The Forge in the Forest (54 page)

The green gloom opened before his eyes, and he saw the gleaming flanks of the shape that dived down, down away from him. But his body was long and lithe now, ribbon-lithe, and he sped after it, the bubbles of his breath streaming past his nose. This shape was more natural to him, more of a size with his own, and it brought back memories of sitting on rocks above the bay of his home village, watching the long sleek sea otters sporting and feeding in the shallow swell. As they had sought shells, so his eyes sought the spear, a point of brightness in the miry bottom. But over it shot a shape larger than the one that had tumbled from his grasp, caught it up and surged away from him at a speed even he could not match. Like a spear itself it seemed, or the broad head of a crossbow bolt. And yet he had no doubt it was her; its flanks still gleamed like the mail she had worn, with air bubbles trapped in the fur. Strange, how appearances were preserved; was there something about him, clad in long body and blunt head, that she also could know? But he had to stop her; she was heading for the surface too fast. He thought back to his childhood once again, and to the high leaping shapes painted in black and white upon the walls of the Headman's house…

This time there was scant pleasure, great pain. This was the hardest of all. His muscles clenched in cramps, his back arched, and suddenly he felt himself break surface, streaming water, and the breath blast out of him and roar inward with explosive force in the instant before he surged under once more. His eye was dimmed, but the rising gleam caught it clearly; he kicked out with his powerful tail, feeling the water fountain behind him and eddy around the high thin fin on his back, and saw the seal break surface just ahead of him. It saw him also, twisted in terror and kicked out with a tailfin around which silver gleamed, turning for the shallows. But it could no more avoid him in this predatory form than a man outrun a landslide. He kicked out again, heaving his sleek bulk upward, and like a toppling hill indeed he slid down upon his quarry. He felt the gape of his great-toothed jaws close neatly round the spearshaft and pluck it free, felt it bend and distort in their inexorable grasp, and at last splinter and snap like a green stick. He spat it out, and saw the ruined thing sink down into the deeper waters of the harbor channel. A shadow passed over his eyes, wide wings of blackness, and with a mighty thrust he rose from the water as if to pluck her down. But the swan wheeled away from him in the air, and he toppled clumsily back. This time he was scarcely aware of thought; again the fire passed over him, and suddenly, he was beating up from the water's surface on black swan's pinions of his own, gliding toward her in the air. Would she understand? Would she believe?
By different roads we reach the same end; what is in your nature I have made mine by my craft. We are alike, you and I
…

Out to sea she might have flown, northward perhaps, or even eastward, out into the trackless ocean. But he turned her away from there, the wind chill on damp plumage, and back, back down toward the palace once again, down to the roof whence they had come. She might have struggled longer; did she come now of her own will, or did she seek to trick him again? In among the statues they flew, he close behind her, right to the spot whence they had come. It was a close landing, confusion and a clumsy impact, and a flare of fever played over him. But by then he was already himself, dazed and winded, sprawled there upon the roof a few paces from Kara. Gorthawer lay at his fingertips, as if he had simply fallen there in springing after her and no weird change had ever come upon him. But he could feel the sting of salt drying upon his cheek, and the light of dawn was now stealing swiftly up the sky.

The roar of battle burst up from below, and in dire dread he hauled himself up against the rail, clinging to some ancient's sculpted robe. But when he saw what passed below him, though the square was a place of carnage, his heart filled with a flaming joy. For even as he watched a sweeping assault of city folk burst against the shieldwall of the Ekwesh, with a cry like the angry sea, and now like the sea they washed over it. The painted shields toppled before them, and were borne down. In scant moments the black-clad ranks dissolved, hewn and beaten down by the sheer force
of
a wrathful folk whose fettered hearts had at last been set free, whose foes had lost the force that underpinned their belief. Men they were still, brave men, but they knew themselves deserted by all that they had served. From iron order they became a milling, desperate mass fighting only to escape from the square, and so being scoured from it piecemeal. Only around Bryhon Bryheren, last symbol of that service left them, did they gather and rally, and stave off the doom that closed around. His armor shone cold in the first gray light, bright as a fragment of the very Ice itself, and the fall of his axe clove those foolhardy enough to challenge him as the Ice the land it passed over. But into the very center of those diehard Ekwesh struck a charge of their foes as arrow into target, and at that arrow's tip were three before whom no Ekwesh stood. The knot broke, and this way and that they fled, crazed with despair, and cast themselves over the steep sides of the square, or stood at bay with screams of meaningless defiance and were struck down with ease by the citizens. And in an open space upon the steps, Kermorvan and Bryhon came face to face at last, and Bryhon had his true wish.

