The Tempering of Men (20 page)

She shook her head. “I am in Antimony's debt. Thank him for choosing this way to,” and she used a svartalf word, with the harmonics that made Brokkolfr's teeth ache.

But his attention had been caught by something else. “Him? I thought … I beg your pardon.”

Baryta raised her eyebrows. “Antimony is a male. Why does this surprise you?”

“I thought … Antimony is a metal, isn't it? And the svartalfar I have seen—women are high-ranking, are they not?”

Baryta exhaled a long breath, almost like the snort of a horse. “It is a complicated question that you ask, surface creature.”

“You don't have to answer,” Brokkolfr said.

She cocked her head, the crystals in her long braided sideburns catching the light. “But curiosity is the mark of,” another svartalf word, which she translated, “those who are awake. And if you are awake, then I may make a bargain with you.”

“There are stories about svartalf bargains,” Brokkolfr said uneasily, and Baryta crowed with laughter.

“So there are, surface-creature-who-wakes. But I have in mind only information. For I, too, wake, and I am curious. So we will trade questions. I will ask first, so that if you do not wish to answer, you will not be left owing me.”

“Should I not be speaking to Mastersmith Antimony?”

“Antimony has gone to view the destruction you have wrought, and will not be back for some time. He does not move as swiftly as once he did. But fear not. I will not cause your debt with Antimony to mount.”

Brokkolfr hesitated, a hundred stories telling him he was being a fool. But Baryta seemed scrupulous, and one thing he knew from having seen the svartalfar and men speaking to each other during and after the trellwar: along with information, one could also trade goodwill.

“All right,” he said. “What question would you ask?”

“You have met svartalfar before.” She smiled, showing inlaid teeth almost as elaborate as those of Isolfr's friend Tin. “How is this so? We are a secretive people.”

Brokkkolfr paused, marshaling his thoughts. “We would never have entered the caves if we had understood they were the home of a clan of svartalfar. We had no idea you were here.”

He remembered Realgar's reaction when Kari had let slip the comment about svartalfar staying, and frowned, wondering again: was it possible that this alf-clan had been here all along, secreted in the deep caverns, burrowed in away from the surface and the sun—and no one had ever known? If so, just how greivous an offense was this trespass? He also remembered what he knew of svartalfar from watching Tin and her allies during the war. He knew that they had held a special honor for Viradechtis.

“My wolfsprechend—one of the leaders of my threat, a man bonded to a konigenwolf—”

“A Queen Wolf!”

Brokkolfr nodded. So that was not different. Did this count as Baryta's second question, or would that seem ungenerous? “He is her brother, as I am Amma's brother.”

Baryta's face furrowed, and Brokkolfr imagined his own expression often looked the same, as he attempted to ferret out the hidden complexities of her words. She said, “Your wolf is a she.”

“My sister is a she,” Brokkolfr said. “But not a konigenwolf.”

Baryta nodded. “Continue, please.”

“Isolfr, my wolfsprechend, is a hero of the svartalfar of the Iskryne. He and his sister, and their allies, including my friend”—had he any right to call Kari friend?—“and a smith named Tin slew a trellqueen in a warren the Iskryne clans wished to appropriate. In return for this service, the Iskryne clans agreed to come to our defense against the trolls who were migrating south and attacking our towns.”

Baryta opened her eyes wide over the crooked twig of her nose. “The Iskryne clans have come south!”

“Well, it was the svartalfar driving the trolls out,” he said. “They needed the room. It was only fair they help deal with the problem.” She grimaced at something in what he said but gestured for him to continue.

“We thought when we first encountered Orpiment and Realgar that they must have stayed behind when Tin and her people returned north.”

“Hmm.” She nodded. “That is a good and fair answer. And you have given more than promised.”

From what Isolfr and Frithulf had taught the werthreat about svartalfar, Brokkolfr remembered that the race of smiths cherished generosity as highly as any thane or wolfcarl cherished valor.

“Ask your question, Ammasbrother,” Baryta said.

“Antimony,” he began, and then hesitated. “But it's not just about Antimony. I know your councils are made up of smiths and mothers; I have heard Tin say so. As our councils are made of warriors.”

“It is so,” Baryta said. “But that is not much of a question, if you know the answer. You would leave me in your debt.”

