“We will see.”
“That we will, sister, and I hope most deeply that your insights are correct, as so often they have been. Please pardon my caution, but one cannot undo a blade in the back, and the angels have shown no great affection for Lornth in the past.”
“Then keep them before you,” said Gethen.
“I will, my father. That I will.” Fornal shrugged. “And I pray that their blades will bring down many of the white demons.”
“I will send the angels with the force from the keep here,” suggested Gethen. “As we know, they are warriors. Let us see what they can do in training the worst of your force.” Gethen smiled. “You lose nothing.”
“Except time and men.”
“Even then, you win.” Gethen shakes his head. “If they are successful, then you take the credit for giving them the opportunity and testing untried techniques on a small group.” He paused. “If they, fail, you point out that you were giving them every opportunity in a way that jeopardized the fewest armsmen.”
A smile cracked Fornal’s face. “That would work. I can appear generous no matter what. I can even say that the failures got two chances, and that will blunt some of the levies’ mutters.” The smile vanished. “Yet what we have learned so far troubles me.” Fornal looked toward the two others, then lifted his hands. “They are warriors and healers and scholars… and a singer and a smith. Does it not seem strange that two so skilled arrived when we need so much?”
A faint frown crossed Gethen’s brow. “I have thought on that. They healed Nesslek, and they healed the roan’s foot. The flame-hair said it would be a day or two before he stopped limping, but Guisanek came over to tell me that he seems totally healed.” Gethen paused. “Still, they are healers, and that will help you.”
“Wizardry… how do we know it will last?” mused Fornal.
“Everything they have done so far has lasted,” said Zeldyan. “Everything.” She shivered, and her green eyes were deep as they fixed Fornal’s.
Slowly, slowly… he looked away.
Gethen nodded to himself, almost imperceptibly.
LII
AFTER LEAVING AYRLYN with Weryl, Nylan slipped out of their chamber, glad that the coolness of the night before remained into the morning, and down the stone steps and out into the courtyard.
He followed the sound of the hammer to the southwest corner of the keep, where, against the outer walls, rested a small square building beside a small open gate. Although the gate would be necessary for deliveries of charcoal and iron stock, he reflected, there was no guard at the smithy gate. Was the lack of guards a reflection of the high esteem in which the regents were held or a reflection of the sad state of the armsmen and the treasury of Lornth-or both?
The angel smith turned from the gate toward the sounds of the hammer and anvil. A battered and unpainted sliding door was pulled open, revealing the smithy inside, where the smith and his striker already worked. For a time, Nylan watched the burly smith. With shoulders as broad as a wine barrel and arms like tree limbs, the smith’s hammer seemed more like a toy in his huge fist as he forge-welded a ring together on the anvil horn.
The odor of hot metal, quench oils, and forge coals drifted around Nylan, and he rubbed his nose gently as he watched.
Abruptly, the dark-bearded smith set the hammer aside, used the tongs to place what looked like a harness hame ring on the forge bricks, and nodded to the striker at the bellows. Then he stepped away from the anvil and toward Nylan.
“You be the angel?” His voice was high-pitched, surprisingly for such a big man.
“That seems to be what everyone calls me,” Nylan admitted. “I’m Nylan.”
“They say you’re a smith. I’m Husta. Regents asked if I’d mind lending fire and an anvil.” Husta inclined his head and grinned wryly. “No smith likes to be told. But they been good to me.”
“I had to learn it alone,” Nylan said. “I’m probably a poor smith, compared to you.”
“Got any work?”
Nylan looked around, then eased out the blade. “I had to do weapons, mostly.”
Husta extended his huge hand, then touched the blade, studied it, and slowly shook his head. “Be not three men in all Candar could match that.” He grinned. “You use the dark forces and the fire, do you not?”
Nylan nodded.
“An honest mage. One who doesn’t mind using his hands.” Husta laughed. “You be doing blades here?”
“No. It’s an idea I told ser Gethen about, and he said he would talk to you.”
