Iron Elf - A Race Reborn (Book 2) (31 page)

CHAPTER 25: ANGROD

The meat I caught went into every course, even dessert. As I discovered, the perfect finish to a well-earned dinner was a cream caramel with just a hint of liver.

Full of food, I found myself wandering the halls. There was little else to do. For the greater part of a year I’d done nothing but eat, train, and sleep. And also make love to Tamril whenever the mood struck. She wanted it all the time and she didn’t feel properly lubricated till after her first delight.

One upside to accepting my fate was that I no longer had any problems making love to the queen. So what if I was sleeping with Arawn’s woman? By the time he found out I’d be too dead to care.

So we wandered into each other’s bedrooms and petted each other in odd corners of the palace. We fucked in the wine cellar, we fucked on the rooftops, we fucked in the king’s own orange grove. Who could stop us? To all appearances I was the king. I’d worried that Tamril might tell the difference, but she never did. The ring’s magic was potent indeed.

That’s why I walked the halls. Stennik the court alchemist had arrived one night and I wanted more information on the ring, as much as I could get without revealing my secret. I peeked into his workshop. He looked at me over his corrective lenses. Glasses, they were called. “Come in, Angrod.”

“Is there anyone who doesn’t know?”

“Oh loverboy? Where aaare you, loverboy? I’m ready for dessert now!”

“Nevermind.” I closed the door. “Gods but that woman has an appetite.”

“I bought those rings for the king, so of course I knew. Did you need something? Perhaps for your digestion?”

A heavy door separated the storeroom from the rest of the workshop. Inside the storeroom were shelves of every sort of potion and powder. “Here are concoctions to ensnare the senses and bewitch the mind. Here in these bottles are elixirs of life and doses of death.”

“Got anything to make lions out of cowards?”

He shook his head. “Rage I can brew, but true courage I cannot. Valour, like all true things, must flow from the heart.”

“Are those bitchy pills?”

“They’ve saved many a marriage. Anyway, I trust you found the massage oil satisfactory?”

We walked back into the workshop, which had none of the clutter of a wizard’s lab. A mage’s workspace tended toward crystal balls, stuffed alligators, and stacks of books holding up tables, the tables themselves piled high with bubbling experiments and forgotten meals. In contrast, Stennik’s workspace was painfully neat. Probably because there weren’t many flat surfaces, just a single heavy table.

“Mess means mistakes,” he said. “Mess makes missiles. One task at a time—that’s the rule when things go boom.”

Caprans were known for their volatile magic. I spotted buckets of sand and water, plus a woollen fire blanket hanging from a rack. “Do you really need elf blood?”

“The blood of any magical creature will do. But never fear, I use voluntary donations. Stress tends to ruin the quality, in any case. Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t lean—aiiee!”

Too late, I’d torn through the wall. I was on my back, looking at an upside-down pond.

“Don’t you know the fourth wall is paper?”

I’d forgotten that these workshops had one flimsy wall, the better to channel an explosion where it could do least harm. “Sorry.” I got to my feet. The lattice was wrecked and the paper in tatters. “I’ll replace that.”

“I have spares. But let’s sit in my office.”

“For us, magic is a volatile thing, a little-understood animal that punishes mistakes most severely. It’s like walking a tightrope in the dark, over a pit of stakes. That’s why we don’t cast spells the way elves do.”

“Wasn’t it a capran who carved out Pithe Lake?”

“He had help. An elf teleported him before he could be consumed by his own working. No, we usually stick to potions..”

An alchemist could still make mistakes, but at least it was a controlled environment. And while it could take several tries to produce something, such concoctions could be relied upon to work as intended. They were basically bottled spells.

“Blood is the primal ingredient. To cast a spell you need a living, thinking being, and to preserve that spell you need a part of that being—or some similar creature. You could mix potions out of just blood and water if you wished. Why bother with other ingredients? For the colour. For the flavour. For the symbolism. It wouldn’t do for every potion to look and taste the same. There’s branding to think about.”

I took another sip of lemonade. The alchemist drank neither wine nor coffee, preferring his nerves unimpaired. He did like his honey, though. “So caprans can use magic, but they can’t sense it?” I asked.

“Essentially, yes. Dwarves, on the other hand, can’t use magic themselves, but they can certainly sense it.”

“They can,” I said. It wasn’t quite as good as elven Sight, but dwarves could identify artefacts by touch. Presumably it was the same thing that allowed them to create magic items.

All artefacts carried the memory of a spell, a memory that must be constantly renewed. Here, again, a living mind was necessary for the magic to work. Without users, enchanted items lost their potency. Elves had the best of both worlds—we could use and sense magic, giving us both power and fine control. “What about humans, then?”

“Humans don’t use magic. They are magic. But hypothetically speaking, if they were to gain conscious control of their healing power they could become true shapeshifters.”

“Ugh. They’re bad enough already.”

Fall turned to winter. Nothing much happened. The hunting tapered off and I spent more time training at the house. I slept, ate, and grew stronger.

Spring came early. Tamril and I went to watch the world thaw. The river cracked when the current quickened. The sheets of ice slid over one another but the larger slabs kept their shape so it seemed you could ride them to the sea. They moved slowly. Beneath them the waters tumbled. We’d grown close, the goat-girl and I. We held each other as the land stirred. My appointed day was closer.

Over the next few weeks I worked to get back in fighting weight. This was easier than I’d thought, as Vitus had already put me through the toughest part of the program. As we neared the end we focused on retaining my skills. Finally we stopped, except for the most basic workouts. It wouldn’t do to get injured.

I was in the best shape of my life. Give me a loincloth and I could pass for a wood elf.

The tournament was to take three days. The nobles began arriving two weeks before that. They came with glittering retinues, these ladies and lords of the Silver World, assembling in the customary field between the palace and the village. The villagers proved to be old hands at this and made a great deal of money. The deer and boar were nearly wiped out as knights and peasants teamed up to see them cooked. One was never far from the savour of roasting meat.

The first day of the tournament was for the melee. The knights arrayed themselves in two lines, then charged. The iron shock could be heard for miles. Another charge followed, and then the action broke into smaller combats as the warriors chased around the countryside. The rest of the morning and afternoon had them seeking each other’s ransoms. Reputations were made and heads were broken.

On the second day we had individual contests of skill. Those who were not too injured leaped into the saddle for mounted archery, mounted fencing, even mounted wrestling. Meerwen would’ve loved it. I myself would’ve enjoyed the carnival atmosphere, but I had to stay in my tent.

On the third day Hafgan rode in from the village, where he had been staying in secret. The games had produced several champions but every man of them shrank from this scowling giant. Just standing there he made their hard-fought trophies seem mere gilded baubles. Poor things beside the scars of a true fighting man.

“Are you sure you have nothing for me?” I asked Stennik. “Some drink, some golden draught to still my quaking knees and bowels? My mouth is dry. My hands are weak. I cannot fight.”

He shook his head. “As I told you, I cannot bottle courage. That is something you must find in yourself.”

Vitus slapped me. “Pull yourself together, prince of elves! There are worse things than death. Like surviving, but without a shred of self-respect. Pick up your bow!”