Gerolf took the high priest Taramo and two guards for their first expedition to the city. His guards were armed with spears, hatchets and guarded by the same boiled leather armor that Gerolf also wore. Gerolf's shortbow was unadorned and he had a machete but the gilded sword that he'd had earlier was somewhere in the city. He'd dropped it when he was disarmed by those Silver Chain goons and hoped that this expedition could retrieve it

  Taramo had no armor except for a strange cloak that gave off a light hum of power. And even without any weapon he was by far the most dangerous. He also had that pet which seemed to be a mix of mist slime and dog. Spot's tongue was numbing, though the numbness lessened after a minute and wore off after two more so it didn't seem to be extremely dangerous.

  Except that it single handedly decapitated one of the Silver Chain members, though Taramo didn't say much about Spot besides him being 'a good boy'.

  The older guard Tarn had Gerolf's scabbard and was whispering an incantation with his dowsing ring, an iron ring that was tied to a sturdy string and had incantations forged into the iron..

  "Prithee what is Tarn doing?" Taramo whispered beside him

  "Doing a divination to try and find my sword." Taramo's one flaw would be he tended to be a bit over formal. Since the high speech was his mother tongue Gerolf was willing to ignore it.

  "How does it work?"

  "I haven't been trained in it's use but Tarn will weave the divination through the hole in the ring and seek out the sword that went with the scabbard."

  "Could someone dispell the pairing between the sword and scabbard?"

  "Someone could, but when the sword was made a piece of the steel was taken off one end of the bar. It was turned into the metal band by the mouth of the scabbard."

  Tarn sighed and turned to Gerolf.

  "Young master the pairing was dispelled. It is probable that the sword was taken by the Silver Chain. Do you still wish for us to divine it's location directly?"

  "Yes. Even if it is out of our reach currently I would prefer that we are certain of it's location. If the Silver Chain took it we might be able to re-buy it from a merchant who passed through their checkpoint."

  "Then we'll have to wait a few minutes. I thoroughly checked the area so my mana is depleted."

  "Well..." Gerolf looked at Taramo "do you want to have a go at the divination?"

  "Sure. Just let me see the dowsing ring." Tarn gave it to Taramo who looked deeply at it.

  A fascinating device.

  The ring was designed to search within an area that was modulated by the amount of mana provided to it. Since the mana needed to pass through the ring there was an upper limit, but it would be much further than Tarn had used. Tarn had given a thin stream that should be at most a tenth of what could be used, though Taramo was not going to just assume that the ring could have all the space used effectively.

  There was some ward on the device that would heat the ring red hot if someone started pulling the weave in the ring apart, thoroughly destroying the device. So he didn't poke and just looked. There were only so many ways to do a divination and the warding on the scabbard would

  "The spell is (Findmatchingonelookclosefindifnotlookfarfindandpullmetothinglightlikebreeze.)" Tarn provided.

  The spell was terribly clunky but it was a set of syllables that would give the same result every time if spoken correctly. Even someone who was entirely unfamiliar with the language could use it.

  "Time to give it a go" Taramo gave the divining ring back to Tarn and drew his wand. The material difference had minimal impact on most magic, besides spells that dealt with soul magic, and the pairing between sword and scabbard was the closest thing to a soul in this instance, which is to say not at all like one.

  Tarn and the other guard stepped back, eyes wide. Gerolf had an impassive face except for a little grin in the corner of his eyes and Spot, at a light mental prodding, took the scabbard from Tarn and brought it before Taramo.

  "(Designate city as within six miles)" A tiny amount of mana was pulled for this, "Find the matching sword to this scabbard. Do not stray outside the city, search in this" he pointed the wand generally where he'd exited the sewers, "area first. Do not exceed 20% of my mana maximum. Activate)"

  He felt a pull of exactly twenty percent of his mana and sixteen mana butterflies, visible to the eye in a shimmering colour like an oil slick, fluttered up and dispersed. Half of them went in the direction that he'd pointed while the rest spread themselves along the three quarters that remained.

  "How did you do that?" Tarn was flabbergasted "You didn't use the ring and even I recognized that the spell chant was completely different and longer than the one I used."

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  "Most things are a matter of fundamental principles and rules. If you properly define the spell you can reduce the waste." Tarn had a glazed over look that was probably in part because of Taramo needing to use some high speech so he'd give an example.

  He used his wand to pull up the paving stones in front of one of the buildings, getting three meters of dense dirt that had been underneath. Some old wards went off giving a small ping to some other part of the city, notifying some office of maintenance that a street was in need of repair. Taramo untied the ward and let it dissolve since all it would do was interfere with the demonstration.

  "Let's say we're here," Taramo pulled a pebble from one of the alleyways and set it in the middle of the dirt, " and we want to find this." He used his raw manipulation of mana to break a few chunks off a paving stone, setting one on the surface of the dirt, halfway between the middle and end of the space.

  He used mana to carve an oval in the dirt around the middle It didn't intersect with the paving stone shard.