“I guess my question is, then, what is Antimony?”

That sparkle of her inlaid teeth again. “Antimony is a smith. A mastersmith, in point of fact, and one of our eldest. But he is also by-honor a mother, as he has adopted children in need and is raising them as his own. He is one of our most honored elders.”

Baryta had felt free to ask ancillary questions, so Brokkolfr did not stop himself. “By-honor?”

The sceadhugenga used one of those windy, harmonic svartalfar words. “
Andetnessa
. By-honor,” she said. “
Andetnessa ne-sooth
. By-honor-if-not-in-fact. A matter of perceived reality in contrast to objective, in a positive context. He performs the service and offers the sacrifice of a mother, so he has the honor of one.”

“Can one be anything by-honor?”

She did something that might have been a shrug but—under the drape of her layers of robes—more resembled a bullfrog inflating and deflating itself. “One can only become a smith by skill,” she said. “Of course, skill is earned, like honor. But it sounds as if your wolfsprechend has become a svartalf by-honor, through his service to … to the Iskryne clans.”

There was something funny in how she said “Iskryne,” and Brokkolfr didn't think he was imagining it. Discomfort, veiled anger. These emotions looked and sounded different on a svartalf, but they weren't unreadable. Just different.

“Your question,” he said.

“You are male.”

That wasn't a question. “Yes.”

“And your companion is male.”

“Yes.”

“Does your kind have females?”

Brokkolfr gaped at her for a moment. “Yes, of course.”

“There is no
of course
about it,” she said. “Trolls have no males, save those who breed their queens. I thought perhaps you creatures were the same way, but in reverse.”

She had thought no such thing; he saw it in the creases around her eyes as they deepened.

He wasn't quite sure how to accuse a svartalf of teasing him; it seemed better simply to answer her question. “Our women are not as powerful as yours,” Brokkolfr said, “but we certainly have them. In fact, there is a woman in the town near my heall who is a smith. She is a widow, and widows sometimes stand in their husbands' stead.”

“Huh,” said Baryta. “But not a mastersmith.”

“We do not have mastersmiths as you do, even as we do not have sceadhugengas.” He stumbled slightly over her title, but she seemed pleased that he had made the effort.

She said, “Your question.”

A sensible man would have asked through trickery or kept his own counsel and learned by observing. But Brokkolfr was very tired of being sensible. “Are your people the enemy of the Iskryne clans?”

It drew her up short. The silver-shod butt of her staff scratched on the stone between cushions and carpets.

“Rather,” she said, “the Iskryne clans hold us in enmity. These caverns are our exile, for practices the old ones found to be anathema. It is why we call ourselves aettrynalfar—poison elves—in commemoration and defiance.” A pause, in which the sceadhugenga made a sound like
humph.
“And now you come from the surface, with news that the Iskryne-folk have begun inhabiting and reworking the very trellwarrens that we were once persecuted for seeking to understand? They will spurn our smithcraft, and yet inhabit the dungheaps of trolls?”

Brokkolfr had heard svartalfar raise their voices to cry across a battlefield or be heard in open council. He had never heard the words of one shake with rage before. He drew a breath and thought about how Skjaldwulf would handle this.

Fortified with the semblance of calm, he said, “I have a feeling there's something here I do not understand.”

She spoke with the same sort of brittle pride he had heard from wolfcarls whose families disapproved of their lives. “We practice forbidden arts here. Did you not observe?”

“No,” Brokkolfr said. “I am ignorant in this as well.”

That hushed her. Momentarily at least. She cocked her head left-and-right and said, “The stone shaping, wolfcarl. The beauties of our lair. You have noticed?”

How could he not? He nodded, thinking of airy stone, filigree, chrysoprase roses that shone with a light of their own.

“It is a trellish art, and some would say unclean.”

It … staggered him. Not that svartalfar had politics—he knew that—but that they had
these
politics. These divisions. These excuses for conflict.

“Who does it harm?” he asked.

This time, the sound her gnarled stone staff made was an intentional sharp rap, and the tiny bells along its length jingled sweetly.

“The soul of the stone? So say our northern cousins. Our ancestors believed that the art of shaping stone with the hands was worth learning.” She shrugged. “Of course, they also forswore warfare and murder.”

He wasn't sure he understood her. “Your people are sworn not to…?”

