The Four Forges (5 page)

Once the Vaelinars had not been Lost,
Suldarran
, from their own world and Gods, but here on Kerith their greatness still could not be denied, and the lesser Gods and Goddesses of this place were laid bare to the Vaelinars who had the Talent and could harness it. He did. Having discovered it by accident, the Talent had doomed him to Quendius. Now he would return the favor.

Fyrvae threw aside unwanted lesser Demons, reaching for the greatest he could call. A roar of power and rage flooded his being, and he gathered it in, weaving its fiery lines as he wove the fires that forged his weapons, teeth clenched against the scorching anger. He rode the planes of his soul, soaring along scorching winds under a sun that would blind him if he looked with mortal eyes, and felt beings reach for him with a hunger to suck him dry except he did not allow their touch. Only one did he call. His hands gestured through the air, fingers threading the sigils of a calling despite its vast resistance.

A Godling Demon answered in murderous rage, lunging at him, no longer resisting, and his power erupted over them. The force catapulted Fyrvae back into his body, his arms upheld, trembling with the burden of his thoughts and workings, driven back onto his haunches. The Demon he called dove after him.

Something snapped in him as clear as a green branch breaking in two, and the pain shot through him. He buckled. In a flash, he knew that he had called one he could not handle, the answer to all his needs, and the solution that would kill him long before it got to Quendius. Fyrvae swayed as the Demon came at him, maw yawning crimson, otherworld rage bent on ripping open his throat, eager to take his heart and soul. He anchored himself with the only thread he could find, his love for Lindala, a ribbon of the riversoul she held, soothing, wet, and pure, against the fire of this Demon Godling that seared him. He grabbed for strength from her, wrapping it about him as if she could shield him from what he must be. The being took hold of him, and Fyrvae shoved back. He thrust the doubt, the pain, and the Demon off a heartbeat away from being shattered. Agony howled from his throat, followed by defiance. Around him, the Bolgers cried out raggedly, snarling in fear and excitement, hoping to bluff the thing they sensed unseen among them.

He grasped the sword, the double edge slicing open his palm, hot blood spurting upward and the Godling Demon swerved. Fyrvae grabbed up the weapon by its hilt, opening his fingers and letting his blood smear the length of the steel, where it ran into the channel he’d cut into it. The Demon entered the element shouting in greed and unwary need. Fyrvae thrust the sword into the furnace, blasting it a last time. The runes he’d marked on it suddenly shone, entrapping its captive. He waited till the last etching glowed, then took the blade and plunged it into the cold riverwater. A last quenching of water. Now all the other quenchings would come from blood. It inhaled deeply and all went still.

An icy blast roared through the building. The forges all went out at once. Fyrvae staggered, going to one knee. The broken thing inside of him might be as solid as bone or as wispy as soul, he had no way of knowing, but the pain came back with a keen edge to it, no less an edge than what he’d sliced himself open with. He reached for a scrap of cloth in his apron and bound his hand, the cut deeper than he’d intended, the edge of the weapon as sharp as any he’d ever honed. Rufus bellowed out orders. Bolgers scurried, grunting, to replenish the fires, their lives dependent on keeping them lit. Fyrvae took a whetstone, sharpening the blade one last time, even as he walked to the great house. Rain poured down in buckets as he made his way through the storm, his eyesight blurring, reeling in exhaustion, his shoulders bowed, the cords and sinews of his body in tense relief against his wiry frame. Rain in torrents, blessed rain. Too late? He did not know.

Inside the great house, he made his way cautiously to the hall, bumping into things now and then when his body and will could not keep him on a straight path in the shadows, weariness claiming him. Fyrvae found the table he sought and laid the sword across it. It seemed to hiss even as he set it down. Quendius would know it immediately.

He backed off quietly as voices reached him, and footfalls. He was unwilling to be caught there yet was too exhausted to move faster. He found a corner behind a tapestry hung to dampen the draft of the hall, and lingered to catch his breath . . . and waited, leaning his fevered face against the cooler stones.

