The Shadowsteel Forge (The Dark Ability Book 5)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “Do you hear it here?” Rsiran asked.

  For him, lorcith was always loudest in his smithy. Partly that came from the heartstone and lorcith buried within the walls, his way of preventing someone who could Slide from entering. But there was also the soft steady song from the unshaped lorcith mixed with what he heard from lorcith he’d forged, the knives and the sword and the many other creations that he had in his smithy.

  When the boy nodded slowly, Rsiran was unsurprised. “Where do you hear it?”

  “There,” he said, pointing to the bin with the unshaped lorcith.

  “What does it say to you?”

  He frowned at Rsiran. “There are no words in the song.”

  “If you listen, there can be.” The same words he shared with Seval. At the table, Rsiran lifted a circular platter, decorated with ornate markings. “The lump of lorcith that created this told me how it wanted to be turned into something both useful and beautiful. The lorcith—the metal,” he corrected, when he saw the confusion on the boy’s face, “helped guide me when I made this.”

  Luca took a step toward the bin, tipping his head to the side. “The song is different here.”

  “Probably.”

  “Why?”

  “The lorcith changes when you pull it from the mountain. Haven’t you noticed that as you mine?”

  “Once I take it from the rock, I hand it to him to keep it safe.”

  “To who?”

  “Ilphaesn.”

  Rsiran held one of his most recent forgings, a long, slender knife with etchings along the blade, and frowned. “Ilphaesn is the mountain.”

  The boy nodded vigorously. “And he does not want his metal taken. That’s why I pull it from the rock and return it to him.”

  “Have you seen him before?”

  The boy shook his head. “He is all around, and everywhere I go. I hear him, like I hear the song. And he tells me that I need to return the metal to him. He shows me what he wants me to find for him. If I don’t, he says that he’ll silence the song.”

  “That’s why you were so deep in the mountain?”

  “Ilphaesn wanted me to go there. At first, I ran when they came for the others. I hid, but then I heard the song, and the way others sang together. Ilphaesn wanted me to help him find others like that.”

  The paired lorcith. At least he knew that was the reason the boy had been that deep in Ilphaesn. But who had been trying to force him to mine the lorcith? If they sought paired lorcith, that made it likely it was Venass, but Rsiran thought they would have a source of their own. Why would they need the boy to find it for them?

  For him to understand, he suspected that he’d have to return. Now that he knew there was paired lorcith there, and how that could be used, he almost had to return.

  “Can I hold it?” the boy asked.

  “Hold what?”

  “That one,” he said, pointing to a smallish piece of lorcith in the bin.

  It pulled at him no differently than any of the others, but must have sung loudly to Luca. What did he hear from the lorcith?

  Rsiran pulled on the lorcith and handed it to him. Luca’s eyes widened at the way Rsiran controlled the lorcith, but then he focused on the lump of metal in his hands, turning it over as he held it, before lifting it to his face and resting the lump of metal against his cheek. He listened like that for long moments and then sighed, suddenly more relaxed than Rsiran had seen him since bringing him from Ilphaesn.

  “What do you hear?”

  The boy kept his eyes closed as he answered. “The song. It… it is different. The metal sings to me, tells me of its joy of being freed. There is more, I know it, but I can’t quite understand.”

  Rsiran smiled. “Keep listening,” he said. “It is telling you what it wants to be, or what it is willing to become. Sometimes, they are different, but often they’re the same.”

  Luca’s eyes opened, and he glanced to the forge. “You make these?” He motioned to the table covered with items that Rsiran had forged.

  “I am a smith.”

  “Does it hurt it when you change them?”

  Rsiran shook his head. “The lorcith—the metal—wants to change. Heating it, hammering it, hurts it no more than when you use your pick to remove it from the stone.”

  Luca stared at him as if unwilling to believe.

  “Let me show you,” Rsiran suggested.

  The boy hugged the lump of lorcith in his arms tightly to him. “No!”

