Laria’s voice sounded exactly the same as it always did, and that familiarity had the effect of lifting the spell that had made Cal sit staring at her in awe as she’d entered. She was a high kindred elf, and that meant that when she chose to reveal her true nature, there was no way an ordinary human could look at her and not be impressed.
She still looked strikingly different from how Cal had known her before, but she seemed suddenly less remote when he heard her speak. Cal found himself suddenly able to smile and find his voice again.
“I do have news,” he said in answer to her question. “I sent a telepathogram as soon as I knew I was ready to give you your new eyeglass.”
“I received your message and came straight down,” Laria agreed. “Max sent me a message earlier saying you’d made progress, but the message telling me that the eyeglass was complete came hot on the heels of the first! I was feeling tired and drained earlier on, but a bath, a meal, and a change of clothes has changed all that. Where is the eyeglass? Can I see it?”
“You can see it,” Cal said. Laria caught the hesitancy in his voice and looked keenly at him.
“The eyeglass is there on the enchanting table,” Cal continued, “but I’ve discovered that this one has a new power, a power the old glass doesn’t have.”
Laria’s brow furrowed a little. She could tell there was something more that Cal hadn’t said yet. “What’s the new power?” she asked. “Is there a problem?”
“Not exactly,” Cal said a little awkwardly. “You see, the new eyeglass gives information on the properties of the other monster parts, the new ones you brought back from your last mission,” Cal gestured toward where the ores, the bones, the essence, and the feathers lay neatly in rows on the table. “The new materials are potentially very exciting. It seems that I might be able to use them to craft new items if I combine the materials with the correct core. The thing is…”
“I see,” Laria interrupted him. Her expression cleared, and she smiled radiantly. “Now you’re made the new eyeglass and discovered the new power, you want to keep it, because it may allow you to do new enchanting and create new products. You want to give me the old eyeglass instead, and keep the new one, is that it?”
“Pretty much,” Cal said, apologetically. “Do you think that would be okay?”
“Of course it’s okay!” Laria said, laughing loudly. “Your first eyeglass was more than sufficient for my use out in the monsterlands. I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t continue to be sufficient. And if you can make some new products from this new eyeglass, that’s good for business, and what’s good for your business is good for mine as well.”
Cal brightened again. “Oh, great,” he said, smiling. “I was worried you wouldn’t want to do that, since the new glass was so much your work - using your contacts with the glass maker to get a good price and everything.”
Laria waved his concerns away with an elegant hand. “Not at all,” she assured him, and Cal was glad to hear the certainty in her tone. “After all,” she continued, “I may have gotten a good price from Ausha the glassmaker, but you paid the price from your profits, and you did the enchanting. No, I’m happy that you’ve found a use for the extra items we brought back, and I’ll be keen to hear how that goes. But tell me, how was the enchanting of the new glass? Did it go well? Was it difficult? I’m interested to hear about it.”
So, they drank their tea and Cal explained how the enchanting process had worked. Max listened intently too, since he’d not heard about the second stage of the enchanting in detail yet.
Laria listened with evident fascination as Cal told how he’d gained a new understanding of the enchanting process in the second stage, and she laughed in amazement as he related how they’d almost been interrupted by the irate Lord Hefton, and how Maddie Turner had saved the day.
“Maddie Turner,” Laria said thoughtfully. “I don’t know that name, but from what you say she sounds like a formidable character. I’d like to meet her one day.”
Cal nodded, realizing that he still hadn’t shared the story of the spider web with Laria. Laria could have seen the spider web if she’d glanced back into the corner of the shop, but the webbing had lost most of its color now. It was just a plain, dull gray now that it had dried up. In the dim, candle-lit space of the workshop, the webbing didn’t look like anything more special than some damp rags, and even if Laria had noticed, she wouldn’t have been likely to pay much attention.
Cal decided - as he’d decided before - not to share that particular secret just yet. His promise to Maddie was now strengthened by the sense that she’d saved them from disaster when Hefton had arrived at a critical moment, and he was glad that he could get away with keeping their shared project in the dark for now. Even though he trusted Laria, he wanted to honor his promise to Maddie.
