Ils chuckled. "Nothing you would know as magic, in any event. That pattern comes not from twisted ropes of metal, as in the mindsword, but from tiny amounts of flame-pure charcoal in the steel, lending it great strength."
"Charcoal?" said Kermorvan, startled. "Would that not weaken metal? Or is that not some magic? It seems a fine and fair bale—"
"Yes indeed!" said Ansker's voice from behind them. The smith strolled down the steps and held out a hand. "Welcome, Kermorvan; I am glad the message found you so promptly. You'll honor us by accepting a stoup of ale? I thought you might. Ils, stir your stumps, girl, before we die of thirst! So, a fine sword it is, and hard in the making; but there's no spell in that. The charcoal's cooked into the metal as it's drawn living from the ore, and lodges in the very crystals of it. That makes it hard, but brittle—almost like stone. The real art lies in breaking down just enough of the crystals to a springier kind, more like common steel, so you can balance the qualities. A powerful lot of forging that takes, strong heating, hard hammering, slow cooling and quick quenching—a great labor. See how the lines run the length of the blade, but here and here and all the way up they fold in across it; that's where the hammer last struck, tempering the stony metal against the springy. Our dual nature again, stone and steel. But few if any among duergar smiths living could craft you a finer blade than that one."
"High praise indeed for sword and swordsmith!" breathed Kermorvan, and looked at it with new wonder. "And a great gift, Elof, for any warrior among men. My thanks, good friend, and may it repay them in the hand!" He swished it through the air in one hand, then in two. "Or hands, for as you said, it is a perfect hand-and-a-half length for me. I'll wager this one won't break in a troll's pate!"
"True enough!" agreed Ils as she reappeared, lb Kermorvan's evident relief she had donned a patterned brown tunic, and bore two large stone tankards in each hand. "But for proof," she added as she passed them around, "you could try it on your own pate! Not having a troll handy." She sat down on the large anvil, and sipped delicately at her own ale.
"No proof is needed," said Kermorvan stiffly, and Elof smiled to himself again. Ils seemed to unnerve this stiff-necked Sothran more than a mountain full of trolls. "It bears witness to your teaching, and Elof's skill."
"Aye, it's passable," said Ils, with a curious expression. "But there's better witness than that! Hasn't he shown you yet?"
Kermorvan looked sharply at Elof. "You've made another weapon? Something you can use against the Mastersmith?"
Elof nodded. "Maybe. Worth trying, anyhow." Ils leaned over, and there was no mistaking the excitement in her eyes. "He made your sword in the times he had to wait for this! While he was waiting for the crystals to grow—"
Elof motioned her to silence. "Better we show you," he muttered. "You are the warrior, after all. Tell me what you think of this as a weapon." He strode over to a cluttered workbench, and picked up one of the various pieces of armor Kermorvan had been looking at. A great lefthand gauntlet of mail and jointed plate it was, long enough to cover an arm to the shoulder; no joint, no seam in it, but was covered and blocked by finest mesh mail. Every finger was a masterpiece of minute armory, molded in bright smooth steel, and covered in the strange lined characters of the duergar and the swirling archaic script of the north, the joints sealed by welded ringmail as fine as cloth. Heavy as the gauntlet looked, Elof donned it with ease and flexed the fingers as he might his own. Kermorvan peered at the hand as he did, and saw set in the palm what looked like a great white jewel, cut flat, upon which the fingers closed. Elof glanced around the forge, bit his lip, and walked over to the fire. With his free hand he pumped the small hand-bellows till they gasped like a hunted animal and the coals at its heart glowed red-white under leaping blue flames. Ils caught her breath, and Kermorvan stared unbelieving as he saw his friend reach out, shielding his face, and plunge his mailed arm downward.
"No!" The swordsman was on his feet in an instant, but he was too late, too far to stop those steel-sheathed fingers dipping deep into the dragon-glare. A sickened look on his face, he watched the hand rise clenched from the flames, like the fist of Surtur stirring under the earth. Fire dripped from it, and the steel of the fingers bore a baleful glow. Then, very slightly at first, they unclenched.
