by J. L. Doty
He stood straight again and returned to his throne. He sat down, resting one arm casually on an armrest and the other on the hilt of the great jeweled sword. Then slowly, inevitably, the decay returned. The tapestries lost their brilliance and the weaponry lost its shine, the enchanted alcove was no longer visible through one wall of the crypt, and the king, powerful and majestic in life, was once more a skeleton of brittle bone and rotted flesh.
~~~
A harsh grunt broke the silence of the crypt, and Salula staggered into the tomb. “Where are you?” he growled, blood dripping down his face from a cut where he’d smashed his head on the rock of the shelf. “You can’t hide from me, fool mortal, and after I have your life, I’ll have that blade that my master fears.”
He looked at the skeleton on the throne, and at the one on the floor, then his head jerked from side-to-side as he searched angrily. “There’s no place to hide in here,” he shouted. He strode across the crypt to a shield leaning against one wall, kicked it aside and looked behind it. “Nothing,” he screamed.
He ripped a moth-eaten tapestry off the wall. The centuries had not served it well and it shredded in his hands, so he tossed it aside. He looked toward the heavens and screamed, “Where is that blade?”
He flew into a maniacal rage, kicking arms and armor aside, breaking anything that got in his way, careful to look closely at each sword he found and declare it, “Not the one.” He kicked shields and spears and other weaponry aside, cared nothing for the wealth of jewels that encrusted them. “Pretty weapons,” he growled. “Useless junk in a real fight.”
In desperation he kicked the skeleton king’s bones apart, stomped them into the dust, overturned the throne to look beneath it, then hacked at it with the obsidian blade, cleaving it in two. He ignored the skeleton of the ancient warrior on the floor, for he saw it possessed no sword, nor any means of hiding one. He turned to the broken and shattered throne, screamed curses and hatred at the bones scattered about it.
He finally stopped in the middle of the crypt, breathing heavily, the air thick with dust. He’d destroyed everything but the jeweled sword, and that he merely spat upon and said, “Another pretty, useless thing.”
He turned his head slowly and looked one last time about the crypt. There were no recesses in the walls, nothing, no place to hide a blade, and no place to hide the body of a badly wounded Elhiyne. He looked toward the entrance and the shadowmagic that obscured everything there. “You and your blasted shadows. Used them to elude me, did you? I stumbled right past you while you hid in those shadows, didn’t I? Well I’ll find you and that blade. No matter where you go I’ll find you.”
He stormed out of the crypt, back into the shadows at the entrance, and left behind only silence, and a floor strewn with the scattered bones of the skeleton king.
~~~
Rhianne rolled over, managed to get to her hands and knees, but could make it no further as dizziness made the ground shift and sway beneath her. She must get up, must help Morgin. She had almost summoned the resolve to get at least one foot on the ground beneath her when Salula’s gauntleted fist crashed into her cheek.
She tumbled painfully on the rock of the shelf, tried to roll away from him, but his boot slammed into her ribs and she almost lost consciousness. Then he picked her up, grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her. She spun once, but not even the spell could support her and she tumbled to the ground in a heap. A moment later she wished she had lost consciousness as he picked her up by the front of her dress and held her face tight up against his, so close she could look nowhere else but into those horrible eyes. “We’re going to find that husband of yours. And when we do, you’re both going to watch each other die, and it will not be a quick death. That I promise you, pretty one. That I promise you.”
He threw her over his shoulder, and somewhere between the rock shelf and the horses she lost consciousness.
~~~
The crypt embraced the silence of the dead for a time, and then the bones of the skeleton king shimmered and glowed with an ancient light. The shattered throne came together, its bits and pieces reassembling as if it had never been damaged. The tapestries reformed as well, though they remained moth-eaten and old. The armor and arms returned to their ancient resting places. Then the bones of the skeleton king slid across the floor, and one by one reformed in the shape they’d held for centuries. And once again the skeleton king sat upon his throne, one arm resting casually on an armrest, the other on the hilt of the great sword.
Once again his flesh reformed, the face filled out, the eyes were no longer pits of shadow but pools of sorrow and mercy, and the king was once again a king of life and health, seated upon his throne dressed in a suit of golden mail and glimmering silk and rich leather. The tapestries on the walls shone with the brilliance of their colors again, and the assorted trappings of arms and armor were clean and bright once more.
He stood, this young and vibrant king, and crossed the room to the body of Lord Mortal lying in the middle of the crypt. The poor fellow’s body had fleshed out and was no longer a shriveled skeleton. The king stood over him and looked at him carefully, and he said, “Thrice, we have come to this, Lord Mortal. Thrice now, I must torment you with life. I know you understand not the reason for such blooding, but without it we are all doomed to a future of slavery and degradation.”
He knelt, rested a hand on the wound in the warrior’s side. With each healing Lord Mortal grew more reluctant to return, and too, this third time crossed a certain threshold, a boundary beyond which control of this mortal would quickly diminish.
Lord Mortal gasped, coughed out a gobbet of clotted blood and sucked a breath of air into his lungs. But he quickly quieted and remained unconscious, breathing raggedly and unevenly.
