Darkness Forged

by Matt Larkin

  Nine days. Yes, the prescribed time for the forging of a great work. He had named the time he needed on a whim—or so he thought. Perhaps that too had been urd, for a runeblade demanded nine days. No less and no more.

  Volund had not had time to craft a fitting scabbard for such a blade. Perhaps he would do so next. He ought to work golden threads into it, perhaps even in a dragon motif. Men feared dragons above nigh all else and not without reason, if the dvergar spoke true. Not even they wished to disturb ancient serpents. Only the alfar seemed to hold more foreboding for them.

  Stone scraping on stone echoed from the cavern outside. Volund smiled. It seemed Amelias had taken him at his word that he would need but nine days. Or perhaps the smith doubted him and came to mock work he might think unfinished.

  Sword flat on his shoulder, he strolled out from the forge to meet the man. It was not Amelias who crossed the bridge, however, but the thegn Thakkrad. The man paused at the island’s threshold, eyes darting back and forth between Volund and the blade.

  And here, delivered onto his doorstep, the very man who had first wronged him. This worm had dared piss upon him like he was some filthy peasant and not the son of a king. Volund did not have nine souls to bind to the blade, but perhaps one would do.

  The thegn shook his head. “What in Hel’s trench happened to you?”

  Not quite the question Volund had expected.

  “Wasn’t his hair auburn?” one of the guards behind Thakkrad said.

  What were these cretins on about now? Volund grabbed a lock of his hair from beside his face to examine it. Indeed, it had turned a mix of gray and black. Perhaps it was caked in soot. Or perhaps working the Art had changed him. His mortal form was not as suited for such violations of nature as one possessed by a vaettr. Such workings had incapacitated Dvalin and his brothers. And yet he did not feel weakened or aged. No, he felt strong, invigorated. Enough that he might charge those swine on the bridge and cut them down, feed them to his blade.

  Not them.

  Yes, perhaps the shadows spoke truth. If he tried such a thing, he might kill two or three or even four of them. But he was not the warrior his brothers were. Eventually, Nidud’s men would cut him down, runeblade or no.

  So still he must temper his vengeance.

  Forcing a smile he hoped looked much like the grin of a saber-toothed cat, he held the blade out before him, flat so the guards could see his work. “Nine days are passed. Has the king not come to see what his actions have purchased?”

  Thakkrad spat. “The king does not deign to come all the way down to you, smith. You walk up to him.”

  Volund sneered. As if the aged Nidud could climb down here. The decrepit fool’s heart would give out before he reached halfway, probably saving them all a great deal of trouble. “Then lead the way.”

  The guards back away, spears leveled. They feared him. Six men, and they feared him. It was rich, a feeling he could quite get used to.

  In the great hall, the king and queen sat once again, this time flanked by two young men, the youngest only a few winters past the age of manhood. Both were standing in silent bluster, trying to look important. Perhaps all young men did so. Volund’s coming of age had meant the beginning of his apprenticeship to Dvalin. Who had these whelps trained under? Certainly not their father, who was well past his fighting days. Thakkrad, perhaps. Yes, the favored thegn of the king no doubt trained his boys. For all Volund knew, he had sired them as well. It must prove hard for the faltering king to get it up, after all.

  Hold your tongue.

  There was wisdom in silence, in letting men wonder what one knew, what one thought. And how odd to think these men seemed not to hear the shadows, for they spoke so clearly now. Warnings and wisdoms both.

  The guards escorted him to the center of the hall, then backed away, just out of spear’s reach. They seemed disinclined to let him get too close. Not quite total fools then.

  Volund hefted the sword, at which the spearmen took up fighting stances. He ignored them, focused on Nidud. “I give you Mimung. Such a blade you have never known.”

  “You named an unproven sword?” The voice came from the left side of the hall as Amelias stalked forward. Despite his brave words, his steps lacked confidence. And he was clad in a suit of dark mail, one quite likely forged from dvergar steel, if perhaps a little ineptly.

  “He now has the chance to prove it,” Nidud said. “Do as I have commanded and score that armor, and all will call you the finest smith in the North Realms.”