It was like opening a furnace door. Fire roared in the hand, as if somehow still fed there by the bellows blast. A glow spread between the fingers, flames arose and licked around them, and yet the metal itself showed no sign of heat. Slowly, very slowly, the fingers steepled, and a thin cone of flame roared and trembled at their apex. With a grin on his face, tense, taut, triumphant, Elof swung round and thrust out his mailed arm in a defiant gesture. The fingers spread wide. A tongue of fire darted across the forge, licked a scorched circle on the wall, and vanished into nothing. Kermorvan sat dazedly staring at the circle, for though among the duergar he had heard much of smithcraft, he had never before seen its power so clearly.
"A remarkable thing," said Ansker calmly. "It is made in something the same fashion as our lanterns. But in all our long years of craft and learning we duergar have never achieved anything quite like it."
"You see," said Elof in a slightly shaky voice, "it has virtues on it of catching, containing, binding. It could do as much with the sunlight, or the wind, running water, the sound of a voice—any force, anything that has heat or motion it can grasp, gather and turn back."
"Including the force that turns men's minds?" demanded Kermorvan sharply.
"I… think so, I hope so. Ansker and Us could teach me little about it, even when I showed them that strange goad, and the symbols I took from it; the duergar have never sought to learn the skills of domination, not even to withstand them. But I have, to my sorrow. I know something must pass out of that mindsword, to strike so many at once. As I have felt, its power is diminished by distance, exactly like a lamp's light or a voice, or the flight of an arrow. So is it not also some kind of force?"
"A dark light, a voice speaking fell things, an arrow of the mind," said Ansker. "So I felt it. So it laid its hand on me even as I fled."
"And I," said Ils, and the light faded in her wide eyes a moment. She shivered in the forge's heat. "I do not wish to face that ever again. It was terrible."
Kermorvan looked doubtfully at Elof. "You think, you hope, it may work. But you will not know, will you, till you go up against your enemy? Can you risk such a thing? I expected—I cannot say—another sword, perhaps? To meet fire with fire?"
"Such means are not mine to use!" said Elof bitterly. "I cannot play with fear and terror, to thrust the minds of men one way while the Mastersmith drives them another. For what then would happen to those minds, caught between two such powers? Would they not crack and shatter like nutshells between stones? Or would you have me drive an army of my own against the Ekwesh, and set them on to slaughtering each other?" He stared bleakly into the distance. "How long must such a struggle endure, when the only real combatants hide behind their forces like human walls? For years, for generations of slaughter and death? Madness and ruin, both, and our only reward the cold pleasure of the Ice. Or worse. If I set myself to driving men like shoals before the shark, year after year—then even suppose I defeated my late master, would I not in the driving grow too much like him, and step into his place?" His voice dimmed with anguish. "It has come close to happening before. He chose me, and he was not wholly wrong. We are too much akin, he and I."
"Folly!" said Kermorvan sharply, twisting his new sword nervously in his long fingers. "That gauntlet cannot possibly match the power of the sword! At best it is a defense. You should have made some weapon of attack!"
Elof shook his head. "No. I cannot turn the craft in me to such ends, not now. It would rebel against me, as once already it has. This—" He hefted the gauntlet. "You misread my purpose. This cannot strike of itself. It can only gather or return what is sent against it, and with only such force as is used. It can collect that force, bind it, even concentrate it. But it c
an add nothing of its own."
Kermorvan clutched the sword to him, and bleak despair settled in his eyes. "It's not enough!" he insisted. "Kerys, it couldn't be! A toy, a trick—"
Elof laughed softly, and held it out, palm open. Kermorvan's scornful words came echoing back at him, and he flinched. Elof looked at him sardonically. "Are you so sure? Maybe you deserve a better proof. Stand, and be answered!" Kermorvan rose awkwardly, and Ils also, with a look of deep concern in her eyes. But Ansker drew her aside.
"Now," said Elof, unmoving. "Take that fine new sword of yours. Lift it high, yes, like that. Then when I give the word, you may strike me down."
"What?" cried Kermorvan, faltering.
"Do as I say!" snapped Elof. "Bring the blade down on my head, and with all your strength, mind! Then we shall see how the trick is played!"
"Elof!" gulped Kermorvan dazedly. "I am sorry! I did not mean to—"
But Elof held up his mailed hand. "Mind you aim straight! That is all. Are you ready? Strike!"
