The Anvil of Ice

by Michael Scott Rohan

  "Easily, it is a scratch. Though I will be happier the sooner it is washed and tended; who knows what filth was on those claws? But let us be on our way."

  The shaft was steep, but far enough from the vertical to make the going quite easy. This was fortunate, for they were both more exhausted than they had realized. Their limbs trembled, and Kermorvan's shoulder tired quickly. "But at least the handholds are firm and well placed—no worse than a steep ladder. One can stop to rest. I had been afraid they might be too small and weak if the little people made them—"

  "They may not be as little as you seem to think," Elof warned him. "I could ill judge the height of the ones I saw, but they seemed—well, solid. We would do best to use them with respect."

  "Naturally, for they are perilous to rouse, it is said."

  "I meant more than that…" Elof began, but gave up. Kermorvan talked of these duergar as things other than human, but Elof could not forget that ring of faces, strange in their features but vibrant and alive and wholly human in their feelings. Hopefully he would see for himself soon enough, for they were almost at the base of the shaft now. It seemed to be widening around then, opening out into a broad and shadowy chamber with what looked like an earthen floor. "A few steps," gasped Kermorvan, "and then you may hail to your heart's content. I, I am going to rest—"

  A shrill whistle sounded. There was a flicker of movement, a sound like a great wing beating in the air between them, and Kermorvan vanished. Metal clashed and jangled as if a forge roof had fallen in, and he sprawled on the chamber floor entangled in a glinting net; dark figures rushed in on him. Something lashed painfully round Elof's legs and tore them away from the rungs; the rung he held bent under the strain, then his fingers were pulled free and he dropped hard onto the floor and lay winded. A heavy net fell over him, he tore at it and found linked metal rods resisting his efforts. Harsh shouts echoed in the shaft, strong hands seized him and coiled ropes round the net, and he was hoisted up and borne forward. Lights danced and flickered around him, earth thumped under heavy feet and they gave way to the hollower drumming of wooden planking, behind it the rush of running water. Abruptly he was flung forward and landed with a crash in what felt like a wooden cart. He could hear Kermorvan cursing weakly somewhere in front of him.

  Wild anger woke in Elof, and drowned all his caution. He had come all this way, through wide lands, hard weathers and the terrors of the Ice, all to be netted like some wild beast, without a word spoken or question asked. Well, let them listen now! He dug his fingers into the net, bunched it into two huge handfuls and tore it free against the ropes; they snapped and fell away, and he sprang to his feet, shouting, "Wait—"

  But then he stopped, and his mouth fell open. He stood, not in a cart, but in the center of a long boat moored at a high wooden wharf, lined with glowing globes of light on posts richly carved; beyond it, a street of housefronts whose warm-lit windows glinted on the cobbled road. And all around him, the sound of a wide, rushing river—

  A torrent of red exploded in his head. Dazed, he fell to his knees, saw the planks rise up to meet him and rolled over into darkness.

  Chapter SevenLink- Stone and Steel

  The sounds grew louder, the bellows roaring, hammers pounding, the heat and the light so fierce he could hardly approach the forge. Yet struggle nearer he must, braving the pain and the shriveling heat, to grasp the scorching metal, and hammer, hammer out the thing that must be made-He struggled up on one elbow, grasping and shaking his head as if he could somehow displace the ringing ache. The light hurt his eyes so much, he did not at first notice it was dim. The first thing he saw was a goblet on the floor beside him, and the sight of it awoke a terrible taste in his mouth. He caught it up and sipped tentatively, then gulped down the strong wine in a draft, coughing as the bitter residue of herbs caught his throat. Blood roared a moment in his temples, his stomach lurched and then suddenly the room swung into clarity. Sitting across from him, his back against a huge heap of old chests and baskets, was Ker-morvan, looking somewhat battered and pale, but with his shoulder neatly bandaged. He met Elof s look with a wry cold smile, and lifted one foot slightly. There was a ring and clink of chain. Elof looked down at his own feet; they, too, were fettered through on the grimy floor. Memory spilled back, and he was about to burst out in angry questions when he saw Kermorvan roll his eyes meaningfully sideways. He cast a casual glance that way, and found that they were not alone. They were indeed in the hands of the duergar, and evidently in their dungeons also. A single one of them was guarding the travelers. Elof grew less surprised at this the more he weighted up the sturdy figure sitting comfortably in the corner by a door as low and wide as himself. He wore no mail, only jerkin and baggy trousers, but a solid helm covered all his head and most of his face, save a squat bulbous nose and a bushy tangle of a beard and behind the t-shaped slit in the visor eyes glinted; they seemed to meet the smith's gaze and return it with the same even scrutiny. That, and the tending of their ills, was an encouraging enough sign in its way. Across the guard's knees, however, lay a formidable billheaded spear, one gnarled fist almost negligently around its axis, where a single twist could swing it to stabbing height.