  Volund cast a wary glance at the king. “In all Midgard, save the dvergar themselves.”

  “His arrogance knows no bounds,” Amelias shouted. Needlessly raising his voice in a place of such acoustics only spoke to his doubt. Surely he hoped to convince himself more than anyone else. To make himself think the sword would not harm him through that armor.

  And true, dvergar chain would stop most blades without suffering so much as a scratch. Mimung was not most blades. The king had granted Volund yet another gift.

  “Very well, great smith Volund,” Nidud said. “If you manage to actually draw blood, your name shall be heralded as the greatest smith in Midgard. Save the dvergar. But if you fail to scratch that armor, skalds will tell of your misery in hushed tones in the dark night. Your fate shall be the greatest fear of men across the North Realms. The name Volund shall come to be a curse of suffering beyond compare.”

  Volund bowed. “I accept your challenge.” He turned to Amelias. “Come to me, smith. Let us see if I can draw blood from beneath that mail.”

  The smith looked to his king, who made no acknowledgment. Then, to his credit, he strode forward with an admirable attempt at bravado. The spearmen backed another step away, giving him room to swing.

  “I trust you have tested this mail?” Volund asked. “It turned a blade once or twice?”

  “A blade, an axe, a spear point.” Amelias spread his arms, giving Volund a chance to inspect his work.

  He did so, taking a step forward and nodding. “Well. I can see you’ve done your best.” He grasped Mimung in both hands and took a sudden stroke downward at an angle. The blade struck Amelias on the clavicle and sheared through mail, flesh, and bone, then bit into the man’s spine.

  And there, unfortunately for Amelias, it did its true work. The spirit within latched onto the smith’s soul, sucking hungrily on the dying feast. The man’s life ended in an instant, but a rush built through Volund’s arm, an energy unlike aught he had ever felt. It drained Amelias of all he was, until even Volund could swear he’d gorged himself on a solstice feast. And the blade pulled from him as well, eating little bits of his own life force to bind that spirit in perpetuity.

  Volund fell to his knees as he yanked the blade free from the corpse. He gasped, panting. It was like every bit of strength had been sucked out of him, and he felt as numb as he had when they brought him in from the platform. The Art had taken more toll on him than he’d expected. This must have been what Durin had meant by the drain of it. And still, a grim satisfaction filled him.

  Screams and shouts rang through the hall. Actually, it sounded like a woman had retched somewhere. Volund wanted to laugh.

  Something hard and swift slapped him between the shoulder blades and he fell forward. Mimung clattered away, and another soldier grabbed it before he could rise. No, not just a soldier—Thakkrad, eyeing the blade hungrily.

  Volund struggled to his knees, watching the royal pair. The queen had a hand over her mouth, eyes wide. Nidud, though, looked thoughtful. Maybe even pleased. Yes, he too had become steeped in the darkness of this place. It had seeped into him and changed him, strengthened him. Volund was wrong in his first impression. Nidud was not some weak old man. Not at all.

  By his side, the youngest of the sons was cackling as though it was the best show he’d ever seen. Perhaps fortunate for all the boy was not next in line for the throne. The child had the cruelty of a dverg or even a svartalf.

  “Thakkrad,” Nidud s
aid. “See that the blade reaches my son Otwin on the front lines.”

  The thegn stared at the blade so long Volund wondered if he would challenge the king for it. Instead, he bowed at last.

  The queen’s trembling eyes were locked on Volund’s. Yes, she feared him. The air was so thick with it he could drink it like mead. So he smiled at her, the kind of smile that promised her the fulfillment of every nightmarish thought in her head.

  She looked away then, burying her face at her husband’s ear and whispering.

  Nidud grunted, then nodded. “Thakkrad.”

  The thegn had already headed for the hall’s entrance, but turned back at his king’s call.

  “Our smith has outdone even his own reputation. It seems prudent to hold onto such a valuable man.”

  Thakkrad grinned. “I’ll take him back to the island. He can make armor to stand up to the blade.”

