Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  But Jalu’d stepped in.

  “On the contrary,” he said, “both of them speak a good deal of sense.”

  Ansu nodded. “Listen, this is one of the world’s major cities, yes?”

  Aranthur nodded and waved at the skyline. Even fire, assault, and invasion by godlike and malevolent entities could not utterly destroy the beauty and harmony of the towers and temples, the fine high buildings, the overhanging balconies.

  “They must have armourers. What if we engraved the sigil on bucklers, or shields?” Ansu asked.

  “How do we power…?” Dahlia said. “Crystal?”

  Aranthur nodded. “It must be possible, or the gate would not have eaten my crystal.”

  “A whole new technology,” Dahlia said.

  Aranthur scratched his unshaven chin.

  “Is it really new? Aren’t we just making a more durable amulet?”

  “Someone must have done this,” Dahlia agreed, deflated. “So some part of it must not work.”

  Aranthur shrugged. “The glyphs are mostly lost. Did you know the ward glyph before… today?”

  Dahlia nodded. “No. Good point.”

  The priest of Masr who was escorting them had been listening intently. Now he stopped them.

  “We use your sigils and glyphs,” he said proudly. “Perhaps these are forgotten in the north, but here in the south we know them well. Our older places are full of them.”

  Dahlia looked at Aranthur, a look that clearly meant “don’t say the first thing that comes into your head.”

  “Can you take us to an armourer?” Aranthur asked.

  The young man nodded. “We have the best armourers in the world,” he said proudly.

  “We also specialise in arrogance,” muttered Sasan.

  “Shut up,” Dahlia said.

  “And we know everything,” Sasan added.

  “Darling…” Dahlia said.

  Sasan winked at Aranthur.

  They walked through noisy streets. Up by the acropolis, the streets had seemed empty. Here, in the heart of the city, the streets were so crowded that it could be difficult to walk, with rows of stalls on either hand, and the looming wonder of the Temple of One Hundred Women, with two magnificent white towers, rising to robin’s egg blue domes dominating the sky over the street. High in the sky between the two towers lay the Dark Forge, a reminder that all was not actually well. But in the streets, despite malign entities and fire and sword, children played, a street singer sang of some Masran hero, an old man sold sweet tea, and a much younger man sold fresh water.

  People watched them, from doorways and from stalls. Dahlia, with her uncovered gold-blonde hair, seemed to draw every stare, but Aranthur’s height and broad shoulders also drew the attention of many. Some of the women made the sign of the “horns,” an invocation of the Gazelle Goddess—but then, one young woman in a veil raised her eyes to look at Aranthur and blinked both eyes.

  Aranthur smiled at her, but she was gone in the crowd.

  In the square before the Temple of One Hundred Women, there were hundreds of stalls. A rich family was distributing food to the poor—good food: white bread and fresh meat and fish and measures of rice.

  The priest nodded, as if this was all as it should be.

  “They earn much favour with the gods,” he said. “Generosity is one of the greatest of virtues.”

  Somehow he managed to imply that, as foreigners, they needed a great deal of instruction on the virtues.

  There were lanes and avenues running off the square in every direction, each of them crowded with stalls and shops. The priest led them across the square. Sasan caught a very young pickpocket and released him. Ansu became entangled with three dancing women, and left the three of them laughing.

  “Those women are not virtuous,” the priest said.

  “Glad to hear it,” Ansu said.

  The priest frowned. “This is the street for armourers.”

  The street he indicated was more of a warren. The smell of burning charcoal and coke was everywhere. The alley seemed to be populated with black-robed priest-soldiers in black turbans. Aranthur noted for the first time that the black robes were only an outer layer. Close up, the priest-soldiers wore elaborate and colourful clothes under the robes: silk trousers, velvet jackets not unlike what a Souliote or an Arnaut might wear for a festival.

