“That’s a good one for specks,” came a voice at the end of the shop.
Carym peered over to see an old man upon a stool behind a desk with a magnifying glass, his hands moving deftly beneath, wrapping tiny strands of silk around a small hook. “You Cklathmen call ’em speckled trout, I believe.”
“This is an amazing blue riverfly, sir. I’ve not seen the like in all my years,” said Carym respectfully, recognizing a master at his trade.
“You won’t either,” the man said, chuckling. “Have a look around, please. Those twitch rods over there are made from the finest Komato bamboo stalks; they’re light and very strong.” The shopkeeper picked up an olive colored rod with silvery hoops that were fastened to the rod by finely wrapped strands of silk and covered with a strong resin made from beeswax and a few other secret ingredients that the man would not reveal.
“A trade secret!” Carym said with a wink, marveling at the finely balanced lightweight rod. “We call these ‘fly rods’ where I come from.”
“I know, lad. Been knowing them as twitch rods my whole life, not about to change now,” the man said with a genuinely pleasant tone. “That one you’re holding is my favorite design. I call it the ‘Speck Stealer!’ And, if you look closely, I made it so you can take it apart in four pieces; makes it easier on you traveling folk!”
Carym had never seen such craftsmanship and decided to purchase the “twitch rod” as the man called it.
“One more thing, young man. My latest invention!” the man said, as he disappeared into a back room and reappeared a moment later. He held aloft a small, metal, barrel shaped object with a handle on one side. “Ever seen one of these, young man?”
“Yes, sir. It looks like a spool.”
“Ahh,” the man said with a sly grin. “A spool it has, but a spool it’s not. Give me that twitch rod of yours and I’ll show you what it does!” The man removed the rod from Carym’s hands and placed the device up against the base of the rod. Two metal feet pointing in opposite directions on the device slid into a pair of metal collars on the rod. Then, the old man twisted the metal collars until they were tight against the rod and unspooled a length of silk line. He ran it up through the hoops, which he said “guided” the line, until the line exited the top of the rod. Then he took the blue riverfly and tied it to a nearly invisible strand of horse hair and tied that to the silk line.
“Come outside with me, young man.”
Carym followed the man outside and to a staircase that led down below the dock way. At the bottom of the stair was a small dock where a rowboat had been secured. The men climbed into the boat and Carym suspected he was going to be given a fishing lesson by the old man. He was ready for something positive after the events of the last few days and was eager to see what the old man was going to show him.
“What’s your name, young man?” asked the older man.
“Carym, sir.”
“Carym, I am Neboneezer Troggins. Well met!” said the old man as Carym took the oars and pulled until the boat sailed out from under the dock.
“Where to, sir?” he asked, pleased that the old man let him take the oars.
“Not too far, just away from this here dock way. That’s it. Now, out beyond the main dock way.”
Carym rowed until he had navigated out from under the maze of dock ways and platforms, soon the men were stopped a dozen yards into the bay facing the man dock way. The man gently lowered an anchor into the water and waited until the slack had run out and the line stretched taut. Then he stood in the boat and stripped away several loops of the silk line from the reel and held them in his left hand, and began swinging the rod forward and back several times, each swing fed more line out of the hoops. After just a few swings, the man made one final pitch forward and grunted with satisfaction as the line danced out from behind him, through the air above, and settled the little blue riverfly gracefully onto the water.
“It floats!” he remarked. “That is an accurate tool you have there, Mr. Troggins!”
“Indeed. The reel, as I call it, allows you to play out the line as you need it, making your casting more accurate.” Neboneezer turned the handle on his spool and Carym watched as the line was drawn neatly back in and onto the spool. A simple, yet incredibly useful creation! He handed the rod to Carym who expertly copied Neboneezer’s actions taking several loops of line from the reel and swung it back and forth until the line was out and the fly was sitting atop the water where he intended it to go.
“So, there is no need to retrieve the line with every cast. Just ‘twitch’ the rod back and then forward again and the fly goes where I want it to go!” said Carym with amazement as he practiced placing the fly next to a post holding up the main gangway. Carym spent the next hour with the old man, learning how to properly use the reel, or rather to avoid using the reel when retrieving smaller fish. As Carym learned, the reel was mainly an invention for carrying a lot of line and being able to spool it up neatly. Nebeneezer showed Carym how to clean and oil the reel and how to treat the silk line so that it wouldn’t become brittle and crack. Finally he handed Carym a small vial with a pasty substance in it.
“That, my boy, is how you keep your bug on top of the water!” he whispered conspiratorially. “It’s just soft beeswax. You just take a pinch and rub it into the fibers of the bug and the wax makes it float!”
Carym was thrilled. The idea of floating tackle was not unheard of, but it was unusual for his own people who preferred the sinking variety. After the two returned to the store Carym purchased the finely made twitch rod, an assortment of bugs and a cedar box to put them in, and the reel. He knew that he had a long journey ahead and hoped that this fine purchase would come in handy. He was pleasantly surprised when old Mr. Troggins offered to buy Carym’s own rod from him, which Carym politely declined. He stayed and chatted with old Naboneezer for nearly an hour more, discussing techniques and trading stories. Finally, Carym decided it was time to move on and see if there were any other items he might find useful for his journey.
