The Anvil of the World aotwu-1

by Kage Baker

  “I can patch it together enough to work,” Smith shouted after him. “It would be nice to have some solder, though.”

  “You’ll manage,” the lordling assured him.

  “Where’s Willowspear?”

  “Fixing us breakfast.” Lord Ermenwyr paced back in a leisurely fashion and stood regarding Smith’s efforts with mild interest.

  “Are you sure that’s safe?” Smith said, around the rivet he was holding in his teeth at that moment. He spat it out, smacked it into place, and resumed tapping. “You’ve annoyed him a lot, you know. I didn’t think he was capable of hitting anybody.”

  “Neither did he.” Lord Ermenwyr snickered. “Another step in his journey toward self-knowledge. Now he’s decided to make amends by cooking for us on this jaunt.”

  “Does he know how to cook?”

  “He’s dear Mrs. Smith’s son, isn’t he? Bound to have inherited some of her culinary genius.” Lord Ermenwyr hitched up his trousers and squatted on the deck, staring in fascination as Smith worked. “And what a splendid job you’re doing! It just comes naturally to you, doesn’t it? You people are so good with—with hammers, and rivets, and anvils and things. It would really be a shame…”

  Smith waited a moment for him to finish his sentence. He didn’t. When Smith looked up he was staring keenly out to sea, pretending he hadn’t said anything.

  “Just before you got hit by the Sending,” said Smith, “You were saying a lot of ominous stuff about the collapse of civilization and dropping dark hints about other people getting involved.”

  “Was I? Why, I suppose I was,” said Lord Ermenwyr in an innocent voice.

  “Yes, you were. And you said something about a Key.”

  “Did I? Why, I suppose I—”

  “Breakfast, my lord,” said Willowspear, rising from the companionway with a kettle. He sat down cross-legged on the deck and began to ladle an irregularly gray substance into three bowls. Smith and Lord Ermenwyr watched him with identical appalled expressions.

  “What the Nine Hells is that stuff?” Lord Ermenwyr demanded.

  “Straj meal, boiled with a little salt,” Willowspear told him calmly. “Very healthy for you, my lord.”

  “But—but that’s nursery food! We used to fling it at each other rather than eat it,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “And when it dried on a wall, the servants had to scrape it off with wire brushes.”

  “Yes, I remember.” Willowspear lifted his bowl and intoned a brief prayer. “Your Mother lamented the wastefulness of Her unappreciative offspring.”

  Smith stared at them, remembering the smiling inhuman thing that had summoned a horror from the deeps, and trying to imagine it as an infant throwing its porridge about. “Er … I usually have fried oysters for breakfast,” he said.

  “This is a wholesome alternative, sir. Better for your vital organs,” Willowspear replied.

  “All right, I know what you’re doing,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “You’re punishing me, aren’t you? In a sort of passive pacifistic Yendri way?”

  “No, my lord, I am not.” Willowspear lifted a morsel of the porridge on two fingers and put it into his mouth.

  “And I’ll bet the meal has been sitting in bins down there for months! There’s probably weevils in it. Listen to me, damn you! I had that larder stocked with nice things to eat.

  Everything the merchant could cram in there on an hour’s notice. Jars of pickled sweetbreads and amphorae of rare liqueurs and candied violets. Fruit syrups! Plovers’ eggs in brine! Runny cheeses and really crispy thin fancy crackers to spread them on! That’s what I want for breakfast!” Lord Ermenwyr raged, his eyes bulging.

  “Then I suggest, my lord,” said Willowspear, “that you go below and prepare your own meal.”

  He raised his head and looked his liege lord in the eye. Smith held his breath, and for a moment it seemed that the very air between them must scream and burst into flame. At last Lord Ermenwyr seemed to droop.

  “You’re using Mother’s tactics,” he said. “That’s bloody unfair, you know.” He sagged backward into a sitting position and took up the bowl. “Ugh! Can’t I even have some colored sugar to sprinkle over it? Or some syrup of heliotrope?”

  “I could prepare it with raisins tomorrow,” Willowspear offered.

