The Forge in the Forest (39 page)

Elof sighed, took his bag of tools from his pack, and extracted a light hammer and some long shapes of bright metal strangely wrought and twisted. "There will probably be ten open doors further down the corridor…"

"Something open that suddenly becomes shut may attract a certain attention!" countered Kermorvan dryly, watching Elof tap all round the lock, feeling the vibration with his fingertips, then pass the long probes into the keyhole and tap on them. "Well, do you think you can do it?"

Elof shrugged, produced a little bottle of fine oil from the toolpack and dipped a probe into it. "Who can tell? If it is as simple as it appears… But I doubt that. Morvan the City was a great center of our craft, and much wisdom was scattered to the winds at its fall."

"Yet it had to start somewhere. If that lock was old even at Morvan's fall…"

Elof's irritation flared. "Then the accursed thing really will be set solid! Quiet, and let me work!"

Kermorvan smiled tolerantly, and strolled a little way up the corridor, gazing watchfully into the dark. Roc and Ils joined him, peering at the carvings and talking in low voices. "What d'you reckon that place might be behind there, anyway?" muttered Roc, suppressed excitement in his voice. "Some secret hideaway?"

Kermorvan shrugged. "It is hard to say. For people, you mean, or treasure? That is less likely. The lock is not well concealed, and the folk of Morvan must have known there was no hope of rescue or recovery in their lifetime or their descendants'. But many old houses of Kerbryhaine have some kind of hidden entrance or stair…"

"You mean… that could be the lower end of some such thing?" Ils demanded. "Leading to an escape, perhaps?"

"Perhaps. But do not build up your hopes. For now I will be content with some place to rest."

Elof pursed his lips, and went on probing at the lock. He had sprung its levers free, oil was spread liberally over the channels where the key should travel, and he had traced their shape; it did indeed seem simple, too simple to deter any save the most casual attempt to open it. Perhaps they had thought the great gate protection enough. Next, he must twist and tap a scrap of stiff wire into the shape of the wards; held in grippers, that should shift the bolt, if it could still be moved. He maneuvered the wire into place, and began to twist it, squeaking and scraping, through the channels. Up it went, up, up, and he became aware without turning that the others were breathing down his neck, tense and silent. Slowly, with all the delicate strength he could muster, he twisted it to the very top of the lock. Then it was as if fire and ice flowed into his arm, a convulsive, tingling shock that must have showed in his face.

"What is it?" Kermorvan hissed. "Are you all right? Can you not…"

"I am a fool!" snapped Elof between clenched teeth. "Who would place so strong a virtue upon so simple a thing? But there it is, a force of stern authority such as I have seldom encountered…"

"To what effect?" Ils whispered.

"I don't know," muttered Elof. "It was too quick, I wasn't ready. I must…" Gritting his teeth, he twisted the wire once more, hard. Again that pain surged into him, but this time he met it, endured it, opened himself to it and sought to read the resonances it awoke within him. A feeling grew in him, which became a note, a phrase, a line, a complex net of surging music. And in that music he heard words of stern command.

Look to the lock! The wards are of fire!

Of ice the bolt!

It stings,

It burns

The hand that turns

That lacks the right,

That serves the ill!

It scorches,

It freezes,

Its strength shall consume you!

Fall back then, false that you are!

"Ah!" he murmured. Never before had he been so clearly aware of the virtue within a work; it was as if words were reinterpreted, remade within his mind, as if the voice of that unknown smith of elder days spoke to him, self to self, through the power of their common craft. Eerie he found that, and daunting, and yet at the same time its sheer clarity aided him. "It says only one with authority may open this door! Ancient and arrogant and strong it feels, older than the metal of the lock itself…"

"Is that possible?" demanded Roc.

"If the lock were repaired piecemeal, over many, many years, yes… and if the virtue were made strong enough in the beginning. Which it surely was."

Kermorvan growled with impatience. "Then you cannot open it?"

