RangerWickett
Legend
The following is an excerpt from the novel I'm writing, detailing the backstory of one of the characters.
Rodinn pulled his finger out of the cage, disappointed the creature hadn’t bitten him. He turned to the human shopkeeper and spoke slowly in Lyceian. “What is it called?”
The man, a greasy pale human named William, growled back, “A bunny.”
Rodinn pondered the caged creature, pushing away a few strands of his gold hair that had fallen in his face when he’d bent to peer at the bunny. “And you say it’s . . . freshous?”
“Ferocious,” William corrected. “And if ye cut off ‘eir feet, ‘ey’re good luck.”
He leered, and the gawdy torches the man used to light his shop made his face all the more revolting. Any respectable businessman would have at least paid for the gentler light of candles.
Rodinn shook his head, not wholly sure he was understanding the surface-dweller’s words, then had to move his hair out of his eyes again. He’d need to trim it soon. “No,” he said. “I don’t need a ferocious beast. You don’t sell any surface magic?”
The human looked confused, so Rodinn accentuated his words with a brief flash of magic light in his hand. The human shook his head, and Rodinn shrugged, disappointed. The only other thing the human had to offer at his brightly-lit stall was a nice variety of surface foods, but Rodinn smelled something nicer further down the way, so he resolved to leave.
In his life, Rodinn had tried three times to make it to the Great Above. He knew as much about it as any Taranesti, and he knew that the Gwenhavesti bounty hunters were looking for him, so he should probably try a fourth time soon. He had hoped William, one of three humans in a city of fifty thousand Taranesti, would have had more to offer.
“Well, my good friend William,” he said in Taranesti, so William simply stared at him blankly, “I’ll come around later if I get hungry.”
Behind him, he heard William grumbling something under his breath. The shopkeepers of the bazaar tended to think Rodinn drove away customers, and because Rodinn made his living selling flotsam culled from the oily lakes around Melasurej, he was often about in the bazaar, being tolerated, ignored, or loathed. Most merchants would spot his long bangs, fluffy eyebrows, and blue-eyed grin at a distance, and be ready to turn him away before he could disturb the other customers.
Rodinn walked away from the human’s stall and down the aisle of wormskin tents, stopping occasionally to look at something that caught his eye, or listen to conversations in languages he only half-understood. He needed time to plan his trip to the surface, and the walks always gave him ideas.
The Melasurej bazaar teemed with thousands of Taranesti, roaming the crooked streets and aisles through the near-blackness of its humid caverns. A few torches and magical light spells flickered in the distance, but even without their illumination, the Taranesti could see in the darkness. The lifeless stone walkways and the occasional decorative stalagmite glistened like wet glass, while the Taranesti and other living creatures gleamed with inner light, their essences reflecting dimly off every surface. Distant groves of plants, growing from the sludge of the city’s waters, provided the glow that gave Melasurej its timeless charm.
Mulesnakes slithered through long crooked tent alleys, drawing sledges laden with purchases; bats chirped overhead in hunting flocks; green-skinned goblin slaves scrambled ahead of their masters on leashes; and occasionally Rodinn spotted races even more bizarre than humans, creatures that wandered down from the mountains of the Great Above. Ships’ bells echoed through the bazaar from the distant, stalagmite-riddled harbor, and Rodinn hummed to their tunes as his whim led him through the crowd.
Eventually, the ship bells began to ring the end of the working day, as the tide ebbed away. Rodinn would be need to leave the city in less than an hour if he wanted to catch a caravan back to Rissan’la, or else he would have to wait another three days to set out for the Great Above. Melasurej, as entertaining as it was, had a few too many Gwenhavesti these days for Rodinn’s comfort, and there was talk of stranger creatures coming up from the depths of the Sunless Sea, creatures that had once just been legends. But Rodinn had wanted to say goodbye to the city that had treated him so well, as he had said his goodbyes three times before.
But he did not feel quite satisfied with his entertainment for the day, so he stopped to think of what he’d like to buy. He was soon distracted by a pair of high-pitched voices speaking in goblin.
“And then the human takes the torch and puts it in the man’s groin, rubbing it in until the fires go out. ‘Wha’d you do that for?’ the man shouts, and the woman says, ‘My momma always told me sex was easier in the dark, and you told me you wanted me to put out.’”
“Oh, Grebos! That’s great! Tell me another one!”
Rodinn chuckled at the dirty joke, and followed the voices to a pair of leashed goblins walking in front of a strange hooded figure. Rodinn could see what looked like tentacles waving within the shadows of the hood, but he was more interested in the goblins. The first one, Grebos, was starting into another joke, so Rodinn followed after them, aligning his magic to make it easier for him to hear.
