CHAPTER 125 – Rule of the Gifted

She sang and chanted as she worked the forge, robes thrown back around her waist, bare-chested and indifferent to the sparks struck by her hammering. In her mind their burn could not assail her, for her skin was a scaled aegis — indifferent to every flame but that of fellow dragons. No momentary pain would dissuade her from her labour.

How transformed her song! Now she sang not with fury, but with potency, weaving melodies of her own from the draconic tongue that expanded upon the ancient elven verses once taught by Eletha. So too the singer was changed, for temporary muscle bunched across her torso with every swing, beating into submission the iron she worked, folding layer upon layer to render the metal purer.

Few but her would go to such lengths. Various grades of iron were stacked on the shelves nearby, including conjured iron sealed in oil, uncontaminated even by rust. Yet Saphienne had a theory she was determined to explore.

Satisfied at last, she ceased her singing and set the billet to cool on the anvil, relinquishing her tools and dismissing the Transmutation spell that had given her the vigour she had no desire to cultivate through exercise. She strode across the sandy floor to retrieve a towel, drying herself with one hand as she drank from a pitcher with the other.

Six months had passed since her triumph, and her left hand no longer trembled.

“I can’t imagine humans working with hotter fires.”

She spoke as though addressing herself, but the hyacinths potted on the workbench before her stirred to answer. “They lack for elven song; so too the dwarves.”

Saphienne smirked she set the pitcher down, then leant against the bench with mischief in her gaze. “Impress me: finish that rhyme along with your thought.”

Rattling, the petals of the flowers yellowed. “Why else the trade upon Hareña’s wharves? Or did Filaurel lie, when she did say for elven steel the world does costly pay?”

“How do you do that? Do you plan out your speech in couplets?”

“‘Tis intuitive,” Hyacinth replied, breaking from her poesy, “and I employ common rhymes when uncertain.”

Shaking her head as she reached for her unworn sleeves, Saphienne didn’t hide her suspicion from the spirit. “That suggests you knew I was going to test you.”

“I did. Leave down your robe?”

She paused with a widening smile. “Is that lust I sense?”

The blossoms darkened to rosy red — and not in embarrassment.

Saphienne left her garment hanging from her belt as she tossed down the towel and turned away, her long, blonde braid trailing her as she returned to inspect the metal. She enjoyed being admired by Hyacinth, for the bloomkith was the only person whom she allowed to see her figment. That others saw her as the elf she’d always appeared to be was inconsequential, for someone beheld her clawed and fanged… and with desire.

“You’ve been talking to Holly,” Saphienne noted. “Did she share a cutting?”

“My want is my own, slow grown from our walking.” Hyacinth had learned sexual desire from her beloved — incorporated it into her ephemeral substance.

“That didn’t answer my question.”

A rustling like a sigh filled the room. “…Unrelenting, you are. If you would press me, grant me admittance.”

Saphienne glanced back across her shoulder fondly. “We can’t: I have work to do, and Iolas and Celaena will be arriving this afternoon. You’ll have to wait until later.”

Hyacinth drooped, her voice sulking. “Cruellest of masters. How much more terribly will you treat me, when your familiar I become? Am I to perish for lack of water?”

“I ‘water’ you regularly.” She rolled her eyes back to the dull iron. “Thirsty though you are, you’ll hardly die from thirst.”

“Should I take another lover?”

Her illusory tail flicked. “…Goading one such as I is not wise, maple-blooded.”

“Perhaps Laewyn? Or shall I seek out Thessa, for when Taerelle next visits?”

Saphienne’s growl was gentle.

“Then again, if he is to visit today, I have walked with Iolas–”

She spun in scandal. “You would never! Not with Iolas!”

Hyacinth’s smile was visible in the swaying of her stems. “Have I not?”

Now her tail lashed, her reptilian pupils thin and teeth bared as she stalked back to the potted plant with claws itching where they protruded from her fingertips. “You haven’t done that with him. I was your first: don’t pretend otherwise.”

“But not my last, the way you decline to–”

Conveniently, figments were dependent upon belief, which meant that when Saphienne pressed the sharp edge of her claw to the base of Hyacinth’s stems the bloomkith felt the threat, and quietened.

Her voice lowered. “I’ll prune you for your insolence.”

Hyacinth’s flowers rustled, restless. “…I would not complain…”

Then Saphienne snorted, and they both laughed as the tension broke.

“Laelansa has your measure,” she told the spirit. “She assumed your influence was what had made us willing to let her lead. She’ll be delighted to discover you’re so needy.”

“I would like that…” Hyacinth flourished as she daydreamed. “…I would like to fall in love with her as well. Together with the novice priest, I would worship at your altar–”

“Stop!” Saphienne abandoned her playful superiority. “I really do want to finish my work before they arrive.”

“…To be continued, Master Saphienne.”

“Good girl.” She ignored the ripple of pink she provoked in the petals as she brought her hands together and concentrated, aligning herself with the sigil of the Least Gift of Sunlight as she invoked the bounty of the daytime. Wordlessly, she moved to the open doorway and dropped the spell on the threshold in the morning sunshine, where magic concentrated into the semblance of a flower.

