Realms of Magic - Brian Thomsen King [19]
The merchant, locking the sliding door behind them, caught Jehan gawking at the creature. He said. "His name is Ladislau? He's a giff, one of the star-faring races? He's normally not this cranky, but the present situation has made him bitter?"
Jehan could not tell if the giff was bitter, cranky, or in blissful ecstasy. All he knew was that the creature could swallow him to the waist in a single bite.
The young apprentice put on his most serious face, the one he used when Maskar was lecturing him. "Is this your… material?"
Ladislau the giff made a loud, derisive snort that sounded like an air bubble escaping a tar pit. "Is this the best you can do, Khanos. Are there no better groundling mages on this dirt speck." The hippo-headed creature's voice was level and flat, and his questions sounded like statements.
"I think he will do, Laddy?" rejoined Khanos. "You don't need a large gun to shoot down a small bird, do you now?"
Ladislau grumbled something Jehan did not catch and motioned to the barrels. Jehan stepped up to the containers and pulled the loosened lid from the closest.
The smoke powder itself was hard and granular, a grayish-black shade shot with small pips of silver. Jehan had never heard of these pips, and inwardly congratulated himself on the discovery. Here was some other fact about the powder that the Old Hounds kept to themselves.
Jehan picked up a nodule of the powder between two fingers. It was heavier than it looked, as if it had been cast around lead. He tried to break it between his nails, but he might as well have been squeezing a pebble.
Jehan looked into the container. The small nodules were mixed with a grit of a soft, lighter gray. The largest particle of the grit was slightly larger than the smallest bit of smoke powder. Doubtless, the merchant had already considered sifting it through a screen. Jehan rubbed the grit between his fingers; it broke apart easily and drifted slowly downward in the still air of the warehouse.
The young mage licked his dust-covered skin. It tasted like the floor of old Maskar's summoning chamber, and the grit clotted into a ball that Jehan rubbed between his fingers.
No sieve then, and no water to separate the two, Jehan thought. He said aloud, "You could do this without magic, and in a city safer than this. Perhaps it would be smarter merely to remove the smaller barrels now and separate it later.
The giff made a noise that sounded like a human stomach growling, and Khanos put in, "We felt it would be easier to move one barrel than six, especially through this city? We don't want these to fall into the wrong hands? Can you separate the two?"
Jehan scooped up the mixture with one hand and sifted it between his fingers. Some of the larger nodules stayed in his palm, but most of the silver-shot grains fell back into the barrel with some of the grit. The grit drifted more slowly, like dandelions on the wind.
At length he nodded. "It can be done. You want to have the powder in the large keg at the end of this?" Khanos nodded enthusiastically. "Then if Mr. Ladislau here would be so kind as to pour the smaller barrels slowly into the larger, I can come up with something to remove most of the debris."
The giff grunted and hoisted the first barrel. Jehan recalled the basics of the cantrip, the small semispell that Maskar had taught him to aid in his sweepings. It was a simple spell-"half an intention and a bit of wind" as Maskar described it when he first taught it. Of course, Maskar the Mummy would never think to use a floor-sweeping cantrip in this way.
Jehan cast the minor spell and nodded at the great creature. The giff began to pour the mixture into the larger barrel. Jehan directed the sweeping wind across