INTERLUDE 10C: UNDERESTIMATION
“I am the self-perfection that is self-made. I am the passion that cares not if it is rash. I am the wilfulness that shapes all in its image. I am Lady Youth.”
– from the Enyan Creed
“Trade’s gonna dry up, Liph,” said the fat man, Urkle. “Ain’t no one needin’ yer shoes. Anyone wan’s a pair, they’s got ‘alf a millyun corpses’ what to pick from.”
Liph pressed his lips together to try to cover the sound of his teeth grinding.
“If they’s got the money they’ll be at Orisar’s over yonder.” Urkle turned south and waved the side of ham complete with five fat pink sausages he called a hand. “Only reason to buy Liph’s is the price, innit? An’ old Orisar’s cut ‘is prices proper. Why ‘asn’t you gone an’ got a real job?”
Urkle wandered off into the flow of the crowd winding through the market, and Liph finally managed to release his clamped jaws, breathing noisily to calm himself down.
Whether or not his rage had something to do with his ancestry, like they all said, he was unsure. He found it hard to believe anyone wouldn’t experience this perpetual anger, if they were subjected to an endless barrage of Urkles and his ilk – and he was an expert. Such was Liph’s lot.
It’s not like he doesn’t know I know full well where my biggest rival’s is, damn him. He doesn’t talk like this to any of the other vendors. Listen to him! Right as rain now he’s talking to Murtle…
He closed his ears as best he could, just listening out for prospective customers, tuning out the market crowd and returning his eyes to his work.
Not that he’s wrong. There are Incursions, and then there are Incursions… This was definitely one of the latter.
Maybe it’s time to consider a career change… both careers…
It wasn’t always easy being green, or even green-adjacent. Liph’s skin was dark and waxy, like holly-leaves in hue – a far cry from the greenness exhibited by full-blooded orcs, but still noticeable all the same. Thanks to his heritage he had half a foot in height over almost everyone he met, never mind his broad back and bulging biceps. Born on the steppes north of Elvensea that Mundians called ‘Sixrivers’, surrounded by those like himself, he had a happy upbringing. Farming in the valley, tilling the earth with plough and oxen. Hunting in the passes, the wild unexplored woodlands, with the priestesses of Daire Obleer. Crafting tools and weapons from the local flora and fauna under the guidance of the elders. It was sometimes challenging and from a certain perspective boring, but whenever he thought back on those days hindsight depicted it as an easy, pleasant way of life – and he thought back on them often. Sitting by the pond behind the cattle-pens with his peers, drinking his first ale to the music of the little waterfalls. Chasing Harpi of the Bolsegars around the bonfire on the Festival of Iruum, when the glowflies rose up to the sky in a beautiful red river.
He finished drawing on the leather and reached for his knife.
Those times were lost forever. Those communities – destroyed. He could never go back, never take his sons and daughters to meet their grandparents even if he found a bride in this glorious cesspool of a city, a mother for his children. No, like his parents those children would only ever live in his dreams. And even with his power, even if those children became real some day, he could still only share what he remembered. He couldn’t bring it to life. Only give it the semblance.
What he remembered…
Would anyone want to remember that? Would anyone want to relive that, the last festival, when the gods’ protections forsook them? They always said that an arrow-storm would blacken the sky, but the elf strike-force had attacked late at night and the shafts and fletching of their missiles shone, hideous arcs of silver-gold death rising high into the moonless sky, darkening only as they descended for the kill. There fell his mother. There fell his brother. There fell Harpi, his betrothed, pierced by a single dart between the shoulder-blades.
Mercifully her death had been over quickly – mercifully for her, and also for him who’d held her in her last moments. He’d seen a lot of death since – a whole lot – and there were far worse ways to go than a direct wound to the heart.
Not that he’d been thinking that way at the time, of course, kneeling in the grass behind the tree where he’d dragged her to die, cursing the omen of the glowflies, cursing the elves and their hateful weapons. If the power had come upon him then – who could say what awful vengeance he might’ve wreaked among the elven forces? There were only forty or fifty scouts in the unit. Probably no more than a couple of magic-users among them, the problems they posed easily negated. Almost certainly no archmages capable of countering his tricks, even if every single elven ranger had been wearing a freshly-renewed anti-glamour trinket.
