“This is how Riverhouse was made. The ancients created a solid mesh of energy stretching the entire length of Riverhouse. Then they fused it with stone and glass to make it solid to which they then created two more solid weaves of magic that encompass both the inside face and outside. In doorways and openings are where the energy of all three weaves tied together. These are critical points and integral toward the rigidity of the structure. These are what the wizards check when they do check at all.”

  Tic paused to see if Leldeif comprehended what he was saying and to his surprise, he was.

  “If you look at this junction you will see four equilateral triangles, base to base, making a square that is called the formation. Outside of that, you will see the other five types of triangles laid out in concentric rows starting with an isosceles triangle and ending with obtuse. Each row increases in size only to accommodate the expanding pattern as the number of shapes stay the same with zero gaps between each shape. That I call the clutch because it holds it all together. This is where the strength of the weave is so it is imperative that it stays healthy. Of course, the center square I call the nucleus. Within that nucleus, you see more squares getting smaller and smaller until they finally disappear into eternity, or at least it looks like eternity. That is a portal. When I am alone, I can project my energy into that point and my mind instantly knows the condition of the weaves for the entirety of Riverhouse from north to south.

  “Are we going to go into it?”

  “No,” Tic said instantly returning them to their own bodies in his home. “It is pretty weird in there and until I am more comfortable with this enhanced energy that I have here, I don’t want to risk it.”

  “Can other wizards go in to it like you just did?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t think so, otherwise they wouldn’t do all of the runes and chanting. Also the areas I repaired would have been replaced by them instead, which is not a good plan in actuality.”

  “Well then how can you do it so easily?” Leldeif’s tone had such an accusing quality that Tic was taken aback.

  “I don’t know that either, other than my basic concept of magic is different than what theirs is.”

  “Explain, please.”

  “Well, in all of the books I have read back in Lemure when I first started toying with this stuff, they always used magic like it was some kind of gift from the gods and it needed smoke and blood as well as obnoxious chanting to summon the gods and silly things like that. I on the other hand recognize it for what it truly is.”

  A pregnant pause occurred as they studied each other.

  “Okay, I’ll bite, what is magic?”

  “Math or physics if you prefer. No, seriously…that is all it is, is math. A math that I have never seen before and it is beyond our physical realm, but it is math nonetheless and still functions under the same basic principles of mathematics.”

  Another pause as the elf digested this. “That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.”

  “It makes a helluva lot more sense than the hocus pocus I see with their ridiculous animal sacrifices and pictures drawn in the dirt. The runes are already there, I just showed you one that is more powerful than any of them have access to and our ancestors made them hundreds of years ago. Just think about that junction, do you honestly think they could draw something that precise with a stick in the dirt or even with a quill on parchment? They can’t, therefore they are weak within the weave and do more damage than good. I recognize that the rune is already there…it’s always there, they are all over this place in fact and all you have to do is tap into them.”

  “I think you are pulling my leg.”

  “Really, I think they are pulling your leg. If they can access the stone at all, it is weakly and by all of the repairs that I had to make, their maintenance schedule has been lacking for many years.”

  Leldeif sat back and thought about what he had just found out for several moments before responding.

  “I don’t want to believe you, but after what I have seen…what you have shown me, I do. I just don’t know what I should do about it.”

  “Do about it? Nothing…there isn’t really much that you can do about it. I was brought here to establish my family’s business on this side of the Swirl. However, I think on a completely unrelated level I am here for another reason.”

  “You’re thinking pretty highly about yourself there,” the elf scolded.

  “No, I mean that it isn’t like that. It is more like that for the first time in my life I feel like I am where I am supposed to be.” It was Tic’s turn to pause as he pondered what he was to say next. He had never acknowledged to himself what had occurred because he didn’t realize what had been happening. He thought it had been nerves or anxiety, but now he realized it was more.

  “On the way over here, we took a stopover at an island where the frost piners were doing their summer harvest. It was called Tekundralokai, I don’t know if you have heard of it?”

  “Yes, the piners harvest there in the summer, the dwarfs establish a fishing camp there in the winter, and the elves hunt the giant lokai on the two islands north of it. It is a very commerce rich portion of the Swirl.”

  “Yeah, hm, I guess I didn’t know that it was all that popular. When I was there, I felt a pull or a curiosity that I had never experienced before. I needed to get here to this mainland and couldn’t have forced myself to go back to Lemure under any circumstances. I had never felt like that before so it was lucky that we had a lot of work to do for the piners on the island or I would have driven myself nuts.”

  “I bet the frostys love your product, you are the first to make a boot for elves and it will be interesting to see how they sell, elves don’t buy much you know.”

  “Yeah? We’ll see won’t we?” Tic stared off into the night as he planned to continue his story. “I needed to use the magic to formulate the idea, so it will take me some time to teach the apprentices the techniques involved. So back to Tekundralokai, we left the island when the elf king died and followed a stream of logs all the way here. It was cool but incredibly slow going. Leldeif, Leldeif?” Tic prompted seeing his friend had gone blank. He snapped his fingers in front of his face.

