I. This is the sequel to Touch O' Luck
II) It will be a superior reading experience
to start this story from the beginning :)
III) The world of the Old Realms is big. Distances are a real obstacle and reliable information difficult to obtain. Different POVs are used to give updates on what is happening on other parts of the Realm, while moving the story along. Not everyone introduced will reserve the same time as Glen for example, but all characters are important and soulful. People will age, learn, or devolve. I strive to make them as real as they can be, but there's always more work to be done.
Finally, everything is told through the eyes of the protagonists, much as they understand it and through brief introductory texts from past and future histories written by the participants, each as reliable as the person behind the quill.
This work is under constant and severe editing at the moment to improve earlier chapters. I hope it offers the same solace to those reading it, as it provided its author.
THE OLD REALMS
~ACT I~
A hint of Magic
Glen
Almost a full explanation
The veritable forest of masts gave him pause.
Some bigger, tall as a four story building, others much like the one on the dinghy that’d helped him escape Shroudcoast, with enough coin to buy himself the grandest Barque, in Castalor’s Westport. Strangely he hadn't the chance to enjoy any of his riches, and it had been months since then.
Most masts remained wrapped or half-hidden behind typically white sails, or variants of it. This was the largest port, the young man had ever seen in his life. Much bigger than Bayspell on Cliffson Cay, both in size, ships present and in its market.
Whores also; remarkably cheap, he thought, eyeing a well-endowed Issir woman yelling her charges for services rented, standing next to a rather boisterous tavern for the time of day. The painted woman, hair cut short, smiled invitingly, showing two rows of teeth that had their best days far behind. Glen, never hang on such trivial minutiae being his motto, returned the gesture, with a grin of his own. Well practiced, and rather confident.
A hard cuff on the side of his head, send him stumbling on the rough cobblestone street and put a stop to that.
“The fuck…?!” Glen wailed, pride hurting more than his head and got up slowly.
“Keep it up and there’s another comin’ fast,” Emerson replied gruffly. “I want none o’ that.”
“Of what?” The young former thief protested, feigning ignorance.
“Ye know.”
“What’s gotten into you?” Glen asked him. “Wine went up the wrong pipe or somethin’?”
He’s thinking about the gold, he thought, more nervous than his face revealed. His thespian skills well-polished by now.
Hopefully.
Worst, he’s about to tell me how he’d figured me out. Glen sighed, looking around them. The whore had found a client by this time and was negotiating a couple of extra stuff, but other than that, there were enough escape routes around for an honest thief to make a run for it.
“Don’t play it smart. But aye, I’m all tensed up inside. Can’t figure the matter of the coin out, so there’s truth in what ye noticed, I reckon,” Sir Lennox said, sending a cold shiver down his spine. It’s a pity, Glen thought, looking at him sadly, we had to part this way. Adding theatrically in his mind. We could’ve been friends. “Ye listening to me?” The knight grunted, snapping him out of his reverie.
“Yep, sure. Wit… almost all ears.”
His pun wasn’t well received, by a frowning Sir Lennox.
“Anyhow, what Nard told me made sense…” Oh, crap, Glen thought. “There’s no way, so much coin goes missin’, without anyone looking’.”
Luthos cock, fell from bloody rot!
“So…” Glen started, dragging the word, not wanting to answer.
“So your father, somehow… found himself the coin,” Emerson explained.
“You mean, as in he stole it?” Glen asked surprised, although he knew that wasn’t the case.
“What? Nay, ye fool. He got it legitimately, was my meaning,” Sir Lennox snapped. “If he’d stolen it, then someone would’ve been lookin’. Do you want me to repeat it?”
“When you say… legitimately…” Glen started unsure.
“Like a payment,” He glanced towards the cackling whore sourly. “For services rented. Do ye get it now?”
Ah.
Right.
There ye go!
Thank you Luthos, ha-ha!
“No… ahm, yes. YES. You are right!” He yelled, clenching both fists in righteous triumph. “It was there all along, for us to bloody see!”
And just like that, everything is explained fully.
Right?
“Lower you darn voice lad. What’s the matter wit you?”
“Apologies.” Glen said quickly, still grinning. Excitement oozing out of him in waves.
For a friendship that was to continue.
The gods had casted their vote decisively.
Sir Lennox sighed, seeing him daydreaming again.
“Stay with the girl. Keep your heads down. I need to go see a man about a job.”
“The girl? Where…” Glen asked and then he saw her standing there, by the weathered streetlight. Barely recognized her truth be told, fully wrapped up in Zestari’s fancy cloak, but for that disapproving pout, when he pointed a finger and called her out.
“Hey, Lith! Come here girl!”
“Behave,” Emerson warned, rolling his eyes at his shenanigans.