  “Not with that one,” he said. Rsiran focused on what he sensed from the bin and pulled on a smaller piece of lorcith, sending a message of what he wanted from it. For this purpose, the lorcith quickly agreed. “Watch me.”

  He heated the coals, and once they glowed a soft orange, he set the piece of lorcith into them. Lorcith took heat easily and quickly. As the metal began to glow bright orange, he grabbed it with his tongs and set it on the anvil to begin hammering it into the shape. As he hammered, much like he did when working with Seval, he pushed on the metal, using his talent to help shape it into the design he envisioned. The lorcith worked with him, taking on the shape.

  Luca approached him slowly and stared at the anvil as he worked. His brow wrinkled in a tight line, and he breathed heavily. “There is no pain.”

  Rsiran shook his head, not wanting to lose his focus. “Listen to it as I work.”

  He continued to hammer, now switching to a smaller hammer and pushing while working, molding the shape with more control than he’d have without using his talent. The metal began to slowly twist, initially forming a cupped shape that reminded him in some ways of the charm that he’d made for Jessa. As he pushed on the metal, it continued to form, a peak rising from it and he pushed the definition into the shape.

  Then he finished. Rsiran took the formed lorcith to the bucket of water where it cooled with a quick hiss of steam. Once cooled, he handed it to Luca.

  He took it with uncertainty and tipped his head to the side as if trying to listen to it again.

  Rsiran waited.

  “What do you hear?” Rsiran asked. He hadn’t been certain that the song would work, but the shape felt right, especially for Luca.

  Luca held it out from him and his eyes practically swallowed the shape. “How did you make this?”

  Rsiran chuckled. “You watched me.”

  “The detail in this. And the song!”

  “You hear it then?” Rsiran asked.

  “It is clearer than it was before you burned it.” Luca held the sculpture of Ilphaesn out to him.

  Rsiran shook his head. “That’s for you. Keep it.” When Luca pulled his hands back and cradled the forging to his face, Rsiran chuckled. “And not burned. Heated. Heat can change something about the metal, but not always. And heat allows it to take on the desired shape, but only the right heat. With other metals, you can get them as hot as you want, but lorcith is different. There’s a range of allowed heat before you start to lose the effect you want.”

  Without realizing what he was doing, Rsiran had pulled another small lump of lorcith from the bin and set it on the coals. Was he really going to demonstrate to Luca how to heat the ore?

  But seeing the intensity with which Luca stared at the metal, he realized that he was. And Rsiran could use this piece, could hear the way the lorcith expressed a willingness for whatever he might need to make, and decided to turn it into a pair of knives. Eventually, he would have to figure out what to do with the paired lorcith that he’d reclaimed from Ilphaesn, but that was for another time. Now it was about demonstrating.

  As the metal took on the soft orange glow, Rsiran lifted it from the coals. “It turns this color when it’s ready. If you see it reddish or with a bluish blush, it will not work the same.”

  “The song is different,” Luca whispered.

  Rsiran frowned. When he started forging lorcith, he usually lost focus on the song from the metal, but now that Luca mentioned it, that was exactly the reason that he knew the metal was ready for him
. He’d never been able to put words to it, only he’d known when the lorcith was ready.

  “The song is different,” Rsiran agreed.

  Luca nodded.

  “What else do you hear?”

  Luca leaned close enough to the lump of lorcith that Rsiran feared he’d get burned, but he stopped, his face barely a few hairs above the metal. His mouth moved silently, as if speaking to himself. “There are whispers… you… you said something to this, didn’t you?” Luca asked.

  “You know that I can hear the song,” Rsiran said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. With enough practice, you can learn to do even more than simply hear the lorcith speak to you. You can speak to it, and…” He didn’t know if everyone could learn to control it like he did, or whether that was something particular to his abilities. Maybe it was tied to Sliding, rather than anything else.

  “You would let me listen?” Luca asked.