  “Oh, sorry. It’s just when you mentioned Lindrow’s death, my mind began to wander.”

  “I suppose it would, I mean from what I hear he was the top dog for all of your people.”

  “That he was, it is just hard to believe that something could actually kill the ornery cuss.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “Something like that, go on with your story.”

  “Oh, okay. The closer we got, the more anxious I became up until the very moment we entered Riverhouse and then it suddenly vanished. The feeling was gone the instant that I felt the energy in this place and it reached out to me, into me. I would even say that I felt the draw to come here before I even knew it existed,” Tic said and cringed when he saw Leldeif’s slight shake of his head to signal that he thought Tic was full of shit.

  “I mean it, Leldeif. You don’t know me all that well, but I am not prone to exaggeration. I had a good comfortable life back in Lemure, a life without complications. It was all laid out for me with a career and family. However, it didn’t feel like this place feels to me. Here…this is home and I know it. I need this place and this place needs me. I don’t plan on ever leaving it,” Tic said with complete conviction to which the elf laughed a giant belly laugh for a long time and just came short of pointing his finger right in Tic’s face.

  “Oh, you silly child, when you get to be my age you will see how long forever can be. I am quickly approaching the end of my second century, which is around the halfway point for elves. To say that you will never leave here is simply foolishness.” Leldeif’s tone was mocking to say the least, but Tic didn’t care. There was no way for the elf to understand how he was able to dedicate himself to things.

  “I don’t think I can leave, Leldeif. At least not for a while anyway. The weaves in here are under attack. Or at least I think it is an attack. It might be simple age and sloppy initiation and maintenance, which of course play a factor, but I believe it to be more than that.”

  “Really, can you stop it?”

  “Not sure, for now I am just going to keep tabs on the weaves, repair as I can until I figure out what is going on. Hey, you know I have told you some things that you may think are bullshit, but I would still ask you to keep them to yourself.”

  “Me? Who am I going to tell when you’re the only one I talk to?” He paused for a second before saying, “You mentioned an elf maiden and an aerial the other day. Could you tell me more about that?”

  “Sure, I can do better,” Tic said before holding his hands together and summoning power from what he said was the junctions within the weaves.

  A fuzzy three-dimensional image began to form in front of them. The elf couldn’t quite make it out completely, but he thought he could definitely see wings on one of the beings back.

  “That is definitely an aerial, can you make it clearer?”

  “I should be able to but can’t. They are in a place of power and have some sort of power with the weaves or runes as you all call them; there is interference. It could be a time lag because this place is very old or it could be distance, I just can’t tell. Maybe if I—” Tic said and his tone sounded strained with exertion as he concentrated upon the image. There was a sudden flash and the image cleared for just a fraction of time. Leldeif looked intently on the fuzzy image focusing on what Tic had said was an elf. How he could tell that, he didn’t know because even his sharp elven eye couldn’t tell. Only having one eye was a detriment when it came to distance, but this close, he should be able to see it clearer.

  The image flashed again and then again and kept repeating gaining in speed with each flash until it became a continuous strobe.

  “Juil,” Leldeif finally said in recognition.

  “What?”

  “It’s Juil. She is the princess of Lilieack and she looks like she is in trouble.”

  “Yeah, she is working out some kind of rune on the floor,” Tic said noticing her focus. “I don’t think it will work there though.”

  “Why is that?”

  “That place, it’s like, not really there…yet I feel like it has always been there, not only pre cataclysm, but from a time before that. I can’t explain it. The weaves of the structure are pulsing and fresh yet the stone that it is made from is very old. Stone cut from a crust that is many feet below what we currently stand on.” Tic’s had his eyes closed, the slight movements of his hands looked as if they were shaping something and his tone was soft, distant. Sweat beaded his brow and Leldeif grasped that this was taking a lot of energy from the young man.

  “Okay, I’ve seen enough.”

  “Wait, her energy is being blocked, I can see it. Someone is keeping her there…trapped, imprisoned. Maybe if I channel just a little into the center of her rune…”

  The room flashed with a large explosion that blasted both elf and human into the walls. The intense light faded and the world went dark, the blast having extinguished the lamps.

  * * *

  The rest of the day in Skorsdale was more of the same as Rowen made introductions and traded product with other dealers. They ate at an alehouse that kept a pot of stew running continuously, but made no attempts to wait for the Skorsdale Rangers return. The ultimate mission was business so by the time the sun hit mid-point in the sky Tia and Rowen were back in the skiff and headed toward the eastern shore of the Headwaters and the few dwarven settlements they could hit there on their way down to their main target, Mikalene. It took over a week to make the trip and Uncle Rowen wasn’t above taking coin for freight going farther down the river to the next dwarven settlement.

