The Anvil of Ice

by Michael Scott Rohan

  Back in his bed, Alv lay awake and brooded. The smith might easily have gone through into the library and up those stairs to the far end of the hall—but then Alv would have heard him, his footsteps, or the creak of the library's heavy outer door. Could the completed helm now mask all these sounds, as well? What other, stranger, powers did it now confer? Of moving subtly … He drifted off to sleep, trying to draw comfort from a vision of Kara—but why were her eyes so cruel—predatory—hawklike?

  "This technique is called pattern-welding," said the Mastersmith. "Do you remember reading about it?"

  Alv screwed up his eyes. "Yes, Mastersmith, I do. An ancient method of forging a strong blade, when they had little good steel and no easy way of making it."

  "Indeed," said the Mastersmith, running his fingers over the short rope of twisted wires. So far there had been no mention of what the rest had been used for, and Alv was not going to admit he knew. "But its very antiquity makes it more than that, for in the course of time it has gathered about it much, much lore. The first great smiths of our kind were taught it by those of the Elder kind, and they in turn by the powers they had revered and abandoned. Like the craft of mail, it takes complexity and makes unity of it, but greater complexity and a more solid unity. Great virtue can be bound up in it by those who have the skill. So—for your trial piece of weaponry, you will make me a sword! But a sword such as you might one day craft for kings, a sword with a virtue of command and obedience, of order and submission. You will prepare everything and shape the blade, but the completion is delicate work, and that may be left to me. It will be long in the forging, many months, I am sure—but when they are over, so will end your apprenticeship. And great things will await us all then, for the world is moving, moving…" He paused and sat back, staring into an infinite distance. At length he reached out and tapped the roll of parchment on the table. "Some references to start your studies, boy. More than one or two slates will hold, as you see. Open it and read!"

  Fascinated, forgetting the mysteries that gathered around him, Alv unrolled the stiff crackling stuff and read the crabbed script. A page here, a page there, notes—a chapter— the reading alone would take weeks. "And that is not all," said the Mastersmith somberly. "You will require the ancient text Ysthihain, its first section on the symbols associated with command and dominion. I have made some notes in it of forms I found used by Ekwesh shamans, which appear to resemble many of ours, but in more archaic, purer forms. Also the Skolnhere-Book, left by a great smith from the east many centuries ago; it has pages on pattern-welding, and others on the powers of command."

  Alv looked at him. "I do not remember even seeing those on the shelves, Mastersmith, let alone reading them."

  "No indeed," said the Mastersmith drily, "and little it would have profited you if you had read them. They are on the North wall."

  Alv's eyes widened, and he started to say something, but the smith held up a hand. "Wait! I am not making you free of it—not yet. Come with me now." They threaded their way between anvils and machines toward the library, where Ingar, scribbling furiously on a slate, paid no attention as they went past. The Mastersmith stopped before the racks of scrolls on the North wall, drew out one, and lifted a heavy fanfold book from a high shelf. Alv could see long tongues of parchment protruding from them both. The smith carried them to a table and opened them carefully. He touched the parchment strips. "I marked these for you, last night. See, from here to here in the Ysthihain scroll—and in the Skolnhere-Book, between this marker and this, to the end of this page." He pointed to the end of the leaf, crammed with crabbed black lettering in an archaic cursive script, interspersed with tight little drawings of symbols or elaborately ornamented characters in red and black. One, the distorted face of some crouching beast, grimaced out from beside the Mastersmith's finger. The wide margins were filled with his flowing script. "Thus far, and no further! Do not let your eyes stray to an earlier or a later page, to another book—not even by chance! You would find little profit in anything you chanced to learn!" Alv nodded, a little rebelliously. "Very well. And do not take them into the forge, they are too valuable."

  That was reasonable enough, but Alv, watching the Master's retreating back, felt like disobeying it, simply out of spite. It was like having a drink snatched away from your lips after the first sip. What he had done so far might please his master, but not him. He felt he had learned almost nothing from any of it—not enough to let him strike out confidently on his own, as he planned to do. He might, with luck, be able to reproduce such a bracelet, if he could get the gold. But the helm was another matter. Information had been carefully measured out for him, so that he knew well enough what he was doing, but had only the barest grasp of why; there was nothing he could apply to any other work. And he had not even been allowed to bring it to its full strength, to appreciate all those powers his own skill had invested in it! And now it was happening again. Why? To make sure he'd stay? To tether him firmly to his master's apron strings?

