Ironcraft

by Pedro Gabriel

  One of his guest replied:

  “We hear you, Kolinzio! You spake well! Nevertheless, what can we do? All of Enoch follows Skillotz as a hippogriff-foal follows its mother! You, oh Kolinzio, have no voice, for you are a judge no longer! What can we do but petition Skillotz, whom we are petitioning against? Do you seek to end up as the Bar-Iared did, with your son slaving in the mines and forges? For what other fate will befall us if the Bar-Kain even consider that we would be allies of the iperborin, or spies of the ophalin? Remember: Such was the accusation against the Bar-Iared, which led to their doom, for they did not want to take part in the war efforts!”

  Kolinzio began to formulate an answer inside his mind, but his voice failed to give it form. His words were suffocated by his sleeping son’s silent breath next door. No, he would not allow him to partake of the Bar-Iared’s hideous fate! Kolinzio dropped his arms as two heavy anchors, binding him to a harsh reality: He was utterly powerless!

  “So be it, then… Yet let us not relinquish our purpose. If there is nothing we can do at present, let us await our chance to act as soon as the propitious moment comes. Let not the occasion flee, when it presents itself. Be patient, but also determined.”

  Another guest nodded in agreement, and made the following proposition:

  “I also suggest we do everything in our power to mitigate the Bar-Iared’s suffering. Let us go to the mines once in awhile and offer them water for refreshment, and also better food than the hard, unleavened bread provided to them.”

  “Yea, let it be as you said,” Kolinzio replied. “But let it not be an excuse for indolence. Remain vigilant! At times, the door of destiny closes almost as it opens! Other times, this door does not even wholly open, rather is only kept ajar! But for the bold, that suffices!”

  They were all in agreement, and departed to their houses before the other Bar-Kain should find them, and be suspicious. All of them were faithful to these resolutions. Nevertheless, they would await many years before the door of destiny would open even a slight crack.

  So began the time of slavery for the Bar-Iared, at the hands of their brethren, the Bar-Kain. The following winter would be a harsh winter indeed: yet less for the weather, as for the harsh circumstances they were living in. This would be the first of forty such winters.

  Chapter

  12

  Deliverance

  For years, the Bar-Iared were immersed in utter darkness. Darkness of the mines, darkness of the smithies, darkness of the soul. They knew no light besides the flame of the furnaces, and the scorching sun. Nor were they given any solace from the smouldering fire of the kilns, or the sultry heat from the mine shafts, or the burning tingle of the lashes.

  The lashes! How they stung, and ached, and burned, soaked as they were with the warmth of flowing blood and sweat. Nor were the slaves the only ones who felt the whip’s throbbing pain. For all those years, King Talizima could hardly slumber. He would wake during the night, with a flaying sensation on his back. No one scourged him; but he felt an invisible hand, which grew heavier the more slaves he had seen throughout the day.

  In the course of those long years, the shadow beneath Talizima’s eyes grew, and his strength diminished—so much so that the enochin used to say old age had knocked early at his door. If things carried on as till then, their king would soon go to sleep in Mathusal, the City of Forebears. Mathusal? In the far north? Never! Their king would slumber forever, but amongst them! They would build a mausoleum for him, erected with their own grateful southern hands! Thus would the nephilin repay him for his premature decay, surely the fruit of the heavy responsibilities laid upon his crowned head. So would the Bar-Kain speak, and so would they think, and a tear of emotion would peek at the corner of their eyes…

  And there was a third, besides Talizima or the slaves, who felt the lashes. From the first holes dug in the mines, Mizar, the underground sylph, felt the pickaxes stinging his back and the shovels flaying his sides. At first, Mizar sought to ignore the discomfort, and the encroaching invasion within his domains. He would ask his musicians, Kadesh and Schechem, to muffle the cacophony of the labours on the surface with their lullabies. And these sylphs of the telluric waters would play their songs louder and louder, lulling him with the sound of the water dripping from the stalactites, or the bustle of the underground torrents whispering through secret caverns.

