The Hidden Realm: Book 04 - Ennodius

by A. Giannetti

  Together, they righted the heavy anvil, setting it close to the forge before cleaning the furnace and clearing the floor of the room. Any ruined items they found were tossed into a corner of the room, but any pieces of metal that Ascilius wanted to keep; they stacked neatly against the walls. Tonare soon grew bored watching them, curling up instead by the back door to sleep.

  As he searched through the debris lying on the floor, Elerian came across a half dozen iron bars about four feet long and three inches thick, rough surfaced and fairly round. Ascilius gave a glad cry when he saw them, stacking all of them except one in a corner of the room.

  “Years ago,” said the Dwarf, “while I was traveling through Tarsius, a falling star struck the plains ahead of me with a thunderous noise and great flash of fire. When I approached it, all that was left was a lump of pitted iron. After it cooled, I carried it home with me, turning it into these bars which I set aside for the day when I might need them. The day is now come, for nothing else will do for the weapons I intend to make. I will need your aid Elerian, but before you commit to helping me, you should know that if we fail in the execution of the spells written on my scrolls, it may mean both our deaths. The forces which we will unleash will suffice to destroy this room and a good bit of the city around it.”

  “My old mentor Tullius once told me that there are good mages and evil mages, but there are no cowardly mages,” replied Elerian. “I am not afraid of magic, but what about you?” he asked curiously. “If we fail, you might be throwing away centuries of life.”

  “I will not huddle in some safe place hoarding the hours of my life like some miser telling his gold, afraid to dare a worthwhile risk,” said Ascilius firmly, his dark eyes flashing. “We must have proper weapons if we are to have any chance of leaving Ennodius, therefore I will dare to speak the spells which no other has dared to cast for hundreds of years.”

  Without anymore talk, Ascilius put on one of the heavy leather aprons he had brought from the hidden room. As carefully as if he was going into battle, he braided his hair and beard, tucking his precious beard behind his apron when he was done. A leather cap taken from an apron pocket went over his head, and heavy leather gloves taken from another pocket protected his hands. Elerian donned his own apron. Like Ascilius, he covered his hair, which was already tied back, with a leather cap, but being an Elf, he had no beard to worry about.

  “We look like corsairs from the southern seas,” thought Elerian to himself as Ascilius lit a red mage fire in the empty forge with a wave of his right hand, the flames bathing the shop with a flickering, ruddy light.

  Ascilius put the silver bars in the forge first, adding a third gleaming bar to them which he had recovered earlier from the floor of his shop. The three bars sat untouched in the flames as Ascilius held back the heat of the fire from the metal.

  “Pay attention to the proportions,” he said to Elerian. “You must use two parts silver to one part khroma. This will keep the silver from tarnishing with time. This much of the process of making argentum is known even to the Goblins, but they still do not possess the spell which transforms the metals and melds them together. Even among the Dwarves, few know it.”

  Ascilius now allowed the heat of the red flames to enter the two different metals, which immediately pooled together, the khroma forming bright, swirling streaks through the silver. Carefully, Ascilius read a spell from one of his scrolls. When the Dwarf raised his right hand, Elerian saw a small golden orb leap from his fingers, striking the small pool of bright metal in the forge. When the light from the orb faded away, the metal was all of a uniform silver color.

  “The meld of metal of metal in the furnace is argentum, now, with all the properties of that metal,” said Ascilius to Elerian. “Call your spell book and I will recite the charm for you in the common tongue.”

  Removing his heavy leather gloves, Elerian called his spell book, writing the transformation spell on a blank page as Ascilius carefully repeated it. After Elerian sent away his spell book, Ascilius withdrew the heat of the flames from the argentum, removing the cooled, silvery metal from the flames with his gloved right hand before setting it aside on the floor next to the forge.

