Emissary of Nothingness - Chapter 57 - Settling In

The next few weeks passed as Arien slowly adjusted to his new reality.

If he were honest, they were some of the best weeks of his life so far.

True, Will kept trying to drag him into morning training, and Aunt Gilfra seemed determined to investigate every detail of his past, present, and presumably future.

Minor inconveniences.

Arien had a shower.

A shower.

Gilfra’s servant had shown him to a bathroom adjoining his room, where Arien expected to find the usual basin, pitcher, and perhaps, if the gods were particularly generous, a large tub. One corner, however, was enclosed by panes of thick glass. A beautifully crafted metal showerhead hung above it, while two polished knobs protruded from the tiled wall beneath faintly glowing runes.

Arien had stared at the contraption for several seconds. 

He turned one knob and water poured from above. The other made it warm.

Beautiful, wonderful magic.

Arien stepped beneath the stream and nearly cried when hot water struck the back of his neck.

No more buckets, heating water over a fire, or standing half-naked beside a basin while trying not to freeze. Just warm water whenever he wanted it.

For several minutes, he simply stood there with his eyes closed, breathing in the scent of unfamiliar floral soap while months of dust, sweat, salt, and travel disappeared down the drain.

If this was what people did with magic when given enough money and free time, Arien wholeheartedly approved.

The rest of Gilfra’s home wasn’t much worse.

His bed had an actual mattress thick enough that he sank into it slightly when he lay down. The sheets smelled faintly of lavender and were changed before he could even decide they needed changing. Soft slippers waited beside the bed each morning. Fresh towels appeared mysteriously after every bath.

And there was food.

Regularly.

Large breakfasts. Lunch. Dinner. Snacks that servants apparently considered perfectly normal to offer between meals. Meat several times a week, fresh bread almost every day, fruit he had never tasted before, and enough butter that his mother would have accused the household of criminal wastefulness.

Arien really wasn’t asking for much.

The fact that all of it came without him having to chop wood, carry water, weed a field, feed an animal, or scrub something afterward still felt vaguely suspicious.

Gilfra’s estate itself was larger than it had first appeared.

The single-story house curved around the garden in a broad semicircle, its white stone walls almost painfully bright beneath the summer sun. Gilfra occupied the right wing, while the central section contained the dining room, kitchens, sitting rooms, and a banquet hall Arien privately considered far too large for any reasonable number of people.

The opposite wing held six guest rooms. Arien and Will occupied two of them, separated by enough empty rooms that Will had quickly taken to simply walking in whenever he wanted something rather than bothering to knock from the corridor.

Outside, the estate was quieter than almost anywhere Arien had stayed since leaving home.

Gravel crunched beneath his slippers whenever he walked the garden paths. Bees drifted lazily between beds of summer flowers, and the air carried the smell of roses, freshly cut grass, and whatever herbs the gardeners had planted near the kitchens. Hedges divided the grounds into little pockets of shade, each containing benches positioned with almost suspicious precision beneath trees.

Arien could have spent entire afternoons there with a book.

Unfortunately, Will had discovered the land beyond the garden as well.

There, behind the beautifully trimmed hedges and flower beds, his friend had constructed Course 2.0.

It was longer and higher than the original and, as far as Arien could tell, specifically designed to increase the probability of serious injury.

So far, he had successfully resisted every attempt to convince him to resume regular training.

His days weren’t entirely devoted to comfort.

Whenever he could disappear without attracting attention, Arien continued practicing his magic. Gilfra’s estate offered more privacy than the ship ever had, although the presence of servants made experimentation considerably more complicated than he would have liked.

As far as Gilfra knew, Arien was simply a provincial boy hoping to enter the Academy. He had carefully avoided committing himself to any particular path, claiming he was still deciding between the martial courses and administration.

Gilfra had accepted that explanation.

Unfortunately, she had interpreted his indecision as an invitation to help.

Within days, she had produced recommendations, names of people he absolutely had to meet, and a growing list of places in Wayhold that would supposedly help him make up his mind.

Arien suspected refusing all of them would only make her more determined.

During those first weeks, they made two trips deeper into the city, with Will taking it upon himself to show Arien some of the places he considered essential.

They limited themselves to two districts. The first was the Temple District.

Arien had not been particularly enthusiastic about that one. Gods were supposedly real. Even after eight years in Erador, that remained an uncomfortable thought.

On Earth, churches had been places where people prayed, socialized, argued about doctrine, or occasionally argued about politics while pretending they were discussing doctrine.

