Powers

by James A. Burton

  He glanced over at her. “Look, I don’t know whether I can fix this thing or not. But it’s not just a technical question. Beyond that, should I even try? Actions have consequences. ‘Let a hundred flowers bloom. Let a hundred gods contend.’ Why should I cut off my own arm to make Solomon’s Yahweh supreme?”

  “You’re misquoting Chairman Mao. Besides, he just used that as a trick to smoke out troublemakers so he could spot them, nab them, and send them to camps for reeducation. Cultural Revolution. Dude, I was there. It wasn’t fun.”

  He grimaced. “You know, sometimes we sound like we’re singing a ‘bragging song’—built the Garden of Eden and the pyramids, told Wellington how to win at Waterloo, all that stuff. Been everywhere, man. Done everything, man. Some of my blades fought in the Battle of Hastings, on both sides . . . ”

  She glanced over at him and then went back to scanning the sidewalks and streets and the roof parapets overhead. Restless eyes. “You made Excalibur?”

  “No. Some other guy. My blades aren’t magic and they aren’t fancy. They just do a damned good job of cutting things, and don’t break unless you really, really try. Besides, it was the scabbard that made Caliburn special.”

  “How much of that story is true?”

  Albert thought for a minute as they walked. He’d known people, who knew people, who . . . “About the usual one percent, I’d guess. Arthur lived. He tried. And failed and died. No, I don’t know whether Merlin was a demon or a god like us or just a clever man. About five minutes after Arthur died, the lies and mixed-in bits of other stories started piling up . . . ”

  Then, “You dodged my question.”

  She smiled. “Yes.”

  Another couple of minutes, walking in silence, and she stopped and turned to him. “Look, I got along okay with what we had. I could take care of my people. That’s all I really need. From what I’ve seen, you could still work miracles with iron. In iron. As for memories, well, I’d managed to forget Hani. And a bunch of other things I’d rather not talk about. Some of them worse. My take on all this boils down to: This world doesn’t need more gods. Hell, I don’t think it needs the ones it has. If I held Shiva’s trident, I’d be tempted to melt Rome and Jerusalem and Mecca down to radioactive glaze, three birds with one stone . . . ”

  Okay, back to Kali for a reference point.

  “So yeah, if you figure out a way, go for it. Fix the damned thing. And modify the spells to include Bilqis while you’re at it. We wouldn’t be in this shit if Suleiman bin Dauod hadn’t tried to slip one past her.”

  Then that quick grin of hers that verged on a leer. “Or slip one to her, as the case may be.”

  Back to Durga.

  They walked on. He felt his forge looming in front of him, his power, his altar, like golden warmth spreading from his hara to all his other chakras. Just to mix theologies and languages all to hell.

  That’s the problem with long life. It melts together. Interferes with “Be here now.”

  And then, as she points out, there are the memories you’d rather forget.

  Remembrance of things past. “Now that we have our memories back, what’s your real name? The original? I mean, Legion called you Noshaq or some such thing.”

  “It called you Simon Lahti. If you start believing demons, God knows where you’ll end up. No, my name is Mel. Always has been. Damned if I remember what language it started out in, or what it means or who first called me that. That’s way too far back. But ‘Melissa’ and ‘Melanie’ and the other names, I just take those to fit the changing world. Noshaq is the tallest mountain near where we lived for some centuries. My people sometimes call me ‘Goddess of Noshaq.’ I’m betting you lived in Lahti for a long, long time. I’m sure people called you ‘The Smith of Lahti.’ ”

  True, that. “What about the ‘el Hajj’ part? You ever make the pilgrimage, or is that just sticking plumes on the donkey?”

  “So I’m an ass, now?” She wiggled her hips at him. Didn’t really fit her cop persona. “No, I made the pilgrimage. Long ago. Wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Stoned the devil and walked seven times widdershins around the Kaaba and kissed the Black Stone and all the rest. Talked to a few mullahs and sheiks who didn’t tack ancient tribalism onto the good parts of the Prophet’s advice. Came away knowing nothing that I hadn’t known before. Served me right.”