Hyacinth’s interest was immediate. “May I partake?”

“Didn’t I say you’ve been good?”

Saphienne grinned at the cool breeze which slid past her as she went back to the anvil, there to busy herself casting a Divination spell of the Second Degree.

Hyacinth used the gifted nourishment to weave a floral shell from her flowers, stumbling as she uprooted her feet from the floor. “Sand discomfits me. Could you not use clay instead?”

“Not a bad idea.” The magician scrutinised the minute crystals patterning the iron, examining the impurities that remained. “That would give me a surface to write on. Less comfortable on bare feet, though…”

Hyacinth draped herself on Saphienne’s shoulder, her cold greenery fashioned into an uncannily detailed elven semblance. “My roots prefer stone or clay over sand. This foundation is unsteady.”

“You just want to complain.”

“I do.” She leaned her petalled head against Saphienne’s. “I am like an elf in her teenage years: taming myself. My constant want is more curse than boon.”

Her lover giggled. “A sweet curse.”

“Only as sweet as–”

Saphienne cut the bloomkith off by turning and catching her floral mouth in a kiss, tongue irritated by the hyacinths. She didn’t take physical pleasure in kissing the shell, but Hyacinth always seemed to, and the stunned reaction she provoked was ever delightful.

When they parted Saphienne immediately gestured for Hyacinth to fetch the pitcher, promptly rinsing out her mouth. “…I’m going to be feeling that throb all day…”

“Do you wish my healing?”

Saphienne wasn’t naïve enough to welcome her within. “I’ll endure. How is it that you’re so desirous when you don’t have–”

“Flowers are not indifferent to the buzzing of the bees.” The bloomkith yearned where she settled against her master. “To acquire the instinct for coupling is to be frustrated: I have no flesh, yet I must fuck.”

That won further giggles from Saphienne.

Hyacinth studied the iron. “Is this for another gift?”

Saphienne’s eyes flitted to the workbench, where lay several enchantments, ready to be given to her loved ones. “No. And it’s not related to the Tome of Correspondence, either — I’m taking my time working on that.”

Blossoms trailed admiringly up her arm. “Then for what do you flex and strain?”

“I have a hypothesis about a magical metal.” Reaching out, Saphienne turned over the forged iron, sufficiently cooled from contact with the anvil that she wasn’t seared, merely uncomfortable. “Adamantine is unbreakable, and usually made from iron or steel…”

“Your coin was neither.”

Were she fully clothed by her robes, she would have produced the disc from her pocket. “I don’t know how I brought about the change. Conventional theory holds that how I comprehended copper and the coin counted most, but my intuition says the material substance was equally important. Specifically, I suspect that the imperfections mattered: Faylar recently told me human coins are often crudely alloyed with other metals.”

Hyacinth tried to follow her logic. “You believe there were traces of iron?”

She surveyed the distortions in the billet’s grain. “That isn’t what intrigues me. More accomplished magicians than myself produce orichalcum from purified gold, mythril from purified silver, but adamantine is harder to form from pure iron. That suggests to me there’s a secret to be uncovered… eventually…”

“To what end?”

Saphienne wondered. “No specific purpose. I’ve just been thinking about the boundaries between one semblance and another; about composition; about what we assume when we talk about these things, and what we mean by strength. That’s what inspired me.”

Hyacinth gave no comment, subtly stroking the frills atop Saphienne’s tail.

 

* * *

 

There were spirals in the grass outside the ritual space.

“More signs of the dragon.” Hyacinth hid her amusement. “My sisters despair about these symptoms. For how long will they continue to appear? Has the dragon not gone?”

Despite the spirit’s teasing, Saphienne wasn’t convinced they were her doing. “No one really knows. Dragonflare has been observed to exert influence for years. We’re lucky that Parthenos wasn’t here for long.”

“How terrible it would be, were a dragon to dwell in our vale!”

She glared at the bloomkith as she let her figment disperse, not daring to maintain the hallucinatory form outdoors. “I’ll leave you to correct this; plant your shell in the flowerbeds if you like. I’ll call for you when I’m done for the day.”

Hyacinth duly moved among the spring flowers, crouching down to root her shell by hand and foot. “Should I be slow to answer, blame Holly for detaining me.”

“Convey my regards to her; and to Nelathiel, if you see her.”

“The two are never apart for long…”

As ever, the bloomkith swirled around Saphienne before she left — but such had her boldness increased that she flurried beneath the magician’s robes, caressing her beloved before she departed the material woodlands.

Saphienne found herself blushing as she went into the house.

 

* * *

 

The kitchen was unchanged, as was the sitting room beyond, but Saphienne admired the glades that Thessa had painted on the walls — bright and vivid transitions between spring and summer, complementing the emerald furnishings. She intended to enchant them with figments when she found time; she still appreciated Illimun’s artistry from when she’d lived with Celaena.

Climbing the stairs, she passed by the bathroom, then the narrow guest room, continuing past the former studio that was now her bedroom and along the extended landing, going through the open door to the second tree. There she leant on the railing, pretending her attention was on the bark-strewn floor of the enclosure below.

