by SJB Gilmour
She looked about, ignoring the surprised faces of Jeff and Jerrit who obviously had no idea what was going on, until she spied the other rod of silver in the furnace. She flicked her hands at the floor, shedding her heat-proof gloves and then reached out and with bare skin, grabbed the intensely hot poker.
‘You might need a hammer, old goblin,’ she told Jeff with a sneer. ‘I don’t.’ She glared at the glowing hot silver rod. ‘Amalgammus!’ she commanded it. Without a moment’s hesitation, the metal she held in her hand began to melt directly into her palm.
In the space of a few heartbeats, Mel’s fingers and hand disappeared as the silver poker and her hand melted together. It didn’t hurt so much as it itched like three-day-old sunburn. The end of the silver rod stopped glowing. Mel shook her arm, which meant shaking the rod as well. The blackened outer layer of oxidised silver fell away as though it was dust. Jerrit and Jeff backed away warily.
‘Tell me,’ Jerrit said to Jeff, as the two watched the wonder before them, ‘are all juvenile female humans so bad-tempered?’
Jeff placed his new knife on a cooling rack and chuckled. ‘And you’re supposed to be running an empire. Goblin, you have no idea. This is nothing. Some cultures even lock them up until they’re sure puberty has finished. This one’s not even human any more. As far as I know, there’s never been a creature like her. This could be her in a good mood.’
‘Have you ever seen any creature, goblin, human or otherwise, that can do anything like that in a good mood?’ Jerrit murmured with a fair degree of awe. ‘She can throw about ball-lightning like a toy and melt silver into herself!’
‘No,’ Jeff said shortly. ‘At least, not mortal. There are plenty of demons who can manipulate iron, but silver… This is something else. This is new.’ Jeff obviously had no idea that Mel wasn’t really angry any more. The amazing feat he had just witnessed, he took for the kind of thing that could often happen when a young, undisciplined sorcerer unleashes their power and temper at the same time.
‘With that kind of power, locking her up might be more dangerous for us than her, wouldn’t you say?’ Jerrit said as both he and Jeff took several more steps back.
Jeff nodded. ‘I don’t think it’d be in the jail’s best interest,’ he observed dryly. ‘This little monster could blow it up and we’d all be knee deep in escaped criminals.’
Melanie breathed a long, loud ‘Aargh!’ She felt a surge of power within her, the strength of which she had never felt before. She watched as the silver colour of the rod flowed up her arm to the elbow. It didn’t hurt at all. Instead, she could feel her body pulling the silver into her. Within seconds, the silver colour of the rod had spread to her entire body. She knew by the look of shock on Jerrit’s face that her skin was now completely silver. The rod disappeared into her wrist and her hand and fingers reappeared, clenched in a tight fist.
She shut her eyes. She could feel the silver within her body. It flowed through her and was part of her blood. The silver rod she had just absorbed had been as pure as the best smiths on Jilde could provide, but it was still not completely pure silver. As clearly as she could feel the silver, she could also feel the impurities she had absorbed with it. Mel forced those few grams of dirt and other stuff out through her palm and into her balled fist. She opened her eyes. Carefully and quite slowly, she opened her silvery fingers and stared at the small fistful of black dust in her palm. Of course, she could have spit it out, or even blown it out in her breath as dust, instead, and for reasons even she did not understand, she chose to be polite about the way she disposed of the impurities in the metal. She casually turned her hand over and let the dust fall to the ground.
She concentrated hard. She could see the silver, feel it. The harder she focused, the better she could see it. It was like looking at the precious, deadly metal through a microscope that was continually strengthening its magnification. Soon, she could see just how the individual particles of the silver within her skin were alive. She could see how they attached themselves to molecules in the air and she realised she was watching oxidation. More than that, she realised she could control the process. The more oxygen silver attached itself to, the blacker it appeared certainly, but also the more oxygen she had in store.
