“A little heads up ahead of time, Sheriff, and I will have something nice prepared to eat,” Nigel said, to which the sheriff simply shook his head and left.

  Tic looked at the Aerial amazed at his relaxed manner.

  “I think that went rather well, don’t you?” Nigel said as unconcerned as anybody could ever be about anything. It was like he hadn’t realized that he had almost been thrown to the dwarfs so to speak.

  “I know he is a bloodthirsty devil, but I can’t help but like him,” Leldeif said, not picking up on Tic’s mood.

  “I know, I feel it is like a flaw within my character or something,” Tic replied.

  “That is a very apt description.”

  “I am right here you know,” Nigel said snidely.

  Tic had been pleasant with the sheriff and he had been happy with not only how the meeting went but the results. What was bothering him was what he didn’t mention to Sheriff Frodeg. Every time he delved into the depths of Riverhouse he found something new. Sometimes it was little things, like how the runes fitted together, other times it was more monumental. The center or nucleus of the construct being a portal to the whole complex is a good example.

  His method had been very slow and plodding as he searched for signs of…anything really. Usually he found something, but it always took effort. He had never traveled quickly through the weaves then directly through the stone at speed before, yet tonight he did and he could feel the sheriff starting to panic. He didn’t know if it was because he didn’t know Tic or because what they were doing was so foreign, but he was beginning to panic and his panic could have caused a loss of concentration that could have doomed both of them but definitely would have doomed the sheriff. He couldn’t afford that so he brought the sheriff back by the most direct route possible and quicker than he ever had, so in what appeared to be a flash, they returned back to his flat.

  It was during that panicked rush that he saw something, from a peripheral sense anyways that showed him something new… something that made him wonder. What he saw pulsed with an energy that he couldn’t fathom and he was compelled to figure it out sooner rather than later.

  “Hold down the fort for a little bit, I have to look into something,” Tic said absentmindedly.

  “Okay,” Leldeif said and Nigel held his cocktail up in a cheers fashion as Tic headed into his room.

  “Well,” Nigel said breaking the ice with the elf. “I know that elves metabolize alcohol so quickly that it is almost impossible for you to get drunk.” He paused.

  “Yes, and?”

  “Would you like to try anyways?”

  “I’ll grab something a little stronger and be right over,” Leldeif said with a twisted smirk.

  “Atta boy. You are one ugly fucker for an elf, but otherwise, you’re not so bad. I am sensing a couple of ‘I love you, man’ in our very near future,” Nigel finished with a chuckle, feeling like he was literally in heaven after having not spoken to a soul in years.

  * * *

  Tic wanted to rest but something told him that he didn’t have the time. He had been meant to see what he had seen, it was like the house itself was guiding him to where he needed to be and showing him what he needed to know. He couldn’t rest, things were just too precarious at the moment. In a couple more days the dwarven armies would be too far out of reach to recall and Riverhouse would be empty of protectors and vulnerable.

  Why did his thoughts keep coming back to that point?

  He sat cross legged on his cot and closed his eyes, instantly slipping into the stone and moving toward the closest nucleus to his home, the join by the skylights that allowed true sunlight in while keeping the foul weather out. He sat on his cot, but his mind was nearly fifty feet above him and flowing into the portal where he started to scan for what he had seen or thought he had seen earlier.

  The weaves glowed green, blue, yellow, and red as they always have with the main runes at openings. The ambient nature of the luminance was steady and not the pulsating that he thought he had witnessed earlier.

  He searched deeper, following each thread out from its origination, or at least what he thought was their origination toward its end. A sudden thought struck him.

  Did the weaves originate at the runes created by the wizards so many centuries ago or is that where they ended? The weaves require a huge amount of power in order to exist and the runes themselves didn’t create power, so where did that power come from? He pondered this as he hovered within the weaves that constructed Riverhouse.

  There has to be something…more, something that I am not seeing and it has to be connected to that pulsating that I had seen earlier, Tic thought he felt the structure warm with his curiosity, giving him an idea.

  He brought his being into a central point within the structure, something he had never been able to do before. Always in the past when he entered through a nucleus, he was instantly spread throughout the entire complex. He was surprised at how differently things now looked as he had himself concentrated into one tiny point. Everything was crisper, more intense and he was able to see that there were definite differences between the weaves as they joined within the runes.

  Junctions? he thought and wondered if it could be true. What if these are not runes at all, but junctions where the energy flows to in order to be distributed as needed? Did the ancients who built this place know that or had they just stumbled upon it? No, that couldn’t be true. You can’t build something like this by accident. Someone knew and that person or persons were much more powerful than the sorcerers that are here today. What is here today is barely able to provide service and basic maintenance to the weaves and what they call runes. Which Tic now knew to be something less magical but to his mind more fantastical than magic could ever be.