Fyrvae scrubbed at his eyes, tired and blurred by soot and heat, unable to get a clear view from his hidden niche in the dim light from the sconces in the room. Guards pushed two hooded men inside, their clothes dripping with the rain and smelling of wet horse as well. One wore a greatcoat, the other a fine cloak, and both had rough hoods over their heads, their hands tied behind them. If they were buyers, Quendius did not care for their coin to treat them in such a manner. Fyrvae watched as the guards tore the hoods away from their heads, revealing two Vaelinars, and he sucked his breath in, surprised. Words leaped to his tongue.
Run, fools!
But he bit his lips in silence as the Armorer strode in, stripping off his fine cloak of ivory fur and dropping it over a chair, immediately seeing the blade, a smile crossing his face as he touched a fingertip to it. He ran it down the shining blade with a murmur of appreciation. He looked up, then, at his captives.

Quendius gestured to the guards. “I’ll greet my guests. You take what Bolgers you need and see to the care of the water gates. I want them opened, or we’ll have every cavern flooded in a candlemark, and then see new fires are laid down in the forges.”

The guards sketched obedience and left him facing the two strangers.

The dark shards in his eyes glittered like polished jet. He leaned one hip on the corner of the massive table, not quite standing, not quite sitting. “Uninvited as you are, what business have you here?”

The man he faced spoke as briskly as if he stripped off gloves and made himself at home, his tone matter-of-fact and otherwise unremarkable, a brilliant blue-green aquamarine glinting in his earlobe as he tilted his head slightly to gaze at Quendius. “I heard you manufactured and sold arms. I have need of such; many, in fact.”

“Going to war?”

“If that’s what it takes. The haven of Larandaril is corrupted by the masses of Kerith who crowd it. I intend to push them back and retake our lands, however it is necessary to do so.”

Quendius looked the two of them over. The younger one shifted slightly but said nothing, watching his elder and the Armorer.

“You’d break old truces? The Accords?”

“Vaelinar blood made those truces, and they are being bent now, sorely, by the mongrels who trespass our borders with every breath they take.”

Quendius smiled then. “Have you a name?”

“Gilgarran.” The prisoner lifted and dropped a shoulder in muffled salute.

“Do you know mine, and if so, how?”

“You are Quendius, and it matters little how, for the man who gave me your name is dead. He is dead because having given me your name, nothing would have kept him from giving my name to others, and it seemed prudent to stop bad manners in its tracks.” Gilgarran shifted. The laced hood of his cloak had slipped down when the other hood was jerked away, and waves of amber hair flowed to his shoulders, catching the glow of the muted light. A strand or two of silver showed among the amber, giving some hint of his age that his face did not show yet.

“My business is not known here, nor am I ready to have it known,” Quendius told him simply. “No one comes here unless I invite them.”

Gilgarran countered, “If you will not sell to me, then I propose an alliance. I’ll fight for you, providing it’s fighting you have in mind, taking back what should be Vaelinarran.”

“An alliance?” Quendius stood, raising an eyebrow. “Bold words from an unarmed captive.”

“All of our words thus far have been bold, hmmm.” Gilgarran managed a humorless smile. “Truces, treaties, slaves, weapons, war, captives, alliances.”

Quendius picked up the sword. In his hidden corner, Fyrvae felt something invisible tug at his chest again as he did, bringing fresh pain, and the blade glittered in the Armorer’s hands. “It would be futile,” Quendius noted, “to deny the work I do here. You can smell the works halfway down the mountain, if you’ve any senses at all. You can see where the timber’s been cut to feed the furnaces, and the range mined for ore.”

“But you’re not ready to sell.”

“No.”

“My other offer, then. I bring alliance.” Gilgarran kept his chin up, watching the Armorer’s ash-gray countenance, even as Quendius weighed the two-edged sword carefully in his great hands.

“The trouble with alliances is that each party must offer something the other truly desires. Although I have some pity for the pristine valleys and dells of Larandaril, I don’t really care what happens to any of the havens of my . . . kin.” Quendius looked up from the weapon. “The only thing I want from you is silence.” With a slight grunt of exertion, he swung, the sword taking Gilgarran’s head off before he’d finished his sentence.

