Let their eyes paint me...

Oliver learns to naviigate the webs of the city.

The darkening sunset invoked lucifer lanterns over the city streets of Balthispeare. In turn, our trapped, hovering fireflies called forth my inhuman colleagues—arcane artists who veil their faces with shadow to blend among the human. Soon they dared to pass in front of my window.

The night belongs to whatever elves and goblins can stitch their weirdness into the grayed edges —not that we of the wizards' college are less monstrous. It is only that, in sunshine, we dare to pretend. That didn't help me as I put my palm on the oak of the door.

The wood stood strong against my soft palms, rough against my finely stitched suit.

It wouldn't fling me out to my death among the shadow lovers, but neither would cowering all day provide me the help I couldn't get in the library. I pulled back, and looked about.

My brother, majestic in his polished blackened armor, sat facing the fire.

I could not summon the courage to venture forth. Fortunately if you find the right thread to pull, you will unravel any mystery. I could 'invoke' the shame of my brother. "Moll?"

My brother tasted the ale in his tankard–his right as a man of fifteen summers. His eyes looked toward me and fell away.

"I um, need to visit the night bazaar."

He glared at me. "Nothing stopping you."

The shiny Temple and its students refused to trifle with the unhoused merchants. But they were here and they had the fireberry wine–for when my lazy spirit refused to release its power. "I'm out of fireberry potion."

"Did you never think to come by it honestly?"

The lazy man's path. I swallowed and dodged. "The official sources are tightly guarded."

"No, Oliver. You're not some hobgoblin or lowly peasant. Gather your forces. Do the blasted work."
I
I pulled at my collar. Other people drew power as needed. Try as I might, I had to eke it out. No matter how sharply I studied, or how clear I spoke, the spells took too long—and drew too much out of me. Even with my fireberry, I fell behind. "Moll, you don't understand."

"Damn right I don't. You want to be some kind of wizard? Why could you not join the knights? — do something honorable?"

I was getting nowhere. I would have to uplevel my work. I raised my voice. "Don't you understand? I am doing everything I can. I'm going to be disgraced."

The serving lady gave Moll a sharp look.

He raised his hands to tamp me down.

"It''s a reagent. No kind of cheat. If you deny me I'll be banished from the college. Is that what you want?"

He stood up. "Pipe down you little bug or I'll—" he raised his gauntleted hand as if wanting to slap me.

I stepped forward, gathering all my bravery, and speaking as if on the testing stage, "Is it?"

He shook his head and turned his back to me.

"What's wrong, Moll? Afraid someone will know our family is a bunch of imposters?"

"Calm down and we'll talk, Oliver."

I lowered my face and my voice. "Take me shopping and I'll be quiet, Mollard."

At last, with a barely-audible groan, Moll swept aside the door with the swagger befitting his size and station. Striking, even with the muted gray of his journeyman-knight plate mail, my brother paraded through the streets.

Our every step led unerringly to the bazaar. With luck, I might win the fireberry potion and keep up with my classwork. "Thank you for helping me with my studies."

"This is indecent. The dragon's justice sent them below for a reason."

I hid my own shame. The goblins and spider elves had been driven from the sunlit surface like monsters–but had it been the dragons? Or forces less discerning. "Where their worst remain."

He scoffed and glared at me over his shoulder.

Mollard would never tease out the half of what I studied. By his fifteenth summer, a man should have pulled at a few of the looser lies—I had begun already, three summers the junior. But then, the only truth that matters to the Temple is the gleam on their armor. "They have much to teach."

He kicked at the rocks and led me down crowded streets. People averted their gazes and stepped aside. "Monsters, warped and ruined by magic. If you weren't my brother…."

Without the warping magic nobody would accept your Temple's vile 'light,' Moll. I wondered if my brother would ever guess what the archwizards did to make his priests seem humane. To make Balthispeare smell like more than a rotting necropolis in service of Moll's Temple. I pushed my glasses back on my nose. "I thank you for your help, again."

A haughty man stepped by with his purchase flopped over his back. Fruits and bottles secured by a gauzy web sack swung back and forth. The wealthy man kicked a puddle up at a beggar child as he walked by.

The fat sweet dollfruit fell from the pack into the lap of the beggar child. Strands of spiderweb rolled back toward the vendor.

I smiled with satisfaction at the spider elves' sense of justice.


Mollard meanwhile, smirked at the 'gentleman.' "As long as they mind their place. Inside their place, they are still people."