  Elof turned back to Kermorvan. "Have you told them anything of our quest?"

  "Only that we came in peace, and in opposition to the Ice. But I might as well have been talking to one of your anvils, for all the answer I had. I thought it better to say no more then till you were awake again. I think we are to be sent before someone. We were many long hours in that barge, and though I could make out little, trussed and dazed as I was, I believe they brought us to a place far from where we first—"

  He stopped, for the guard had risen suddenly. He looked at them for a moment, then thrust open the door and ducked out. "A fine dungeon!" laughed Kermorvan. "No lock on the door. Though it is dirty enough, in all conscience, and these fetters adequate. Had I my sword—"

  "It would avail you little," said Elof, tracing the bluish sheen of the metal bands around his ankles. "This is strong work, and new-looking, the fastenings also. As if this place had been made into a dungeon from the storeroom it looks to be—"

  Kermorvan arched his brows. "Why? Because they've never before needed one? Surely not!"

  The door creaked back, the guard reappeared as suddenly as he had gone. He marched over, swatted Elof's hand aside and undid the band. Elof sprang up on unsteady legs, but more helmeted figures appeared now in the doorway. They gestured him forward, but kept spears leveled at his chest. Behind him he heard Kermorvan's fetters clat-ter to the floor, and together they ducked awkwardly through the door and cautiously into the corridor beyond. The sight of it made him shudder. Grim and bare as it was, he could not think why, till he realized it was made in the same fashion exactly as the corridors of the Mastersmith's tower. Understanding that, other things began to slip together in his memory. But he was given no more time to think, for spear-butts at their backs urged them on; Kermorvan glared angrily, though he had the wit to stay calm. They were hurried along and round a corner, then up a flight of steep steps and through low heavy doors. Smooth paving replaced flagstones under their feet. The room beyond was as gloomy as the cell and passage, and little wider, but its ceiling was high enough to be invisible in the shadows; even the tops of the high dark doors in the far wall could not be seen. Guards took station beside these and the doors they had come through, grounded their spears and stood waiting. In the sudden hush Elof could hear a low buzz of voices from the room beyond.

  Kermorvan nodded. "So," he whispered, "we are indeed being brought before somebody of importance. Let us at least hope he will give us a hearing!"

  "How can you be so sure?" asked Elof. "Can you understand what they say?"

  Kermorvan chuckled sourly. "No indeed. But courts, it seems, do not change overmuch, whether it is men that hold them or not. This antechamber, the sentinels, the hubbub, all unmistakable."

  Then three great strokes boomed on the high doors, and the gu
ards sprang to haul them open. Smoky red light flooded in, the travelers were thrust forward into it, and the doors slammed solidly shut behind them.

  Blinded at first by the strange glare, they saw nothing, but heard the babble, smelled the strong scent of an excited crowd around them. It was a hostile babble, and the smell was not that of ordinary human bodies. To Elof it was strange and unsettling, though in itself more wholesome than a human crowd, more like the clean sweet smell of the cattle he had tended. But Kermorvan held his head high and wrinkled his nose fastidiously. As their eyes cleared they gazed upon what they had endured so much to find, the court of the duergar.

