Shadow Dawn

by Chris Claremont

  He let her rudeness pass, to bring the lesson home. “I will. Others might not be so forgiving. Special as you are, Elora Danan, you’re still mortal. You can bleed and you can burn.”

  Torquil frowned as he ran experienced hands over the face of the massive slabs of stone that ringed the pit. They had been quarried from primordial rock, as thick as the Nelwyn’s own body, and had withstood the abuse of years protecting the training forge without showing significant wear. The tiny elemental had changed all that. Although the exposure to its flame had only been a matter of seconds, the phenomenal heat had cracked and pitted the surface of the stone, exposing the most minute flaws and in some spots leaving the stone itself so brittle it powdered at the slightest touch. One massive slab had cracked right through.

  “Torquil, why are you so angry?” Elora asked quietly, watching him. “I was just trying to raise fire, as you taught me. I’ve worked alongside your apprentices for months, learned as they learned.”

  “And done well,” he conceded.

  “You thought I was ready, you said so yourself.”

  “My error. Bless the Maker, neither of us had to pay the price for my foolishness.”

  “That isn’t fair!” she said again.

  “Elora, you were to Summon fire on this exercise, not an elemental. The instant it manifested, you should have aborted the spell.”

  “It was such a little thing, Uncle. I didn’t think it could do any harm. I’m certain it meant none.”

  “Sometimes, child, there’s a world of difference between intent and execution.” He waved a hand dismissively. “It’s not you I’m furious with, Elora, but myself. I’m the one who’s supposed to know better.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He cocked a quizzical eyebrow. “Did Drumheller teach you nothing before he brought you here?”

  “Thorn did the best he could.” She chuckled at the memory as she took the wire brush he handed her and began scraping at the char on the furnace, to see if any of it was salvageable. “Considering we were pretty much always on the run. And that I was about as ignorant as a girl could be.”

  “You know there are four Great Realms to the Circle of the World, as there are four also to those of the Flesh and of the Spirit.”

  “Of course,” she replied, slipping easily into the role of pupil to schoolmaster. Before continuing her reply, though, she frowned and shook her head. The damage here was worse than to the shield walls. The furnace was ruined. The walls of the chamber itself, where the fire had struck, hadn’t fared any better. She and Torquil may have emerged unscathed, but the forge was a total loss. She recited, “The Realms of the Circle of the World are Earth and Air and Fire and Water.”

  “We Nelwyns are of the Earth.”

  “I know that, too. You resonate to its power the same way the Wyrrn do to the Realm of Water.”

  “But it’s fire, Elora, that forms the heart and core of Creation. All was void until that first fateful spark was struck.”

  He was paraphrasing the Nelwyn catechism, their story of the origins of the world and of themselves. In the Beginning was Nothing, until the Celestial Fire was lit, to cast the Universe into the defining duality of Light and Shadow. From that fire came all the aspects of being, and, as importantly, of life.

  “Fire made us,” he went on. “Its warmth sustains us. Its passion inspires us. Its fury consumes us. It can take a solid and melt it into liquid, that liquid into gas, and ultimately flash even that gas into nothingness.”

  “Earth to Water to Air,” she said, completing the litany of transition for him.

  Torquil nodded. “Nothing in our lives is so essential, or so deadly. As this lesson has shown us both.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I,” he agreed, and he furrowed his brow, pursed his lower lip between his thumbs in thought. “Shouldn’t have happened, this. The wards were set right and proper, as you’ve been taught. The songs of making were performed likewise. This was as fine an examination as I’ve seen….”

  “Until the elemental came.”

  “Aye.”

  “Proof positive maybe, Torquil, that the enchantment or whatever it is that makes me immune to magic also makes it impossible for me to work magic?”

  “This isn’t magic, Elora, any more than striking flint to steel makes a spark, or applying sufficient heat to a pot of water can bring it to a boil.”

  “Then how come everyone in the world can’t do it?”