  He didn't want to believe that. He reined in his temper, remembering the gratitude and admiration he still felt, afraid of hasty judgments. But the doubt still hovered blackly around him. He looked across at Ingar, blissfully engrossed in transferring his notes onto parchment. Does he ever feel like this—fenced in—cozened with false hopes—cheated? Probably not. He had no driving ambition, no great reason for it; apron strings suited him very well. Ingar tossed down his pen on the slab, scattered fine powder onto the wet page and threw it aside with a satisfied grunt. Then he snatched up his slates and scrubbed them clean with a fold of his left shirtsleeve. He tossed them down, and caught Alv's eye. "Filthy habit," he said unapologetically. "I can never be bothered hunting for the cloth when I'm busy!"

  "It's sticking out of your pocket," said Alv, striving to keep his voice level. "Ingar, I never did ask you just what your prentice pieces were."

  "Can't tell you—not till you're a journeyman yourself. Guild rules, remember—and the master's a stickler for them—he shall not seek nor have help or advice save from his own master …"

  "Not like that, ass. All I meant was, I don't remember seeing you bent over an anvil for as long as I look to be."

  "Should hope not!" grunted Ingar. "Guild rules don't undervalue scholarship the way tykes like you do. You can substitute dissertations for the two higher pieces, if your master thinks fit. So I did." He pointedly unrolled the next page of the work he was studying and leaned forward over it in his customary reading position.

  Alv nodded slowly, and looked down at the page below him. There was the slight chalk smudge, much the same as the others, including, no doubt, one on the column Ingar now read. The fastidious Mastersmith would never treat clothes or books thus. So—Ingar had trodden this ground before him. And read almost every other page Alv had had doled out to him.

  Alv drew a deep breath. He could guess just what those dissertations had been about.

  Deep in his mind, almost sooner than he could admit it to himself, his doubt was becoming a certainty. The Mastersmith was seeking to tether them both, not only rationing the knowledge he was giving them but carefully separating it, encouraging them to stay within their specialties. Ingar the scholar, seeking knowledge without the craft to put it into effect, Alv the man of skills denied the learning to use them—both of them less than a whole craftsman, both of them dependent on their master, doomed to use their gifts for him, as he chose to direct.

  Black anger rose in Alv's throat, the worse for being wholly helpless. What could he do? There was nobody he could even talk to about it. Ingar had seen it already, last night if not sooner; Alv remembered his strange look, when he was confronted with the powerful reality of the helm his studies had given shape. He had seen it, and accepted it—perhaps even liked the idea, because it gave him an easy, congenial living without sweating over an anvil. Which is all very fine for him—but me? Where does it leave me?

  "Right up your own chimney!" said Roc, and laughed raucously. Alv glared at h
im. He had had to talk to someone, and while he had tried to avoid becoming close or familiar with the forgeboy, Roc had somehow remained the nearest thing to a friend he had. So in the end he had swallowed his pride and told him something of what he feared—putting the best possible complexion on it and with no question of seeking advice. But of course the first thing Roc said was, "If you want my advice—" He seemed to be waiting for Alv to deny it. "If you want my advice," he repeated inexorably, "stick it out, then get out! Getting to be a journeyman, that's the thing, getting the badge and script. Then push off and find some other bolthole!"

  "Maybe I don't know enough yet—"

  Roc shrugged. "Pick it up as you go along! The rank's what folk'll pay heed to. Take what you're given and use it, that's what I say."

  "Maybe you're right," Alv admitted. After all, it was no more than he'd planned, wasn't it? But he hated the idea of leaving without at least some of the unique learning that was here, and was denied him. His anger turned round then, and became a cooler, more calculating thing. "Maybe you're right," he repeated, and Roc looked at him shrewdly. But Alv kept his own counsel then, though he did not cease to think. Go he would, but not without at least some of that special knowledge, knowledge he could rely on to make his living and let him search for Kara. And he would gain it by turning the Mastersmith's own methods against him; since Ingar was so content to be used by his master, why should Alv not make equal use of him?

