The Slime Farmer

Jar"s basket, Defi filled until nearly full with zaziphos and finished with a layer of crab sh.e.l.ls on top. Lar"s basket, he filled half with zaziphos then the other half with the bones of silver-blue carp. Mal got the basket with plain zaziphos.

He was disappointed that the stall owners at the fruit market said the starcherry seller wasn"t present today. All three slimes would have benefited greatly, in terms of extract.

He still had most of the quartel barrels of crab sh.e.l.ls and carp bones left. He covered the barrels and slapped the paper pieces that contained preservation and scent-dispersing emblems on top. Both emblems would last only three days, according to the old women, who were the elders Grenia and Marte.

It was a good thing slimes ate so much. The house would start stinking of fish and crab in three days if not.

According to his experimentation, to make sure that the second milking in the evening produced the same amount of extract, he needed to feed each slime at least ten kilogar of food a day. He"d been managing with zaziphos only because Sarel"s trees never stopped fruiting and she only had six regular buyers in town with no inclination to acquire more.

If Defi didn"t know that Sarel was the founder of a merchant company that specialized in condiments, and was still regularly researching taste and flavor to add more items to the company"s offered products, he would have sourced a few other buyers for her. The lazy hermit.

He sighed.

Why did she plant that many zaziphos trees?

Each tree bore about five kilogar of fruit each month. With so many trees, even if Sarel picked fifty kilogar of fruit a day, by the time she got to the end of the orchard the first trees she picked would be fruiting again. Before Defi came along, more than half the fruits were rotting on the ground. Luckily, the fruit rotted quickly and the scent was unexpectedly fragrant despite the underlying musty odor of decay.

He entered his bedroom, knelt and dug into the large storage chest that also served as a low table. He pulled out the summon-tablet, ran fingers lightly over the reliefs of emblems on the surface.

He"d originally wanted to summon just one to feed with savras. But with the abundant resource that was the dawn market, he could start the process to increase his production of vinegar and lotion.

Defi wasn"t worried about the samples sent to the Bluzand Company. But once they were approved, the amount of extract he produced now wouldn"t be enough.

"Should I summon more than one so soon, Turq?" The warehouse was not yet in construction. He didn"t know if the crab sh.e.l.ls and carp bones would work well. He didn"t have a supplier of starcherry. He only had a single medial-size cask of savras to last for two weeks.

Summoning more slimes at the moment was a gamble. Right now he sourced at least forty kilogar of slime food every day. Just thinking of doubling that was daunting.

Turq bounced onto the storage chest, crept toward the summon-tablet.

Defi watched for a moment, then smiled suddenly, laughed. "You"re right. I am someone who should not falter here; someone who before had bled for training and study, who had crossed a Gate forbidden, who treasonously freed slaves. What am I hesitating for? If I do not have at least this much determination, what worth would my future in this world have?"

He scooped Turq into his arms and marched out of the house, summon-tablet in hand.

"Turq, we"re tripling production!"

He did not know yet, if this was a path to happiness that would honor his mentor. But it was not a path he wished to turn away from.

*

Defi had been enthusiastic, but…

How many slimes made a "clan"?

He touched the tablet with the Current. It started to s.h.i.+ne. The glow he remembered from that day months ago at Sarel"s house made him a little nostalgic.

A ball of light rose from the tablet, curled into itself, and a dark green slime popped into being.

Defi laughed in relief.

It worked.

He let the slime creep around the gra.s.s, and started summoning more.

One after another, slimes popped into existence.

After the fifth, a pale rose colored specimen, Defi was no longer worried about not being able to summon enough. There was energy around the tablet, which made him think he could call upon much much more and they would appear.

He finally summoned the eighth and exhaled. There was a strain in his energy similar to the feeling of having healed the sansu orchard for a quarter of his usual sessions.

It was surprisingly a lot, for eight slimes.

He put the summon tablet down, watched his eight new farm workers gallivant silently in that slime-like manner. They were mostly varying shades of green, but for two. One was rose colored, like a gentle dawn, and another was yellow, like the ripe mangoes of Ontrea.

