The Witch of Thornvale Chapter 11: Market Forces
The Witch of Thornvale is a literary portal fantasy featuring two distinct characters. It allegorizes Ludwig von Mises’ Six Lessons.
We have steamrolled into Chapter 11 and are roughly 18,000 words into The Witch of Thornvale. If you haven’t yet checked out Chapters 1-10, catch them below.
The Witch of Thornvale Chapter 11: Market Forces
The fire crackled at the edge of the square—coals glowing under a dusk sky washed violet and gray. Smoke drifted through the eaves, catching in the moss that clung to every beam. Villagers ringed the stone circle in tight clusters: elders on low benches, traders with stained hands, and children sitting cross-legged in the dirt.
Drake stood by the central log table, with two crystals mounted on carved posts flanking him. One pulsed faintly, and the other sat cold.
Behind him, Eirwyn stood—arms folded, her bare feet planted.
A younger merchant around Drake’s age leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “It blinked once. And then what?”
Drake knelt beside a cleared patch of dirt, scraped his palm across it, then arranged the quartz in the same pattern of six surrounding the seventh, before transferring his energy into and emitting a low hum.
Drake’s finger tapped the main quartz. “The signal travels in pulses. When mine and Eirwyn’s experiment worked, one group of quartz linked to the next group the second there’s magic or even human energy embedded.”
A stout man with rope burns across his forearms stepped closer. His tunic bore the fishhook mark carved above his stall. “Pulses vanish in air. I want records. Slates. Something I can read when the sender’s dead.”
“You’ll still have slates.” Drake nodded to the kids who were keeping track earlier and pointed toward the inn. “But now they can record everything faster.”
He set up another quartz circle, drew a line between them, and another branching off to a third landmark, this one representing the inn. “Trusted keepers wouldn’t need to run around all day. You pass the transaction through the quartz, and the kids record it on the slate.”
Drake pushed the dirt with his thumb, smudging the center line. “No one owns the whole signal. You buy your own quartz circles.”
Murmurs rippled. A potter whispered to a weaver, and one of the children mimicked the pulsating quartz pattern with her hands, sketching something only she could see.
Eirwyn stepped to Drake’s side. “No central overseers. Just tools you can buy from us that would make your life easier.”
The woman from the inn stepped through the ring of firelight, arms loose at her sides. She looked at the circles in the dirt and at the glyphs embedded into the quartz. “When would one find time to make these tools?”
Smoke curled from an old mill’s chimney. It was thin and sweet with burning juniper. Sparks danced above the eaves as a contingent of the village bent itself to the work.
Eirwyn motioned toward a pile of quartz she and Drake scavenged from the ridge. “Me and Drake can make them. Even improve them to where they could reach the next town over.” A warm smile crossed her face. “It could turn into a quiet dissent against Malcor.”
“And it’ll buy us more time in that inn besides my limited number of stories if these quartz circles sell.” Drake reached for the quartz and traced the glyph Eirwyn showed him earlier today—a spiral with sharp corners and no curves. His hands moved with purpose.
Children crouched at the edge of the clearing, etching the marks into bark slabs, as though believing the wood could emit a signal. Some used bone-tipped styluses. Others worked with charcoal, their fingertips stained black and smiling like they’d stolen fire.
By nightfall, Drake and Eirwyn built and tested quartz groups at varying distances: behind buildings, from the center of the village, and even from one end of Cinderglen to well off into the trees.
At times, the signals lit up. Other times, they fizzled, leaving the innkeeper’s boy to take notes on a slab for record-keeping on their progress.
A girl raced from one house, laughing as she waved a flickering discarded shard no bigger than her thumb. The glyph on its surface blinked randomly, and by the time they wrapped up, Drake and Eirwyn handed other kids their failed experiments while the successful ones stayed embedded in certain parts of town.
***
By the following evening, willing merchants testing Drake and Eirwyn’s experiments had fewer kids walking or running to confirm trades. Instead, the merchants set up shop near one group of quartz, and the kids standing near other groups in the village recorded the trades.
Drake stood at the edge of the square, arms crossed, watching a boy no older than ten trade two of his father’s dried fish for a pouch of bitterroot before speaking into the nearest set of quartz. Near the inn, a girl nodded and wrote up the transaction on the slab.
Drake’s breath fogged just slightly in the shade as he and Eirwyn watched magic moving as a utility. “At least we have a basic framework down. Now we just need to figure out how to work around obstacles that are blocking some of the signals that are farther away.”
Eirwyn bit her lip but shrugged. She gazed at the forest and shivered, the look on her face unreadable.
“What’s on your mind?”
“Malcor. I was thinking about him last night. His huntsmen, soldiers, castors, and whoever else he has now. He might not enter this village yet, but it’ll get obvious when nobody has seen hide nor hair of me.”
Ash settled over the square like slow snow—flakes drifting from the chimney above the tanner’s hut, catching in the slanted sunlight. The air smelled of wet hide and faint copper as Drake leaned against a post.
“Drake?”
Drake kept his eyes on the messages passing between the quartz, replies echoing as they played calls and responses. “What were you thinking? You sound like you want to stay here, but…”
She leaned on the other end of the post. “I’d never forgive myself if Malcor figured me out and invaded this place, because we both know he would. You’ve seen what they do to villages.”
Near the edge of the square, a blacksmith wiped his hands on his apron, lips pressed thin. His hammer sat untouched on the anvil. The fire in the forge smoldered low, leaving no bellows pumping. Two children passed his stall and headed home, their work completed for the day.
