by Aaron Crash
She walked into the feasting hall. Pots clanged in the kitchen. Haylee was right. There was a restlessness to the night.
She hissed in surprise, then cast a Sunfire prolium spell, creating a curved sword made of flames. A simple “ignis ignarum,” and the blade was in her fist, lighting up the hall.
She hurried forward. “Caelum caelarum.” She floated up and over the counter and then burst through the swinging doors and into the kitchen.
A single Sunfire lantern burned. There were dirty pots around, some pans, and the lingering sweet scent of something candied cooking. A dirty machine sat on a counter, but Della hadn’t been in the kitchens enough to know if that was new.
She moved by some racks, and silently floated over the floor.
There, she saw who was in the kitchen, which was against the rules. Breakfast prep wouldn’t start for another several hours.
The dwab, the princess of the Ruby Stonehold, whirled from the pot where she stood, stirring. She was in a blue dress and a white apron, and her red hair was frizzy and out of place. The wide little woman blinked. “Princept! You scared me!”
“Ignis inanis!” The fire sword turned to smoke in Della’s grip. “Toriah, what is the meaning of this?”
Tori wrinkled her nose. “Oh, sorry, Princept, I couldn’t sleep. I tried to sleep. You know, I have the big room in those rambling apartments, Moons housing, and a whole bunch of us live there. Nice girls, though Ribrib snores. That Ribrib. Anyway, I like to look out at StormCry, though this late, there are only a few of the Sunfire streetlamps down there. That usually relaxes me. I pretend the sky is stone. You overtoppers and your sky. It’s unnerving. It really is. A whole other planet could come falling down on us.” The dwab sighed. “But really, you don’t want to hear about my insomnia. What I think you want is an explanation. Well, here it is. Are you ready?”
Della couldn’t help but smile at this cheerful little woman. And from what Della knew about Morbuskor culture, Toriah Welldeep hadn’t known much cheer in the decades she’d lived so far. She was fifty if she was a day. “Yes, Toriah, I am ready.”
“I said to myself, Tori,” she grinned. “I call myself Tori. Other people do too. It’s cute. Anyway, I said, Tori? You can either lay here all night or you can go to work and make your special pancakes for those hungry scholars. Problem with that? My pancake batter needs to set for at least four hours. Which means I had to get going. Here is where it gets funny.”
“Funnier, I imagine,” the Princept said indulgently.
Tori giggled. “Funnier. Bless my stone bits, but you’re right about that. I got hungry. I was going to make a little sweet and then do my batter. I know, eating sweets at night isn’t so good for you, but I’ve been homesick. So, that’s my story. I figured since I was kitchen staff, you wouldn’t mind. I’m not sure what Francy will think. I guess I’m in trouble.”
“Not in trouble,” Della said. “But this is probably not something you should do again. Finish up and get back to bed.”
“I will, Princept, I will.” Tori started cleaning.
Della wasn’t interested in chatting more with the talkative dwab. She took a bottle of milk and left the kitchen.
On her way up to her chambers, she thought of Haylee again. Thinking of the half-elf put a fresh spark in the Princept. A little rubbing. A little milk. And she should be able to grab a few hours of sleep yet before the new week started.
Chapter Nineteen
YMIR HURRIED INTO THE feasting hall, not having slept. Tori hadn’t slept either. She’d covered for them perfectly with the Princept. Right before Della had come in, they’d moved the drying trays into the cold ovens.
After Della had gone back to bed, Lillee acted as the lookout in case she returned.
Ymir, Jenny, and Tori had worked fast, grinding and pressing the rest of the xoca nibs. Cooking, melting, enchanting, and cooling followed. They chopped up the xocalati and carried it down to his cell in egg boxes, which they returned. Ironically, Tori wasn’t going to eat any of the xocalati, not when she found out it had a more erotic element to it.
Lillee had no trouble sampling their product, but when Jenny ate some, she waved her hand over her face. For Ymir, it got him hard, and, yes, it piqued his interest in sex, but it wasn’t overwhelming. It aroused him just enough to know he was aroused.
