“Don’t mind if I do, don’t mind if I do,” the man said happily, plopping down onto the offered spot. “These old bones just aren’t what they once were, I’m afraid. Standing around does terrible things to my knees. I guess the years caught up to me, eh?”
‘The pot belly probably doesn’t help,’ Zorian thought inside his head, though outwardly he remained silent, waiting for the man to tell him what he wanted of him.
“I have to say, this looks like a nice place to relax in,” the man said, idly looking at the sheet of paper that listed the prices of some of the meals and beverages. “A little pricy, but quiet and out of the way. Private. Anyway, you don’t mind if I order us a drink, do you?”
“I don’t drink alcohol,” said Zorian with a shake of his head. And he didn’t trust any of the non-alcoholic beverages in a place like this, either — it wasn’t that upscale of an establishment, regardless of what the man said. “I’m going to have to decline.”
“Now that’s just unfair,” the man said. “Oh well, I guess I’ll have to drink alone then. Forgive the impoliteness but I’m rather parched and it just feels wrong, having a conversation in a tavern without a mug of beer to sip on occasionally.”
A few minutes later, the man took a swing from his mug and got to the point.
“Ah, that hits the spot,” he said. “With that out of the way, allow me to introduce myself: I am Gurey Cwili, of Cwili and Rofoltin Equipment. Though I’m sad to say old Rofoltin passed away two years ago, so I’m the only owner now. I kept the name as it is, though. Tradition.”
Zorian resisted the urge to tell him to get on with it.
“Anyway, I see you’re a busy man so I’ll get straight to the point — I’ve heard you’ve been going out into the forest to gather alchemical ingredients and hunting winter wolves. And also that you’ve been selling magic items on the side, too.”
“Yes, what of it?” asked Zorian. Nothing he did was in any way illegal. The winter wolves had sizeable bounties for every pelt brought to the nearest guild station for the express purpose of encouraging people to hunt them, as they tended to prey on the livestock, children, and lone travelers, and selling magic items and alchemical ingredients was hardly a crime. Some places had arcane restrictions about what could and could not be sold and by whom, but those were usually the consequence of regional monopolies granted to someone and Knyazov Dveri was under no one’s monopoly. He’d checked. “I’m a certified mage, if that’s what’s bothering you.”
He even had a badge to prove it. It was pricy, but he interacted too often with mages in the town to risk getting caught doing business without a license. Especially since he had gotten an impression that a couple of shop owners resented the competition he represented and would love to report him to the guild if they could find an excuse.
“To put it bluntly, I want you to sell your alchemical ingredients and magic items to me instead of my competitors,” the man said. “Don’t think this is some kind of threat or blackmail, though — I’m willing to pay you extra for the privilege.”
Zorian blinked. He didn’t expect that.
An hour later, the man had hashed out some sort of agreement with Zorian. The extra money didn’t mean all that much to Zorian, but the man did have something he wanted — a fully-equipped alchemical workshop that he wasn’t using all the time. In exchange for the right to use said workshop from time to time and the right to consult the man’s private library for botanical books, Zorian agreed to offer all his products to the man before he did to anyone else. The man seemed pretty pleased with himself at having closed such a deal. Honestly, so was Zorian — the local library had a miserable selection of books on plants and herbs, but Gurey claimed his own private library was not nearly so limited. Having access to a proper alchemical workshop was also convenient, and not something he could easily get elsewhere, unless he was willing to teleport to Korsa every time he wanted to make something. And he really didn’t have that much mana to burn.
“How come there is such a demand for potions and magic items here, anyway?” asked Zorian. “This city seems a little too small for the amount of magic shops. I understand the workshops since they can always export their products elsewhere, but how do shops like yours achieve such volume on the local market?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Gurey said. “Travelers. Or more accurately, settlers and adventurers. You see, this city is one of the last stops for settlers going further north as part of the ‘Great Northern Push’, as the government likes to call it. As one of the last centers of ‘real civilization’ on their journey, we get a lot of demand for critical supplies of all sorts.”
“Great Northern Push?” asked Zorian.
“Not a regular reader of the newspapers, I take it? It’s the whole thing with colonizing the Sarokian Highlands that the government has been pushing so hard lately. You must have noticed the posters around advertising free land and tax exemptions and what not. It’s part of Eldemar’s current strategy for achieving supremacy over Sulamnon and Falkrinea. The idea is that by taming the northern wilderness the country will get a major population and resource boost. All countries that have a border with the wilderness do this to a greater or lesser degree, but Eldemar has really invested a lot into this endeavor. Not sure whether it will be really worth it in the end, but I sure don’t mind the traffic it gives me!”
Hmm, now that he thought about it, there were traces of that even back at the academy — it was nothing horribly blatant, but textbooks and class assignments often worked in mentions of the Sarokian Highlands far more than one would expect, considering their low population and current importance.
In any case, the man soon left and Zorian returned to staring at his map. Goddamn witch.
“I don’t suppose that now that I have brought you the plants you asked for—”
“Don’t be silly, boy,” Silverlake said, snatching the bundle of plants from his hands. “You don’t really think a silly little fetch quest like this is all it takes to get my help? Think of this as an… elimination round. You were horribly slow, anyway.”
“Slow…” Zorian repeated incredulously. “It took me only 3 days. The only reason I could get them all so quickly at all was that I could teleport from place to place. Not to mention the danger involved — you never even told me those ‘redbell mushrooms’ of yours exploded into clouds of paralyzing dust if handled improperly.”
“Well that’s just common knowledge,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “Everyone knows that. Here, grind these snail shells for me, please.”
Zorian looked at the small leather bag full of colorful red-and-blue snail shells and frowned. He knew that species of snail. They were used in production of certain drugs, and were very much illegal to harvest. More important than that, their ground up shells were a powerful hallucinogen and inhaling even a handful of dust would leave him delirious and incapacitated. He threw the annoying old woman a brief glare before simply casting a ‘dust shield’ spell on himself — the same one he used to protect himself against the paralyzing mushrooms — before grabbing a mortar and pestle and getting down to work.
After he was done with that, the old witch promptly handed him the very bundle of plants he had spent three days gathering, rattled off a series of brief instructions and pointed him towards an old cauldron leaning on the wall of her cottage. Wonderful — apparently he was going to be making a potion the old way. He had been tutored by another witch as a child, so he wasn’t totally lost here, but the potion she wanted him to make now was unfamiliar to him. Not to mention that there was a reason why traditional potion making was considered obsolete compared to modern alchemy — it was harder, less safe, and usually gave worse results to boot.