  “Yes do. But before that, it seems prudent to ensure he won’t try to leave our employ. Cut the hamstring on his right leg. Use Mimung.”

  Volund jumped to his feet only to be shoved back down by three guards. “What! You cannot! You dare not!”

  Rough hands shoved him forward, bent him double.

  “As my king commands,” Thakkrad said.

  Someone held Volund’s neck down. He couldn’t see the thegn approaching. But he could feel it. The man stalking closer. The cruelty in him saturated the air and made shadows dance before Volund’s eyes.

  “No! No!”

  A chill blade like a razor settled on the back of his thigh.

  Gods, where were the voices? Had they abandoned him now? What was he to do? There must be some way he could—

  The blade bit deep, slicing through tendon like bread. So sharp it took a heartbeat longer for the pain to hit. And then the pain of his wound crashed over him like a falling mountain.

  14

  Nine Years Ago

  They had forced him to walk over acid. A thin layer of the substance, used for etching metal, spread across a depression in the floor. The dvergar had said the worst part would be the acrid smell of his bubbling feet. They were wrong, of course. The worst part was the agony. Waves of it, a raging torrent of pain that constantly threatened to pitch him forward. Had he fallen, the acid might have eaten away at his arms, chest, face.

  And so he remained on his feet, screaming with each step. He did not cry the names of the gods, nor curse the dvergar, at least not that he recalled. It seemed rather an incoherent primal scream of denial.

  Durin treated him afterward, as always. In this case, the dverg spread a cooling salve over his feet while he lay abed. They had given him a draught of sapphire shrooms that had eased his pain, but left the room spinning, shadows playing a musical dance. The dverg had the gentleness of a mountain goat, his coarse hands nigh painful enough to negate any benefit of the salve, at least at first.

  When he had finish slathering the paste over Volund’s feet, Durin sat back and shrugged. “Ought to do you.”

  “What exactly was this lesson supposed to teach me, anyway?”

  “If you have to ask, I’d say you didn’t fucking learn it.” Durin spat to make his point.

  Oh, Volund had understood. Dvalin had caught him boasting of his skills to some of the other dvergar. Boasting, in fact, that even some of them had become jealous of him. And it was the truth. Their eyes watched him with envy.

  “Not to mock the dvergar,” Volund finally mumbled.

  “Eat a fucking stone bubble, shit-for-brains. The point was your fucking pride’s apt to cost you more than it buys.”

  “What do we have but our pride? Do you not regale me often enough with tales of your noble lineage?”

  The dverg was wont to carry on about his father, Modsognir, but did not oft boast of his own accomplishments—except for his greatest works, the runeblades.

  Volund listened, of course. To do otherwise would not only have proved rude, it would have denied him one of his few chances to learn more about the dvergar beyond Nidavellir. For sometimes Durin even spoke of Nidafjoll, the world these spirits hailed from.

  Now though, the dverg shook his head. “Pride, yes. It is a failing they gave us.”

  “What?”

  Durin settled back on the floor, groaning. “The legends say, long before the mist, the realms of Sun and Darkness warred. Did you know that?”

  “I know no truths from before the mists. You speak of the worlds in the Spirit Realm?”

  Durin spat. “Fucking liosalfar. The svartalfar fought them, raised us up from the rocks like maggots. Or so they told us. Sent us to fight their enemies. And the liosalfar cursed us, made the sun itself our enemy. There is no pride quite like that of the alfar. And for it, we were twice brought low.”

  The room was spinning, twisting with the effects of the sapphire shrooms. Had Durin gone, left him?

  The dverg grabbed both sides of Volund’s face with rocky palms. “Take care with your own pride, boy. You are thick with it, and one day it will cost you more than you know.”

  Volund spent perhaps half a moon in his convalescence. Some number of the dvergar visited him often enough, drank with him, until the day he could walk on his own. Then they expected him to return to the feast hall and carry on as if naught had happened. They did not need to tell him they expected this. He knew. Such was the way of the world.

  Dvalin, in fact, said naught more of the incident. Perhaps to him it was but one more pain, humiliation, or other tempering of his student.

