Character · Open
Rondal takes a witchstone at the fall of Boval Castle in Book 1 — but in early Book 2 he appears to be stoneless again, without any explanation of where the stone went in between.
During the Siege of Boval in Spellmonger, Rondal (then Garkesku's bookish apprentice) takes and bonds a witchstone of his own alongside Tyndal, and uses it through the final phases of the siege — spotting the tunnel spur, helping ward the walls, and participating as a stone-bearer in the nineteen-mage circle that powers the evacuation ritual.
A book or two later, however, Rondal is treated narratively as though he does not have a witchstone. He joins the warmage corps as a young knight mage without his own stone, receives a stone again at a later ceremony, and the text does not clearly account for the gap. The stone he bonded at Boval either is quietly retconned out, is handed over off-page, or was never intended to carry forward.
Possible reconciliations: (1) The Boval-era stone was taken by Minalan after the evacuation for re-bonding or re-distribution, a common practice during the witchstone shortage of Book 2 — just not shown on-page. (2) The stone was surrendered as part of his apprenticeship arrangement when Minalan formally took him on. (3) The Book 1 detail is a soft retcon — the author decided Rondal's arc worked better if he earned his witchstone later alongside Tyndal as a matched set, and the Boval-era stone was quietly dropped from canon. No textual explanation is offered; the exact passages on both sides of the gap should be cited here when located.