  “I haven’t even got my special breakfast spoon.” Grumbling, Lord Ermenwyr helped himself to the porridge.

  Smith took a cautious mouthful. It was bland stuff, but he was hungry. He shoveled it down.

  “My lord?” said a voice like a hesitant thunderstorm. Cutt, Crish, Stabb, and Strangel stood watching them eat.

  “What?” Lord Ermenwyr snapped.

  “We have not tasted blood or flesh in three days,” said Strangel.

  Lord Ermenwyr sighed and got to his feet, still dipping porridge from the bowl. As he ate, he scanned the horizon a moment. At last he sighted a fin breaking the water, and a pale shape gliding below the surface close to shore. He pointed, and through a full mouth said indistinctly, “Kill.”

  His bodyguards were over the rail and into the water so quickly that Smith barely saw them move.

  Moments later, cosmic retribution caught up with a shark.

  “So there was this Key you mentioned,” said Smith, as he fitted the boiler dome back into place.

  “So I did,” said Lord Ermenwyr a little sullenly, staring out at the whitecaps that had begun to appear on the wide sea. He ignored Willowspear, who was carefully setting up a folding chair for him.

  “Well? What were you talking about?”

  “The Key of Unmaking.”

  Smith halted for a moment before picking up the wrench and going on with his work.

  “That’s just a fable,” he said at last. “That’s just, what do you call it, mythology.”

  “Oh, is it?” Lord Ermenwyr jeered. “It’s in your Book of Fire. You’re not a believer, then, I take it?”

  Smith went on bolting down the dome. He did not reply.

  “I am familiar with the Book of Fire,” said Willowspear hesitantly. “Though I confess I haven’t studied it. It’s your, er, religious history, is it not?”

  “It’s the legends from the old days,” said Smith, getting to his feet. He wiped his hands clean with a rag.

  “You’re not a believer,” Lord Ermenwyr decided. “Very well; but you must have heard the story of the Key of Unmaking.”

  “I haven’t,” said Willowspear.

  “I’ll tell you about it, then. Long ago, when the World was uncrowded and the personified abstract archetypes supposedly walked around on two legs, there was a God of Smithcraft, which was a pretty neat trick given that black-smithing hadn’t been invented yet.”

  “Shut up,” Smith growled. “He was the one who worked out how to make the stars go up and down. He made the swords and tridents for the other gods. He designed the aperture mechanism that rations out moonlight, or we’d all be crazy from too much of it.”

  “You do remember, then,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

  “And he … well, he fell in love,” said Smith reluctantly. “With the fire in his forge. But he knew the flames were only little images of True Fire. He watched her blaze across the sky every day, but she never noticed him. So he put on his sandals and his cloak and his hat and he walked in the World following after True Fire, always going west, hoping to get to the mountain where she slept every night.

  “He took his iron staff with him and, uh, things happened like, when he walked through the Thousand Lake country near Konen Feyy the ground was muddy, and his staff end left holes in the ground that filled up with water, and that’s how the lakes got there. And up in a crater on top of a mountain he found True Fire at last.

  “He courted her, and they became lovers. And they wanted to have children, but she—well, she was True Fire, see? So he made children for her, instead, out of red gold. And she touched them with holy fire and they became alive. Perfect mechanisms that could do anything other children could do, including grow up and
have children themselves. And they were the ancestors.”

  “Some of your ancestors, Willowspear, on your mother’s side,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Isn’t that an odd thought?”

  “And … True Fire made islands rise up out of the sea, and the Children of the Sun lived on them,” said Smith. “Those were the first cities.”

  He threw down the rag and squinted up at the sky. “We should get moving again,” he said. “Make sail and weigh anchor!”

  The demons, who had been sprawled out in sated repose, clambered to their feet. Two set to with the capstan bars and the anchor jumped up from the depths like a fishhook, while two mounted into the dangerously creaking shrouds.

  “There’s more to the story, though, isn’t there, Smith?” said Lord Ermenwyr.

  “Yes,” said Smith, taking the helm. “All right, you lot, remember where the anchor goes? Right. Coil the hawser like I showed you.”

