The Hammer of the Sun

by Michael Scott Rohan

  The Hammer of the Sun (Winter of the World volume three)

  By Michael Scott Rohan

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  Other Avon Books in

  The Winter of the World Trilogy by Michael Scott Rohan

  Volume 1: The Anvil of Ice

  Volume 2: The Forge in the Forest

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  Copyright © 1988 by Michael Scott Rohan

  Cover painting by Anne Yvonne Gilbert

  Published by arrangement with William Morrow and Company, Inc.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-32722

  ISBN: 0-380-70549

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Permissions Department, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 105 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

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  Contents

  Prelude

  Chapter One - The Forging

  Chapter Two - The Flaw

  Chapter Three - Into the Night

  Chapter Four - The High Gate

  Chapter Five - To the Heart of the World

  Chapter Six - King and Mastersmith

  Chapter Seven - Sorcerers' Isle

  Chapter Eight - The Cleansing Fires

  Chapter Nine - The Airs of Freedom

  Chapter Ten - The Shieldwall Breaks

  Chapter Eleven - The Hammer of the Sun

  Chapter Twelve - The Coming of the Spring

  Coda

  Appendix

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  Prelude

  The happiness of men is fragile; for so are we made that all our gains carry within them the seeds of loss, and too often we ourselves may sow them. After the events chronicled in the Book of the Helm, many long years of such happiness awaited Elof and Kara whom he loved, and the friends they had won; and for all he knew, in the pride and prime of his years, they might have lasted forever. But it was he himself who was to end them, in such folly as only wise men may create, and endure terrible trials in consequence. Yet from that ill sowing much else was to grow; and of that the Book of the Armring tells.

  Chapter One - The Forging

  It was her restlessness that roused him, the slender body beside him twisting and turning beneath the covers of heavy tapestry, admitting the keen morning air to play over his naked skin. For a moment he lay half-drugged with sleep, dimly aware of a deeper chill growing within him. He knew it well, that chill, all too well of late; in part it was excitement, oddly tinged with guilt. But even more of it was fear. In sleepy anxiety he rolled over, put out an arm to enfold her; it brushed her flank as she rose, and dropped on the warmth of the empty sheet. His eyes blinked open, she was stepping onto the balcony, her skin pale as the dawn sky beyond, lifting something to her shoulders. A swirl of white hid her back, fell back to her sides, its lining black as her hair. Then her outstretched arms raised the cloak in a great spreading sweep, hiding the sky; fear stabbed him awake. He sat up, cried out. Her arms dropped, but in falling the cloak billowed out, the lining flashed, and the air whistled with the downstroke of wide black wings. A great swan surged up from the balcony and wheeled dark against the pallid airs, lifting and swooping with a lazy grace out over the sleeping rooftops and down towards the sea.

  He cursed and sprang from the bed, his feet tangling in the spread skins beneath, and flung aside the curtain of the aumbry behind; from its highest shelf he seized a light metal cap and clapped it onto his head. A spray of mail fell icy about his cheeks, chilled his neck as he closed it with clumsy fingers. Fear flamed in him, fear and a fire still hotter. So it was, as the tale is told, that there awoke in his heart that wish, wholly loving and yet tainted by darker and more ruthless desires, that was to turn the course and flow not of his brief existenence alone, but of the whole Winter of the World. He drew breath an instant, forced himself to think, while the black speck dwindled in the swelling light.