  Hammers rang on anvils, punctuating the air with clear notes, higher or lower as the artisans worked their pieces. The shops seemed dark from outside, sometimes lit only by the forge fire. At street level, they often had an awning of finely woven tapestry, black with shop-soot, and under the awning would be a pair of boys or girls and a carpeted table covered in wares: pairs of gauntlets in one shop, puffers in another. A third had finely ornamented helmets with lobster-tail neck protection and elaborate bars under a sun visor. Another had daggers, hilted in antler or ivory, wickedly curved and often jewelled.

  “Anyone have any money?” Aranthur asked.

  Ansu smiled. He no longer painted his teeth black, so his smile was very white in the gloom of the forge-street.

  “I always have money.”

  Dahlia shook her head. “We can’t just live off Ansu.”

  “Why not?” Sasan asked. “Ansu, does your beneficence run to some kit for my bandits?”

  Ansu turned to the Masran priest and bowed.

  “I will need to negotiate some bills,” he said. “Can you ask for a money-changer to come here?”

  The priest smiled slightly. “I can take you to a money-changer. There are three on the other side of the square.”

  Ansu smiled. “I suspect they will come to me.”

  He took his pen case from his belt and, using Aranthur’s back, he penned a short note. He folded it, and with a single silver coin he acquired a flock of small boys.

  “Listen carefully,” he said to the boy he selected. “And this small coin will grow much larger. Go to the money-changer with the largest table. Give him this note. If he declines to follow you, go to the next. If they all decline to follow you, come back here.”

  The priest was amused.

  “I have never seen anyone summon a money-changer,” he said.

  Ansu bowed slightly. “I am not surprised.” He smiled, in case his words gave offence. “Now, let us make some purchases.”

  Sasan found maille, light as air, almost magikal in its tiny complexity, and helmets. Ansu found a shield maker, and after a brief discussion with the girls at the table, they were invited into the shop. Then they walked through the shop into the back, where there was a small garden and a well. The shield maker came in from another door, wiping his soot-black hands on his leather apron.

  “Effendi?” he asked.

  And in minutes, he was with them at a small table, and Dahlia had her sketches in front of him.

  “Steel? I can do it,” he admitted. “Good steel is… difficult in this size.” He glanced around. “How many?”

  “Thirty?” Ansu asked. “Fifty?”

  The man paled. “I will need to work with other people.”

  “How soon?” Ansu asked.

  “A month?”

  “I need them tomorrow,” Ansu said with royal confidence.

  “My lord, there is a man to see you,” said one of the young girls. “Papa, may I let the man in? He is a Farounzi, a money man.”

  “Let him in and bring us tea,” the artisan said.

  The girl bowed, both hands on her heart, and darted away. A moment later a young man in a long black gown appeared. He was smiling.

  “I had to see what this was about,” he said, pleasantly enough. His glance fixed on Ansu. “You are from Zhou?”

  “I have that honour.”

  The money-changer bowed. “I am Bardi. Lanzo di Bardi of the Megara House.” He nodded. “You must be Prince Ansu. There cannot be two of you.”

  Ansu rose and returned the Liote man’s greeting and bow.

  “I am he,” he agreed. “If I write a note on my Imperial
father, will you honour it?”

  Bardi shrugged. “It depends on how good my own credit is, Highness. The truth is that these people are under siege—even hard currency has lost value compared to food, and credit is not very elastic. How much do you need?”

  “One thousand gold dinars. Perhaps three times that.”

  To give the man his due, Bardi didn’t flinch or wince. He did smile.

  “That much?”

  “We are endeavouring to save the city. Listen, Syr Bardi—these shields will have movable wards. With those we can clear the infested sections and then repair the great wards. The city, at least, will be safe.”

  “Tomorrow?” asked the shield maker. “That’s… impossible.”

  Aranthur leant in. “Syr, if these work, they will… be quite valuable. And perhaps revolutionary.”

  “If they work?” Bardi asked.

  Dahlia smiled. “I am Dahlia Tarkas.”

  “Ah, Myr Tarkas. I can offer you perhaps fifty ducats.”