  But soon not even the song of Kadesh and Schechem—which had lulled Mizar to sleep for centuries—was enough to cloak the noise. The sounds of the mines echoed now even in the most inner recesses of the caves, magnifying the racket with their acoustics. The clatter resounded more loudly than any stream, more acutely than any gurgling, more lastingly than any dripping. Who could focus on a song, and forget a screech piercing through his ears? Not even a sylph as mighty as Mizar could do so! He ordered his two servants thus:

  “Do not give me music, for that medicine hath been tried and found wanting! For entire ages have you lulled me to sleep so! If I no longer sleep, why do ye seek to proceed as before? Play no longer, be silent! And go! Go to the surface, and end this dreadful racket!”

  Thus Kadesh and Schechem ascended the water streamlets through the soil’s interstices. They emerged at one of the many puddles scattered throughout the mines, and peered slightly above the water. What they saw filled them with awe and dread! No one, be it logizkal or sylph, had ever seen such a dark sight—dark not because of the lightless underground, but because of the darkness of slaver hearts! At once did they drain back to the depths, and relayed everything they saw to their master:

  “So, they are not content with robbing my peace, they must also rob me of my iron, and rob others of their freedom as well!” Mizar cried, most irate. “I shall kindle my wrath against them, and in fury drive them away! Let the foundations of the earth tremble, and let their mines crumble, and their labours be thus buried!”

  “Far from thee such thoughts, Thy Majesty!” cried Schechem of the gentle heart, for she loved the logizkal since the time she taught them the art of masonry. “Let it not be done as thou hast said! If thou so doest, not only the slavers will perish, but the slaves as well! For there are scores more slaves inside the mines than their slavers! And what guilt do the slaves share, besides being most aggrieved, as thou art, my lord?”

  “What dost thou suggest, then?” replied Mizar. “For we must put an end to this. My kingdom is a place of peace. Herein I slumber; herein tranquility reigneth. Hence no giant is allowed inside my domains, save those who come to slumber with their forebears at Mathusal, with its placid crypts.”

  “Thy Majesty,” Kadesh intervened, scratching his moist beard, “I perceive that the slavers force the slaves to thieve iron from thee, which the slavers mold into shackles to enslave their brethren. As a father knoweth the virtues and defects of his sons, surely thou knowest the properties and flaws of all metals and rocks, for thou reignest over them. Tell us of the iron’s weakness, and we shall release the slaves from their chains.”

  “I hear thee, my good friend and servant. It is as thou hast said: There is a way, and the logizkal, as newcomers to the art of ironcraft, are surely unaware of it—‘rust.’ You two be the key to their locks, for ye are aquatic sylphs. Be ye warned, however, that this shall be a slowly-paced task indeed. Deliverance shall take its time to come.”

  “We hear thee, Thy Majesty!” Kadesh and Schechem replied. “Let it be slow or swift, for the days of the mortals are but an instant for us! We shall not waver! Was it not out of our own accord that we spent centuries playing the harp to lull thee, oh brown-bearded Mizar? Why would we lose patience, and be disheartened, if this task be also done out of our own accord, and if we can ease the troubles of those poor souls whom we saw toiling under the lash?”

  So, as Nod taught the giants the art of ironcraft, Mizar instructed Kadesh and Schechem in the art of rustcraft. That night, the aquatic sylphs appeared to the leaders of the Bar-Iared, and, after telling them not to be afraid, explained their plan; and t
he leaders rejoiced at this unlooked-for succour. For years on end, night and day, the sylphic couple did not cease dripping their waters from the vaults of the mines… they did not cease dripping their waters on the slaves’ fetters… they did not cease to drip their waters on the iron… did not cease to drip, and drip, and drip… patiently awaiting for the day the iron would finally succumb.

  ***

  As the years accrued, so did the waters over the iron, and so did the rust. And finally, forty years after slavery began, the shackles were so weakened that one of the Bar-Iared was able to break them. It was night. The slave slipped through the cave, and up the entrance of the mine. Cloaked in the pitch blackness of the night—since his own body was darkened by coal and filth—he snuck into the sleeping guards’ shack, and thence he stole the keys to the fetters. As for the Bar-Kain, they slumbered peacefully, for they never thought that their slaves could escape from the iron manacles binding them.