  An image formed in his mind; he gave it substance, shape, and as it burgeoned a wave washed over him, a prickling surge of pain, cold and metallic, that trailed behind it a sense of vast pressures. He let fall his hands, and felt the air grow thick beneath them, a sudden urge of overwhelming power at his breast that lifted him high, higher, across the tangled bed and out over the balcony in a single thrusting embrace of the air. His legs trailed, he angled his feet in the rush to steady him as he rose; his eyes, grown newly keen, sought out the distant wing-beats. Already they were out beyond the harbour; with a fierce, voiceless hiss he angled his wings and plunged down the the sky in pursuit. Below him the ships of the great fleet rocked gently at their moorings, no-one stirring on their decks, and at the sight of them a cool thread of doubt grew among Elof's anger. He threw all his strength into his wings, arced high above the sea wall and out over the swell that heaved like the breathing of some vast monster, low but deep. Over it, now low, now high, sped Kara, but for all her speed he was gaining, he was upon her, the shadow of his wings flickered on her back as he stooped to her. She wheeled effortlessly, and rose to meet him. Level with him she flew, and passed so close that her back brushed his breast and their flight muscles rippled together under the sleek black down. Her neck snaked against his, writhing teasingly, then, suddenly, down ruffled against bare skin, her skin. Up and past him she surged, in woman's shape once more; but from her shoulders vast black wings still beat, and among their feathers was a single flash of gold. Startled, he threshed clumsily after her, and her laughter rang bright in his ears. He struggled to concentrate, to clothe himself in a new shape as she had, but he could not imagine himself so, could not accept the strangeness of it. He faltered, fluttered on the freshening wind, panicked, and felt the shape that masked him fall away, the rushing air chill upon his naked skin. He flailed at emptiness and dropped like a stone.

  The uprush took him, flung him about, showed him the steely sea sweeping up to meet him. Then it whipped him around again and Kara filled the sky, swooping down upon him, a vision of eerie loveliness. He reached his arms out to her, and her great wings closed about him, enveloped him. He touched her, clung, and felt her legs twine around him. Her lips pressed down on his with bruising force, her tongue flickered against his and her breasts thrust against him with every wing-beat; he hooked an arm about her heaving shoulders, caressed her with his free hand, felt the taut peak of her fierce excitement, the heart that leaped beneath. He stroked his fingers down her ribs to her flank, across her taut belly, and she threw back her head and cried out. They were rising now, the sea swaying away beneath them with every beat of the black pinions, faster and faster; he felt a surge of strength to match her own, and crushed her to him. Her back arched, her legs quivered against his, then she folded fiercely forward and crossed them about his waist. Joined, they scaled the heights of the sky while beneath them the horizon rolled away to reveal the sun, and they lifted into its first clear flare of gold. It blazed on Kara's pale skin as she swayed back in a tremor of delight, and to Elof s eyes she seemed to flow with a flood of molten light; it spilled over into him, rushed searing through his body, a torrent that burst into his mind and blotted out thought. He felt Kara stiffen convulsively against him, her wide wings . outhrust, quivering. With the high scream of a great bird she toppled backward in the air; they went spiralling down into emptiness, uncaring.

  Only in the last instant, as the sea seemed to reach up and grab at them, did Elof recover his wits. Kara gave a wild yell, then he felt a great stinging slap of cold across his back, that all but drove out what little breath was left him. Water rushed into his open mouth, stung his eyes, roared in his
ears; it sucked the heat from him, though his skin burned with the impact. Instinctively he kicked out against the icy embrace, felt himself rising, and in a sudden qualm of panic snatched for the precious helm. His fingers touched metal, and he knew it hung still fastened about his neck; it was no greater relief when an instant later he burst through the surface and could draw breath. Gasping, he clawed his streaming hair out of his eyes; a wave lifted him, and he looked anxiously about. He was floating naked in a strong swell, the shore no more than a sun-reddened streak of grey in the distance, and he could see no other shape among the wavecrests. Then came a splash, and Kara's light laughter rippled like harp strings among the soft rush and thunder of the ocean. Two warm and wholly human arms slithered around his neck, and her slender body was a startling warmth in the dawn-chilled waters.

  "Kara! You…" Then he had to hold her close and kiss her, taste the salt on her soft neck. Her dark eyes sparkled into his, and he sought to see past the gentle mockery he read there, and heard in her voice.

  "But you were not worried, surely? For me? Who in all the world has less to fear from any element than I?"

  He held her to him, tight, as if at any moment she might slip away into the depths beneath. "I was afraid you might have… changed again. Gone where I could not follow."

  She stroked his forehead. "Why would I do that, my heart, even if I could? Have you not' bested me before, you and your cunning helm?"

