The Hammer of the Sun (45 page)

"I know!" said Elof calmly. "I meant something else, something lurking under their whole approach to us. They spoke as they did so that no word could be reported; in another's voice the true meaning would be lost. Yet would you have babbled out so perilous a plot so lightly to one you hardly knew? However badly you needed his help, however sure you were he hated your victim? They seemed in such haste, too hasty to make caution worthwhile for them." He paused. "Or for me. As if they knew something might happen to me -"

"Or they planned it to!" muttered Roc, "the treacherous little swinesheads!" Then he brightened again. "But you must still be all right for those two weeks, or they
wouldn't
have swallowed the wait. And after that…"

"After that we'll see. I will deal with them another way. But we must hasten our plans, Roc. At least I've won time to work without interruption, still." But in that, as before, he was mistaken.

The days that followed were a time of unrelenting toil. They had known many such in their lives, but seldom if ever had they had so clear and steep a brink marked out before them, or so dark an abyss beyond. They knew their span; in fourteen days they must be ready, for after that might lie ruin for themselves, and so, perhaps, all that they cared for in the world. Their work began before the sun, and finished after it, though it was high summer and the evenings growing long. Through light and dark they laboured, and sought rest only when they were close to falling, when the arm would no longer support the weights it must, when the fingers trembled perilously over delicate work and the details of it became dull blurs under aching smoke-ridden eyes. Once in a while rest was forced upon them, chiefly when the furnace must be left to cool, but Elof grudged the rest even as he welcomed it. For him sleep became a monster that drew him down unwilling into shadowy deeps, into nightmare and turmoil that left him feeling almost worse when he awakened. Roc slept better; but all his food smacked of little save smoke and soot.

Late one evening, that of the twelfth day since the coming of the princes, such an enforced rest found Elof slumped upon the hearthside seat where his aching limbs and shoulders could draw in the milder warmth gratefully, taking bread and drink he could scarcely taste. His eyes burned from the endless intricacies of his task; the urge to haste burned in his veins, and with it the fear that all might come to a crux too soon. He felt a fierce restlessness, and the need to distract his racing mind. It was a jeweller's craft he exercised here, yet the power in
it
was vast, and must be tightly secured, firmly controlled, lest the work shatter under its own stress. So also it was with him. Roc was throwing open doors and windows to clear the manyfold smells and smokes of the labours, and let the scent of the myrtle bushes nearby drift in on the warm airs, alive with the creaking of cicadas. But at the window that looked down to the River he stopped, gaped out and swore horribly. "What is it?" Elof shouted.

"There's a bloody boat down there! Beached and all, sail furled and a couple of sailors dozing in her lee! Someone's sneaked ashore!"

"But who? Is it that Royal barge?" "No; half the size! But it looks rich enough!" Elof swung around on his crutches, but even as he did so he saw the shadow that crossed the doorway. He raised his voice in an impressive challenge. "Who comes unheralded to the Socerers' Isle?"

The voice that answered him was a woman's, hard and clear and proud. "No herald needs the Princess Beathaill to any servant of the King her father! Bow down to receive her!" Through the doorway stepped two tall and haughty women, angular in rich-hued gowns of court, and stood flanking the entrance, their eyes flickering nervously about the strangeness of the forge. After a moment, seeing no lurking peril, they turned and bowed, and between them stepped a shape shorter and more shapely of a girl of at most twenty years, probably a shade less, startlingly pretty, clad in a divided hunting gown of green as bright as her eyes, with breeches of the same beneath. She hesitated only a moment before she saw Elof, standing stunned behind a great anvil, and advanced to meet him. Her body, slender and lissom, moved with a skipping grace that set her mane of long chestnut hair asway; that and the hair alone allowed Elof to recognise in her the little girl of eleven who had witnessed his downfall and disgrace. And now, of all things, she was holding her hand out to be kissed.

"I seek the mastersmith," she said in a soft voice, slightly tremulous, as, speechless with astonishment, he took it to his lips. "The crippled one, the… Valant, the sorcerer…"

Elof placed his hand at the open neck of his shirt, upon the small stamp that hung there. "I am the Mastersmith, my lady, Elof Valantor. You will find no sorcerers here." And he bowed as best he could on his crutches.