"Not directly! But let me think…"

"It would be a strong force indeed," he heard Ils murmur, "that could resist what is in him… if only he can bring it to bear…"

Elof searched his mind with growing impatience. In what would the lock recognize authority? A key, set with a matching virtue? But keys may easily be lost in the course of time, and that spell was meant to last. Was that why the lock was made deliberately simple? So new keys could easily be cut… and used with some greater authority, less likely to be lost. Any number of locks could be secured thus. Most men would need some outward emblem of authority, imbued by smithcraft with virtues of command, but a smith might manage with a simple form of words, if only they were the right words…

Or strong ones. The arrogant sting of the spell, the shock of pain and the contemptuous dismissal in the words, these had roused a great impatience in him, and it swelled now to danger. Kermorvan had bidden him open this door, and who now was lord of these ruins, if not he? Elof bitterly resented being so daunted by this ancient force; he would meet its demand for authority with his own. He would create a counterpoint to that wild music, an answer to those challenging words, as surely as he had shaped wire to ward. And with that thought his impatience turned to a harsh insistent rhythm, a chant of authority no less imperious than that upon the lock. He leaned his head against the cold stone and though he muttered the words he seemed to feel them batter against that guardian thought like a forging hammer, like that of Ilmarinen in his image.

By the self that hears your singing,

And the craft that burns within me,

By the strength I turned to evil

And the evil that I withered,

By the skill that I have nurtured

And the knowledge I have gathered,

By the courage of the seeker

And the quest that now I further

These the rights you shall acknowledge

These the strengths you shall bow down to,

You, a singing of the Old World,

You shall hearken to a Master

As the Shaping to the Shaper

In the image you are set in! As a rightful lord has willed it, By that will I bid you—open!

On the last word he gripped the wire and twisted, this time with all his strength, ignoring the pain that lifted before him like a forbidding barrier. Then suddenly, astonishingly, it was no longer there; the lock was turning softly, silently, the bolt sliding smoothly back from the socket it had lain in a thousand years or more. Elof let out a great sigh, and sagged down on his knees, still clasping the grippers. Under his weight the slab creaked out a little way from the wall, and stopped.

"Bravely done, my smith!" said Kermorvan admiringly, as Roc helped Elof to his feet. "Do you rest now! For since your skill has freed the lock, let mere thews do what remains!" And he leaned forward, clenched his long fingers round the lip of stone, braced a foot against the wall and hauled. Slowly, ever so slowly, the great door yielded to his careful strength, a finger's width, a handspan; the faint protest of hinges could be heard, but no more. Ils ducked under his arms to add her own unhuman strength; her shoulders tensed, the muscles stood out on her shapely limbs, tracing the shape of the heavy bones beneath. The slab advanced a handspan more, and in its exposed edge metal glinted, a diamond-shaped plate of tarnished bronze that could only be the lock. Upon it were incised many characters, but it was the cartouche upon the square face of the bolt that caught Elof s eye, that sowed within him a sudden unease. So fierce a challenge, on a lock so simple… Those characters, that pattern, he had seen them on other bronze; his hand flew to his pack, to the wrapped shape of the scepter, and he saw at last what crooked shape it must be that Ilmarinen forged. That carven door must symbolize royal command, the power those characters embodied; and so he had misread that challenge. Not arrogance, but a stern decree of state… "Kermorvan, hold! This may be no common hiding place…"

But he was already too late. Under the unison of strong arms the stone was swinging outward with a momentum of its own, sending Ils hopping out of its path, Kermorvan striving to halt it lest it be torn from its protesting hinges. The torches fluttered, and from the open doorway the darkness billowed out like curtains in the wind. A slight rush of air swirled out after it, a waft of odors strange to the cold corridors, a heavy, stifling weight of dust and must, a strange scent tinged with a thin spiciness, with aromatic resins and pungent balsam. It was such a smell as antiquity might have, the dust of withered summers, of faded years.