It was likely, he reflected in later years, that was precisely why the magic didn’t choose him back then. It was waiting for the right time. To turn him into a champion, not a darkmage. It would’ve been all too easy to have them turn their bows on each other. All too easy to shed their perfectly dirty blood where the pristine hybrid blood of his people already pooled in the grass.
All too easy to lose himself.
He put the knife down, holding the leather up to check the edges of the cut for imperfections. The insole would have to fit snugly, or it’d need redoing.
It was important to keep up appearances, especially for him. His recall was nigh complete, in the technical sense, and he could enter into his imagination, see and smell and hear and taste and touch whatever he desired, whenever he desired it. It would be all too easy for him to succumb to the waking dream – step into it and never step out again, leaving his catatonic body behind, until negligence sapped his strength and his life faded, his hallucinatory terrain slowly dying all around him, along with him…
He’d almost done it, once. Never again. A veritable eternity of watching Harpi dance around the bonfire… it almost killed him. And that wasn’t fair to everyone else. They needed him. He needed grounding. A reality away from the escapism.
“Excuse me, sir! Are you a cobbler?”
Startled, he whipped his head around, setting the insole down on the counter. The woman who’d accosted him was striking, and he took a moment to centre himself.
Why didn’t I sense her approaching?
Too deep in his thoughts.
Dangerous.
He was glad of the distraction. The lady was plump in a particularly luscious way, clad in a crimson cobweb dress, all strings and lace, leaving little to even the world’s most overactive imagination. She had to be about thirty-five, but she’d kept the girlish dimples in her cheeks. Ruby lips glistened as she pouted. A full head of straight, white-blonde hair completed the intoxicating look.
There had to be elven in her heritage, but Liph wasn’t the kind to be prejudiced. Not really. He knew everyone was the same beneath their meat-robes. The person he knew best in all the world was an elf. And without fail everyone, no matter their race, thought elves were hot.
Liphaliar’s interests went a little deeper. As expected, he found himself wondering what it was like to be her. He would never invade a stranger’s mind like that, of course. Not unless it was part of an official undertaking, anyway. It wasn’t just a matter of legality. He did illegal things all the time, so long he was satisfied it was traceless. No – it was a matter of ethics.
A quick, not altogether legal (but entirely, in his opinion, ethical) scan of her emotions later, he was satisfied she wasn’t a darkmage. A surface-brush of her mind was all he’d needed to be ninety-nine percent sure of her and achieving true certainty would leave semi-permanent blemishes on her psyche beyond his ability to repair without breaking other laws. But there was nothing of note in her head – well, nothing that tripped his alarms, anyway. She was just an ordinary, exceptionally-striking woman.
Liph gave her his best, friendliest smile – hiding his teeth so as to not offend her with his fanglike chompers. He pointed a finger straight up, indicating the sign hanging over his head.
“I’m a shoemaker, miss, not a cobbler.”
She smiled back, and it was such an open, honest smile that he unconsciously filed it away for later use.
Almost like she likes him, he thought, suddenly confused. He wouldn’t have tried touching her mind now even if he could’ve. He couldn’t even direct his own thoughts, never mind someone else’s. The way his control of his magic was suddenly thrown off – even she would’ve sensed his bumbling intrusion, like a drunk burglar knocking himself out cold on the stove after crashing in through the window.
“Sorry…” she breathed, still smiling. “My mistake.”
She pressed her lips together, almost as if to blow him a kiss, then turned on her heel to stride away.
“Wait! Wait, miss. That’s just what all the shoemakers say, to make themselves feel better. Of course I’ve done some cobbling in my time – wouldn’t be in the market if I didn’t know my way around another man’s shoes. Meaning the maker, not yourself, of course!”
You’re babbling, Liph.
He froze up as she stopped, once more turning back to him.
