The Four Forges

by Jenna Rhodes

  She kicked off Ribbon and without another word of explanation, Lariel cut her horse down and then Ribbon. Both horses fell to their knees and then their sides, throats opened in a bloody red gash, bleeding their life out on the dirt. Rivergrace put her hand to her mouth.

  “Run. After me. That won’t buy us much time.”

  They clambered up the steep side of the cliff, finding that deer’s trail to be more of a goat’s path and then it opened up to a dark maw yawning into the peak, with a singular white marble column blocking its way. They clung to each other, catching their breath, hearing the noise of the Blackwind runner behind them, savaging the horses.

  Lariel put her knife to her wrist. “Listen to me,” she said, and she began to talk, quickly, breathlessly, as her blood started to flow down her knife and onto the column, and the mountain opened with a deep moan, and musty air spilled out.

  Rivergrace listened, then drew Cerat and went on.

  The earth breathed around her. Not as she breathed, not steady movement in and out of air, but a long, steady, quiet moan of rock and dirt and water pushing against one another in its very deepest recesses. She felt it more than heard it and its heaviness; its pressure weighed on her. She could hardly breathe with its weight. Her hearing was muffled. Her throat began to close and her heart to pound, and she could feel the panic welling up in her, the crazed need to claw her way out. Out, out!

  Rivergrace stopped dead in her tracks. Both hands wrapped about the sword’s hilt; she leaned on it as if it were the only thing that could keep her upright and on both feet. Its metal body vibrated to her touch. It sang softly to her, a soft ululation for the day, for the air, for the hunting of prey which would spew blood when struck, hot and full of life and color. Rich crimson and sharp-edged bone-shard white, the pink of muscle. Even the death of a soul held colors that this underground imprisoning did not, and it urged her to go find them. It would lead her from the stillness of the caverns and take her out into the air and freedom, if she would only let it.

  She laced her fingers tighter about the hilt until her knuckles shone like small moons in the twilight, wrapping her will even harder about it than her flesh, denying it. She would lead it, not it her. When she swung it, it would be because she had made the choice. Cerat growled at her unhappily. The vibration within its metal form grew stronger until her bones ached to hold it, her whole body abuzz with its throbbing. Her teeth rattled until she clenched her jaw tight. The fight to remain in control drove her panic down. She took a step.

  Sun slanted inward at her back from the wide cavern mouth, a beam as pointed as the weapon she carried. Its finger jabbed inward and she followed it, afraid of what she would do when the light could no longer reach her path. She had the oiled torch stuck in her waistband, and flint and steel to strike it, but could she put aside the sword long enough to do it? Would Cerat leap out of her control if she took her hands and will from it?

  She took one trembling hand from the hilt and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. Heat pooled in the caverns, though she could feel a coolish breeze from somewhere deep ahead. Her side ached. She could feel blood trickle sluggishly down her skin, smell its coppery scent, and that made Cerat hungrier. It had its shrewd side, though. It knew better than to ask her for her own blood.

  Not that it didn’t want it, but slyly, it knew that it would have it in sweet time, as if it were death itself and would have all things sooner or later.

  Rivergrace pushed herself forward. The cooler air coming toward her was far from sweet. It carried a tang upon it, a rankness akin to that of carrion ripening in the sun. It stained the back of her throat as she breathed and made her choke with it. Something foul and unspeakable waited for her.

  Aderro.

  No, she cried back to Sevryn. Don’t call me, you’re lost and gone, and all I can do is hope with every step that I move closer to you.

  Her footfall echoed in the tunnel. Aderro.

  You could have found another way to save Lariel. To show her what the sword could do and what Quendius was capable of. You could have! Instead of leaving me . . .

  Her body began to block the thinning sunbeam from the cave mouth. It flickered like a guttering candle going out, throwing darker shadows in front of her as the cave floor began to slope downward and grow uncertain with broken ground and rock crumbling under her steps.

  “You’ve can’t have her. She’s my sister. I pulled her from the river and found her! She’s mine!” Nutmeg’s spice and fire in every word echoed inside her memory.

  You belonged to her because she found you.

  “No,” Rivergrace said firmly to the earth and stone. “Because we loved each other.”