Laria was getting ready to leave. She stood, picked up the old eyeglass, slipped it into its leather bag, and pulled the drawstring tight.
“This has been an epic adventure,” she said as she stowed the eyeglass in her belt pouch, “but I’m glad it’s worked out. I was really angry with myself for dropping my hunter’s glass when we first inspected the spiders upstairs, but it turns out that my clumsiness has brought a whole new set of possibilities to light. I couldn’t have guessed that I would have ended up causing so much change. Well, I’ll leave you two to your work for the moment. I’ll send you a telepathogram once me and the team are ready to depart again. It’ll probably be the day after tomorrow when we can get another sailing, but I’ll message you when we leave and we’ll see you in a few days when we get back.”
“Oh, before you go,” Max said, rising and grabbing his pad of paper, “one thing. If we’re not going to see you again before you leave for your next hunting mission, let me write down a few specific cores that we could use for crafting from the new materials. Perhaps you could seek these ones out while you’re on your next mission?”
Cal smiled as he watched Max quickly writing the list of items for Laria. Once again, Cal saw that Max was showing initiative and confidence in the management of their business. A warm feeling of satisfaction washed through Cal at the sight. His friend was growing into his new role.
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Working quickly from his notes on the properties of the crafting materials, Max wrote down what would be needed for crafting, tore the sheet from his pad and handed the paper to Laria. The elf-woman’s perfectly curved eyebrows shot up and she whistled in surprise when she read the items on the list.
“Level 5 cores?” she exclaimed. “Are you sure?”
She and Max both glanced over at Cal, who nodded his agreement.
“We need Level 5 cores to work with the Level 4 crafting items,” Max explained. “It seems that each crafting item needs a core from the next level up to be turned into something new. If you can’t get the Level 5 cores this time it’s not a big problem, though. It’s only the feathers and the essence that need Level 5 cores to craft. There’s plenty of bone and ore here, and they only need Level 2 cores to work with.”
“Actually,” Cal put in, “maybe it would be best to not try to get the Level 5 monster cores for now and just concentrate on the Level 1s and 2s. After all, crafting with the new materials is just experimentation at this point, there’s not much chance of making any money from them for a while yet. Even if I get success from the crafting, I’ll need to register the products with the Pedantus Guild before I can think about selling them. Also, the Level 5 monsters would be time-consuming and dangerous to hunt. I’d rather have more low level cores, since the first priority is to build up some stock. Once we’ve done that, we can put more time into the experimental work and think properly about branching out.”
“Yes, that’s a good point,” Max agreed. “I hadn’t thought of that. Also, there’s one other issue that I just realized - the monster bone needs Level 2 conjuring cores to craft, but we don’t have a conjuring rune on our enchanting table. Presumably you need an active conjuring rune before you can craft from materials that require conjuring cores.”
“Hmm, that’s probably true,” Cal said. “Okay, change of plan then, Laria. If you can gather some Level 2 fire cores so we can experiment with the ore, that would be great, and it shouldn’t be too much extra work for you. Aside from that, just concentrate on Level 1 cores for the moment. Does that work?”
“Sure,” Laria said with a nod. “I agree, that’s a better plan. It’ll be easier for us to do the hunting, and you’ll get more cores that you can make money from quickly. Okay, thanks for bringing me up to date with what’s been going on, and thanks for the eyeglass. You’ll hear from me once I have a clearer idea of our travel plans. I’ll see you in a few days with more cores.”
After Laria left, Cal glanced outside and saw that it was dark outside and getting late. The ground floor display window of Maddie’s shop was dark, the shop closed and shuttered for the night. A single light burned from the small window above the shop where he assumed Maddie’s private apartment must be. He considered going over to see her now, but decided against it. The evening was getting on, and Maddie might not welcome a visit from Cal, now that she’d closed up shop and headed upstairs for the evening.
“I’ll go see Maddie tomorrow,” Cal decided. “It’s getting late. Max, let’s get that shopping unpacked. You said you got enchanting supplies. Did you get more pendants?”