Behind the mushroom drying shed, a tanner tossed a length of leather over the rail, muttering low. “People starting to talk through crystals now. They’ll forget how to speak face-to-face before long.”
Drake wore a half-smile. “If this fails, they’ll just force us out anyway.”
A goat bleated from inside the pen, but the rhythm of the village had shifted. It was smoother and faster—but quieter in places where conversation made the place come to life a few days back.
Eirwyn, as though noticing this sudden change too, nodded. “They weren’t running around as much, but they made a lot more trades.”
At the next post, one of the elders stood with her arms folded, her robe fringed in sunburst thread faded with age. Her gaze followed the nearest sets of quartz. When Drake stepped beside her, she gave him a sideways glance. “Every innovation comes with a cost, you know?”
Drake rolled back his shoulders until he stood at full height. “It’s a market disruption. There’s a trade-off now. But if people see benefit and value in it, then mine and Eirwyn’s invention will stay.”
Eirwyn glanced at Drake and wore the faintest trace of a smile, though she still looked uncertain.
The elder studied the dirt, then her eyes flickered to him, before turning and walking away.
***
From across the square, the scrape of steel echoed the next morning—a blade drawn slow along whetstone. Eirwyn crouched in the shadow of the inn, cloak pooled behind her, the curve of a dagger that she bought with her and Drake’s first payment from those who decided to keep using the quartz—nearly everyone who tested it the previous day—flashing orange with each pass. “We need to make sure no one messes up this map. It has all of our quartz circles labeled.”
As the edge gleamed, her wrist flicked again, and the steel blade hissed in reply.
The morning sun peeked through the clouds with a wind sharp enough to sting the eyes. Smoke lifted slow from Cinderglen’s chimneys, curling through bare branches and across rooftops still slick with dew. The square stirred before the sun fully claimed it as boots crunched dirt and gravel, satchels slung over shoulders, and voices rose in fragments of trade and laughter.
At the edge of the village square, a woman unwrapped a parcel. She retrieved dried fennel, frost-root, and sprigs of purple threadmoss. Her breath caught as she laid the herbs out across her stall. The boy beside her recorded something on his slate.
Across the path, the blacksmith stepped back from his anvil, his jaw slack. He turned to the crate beside him, and cracked it open with a crowbar.
Coiled copper. It was clean, and hammered flat for shaping.
Drake watched from the edge of the inn. He traced the motion of the village with his eyes, and the way people moved differently now. Even fewer legs ran today and more kids worked the slates while others took calls from the quartz. A burst of color across the sharp spiral glyph perched off a quartz circle near an old oak beside a waterwheel. Quick flashes, immediate answers, and fast and accurate record-keeping that multiplied.
Value found its channel, even as a few vendors shot the others distrusting looks and sent their kids running across town to manually deliver the messages.
Fresh marks sprawled in concentric rings as kids recorded each transaction on growing piles of slates. Chalk dust clung to grubby fingertips and worn sleeves. One slate bore ten entries—each a single line: giver, taker, what passed between them, and if necessary, for how much. Another chalked three loops, then drew a fourth with a smirk and a shrug.
A girl near the back tapped her chalk against a glowing quartz in the stone. It pulsed once, and she leaned in to listen to the message before recording it.
Eirwyn stepped beside Drake at the threshold, looking protective of her map as she sheathed the dagger into her cloak. She watched the movement with the same intensity she gave to forest trails and wind patterns days ago.
They stood together, with Drake recording the occasional note and Eirwyn’s eyes flickering back to her map.
Mist clung low to the square as the day drew on, and lanterns flickered along the main street as the sun set.
Something caught Drake’s eye as a figure approached in the distance. Eirwyn must’ve seen them, too, as her breath hitched.
A peddler arrived under fog and silence, the creak of his cart’s wheels and the metallic jingle of harness rings announcing his arrival.
His cloak swept the mud behind him, soaked deep at the hem. But his boots stepped too clean for the road he traveled, likely the one that emerged before Drake and Eirwyn entered the village. Given the way the villagers acknowledged the man, it showed he was a familiar face.
He went from vendor to vendor, making his rounds quick. First stall: copper chisels for dried apples. Second: a pouch of greenroot swapped for arrowheads. Third: mushrooms, bone powder, and thick thread. He knew the exact weights before scales came out, and what to offer before anyone opened their mouth.
The quartz went off as vendors spoke into them and echoes and distant scratching told Drake that the kids quickly picked up and recorded the messages.
Eirwyn crouched beneath the overhang beside the inn, one knee pressed into the wet moss. The wind caught her cloak and flattened it to her side. Her eyes tracked the peddler’s hands, the way his fingers moved too fluid across his belt pouch.
He asked about the quartz circles and how they worked.
Drake leaned against the inn, a hand in his pocket, waiting for someone to point in his and Eirwyn’s direction.
Eirwyn shifted her weight, and nodded toward the square where the peddler now leaned on a post and asked a third merchant about the quartz’ signal range. “I’m wondering where he came from. Even if they know him, I’m pretty sure he’s going to let other villages know about this.”
“And about you, too.” Drake stared down the peddler as the vendor pointed his way.
“Well, there’s no sense in running.” Eirwyn stood and sidled beside Drake as the peddler slouched over, his gaze flickering between them. “I’ll let him make the first move.”
Catch Chapter 12 now and discover what the peddler makes of Drake and Eirwyn
This piece first appeared on The Rogue Scribe