After Tori and Lillee had run in, the dwab apologized, again and again, for being so late. Lillee had been oddly talkative, saying that she was as much to blame. The two shared the same little smile, slightly heated, slightly embarrassed, but completely secretive.
The clansman knew what had happened. Lillee kept adjusting her essess. Tori couldn’t stop grinning. He wasn’t upset, but their timing was poor. He also wondered about the dwab, about whether she enjoyed women more than men. If so, why had she flirted with him at first?
Regardless, he was forced to forgive her because she’d saved them from the Princept. They’d spent the night cleaning, packaging, and preparing the xocalati for sale.
The clansman had come up with a plan, not only to hide the enterprise, but to add a layer of mystery to their very expensive product. If there was one thing he’d learned dealing with the merchants in Summertown it was that the rich loved to buy expensive things. It was a strange thing, but if something was rare, and slightly forbidden, people would leap to squander their money. It was the story that grabbed them.
Grandfather Bear had been very good at telling stories. He’d begun the rumors of a vicious woolly snake slithering across the tundra, with the sweetest meat and the softest pelt. Part scale, part fur, you could only skin the woolly tundra snake in sections. With the meat, you had to be careful of poison sacs, so it was best to chop it up fine to make sure you didn’t miss any.
Summertown merchants paid twice as much money for the woolly snake pelts and three times as much for the minced serpent meat.
In fact, there was no such thing as the woolly snake. Grandfather Bear had wanted to sell the leftover organs of the elk and skin taken from their skulls and legs. It was the story that sold those scraps.
Ymir had a story for the Amora Xoca, the name of their very expensive xocalati. They’d sell it all. First, though, he had to get to class.
Tori prepared a quick breakfast for him: three hardboiled eggs, orange slices, and three mugs of kaif, cold and ready to guzzle.
The little woman frowned. “Ymir, you and I, we need to talk. I know, everything turned out okay, but gosh me underground, you deserve the truth. Lillee didn’t say anything because I swore her to silence. You’ll have to promise to keep what I tell you to yourself as well. It’s, um, Morbuskor stuff.”
Even though she’d not slept, Tori still looked pretty, a little frazzled, a little worn, but so cute. He had a little trouble taking the somber expression on her face seriously. “It’s why I couldn’t find much on your people,” he said. “When do you want to talk?”
“Well, this afternoon would be ideal, but you’ll be sleeping.” She furrowed her brow.
“I won’t be. I’ll be working. Then I’ll be studying because, yes, we have our first batch of the Amora Xoca to sell, but I have other things to research. Things that are far more important than a few shecks.” He was careful not to tell this poor girl everything. He didn’t want her worrying about demons, assassins, and such.
“I’ll come to your table on the second floor then.” Her freckles were dim. Worry dulled the cheery sparkle that normally filled her green eyes.
“You know my spot well,” he said. Everyone in the school did. At this point, no one sat there except for him. He wasn’t sure why. It certainly wasn’t out of respect. Most didn’t know him well enough to fear him.
He chugged down the kaif. He ate the eggs and oranges on his way to the Flow Tower, and then he was sitting behind Lillee, who reached out and caressed his leg. He petted her soft, platinum curls.
Professor Leel sniffed and got started. “So, we’ve been discussing the five Categoria Magica, and for
the purposes of this class, we’ll—”
Ymir was feeling reckless and impatient. The kaif had given him energy, but it had also taken away some of his reservations. He raised his hand, following the customs of the southerners. He would’ve rather just asked her questions without asking for permission.
The Ohlyrran professor gave him a weary look. “Yes, Ymir.”
“We have been practicing cantrips for months. We’ll get to armatus, am I correct? Actually, I’ve already done that. What about prolium?”
“I was going to lecture on that today, actually,” she said.
Ymir’s mind jumped on the next topic. “Focus rings help focus our power, but they also guard against using too much magic and destroying our dusza. Do you pull the magic in through the Focus ring? Or do you channel it into the ring?”
“Ease on up, clansman. We’ll get to that.” Jenny laughed from across the room. She hadn’t moved because she liked sitting next to Nellybelle so they could lie to each other when they weren’t hating each other. Having such a friendly enemy baffled Ymir, but the Swamp Coast women did enjoy their feuds and fakery.