She made no reply at first, but stared at him wide-eyed, her feelings coursing undisguised across her face. There was fright at first, and surprise; she stepped back a little, and her hand flew to her throat. Then came awe, and sudden interest, and she looked him up and down with a heedless arrogance that made him acutely aware of his maimed legs. "But… you are so much younger than I thought to find!" she said. Then her eyes grew apprehensive again. "Or… is that only the way you choose to look?"

"I am as you see me, my lady," he answered, a little stiffly. She had looked on him last with the eyes of a child, eight years since, and though even now he was not yet in his middle years, she had evidently been expecting some snaggle-toothed spellmonger out of romances. Perhaps her brothers had been telling tales, and exaggerating the mysterious figure he cut.

"
Of
course?" she laughed, a little too blithely. "Why, you might almost be handsome, if you kept your-self cleaner. And if you could manage to smile now and again; or are you so set in grime and grimness that your cheeks would crack?"

"You come upon me in the practice of my craft and mystery, my lady. At the day's end you would find me scrubbed as clean as you could wish to look upon. And should I in my plight smile as lightly as any careless mayfly of your father's court? I saw you weep once at a certain sight."

She laughed again, and wrinkled her dainty nose. "Oh, I was only a child when last you saw me; father would not let me come here, in all these years."

"Then should you have come now, my lady? Will your father not be wroth with you? If you go swiftly he need never find out…"

She arched her brows at him. "So eager to be rid of me? Do you have so many high-born ladies visit you that you must drive one forth ere the next arrive?"

Elof smiled wryly, and bowed again. "Doubtless they would all pale away before your fair presence, my lady Beathaill. I spoke only out of concern for your gracious self."

She laughed, and clapped her hands. "Ah, so you can smile when you wish, I see. And play the courtier, also. But my father is far off, deep in endless wrangles with the barbarians or some traitorous lord, I know not which, and besides he grows old. He will hardly care about such a petty thing, not now…" She checked at a thought, and began to rummage in the long and heavy sleeves of her outer robe. "Not now my brothers have set foot here, I meant. But still, I have no time to waste, there is dancing tonight in the hall. I came not out of vulgar curiosity, I wish you to mend something for me…a gaud, an ornament… ah, here it is." And before Elof's appalled eyes she cast the two halves of the golden arm-ring chiming upon the anvil beside him. He stood staring at it, and felt the blood drain from his face.

"Is aught amiss?" he heard her ask, sudden concern in her tone; but her voice reached him as from some infinite distance. "Are you unwell? Or can it not be mended? Has it been re-soldered too often? Speak freely, you need not fear my displeasure; it is the least of my things, but I have had it since I was a child and am grown fond of it, only it is forever breaking and my ladies insist that I cannot wear a broken thing now I am no longer a child, and that I must give it up or have it made whole. Only," she added, a little wistfully, "there is no goldsmith in the city who has ever been able to heal it neatly or lastingly, not without melting it down altogether. And I fear they would spoil it, then!"

Elof drew breath, and recovered his calm. He guessed there was more, that word had indeed got round of the princes' exploit; probably Kenarech had been boasting of it - though hardly of his true reasons, save to a select few. Almost certainly she was not among those; but she had been delighted at having such an excuse for a slightly daring exploit of her own, of being able to boast that she too had bearded the mysterious sorcerer in his den - all the more because her father would not approve.

"It can be re-made well enough here," he told her, caressing the pieces with his fingertips, feeling the ridges of solder built up about the broken surfaces. He would gain little from lying about that; she would only take the pieces away to cherish. "And so it should be. But my lady, do you know what you have brought me?" He chose his words carefully. "This… gaud was made by me, and taken from me against my will, and the loss of it all but broke my heart. It was the first gift from me to my wife, who is lost to me."