“You’re certain?” She was from round these parts, he could tell, but she was one of the poshest-sounding Hilltown residents he’d ever met. “I wouldn’t dare impugn the honour of a man of your obvious talents, and I’m most dreadfully sorry to have misspoken.” She stepped closer, clasping the embroidered purse she carried closer to her midriff. “Perhaps, if you would be so kind as to merely… point me in the right direction…?”
“Please,” he said, almost stammering, “please allow me.”
He gestured to the pair of chairs behind the stall.
“Are you quite sure?”
“O-of course. Please.”
Her questioning demeanour was at odds with the purposefulness in her motions, stalking gracefully around the table in her way, moving to the closer of the two chairs. He saw in his peripheral vision that her chest heaved with each breath she took, and it was only the fear – fear of reprisal, fear of the inevitable mass-castigation to follow – that kept his eyes from wandering from her own.
She’s rich. Maybe powerful. Can’t behave improperly. Say the wrong thing and she gets me locked up. Can’t be having that. Can’t let mistakes snowball.
He’d known archmages like him who’d gone down. The magisters took them and they never came back. He’d known others who’d gone off in self-imposed exile rather than face the day-to-day temptations posed by just existing in this way, surrounded by so many pliable people, wet-clay personalities…
“Let’s be having a look, then, miss.” He lowered his eyes to the ground as she seated herself – she tried to be demure, placing her posterior with ladylike care, but the sultriness of her apparel only made the motion more bewitching. He dragged over his little stool and plonked himself down in front of her.
She immediately placed her right foot atop his extended knee and he was surprised to find not some dainty peep-toe shoe or utilitarian sandal – a heavy groundskeeper-style boot was there to greet him. He’d rarely seen one so small; perhaps it was of dwarven manufacture. Still, the incongruity of it all shocked him. He supposed he hadn’t been able to see her footwear until she stepped around the table, but if he’d been asked to make her illusion thirty seconds ago there was zero chance he’d have picked these boots with which to complete the ensemble.
Liph was ever-more intrigued. For a moment all the hustle and bustle and hurly burly, the raucous mid-morning sounds of Beller’s Market, fell away into absolute serene silence.
Who is she?
The temptation was almost too great.
Just because she’s clean doesn’t mean it’s safe. Who else could be watching? For all you know, this is a Magisterium trap designed especially for you. Hitting you now, exactly when you think they’re too weak, they wouldn’t bother testing you…
Play it cool.
“So it’s just the heel coming away, is it, miss?” His fingers carefully checked the whole boot, but there was only the one flaw.
“You aren’t going to comment on my choice of shoe, then?”
He glanced up, amazed, to see the red lips smiling deviously.
“I – I did wonder – but far be it from me to judge –”
“It’s quite alright.” She laughed, a gorgeous, trilling laugh. “Yes, indeed, esteemed shoemaker, your diagnosis is correct. The heel.”
“May I?”
He gestured; she nodded, and he untied her laces. When he went to pull the boot free she leaned forwards, suddenly taking his hand in hers.
He looked down at her tiny, pale fingers lying across his thick knuckles.
“It’s a little snug. Try – here.”
She moved his hand to her ankle. Throughout those glorious seconds of skin-to-skin contact his fingers trembled, the back of his hand aching where she touched it.
Then the boot was free. There wasn’t even the faintest of odours, the lambswool lining inside bone dry despite the current climate.
It’s like she only just put it on…
She left her foot atop his knee, and wiggled her black-painted toenails.
“I can put a new cap on it for you. If you could – let’s see…”
“Just put my foot where you want it, shoemaker.” She cocked her head to the side, looking at him strangely. “I’m in your good hands.”
He felt himself blush – one of those rare times it was easier being green. He doubted anyone could tell he was flushed; the change in hue was very subtle indeed. He lifted her foot as he stood then placed it gently back down on the stool while he went to fetch his things.
An uncomfortable silence stretched out between them. It’d only been seconds while he located the box containing the dwarven adhesives, but he felt he had to speak, had to say something –
“So… if you don’t mind me asking… why are you wearing boots?”
