On the next day he hurried through his duties in the shipyards like a man possessed; that carving haunted him like a persistent irritation, an itch in the mind. Even when he found himself dangling head down from a masthead to free a salt-encrusted block, rather than reeve a whole new set of tackle, he could not stop running over and over the patterns in his mind until they made him dizzy. He swung himself upright on the little platform, and to avoid looking straight down to the deck he glanced out across the harbour, enjoying the cool breeze and the look of the town in late afternoon. Down here, walls were mostly half-timbered and limewashed, or timbers laid clinker-fashion and painted very much like those of his childhood village. Many had been repainted after the ravages of winter, and garlanded with flowers in hanging baskets and window shelves; they looked bright as toys clustered around the feet of the more august buildings of the upper town, in their rich shades of red and yellow stone. But inevitably, somehow, his glance was drawn across the lower rooftops again, towards the dark bulk, itself a little like a louring anvil, that was the hall of his guild; his sight seemed to pierce through those walls and down, down towards those half-formed secrets they held. He cursed; the joy had gone out of the scene for him, the irritation had infected it too. He hated what he was doing, yet it would not let him be. Moodily he lobbed the useless block into a cluster of seagulls bobbing on the harbour waters, and watched them explode upwards, cursing and squalling just as he wanted to. Then he shrugged guiltily. It would not have amused Kara, that; one of them might even have been Kara, if he had not… Very slowly he inched out along the shrouds and slid down with gloved hands. His duty was done for the moment; he could get back to his carving once more.
By late evening it was complete, carved surfaces more detailed and more delicate than any he had ever made till now. The living lock and feather he took and set among the patterns, and save for the hues of life they were matched to perfection. He laid them apart, then swiftly turned to preparing the moulds, lest in the warmth of the forge the wax should soften further and lose some tiny point of definition. By that much might its power be lessened; by so much might he lose what he fought to preserve.
It was with the gentleness of love that his practised fingers worked a soft slip of burnt and powdered chalk about the delicate shapes he had made, to take the finest possible impress of the pattern. Over that he smoothed layer upon layer of clay, gradually firmer, till at last the prepared shapes could be manoeuvered gently into position in his moulding flasks, sprues carefully aligned with the openings, then encased and set to dry well away from forge-hearth and furnace, lest the sudden heat should crack them. Now he brought the water thundering down, washed the clay from his stinging cuts and set the bellows-wheel spinning till the breath of the bellows roared through the coals like buried dragons. Then with long tongs he set the crucible of purified silver among them, and several of other rare metals for his chosen alloy. He sat by the maw of the furnace, humming idly under his breath and watching its dulled surface gradually shiver with remembered heat and change into a flowing mirror. He remembered his tumbledown smithy among the Saltmarshes, these ten years behind him and the breadth of a land away, and the silver wires he had worked there for a swordhilt. Believing his craft lost to him, he had not sought to set within them any virtues; and yet they had absorbed something of his essential self and shown it him as an image of the Marshland skies, a rushing of grey clouds, a sweep of rain and storm. Now he must make this silver do likewise; save that now he would determine the image, and the essence would not be his own.
He began to sing to himself quietly, vague snatches of that new song, wordless still or with only a single word, yet heavy with a meaning that was growing continually clearer. Firing the moulds, he felt a chain of words take shape in his mind as the wax rushed molten from the sprueholes, spitting and flaming onto the coals, and after it the boiling water to clean them. He set them at the edge of the fire, and took a deep breath; then he lifted the glowing crucible to the furnace door, and one by one, in careful order, tipped in the lesser metals. Some were to make the silver harder and more durable, some to add slight spring to it; but others, added in merest traces, were to bear special virtues of their own. The heavy liquid hissed and seethed sluggishly as he stirred it with a long rod of steel, and all the while, listening carefully to the thin high note of the coals, he sang the chant that had come to him. That swirling rythm went well with the stirring, and the coils it awoke in the crucible's heart.
In silver the shaping, enclosing, embracing In silver a shield-ring of signs interlacing Set firm within silver the circle shall close.
In silver the melting in silver the blending
As ramparts of steel shot with moonlight defending
No call from without them may pass what they hold.