  “Very kind, but I am merely saying that we have certain… interests. In Megara. I promise you his bill is good.”

  “The Emperor, you mean? You mean that you are on official business?” He smiled. “Of course, a Tarkas would not lie to a poor banker, would she?”

  “Almost never,” Dahlia said.

  “Make one,” Aranthur said. “We’ll test it, and we’ll know. Someone has to work the crystal side. I have several crystals…”

  No one else volunteered.

  “That’s me, then,” he said.

  The craftsman quoted a price, and the banker agreed. Immediately the man went out into his shop and let forth a rolling volley of orders to the dozen young men and women, who went in what seemed to be all directions.

  “I need to be here,” Aranthur said.

  Dahlia shrugged. “We have nowhere else to be.”

  Ansu smiled. “I’ll just cross the square with Syr Bardi, then, and spend my father’s money.” He smiled and bowed slightly.

  Sasan went out to shop for his horsemen, but before he went out, he leant over Aranthur.

  “Don’t you think Ansu’s business will involve the dancing girls?” he whispered.

  “All three of them, no doubt,” Aranthur said, grinning.

  “That’s just selfish,” Jalu’d said. “He’ll need help. I can’t abandon him.”

  Over the next few hours, Aranthur and Dahlia tried not to be in the way in a very small shop, especially as the front of the shop grew gradually more cluttered with Sasan’s growing pile of purchases. An engraver was sent for, and Aranthur and Dahlia drew out a glyph for him to copy. The man had more than a little latent talent. He was very cautious of the glyph, but he rendered it neatly on to a sheet of copper with his engraver, and then set about deepening the engraving lines.

  He called for the smith, and the two of them had an animated conversation in Masri. By then, the priest had changed his mind about the foreigners. Something about the banker’s ready attendance on Prince Ansu had convinced him that they were worthy of his time. Now he first gave his name, Haras, and then translated the exchange.

  “The smith says, why do you interrupt me, I’m working, you do your work and I do mine. The engraver says, this is all baraka and must be done in sequence, and how will this complex working be powered? The smith says, Oh! Gods save my house. The engraver says, these are evil days. Then he says, let me engrave the iron, before it is hardened in the furnace. And he also says that he could do it faster, and perhaps better with wax and acid, in his own shop.”

  “That’s not engraving,” Aranthur said. “That’s etching. I’m not sure…”

  Dahlia shook her head. “Let it be. Anything that is faster is better.”

  Aranthur pointed at the practice copper.

  “When you build the shield, put this behind the steel,” he said.

  The engraver smiled.

  The shield maker frowned.

  “Too heavy,” Haras said for him.

  “Try it,” Aranthur said. “I’m fairly strong.”

  Dahlia turned to Haras.

  “What do you do, when one of these things attacks inside the city?”

  “We die,” Haras said. “The only tactic so far is to set fire to a street of houses. The entities fear fire.” He winced. “Sometimes.”

  “And they are getting stronger,” the banker said. He had returned after an hour. He glanced at Dahlia. “I have scraped together enough credit to cover your friend. It’s mostly my own money, and honestly, I’d rather not die here.”

  He glanced at Aranthur, who was working on a sheet of leather he’d acquired from the harness-maker a street farther north.

  “What news of the General?” he asked.

  Dahlia sketched the events of the last two weeks.

  The banker shook his head. “We heard here… that you lost.”

  “What?” Aranthur looked up, his burnisher in his hand.

  Bardi shrugged. “That’s what we heard yesterday, from Antioke.”

  “No, we most definitely won,” Dahlia insisted. “We broke their army, captured their horse herd and all their guns, and killed or captured most of their magikal talent.”

  Bardi leant back. “That’s…” He looked first stricken, and then delighted. “That’s amazing. So the General is not dead or captured?”

  “I saw the General with my own eyes, as close as we are, seven days ago,” Aranthur said.

  Bardi blinked. “Someone is misinformed. Bankers can’t afford this kind of error. Thankfully, I’ve had nowhere to wager my money.”