  That brought them to the turn into his alley, the back alley of his apartment. He half expected to find Mother waiting, holding a flaming sword to bar him from returning to Eden. She’d been in front of them and waiting at every step of this personal Hajj. Everyone hates a know-it-all.

  But the alley stood empty except for the pizza joint’s Dumpster and some other trash, and a mangy-furred yellow dog that took one look at them and slunk away into the shadows and vanished into a slot between brick walls too narrow for most people to follow. Judging by the trash spilling out of the dumpster, it must be Thursday—regular pickups were Friday and Monday mornings, early, and stores had been open on their walk, so it wasn’t Sunday.

  He hadn’t asked Mel what day it was . . .

  He hadn’t asked how much spoiled food she’d had to toss when they got back either. Gone three weeks, he expected his own kitchen now harbored an advanced ecosystem in the breadbox and the refrigerator. Maybe the penicillin mold would fight back the salmonella. Or maybe the hobs and brownies and house-elves had feasted behind his back. He had invited them past the door of his house and then went away.

  His cellar door stood closed, just as he’d left it that dawn long weeks back. There too, he’d half expected Mother to have interfered. But she’d never liked entering his forge. Temple of another god, perhaps, and it felt chill and unwelcoming to her?

  And then there was the iron. She’d never liked iron. Came after her time, probably.

  Anyway, he locked the door behind them, barred it, and stood sniffing for a minute before he switched on the lights. Nothing out of the ordinary, no smell of anyone passing the door since he’d locked it—cool dry dust and darkness, old brick and wood and stone, the memory of charcoal fires and hot iron and bitter sparks. Normal. He led Mel down the stairs to the second door and locked and barred that behind them too. After all, Mel was on the inside. Nobody else could get past those locks just by talking to them.

  Except Mother wouldn’t need to use those doors to get inside. She knew the hidden ways. He switched on every light he had and poked into dark corners, looking and sniffing, just in case. No Mother.

  At last, he took the pieces of the Seal out of his pockets—separate pockets because they didn’t seem to like each other now—laid them on his largest anvil, and stared at them. What did they want him to do? Forge them, that was obvious. They asked for heat and hammer and anvil. And magic of some kind, the touch of a forge god. Which wasn’t the same as the touch of a wizard-king . . .

  How could he fix it?

  What did it want to be?

  Would forge-heat and hammer make the two pieces one again? Flow metal together in alliance, bring those strings of spell-iron into a working circuit? Did Mother do something in the breaking that caused the matched edges to repel?

  His mind turned back to how Mother didn’t like iron and steel all that much. Maybe it tied into the myths that the Old Ones, the fairy people, feared cold iron. Used copper and bronze and flint in their weapons, rather than steel. The stories said humans had driven them from the world with iron. Solomon had used iron for his Seal, to drain power from competing gods. That meant something—normal people didn’t use iron to decorate their god’s temple. Iron was too utilitarian. It wasn’t rich and rare and pretty.

  He stared at the pieces of the Seal. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m just going to start doing it. The iron wants heat. Maybe once it’s hot, it will tell me the next thing and the next.”

  He looked up. Mel just nodded, no words. This wasn’t her department.

  So. Charcoal. A wide bed this time, not long like he’d made for hi
s cane. Deep around the tuyere, and he checked to make sure he had plenty of charcoal in reserve. The iron was asking for a lot of heat. Something beyond normal—beyond forging, beyond welding, into the range of casting or the transformation that was smelting from the native ore. The magic thing again. Or maybe it was the salamander’s soul, looking for escape and rebirth on some kind of elemental’s Great Wheel. He kindled the fire with shavings and wood splits, and checked tools and quench tubs and room to work while the coal took fire.

  All was as he’d left it, where he could find things without thinking. Of course. But he kept expecting to find some sabotage, some further trap Mother had set in advance in case she hadn’t blocked him before this point. A bomb camouflaged as a lump of charcoal, a flaw hidden in hammer or anvil that would shatter like glass under impact. Plots within plots within plots. She’d intended him to get his hands on the Seal, but too late to save it . . .

  But she hadn’t killed the Seal. He held that thought.

