“As you will,” Yocote sighed, and turned to lead the way with an anxious Lua beside him. Culaehra glanced at Illbane, decided he didn't like the old man's smile, then bent his back under the load and followed his diminutive guides.
They threaded through subterranean passageways all that day and the next, sleeping around a campfire of torches that stayed burning but never shortened. Now and again the narrow corridor opened into caves—some large, some small—then closed about them again. Twice they paced long galleries, and Culaehra and Kitishane marveled at the paintings of animals that cavorted on the walls, seeming almost to dance in the torchlight.
“Who made these?” Kitishane asked, her voice hushed.
“Our ancestors tell us only that it was men who painted them, long ago,” Yocote replied. “We do not know why they did so strange a thing.”
“Men's deeds are frequently unexplainable,” Kitishane said, and followed the gnomes, leaving Culaehra to scowl at her back.
Onward they went, through night divided only by the light of their torches. Culaehra did not realize how much warmer it had become until the first time he wiped his forehead. Then he stared at the sweat on his hand and felt fear coil through him. Was there truly a lake of molten rock? But there was no way to avoid it—and no way to know why Illbane wanted to go there. Of course, Culaehra could have asked, but he felt certain Illbane would only tell him to wait and see. Onward he strode, following the gnomes.
Toward the end of that day, they began to hear the clanging. It was distant and muffled, as if by layers of rock, but it was insistent as a heartbeat. It would sound several times, then lapse, then sound again, over and over for an hour or more at a time. Then it would stop for a while, but would unaccountably start up again.
Culaehra was tempted to say that they were nearing the heart of the mountain, a heart that was ill, but he glanced at his companions' faces and thought better of it.
They spent another night in the rocky tunnel, camping at a place where it broadened almost into a cave. They piled several torches together to boil water and for the comfort that light gave amidst all that darkness, but they certainly did not need it for warmth.
Mercifully, the clanging did not sound the whole night.
They woke, broke their fast, then marched onward, sweat streaming from every pore as the heat grew worse and worse. Culaehra had to remind himself that Illbane had said they would not actually come to the molten lake—but halfway through the morning the gnome stopped where the tunnel branched. “To our left lies the path around the Forge,” he said, “but if you wish to see it, we must go right.”
Kitishane frowned. “What is the 'Forge'?”
“The lake of liquid rock of which I have told you. The gnomes and dwarfs alike call it the 'Forge of Agrapax,' because there is an old legend that it once was the fire for the god's smithy—pure silliness, of course.”
“How close would we have to come to see it?” Culaehra asked.
“Close enough to be very hot, not close enough to burn. It is a sight to overawe, they say.” Yocote fairly quivered, his eyes gleaming.
Culaehra recognized the signs and smiled. “But you have never seen it, is that it?”
“Never,” Yocote confirmed, “and I would most surely like to.”
Culaehra turned to Illbane. “Is it important for a shaman?”
“Very important,” the sage told him.
Kitishane smiled. “Then let us see.”
Yocote laughed and leaped, knocking his heels together. “Then let us go!” He turned away and strode smartly up the right-hand tunnel. The companions followed, only Lua hanging back in misgiving.
The heat grew worse and worse as the tunnel climbed. Several times Culaehra touched the rock carefully, ready to snatch his hand away, but it never grew truly hot. Finally, they came out onto a broad lip of rock and found themselves in a huge cavern, lit by a ruddy glow.
“Carefully now.” Yocote lay down on his belly and crawled forward till his face thrust over the edge. He gasped and froze, staring.
Curiosity triumphed. Culaehra shed his pack, lay down, and crawled forward; so did Kitishane and, after a few minutes, even Lua. Only Illbane stepped near the edge, leaning heavily on his staff.
The caldron seethed below them, glowing red. It was the full width of the cavern, a roiling expanse of thick, viscous liquid. Here and there it mounded into huge bubbles, which swelled and burst. Culaehra stared, spellbound, and might have stayed so for an hour or more if it hadn't been for the blast of heat that struck his face on an updraft. He pulled back quickly, and so did the rest. They stared at one another, shivering in spite of the temperature. “If ever there was a home for demons,” Culaehra finally said, “that is it!”
“Hotter than any furnace.” Yocote's habitual self-possession seemed shaken. “No wonder they call it Agrapax's Forge!”
As if it had heard him, the whole cavern suddenly reverberated with a clang that seemed to engulf them all. It went on for several minutes, three clangs, a pause, then four or five, a pause, then some more. At last it stopped, the echoes fading away, and the companions stared at each other, pale and shaken. “It couldn't really be ...” Kitishane stammered.
“Could it?” Yocote asked.
“Not in here, no.” Illbane beckoned. “Come.”
He led them down from the lip of rock, back into the sloping tunnel, and they gasped with relief as the heat abated. Culaehra was amazed—only minutes ago he had been thinking how hot this tunnel was, and now it seemed cool!
Illbane stopped at a branching of the way. “Through here.”
Yocote stopped, staring. The tunnel they had climbed slanted downward to the left; this one led off to the right, level but turning. “This was not here when we came by! I never saw it!”