Eight blue legs crept down the nearby wall.

She remained where she was. “…Don’t jump on my shoulder…”

Minina instead pounced onto the railing, scrambling to find purchase, her fangs digging into the wood as she righted herself and waved a leg.

Saphienne shifted her weight onto her elbow as she reached out to pet the spider, who’d grown as large as both her hands put together. “Excellent manners! But you’re getting too big to spring around like that. What would happen if you fell?”

Contemplation showed in four pairs of eyes as the aberration considered this, and then Minina attached her golden webbing to the wood and tumbled off, dangling over the drop before descending.

“That’s not a solution,” Saphienne tutted as she went over to the spiral staircase. “You could have missed! If you’re going to leap around, tether yourself first — and remember to clean up your webbing when you’re done.”

Minina was indignant where she climbed onto a golden, silken hammock placed under the landing, baring her fangs and tapping a rear leg.

“Oh, don’t be childish.” The magician lay down beside the spider, lifting an arm so that Minina could nestle against her. “Think of how upset I’d be if you were hurt. Do you want to make me cry?”

This calmed her arachnid friend, who settled, laying one limb on Saphienne’s stomach as she huddled close.

“Let’s see…” Saphienne casually cast a minor translocation – Far Hand – to levitate a children’s book to her from a shelf across the room. “…I don’t have long to read to you this morning, so how about a short story?”

Minina raised a front leg in question.

“Because Celaena and Iolas are coming over–”

The spider began excitedly shimmying.

“–But not to play! I’m going to have to shut the door.”

She stilled. Her body lowered in sadness.

“There may be time for games after. If there isn’t,” Saphienne promised as she opened the book and thumbed through its pages, “then I’ll take you for an extra long walk this evening. No, not through the village — more people need to meet you first.”

Consoled, Minina placed her foot back atop Saphienne.

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“Let’s see… this is a good one for us. It’s a story about a little duckling who didn’t quite belong. You remember those noisy birds at the lake? Well, maybe we’ll go visit them again…”

 

* * *

 

Once Minina was dangling below the hammock, asleep, Saphienne returned upstairs, brandishing her hallucinatory seal before quietly shutting the door to the library behind herself and drawing the privacy bolt.

She needn’t have bothered: she wasn’t going to be disturbed.

Minina had stopped trying to get inside once Saphienne had relented and shown the spider around. Whatever the curious aberration had imagined lay within, she’d been disappointed by the sparse bookshelves lining the walls – less than a quarter filled – and the starry lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Perhaps the room would look more impressive with figments? Yet they’d be wasted, for few people other than Saphienne would see them.

At least the view from the window was good where the large, abjuration-reinforced pane overlooked the hillock in the garden. Minina hadn’t spent long staring out, entranced instead by the mirror standing in the centre of the room.

Saphienne had known why. Later that night, Minina had raised a foreleg in question, pointed to herself, then counted to two.

“No, my Minina, there aren’t any other spiders like you. Rydel didn’t intend for you to be so intelligent — he doesn’t even know how his Transmutation spell did that. Oh, Minina: please don’t be sad. Just because you were an accident doesn’t mean you’re unwanted…”

Part of Saphienne wished to expand on his work, that Minina might find companionship with others like herself. Yet the Luminary Vale would never approve… and intentionally creating sentient aberrations was the height of hubris. The best she could do was provide the spider a home until old age claimed her.

Saphienne blinked at her reflection. Would seeing herself as an elf always make her morose? She put the memory out of mind and went to close the curtains, thereafter stripping and cleansing herself with a spell before she reviewed the new robes and jewellery waiting upon a mannequin behind the mirror, especially crafted by her for the occasion.

Her mood soon lifted. She had a reason to be joyful.

Today she would finally tutor her friends.

 

* * *

 

Almon had exhausted every pretence to delay her. His inevitable concession had been preceded by several minutes of pacing and muttering, passing back and forth before the unlit fireplace in his parlour, entertaining Saphienne where she sat in his high-backed chair.

“You have adequately distilled the essence of the fundamentals,” he admitted as he propped himself against the mantlepiece. “You’re unqualified to teach apprentices of your own, but your grasp of pedagogy is tentatively sufficient to support the work of a highly competent teacher. You may begin later this week, after their lesson.”

She steepled her fingers, finger rings and bangle inactive where they were worn upon her left hand. “You mean you can’t fault my memorisation and analysis of the reading, and instructing me any further would rise to the level of education available at the Luminary Vale — so you’re forced to set me loose.”

His dour expression told her she was right.

Humming, Saphienne slipped her hands into her sleeves as she sat forward. “Shall we proceed to the ground rules? You must have written some.”

“Conceived in principle.” Her former master folded his arms. “Given your formidable record in subverting rules as written, we’re not going to engage in a back and forth over definitions. When it comes to the education of Iolas and Celaena, as far as you are concerned, I am a capricious and vengeful tyrant.”

She smiled, having expected no less. “Fine enough, old friend. How shall I avoid your vengeance?”