  Fire in the heart of his forge, spreading, awakening it to life. He pumped the bellows. Sparks branched like fireworks. Blue flame. Yellow glow, edging toward white. He knew the fire. The fire knew him. They talked.

  He laid the broken star in the heart of his fire. Tried to add the triangle. It wouldn’t go. He turned it. Still the part would not join the heat of the main body. They wanted to be forged apart. Once broken, they became new things. He set the triangle aside.

  More air and fuel and heat. The iron stayed dark in the glowing heart of his fire. More heat. More air. More charcoal. Still dark. He turned the iron, half expecting letters to glow on the surface, like that ring in the story, Solomon’s magic made visible by heat. Ancient Hebrew it would be, he didn’t know that language, wouldn’t be able to read it. Bellows. Charcoal. Air. Fire.

  Hand on his shoulder, Mel, shaking him out of communion with his fire, his forge, his iron. No words, she waved him away from the bellows. Goddess of the Mountain Winds. She didn’t touch the bellows, just stared at the fire. It blazed white.

  Dull red now in the iron. He sank his mind back into it. Lines, threads, circuits, the grain of wrought metal. Incomplete. Broken.

  Not to be mended.

  But, maybe changed.

  More wind. More charcoal. More heat.

  Red heat. Orange. A tinge of yellow. He grabbed tongs out of the air and pulled his iron from the fire, laid it on his anvil, raised up his hammer. What did the iron want to be? How would the threads weave back together in a working whole?

  A gentle tap, then harder as the metal spoke to him. Collapse the form, collapse the remaining points of the Seal, fold them, make a forging blank that could become anything. Anything at all. Feel the grain of the iron under his hammer, through the tongs, against his anvil. Fold. Fold. Fold. Back to the fire.

  The charcoal glowed beyond purple now, near ultraviolet, heat never seen. Forge god and wind goddess. More fuel. Carbon. Iron. Steel.

  Heat that wasn’t heat flowed over him, spreading, thinning, escaping, leaving a hint of sandalwood and joy behind. He’d, they’d, freed the salamander from its iron prison, undone that part of Mother’s cruelty. Now the iron could speak to him, listen to him. It wanted revenge. He caught a sense of direction from it. That structure waited, still a grain within the metal, Solomon’s touch that made this iron strange.

  Hammer. Anvil. Tongs. Turn. Fold. Weld the grain back on itself. Heat. Hammer. Anvil. Stretch the form, stretch the grain. Back to the fire.

  Shape. Long. Narrow. Taper. Bevel.

  Blade.

  Tang.

  Point.

  Change anvil. Change hammer. No grinding. No polishing. Nothing to touch the grain. Nothing to break the grain. No metal lost. Too precious. Polished anvil, small hammer, small fuller, polished faces.

  Point. Edge. The blade knew his mind. The steel flowed under his hammer. He flowed with it. Soul bound in blade. Balance. Hand, particular hand. Arm, particular arm. He knew that hand, that arm, the span of them, the strength of them, lover’s caresses in the dark. He felt them on his body, on his manhood, on his heart.

  Shaped the blade. Heated the blade. Quenched the blade. Drew the temper, hard and keen and tough and eager.

  Cross-guard. Triangle, into the fire. It felt the need, drew the heat, formed under thoughts and taps that wouldn’t kill a fly. Cut, hot chisel. Two pieces. Larger shaped, split center. Laid across tang of finished blade, attraction, no repulsion. Driven home against taper, no sharp shoulder to concentrate stress. Chill of blade. Shrinking metal. Blade and guard, one again.

  Grip. No waiting. A thing of days, his habit. Not this time. The blade’s need drove him. Hardwood, oak, straight-grained. Carved to fit that hand again, that hand that held his heart. Heart hollowed to meet the tang, bound with silver chain, jewelry chain, little coarser than a horsehair braid. Sandpaper rough, sweat or blood would soak in and leave firm grip. Tap chain round and round with peen to set it in the wood, meet the ridges and hollows of that hand he knew.

  Pommel. Second piece. Heat. Shape. Punch. Drive home to pinch chain end, hold, smolder, tap to thicken against wedge of tang, never come loose. Quench.

  Sword.

  Sword to kill a god.

  Any god.