  What does love mean?

  It’s like a river, a river that fills you to overflowing, cleanses you, feeds you, cradles you . . . can sometimes even sweep you away in a devastating flood, but a river you would never want to be without. And it flows both ways, like a miracle.

  She shook herself from memory. The mountain leaned on her, corrupt and besmirched. “Come out and fight!”

  Rivergrace pulled a tangle of hair from her eyes. She wanted something to attack her. To rush on her from the dank, foul unknown in front of her, to pounce on her so that she could cleave it away. With each pass of the sword, she would carve it and let the rage warm her blood, boiling away the fear. Anything would be better than this chilling fear, this uncertainty that beat at her. She called up anger inside of her. The curses at her Vaelinar blood. The raiders who burned her home down and destroyed the Farbranch life. The slag mines that boiled over into her rivers and polluted them, killing all that every drop of water might reach and touch slowly, bit by bit. She would bring it down, the thing that did this, now.

  If only she could find it.

  She stumbled over a rock and crashed to one knee. She bit her tongue as she landed. Sharp pain jolted her bones and lanced through her mouth. She knelt long enough to gather herself. She wanted to hew away at the stone that tripped and hurt her. She shifted Cerat in her hold.

  “Show yourself! Come out and meet me”

  Her voice echoed harshly, beating off the sides of the cavern. Things skittered and flew past her, wings flailing, bats with their high-pitched screams and blind eyes. She ducked and covered her head, their clawed feet and wingtips scratching at her hair and arms. Then, suddenly, gone.

  Did it listen for her? Did it wait below? Demon, demi-God, or perhaps an ancient Vaelinar sitting on a throne of stone? How patient it must be, letting her carry the battle to it, unworried about her existence at all.

  The day shifted. The sunbeam slanting thinly through the cave mouth vanished, and she was left entirely in the dark, without even a bat’s high scream to echo around her and show her the walls, the ceiling that grew lower and lower with every movement she made.

  She knelt and put Cerat on the pebbled cave floor to slip the torch from her belt. She struck it, three times, flint to steel, before the sparks ignited the torch. It burned fitfully as she took it up in one hand and the sword in the other. The sword twisted, leaping in toward her leg and nearly bit her sharply. She deflected it just in time.

  So that was how it was to be. She gripped it tightly in her sweating palm.

  The torch lent sight but also bedazzled her a bit with its orange glow. She lowered it and held it in front of her as the cave floor twisted and turned upon itself. The closeness began to choke her again. A stone snake had swallowed her, crushing her in its coils. She would die here. Others might have died before her . . .

  “My blood stained these stones once, and will again. When it does, you must fly, Rivergrace. The rest of the journey is up to you to finish.”

  “Queen Lariel . . .”

  “My blood,” she repeated. “The blood of my family sealed this pact, and we failed in our trust. I’ll spill my life to renew it, but only you can cleanse the river. Now run!”

  Lariel took her dagger and opened up her arm, and the Demon dog that guarded th
e way lunged at her, to hunker down at her feet and lap up each steaming crimson drop. “Run!” It would be bound unless she ran out of blood first.

  Grace had, but only a few steps. Behind the massive boulder that fronted the cavern mouth and there she knelt, taking out her own small knife and putting it to her wrist, letting blood run down and pool until she grew faint before tearing her sleeve hem and tightening a cloth bandage about the wound. It would smell her blood and come to it. Come, she prayed, and be filled before the queen runs dry and falls to her sacrifice that opened the path.

  The sword twisted in her hand again. She tripped, her shoulder going roughly into a jagged curve in the cave, and the torch falling from her hand as she did. Her curse rang out, echoed, and then she realized the orange glow of the torch fell. And fell. And fell as an ever smaller orb of fire. Then it went out in a shower of tiny sparks as it hit bottom.

  Shaking, Rivergrace took firm hold of Cerat again. Now blinded, she used it as a cane, tapping. The hole in front of her seemed endless but she finally found a small way around the rim of it. Sand showered away from each step, but she did not fall as the torch did.

  How to find her way?

  Aderro. Listen to yourself. Follow your love of the water.