Tiny droplets of metal spattered his hand, the rod grew hot through the rag he held it by, the furnace heat drew the skin taut over his cheekbones, cracked his lips, stung his eyes, yet still he sang, dry-tongued, till the last part of the alloy was added and the blend complete.
As freely you flow now a form shall enfold you,
In cooling, coalescing, a pattern shall hold you,
In shaping in firming, grow strong yet grow fair.
What now I trust to you, embrace it, enfold it,
Against yearning for change, against wandering hold it,
Encase as in armour the heart that is torn.
With frantic speed he threw his weight upon the great forge bellows, pumping them faster than could the waterwheel, till the hill of coals glowed searing white at its summit, as if earthfires fed it indeed. Urgently he heaved out the crucible in the long tongs, whitehot metal slopping and sizzling against its flanks, and whirled it across from furnace to forge; it seemed to leave a trail like a falling starstone in the heavy air, and hissed onto the angry coals. The lock of hair and the feather he caught up, raised them to his lips a moment, then reached out over the fire to the crucible and dropped them in. A light plume of flame danced up, ghostlike, and they were gone.
Gathering his strength, he took up the crucible once more, swung it around to the moulds waiting on the forge-rim… then cursed himself luridly. Fool that he was to try such a task without one forgehand at least, to steady the mould, to correct his aim, to vibrate out airlocks and bubbles, to warn him when it was almost full… Hideous difficulties loomed over him; one mistake, one only… But there was no help for it now; delay would only cool the silver further, make it harder to pour. He would have to reheat it, risk dissipating what he had set within it… and would he ever dare to replace it? Better at all events to have no forgehand hear what he must sing now. Gritting tooth on tooth he tilted the heavy thing, saw a swelling of red at its rim, a fine thread falling… Straight into the mouth of the mould. Steam whistled from the other spruehole; he breathed again, and on that note he sang, clear and fierce, that older song his memory had taught him. Yet the words were new; and as he sang his hand never trembled, the thread of falling silver never wavered.
Sheltered in silver
By craft and by flame
Be no more now drawn from me
And captive again - As once you chose,
Choose to remain!
Your own self shall enclose you,
More firmly than fetter or chain!
Silver sprang and spat, and he swung the crucible away. But was the mould full, or was it only an airlock which would leave a damaging flaw? Too late to tell; already the mirrored meniscus was dimming, he must pour the other quickly before the silver cooled. This was worse, his arms aching with cramp, his fingers trembling with weakness. His head swam, but he sang the words clearly through the smoky air. A long age it seemed before the silver leaped and spattered down the flanks of the second mould, and so great was his relief that he all but dropped the crucible, and had to set it down at an awkward angle on the rim before coaxing the moulds gently out of the coals; even unshaped, that silver could be potent stuff. He would be safest maki
ng some other work of it as soon as possible, set with different virtues. Meanwhile… He left the moulds on top of the coals, to cool slowly as they did; that helped lessen stresses within the metal. Exhaustion burned in his back and arms, and suddenly the air choked him; he flung the air-vents wide and collapsed by the forge, listening to the wind sigh in the passages of the stone. His head drooped on his breast, he jerked upright once, and then it no longer seemed worth the effort; his eyes were hot and sore, his head…
Thunder crashed around him; suddenly he was in many places, on a storm-wreathed tower-top, a grim and night-bound forest, by a forge in a marshland hovel - or was it in the mountains of the north… Then he knew where he was, shivering by a stone-cold hearth, with pounding, pounding upon his doors. Speechless he stumbled up, his throat ashen as the forge. Something in his dreaming, a memory of other such summons, filled that sound with dread, made his hands clumsy on the heavy bolt. For a moment the figure that stood there in the shadowy corridor, cloaked and hooded, seemed ominous; but he was shorter than Elof, short and rotund, and from beneath the travel-stained hood blazed a mane of red hair. Elof forgot all his alarm and seized the proffered hand. "Roc my lad! So you're back, then!"