“Well, I was in this cave a few weeks back,” at this the second goblin chuckled, “and I saw a dragon and a wyvern both taking a
. The dragon turns to the wyvern and says, ‘Do you ever have problems with sticking to your scales?’ and the wyvern says no, so the dragon grabs the wyvern and wipes his ass with it.”
The second goblin chortled, while Rodinn shook his head in mild amusement. He wondered if he should buy a goblin slave and was about to go up to the hooded figure when whatever-it-was turned and tugged its two goblins after it into a tent stall that sold books. Rodinn was about to follow when his attention was caught by the haggling voices of a male and female Taranesti.
“Why would I want to buy that runt of a girl?” the woman was demanding. “Don’t you have anything worthwhile for me?”
Trying to remain inconspicuous, Rodinn took in the scene. The buyer, a gorgeous violet-eyed and golden-haired noblewoman dressed in crimson spidersilk veils, stood across from the older, black-haired slaver, apparently the owner of a large tent stall of slaves in front of which they were standing.
“I misunderstood your interests, mistress,” the slaver apologized convincingly. “A lady with your obvious wealth and taste must see little of value in this common whelp. When you said you wanted someone to serve you, I thought you meant for cleaning and such. Let me show you a pretty plaything you might like.”
As the slaver leaned into his tent to call for another slave to be brought up, Rodinn’s stare dipped down to waist height, then to thigh height. He smirked slightly when he saw the scrawny, under-fed child they’d been discussing. She couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old, and obviously was only kept to make the rest of the slaves on sale seem more appealing. Though she held her head high in curiosity, the little girl’s sickly, stringy gold hair fell into her eyes so she squinted, and he couldn’t see what color they were.
Since he hadn’t bought much yet today, and he wanted to find out what color her eyes were, Rodinn decided to buy her.
One of the slaver’s assistants brought out another child, a well-fed and well-groomed boy, who bore numerous scars of disobedience. Surprisingly, he had pale skin and black hair, the mark of a Shahalesti elf from the Great Above. Rodinn had seen a few Shahalesti, but they were rarer than humans. The noblewoman purred to herself when she saw the boy, to which Rodinn shuddered a little.
“Well, he looks better,” said the woman, adjusting the veils across her breasts and hips, “and it looks like he enjoys a good beating. I hope he doesn’t die as quickly as the last one.”
The slaver chuckled, shaking his head. “You need to treat slaves of this quality better. There’s just a limited market, you know. . . .”
Rodinn tuned out the conversation when he noticed the goblin voices again. The hooded figure was guiding them out of the shop, away from Rodinn, so he was only able to catch a bit of one last joke.
“ . . . and I’ve never been called an ale-drinker. But you screw one goat. . . !”
As the goblin laughter trailed away down the aisle of stalls, Rodinn turned his attention back to the slave tent and walked forward.
“Are you going to buy that little girl?” he interrupted.
The slaver’s assistant looked down at the little girl whose reigns he held, snorting in humor. Rodinn looked down also to see the squinting girl smirking at him. Rodinn smiled eagerly back at her, then looked up when the slaver tapped him on the shoulder.
“One sale at a time,” the slaver said, “if you don’t mind. If you want, my assistant here can take you inside to see if something else catches your eye.”
His assistant grinned and beckoned for Rodinn to follow. “I can’t see why you’d want the waif. We do have adult slaves you know. One woman is half-Taranesti, half human, and her breasts are bigger than her head.”
Rodinn raised a fluffy eyebrow at the assistant’s enthusiasm, then brushed his hair back behind his ears. “Is she a virgin?”
“If you pay a little extra, yes.”
Rodinn emerged from the tent a few minutes later arm in arm with an exotic, yellow-eyed woman. She seemed a bit relieved to be out of the tent, though the vast cavern city didn’t seem to impress her much. She couldn’t speak Taranesti, but there was probably a charm seller nearby who could remedy that.
The noblewoman had departed, so the slaver turned eagerly to Rodinn. “You like her, yes?”
“Do I get to keep the outfit?” Rodinn asked, sliding his hand down the V-slit in the woman’s pale golden robe. She cringed slightly, so Rodinn gingerly took his hand out, not wanting to offend the lady.
“It’s a little extra, but since you didn’t bring your own clothes for her. . . .”
“Yes, yes,” Rodinn sighed. “Impulse buying. Impulses will kill me some day, I’m sure.”