  Aranthur kept working. He cut out leather backing for the shield, and then worked the glyph on the rough side, facing out. Then he added some routine decoration, and made a strap. A teenage girl in an apron came and took his work, and fifteen minutes later, they had the shield about the same time that Ansu and Sasan returned.

  The shield, which was really more of a buckler, had a steel outer face. It needed a great deal more polishing than it had received, but polishing hardened steel takes time. The glyph was very clear in fine engraved repoussé, and the light polishing had tended to hit the high points, so that the glyph glowed against the fire-scale and roughness of the less polished portions. The copper layer was barely visible, riveted close to the steel layer, and the leather was held by the same rivets. The strap had a nice steel buckle.

  “You do good leather-work,” the smith said. “I have three more on the way. Give me another two hours. They will be…” He looked at Haras.

  “Etched,” Haras said. “Not engraved.”

  “How do we test it?” Sasan asked. “Oh, fuck me, I didn’t mean that.”

  “We go out into the bad neighbourhoods and find ourselves an Apep-Duat.”

  Haras flinched when Aranthur used the Masri word.

  “You have no idea what you are saying,” the young priest said. “The Apep-Duat are unholy. They are like gods, but… no one would ever seek one. They are—”

  Dahlia nodded. “And then we see what we can do to it. When we were at the gate, I took careful note of what hit hard and what didn’t. Jalu’d had an emanation that I’ve never seen—it appeared to do damage. The Lightbringer was less effective.”

  “He was too afraid. I merely danced for it—a little love can be very confusing to the wilfully evil.”

  Jalu’d nodded, as if throwing love as a weapon was a commonplace.

  A young man came in and said that food was to be served for all of them in “just a little time.”

  Sasan nodded. “Good. I’d like to eat before I go wandering around looking for something I can’t fight.”

  “You cannot do this. You will die, and you might stir one of these horrors up and it will devour more people.” Haras was indignant.

  Aranthur shook his head. “Qna Liras makes it sound as if all casters have all these talents in common. But you and Ansu are as different from Dahlia or me as chalk from cheese.”

  He was talking mostly to himself; while
he spoke, he was fiddling with a small kuria crystal.

  He handed the shield to Sasan.

  “Engage the crystal,” he said.

  Sasan did as he was told, and the shield glowed a cold blue.

  “If it is fog,” Aranthur asked, “can it be moved by wind?”

  Dahlia tapped her long fingers on the table.

  “Interesting. Have you learnt the Safian Transference yet?”

  “I’ve learnt it, but I don’t get the result that I was told to expect, and I don’t have the grimoire here to see if I misunderstood. Somehow, my casting creates heat…”

  Dahlia nodded. She turned to Haras.

  “Can you ask the artisan for the use of an old clay pot or two? They will be broken. I hope.”

  The young woman ran off with a bow, and returned with ceramic vases under each arm.

  “Both cracked. Go ahead.” She spoke through Haras. “She asks, do you use that sword? Are you a warrior?”

  “Watch out,” Sasan said. “Masrans are the most conservative people in the world.”

  Haras shrugged. “We have no women as soldiers, it’s true. Women are too important as the makers of children to waste them on war.”

  Dahlia smiled at the girl, but then looked at Haras.

  “So women’s ability to rear children is more important than war?”

  “Of course,” the Masran priest said.

  “More important than politics, would you say?”

  “The very most important thing.”

  Dahlia grinned. “So naturally—” she began, and Sasan put a hand on her arm.

  She looked up at him.

  “Guests,” he said.

  She leant back. She looked at the girl.

  “Yes, I wear a sword, and use it. And I can work the Ars Magika, and I will eventually sit on the Council of Thirty that makes the laws of my City.”

  The dark-haired young woman nodded. She glanced at Haras, shrugged, and walked over to the wall without reply.

  Haras looked back and forth.

  “Show me your transference,” Dahlia said.