"Very well, my lord. But if you will forgive the question, whose was it once?"
"Ah!" chuckled Korentyn. "So you noticed that? I hope you were not offended. From what I hear of you, he would have counted it an honor to have you wear it. Now what was his name? A friend, and it escapes me, shamefully… Thyrve, that was it! Thyrve, a northerner as you are by your speech, and a man commanding a boundless craft and skill. Why, even Lord Vayde respected him, who was himself a great smith. It was Thyrve's livery."
"Livery?" Elof had never heard of a smith wearing any formal garb save his guild's.
"Aye! He was the king's chief smith. Did you not guess that from the pattern?" For a moment the prince's kindly vagueness fell from him, and his eyes glittered as he gazed into infinite distance. "It lives in my mind, though long it is since last I saw it. Long since Keryn gave it secretly into the hand of Ase our sister, she whom we called the Deep-Minded, to take westward and hold there for his son. Is it not the symbol of the power the smith sets in the hand of the king? Is it not the pattern on the Great Scepter of Morvan itself?"
How that meal ended Elof never knew. He must have eaten, held converse, taken his leave in some kind of dazed trance, for it was like an awakening when he found himself alone in his bedchamber, the bronzen rod cool in his clutching fingers. In the keeping of Ase it had been; but Kerbryhaine had cast out Ase with the other northerners, who had then founded the realm of Nordeney. So what might Asenby mean, where he had had his rough raising, but the settlement of Ase? A remote place where such a treasure might be hidden, and in time even forgotten, till it found such use as a gaggle of peasants might have for an instrument of kingship and command. Small wonder the Ekwesh chieftain had kept it from the sack of Asenby; his shamans could not have failed to know it for a thing of ancient power. A greater mystery was how Elof himself could have been so blind. Yet even as he remembered with a shudder how casually he had used it to tug and prod the huge cattle about, he felt the shimmer and flux within it fade and shrink to a distant gleam; he thought of it in a king's hand, and to his inner eye it burned with a warm golden flame. Startled, he let it dim once more, overwhelmed by the strangeness of his destiny. For all he knew, the sole purpose of his whole existence might be to restore this heirloom of power to hands that owned it by right. But whose hands were those? He knew one with a good claim; but now he had found another. That was too good a recipe for strife. Decisively he wrapped the scepter in its soft leathers once again. Kermorvan was his friend, he would tell him before he told Korentyn; but he would tell neither yet.
The days of ease that followed held no more shocks for Elof. Indeed, they seemed to lessen the impact of all that had passed, making familiar what had felt so strange. Resolve as he might to keep apart from the court, he soon found it would not let him. In truth, as Roc and Ils delighted in pointing out, the fault was his own. In his way he was fair of face, and his withdrawn, thoughtful manner, together with the rank and power his new garb suggested, brought him into notice among the ladies of the court, and great demand. At every turn he was greeted with a mixture of awe and breathless interest that few men could ignore, fewer still fail to enjoy, especially as young as he. Nonetheless it made him impatient; somewhere was Kara, and all the fair of Lys Arvalen could not for a moment take her place. Their attentions he enjoyed, but he found the courtly company and manners exhausting, suffocating, as rich and heavy as the garments and the hangings on the walls, and as dulled with age. Even Korentyn's unfailing kindness and courtesy began to seem bland, almost sickly. Worse, Kermorvan, who greatly revered him, was taking on the same airs, and losing or curbing those flashes of spirit, even arrogance, which had seemed so much part of him.
"Ach, it's not so bad," protested Roc. "Might be this lass Teris that's taming him, and who's to blame him for that? You've just got a morning head on you, or it's stale you're getting."
"Stale?" laughed Elof bitterly, ducking his head beneath the chill spring waters to clear it. "Worse than that! That feeling is with me still, that my past is slipping away beneath these trees! As if there's always been Forest, nothing but Forest, no place, no time beyond the shadow of these boughs that weigh upon my soul. And it grows worse! Even my craft fades, all the mystery and the scholarship. Small wonder, perhaps; among this world of things that grow, the arts that dwell in metal are scant service! What can I shape or smelt there, cast or hammer?"