I’m out of the woods, Glen thought with a shrug, too elated to calm down. Got the gold, a ship to Raoz and no one’s the wiser.
“Ahm. Don’t worry about it. Hey, when you say job. What do you mean?” He asked, the already walking away knight and he answered him without turning his head. Sounding in as bad a mood, as the day he’d met him.
“Mercenary.”
Lith, standing tall and mysterious, though no taller than him, made a signal with her head, towards a less crowded part of the cobblestone street running parallel to the docks; where rows upon rows of cases laden with supplies, were stacked twice his height.
Glen frowned unsure on her intentions, his mind leaning on the lewder side, but not risking saying it out loud.
“You want us, to have some privacy?” He asked all mannish, left brow raised to the heavens.
“To talk.” Lith explained, voice neutral.
“Twas what I implied,” Glen countered readily and followed her in a shaded narrow corridor. “You know, I’ve held a spot for ye in the ship,” He told her, the moment she stopped and turned to face him, only her chin and mouth visible.
“A journey to Raoz,” Lith said, in that strange singing accent.
“Exactly. I hope… you’d like to come with us,” Suddenly less certain, whether the exotic female, would join them or not.
“We have agreement. Do we not?”
“Sure… yes,” He agreed, not remembering giving assent on anything. Ah, yes. “You will get me a leather armour. Or something.”
“What you want,” Lith corrected him. “You shall have.”
Glen grinned.
“Even better,” He could ride with that.
“If you help me,” Lith elaborated further patiently, and lowering her voice to an enticing whisper. “Have mine fulfilled.”
The meaning clear, much as our young thief understood it.
Glen smacked his lips interested, then glanced right and left at the confines of their ‘private’ spot to make sure they were indeed alone, wishing he hadn’t. He got a glimpse of that elusive dwarf watching them, head popping out behind a case full of onions and recoiled in shock. Glen let out a small yelp, his mood completely ruined, and the small creature mirrored him, as if it was as astounded as he was.
“There… he is!” He jumped towards the case and the sneaky creature, missed it for a hair, but bumped a case with a shoulder, the whole row shaking this way and that, as if ready to come down on their heads.
Until Lith put a hand on it that is and the row stopped dancing, as if by magic.
“STOP! YOU LITTLE SHIT!” Glen yelled next at the top of his lungs, unwilling to let the sneaky bastard get away. Incensed with him for spoiling their special moment.
The dwarf rolled on the ground like a ball of hay, turned a corner still rolling, with Glen hot on his trails, until he found a hole between two rows of supply boxes, too small for the young man to follow and disappeared inside.
“Fuck,” Glen exclaimed, doubled over his knees, breathing hard. “How does he do that?”
“You asked, If I will come with you earlier,” Lith said standing behind him, voice calm and disinterested as if nothing had happened and he turned his sweaty, flushed face her way. “Why query, on what you already know?”
Apparently, she was still on their earlier conversation. He hadn’t gotten her tone wrong. The whole dwarf episode, slipping past her like it was nothing.
That was pretty stoic, Glen supposed. Some even went so far as to think it a quality trait. Being stoic that is, like let’s say, a tree. Some men liked that in their women.
Glen didn’t.
He also genuinely didn’t know, what in the slovenly fuck, was she talking about.
Glen said as much.
“I didn’t?” He replied, wiping the sweat off his face with a sleeve. Eyes still on the alert for the small creature.
“You have my arrowhead.”
Glen felt it in his coat’s pocket. The corpse’s coat technically. A fucking great coat it was.
He glanced to the skies, genuinely moved.
Father, thank you.
“I do.”
Lith stooped near his face, as if to kiss him.
“Why did I give it to you?”
Glen felt his knees weaken.
“Ye did?” He asked, not really paying attention to anything, but her mouth. Luthos, those are some pretty potent teeth. Crafton had some horror stories, about foolish sailors visiting the wrong brothel and putting their cocks, where you ain’t supposed to.
He coughed hard, to flush the disturbing image out his system.
“Aye. I did. You thought it was from someone else?” Lith answered, oblivious to his plight.
No you didn’t. It was that damn dwarf for Luthos sake!
Wait…
Oh, ye gotta be bloody kidding me!
“Nah. You are right,” He said yielding to her, now everything obvious. Pulling back to clear his head some. Glen decided right then and there, to be more guarded around her. Being all misty eyed, horny and confused, could get him in big trouble down the line. “Apologies,” He offered, much as Sir Lennox always did, when he was in the wrong.
“You are welcome, Glenavon,” Lith said politely, with a small bow of her hooded head.
Glen grimaced, a last look about them, revealing nothing. With a deep sigh, he made another step back from the alluring Zilan and asked, all business, wanting to clear the air between them.
“So… let me get this straight. All this time… the fuckin’ dwarf, works for you?”
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