by Guy Antibes
Everyone, but her mother, fought their captors in their rooms. The library wasn’t untouched. All of her father’s books and scrolls were dragged off the shelves and left in a heap in the middle of the floor. These men were mean for mean’s sake, except for the one man, who didn’t seem to like what he was doing—at least that was the image left burned into Bellia’s memory.
The shelves of her father’s workshop held no more books. A few tools littered the floor amidst the piles of books thrown to the floor heedless of condition or fragility. There wasn’t much of interest left in this room.
Bellia felt her wrist throb. She swallowed to find her throat sore. A cold along with everything else, she thought. Her tailbone began to throb again as she gingerly sat down on her bed. Not much evidence of the intruders in her room, other than obvious signs of a hurried search. Bellia always kept her room clean and spare. Her hope was that the invaders didn’t know she existed.
She went to lie down in the great room and let herself cry again. The four urns sitting on the hearth represented the end of her family. What could she possibly do now? The feelings of abandonment welled up inside of her again.
~
The light of a desert dawn woke her up. She hadn’t eaten since the previous morning. She groaned as she looked at the cast. No breakfast awaited in the kitchen. No mother to cheerfully greet her. No dour father to fret about her bothersome questions. No brothers to chide her when they all practiced with swords.
Her father demanded that they could all defend themselves. Bellia often fought with them, giving as good as she got. Other than Merrian, her older brother, they had no chance against the thugs that ended up being their killers. She wanted to feel angry. Why wasn’t she throwing things around in a rage? The numbness of despair, of hurt, of loss, covered over those kinds of feelings.
Her body ached as she struggled to sit up. Bellia didn’t know what medicines to take to help her injuries. Perhaps a spell would work, but her mother always told her that wizards never healed themselves.
The House was so silent. Her eyes continually drifted to the hearth and then to the black smudges remaining on the floor where her family truly died.
Was it in her to avenge their deaths? She sat at the dining table in the Great Room and looked up at the clerestory windows that extended up from the edges of perimeter living spaces facing the great room. Could she even live in the House anymore?
She went back into her father’s workshop and sat at her father’s desk. After punching a magic code in the air, Bellia opened the bottom right drawer. The intruders didn’t get this far.
She leaned over to examine the contents. Her father had showed her the secret drawer when she was little. Bellia might not enjoy her father’s magic classes, but she never forgot a code. Of course, she kept the extent of her talent a secret from him, not that he cared.
Something shiny attracted her attention. She pulled out an amulet. Words circled the disk in a script Bellia didn’t know. She let the amulet and it’s golden chain fall back into the drawer.
A pouch of coins looked more promising. The same script was engraved on the coins. Perhaps these came from Grianna? Her father had never taught her the language of his home country. He insisted that they spoke and wrote in the common language of Testia, the continent where they lived. He always had an accent even though her mother had shed hers. Bellia put hands to her head and let another wave of grief wash through her.
She took the pouch and threw it on the desk’s surface. An old book of special codes sat in the drawer’s jumble. The writing was in more of the indecipherable script, so she ignored it and shut the drawer and then opened it again now revealing the normal contents of a desk drawer full of ink and quills.
She sat at her father’s chair and couldn’t picture a fourteen-year-old living all by herself. She never learned to conjure coins like her father and brothers. It seemed that she would have to earn her way in the world. She couldn’t even imagine how she would make it.
~
Bellia stood on the porch, feeling the heat of the desert. She yearned to talk to her mother with all of her heart. She could give Bellia the advice a young woman needed. Bellia had lived such a sheltered life with her family and that option was forever lost to her. She had recently looked forward to her mother talking about feminine things and that would never happen now. She felt the tears begin to flow again. Anger overcame her sadness for a moment. Why did these men have to steal away her life?
She peeked over the edge of the porch at the body lying in a tangle far below. No. She couldn’t live here, but where? She would have to start at one of the twelve villages.Pock The word just popped into her head. Where did that come from, Pock, the blacksmith?