"Well, find yourself something else to do! Go hunting, like Gise; he's off already with that great lout Merau. Tomorrow I'm going myself, with Ils and the other lads, all save Arvhes and Tenvar who won't be budged from the court. Why not tag along?"
"Hunting? What else have I done since I came here? Fisher, forester, hunter, gatherer, till my mind rots like the leaf mold!"
Roc rolled on his back and kicked up water. "You've turned fisher and gatherer before, have you not, upon the Marshlands? You almost liked the life!"
"Aye, but there I had my smithy to balance them, and a useful service to do. Here I've nothing."
"You've your tools, and mine; you could tinker up something. What you need's a spot of hard work! Sweat all this holidaying out of your bones with some good honest craft."
"Work?" sighed Elof. "What meaning has labor here? And what place for it? How could I begin it without furnace, forge or library?"
Those may be found.
Elof twisted round sharply in the water. It was a voice clear and unhuman as before, but of a wholly different timbre. And it had not come from any of the trees around the pool, but from the rocky source of the spring itself. "What is it?" barked Roc. "What d'you hear?"
"The spring! The falling water…"
What you need, you may have. Did I not say that in my realm men may live wholly as they wish? You have only to ask, and your needs shall be met. There are metals enough in these mountains, and the hall has many ancient books of lore. Some will treat of your craft; smiths have labored in Tapiau'la ere now. Build your forge where you will. May your work bring you peace of mind.
"I heard something," muttered Roc. "A ringing… almost like a song… water in my ears, maybe!" He shook his head to clear them.
"No," said Elof, swimming up to the base of the little fall, and listening to the water hammering upon the stone. He felt suddenly alive and excited, his mind flooding with thoughts of what precious books a smith of old might have carried with him as he fled. And below them stirred the germs of a venture deep and perilous. "Tapiau spoke. He suggested, as you did, that I can try my craft here; I may, indeed. He has many voices, as he said. But how many eyes, I wonder, and ears?" To that the waters made no answer. Yet in the weeks that followed he was to hear the voice of the Forest again.
It was a time in which he grew increasingly alone. Roc went off on his hunt, and with him Bure, Borhi and even Ils; Arvhes and Tenvar seemed happy to lose themselves in courtly pleasures. Kermorvan was with Korentyn, plying him with questions about Morvan and other ancient lore, or with Teris; how serious that attachment was Elof could not guess. But though Elof could have found company enough in the court, he shunned it. An idea had been set in his mind, a spark lit that would not go out; his craft would not leave him be. He had found his purpose, and till he achieved it he could not rest.
Korentyn gladly gave him leave to search through all the castle's store of books, but at first his search seemed likely to be fruitless. It was chiefly chronicles and romances of old that had been well tended, and in some cases recopied; fascinating as he found many of these, they were distractions he had no need of. Books on almost any skill or craft he found dirty, neglected, in some cases even crumbling to fragments, as leaves to mold upon the forest floor. But he cleaned and patched what he could with fine cloth or parchment scraps pared thin, and drew rich rewards. There were a few elementary books, but his capacious memory already held all they could offer. It was lost works he hoped for, texts as rare and arcane as those upon which the Mastersmith had mounted his most deadly guard. Elof was not disappointed. From beneath a disorderly pile of histories he recovered one full scroll of the
Ircas Elyn
, an exhaustive treatise on symbols the Mastersmith had known of, but could never find. He had not dared hope for the
Skolnhere-Book
, yet he found an excellent copy on fabric, with many interesting marginalia, lying forgotten atop dust-lined shelves. The rarest work of all he found was the minor but fascinating
Daybook of Ambrys
, an accomplished armorer of Morvannec a century or so before Korentyn's day; smiths valued it chiefly for its brief quotations from even more obscure tracts, and its illustrations, so finely drawn they were a copyist's nightmare, for they
could
not be copied with blocks. It was one of these that caught his eye, and set an idea danc-
ing in his mind. But it danced with doubt and fear, and a chill of revulsion at the cruelty he could not now avoid.
