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?
“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.
She turned her attention to him. “Make her give it to me. You’ve proven how great a smith you are. How great a wizard you are. Greater than Solomon. Now we have to destroy it. Before it destroys us.”
Mother stepped out of the shadows. The light didn’t flatter her. Cobwebs and dust from the old airshaft sullied her perfect hair. Sweat beaded on her forehead and stained her silk drape, another sexy thing in green that clung like a second skin to the bits it didn’t reveal. Not suitable for a forge—she’d brushed up against something that left a black smear on one hip. Looked like grease or dust from a chunk of scrap iron . . .
Mel fit into his world a hell of a lot better. Soot-smeared coveralls and sweaty tousled hair and ragged fingernails sort of goddess. Mother had never liked getting her hands dirty. That was for others.
He looked around for his cane, forgotten in the heat of forging. “I can’t give you the sword. Like with Fafnir and the Seal, it isn’t mine to give.”
“Nonsense. You made it. It’s yours. Now give it to your mother.”
As if
she
could unmake that which he had made . . .
But, “You’re not my mother. We’re not even part of the same family. Gods of different tribes.”
Memories. Two-edged blade, giving us back our memories.
There. I’ve
said
it. Out loud. Not anything like hearing Mel say it. Cutting the apron strings.
She winced like he’d slapped her. Rage blazed dark across her brown cheeks. She said something, three syllables, four, five, but his ears and brain wouldn’t process them. Wouldn’t even make
sounds
out of them, much less meaning.
His cane. Over there, that long shadow leaning against another of the brick pillars spaced through the cellar gloom. He wanted a weapon, with Mother in a rage. He
needed
a weapon. That blade had stabbed through a shield-bear’s heart . . .
He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even move his eyes.
Mel glanced from him to Mother and back again and back to Mother. “That won’t work on me. How long ago did you tamper with his brain? Centuries? A thousand years ago? Did you booby-trap his ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters,’ too?”
She moved the sword’s tip. It waited, directly between them now. He wondered if that was Mel’s thought, or the sword’s.
Mother wasn’t taking care of us, she was controlling us. Part of her plan. Control every god and goddess she could track down. She only kept
me
close to break the Seal, if she couldn’t do it herself. So many lies, for so many years. Centuries.
Mother shook her head. “Give that thing to me. You don’t know what it is. All those thousands of years, sucking life and memory and power. Now he’s fixed it. Worse. He’s made it into a weapon, not just a drain. That thing can kill
you!”
Mel had circled away, stepping sideways to where brick pillars and the fieldstone foundation guarded her flanks, her back, choosing her battleground, and he could see her face now. Bitter smile. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
She asked for a blade to kill a god . . .
Mother jumped on that. “If you want to die, give me the blade.”
Mel’s sword dipped an inch, as if she considered the offer. Then the point came up again. “No, I don’t think so. I’m not bored with Al yet. Did
you
teach him?”
Ohhhh, me
ow
. . .
Mother’s face flushed darker. Goad your enemy—rage makes bad decisions. Always trade insults before battle. Mel
was
a warrior goddess,
was
Kali, plus all those other aspects and avatars.
Mother snarled. Then, “Give it to me. Or I’ll destroy you.”
Now Mel’s smile turned mocking. “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand? I’ve been around for a long, long time, O mighty Bilqis of Sa’aba. You wouldn’t say that if you were sure. You’d just
do
it.”
Achilles and Hector, two champions out in front of their armies. Trading insults. Hectoring.
But jaw jaw is better than war war. Churchill knew. He’d
seen
war. Not like some other leaders.
Then something moved at the edge of his sight, fuzzy, and he couldn’t turn to focus over there. His anvil? The big anvil? Two-hundredweight of steel, plus the elm-wood block it sat on, floating through the air? It accelerated into clear sight, aimed at Mel.
Yes, his big anvil. Flying. Mother’s witchery.
Mel flicked her gaze at it, didn’t flinch, didn’t step aside. A flash of glowing steel, and the anvil split and flew past her shoulders in two pieces, clanging to the floor. The basement shook around them.
Mel shook her head. “You know, I never believed that part of the story. That Siegfried cut the anvil in half with his re-forged sword. Not possible. But, I’d never held that sword’s brother before . . . ”