The voice that answered him was a woman's, hard and clear and proud. "No herald needs the Princess Beathaill to any servant of the King her father! Bow down to receive her!" Through the doorway stepped two tall and haughty women, angular in rich-hued gowns of court, and stood flanking the entrance, their eyes flickering nervously about the strangeness of the forge. After a moment, seeing no lurking peril, they turned and bowed, and between them stepped a shape shorter and more shapely of a girl of at most twenty years, probably a shade less, startlingly pretty, clad in a divided hunting gown of green as bright as her eyes, with breeches of the same beneath. She hesitated only a moment before she saw Elof, standing stunned behind a great anvil, and advanced to meet him. Her body, slender and lissom, moved with a skipping grace that set her mane of long chestnut hair asway; that and the hair alone allowed Elof to recognise in her the little girl of eleven who had witnessed his downfall and disgrace. And now, of all things, she was holding her hand out to be kissed.
"I seek the mastersmith," she said in a soft voice, slightly tremulous, as, speechless with astonishment, he took it to his lips. "The crippled one, the… Valant, the sorcerer…"
Elof placed his hand at the open neck of his shirt, upon the small stamp that hung there. "I am the Mastersmith, my lady, Elof Valantor. You will find no sorcerers here." And he bowed as best he could on his crutches.
She made no reply at first, but stared at him wide-eyed, her feelings coursing undisguised across her face. There was fright at first, and surprise; she stepped back a little, and her hand flew to her throat. Then came awe, and sudden interest, and she looked him up and down with a heedless arrogance that made him acutely aware of his maimed legs. "But… you are so much younger than I thought to find!" she said. Then her eyes grew apprehensive again. "Or… is that only the way you choose to look?"
"I am as you see me, my lady," he answered, a little stiffly. She had looked on him last with the eyes of a child, eight years since, and though even now he was not yet in his middle years, she had evidently been expecting some snaggle-toothed spellmonger out of romances. Perhaps her brothers had been telling tales, and exaggerating the mysterious figure he cut.
"Of course?" she laughed, a little too blithely. "Why, you might almost be handsome, if you kept your-self cleaner. And if you could manage to smile now and again; or are you so set in grime and grimness that your cheeks would crack?"
"You come upon me in the practice of my craft and mystery, my lady. At the day's end you would find me scrubbed as clean as you could wish to look upon. And should I in my plight smile as lightly as any careless mayfly of your father's court? I saw you weep once at a certain sight."
She laughed again, and wrinkled her dainty nose. "Oh, I was only a child when last you saw me; father would not let me come here, in all these years."
"Then should you have come now, my lady? Will your father not be wroth with you? If you go swiftly he need never find out…"
She arched her brows at him. "So eager to be rid of me? Do you have so many high-born ladies visit you that you must drive one forth ere the next arrive?"
Elof smiled wryly, and bowed again. "Doubtless they would all pale away before your fair presence, my lady Beathaill. I spoke only out of concern for your gracious self."
She laughed, and clapped her hands. "Ah, so you can smile when you wish, I see. And play the courtier, also. But my father is far off, deep in endless wrangles with the barbarians or some traitorous lord, I know not which, and besides he grows old. He will hardly care about such a petty thing, not now…" She checked at a thought, and began to rummage in the long and heavy sleeves of her outer robe. "Not now my brothers have set foot here, I meant. But still, I have no time to waste, there is dancing tonight in the hall. I came not out of vulgar curiosity, I wish you to mend something for me…a gaud, an ornament… ah, here it is." And before Elof's appalled eyes she cast the two halves of the golden arm-ring chiming upon the anvil beside him. He stood staring at it, and felt the blood drain from his face.
"Is aught amiss?" he heard her ask, sudden concern in her tone; but her voice reached him as from some infinite distance. "Are you unwell? Or can it not be mended? Has it been re-soldered too often? Speak freely, you need not fear my displeasure; it is the least of my things, but I have had it since I was a child and am grown fond of it, only it is forever breaking and my ladies insist that I cannot wear a broken thing now I am no longer a child, and that I must give it up or have it made whole. Only," she added, a little wistfully, "there is no goldsmith in the city who has ever been able to heal it neatly or lastingly, not without melting it down altogether. And I fear they would spoil it, then!"