  Albert fell out of his work. Out of his trance. Out of the timeless space.

  He held a short sword or long knife in his hands, gleaming. No, glowing with the forge’s heat bound within the steel. Straight, neither narrow nor wide, double-edged. Ripples on the steel, from hammer, fine scallops on the edge from hammer. Watered-silk grain of the folded steel, pattern of breaking waves without an acid etch. Edge without file or grinding wheel, polish without rouge.

  Masterpiece of a god.

  Not made for his hand.

  Made for hers.

  He scrounged around in the darkness cast by the dying fire and found a rag. He dropped it on the blade’s edge, just gravity. The rag split before it touched the blade’s edge, and fluttered down. He found a length of steel bar stock and dropped that on the blade’s edge. The bar split and clanged to the stone floor.

  That eased sound back into his ears, the snaps and clicks of his forge cooling. He broke his focus from the blade. Firebrick had melted at the edge of the forge, flowed, freezing now. Charcoal gone. Even the ash gone. Heavy anvil scorched. Wooden beams overhead, scorched. Air scorched.

  The skin on his face and arms ached with a dry tightness like sunburn. Muscles shook and twitched. He set the blade across his small anvil. Let his knees fold. Sat on low wood, the edge of his stock bin.

  Mel.

  He found her in the shadows, face soot-smeared so that it blended with those shadows, her stare moving like a metronome between him and the blade. He waved for her to take it. She stepped forward and reached as slow as if she thought it would bite. Venomous bite. As if that blade would ever bite her.

  She took the grip. Lifted the blade.

  “Oh. My. God.”

  The point twitched to one side and then the other, up, down, her testing the balance. “It reaches up my arm and into my head. If I think, it moves. How the hell do you make a blade like this?”

  Albert groped for words. “I don’t know. I’ve never forged a blade for a lover before.”

  She looked around and then focused on the scorched ceiling beams. “That fire . . . we should have burned your building down around us.”

  He thought back. “That’s just leakage. I focused the heat. We focused the heat. That’s how the sword knew you before you ever touched it.”

  He glanced at his charcoal bin. Empty. Not just empty, clean. No charcoal dust, no crumbles. He didn’t remember feeding the fire. Not past a certain point in the forging.

  “I guess I need to buy more fuel.”

  She was eyeing the sword again. “This blade could cut the moon out of the dome of heaven.”

  “It will cut anything you want it to. I’ve never forged like that before. Never forged iron like that before. Solomon did something to it.
Now I’ve done something to it. Added . . . I don’t know what to it.”

  She still focused on the thing in her hand as if it was a snake that could turn and bite.

  “How do you sheathe a blade that can cut diamond with a thought?”

  He took a deep breath. His ribs ached. His shoulders ached. “That, that I can answer. I mold copper sheet around it to line the sheath. As long as I’m the one who forms the copper to the steel, they know each other. The blade won’t cut its friend. Brass or bronze throat to the sleeve, has to have copper in it. Then, wood or leather or whatever you want, the outer sheath. Hangings depend on how you want to carry it.”

  “That’s why the naginata sheath is heavier than it looks?”

  She’d noticed. Of course she’d noticed. “Yes.”

  Then, from the shadows across the cellar, “Such a clever boy. Sholomo ben David would have been impressed. Now give me that abomination before you hurt someone!”

  Mother. How long had she been there, watching, just in front of the false wall that hid one of the secret ways?

  XXVII

  “No.” Mel shifted her blade so that it pointed just a bit away from Mother, not actually threatening but not not threatening. Her stance growled a quiet, “Go ahead. Try and take it. Make my day . . . ”

  “Give that . . . that thing to me!”

  Albert couldn’t remember ever hearing tense fear in Mother’s voice before. She’d always been so sure of herself and her command of all around her. The universe would obey her. It didn’t have a choice.

  He sagged back against one of the dirty square brick pillars that supported the floor beams overhead. Oh, god. Gods. Mother. I’ve just forged the greatest blade of my life. That means I’m on the edge of falling over dead where I stand. I think Mel would have to carry me upstairs and pour soup down my throat. Not even strength to eat. And Mother turns up, looking for a fight.