  The Headwaters came to a channel where the coral river formed between cliffs that stretched hundreds of feet into the air. On the east side, you had Smithtown, which was a mecca of industry. So much so that nobody could live there as it was, operating large machines day and night, all powered by the force of the river below. Arched bridges spanned the gap over to Mikalene where the families who worked in Smithtown lived.

  Mikalene was bigger than any city Tia even imagined and Uncle Rowen spent the better part of three weeks taking her around to the different vendors. It was toward the end of the second week when things in the city began to get a little dicey. Odd things began to happen around the city, nothing directly related to them, but strange things nonetheless.

  One night, three churches and a government building burned to the ground. Rumor said it was deliberate and the dwarfs were scrambling to find the culprits. Shop owners claimed that there were all sorts of outlanders in the city. They were never caught doing anything wrong, but they always seemed to be around. Nobody knew where they stayed or what brought them to town and they never seemed to spend any money. Rowen did his best to keep Tia away from it all.

  Due to a series of innovative locks and levees designed to bring ships down into the river proper gracefully, Mikalene had several levels of wharf. The lowest level was where they processed and counted fish before shipping it up to level three and four to be sold or cooked. Level two was where they unloaded cargo and the spent ice from around the frost pine, which was used for refrigeration throughout the city. The frost pine of course was unpacked on the Smithtown side at approximately level five, which is the highest level on the Mikalene side and supported the upper end homes in brightly lit neighborhoods.

  Tia and Rowen rented a flat on level three above the Twin City Cobbler shop. The owner was a man named Art and had done business with Rowen for almost thirty years. Tia even remembered seeing his name on certain orders especially the ones that would accommodate dwarfs’ feet. There were many dwarfs around the Twin Cities, which everyone seemed to call it though it was in name only. Smithtown and Mikalene were nothing like twins, in actuality they were complete opposites.

  Smithtown was blocks and block of massive concrete manufacturing facilities where everyone from Mikalene worked. There were very few windows and what doors were available were many feet wide and tall in order to allow product to pass through on an elaborate rail systems that Tia could never have imagined. The populace crossed to the facility along massive arched bridges, hundreds of feet above the river, the longest of which spanning almost a half mile. Rumor had it that it took a full season worth of frost pine to build it, the beauty being that if cured properly, frost pine would last forever. It was stronger than steel, it wouldn’t rot nor would it rust, not to mention it was the only product in the world that could span over two hundred feet without a join. That bridge was two massive platforms joined in the center with a keystone, it was solid but it was closed to traffic during high winds. It was built as a dwarven experiment that worked so well they simply left it to be used, prior to that they had a series of three bridges used in order to make that crossing.

  The room was nice and Tia could tell that it was strictly for the use of the shop’s suppliers by the personal touches that were added to make it feel a little bit more like home. Rowen had gotten into the habit of stepping out for a pint at night and bringing Tia with him.

  “As a sales rep you will be expected to bring with you a parcel of news. People don’t get a lot of news in the smaller towns and it is up to us to bring them an accurate report of the goings on. To do that, we buy a couple of newspapers and top that off with a good bit of rumor. The truth is typically in between the two somewhere there about.

  The one thing that Rowen hadn’t counted on was the fact that Tia was no longer the gangly awkward kid he had come to love. He spent more time protecting her and fending off the curious than he did gathering information. It was Tia who found out about the crafts fair in time to get them a small booth. Rowen ranted at the mayor’s assistant about not being informed until the man gave him the booth at half price.

  It was the night before the fair that Rowen had a frank with Tia about her position within the company.

  “I just don’t know how this is going to work out, Tia. The men just won’t seem to leave you alone and we can’t be sending a guard with you all of the time, it will be too expensive,” Rowen said with deep regret in his eyes.

  “The only reason why you’re so uptight is because you are so worried about protecting me. I am a big girl and I can take care of myself, besides…these aren’t like the wharf pubs I have been delivering too since I was thirteen, they’re cleaner and more respectable. Just stay away from me for a couple of days and watch.”

  He agreed and that evening Tia bellied up to the bar for some grub. She ordered the beef commercial, which every society seemed to make the same way as it was a tried and tested recipe. She called for a tank of mead as it didn’t carry as much of a kick and she liked the sweeter taste. This was a good batch and the essence of honey permeated the entire structure of the concoction.

  A gruff old man to her right looked over and smiled at her. Tia held a finger up to Rowen who was already starting to move her way stopping him.

  “Yer the new cobbler rep, ain’t cha?” the man said in a mid-range laid back tone. His body looked as though he was an old man of sloth with an ample belly that carried around to his well-used backside.

  “I am, my name’s Tia Rowe.”

  “Rowe? Is you his daughter?”

  “No, I am his niece. My brother and I have come over to help production on this side of the Swirl,” She said relaying the common statement of introduction Rowen always used. “And you are?”

  “Vern, I freelance repairs on all sorts of leather good, saddles mainly. Occasionally they ask me to work a pair of boots that they can’t figure out, ha ha, stupid sons ‘a bitches.”