Hells!
Hells! Hells! Hells! Hells!
He sat up, swallowing down his nausea.
His reasoning, the evidence, all hung together, and he did not want it to. He remembered Keir tending his hurts after his fight with Dreben. Keir hugging him when he departed for Olluvarde. Keir smiling at him when he returned. Keir vehement about her desire to heal trolls of their truldemagar.
How could that Keir – the Keir he knew, the Keir he’d worked with, taught, and protected, the Keir he . . . loved? – be the traitor who plotted and acted to ensure the deaths of troll warriors on the field of battle?
And yet . . . she was.
He had no doubt at all, despite his inability to reconcile his experience of Keir with his knowledge of what she must have done.
He felt worse than sick, and lay down again.
Was there any doubt? Any doubt at all? He wanted there to be doubt. Desperately wanted it. And could not find any grounds for it. None at all.
What would he do now?
He felt dizzy, as though someone had reached into his skull with a long-handled spoon and stirred. All his thinking had led him to this, but now he could not think at all. Could not reason his way to equilibrium, to clarity, to understanding. He felt lost.
Hells, Gael! Get a decent night’s sleep, said some still, small voice inside him – the force of habit perhaps. Obediently, he buried his head in the cushion beneath it. And against all expectation, sleep claimed him.
* * *
Gael’s Dream
Sleeping, Gael dreamed.
Dreaming, he spoke, making confession to a young acolyte in training under Tiamar’s priest, back home in Hadorgol. But he spoke not in good faith. He sought to awe the young man rather than to clear his own conscience.
Within the dimness of the confessional booth, the dark wood smelled musty, as though it had been immersed in deep water and then allowed to dry imperfectly. The bench under Gael’s haunches pressed his flesh uncomfortably against his bones.
On the other side of the carved screen shielding his confessor from sight, the acolyte’s robes rustled faintly. Was the youth nervous in his unaccustomed role?
“I bear the mark of Gaelan on my face, as do my brethren,” intoned Gael. “Great curved noses, line-bracketed eyes, and sallow skin mar our visages. But I alone, amongst all in the legions under my lord Carbraes, bear Gaelan’s name. It is fitting, for I betrayed them to their deaths.
“I am Gael.
“I am kin-slayer.
“There in the bowels of the mad tower I crouched, listening to the scratching of my own quill pen. I tallied ingots of copper, ingots of tin – tin so rare. Who would believe the record keeper could be more lethal than the warrior?
“The stone foundations around me echoed the metallic beating of swords, of shields, of helmets. My lord Carbraes was winning this war. His trolls mined copper ore from veins beneath the ancient hills and smelted it with precious tin arriving from afar. Every ingot in received its mark in my ledger scrolls. Every ingot out – tin and copper married to make bronze – I tallied likewise.
“Who was to know that the bronze was brittle? Not the one part of tin to nine of copper demanded by the smith’s recipe, but two tin for eight copper. The blades hammered from these ingots would shatter, and how would the warrior who bore one fare then?
“Channeled by the tower’s tunnels, the roar of the furnaces deafened my thoughts.
“Whom would I betray? My troll-kin who brought Lord Carbraes victory? The peculator defiling the bronze?
“Oh? Did you think it was I? Secreting nuggets away in some fastness?
“No, ’twas another. Should I betray him?
“Or must I betray our enemies, crushed beneath Carbraes’ might? Our enemies – the unafflicted – those with pure faces, the ones from whom we come, trailing glory, before Gaelan marks us as his own.
“But you know I betrayed someone, else I would not now speak this confession in your ear.
“In the end, I betrayed them all.
“For a time, I kept silence, protecting the traitor and letting my silence reap the troll-warriors on the bloody fields. Blade after blade shattered, piercing the disarmed ones with their fragments or merely leaving them defenseless before the adversary, who slew without remorse.
“Then my conscience misgave me, and I betrayed the traitor to his death.
“‘Behold him,’ I pronounced, ‘the author of your defeats, the one who stole your lives! He defiled the bronze of your blades, and they failed you.’