  “Clever lads!” Lord Ermenwyr called out. “But Smith can’t sail away from the story. Pay close attention, Willowspear, because this is where it all went wrong. If the Children of the Sun had stayed on their islands, all would have been well for the rest of us. Unfortunately, they were clever little clockwork toys and invented all this ship business. Halyards, lanyards, jibs, and whatnot. Which enabled them to spread out and colonize other people’s lands.”

  “That was ages before the Yendri even came here, so you can’t blame—”

  “The demons were here, though. They matter too.”

  “We travel because our Mother travels,” said Smith. “That’s what the stories say. That’s why we’re always moving, the way She moves across the sky.”

  “Yes, but you don’t exactly bring us light, do you?” said Lord Ermenwyr.

  At the wheel Smith narrowed his eyes, but said nothing as he guided the ship out of the bay.

  “Burnbright is the light of my world,” said Willowspear. “They are capable of great love, my lord.”

  “And that’s the other problem!” said Lord Ermenwyr. “They breed like rabbits. Even their own legends say that soon there were so many of them running about the world that the other personified abstract archetypes got upset that their own children were being crowded out, so they went to the Smith god and complained.”

  “There was a council of the gods,” said Smith. “They told the Father he had to do something. So he made … so he is supposed to have made this Key of Unmaking.”

  “The opposite of a key that winds mechanisms up, you see, Willowspear?” said Lord Ermenwyr.

  “No,” said Willowspear.

  “It shuts us off, all right?” said Smith. “Or it’s supposed to. It’s only a myth, anyway. The stories say that the gods used it to bring on calamities. The first time they used it was when the Gray Plague came. Everybody died but a handful of pregnant women hiding in a cave, that’s what the story says. And then everything was all right for ages, and the cities came back.

  “And then… Lord Salt is supposed to have used it when he burnt the granaries of Troon, and famine came, and the Four Wars broke out at once. In the end there was just a handful of fishing villages along the coast, because inland the ghosts massed on the plains like armies, there were so many angry dead. Nobody could live there for generations.

  “And people say…” Smith’s voice trailed off.

  “What people say” said Lord Ermenwyr, “is that one day the Key of Unmaking will be used for the third time, if the Children of the Sun can’t learn from their mistakes, and there will be no survivors.”

  “But it’s just a story,” said Smith stubbornly.

  “I have news for you,” said Lord Ermenwyr, taking out his smoking tube and tapping loose the cold ash. “It’s real.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “I beg to differ. What’s the Book of Fire say about it? Let’s see what I can recall… (Mother made us study comparative religions, and Daddy always said they were good for a laugh, so I applied myself to the subject)… ‘The Father-Smith sorrowing sore, on the Anvil of the World, Forged his fell Unmaking Key, Deep in the bones he hid it there, Till Doomsday should dredge it up. Frostfire guards what Witchlight hides.’ ”

  “It’s a metaphor,” said Smith.

  “How can you disbelieve your own Scripture?” Willowspear asked him, dismayed.

  “It’s different for you,” Smith replied. “Your history is still happening, isn’t it? His mother is still writing letters to her disciples and running the shop, isn’t she? If you have a question of faith, you can just go to her and ask her.”

  “Though Mother says nobody listens to her anyway,” said Lord Ermenwyr parenthetically.

  “But Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches will still be sacred though a thousand years pass, and the White Ship will still have put forth from its shores. The passage of time can’t make truth less true,” argued Willowspear.

  “You’re missing the point, my friend,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “It doesn’t matter whether Smith believes in the Key of Unmaking or not. Other people do, and they feel it’s high time it was used again.”

  “What kind of people?” asked Smith, feeling a chill.

  “Oh … certain demons have felt that way about your race for years,” said Lord Ermenwyr, with an evasive wave of his hand. “But that’s never been much of a threat, because no two demons can agree on the color of the sky, let alone a plan of action. I’m afraid this whole Smallbrass Estates affair has made things worse, though.”

  Smith shuddered. But, “So what?” he said. “There isn’t actually any real literal Key.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?” Lord Ermenwyr said. “If you don’t think there’s any real danger, Smith, why should we greenies worry?”

