Chapter 170 - 154: The One Who Stole the Young Man’s Shadow

"Yes."

Richard crouched down again, pushing the small wooden plane into the crack.

The process of cleaning the crack lasted for about forty minutes.

Even with gloves on, his hands were frozen stiff.

Once the crack was clean, Mrs. MacNeil grabbed a small handful from the coarse salt pouch and sprinkled a line along the crack.

"The purpose of the salt is to ’reset’,"

"It neutralizes the residual Ether on the surface of the crack. Local coarse salt is sufficient for this."

"Why not use sea salt?" Theodore asked after a moment’s thought. "Isn’t sea salt purer?"

"Purity isn’t what we need for this step," Mrs. MacNeil said.

"Sea salt carries the ’essence’ of the ocean. This is the Highland, hundreds of miles from the coast. The Seal is repulsed by seawater."

"The local coarse salt is mined from the earth. A terrestrial Seal requires terrestrial salt."

"I didn’t realize it was that specific," Theodore said, a look of understanding on his face.

"Don’t you have rules like that at the mines?" Mrs. MacNeil asked casually.

"At the mines, we have a saying: ’Well water doesn’t cross the well’s lip.’"

"’Well water doesn’t cross the well’s lip?’ What kind of rule is that?"

"Water drawn from the bottom of a well can’t be drunk straight from the bucket at the wellhead."

Theodore explained, "You have to pour it into a clay bowl first."

"Why?"

"...I don’t know. It’s just what my father taught me."

After sprinkling the salt, Mrs. MacNeil opened the small vial of Rice Wine and shook a few drops into the crack.

"The Rice Wine is the ’catalyst’ for the next step."

"The salt resets, the wine activates. Only then will the Silver Belt properly bond with the crack when we apply it."

Finally, the dried rosemary. She swept the bundle over the crack three times.

"The scent of the rosemary is a ’marker’."

"Once this section is finished, its location on the Seal is marked as ’Newly Sealed’."

"The next time other Practitioners come on patrol, they’ll smell the fragrance and know this section was repaired this year, so they won’t work on it again."

"So it’s a mark for other Practitioners," Richard realized.

"Repeating work is the biggest taboo in our profession." Mrs. MacNeil tied the rosemary back onto her satchel.

"If you repair a section of a Seal twice, the second repair will conflict with the first."

"The result is that neither repair holds, which is why this Seal has always needed maintenance."

Cleaning the crack, sprinkling the salt, priming with wine, and sweeping with the scented herb. Only after these four preparatory steps were complete did they move on to the Silver Belt.

Mrs. MacNeil removed the Silver Belt from a metal tube.

As she unrolled it, Richard saw that the Silver Belt was covered in Inscriptions.

"Is this... the Ancient Gaelic ’chain’ Inscription?" he asked, leaning in for a closer look.

"The chain Inscription," Mrs. MacNeil confirmed. "It dates back to the Pre-Roman era. Each section of the Silver Belt is a link in the chain. The links must overlap to form a ’lock’."

A soft, short CLICK sounded between the Silver Belt and the wall.

"It’s taken," Mrs. MacNeil said with a nod.

"...I felt it," Richard said, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Felt what?"

"When the Silver Belt made contact with the wall, the other side of the wall also ’heaved a sigh’."

Mrs. MacNeil stopped what she was doing.

"You could feel the wall sigh?"

"...It wasn’t very clear," Richard quickly added. "It might have just been my imagination."

"It wasn’t your imagination." Mrs. MacNeil shook her head. "Someone who can feel the wall sigh has a level of inspiration a cut above the average Newcomer."

She glanced at the stable boy.

"Did you feel anything like that when you were applying it?"

"...No," Theodore answered honestly. "It just felt like I was pasting a piece of paper."

Applying the Silver Belt to the exterior wall took the entire morning.

After lunch, Mrs. MacNeil led them to a small door on the north wall of the mill.

The small door led to the mill’s cellar, the entrance to which was located behind a set of sunken stone steps.

Mr. Hutton, Edmund, and Maggie were at the entrance to the cellar.

The cellar entrance was low; Richard had to duck his head to get inside.

In the center of the cellar stood a stone sarcophagus.

On the stone wall beside the sarcophagus was a mural.

Most of the mural had faded, leaving only a few blurry, humanoid figures visible.

Above the figures’ heads was a curved line that Richard recognized as a bridge.

Mr. Hutton gently swept the loose dust from the mural’s surface with a fine-bristled brush.

The lower portion of the mural was revealed, showing a Latin Inscription.

The Inscription was badly worn, but the outlines of the letters were still visible.

"In nomine Sancti Cuthberti... (In the name of Saint Cuthbert...)"

"Saint Cuthbert?" Maggie tilted her head. "He isn’t one of the local Saints, is he?"

"A Saint from Northumberland," Edmund explained. "A seventh-century figure."

"Why would his name be on this wall?"

Mr. Hutton spoke up.

"The Medieval Church had a standard procedure for dealing with Seals from Paganism."

"They would find a native Saint and transfer his name and protective duties onto the original Seal."

"Essentially having the Saint take over the Seal’s function."

"And the Saint would come?" Maggie asked, incredulous.

"Of course the Saint wouldn’t come," Edmund said with a shake of his head. "But through ritualized transference, the Church could make the Ether Layer recognize the name."

Mr. Hutton took a notebook from his pocket and opened it.

"So our job is to figure out the true name of the sealed entity, or at least find an epithet for it."

A dozen or so short phrases were copied in the notebook, each one extracted from murals or Inscriptions.

"The One Who Takes from Below the Bridge"

"The One Who Walks in Shadow"

"She Whom Salt Cannot Touch"

"The One Who Comes Not Forth Before Dusk"

"This line..." Mrs. MacNeil used Ether to peel away a flake of pigment from a distance, revealing the phrase beneath.

Mr. Hutton leaned in.

"...Ancient Gaelic. ’Sí a ghoideann scáth na n-óg.’"

"’The one who steals the shadows of the young,’" Maggie translated.

"The preparations are complete. We’ll begin evacuating the villagers tomorrow."