  "We use the search divination and with what we use we check here. We could do it again," and he made another oval, missing the stone again, "except that now there's some spots we checked twice. That's waste, unless you know that your manipulator, your dowsing ring in this case, can remember where you checked for the sword. What should probably work is altering your chant to define an area close to you that you won't check and only check further out." He wiped the other lines and made two rings.

  "From what I can see with your dowsing ring you should be able to define different ranges you would accept or reject. You could make each ring you check a different range so there's no overlap. I think that should work better."

  "For finding at the start, maybe, but after that I would follow the path the ring pulls me to. With it defined like that I would lose what I'm looking for, though maybe if I used a compass and the thing wasn't running around... " Tarn got thinking, which Taramo always liked with his apprentices, though Tarn wasn't one ... yet.

  Then everyone else jumped to attention when Taramo jumped at a noise only he could hear. A shrill chime that announced that one of his butterflies had gotten in range of the target and the others were converging on the line between it and him, letting him get a better view of the area between.

  "I got it."

  "What are we waiting for, let's go see where it ended up." The other guard seemed enthusiastic to do something besides keep watch for birds or whatever else might be about.

  "Not yet. I'll be able to show us where it is in a minute. If it's the Silver chain base I don't think we should get closer than we have to. I'll need us to go somewhere dark, however, if I'm going to show everyone better."

  The two guards checked a nearby store that had the glass removed and windows left empty, but one of the back rooms would fit them and still had shutters, even if they were on the ground. The shutters were balanced on their spot in the window after one of the mana-butterflies entered and landed on Taramo's head.

  Taramo coaxed the bug onto his finger and sent some light through the wing where it landed on the wall, showing a spot overlooking the building that they'd entered.

  "That's the closest one, we'll jump to the next." A part of non-descript rooftop was mostly the others with only one in the middle that showed a garden that was fully enclosed by buildings and had dense vegetation.

  "(Remember that spot)" Taramo would want to check out any interesting areas in the city, but he'd need to find them first. There might just be plants and animals there but he'd probably see some new ones since there was a lot of time for them to change, ignoring the mages and their little experiments he'd seen in his own time which were wildly different.

  "I'll want to check there later" Taramo assuaged the others as the jumps of perspectives continued, ending at one of the watch towers on the main wall.

  "That's not the Silver Chain's hideout. They've got the fortress that holds the mountain pass. Fort Tarnox, but they'd probably not use the name. The founding king was fond of using the wraiths to enforce his will and the empire up north doesn't like them much."

  Taramo would have to ask about King Tarnox sometime, but he'd do it when they were back behind walls.

  "Now the question is, will the person who took the sword stay in the City long enough for us to get more help."

  "I don't want to lose it. It was my first sword." Gerolf looked down, then apparently got an idea "Which means that I would be willing to pay more than someone else. If they are friendly this could be a way to reach out to them and build friendship. There were supposed to be other fey's children in the city but we haven't found any so far."

  Something else to ask about, but Taramo would show his capabilities.

  "I could keep watch over the area while we approach." He gestured to the projected image, "This is just for your benefit. I could also have some wards to see what life is about us and if they become hostile."

  Gerolf looked to Tarn to make the decision.

  "We will check today, but we probably can't get it now, unless you brought your coin with you, Young Master?"

  "Okay. We'll go and see if they're friendly. If they are we will want to offer an olive branch anyway."

  In one of the watchtowers on the North Border of Tarnox.

  A blade inlaid with enchanted gold was an exceptional find. Why someone would have abandoned it in the city of the dead was something far beyond Nikalia's understanding. Someone who left it behind would probably not be after it, would they?

  Would the Sisters Sylvan be willing to buy it? They would normally come to gather her knitting and spools of spider silk. She'd gotten some from a spider web that was emptied, someone had killed one of the wraith-weavers and eaten it.

  If someone else was wandering the deeps and hunting then maybe she should take the Sisters Sylvan up on their offer. Living in their enclave would give some restrictions to what she could do but they were friendly and the forest valleys had less wraiths wandering in them.

  There were also the other settlements still existing in the city and the new one. Would the Papylaras be willing to take her on? She was stronger and would be able to give more protection so they wouldn't have to wander quite so much. She'd eat vegetables if she had to but they might be willing to hunt a bit.

  The beetles were probably unviable since they weren't fond of her kind, though it made sense given her people's place as the masters of Tarnox for a long time. There was too much to consider.

  She clambered up the netting that she'd set along the center of the tower and scuttled up to the top floor. There was a good view from up there and she'd do some knitting while she considered her options.

  Getting to the top she settled her abdomen on the pile of straw after she pushed it together with her set of forelegs, then grabbed the knitting needles from her waist pouch and fed a line of silk from her spinnerets and threw it over her shoulder, catching it in her hands and settling down. She'd decided to make some gloves, she liked to give them spider-grip. The Sisters said that those enchantments were popular.