  “I don’t think I could stop you from listening,” Rsiran said. “And I wouldn’t want to stop you. I think it’s important to hear the song of the lorcith, and be able to understand it. Too much has happened when others have not listened to the lorcith.”

  Rsiran turned his attention back to the heated metal and started hammering it. As he worked, he realized that Luca watched him, every so often tipping his head to the side as if listening, and then he would nod to himself.

  “Grab a hammer,” Rsiran said.

  Luca shook his head.

  “It won’t hurt you. You can be the striker like I was when I first learned.”

  Luca swallowed and then, cautiously, grabbed the small pick that Rsiran had long ago brought with him from the mine. He waited as Rsiran pointed where he needed him to hit. At first, he worked slowly and carefully, as if afraid to strike very hard, but the longer they worked, the easier it became for him and the harder he hit.

  The work continued, neither of them really speaking, with Rsiran only pointing. And Rsiran was not surprised to find that Luca was a natural, quickly growing to understand where Rsiran needed him to strike. How could he not be, Rsiran decided, since he possessed smith blood?

  Chapter 21

  Rsiran made his way through the tunnels leading to the Alchemist Guild. He no longer needed the map he had found, now able to mentally trace the different paths through the underground maze, following them as easily as if they were infused with lorcith.

  “We should Slide,” Jessa suggested.

  Rsiran sniffed. “I thought about it, but there’s something about finding my way through these tunnels…”

  “You think that if you spend enough time here that you’ll understand your father better.” When he tensed but didn’t answer, she laughed softly. “I know you too well, Rsiran.”

  “I hope that I can find answers,” he said.

  “From the tunnels?” She glanced around the smooth walls, probably seeing much more than he could even with the short bladed knife he held extended like some sort of lantern. “What do you think you’ll learn of him from this place?”

  Rsiran sighed and continued onward, taking a turn that the map in his mind told him to take. “I don’t know. Maybe a reason why he hid so much from me. What did he think to protect me from?”

  Jessa grunted. “What makes you think he wanted to protect you from anything? If he wanted to protect anyone, it was his precious Alyse. Or himself.”

  Rsiran glanced at her, noting the clenched jaw and the way she twitched her neck, tossing her hair over her shoulder. She sniffed at the yellow flower she wore today, and said nothing more.

  “Thanks for coming with me,” Rsiran said.

  She snorted. “After what you found in Ilphaesn and then with Sarah, do you think I have a choice?”

  They started up a few steps and were near the wide entrance to the Hall of Guilds. “You don’t have to come with me for this.”

  “You’ve left me out of enough lately, don’t you think?”

  “I—”

  “And now you seem to have taken on an apprentice.” She shook her head when he began to object. “I don’t trust him, Rsiran. I know what Della says, but that doesn’t mean I have to trust him. He’s already tried to hurt you before. What if he really was Compelled? I know you think that with your special connection to lorcith that you can’t be Compelled, but we haven’t tested it, at least not in a way that makes me comfortable with you trusting that he’s not going to hurt you when you turn your back to him.”

  The pair of wide doors hung closed in front of them. Lorcith and heartstone worked into them, and Rsiran had only to push to open them, but once he did, the conversation with Jessa would be over. “He’s not right, Jessa,” he answered. “I know that. And he hears the lorcith in ways that I don’t. Most of that is tied to how long he was trapped in the mines, but I think he prefers to hear the lorcith, and when he doesn’t…” Rsiran shook his head. That had been part of the reason that he’d made the sculpture of Ilphaesn, hoping to create an echo, something like the memory of the song that he would have heard while in the mountain. They had worked together on a few other projects since then. Luca showed a real talent with lorcith, not surprising given his connection to the song. “It’s when he doesn’t that he’s even more unhinged.”

  She rested a hand on his arm. “Then why are you helping him? If you know that he’s not right, why risk yourself?”