“Oh, I enjoy eliciting a reaction, and I can’t abide those strappy abominations. Always falling off at the most inopportune time. Give me a reliable boot any day of the week.”
“You’re the first highborn lady I’ve met to wear such sensible shoes.”
With such an audacious dress, he wanted to add.
“You’re the first half-orc I’ve met to speak so cordially.”
Am I the first part-orc to whom you’ve spoken cordially?
“I was fortunate to receive… an education, miss. Many of my kind are not so blessed.”
“That’s not what I mean. They call you savages, as though you were full-blooded orcs. You do not seem so to me.”
“Full-blooded orcs, full-blooded humans… the steppes dwarf-clans… In those places, everyone lives the same way, miss. By sword and shaft and tooth.”
She blinked slowly. “Are you a poet also, sir?”
He almost grinned. “Don’t poke fun.”
“So what is it like to be of neither kindred? Is it in truth as the tales tell? Outcast on both sides?”
No one had ever asked him such penetrating questions. Certainly not with this obvious sympathy in their voice.
He couldn’t answer directly.
“They call your lot haughty and cold. You definitely do not seem so to me.”
She laughed the delightful laugh again. “Well, don’t think me highborn. Not quite. Mother’s husband is well-to-do, there’s no denying; his farm’s where I found my love of a good, solid pair of boots.” The warmth in her smile outshone the sun. “But I’m untitled. Not that I didn’t used to have my ambitions…”
Was she a poetess, then? Or had she meant that he was both a poet and a shoemaker? He didn’t want to ask now in case he came off as ruining her joke – still, the fascination filled him, capturing all his attention. He heard the quiet desperation in her voice as it trailed off and more than anything else the desire consumed him to find the source of that hunger she felt. He the didn’t want to become her paramour, if she found out how rich he really was. He didn’t want to know her that way. No. He only wanted to become her. Understand her existence.
“You’re quite the enigma, miss.”
“So quoth the enigma.”
He chuckled; she joined in. He felt his previous nervousness giving way to the easy camaraderie.
When he carefully placed the boot back on her foot after several more minutes of tantalising conversation, she opened her purse, fishing within its silken walls for her coins – a meagre supply, by the faintness of the tinkling.
“Oh, please don’t bother yourself, miss.” He waved a hand at the empty stall-front, the crowd that only seemed to have eyes for the barbecue vendor opposite. “It’s hardly like you’re keeping me from my customers.”
“But I insist –”
“The conversation’s been payment enough.” She’d have no idea just how much money the Magisterium gave him, of course, even if she was part of a spying operation. “But do come back if you have any more problems – or at least recommend me. I try to be here seven mornings a week, weather permitting.”
She sighed lightly as she rose. “Demons too.”
“And that.” He smiled, a genuine, unplanned smile that bared his teeth – and she didn’t seem the slightest bit fazed, pursing her lips and fluttering long eyelashes.
Do I intrigue her too?
There was only one safe way to find out, and he had to find out. He couldn’t let it go like this.
“Do I intrigue you, miss?”
She grinned, and for a moment her brown eyes twinkled, deep ochre or the red of autumn leaves.
Her elven heritage showing.
“You dooo.” She glanced down at her feet then back up into his eyes. “Rest assured I will be back for my next pair of boots.”
“Damn. Should’ve done a shoddy job on that heel, shouldn’t I?”
She giggled, and stepped around the table back onto the thoroughfare. He looked after her longingly and she even turned back to wave at him just before she vanished into the crowd.
Too late, he realised he hadn’t even asked her name. He could pick it out of her head, of course, but that would be wrong.
He could wait. He would wait.
She’d be back.
Surely, she’d be back.
* * *
“Surprised yer still ‘ere,” Urkle said, placing his elbows on the stall and leaning over, getting as much into Liph’s face as physically possible without an actual transplant occurring.
He gritted his teeth. “No you’re not.”
Urkle shrugged. “True ‘nough. She ain’t coming back, man. You met yer angel and you didn’t even get ‘er name.”