Here, priests healed wounds. Blessings could strengthen crops or people. Relics carried mana. Miracles were rare enough to inspire awe, but common enough that nobody seriously questioned whether they happened.

Arien still had no idea where divine power ended and ordinary magic began. His experience with the Abyss had done nothing to improve his opinion of the subject.

More than once during the carriage ride, he considered inventing an excuse to stay behind.

Unfortunately, Aunt Gilfra had arranged the outing herself, and suddenly developing a mysterious illness the moment someone suggested visiting the temples seemed considerably more suspicious than simply going.

So Arien went, quietly hoping that no priest, goddess, spirit, ancient relic, divine messenger, or other supernatural entity decided he looked particularly interesting that day.

The Temple District turned out to be difficult to ignore.

Broad stone avenues opened into enormous plazas crowded with worshippers, pilgrims, vendors, beggars, and processions moving between temples. Bells rang from towers at irregular intervals, sometimes answered by deeper notes from somewhere farther away. Incense drifted through the streets, mixing with hot stone, flowers, food, and the smoke rising from dozens of braziers.

Arien was reminded vaguely of illustrations of ancient Rome, though the resemblance weakened the longer he looked. There were fewer forests of columns than he had expected and considerably more color. Temple fronts had been painted, tiled, carved, gilded, or covered in banners bearing symbols he recognized only occasionally.

Sul’s seven-flamed disk appeared often enough, but many of the other symbols meant nothing to him.

Priests and priestesses moved through the crowds in robes of every imaginable color, accompanied by acolytes, temple servants, armed attendants, and sometimes people carrying objects Arien strongly suspected were magical.

One plaza contained a fountain surrounded by dozens of people waiting to fill small glass bottles from its water. Another temple had a line stretching almost around the building, with injured and sick people waiting beneath canvas awnings. Nearby, a priest stood with both hands raised over a group of travelers while faint golden light shimmered around them.

Arien deliberately did not stare. He also deliberately did not use Mana Sense. That decision became harder every few minutes.

Will, naturally, noticed.

“You look like you’re expecting one of the statues to attack you.”

“I’m being respectful.”

“You’ve been respectful for three streets.”

“Very religious district.”

Will gave him a suspicious look but mercifully let it go.

To Arien’s immense relief, nobody paid him the slightest bit of attention. No priest pointed at him, no relic began glowing, and none of the statues showed any interest in watching him pass.

By the time they left several hours later, Arien had almost convinced himself that his worries had been ridiculous.

The second was the Craftsmen’s District, which fascinated and terrified him in roughly equal measure. Magic was everywhere: in weapons, household items, furniture, clothing, potions, and artifacts whose purpose Arien couldn’t even begin to guess.

Mana seemed to cling to half the district. It shimmered through shop windows, pulsed faintly from workshops, and occasionally made his Mana Sense itch even when he wasn’t actively focusing on anything.

What terrified him were the prices.

Until then, Arien had believed that the purse Lady Vylda had given him, combined with his own modest savings, amounted to a respectable fortune.

So when Will announced they were visiting the district, Arien had brought some money along. Just in case.

The first shop specialized in enchanted clothing.

Cloaks hung from polished wooden stands, some embroidered with faintly glowing runes. Gloves rested on velvet cushions. One pair of boots floated several inches above a shelf for reasons Arien desperately wanted to understand.

A dark grey cloak near the entrance immediately caught his attention. “What does that one do?”

The shopkeeper barely glanced up. “Minor concealment enchantment. Makes the wearer slightly harder to notice.”

Arien’s eyes widened. “Like invisibility?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“And before you ask, it’s eight gold.”

Arien quietly stepped away from the cloak.

The next shop sold enchanted weapons.

He spent several minutes admiring a dagger that supposedly never dulled and a spear whose tip could burst into flame for several seconds.

Then he made the mistake of asking how much they cost.

The cheapest weapon in the shop was worth more than the house in Three Meadows.

Arien stopped asking.

Eventually, they wandered into a tiny workshop packed so tightly with strange trinkets that there was barely enough room to move between the shelves. Rings, pendants, metal figurines, boxes, rods, and objects Arien couldn’t name occupied every available surface.

One shelf appeared devoted entirely to artifacts whose usefulness was questionable at best.

Arien pointed at a thin silver rod. “What does this do?”

The elderly craftsman looked up from his work. “Scratches your back.”

Arien blinked. “With magic?”

“Naturally.”