He desperately wanted to find a shop with magical supplies, fondly remembering his adventuring days following his service in the Arnathian Fleet. While he never desired to study the arcane arts, and would have been hunted and persecuted if he had, he had always been fascinated by enchanted items. He had seen enchanted potions put to use, armor enchanted to protect the wearer from harm, weapons enchanted to strike twice as hard as any other, and even some very plain looking rings that could perform wondrous feats!
He wryly contemplated how many of the finds he and Zach had made, items that the pair had rescued on behalf of someone else. How precious little true magical items were available in the world and how he had never had the fortune of finding any among the possessions of any of the criminals he had taken in on warrant duties.
A smile crept over Carym’s face as he found the shop that he had passed on the way into the city. The door was open and a faint but certain odor of cloves drifted out. Caution momentarily found him as he thought of several good reasons why it might be a bad idea to go into this shop, especially when one considered this in the context of the previous day’s events. However, caution was overpowered by curiosity - as is often the case - and Carym strode boldly through the open door.
He was struck by the neatness of the shop. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling and wheeled ladders were located at intervals to aid the customer in gathering the hard-to-reach items. White jars lined many of these shelves, each bearing a label with words written in unknown tongues. Other shelves held jars of glass filled with liquids and various dead things, most of which were unrecognizable to him. His nose was overpowered by the abundance of sharp and contrasting smells and he fought a bout of nausea rising in his gut. As he walked deeper into the shop he found a counter with a comfortable looking chair at the far end of the shop, presumably where the shopkeeper sat. Behind the counter was an assortment of beautiful and shiny wands, staves, walking sticks, and other similar weapons. Un
der the glass surface of the counter was a variety of beautiful jewelry, alongside a variety of ugly jewelry; there was a ring with an eyeball that appeared to be watching him as he moved.
To the right of the counter was another room with an assortment of swords and shields, axes and maces, pole arms and armor. There were cloaks and coats and shirts and boots of the softest leather. As he walked about the room, a remembered warning from the old druid drifted through his mind; beware of anything sold openly as magical, for surely it is mundane; or dangerously arcane! The old druid knew that there were a rare few shops specializing in magical supplies. Most were merely traps to catch the unwitting fool and part him from his money with a bottle of snake oil.
Oil gleaned from a stone, old Dryume would say of the so-called potions sold in these places.
Carym heaved a sigh, wondering if this were such a place; and nearly gagged from the taste of the malodorous atmosphere. A quiet chuckling drifted through the shop from seemingly every direction at once, but faded quickly. Carym warily looked for the source of the sound, but saw no one. Assuming the sound had come from passersby outside, Carym continued to peruse the items in this room and his eyes came to rest on a beautiful cedar chest in a corner, covered in dust and edged with webs. The decor on the chest was Cklathish in origin and Carym recognized some of the ancient letters.
He brushed off the dust, which billowed into the air and nearly choked him. After a brief coughing fit Carym opened the lid to the chest and peered inside. Inside the chest were some dusty books, and a couple of dirty pieces of cloth that looked to be the remnants of a very old cloak. He gently brushed the dust off the cover of one book, but put it back down after realizing he could not read any of it. He rummaged through the chest some more and found a pouch that appeared to be filled with something. He picked up the pouch and found that its old fibers gave way and several marbles spilled noisily out into the bottom of the chest.
“Now, what would you be wantin’ with that chest? Hmm?” came a crackly old voice.
Carym turned to see the same mysterious looking man who had been talking with the Crimson Elf outside this very store only a day before. The man’s eyes looked very young, despite his elderly appearance.
“I came to see the sort of wares you sell, sir. I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said, nervously. He recalled how particularly onerous sorcerers could be.
“No one has looked in that chest in nearly three centuries, boy.” The older man seemed testy to Carym, and he wondered if the man was going to cast a spell at him. He fervently hoped not and wondered how this store could have been here for three centuries, and the wizard with it.
“Sorry, sir. I’ll just put these back.”
“No you won’t, either,” the man said in his peculiar manner of speech. “Show me what ye found, boy.”
Carym hesitantly held out the handful of marbles he had picked up from the bottom of the chest. Glancing at them for the first time, he felt a sudden mix of contrasting sensations roiling across his outstretched hand. Swirls of heat, stabs of cold, rivulets of water, the tickling of a breeze, and a very deep resonance that shook his soul, assaulted his senses all at once. The sudden onslaught of sensations caused a sense of dizziness and his knees buckled.
“Whoa now! How did ya do that?” the old man whispered, mystified by the presence of the marbles. Carym and the old man just looked at what he now realized were not marbles, but stones. They were both silent for a long moment, each contemplating the shifting colors on the surfaces of the odd stones. One was a deep crimson, with swirls of jagged reds; another as blue as the sea with shocks of silver scoring the surface; another was misty gray, with roiling clouds; another was brown with shifting rivulets of gold and copper and bronze; another was so dark and so black that it took Carym’s breath away to just look at it; the last was translucent, and when he looked at its surface he swore he could see the fleeting images of faces peering back at him!