Maybe the man could find someone who could use the help of a fourteen-year-old girl. No good alternatives came to mind. Pock’s smithy would be a good place to start. At least he seemed friendly enough to help her.
The kitchen began to emit odors of rotting food. Bellia realized her mother used preservation spells on the food. She scoured her mind for such a code and came up empty. That settled it for Bellia. She really didn’t want to live here and have nothing to do but wait for food to smell. Grabbing a potato bin, she began loading it up and tossed all of the perishable food out of the House.
There was no way to know if or when Bellia would return, but if this was to be the mausoleum for her family, she’d clean it up. She owed her parents that much. So she struggled for another two days picking up the House and ordering her father’s books and scrolls. She knew a couple of good cleaning spells and used them as best as she could. At the end, the fingers on her injured wrist were so swollen, she didn’t trust her ability to do any complex codes.
She barely slept the night, thinking of her life in the House with her family. Visions of forays into the twelve villages to pick up supplies with her mother kept interrupting her sleep and brought tears of regret each time.
The house seemed like an empty shell while Bellia wandered through every room—meticulously cleaning every nook and cranny. She fixed a sling so the fingers wouldn’t swell up so much. She wanted to make sure she didn’t err when punching the magic code for Greenwell. Random images came to her mind in each room. If she didn’t leave now, she could get lost in memories, meandering in the House for the rest of her life. Perhaps it was time to put magical things aside.
Bellia walked out the porch and leaned against a corner looking out towards the sea. Somewhere, her family’s killers lived. They would probably be hired men from Eustia. Perhaps, when older, she could find out what happened. Could she pay the men back for what they did to her family? To her life? Bellia didn’t know. She hardly felt ready for such a quest.
For now, Pock would lead her.
~~~
Chapter Two
Blacksmith Apprentice
~
Leavesflittered down from the trees, adding to the myriad others collecting in the streets of Greenwell. The brilliance and energy of had summer seemed to have faded even more since her last trip to the little town just days ago. Bellia felt the same way about her young life. The shock of her mother’s loss increased as Bellia walked through Greenwell’s cozy lanes, feeling lonelier than she had been at the House.
She didn’t have much in the way of personal possessions with her; the coin purse, a few changes of clothes and her own magic codebook that she had hidden under her mattress. Butterflies flew in her stomach as she stopped in the middle of the lane hoping for some inspiration. Pock’s smithy confronted her.Go on in, a voice spoke in her mind.
The blacksmith intently pounded on a curved red-hot metal bar. When he plunged his work into a bucket of water, Bellia walked up, standing on the other side of the acrid plume of steam.
“Hi, Master Pock.” She didn’t know what to expect from the man. Bellia didn’t even know if Pock had offered his help as a serious gesture or out of pity.
“Lass. You’re back. Somehow I thought you’d be. What h
appened to your mother? Is she all right?” Pock plunged his work back into the coals of his forge.
“Dead. My whole family. The men who abducted my mother killed them all.” Bellia couldn’t keep her voice from breaking up and couldn’t look at the man. Her eyes watered. “Must be the smoke,” she said as she wiped at her face.
“Sure. Happens to everybody,” Pock said. The blacksmith sat down and shook his head. “Dead, you say? Ah, your mother and father and your siblings? You don’t know how badly I feel about that. Your mother was a really nice lady. I guess you’re an orphan, then? Do you have any relatives?”
Bellia merely shook her head. “My parents came from Grianna. My father never talked much about his origins.” Bellia winced inside, embarrassed that she felt she had to lie to Pock about her father’s background.
The blacksmith looked out at the lane that fronted his shop. He took a deep breath and looked Bellia in the eye. “I said I’d help and I will. I could use an apprentice here. I know you can’t do a lot of work at the smithy, but you can do the kinds of things that take a lot of my time, sharpening and polishing. King Rollack’s building an army. Lots of work will be going out to the blacksmiths. My old apprentice, Wennet, left me last spring to set up his own shop to the south, doing weapon and armor repair, so I’m kind of short handed. You interested?”