He looked down at the little girl at thigh-level. The harness was tied to a tent-pole, holding her in place. “She looks bored,” Rodinn observed. “I empathize.”
The slaver laughed. “I doubt you’ll be bored as soon as you get her to some place private. Eh . . . it’ll be three hundred and sixty malachites, plus eight more for the dress.”
Rodinn smiled in a fake gasp of shock. “She’d better be able to cook too, for that much.”
“Bah! You’d pay twice again that for a painting half as pretty. I can also give you the name of an alchemist here who makes arousal potions and balms.”
Rodinn chuckled as he counted out the tiny beads and thin strips of of semi-precious malachite, then handed them over. “Well, good doing business with you, but I think I’ll try my hand at wooing her instead.”
The slaver chuckled and started to head back into the tent. Rodinn snapped his fingers toward the knot on the tether holding his second purchase, and grinned to himself when the knot undid itself. He bent down and scooped the young girl’s leash in his hand and started to walk off.
He had passed several more stalls before he heard the commotion behind him. He wouldn’t have seen it coming if he hadn’t stopped to laugh at the two goblins, who were now trying to yank the tentacles emerging from their master’s hood. He was pointing out the humorous sight to his new concubine when he spotted a trio of armed guards approaching him with swords drawn.
Rodinn glanced down at the little girl at his thigh—she was trying with her tiny child fingers to untie the collar around her neck—then grimaced. “I forgot to pay for you, didn’t I?”
The little girl shrugged, but then Rodinn’s attention was pulled away when the exotic woman next to him screamed. The three guards were now charging and shouting. Rodinn pushed his concubine away to the edge of the aisle, then pulled forth a wand and waved it to cast a spell. Glass shards appeared and flew for the first warrior, gashing his face and knocking him off his feet. The other two ran past their injured companion and began to swing at Rodinn, not giving him time to explain.
Rodinn whirled and let one of the slashes tear through his cape, then sidestepped a downward chop as he smacked a second warrior on the side of his head with the wand and shot a drill of glass shards across his temple. The man fell to the ground screaming, but the first warrior was now returning to the fight.
“I didn’t know I stole her!” Rodinn shouted as he backed away, almost tripping over the girl.
As he recovered his balance, he noticed the two goblins where cheering and pointing, and that their master was watching the fight ominously, tentacles writhing from the shadow of its hood. Rodinn wasn’t sure who they were cheering for.
The two guards began to circle him in opposite directions, and Rodinn realized he’d need to take drastic measures. Ancient elvish words to call forth a powerful wave of fire came to his lips, and a wave of his wand gathered the necessary energy. Nervously, he clapped his hands together to complete the spell.
Just as he clapped his hands, though, one of the warriors thrust his sword at Rodinn’s face, so he ended up clapping down across the flat of the blade, slowing the thrust enough so it simply scraped him across the nose. Losing his balance and his control of the spell, Rodinn fell backward as a wave of blinding green light burst through the air, filling the aisle.
Rodinn, somewhat stunned and unsure how exactly he had ended up on his back, sat up and looked around for his attackers. The one who had stabbed at him was now a singed and smoldering corpse, and Rodinn turned to the other guard to sputter an apology. From behind the remaining guard approached the slaver, squinting from the bright flash of light a moment before. Blood matted half his hair, while the other half had been burnt away. Most surprisingly, the man’s eyes had changed colors from when he’d last seen him. They were as bright an emerald green as the flash a moment ago.
“Kill him! He tried to murder me and destroy my store!”
The guard regained his confidence and closed to Rodinn quickly, placing a swordtip at his throat. Rodinn gulped.
Then, from the crowd around them, people began to gasp in surprise. At nearly every stall, shoppers and storekeepers were pointing at each other’s faces, and Rodinn could see that all of their eyes had been turned a brilliant gleam of green. The guard in front of Rodinn had green eyes as well, as had the two goblins nearby, who were making sickly faces at each other now. Rodinn briefly tried to cross his own eyes to see if he’d been affected himself, then he sighed.
“I’m more than willing to pay for the little girl,” he said.
This did not have the desired effect. The guard drew back his sword to behead Rodinn, but just before he would have struck a word flooded Rodinn’s mind.
Stop.
The guard just let go of his sword and stopped, then sat down at Rodinn’s feet. Rodinn rubbed his throat in relieved shock, wondering who had helped him. He looked down at the little girl, shook his head, then looked around at the crowd.