  The people of the Bar-Iared slipped through the dead of the night. They climbed up the Hill, where they had once lived. They dared go no farther, for the houses of the Bar-Kain now circled the whole Hill, and they could not escape without passing by their slavers’ doorsteps. Nor would they set foot inside the armouries where the Bar-Kain stored their weapons, since they now hated iron with a vengeance. Now they knew: They trusted no one but the sylphs, whose trust they should never have abandoned. Thus—so they decided—they would barricade overhill and endure the siege; perhaps the sylphs would find ways to aid them once again.

  When they arrived atop the Hill, they breathed the freshness of a spring dawn. How different was this breeze from the infernal heat which had scorched them, body and soul, for so long! From the east, one could see a glittering string running through the horizon. The morn was at hand. The shadows withdrew to the recesses, as the morning light sallied through the edges of the ground, and rocks, and trees.

  Alas, the light did not just cast away the darkness. The dawning light laid bare the ruins of Enoch Bar-Iared—their former town now laid to waste. They could see the charred remnants of their homes, the abandonment of their scattered objects, the solitary pillars of rubble stoically enduring the weather’s endless withering. They could now see the shades of mossy green, ashen gray, and pale lichens covering everything. And there was something they saw not as they sought amidst the ruins: the gryphons which they had shepherded so lovingly for generations.

  For hours they stood there, contemplating this scene: some standing, others sitting, others kneeling, all of them heartbroken. And as the hours passed by, no one could say if the droplets swelling on the grass blades were from the morning dew, or from the tears the Bar-Iared cried. And the day came, and covered their shoulders and heads with a mantle of lukewarmness, soothing the scars on their backs.

  Then, when Carmel-sun peered between the bounds of sky and land, a fearsome noise slit this bittersweet peace. The trumpets of the Bar-Kain were heard down below. For the Bar-Kain, too, the morning light had revealed something which displeased them greatly: Their slaves, all of them, had escaped, who knew whither! And the runaway slaves looked down yonder, and saw their foes splitting into two search groups: one scouting Enoch’s vicinity… the other coming uphill!

  “What shall we do? What shall we do?!” No one knew. The elders were burdened by a long life, and four decades of mistreatment. But their love still burnt within their limbs, so that they would not forfeit their lives till the lives of their children were saved. They looked around, and recognized, amidst the debris, the walls of the once-beautiful Horeb’s Temple. Yea, the chapel their forefathers had erected in honour of the Golden Star, who had told them where to lay the foundations of Enoch, long before the Bar-Kain came. The morn had already put out all the stars in the sky… save for Horeb, whose glow persisted still.

  The Bar-Iared rushed to the entrance of the Temple, now no more than a mound of rubble, and prostrated themselves before it, tearing their hairs and beards in desperation:

  “Oh Horeb, we know this Temple holds a door no longer! If a door was still here, it would be locked! But it was not our will that this holy door would be locked, or destroyed! Come to our aid, Horeb, mighty Judge of the Stars! For Aigonz’s sake, help us!”

  They were so praying, when the first Bar-Kain arrived overhill, shouting: “Here they be! Here they be!” It was, therefore, before everyone’s eyes that a miracle then unfolded. For behold! The gilded mantle of the morning turned into a mist, which did cover the Hill’s summit, as a golden crown hovering over the earth. And the Hill was never as tall or majestic as on that last day!

  In the midst of that otherworldly fog, they could perceive a silhouette with a scale hanging from its right hand. His face was veiled by the haze. From his shoulders thundered two voices, resounding to the ends of Thebel: One of the voices lamented for the Bar-Iared, and praised their forbearance; the other voice pierced hearts and ears both, as it cried against the sins of the Bar-Kain. And no one heard these voices more clearly than King Talizima, though he had stayed at the foot of the Hill. As for Skillotz, he was away, ruling over the city of Lamech.

  The mist came and engulfed the Bar-Iared, forming a wall of light between them and their pursuers. Then, as the mist lifted, Enoch Bar-Iared was nowhere to be found. They were forever taken away from mortal sight. No one ever knew anything more of them, nor were their remains ever found inside Mathusal, the City of Ancestors.