  In a flash of revelation Tic realized that Riverhouse wasn’t created through magic at all, though it responded to magic. It was a process of precise calculations combined with conductivity and intelligent design and that is why Tic was needed here, his mind worked differently than most. What people saw in mathematics was a jumble of numbers where through a ponderous process they could turn into an equation that miraculously made sense. For Tic all it ever took was a glance and the equation revealed itself to him through the energy of their very existence.

  People had called him genius and brilliant or even gifted but Tic knew better. He simply looked at things differently and realized that the laws that governed this world were not the laws of man or dwarf. Tic’s world; was governed by the laws of physics, if the numbers didn’t add up then it simply didn’t exist. The existence of Riverhouse itself made him realize that somebody at some point in time knew this and saw the world as he saw the world. He had argued in the past with scholars who always wanted to believe that some mystical thing was responsible for this or that, but Tic had recognized that for what is was…laziness, or simply the inability to see beyond themselves. The answer went so far against what they had been taught that when their thoughts came to a dead-end it was easier for them simply say it was magic or some other such nonsense. It was the main reason why Tic never wanted to go to the university for his post grad. He felt that four to six years of studying there, he too would have his mind polluted by such nonsensical thoughts and he would become just like them. Now he was here within the very weaves of a structure the likes the world had never seen before and he knew the truth. He had been right all along, it was nothing but very complicated, possibly even ethereal mathematics.

  He focused his energies on one strand coming out from a junction which just seconds ago he had referred to as a rune and followed it down toward the floor then out and under the river itself.

  Of course, the energy flows under the river, it has to. Leldeif and I had taken that path on my first attempt at including another. If we could travel through it there had to be energy. This isn’t just a shell that covers us from the sky, this is a cocoon or pipe that wraps us in a complete tube of energy.

  He hovered at the lowest point, wondering where to go next. This couldn’t be it, there had to be more here or it just wouldn’t make sense to his mind. He walled himself off from everything and simply felt the energy flowing around him in steady streams. Beneath that, however he felt, a pulsing. A deep throb that felt like a heartbeat or a pump working off of a mill.

  That’s it, a heartbeat, he realized and drew the energy to him hoping that it would expose itself to him, but it wouldn’t. He knew where the power was coming from and felt that he could even draw from it, but it wouldn’t let itself be exposed to him. There was something blocking it, much as the princess’ runes were blocked in the drifting castle. He tried harder and actually found what could be termed as a barrier. He pushed on the barrier and felt the resistance intensify.

  He pressed forward and he felt an explosion within his mind that would have sent him to his knees if he had been in his corporeal form. Pain raged through his brain and he felt like his eyes were bleeding. He opened them and thought maybe his eyes had burst, for he could see nothing. Then he realized through his pain that he was seeing things, but they moved so fast that he couldn’t focus on them. Then he was sitting cross legged on his bed staring at his empty room. He looked around in wonder realizing that something was very wrong.

  He reached out to flow back into the stone and he was stopped. He tried again and was stopped more firmly this time giving him the feeling that he had pushed too hard.

  With a sad realization he understood that by trying to get through the barrier he had violated something. Trust? Was it akin to trust? Whatever it was, he now was denied access on an even basic level. His heart fell…this was bad. He had crossed a line and he knew it, yet on the other hand, he realized that whatever was using him was sentient. A thinking, living, possibly even breathing, being. On a deflated note he understood now that he had to treat it as such. This wasn’t a power that was given to him…it was a relationship that lent him strength.

  * * *

  Tia was in the Rusty Scupper which was their haunt, at least ever since they met Vern. Rowen was off finalizing some orders before they left on the morrow and Tia was kicking back and relaxing with her new clientele. It turned out that once Rowen gave her free reign there were several people who wanted to establish relations with the new rep. Maybe something with Rowen had fallen through or they never got the chance to meet him and figured they had a better chance with the new kid. She was alone for the moment, trying to figure out if the consolidated credits she had received from Vern for the stock she left for him would transfer into Riverhouse credits and at what rate. She had noticed two strangers paying close attention to her, but she thought nothing of it. She was the new kid in town and a pretty young woman at that, there were a lot of people that watched her. If she would have been more attentive she would have noticed that a lot of the locals had their eyes on the two strangers. The Rusty Scupper was an establishment that catered to all kinds of people. dwarfs and sprints frequented the place, as well as an occasional gnome and sometimes even elves. These weren’t what Tia quite expected elves to be, though she had never seen them before. She had always heard how noble and proper they were, but these elves were the life of the party. The women flowed through the room flirting for drinks and winding the men around their fingers from one end of the room to the other. The men on the other hand diced loudly and outpaced the other patrons two to one on drinks.

  The crowd was comfortable with them so Tia watched and enjoyed their antics assuming that they were known to the town folk. True to her profession she couldn’t help but notice their footwear which seemed to be nothing more than a leather bag wrapped around their feet and allowed to shrink and shape to their foot. She was going to approach one, but she didn’t have to as one of the women who had been traversing the room sat down across from her. She was much smaller than Tia. Possibly barely breaking the four foot mark, her skin from across the room looked slightly brown, almost yellow, but now that she was close Tia could tell is was a simple shade of pale lavender. Her almond shaped eyes were definitely yellow, a bright rich yellow that almost crossed into orange.

  “Buy me a drink?” the girl asked playfully.

  “Sure, if you’re old enough that is,” Tia said and the girl laughed.

  “It’s a little different for elves, you know. My name is Rain and yes I am quite old enough, I had my fiftieth birthday just last month.” Tia gulped, then signaled for a round at her table.

  “Are you hungry?” Tia asked suddenly wanting to get to know this woman.

  “No thanks, we had some wayfarers bread on the way in to town, that should hold me for a day or two.”

  “A day or two? Is that how much you always eat?”

  “No, only when we travel. You see, we are on a great mission and have traveled all the way from the lost lands in search of someone very important,” Rain said conversationally.

  “Really, they sound important. Do you think they are in Mikalene?” Tia pressed.

  The server came over and set the drinks down at their table. Tia gave a quick glance around the room and got the suspicion that all of the elves had a side eye on her. Then she realized it was true, all she could see of any of them was a profile. There weren’t any straight on looks or a head turned or even walking away, they were watching her and probably listening.

  “No, not in Mikalene, but he is close. At least much closer than he has been up until now,” Rain said slyly.

  “So your journey continues, my name is Tia, what can I do for you?” Tia said remembering Rowen’s words about elves having never spent a dime on their product which seemed to her, somewhat unpatriotic.

  “You my new friend…” Rain paused as if she didn’t quite know how to continue with things. “Are the next step in our journey.”

  “Me? I guess I don’t see how that could be. I am nothing but a simple cobbler here to sell my wares and establish contracts for the next time I am in the city. I think that you might have me confused with someone else.”

  “Hmmm, maybe. Tell me, do you know a man by the name of Mattic Rowe?”

  “Possibly, can you describe him?” Tia said not wanting to give up her brother so easily.

  “No, I can’t. However, you surely could since he is your brother,” Rain said her suddenly serious yellow eyes locked on Tia’s.

  “What do you want?” Tia said, her mood suddenly dour.

  “Nothing nefarious, I assure you. We, meaning my people, have been awaiting the arrival of Mister Rowe for many years.”

  “I doubt that since he isn’t even twenty yet. Are you sure that you have the right man?”

  “Oh yes, quite sure. In fact, our entire populace had a festival on his birthday so your claim of his age confirms it,” Rain said cutting all of her arguments off.

  “Look, if you think that I am going to tell you anything about my brother you have another thing coming. Our conversation is done here…whatever your name is. Leave me before I am forced to draw steel.”

  “My, my…that is quite an aggressive stance. I certainly didn’t mean to put you on edge.”

  “You didn’t hear me? It is time for you to go, be gone,” Tia said her voice dropping to a growl.

  “Very well then, thank you for your time.” The petite woman stood and signaled with a flick of her wrist and the band of diminutive elves filed out the front door without further question and the rest never so much as even glanced her way.

  She had noticed Vern paying close attention to her table, he gave a wink after the elves had left and she smiled before he returned to his drink. She felt good about having friends here in this strange city and she trusted the rough looking man as if he were an uncle or a family member of some sort. There simply wasn’t any malice within him. Vern waved to her when he left for the night and the crowd started to thin out.

  Tia again noticed the two strangers who had been casting her a lingering eye. It wasn’t the eye of men with carnal pursuits in mind but… she didn’t quite know what, but there was something and she couldn’t help but feel that she was the center of their focus.

  She caught the bartender Triab’s eye as he polished glassware, he gave her a nod and then a slow but deliberate glance at the two men in the booth before looking back at her. She didn’t quite know what he was insinuating so she gave him a slow, single nod.

  Triab’s face suddenly became very tight as he put his highly polished glassware down in a very methodical manner. His actions were the well-rehearsed movements of someone who had been dealing with the intoxicated public for many years. He took off his apron and tucked something she couldn’t identify into his belt.

  “Look here, mates, you blokes have been sitting here taking up a table all night and have only ordered so much as a pint.” He stepped between the view of her and the men and gave a flicking gesture with his fingers for her to go. Triab was a big man and towered over the two in the bench, his powerful personality commanding all of their attention.

  “You cost me money is what you did. Let’s say I recoup my losses by bringing you both out some fish stew. It was freshly caught this morning…”

  Tia didn’t hear any more once she was out the front door and she wasted no time in making her way down to the second wharf where their skiff had been loaded. She was supposed to wait for her uncle to come and get her, but he was overdue and she really had been worried about the two in the bar, not to mention the weird experience with the elves. She had expected her first encounter with elves to be different and she had definitely figured them to be taller.

  Where is Uncle Rowen? he’s never late. She was sticking to well-lit avenues on roads they had traveled extensively over the last three weeks. She knew how to find the skiff though it was a ways yet and she was armed. Her hand rested upon the hilt of her rapier. She had switched out the one she had trained with in favor of a thicker blade to offer some defense against a heavier blade.