“It’s not that late yet,” Liph shot back.
“Past three! Third time this week yer’ve been ‘ere past three, an’ then some! Nuts, I tell you! Nuts! She’ll be back when the walls fall, an’ only then ’cause ‘er other ‘eel’s wonky! Yeh’d never git the lass anyhow. Lookit yer! Lookit this place!”
Urkle waved a hand at Liph’s rundown stall, then put it to his forehead to hide his eyes from the sun as he pottered off.
Liphaliar stared after him, burning holes in the back of the vile man’s head.
It would be so easy…
So easy to ‘fix’ him. No one would ever have to know.
No one but him.
He sighed, lowering his eyes to the table, the leather shapes whose completion had been so rudely interrupted. For all that Urkle was irksome, for the first time Liph actually believed him. How could he have been so resoundingly stupid?
So stupid…
He’d finished twenty-four shoes this week. Twenty-four. Drawn, cut, punched, stitched, assembled, cured, burnished and laced.
How many customers had he had?
Six.
No, they didn’t happen to want two pairs each. They wanted one pair. It was him – it was all him. Making boot after boot designed to fit the feet he’d encountered eight days earlier, the feet of the mysterious woman he loved –
You’re going bonkers, Liph. You talked to her for fifteen minutes tops, and now you’re in love? You’re infatuated. You’ve seen it happen a thousand times – well finally it’s happened to you. In spite of all your prowess, you’ve fallen victim to the one thing you were supposed to be a master of.
Emotions.
He screwed up the leather scraps in his hands. Why was he going all in on pair seven, for a woman who was never going to be in his life, never going to be part of the dream he’d woven for himself? Why was he allowing himself to be deluded?
Introspection was no weapon against such an insidious enemy, he found. Knowing you were besotted didn’t remove the cobwebs from your mind. If anything, he felt, it only strengthened their hold on you. He might’ve been the master of others’ emotions – but his own? His own were no more in check than a teenager’s!
How did I let her get to me like this? Think of something else!
It was a relief beyond compare to hear the faint jingling, the hum of his glyphstone from his sack of belongings behind the stool.
He threw up an ignorance-screen – not true invisibility, just a repulsive barrier to keep prying eyes and ears from focussing on the goings-on at the back of the stall. He’d done it many a time. The diversionary effect was almost automatically erected the moment the desire to create it entered his head.
Then, far more swiftly, he changed himself.
It was his area of expertise – the one thing at which he shone amongst all his peers. Not that they knew, of course… unless one of the arch-diviners had told them. Every archmage had different propensities, he’d discovered in the four years since he became a champion. Some of his brethren were virtuosos of innovation and tactility, crafting illusions on the fly that seemed real not just to eye and ear but to the other senses as well. Liph was never the best at that – he worked slowly, especially if the illusion was big. Others were true telepaths, capable of stretching pre-established links to extended distances, or even forming them at twice the range he could manage. Reading and warping minds required muscles he tried to exercise as infrequently as possible – he didn’t want to reinforce those tendencies in himself, didn’t want to run the risk of exposure.
Especially as a part-orc. A part-orc in disguise.
He’d lasted this long by keeping his head down. Keeping his head hidden, behind hers. Even Timesnatcher had only winked at her, that first Gathering she’d attended. Tyr Kayn hadn’t revealed her true identity, evidently knowing full well that she was no threat to the dragon. Glaif and Illodin hadn’t struck her down when the enchantress swore her vows. None of them suspected, and if she had a rival in her ability to self-glamour, it was Feychilde whose predilections challenged her own, not the other arch-enchanters. Somehow the sorcerer had illusion-power she couldn’t penetrate – not that she’d given it a hundred percent effort. Was he using one of those incredibly-overpowered eldritches to mask a hideous scar or something? One day, maybe, she’d have chance (and the courage) to ask.
Liph let go of the sounds around her as she looked into the glyphstone. It was a mass-message, not a two-way conversation.
