by Jenna Rhodes
If it lived. If she could stay strong enough to nurture it. Lindala sat, hunched over, her hands touching her daughter’s, playing at the patterns of the sticks and stones, her mind plotting at getting food into the cavern depths. A chicken would be wonderful. It could eat the small bugs and lizards that skittered among the earthern cracks and walls, and an egg a day . . . even every two or three days, oh yes, that would be as if Godsent. She would have to coax the Bolger into stealing one for them, and she could do it, she thought. Winter crouched over them. If he brought her leather, even scraps, she could fashion protection for him. He had to feel pain, even though they’d been taught not to feel much at all. His tribe had been enslaved by the Bolger mercenaries who strengthened the will of Quendius. He was little better off than she, unshackled from the forge only long enough to bring wood in and stack it, and help bring mine carts up now and then from the caverns to work his muscles and remind him that there were worse places to be chained than the forge. Bolger enslaved Bolger even as Vaelinar enslaved Vaelinar, and those in the lands above turned their faces away from the atrocities. He might help them. Lindala determined that he would help them. She would find a way to reach him. She would have to convince Fyrvae to tolerate him even more than he did now. Kindness, like water dripping upon a stone, made pathways where none existed before.
Her daughter stopped humming, turning her face upward. She wrinkled her nose. “Stinkers,” she said quietly. Her fingers tightened about a stone even as she smiled in anticipation.
Lindala smelled it, unworried. Then the stench blanketed them heavily, and she lurched to her feet. More than one. No more than one ever came down here! Heavy footpads and the sounds of boots echoed down to them, and her heart quickened in her chest like that of a frightened bird trying to wing away from danger. She pulled her daughter behind her as orange light flared into the shadow, and the heat of a torch seared across her vision and her skin. Encircled, they had no place to run except into the raging water itself, and that she would not do. Bolgers grunted and clashed tusks at her, but it was the figure hulking behind the torch who struck the greatest terror into her, yet she refused to turn her eyes from the glare.
A long silence, then, “You’ve done well.”
Bolgers gnashed in contentment and quieted until it was just the one man and Lindala with her child hugging her legs from behind, little more substance to her than a shadow, who faced one another.
“What do you want of me?”
“I came just to check on your well-being. The rains have flooded the river. I am told it will be cresting. You should leave the caverns, or at least come to the upper levels, for your own safety.” A pause. “And hers.”
“The river doesn’t threaten me.”
“No?” Another long pause. Then the being shifted, signaling the Bolgers who dragged her child from behind her and held her between them. She let out a wailing cry, then fell silent, her lip caught between her teeth, jaw trembling. The man took a pair of silvery, gleaming objects from inside his cloak. “I had these made,” he said to Lindala, turning them over and over in his hands, the oily light of the torch spilling down on the bracelets, “for you. I had a curse put into them . . . ah, yes, there are Vaelinars who work in such dark things, although rarely. I did not want you straying. After your bonding to the river, though, it seemed unnecessary, but I kept them. Now . . .” and he grabbed one of the child’s hands from the Bolger and snapped the bracelet about her thin wrist, then the other.
Her daughter started to cry, trying to pull the shackles off, pain in every smothered noise she made. Her skin grew crimson and curled back in an open gash and Lindala reached for her, trying to stop her, trying to stop the damage. Her touch seemed to soothe, if only for a moment, and she pulled her daughter to her, feeling her quake in every past of her thin, fine frame. The air smelled of burning skin and blood.
“They will keep her safe. She won’t wander far from here, with those branded into her skin. Accidents can happen, and we wouldn’t want that. There are rings for the chains, but I can wait on those.” He turned on one heel abruptly, and the Bolgers scattered before him, scrambling back up the passage, clicks of stone and dirt signaling their hasty retreat. “Congratulations on your child, Lindala. My pardon that it is late in being given. It seems I wasn’t told. Together, however, we shall value her for what she is. Another Vaelinar slave.”
He left in a haze of smoke and orange light, and Lindala gathered up her daughter, holding her close, trying to ease away the pain of the shackles, trying to stop the cutting and bleeding, and weeping her own river, to no avail. When she caught her breath, she listened for hope, for the floods to come.