A pair of cold pupil-less eyes, solid white, stared from within the dark hood of the figure he’d been following earlier. The air felt suddenly humid and heavy, and Rodinn looked away to catch his breath. Around him, everyone else was just standing or sitting still, staring blankly. The only movement came from the hooded figure’s tentacles. And the little girl tugging nervously on Rodinn’s cloak.
Rodinn looked down again, his already surprised eyebrows lifting an inch when he saw his own wand gripped in the girl’s hands. He gave a brief cry and snatched the weapon from her hand, then picked her up and tucked the tiny weight under his arm.
In an instant he was invisible, gone, leaving behind a whole horde of green-eyed Taranesti, goblins, and one extremely large-breasted half-elf.
The little girl whimpered occasionally as Rodinn ran through the streets, but didn’t cause much fuss. Within minutes they had reached the caravan back to Rissan’la, and an hour later he and the girl were safely in his small home. The Gwenhavesti would certainly be tipped off to where he was now, but he wanted to talk to the girl, to make sure she wasn’t scared or worried.
She was sitting on his cushion bed, looking at a spellbook open to a half-scribed page, and he sat down next to her. A strand of golden hair fell over his face, which he tried unsuccessfully to blow away several times. He should change his hair color, he thought. Bleaching it would be easiest.
“Who are you?” the girl asked, curious but nervous.
Rodinn smiled, gently reaching to turn her face to his. “I’m Rodinn Berrel’ost. We just escaped!”
The girl was obviously confused, and she was still squinting in nervousness. She turned back to look at the spellbook, flipping random pages. Her back was tensed in a slight cringe, as if she expected to be hit for her curiosity, and Rodinn bit his lip in pity. He didn’t deal with children often, and wasn’t sure how to help her.
“Hey,” he asked gently, “how’d you like that magic I did back there?”
She looked back at him, interested by magic, at least. Her eyes were wider now in wonder, and Rodinn sighed. Her eyes were emerald green, just like everyone else’s caught in that spell, probably even his own. Now he’d never know what color they had been. But he hit upon an idea.
Rodinn smiled at her. “I’ll show you some more magic if you tell me your name.”
The little girl pouted. “They didn’t give me a name. They called me ‘Triel Nhi.’”
He managed enough composure not to laugh. It was a name one gave to three-legged pets and other runts, effectively the same as ‘Stumpy.’ It certainly fit her, though that was probably more the fault of the slaver not feeding her well enough.
“Well,” Rodinn pointed out, “that’s a guttural little name. Let’s just call you Tri’ni. And if you don’t have a last name, I can give you one.”
Tri’ni shrugged slightly, slowly sinking back into nervousness. Rodinn waved his hand to get her attention.
“What color are my eyes?” he asked, pointing to his eyes and widening them dramatically.
Tri’ni muttered nervously, “They’re green.”
Rodinn nodded, then pointed at Tri’ni’s face. “So are yours, so if you like, your last name can be Gren’eys from now on. It’s a word from the Great Above that means ‘green eyes’.” At least so he thought, though he’d never been good at pronouncing Lyceian quite right.
Tri’ni Gren’eys smiled, crossing her emerald green eyes to try to see if Rodinn was telling the truth.
“Now,” Rodinn continued, glad to see a smile from her, “you’re going to be like a daughter to me, so-”
Tri’ni gave a soft gasp, and smiled up at him, uncrossing her eyes. “You’re . . . you’ll take care of me?”
Rodinn happily rubbed her hair with his hand. “Certainly I will. Like I was saying, you’ll be my daughter, so whatever name you have, I’ll have also.”
Tri’ni slowly said, “Rodinn Gren’eys?”
Rodinn nodded with a smile. “You’re fast. And since we both know each other’s real names now, and since we’re family, we’re connected.”
“What does that mean?”
Rodinn stopped, puzzled himself, then nodded in understanding. He twiddled his fingers in the air, and tiny motes of multi-colored light fell off them like dust. The light filled the dark, cave-like room. “That’s just a tiny bit of the magic I promised you. Since we’re connected, we share the magic. I’ll teach you so you can do this also.”
Tri’ni Gren’eys, eyes emerald wide, reached out nervously and touched Rodinn’s fingers. The glow surrounded Tri’ni’s hand for a moment, then died, leaving the cave dark again. Tri’ni raised her hand before her eyes and stared at it, dazzled.
“Tri’ni,” Rodinn whispered, as if sharing a secret.
Tri’ni Gren’eys looked at him through her splayed fingers.
Rodinn reached out and pulled Tri’ni closer to him, into a hug. After a moment, he let her go, chuckled, then stood up.