Though both were weary, like men fresh and young they fought, the great axe whistling in the air as it chopped and cut at Kermorvan, seeking ever to force him to a false footing upon the worn stair. But his sword was light in his hand, and as Bryhon's strokes passed, it bit and stabbed at him so fast he was forced to parry with the long axehaft. Showers of sparks flew up, for it was bound all in rings of steel, but Elof knew well the strength of the gray-gold sword and the arm behind it, and guessed what must soon happen. So evidently did Bryhon, for as Kermorvan thrust hard at him he changed the way of his stroke with amazing swiftness, and let its own impetus whirl him round. Abruptly he was no longer in the path of the thrust; Kermorvan lost his balance, stumbled to his knee on a lower step, and Bryhon whirled right about and hewed down with fearsome speed at the back of his unprotected neck. Kermorvan could not throw himself out of the path of that terrible blow; he threw himself under it instead, straight against Bryhon's feet. The axe hissed past Kermorvan, and at the same moment his legs kicked straight, carrying him to his feet. The axe crashed into the stone and shattered in flying splinters; Bryhon toppled over Kermorvan's rising shoulders and crashed down beside it in a jangle of metal. The gray sword flashed skyward, and with the first rays of the risen sun it fell upon that bright armor. And deep as the sun into clear ice, it struck it through. Metal clashed and screamed; Bryhon convulsed, his limbs jerked at that impaling stroke, and the chain was broken indeed. Kermorvan plucked free his sword, and Bryhon in agony rolled over onto his back. In the silence that had fallen, Elof heard him mouthing, snarling, but could make out no words, if words there were. He folded suddenly, clutched at himself, then his hand came free with a broad dagger and he rose on his knees and lunged at Kermorvan's midriff. Kermorvan's sword crashed down once again, and passed point down between Bryhon's armored collar and his neck. He fell back, head downward upon the steps, shuddering. A great rush of scarlet stained the tangled beard, spread out in a wide pool upon the steps, and he was still. A deafening cheer arose from the square around, and the crowd rushed forward. Slowly, shakily, Kermorvan sat down upon the steps and put his head in his hands.

Elof turned slowly away, at once glad and sickened, and in a sudden flood of horror realized he had forgotten Kara. He looked up, and was startled to see her only a pace or two from him, her brown eyes wide beneath her salt-straggled hair. What had she lingered to watch—the battle, or him? Clumsily he put out a hand to her, and like a wild creature she started back. "Kara!" he croaked, and she sprang back another pace. He stepped forward and tripped over Gorthawer; the helm slipped over his eyes, and he heard her halting footsteps stumble back further. He wrenched off the helm and stuffed it in his tunic, picked up the sword and sheathed it. But still Kara backed away, her full lips trembling, and suddenly, coming to a low doorway, she whirled and sprang down it. In panic Elof dashed after her; if once she got out of his sight she could assume any shape, and how would he ever find her then?

The door led down a short stair into an upper corridor of the palace, richly appointed but with an air of neglect in recent years; the rich hangings on the walls had a faint smell of mildew about them. Kara was hobbling along ahead of him, staggering along the walls in desperate flight; the sight plucked at his heart. Why had she changed so from the brief moments they had shared before, when she had seemed to return his love? Now she seemed to fear him, the last thing he would have. His heart felt empty as these unhappy halls, and he cried out her name as she fled, as he saw her turn a corner and vanish through a wide doorway. Round its heavy pillar he whirled, and found himself in a wide and airy room, a bedchamber with an open balcony beyond. A tall brazier still burned there, that had warded off the night's chill. Beyond it, on that balcony with her back to the balustrade, bedraggled in her mail, stood Kara, gazing at him with the same fierce feral look.