"Sort of looks that way, don't it?" grunted Roc gracelessly. Elof looked at him narrowly; though Roc was nominally a Guildsman, he was seldom seen in the Halls. There was no mystery about that. In the Southlands he had been a respected master of his art; but what status had a smith here, skilled as he might be in the mechanics of his trade, who lacked the least trace of true smithcraft? The short man grimaced. "You're the only waking soul in the place! And here's me just in the gate, all the hostelries still shut up snug for the dawn, and me too dry with the dust of twenty roads to make the climb up to the palace -"
Elof took the hint, and poured them both wine from a jug on a side-table; Roc downed his in one gulp, and held the beaker out for more. "Not bad," he wheezed. "Distinctly passable, in fact, though the soot's got into it again. Don't your forgeboy keep it covered up?"
Elof peered suspiciously into his own goblet ."I don't keep a forgeboy anymore; I get the prentices in to help as I need them."
Roc snorted. "No wonder place is a mess, then. I've half a mind to take up my old post again; you're not fit to look after yourself. What's this that's got you out of your bed so early?" He glanced at Elof from beneath his bristling brows. "Or kept you out of it all night, eh? My, my, must be something good and juicy!" He squinted at the small moulds, into the cold crucible. "Silver? Not stuff for the fleet, surely?"
"Hardly!" smiled Elof. "That's day-labour. This is to be a gift, a surprise, so not a word of it. Even to Marja…"
"Scant danger of that!" grunted Roc. "Smithcraft's not a thing we talk about; jewellery least of all. Well, these moulds look about ripe for cracking. Want a hand?"
"If you're not too weary," grinned Elof, striving not to let his misgivings show. But it would be a worse risk being seen to hide anything from Roc; he was no fool. And since he could see nothing of the craft within the metal, what harm was there? His stubby hands were every bit as deft as Elof s as they prised apart the metal shells and chipped at the crumbling clay within. Below lay the chalk, sintered now to the hardness of the rock it came from; but under Elof s impatient grip its edges flaked away, and he shelled it like some strange fruit, catching his breath at the gleams of bright metal that showed through. He brought down a jar of corrosive from the high shelf and mixed a weak solution in water.
"So!" said Roc, as they watched the chalk fizz and bubble away, revealing the clear outlines of the pieces. "Not bad. Not bad at all. Neat as Marja could manage, or any other master jeweller I know. But that's no surprise. They the way you wanted them, then?"
With great care Elof hooked the gleaming pieces out of the cleansing bath, ran them a moment beneath the waterchute and held them up, first to the red-tinged duergar lantern, then to the thin light that was filtering down the air-shafts. "Yes," he breathed, seeing the intricate pattern of lock and feather wind its way around them without the tiniest flaw or bubble to break its inexorable course. "Yes! They are. Indeed they are." They set a catch in his voice, for he had the true smith's love of all things harmonious and fair. Yet not only their perfection moved him, but the sight of the shimmers and flickers that to his eyes darted this way and that in the metal, like fish below clear ice.
With a friend's privilege, Roc reached up and plucked down one of the gleaming things, like rare fruit. "Bracelets, eh? But why open like that?"
Elof smiled. "Anklets, rather."
"Mmmh. I see; so they'll fit over the foot. But won't they need hinges?"
"No; the natural spring of the metal…"
Roc nodded, and his powerful fingers closed around the thick ring of silver, narrowing the split. "No!" barked Elof, and wrenched the fair thing from his hand. Roc raised his eyebrows mildly, and Elof smiled in apology. "After it's annealed, I was going to say. A long slow heating and cooling, to heal any inward stresses."
"All right," grunted Roc. "I wasn't going to risk closing it all the way, anyway; guessed you'd be wanting to work on the catch. Can't see how it'd undo, as it is."
Elof shrugged. "It's important they stay on securely."
Roc grinned in wry agreement. "Fair enough. She's an active girl, your Kara, more active than most. You'd be wanting anything you gave her to fit close and stay close, all right."