“Now, our first thing we’re going to do as a family is run away very very fast.”
Rodinn pulled his finger out of the cage, disappointed the creature hadn’t bitten him. He turned to the human shopkeeper and spoke slowly in Lyceian. “What is it called?”
The man, a greasy pale human named William, growled back, “A bunny.”
Rodinn pondered the caged creature, pushing away a few strands of his gold hair that had fallen in his face when he’d bent to peer at the bunny. “And you say it’s . . . freshous?”
“Ferocious,” William corrected. “And if ye cut off ‘eir feet, ‘ey’re good luck.”
He leered, and the gawdy torches the man used to light his shop made his face all the more revolting. Any respectable businessman would have at least paid for the gentler light of candles.
Rodinn shook his head, not wholly sure he was understanding the surface-dweller’s words, then had to move his hair out of his eyes again. He’d need to trim it soon. “No,” he said. “I don’t need a ferocious beast. You don’t sell any surface magic?”
The human looked confused, so Rodinn accentuated his words with a brief flash of magic light in his hand. The human shook his head, and Rodinn shrugged, disappointed. The only other thing the human had to offer at his brightly-lit stall was a nice variety of surface foods, but Rodinn smelled something nicer further down the way, so he resolved to leave.
In his life, Rodinn had tried three times to make it to the Great Above. He knew as much about it as any Taranesti, and he knew that the Gwenhavesti bounty hunters were looking for him, so he should probably try a fourth time soon. He had hoped William, one of three humans in a city of fifty thousand Taranesti, would have had more to offer.
“Well, my good friend William,” he said in Taranesti, so William simply stared at him blankly, “I’ll come around later if I get hungry.”
Behind him, he heard William grumbling something under his breath. The shopkeepers of the bazaar tended to think Rodinn drove away customers, and because Rodinn made his living selling flotsam culled from the oily lakes around Melasurej, he was often about in the bazaar, being tolerated, ignored, or loathed. Most merchants would spot his long bangs, fluffy eyebrows, and blue-eyed grin at a distance, and be ready to turn him away before he could disturb the other customers.
Rodinn walked away from the human’s stall and down the aisle of wormskin tents, stopping occasionally to look at something that caught his eye, or listen to conversations in languages he only half-understood. He needed time to plan his trip to the surface, and the walks always gave him ideas.
The Melasurej bazaar teemed with thousands of Taranesti, roaming the crooked streets and aisles through the near-blackness of its humid caverns. A few torches and magical light spells flickered in the distance, but even without their illumination, the Taranesti could see in the darkness. The lifeless stone walkways and the occasional decorative stalagmite glistened like wet glass, while the Taranesti and other living creatures gleamed with inner light, their essences reflecting dimly off every surface. Distant groves of plants, growing from the sludge of the city’s waters, provided the glow that gave Melasurej its timeless charm.
Mulesnakes slithered through long crooked tent alleys, drawing sledges laden with purchases; bats chirped overhead in hunting flocks; green-skinned goblin slaves scrambled ahead of their masters on leashes; and occasionally Rodinn spotted races even more bizarre than humans, creatures that wandered down from the mountains of the Great Above. Ships’ bells echoed through the bazaar from the distant, stalagmite-riddled harbor, and Rodinn hummed to their tunes as his whim led him through the crowd.
Eventually, the ship bells began to ring the end of the working day, as the tide ebbed away. Rodinn would be need to leave the city in less than an hour if he wanted to catch a caravan back to Rissan’la, or else he would have to wait another three days to set out for the Great Above. Melasurej, as entertaining as it was, had a few too many Gwenhavesti these days for Rodinn’s comfort, and there was talk of stranger creatures coming up from the depths of the Sunless Sea, creatures that had once just been legends. But Rodinn had wanted to say goodbye to the city that had treated him so well, as he had said his goodbyes three times before.
But he did not feel quite satisfied with his entertainment for the day, so he stopped to think of what he’d like to buy. He was soon distracted by a pair of high-pitched voices speaking in goblin.
“And then the human takes the torch and puts it in the man’s groin, rubbing it in until the fires go out. ‘Wha’d you do that for?’ the man shouts, and the woman says, ‘My momma always told me sex was easier in the dark, and you told me you wanted me to put out.’”
“Oh, Grebos! That’s great! Tell me another one!”
Rodinn chuckled at the dirty joke, and followed the voices to a pair of leashed goblins walking in front of a strange hooded figure. Rodinn could see what looked like tentacles waving within the shadows of the hood, but he was more interested in the goblins. The first one, Grebos, was starting into another joke, so Rodinn followed after them, aligning his magic to make it easier for him to hear.