“Aye. He did.” The burly man shook his head. “Good man, and lucky we are that he be one of the regents. Sure be wishing that poor Lord Sillek had lived-talk was he didn’t want to fight the angels, begging‘ your pardon, ser Nylan. But those stiff-necked holders… they worried about a bunch of women on a mountaintop. Ha! My Cethany’ll have told ’em not to mess with ‘em, she would. Women are tougher than men most ways, even if they can’t heft a big blade or a hammer.” Without a pause in his words, Husta nodded at Nylan, motioning him toward the striker who stood by the great bellows. “Corin, this is the angel smith. Work the bellows for him like you would for me, ’less he tells you otherwise.” Husta glanced at Nylan. “That be all right?”
“That’s fine, and I appreciate the help.” Nylan stripped off his shirt.
Husta gestured to an old leather apron hanging in the corner. “Use that. Old, but it stops sparks.”
“Thank you.” Nylan hung his shirt on the peg from which the apron had come.
“If you do not mind, angel, I’d lief watch as you work.”
“As you please,” Nylan answered pleasantly, knowing that, once again, he faced some skepticism.
Husta grinned, not unpleasantly.
Nylan wandered over to the dark inside corner where the rod stock was heaped, then looked at the scrap bin. For a moment, he stood in thought, trying to assemble mentally what he had in mind. Finally, he selected a length of the narrowest stock. “This-and perhaps some cuts from the scrap plate there-they should be enough.”
“Lord Gethen pays for the stock. So long as you waste none, it’s no matter.” Husta laughed, again a high-pitched sound.
The silver-haired smith nodded and pointed to the hammer. “Might I use that, or would you prefer I use another?”
“Use it you may, and I thank you for asking.”
Nylan nodded and hefted the hammer, fractionally heavier than the one he had used on the Roof of the World, though not by too much, then set it down while he set out the rod stock beside the anvil and found a pair of tongs. He looked at Husta.
The big smith nodded, and Nylan took the tongs, using them to ease the first section of rod stock onto the coals.
Once laid on the forge coals, the iron heated quickly-at least compared to the finished blades and higher-tech alloys he had been working. With the tongs he slipped the cherry-red rod onto the big anvil and, using firm strokes of the hammer, began to fuller it into the thinner strips he would need, sensing the grain of the metal and the tiny fluxes and the unseen white shimmers that told of impurities and weaknesses. Compared to what Nylan had used on the Roof of the World, the smith’s stock was soft iron.
“See…” bellowed Husta to the striker. “He’s worked out that bubble there. Have to learn to know the metal, like a lover, know where the hidden rough places are. You can see if you look hard enough.”
Nylan almost felt guilty, because he couldn’t see half of what he sensed, and clearly Husta had learned to use his eyes far better than Nylan. The angel smith held back a shrug. He had to use what senses and skills he had, and. he was glad he had them.
Still, in three heats, he had the first long strip rough-finished.
Three more finished the second, and another three the third. “Ah…” Husta cleared his throat and glanced at the sky. Nylan blotted his sweating forehead with the back of his forearm and lowered the hammer. His eyes took in the lack of shadows, and he realized it was nearly midda
y. Had he been working that long?
“Would you join us for bite?” asked Husta. “Bread and cheese, and some ale-and pale sausage-meat stuff, not that blood crap.”
“I’d be pleased.” After setting the hammer aside, Nylan had to blot his forehead again. In the comparative heat of the low-lands, sweat seemed to flow from every pore of his body- and it was spring, not summer. “Over here.”
The bigger man hoisted a long bench out of the back of the smithy and set it in the shade outside. “Cooler here. Can see you’re used to a colder place.”
“The Roof of the World is a lot cooler,” Nylan admitted. Husta poured the pale liquid into a tin mug, then into a wooden cup. He handed the cup to Nylan. “Good ale. Got it from Gherac for some piping. Pipes are a friggin‘ pain.”
The angel smith nodded. He hadn’t even tried something like piping, although he supposed he could. It would involve bending thin sheet around a rod or cylinder, not that difficult compared to ensuring that the welds were tight.
“You work hard,” the big smith said. “Good rhythm, too. Got to have rhythm in this craft.”
