midst of fighting the greatest war ever. The same elf who had forged this blade had forged a continent. The world had been fundamentally different when Sunfang had been made, and Caledor had been the one who altered it when he created the Vortex.
Surely there was something to be learned from understanding this spell work. So thinking, Teclis threw himself once again into studying the weave and pattern of the magic and imprint of the elf that had made it so.
Hours later, grimly elated, exhausted and at the end of his strength, he felt that he had grasped the essential nature of the magic. He thought that perhaps one day he would be able to forge a weapon, if not as powerful as this one, at least of a similar level of sophistication.
‘You have penetrated the blade’s secrets?’ his father asked. It was not really a question.
Teclis took up his pen. ‘I have discovered a very great deal. Let’s get it all down while it is fresh in my memory.’
Teclis slumped wearily into his armchair. He looked over at his father and saw that the old elf was transformed. His face had lit up with something approaching joy. He looked as if he was about to burst into dance. In his hands he held the scrolls containing the notes that Teclis had made during his examination of Sunfang. He kept running his gaze over the runes again and again, as if he could not quite believe what he was seeing.
‘What is it, Father?’ Teclis asked. His father looked as if he was about to burst into tears. He did not seem able to force the words out.
‘I think we have found it, my son,’ he said. ‘I think we have found what I was looking for over all these centuries. I think we found the missing piece of the puzzle.’
Teclis found his father’s excitement contagious. Weary as he was, he rose and limped over to where Prince Arathion stood. He looked over his father’s shoulder at the complex mass of magical notation that he had left on the parchment.
For once, his father was ahead of him when it came to understanding magic. He simply could not see what it was that the older elf was so excited about. Then again, he told himself, he was tired and he did not have his father’s long experience of studying this sort of spell. It was quite possible his father was the greatest expert on this sort of thing in the world. He had concentrated obsessively on it for centuries.
‘I don’t see it,’ Teclis said.
‘There,’ his father said, his finger stabbing towards one section of the inscription. ‘Do you see it now?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘I think this is the missing part of the weave, the thing that has prevented me from being able to reactivate the armour over all these centuries. I think this is the magic that will enable me to bind all of the complex spells together and make them work. It will be expensive and it will take time but I think I can do it.’
Teclis began to vaguely see what his father was getting at. It was not something that would have excited him, or even have got his attention had it not been pointed out to him. It was a relatively simple thing but once he looked closely at it he could see the cleverness of it.
It was a small, intricate piece of spellcraft, designed to link together a mesh of other spells, reinforcing them and letting them draw on each other’s power. Anything inscribed with this particular rune would be much stronger and yet much easier to use. It was something that was difficult to spot because it was so embedded in the rest of the spells on the blade, but once you saw it…
‘I see it now,’ Teclis said.
‘I knew you would – eventually,’ said his father with a smile. ‘It is quite brilliant and I can see how it has eluded me for so long. It will take quite a bit of work to recreate the links in the armour but once that is done, I should be able to bring it back to life. Of course, I won’t be able to make the spell as strongly as Caledor did. There’s less magic in the world now.’
When he said that his father looked troubled. ‘Although that may be changing. The winds of magic have been blowing much stronger recently and there is an odd taint to