The face and voice of Ciraya, Kas’s chief lieutenant. She was a curious one. The shaven-headed, tattooed look wasn’t one that’d ever appealed to her; the enchantress would’ve never wrapped herself in that style of glamour. Still, the sorceress somehow made the look work for her – she was fortunate to have been graced with a rather small head, and the icy, intense will behind her gaze paired well with the external hardness of the painted lips, shadowed eye-sockets, inscribed flesh…
The rasp of her voice was always the same: even when Ciraya was at her happiest she spoke in a sardonic drone.
“Champions of Mund. We’ve got a developing situation in the old sewer sections that run from Hidebent to Tanvil. I’m trying to arrange transport for those of you stuck in the south-west.”
I’m going to be one of the first on the scene. Link-initiator.
“Fly-God cultists seem to have awoken or summoned a swarm of mutated vermin. Real big critters – three-inch incisors, multiple additional limbs, razor-thorn tails. They’re multiplying at an exponential rate. Not nice, trust me. Nightfell suggests a high likelihood former heretic dissidents are involved. Prepare for archmage combat. Attend your nearest sewer entrance as quickly as possible – we have approximately… seventeen… minutes remaining until critical population’s reached. Once that happens we won’t be able to stop them hitting the surface. Keep them contained at all costs.” The young woman’s lip curled. “Yune be with you.”
The message ended. She lowered the glyphstone, slipping it into his trouser-pocket as her eyes checked over her visible form for incongruities.
Everything appeared to be in place. The orange summer-robe with slits up the sides, covered in dark-red swirls. The belt that appeared to glitter with coloured metal shapes, tiny gold and blue leaves pressed into black leather. The smooth cinnamon skin of her elfin hand, the complexion Liphaliar thought he’d have if the hated green tinge were drained right out of him.
It was only as she looked up that she saw the woman in red, the woman whose return she’d awaited so long. If anything she only looked more attractive in the light of her endless, unbearable absence.
“Not now!” the enchantress moaned. “Why now?”
It was the work of an instant to undo the illusions. The woman’s gaze took a few seconds to centre on him.
“Miss…”
“Oh my! Do forgive me. It seems my mind wandered a moment and I didn’t see you there. It isn’t in the habit of doing that, I assure you.”
He slid around the stall, standing beside her in the thoroughfare. She was so small – the top of her head would hardly reach his chin. “Miss, this is – I’m sorry, but this is a really bad time.”
“Oh.” The mystifying smile on her lips became a plain, honest frown. “You’re… going somewhere? I thought, to discover whether you had a shoe that might fit me after all. You see –”
“Miss.“
He used the voice only an arch-enchanter could use. The voice of ultimate authority. The voice that made the listener a toddler at their mother’s heel, utterly captivated.
It was as close to a true psychic command as he’d ever let himself give, and he was only willing to go so far because her sudden reappearance threatened to infringe on his official business – threatened to cost lives. Such spell-speech would only strike at the emotional layer of her being, leaving her analytical landscape undisturbed. The stunning-effect would only last moments. Not something the Magisterium would drag him in for.
“I have an appointment but I’d love to show you some boots, and I’ll be back as quick as I can, if you’ll wait.” He threw the anti-charm back over the stall to fend off thieves. “Please, wait.”
It was all he could do to reinforce the suggestion, hope against hope that it sank in.
If I’m doing Yune’s work, then I’m in good standing.
Without awaiting her dazed response, he spun about and tore off into the crowd towards Tanvil Park. A few moments under the screen and the transition from ‘he’ to ‘she’ was successfully smeared away. He got a wide berth; she got given room, even without use of her powers. It was a completely different experience. No spite and suspicion. Just awe. Respect.
They were always intimidated by him, at least on some level. He’d known it from the first human settlement he found on his travels. He spent a summer on a poultry farm, making ten enemies for every one he’d have naively called a friend. However, he discovered soon after leaving that the people of the Realm became increasingly ‘tolerant’ (as they were so fond of calling it) as one approached the capital. When he first came to the city of Mund at the tender young age of seventeen he’d fallen in love with the place instantly. He’d accepted his meagre payment from the caravan-master, his reward for two hundred miles of bodyguard-duty, and headed off into the streets to hunt his fortune. Within two weeks Borgat had changed his name and picked up a trade. The elven name was the final part of his transition. When he found out its origin, a solid two years after he started going by ‘Liphaliar’, it was all he could do to laugh it off.