Kermorvan had gone white, caught between anger and shame and alarm at what he might do. He hesitated an endless few seconds, veins bulging at his temples, then brought the blade down upon the unprotected head of his friend. He struck with neither his full strength nor speed and so might, perhaps, have been able to turn the blow aside before it fell. But he was never given the chance. The mailed hand rose to the blow, palm open, and the blade smote down upon the pale jewel at its heart. But as they met there was no sound at all, and the stroke, though it might easily have lopped an oak branch, did not so much as cause the hand to waver. The steel fingers clamped tight round the blade. For a single heartbeat they held it rigid, while Kermorvan's eyes bulged in disbelief, and Elof easily thrust it aside and down. Then the fingers flew open.
Kermorvan's sword was wrenched out of his grasp, with force enough to spin him round and throw him to the ground. Across the forge it arced, almost too fast to see, and with a deafening clang it struck against the huge anvil, sprang high in the air and clattered to the ground.
"My!" breathed Ils. "Glad I wasn't still sitting there!" Kermorvan could only stare, and even Elof seemed taken aback.
"I am taught," said Kermorvan hoarsely, as Ansker went to help him up. "Elof, will you forgive my doubts? It is a mighty weapon you have made—as mighty, it seems, as its mightiest opponent!"
Elof looked troubled. "Rather you should forgive me, for I never expected the reaction to be so violent. Is your sword unharmed?"
"It is!" said Kermorvan, still stunned. "It is the anvil that is chipped! And you say there is no magic in this? It is an awesome thing!"
"In the right hands," said Elof. "But believe me, I too have doubts. That fell sword was shaped by the Mastersmith, even if the hand and the power were mine. It was hammered out in his will, with knowledge that came to him from darker sources. You are right to doubt if I can counter that. It was forged, ultimately, upon the Anvil of the Ice."
"Yes," said Kermorvan. "But it is he who wields it. He seems to me to take all he has from others. He has, then, less of his own, and that should count in your favor."
"You speak truly," said Ansker. "I have met him, talked with him, weighed him up. Though he has strong craft of his own, for a man, it flows less richly and freely than yours. That Ekwesh mask-magic of his that blasted your old sorcerer, he had to dance himself in their fashion almost to exhaustion to unleash it, did he not? So. Few mastersmiths among men could pour power as you have into two such creations, let alone one."
Kermorvan smiled. "So? Is Elof not doubly a master-smith now? Even a sword that can bite iron unscathed is surely a masterwork of itself!"
Elof shook his head, a little sadly. "Ansker has shown me. Journeyman, that is a single bridge for all to cross, but not so mastership. That is achieved only when the smith masters himself, when he can control and direct whatever power he has; without that the craft alone means nothing. And at that I am only competent, no more. Two years could not bring mastership." He snorted. "Perhaps I should be able to make a sword that cleaves anvils, not scratches them!"
"I have something for you, nonetheless," said Ansker gravely. "I remember the fashion in which such things were made, among your people. They may find the sign on it strange, for it is mine, but your skills they cannot challenge. The seal of a duergar mastersmith might be of help to you, one day." He held out a thin chain, and looped upon it a seal of black stone set in gold.
"The stamp of a journeyman!" laughed Elof, and fell to one knee. "Master, I thank you!"
Ansker hung it round his neck. "Do so, by achieving mastership!"
"That must come soon!" smiled Ils.
"Perhaps!" said Elof. "But my need is now!" His eyes screwed up, as if in pain. "When I think of those patterns on the sword—I remember them so clearly, they haunt me—it's somehow vital I understand them… And something else is needed from me, something vastly important—I can see that—but I don't know what!" His voice wandered away into a whisper.
"There I cannot yet help you," said Ansker gravely. "And there is no more time left you now. That is why I called you here, Kermorvan. Only two months or so remain of your two years, and you should be ready to leave. But it may not be so easy."
"What do you mean?" asked both men together.
