The Archmage: Chapter Twenty-Nine

Osheen and I left Yesgol to return to the capitol, and spent the season with Aldvarri, spending a lovely winter season together. On the first day of the solstice, we made a lovely mulled spice wine with cinnamon, cloves, and even oranges that had been imported all the way from Elderglass, and used the wine to poach some pears, and made a salad with toasted nuts, poached pear, greens, and salty parmesan cheese. 

On the second day, while Osheen was out to buy a basket of changa mushrooms, Aldvarri pulled me aside. 

“When are you going to marry that boy?” he asked quietly. 

“Uh,” I said. “In some ways, we already are. In other ways, we’re not. I want to go through the proper mortal ceremony, but –” 

He patted me on the shoulder and shook his head. 

“If you always wait for the perfect moment, then the moment will never arrive. Sometimes it’s hard to take the plunge. Just tell me this – do you want to marry him?” 

“Of course,” I said. 

“And does he want to marry you?” 

“He’s said he does, and I trust him.” 

“Then,” Aldvarri said. “Marry him.” 

“But what if–” 

“Life is nothing but what ifs,” Aldvarri chuckled. “Just do it. Get a ring and propose.” 

I opened my mouth and shut it, then nodded. 

“Alright. I will.” 

“Good,” Aldvarri said. “We do need some more coal for the fire, but I happen to know that Brahm is out. That means the nearest person who sells coal is a half hour’s walk away, near Hailey’s Jewelry, and I really want coal, and not firewood. Brahm’s out for the whole season, so you can probably take a few trips to look around for the perfect… Bag of coal.”

He winked at me, and I nodded. 

“I understand,” I said, then headed out. 

Looking over the rings was an interesting experience. Gold was expensive, of course, I knew that, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of what made some of the rings more expensive than others.

Oh, I understood the basics of how a larger, clearer, rarer gemstone was better than a smaller cloudy one, but why was one gold band with rubies set into it a quarter of the price of another, that was virtually identical? Both were made of fourteen karat gold, and both were roughly the same size, with similar stones. 

“Ah, well, those rubies were mined in the land of the giants,” the salesperson, a short man with a well oiled mustache, said, pointing to the cheaper one. “Thus, relatively local. But the other is a Tracktath import – far more luxurious, and a way to tell your bride to be that you really care about her. In fact, most stores weren’t even able to host Tracktath gemstones until earlier this year!” 

I gave the salesperson a screwy-eyed look, and he simply smiled. 

“Husband to be,” I said. 

“My apologies, good sir,” the man said, mopping at his forehead with a handkerchief. 

“What about garnet?” I asked. They looked prettier than many of the rubies, a deeper red, and would compliment the shades of red that Osheen and Bridgette’s auras were – similar, yet not the same.

“Ah, I see,” the man said. “If you need help, let me know.”

He left then, leaving me far more confused than I was before. Why had he left? 

Ah. 

Price. 

Garnets were cheaper than rubies, and thus, I’d insulted him by asking for the cheapest possible version.

But that was stupid! 

Price shouldn’t be the deciding factor in a wedding or engagement ring. Money and love were not related, no matter what the nobles seemed to think. 

Tradition might have stipulated that a wedding band be the equal of three month’s salary, but that was utter nonsense. Yes, it was going to be something you would hopefully wear for the rest of your life, but if you were suffering in the here and now, that didn’t mean you had to suffer even more just to get a dinky bit of jewelry. 

If a wedding band was only ten crowns, but had meaning to you and your spouse, then it was suited perfectly. If it was a thousand crowns – and you could afford it – and it had meaning to you and your spouse, then it was suited just as perfectly. 

I left that shop, pulling my sympathetically linked pen to write a message to Emilia, wanting to ask her if she and Finnalir had any suggestions, when I paused. 

Emilia was a body mage, and the pens were sympathetically linked… 

That would make for a good enchantment. I’d thought for a long time about what magic to put into the rings, but had never found a solution I was satisfied with.

But if I could convince Emilia to give me a body diagnostic spell, then link the rings, I could make a simple foci that would cast the diagnostic on the opposite ring. 

It would let us always be able to know that the other was alive, even while we were separated! 

Better yet, since it was a foci, I could just slap it on with a universal anchor. I didn’t need to worry about the fact that the ring was small at all, which had been a major flaw in a lot of the ideas I’d been considering. 

I furiously scribbled out my message before shoving it away to actually pick up the firewood. Aldvarri had given me an excuse to get out and look at rings, but it would look suspicious if I didn’t come home with anything…

That night, after Osheen passed out, I crawled out of bed and started working on the ritual array I would need. I didn’t know what ring I would have yet, so I was really building only half of a spell, but I wanted to have everything in place for when I got my own ring. 