“I watched as the executioner severed his head, and I wept. For he was my friend. And he bore the courage and singleness of purpose I possessed not, fighting for the unafflicted even amidst his truldemagar.
“And then I watched as the unafflicted fell upon the battlefields, assailed by the fierce weapons of the troll-horde and a strange, deep throbbing on the air and in the earth that stole the strength from their straight limbs.
“I am guilty in every way that guilt may be measured.
“I betrayed my comrades. I betrayed my lord. I betrayed my friend. I betrayed the pure ones, undefiled by Gaelan’s mark and deserving of my protection. Can any penance you devise wash clean my sin? I think not.”
Gael’s auditor began an answer, but the young man’s voice was wrong: an elder’s baritone, not a youth’s tenor. No acolyte pronounced judgment on Gael’s crimes, nor yet the head priest. The depth and power beneath that voice belonged to no mere mortal. This was Tiamar himself, puissant and all-knowing.
He spoke soothingly, reassurance in his tone, but Gael could not discern the sense of his words. It mattered not. Nothing the god might say could shake Gael’s condemnation of himself.
* * *
Chapter 20
Gael emerged from sleep stunned and confused, still half under the influence of his dream.
Sunlight sifted through the inner shutters covering the glass-paned casements, sprinkling dots of gold across the deep sills, the flagstone floor with its hide rugs, and the backless chairs. The angle of the light was long and low. Dawn could not be too far past.
Gael sat up, swinging his legs around to rest his feet on the sheepskin beside his sleeping couch. He paused there, scrubbing a hand across his face and attempting to come more fully into the waking world.
His dream – it was a dream, was it not? – had made no sense.
Keir was no thief; that was Theron. And Arnoll, and Nathiar, and Barris, and Halko. Nor was she a boy. Nor had Gael delayed in the matter of the disguised ingots, withholding dangerous knowledge from those who needed it most. He’d been clueless with all the rest until last night. Nor had he given Keir up for execution.
Nearly every detail of his ‘confession’ failed to match the truth.
Save one thing. His guilt.
In his heart of hearts, he believed that his service to Carbraes, the ruler of Belzetarn’s troll-horde, was wrong. He wished no harm to the Ghriana foe they fought. And yet, at one and the same time, he believed that any failure of his to support the warlord who gave him and all the afflicted shelter and a home was wrong. He possessed no avenue toward a clear conscience.
Unable to heal the divide in his loyalty, he’d chosen the side that permitted him life. And so might he have continued to choose, had Keir never come to Belzetarn. Keir might be a traitor in deed, but Gael was one at heart. And today he would have to decide between Keir and Carbraes. There was no way to choose both.
Last night, before he slept, before he’d realized Keir’s treason, he’d planned to negotiate with Carbraes for her release. But she was guilty of exactly what Theron had accused her of. She’d disguised tin as copper and fed it to the blade smithy, making Belzetarn’s swords brittle. And she’d disguised copper as tin, so that the tallies would balance, feeding that disguised copper through the hands of the artistic privy smith.
Gael would not traduce her to Carbraes himself, of course. Not before he’d confronted her face to face. He
still hoped, in some irrational backwater of his mind, that she was innocent. But he hadn’t the fortitude to petition on her behalf when he believed in her guilt.
It meant letting one opportunity to obtain Keir’s freedom go. Gael shook his head. So be it. He would just have to find another one. Or make one.
He rose. His body felt strong and rested, ready for action, ready for the day.
His mind and heart felt disquieted and vulnerable. He dreaded what might come.
But he had a lodestone to divide and a gong to quell. Hiding and quaking in his chambers would neither make his decisions nor fulfill his responsibilities. He must march upon his dilemma, for it would march upon him if he did not.
* * *
He found Arnoll – and no one else – awaiting him in the blade smithy, as planned. Thank Tiamar that no curious spectators had come to watch. Or if they had, Arnoll had ushered them out.
