Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (54 page)

Nora groaned.

“Bashan is just doing your legwork,” she said bitterly. “He’s supposed to get the Blade for you. Then you’ll have all the gods’ treasures, all their power, won’t you?”

Suranna clapped her hands in mock delight.

“Aren’t you a clever little girl? I do hope you don’t tell anyone.”

“What do you want with me? I mean nothing to you. I am nothing. No one. Just kill me already and have it done and over with.” Nora closed her eyes.

“Look at me.” Suranna bent down to see Nora’s face. Nora obeyed. “I was once your age. I saw the world as it truly is: dark and ugly on the outside and worse within. Then I met him and everything changed.”

“Diaz?”

“Shinar. He came to me in a vision. A vision of how I would summon Him back into existence. I saw you, too, your coming as a herald to a glorious free future where we all, man and wight, shall be the children of the gods once more.”

Nora remained silent. She had no answer to that amount of crazy.

The conversation died and Suranna left.

Nora was alone for a while in the shade, heat gone, thirst gone. Her arms ached and her legs were still weak, but she knew it would be over soon. And so she waited.

After what felt like hours, the door opened once more.

Owen stood in the doorway, holding the key to her shackles. The start of a scruffy beard lined his jaw, and his face seemed leaner than she remembered, grim and hard. A lump tightened Nora’s throat. She stood still, fighting the urge to strain against her bonds and reach out for him. Owen did not move except to look her up and down, as if he were memorizing every detail. The need to touch him grew unbearable. What if it was a trick? What if it was Suranna returning and he—

“Owen.” Her voice cracked.

As though hearing his name broke his trance, he stepped up swiftly to open the shackles with trembling hands, catching her as she tumbled into his arms. She rested her head in the nook of his shoulder and felt his grip tighten around her. As she breathed in his familiar scent of ink and old books, she allowed herself to relax. It
was
Owen. Touch of iron, she thought. Touch of home.

Taken from the Indigo Girls:
I come to you with strange fire, an offering of love
. Sounds way better than Author’s Note, Afterword or Acknowledgments, doesn’t it? Yes. Yes, it does.

Well, I guess if you made it this far, you really want more, don’t you? Personally, I love long Author’s Notes – the longer I get to stay in my favorite books, the better, say I – but let’s do this Nora’s way: hard and fast.

On charcoal:
First off, why make charcoal? Simply said, no other combustible substance generates the heat necessary for the forging of metals, which is why blacksmiths today still prefer using charcoal and why large parts of Central Europe were deforested during the industrial revolution. So it kind of made sense to have my main characters have this profession in a book titled “The Living Blade” with its focus on blades and knives and stuff and things, you know? I mean, not everyone can start their Hero’s Journey as moisture farmers on Tatooine.

Charcoal has been made by various methods. “The traditional method in Britain used a clamp. This is basically a pile of wooden logs (e.g. seasoned oak) leaning against a kind of chimney (the logs are placed in a circle). The chimney consists of 4 wooden stakes held up by some rope. The logs are then completely covered with soil and straw, also moist clay, allowing no air to enter. The clamp is then lit by introducing some burning fuel into the chimney. The logs then burn very slowly and transform into charcoal in a period of about 3 to 5 days’ burning (depending on size –
as so much does
). If the soil covering gets torn or cracked by the fire, additional soil must be placed on the cracks to control the leak. Once the burn is complete, the chimney is plugged to prevent air from entering.” (And let’s all go donate to Wikipedia now. Thanks Wiki – we love you!)

Charcoal burning is a delicate art which is why professional charcoal burners (or colliers) usually comprised whole families who lived together tending their piles. (Er…log piles that is.) In the Harz Mountains (in Germany, so, not far from where I live) the word for collier “Köhler” is still a prominent surname, attesting to how widespread this profession was and, for tourist-y reasons, you can still find shelter on hikes through the mountains in “Köten” or “Köhlerhütten”, that is: in traditional, conical coaler’s huts.

Twins are thus perfect for tending a burn. One of them would stand watch over the burn while the other slept. If they both fell asleep for more than about ten minutes, all the charcoal could be lost. A coalman’s weapon of choice is the curved spade or shovel with a long handle, and this is used to maintain the layer of straw, turf and mud on the clamp throughout the burn. It’s heavy. Tending a burn builds lots of muscles. It builds callouses. It develops tolerance for sleep deprivation, for standing up for long periods, for extremes of heat and cold (often at the same time). It also accounts for not learning social norms that would behoove young girls. I’m looking at you, Noraya Smith.

Fuck you!

Stop swearing!

Pfft!

On Flour:
Flour and sugar mills were seldomly built within a medieval town or village, but usually in quite a distance from any settlement. Why? Well, historians who focus on architecture have postulated a number of sage reasons, of course, but my personal favorite is the one Owen utilizes to blow up the Red Gates at the Temple of the Wind: flour explodes. Yup. Think about that, next time you bake muffins.

Chemistry teachers can explain this better than I can. But what basically happens is that by scattering the fine dust of the flour over a flame, you create a much larger surface area that reacts much better with the oxygen, so you get a really good
whoosh
. (Watch this:
youtube.com/watch?v=evXhs1-exMo
 – go ahead, have fun learning stuff.) This is why grain elevators nowadays still have such thick walls. And you thought fantasy was all about magic.

Obviously, Owen would have read about this in an ancient tome
On
Alchemy,
heard of a flour mill burning down and put two and two together. There certainly was never any burning desire on his part to actually try this out. Like ever. Really.