“Yes, if I can leave any time I feel like it. I don’t want any long-term commitments.” She’d heard of lengthy contracts of servitude when her family talked about apprenticeships around the dinner table. Old wizards generally trained new wizards by indenture. The secrets were too important not to bind the apprentice to his master for years and years.
“No contracts here, lass. Not something I’d do. Remember that room you used? It’s through my shop in there. The door on the far wall. Put your stuff in there and then come out here and we can get to learning right now. Lunch in about an hour, if that suits. For now, room and board until you show me how well you can earn your keep. Is that satchel all you’ve got?”
“It’s enough. If I need more, I can return to our house.” Her house now. She nearly moaned at the thought. “I don’t want to live there any more.” Bellia stood and considered Pock’s offer. She didn’t have any other options and working in a village blacksmith’s would give her some space to get her mind in order. “I guess I’ll get right to work,” Bellia said as she made her way to the door to an enclosed blacksmithing shop.
The forge in the big room was smaller than the one outside. Bars of different metals lay horizontally in racks made of thick timbers. A large table next to a wall held sheets of metal. Rolled metal? Bellia couldn’t quite remember what Pock had told her.
She walked through the door right into the room. The bedding she used had been rolled up and tied with a string. The window, high up pointing towards the garden of the cottage next door, provided the only light. Bellia placed her bag on a low chest in the room and sat down on its only chair.
She hugged herself and shivered and gazed all around the room. Her bedroom wasn’t much bigger and she kept it as spare as this one. Had she made the right decision? A girl in a blacksmith’s shop? She searched in her mind and came to the conclusion that working for Pock would give her time to think about her future; her quest to find her origins—and there was that voice.
The bar Pock had been working on took shape while Bellia found her new room and returned. It was long and skinny made with a little bit of bow and points on the end.
“A pick?” Bellia looked at Pock.
“Right you are. Watch how I put in the hole for the handle.” Pock’s actions were like magic to Bellia. Pock produced a piece of metal that went from a point to a flared out end. He pointed to a jar. “That is what I call flux. It will keep this tool from melting into the pick head while I pound it through.” A waxlike goop was slathered on the metal, while the pick head heated up in the forge.
“Pull on this rope. You can work the bellows with your good arm. Slowly let it go and then pull again. Just keep doing it until I pull the pick head out of the coals. I tried to get Hella to help, but she can only last for a few minutes.”
Bellia did what she was told and she found a certain calmness as she kept up the mindless activity of keeping the bellows going. Pock pulled the pick head out. This time it was more yellow than red. He laid the head on a block of metal with a hole in the center.
“Put this glove on over there and hold this punch.”
The rod, held in one hand by Bellia, pointed end down was soon being pounded into the pick head while Pock held the piece with tongs and slammed a hammer down on the punch. When the flux touched the pick head, it sizzled and the fumes made Bellia a little dizzy.
Pock drove the punch all the way through the head, but stopped. He knocked the punch back out and threw the punch into the water bucket. Then the pick head had a steamy bath, as well, and went back into the coals. After three attempts with bigger punches, the hole in the head was complete. Pock quickly hammered a sharper point in one end and pounded out a flat little blade into the other. It made one more trip into the coals. When it came out, Pock hammered the pick head into more of a triangular shape. He pulled a metal punch out of his leather apron and pounded his mark into the metal.
The pick head made one more plunge into the water for a short time, and then Pock grabbed a blank handle and shoved it through the hole. The handle had a flared end as well, just like the punch and burned as it was pushed through the hot metal. He quenched the whole pick into the bath with the handle attached. Pulling the pick out of the water, he tested the handle for fit. There was no give. The pick had shrunk to tightly grasp the handle.
“Nothing to it. I’ve only got to make fifty of these for the King’s army. I’d sure like to make swords, but that kind of steel is too expensive. Let’s break for some lunch. Go around this wall. My house is in back. Nillie’s back so just knock on the door and tell my wife you’re the new apprentice.”
Bellia knocked on the door. A plump woman answered. “Yes?”
“I’m Pock’s new apprentice. He sent me to get lunch.”
“New apprentice, eh? She looked Bellia up and down. “A girl, even. We couldn’t afford the last one and now he’s gone out on his own to serve King Rollack. An’ you’ve got a broken arm. What is Pock thinking? Stand there, I’ll be right back.”
Five minutes later, Pock and Bellia sat on two blocks of wood eating meat, bread and drinking water.
Bellia worked the rest of the day with Pock. In five more hours, four more pick heads joined the others Pock previously made.
Dinner ended up being an uncomfortable experience for Bellia. On one hand, she had to endure the disapproving stares of Nillie and on the other, Hella, Pock’s niece, gave her odd glares of her own.
“Here you keep whining about not making enough to buy the stock to make the good stuff for the King and then you go ahead and bring in a female apprentice.”
“Nillie, have you no sense? How can I make the good stuff all on my own? All of the suitable boys have gone into army, even our Wennet has set up shop closer to the army to do weapons work.” Pock turned to Bellia. “Sorry, lass,” Pock said giving Bellia a crooked smile. “I still need you. You did a great job, for someone new. Don’t mind what we say around the dinner table.”
Bellia stirred the plain food around with her fork. “What if you had the money for better stock?”
Nillie snorted. “And fish grow on trees.”
“Excuse me.” Bellia rose from the table and left the house. She ran to her room and extracted the pouch of coins. She vaguely knew that gold was better than silver was better than copper was better than iron. That’s how she thought of it. But she had always played while her mother did the actual buying.
“Here,” he said as he poured the coins from the purse on the table. “Will this help?”
Nillie’s mouth dropped open. She picked up a gold coin and bit it, looking for tooth marks.
Pock picked up a coin
and looked at it. “These are from Eustia. They write like that over there. Don’t know what kingdom. Is this what your mother’s abductors wanted?”
Bellia’s breath shortened and she felt her chest tighten. She was about to make a decision and she had no idea if it was the right thing to do.Go ahead,the voice in her head suggested.
“You can use these to buy stock?” she said, looking into Pock’s wide eyes still examining the coins. “You can have them.”
The blacksmith pushed them away. “No I can’t take these from you. This is at least five year’s worth of fees for my work.”
Nillie looked at her husband and then pursed her lips. “Girl, you want to be partners with my man, Pock?”
“Partners?”
Pock’s eyes brightened. “Sure. You help me and I’ll help you. We’ll use this to buy good steel for swords. That’s what I make best. We split the profits in half. I’ll do most of the work while you learn and we’ll give it a year or two and see where things stand. What do you say?”
“Will you have to use all of this, if it’s five years profit?” Bellia realized these people could steal all of her money, now that she had an idea of its value.
“No, we’ll just buy a batch at a time. When you can work harder, we’ll buy more.”
Bellia looked at Nillie. The pinched look on her face showed that she didn’t seem to want her husband to be quite so generous. That tilted the decision.
“It’s a deal.” Bellia smiled. Perhaps she had a home for a year or so. Would it be enough time to prepare her for her quest to find her family’s killers?
~
By the time Bellia’s cast came off, the shipment of steel came in.
“These are just short blanks,” Bellia said as she kept squeezing on a small ball stuffed with rags that Pock gave her to build more strength in her grip.
Pock smiled as he picked up a blank not quite as long as his forearm, as wide as his hand, and as thick as his thumb. “Layers, Bellia. The secret to making a good sword is layers and lots of them, with some good coal dust thrown in. And that’s what you are going to make. I need that barrel of spent coals ground down into powder.”