Curious to see just how effective this was, Mel held her breath. Her lungs soon began to ache as no new breath entered them, but Mel then began to pull in some of the oxidised silver from her skin, bringing with it the oxygen she’d normally have obtained through the air. Her lungs stopped aching. Every fibre within her was tingling. The metal itself possessed such power! She’d had no idea that what had always been considered to be a poisonous but inanimate substance was actually alive.
Apollo’s voice sounded within her mind. ‘Yes child,’ He said. ‘Now you know the true nature of this metal, I can tell you the last of the change within you. Without the power to control this metal in your veins, it would kill you.’
Melanie gasped. Where have You been? She demanded silently, wincing at her own crankiness — she knew she probably shouldn’t be talking to a god that way.
‘You know this world of monsters is not my realm, child,’ Apollo chided her gently. The warmth of His voice told her that He understood her mood and all was forgiven. ‘Attend the metal you wield,’ He instructed.
She stared at a patch of her skin and could see the millions of silver molecules within it, all busily going about their task of being her.
‘Agi!’ she commanded the silver to move and suddenly a gaping hole appeared in her hand as every last particle of silver rushed to obey her. The wound did not hurt. Instead, it felt exhilarating! The silver actually enjoyed doing her bidding. Understanding of the nature, the true nature of silver washed into her mind like a flood. She felt dizzy, as if she had sat up too quickly. Once again, she remembered Sarah telling her how it felt when she learned a lot of new stuff very quickly.
Silver did not like being crafted and turned by smiths and engineers and so on. It hated being heated and then moulded into forms that it did not choose. However, it did enjoy very much doing the will of the one individual that truly understood it — a young girl, far away from her home.
She heard the voice of Apollo once more within her mind. ‘The power is yours, child,’ He told her calmly. ‘As much as silver has strength, so have you. Truly, now you and that element are forever joined.’
‘Cool,’ Mel muttered to herself, grinning from ear to ear.
She shut her eyes again and concentrated on the silver she had absorbed. She could feel its texture and strength. She tingled as the silver, anxiously waiting for her next command, surged through her veins. The heat this caused made her new leather apron and work clothes smoulder and smoke. Soon they caught fire as Melanie stood there with her arm outstretched, her mind filled entirely with one, single thought. All around her was lost as she focused solely on the silver in her body. She barely noticed the flames, and though they would have killed a normal human, the fire did not scorch her at all. Melanie was now impervious to flames as she herself had become the very metal that had nearly killed her. She compressed some of the molten silver within her until it was so dense it could barely flow. Then she pushed it out through her palm once more only this time, it took the shape of a short blade matching the one Jeff had placed on the cooling rack.
Her smithing smock and breeches had now burned away entirely. She stepped away, and shook the ashes of her clothes off onto the cavern floor and carried the glowing sword she had just created to a large open barrel of water. She plunged the white-hot knife into the water, sending off a huge cloud of steam and vapour. Once the metal had cooled enough so it would not burn a goblin’s claw, she handed the sword to Jeff, hilt first.
Jeff gaped at the wondrous weapon his new apprentice had just created. He waved it about and tested the balance, gazing with his empty eye-sockets at the edge, shaking his head in admiration.
‘Nice work,’ he commented. ‘Very nice!’
‘Amazing,’
Jerrit breathed. His black goblin eyes were wide with awe and a healthy dose of fear as he regarded the shining silver Mel.
Mel smiled and looked down at her very slender naked body. Unlike everything else she could see that had a silver tinge to it, her own skin was actually silver. She looked as though she was a glowing human mirror. Now, for the first time that she could remember, she was not ashamed or embarrassed by her boyish body or of being undressed. Again and again, she was seeing things as she imagined Sarah did. After all, these were goblins with her, not humans. Being naked in front of them was no different to being undressed in front of a goldfish. Of course, she wasn’t about to explain that to these quite powerful, and now very shocked, goblins.
Still, she thought she had better put something on. First, she thought a simple black cotton robe would do. She walked over to the coat rack on the wall and reached out for it. As soon as her silvery fingers touched it, the robe began to smoulder. She had cooled the sword certainly, but the rest of her was still very, very hot.