By the time they left, Arien had a much better idea of how wealthy Wayhold really was. Magical craftsmen would apparently enchant almost anything if someone paid them enough, while he himself was nowhere near rich enough to afford anything resembling an invisibility cloak.

The craftsmanship itself was extraordinary.

On Earth, he had been surrounded by mass-produced goods designed to be cheap, consistent, and easily replaced. He had appreciated that plenty while he had it. These objects felt different. Someone had spent hours, perhaps days, shaping each one by hand before adding magic on top of it.

He knew he probably looked like a provincial bumpkin, but he couldn’t stop staring as they moved from one shop to another.

He was fairly certain that without the servant Aunt Gilfra had assigned to accompany them, more than one shopkeeper would have politely suggested that two children find somewhere else to spend their afternoon.

It was during those excursions that Arien first encountered platinum and mithril coins as well. Both denominations were worth considerably more than gold and, much to his fascination, contained mana themselves.

Even so, both outings had been enjoyable.

His only real disappointment was that he still couldn’t enter the Academy. Its red walls and towers seemed to appear wherever he went in the central districts, constantly drawing his gaze back toward the hillside. Unfortunately, entering the grounds required a special pass, and neither of them had one.

Arien also survived two of Aunt Gilfra’s social gatherings.

They were every bit as boring as he had feared.

The adults, mostly women, formed constantly shifting circles throughout the sitting room and garden, glasses in hand, drifting from one conversation to another with a skill Arien found almost impressive. They exchanged names, discussed marriages and promotions, and dissected social absences with an intensity Arien found difficult to understand. Someone’s absence from a dinner apparently carried enough political meaning to occupy three women for nearly twenty minutes.

Gilfra moved effortlessly between them all.

Every few minutes, she seemed to appear beside a different guest, laughing at exactly the right moment, introducing two people who apparently needed to know one another, or casually dropping some piece of information that immediately changed the direction of the conversation.

Arien was beginning to understand why Malbek called socializing a form of work.

He still wanted no part of it.

The children were easier to understand.

They simply boasted.

One boy had an uncle serving in the Royal Guard. Another had apparently been promised a place with some Faction Arien had never heard of. A girl spent several minutes explaining how many members of her family had attended the Academy before eventually asking Will what year he expected to enter.

She never asked Arien anything, which was fairly typical.

He usually remained beside Will, nodding politely whenever someone acknowledged him and wondering how many of these future prodigies would actually make it through the Academy’s first few years.

Their families were certainly wealthy. Important too, at least compared with anyone Arien had known before coming to Wayhold. Most were children of prosperous merchants, senior officials, or provincial nobles, often with a sibling, parent, or cousin who had attended the Academy.

They still weren’t the capital’s real elite. Neither gathering had included anyone from the great Houses or the royal family, only prosperous merchants, officials, and lesser nobles with enough connections to care intensely about who stood above them.

Close enough to power to see it clearly. Far enough away to spend considerable effort proving they belonged near it. Perhaps that explained why so many of their children treated Arien as though he were invisible.

He found the whole thing more amusing than insulting.

A generation or two earlier, some of their families had probably stood much closer to Arien’s own on the social ladder. Now their descendants seemed terrified that acknowledging a peasant boy might somehow pull them back down.

Arien was perfectly happy to cooperate. Being ignored meant nobody asked inconvenient questions.

Will was considerably less fortunate.

His early System awakening had apparently transformed him from a provincial curiosity into desirable company. Children who had barely acknowledged him months earlier now sought him out constantly. They praised his talent, asked about his training, mentioned relatives at the Academy, and found increasingly transparent excuses to discuss whichever Faction or House their families happened to favor.

Arien had never seen Will quite like this before. Around him, Will was usually loud, earnest, and impossible to keep still. Here, he seemed to retreat into himself. The conversations moved too quickly, jumping between names, families, and implications Arien suspected Will barely understood, and after a while he stopped trying to keep up.

His answers rarely exceeded a few words.

"Yes"

“I suppose.”

“No.”

On one occasion, Arien watched a girl spend nearly five minutes explaining how advantageous an acquaintance between their families might become.

Will listened patiently, then asked whether she knew how much a war hound weighed.

She left soon afterward.

Arien had to turn away to hide his smile.

Whatever Aunt Gilfra’s plans were, turning Will into a courtier might prove considerably harder than she expected.

Arien’s own ambition was considerably simpler. Whenever he looked toward the center of Wayhold, his eyes still found the Academy’s red towers.

He would get inside soon enough.