  "Aye, but it strains me, Kara; I was not born to this constant shifting and change. And I love you as you are; I would have you so - "

  She lowered her eyes and smiled a small smile. "And did you not, just? In what counts, at any rate…"

  Elof laughed, though it rang hollow in the emptiness within, and bent his head to hers. "That I'll grant you! Though the rest was strange enough, in all conscience it was good. But I'm wearied now, and the ocean's ice-chill yet at this hour; let's be swimming back for breakfast, eh?"

  She threw up her arms above her head, as if about to dive; her serpentine gold armring flashed warmly in the sunlight. "Gladly! In what - "

  "As ourselves, Kara. Please!"

  She pulled free of his arms, rolled idly on her back in the water and let a wavecrest bear her along. "If we must!" Then suddenly her long legs thrashed, sprayed water in his face, and she was torpedoing off through the waves, almost as fast, it seemed, as in any unhuman form. Elof groaned and launched himself after her. He was a powerful swimmer but a graceless one, and in another moment she was rolling and plunging about him like the dolphin she could be, tickling him, nipping him, tangling his thrashing legs or simply brushing herself against him and darting out of reach, and that he found most disturbing of all. She was seldom so skittish, and unease swelled in him.

  "All right!" he protested, coming to a halt and treading water. "Have it as you will! Match me now -" He reached up and pulled the helm over his head once more and ducked down. Side by side, twisting in the first shaft of sunlight, two seals arrowed towards the coast.

  But it was in human form that the two clambered onto the warm stones of the sea wall and stood dripping a moment. "Well?" laughed Kara, leaning on Elof's shoulder and clutching her swancloak about her. "May I shift shape once more? Or would you have us stride through the streets as we are?"

  "We've scandalized the night watch enough already, I doubt not. Shift, and I'll follow."

  Kara, already in swan's shape once more, chose to hear that as a challenge; rather than flying straight home, she led him a lively dance around and about the forests of masts, diving and weaving among the tangles of rigging with a leisurely grace that was wholly deceptive. Plunging after her between trailing clumps of blocks and tackle that every moment threatened to snare a wing and send him spinning down to the deck or sea, Elof felt the terrible sinking of doubt grow ever greater in him. Soon, very soon now, this great fleet must take to the sea, sailing southward as they had every spring these seven years past, on a great voyage south and east, making landfall upon the barren coasts of the inland seas. From there the King and his crews would retrace the way overland through the borderlands of the hostile Wastes to the fair coasts of the West, the road by which, a thousand years past, Vayde had led the Lastcomers from Morvan to the land of Bryhaine in the West. There they would help to hold off the advancing Ekwesh marauders for another summer, and at its end, as the raiders retreated for the winter, bear back with them still more of Kerbryhaine's unhappy people. And, with the fleet, as in every one of those seven springs, Elof and Kara would go. Long and arduous that way would be, yet it was none of the many perils of the Wild that awoke such unease in Elof s heart; to the menaces of the Forest realm, Tapiau'la-an-Aithen, they were as nothing, and through that he had already passed, and bested the will of its shadowy lord. It is the perils we may bear with us that I fear…

  By the time he landed upon the high balcony of the palace Kara was already shaking the seawater from her swancloak, whirling it this way and that in a rain of droplets. "There! And what, pray you, was so terrible about that?"

  "Nothing," said Elof sombrely, "as well you know. And yet…"

  Kara's dark eyes seemed to narrow further. "And yet?" she echoed, and her arms fell to her sides.

  "It happens ever more of late. You grow restless, the fit falls on you of a sudden, and… you are gone. By strange ways, in strange forms. You are often hard to follow."

  "Not by design! Are you not as apt as I am at the sport? You proved that long ago!"

  "Perhaps. Though it is natural to you; other shapes are but masks to me, and they soon gall. But is it any longer a sport, Kara?"

  She stared at him, bewildered. "Why - "

  "Why indeed, Kara? What is it stirs in you, calls you so?"

  "The spring, perhaps…"

  "Nothing more? No other behest, no other voice, nothing that would summon you away from me?"