However, it was a good thing that Jenny hadn’t completely dropped her Josentown friends. That morning, she mentioned a new kind of xocalati that didn’t just taste good, but it also filled you with lust.
Not an uncontrollable lust, and not a passion that would eclipse your good sense, but one that would put a tickle in your glitter box. Those were Jennybelle’s words, and it was as good a start to the story of Amora Xoca as anything. Tori was talking about it as well. Lillee wasn’t outgoing, though she did say she would mention it to Kacky and Gluck, her she-orc friends.
Slowly, the story would spread, mostly because the Swamp Coast women were both rich and famous gossipers.
Ymir saluted Jennybelle with a single finger. He nodded for the professor to continue.
Three mugs of kaif, in quick succession, wasn’t a good idea.
Ymir listened carefully. By now, he knew the five Categoria Magica. As she talked, he broke them down in his mind.
Cantrips were simple magic.
Armatus was armor and shielding. When he’d fought Gharam Ssornap, the Gruul had wreathed himself in flames. That was the Sunfire armatus. Ymir had saved his own life by using the Flow armatus twice now.
Prolium was attack magic. Last night, Ymir had been hiding when Della walked into the kitchen with her sword made of flames. That was Sunfire prolium, which meant you should be able to create a sword made of ice with Flow prolium. Did that mean a blade of lightning was possible? Or with Form, could you magic up a steel blade from the very elements?
From what Leel said, most of the time sorcerers hurled prolium magic: balls of fire, lightning attacks, ice storms, rock storms. All made Ymir pause to consider the ramifications of such power. In a battle against the White Wolf Clan, his people could devastate them as they charged with a fall of boulders from the sky. Yes, the magic was evil, and yet, it was so effective. What would he do once he mastered some of these abilities? It wasn’t a question to ask himself on a day he’d not slept.
The last two powers were called the major arcana, and they consisted of fascinara and devocho.
Fascinara was used to enchant items, creating artifacts and fashioning golems, like the coral golem that Siteev had. This was also used for healing, and every one of the Studiae Magica had their own version of the cura spells. The Princept had used a jelu cura spell to heal Jenny of her burns after the fight with Siteev.
Lastly, devocho involved the greatest sorcery: summoning, breaking through time, breaking through space. With advanced devocho, you could manipulate the building blocks of reality itself. You could, but you shouldn’t, or that was the point of the lesson.
Leel frowned at her class. “With great power comes great suffering. Yes, to know more is to suffer more, and in the end, we are not gods. Many a sorcerer, blinded by hubris, has died horribly.”
“Even Aegel Akkridor,” Ymir muttered to himself. The vempor might’ve lived a thousand years, but he’d met his fate like a mosquito that lived a day. It was clear to Ymir that all of the Akkridors had been sorcerers, and their lust for magical power had mirrored their lust for political power.
Ymir thought of Grandfather Bear and the woolly snake story. If you were buying elk scraps thinking they were mystical animal parts, you had too much money. Excess, clearly, was something that one needed to temper or else there was the real possibility of losing everything.
The day dumped him from one class to another, and his ability to focus melted like xocalati in the sun. He spilled from the classrooms into the work of sweeping the Moons Tower. He saw the Ironcoats in a classroom, heads bent, talking quietly. Again, he was struck by how similar Ibeliah and Brandmunli looked.
He didn’t want to disturb them in the classroom, but it needed cleaning. He walked in. The windows were dim with rain and clouds. As if summoned by the sun, the rain had come sweeping down in sheets. The wind joined in the winter dance, though to call a little rain winter was laughable to the clansman.
He stood at the door. The Morbuskor pair were by the window across the room. Ibeliah taught here, and from what he saw, the husband, Brandmunli, had been put to work in Form, helping Brodor with repairs around the college.
“I have to clean in here,” Ymir said brusquely. The kaif had worn off, and he found himself annoyed. “You can stay, but you’ll have to move around.”
“We can leave,” the dwarf said.