The second man dropped to his knees immediately, as the back swing of the blade narrowly topped over him and Fyrvae broke from his hiding place, running for the back hall corridor even before the first head stopped rolling, unable and unwilling to help the living man. Quendius staggered back with a curse, his wrists bowed as the sword came to unbidden life in his grip. He roared as he fought the blade which began to shriek for more blood, twisting and bucking in his hands.

Then Fyrvae burst out of the room and into the hidden back ways, the turmoil and screams fading in his ears as he raced for the mines and tunnels. He had loosed all he’d hoped to, and more. He prayed Quendius could not contain it, and it would turn on him as well.

Fyrvae had but one chance.

He could barely see in the caverns, stumbling in a broken sprint, his hands out, taking the brunt of wall and ceiling as he bumped and fell his way into them, his cut breaking open and the bandage sodden about him, and he nearly fell over Lindala when he finally reached their crevice.

“The raft! Get to the raft.”

“The river is rising. You can hear it everywhere. It’s cresting.”

“I know, I know.” He took her elbow, not to guide her, but to let her guide him. “They’ve opened the floodgates, there is nothing on the river to stop us but the water itself.”

Lindala sucked her breath in, then tugged him after her, after stooping and picking up an ungainly bundle from their nest on the ground, their child wrapped in blankets rewoven from their ragged clothing. She hobbled as she ran, panting from her burden, and he slipped his hand to her braided belt to keep up with her. “We could have used another stick or two,” she managed.

“No time!”

“I know. The rains came!” Her voice lifted a bit, unclouded by worry. They made their way to the banks of the underground river that raced through the caverns, usually silent and dark as a serpent but now bursting, its angry edges phosphorescent in the evernight of the mountains. Lindala put her burden in the center of the raft, tucking an edge of blanket carefully about the sleeping child, and bent with Fyrvae to launch the unsteady platform over the edge. He embraced them both, with a muttered word for warmth, the last of his fragile strength for now. The raft bucked over the edge suddenly, taking them with it, gasping and holding on for dear life. The rain-swollen river frothed about them, all encompassing. If the sword took Quendius down, all their bonds would be severed. If not, they would escape but perhaps into more suffering. Yet the price of freedom was one they’d sworn to each other they’d pay. All hope, all despair.

He embraced Lindala closely, whispering in her ear over the roar of the river. “Now pray for life.”

The waters took them plunging downward.

SEVRYN THREW HIMSELF to his knees as the howling blade passed over him. Something warm dribbled down the back of his neck, and he lunged forward, rolled, and came up, previously concealed long knife in hand, his bonds severed. A high keening raised the hair on his neck as Quendius struggled to retain his balance, sword in his grip. Sevryn threw a glance at Gilgarran’s head rolling across the floor, and without another second wasted, scrambled to his feet and bolted out the nearest door, the view of surprise in his friend’s eyes even as they dimmed overriding his own vision and that of the halls he raced through. His job now was to get out.

Outside, the rain fell in a dense, dark curtain. He plunged into it, boots sliding across mud, turned the corner, and headed across the grounds toward outbuildings. The immensity of the place loomed over him. He could, and would, take a wrong turn or two before finding his way out. Hooded, he had only noted that they had not gone underground while they were being brought in. That, at least, kept him from darting into the various cavern mouths gaping blackly at him. Skidding across the open space, he could hear the shouts behind him, and Quendius’ growling commands.

No time to gather himself to find the way out. He whirled and took down the Bolger sprinting nearest him, leaped over the body, and cut through the pack of guards as they reeled back in grunting surprise. Three more slices and his way cleared. Sevryn wiped blood off his face, cold and thin in the rain. It wasn’t his. He bolted at angles to his destination, zigzagging through the open. Galdarkan guards lunged out of an outbuilding, and he knew a prickle of fear. They would be much harder to take down than the Bolgers. Hounds, then hunters. And after them, Quendius . . . whatever he was, whatever it was he wielded.

The damp brought out the stink of the manure piles as he strong-armed himself over a log barricade. Pigs ran squealing from him, bristle-backs with raised hackles as he plowed through and jumped the other side of the corral. Mud and worse flew from his footfalls. At the far side, he turned and quickly let go two of his daggers. Two Galdarkans fell, one with crimson spurting from his neck, the other holding his leg and cursing him.