He wanted to feel like a good person. I thought of the boy Dust, who said it better: 'Everyone has a place in our empire.' The hardest part of being an arcane student was remembering how hard it was to see the truth—the smoky serpents that first whispered these sweet-sounding stories. I rummaged in my rucksack for a bit of candy to calm myself.

Disappointed, Moll shrugged and continued on.

He still wanted my approval. Surely that thread would unravel by the end of winter. Till then, he was better than many spirits that I had to bargain with for my knowledge.

I counted a couple spider eves. Their once-ebon skin had brightened to deep purple from the time they had spent in light of moon and fire since reaching topside. Likely their first year.

Only a few of them dealt in arcane on the surface; none of them displayed what I needed. I feared I might lose my standing. I could perhaps pursue the art as a witch. Perhaps it was not so bad; I could study in the woods, free of the stain of sulphur and ink. Still, the threads all lead to me being lost outside the library—parchment in the rain.

A woman's voice cut through the din, whisper vibrating with such power that even a soldier could hear the arcane threat: "I'll send you back to your spider."

A great ominous glow of conjured power blotted out the mage's face. The violent orb crackled and spattered over the area. My skin itched and my stomach churned as the undisciplined witch gloated, "and I'll own everything you have. Unless …?"

A day elf, skin as pale as mine and Mollard, pulled me back. "Mot tilli."

Not your fight, she warned, in the wizard's cant, but if—as that implied—I was a friend, I dared not hold back. I stopped Moll. "Look, she's robbing that spider elf."

Moll shrugged.

"The witch?" Clearly no licensed mage would spray power across the plaza, out and vulnerable.

Moll did a quick scan of the crowd. Nobody wanted to face the witch, but they all looked at her with disgust.

Moll nodded and brandished his trident in the air. "For the Honor of the Temple!"

My face turned red as I realized that this had become about making the Temple look good.

The witch brandished her wand at him. ..


"Stand back, ignorant cultist. I shall make it worth your time."

"You can do no such thing."

The witch gesticulated at Moll. "It is my right as a citizen to pass judgment on the enemies of humanity."

Mollard chuckled with thespian flair. "And mine to purge those who dishonor it."

I pulled off a strand of the witch's power, to weave into Moll's protection, even before she took aim at my brother.

She screamed. "Upon my soul, I shall darken your Temple and sacrifice it to the ratspiders." Like a storm of knives, her hail of raw power fell upon Moll.

My hasty net tangled barely two-thirds of the blades, the rest clawing his armor and tearing at exposed areas.

He raised his trident, calling down the 'holy' Brilliance.

The flash seared through my eyelids, leaving me feeling as if I had stared too long at the sun.

The witch stumbled.

"Warlock, breaker of oaths, zombie soul, I remand you to the custody of your gods." He charged and skewered her with his trident.

The word 'gods' sounded like a song of hate, exposing many threads of the Temple's secret lore. It wasn't the elves they hated, but the gods that made them.

Having executed the bandit witch—this uneducated mistress of arcane art— the Brilliance reduced her to a cold and bitter black ash that vanished in the breeze.

The crowd cheered. Justice—such as it was in the theater of the Temple—had been served.

She deserved a trial, not theater of justice. Had she deserved death for her overreach? Yet the spider elves did not deserve to face her knives, let alone the massed constabulary and the shining armor of Moll's masters. I dared to hope this had been a good thing.

Moll chose a nearby seat. The spider elf girl fairly leaped off the barrel to make room.

The spider elves gathered and cleaned his wounds with their spider web. The powder clung to the wounds and sealed them, leaving him visibly refreshed.

"Please, accept our favor." The lead offered an ivory tub with an ornate black spider on it.

Face reddening, Moll slapped it aside. "Mind your place."

One of them offered me another, smaller tub—the size of my palm—and I took it with a smile and thank you.

Moll brought the butt of the trident up under my knuckles, flinging the tub across the way— where the bystander elf caught it. With a wink at me, she passed it to a spider elf and stitched herself into the night.

I looked in horror at my so-called brother.

Moll boxed my ears with his weapon and, through gritted teeth, hissed, "Do you want them to think we are nothing more than vassals of these god-warped zombie souls?"

Holding back the tears, I shook my head and ignored the hands of the boy slipping something into my secret pocket.

***

Sadly empty-handed and drained of magical might, I returned to the college.