Elof drew breath, and recovered his calm. He guessed there was more, that word had indeed got round of the princes' exploit; probably Kenarech had been boasting of it - though hardly of his true reasons, save to a select few. Almost certainly she was not among those; but she had been delighted at having such an excuse for a slightly daring exploit of her own, of being able to boast that she too had bearded the mysterious sorcerer in his den - all the more because her father would not approve.
"It can be re-made well enough here," he told her, caressing the pieces with his fingertips, feeling the ridges of solder built up about the broken surfaces. He would gain little from lying about that; she would only take the pieces away to cherish. "And so it should be. But my lady, do you know what you have brought me?" He chose his words carefully. "This… gaud was made by me, and taken from me against my will, and the loss of it all but broke my heart. It was the first gift from me to my wife, who is lost to me."
"Ohh," breathed the young woman, and laid a light finger on one of the serpentine pieces, so that it rocked back and forth. "How sad that she is lost, sorcerer! But my father would have found you another if you had asked him, a very fair one, even though you are not a whole man."
"I have never wished another," answered Elof as calmly as he could, still holding back from open appeal. Beathaill looked at him more closely, and her green cat-eyes grew softer.
"That is sweet; you must have loved her very much! Make me the ring again, Valant, and maybe you will find another to love…"
Elof grew desperate, and clenched his hand on the anvil's rim. "Princess, I ask it of you; I beg you, do not keep it from me! If I could, I would throw myself at your feet for it. Give it me, and I will shape you such jewels as never blazed about the body of any princess of this earth! I will draw down the light of moon and stars and girdle you with them, I will crown you with the rays of the sun! I will make you a vision among the Powers! But do not keep it from me!"
She was all astonished attention now, biting at her neat forefinger with unconscious childishness. "Could you do that, indeed?" she whispered. "How soon? Would it take long?"
"It could not be hurried, my lady!" admitted Elof. "A year, perhaps, if my labours are as light as now; a brief time, for such an end… my lady, give it me!"
Sadly, regretfully she shook her head. "Alas!" she said softly, "it may not be. I would have you work your wonders, but soon…" She checked herself once more. "But Valant, I did not take the ring from you, and it was given to me and I love it; I cannot let it go for a promise. You may keep it a few days, at least, to remake it. Do that, and make me these jewels you promise, and then, maybe, I will let you ask it of me again; and I shall take good care of it in the meantime, never fear."
"My lady!" cried Elof in anguish, "Do not sport with love, as you hope for love yourself…"
Her neat mouth pursed, and she stamped hard on the earthen floor. "You presume upon my good heart, smith! What are you but a thrall, my father's broken bondsman, unfitted even to address me, let alone beg? All you have is mine by right, all the jewels you can make me mine if I but wish them! It is not for you to bandy bargains with a princess of the Lonuen! Five days from now my father is due back; I shall return on the third. If the ring is not made whole, then do you look to that wise head of yours! And seek not to gull me with substit
utes; I have worn that ring these many years, and even re-made I shall know it! Meanwhile you may reflect on what respect is due a princess!" She spun on her heel, waving her women away before her; the wide skirts of her gown flared about her, her riding boots clattered on the threshold, and the door slammed. Elof bowed his head down over the anvil till his forehead almost touched the cold iron, and his fingers gripped the rim of it as if to dig deep into the metal.
"Whew!" Roc breathed eventually, breaking the tense silence. "Old Nithaid's losing his grip for sure, if even that chit and child rushes to defy him!"
"No, Roc!" said Elof; his voice was stern, though the grime on his face was streaked and moist. "There is more to it than that, I am sure now! She also was strangely in haste; and twice she all but let slip that time, my time, grows somehow short… That is why her dear brothers were in such haste, then! And it all has some connection with Nithaid's return…" He hobbled laboriously to the window, and watched the little boat pulling away from shore, the sail hoisting and swelling, shining suddenly scarlet as if the rays of sunset filled it. He could not see whether she was looking back at him. "It grows shorter than you dream of, lady, that time…"
"But can you?" demanded Roc. "In five days, if it's true what you fear… Can we finish our work in that time?"