On Shinar:
Many of the dreadful things that happen here are actually taken from our own history as testified by numerous ancient sources, the Bible, and archeological evidence, unfortunately. If you read Deuteronomy 18, you can find that magic, spellbinding, spiritism, and sacrifice of their children by fire were among the Canaanites’ detestable practices which condemned them to divine judgment. According to Merrill F. Unger: “Excavations in Palestine have uncovered piles of ashes and remains of infant skeletons in cemeteries around heathen altars, pointing to the widespread practice of this cruel abomination.” (
Archaeology and the Old Testament,
1964, p. 279) The Canaanite goddesses Ashtoreth, Asherah, and Anath are presented in an Egyptian text as both mother-goddesses
and
as sacred prostitutes who, paradoxically, remain ever-virgin (literally, “the great goddesses who conceive but do not bear”). Their worship apparently was invariably involved with the services of temple prostitutes (female
and
male, actually), pretty much as Bashan explains it to Nora. These goddesses symbolized the quality not only of sexual lust but also of sadistic violence and warfare. The goddess Anath, for example, is depicted in the Baal Epic from Ugarit as effecting a general slaughter of men and then decorating herself with suspended heads and attaching men’s hands to her girdle while she joyfully wades in their blood naked. I can totally see Suranna doing that, can’t you?

(Oh, and the Latin phrase Nora quotes? It means:
All animals are/feel sad after sexual climax
. Just so you know. I didn’t. I had read it in a book and couldn’t figure out what
coitus
meant and instead of turning a few pages in a Latin Dictionary (Google wasn’t around back then), I asked my Latin teacher. In class…I was a very popular kid at school. Don’t be like me.)

I’m going to go all Roland Barthes on you now. You know: a “text is a tissue of quotations”, drawn from “innumerable centers of culture.” (
Death of the Author
) So, did you find the Easter Eggs? No? Look again. In Book One, which reference is made to Philip Pullman’s
His Dark Materials
? In Book Two, whose words does Master Diaz echo when he talks to Nora about his art? And in Book Three: which dogmatic, but equally charismatic mentor figure does Suranna paraphrase? Know the answers? Found more Easter Eggs? DM me over at Twitter @timwhitecastle with #easteregg and I shall applaud and love you dearly, you pop culturally savvy reader, you!

And while we’re deconstructing the author, I must point out to you that, while it’s my name on the cover of this book, I certainly couldn’t have done this on my own. Before I say my thank yous, though, I want to take a short moment and ask you to imagine (if you can) a serious, non-reckless, non-swearing version of Nora. Okay? Okay. (See what I just did there? Another quote.) Now that was what Nora used to be. But then I got myself an editor who knows Story like Bruce Willis knows how to Die Hard.

Nora wouldn’t be Nora if it weren’t for Harry Dewulf. (
harrydewulf.com
)

Now, if you have a story you’re thinking about publishing and would like some editorial advice, I would recommend Harry.

I would, that is, if he weren’t a very busy man already and back off! He’s mine. I saw him first!

So, what I would
really
recommend you (
she said, glowering
) is to head over to Udemy to get the next best thing: hours of Harry coaching your individual story to make it awesome. The Read Worthy Fiction Course helped me when I ran into an issue in the first third of this book. It made me rethink Diaz’s character and realize he had so much more potential and impact on the story I’m trying to tell as a hero on his own journey.
www.udemy.com/read-worthy-fiction
You’re welcome.

I’d also like to thank Kira Rubenthaler (
www.bookflydesign.com/editing
), copy editor extraordinaire, who basically tells me to cut, cut, cut, and insert more Oxford commas. She makes the torrent of words flow much more gracefully and I am highly indebted to her advice. Also from Bookflydesign, I’d like to thank James T. Egan for his patience, excellent typography, and making the cover stand out.

And talking about covers, words cannot express how indebted I am to the awesome, eye-wateringly beautiful artwork that graces the cover of this book (and my desktop, and my smartphone’s home screen, and my … ok, you get it. It’s everywhere and I just can’t get enough.) The artist’s name is Tommy Arnold. You should check out his other fantastic art at:
www.tommyarnoldart.com
and because I know you just won’t get enough, look here, too:
tommyarnoldart.tumblr.com

Huge thanks go to my beta readers over at
www.fiverr.com
: Cate (Msalwayswrite), Sarah (Woadwarrior), HermioneB, and Anaiya who test drove this narrative for you and pointed out the unintelligible, bumpy spots along the way.

And a big thank you to my husband Tobias who – without knowing – “lent” me his RPG character name in slightly changed form for Nora’s lurrrrve interest. Ahem.

But lastly, I need to thank you, dear reader, for picking up this book and reading so far. I love to entertain you. Here’s how you can express your enjoyment:

Buy the book.
Done
.

Read the book.
Done.

Review the book.

Sign up to
timandrawhitecastle.com/join
to be the first to know when the next book comes out.

Buy the next book.

Read the next book.

Repeat.

Thanks.

Timandra Whitecastle lives on the original Plains of Rohan (Lower Saxony) in Germany, with her family. She is a native speaker of both English and German, but she’s also fluent in Geek, Gaming, and Whale. Reading is an obsession that borders on compulsion most days.

Tim has never bothered to get a life because she feels like she’s been trying to lead three different ones already – and, yes, she totally stole that line from Terry Pratchett. Also, she’s partial to Mojitos and Baileys … er, just in case you meet her in a bar and want to buy her a drink, say. (She knows people don’t actually read author’s biographies, but feels mentioning this might be worth a shot … or two.)