  A high hall it was they found themselves in, the highest indeed that ever Elof had seen. Yet he might have thought himself under the roots of some impossibly vast tree, for so the columns of the walls were carved, gnarled straggling shapes that closed together in shadowy vaultings far overhead. The air under this strange roof seemed at once fresh and smoky, like a late autumn afternoon; the reddish glow came from torchlike objects set high on the walls and burning steadier than any torch. The light danced about the gilded carvings covering the doors, glowed on the sharp-edged patterns set in the polished stone of walls and floor, where flakes of pink granite and green dolerite, purple quartz and ruddy sandstone vied with strange and rare minerals. Shapes or characters they made, hard and enigmatic, save on the far wall, above the heads of the dimly-seen throng. An image was there, so striking that Elof forgot all else in contemplating it, a high silhouette seen from below, like a man through the eyes of ants, a broad figure haloed in glittering flame and with a hammer raised in one firm hand. Before him was an anvil, and he hammered at something held upon it, something shining and jagged. It might have been a short, burly man, that figure, or one of the stranger shapes that now closed in around him.

  "Well, men?" a cold harsh voice demanded, speaking the northern tongue. "Feast your eyes as you will. You came to find the wealth of the duergar, through many perils, no doubt. We would not grudge you one brief glimpse of it."

  They were not, as Elof had warned, so very small. The tallest, rising on their toes to see, were less than a head shorter than he, though many were much smaller. It was their shape that made them look stunted, wider than most men, with heavy arms on broad sloping shoulders and thick neck. The faces, though, seemed stranger than he remembered, for now not one of them was smiling. The mass of them, the adults, looked carved from old, well-seasoned wood, and carved deeply at that, for almost all were a mass of lines; those framed with white hair might have been made of bunches of cords. But it was the beardless faces, the younger faces, that were the most disturbing. There the unhuman mold showed stark beneath the skin, bared of the trappings common to man and duergh. The forehead was low and sloping, partly hidden by the bushy brows that rode the arched ridges above the eyes; but it was those eyes, huge, wide and deep-set, that banished any trace of the bestial in the face. The noses were almost all large and slightly snubbed, but varied as much as those of men. Below them, though, the duergar face fell away in a great curve to wide thin lips, and below those to a heavy clean-edged jawline with no trace of a projecting chin. High cheekbones and thick jaw muscles hollowed the cheeks; the ears were large, lobeless, curled at the top into a slight suggestion of a point. If they seemed to be set rather far back, that was because the head itself was longer and wider than a man's. All of these things Elof noticed, and yet in the same instant he saw men who were handsome and girls who were pretty—or might have been, had they smiled. But it was not smiles that bared the large teeth, or kindly curiosity that had them milling forward around the travelers.

  An angry buzz filled the hall as the voice spoke, and guards sprang forward to clear a path with their spear-shafts. Elof saw then that the hall was a shallow amphitheater centering on a narrow platform, below the vast image. The dais stood head-high to the duergar, with many solid figures seated about its base, their very attitudes at once proclaiming their importance. Kermorvan was right; some things did not change. But more impressive by far, though he lacked their dark-sheened robes and rich furs, was the speaker. He sat atop the dais, in a chair of plain gray stone. Its arched back, upon which thin lines of gold traced out a single straight character, was high enough to diminish the tallest of men. He who sat beneath was not the tallest of duergar, withered and bent with age unguessable, but it diminished him not a bit. The stone around could not have been harder than his voice.

  "Your coming, you see, was known at once. The rivers bring us messages, and the air, the cave breezes—but most of all the stone." His fingers caressed the rough gray chair arm, almost tenderly. "Always the stone. Our northern outposts are few now, but they are ever alert; they must be, for they watch the Ice! And so you were taken. You— men." The word hung bitter on his tongue. "Men. May the day perish on which first we took pity on your kind! Upon which we, the Elders, first sought to raise you up from your animal estate, as we ourselves had been raised long since! Every time we have aided you, misery and pain have repaid us. Across half a world we have fled you, and yet still you leave us no peace. By luck or design you have fallen among us, where no man should, and awoken greater fear and disquiet than I looked to see in my lifetime. I would know why." Angrily he tugged the plain robe of silver fur closer round his thin limbs. "I am Andvar, lord of all the duergar folk in these mountains. I am half tempted to kill you at once and have done. But I will not have it said that I stoop to the level of your folk. Speak, then."

