Ari set the silver spear down on the enchanting altar, making sure the tip was near the center even though it left most of the shaft hanging off the side. He transferred the essence his body had taken from the distillation into the altar and set his hand down on the imbuing ward. He made the enchantment stronger than he planned to for the other weapons, using the full amount of essence contained within a single vial.
A shimmer similar to the dazzling, glimmer spell’s effect ran over the spear as the actual enchanting took place. The enchanting altar glowed during the process and went dim at the end of it. Ari picked up the weapon and used his will to probe and identify the magic he’d imbued it with.
“Perfect,” he said. “Or at least good enough.”
He could always offer to strip the enchantment off the spear later on and replace it with a new, more powerful one. Alternatively, he could copy the enchantment back into the altar and place it onto a new weapon for her. He hadn’t spent much time considering just how open the possibilities of enchanting were and how to maximize the value they were getting out of their equipment.
Enchanting the spear had given him an idea about who else could use a new weapon and what would be the most effective application of essence. Eva had done the majority of the physical fighting during their last foray into the spire, taking down the steam golems with the two-handed mace.
The weapon’s weight was a drawback, and it wasn’t practical for her to remain in her sword form indefinitely whenever she wanted to take it with her. Fortunately, Ari had an enchantment that he suspected might solve the problem, if applied correctly.
He took off his Feathercloak, which he noticed was in need of a good laundering, and set it across the enchanting altar. He used the wards to copy the wind-affinity enchantment from it, the first attribute spell he’d ever enchanted and the underlying basis of the Ravarian’s flight.
Next, he set the two-handed mace onto the altar, but in reverse, with the grip over the enchanting altar’s center. He wanted the weapon to behave a little like his Feathercloak, using the magic that allowed it to give him lightness and air buoyancy to give the mace a similar factor. He had no idea whether or not it would work, but if it didn’t, he could always strip the enchantment and return the essence to the altar without wasting anything.
He drank another of the disgusting vials, shaking his head to ward off a migraine as the sweet, fiery liquid tortured his throat. The rest of the enchanting process went off without much interruption, and Ari grinned as he picked up the mace by the handle when it was done.
It had worked perfectly. He could lift it from the handle or lower shaft with one hand as though he was lifting a broomstick. The weapon’s weight was all still there, which became instantly evident if he tried to pick it up by the head. The magic simply reduced the effort needed to move its mass around from the point at which he’d applied the spell.
“Two for two,” he whispered. “Let’s see if I can do… a few more.”
CHAPTER 19
Ari set the enchanted mace down next to the spear and let out a groan as his eyes settled on the distilled essence vials on the shelf. He wished that there was an easier way to transfer it into the altar and found himself feeling wistful for the days when gathering essence had involved cutting down mesmers with Azurelight.
He mustered all the reasons why it was important for him to get the weapons he had enchanted and tried to get as many done as fast as he could. He applied the glimmer enchantment to two more daggers and the longsword, setting them into a neat pile on one of the lower shelves. He finished the short sword, too, though as he was putting that away with the rest, the effect of all the distilled essence he’d imbibed finally caught up with him.
Ari fell to the floor, flat on his back, sweating and feeling clammy and uncomfortable. The room seemed to sway slightly, not in circles as though he’d had too much ale, but from side to side at a gentle pace.
He’d brought the copper hand up into the enchanting chamber with him, and he took a closer look at it to distract himself. The metal was smooth, polished, and almost soft to his touch. The hand was small, but it was still hard to tell if it would be the right size. It was also on the heavy side, not hollow throughout as the steam golem’s head had been, but composed of carefully smelted pieces.
The most important detail was the fact that the complicated rune pattern etched into the palm was still completely intact, meaning there was no reason why it wouldn’t serve the purpose he intended for it if filled with sufficient essence. He’d need to get a strap for it, or maybe a glove to go over top. An elbow-length glove would be perfect, he decided.
“Aristial!” called Kerys. “I thought I heard something. Are you okay?”
“Fine!” Ari sat up as quickly as he could, pulling the hand behind. “Totally fine.”
“Why are you on the ground?” asked Kerys. “What’s going on here?”
“Taking a small break,” said Ari. “The distilled essence is pretty unpalatable stuff. Want to smell it?”
“Uh, no thanks,” said Kerys. “Anyway, Durrien stopped by looking for you, but I figured you were still busy with your enchanting, so I… what are you doing?”
Ari had stood up while she was talking after carefully sliding the copper hand back behind the enchanting altar. He held her disabled arm and was slowly unbuttoning the end of the sleeve that hid her injury.
“I need to see your arm for a second,” he said.
“You could ask, like a normal person.” Kerys’ face flushed. “I don’t exactly like having people stare at it, you know.”
“Which is why I figured I’d just go for it,” said Ari. He grinned at her and got the button loose. The sleeve fell back, revealing an arm that ended in a scarred, but fully healed, stub. The skin was smooth and oddly shiny, and the shapes of the bones of her arm were visible underneath.