  And so he threw himself into what was to be the hardest labor of his life till then. Throughout the long weeks of study he kept returning, again and again, to those texts from the North wall. In them he at least found a foretaste of the knowledge that he wanted so much, that in truth was as necessary to him as meat to the starving, so strongly did the craft within him burn to find its fullest expression. But what little he learned served only to awaken further that appetite, never satisfying it. Often he felt tempted, driven, to disobey the Mastersmith's injunctions, but though he was no longer sure he believed the books were guarded, still he never once dared to let even a page too many fall open. What he was allowed, however, he read and reread, draining the last fine drops of learning from it, and most of all the Mastersmith's own notes in the margins. These came from many sources, but the ones he found most illuminating seemed to stem from comparisons with the lore of the Ekwesh.

  "Indeed," said the Mastersmith gravely, when Alv sought counsel from him one day. "Their smithcraft is often rough and savage, for it is the preserve of their tribal shamans, who must also be priests, chroniclers, bards, healers and counselors to the chieftains in peace and war. Their metalworking is elementary and knows little of fine alloys and precious metals. But they have some special skills, little practiced in more civilized lands; one of these is the use of masks, in which the wearer, as it were, becomes his own living symbol. But these they make chiefly from wood, as yet. I have experimented at combining their skills with ours, and have often found the results very potent." Alv thought of the Thunderbird, the beautifully crafted metal death's head within, and the keen cold mask that now fronted that strange helm. He nodded with polite interest, but said nothing. "They are also concerned," continued the Mastersmith, "with the swaying of wills, and that is what makes their work relevant here. In their tribes, where the chieftains enjoy all power of life and death over their people, such things are more easily and openly studied than among our own, and more greatly valued. So I feel that by considering their equivalents, these characters of ours, here and here, could well be modified thus…"

  It was not the first or the last advice he gave. He never hovered over Alv, but he seemed to be constantly on hand when he was needed. His counsel was always good, always helpful when Alv had a choice to make. But about the reasons for that choice he was given only the most general ideas, little or nothing he could apply to other works. Alv was careful never to appear less than satisfied and delighted with what he was given, choking down the frustration he felt. And in truth he often forgot it, as the sword seemed to take shape among the piles of slate and parchment before him. More than once he dreamed of this, of sliding his fingers down among the litter of papers and touching cold metal there—but metal that quivered at his touch, and went slithering away through the rustling layers like a snake among fallen leaves.

  But day by day the image of the sword grew less elusive, more real, till it came to occupy his mind almost to the exclusion of all else. He had not forgotten his other concerns, his fears and hopes and desperate love, but it was as if he poured them into a single mold, and sought to hammer them all out at the same anvil where he would forge the sword. It seemed so clear before him now that his arms grew taut and tense as he sat, impatient to be striking the first hard blows. But he knew where impatience led, and what flamed in his mind he quenched with the cool precision that he would first of all need. For no work he had yet attempted, not even the helm, had been so minute and so complex. And as at last he drew all his patterns together, and scribed the final design onto stiff yellow parchment with a fine silver-tipped quill, he almost quailed at the weight of the work that lay upon him.

  Five rods of metal would make up the sword, one for a spine, two for the body of the blade and two, longer and thinner and of harder stuff, set round the outside to take the fine edge essential to a good weapon. Each of these rods he would make from many strands of metal, twisted together like ropes, and these strands themselves he would in turn twine out of many finer ones, cords and bowstrings and threads of many metals and alloys, starting with strands thinner than his own fine hair. And each of these would have its own symbols, its own virtues, to be sung into it with its own proper song.

  He stopped suddenly, pen hovering over the paper like the great condor that had borne it. He had planned them all. He had command of the songs, the symbols, the metals, and surely above all he had the skills. Then what could he not do? What was lacking in him now for the Mastersmith to fulfill?

