Page 143 of A Baron of Bonds
I nodded, pushing the needle through the silky, light blue swath of fabric. I had promised Ilyenna that I would gather supplies and start her growth band for her, also promising to teach her how to embroider each moon.
We guessed she was a little over her first month of growing her child. Lia had been more than helpful, letting me use her box of thread and needles, also helping me cut and prepare fabric for the band that would tie around Ilyenna’s waist until her child was born.
“Would you read it to me?” I asked sweetly, my mind trying to wander elsewhere. I wanted more distraction while waiting for the Blightress to call.
Rev smiled, pulling my chair closer and tucking my feet further underneath him. “I’d love to,” he began with a wink.
My grin bloomed across my face, my heart skipping at least one beat whenever he did that.
He cleared his throat, reading, “The lapis trial is known as the most difficult. I would assume this is because it is rarely passed, as most channelers hone the power of health, animals, or plants instead of stone. I myself am a lapis conduit, and therefore, I do not quite understand this struggle, but this is how it has been proposed to me: the lapis trial is impossible to complete without adept lapis magic.
“The other trials can be passed, even if that channeler is not particularly interested in following that magic. For example, a medicus adept channeler can still pass the iumenta trial, butmay perhaps still choose to apprentice as a healer. No such luck is had with the lapis trial, which is always the second trial each channeler goes through.”
I interrupted his reading, pulling silvery thread up through the fabric. “Did Clairannia and Figuerah pass the lapis trial?”
“No.”
I frowned. “It really must be difficult then. I would have thought they had passed them all.”
“Mostly,” he replied. “Clairannia passed the medicus and iumenta. She struggled with the agricola and gave up on the lapis.”
“And Figuerah?”
He shrugged. “She passed all of the other three.”
I set my embroidery in my lap and stretched my arms over my head. “Have you trained any channelers who have passed the lapis trial?”
“No, but I was hoping Ilyenna would.”
“To help in the Hallow Marshes?”
He nodded, holding his place in the book with his thumb and flipping through some of the pages.
I watched the flames flicker and dance, wondering how many of the trials I’d be able to pass. I didn’t feel particularly influenced by any stone but the rhyzolm. But I remembered the Blightress’s implication that I held strong magic of all four types of conduits.
Rev cleared his throat and continued reading. “If the lapis trial is ever passed, the conducting Baron usually insists on that new conduit following that line of magic, due to the scarcity of it.
“I myself have apprenticed a few lapis conduits in my life and have helped in the opening of several gold and silver mines near the Attatok Mountains, also finding quarries of gems throughout Arcaynen before deciding to pursue other passions.”
“I thought this was a conduit memoir,” I mentioned, almost finished with the first half of the moon on the band.
“It is, I believe.”
“But she speaks as if she wrote this years after she left Felgren. I thought conduits wrote their memoirs just before they left.”
He flipped back to the beginning of the book. “It’s dated as being written two-hundred years ago. She must have wanted to write something to add to Viridis later in her life.”
I gave a sound of acknowledgment. “Did Clairannia and Figuerah write one?”
“No. Not yet at least. They spent a lot of their time researching ways to return your memories, and all of us got a bit side-tracked for quite a while in their training.” He gave me a weak smile. “They’ve both assured me they intend to finish the memoirs they’ve started, though.”
I sighed, looking up to our stone ceiling, wishing once again that I could change the past.
Rev rubbed the back of my calf and continued reading. “The amount of time a Baron must place into preparing the lapis trial is greater than the other three. This is because a Baron himself often does not possess much of the skill needed to prepare the task that the channeler must face in this trial.”
I interrupted again, “You obviously contain lapis magic. Have you struggled setting up this trial?”
“No, but I see why it would be difficult to.”