‘Ah, crap,’ she muttered. Then she remembered the ideas and designs for metal clothing that she and Sarah had made. It seemed like such a long time ago that they had been together, happily dreaming up fancy metal clothes for a necromancer to hide her modesty. She looked down at her naked body once more.
Jerrit and Jeff, already stunned by what they had seen, again drew back several more paces as Melanie suddenly sprouted boots, tight fitting pants and a very snug sleeveless tunic, all made of the finest blackened silver and silver mesh. As she moved about in the new metal suit, she noticed a few design flaws she and Sarah had not considered. The chinks of metal pinched and the stiffness of the plates was uncomfortable. She closed her eyes again and the silver changed once more. It spun itself into the thinnest of fine fibres and wove itself into a fabric softer than silk but stronger than any material known to man or goblin. The outfit was nearly complete. She touched a finger to her shining silver hair and grew a gleaming silver helmet with nose and jaw guards.
The contrast of burnished silver and tarnished silver mesh gave her new armour quite a forbidding appearance. She looked at the skin on her forearm. She could see the silver on its surface. Calmly, and as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she pushed the silver back inside so that her skin was once again its normal pale olive complexion.
Now fully clothed, she held her hand out to Jeff. ‘Could I have that thing back, please?’ she asked.
The Smith of Ages was too stunned to move. It was then that Mel discovered another startling aspect of her new powers. Though the silver was separate from her, she could still feel it. It was part of her and she knew that she could draw it back within herself if she chose, only to produce it again whenever she needed. She did not need to say anything. She merely willed the sword back into her open hand. The weapon wrenched itself free of Jeff’s claw and flew to her to settle in her grasp. She glanced at its mate on the cooling rack. It flew to her just as the first one had and she grabbed it with her free hand. She twirled the blades about for a moment then sheathed them in scabbards that grew out of her thighs. She looked about slowly, noting every molecule of silver that she could see.
She held her hand out, palm up. The room shook and shuddered. Dust and fragments of rock fell from the ceiling as millions of particles of silver streaked across the room from every surface, to land on the palm of her hand. As thinly spread as the silver had been, there was still an awful lot of it. Her palm absorbed all the silver and let it course through her veins. Soon she felt full, as though she had just eaten an enormous meal.
‘Ahh, now I get it,’ she murmured to herself. She dusted her palms together and let the debris fall to the ground. She held her palm out once more and concentrated. All of the silver she had just absorbed was now mixed in with her blood. Instead of separating it, she simply willed a small glob of her blood to ooze out of the pores in her palm. In moments, Melanie was holding a glowing ball of molten silver roughly the size of a baseball. More and more silver streaked across the room to join with the small orb. Outside Jeff’s cellar, the caverns rumbled and shook with violent tremors. As she gazed about the room, collecting every last trace of silver except the amulet in her jacket pocket, Mel realised that save for the light from a few lanterns, the room was much, much darker. Without the lanterns, the place would be pitch-black.
‘And you can do more than that, child,’ a new voice murmured in her mind. Mel immediately recognised Demeter’s gentle, earthy tone. ‘Is there not some silver left? The amulet I gave you?’
Then how will I carry the coin? Mel replied silently.
Demeter’s tone was amused. ‘You’re a smith, child. Surely you can think of something. It is not uncommon for my cousin’s Amazons to use braces on their wrists to carry their payment for Charon.’
Mel grinned and focused on the amulet in her jacket. That silver too obeyed her. It turned to vapour and drifted out to her. The gold coin it had held lay safely tucked in her jacket pocket. She shut her eyes and for the first time in a month, saw only darkness. With her eyes still shut, she looked in the direction of her palm and there, as clear as day, she could see the glowing, silver ball she had just made. She opened her eyes and grinned at the two gobsmacked goblins.
Jerrit recovered first. ‘A miracle,’ he breathed. He was not staring at Melanie so much as he was the orb of molten silver she was holding. ‘The birth of our moon! All my life I’ve dreamed of this day, never knowing how it would come to be.’