  “Climb to the top of the Stairs to Heaven, try boiling water. You can’t, no matter how much heat is applied. Try striking your spark to a log instead of tinder, or soaking wet scraps instead of dry, where’s your fire then? You need the proper interaction of natural forces for the processes to work, same here as there. To draw molten rock from the heart of the world, as we do, what’s needed is a place where the stones are receptive to our songs, as our farmer cousins seek fertile land and sweet water for their crops.”

  “So what happened here, Uncle, with me?”

  “As nearly as I can gauge it, child, you must be like some beacon on a cliff. Or perhaps the pole to a lodestone. You draw things to you simply by being. Especially fire. Grown elementals have sense enough to know you for what you are….”

  “Sacred?” She cast forth a joke. Torquil didn’t bite.

  “Human. So they keep away. But that was a youngster, the barest wee bit of a thing, probably only just coalesced to awareness. All curiosity, no sense. You’ve that in common, the pair of you.”

  “Are you going to keep hammering at me about this, Torquil, till I’m flat?”

  He tried to look stern, but then grinned, which made him look surprisingly handsome. Elora could easily see why his wife loved him so. There was a fair measure of imp in that smile, a roguish coloration to his character that reminded her of friends she hadn’t seen in far too long.

  “I’d as soon try to crack a diamond with my teeth, thank you very much, and no doubt have about as much success. I tell you truth, Elora Danan, because you need to hear it, and tell you often in hopes that someday you’ll actually listen.”

  She stuck out her tongue at him and made a rude face to go with it, and he laughed.

  “Strange, though,” he mused when his chuckles subsided, more like thoughts spoken aloud than words actually meant for her ears.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That wee bit. It was too young. wouldn’t have thought to see one without its mam being close at hand. And no mam worth the name would’ve let her bit come near the likes of you unattended. Too dangerous by far for both.”

  She stuck out her tongue again and crossed her eyes in the bargain and Torquil laughed all the harder.

  “Should we do anything about that?” she wondered aloud. “I mean, if it’s lost…” She spoke with more passion than she realized, the elemental’s plight striking too strong a resonance to the experiences of her own young life.

  “Not much we can, to help. And we’re in enough trouble already, the pair of us.”

  He was trying to deflect her from her purpose with humor but she wouldn’t have it.

  “That’s cruel, Uncle.”

  “We work with fire, Elora. But there are creatures who dwell amongst it, as we do the air or the Wyrrn the oceans of the world.”

  “I know, I’ve met them.”

  Torquil shook his head in wonderment, and no little awe. Thorn’s tale of his and Elora’s encounter with a school of firedrakes still had the power to thread the older Nelwyn’s heart with ice. “So I recall. You saw just now what the smallest one of them can do. Our magicks were no proof against it, only good, solid rock saved us. And that by a margin so slim I don’t care to think about it. Imagine one of full growth, perhaps of a mind to do us harm. Even stone burns, child, and I’ve no desire to see our mountain home turn into a bonfire.”

&
nbsp; She allowed herself to be convinced, but she didn’t much like it.

  Each household had its own smelter, linked to the mine by broad tunnels that snaked outward from the vertical shafts sunk deep into the earth. The shafts themselves plunged a mile and more through the heart of the mountain, from well below ground level to near the summit, with a new mining level every fifty feet or so. Excavations followed the veins of ore, some petering out after a few hundred feet, while others plunged ever onward, sprouting offshoots along the way just like the roots of a tree. The effort was communal, the work and the profit shared equally among the entire clan. For the most part, the refined ore was sold in great blocks and slabs and sheets of metal, to be transported by caravan or keelboat to various Daikini strongholds, where it would be put to its final shape and purpose. Each household was entitled to claim a portion of ore to do with as they pleased. Some chose iron, to shape into steel and from there to weapons. Others, Torquil foremost among them, preferred to work with stones and precious metals.