“But only if you promise you’ll read that poem from Obanathy. You’ll do that, right, Ymir?” the bearded dwab asked. “Obanathy swore that all art came from the Studiae Magica, and he perfected several Flow cantrips and even some major arcana.”
Ymir stopped to lean on his broom. “Cantrips to find out the truth? Or to protect a person from being scried?”
“So you know of Obanathy?” Ibeliah asked in wonder.
“I do.” Ymir decided to lie, though this poet was new to him. To be honest, he tried to forget as much of her inane class as he could. She’d promised that they would be applying the poet’s process to magic later in the semester. Ymir wasn’t sure he believed her. He went to the class in hopes Ibeliah would let something slip about the mystery of Morbuskor culture. So far, to his great disappointment, that hadn’t happened.
Brandmunli laughed like only a dwarf could, bold, and brazen, and loud. “See, Ibeliah, he is as smart as they say. He devours books. I’ve seen him in the Librarium, poring over his tomes. The focus is almost dwarven, by my stone heart.”
Ibeliah joined him in laughing. The two might’ve been brothers despite their sexes. “And I thought he wouldn’t show up to my class at all. He abandoned Denalia Fisherking’s courtly manners class without attending a single lecture!”
Ymir grinned good-naturedly. “Denalia didn’t promise me magic lessons, and she’s human. You Morbuskor are a mystery. I like mysteries.”
“We are mysteries to you overtoppers,” Brandmunli said. “And for good reason. Your people spent two thousand years murdering each other, murdering elves, murdering dwarves, and for what? A few farms, a few forests, and a few fishing villages? Bah! It’s better for us to keep a close eye on you all.”
“Which is why you’re here,” Ymir said. “You remain a mystery to protect yourselves, yet come here to learn the secrets of men, elves, and orcs. For the record, my people kept to the Ax Tundra, though we do enjoy our wars as well.”
“See?” Ibeliah said. “You admit you uppergrounders are stupidly violent. If more of you valued food and cheer and poetry above your wars, it would be a merrier world.”
Ymir grimaced and shook his head. “No, Professor, it would be a tedious world. Words fail in the face of battle. There is only instinct, passion, muscle. There is only the single moment of life or death, until the moment is spent. Scholars here get lost in their minds, regretting the past, fearing the future. They forget this second, now, is all the life we ever get.”
“You wouldn’t stop the many wars if you could?” Ibeliah asked. She was serious. Even Brandmunli wasn’t smiling.
“Would I?” The clansman paused to think of the question. “Professor Leel warned us today of the abuse of power. For me to cast magic and force all the peoples of Raxid to be pleasant, plump, and peaceful would be to remove their passion. As long as people are free, they will fight. The strong will conquer. The weak will fall away. Such is the nature of the world. The Shieldmaiden offers mercy. The Axman does not.”
“Are you more of the Axman or the Shieldmaiden?” Brandmunli stroked his beard. Ibeliah followed suit.
Ymir grinned. “I’m neither. I’m the Wolf. I run. I hunt. I mate.”
“Yes!” the dwarf man thundered. “Now we get to the heart of the matter. Your warring is one thing. This obsession your kind has for sex? Shameless. At least the Ohlyrra have the good sense to temper themselves with their forearm cuffs.”
“And what of the Morbuskor and sex?” Ymir smirked, knowing he wouldn’t get an answer.
“That is a taboo subject for us,” Ibeliah said seriously. “Even the Morbuskor don’t talk about it. It’s shameful. It’s unspeakable.”
“So we won’t speak of it.” Ymir took his broom and walked to the far side of the room. “And I’ll read the poems. I’ll read all of the Ax-damned poems, covered with dust though they be, if you’ll lift your feet.” He made a sweeping motion toward them, and the Morbuskor chuckled.
He would do more than read the poems, though. He would dive into the works of Obanathy. Obanathy was one letter away from Octovato, and so both authors should be in the same section of the Scrollery. That was important if he ever got the opportunity to go down there. If he could get access to Obanathy, he might be able to grab Octovato’s work.
The Ironcoats crossed the room, still laughing, and both left with their big black boots squeaking on the wood floor—a floor Ymir had to polish. But not for very much longer.