The Tempering of Men (21 page)

Antimony's winging eyebrows shot up. “I see Baryta was correct.”

“Correct about what?” Isolfr asked.

“She told me that your people were awake, even if you could not sing, and I see that it is true.” Antimony took a sip of wine from a stone goblet so delicately made that it was translucent. “We are taught that in the days when the world was young and the World-Tree but a sapling, there was only one language, and alfar, men, trolls, Jotun—all spoke it. My grandmother's mother said that it was the language spoken by the gods and it was they who taught it to the creatures of Midgard, but I have never heard anyone else say that, and I do not know from whom she learned it. We believe that our language is close to that language, but even the svartalfar could not keep everything, as first the Jotun, then the trolls, then the men turned against us. Some of our oldest writing, we think, may be close.

“But as each race turned to war, their language changed and was lessened. The trolls lost language altogether, as in the dreaming of the mother-mind they did not need speech. And the Jotun, it is said, now speak so slowly that it might take a svartalf her entire life to learn one name. But men are the youngest race, and the last to taste the fire, and their language is still close-kin to ours. We learn it because it is our nature and our task to hold knowledge, lest it be lost as the language of trolls has been lost.”

Beside Brokkolfr, Isolfr shifted uneasily but did not speak.

“At least,” said Antimony, “that is the story as I was taught it.”

Orpiment said, “I was taught that it was the svartalfar who taught language to men, and when they could not teach them to sing, they banished them to the skin of the world.”

There was no hostility in his voice—he didn't sound as if it was something he believed, and Brokkolfr listened as all the alfar at the table became embroiled in a discussion of myths and children's tales and variants. He understood why Antimony had said it was their nature to hold knowledge.

Kari said, just loud enough for Brokkolfr and Isolfr to hear, “Skjaldwulf would love this,” and Brokkolfr was reminded that it wasn't alf nature alone. Men could hold knowledge, too.

The aettrynalf food was strange; there was something that tasted like beef but did not have the texture of meat, small crunchy things that Brokkolfr could not identify, and a profusion of root vegetables, some of which he recognized and some of which he did not. All of it was good, and since Isolfr ate without any noticeable concern, Brokkolfr decided he probably didn't have to worry about being poisoned by accident. Antimony calmly and patiently refused to discuss the cave ice until the last dish had been cleared off the table by Realgar and Pitchblende—the oldest of Antimony's children and the youngest of his students—and then the mastersmith rolled his knobbled shoulders and said, “And now we must speak of the business between us.”

Everyone sat up straighter and tried to look attentive.

“If it will not distress you,” Antimony said, “I would wish for my children to stay—so long as they are quiet and respectful,” and he offered a glare at the twins, who nodded solemnly. “We would not have sought out contact between our peoples, but since it has occurred, it seems to me foolish and useless to try to retreat. Better that my children should learn to speak with you now.”

“I concur,” said Isolfr, “and I do not think we will be distressed.” He glanced at Brokkolfr and Kari, who both shook their heads.

“Then, Orpiment, if you will please ask the sceadhugenga and the mastersmiths to come.”

Orpiment left, and Antimony said, “Although we do not have a council as our cousins of the North do, we have agreed that any important decisions about the”—a buzzing, echoing svartalf word, which Antimony translated, “the life of the cave”—“must be deliberated by a quorum of three mastersmiths, with the sceadhugenga to speak for the lives of the creatures, alf and otherwise. Baryta undertook to host the mastersmiths and to explain what has occurred.”

Brokkolfr swallowed hard, and Isolfr patted his thigh, exactly the same tactile reassurance either of them would have offered to his sister. “They understand what an accident is, Brokkolfr.”

“All too well,” Antimony said wryly, and began to tell a complicated story about something that had happened when he was an apprentice. Brokkolfr couldn't follow most of it, but from Realgar's and Pitchblende's expressions, whatever Antimony had done had been truly spectacular. Brokkolfr knotted his fingers together and told himself not to worry.

Antimony's story was almost finished when Orpiment reappeared and bowed in Baryta and the mastersmiths. Brokkolfr was deeply grateful he'd met Baryta already and was able to recognize the smile around her eyes when she looked at him. The mastersmiths were indistinguishable from Antimony to Brokkolfr's eyes; he never did get their names and was reduced to thinking of them as Bark and Bubble for the way each of them spoke.

