he worked on his magic.

One day, a month ago, a funny little man arrived with one of the Crasfield’s transporters. A gnome, he learned later. At dinner in the common room of the inn, the gnome took Ned aside.

“I hear you’re the one that’s selling all those extra-dimensional bags,” he said.

“That’s me,” said Ned. “You in the market?”

“Actually, no. I’m in the business.”

Ned blinked. He’d never met another magician before. “I’ve never met another magician before,” he said.

“We’re a secretive bunch. Tend to enjoy our creative freedom. Don’t want to get snapped up by the nobility. That happens and, yes, you get a lot of funding, but you have to do what you’re told. Much more fun to do as you like.”

“What’s your name?”

“No names,” said the gnome. “Harder to get tracked down that way.”

Ned nodded. “Okay.”

“May I see you work?”

Ned shrugged and took him to his lab. He was proud of it. Lots of windows for light, a large bench, lots of cabinets and drawers.

The gnome looked embarrassed.

“What’s with all the windows?” he asked.

“Well, light,” said Ned. “Oh, and I like to open them up in case of explosions.”

“Explos—. Maybe you’d just better show me.”

So, Ned made him a bag.

It took only three tries and one small fire.

“My gods,” said the little man. “How many spells are you casting at once?”

“Four.”

“Four!” The gnome stomped his foot. “Are you crazy?”

Ned gestured at the windows that were still ventilating all the smoke quite nicely.

“Why do you not use rituals?”

“Right,” said Ned. “What are rituals?”

The gnome blinked.

They looked at each other a long time.

“Who taught you your business?” asked the gnome.

“I’ve worked it out myself.”

“Worked it out yoursel…. Yes, that makes sense. Listen here....”

It turned out that ritual magic is what most enchanters used for complex work. There are lots of candles and arcane runes and whatnot, but all that is mostly traditional and used to confuse the rubes. All it is, really, is that you go ahead and cast your spell. Well, 'cast' is the wrong word. Casting is the whole process. Spellwork, the gnome told him, is like breathing. There’s the energy and magic you gather inside before you let it out in its final form. There were words for it that Ned promptly forgot. So, what you did was do the breathing in, and if you were successful, you held it like you were holding your breath. Only it turns out you can’t do that. You need a placeholder. A crystal or diagram or some sort of focus. You store the, well, breath, in there, while you go ahead and breathe in your next spell. Once you’ve got all the ones you want ready, you let them all go at once and the item, if it’s of sufficient quality to hold and wield all that magical energy, is enchanted.

The trick is that you have to maintain a fraction of your attention on your chosen focus. If your attention wavers, the spell sighs out and ruins the focus. There are no fires. No explosions. Normally.

When the little fellow had gone, Ned called, “Hughie!”

The big crow fluttered to the window. “Yes, Ned?”

“Why. The fuck. Did you not tell me. About ritual. Fucking. Magic?”

“You didn’t ask, Ned. I can’t volunteer information out of the blue.”

“Do you know how much money I’ve spent on these materials that burned up when they didn’t have to burn up?”

“Actually, I do. It’s about—”

“It’s too much is what it is! How much else are you not telling me, little bird?”

"Nothing of which you're aware," Hughi smiled and then thought better of it. He sighed. “I can’t tell you that either, Ned. It’s against the rules. I’ve told you —“

“Yeah, yeah.”

And so, Ned learned things and built and recruited and taught and loved his new home.

It took him forever to name it. A settlement, however small, needed a name. It couldn’t have anything to do with Red Betty or the bandits. Or not much. People did come to see the place that had prompted so much fear over the years, and Ned would give them the tour, pointing out where things had been and what he had found there. No, this place was something much different from that now. It had to have a good name. Maybe it would be a good idea to call it something that others from Earth would recognize. So far as he knew, he'd only ever met one other, a guard in the employ of the Duke, but Earthlings tended to keep that information close to the vest. Mages weren’t the only beings to get snapped up by noblemen. Earthlings knew things. They were useful.

They were also brought here by the developers of this world to be heroes. So far as Ned knew, the ruling class was unaware of that. Maybe. But they tended to be capable people, at the very least. They were either controlled or watched or both.

No, the name should reflect the nature of the place. A place of learning and peace.

Well, this world was inspired by the fantasy genre of Earth. Medieval Europe with magic, right? There were schools back then but they were largely controlled by the church. Monasteries. Only there were no women or sex, supposedly, in monasteries.

What could he name the place that promoted a sense of peace and scholarship. That said, Hello, world! Come and learn!

Hello, world!

And then Ned had it.

He made a sign. Put it by the fork in the road where one way led up the hill to home.

He passed it now as he led his students back from their eventful patrol. He thought about it now as he contemplated all he had done, all he had gained, all that Cadmin Frank with his running off and his spying put at risk.

It was well made. A simple wooden placard, painted white with gold lettering outlined in red, the characters engraved into the pine.

Welcome to

The Namastery