“Never saw it, though it was here,” Illbane agreed. “We would not see it now, if Agrapax the smith had not become curious about us.”
“But generations of gnomes have passed this way—I can see their signs! Dwarfs, too! How could a door to Agrapax's smithy be here, and they not know it?”
“Because dwarfs and gnomes are natural things underground, and part and parcel of the stone and ore that Agrapax knows and loves so well,” Illbane explained. “But human beings below-ground are very much out of place; we have aroused wonder in the Wondersmith. I doubt not that he wishes to see who has come so near his domain, and knows that the natural curiosity of our species will draw us in.”
“He judges me wrong, then!” Culaehra said. “Murrain take you, Illbane, for you have taught me fear!”
“I only reminded you of it; you had learned it in your childhood,” the sage said absently, and led them into the branch. The clanging began again, seeming to sound all about them.
Suddenly, the tunnel opened out, leading them to a huge archway. The clanging was louder now, much louder, and the cavern beyond was lit with a sullen glow, like that of the molten rock, but highlighted and shot through with the bright yellow and orange of flame, with flashes of something much brighter. The companions froze, for through that archway they saw two mighty legs wide apart, each as thick as an old oak, hairy and scarred with burns here and there. The feet wore sandals that were bound with crossed leather straps, up as high as they could see.
Illbane stepped up to the edge of the archway, beckoning them forward. Slowly and with fear coiling within them, they came, and found themselves staring up, up, at a torso that seemed far too large for the legs, shoulders far too broad for the torso, and arms as thick as the legs, knotted with muscle and gleaming with sweat.
Above all was a huge head with a grizzled beard and bright eyes that reflected the fire. It was a homely face, smudged with soot and filled with the intensity of the fanatic.
He stood three times the height of a man, surrounded by neat stacks of metals and gems and other materials that receded into the gloom of that huge cavern. He worked before a forge that bubbled with molten rock. As they watched, he took tongs to hold a bar
of metal just above that liquid fire, raising his other hand to pull on a beam that must surely have been the trunk of a century-old tree. When he did, flame roared up from the molten rock to surround the metal bar. The giant smith released the handle; the roaring and the flame ceased as he transferred the bar back to an anvil that stood taller than a man, as large as a rowboat, made of black metal that must surely have weighed a ton or more.
He worked in silence, his eyes glowing as he beat the bar into shape. Kitishane could have sworn he had not even noticed their entrance, that they were far beneath his notice—but finally he set the bar aside to cool and spoke in a voice that reverberated through the great cavern like the rumble of an earthquake. “What are you doing here, Ohaern?” He turned to glare down at Illbane. “Why must you come blundering into my smithy? Isn't it enough for you to spend your centuries bedding my wife?”
The companions stared at Illbane, thunderstruck.
But Illbane's face swelled with anger, and he spoke to the giant as though he were an interfering village gossip. “She was never your wife, Agrapax!”
“No, but she should have been, for there are precious few Ulin left, and we two are the mightiest of them. You stole her from me, mite!”
“I could not steal what you did not own! You never had any claim to her, nor should you have, for she could never have commanded your attention for long! Always, always, your mind would have drifted back to your forge, and off to your smithy you would go, to pursue your next project and leave her forlorn! No, never could you have been a true husband, for you were ever wed to your art!”
“The same old cant.” The giant smith turned and spat into his forge. “The truth of it is that I am too ugly for any woman— except the one time when she wished to number the Wonder-smith among her trophies. I am bandy-legged and lame, singed and squint-eyed, big-nosed and lumpen. Well, no matter—my metals love me, and I love my metals,”
That last, Kitishane thought, was the only true claim. Well, no, the giant was homely, but certainly not ugly—and though his proportions were odd, those huge muscles exerted an attraction all their own. He was not the sort of man a woman would choose for a lover—but for a husband? Quite possibly, if he were not so bad-tempered.
For Culaehra, though, the effect was devastating. He was a man of action, a warrior who had always felt strangely superior to the smiths whose weapons he used—but here was a smith who could have crushed him absentmindedly, flattened him with one stroke of the huge hammer and gone back to shaping his iron, scarcely missing a beat! Here was a smith who had so little regard for anything but his art that he might just have done it, too, had Culaehra come there alone.
But he had not—and that made it worse. To feel himself dwarfed by a smith was bad enough, but to find that the teacher who had disciplined him and trained him, and whom he had dared defy, was the fabled Ohaern, made him feel a total fool for ever having had the temerity even to think of rebellion! A perverse desire rose in him to deny it, to tell himself that this oldster was only an ordinary mortal named after the great hero. But to hear Agrapax himself address the man as an equal, almost a familiar—though a disliked one—and to hear Ohaern respond in kind, daring to rebuke a god, made Culaehra's very soul seem to shrink within him. And, if he could have denied anything else, he certainly could not mistake the focus of their quarrel. Ohaern had been lover to an Ulin woman! His vagabond teacher Illbane had been, perhaps still was, her paramour!
Who could they be speaking of, but Rahani herself?
The mortal sage Illbane, whom he had tried so hard to regard as a contemptible old beggar, was consort to a goddess, to the goddess!