“To kill,” Baryta said. “The mother of our mothers, the mastersmith Hepatizon, who named herself Vaidurya when her sisters cast her out, taught that each death remained in an alf's song, making her darker and weaker. She taught that it was killing that was poison, not the working of trolls, that if we believe the world is the song of the First Mother, then how can we say we have the right to silence so much as a note of it? We follow her teachings. We hide; we do not kill. And now you and your threatbrother have found our hiding place.…”

Her openness bothered Brokkolfr. If she had never met an outsider—which was seeming more and more likely—she might be frighteningly naïve. “Should you tell a potential enemy that?”

“I would not.” Her voice ran cool and deep with certainty. She spoke as sceadhugenga now, he realized, and not as Baryta. The shift in roles was as astounding as when Vethulf put aside his snappish, temperamental exterior and became a man in command of a war-band. “But you are no enemy of mine, Ammasbrother. Nor, I think, shall you ever be.”

*   *   *

The first Brokkolfr knew of the rescue party was somewhat past suppertime—he assumed it was suppertime—when Isolfr appeared. Or rather, was waiting for Brokkolfr in the company of Mastersmith Antimony, when Realgar guided him and Kari—awake again, and hobbling on stone crutches as light as if they were withy-woven—into a room arrayed for dining.

The wolfsprechend seemed hale and hearty, if a little smirched about the knees and elbows, and he rose from a stone bench by the wall—one that might serve as a sideboard for a svartalf—to greet the prodigals.

“Amma is beside herself,” he said.

Brokkolfr did not wince only because he had expected nothing less. “We did not plan to be gone more than a few handspans of sun.”

Isolfr smiled in sympathy. “Next time you're falling into a hole in the ground, send a message home. Mastersmith Antimony informs me there has been some damage.”

Brokkolfr's face chilled as the blood fell out of it. “I will make it good.”

Kari made a noise of protest. “I was the one who fell through the cave ice.”

“The heall will make it good,” Isolfr said firmly. He glanced from Brokkolfr to Antimony and Realgar. “It may yet serve us to owe them a debt.”

Antimony laughed. “Isolfr Alf-friend,” he said. “It may also cause you untold trouble. Here comes Orpiment with the children now. Come, dine with us. We have much to discuss.”

Brokkolfr wondered how Antimony had known Isolfr's status. Did these exiles, these aettrynalfar, still have contact with their brethren? He would have to tell Isolfr what Baryta had revealed regarding this clan's outcast status. But perhaps in front of the mastersmith and his family was not the correct time.

Brokkolfr kept his counsel close and sat where instructed. There were no benches, although the young alfar had blocks to crouch on. The table was no more than knee-height on a man, and the aettrynalfar ate squatting in their typical resting huddle. Brokkolfr and Isolfr had to help Kari sit on the floor, but once that was accomplished the arrangement was quite comfortable.

“Did no other wolfcarls come with you?” Brokkolfr whispered.

“I have more sense than to go haring off alone,” Isolfr said.

“Barely,” Kari muttered, and Brokkolfr was surprised and delighted when Isolfr laughed.

“True enough. But, yes, there are half a handful of other wolfcarls—they are dining with the…” He looked at Antimony, who supplied, “The quarrymaster.”

“Yes,” said Isolfr, “thank you. The quarrymaster and her masons. We could not spare more men, as there was a cave bear attacking Franangfordtown.”

Kari and Brokkolfr both stared at him. “I assure you,” Isolfr said, “I haven't the imagination to make up such a thing, even to make you feel guilty.”

“We have guilt enough,” Brokkolfr said.

“We will speak of that later,” Antimony said. “Not during dinner. Now, please, allow me to make known to you my children.”

There were five of them, the three Brokkolfr and Kari had seen earlier—Thallium, Cinnabar, and Alumine—and two more: Osmium, who was even smaller than Cinnabar and Alumine; and Pitchblende, who was almost old enough to be apprenticed. Pitchblende called Antimony “Mastersmith,” as Thallium, Realgar, and Orpiment did, while Osmium, Cinnabar, and Alumine called him “Dama.” Perhaps the form of address was a matter of age rather than kinship? The children were confident and well-mannered; all of them seemed to speak the language of men, and Brokkolfr finally succumbed to his curiosity and asked why.