  "No! From you?" Her arms went out to him, and hearing the hurt in her voice he could only take them, hold her to him. "What could ever be strong enough to do that?"

  He shook his head. "Then what is it, Kara my love? For there is something, I would swear it…"

  In the palace towers above bells chimed, sounding the first hour of the day, and she pulled away from him, laughing again. "What a mood for so fine a morning! Come, dress if you're so set on your breakfast!" Other bells were echoing the hour from the city below, an instant apart, so that the peals rang together, but not as one. Elof, struggling into tunic and hose, watched Kara flow into her gown with liquid grace. Even so it is with us, he thought.

  But as he followed her out onto one of the open galleries that circled the palace like a coronet, he said no more, only listened intently to the music of the bells. Many he knew intimately, could distinguish their individual tones clear among the clangour; good chimes, well pitched, ringing brightly without crack or flaw. Those bells he had cast himself, making good the destructions of the Ekwesh occupation; he knew every stage of their making, from the alloying to the final raising. He could trust them. Then he grew wroth with himself for what that thought implied, whether about Kara or others; his trust was not so narrow as that. He had friends enough who had risked their lives with him, for him, and for whom he had done the same, or would gladly; those bonds were of nothing so fragile as metal, nor so easily forged. Then why think worse of Kara? A gleam of gold caught his eye, and for all the warmth of the sunlight he went cold. He had shaped her the armring, that was why, the ring and all that went with it. Without those virtues, those patterned forces in the gold…

  Once, a lonely, desperate youth, he had pressed it on her; she had taken it, in sympathy perhaps, and -Suppose she had not? What would he be to her then? He bit his lip savagely. But then she turned and laughed, warmer than gold or sunlight, and tucked her strong slim arm in his, pressing closer to his side, and he could resist her no more; he hugged her close, and they made their way thus down the long stairs to the lower galleries. The cold core of doubt and fear within him seemed to melt and d
windle; yet, tempered and hardened by fear, fear of loss, some tiny sliver still remained.

  Under the new kingship and the restored peace the great halls of the Palace of Morvanhal through which they walked were flourishing as they never had before the Ekwesh came. There was not one of that fierce folk now left alive east of the mountains, so far as any could tell. In a swift and bloody week the land had been scoured of them and of those others, shadowy followers of the Ice-worshipper Bryhon, who had guided and prepared their invasion. Freed from the Ekwesh, the Eastlands had begun to grow and flourish once again. From the day he took possession of his halls the new king had made his first priority the feeding of his folk, organising the fair sharing of what supplies there were, and the urgent clearing and planting of land that had been left fallow and overgrown for many years. But even as the first planting was ending he was setting out with what ships and men the land could afford for the Westlands and for Kerbryhaine, the City that two years since had ail but driven him out. He found it in a very different mood, harried by famine and disease, the power of the Syndicacy in tatters. It might have been in total anarchy, save that the threat of the Ekwesh had grown so great there that internal differences had come to seem light by comparison; and perhaps also the death of Bryhon had led to a lessening of the strife. Ironically enough, it was the Nordeney fugitives the syndics had once sought to bar who had become the staunchest supporters of order, and the fiercest fighters against the invading reivers. But they were not enough. Slowly but surely the lands of the great landowners were being overrun, and their peasants were fleeing within the walls of the city, reducing the flow of its food supply even as they increased the demands on it. The prospect of an eastern realm which neither Ekwesh nor Ice could easily reach, with a diminished population and land to spare, became suddenly appealing even to those landowners, and to those partisans of the Bryheren faction, who had long opposed the line of Morvan. When under Kermorvan's generalship a mingled force of men of Nordeney, Kerbryhaine and Morvanhal decimated or drove out all the larger bands of marauders, all opposition fell strangely silent, and many who had most fiercely opposed the kingship became most vocal in seeking its shelter. More sought to go with Kermorvan than he could possibly take; he promised to return for them, and this promise he had kept. That first fleet sailed back in time to help with a harvest of unlooked-for abundance, and from that day forth it became only a matter of time until the west was abandoned. That time drew nearer with every passing year.