  And Volund supposed it was. He hobbled around in pain for many days as Durin’s salve regrew the ruined skin on his feet. The dvergar, of course, were damned to hobble around in pain for all eternity. No matter how fine a host they took, always the body would twist and warp out of alignment. If a human host were slowly transformed into a rough facsimile of a vaettr’s true nature, Volund oft had to wonder how hideous these creatures must then appear in their own world. Not that he would ever be able to see their true forms.

  After a feast, he returned to his chamber to find a girl there, but not one he had sent for. Indeed, it took him far longer than it ought have to recognize her.

  “You. The one from the camp below here.”

  His first. He’d thought of her sometimes. He could remember the feel of her tiny breasts in his hands, yet no matter how tightly he closed his eyes he couldn’t quite picture her face. And here she was, changed a bit in the past two winters. But definitely the same.

  All those times imagining meeting her again, and now his tongue wouldn’t work.

  The girl nodded. “Your brother sent me.”

  Volund had to roll her words around in his mind to make sense of them. “Which brother?”

  Damn fool question. The better question might have been to ask what his brother was doing here at all. Or why he’d send a slave girl to meet Volund. Or what her name was—the question he had wrestled with the past two years.

  “Long brown hair and a scruffy beard. But he had another with him.”

  Slagfid. And with Agilaz, perhaps? So his year had ended, then.

  “What did he … What’s going on?”

  The girl pressed herself close and Volund, despite his best intentions, suddenly found his arms around her. She stiffened at his caress, though, and whispered in his ear sternly.

  “Yesterday your father came to find you. There was an avalanche on the way. Your father was buried in it.”

  Volund shoved the girl away. “What in the fathomless darkness of Svartalfheim! You spout lies.”

  She shook her head and motioned for him to lower his voice. “I am sorry for your loss, truly I am. Your brother plans to come here tomorrow and explain things to them.”

  Eyes shut, Volund shook his head. Based on the look on the girl’s face, she knew as well as he did. They did not understand human excuses. The dvergar did not care to understand much of any such matters.

  No, Dvalin’s words. If Wade himself did not return … tomorrow, gods! Already tomorro
w? If Volund’s father did not come here himself, the gold and Volund himself were forfeit. He backed away from her and slumped down onto the stone shelf that served as his bed.

  In two years, he had learned many times more than another man might learn in a lifetime. But he could not remain here. There remained the very real possibility that Dvalin or his kin had engineered that avalanche. The dvergar did exert some measure of control over rock and stone when they were so inclined. They could move through it, send it tumbling one way or the next.

  Even had Dvalin not arranged something like that, what fate would befall Volund were he to remain here? Host to a dverg spirit? Dvalin had once said he was not suited for that, though why he could not imagine. And if not, then what? Nidavellir would own him in truth, perhaps make him a slave. Perhaps something even worse than that.

  He rose. No. He would not allow himself to meet such an end. His father had died for him, and Volund would grieve once he had won his freedom. But right now, his brothers were about to risk their lives on a vain hope of saving him. And he had to get to them before that.

  On his wall hung a sword he had forged some moons back. Made from dvergar steel. One of the finest masterpieces he had ever laid eyes on, though it was no runeblade. Even Dvalin had granted it grudging approval and let him keep it.

  Volund snatched the sword and slung it over his shoulder, then grabbed the girl’s hand. “Come. There is another exit.”

  He led her through the tunnels of Nidavellir, unable to shake the feeling that their every step echoed twice as loud as it ought. They passed slaves and dvergar both, but neither seemed to pay him any mind. Like his dvergar masters, Volund was known to take slave girls along with him often enough throughout the day. Perhaps that aided him now.

  They descended into a tunnel with stairs that ran for a long distance before leveling out. He dare not speak here, where his voice would echo. Nor was this a place he was meant to be without permission. The tunnel led to a secret entrance, one used to bring in small amounts of supplies or the occasional new slave. Dvalin had had him retrieve some goats delivered here for a feast, eight, maybe nine moons back. The dverg had probably only told Volund about the place because he was too drunk to remember who to send.