Asteras Os

The shopkeeper sat at his desk, frozen in indecision over a pile of papers. At one time there had been organized stacks of inventories, reports and letters. Now there was one huge pile. Where was he going to start? Thankfully, he was interrupted by a tall man wearing a square, gray felt hat.

“Excuse me,” the man said. “The clerk at the counter said you would be able to help me.” Light reflecting in through the shop from the open casements caught the man's blue eye as they scanned the papers on the desk. “If you're not too busy, that is.”

The shopkeeper shifted to one side in his chair until he could see his assistant in the background of the shop. The assistant shrugged apologetically. The shopkeeper returned his attention to the customer looming over him. “I am definitely busy,” he gestured at the mess of papers, “but with minor things. Of course I can help you, if possible.”

“I hope it's possible.” The man wasn't angry but his tone was curt. “I need a wand.”

The shopkeeper clapped his hands together. “Then this should be easy. This is a wand shop, and we have a lot wands, from everywhere, except at the moment we are out of dark elm. And I apologize, you need a wand and more than you want to know. Please continue.”

The man nodded and stepped closer to the desk, glancing over his shoulder. “I need … I'm looking for an elven wand.” His voice fell to almost a whisper as he finished the sentence, but his eyes locked with the shopkeeper's, steady, as if by sheer will he could convince the older man not to immediately call the City Guard.

The shopkeeper straightened the papers directly in front of him, tapping their edges into line before sitting back in his chair. It was a supportive chair, with a low back and padded seat, and wide arms that he could rest his elbows on. “Please sit,” he said, motioning at an identical chair on the customer's side of the desk. He caught his assistant's attention with a wave and a moment later they could hear the shop's door lock with a metallic clunk. As the man settled into the chair, the shop dimmed as the casements were drawn closed.

The shopkeeper kept a pleasant smile, steepling his fingertips. “I'm a businessman,” he said. “I'm willing to talk business, even hypothetical business, or the business of business.”

The tall man frowned. “What does that mean?” He shifted in the chair until his tried to move his arms. His forearms were stuck to the armrest. He tried to jerk his arms free but they were stuck. “Hey, I'm stuck!”

The shopkeeper nodded calmly. “Yes, because while I have no reason to distrust you – and stop panicking, I don't intend to call the guard – but if you're asking around for illegal magic, I'd rather take a few precautions to avoid a firefight. You're welcome. You'd lose, and it'd be messy, and I seriously don't need anymore paperwork to fuck with. Are we good?”

The man struggled for a minute, until he dislodged his hat. He watched it fall to the floor, then sat back in the chair, resigned. “Okay, fine. I assume you have something to sell, or you would have sent me on my way.”

“This a wand shop,” the shopkeeper said. “I have other items, other wands that are as powerful as elven wands. As magical … as alive as elven wands. Plenty of perfectly legal artifacts, registered and monitored, if you will, by the Academy. Why don't you tell me what you're looking for, exactly?”

“An elven wand.” The man was humorless, and less than chatty.

“Yes, but to do what with?”

The tall man looked at the floor, presumably at his hat. “To have as my wand,” he said. “That's all. Why is this so difficult?”

“Am I the first wand seller with whom you're inquired?”

“No.”

“Have far did you get with the other shops?”

“They were reluctant to call the guards but they still showed me the door. No further.”

“Understandably.” He chewed at the corner of his lip, considering. “I guess your persistence has paid off before a less tolerant person turned you over to the guard. Risky. Stupid. Apparently you've never seen the inside of the prison.”

“I --”

“And perhaps you're not actually prepared to find someone who knows what you're talking about. Sinister beings, summoned from the core of the Earth. Crippling weather. Unbound souls. Brain-twisting illusions. Wards against the metals of Man? Silver fire? Gold waters? Vampiric immortality?” He leaned forward, arms on the desk, sliding over the paperwork. “The Bane of Sulpherus was destroyed last month, requiring the focus of the entire Wizard Academy to drain its magics back into the ether. Two apprentices died. The reward for the Word of Kane, the wand of the deposed elven monarch, is over a billion gold. Is this the market you're interested in?”

The tall man didn't answer immediately. His eyes had closed and his head had tipped down while the shopkeeper threatened him with the list of the more common rumors about the magics of the Elves. When the man lifted his head, a blue fire burned in the cavern where his eyes had been. The glow of the eldritch fire flowed down his arms, dispelling the trap. Freed, he leaned forward and retrieved his hat from the floor. He dusted it off, bathing the cloth material in the glow, transforming the hats surface into a repeating pattern of melting and reforming stars. He placed it delicately back on his head, canting it slightly forward. “Yes,” he finally said. “That's the market I'm interested in.”