"Aren"t you happy, Turq?" Defi lifted his first slime from his head and let him inch along the gra.s.s with the others.

He stood, readied baskets and buckets. There had been a lot of containers in the warehouse – sacks, bottles, baskets of varying size. It appeared that the Garge homestead, apart from grain and fruit, used to keep milk goats.

Most of the usable buckets, baskets, and bottles were now stored in a shed the workers had set up. The fiber-woven sacks were a lost cause.

He put each slime in a bucket.

He wanted to know what kind of extract a natural-fed slime would produce.

He flipped the cover-cloth over his hands and started kneading. The slime was dark green with a line of blue spots. It took even less time than usual for the slime to erupt in defense.

Defi withdrew his hands, brought them to his nose. There was a faint bitter smell, like medicine. He frowned at the extract in his hands, then licked. He grimaced and spat.

It really was bitter.

That wasn"t a good thing. The taste would affect his products.

They couldn"t be all bitter, could they?

He washed his hands and reached into the second basket before a thought stilled his motion. Slimes ate everything; what would a yellow slime eat that might have affected its color?

In retrospect, it was probably a good idea he hadn"t tried to milk Turq.

Defi retracted his hands and went to the shed. He"d seen a large mortar and pestle in there. The wooden pestle was slightly less than a mar in length. He cleaned off the dust and used it to knead the slime.

The yellow slime erupted. Defi cautiously peeled open the cover-cloth. Surprisingly, the scent was light, nearly odorless. He tapped a finger against the wet cloth and brought it to his mouth. Mostly bland, with only a slight gra.s.sy flavor.

He immersed himself into the Current. There was no stirring of alarm.

The extract wasn"t poisonous.

Defi looked at the other buckets, and silently lamented that his studies into the Current were too shallow. A master, even a high adept, would have known if the extract from the other slimes were harmful without needing to ingest a sample.

He composed himself. This was no time for self-pity.

In any case, the yellow slime pa.s.sed the scent-and-taste test he suddenly was now conducting. The scent and taste must not be too heavy or it would overwhelm. Well, a fragrant slime would probably be the best to produce lotion extract.

He cleaned the pestle and moved on to the next bucket. The slime in it was of a green paler than Mal, nearly white, the color of fine jade.

He started kneading the slime.

His thoughts wandered. Did jade exist in Ascharon? He"d heard Erlaen talk of jewels in various terms, an attempt to explain when he could not differentiate between colors because Ascharonians often had several names for different shades of the same color, but not jade.

He put the pestle down as the cover-cloth suddenly sagged with moisture, indicating that the slime had erupted. He bent to open the cloth, then jerked back as the smell hit his nose.

For a slime that looked like it was worth ten times its weight in gold, it smelled foul.

White jade slime, failed.

He gingerly fished the slime out with a piece of flat wood and placed it in a clean bucket with the dark green bitter slime. The four slimes he had regularly huddled together happily, so these wild slimes probably wouldn"t eat each other. Probably.

He continued with the test. The next slime, also green, was unfortunately a sludgy slime and so went into the discard bucket. He continued with the next, and the next.

In the end, of the eight slimes, only three pa.s.sed the scent-and-taste test.

Defi determinedly took the summon tablet. He needed eight slime workers and eight slime workers he would have.

The tablet glowed and slime after slime appeared.

He summoned and kneaded and tested, then summoned all over again.

By the time he had the eight he wanted, his energy was strained, his arms were limp from kneading and lifting the pestle, and there were over thirty slimes summoned.

There was a ma.s.s of green piling out of the buckets around him, with the occasional show of other colors.

He didn"t realize Lar had such a rare hue. Even Turq…

Defi realized his head was free of the familiar weight. Had he accidentally lost Turq in the battalion of green slimes summoned? He looked around.

"Turq? Turq!"

A slight weight fell on his shoulder. He looked at the green and blue slime. Of course it wouldn"t be lost. Turq was the pet that had been with Defi the longest, his first ever summon.

He sat down to rest, the basket with the eight chosen slimes beside him.

"What in the Harmonium is this?"

Defi turned his head to see Barrey, one of Karles" workers, looking at the slimes in perplexity.