They asked Kari and Brokkolfr to tell their story again and asked a number of searching questions, most of which were uncomfortable but at least one of which Brokkolfr was grateful for: Bark asked if either of them had ever seen cave ice before.

“No,” Brokkolfr said, and Kari added, “We'd no idea stone could do that.”

“It is a marvelous thing,” Bubble agreed.

“Now destroyed,” Bark said dourly.

“But—Antimony, I have the most fabulous idea! Since the cave ice is broken
anyway
, why should we not—,” and she dropped into svartalf, with a long word that was all warble and buzz to Brokkolfr's ears but made Antimony's eyebrows shoot up. The three mastersmiths huddled into a conversation that made no sense to Brokkolfr at all, despite the fact that he could understand or guess at more than half the words. But it didn't look like Orpiment and Realgar were having any better luck. Bark seemed to disapprove of Bubble's idea—unless that look was just habitual—but Antimony was visibly intrigued.

After a fair span of time, when the discussion had neither ended nor even slowed, Baryta cleared her throat and said, “Mastersmiths?”

“Right,” said Bubble. “The judgment.” Her little twinkling eyes surveyed Brokkolfr and Kari. “You are to be commended for not allowing your corpses to poison the water.”

“We may not know about cave ice,” Kari said stoutly, “but we do know about water ice.”

“That's true,” said Bubble, suddenly intent.

There was another, much quicker round of discussion between the mastersmiths while Kari and Brokkolfr exchanged bewildered glances behind Isolfr, and then Bark said, “Very well. It does answer the question of reparations. Wolfsprechend, we ask from your heall that as you have broken the cave ice in”—that svartalf word that Brokkolfr couldn't make sense of—“so will you aid us in a new shaping there. For while we cannot restore what has been destroyed, we can recognize the opportunity of making something entirely new.”

“And marvelous,” said Bubble, and was not at all subdued by Bark's withering glare.

*   *   *

In the morning, they returned to the surface of the world, Kari supported by his crutches or—frequently—Brokkolfr. It was not easy going: the tunnels were meant for svartalfar, not for men; they were low, and they twisted with the natural patterns of the rock. But Kari did not complain and only once suggested that they would have been smarter to leave him with Antimony.

“I would have had to explain to Hrafn,” Brokkolfr said, and that was all the reassurance Kari needed.

Isolfr had bargained cautiously and hard with the aettrynalfar, but Brokkolfr thought he was pleased to have the heall involved in this shaping. They had shared a bed that night, and Brokkolfr had told him what Baryta had said. “We will be careful,” Isolfr said. “But for all that Tin is my friend, this is an opportunity to share, to learn, that her people would never have offered us. And in truth, if we have neighbors who are both delvers
and
shapers, I had rather be on good terms with them than otherwise.”

Brokkolfr remembered the way troll ambushes came from beneath one's feet and agreed fervently.

The aettrynalfar took them out a different way—which was a mercy, as neither Kari nor Brokkolfr thought Kari would be able to wriggle out the way they had come in. Brokkolfr knew they were getting close to the surface when Amma suddenly burst into his head, a wild wash of anxiety, love, and loneliness.

I am sorry, sister,
Brokkolfr said to her.
I never meant to be apart from you for so long.

Her forgiveness was immediate and as wholehearted as her worry had been. Beside him, Kari exhaled a soft laugh. “Hrafn says I am to leave holes in the ground to rabbits.”

“Hrafn may have a point,” Brokkolfr said.

“It's not the holes that are the problem,” Kari said. “It's breaking my ankle once I'm down there.”

“Yes,” Isolfr said in his soft voice. “The entire heall begs you will not make a habit of that.”

“No fear,” said Kari. “If I never fall through solid rock again, it will be too soon.”

“Is that what it was like?” Isolfr asked.

“It was
rock,
” Brokkolfr said. “Until it wasn't.”

The aettrynalf leading them—one of the masons who had hosted the rest of the rescue party while Isolfr dickered with the mastersmiths—said, “Truly, it is a mistake anyone can make. It is why it is the duty of the smiths' journeymen to explore the caves beyond our settlement, and why they must teach the caves to the apprentices before they may attempt their masterwork. So that there will always be someone among us who knows where the cave ice is. Along with other hazards.”