  The doors started to open, though Rsiran hadn’t pushed on them. “I’m helping because… because I think that I have to. Della asked me to help, and I wasn’t sure that I should at first, but I understand now why she asked, and what she thinks I can do. I remember when I offered to take him from Ilphaesn, but he refused.” Panicked would be a better way of putting it. “But this time, I didn’t give him the choice. I just brought him out of Ilphaesn because he needed to come.” As the doors finished opening, he glanced to her and smiled. “Besides, weren’t you the one who suggested I find an apprentice?”

  She punched him in the side. “Idiot,” she mumbled.

  Ephram watched him from the other side of the door. “Lareth. You’ve been looking for me.”

  “Did Sarah tell you what I found?”

  Ephram’s eyes narrowed. “She did. And she told me what she did. She shared what she should not have and now faces the consequences, to be handed down by the guilds.”

  Rsiran crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

  “You are not of a guild, Lareth. You should not have—”

  Sarah pushed past her father and nodded to Rsiran and Jessa. “He’s of more than a guild, Father. You know what was Seen.”

  “That does not change tradition, Sarah.”

  “I think Venass has proven they care little for tradition.”

  Sarah stepped past her father and led them into a small room off the main area of the Hall of Guilds. When Rsiran and Jessa were settled into a pair of chairs Sarah remained standing and glanced from Rsiran to Jessa. “Are you certain that you want her here?”

  Jessa leaned forward, a knife quickly appearing in her hands that she turned so the tip faced outward. “Are you certain that you want to ask that question? I think you’ve been off in the woods with Rsiran enough, don’t you?”

  “That’s not—”

  Jessa stared at Sarah, fixing her with a heated gaze. “I see the way you look at him.”

  Rsiran suppressed a grin. “And what way is that?” he asked in a hushed whisper.

  She didn’t look over at him. “It’s the same way that you’re supposed to look at me.”

  “What do you mean by ‘supposed to’?”

  Jessa didn’t answer, keeping her eyes locked on Sarah.

  Sarah met Jessa’s eyes for a moment before she turned away. “Anyway. You wanted to show something to my father.”

  Ephram had followed them into the room, and now took a seat facing Rsiran. “The miners will not be pleased if I go to Ilphaesn.”

  “Why would they care?”

&nb
sp; “As I said, you are not of the guilds. There is much that you don’t yet know.”

  “I could Slide us there and back out before they knew.”

  “They would know.” Ephram sighed. “But there is something else we need to show you, something one of our travelers noticed on a scrap of metal found outside the city, in a place called Cort.”

  Rsiran sat up straight. Cort. That couldn’t be a coincidence, especially with the fact that he had tracked lorcith through the forest toward Cort. He thought of the medallion that Connor Jons had traded him. Even after learning it had been Rsiran’s grandfather’s, he still hadn’t completely worked out how he had managed to forge it.

  But why Cort? What was significant there?

  “Can I see it?” Rsiran asked.

  Sarah reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of lorcith. Rsiran should have noticed it as soon as he entered the room, but something about the symbols on the lorcith affected his ability to hear the call from it. As he studied it, he realized that the symbols were similar to those they’d seen in the Forgotten Palace, but different as well. Those didn’t affect his ability to listen to lorcith, not as these seemed to. And they were similar to those used on the necklace that Alyse wore, but not the same. Almost as if whoever created the patterns continued to work with them to perfect them.

  “These symbols are like what’s in their palace,” Rsiran said. And possibly made by his father as well. But why would it be in Cort?

  “The lorcith tells you that?” Sarah asked.

  Jessa tensed and clutched her arms more tightly to herself.

  “Not the lorcith. There’s something about it that prevents me from hearing it.” The thought made him uncomfortable. Always with lorcith, he heard it. The silence from this piece… it troubled him. “The patterns. They are the same.”

  Jessa shook her head as she studied it. “Not the same. Maybe a progression of the others, but not the same. And why would it be in Cort like the other thing you found?”