  Picking up one of the bars of sky iron with his right hand, Ascilius thrust the other end into the red flames burning in the forge. At once, the lower two thirds of the bar turned a deep orange color. An acrid smell filled the air as the thick tarnish the iron had gathered over the years burned off. Thick blue smoke drifted up from the bar to the ceiling where it vanished, carried off by vents above the forge. As his nostrils filled with the unpleasant odor of hot iron, Tonare raised his head and blew vigorously through his nostrils. Throwing a disgusted look at Ascilius, he walked over to the stairs and climbed to the apartment above the forge room where the air was fresher.

  Ascilius ignored the dentire, continuing to hold the bar in the fire with his gloved hand. From past experience, Elerian knew Ascilius’s control of the magical fire was keeping the heat confined to lower part of the bar. With a skill garnered through years of practice, the Dwarf next laid the glowing metal on the anvil and began to shape it with his inlaid hammer. At each stroke of the sledge, there was a faint silvery flash, and the clear, sharp ring of steel on iron filled the room.

  “This is the music of the Dwarves,” roared Ascilius happily as hot orange sparks flew into the air with each skillful, powerful stroke of his hammer. The incandescent particles sent up puffs of blue smoke whenever they struck the heavy aprons worn by Elerian and Ascilius, further fouling the air in the room with the smell of burning leather, but neither of the smiths noticed, for they were both intent on the bar that Ascilius was shaping. Slowly, under the assault of the Dwarf’s magical sledge, the heated part of the bar began to flatten out and lengthen. With barely a break in the rhythm of his hammer, Ascilius swiftly thrust the bar back into the mage fire whenever the bright orange glow of the metal began to fade, holding it there until its fiery color was renewed before returning it to the anvil.

  Elerian quickly lost track of the time as he watched Ascilius’s deft strokes transform the bar of iron into the beginnings of a sword. The temperature in the room rose and beads of sweat gathered on the Dwarf’s forehead from the heat and his exertions. A pall of blue smoke hung under the ceiling beneath the vents by the time the bar had assumed the rough shape of a sword. Ascilius finally set aside the crudely formed weapon and turned to Elerian.

  “That was a good beginning but it is time now to eat and then rest,” he said wearily.

  After extinguishing the mage fire in the forge and divesting himself of his leather gear, Ascilius led the way up the stairs to the second floor of the workshop. At the top of the stairs, Elerian’s mage light revealed a sitting room that had two large windows which opened onto the boulevard that ran by the front of the shop. The glass was broken out of the frames, leaving jagged edges like snaggle teeth all around the wooden frames. The room itself was in disarray like every other room in the city that they had examined.

  After Ascilius closed the wooden shutters that framed each window, Elerian hung a heavy blanket over each of them for good measure. He then followed Ascilius into the washroom at the back of the apartment where they ran clear water from a brass spigot set in one of the walls into a shallow stone basin. With soap that Ascilius recovered from the floor, they washed off the grime of their labors, drying themselves with towels which had been strewn on the floor of the washroom. Ascilius then had Elerian trim nearly an inch of uneven, singed hair off his beard and hair with a small scissors that he also recovered from the floor. The Dwarf was especially incensed about the damage Eboria had inflicted on his beard.

  “It was bad enough that you burned a hole in it,” he complained to Elerian. “Now I am forced to shorten it from the length that I prefer. Someday Eboria will pay for this indignity as well as all the other wrongs she has inflicted on me,” he said angrily as he examined his shortened appendage.

  “Be thankful that we sustained n
o worse damage than singed hair,” Elerian advised his companion as he recalled their narrow escapes from the dragon’s flames.

  After they were done cleaning up, they toasted cheese, biscuits, and chestnuts over a small mage fire Ascilius lit in the fireplace in the sitting room. When the food was well heated, Ascilius set out a generous share of cheese and biscuits for Tonare, who wolfed his portion down and then curled up by the fire to sleep. Sitting on the hearth in front of the fire, Elerian and Ascilius ate their own meal, washing the food down with wine that Elerian made from clear water he obtained from the washroom.

  “I had a dwelling on the top level of the city, but it was often easier to sleep here when I was tired,” said Ascilius as they sat drinking the last of their wine while basking in the heat of the fire. “It was a pleasant place back then, not the ruin you see before you now.” As he looked sadly around the damaged apartment, Ascilius suddenly yawned. “I must sleep for a time, Elerian,” he said tiredly as he set aside his empty glass. “When I awaken, we will continue the work we have begun.”