“Are there many?” Kari said. “Other hazards, I mean?”

The inlay on her teeth flashed in the torchlight when she grinned. “Oh yes. There are holes we do not know the bottoms of, rooms with unstable ceilings, passages that look safe until you are too far along them to back out again, hot pools that will scald you to death if you fall in. Plus bear dens, bat roosts … and the grendle, of course.”

“The grendle?” Brokkolfr said. He was beginning to get a feel for when an alf was teasing.

“The monster who eats aettrynalf kits who go exploring where they are not supposed to,” she said straight-faced. “It is a wonder she did not eat you.”

“Perhaps she thought we'd taste bad,” Kari said, just as straight-faced, and was rewarded by a chuffing laugh.

The exit the aettrynalfar led them to was every bit as well-concealed as the one Kari had shown Brokkolfr, a slit between two boulders so narrow that you could not see it unless you stood directly in front of it. There was barely enough room for the men to squeeze out sideways, and Brokkolfr was glad Isolfr hadn't brought any of the more hulking members of the werthreat. Of course, he remembered, they would have been needed for the cave bear.

There was a delegation of wolves waiting: Amma, Hrafn, Viradechtis, and the other wolves whose brothers had made up the rescue party, plus Kjaran, sitting by Viradechtis and looking politely interested as the men emerged from the earth.

Brokkolfr knelt to hug Amma, knowing that she would try to stand up to reach his face if he did not, and she was much too pregnant for that maneuver. He missed the other reunions, his face buried in Amma's ruff while she licked his ear and neck, but finally Isolfr cleared his throat and said, “Vethulf is back at the heall. He was hurt in the fight with the bear, although Kjaran says not badly.”

Brokkolfr stood, brushing flecks of dead leaves off his knees. “Yes. We should go.”

There was no sign of the aettrynalfar, but Isolfr said clearly, “We will come to treat with you again in a sevenday. And … thank you.”

Except for Kari's pain, which it was getting harder for him to hide, the walk was pleasant. The wolves ranged widely; about halfway back, the rest of the rescue party split off as a hunting party, leaving Brokkolfr and Isolfr to get Kari back to the heall.

“Sorry … about this,” Kari said. “Funny thing is … not my ankle … It's my
arms
.”

“I remember how much Sokkolfr hated his crutches,” Isolfr said. “We won't make you stir from the hearth once you get there, I promise.”

“I'll hold you to that,” Kari said, then gritted his teeth and started forward again.

TWELVE

While the sun set, the Rheans built a pyre. There was no sign of Lucius or the centurion he had gone to fetch; Skjaldwulf guessed unhappily that the centurion had decided to take a more aggressive approach to his blindness rather than make any effort to disrupt Sixtus' plans.

Skjaldwulf could not count on anyone putting a stop to this madness, then. There was no telling when Tribune Iunarius might return, and Skjaldwulf did not want to be a greasy pile of ashes and bones when he did. Otter might help him—and then again, she might not.

Pack,
said Mar.

We don't know where they are,
Skjaldwulf said.

Pack,
Mar said patiently, and showed Skjaldwulf: Ingrun, Kothran, Afi, and Dyrver, with their brothers warm shadows beyond them. They were not far away, and they were quick to answer Mar. Skjaldwulf could not follow much of the conversation that followed, if conversation it could be called. Wolves did not use words, and the flickering mix of images and scents was confusing to anyone who did. But he understood that their small threat was moving toward them. If he could free Mar, at least they would have a target to flee toward.

And it was not that he
could
not free Mar, merely that he could not do so unobserved.
Perhaps as it grows darker,
he thought, knowing that a misjudgment would mean both their deaths.

He waited, watching the competence and precision with which the Rheans toiled. They'd done this before, and he wondered if they often burned witches, wondered if many Brythoni had been burned for not being what the Rheans expected.
A thousand leagues,
Iunarius had said. Skjaldwulf couldn't imagine a distance that great, much less the different peoples who might live within its span. He wanted to tell the Rheans that burning was the wrong answer, but he thought of Iunarius and Lucius and knew that many of them knew that already. A jarl should not be ruled by villagers, and Skjaldwulf thought it would be a terrible pity to die just to prove that hoary truth one time more.