"Ohh," breathed the young woman, and laid a light finger on one of the serpentine pieces, so that it rocked back and forth. "How sad that she is lost, sorcerer! But my father would have found you another if you had asked him, a very fair one, even though you are not a whole man."

"I have never wished another," answered Elof as calmly as he could, still holding back from open appeal. Beathaill looked at him more closely, and her green cat-eyes grew softer.

"That is sweet; you must have loved her very much! Make me the ring again, Valant, and maybe you will find another to love…"

Elof grew desperate, and clenched his hand on the anvil's rim. "Princess, I ask it of you; I beg you, do not keep it from me! If I could, I would throw myself at your feet for it. Give it me, and I will shape you such jewels as never blazed about the body of any princess of this earth! I will draw down the light of moon and stars and girdle you with them, I will crown you with the rays of the sun! I will make you a vision among the Powers! But do not keep it from me!"

She was all astonished attention now, biting at her neat forefinger with unconscious childishness. "Could you do that, indeed?" she whispered. "How soon? Would it take long?"

"It could not be hurried, my lady!" admitted Elof. "A year, perhaps, if my labours are as light as now; a brief time, for such an end… my lady, give it me!"

Sadly, regretfully she shook her head. "Alas!" she said softly, "it may not be. I would have you work your wonders, but soon…" She checked herself once more. "But Valant, I did not take the ring from you, and it was given to me and I love it; I cannot let it go for a promise. You may keep it a few days, at least, to remake it. Do that, and make me these jewels you promise, and then, maybe, I will let you ask it of me again; and I shall take good care of it in the meantime, never fear."

"My lady!" cried Elof in anguish, "Do not sport with love, as you hope for love yourself…"

Her neat mouth pursed, and she stamped hard on the earthen floor. "You presume upon my good heart, smith! What are you but a thrall, my father's broken bondsman, unfitted even to address me, let alone beg? All you have is mine by right, all the jewels you can make me mine if I but wish them! It is not for you to bandy bargains with a princess of the Lonuen! Five days from now my father is due back; I shall return on the third. If the ring is not made whole, then do you look to that wise head of yours! And seek not to gull me with substitutes; I have worn that ring these many years, and even re-made I shall know it! Meanwhile you may reflect on what respect is due a princess!" She spun on her heel, waving her women away before her; the wide skirts of her gown flared about her, her riding boots clattered on the threshold, and the door slammed. Elof bowed his head down over the anvil till his forehead almost touched the cold iron, and his fingers gripped the rim of it as if to dig deep into the metal.

"Whew!" Roc breathed eventually, breaking the tense silence. "Old Nithaid's losing his grip for sure, if even that chit and child rushes to defy him!"

"No, Roc!" said Elof; his voice was stern, though the grime on his face was streaked and moist. "There is more to it than that, I am sure now! She also was strangely in haste; and twice she all but let slip that time, my time, grows somehow short… That
is
why her dear brothers were in such haste, then! And it all has some connection with Nithaid's return…" He hobbled laboriously to the window, and watched the little boat pulling away from shore, the sail hoisting and swelling, shining suddenly scarlet as if the rays of sunset filled it. He could not see whether she was looking back at him. "It grows shorter than you dream of, lady, that time…"

"But can you?" demanded Roc. "In five days, if it's true what you fear… Can we finish our work in that time?"

"We must - must we not? And one thing more, even. For this,
this
-" He caught up the halves of the ring, clutched them to him, held them to his lips, his eyes, his breast. "Whatever may befall, this shall be made anew!"

What means Elof used are not recorded. Most probably he encased the two pieces together in the finest clay or sand, as the ring was first moulded, and fired it with long and delicate care as it first was, in the upsurge of earthfires. He would have sung the same soft songs over that chrysalis within which the sundered gold sweated! shivered and at last grew liquid, as it seethed and flowed in currents of convected heat, pent within the shell of its own shape. But within that shell there would be nowhere it might flow, save into itself, uniting, mingling. Within that shell the process of change was brought to its absolute, only to be turned back upon itself; a dissolution so total it restored form, a turmoil so fierce it imposed unity, a storm that served only to create a greater calm.