“Well, I was in this cave a few weeks back,” at this the second goblin chuckled, “and I saw a dragon and a wyvern both taking a
. The dragon turns to the wyvern and says, ‘Do you ever have problems with sticking to your scales?’ and the wyvern says no, so the dragon grabs the wyvern and wipes his ass with it.”The second goblin chortled, while Rodinn shook his head in mild amusement. He wondered if he should buy a goblin slave and was about to go up to the hooded figure when whatever-it-was turned and tugged its two goblins after it into a tent stall that sold books. Rodinn was about to follow when his attention was caught by the haggling voices of a male and female Taranesti.
“Why would I want to buy that runt of a girl?” the woman was demanding. “Don’t you have anything worthwhile for me?”
Trying to remain inconspicuous, Rodinn took in the scene. The buyer, a gorgeous violet-eyed and golden-haired noblewoman dressed in crimson spidersilk veils, stood across from the older, black-haired slaver, apparently the owner of a large tent stall of slaves in front of which they were standing.
“I misunderstood your interests, mistress,” the slaver apologized convincingly. “A lady with your obvious wealth and taste must see little of value in this common whelp. When you said you wanted someone to serve you, I thought you meant for cleaning and such. Let me show you a pretty plaything you might like.”
As the slaver leaned into his tent to call for another slave to be brought up, Rodinn’s stare dipped down to waist height, then to thigh height. He smirked slightly when he saw the scrawny, under-fed child they’d been discussing. She couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old, and obviously was only kept to make the rest of the slaves on sale seem more appealing. Though she held her head high in curiosity, the little girl’s sickly, stringy gold hair fell into her eyes so she squinted, and he couldn’t see what color they were.
Since he hadn’t bought much yet today, and he wanted to find out what color her eyes were, Rodinn decided to buy her.
One of the slaver’s assistants brought out another child, a well-fed and well-groomed boy, who bore numerous scars of disobedience. Surprisingly, he had pale skin and black hair, the mark of a Shahalesti elf from the Great Above. Rodinn had seen a few Shahalesti, but they were rarer than humans. The noblewoman purred to herself when she saw the boy, to which Rodinn shuddered a little.
“Well, he looks better,” said the woman, adjusting the veils across her breasts and hips, “and it looks like he enjoys a good beating. I hope he doesn’t die as quickly as the last one.”
The slaver chuckled, shaking his head. “You need to treat slaves of this quality better. There’s just a limited market, you know. . . .”
Rodinn tuned out the conversation when he noticed the goblin voices again. The hooded figure was guiding them out of the shop, away from Rodinn, so he was only able to catch a bit of one last joke.
“ . . . and I’ve never been called an ale-drinker. But you screw one goat. . . !”
As the goblin laughter trailed away down the aisle of stalls, Rodinn turned his attention back to the slave tent and walked forward.
“Are you going to buy that little girl?” he interrupted.
The slaver’s assistant looked down at the little girl whose reigns he held, snorting in humor. Rodinn looked down also to see the squinting girl smirking at him. Rodinn smiled eagerly back at her, then looked up when the slaver tapped him on the shoulder.
“One sale at a time,” the slaver said, “if you don’t mind. If you want, my assistant here can take you inside to see if something else catches your eye.”
His assistant grinned and beckoned for Rodinn to follow. “I can’t see why you’d want the waif. We do have adult slaves you know. One woman is half-Taranesti, half human, and her breasts are bigger than her head.”
Rodinn raised a fluffy eyebrow at the assistant’s enthusiasm, then brushed his hair back behind his ears. “Is she a virgin?”
“If you pay a little extra, yes.”
Rodinn emerged from the tent a few minutes later arm in arm with an exotic, yellow-eyed woman. She seemed a bit relieved to be out of the tent, though the vast cavern city didn’t seem to impress her much. She couldn’t speak Taranesti, but there was probably a charm seller nearby who could remedy that.
The noblewoman had departed, so the slaver turned eagerly to Rodinn. “You like her, yes?”
“Do I get to keep the outfit?” Rodinn asked, sliding his hand down the V-slit in the woman’s pale golden robe. She cringed slightly, so Rodinn gingerly took his hand out, not wanting to offend the lady.
“It’s a little extra, but since you didn’t bring your own clothes for her. . . .”
“Yes, yes,” Rodinn sighed. “Impulse buying. Impulses will kill me some day, I’m sure.”
