Chapter 387: The Work Above

Ren started with the quarter-turn. It was the observation he hadn’t repeated.

He set the Ladder stone in its tray and matched the wedge and setting lines to his separate sketch. The craftsperson checked the far side, then returned to the door fitting at its end of the bench.

Ren poured to a mark on the cup, fed the water into the recorded mouth and lowered the stone onto the wedge. Water emerged from the opening on his sketch. He let it drain, dried the faces and repeated the pour from the same starting position.

The same opening.

He returned to the original setting and checked that pair twice. Both pours drained from the far-face mouth. When he lifted the wet stone to inspect its chalk marks, the craftsperson glanced up.

"Over the tray."

Ren moved his hands back before another drop reached his notes.

The two sketches lay beside each other. He wanted to add the next mouths without crowding the setting lines.

’He was going to need a bigger sheet.’

He copied both arrangements onto one, keeping the face labels consistent and drawing the wedge beneath each view.

"Turning it could just make another branch drain," the craftsperson said. "Water finding a lower opening doesn’t tell you how it got there."

"I want to measure that next."

First he tried two more upper mouths in the original setting, draining the stone between pours. One connected to a neighboring opening on the far face. The other drained through the end face. Each result repeated.

He recorded those beside the first two arrangements and set the cup down. There were other mouths to try, but he still knew nothing about the distances between them.

— • —

The craftsperson put aside its fitting and brought over a spool of fine waxed thread.

"Try feeding this with the water. If it catches, stop."

Ren returned the stone to the original setting. He lowered the thread’s tip into the first mouth and poured slowly, feeding it without pushing. The tip appeared at the far-face opening. He caught it and drew enough through to hold both ends.

He couldn’t see the route inside. The thread ran freely when he moved it a little in either direction.

"Easy," the craftsperson said as he took up the slack. "Don’t stretch it."

Ren held the thread against a marked point on each mouth’s rim. The craftsperson put a fine ink line on it at each contact, then he withdrew it.

The craftsperson brought out calipers whose curved arms reached around the stone. It touched their tips to the same two rim marks and transferred the separation to its rule.

Ren laid the marked length of thread alongside it under the same light tension.

It came up short.

He moved the thread’s first ink line back against the beginning of the measured span. The second still fell short by roughly the width of his thumb.

"Did it slip while you marked it?"

"Hold it again."

They checked a wetted length against the rule before the next pass, then threaded the same route. This time Ren held the ends while the craftsperson watched both contact points as it marked them. They withdrew the thread and checked the length again.

The shortfall remained. The reference marks they’d made before threading hadn’t moved closer together.

Ren laid the calipers’ tips against the stone once more. They reached around it, from one mouth to the other. The thread that had passed through the material between those points could not span that distance on the bench.

"If there were slack left inside, we’d have more thread here," he said.

"Yes." The craftsperson looked from the rule to the stone. "I’ve never measured a passage shorter than the gap between its ends."

At Carrow, Ren had learned to check where a crossing ended instead of extending the line he’d walked. Here he could hold both ends in view. Knowing their positions still hadn’t told him how much distance lay between them through the stone.

He turned to the end-face connection on his sketch. Its mouths were closer together than the first pair’s.

Before taking the spool, he wrote beneath it: shorter inside; expect about the same shortfall.

He showed the craftsperson.

"The same length?"

"The amount missing. I think that stays close."

It read the line again and handed him the thread.

Ren fed it through with another small pour. The tip emerged from the end-face mouth. They marked it at the rims, withdrew it and compared it against the separation taken with the calipers.

The passage was shorter. The difference was close to the first one’s, although the total length was smaller.

They repeated the measurement before Ren entered it beneath his prediction. He kept the two routes on separate lines, with both measurements beside each. The first result had suggested what to expect; the second had held when he checked it.

He ran his thumb over the worked face between the mouths. The water had given him connections. Now he had measured something of what the stone did with the distance between them.

"What next?" the craftsperson asked.

He’d considered grafting it. The gate stone had given him workings he could study afterward, but this piece was still intact, and he had another connection waiting to be measured.

"I want to measure the next one before I decide what else to do with it."

"Leave it at the end, then."

He drained the stone over the tray, dried its faces and checked the chalk before returning it to the folded cloth.

The craftsperson wiped its calipers.

"The spear’s second head still needs its load checks. Bring your range notes when you come back. And the fitting blank."

"Tomorrow?"

"Yes. I want to check your grip against the mark before the joint goes in the test fitting."

Ren packed his sketches and the thread, leaving the craftsperson to its fitting. Alone on the path to the Worldroot, he asked the System privately for the result.

[SPACE: 1.75% → 2.00%.]

— • —

At the Worldroot, Ren sat against the trunk and asked privately for the Law requirements that remained unmet.

[FIRE: 18.3% / 25%.]

[WATER: 12.9% / 25%.]

[EARTH: 12.6% / 25%.]

[AIR: 10.8% / 25%.]

[LIGHT: 4.2% / 5%.]

[SPACE: 2.00% / 2.50%.]

[TIME: 1.60% / 2.50%.]

He read the seven lines once.

Light, Space and Time had work he could continue. The four elemental requirements needed much more. Kilnreach and Ebbmere had given him useful instruction and material; he would write to Maren and Tamsin about further work, then arrange his practice around what was available.

He dismissed the display.

There was also the sun. The System had confirmed that the existing one could serve, with stabilization and integration required. He had no measurements of his own yet.

Ren returned to the place where he’d entered Verdance and opened the way to his room. He collected Dalia’s board and its folding stand, then brought them back through.

He chose open ground beyond the Worldroot’s shadow. As he spread the stand’s legs, he saw one would come down among his mother’s flowers. He moved it clear of the stems and settled all three feet on firm earth.

The board sat level. Beside it, he fixed a short stone peg high enough for its shadow to reach across the squares. He marked the stand’s position and the peg’s, then measured the peg’s height above the board.

With his Light working off, he marked the shadow’s tip and wrote down the time shown on his slate.

He sat beside the flowers with his notebook on his knee. Dalia had made him watch where the light arrived before he tried to change it. He watched now as the shadow moved across the grid, its tip leaving the first mark behind. When he marked its new position, he recorded the time again.

No branch shadow had crossed the board while he watched. He noted that beside the two readings, then sketched the setup with its height and direction.

He checked the stand’s feet before folding it. They hadn’t sunk into the ground. The two marks would give him something to compare when he returned to the same arrangement; he copied their positions onto the sketch so he could use the board for practice in between.

It was a start on observing the light reaching this patch of ground. It gave him no reason yet to call the sun steady or unsteady.

He closed the notebook around the sketch and opened his older throwing notes. The craftsperson’s wax mark was recorded beside his grip, with the misses and clean releases from the range.

Ren folded the corner of that page. Before tomorrow’s visit, he would collect the fitting blank too.