Chapter 399: What Remains

Ren brought Dalia’s board and his notebook to the Worldroot, then sat against the trunk and asked the System privately for the requirements still unmet.

[FIRE: 19.0% / 25%.]

[WATER: 13.1% / 25%.]

[EARTH: 13.3% / 25%.]

[AIR: 11.4% / 25%.]

[LIGHT: 4.7% / 5%.]

[TIME: 1.95% / 2.50%.]

[STELLAR STRUCTURE: EXISTING SUN.]

[STABILIZATION REQUIRED. INTEGRATION REQUIRED.]

Space was no longer on the list. He read the remaining lines and dismissed the display.

Light and Time had exercises he could continue at home. The four elemental requirements needed much more. He could return to the workings he’d followed in grafted material and practice what he’d learned at the passages, but repeating a familiar exercise wouldn’t supply the understanding he still lacked. He would ask Maren and Tamsin about work beyond the sections he’d already managed.

He needed a source of instruction for the sun. He had begun observing its light, but nobody had yet taught him what preparing a stellar structure involved.

"I like having you here, Ren."

Kaia spoke privately from the roots.

"I like being here."

He left the board on the grass beside him a little longer before getting up.

— • —

The stone peg remained on the open ground west of the trunk. Ren opened his notebook to the earlier sketch and set the stand’s feet on their recorded positions, clear of his mother’s flowers.

The ground was firm beneath them. He checked the board’s height with a rule, laid a small level across it in both directions, then matched its alignment to the sketch. The peg’s position and height above the board agreed with his record.

Three squares near the middle still carried the pencil marks from Dalia’s lesson. He left those alone. The first sitting’s shadow positions were copied in his notebook; he began a separate sketch for the new readings, using the same grid.

He sat beside the flowers with the slate within reach. Neither Light nor Time was active.

The peg’s shadow crossed the board. Ren marked its tip, copied the position onto the new sketch and wrote down the time shown on his slate.

The tip’s edge was soft against the wood. He noted where he had placed the pencil mark within it; a difference smaller than that blurred edge would be difficult to distinguish.

He watched it move away from the first mark. At the next timed interval, he marked and recorded it again. A breeze stirred the flowers beside his knee, but the stand’s feet held their places.

He took two more readings at the same interval. No branch shadow crossed the board while he watched, and he noted that beneath the four positions.

The earlier record had two readings. He laid the pages side by side, keeping each set’s slate times beside its positions. Restoring the arrangement let him compare them, but the sittings covered different intervals. He couldn’t call them matching results simply because he had used the same board.

During this observation, the shadow had moved across the grid without a visible jump. That was what he could record. It told him nothing yet about how to stabilize the sun or join it to Verdance.

He rested the pencil across the open notebook. At Kilnreach, Dalia had been able to tell him what to watch and why. Here he didn’t know what else needed measuring.

Sovereign Dawn’s archive had supplied Farcast and the implement requirements that went with it. He could ask there for references on stellar preparation, or where to look if their collection didn’t cover it.

He wrote the question beneath the observations, checked the stand’s feet once more and folded it. The peg stayed in place. He packed the rule and level with the board and carried them back toward the Worldroot before returning to Dawnspire.

— • —

From his room, Ren wrote to Maren about further work on the heat routes, cultivated bedstone and connected air passages. He described the cooling patch he’d tended, the load adjustments he’d left in the bedstone and the three-passage exercise with Joss. He asked what work could take him beyond those tasks.

To Tamsin, he asked about another suitable tide for working with Hadde along the connected wall.

Then he went to the archive. The clerk wrote down his request for references on preparing an existing stellar structure and checked where to send a reply. She couldn’t tell him yet what the collection held.

He left her with the inquiry and headed up to the Terrace.

Lyra sat beside her tea with the sheet he’d seen before leaving for Carrow. It had become a drawing of a jetty, measurements crowded beside the posts and a gull hunched on the outer one. She pushed a cup toward him.

"You never told me the rest of the garden visit."

"Lenna let me work on the bedstone."

"Under the beds?"

He nodded and told her about the root that had thickened in its recess. The stone beside it was carrying too much of the load. Lenna had shown him two neighboring connections that could take more. She had moved a small share herself before handing the patch over. That change was still in the stone when his own attempt began.

"The readings looked right while I was holding it," he said. "When I eased off, my part of the load started going back."

"And the root?"

"Still had room. I stopped before the opening narrowed too far. She told me to follow where the connection took the weight."

"What had you missed?"

"Her adjustment stayed. Mine needed me to keep holding it there." He set his cup down. "I followed hers into the junction and changed the stone’s own working. A little at a time, checking as I let go. That held."

Lyra looked at the posts on her drawing.

"A survey pole can look straight for as long as I’m holding it."

"That was about where I’d got to."

"I prefer finding somewhere it’ll stand by itself." She turned the sheet toward him and tapped a post. "That one was leaning. I had to take the measurements from the next."

His slate sounded while she was showing him the reference line. Ren turned it face down and followed her finger across the drawing. She explained where she’d measured from, then drew the sheet back beside her cup.

"What are you doing next?"

"I’ve asked about more work at the garden and the nursery. And I’ve been observing the sun."

"Verdance’s?"

"Yes. Where its light falls on a board, so far. I’ve asked the archive what I should be reading before I try anything more."

"If you need help setting it out, ask me. I can hold the other end of a cord."

"Once I know what I need to measure."

She nodded and took another drink. Ren finished his tea before turning the slate over.

Maren had replied.

Tobin and Lenna have finished examining the retained pieces. Their report is attached. They can show you the samples and discuss the work that follows in the window below.

"Kilnreach?" Lyra asked.

"The split under the first bed. They’ve sent the findings."

He opened the attachment. The first drawing showed the two ends of the split Tobin had kept for examination.