  "The five rods you will make as you have planned," said the Mastersmith approvingly. His dark eyes flashed as he scanned the crammed parchment. "And though I would not entrust it to every apprentice, I see no reason why you should not also make up the spine and body of the blade."

  "And the edge, Mastersmith?" Alv strained to sound no more than normally eager.

  The Mastersmith smiled, faintly. "In the edge of a sword is power. In the edge of a sword is what gives meaning to its presence—force fined down to a cutting thinness, to strike where it will profit most, the final sanction that enforces the command given. The body is the command, the threat—the edge is the enforcement. The execution. Without its edge the sword would be only a dull threat, a club at best, its violence dissipated, ineffective. So, this edge is crucial, and must be invested with extra strength. It needs not only the symbols sung into it, it must bear others." He shook his head sadly, and his long dark hair rustled against the rich collar of his robe. "These I cannot trust you with, not yet. They are of my own devising, and difficult to use—perhaps even dangerous. So I will take that work upon myself—" He smiled more widely. "But I am sure that you would find the stamp of a journeyman some balm for your pride, at least. We will see. But for now—to your forging!"

  The first days of it were long and wearisome, and they grew to weeks as Alv struggled with the metal that seemed to grow willful under his hands. For him the passing of time became measured by the chime of hammer on anvil, the slow deep gasping of the bellows, the verses of the chants that hung leaden on his dry tongue. The Mastersmith had predicted he would often fail, and often he did— most often of all within reach of success. It was then that an overstrained filament would weaken and snap, or welded cords would part at a blow. Alv would simply stare at the remains and hurl them aside. If it was time then to eat or sleep he would; otherwise, with unfailing patience, he would simply start again. He lived to a strict order, never working long hours or missing meals, because he could see that haste would not help him here. Later it would be forced on him, and he must sa
ve his endurance for then. So it was long months before he had even completed enough of the long cords of iron and steel, as thick around as his thumb, that would become the five rods. Some were entwined with threads of bronze and gold, others with thinnest webs of rarer metals and fine alloys. But those for the edges were made all of steel, hardened with traces of strange metals and other substances.

  "So far you have done well," said the Mastersmith, "and quicker than I feared." Alv looked up sharply, and caught Roc's eye; the forgeboy shrugged eloquently. Feared? Did it matter how long he took? The Mastersmith had never even suggested that. But he did not press the question; the smith was looking odd now, troubled—almost afraid, if you could imagine that in such a man. It seemed to have been growing on him for some time, since that night in the snow, perhaps. He spoke often of the Southlands, though he seemed never to go away now. Alv remembered what Ingar had said, that Louhi's last visit had begun the Mastersmith's plans to move here. What had she set in motion now? The Mastersmith laid down the length of metal he had been examining. "You cannot linger over the rods. Now comes the race!"

  Then the bellows must needs blow faster, and Roc was kept busy topping up the firepit with coal and charcoal, and silver sand to keep it and the metal clean, till the airshafts could barely cope and the stink of soot and sulphur hung in the air. Alv bound together seven of the stiff cords, carefully chosen and matched, with thin wire and thrust their tips into the glowing heart of the pit, plucked them out an instant later and beat them together on the anvil. Then they went back to the fire till they glowed red-white, had a cloth wrapped round them and were jammed into a ring swage set in the anvil's side; Alv set a lever under them, tensed his foot on it and by the sheer force of his arms and shoulders, twisted the thick metal strands about each other a handspan or so, with the words of his song hissing through his teeth. Then the glow died and the cords went back to the fire, the bellows wheezed, and again Alv strained till the sweat rolled in rivulets down his forehead. For another handspan or so the separate strands became a thick coiled rod, threaded like a screw, coated with gray dust from the fire. But as Alv's fire and strength and song bore down on it, the coating cracked and fell away to uncover the clean glowing metal, the threads twisted closer and closer until they met and became a single surface with only a faint coiled tracery to show where they had been. And so, in twenty hours of unstinting, unceasing work, the first rod was made. Each of the others took as long, but on the tenth day after that they were complete. That night he slept the long sleep of exhaustion.