Arc 3: Chapter 11: The Wizard
Lias… where do I even begin with him?
He’s one of my oldest friends, and I don’t trust him a wit.
He’s been with me through some of my bloodiest and best years, and I’d trust him with my life.
Part of me had believed I’d never see him again. Part of me had hoped I wouldn’t — I didn’t like the idea of meeting someone I’d known so well, only to see and feel like a stranger.
We made a fire in the cover of the trees. Whatever power Lias held over the weather, it didn’t seem capable of taking any of the chill out of the air. I didn’t let him use his sorcery to start up a flame, wanting the time it took to gather firewood and light it to gather my thoughts as well. Then we sat for a while, neither of us seeming to know what to say or how to begin.
Lias had never much liked silence. He broke it first. “Been a long time,” he said. He had a light voice, quick as a bird-trill sometimes, so you had to keep sharp if you wanted to catch every word.
I grunted something halfway to acknowledgment. I had a long stick in my hands, which I idly broke into smaller pieces. My eyes were on the stick and the fire — I felt a strange anxiety that if I looked at Lias, he might vanish like one of the ghosts who strayed close most nights.
“I like the cape,” Lias observed. “Suits you, better than that green one the Table gave you anyway.” He sniffed, and wrinkled his long nose. “Ugh. I take it back, that thing reeks of Briarfae. Where’d you get that?”
“A wicked angel,” I said. “In return for saving a girl.”
Lias lifted his one visible eyebrow. I saw no hint of gray in the loose strands of black hair escaped from his head wrap, and he had few wrinkles on his sun-kissed skin. How old was he? Forty-five? He’d been the oldest of our trio, and I’d expected some of that age to show. Other than his strange garments and the missing eye, he’d hardly changed.
“Heh.” Lias began fishing around in his packs, laid out by his side where he’d propped himself along with his staff against a fallen tree. “I’d almost forgotten your lack of verbosity. I ask you about your faerie cloak, and you give me barely a sentence and a book’s worth of questions.”