Nylan took a sip of the ale, which was surprisingly cool and bitter, and sat, straddling the end of the bench clearly reserved for him.
“He strikes hard,” observed Corin, as if Nylan were not present, as he pulled up a battered stool. “Wouldn’t think it, but he never stopped.”
“Good smiths don’t be stopping, Corin, except when they choose. And plenty of smiths I’ve seen aren’t all that big- good ones, too. Mikersa, he wasn’t even up to ser Nylan’s shoulder-seems strange that a smith be a warrior, too, but like no one’s seen an angel smith.” Husta took a long pull from the battered mug, then shoved the platter from his end of the bench toward Nylan. the silver-haired man broke off a chunk of the dark bread, then used his belt dagger to carve off slices of sausage and cheese, almost creating a sandwich. He wolfed through three bites, then almost laughed. He’d forgotten how much energy smithing took, especially when he’d barely recovered from the costs of healing young Nesslek.
“He eats like a smith, not like some fancy lord!”
“They all call him ‘ser,’ ” pointed out Corin.
Nylan shook his head. He was really closer to the professional armsmen, those who were officers, than to the lords of Lornth, if he equated his past position in the U.F.A. to the equivalent in Candarian society. . “You look thoughtful, ser Nylan,” observed Husta.
“I was thinking,” he admitted. “I was more like… I don’t know… there’s nothing quite like it here… but someone who leads a special kind of armsman. I certainly wasn’t a lord.”
“They call him ‘ser,’” Husta continued,“ ‘cause he’s a right good blade and a mage. Huruc told me he pinned Lord Fornal’s blade twice so quick that Fornal couldn’t believe it.”
“Is that true?” asked Corin.
“Unfortunately,” Nylan mumbled. He took another mouthful of cheese, sausage, and bread. The headache he had ignored was beginning to subside.
Corin glanced to Husta.
“It’s risky showing a lord up. If you don’t, you could get hurt, and if you do, they don’t forget.”
Nylan nodded. The big smith had that right.
After he went back to the forge, Nylan had to hot-cut the strips and then bend and weld the framework together- quenching it in sections. That took most of the afternoon, and Husta watched and puttered, watched and puttered.
In the end, Nylan still had to make the equivalent of two low-tech cotter pins, and punch four holes in the attachment brackets. The pins took almost as much time as the bracket, and he had to fish one out of the quench tank when it slipped out of the tongs.
By the time the sun hung just above the walls, what he had was a cantilevered framework that needed to be covered with leather or cloth or both, forge-welded all the way around. Rivets would have been faster, but he saw none, and making them would have taken other stock, and he still wasn’t so proficient as he would have liked in making small items.
“Nice work,” said Husta. “Smooth, but I cannot see its use.”
“Once it’s covered in leather or cloth, I’ll fasten it to a saddle-one of those with a high back.” Nylan sketched with his hands. “That way you can carry a child too small to ride, but too big to carry.”
“Don’t know as many would want that-except you and the regent. They say she’s loath to leave her son-and she likes to ride. Most folks would use a wagon or a carriage.”
“Wagons don’t go everywhere,” Nylan pointed out.
“They go everywhere I want to go,” laughed the big man. “People who ride end up in bad places.”
Nylan hadn’t thought of it in such a fashion, but Husta was probably right about where riding often led.
LIII
THE THIN, LONG-FACED young woman looked down at the pink floor stones. “Lord Gethen said you needed a nursemaid for your son. He and me, we got on well enough while you were ill.” A gust of hot air from the open chamber window fluffed her shoulder-length black hair, drawing a strand across her left eye, but she made no move to brush it back.
“You did,” said Nylan. “You were good to him, and I appreciate it. We are looking for someone to ride with us and to take care of Weryl. It won’t be all that easy, not like it was here.” Nylan paused. “Do you ride?”
“Yes, ser. My father, he works for Edicat, and they let me ride when I was a girl.”
The engineer suspected that it hadn’t been that long since Sylenia had stopped being a girl, although some women looked girlish forever. He reclaimed Weryl from the brass-bound chest where the boy tottered on unsteady legs, holding himself erect with one hand on the brass handle at the end while trying to step away.