  But Mizar felt that the Bar-Iared weighed on his back no longer. And as the Bar-Iared were lifted away, so was Mizar’s indulgence. The chthonic sylph rolled inside the bowels of the earth with all his might. Claiming his profaned domains to himself once more, he took revenge for forty years of grievances. The earth quaked. The soil turned over, the smithies shook loose from their foundations, the mineshafts were buried. And the Bar-Kain who had climbed the Hill in pursuit of their slaves toppled from the heights. They fell through the scaffoldings and the pulleys, and in like manner perished. Only the Bar-Kain who had remained underhill survived the calamity.

  They looked up, and saw the Hill no more. The superb mount had been reclaimed by Mizar. So great was the earthquake, the Hill collapsed under its own weight: For the mount had been weakened when the giants burrowed through its foundations. A thick cloud of debris fell down the slopes of the Hill, from top to bottom: a colossal landslide dragging everything in its path, devouring the Hill and all the possessions and labours of the logizkal. And this maelstrom of dust and dirt would have crushed the whole town of Bar-Kain down below, if Nod had not flown out of Talizima’s house and placed herself betwixt the avalanche and Enoch, shielding the village with her magic. Even so, she was not able to protect the Bar-Kain from being covered with a blanket of dust: Their tongues cleaved to the roof of their mouths, their nostrils covered with powdery plugs, their sandy eyelids struggling to open. And they remained like that for several minutes, as statues molded from pillars of ash, cropped against the outline of an opaque, brownish-grey mist, amidst an unnatural snow of cinder and debris.

  And from that day onward, Nod’s white dress was forever tainted with a certain grey hue, though very faint…

  Chapter

  13

  Moab and the Seven Gifts

  When the earthquake ceased, the Hill had ceased to be as well. As the fog departed and the Bar-Kain regained their sights, their minds were deeply perturbed. What happened? Where were their slaves? How could the Hill have crumbled? Were they themselves still alive?

  Soon, all of those questions were forgotten. For lo! As they looked down upon the void left by the Hill, they saw a form within the emptiness. A huge block of metal cast its shadow on the grey curtain of that fateful day. A block of pure gold it was, resting atop a base of native iron. The enochin mines, in the midst of their zigzagging patterns, had somehow missed that immense mass of precious matter. Only the calamity had exposed it. And though the logizkal were giants, the block was as thick as three giants lying down, and as high as six giants standin
g on each other’s shoulders, or one hundred feet.

  “That is it! That is it!” the Bar-Kain heard behind them. As they turned, they saw Malvizio, the elder, shouting and leaping. “That is the sign!”

  “Sign? What is he muttering about?” they asked amongst themselves. But without further discussion, Malvizio went down his lair. When he returned, he brought a long parchment, yellowed by the years.

  “Behold! Behold all of you! Remember those six days I stayed with Nod, and Nod alone, locked inside my library? She instructed me to build this, as soon as I had gathered enough material.”

  They beheld the parchment as Malvizio unfurled it, and saw the sketches he chalked on its surface. It was a creature. And what a strange creature it was! The head had the proportions of a man, but the beard was of a giant, as was the size of the creature. A horned crown went around its skull. But along its body, there were heads of other animals—seven heads could one count, piling as bricks atop one another. This being sat on a throne, and had a sceptre in one hand, and a sword in the other.

  “You were instructed to build a creature? How are you to perform such a feat? Are you going to gather flesh and give it life?” the enochin asked.

  “Do not be simple-minded!” Malvizio replied. “This is not a creature made of flesh, as we are, or the ophalin. It is a creature made of metal, as the magical sphinxes protecting Ophir are made of stone. I was asked to build this statue, but with a much greater size than all of our foes, so that it would crush them. Yet, no matter how much I turned my mind around, I never found enough iron to build it, while leaving enough iron to arm ourselves. But lo! Here is the block of raw matter, from which we will give form to the One who shall protect Enoch.”

  Till then, Nod kept minding her dress, shaking the dust and ash away from it. But now was her time to speak, and bring light to the enochin’s confusion. She smiled, and her smile would be enough to convince anyone of anything: