Shadowless

by Randall McNally

  The blacksmith, Thycoalis, let out a gruff ‘Hah’.

  ‘That is it, put the materials anywhere, although get the magnentium ingots out, I need those right away,’ Ermithdin said, as he lifted the sword he had been experimenting with earlier.

  He piled all of the metal into Protius’s open arms, locked the door of his workshop and headed to the forge.

  On the way through the twisting tunnels to the second level of Dragonov where the forge was, Thycoalis quizzed Ermithdin about the weapon he had been told to make.

  ‘By using different shards of magnentium in the crafting process, I can create a weapon that can repel the quarrel up the flight groove as well as propelling with the string,’ Ermithdin said. ‘This gives a far longer range and greater striking force than a normal crossbow. I changed the dimensions of the parts each time I made one before starting again; for example, the fourth one I crafted was by far the most powerful, yet had the shortest range, and likewise the seventh fired bolts the furthest but did the least damage.’

  ‘How many have you built?’ Thycoalis asked.

  ‘This will be the ninth. I have mastered the smithing process but I have never had this much magnentium to use, so this one will be nothing short of perfect.’

  The inside of the forge was dark, save for a few small piles of hot coal. Its air was dry and oppressive, and Protius had to leave at regular intervals to catch his breath. They entered the walk-in chamber and set up the stone, clay and sand moulds, taking great care to get the dimensions just right.

  They pumped fresh seawater into a stone basin at the back of the room before leaving.

  ‘Now what?’ Thycoalis asked.

  ‘Now I go back in, on my own,’ Ermithdin replied, as he removed his robes.

  Thycoalis narrowed his eyes as the leader of the Cult of the Fire Forge stripped off. He put his clothes in a chest, opened the door and walked barefoot into the forging room.

  Protius turned the heavy metal wheel, locking it and shovelling sand against the bottom of the door to seal the furnace.

  Making his way to the moulds, Ermithdin ran his fingers along the flat of the magnentium blade. A purple hue shone faintly against the light from the hot coals in each of the fire-pits. Standing above the moulds, grasping the blade, he thought of what had happened during the meeting yesterday and how Jorgi’s words had affected him. Closing his eyes and rolling his head back, he let dark and spiteful thoughts enter his mind. Feelings of malice and hatred formed inside him and increased rapidly, bubbling over into bursts of intensifying animosity.

  Then it happened.

  The feelings of anger and rage awoke a latent, primordial instinct of wrath within him and his blood began to boil. Flames formed behind his eyes and the veins in his body glowed. His skin hissed as the moisture on it turned to steam, evaporating into a cloud of mist. A few seconds later, his body burst into flames with a flash of searing heat and a layer of blue-and-yellow fire danced and rippled across every inch of his skin. Concentrating on the sword in his grip, Ermithdin watched as his hands got redder and redder, heating all the time until the blade began to glow orange.

  Holding it closer to the mould he emitted a roar and his hands glowed white with heat, causing the blade to erupt into liquid form and fall into the trough, running down into the hollows carved out for it.

  Taking each of the magnentium ingots in turn, he heated them in his hands, smelting them down and letting them too run into the moulds for the flight groove. Using what was left he tipped the raw magnentium into a melting pot and added a few ingots of steel and iron in different quantities for strength and support, recalling how much of each metal he had used in the previous incarnations of the crossbow.

  Draining some of the liquid into the curved section, which had been etched from a stone block that would be used for the limb of the weapon, Ermithdin scraped the excess into the pot and put it to one side.

  With the cross-piece cooling, he plunged his hands into the molten metal and cupped handfuls of the bubbling liquid into troughs which ran into moulds for the riser, quarrel-heads and trigger mechanism. When each of the parts had cooled sufficiently to have solidified, he picked them from their moulds and submerged them in the basin of fresh, cold seawater.

  Protius and Thycoalis were discussing the finer points of metallurgy when the clanging came from the other side of the furnace door. Turning the wheel and opening the door, Protius fetched Ermithdin’s clothes. Thycoalis expressed his surprise that some of the sand at the bottom of the door had turned to glass.

  ‘Protius, you take these parts; Thycoalis, you take these.’ Ermithdin handed them different parts of the crossbow.

  The sections were heavy and still warm. Different parts pulled at each other, causing Protius and Thycoalis to walk ten feet apart.

  The royal blacksmith asked about the next stage in the crafting process.

  ‘The parts that have just been made will be filed down, bent and hammered into shape, polished and finished. That is just the metal sections. The wooden parts have to be measured and the size sent off to the woodcutters for the stock, handle and grip. The string itself will need to be made from individual strands of intertwined metal wire because a normal string will not be able to take the strain and would snap. And the crank mechanism…’

  ‘Crank mechanism?’ Thycoalis interrupted.

  ‘The string on this weapon will not be able to be pulled back by hand. It is going to need a crank handle to winch it back,’ Ermithdin stated.

  ‘How often will it be able to fire a bolt?’

  ‘Depending on the speed the user turns the handle, about once a minute.’

  ‘What happens if the first shot doesn’t kill the dragon?’

  ‘Then the king will be holding trials for a new marksman.’

  The next task was to sort through the materials that the king had sent. After Ermithdin had checked them against his inventory, he and Protius set about the filling, grinding and cutting process, removing the excess magnentium that had seeped out around the edges of the mould.

  Ermithdin then began to straighten the parts, making sure that the cranking mechanism fitted into position and that the weapon could be easily assembled or disassembled for ease of transport. This was achieved via bolts, which screwed the metal sections to the primary wooden structure.

  Within an hour, the metal parts of the ninth Deathstrike crossbow had all been crafted into shape under the watchful eye of the king’s blacksmith.

  Over the next three weeks the other guilds supplied different parts and components for the crossbow. The carpenters of the Cult of the Rotten Root supplied a stock and fore-grip made from the finest cuts of stained sandalwood, while the intertwined high-tensile wire for the string was provided by the smiths of the Iron Anvil guild. The quarrels that were used were the best that Ermithdin had ever seen, and were supplied by the fletchers from the Cult of the Silver Quiver. Even guilds not directly responsible for building specific parts of the weapon were ordered by the king to assist, with the sorcerers of the Cult of the Elemental Wind engraving the wooden sections of the crossbow with Runes of Strength and Flame Resistance and the magicians from the Cult of the Basilisk engraving the tips of the quarrel-heads with Runes of Impact.

  Rarely did anything unite the guilds, but the shared effort that went into building the ninth in Ermithdin’s series of Deathstrike crossbows impressed even him.

  The weapon was almost ready and the men were hard at work one day when the door burst open and King Gilrin entered, followed by four armoured guards.

  ‘How is my crossbow coming along?’ He walked to the workbench, rolling the ends of his moustache.

  ‘Almost ready,’ Thycoalis said.

  ‘The weapon itself is not ready,’ Ermithdin snapped. ‘It is yet to be field tested.’

  ‘Field tested?’ the king asked.

  �
�To see if it works or falls apart, Your Majesty, before it is deployed on the battle field,’ Ermithdin said.

  ‘Just make sure it is fully operational by this time next week,’ King Gilrin replied. ‘So, anyhow, there is someone I would like you to meet.’

  In response to the king’s wave a tall blond man wearing a brown leather tunic and grey cape entered the room.

  ‘Ermithdin, this is Yan Krinkin, who won the tournament. The man who will use your crossbow to slay these dragons,’ he said with a smile before slapping the man hard on the back.

  Yan stretched out his hand to Ermithdin.

  Ermithdin nodded, then turned and walked to his former position at the workbench. Yan followed, standing alongside him and gazing at the weapon on the table. He leaned forward, his hand outstretched. Ermithdin, feeling his veins glow, knocked down Yan’s hand.

  ‘You see with your eyes, Yan, not with your hands.’

  Yan backed off slowly and retreated to the king’s side again.

  ‘Good to see you are as hospitable as always, Ermithdin. We will be leaving now, I just thought you should see who it is that will be firing your lovingly crafted creation,’ the king said, as he turned his back and ushered his guards out of the door.

  Yan lingered, staring at Ermithdin, before following the king out and slamming the door.

  ‘Let’s get back to work,’ Ermithdin said.

  ‘How far is it?’ Thycoalis squinted to see the target.

  ‘Fifty yards,’ Ermithdin replied as he looked through a fold-up contraption with a lens at either end. ‘Take your time, Protius, easy does it. Remember what I told you: breathe in, hold it, breathe out then squeeze the trigger slowly.’

  The corridor was tunnelled parallel to the cliff face and had rectangular windows cut from the limestone. The seabirds used it to shelter from storms, of which there were plenty, their presence apparent from the feathers and droppings that littered the stone floor. It was cold.

  As Protius lay on his stomach with the weapon in front of him he filled and emptied his lungs again and again, hearing the waves crashing against the rocks below and the faint cries of the gulls overhead. Closing his eyes, he cleared his mind of all outside influences and began concentrating on the target. Opening them, he put one eye against the target view-enhancing device that had been supplied by the seers of the Cult of the All-Seeing Serpent.

  The target appeared far closer than it was.

  If Protius moved the weapon by even a coin’s width he found that the target jumped out of the viewfinder by at least a yard, causing him more frustration as he wrestled to get it back into his sights.

  ‘Will you be taking the shot sometime today?’ Ermithdin snapped.

  Gritting his teeth Protius pushed the butt of the crossbow against his shoulder and took slow, shallow breaths. Closing one eye, as he had been instructed by the seers, he focused on what he was seeing through the view finder. The dragon scale appeared in his eye-line; he held it there for a second then squeezed.

  A high-pitched twanging filled the corridor as the tension in the string was released, followed by a thundering crack when the quarrel struck its target. The recoil jolted Protius’s shoulder back, the force catching him by surprise.

  Protius turned to Ermithdin and grimaced.

  ‘Think I hit it.’

  ‘That you did, Protius; that you did.’ Ermithdin looked through his telescope. ‘Let us go and see the damage.’

  They set off down the corridor to inspect the target. Reaching the far end, Ermithdin crouched to the ground to find the dragon’s scale, the size of a kite shield and as thick as a door, lying on the stone ground with a large hole punched through it and the bolt buried in the rock. As he heard the other two celebrating the weapon’s power, he could not help but have his pride tinged with sadness in the knowledge that he had built a weapon so lethal and powerful that it was capable of bringing down a dragon.

  After disassembling the weapon and packing it and the bolts into a cloth sack, they trekked to the workshop. Ermithdin did not speak; he listened to the enthusiastic conversation of Protius and Thycoalis and contemplated what he had created. He had known the ninth would be better than the rest, but even he had not anticipated it being this powerful. The extra ingots of magnentium, the runes, the view finder, they all added up to make it the most devastating weapon he had ever seen, let alone created. Firing bolts that could blow a hole in a dragon’s scales at a range of fifty yards was unheard of.

  They don’t stand a chance, he thought. Not even Bulros will be able to withstand that impact.

  Reaching the level of the workshop, the men turned the corner to find King Gilrin and a troop of royal guards in chainmail waiting.

  ‘Guards, seize the weapon,’ the king commanded.

  The armed men surrounded Protius and took the sack.

  ‘What do you think you are doing, you idiots? The weapon has not been fully tested,’ Ermithdin protested.

  ‘Well?’ the king asked, looking at Thycoalis expectantly. ‘Has it or has it not been tested?’

  ‘It sort of has. We tested it just this very day, firing it at a dragon’s scales and it works perfectly,’ the large man said, not making eye contact with anyone.

  ‘Then, it is decided. The weapon is hereby ready for use. Guards, take it to the vaults,’ he ordered before putting his hand on Ermithdin’s shoulder. ‘You have done your city and realm a great service. Tomorrow, we go dragon hunting.’

  The king smiled before striding off down the corridor, flanked by his guards and with Thycoalis slinking after him.

  ‘What now, master?’ Protius asked.

  ‘That is it, boy. Our work is over. They asked us to build it, and build it we did. It is theirs now,’ Ermithdin said. ‘I pity the wretched creature that gets in the way of its bolts. Go home, tomorrow is going to be a long day.’

  Ermithdin woke up early with the nervous feeling of a man about to face a preordained judgement. He lit the lamp on his bedside locker and ate a light morning meal. It was very quiet in his workshop, which had been a hive of activity for the past month; no one was knocking on his door with parts or components for the weapon; no one was asking if he was ready to have runes engraved on the crossbow or demanding a progress report. He opened the door, and taking one last look around his workshop, he sighed and then closed the door quietly behind him. His walk was long and lonely, the corridors and stairwells empty. Everyone was in the city.

  He heard the noise before he saw the crowds, thousands-strong, which had gathered at the Fulcrum in the city centre, all waiting for the king to make an announcement. The guilds stood around the edges, those not affiliated with them at the bottom of the steps.

  As Ermithdin reached the bottom of the stairwell he was met by Jorgi Sizebith, who approached him with a swagger in his step.

  ‘Your crossbow puts bolts through scales at fifty yards? Very impressive,’ he said with a smirk. He whispered: ‘You know, we’re not going to use it to slay just a few of these things. I’ve made a deal with the king; we’re going to kill them all.’

  Ermithdin would have loved nothing more than to grab Jorgi by the head and self-immolate, only letting go when the obnoxious man’s brain-fluid boiled and trickled out his ears. It took all his powers of restraint not to do so.

  ‘The dragons were here a long time before we were, Jorgi. It is my guess that they will be here a long time after we are gone,’ he stated, before turning away.

  Walking through the crowd towards the corner where the rest of his guild were assembled, Ermithdin saw Protius bursting through the mass of people and running towards him as fast as he could.

  ‘Bulros has been spotted to the east, they’re sending meat up Shaft Two to lure him,’ he said, panting and trying to catch his breath.

  Ermithdin shook his head in disgust and was about to speak when the doors of the Fu
lcrum creaked open. The cavernous hall was filled with the high-pitched sound of the doors retracting, and then King Gilrin walked onto the steps with his royal guards, each of whom was dressed in heavy chainmail, a knight’s helm and a tabard with the royal emblem, a dragon, on the front. The guards did not usually dress in such attire, saving the pomp and ceremony for special occasions, a fact not lost on the crowd who burst into spontaneous applause upon seeing them.

  The irony of it all, Ermithdin thought, looking at the emblem.

  The king walked to the top of the steps, held his arms aloft and addressed the cheering crowd. ‘Welcome to you, our loyal subjects and citizens. Today is a glorious day: the day we end the scourge that has plagued our realm for as long as we can remember.

  ‘For the first time in our great history, we have the ability to take vengeance on the beast who killed our loved ones. I gave the order for a weapon to be created, an instrument of destruction with such power that it can pierce the toughened hide of one of these monsters and send it back to the hell from which it came.’

  Once again the crowd went wild, clapping and cheering.

  ‘This is the man who has been chosen to rid us of this menace.’

  He waved to the doorway of the Fulcrum. Yan Krinkin emerged and joined the king at the top of the steps, waving at the crowd. The people responded by chanting his name.

  ‘And of course, there would be no weapon if it were not for its inventor and creator: Ermithdin Ulroch, the head of the Cult of the Fire Forge.’

  Ermithdin folded his arms, refusing to acknowledge the crowd or his peers.

  ‘You must forgive him, he is a little shy,’ the king began. ‘But deep down, I have no doubt he thanks you all for your warm applause.’

  One of the king’s advisers approached him from behind and whispered in his ear.

  ‘I have just received word that Bulros has been spotted and is currently being lured to the ground, where we will shoot him. But now, we must go to the vault and retrieve the weapon that will end the domination of these creatures in our realm.’