Nevertheless, that same day he went to Korentyn and sought leave to build a forge. To lessen the risk of fire, it would be made all of stone, and well beyond the castle walls, in a clearing by a stream on the slopes above. As he had expected, leave was given gladly, and more; Al-mayn remembered that some equipment still remained from an old smithy, and Korentyn called upon the strongest among the
alfar
to labor for him. Under Elof s direction, in the weeks that followed, they willingly stripped a wide square of the clearing floor to the bedrock, while others hauled down great chunks of granite, raw and iridescent, hewn from the mountainflanks above. The walls they raised were crude, but thick and strong, fit to bear the single great slab he set across them as a roof, like some monument of old; he would have no wooden beams, he said, lest they scorch. The slatted shutters he made of slate for the same reason, hinged upon pins of iron he hammered out on a riverside rock. He hung more slate upon an iron frame to make a door, and stacked outside it the firewood the Guardians brought him. His high hearth was built of dry stone, and around it were set a quenching-tank of pitched slate, and stone slabs and benches to work at. Last of all, dragged up the slopes by a crowd of laughing
alfar
, came what he had salvaged from the old smithy: a bellows engine, much restored and given new leathers, and a great anvil of a shape strange to him. Ancient and rust-cloaked it was, yet when he smote it with his hammer it rang true, sharp and defiant against the Forest's infinite whisper.
With these they brought such tools, clamps and vises as were still usable, and also the store he had found there, a very hoard of metals and gems in all stages of working, many rare and precious. They told him cheerfully that the mountains held as much more of such toys as he could desire; if he would sooner hunt dull stones than quick beasts they would gladly take him. With that, laughing, they took their leave, not lingering for his thanks, leaping with startling strength for the pine boughs overhead. Elof looked after them, and nodded to himself, thoughtfully; such a hunt among the mountains might serve many ends.
He sat down then by the door that was his,
and gazed
out over the wooded hillside. It brought back to him the mountain woods of his youth, only a few years behind him yet an age away. In many ways he had been happiest then, but he could never forget that only lies and corruption had lain beneath. He could no longer take happiness as a gift, without price or obligation, or trust good fortune he did not wholly understand. If Kermorvan was learning to trust his heart more, then Elof had learned to trust his less. Idyllic as Lys Arvalen seemed, he would, he must, delve out the truth that lay at its root. And to that end he had shaped this forge.
He reached for Gorthawer, leaning against the wall, slid it halfway from the scabbard, and studied the shadow the black blade cast. Warm and deep and dark, it seemed to flow over the ground like viscous ink, merging with the thousand shadows of the wood; the talisman was strong here, as should be expected. Swiftly Elof rose and swung back the heavy door, its hinges creaking despite their grease. As he stepped over the threshold the shadow seemed to shrink and fade, falling pale upon the scoured stone at his feet. He nodded thoughtfully to himself, and played the blade carefully all around the little forge, and most carefully over the water in the trough, and over the least of the stone slabs, always watching the shadow intently. But nowhere did it grow the least trace darker. He sheathed Gorthawer then, and took it outside with him once more, and sat down in the sun with a sigh. Beneath that small slab lay the only wood within the walls, the cedar lining of the chest wherein he stored his precious books against damp and smoke; even that he had immured within pitch and stone. There would be no more, save what was already burned to charcoal. He had guessed aright.
Now he must look to his materials. He reached for the heavy hide sack that held the ancient hoard, and spilled it out over the sun-warmed ground before him. It was dazzling wealth that glittered there, but a smith's eye measured potential more profound than mere value. And what he saw he found strange indeed. Many pieces were so advanced it was possible to deduce the cunning design intended, the subtle virtue half set upon them. Yet all such pieces had been left unfinished, even where no fault or flaw could possibly have barred their completion. So engrossed was Elof that he scarcely noticed a fish rise to a deerfly struggling on the stream. Yet in the splash and spurt of bubbles the babbling music of the water was suddenly, subtly, altered.