Nylan carried his son over to the young woman. “Would you like Sylenia to be your nursemaid?”
Sylenia raised her eyes to the silver-haired boy and smiled. “A handsome child.”
“You lost a child?” asked Ayrlyn. “That was Acora?”
Sylenia nodded, then added slowly. “My girl. Only child.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Nylan. “It’s a long ride to Clynya and the copper mines.”
“I am at your bidding, ser.” The slightest of shivers passed over the thin girl.
“Sylenia,” said Ayrlyn softly. “You are under our protection.” Her voice turned dry. “Such as it may be.”
“Lord Gethen… he said none of the soldiers-”
“They won’t,” Nylan affirmed.
“He said you were both mighty warriors… and that you would not leave your child behind.”
“That’s true.”
Sylenia looked at Weryl again, solemnly.
“… aaaahhh-raaa…” Weryl gurgled and smiled, thrusting a chubby hand toward the dark-haired woman. “… aaahhh…”
Nylan stepped closer to Sylenia, and Weryl’s fingers brushed her cheek, exploring with a gentleness that surprised his father.
“I would… take care of him… like my own,” the dark-haired woman said, her thin fingers touching Weryl’s. “Could… I?”
“Ahhh… daaa…” interjected Weryl, squirming in Nylan’s arms.
“Leaving Lornth… ?” began Ayrlyn.
“I would as soon leave Lornth for a time.” Sylenia’s words were firm.
“Good. That seems to be settled,” Nylan said. “We won’t be leaving for a few days, but it might be better if we arranged some times for you to spend with Weryl and to show you how we do some things.”
“As you wish.” She inclined her head.
After Sylenia finally left, Nylan closed the door, then set Weryl back by the chest. The boy promptly grasped the hand-tarnished handle and pulled himself erect. “Daa-da!”
“Yes, you’re standing, and it won’t be that long before you’re running everywhere.” He shook his head slowly as he turned toward the window, gazing out to the southwest. Clynya and the copper mines lay there-somewhere-and so did the white troops an
d Cyador.
“She’s basically sweet,” Ayrlyn said, “and she likes children.”
“She’s been ordered into being Weryl’s nurse or whatever,” said Nylan, after a moment.
“That’s obvious.”
“Zeldyan and Gethen, you think?”
“I’d suspect so.” Ayrlyn shrugged. “They’re not happy with Fornal.”
“And they can’t do anything about it?” Nylan blotted his forehead. He already was sweating all the time, guzzling liquids, and was generally miserable with the heat-and everyone told him that summer hadn’t really started. He could hardly wait.
“What? Zeldyan’s a woman, and no one in this culture thinks much of women as leaders. She’s only a regent because she’s Nesslek’s mother, and because her family is strong. Gethen would be the logical candidate, from what I can figure, to be the lord if anything happened to Nesslek, but since Nesslek’s his grandson, that sort of balances. But… Fornal would be heir if Nesslek died, and that means that any effort Zeldyan and Gethen made to get Fornal off the regency council would be viewed with skepticism. Besides, they can watch him more closely if he is a regent-”
“And that’s where we come in?” asked Nylan. “We’re supposed to keep him out of trouble?”
“Something like that.”
“It’s never simple, is it?”
“Death’s the only simple thing, and it usually leaves behind a mess for the living.”
Nylan smiled wryly. “You’re so cheerful. Accurate, but so full of good cheer.”
“And you’re not?” She grinned at him.
“Daaa!” added Weryl. For a moment, he looked like Istril, and Nylan swallowed. Was this how he was protecting her son? By taking him into danger? Except who else could protect him better?
Ayrlyn nodded.
Nylan shrugged.
LIV
GETHEN ROSE AS Nylan and Ayrlyn approached the table in the small dining room. Zeldyan, wearing yet another tasteful green and gray outfit, smiled. Her blond hair was perfectly in place, held there by another hair band, this one of silver and malachite. Following Gethen’s gestures, Nylan seated Ayrlyn directly across the circular table, covered in a pale green linen, from Zeldyan, then took his seat across from Gethen, with Ayrlyn to his right.
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