“Come on,” whispered Kerys. “What’s the point of this? Are you feeling guilty over what happened again? There’s no need for that, Ari.”
“I’ll never stop feeling guilty, Kerys,” he said. “But no. I just… needed to see it. To see you.”
He planted a soft kiss on the end of her stump, and Kerys shivered slightly, as though the small point of contact tickled. He ran his hand over it one time, trying to commit the width and thickness of her wrist to memory.
“I should get back down to the children,” said Kerys.
“Right,” said Ari. “Hey, I figured we could have a celebration tonight since things have been going so well.”
“I’m not sure that’s how I’d characterize what’s happened over the last few days,” said Kerys.
“We’re alive and flush with essence,” said Ari. “We’re doing well, by my standards.”
Kerys shrugged, and a small smile sneaked across her face. “Well, I suppose Grena and I could pull out all the stops for cooking tonight. It’s probably better for us to eat some of the choicer gazelle steaks before we start to get sick of the meat. We also found some potatoes that would be fantastic roasted over a fire.”
“Perfect.” Ari gave her a quick kiss. “Spread the word.”
He patted her butt as she turned to go, which earned him an exaggerated scowl.
Durrien was outside, not far from the tunnel, walking across the grass and pushing a stick down into the grass every few feet. Ari shouted a greeting as he approached, and the old man turned and gave him a wave and a grin back.
“What are you doing?” asked Ari.
“Testing the soil,” said Durrien. “I knew a bit about farming back in the day. Not much, but enough for us to take advantage of some of this space once the season comes back around.”
“Good thinking,” said Ari. “It’s not like we’d even have to grow all that much to feed everyone here reliably, given how few of us there are.”
“I would expect that there might be more next season,” said Durrien. “We’ve already picked up one new refugee this week.”
Ari chuckled a li
ttle at the characterization of Lady Prestia as a refugee, but he saw Durrien’s point well enough. He rubbed his hands together, warding off the cold. Durrien lifted his gaze from the soil, and his eyes seemed to fixate on a specific point out across the horizon.
“See something?” asked Ari.
“I thought I did earlier,” said Durrien. “Mentioned to Kerys that I’d want to tell you after. I thought… Well, maybe this isn’t worth getting worked up over.”
“What is it?” asked Ari.
“It looked like a person,” said Durrien. “Someone in the trees. They were moving away from me, and I couldn’t make out much detail. It could have been Rin, on one of her patrols, but I haven’t gotten a chance to ask her yet.”
Ari frowned. “That doesn’t bode well. We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled tonight.”
“You wanted us to celebrate our recent victories, right?” asked Durrien. “I heard from Kerys. I think it’s a great idea, great for the morale of the community.”
“Yeah…” said Ari. “I feel a little unsure after what you just told me. Maybe we should save it for another night.”
“I’ve already started gathering wood for a bonfire, though,” said Durrien. “Come now, Lord Stoneblood. Don’t let this old man’s failing eyes be the reason why we don’t let the people enjoy themselves!”
Ari rubbed his chin. “Build the fire on the far side of the tunnel from where you saw this potential person. The flames won’t stand a chance of giving us away if they’re blocked from view by the arena, and the smoke will only reveal us if a scout gets close enough to see Etheria, anyway.”
“Very wise,” said Durrien. “Just so you know, there’s one other reason why I’m hot for a celebration. Thought it might influence your decision if I mentioned it before you’d made up your mind.”
The old man flashed him a smile that managed to be simultaneously crafty and mischievous as he reached into the pocket of his shirt. He pulled out one of the rough clay jugs they’d been using for storage, pulled out the cork, and passed it to him.
Ari smelled what was inside before he tasted it. A strong, sweet-smelling wine, flush with the essence of either plums or a similar fruit. Durrien’s smile became a toothy, fulsome grin. Ari took a quick sip and let out a small cough as the kick hit the back of his throat.
“I’ve got ten more jugs of it made,” said Durrien. “Twenty more beyond that still fermenting. I call it ‘Drakeplum wine,’ and it’s my own recipe.”
“You made ten jugs of this stuff?” asked Ari. “You’re telling me that this is where all the clay containers that have been going missing have been disappearing to?”
“For a good cause,” said Durrien. “We can sell what we don’t need when we finally make the trip to Cliffhaven. I can get a good price for this stuff if I sell to people who know me.”
Ari chuckled and took another sip. “I like the way you think. But don’t sell all of it. We’ll be bringing other trade goods with us. Enchanted weapons, and I’m betting we could find a buyer for some sarkin flower too if we bring enough with us.”
Durrien reached inside his shirt again, this time pulling out another of his carefully rolled sarkin flower smokes. Ari shook his head.
“Save that for later,” he said. “Kerys would never let me hear the end of it if she thought I was slacking off to smoke during the day.”
Durrien cackled and clapped him on the back.
CHAPTER 20
A single sip of Drakeplum wine was enough to wash away the taste of the distilled essence and settle Ari’s stomach. As much as he would have loved to give both his mouth and his gut a break, it wasn’t quite late enough in the afternoon to justify calling it a day.