"Don't go, Kara! Don't flee! Did I not do as you bade me? I followed the dawn, Kara. And dawn is here."

"And I did as I promised," she said quietly. "Though many a time I had to break away in pain to do it, and endure punishment after. Did you not see my wings?"

"Often," he said. "And grateful I am, and grieved at your pain. But could you not have come closer? That fleeting vision brought me as much foreboding and fear as comfort."

"Fear and foreboding is the lot of mortals who mingle with Powers," she said. "That I would spare you."

"Why? Because you love me?"

"Because I too have been caged so long!" She was shivering now. "I would have no more bonds, nor wish them upon others…"

"If I have learned one thing in all this long year's journeying, Kara, it is that we all must bear the bonds of our own selves. In that men and the Powers are alike."

"Come no closer!" she gasped. "You know me for a Warrior of the Powers, and you would dare match yourself against me? You would still dare speak of loving me?"

A breathless laugh bubbled in Elof's breast. "I would! I have loved you since first I looked upon you. And if you are of no common sort, nor, it seems, am I! For you would not be the first of your kind I have matched myself against. Have I not broken the will of one great Power, in the heart of his domain? And gone up against another in body, and bested her also? And by the craft that burns within me have I not won for myself arts scarce short of your own, strength that outmatched you at the test? Though I saw well that you never sought in any shape to harm me, Kara. You love me, as I you. And none of these deeds I dare boast of, not even the blood of Vayde that may run in my veins, nothing would make me worthy of you if that simple truth did not! I am told that men have loved the Powers before, Kara; but those Powers must also have loved men." He stepped closer, came up to her upon that bright balcony, and she stiffened, her body tautened, but she made no move to flee. The silver chain clinked at her ankles, and he stared at it with hatred. "I have no forge nor hammer to hand! But let us see—" And he caught up his gauntlet, and thrust his mailed hand into the brazier. The dancing flames sank, the coals crackled and dimmed, the glowing metal blackened and dewed the cold. "He who made this bond I cast down! She who willed it has fled me! Shall mere metal stand against my will? I have seen the sun's warmth melt the Ice itself!" He clamped his gauntlet hard about the fetters. For an instant they seemed to drink in the intensity of heat, and then suddenly they shattered. Kara's legs quivered, and he caught her as he rose. He stripped off the gauntlet, and reached out with hands that trembled to clasp the cold mail at her shoulders.

"Would you destroy me?" she whispered desperately. "Would you shatter my fair reflection upon the dark stream?"

He shook his head gently. "I would only drink of its waters, Kara, and slake a thirst ere it consumes me. I am wreathed about in fires! But if I were to drown in it, I could ask no more." He bent his head and kissed her, and smiled inwardly as he tasted salt upon her lips. Then he did indeed start, as at a sudden burning, and he clutched her close, slid his hands from shoulder down across the smooth mail of her back, felt her firm breasts flatten against him, and leap as she gasped.

"Here also there is flame!" she breathed, her eyes wider, wilder than ever, an abyss of darkness beneath him. "With all the force of my being I could crush you in my arms, drink of you, burn you, consume you! Elof, would you? Dare you? Do you not fear the madness that comes upon me?"

He threw back his head and laughed. "Ah! Since when did a smith fear a flame?"

Then
suddenly
his laughter turned to a cry of shock. For the mail he caressed caved inward, and fell away to emptiness in his
grasp
. Dazed, he let it fall and jingle upon the polished stone, and stepped back from it, bewildered. Of her feather cloak there was no sign. The sky above was empty, the room… There was the cloak, draped flat like counterpane across the bed. With a tingle of anticipation he threw it back. But beneath it there was nothing save a sheet of creamy silk. For a moment he stared at it, and then he saw the gleam that flowed within it, as through true smithcraft, and he laughed again, and shed his own soiled tunic and hose, and lay down upon it. Under his hands it squirmed and surged, and was Kara again, her own laughter warm in his ear.