‘You’d think,’ Jeff commented dryly, ‘that if you’ve dreamed of this happening for so long, someone with your education would have come up with something more eloquent to say.’ He shuffled forwards towards Mel, finally having got over his surprise. ‘Tell me young smith, what are you going to do with that now?’
Mel had no idea. She knew exactly where Jilde’s moon was supposed to be. She could feel it quite plainly. The problem was, the spot in Jilde’s orbit where the moon should be was thousands of kilometres away, and it was constantly moving. There was no way, enchanted or otherwise, that she could think of to get her small orb of silver out into space.
‘It’s not a moon yet,’ Mel told Jerrit, more to stall him than anything else. She certainly didn’t want him to know she didn’t know what to do next. To head off the inevitable, she added ‘I need to work on it before it’s ready.’
Jerrit looked disappointed for a moment, then he smiled and sighed. ‘Well,’ he conceded, ‘it’s progress.’ The goblin ruler paused and thought for a moment. Then he frowned. ‘If you two will excuse me, there’s something I have to do,’ he said briefly and turned to the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Jeff demanded.
Jerrit stopped. ‘The Moon Cult is about to begin foaming at the mouth. This young lady is going to require extra security. Excuse me for a few minutes.’ He strode out purposefully.
Jeff tilted his head as he regarded the silver ball Mel was still holding. Then he shrugged. ‘Okay, I’ll admit you don’t see that every day, but when you get as old as I am, the sensation of surprise doesn’t usually last very long.’ He nodded at the clothing that Mel now wore. ‘Interesting,’ he mused professionally. Gently, he touched the silver fabric of her sleeve with one long claw. ‘You’ve cooled off quickly. Tell me, did it hurt?’
‘No, it kind of felt good,’ Mel said feeling a little confused herself.
‘My previous apprentices will be jealous. None of them were ever able to make anything half as fine as this.’
‘And finally, my child,’ Apollo whispered to her, ‘it is time for you to begin the restoration of those things that were lost.’
Mel let go of the silver ball. It hovered patiently beside her, spinning slowly. She grinned at her tutor.
‘I’ve got something else for you,’ she told him. She held out her hand again and Jeff’s ragged blindfold appeared in her palm.
So this is how Sarah feels, she thought yet again to herself. Then she focused her attention on
the gaping holes in Jeff’s wrinkled head where his eyes had been.
‘Santicularus!’ she commanded, using more power than she had ever been able to muster before.
Jeff screamed and clutched his claws to his face. He fell to the ground, writhing and crying in shock and pain. As suddenly as it had come, his pain disappeared. The Smith of Ages lay on the floor in a crumpled heap, whimpering.
Mel looked down at the aged goblin. ‘Oh, get up,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t hurt you that much!’
The Smith of Ages blinked his new black eyes several times and gaped like a goldfish. Then he covered his face with his claws and wailed. He staggered to his feet and carefully removed his claws from his face. He gaped about at Mel and his cave for a moment then wailed and simply stared at his own claws, gibbering in amazement.
At that moment, Jerrit returned, grinning quite wickedly. His grin only faded a little as he observed Jeff, now with new eyes, wandering about the place muttering like a madgoblin.
‘Hmm,’ Jerrit said as he casually observed the Smith of Ages. He stepped forward to Mel and reached out and gently touched her bare bicep with the back of his claw. He raised one eye-ridge curiously. ‘You’re freezing! Don’t you feel cold?’
Mel did not feel cold at all. She analysed her senses in her mind. Her hearing was more acute than it had been. Her eyesight was definitely different. Her sense of touch had now also changed. She felt more solid and tighter somehow. She could feel every vibration and movement in the air around her and up through the floor. She also realised that though the cave was quite cool, and though her new clothes were more revealing than her leather smock and apron, she did not feel cold at all. Temperature, she realised, meant very little to her at all now. Then she understood. Slight changes in temperature meant quite a great deal to mammals and even more to reptiles. She was neither of those now. She was something different. Only extreme temperatures that would kill just about any other living thing, would affect her. She calmly walked over to the furnace.