Shadow dimmed the unpeopled vaults, and the charcoal within the forge glowed redly, illuminating the large cedar tub full of water standing before it, as well as a massive stone block with a smooth convex top and a thick layer of sand protecting the flagstone floor. The eastern wall of the smithies possessed no arrowslits through which the sun could slip its morning rays.
The silence of the space, broken only by the subdued hiss of the single forge, seemed wrong to Gael, but the familiar scent of burning charcoal reassured him.
He eased the gong from his back onto the stone, noting that the curve of the one matched the curve of the other. He’d chosen to transport the gong himself, tying a leather thong through the two holes pierced in the gong’s furled edge and slipping a leather strap through the thongs. That had given him sufficient grip to manage the thing. It was heavy, heavier even than an oxhide ingot, and had pressed uncomfortably into his shoulders, but was not so unwieldy as to require two to carry. He preferred to involve as few others in this business as possible.
He greeted Arnoll and gestured to the gong resting on the massive stone. “You do remember that Nathiar will suspend the gong midair with his magery, do you not?” he asked.
“Of course,” answered the smith. “But I deemed it wise to have a support available in case the magus slips. The swords he’s manipulated are considerably lighter than this gong.”
Gael nodded. “Good point.” He scanned the area. Arnoll had laid tongs and hammers ready to hand on a counter, along with two leather aprons and three pairs of smith’s gauntlets. The smith’s own apron already covered his tunic and trews.
“What of those questions you promised to have ready for me?” asked Gael.
They went over the procedure they planned to follow together. When Nathiar joined them in mid-discussion, Gael explained that he wished to pull a small droplet out at the earliest moment possible, with its lattice unchanged, before they proceeded with the steps that would quell the gong forever. That change in plan required a few adjustments, but nothing substantive.
Arnoll proved to have fewer queries than did Nathiar. It was not the magery that concerned the magus, but the interface between it and the rude physical implements of smithwork, especially since Arnoll’s suggestions – made after Gael’s initial consultation with Nathiar in the cherry glade – had all involved the forge and the timing and duration of its use.
Arnoll and Nathiar argued vociferously about how the gong would be removed from the forge, the smith asserting that he and Gael should lift it with tongs, while Nathiar insisted that manipulating the energea would be smoother if he took the gong from a steady bed of coals rather than from tongs held by potentially wobbling troll arms. Arnoll objected to the idea that his arms might wobble, but Gael interceded that his own probably would.
“Is the forge hot enough for us to begin?” Gael asked. He could feel the heat rolling from its glowing maw.
Arnoll narrowed his eyes, measuring the color of the light cast. Then he studied his companions. “The forge is ready, but you are not,” he said, jerking his head at the aprons and gloves.
Nathiar was wearing his usual long robes. Arnoll sniffed disapprovingly. Even Gael could see that a smith’s apron would reach merely to Nathiar’s knees, but at least the suede of his robes would protect his legs from any stray sparks or splashing metal. Not that they expected to be dealing with molten metal.
Gael had chosen the same shabby trews and short tunic that he’d donned to search Martell’s smithy for a misplaced ingot, twenty-five days ago. One of the leathers grooms had cleaned the soot from its worn suede far more effectively than Gael had deemed possible.
Nathiar permitted Arnoll to help him with an apron, but he declined the gauntlets, saying in an exasperated tone, “I’ll need the finest control of my fingers for this, and I have no intention of touching the heated gong with anything but magery, my dear Arnoll.”
Gael accepted both apron and gloves. Aside from the subdivision of the node, his part in this would be anything but delicate, and the bulky leather enclosing his hands would not impede him in the slightest.
Arnoll checked the forge again, and then took up one set of tongs, nodding for Gael to grab the others.
They positioned themselves on each side of the gong.
Gael scrutinized the artifact a moment. It looked just as it had when he first set eyes upon it, the wide and shallow curve of the bronze – a rosy golden shade under the frost of the arsenic – with its deep furled lip and the protruding central boss of black iron. The phoenix etched in the metal curled its wings around that boss, from which scrolling rays emanated, arcing outward like energea from a node, hinting at the energetic structure within.