"Room inspections are coming and you, Oll?" The upperclassman sneered at me. "Not ready."

I glared at him.

He wiggled the Temple trident rune hanging from his necklace.

What had they done? Had they already turned the students against me? As the warmth ran from my face, I rushed to my dorm.

A student girl stood at the head of my stairs, ear tips covered by her silvery hair. Fihvyx, I reembered—quiet, talented. I knew nothing more than that, except that she was the bystander elf that warned me from helping the others. I hadn't known Fihvyx was an elf, though a proper student of the arcane, however exceptional. I didn't need to trifle with that thread just yet.

The proctor stood outside of my room. "A few conjurations of acid should wash your walls away. Oliver. If only you had the time."

Fihvyx followed me.

The proctor sneered at her and walked past. "If only you had the time to gather your forces. I'm sure you'll enjoy life as a hedge witch."

Bright red paint scrawled the words "I love the Spiders" across the walls of my room. Enough to warrant expulsion with this proctor. I would be lucky to find a forest cottage where I could enchant herbs.

I needed the fireberry more than ever—with it, I would pass out from the exertion. Without it, laziness would delay my work and cast me out of this ivory tower into the streets. At least I might find friends. "I'm faster at conjuring the acid than they think." I started the incantation.

Fihvyx pulled at my secret pocket. "Not that fast." A gauzy tissue gathered from the tub into her hand—they had gifted me with their web. It clung to the paint and pulled it from the wall.

If caught, Fihvyx could be expelled—as an elf, she surely would. "Why are you helping me?"

She grinned and shoved my shoulder. "You're stupid for a wizard. I mean, I should ask you why. If only we had the time."

I checked the hall as the proctor entered the upperclassman's dorm.

"You'll need to hide me." She pulled at the paint as they came out of my neighbor's dorm, dropping it in an inkwell.

The paint fell only in the well. I scarcely had time to wonder if the skill were in Fihvyx or, as I felt, in the web itself. If the latter, then this was no small gift.

"If you're measured with the corrosive, then-"

A valuable ink, but not as valuable as her space in the college. "They're coming."

She stuck a framed picture with the web and crawled under my bed.

The Proctor smirked at me, guessing that we had not finished our clean up. "A point lost for that improper picture on the wall." He marked it on the clipboard.

I sighed and brushed the blanket over the edge to help veil her presence.

"I see you're better prepared than I dared guess." He sniffed at the room and stepped by my bed. "But you're hiding something."

I pulled at my collar.

He gesticulated in the air—drawing up a mage hand if I dared guess.

Fihvyx' golden slipper kicked out, and she struggled to pull her foot back as the proctor ticked her foot.

She squeaked as she tried to hold her laughter.

"A girl? I had thought you too young." The proctor released her, and then whispered in my ear. "Take heed. We don't need any half elves."

After he left I closed the door. "Okay, it's safe."

She crawled out and blotted her lips with the paint from the wall.

"I don't want them thinking of you like that."

"We're concerned about how they think of you, not me." She placed a kiss mark on my cheek, and a steadying hand on my chest. "Let their eyes dress me as the whore rather than your friend. If that keeps our friend safe."

As I blinked away the tears at that, she held her face close to mine. No statue ever captured such beauty.

"Humans. So old, so early." She smiled at me, eyelids fluttering, and stroked my chin with her finger. Her head tilted, and her breath smelled of cinnamon and fireberry. "That one was for show."

I swallowed, unsure what would happen.

"This was for you." A quick, gentle kiss. She stepped back, and scratched at my cheek with a dry quill. With a wink she combed her hair over her ear points. At last, she bowed out and left the room.

As the flutterblades in my stomach faded and the sweetness flowed through my body, I threaded my mind to think. They would see her mark—wizards could see the hidden runes. Even I could, with my glasses on.

"Wait! Won't they…" But she had run from me.

"Something on your cheek, Oll?" The upperclassman looked impressed.

I cringed. "What does it say?"

"Says you got fine taste in girls, kid." He stared at me. "The lipstick stain?"

Of course—I blushed at my stupidity. Fihvyx knew how to smuggle a secret. I yearned to think that on the inside, I had less in common with the humans of Balthispeare than the goblins.

"Kid, you're Oll Korrect." He brushed my head and twiddled with his pitchfork—ah, Temple trident—pendant. "Wouldn't have mussed up your room if I'd known what you were on about."