Assuming he said yes, of course. He had said he wanted to marry me, but maybe he meant he wanted to in a few years, or after the political situation calmed down. Maybe he had meant he wanted to, but couldn’t because he had to work to save Paerús. 

I shook off that line of thought before it could get too far afield. It wouldn’t be doing any good, and would only make things worse. I couldn’t make the thoughts vanish completely, of course, but I could shove them into a corner of my mind and not acknowledge them.

When I went out to get firewood the following day, I headed out to a different jewelers. This one was run by a tiny aster, who glared at me the whole time, as if she thought that I was going to steal from her. 

To her credit, I probably could have – there were no wards, not even the basic alarm wards that there were in Zheren. But she didn’t know that, and I didn’t love being treated like I was about to steal. 

It was only at the third jeweler that I found a band that I thought suited Osheen. It was mostly plain gold, with a center ruby, ringed by several small shades of garnet, red spiel, rhodonite, and other. It shimmered with different reds at every angle, and was also a reasonable price – two thousand crowns. 

I poked at myself mentally for thinking that was reasonable. There was a time that would have beggared me. 

Now, though, it was attainable with some enchanting. 

Better yet, the woman who ran the store was able to engrave the interior of the ring. 

“What do you want engraved?” the broad-shouldered elf asked. 

“The universal anchor,” I said, then realized she might not know what that was, and pulled out some paper to draw it for her. She picked it up and frowned, then gave me a glare. 

“This isn’t going to curse me or something, is it?” she demanded. 

I sighed. I’d honestly forgotten that there was so much anti-mage rhetoric among the common people. It made sense – it was widely thought that magecraft was an extremely dangerous career, and that unless you were a noble or military, it was best left alone. 

“No, it won’t,” I said. “I’m going to use it to enchant the wedding ring to let me and my partner check on one another from afar, to make sure we’re safe.” 

“Spy on each other, more like,” she said, “but it’s none of my business what you type get up to.” 

“It’s not just nobles,” I said. “My dad is a tailor, not some grand mage. I learned to enchant the hard way. The only reason that you don’t like mages is because the nobility doesn’t want common people seizing power for themselves.” 

The elf gave me a strange look, then shook her head. 

“Like I said, it’s none of my business,” she said. “I’ll do it.” 

I picked the ring up the following day, and then snuck out one night onto the roof to start the enchanting. I couldn’t finish it entirely, since it was interlocking bonds, but I could at least get the basics done. 

On the solstice itself, while Aldvarri was stewing some more mulled wine, and snow was falling down heavily enough that even the bonfires had been called off for the day, I pulled Osheen to one side. 

My stomach was tying itself into a knot, and I felt like I was going to lose the porridge that I’d eaten that morning. I very nearly chickened out at the last second, but I forced myself to go through with it. 

I got down on one knee, though it was more like the thudding of a fall than an elegant proposal, and just removed the ring from my pocket, holding it up to him. I tried to open my mouth to ask, but no sound came out. 

My mind started running in full panic mode then, insisting that I’d completely ruined everything. Osheen’s eyes widened. 

“Are you asking me to marry you?” he asked, and I nodded mutely, still unable to speak, despite the fact I wanted to. I needed to say something, anything. 

Osheen’s face twisted, and he let out a strangled half-sob, half-laugh, then turned and raced away. For a moment, I thought I was going to pass out, then he pulled something from his bag and raced back, holding out an engagement ring of his own. 

It was silver, with an emerald set inside, and a complex design worked into the silver that resembled a flower unfolding around the emerald set within. 

I finally was able to make a noise, but the noise that I made was more of a squawking sound than anything. 

“Yes,” Osheen said. “But will you marry me?” 

“Yes,” I said, it coming out as half a whisper. Osheen snapped his box shut and tossed it on a chair, then pulled me in a hug, lifting me right off the ground and whirling around in a circle. He held me crushingly tight, and I held him back, though I also frantically clutched at the ring – the last thing I wanted was for me to drop it and it to slip between the floorboards, only to be lost forever, or something like that. 

Aldvarri stumped over not long after, surveying the room. When he spotted the box, and Osheen slipping the ring on, he smiled and nodded his approval. 

“Congratulations,” he said. “When’s the ceremony?” 

“I… I don’t know,” I said. I looked up at Osheen. “When is it?” 

“Maybe in the autumn,” he said. “Before our second year as teachers starts?” 

“That sounds good to me,” I agreed, then looked to Aldvarri. 

“Autumn,” I said, and he let out a low chuckle. 

“So I heard,” he said. “Congratulations again.” 

I smiled at him, even as I flexed my fingers, getting used to the new weight on them. Then my eyes widened and I whirled around to Osheen. 

“I didn’t even tell you about the enchantment!”