"We must - must we not? And one thing more, even. For this, this -" He caught up the halves of the ring, clutched them to him, held them to his lips, his eyes, his breast. "Whatever may befall, this shall be made anew!"
What means Elof used are not recorded. Most probably he encased the two pieces together in the finest clay or sand, as the ring was first moulded, and fired it with long and delicate care as it first was, in the upsurge of earthfires. He would have sung the same soft songs over that chrysalis within which the sundered gold sweated! shivered and at last grew liquid, as it seethed and flowed in currents of convected heat, pent within the shell of its own shape. But within that shell there would be nowhere it might flow, save into itself, uniting, mingling. Within that shell the process of change was brought to its absolute, only to be turned back upon itself; a dissolution so total it restored form, a turmoil so fierce it imposed unity, a storm that served only to create a greater calm.
However this may be, there is no doubt that Elof succeeded; for as he gazed upon the ring re-made, it is set down that he wished aloud he could do as much for himself. "Melt myself down in my own furnace, mold myself anew, mended and whole! And in doing it I might even skim away the clinging dross of all my past, all my follies and my cruelties; all the wrongs I have done, all the wrongs done to me, I might forget them all together! I could just escape then, and have done with it, this damnable hunger for revenge! I grow to hate it, Roc; hate what I must do to glut it. It is a master almost crueller than Nithaid! I hate to deal in this way, even with such as they!"
"What's this, then, from you of all folk? Mercy? Compassion?" Roc looked around from the bag he was packing, and his voice grew edged and bitter. "It's never yet held you back from what you thought needed doing. Didn't stay you with poor old Ingar, did it? Or Korentyn. Or Kara. Why then now, with these creatures that are a hundred times the worse?" Elof writhed beneath the sting of the words, but he made neither protest nor denial; for they both knew too well there was none. "You've never scrupled to mess with your friends; why baulk at your foes? Regret's cheap when it comes too late, my lad. What you've planned now, you must do, or all's to wrack and ruin… more, maybe, than you know. You'll not make yourself a better man by turning stupid!"
"No!" muttered Elof, still burnishing at the gold, though it shone bright as it ever had in the midday sunlight. "But I may yet make myself worse. Enough! High time you were on your way; the guard-boat is waiting! And take care!"
Roc nodded curtly, and turned to the door. "I'll do my part, never fear. Only do you yours!"
The door closed behind him. Regretfully Elof wrapped the bright fair thing in a square of dark velvet and laid it aside on one of the benches beneath the window. He leaned there for a moment, resting his weary shoulders, and watched the guard-boat with Roc on board pull away across the great smooth flood of the sunlit Yskianas. It was the last piece he could move, in a play that stood either to lure his foes into the check he had laid with such care, or to rebound upon him so utterly as to sweep him from the board. And Roc with him, perhaps, and many more. Had he been over bold? Too late if he had; he should be thinking of his work. They had loaded the furnace earlier; high time he shut it down.
He limped over to it and began to spin the wheel back. Beneath him he felt Che door grind across, though it seemed to be growing harder than usual to move; when it was three-quarters closed, it began to stick. He cursed, tugged at the wheel, wound it back and then sharp forward; it turned a little further, then stuck. Alarmed, he had to jerk it again and again, throwing all his weight upon the wheel till it seemed to clear the obstruction. At last it slid a little way smoothly, then a sharp clang told him the door was shut. He cranked the air-vents open wider, knocked free the bolts on the outer door and heaved it up, ducking back to let the gush of searing air disperse. Then it was only a matter of more waiting, until the stalks had spread their leaves wide enough to show him it was safe to enter. Waiting; and he could not even pace up and down. With rags wrapped around hands and feet he swung himself down onto the stairs and shone his lamp into the mephitic gloom, coughing as the fumes caught his throat. The floor seemed different somehow, its slope changed and less regular; he limped down the steps, though the rags were charring, and saw that at the rear by the door's foot the floor was no longer a smooth incline, but had across its centre an irregular tongue of smoking slag. Small wonder he had had to fight that door shut! Whatever die reason, the earthfires were certainly growing fiercer; now, from out of whatever vein lay open behind that door, they had come boiling up into the furnace itself.