The back gate to the furnace creaked as the great doors swung up, and Quendius filled the threshold as if bidden by thought to appear. Fyrvae squinted through the swirling heat of the forge at his master.
He wore ivory robes of soft curled and combed fur, hanging open over a bare torso, his leather pants cut to move supplely, the grain as soft as butter. The light gray irises of his eyes were spoked with obsidian streaks so that it was like looking into a dark star that had exploded into shards against a gray dawn sky. With his skin a soft, sooty charcoal, and his blue-black hair tied back, Quendius filled the doorway, the biggest Vaelinar Fyrvae had ever met in his life. Rumors said he had no Talent but that of strength. Fyrvae had never found any Talent in him except cruelty and shrewdness.
His square jawed face showed the barest approval at the forge stirring to life. “We’ve guests coming.”
“I felt them, master.” Fyrvae dropped in a half bow.
“I see you’re getting the furnaces hot. Excellent. I want a sword finished. These guests are not invited, but they should be impressed with the caliber of the swords only you can make.” Quendius stepped inside the forge, forcing Fyrvae to look up at him with a painful stretch of his neck and shoulders as he settled into a wide-legged stance. He wore the first of Fyrvae’s specially commissioned swords on his hip, the only man who could have worn it that way, as most would have carried it in a back sheath. He, however, had the height and arm span to wear it as he did.
He did not wish just any sword, then, any cutting blade, but one of them. “A second sword, master, as agreed?” The making of a second imbued sword would free him from his indenture; that was the pact they had made when Quendius found him and offered shelter for the fugitives. Better perhaps that he’d stayed to face the judgment of the Council, though they were said to have little mercy for those who broke the Peace Accords. Even little mercy would be more than this man held.
“Agreements change,” Quendius reminded him amiably, “as ours did when you tried to escape.” The black shards in his eyes seemed to glint harshly, catching the reflected orange light of the banked fires. “Two swords for two Vaelinars, but now there is a third, is there not? I wonder if she could live in the daylight, away from the caverns. Away from yourself . . . and your wife. Best to stay in the shelter I’ve given you, and work your way to freedom.”
Fyrvae felt rebellion rising in his chest and tried to quell it as cold realization leached the fire out of him. Quendius would never be through with him. Fyrvae and Lindala would always owe him, the pact would never be completed. They had sunk from indentured servants to slaves and now he knew they could sink even lower. Little choice left; looking up at the armorer, he contained his expression most carefully, unwilling to admit defeat. “You know more than I, then.”
“So it seems. A second sword, and I want the best from you. You’ve been working on one . . .” Quendius’ glance scoured the forge, and fell upon a nearly finished blade in a rack to the side. “Your craftsmanship shows. How much longer till that one is finished?”
“It’s nearly done.” His thoughts threatened to scatter impossibly far from him despite his need to focus. He had no life expectancy beyond that of the finished sword as a surety. He knew that. The Talent he poured into the metal and the fire, working it, took nearly every fiber of his being.
Fyrvae considered the blade as well. He’d already made the hilt and pommel, which were waiting to be settled onto the blade’s tang, the whole being a work of art, something he’d done to keep his mind occupied, something to keep him on the edge of sanity. He hadn’t hidden it, for nothing could be hidden from Quendius. Still, it had never been meant to be one of his workings.
“Finish it, then. And then ...” Quendius leaned over him, his presence more oppressive than even the heat of the furnaces. “Imbue it. Finish it.”
Fyrvae inclined his head to study the ground and did not move until the other had left, then he stood wearily, and took up his tongs and hammer. The forge seemed lessened without Quendius hulking inside it, and even the Bolgers shuffled a bit. His leather apron, charred and weathered, hung on a peg, and he took it down for whatever protection it could afford, knowing that there was no protection on this earth, this Kerith, to be had from what Quendius asked of him.