“I sure did,” Max said with a twinkle in his eye, “and more besides, but let’s get the food unpacked first. I’m starving. I’ll get dinner on and you can check out the new enchanting supplies.”
They brought the heavy fabric carrier bags through to the workshop - Max had left them behind the counter when he’d arrived earlier - and unpacked the purchases onto the desk.
“This is heavy!” Cal said as he lifted the bag of enchanting supplies. “You must have bought a lot of stuff!”
Cal wasn’t sure exactly how much money there had been in the lockbox under the counter, but he hadn’t thought it was that much. He looked into the bag and saw a lot of goods, but when he glanced up at Max, his friend had a twinkle in his eyes that suggested there was more to this.
The other bag contained food, including some good fresh lamb which Max planned to make into a stew that would do them for the next two nights. There were fresh herbs, root vegetables, and a bag of a particular kind of dark green rice that was imported from Yallish through the north-south trade route.
“Yallishian green rice!” Cal exclaimed as he saw the dark green color. “I’ve not had this in years. Good choice, Max.” “I love the flavor of it,” Max said as he cleared one corner of the crowded table and began chopping onions and crushing garlic. “I used to have it a lot when I was younger, but not so much recently.”
“Me too,” Cal said. He picked up the bag and inhaled deeply, the exotic, light jasmine smell of the Yallishian grain filling his senses and taking him back for a moment to homely scenes from his childhood.
As Max began the cooking, Cal started unpacking the new enchanting supplies. There was a whole stack of pendants in a range of impressive colors, several brightly-glazed bowls and cups, and a good number of Angie’s hats and gloves as well. In the bottom of the bag, Cal found a bundle of enchanter’s keys tied tightly together with a thin leather strap. They made a heavy clunk as they rolled onto the table.
“Those keys were going cheap,” Max said, glancing up when he heard the sound and gesturing with the knife. “I originally went into the blacksmith’s shop to get some ingots - I had the idea I might make the keys myself, but the blacksmith had all these keys at the front of the shop. He was up for selling the lot to me for 20 crowns, something about needing the space for new stock.” Max grinned. “I haggled him down to 15 crowns for the whole bundle,” he added.
Cal laughed. “Good work!” he said. “But you must have spent a lot of money on the other supplies, particularly the hats and gloves from Angie at the pottery store. I didn’t think we had that much ready cash available.”
There was the twinkle in Max’s eye again. “Actually, I hardly spent anything.”
“What? But…”
“It’s like this, Cal,” Max said. “Tom and Angie have decided to give us the stock we need for our enchanting, on account, and not only that, they want to give a bulk discount. We can pay for all this at the end of the month, once we’ve had a chance to do some enchanting and make some money. Actually, I hardly spent anything up front, I just paid for the food and the keys. The most expensive thing was the lamb!”
“That’s good of Tom and Angie to do that,” Cal said. “I’m surprised, because Tom said they wouldn’t be able to afford to give us an account last time I spoke to him.”
“I know,” Max said. “I was quite surprised as well, but Tom said that since last time we were in, he and Angie had got a really good deal on a bulk order of clay, glazes, and wool from the wholesaler they use. Something to do with their supplier clearing out old stock in advance of getting new products in for the spring. He said that our custom has been a real boost to them, and they want to help us out. Between ourselves, I think their business has maybe not been doing so well recently, and so they’re really keen to keep our custom.”
“That’s great!” Cal said. “I’m glad to hear we’re giving them a boost, and it’s definitely very helpful to be able to get their goods on account like that. I hadn’t even considered looking elsewhere for the pendants and woolens, since I really like the way Tom’s work looks, and Angie’s hats and gloves are great, but I suppose I could have maybe gotten things a bit cheaper if I’d bought from someone else.”
“No need to, now,” Max grinned, moving over to the fireplace and beginning the process of cooking off onions, garlic, and rich meat.
Cal rubbed his hands together in anticipation at the sudden abundance of cores and materials. It was time to take his shop to the next level.