Kermorvan, releasing the door, swept up the guttering torches and stepped over the low sill into the chamber beyond, holding them high. They flamed up and flared, the blackness cowered away at their fire and fled down the long chamber before them. For a moment Kermorvan's tall shape hid it from the others; but then he seemed to crumple as if struck. His cloak billowed about him and he sank down to his knees, the torches sagging in his hands; red light and long shadows surged up the walls. Strange shadows they were, from the high slabs and pedestals of stone ranged along those walls, from the still shapes upon them. Kermorvan bowed his head low in the somber glow.

"What ails you, man?" Elof whispered, hardly able to speak aloud. Kermorvan made no reply, nor showed that he had heard. "What is it?" persisted Elof, ever more unnerved. "What place is this?"

To those who knew him less well, Kermorvan might have lacked expression, have looked like the graven image of a man painted into life yet tinged with the stone that lay beneath. And they might have asked, those who did not know him, into what unimaginable depth or distance his gray eyes stared. His companions, each in their way, knew better, saw the play of feelings inside him like cloud shadows going across a hill, like breath upon glass, heat through iron. His stony lips stirred, but it was not to them he spoke.

"
All that we were
…" he murmured, and shook his head, almost in disbelief. Roc, hearing the words, looked around him quickly.

"It can't be!" he burst out. "We've not…" He bit his lip, and to Elof's astonishment he looked ready to turn and run. Kermorvan repeated the words softly.

All that we were, passes; A sheaf of dry grasses That late in green meads blew, To this end are we come. Passed on, scepter and crown, Justice and rule, laid down, As least man must, we rest Silent, in our long home.

"Ils and Elof, you would not know that," he said gravely. "It is the opening of the rhymes of lore that are called
Arel Arhlayn
. Few in Bryhaine now learn them, but that first line has become proverbial."

A dreadful understanding cut through Elof's confusion. "But
Arel Arhlayn
, in the old words that would mean…"

"The Tale of Lords, the tally of kings. Exactly so. And you could say you stand among it here, its living self, or that once lived. For as you feared, this is no common hiding place. We have strayed into the crypts of the ancient King's House, and by your craft laid open the place called Dorghael Arhlannen, vault and tomb of the Kings of the realm of Morvan, the deepest hallow of all that land. And all around us they lie."

Elof could have wished the cold stone to open then and swallow him. For in his haste, his old ruthless haste, had he not seen that stern barrier only as a thing to be broken down, without thought or respect? Even thus an Ekwesh pirate might shatter a casket of fine crystal to get at the gold within. The Kings of Morvan! Kermorvan's own line, his forefathers whom he most revered… Like Korentyn. Elof thought then of the brand that ancient lord had set upon him, of open honor and hidden shame. Had he not now earned it doubly?

"Elof Valantor…" said Kermorvan, and Elof sickened at the name. The warrior's voice was hushed, but the same cold strength was in it that the smith had heard first among the duergar, and never forgotten. "Well may you bear that title! For by the cunning of your hand you have brought an era to an end, a long era of division, of separation, that should never have taken place. To this place of old it was the custom that every prince must come ere he took the kingship, to revere his ancestors, to take counsel among them, to reflect upon the end to which even such power as his must come, and so use it more worthily. And because the son King Keryn sent east was too young to have done this, it was the pretext his enemies chose to deny him the throne, and all of us of his line following. Now let them regret it! For they have laid so much weight on that one custom, that it shall turn as heavily against them. You have done me greater honor than I deserve, my friend." He looked round, met the astonishment on Elof's face and smiled gravely. "Did you fear otherwise? Why? It was at my behest you broke the enchantment on the lock; what followed was mine to bear, for weal or ill. And bear it I shall! Share this with me, my friends; look around you, imagine, wonder! Here lie in state the remains of the Kings of Morvan since the first founding of that kingdom upon the then unknown shores of Brasayhal, a good four thousand years ago."