Fyrvae bent over his work and added his silent prayer for rain to those being murmured in the caverns beyond and below. Born of the earth and tempered with fire, he knew his creation better than it knew itself. The time passed and he did not hear the rains open up, pelting the roof overhead, or smell the hot water steaming off the furnace-heated buildings, or sense the guard force gathered outside in the yard and given orders to round up those who drew near the fortress without permission. He knew only the mutterings of the Bolgers as they banked the fires, waiting to see if he would heat the blade again, readying to turn the grindstones if he directed them to, although he preferred to do that work himself. Rufus closed on him, doing small things he caught at the corner of his attention, stoking the fire, adding water to the cooling vats, watching him.
He did the grinding with Vaelinarran precision, ignoring the sparks as they flew up, scorching apron and hands and forearms, intent only upon bringing out the fine edge he knew waited in the sword, preparing it for its ultimate possession. He heated the blade for its final tempering, and sweat ran off his torso in rivulets under the leather apron as he hammered. The metals reverberated against each other, resisting and tempering, and he could feel the power rising to run through him, drumming in his veins, roaring through his muscles. As he examined the blade and saw no flaw in it, he put it in the salted bath to ensure an even heating. He would grant the demand made of him. Grant it, and more. They would be free or die trying.
Finally, he plunged it into the quenching tank, cooling it quickly and thoroughly, listening to it hiss as he did.
He fastened the hilt to the blade. He wet the blade and wiped it clean, marveling at the sheen of the alloy. Deadly, balanced, elegant, strong, two-edged. Fyrvae had made a weapon worthy of being wielded.
He laid it across his anvil and closed his eyes, sifting through the planes of elemental existence, drawing his power together, feeling the tide rise in him as it had built all day.
“You, Fyrvae, should have been a priest not a smith,” Quendius had told him when he put the slaves’ ring on him. An odd thing to say, then.
Now it frightened him that Quendius knew him better than he knew himself. It made him even more of a slave than the bonds of fear and consequence holding him, than the hostage held in the caverns below, than the fears of his childhood buried deep in his mind, even that of the lost heritage of his people.
He did not fear now. Now he was master of the elements and of the weapon in front of him, and he opened himself to the Talent, to the Calling. Around him, he could hear the Bolgers shuffle to the far corners of the forge, their chains rattling quietly, their guttural words muffled so as not to attract his attention.
That’s right, you sorry sons of bitches. You know what I am doing. Fyrvae opened his eyes to feel them cowering in the corners, and looked at them, their bare scalps wrinkling with dismay, eyes squinting in hopeless fear. Their leathery cupped ears were pinned back, and the one nearest him managed words that he could understand.
“Master, pliss. We work hard. Do not hurt.” The Bolger nearest him scraped the hard-beaten floor of the forge as he groveled toward Fyrvae, his thick hands curled in palm-upward submissiveness. He did not fool Fyrvae. If he turned his back, within reach of those chains, and seemed the least bit inattentive or weak, they would pull him down. He knew that, and they knew he knew it. The sharp reek of their fear began to fill the air with sourness, sweat that even the heat could not squeeze out of them, brought from the depths of their miserable bodies. One alone stared at him, his gaze steady yet respectful.
This was Rufus, as Fyrvae had named him, who faced him now, his forearm branded with the tong mark, old now, long healed, and although the enmity between them remained, it was partnered with a grudging respect. The Bolger watched him closely with everything he did. Fyrvae would be willing to swear that the Bolger learned from him, whatever he could, in that bony head of his. Not animal, not man, but shrewd enough to be dangerous. They held an uneasy partnership, he and Rufus did. Rufus learned from him, and he often found a grudging desire within himself to teach. To share the satisfaction of a hard day’s work, to see the jewel of a blade brought forth from his efforts. Lindala knew Rufus and treated him kindly, something Fyrvae did not understand but did not stop, and Rufus repaid them with smuggled kindling wood from time to time, whenever his duties took him into the mines.
He took pity on Rufus and the other Bolgers, curs who were no less a slave than he was. He warned them. “First blood will not be yours,” he told them. “Once it is loosed though, I can make no promises. It is a sword that will be blooded. Again and again. It will call for blood. Stay clear of it. Understand?”
They babbled back quickly. “Yes, master. Yiss. Yes.” The Bolgers huddled farther back in the sooty shadows of their corners where their chains chimed softly as they continued to cower in fear.