He looked down at the little girl at thigh-level. The harness was tied to a tent-pole, holding her in place. “She looks bored,” Rodinn observed. “I empathize.”
The slaver laughed. “I doubt you’ll be bored as soon as you get her to some place private. Eh . . . it’ll be three hundred and sixty malachites, plus eight more for the dress.”
Rodinn smiled in a fake gasp of shock. “She’d better be able to cook too, for that much.”
“Bah! You’d pay twice again that for a painting half as pretty. I can also give you the name of an alchemist here who makes arousal potions and balms.”
Rodinn chuckled as he counted out the tiny beads and thin strips of of semi-precious malachite, then handed them over. “Well, good doing business with you, but I think I’ll try my hand at wooing her instead.”
The slaver chuckled and started to head back into the tent. Rodinn snapped his fingers toward the knot on the tether holding his second purchase, and grinned to himself when the knot undid itself. He bent down and scooped the young girl’s leash in his hand and started to walk off.
He had passed several more stalls before he heard the commotion behind him. He wouldn’t have seen it coming if he hadn’t stopped to laugh at the two goblins, who were now trying to yank the tentacles emerging from their master’s hood. He was pointing out the humorous sight to his new concubine when he spotted a trio of armed guards approaching him with swords drawn.
Rodinn glanced down at the little girl at his thigh—she was trying with her tiny child fingers to untie the collar around her neck—then grimaced. “I forgot to pay for you, didn’t I?”
The little girl shrugged, but then Rodinn’s attention was pulled away when the exotic woman next to him screamed. The three guards were now charging and shouting. Rodinn pushed his concubine away to the edge of the aisle, then pulled forth a wand and waved it to cast a spell. Glass shards appeared and flew for the first warrior, gashing his face and knocking him off his feet. The other two ran past their injured companion and began to swing at Rodinn, not giving him time to explain.
Rodinn whirled and let one of the slashes tear through his cape, then sidestepped a downward chop as he smacked a second warrior on the side of his head with the wand and shot a drill of glass shards across his temple. The man fell to the ground screaming, but the first warrior was now returning to the fight.
“I didn’t know I stole her!” Rodinn shouted as he backed away, almost tripping over the girl.
As he recovered his balance, he noticed the two goblins where cheering and pointing, and that their master was watching the fight ominously, tentacles writhing from the shadow of its hood. Rodinn wasn’t sure who they were cheering for.
The two guards began to circle him in opposite directions, and Rodinn realized he’d need to take drastic measures. Ancient elvish words to call forth a powerful wave of fire came to his lips, and a wave of his wand gathered the necessary energy. Nervously, he clapped his hands together to complete the spell.
Just as he clapped his hands, though, one of the warriors thrust his sword at Rodinn’s face, so he ended up clapping down across the flat of the blade, slowing the thrust enough so it simply scraped him across the nose. Losing his balance and his control of the spell, Rodinn fell backward as a wave of blinding green light burst through the air, filling the aisle.
Rodinn, somewhat stunned and unsure how exactly he had ended up on his back, sat up and looked around for his attackers. The one who had stabbed at him was now a singed and smoldering corpse, and Rodinn turned to the other guard to sputter an apology. From behind the remaining guard approached the slaver, squinting from the bright flash of light a moment before. Blood matted half his hair, while the other half had been burnt away. Most surprisingly, the man’s eyes had changed colors from when he’d last seen him. They were as bright an emerald green as the flash a moment ago.
“Kill him! He tried to murder me and destroy my store!”
The guard regained his confidence and closed to Rodinn quickly, placing a swordtip at his throat. Rodinn gulped.
Then, from the crowd around them, people began to gasp in surprise. At nearly every stall, shoppers and storekeepers were pointing at each other’s faces, and Rodinn could see that all of their eyes had been turned a brilliant gleam of green. The guard in front of Rodinn had green eyes as well, as had the two goblins nearby, who were making sickly faces at each other now. Rodinn briefly tried to cross his own eyes to see if he’d been affected himself, then he sighed.
“I’m more than willing to pay for the little girl,” he said.
This did not have the desired effect. The guard drew back his sword to behead Rodinn, but just before he would have struck a word flooded Rodinn’s mind.
Stop.
The guard just let go of his sword and stopped, then sat down at Rodinn’s feet. Rodinn rubbed his throat in relieved shock, wondering who had helped him. He looked down at the little girl, shook his head, then looked around at the crowd.