As the graceful, brown-skinned enchantress, she even suited the name. ‘Liphalia’, she supposed. She’d certainly included enough elvish traits into the image she wore: tall and slender, smooth-skinned and golden-haired… There was attraction too, not just awe and respect, in the eyes of the men who beheld her – and in a fair few of the women too. As ever, she had no idea what to do with that. Her form wasn’t created to fit in. Her form wasn’t created to please others. It was there for her. It was who she wanted to be. She didn’t want anyone to love her – not for who she appeared to be.
She only wanted to love herself.
Maybe I should approach the red woman looking like this. Maybe she would still see me for me…
Just turn back up, as a champion… Would she want me? More? Less? Would I ruin everything?
She turned off Elberets onto the Old Road, keeping her eyes on her footing. The stone street beneath her blue boots was something of a local relic – some said the broken square slabs dated back to the time of the Founders, the grey paving of the original roadway laid down by Wyre Eldervain himself. Repairing it was out of the question, now. The civilians milling about her were forced to halt if they wanted to gawp at her, and she didn’t need to look back at them to note the flux of emotions of those who glanced her way and stumbled.
How could it make life worse, to show her what I am?
She wanted to take the risk. It was the End of Days. Couldn’t keep on pretending it wasn’t. She just had to go deal with this mutant sewer-rat problem and then she’d be right back, right back to show her customer the boots he’d made her…
Just as she made her mind up, Mountainslide burst out of the ground not five yards ahead of her, pulling himself out of the earth with what looked like considerable effort. Riven paving-slabs toppled about him as the dwarf withdrew one leg and then the other from the crevasse.
Planting his boots firmly on the road, he cast about and then, as if realising where he was, he waved a hand at the shattered surface of the street, sealing it back up again with care to leave it a bit of a mess.
The wagoners had gladly halted their cart-horses to watch; the pedestrians cooed and cheered as the dwarf came tramping towards her, the arch-wizard’s bearded head nodding to a select few of the onlookers as he walked.
“An interesting entrance,” she observed when he stopped.
“Trying to perfect it,” he replied, a certain bashfulness in his grim voice. “So many material fluctuations at the end – if the foundations were thicker…” He sighed. “Don’t quite know how she does it so smoothly.”
“Ironvine?”
He nodded, then put a contrite smile on his face.
“I’ll get there – some day.”
His words just reminded her of her need for haste.
Oh. Of course.
“We’re linked.” She opened her power for broadcasts, just as easily as one might throw open a door; the mind-tracers of her fellow champions would soon be entering her consciousness. Hopefully this would all be over soon. “So where are we going?”
The dwarf’s eyes twinkled. “Down. I hope you aren’t expecting to be wearing that robe out after.” He glanced at the crowd, waved at a few of the kids, then looked back to her. “It’s rather disgusting down here, I’m afraid.”
She nodded. Incorporating stains into the enchantress’s robe, indeed incorporating all manner of physical intrusions into her visible form, was just part of the fun.
“Dark, too,” the dwarf went on. “I can make light, but your thoughtsense is going to be really useful, let me tell you now.”
“Lead the way.”
A hundred or more people stood around gawping as the two champions plunged into the street.
Suddenly disappearing into the pit created by the arch-wizard’s will, his geomancy or aeromancy gripping her at the navel and sending her plummeting down at a horrific speed, she sent out the thought one last time before the road’s surface sealed again above them, cutting off the daylight.
She couldn’t entreat the woman in red, couldn’t touch her mind even if they were eye to eye. But she could cast it out at those heedless blue skies, hoping that those who dwelt beyond would hear her supplication.
Please…
Let her wait.
* * *
It took four-and-a-half hours.
She didn’t wait.