“What are these?” he asked, mystified and mesmerized. The old man glanced from the stones and back up to Carym and slapped the younger man on the shoulder, startling him.
“Don’t stare at them faces, boy!” he hissed. “Unless you care to join them!”
Carym could say nothing, but felt like the older man was probably right. Somehow he sensed that these were very dangerous items indeed. “I’ll just go put these back in the chest for you, sir.”
“The Hades you will, lad!” the man said forcefully. “I’m not wantin’ them things in me store. Been there too damn long, collecting up all me good dust. Nah, them’re yours lad.”
Carym looked the man questioningly. “What do you mean?”
“Are ye daft? Their yours! Get them and get gone with ye. I’ll not sell them to one of your like, so just ye go and take them out of me store!” Then, under his breath, the old man muttered, “Figures, they’d be Sigil Stones! They been here all these years, and whoda thunk it? Damn!”
“I don’t understand, sir. What do you mean?”
“What this grumpy old curmudgeon means to say is that you, sir, are a Fyrbold!” came the smooth voice of the Crimson Elf Carym had seen the day before.
The man strode gracefully into the room, with a definite air of nobility and authority, while the tone of his voice bespoke of an honest and friendly nature. He glanced at the older human with great respect and bowed his head at the old man. He thought he saw a twinkle of amusement in the old man’s eyes which quickly disappeared.
“Who are you?” Carym demanded. He was starting to panic as thoughts of a dire need to escape assailed him. He wondered, though, how he would fare against a Crimson Elf and a mage who intimated his age to be counted in centuries. “And, what is a Fyrbold?”
“I am Morgon-Fyr, of Alfheym,” the man said gently with a slight bow. “I am your friend, Carym of Hyrum.”
“I don’t know you,” he said.
“But I do know of you. I am of the Society of the Watchers, Carym. We’ve been waiting for a sign of the Return for centuries, and now here you stand before me. I am honored to meet you, sir,” the red skinned man said earnestly. He pointed to the stones in Carym’s hand and said, “If I may?” Without waiting for an answer, he waved his own hand and the red stone drifted lazily through the air and settled his outstretched palm. He gazed in wonder at the stone, his eyes reflecting the swirling light within.
“What are they?” asked Carym, his fears of hostile intent somewhat allayed. Still, he was edgy being around men of such power.
“These are the Sigil Stones, taken from us by the Great Zuhr, so very long ago,” the man’s voice was scarcely above a whisper now. Then, with the flick of a wrist, the stone flew across the room to settle once more on Carym’s own palm.
“You must guard these with your life, Carym; tremendous power lies within them! Each represents one of the six disciplines commanded by the six Orders of Sigils: Fire, Air, Earth, Water, Shadow, and Spirit. And all of them here in one room!”
“And ye need be gettin’ them outta here!” barked the old man. “I’ve enough to do fending off halfwit thieves and pirates. I’ll no’ have denizens of that Shadowfyr, Umber, lurking about thinking them stones are here! Them’re nasty beasties too; like to flay the skin from a man’s bones, they do!”
“Oh, do be quiet, Bartholomeul!” quipped Morgon with a smile. “All these years that dratted old chest just sat in the corner collecting dust. And you, my friend, were nary the wiser, eh?” he said with a laugh at the old mage. Then, with a sigh, he said, “What shall we do with you, Carym?”
Carym wasn’t sure he wanted anyone to do anything with him at all. “What do you mean,” he demanded. “I am no threat to you!”
“To us? Good heavens, no! Are you perchance, on a quest? To the Everpool, perhaps?” asked the soft spoken elf. Carym’s heart was racing. Damn! How did he find out? Could I have said too much to that blasted siren?
“Never heard of it,” he said simply.
“Wise of you to deny it. Howe
ver, as I said before, I am your friend. In fact, your druid friend thought it wise to inform Alfheym what had befallen you and of his remarkable observation of your latent talents. My people sent word to me and, knowing your destination, I deduced the most logical port of departure: Dockyard City. Shocked indeed was I, when you walked right past me as I was discussing your plight with good old Bartholomeul here!”
“Why is Alfheym concerned with the likes of me?” he asked. He was not surprised that Dryume had been acquainted with elves, the man was as old as the trees he tended.
“We are the keepers of what is left of the lore of the Fire Sigil. I am from a long line of Fyrbold, though it has been long since any of my kin have been blessed with the power to control the Tides of the Fire Sigil. We Crimson Elves may only touch the Tides of Flame and none other, thus I may only touch the red firestone that lay in your palm. You, however, seem to have been gifted with the power to hold all six! When I touched that stone, I could sense the amassed knowledge of the ages, condensed into that one stone!”
The man seemed genuine to Carym, even if he was acting a bit giddy.
“The many races gifted with the power of Sigils were typically able to use but one of the six disciplines. Somewhere along the way, the Great Father saw fit to place humans on this great creation known as Llars,” said the man with a wry grin toward Bartholomeul. “To humans he gifted the mastery over any one of the Sigils, some could even dabble in multiple Sigils. But here stands you before me with all six in your very palm!”
The Dragon Writers Collection Page 32