  Kermorvan's face colored with anger, but he kept his peace and looked to Elof, who stepped forward. "I thank you, lord, and I think you will not regret hearing us. We are sorry to have alarmed you; the way we came, we were driven to by sore necessity and fell pursuers off the Ice. But we came to these mountains in search of the duergar. We came to gain your aid, not your riches."

  There was a rumble of sardonic laughter, and even Andvar's dark lips twisted. "Aid also may be stolen, as we have learned. What is your quest?"

  Elof met his gaze. "A quest vital to all who oppose the advance of the Ice, and the Ekwesh its champions. And though I have never spoken with any of your folk, I have once at least proven myself no enemy, and been treated in turn as a friend." A stir of interest ran through the great hall, and Elof held up a hand. "I ask only that you hear my whole tale, before making your judgment."

  Andvar waved a wide leathery hand, brushed a straggly lock of gray hair out of his eyes, and settled back on his bleak throne. "So be it. All here will understand your tongue well enough, and fairly you speak it. But I usually know the names of my friends."

  "Of course, lord," said Elof uncomfortably. "This is Kermorvan, a great warrior from the Southlands, my companion." Kermorvan bowed, though with a strange smile on his lips, as if there was something sadly lacking in the description. "My name is Elof—"

  Derisive laughter hooted through the hall. "A modest name, indeed!" barked Andvar. "That ancient title, The Smith, know that we give it only to one who is truly One Alone." He gestured up to the mighty image above.

  "If you are offended, I am sorry!" breathed Elof in utter dismay. "I chose it in all innocence, for I was a nameless foundling, and I am a smith among men. For I was chosen as a boy by the Mastersmith Mylio—"

  He stopped, sensing the sudden chill hush in the hall. Andvar's eyes narrowed, and his fingers tapped on the arm of the throne. "That name is no longer any bridge to our favor."

  "So much the better for me!" said Elof defiantly. "Will you keep your word, and hear?"

  Andvar sat rigid with anger against the stone. "Say on, then. Be silent, all."

  From that moment the listening duergar might have been carved from the rock, until Elof told of the forging of the test pieces. Then the whole atmosphere in the vast stone chamber changed, and the stillness grew charged, as before thunder. When Elof finished telling of the forging of the sword, it was Andvar who broke his own command. "You forged that thing, boy? You?" A long finger crooked at him. "Come here, smith amon
g men. Let me look at you more closely!"

  Elof stepped forward to the base of the dais. The duergar lords there rose, leaning on tall staves, and drew closer, their wide eyes staring through and through him. He stepped up on unsteady legs, and the wrinkled face of the duergar lord bent over him. Ancient eyes, yellowed but clear, met his; he held the gaze, and was startled to see a reddish flicker deep in the huge pupils that was no reflection of the torches.

  After many minutes Andvar sat back in his throne. "It could be!" he said, and his tone was thoughtful. "It could be. The crafts of man and duergh are very different things. Those are strange fires burning in you, but hot enough, indeed—" Then the wrath in him overran his curiosity, and he slumped back, knotting his hands. "And what claims on our mercy does such a feat give you, then? How shall we best reward the making of so evil a thing? At least I shall not now think your end unjust, for there are lives of our folk to pay for, and that one of your own whom you betrayed. An apt pupil you were, of that master! He was our friend at first, and of service to us, and when he sought to settle in our ancient watchtower we agreed, won over by pity for one exiled from among men! Pity! We even helped him build his forge, and shared our wisdom freely! And then when we found him delving in our mines, and dealing with uncanny folk, we warned him, sought to have him leave freely. He delayed us for long months with endless pleas and promises, and at last even threats. Even in the end, when we had to send a force to dispossess him, we gave fair warning—and do you know how it was met?"

  "I do," said Elof. "I was there, because I was fleeing him, and the thing I had done. I sought to warn your folk, shouting from the hillside above. I am sorry I could not do more. Then I fled myself, in panic as I thought—but I see now that it must have been the sword, its effects tempered by distance. Some of your folk, I believe the survivors of your force, found me and my then companion, and took us to freedom by underground ways. They judged that I was their friend, and I am grateful to them. Will you gainsay them now?"