Elof relaxed, trying not to show how shaken he had been, how vital it was that those clasps should close only at the right time and place, and in no other. It was a fell thing he had shaped here, in its way, but there was no help for it. He had only to think of her drawn back to Louhi's clutches to make it all worthwhile again. He balanced the anklets in his palm, and was startled to see blood on the metal. It was his; he had reopened some of the worse cuts when he snatched the thing back. Well, on the outside of the piece it could do no harm; he turned to wipe it away on a clean rag. Then he froze. On the outside… But he had paid little heed to his injuries earlier in the work; he could have bled at any point, onto the wax, into the silver… The tokens; he could have added his own blood to that feather. And there was no way now he would ever be able to tell.
"What's amiss with you now?" grunted Roc. "You've a face on you the colour of milk, and sour at that."
"I… It's nothing. Just… an effect, one that might turn out good or bad, I've no idea." He choked down his sudden flood of anxiety. There was always slight contamination when you touched something, a flake of skin, its natural oils; that mattered little, so why should this? And after all, could he really be bound up any more closely with Kara than he was? It might even strengthen the thing. He smiled wearily. "I was really wondering… I've a fair amount of silver left that I'd like to find a use for. Do you have any notions?"
Roc fingered his stubbled chin. "Not just now, but then my mind's that muzzy, I've not slept; something to help us on our jaunt south, that's a good an idea as I can hatch right now. Me for the palace, and some breakfast. And a bath; they should have the bathhouse warming nicely by the time I get there. You could use one, after your labours; set you up. Coming?"
Elof considered a moment. "Why not? But hear me; if Kara is there also, not a word of the gift, remember!" He shut away the anklets in a secure cabinet of iron, and closed up the forge with as much care. Then they went together out of the Guildhalls and into the winding streets of the northerners quarter, at whose heart the great building stood. A light spring rain was falling, making the scale-tiled house-roofs shine, gurgling out of the open-mouthed dragonheads at their gable-ends or running in sheets down their wall timbers, caulked tight as ships with the figures brightly limned in red and black upon them; little rivulets chattered down between the cobbles into the central gutter. Roc looked at the ships rolling at anchor, and up to the ornate weather-vanes on the house-roofs, and groaned.
"Wind's swinging around the compass again; clear dawn when I came in. Ah well, that's spring for you; that'll give us an
interesting time at sea, that will, just like always."
Elof grinned sympathetically; Roc was unhappily weak of stomach in a lively sea. "You know," he remarked, watching the vanes creak back and forth over the tiles, "That was no bad thought of yours. Something to help on the voyage, indeed. I'll think on that!"
And so he did; even as they took their ease in the royal baths, stretching out weary limbs on the steam-room slabs and drifting in the heated pools, his mind dwelt on it still. Then friends and fellow-courtiers came to join them, and later Marja and Kara, and the demands of the day took over his thoughts. His other, deeper concern he forgot entirely for that time, the matter of the blood. Yet in the years to come he had cause to remember it, and wonder if this petty accident might indeed have played a strange part in his fortunes. For to the effects of true smithcraft, say the annals of that day, it was ever hard to put any bounds, and never more so than in the hands of Elof, called Valantor.
From that day forth he had in any case little leisure for thought; the day of departure was near, and his was the ultimate responsibility for all the work his helpers, men and duergar, had made ready. What spare time he had he devoted to reforging the extra silver; he would leave nothing so perilous behind to suffer the whim of chance. This work was less subtle, for the forces of nature might be stronger than the turning tides of heart and mind; but it cost him much hard labour incising its pattern with maul and chisels, and beating down an inlay of gold wire into the troughs thus made. He had chosen the complex pattern, coiling and intertwining in the Southland style, that represented Amicac, the Sea Devourer, embodiment of the terrors of the oceans. But it represented also their regality and strength and as such it was the favourite emblem of the boldest corsairs, and fitted his purpose well. From time to time he would sing snatches of old fisherman's shanties he remembered from his youth in Asenby village, songs chiefly concerned with summoning fine weather and catches, simple but strong. More often, though, he whistled hard between his teeth as he worked, recalling the pipe-whistles the seawise smiths of Nordeney used to forge for mariners to summon up the breeze. And as often happened to him, a work he had started casually took hold of him, and ere it was finished he had set within it a surpassing craft and strength.
The Hammer of the Sun Page 4