  Fresh or salted, clean or foul, it did call to her. She took a deep breath riddled with the corruption of the air, and closed her eyes, and imagined where the water might lie, where the wellspring of the Andredia came up from the rock and down from the mountain, and from which all its waters began. She took each step carefully, knowing that the river might draw her to it as the crow might fly, yet she walked on earth and rock, and treacherous at that. Each halting step she took cautiously so that she would live to take the next.

  The cavern walls grew lower and the passage narrower. She could feel it, even through her shut eyes, as it closed in upon her. Her heartbeat echoed through the stone. She thought of her alna, her silver-tipped free flier, and how its heart had beat frantically in the cage of her hands when she’d held it for healing. Her footfalls drummed on the stone.

  Then her eyes flew open, and she saw, dimly, a faint glow ahead. And she heard the echo although she made no movement.

  She was no longer alone.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  CERAT THRUMMED IN accompaniment to the steps as they drew near. Rivergrace could feel it stir in her hands. It wanted to leap out, but she held it close to her even though the smell of her blood made it whine with an irritating buzz that sawed along her nerves. So near to the wellspring now that its corruption left a stain upon her with every breath, like a slimed coating upon her tongue and throat, she paused.

  “It is written there is a dome,” Lariel had told her. “Of natural rock, perhaps quartz or agate, cut so finely that it is translucent and the sun can beat down upon it, and shine through, as though the Gods made a window to look upon the Andredia. When you see light at the tunnel’s end, you’ll know you have found it.”

  And she saw light. Faint as a wavering breath, a turquoise blue upon the black of no light at all, awaiting her.

  Between her and it, a shadow loomed, piercing the blue halo. Pebbles crunched under its boots as it drew near her, and she it.

  “Give me the sword.”

  Like a wind hissing through the tunnels, words carried to her. Cerat answered in her hand, tip going up, pointing at the speaker, carrying her toward him.

  Cyclone wings of shadow wrapped about him. He stood in a maelstrom of dark and storm, and she saw a blade gleam in his hand, a throwing dagger, his face obscured by the slow-turning shades enveloping him. He wrapped himself in oblivion.

  “You will die here.”

  Then she’d be that much closer to Sevryn. The sound of water bubbling up could be heard clearly under his words, over them, through them. “We both may,” she told him.

  “Give me the sword, and all is forgotten.”

  Forgotten? That was all she had, her memories. They filled her up. Created to be a vessel, she held so much more than her creators had ever intended. She overflowed with all her yesterdays, so that nothing should ever be forgotten.

  “No,” Rivergrace answered flatly. She charged at him, giving Cerat its wish and will.

  The being darted aside. She fell underneath the dome, seeing an agate-blue sky overhead as she rolled, and kicked out, and caught the attacker in the knee. He fell, swathed in black and shadow, even his face, tumbling head forward and coming back up on his feet. He swung, cuffing her in the side of the head, and she reeled back, biting her lip. Her vision blurred, then steadied.

  “The sword,” said the Kobrir a third time.

  “No.” Anger welled up in her, fused her, and she welcomed it. She twirled the blade about, then straightened her wrist, and put her other hand upon it, for its weight made it a two-handed sword for her. She fought for her balance and waited for him. “Come and get it, if you dare.”

  With a hiss of anger, the Kobrir jumped, but not at her. He jumped at the cave wall to the side, and rebounded, somersaulting in the air above her. It happened so quickly that she readied for him out of instinct rather than planning. Perhaps it was Cerat, eager.

  Perhaps it was that silvery fire that raged in her.

  Perhaps it was the Kobrir’s destiny.

  She dropped a shoulder and went to her right knee, jabbing her arms to the left, elbows straight and braced. He leaped on her with a scream as the blade impaled him, ran through him raggedly, and Cerat sucked at his soul. She couldn’t hold him. He fell off the sword when she dropped it down, and lay in a rapidly growing pool of blood bathing him and the blade.

  He looked up at her in sheer amazement. His clothing lay in blood-sodden wings about him, its life ebbing as his did. Cerat jerked, straining to reach the crimson puddle. She would not let it.

  “Narskap...did not...tell me...this.” The Kobrir threw his hand up in one last convulsion of life, arched his back, and died.