Defi laughed lightly. "Do you know how to unsummon a summon beast?"

"I"ll get Tholme." He jogged back down to the pier.

Tholme had a summon beast, a one-horn mule, so his a.s.sistance was welcome. Defi wanted to ask a few questions since he learned that the mule was the man"s summon. He didn"t think he"d summon this many slimes in one day however.

Tholme and Racard loped into view. There was a stand of trees separating the warehouse and pier from the house and the sansu orchard, so there was a certain level of privacy.

Racard snorted at the slimes. Lifted a brow at Defi. "Be in actual danger next time."

He sauntered back down the path.

"I didn"t say anything about danger. I just want to learn how to unsummon beasts."

Racard just waved.

Tholme, left behind, looked around in comprehension and chuckled. He was large, with a chest like a barrel. His clean-shaven face was smooth and hard planes, marred by a crooked nose. "First summoning?"

"Second."

"Unsummoning"s not hard. You just want them to be gone, return to where you pulled them from. With the more sentient summons that people prefer these days, the summon beast unsummons itself when it"s not needed. But slimes don"t have desires other than to eat. It"s what made them great pets. Had one as a kid myself. You"ll have to direct the unsummoning."

Defi heaved himself up tiredly. "Just want them to return?"

"It helps if you concentrate on the summon emblem when you do that."

Defi lifted the summon-tablet to look at the design. "What a complicated emblem."

"That"s for sure." Tholme leaned over to look at the tablet. "An heirloom? People don"t summon slimes these days, much less use a tablet for them."

"I found it on the river."

"Ah, treacherous treasure." He chortled at Defi"s confused glance. "They say there"s a lot of treasure in the Treachery, if one can survive the finding of it. Myself, I think what treasures there"d be dashed to pieces against the stones by now. Still, things float down to the Lowpool all the time, mostly unimportant. But every now and then someone something worthy of being called "treasure" and the stories start again. This tablet should be pretty old. Miracle it"s not been cracked, really."

Tholme waved at the slimes. "Well, try the unsummoning. Best not let them escape. Don"t know what"ll happen to you if all the fish in the area are eaten."

Defi huffed a laugh at that, but considered at the tablet again and focused.

He traced the lines of the summon emblem with his eyes, then looked at one of the green ones and did his best to send it back. It disappeared.

"That"s it." Tholme clapped him on the back. "With that lot, you"ll get good practice, eh?"

"I"ll set out some shredded squid today, in thanks."

Tholme sent him a surprised but pleased grin as he started toward the warehouse. "Heading to the Dimm homestead?"

"The fruit won"t pick itself." Defi unsummoned another slime. Sarel"s place was the Dimm homestead, according to townspeople.

"See you in the afternoon, then."

Defi smiled at the man. His first impression was that Tholme was the friendliest of the three workers, Racard the most skilled, and Barrey the quietest. It hadn"t changed so far.

Once he got used to unsummoning, it was a simple matter to unsummon groups of slimes. They were gone in half the time it took to summon them. He"d been summoning one by one. Next time, he"d try summoning in groups.

Defi started to clean up, washed the tubs and buckets, left them out to dry.

He hesitated with the slime extracts, but in the end he carefully washed a number of bottles and poured all the samples into them, carefully labelled.

He was not an alchemist, but he"d been Maryiz"s a.s.sistant for six years, during which time the alchemist Casmiref had dragged him about as a pseudo-a.s.sistant as well. Keeping odd substances for testing was not a foreign action for him.

Perhaps he was just being sentimental.

He put all the bottles in the underground storage room, promising to find a way to test them at a later date.

Cleaning up had taken another hour, and he needed to set out baskets of bread and smoked fish, plus jam, the shrimp flakes, and the promised shredded squid. He wouldn"t be here during lunch, and it was discourteous to leave the workers without food.

This was Ascharon, after all.

He poured the last of his store of zaziphos into eight baskets. Then he mixed other things in with them. In two, he poured all the crab sh.e.l.ls. In another two went the carp bones. Another two got savras. The last two baskets were all fruit.

He distributed the eight new slimes into the baskets and went to prepare the food.

He was a little late for work already.