  He leaned back in his chair and gazed out at the bright sea sparkling.

  “I’m getting a headache from all this glare,” he said after a moment. “Willowspear, fetch me a parasol. And perhaps my spectacles with the black emerald lenses.”

  The third day out dawned clear and bright, but far to the south was a glacier wall of fog, purple in the morning sun, blinding white at noon. By afternoon they had come close, and it loomed across half the world. Under it the blue sea faded to steel color and green, with a pattern like watered silk, and distance became confused. Rocks and islets swam into view, indistinct in the gloom.

  Smith struck sails and proceeded with caution, relinquishing the helm to Willowspear every few minutes to take soundings from the chains. He sighed with relief when he spotted a marker buoy, a hollow ball of tin painted red and yellow, and ran aft to the wheel.

  “We’re at the mouth of the Rethestlin,” he told the others. “And the tide’s with us. This is where we go inland, right?”

  “Yes! Turn left here,” said Lord Ermenwyr. He shivered. “Chilly, all this damned mist, isn’t it? Cutt, I want my black cloak with the fur collar.”

  “Yes, Master.” Cutt went clumping down the companion-way.

  “The water has changed color,” observed Willowspear, looking over the side.

  “That’s the river meeting the sea,” Smith told him, peering ahead. “Maybe we should anchor until this fog lifts… no! There’s the next buoy. We’re all right. You ought to thank Smallbrass Enterprises for that much, my lord; this would be a lot harder without the markers.”

  Willowspear scowled. “Surely they haven’t begun their desecration!”

  “No,” said Smith, steering cautiously. “They can’t have got enough investors yet. These were probably put down for the surveying party. So much the better for us. Weren’t we supposed to be racing to rescue your sister, my lord?”

  “She’ll hold off the ravening hordes until we get there,” Lord Ermenwyr said, allowing Cutt to wrap him in the black cloak. “She’s a stalwart girl. Once, when Eyrdway was tormenting me, she knocked him down with a good right cross. Bloodied his nose and made him cry, too. Happy childhood days!”

  The tide swung them round the buoy, and another appeared. A smudge on the near horizon reso
lved into a bank of reeds; and the thump and wash of surf, muffled, fell behind them, and the cry of a water bird echoed. The roll and pitch of the sea had stopped. They seemed stationary, in a drifting world…

  “We’re on the river,” said Smith.

  The fog lifted, and they beheld Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches.

  It was a green place, a dark forest coming down to meadows along the water’s edge, cypress and evergreen oak hung with moss that dripped and swayed in long festoons in the faint current of air moving upriver. Deeper into the forest, towering above the green trees, were bare silver boughs where purple herons nested.

  Three tall stones had been set up in a meadow. Yendri signs were cut deep into them, spirals of eternity and old words. Around their bases white flowers had been planted, tall sea poppies and white rhododendrons, and the bramble of wild white roses. Willowspear, who had been praying quietly, pointed.

  “The shrine to the Beloved Imperfect,” he said. “That was where he stood, with the Child in his arms. There he saw the White Ship, that was to bear him over the sea, rise from the water. This water!” He looked around him in awe.

  Lord Ermenwyr said nothing, watching the shore keenly. Smith thought it was a pretty enough place, but far too dark and wet for Children of the Sun to live there comfortably. He was just thinking there must have been a mistake when they saw the new stone landing, and the guardhouse on the bank at the end of it.

  “Oh,” said Willowspear, not loudly but in real pain.

  It was a squat shelter of stacked stones, muddy and squalid-looking. Piled about it were more of the red-and-yellow buoys and a leaning confusion of tools: picks, shovels, axes, already rusted. There were empty crates standing about, and broken amphorae, and a mound of bricks. There was a single flagpole at the end of the pier. A red-and-yellow banner hung from it, limp in the wet air.

  The shelter’s door flew open, and a figure raced out along the bank.

  “Ai!” shouted a man, his hopeful voice coming hollow across the water. “Ai-ai-ai! You! Are you the relief crew?”

  “No, sorry,” Smith shouted back.