  “Sleep then,” said Elerian. “I will clean up.”

  Ascilius extinguished his mage fire before disappearing through a doorway to the right of the bathroom, which led to a small bedroom. Elerian quickly cleaned up the remnants of their meal and washed the utensils they had used. He was also tired, but felt no need of sleep. Righting an overturned, padded armchair that was badly slashed but still serviceable, he set it by the fireplace. After sitting and making himself comfortable in the chair, Elerian stripped away the illusion that concealed his ruby ring. For a time, he sat and watched the stone as it beat in cadence with Anthea’s heart.

  “She must have returned home safely after leading the second dragon away,” he thought to himself, feeling a sharp pang of disappointment that she had not returned to talk to him. His loneliness, the uninviting room so far underground, and his uncertain future suddenly all weighed in on him, plunging him into a melancholy mood. “I should take it off and free her,” he thought to himself morosely. “Without the treasure that Ascilius promised me, I cannot return to Tarsius even if I leave this city alive. It would be better for her to suffer a little pain now than to have her linger on, hoping that I will return.”

  Elerian’s right hand hovered over the ring, but he found that he did not have the will to remove it, for he found that the thought that he might never see Anthea again was more than he could bear. Throwing caution to the wind, for he knew not what it would show him, he called his crystal his orb to his right hand. After it appeared, he willed the silvery glow that clouded its interior to fade.

  “Show me her dear face,” he silently commanded the sphere.

  The interior of the orb cleared, but instead of Anthea’s fair face, Elerian saw an alien land, a place of stones and emptiness where the lonely wind prowled beneath a dark sky filled with strange stars. His melancholy, strengthened by the influence of that deserted land, suddenly deepened to a despair that pieced his heart like a knife. Shaken to the core, for the orb never lied, Elerian sent away the globe, wondering what its revelation portended for him.

  “Am I destined to someday wander that empty land alone and friendless?” he wondered to himself apprehensively. To distract himself from what he had seen, he finally thought to bring back Dymiter’s spell book as well as his own book.

  “I am here in Ascilius’s workshop where I never expected to come,” he thought to himself. “Perhaps I should reconsider using the spells Dymiter gave me. It would be foolish to miss the opportunity to make a ring that might help me overcome the perils I may face in the future.”

  Had Dymiter appeared in that moment to press his case, Elerian might easily have changed his mind, for he remained deeply suspicious of the wraith and his intentions, but no shade rose out of Dymiter’s spell book when it appeared in his hand. Opening the book to the section on ring making, Elerian began studying the spells in the Elven mage’s book.

  “If I am to make this ring, then I must find a way to render it harmless,” he thought to himself, remembering Dymiter’s warnings. “There were futures that Dymiter would not tell me about, futures with no good outcomes. Perhaps I became like Torquatus in them,” he thought to himself with a shudder. “How can I avoid such a fate?”

  Carefully, Elerian began to alter the copies of the charms that he had made in his own book, erasing the old letters with a touch of his right forefinger and writing new ones with the quill pen and ink that had appeared with his book. The only sounds in the room were Ascilius's heavy breathing from the next room, and an occasional, anxious whine from Tonare, who appeared to be experiencing some unhappy dream or memory as he slept.

  Suddenly, Elerian stopped reading, becoming, instead, acutely aware of the great, empty city that surrounded him on all sides.

  “Outside, it is early summer,” he thought to himself regretfully. “The leaves are full, the forests are filled with life, and here I sit entombed in cold stone.”

  Suddenly, Tonare raised his head, interrupting Elerian’s musings. He looked toward the windows with his small, fierce eyes, and his thin, black lips pulled back, exposing his sharp white teeth in a soundless snarl. Elerian watched apprehensively, wondering what had disturbed the dentire. Then, after a few moments, Tonare suddenly relaxed and turned his head to face Elerian.