A pair of cold pupil-less eyes, solid white, stared from within the dark hood of the figure he’d been following earlier. The air felt suddenly humid and heavy, and Rodinn looked away to catch his breath. Around him, everyone else was just standing or sitting still, staring blankly. The only movement came from the hooded figure’s tentacles. And the little girl tugging nervously on Rodinn’s cloak.
Rodinn looked down again, his already surprised eyebrows lifting an inch when he saw his own wand gripped in the girl’s hands. He gave a brief cry and snatched the weapon from her hand, then picked her up and tucked the tiny weight under his arm.
In an instant he was invisible, gone, leaving behind a whole horde of green-eyed Taranesti, goblins, and one extremely large-breasted half-elf.
* * *
The little girl whimpered occasionally as Rodinn ran through the streets, but didn’t cause much fuss. Within minutes they had reached the caravan back to Rissan’la, and an hour later he and the girl were safely in his small home. The Gwenhavesti would certainly be tipped off to where he was now, but he wanted to talk to the girl, to make sure she wasn’t scared or worried.
She was sitting on his cushion bed, looking at a spellbook open to a half-scribed page, and he sat down next to her. A strand of golden hair fell over his face, which he tried unsuccessfully to blow away several times. He should change his hair color, he thought. Bleaching it would be easiest.
“Who are you?” the girl asked, curious but nervous.
Rodinn smiled, gently reaching to turn her face to his. “I’m Rodinn Berrel’ost. We just escaped!”
The girl was obviously confused, and she was still squinting in nervousness. She turned back to look at the spellbook, flipping random pages. Her back was tensed in a slight cringe, as if she expected to be hit for her curiosity, and Rodinn bit his lip in pity. He didn’t deal with children often, and wasn’t sure how to help her.
“Hey,” he asked gently, “how’d you like that magic I did back there?”
She looked back at him, interested by magic, at least. Her eyes were wider now in wonder, and Rodinn sighed. Her eyes were emerald green, just like everyone else’s caught in that spell, probably even his own. Now he’d never know what color they had been. But he hit upon an idea.
Rodinn smiled at her. “I’ll show you some more magic if you tell me your name.”
The little girl pouted. “They didn’t give me a name. They called me ‘Triel Nhi.’”
He managed enough composure not to laugh. It was a name one gave to three-legged pets and other runts, effectively the same as ‘Stumpy.’ It certainly fit her, though that was probably more the fault of the slaver not feeding her well enough.
“Well,” Rodinn pointed out, “that’s a guttural little name. Let’s just call you Tri’ni. And if you don’t have a last name, I can give you one.”
Tri’ni shrugged slightly, slowly sinking back into nervousness. Rodinn waved his hand to get her attention.
“What color are my eyes?” he asked, pointing to his eyes and widening them dramatically.
Tri’ni muttered nervously, “They’re green.”
Rodinn nodded, then pointed at Tri’ni’s face. “So are yours, so if you like, your last name can be Gren’eys from now on. It’s a word from the Great Above that means ‘green eyes’.” At least so he thought, though he’d never been good at pronouncing Lyceian quite right.
Tri’ni Gren’eys smiled, crossing her emerald green eyes to try to see if Rodinn was telling the truth.
“Now,” Rodinn continued, glad to see a smile from her, “you’re going to be like a daughter to me, so-”
Tri’ni gave a soft gasp, and smiled up at him, uncrossing her eyes. “You’re . . . you’ll take care of me?”
Rodinn happily rubbed her hair with his hand. “Certainly I will. Like I was saying, you’ll be my daughter, so whatever name you have, I’ll have also.”
Tri’ni slowly said, “Rodinn Gren’eys?”
Rodinn nodded with a smile. “You’re fast. And since we both know each other’s real names now, and since we’re family, we’re connected.”
“What does that mean?”
Rodinn stopped, puzzled himself, then nodded in understanding. He twiddled his fingers in the air, and tiny motes of multi-colored light fell off them like dust. The light filled the dark, cave-like room. “That’s just a tiny bit of the magic I promised you. Since we’re connected, we share the magic. I’ll teach you so you can do this also.”
Tri’ni Gren’eys, eyes emerald wide, reached out nervously and touched Rodinn’s fingers. The glow surrounded Tri’ni’s hand for a moment, then died, leaving the cave dark again. Tri’ni raised her hand before her eyes and stared at it, dazzled.
“Tri’ni,” Rodinn whispered, as if sharing a secret.
Tri’ni Gren’eys looked at him through her splayed fingers.
Rodinn reached out and pulled Tri’ni closer to him, into a hug. After a moment, he let her go, chuckled, then stood up.
“Now, our first thing we’re going to do as a family is run away very very fast.”
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