  Payment was by barter, goods for goods. There was no sense offering gold to those who made their living liberating it from the rock. In terms of absolute wealth, the Mountain Kings could probably beggar an empire, so they used that fortune to acquire materials and possessions that didn’t come so easily to hand. Fine woods, for one, both as raw material and finished product, to furnish their habitats. Tapestries to decorate the home, cloth to adorn the body. Delicacies of both food and drink to delight the palate. Manuscripts of both fact and fiction to intrigue the mind. Rock Nelwyns worked hard; to live well, they felt, was no more than their just reward.

  During her travels Elora had seen termite mounds better than twice the height of a tall Daikini. One had been broken open, as though cleaved from top to bottom by an ax, revealing an intricate network of tunnels and chambers. It was an image that often came to her when thinking about the Mountain Kings, who made their own home in a similar kind of honeycomb labyrinth. To these Nelwyns, this was paradise—but Elora missed the sun, and the star-scattered sky at night.

  Torquil set himself in a crouch beside where the ore would be melted, one hand resting lightly on the cool stone, his head cocked slightly to the side in an aspect of rapt attention.

  “Uncle,” Elora prompted, after he’d remained there unmoving for what seemed to her the longest while. “Is anything the matter?”

  He didn’t appear to hear at first, but before she could repeat herself he forestalled her with a shake of his head.

  “Just deciding to accept Dame Nature’s suggestion that we fulfill our commitment the old-fashioned way,” he told her with a grin, to be answered with a heartfelt groan, for that meant much more work for the apprentice.

  “Couldn’t you sing the songs of Shaping?” she asked.

  “I could, but I won’t. Fire’s a chaos to deal with at the best of times, an’ right now, child, the patterns feel too wild and unpredictable.”

  “This has never happened before. I mean, I’ve helped you lots of times….” She caught herself as she heard a whine creep into her voice.

  “All the more reason to be cautious. One surprise like that is enough for any man, thank you, an’ fate’s been tempted enough for any day. Besides, as the first part of your exam was, shall we say, inconclusive, I want to see how much you’ve really learned at my side.”

  First, Elora had to load the coal to fuel the furnace. The fire was perpetually lit, but since most of the actual smelting was done in concert with a sophisticated network of manipulative enchantments, those flames were maintained at a fairly low intensity. Now they had to be stoked until the kiln blazed white-hot. Elora lost track of how many shovelfuls she pitched through the grate and had even less idea whether the sweat that poured off her was from the tremendous and sustained effort required for this task or the raw heat barely two body lengths from her masked and goggled face.

  Normally this was a job for the entire crew of apprentices, and even then it was backbreaking labor. She had no words to describe what it meant to do it by herself and no strength to spare for any emotional response. Quite the contrary. She didn’t dare indulge in any resentment because it was simply too dangerous. The smallest misstep, the most minor of misjudgments, could have catastrophic consequences. Like all the apprentices, and Torquil himself, Elora had the bumps and bruises and burns to prove it.

  “That’ll do, Elora,” Torquil said at long last. But there was no rest for the weary.

  He called her to his side and allowed her a moment to marvel at the sight of what had been a pile of rocks better than twice her height reduced now to a pool of glowing liquid. Then, to her amazement, he passed off responsibility for the pour to her.

  The normal means of production was to sing to the liquid rock in the language of stone and gradually reshape both melody and lyrics to that of metal. In the process—and with great care, because even in a liquid state stone could be notoriously stubborn and hard to move—impurities and lesser metals would be cajoled from the mix and directed into drainage channels where they were allowed to pool to hardness. Some of these castoffs would be recycled into later pours, others used by the apprentices for practice. One way or another, everything that came through the foundry had its purpose. At the same time streams of different ores would be blended to create alloys that were far stronger than their component parts.

  Unfortunately Torquil made plain that today’s pour would be a manual operation from start to finish, completed without the benefit of magic of any kind.