  “One of the small dragons passed by in the street in front of the shop, but it has gone,” he said quietly. Laying his head down, Tonare went back to sleep at once.

  Since the room’s windows were well covered, and they had left no scent to attract a dragon in the boulevard, Elerian continued reading by the rays of the dim mage light which was positioned above his head, searching diligently for ways to make the ring Dymiter wanted him to fashion more amenable to his will. When Ascilius awoke hours later, he said nothing of his decision to make ring of power.

  “He is sure to disapprove, so I had best keep my plan to myself for now,” Elerian thought to himself as he sent away his spell books.

  WEAPONS AND SPELLS

  Alternately working and resting over the next four days, Ascilius flattened and shaped the raw iron of the sword he had begun. Since this part of the forging process produced few sparks, he and Elerian both stripped off their leather armor and shirts, wearing only their leather caps, aprons, and pants, for the heat of the red-hot iron kept the temperature high in the forge room even though there were shafts to bring in fresh air.

  After the first day, Ascilius allowed Elerian to take his place at the anvil when he tired, for Elerian was eager to help in the making of his sword. With each stroke of Ascilius’s magical hammer, he saw the lines of argentum inlaid in the tool flash white and felt a corresponding drain on his power. Despite the toll it took on his strength, the sledge felt wonderfully light in his hand, allowing him a wonderful precision as he shaped the soft iron of his sword on the anvil.

  Ascilius watched Elerian closely at first, but he could find no flaw in companion’s work or in his mastery of the mage fire. Sitting on a rough wooden bench, he watched the half-Elf’s skillful strokes in silence, only now and then giving a bit of advice or guidance.

  “Take a few inches off of you and you would make a fair Dwarf,” Ascilius joked one day as Elerian worked, his long muscles twisting and contracting beneath his pale, sweat slicked skin as he swung Ascilius’s hammer.

  “I would look and act out of place without a long beard and a grumpy temperament,” replied Elerian at once without looking up from his work. A half smile formed on his lips when he cast a sidelong look out of the corners of his eyes at Ascilius and saw the Dwarf frowning as he tried to think up a suitable reply.

  Under the combined efforts of the two companions, the double-edged sword took on the appearance of a long, slender ash leaf. After the blade took its final form, Ascilius welded slender, up curving cross guards between blade and hilt. At the end of the round bar that was to be the foundation of the hilt, he shaped a steel ball. When all was done to his satisfacti
on, Ascilius melted some of the argentum, molding it around the steel between the cross guards and pommel. With one of his tools, he then carved a series of thin, rounded ridges on its smooth surface.

  After heating the blade once more in the mage fire, Ascilius used another of his sharp instruments like a pen, scribing long, flowing lines into the surface of the blade. He demonstrated a wonderful precision and artistry as he cut the complex shapes without the use of any guide or template. After he wrote the name Acris on the blade in Elvish, using a thin graceful script, Ascilius flowed hot argentum into the deep lines that he had engraved, binding the silvery metal to the steel with a joining spell. He then heated the blade, but not the argentum, red-hot before plunging it into a tub of water to temper it. A sharp hissing sound filled the air, and a dense white steam rose up from the tub as Ascilius did this seven times in rapid succession, filling the forge room with a pale fog by the time he was done. Last of all, Ascilius sharpened the blade on a grinding wheel that spun by itself before polishing the entire sword on a soft wheel until it shone like a diamond.

  “Now comes the dangerous part,” said the Dwarf to Elerian on their fourth day in his shop as he laid Acris down in front of him on the anvil. “The argentum inlaid in the steel is now ready to receive the spells which will give the sword its power. Your task will be to hold the scroll I will use where I can read it. As I speak the spells, stand ready to help me if I falter. If I fail to complete any of them, the released magical power will destroy this room and everything in it.”

  Having witnessed firsthand the effects of an uncompleted minor spell during his apprenticeship as a mage, Elerian knew that Ascilius was not exaggerating their danger in the slightest, but he held up the scroll with steady hands, holding himself ready to give aid if Ascilius should need it.