Gael’s reason regretted what he was about to do, but a more primal instinct, remembering the weakness that shivered in his bones when the gong sounded, hungered for the artifact’s destruction.
Well, he would not be truly destroying it – turning it into a puddle of molten metal, as the word destruction implied to him – but his actions would diminish its present caliber.
With both hands, he maneuvered his tongs over the deep-furled lip and clamped them closed. Arnoll mirrored him and nodded. Together, they raised the convex disk from the stone where Gael had laid it.
It was far heavier held thusly, pinched between the business end of the tongs and secured there only by the strength of Gael’s double grip, the length of the tongs acting as an unfavorable lever. Gael clenched his fists harder and moved in sync with Arnoll toward the forge. The heat grew fierce at its maw, baking the unprotected skin of his face and drying his eyes.
He and Arnoll eased their burden through the slot of the forge’s opening – barely wide enough to accommodate it – and then released the grip of the tongs to push the gong into the heart of the glowing coals.
Gael backed away, eager to escape the inferno, but Arnoll lingered, apparently untroubled, rearranging the scattered charcoal with a shovel, restoring the disturbed pieces to a smooth mound. When he got it to his liking, the smith moved to the bellows at the side of the forge and began pumping. Shuff, shuff, shuff, whispered the bags of leather. Flames leaped up around the gong, and the roar of the furnace intensified.
Arnoll glanced over his shoulder to where Nathiar stood watching, quietly intent.
“Be ready,” the smith warned. “The bronze will heat much more quickly than the iron.”
Nathiar nodded, his face saturnine, lit from below by the glow from the forge.
Gael peered into the flames. The bronze was acquiring a deep red hue as it heated, but the central boss of iron remained black. He looked down to check that his leather apron hung straight and that his gauntlets fully covered his forearms. He would not be handling metal going forward, but he would need to come close to play his part, and he must stand ready to step in, should Nathiar falter.
As the heating bronze grew amber in hue, the black of the iron boss began to display a dark red tint. Nathiar would heat the iron to full pliancy, but using the forge to do the first stage of the work would allow the magus to reserve his streng
th for the demands of the critical later stages.
The amber glow of the bronze grew golden, while the iron’s dark red moved toward orange.
“Now,” said Arnoll.
Nathiar raised his arms, curling his fingers and straightening them.
The gong rose to hover above the burning coals amidst a shower of sparks, then slid from the forge’s throat when Nathiar beckoned. His arms pulsed, pulsed again, and went abruptly still while his fingers wove patterns. The gong stopped in midair, directly above the curved stone from which Arnoll and Gael had lifted it.
Gael allowed his inner sight to open, and his vision became much more complex.
Beams of green energea shot from Nathiar’s palms, mingling, and then widening to form a pillow beneath the gong. Intermittent needles of blue energea sparkled from the fingers of his left hand, jabbing into the gong’s central boss, while more languid curls of silver energea emerged from the fingers of his right hand to caress the bronze surrounding the iron boss.
The energetic structures within the gong itself shone amidst Nathiar’s working – the glowing green heart node and the silver arcs scrolling into and out of that heart.
The complexity of Nathiar’s magery was impressive. Gael would not have been able to manage the conflicting forces, but he understood what the magus achieved with his skill: support for the gong with the energea pouring from his palms, while increasing the friction – and thus the heat – in the iron with his left fingers, and drawing excess heat from the adjacent bronze with his right.
As the iron grew hotter yet, its orange glow brightening to amber and then fierce yellow, Nathiar added yet another gambit to his manipulation of the energea. Index and middle fingers on both hands continued to feed heat into the iron, while drawing it out of the bronze, but the other two fingers wove a horn-shaped funnel of green and aqua sparkles. This was the energetic shunt that would safeguard them at the moment of greatest danger.
The Tally Master Page 40