milliways_bar | Breakfast at Milliways

"Nay, Erinnish magic is... softer. Erinnish magic is more about mercy and understanding. The cileann take the dead to their places of resting, and those in the house of Eagles, the royals, can have a magic called the kivarna that lets them know what others feel. My two cousins, Aidan and Shona, had it in full measure."

"Do the Cheysuli have magic beyond the lir-link?"

He remembers himself.

"And you can tell me to shut it if you like. I'm too curious."

"Nay, questions are how ye learn, and I don't mind - better I tell people and they understand than go about thinking wrongly. The lir-link is what gives us our magic. We have three magics, but use only two." He held up two fingers and counted it off. "One, we have the shapechange. I become a wolf, as Tanni, but black. Two, we can draw on the magic of the earth to heal. The third... It is what has named us demons in the past, though we do not like to use it. The third can take away a man's will and replace it with that of the Cheysuli putting such a magic on him."

Richard shivers.

"That last one sounds frightful. But changing your shape could be fun. Chanterella can be a nightingale and a kitten."

"It's a wonderful thing, boyo, being able to have that freedom... There's not a thing like the shapechange, except one." His lips uplifted in a bit of a grin. "We call it sul'harai."

He tries to approximate the sound of the word.

"Sool-har-aye? What's that?"

The accent gained him a bit of a grin. "It means the moment of perfect union between lovers."

He's actually become careful to say it that way, other than the translation others would call more literal.

Richard blushes bright red and grins at this.

"I-I think I know what you mean. I am bloodlinked to my lover."

He can't stop grinning.

A chuckle at that and he just smiles. "Aye then, I'd guess you would know. But that is the shapechange, that joy and perfection."

"That just sounds amazing. I'm learning a bit of magic now, but I doubt I'll ever get that far."

"I'm sorry to say, lad, but without a lear, I don't know if you could do it or no. But your magic, I don't doubt, is differing from mine. You can likely do things I can't." Not that it bothered him in the least.

"I only know a little magic. Just a few things Sooty taught me. Like this.."

He casts the light rune and a small globe of lavender light appears.

"Useful, but not powerful."

"Says something for you that you're able to do it in my presence, though - usually Cheysuli and Ihlini cancel each other this close. Maybe it's that you don't have the blood." Blais shrugged. It didn't matter to him. He had Tanni, and if this lad could do Ihlini magic, well then, who was he to protest?

"Really? I didn't know that. Must have made fighting one another challenging."

"It made Cheysuli and Ihlini face as men to men. It made the fighting fair." He shrugged. "Or as fair as it ever can be, when Cheysuli are known for bows and knives. They ever tried to wipe out our race. Near succeeded. But we never fully died."

"That's horrid. Sooty did that?"

"The driving force behind it, aye, but never the direct hand. His will was that the prophecy fail - that the Firstborn never be given life, or did it come to be, that the Firstborn be his to control. The methods were up to the Ihlini that were, at the time, serving him in Valgaard. I don't know what came of it. I died when the only one with all the right blood was ten."

Richard is pretty troubled by this but says nothing.

"I don't know any of the stories of prophecy. I just know that Asar-Suti and Lochiel were defeated."

"Now, look you, lad..." Blais sighed, leaned forward so he would be heard more easily. "Don't you be thinking ill on them now. Here, they aren't what they were. Here, they're men, same as you and I. ... Lochiel wasn't, last I was looking, on the outside. But inside, yes. They've got magic, and they've got pasts that have more trouble than mine. But they're changed."

He nods.

"I'll try to remember that. Sooty has been kind to me."

"If either of us has more reason to hate him, 'tis me. 'Twas an Ihlini that took Tanni's life, on behalf of Lochiel - on behalf of Asar-Suti. Here... 'twas Asar-Suti I laughed with near to the point of crying about these silly birds called penguins." Blais shrugged. "To me, here, they aren't the ones I knew of."

He nods again.

"I can except that. They don't seem like your typical Dark God and Overlord."

He keeps from mentioning Lochiel's condition last he'd seen him. Barely. "Far from what they were, at least - and I'm glad of it. I would hate to have to break the bar's rules. I've come to like it here."

He smiles.

"I love it here too. Milliways has become a second home."

"Right now, Milliways is all I can have," Blais pointed out. "I am rather dead."

Then he grinned, shrugged, and stood from the stool. "But, thankfully enough for me, Milliways also has woods. And I'm chafing for the outdoors. How much is it I owe ye, boyo, and I'll be letting you on with your work."

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