  The equipment and tools were designed for Nelwyn hands and Nelwyn strength. Neither they nor Torquil made the slightest concession to Elora in terms of gender or size or race. She was expected to pull her own weight, just like the other apprentices, no matter how much greater the effort. Heavy protective clothing was an absolute necessity, for despite everyone’s care, there were always splashes and overruns, and the ferocious heat emanating from the melt sometimes seemed enough to ignite the very air they breathed. Elora had seen, and survived, far worse, but on that occasion she’d had the benefit of one of the most intense defensive wards Thorn Drumheller had ever cast. As her encounter with the elemental had brought home, she had no such armor here. At the same time she was manhandling ingots and beams whose standard size was twice hers and weight better than triple. Even with the inventive arrangement of slings and counterweighted pulleys that Torquil had rigged, each workday left her aching and breathless as she pushed and pulled and hammered and chiseled her way from slab to slab. Where a Nelwyn used one hand to wield a hammer, she used two. Where a fellow apprentice might maneuver his piece with an application of brute force, she finessed it with Torquil’s rigging. She gave little thought to the fact that she was managing loads today that would have been impossible when she arrived, and doing so with an ease and relaxed confidence in her body and its capabilities that she’d never before known. All that mattered was that the job be done and done well. That was the core of her pride.

  Torquil’s was in seeing her do so.

  Their consignment for the day was a dozen ingots, a full load for the wagon waiting beneath the crane station at the far end of Torquil’s cavern. He was rare among Rock Nelwyns—in that, Elora thought, I bet he takes after Thorn—he liked space. Most forges were cramped into the smallest space practicable. This was a cave that dwarfed the High King’s throne room in Angwyn. Better than a hundred yards from end to end, a bit less than a hundred feet across, a level floor for the most part, with a network of ducts that diverted water from the household spring for the use of the forge. Others sent jets of air rushing through the furnace to keep the ore properly oxygenated as it was reduced to pig iron and later refined to various grades of steel. The walls came together high overhead in an off-center arch, like a letter A that was curved on one side but slashed straight down the other, with ledges that Torquil used to hold the crosspieces of his hoists and cranes. If necessary, he and Manya could run the
entire forge by themselves.

  With a dull, metallic thunk, the last ingot dropped into place atop its fellows. Elora clambered aboard the wagon and wrestled free the restraining clamps, putting her shoulder against the crane arm to shove it back against its safety stops. Then she folded at every joint—knees, hips, vertebrae, shoulders, skull—and took on the aspect of a stone herself, too exhausted to do more than breathe as she dropped to her rump. She didn’t budge when the dray horses were harnessed into place on either side of the wagon tongue, and only cracked an eyelid when the wagon itself began to move.

  “You’re taking me along?” she asked Torquil.

  “You’ve earned the treat” was his reply. He knew how difficult it was for her to live underground. “From what the Cascani Factor told Manya, this may be your last chance this season. Keep your hood on and your wits about you outside, you’ll be fine.”

  “Wits,” she snorted, in a fair approximation of Torquil himself. “I’m so tired I’m lucky I can string two coherent words together!”

  “So I notice,” he agreed, his tone dry as her throat.

  She clambered forward to take the seat beside him and gratefully accepted the proffered water bottle. She drank as she’d been taught, slow and shallow sips at first, to remind mouth and throat what cool liquid tasted like. Then, in a matter of swallows, she drained half the flask. The only greater pleasure, she decided, would be a swim.

  Perhaps later, she promised herself.

  Torquil was right. There was little chance of her being recognized, even by those who knew her. For one, given the passage of time, both enemies and friends would be expecting someone taller. And while her silver skin and hair were dead giveaways, there was precious little of either to be seen beneath her own clothes. She wore gauntlets that touched her elbows and a hood that fastened across the front of her face so that only her eyes were visible. All she needed to do to cover those was slip her goggles into place. The lenses were smoked so dark as to be nearly opaque and the frames had blinders attached to either side to protect her sight from any wayward sparks. Under the flap of the hood was a scarf, usually worn tucked up over the nose, one more added layer to shield her from backflashes. This was far heavier clothing than an adult Daikini could comfortably wear, let alone an adolescent, but Elora was stronger than she looked. More so, stronger than she gave herself credit for. The last piece of camouflage was the soot and dust raised from the forge that always managed to work its way beneath all those layers of clothes to darken cheeks and chin more effectively than any cosmetic.