5th Frostfall
He’d been surprised by how well-stocked the kitchen had turned out to be. Most mages seemed to forget about boring, ordinary things like food, Nerussa being an obvious example. Lydia could usually manage to convince her to eat one proper meal a day, at least, but most of the time she was rushing around, doing things, studying new spells, or scribbling in that journal of hers, and they just tried to keep things she could eat with a spare hand without grumbling that it was dripping onto the page. His ears were still ringing from the time he’d brought her a tomato and she’d bitten into it, thinking it was an apple.
She’d taken a spell tome, Rune of Dampening, out of her pack before he went down to the kitchen, but she’d looked awfully comfortable on the bed, and he was pleased to find she’d fallen asleep when he came upstairs with two bowls of stew. He absently waved a hand at Nerussa’s food, and the steam coalesced to form a lid, keeping the heat in the bowl. He picked up a book, Thief of Virtue, and began to eat.
An hour or so later, he climbed the ladder and lifted the trapdoor to the roof of the tower. The light was beginning to change, and he supposed it was time to wake Nerussa. She ate quickly, and told him off five times for letting her sleep so long, which he took as a sign she was more or less recovered. They gathered their things, wrapped their cloaks around themselves, and headed out.
“How did you keep my food warm for so long?”
“Hmm? Oh, I don’t know, it just sort of does that.”
“I see. Any idea what the meat was?”
“None at all!” But probably wolf, he thought.
They made good progress, and were in Winterhold for nightfall, Nerussa stopped in to the Frozen Hearth to pay for Rumarin’s bed for the night, and they headed up to the College. Sure enough, the Orc, whose name was actually Mugnor, was there.
“Sure, I’ll teach you some magic. In return, you let me replace your brain with Dwemer gears and wheels, powered by rodents.”
Nerussa was rather alarmed to realise he actually seemed to be considering the offer, but evidently he drew the line at Mugnor’s suggestion that skeevers would be the best animals for the task. Mugnor huffed at them both, and a few moments later they heard the door of the Hall of Attainment slam.
“I’m sorry to say it, but I don’t think our plan is working out.”
“No… it’s almost starting to look as though I don’t have the talent to be anything more than a bladebinder. But that would mean I’m not perfect! A stunning revelation, I certainly never saw it coming.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but she could see he was thinking, and kept quiet.
“What if… Look, Otero once said, if you want to learn to juggle swords, it does no good to practice with wooden ones. This is going to sound crazy, but… maybe if you pummel me with a spell, my survival instinct will kick in, and I’ll fashion a ward?”
“Sounds like fun!”
“Wait! I don’t like your tone. You do realise I want you to aim at my feet, right? Because I’m not completely sure you got that part. I did apologise for letting you sleep so long, remember?” Ah, she had to admit, teasing the younger Mer was entertaining sometimes.
“Fine, yes, got it. Aim for the face. Oops, I mean feet!” He glared at her, but he couldn’t keep it up and soon he was grinning. Good, she wanted to catch him off guard, and she quickly whipped her hands, spells charged, from behind her back, and shot a stream of frost magic at him. She knew the necklace she’d lent him earlier would keep him safe enough, but just as she’d thought, the distraction seemed to help, and just as he’d hoped, instinct took over and a weak, but still noticeable, ward began to spread out from his hand. It shattered immediately, but that didn’t matter – he’d cast it! Caught up in the excitement, she ran over and hugged him for a few moments before remembering herself and pulling away. He looked a little confused, but then he shook his head slightly and stared down at his hand.
“I think I did it? I mean, I don’t know, I’ve never done it before, but… I think I felt it. Smaller than a juniper berry, admittedly, but I did, didn’t I? I actually felt the ward coming out of my hand! It worked! Not sure I could really even call it a lesser ward, maybe a lesser-than-lesser ward? Or the least ward. Barely enough to cover a nipple. But still, a ward!”
“Congratulations, I’d say this makes you a mage!”
“Oh, now, let’s not get carried away. I’m still a bladebinder. I’m just a… a wardbinder, on my days off.”
“Do you think you could learn other spells like this?”
“I’m not sure, perhaps. The better question is, do I want to? At the moment, on balance, after what it took to learn this one? Perhaps not. Still, I appreciate all your help, you know. I know you’ve got all that Dragonborn business to worry about, and your, erm, other work. Look, it’s not much, but I wanted to give you this. I, erm. Lydia made it. For you. But, well. From me.”
The war paint made it a little hard to tell, but Nerussa thought he might actually be blushing a bit as he fumbled around in his pack and brought out a little bundle of cloth. He shoved it into her hand, made a big show of realising what time it was, and exclaimed that he’d better dash before the innkeeper locked the doors for the night.
Nerussa watched him go, and sat down with the bundle in her lap. She stared at it for a moment, then unfolded the cloth. There was a piece of paper inside, wrapped around something cool and heavy.
“N – your eyes always light up when you find one of your shiny pebbles. I thought you might like to wear some. R.”
Well, that explained some of the missing silver. And Lydia really was talented. In Nerussa’s lap sat a bracelet, set with three sapphires. She stared at it for a minute, then slipped it on, and took out her spell tome, twisting the cool metal around her wrist with the other hand as she read.
4th Frostfall
Da, Ma,
Please tell Aunt Nilif not to worry about Dagmir too much, he is faring much better thanks to the help of the local alchemist’s apprentice, who is a friend of my Thane. She is a strange one. You probably already heard she’s a High Elf (she says “Altmer”), and she really is from the Summerset Isles, but when I told her it was my cousin with those Thalmor, she just told her friend, another Elf, to stay out of the way of the mage (she says they are very weak to magic, something about their god wanting to balance things out?) and attacked.
One of the Elves was a bit broader than they usually are, and it only took a day or so to re-work her armour to fit me - good job we had two sets, so I could use Oengul's smelter to smelt some pieces down and extend the main set where it needed to be broader still! Oengul showed me how to work the metal so you can't really even tell there's a join, especially with the way the material is blackened with the goldish colour only showing through at the edges.
I do miss my steel a bit, but heavy armour does slow you down a lot, and I can move almost as fast as my Thane in this. Don’t worry, though, it’s stronger than you would think to look at it, and I can dodge better, so I am probably safer, really. At least I wear armour, my Thane mostly does not – she’s got a set of leather boots, greaves and a sort of half cuirass she wears over a tunic, but mostly she wears her enchanted robes. She moves like lightning in them, though, and she says she finds it easier to cast if she can move freely.
I think my Thane’s friend is sweet on her. He asked me to make her a bracelet, to thank her for helping with something, he said. Well, none of the other people she has helped have come out with me early in the morning to scour the Reach for a vein of silver, that’s for sure. And he is one of those theatre people, not one for hard work with a pickaxe at all. He won’t even carry weapons unless we are going into a tomb where you need silver. Da, bet you never thought when you were promising me Draugr couldn’t fit under my bed, that your little girl would be slicing their heads off with a silver blade she made herself! My Thane uses her magics on them. And her Voice! Oh, Ma, Da, you should hear her. I’m hoping we will be able to come to visit soon. Not that I should probably ask her to use her Voice just to show off, but I bet if Granda asked her, she would.
I will be working on something else while she and her friend go up to the College, but I will tell you about that when I see you, I must go now and meet the person who is going to help me with it.
Love you both,
Lydia
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Comments
Sotek struggled in wolf armor so I can sympathise with the steel situation.
Great chapter Gnewna.