* * *
“You like that style better?” he asked, as the boy came sauntering back to the stall.
“They’re a bit big,” the ten-year-old replied, sounding upset.
“You’ll grow into them,” the little lad’s father said, in a ‘I can’t wait to be done here’ voice. He’d cast Liph a number of shady looks already, and the silence that grew between them while they waited for the boy to return from his jaunt around the market could only be described as awkward in the extreme. If the chap had the pennies for a pair of Orisar’s, he’d have been over there in a shot.
“Never you mind, young man,” Liph said in what he hoped was a helpful tone, “we can sort you out with some fillers.”
The child beamed, but the father turned his glare back on the shoemaker.
“Bundled up bits of cloth,” Liph explained. “To shove down in the toe.” Then, after a moment more: “Free of charge bits of cloth.”
The man finally grunted, and slapped the agreed sum down on the tabletop between them; he had it exact in his hand, it appeared. Liph deftly scooped up the copper and silver coins before they rolled off onto the ground, as several were threatening to do.
“The cloths!” the man barked.
Give me a chance…
He didn’t meet his customer’s eyes – he bent down to the crate beneath the stall, located the rolled-up scraps, and tossed them up onto the wooden surface. By the time he’d straightened up the man had already charged off, marching his son down towards Elberets Way, not even letting the poor kid put his fillers in first.
It was always hard. Not… straightening people out. Even five seconds of concentrated will would probably supply enough magic to repair that father-son relationship. But he wasn’t committing a crime. If he were being watched…
He sighed, then started packing up. It was getting late. He thought he might go for chicken at the Bluestone again – well, ‘she’ might. He did want to eat in the enchantress-form as much as possible – it helped cement the visible reality in the minds of her fellow champions, especially her arch-enchanter peers… and, well, he sometimes got funny looks when he ate in public in his natural form. More than anything, he wanted to be around people right now. The temptation to fall back into his past had never been stronger. He felt so alone, with just his idiot customers and Urkle for company all day. He longed for conversation. To make a connection. To feel uninhibited. That was only something that happened to the enchantress; never the shoemaker.
He put the last box on the table, and raised his eyes to the gorgeous woman in red.
His jaw dropped. It all melted away.
They spoke without words or spells. The eyes had a language all of their own. When he finally greeted her, she didn’t reply. Her fascination was on her face, and it was all she needed to say.
He felt his heart hammering, hammering, hammering.
She glanced down at her body, then looked back to him through her eyelashes, as if inviting him to study her, like an object on display.
Then she spoke, and it was a throaty murmur that came from her lips. A sound unlike any he’d heard in his life – directed at him, anyway.
“Good afternoon, shoemaker. Would you like to accompany me today? I have need of a strong, virile man like yourself.”
The way she looked at him…
She hasn’t come for shoes?
The very notion dumfounded him.
“You were the first – the only man – who came to mind for the task.”
“And…” He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “And what is the task, miss?”
She laughed like rain.
“Oh, you’re more than the measure, I’ll warrant. Come.”
She held out her hand and in the very same moment the glyphstone started to peal.
He half-turned –
But he was already stopping himself before she spoke.
“I can show you,” she said.
He stared into her eyes, those magnificent, iridescent eyes.
“Show me? Sh-show me what?”
“Everything. Myself. Who and what I am. In each and every way. I’ll be the mirror you need. You can be whatever you want, for real, with me. I do not know how to judge.”
Her sincerity couldn’t be doubted. The crystal chimed insistently, but a single impulse of his power silenced it.
No. It wasn’t going to happen again. The gods abandoned him last time. It was their turn now.
He stepped around the table, throwing up his screen of repulsion to keep his belongings safe, and placed his big hand in her slender one.
She interlaced their fingers, smiled, and led him up towards Hill Road. When he drew close to her side she placed her head against his arm, her hair softly swishing against his tunic with every synchronised step.
Bewilderment and elation met and mingled in him.
“But,” he rumbled, “miss…”
I don’t even know who you are.
“Please,” she murmured, “my dear Liphaliar… call me Fay.”
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