"I mean that Andvar may not allow it. He has always hated allowing you to live, let alone learn among us, and still worse is the prospect of letting you free once again, knowing what you do about us. He regrets being forced to do as he did, and though you have won many friends, there are yet more who still distrust all mankind; with their support he can afford to ignore the council. I fear he may seek to delay you, even forbid you altogether. And delay you he must not! Word reaches us from the world outside, where spring moves toward summer once again. The Ekwesh raid no longer southward, but mass in force on the northern coasts. It is as if they await something. And some weeks since, our watchers saw the Mastersmith quit his high house in dead of night, and set off toward the west, toward the sea. Surely he goes to join them. The assault on the Southlands begins!"
Chapter EightLink- The Wind Beneath the Earth
Kermorvan's breath shuddered in his throat. "You are sure?" he demanded. "So many rumors—"
"These are no rumors," said Ansker firmly. "Your coming here stirred the whole duergar nation to alarm, the more so as you came through our northern outpost, that closest to the Ice. Strange stirrings have been noted there of late, and the fell things roaming the mountains have greatly increased, so now no northern pass is safe. We have been keeping a special watch lest some assault on our realm also is brewing, and even wrung permission out of Andvar for some scouts to venture afield. They now report that this winter and last some of the Ekwesh have not sailed homeward, but have remained on the northern lands they have wasted, levying tribute from your inland towns under threat of assault. We hear that they even build longhouses and bring in thralls to farm the lands for them. Evil times! Those ravening creatures are worse even than the east-men who first overran our lands!" Kermorvan twitched with anger, and the duergar smith made a conciliatory gesture. "They were your kin, I know. And not all behaved evilly to us. But most did, driving us from lands we had mined and farmed freely for many lifetimes, calling us vermin and slaying us out of hand, with a price on our skins—"
"Surely not!" cried Kermorvan.
"It was so, I assure you," said Ansker calmly, "though I am not old enough to remember those times. Even Andvar is not, not quite. But his father was. I cannot wholly blame him for his distrust of men." Kermorvan glared down into his ale. "But that is of no matter now. Our concern is to get you away from here and back to your folk as soon as may be. And that means before Lord Andvar can prevent you."
Kermorvan looked thoughtful. "That will not be easy. This is a mighty warren you have here, and well guarded—"
"But we will help you," put in Ils. "We, and others of like mind, we have been laying our plans…"
"You should not take
such a risk!" said Elof, Kermorvan nodding his agreement. "If Andvar should find out—"
"What can he do?" smiled Ansker. "Very little, to us, for all his bluster; there are too many of us, and we are not without influence. It is you who are in danger, and you should go at once, before word can reach him! Once out of the capital, Andvar will have difficulty in bringing you back. So, we have arranged that there will be a boat waiting for you at the quay, small and fast as suits your need. It should be there an hour from now, well supplied for a long voyage. You may sail southward, and leave from one of our southern gates, now little in use."
"This is generous, Master Ansker!" cried Kermorvan. "And I have some skill in boats, myself—"
"But not below ground!" said Ils. "You'd dent that high brainpan of yours on a passing stalactite! And you don't know our waterways. Me, I've played courier to the south often enough, and ridden the odd rapid or two for the sport. So I shall be going along."
"But—" began Kermorvan.
"For that and other reasons," said Ansker inexorably. "We who favor aiding you men, we must have better reports of what passes in your lands, in Suderney most of all. We hear some tidings from the Children of Tapiau, and one or two outlivers, but they are odd even for men. A clearer eye is needed—one that is happier in the hard light of the sun than most of us. As I was once, but I have dwelt below ground now for many a long year. And it must be someone who will find acceptance among men he meets, also."
Elof laughed. "Ils will find that readily enough—eh, Kermorvan?"
Ils fixed the swordsman with an eye of black steel, and fingered the half of a heavy axe at her belt. "Why—er, yes, I… suppose so," he managed. "In her way."
"Truly?" said Ansker. "There are times when even I despair of understanding your folk. But it is settled, then." He sniffed severely. "Now perhaps I may have some peace here! It has been noisy enough with one young person, growing restless and wanting to see the world, but with two… Ah well. Perhaps it will seem too quiet, then." The wide eyes of the great duergh scanned them over the edge of the ale mug. "Do you take care, Ils. And you also, you men, for we have learned to value you both. Elof, because he is so like us, more than I had ever thought a human could be. Perhaps you have a strain of us in your ancestry."
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