The young king stood, looked down upon his handiwork and asked, “Did you ever find your true name, Lord Mortal?”
He considered the poor fellow at his feet. “No, I suppose you didn’t. But you must, you know, for without it you will suffer a fate far worse than all of us.”
He sighed, turned about and returned to his throne, sat down upon it and looked at the unconscious Lord Mortal who lay sucking in ragged breaths of air. The young king nodded, as if acknowledging a painful and difficult task finally completed. He spoke, his voice a faint whisper, “And so must a blade be born.”
He rested one arm casually on an armrest and the other on the hilt of the great sword. Then slowly, inevitably, the decay returned. The tapestries lost their brilliance and the weaponry lost its shine. The king, powerful and majestic in life, was once more a skeleton of brittle bone and rotted flesh.
The End
Here ends The Heart of the Sands, the third book of The Gods Within, in which Morgin has learned the heart of the Benesh’ere and tasted the magic of steel. In the fourth book, The Name of the Sword, Morgin must save Rhianne and France if he is to save himself.
Don’t miss The Name of the Sword, the exciting conclusion of The Gods Within. Go to the author’s web site (www.jldoty.com) for status reports and updates. He’ll also be posting sample chapters there in early 2014.
The author has also constructed a Dramatis Personae for each of the first three books in The Gods Within, and posted it on his web site.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank Durelle Kurlinski for fixing all my dotted t’s and crossed i’s, Kelley Eskridge for helping me turn an ok manuscript into something I can be really proud of, and Steve Himes, and the whole team at Telemachus, for getting a quality product out the door.
Some Notes About Steel
The author spent a considerable amount of time researching old and new methods of making steel, though he does not purport to be an expert in any way. And if he has made any mistakes, he would appreciate hearing about them.
Pure iron is a fairly soft metal, and as Salula pointed out, will not hold an edge well. Add carbon to it, and it gets harder—it becomes steel; the more carbon added, the harder it gets, and
the better the edge it will hold. But if too much carbon is added, the steel becomes brittle, and a long, thin blade like a sword could easily break, or shatter on impact. So a sword smith must draw a careful balance between enough carbon to provide a hard edge, but not so much that the blade shatters during a fight.
An alternative approach is to make the backbone of a blade using steel with less carbon that is more flexible, then wrap a layer of high-carbon steel around it that will hold a good edge. In this way, the sword smith can make a blade with an extremely hard edge, but flexible enough to maintain its integrity on impact. Morgin alludes to this technique when Chagarin tests his knowledge of steel.
Sulfur, in very controlled, small amounts can make steel easier to machine, but too much will make it extremely brittle. Hence, Morgin’s comment that one of the steel blooms had been “. . . fired or smelted with stink coal, coal contaminated with the yellow earth.”
Chromium is added to make stainless steel, steel that is resistant to oxidation. The iron in simple carbon steel can oxidize when exposed to oxygen and water vapor, producing hydrated iron oxide: rust. Rust is active and accelerates corrosion by forming thick layers of iron oxide which then flake away. The addition of chromium impurities (as much as 11%) allows the steel to produce a chromium oxide layer on the surface that is passive. Due to the similar size of the steel and oxide ions they bond very strongly, producing a microscopically thin protective layer of chromium oxide that doesn’t progress. Stainless steel is not truly stainless; it can be discolored in many ways. But the thin chromium oxide layer isolates the iron in the steel from oxygen and water vapor, preventing the active formation of rust.
Iron ore is a mixture of rocks and minerals that contain high concentrations of about five different types of iron oxides. Smelting is the process of extracting the iron from those oxides and removing other contaminants in the ore. It uses heat and a chemical reducing agent (usually some source of carbon) to drive off undesired elements as gasses or slag, yielding raw iron or steel. Coke, and in times past charcoal, is most often used as the reducing agent. Coke, derived from coal, and charcoal, derived from wood, are produced by burning off all volatile elements, leaving behind relatively pure carbon. If simple coal or wood is used to smelt or forge steel, the presence of the volatile elements can contaminate the iron, producing an inferior grade of steel.
An experienced smith can control the contaminants in the steel by controlling the contaminants in his flame. Residual oxygen in the flame can combine with carbon in the steel to reduce the carbon content, driving it off in the form of carbon dioxide. But residual oxygen can also combine with the iron in the steel to produce iron oxide, which can result in seriously inferior steel. Conversely, residual carbon in the flame, with no residual oxygen present, can increase the carbon content of steel. Hence, Morgin’s comments about adjusting the hardness of the pig iron and mild steel when Chagarin tested his knowledge.
Only a knowledgeable and experienced smith can successfully make use of these techniques.
Other Books Available by J. L. Doty
A Choice of Treasons (hard science fiction)
To save himself, he first had to save two empires . . . but when he tried, his options were limited to a choice of treasons.
As a lifer in the Imperial Navy, York Ballin’s only hope at an honorable discharge is the grave. Matters only get worse when he finds himself deep behind enemy lines on a commandeered imperial cruiser without a trained crew, commanded by an incompetent nobleman, with the empress and 200 civilians as passengers, and everyone hell-bent on turning them into a cloud of radioactive vapor.