The tower’s common room was empty, which meant that Kerys and Grena had probably taken the children outside to play or into one of the underchambers. Ari drank another vial of essence, made two more enchanted daggers, and then fell into a stubborn state of distraction.
It reminded him of the times back in the Hollow when he’d been working the pit alone, without Milo breathing down his neck and shouting at him each time he was caught slacking. It wasn’t that the work was hard, or even that the taste of the distilled essence had caught back up with him. Ari had just reached the limit of his focus for the day for enchanting weapons.
He decided to take a different approach. He brought a vial of distilled essence with him as he headed back out into the arena’s main chamber. The chamber was divided into the underchambers in the sections nearest to the entrance and front and the tower in back, but there were two other, currently unused chambers, each with various wards inside.
Ari hadn’t bothered committing any essence to any of the wards back when the focus had been on getting the roof in place overhead and supplying basic illumination through the ward lights. Especially since, as far as he could tell, the purposes for most of them were redundant when considering what the tower was already capable of.
One of the chambers was quite obviously a kitchen of some sort. Dusty counters ran across the walls, with an odd contraption in between them that reminded Ari of a long, rectangular fire pit, with metal grates in the wall just above it for ventilation.
A heavy iron spit ran across the length of it, with a handle at one end and a simple lock that could be undone to remove it at the other. Ari could only imagine that the setup had once been used to cook large amounts of food at one time, likely enough to feed the paying members of the arena audience.
He found the rune ward at the pit’s side, and after downing another vial of the least palatable liquid he’d ever encountered, he willed in the requisite essence. A small, rushing noise came from the cooking pit’s interior as half a dozen purple flames burst into life underneath the cooking spit.
Ari hopped back in surprise. The cooking table that he’d activated with essence in the tower was much less flashy, simply heating up with a subtle orange glow. He held a hand over one of the purple flames, pulling it back as his skin prickled from the unusual amount of heat it emitted.
They wouldn’t need the cooking pit for the celebration that night, which was a small relief. Ari wasn’t totally sold on the safety of the oddly colored flames, and decided that testing them with small portions of food, for the sake of safety, would be the best approach.
Having a second kitchen, especially one better equipped to handle the needs of the slowly growing community, made sense. It meant that the next time Ari needed to take the tower on a mission to Deepwater Spire or wherever else, he wouldn’t have to worry as much about how it was affecting the conditions of those who stayed behind.
It was for the same reason that Ari headed out of the arena’s kitchen and across the massive main room, to the other chamber that stood apart from the rest in form. It had two doors, both facing directly toward the arena’s center, and both leading to identical rooms.
As far as Ari could deduce, each of the rooms had once been a waiting area for arena fighters of different teams. Chains hung from the ceiling in the corner, where Ari suspected mannequins or training bags might once have hung.
On the other side of each of the rooms was a small subdivision, within which there was a shower close to identical to the one within the tower, along with a curved basin lined with stone with a drain at the bottom and a similar spigot. A shower and a bath, two essentials that would be a welcome addition to Etheria, given how frustrating it could sometimes be for more than a dozen people to share a single bathing apparatus.
Ari activated them both with essence and proceeded to give them a quick test. There was a small lever that controlled the drain for the tub. The water came out hot or cold, depending on how long he activated the rune ward for.
He knew that the fact that the pipes had access to water in the first place meant that there must be a water basin that they’d overlooked somewhere outside the arena. As for the other conveniences, Ari knew that it would make a huge difference for Etheria to have water on demand from a source that wasn’t li
mited to the tower.
“Just one more reason to celebrate,” he said with a smile.
It took more willpower than he’d been expecting to turn off the warm water and resist the urge to climb into the tub for a long soak. The waiting area, which was now more of a bathing chamber, still didn’t have a door. It was a minor issue but still an issue. It was surprisingly easy for him to picture Virgil attempting to spy on Kerys or one of the other women while they were stripping down for a bath.
Ari was, of course, completely above that sort of thing.
***
There was still time left in the afternoon, so Ari decided to take on the task of delivering his newly made enchantments. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to find Rin, but as he carried the silver spear outside and toward the drake skull, he spotted a flash of movement through the mouth of the long-dead creature.
She was training again, which made Ari want to pat himself on the back for his own timing. The tunic she wore was one of her older ones, made of pale green leather, with no arm sleeves. Her hair was loose, and it seemed to add a sense of chaos to her motions along with the shifting of her wings.
“I come bearing a gift,” said Ari. “Check this thing out.”
Rin set down the practice spear she’d been training with and wiped sweat from her brow. She was still breathing heavily from her exertions, which made the almost predatory smile that came across her face seem that much more dangerous.
“A gift?” asked Rin. “I’d already forgiven you after our, ah, conversation last night, chala.”
“This isn’t to buy your favor, Rin,” said Ari. “It’s one of the weapons Eva and I recovered from the spire. I put a new enchantment on it, one that you should be able to make good use of.”
Reborn Raiders (The Weatherblight Saga Book 4) Page 12