  Rivergrace looked down at her chest, where the Kobrir’s silver thorn blossomed as it pierced her, below her left breast, and she did not feel the pain till the next breath. She would pull it free, but now her life pulsed in her ears, beats of time, and she knew she hadn’t much left.

  She stepped into the blue twilight. She had come down one passage, but another lay before her, blasted into the mountain crudely, hacked into the heart of this sacred place. Rails led out, an overturned cart rusting away on its side. A well of stone and mortar stood around the wellspring, damming it from where it flowed up and over a streambed, forcing it down another. She saw the great blackened wall where wood piles had burned, and bellows heaved to bring air, and two anvils stood anchored into the cave, stained with the rust of blood as well as metals beaten upon them. The Andredia ran sluggishly into vats and man-made bowls to cool and temper the steel, and the water smelled of the souls sacrificed therein to call down the Gods in this sacred place, before it slowed down an unnatural riverbed, carrying its poisoning with it. This must have been a forge long before the other, and fouler, and darker.

  Her soul quailed at the enormity of it. She ached to cleanse it and hardly knew where to begin, or if she would live long enough to complete the task. She hesitated.

  As if sensing her weakness and testing it, under the agate sky, a thing erupted from the stone. It unwound with a hiss, and unfurled its wings of marble-veined quartz. Eyes of fire opened to stare down at her. A drake of stone, of quartz and marble and mica-limned granite, hunched over her, alive yet not alive, with blue agate tracings upon its figure, and it blocked her way to the wellspring.

  She was not enough. Even with Sevryn here by her side, and Lariel, and Jeredon, and Garner and Nutmeg, she doubted they could take this stone dragon down. Born of tales from the toback shops, it rumbled a growl, the sound a tumbling of rock over dirt and stone, that came boiling out with white steam that stank of the tainted river. Meshed of earth and water and fire, this impossible creature snaked its neck back and forth, sharp-paned head with hooked bea
k of a mouth opened to show teeth of hardened gemstone. It lifted a taloned foot, and flailed its long tail about it, end spiked with granite-laced quartz. Rivergrace stepped back.

  Her thoughts spun away. How had the Kobrir gotten past this? How had those who mined and smithed here not awakened it? Or had the pain of the Andredia created it, too late to save itself. Four forges dire; earth, water, air, and fire . . .

  It coiled and followed her movement. Its wings lifted and moved, and a wind rushed from them that pushed at her, tearing at the ragged ends of her journey-worn clothing before whistling away through the caverns. She put her face into it, blinking into a gritty veil of sand that stung her eyes. Pounding her sword upon the stone drake would be no more useful than slamming Cerat against the anvil.

  Breath lanced through her with fiery, aching pain, the dagger buried deeply in her, a silvery thorn she dared not pluck away. No time to think. Only remember.

  She turned on one heel, slowly, to face the wellspring and the dam that plagued it. The drake’s head rose as it gathered itself to strike. The water called to her and she answered back. She began to sing, in a thin, halting voice, the song she sang to the Silverwing and to the well she’d opened in Calcort, and to every drop of water she’d ever touched. A song that came to her anchored in her past, almost regained, never quite understood. She wrapped both hands about Cerat, the sword with her love’s soul entrapped in it, and whispered to him to lend her strength from within the steel. She had but one strike, possibly two. No more.

  She wheeled about and hammered the blade down on the rock wall about the Andredia, putting her back to the dragon. Steel clanged and belled upon stone. The cavern reverberated with it, and the drake let out a screech that made her ears bleed, and still she sang. Rock gave. The wall cupping the font cracked away, and the Andredia trickled down, moistening the gravel at her feet. Hot breath and steam scalded the back of her neck, her shoulders, her hair singed away. She struck again, crying in agony. Cerat tolled its blow as if a massive instrument, ringing, and it held the note as she felt the river answer. It geysered up, freed, erupting in cold spray and foam, flooding. Her voice broke. Cerat splintered. As it gave way, she did too, half turning, collapsing, her eyes on the thing made of crystal and gold and granite and jade and copper and all else the earth could hold, the fire in its eyes extinguished. The drake collapsed upon itself, returned to unmoving stone.