The sight filled him with horror. His labour, his creation, his last gate to freedom all depended on the furnace, his very life even if his play went as he planned. And it was no longer safe to use; yet, safe or not, he must open it again - if he still could - and risk unleashing what dire consequences he might. Suddenly he became aware of the smoke arising round him; his rags were smouldering, and one trailing strip burst into a little yellow flame, easily stamped out. Only he couldn't! He cursed and swung himself up the stairs; but that took time, and the rags were well alight as he emerged. He had the sense to smother them in sand first rather than pour water over them, which would have carried the heat through too swiftly. Angrily he peeled off the scorched cloths and slumped down with his back to an open window; he must think, and fast.
On reflection, he decided, it could have been worse. It must have taken time to rise, that flood. It could only have happened moments before he shut the door. So it would again, most probably; he should be able to work in short bursts, ever watchful for what might be rising beneath. It would slow him, perhaps too much; yet there was no help for that. He would have to work all the faster now. Thoughts of what that would mean, problems present and foreseen, whirled and tangled in his mind and though the forge and its engines stood quiet now, the creak and tick of contracting metal, the wind in the air-vents and the flow of water in the troughs were so loud that he did not hear the hull that ground onto the beach, the footsteps on the grassy slope, till they touched the very sill of the open door. He sat up in sharp surprise.
Upon his threshold stood Beathaill, alone. She was clad now in a light silken gown of a leafy pattern, girdled with silver; the low sun behind it made a willowy silhouette of her body. She seemed tentative, almost shy in her manner, but she stiffened as she saw him. He bowed to her from where he sat. "Good even to you, lady. I expected you tomorrow; you return earlier than you said."
A haughty smile quirked her lips. "Why should I not? It is up to me. You have had ample time, in any case. Well? Is it done?" Elof bent to gather up his crutches, and did not reply. "Well?" she shrilled, and stamped her foot. "Have you mended it as
I bade…" Then the arm-ring caught her eye, gleaming on the velvet like the sun over stormcloud. "Oh," she said flatly. "You have…" She sniffed contemptuously. "I see you know how to obey your betters after all, like a good thrall." To Elof's acute ear the tinge in her voice was almost clear enough to be called disappointment. She stalked over to the ring, and was about to take it when Elof's hard hand closed over the shining gold.
"Lady," he said quietly. "I have made that fair thing whole again; but I never said it was for you."
"How dare you)" she squealed, and stamped again.
"Lady, that arm-ring is not for you. There is a potency in it, a strong one, its virtue a binding bond. It cannot create one where none exists; but where one is, it may act upon it, lend it strength, in what ways who can tell?" She snatched at the gold unheeding, but he did not release his grip. "Lady, I warn you only for your own sake!"
"Give it me!" she said, her front teeth white against her carmined lips. "And have done with your conjurer's cant; have I not worn that ring all these years? Do you think I am still a child, to be frightened with tricks and shadows?"
She shook the ring in Elof's grasp; and though she had none of Kara's strength, the memory defeated him, and he let it slip through his fingers. He caught earnestly at her arm, preventing her donning it. "Lady, upon your head be what follows if you take that ring to yourself…"
"Get away from me!" she cried, springing free and forcing the ring onto her arm. "Thralls have died in torture for less gross offences! Ach, you soil me, you stink of sweat and soot -"
Elof sighed; he would achieve little by offending her, in her nostrils least of all. "Lady, I apologise. I was about to wash when you arrived." Doffing his sweat-stained tunic, he turned to the trough that flowed through the forge, reached for the bag of fatted lye hung beside it, and quickly splashed the cold spring waters about himself. He was half afraid she would simply march out on him, but knew she was still standing there; he could almost sense the intentness of her. Upon the ring? Then he heard her say sardonically "That is a fine crop of scars you bear, thrall. One might almost take you for a warrior or an adventurer, rather than a sorcerer and an artisan."
The Hammer of the Sun Page 34