The shopkeeper raised his eyebrows and relaxed once again in his chair. “Stefan!” he shouted his assistant's name. “We need drinks! The good stuff!” Stefan said something unintelligible from the far side of the room, and the tall man adjusted the scene-shifting hat slightly further to one side.

The shopkeeper stood and moved around to face the wall of honey-colored wood behind his chair, empty except for a small painting of a round white cloud against a blue sky. He raised his right hand and slipped a small thin wand out of sleeve with his left hand, and used the wand to tap once on the wall, avoiding the painting.

The wall lit up in a grid of hand-sized square, each square a different color of the rainbow. He tapped a green square and all the other colors disappeared, and when he tapped the green square a second time, all the green squares blinked and shifted in a revolving dance of light that flowed into a single, brilliantly green square.

The shopkeeper resleeved the wand and withdrew another wand, this time with his right hand from his left sleeve. He used this wand to tap on the green square a fourth time, and it darkened into a recessed shadow. He reached into the blackness and pulled out a long, clear box. He placed it on the desk, on top of the papers.

“I have this one item,” the shopkeeper said, returning to his chair. Inside the box was a wand a yellowish wood with a cloudy green stone in the base of its pommel. The wand's simple design was overshadowed by the way the green stone glowed with a soft but bright light.

The tall man clutched at the arms of the chair, as if preventing himself from grabbing at the box. “Asteras Os,” he said as if to himself. “Boneflower.” His pulled his eyes away from the elvish artifact, wiping away tears that had come on suddenly. “I thought … everyone said the Boneflower was lost in The Greenlands, in the battlefields.”

The shopkeeper shook his head. “I guess it was found.”

“By who?”

“Unknown.”

“How did you get it?”

The shopkeeper pushed his back against the curve of his chair, letting his gaze trace the curve of the wand's handle and the rounded bead of wood that separated the handle from the thin shaft that curved very slightly to the point. The transparent box around it was designed to keep both hands and magics away from the wand, it also locked inside whatever magics were within. While Boneflower was clearly visible, the gathering energies emanating from the wand blurred the ink and writings on the papers underneath the box.

The shopkeeper forced his eyes back to the customer. “The wand arrived under difficult circumstances,” he said, finally.

“For you?”

“For the previous owner. He was … in a hurry.”

The tall man looked ill, as if the wand was reaching beyond the wards of the transparent box and draining the color from his face. The shopkeeper wondered if the man was struck for the first time by the great gulf of difference between the palpable power of the Boneflower and his own meager skills. Probably. The shopkeeper was, too.

The old man reached for the box, intending to return to the vault in the wall.

“Wait,” the tall man said. He licked at his lips. “How much?”

“Too much.”

“I have all the gold you could want.”

“Not even if you had a billion. Asteras Os is too much for you. If you were to take it, to hold it in your hands, I doubt you would make it to the door. Asteras Os would consume you.”

“That's a lie!” The man leaped up from the chair and his eyes blazed brilliant blue flames that wrapped all the way around the shopkeeper's desk, around the shopkeeper and up the wall behind him. But instead of using the flame to grab the box and the wand, the man was suddenly struggled to control the arc of his wild magic.

A deep howl escaped from the man as the blue flame began spiraling into the box, circling the length of the yellow wand until disappearing into the now brilliantly glowing green stone. With a great rush of air and noise, the totality of the tall man's blue magic was sucked into Boneflower.

The tall man collapsed into his chair, shaking and gaunt. The shopkeeper grabbed the box, touched the wall and shoved the box into the recess of the square that opened. The interior of the warded vault flicked blue, green and then yellow as its door slid shut.

The shopkeeper returned to his chair as the tall man regained his composure. Most of the papers that had been on top of his desk were strewn around the floor. Smoke drifted off the edges of the few papers remaining in the middle where the box had been sitting.

The clattering of glass goblets preceded the assistant's appearance with a tray of wine bottles. He stopped as a corner of paper floated into his face, descending perhaps from the ceiling.

“Ah, just in time,” the shopkeeper said with a clap of his hands.

The tall man accepted the goblet from the assistant, who then filled it with a deep red wine. One the shopkeeper's goblet was filled, the pair drained their drinks in one long gulp.

“Now,” the shopkeeper said, “now we can talk about the kind of wand you really want. I have a fantastic collection!”

He laughed heartily and the grid of colored squares behind him danced in a blinking circle. The tall man nodded wearily, watching the assistant to fill his glass a second time.