They did not really understand. They did not know that he would pry forth a Demon and imprison it in the sword, just as he had in the first sword. In trying to fill that first blade with the very heart of the metal he worked, seeing it, seeing the fire he tamed and boosted to temper it, that first time, he’d worked with his Talents. Earth and fire, fire and earth . . . and he’d shaken loose a Demon, albeit minor, from the planes of its existence. Shaken it loose and poured it into the sword where Fyrvae then caged it. Just a tiny Demon, with a lust for the destruction a weapon naturally caused, and when Quendius handled it for the very first time, the sword had bonded to him. It struck unerringly quick and deep, as if it had eyes, paired with the skill of its wielder. Yes, a fine, fine weapon. An unnatural weapon.
Seeing what he could do, what use might be made of him, they’d tried to escape. That was when Quendius had made slaves of them instead of servants. When he’d had a Vaelinar ally bind Lindala to the river she had tamed for their pact, chained her to its underground waters until freed. To face the day, to be out of touch with the water, she would suffer terribly. Only Quendius held the key to that unbonding. As for Fyrvae, he was chained to Lindala. Quendius demanded a sword per soul that he harbored. Fyrvae would have offered the second sword up if he could have, but his Talents thinned, like a spark at the edge of a forge fire, barely glowing, threatening to go out altogether. Like a great working of magic that took a Godly toll, he could not summon what he needed to make another then.
Quendius could, and did, wait. Years. Fyrvae directed the making of many fine weapons while he collected the scattered bits of himself he’d nearly lost, and now, desperation fueled him. Ready or not, he’d run out of time.
Fyrvae looked upward, but he did not see the soot-stained roof of the building where smoke curled ever upward, and the blue-orange glow of flames danced against black reflection. He looked into existences not meant for his eyes to see, heard the discordant strains of beings never meant to be heard by mortal ears, touched and answered back and commanded and called Demons beyond the reaches. They snarled and fought him, whipping his soul in anger, scouring him with their power. They branded him from the inside out, and Fyrvae cried out
in pain and anger of his own, whipping back at them. He lashed them as only a Vaelinar could, not born of their world, yet able to command it at great cost, and he willed himself to pay the price.
Once the Vaelinars had not been Lost, Suldarran, from their own world and Gods, but here on Kerith their greatness still could not be denied, and the lesser Gods and Goddesses of this place were laid bare to the Vaelinars who had the Talent and could harness it. He did. Having discovered it by accident, the Talent had doomed him to Quendius. Now he would return the favor.
Fyrvae threw aside unwanted lesser Demons, reaching for the greatest he could call. A roar of power and rage flooded his being, and he gathered it in, weaving its fiery lines as he wove the fires that forged his weapons, teeth clenched against the scorching anger. He rode the planes of his soul, soaring along scorching winds under a sun that would blind him if he looked with mortal eyes, and felt beings reach for him with a hunger to suck him dry except he did not allow their touch. Only one did he call. His hands gestured through the air, fingers threading the sigils of a calling despite its vast resistance.
A Godling Demon answered in murderous rage, lunging at him, no longer resisting, and his power erupted over them. The force catapulted Fyrvae back into his body, his arms upheld, trembling with the burden of his thoughts and workings, driven back onto his haunches. The Demon he called dove after him.
Something snapped in him as clear as a green branch breaking in two, and the pain shot through him. He buckled. In a flash, he knew that he had called one he could not handle, the answer to all his needs, and the solution that would kill him long before it got to Quendius. Fyrvae swayed as the Demon came at him, maw yawning crimson, otherworld rage bent on ripping open his throat, eager to take his heart and soul. He anchored himself with the only thread he could find, his love for Lindala, a ribbon of the riversoul she held, soothing, wet, and pure, against the fire of this Demon Godling that seared him. He grabbed for strength from her, wrapping it about him as if she could shield him from what he must be. The being took hold of him, and Fyrvae shoved back. He thrust the doubt, the pain, and the Demon off a heartbeat away from being shattered. Agony howled from his throat, followed by defiance. Around him, the Bolgers cried out raggedly, snarling in fear and excitement, hoping to bluff the thing they sensed unseen among them.