The Thirteenth Man (hard science fiction)
Beware the curse of the thirteenth man, for should he not fall, all may fall before him.
Charlie Cass returns from five years in a squalid POW camp to find the nine Dukes and the King conspiring against each other, and plotting with Charlie’s old enemies. As interstellar war looms, he’s forced to assume the mantle of the thirteenth Duke de Lunis, who, according to legend, is destined to fall beneath the headsman’s ax. But if he can survive the headsman, all may fall before him.
Child of the Sword, Book 1 of The Gods Within (epic fantasy)
When gods and wizards go to war . . . it’s best to just find a good shadow and hide.
Rat is no ordinary thief. A feral, filthy and malnourished child; he survives on what he can steal. But he creates his own shadows and hides within them, though he’s completely unaware of his use of magic. When a clan of powerful wizards see his shadowmagic they adopt him, because they want such magic in the clan. Perhaps that’s a good thing for Rat, as long as they don’t kill him in the process.
The SteelMaster of Indwallin, Book 2 of The Gods Within (epic fantasy)
Can one ever rule both the steel within, and the shadows without?
When Morgin’s sword goes berserk and wants to butcher everyone at the annual meeting of the Lesser Council, he’s barely able to control its rabid bloodlust. But the Lesser Council declares him an outlaw for bringing such a dangerous talisman onto the Mortal Plane. So with a price on his head he goes on the run, a wizard without power always just one step ahead of the next bounty hunter.
When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough, Book 1 of The Dead Among Us (contemporary fantasy)
The dead should ever rest in peace, but when dead ain’t dead enough, the living should fear for their mortal souls.
Paul Conklin is a rather ordinary, thirtyish fellow, sharing his ordinary, present-day San Francisco apartment with the ghosts of his dead wife and daughter. Suzanna’s cooking for him again, and Cloe’s bouncing around the apartment in her school uniform, and things are almost back to normal. But a piece of Paul realizes he’s really bug-fuck nuts, or at least that’s what he thinks. He has no idea that a Primus caste demon from the Netherworld covets his soul, and that he’s going to have to take a crash course in killing big, bad hoodoo demons, or lose his soul for all eternity.
Still Not Dead Enough, Book 2 of The Dead Among Us (contemporary fantasy)
When the dead refuse to rest in peace, perhaps they just need a helping hand.
Now that it’s clear Paul isn’t a demon, he hopes he’ll no longer be a target, but he quickly learns otherwise. The Russians want him dead on general principal. The Sidhe have no souls, so they’re not really alive, and Paul may have added power over them, which they don’t like. And the Summer Knight, Anogh, is pulling strings in the background, manipulating everything concerning Paul and Katherine.
About the Author
Jim was born in Seattle, but he’s lived most of his life in California, though he did live on the east coast and in Europe for a while. From a very early age he made up stories in his head, but he never considered writing. In his family you went to college, got a degree in something useful and got a real job. So he got a Ph.D. in optical engineering, and went to work as a research scientist. But he was still making up those stories in his head, so he wrote the first draft of A Choice of Treasons, and as he says, “It was 250,000 words of pure, unmitigated crap. It was terrible: poorly written, poorly plotted, shallow characters that no reader could come to care about. It was the hardest decision I ever made, but I literally threw it away and turned to other projects.” He spent more than a year writing the first draft of Child of the Sword. Then he went back to A Choice of Treasons and started again, from scratch, a complete rewrite from the get-go. He worked on it for several years before releasing it, and also spent some years putting Child of the Sword through a number of rewrites to insure quality.
Science has always been a passion of Jim’s, but writing is an addiction. He’s finished seven books now, and is working on a prequel to A Choice of Treasons, the third book in The Dead Among Us, and the fourth and final book in The Gods Within.
Jim has a big pet peeve regarding lasers as weapons in science fiction. He spent decades working in the laser and electro-optics industry, even did some research on laser weapons in the 80’s. And when
writers use a laser as a weapon in a story, they invariably get it wrong, usually by violating some basic law of physics.
Jim intends to keep on writing and producing more stories, but no laser weapons.
Visit the author’s website at http://www.jldoty.com
Contact the author at [email protected]
Follow the author on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/@JL_Doty
Table of Contents
Prologue: To Know the Steel
Chapter 1: An Oven of Sand
Chapter 2: The Spirit of the Sands
Chapter 3: Rescue
Chapter 4: The Jest of a Name
Chapter 5: Brothers of the Sands
Chapter 6: Close to the Steel
Chapter 7: Without a True Name
Chapter 8: The March
Chapter 9: A Feast for Flies
Chapter 10: Ancient Lessons Remembered
Chapter 11: Fire From the Blood of Our Kin
Chapter 12: The Freedom to Die
Chapter 13: SteelMaster
Chapter 14: The Obsidian Blade
Chapter 15: A Journey Remembered
Chapter 16: The Curse of the Benesh’ere
Chapter 17: The Blade is Near