No. Not a goddess—an Ulin, Culaehra amended. Only an Ulin. After all, Illbane had said so—and what mortal man could know better than Ohaern?
“I should still like to strike you down for the blasphemy of loving an Ulin woman, Ohaern,” the smith rumbled. He drew forth another bar of metal and inspected its surface.
“Strike, then.” Ohaern smiled. “Strike, if you are willing to suffer Rahani's displeasure; strike, if you are willing to risk the certainty of never seeing or hearing her again.”
The smith snarled and thrust the bar into the forge.
“Strike,” Ohaern said, in a voice lower and, in some way, almost sympathetic. “Strike, if you dare risk the displeasure of Lomallin's ghost.”
Agrapax stared at the dull glow of the metal. “Ghost or not, Lomallin is still mighty.”
“Ghost or not,” Ohaern replied, “you would still rather not risk losing the liking of one of the few Ulins who befriended you.”
Agrapax shrugged impatiently. “Lomallin befriended everyone.”
“Even me,” Ohaern said.
Agrapax stood staring into the fire. At last he turned to give the sage a curt nod. “He did, so I shall speak to you with courtesy, for you are the friend of a friend. Tell me, then, Ohaern—why have you come here? Why have you sought me out?”
Ohaern nodded at the biggest of his companions. “This warrior is named Culaehra. He has taken upon himself the fulfillment of a promise made to you by another.”
The Ulin turned his gaze directly upon Culaehra. “Taken another's risk and burden when you did not need to? What manner of fool are you, mortal?”
At that moment Culaehra felt very much a fool indeed. “A human fool, great Agrapax.”
A gleam of approval showed in the smith's eye. “He has a civil tongue, at least, and perhaps the beginnings of wisdom. Whose promise is this you have taken up?”
“A—A king, some weeks' journey from here,” Culaehra said. “His name is Oramore.”
“Oramore ... Oramore ...” The smith looked away, frowning and rolling the name on his tongue. “The name has no meaning for me. Still, there are not so many humans who seek me out, that I should have forgotten him completely. What was his promise?”
“To give you the first fruits of his pastures and his fields, O Wondersmith.”
“Why would he promise me that?”
“In repayment for invulnerable armor and magical weapons, and the wisdom to use them well, so that he might protect his people from barbarians and bandits.”
“Ah! The breastplate, helm, and greaves of bright bronze, alloyed with traces of antimonium and adamant!” Agrapax nodded. “Yes, I remember it well. But he is somewhat late with his first fruits, is he not? That must have been several years ago.”
“Twenty, at least,” Culaehra said, his voice seeming very small.
“Twenty? Yes, that is not so much. But first fruits of grain and meat do not last so long as that, do they?”
“They do not.” Culaehra's voice seemed still smaller to himself. “He sold them all for gold.”
“For gold!” The Wondersmith's voice rang harshly. “Then he broke his promise? Do you tell me he broke a promise to an Ulin?”
“I do.” Culaehra's heart raced with fear.
“The more fool he, then! Had he no notion of the consequences that fall on the head of a man who breaks faith with his god?”
Now Ohaern spoke. “An emissary from Bolenkar came to him, great Agrapax, and so bedazzled and befuddled him with spangling words and curling lies that he forgot to think of consequence.”
“Bolenkar? What thing is that?”
“The eldest of Ulahane's half-human children.”
“Ah, the Ulharl brat! Yes, I remember him now! Ever skulking about his father's halls, sulky and brooding. Has he come to power, then?”
Culaehra could only stare, amazed at the Ulin's lack of awareness.
“He has,” Ohaern said. “He seeks to take up the mantle of his father and purge his hatred of Ulahane by surpassing him.”
“Surpassing him!” Agrapax snapped upright, staring. “The audacity of the creature! He seeks to slay all the younger races, then?”
“That is his intent, I am sure,” Ohaern said evenly.
All the companions felt their stomachs shrink and churn within them. They had never allowed themselve
s to feel the reality of the Ulharl's plan before.
“Why then, no wonder this human king was bamboozled! I should have given him tin ears, not bronze armor. And you have taken it upon yourself to right what the agent of Bolenkar sent wrong?” The huge eyes burned into Culaehra's again.
“I... I have,” the warrior said, faltering.
“Great folly was that, to take on such a burden when you did not need to! Why did you do it?”
“Why ... I... I could not say,” Culaehra stammered.
“Could not say? Of course you could! You have lips and tongue, and lungs to drive the breath past them both! Speak, man! Why did you undertake to mend this broken promise?”
Culaehra could only stare up into those huge, bitter eyes and search his heart.
“Speak!” the Ulin commanded again.
“It ... it was the right thing to do!” was all Culaehra could say.
“Right! How? Why?”
“Because ... a promise must be kept.” Words began to come. “Because, in breaking his promise to you, he broke faith also with his peasants, simple folk like those who bred me, like I myself! He ground them into the dirt they ploughed, to squeeze himself a few more pieces of gold! They lived in wretched hovels, while he built his castle high and adorned it with every luxury his wife could find! No, great Agrapax, that was wrong, pure wrong!” Culaehra realized he had finished with a shout, and stood stiffly, trembling, as he stared up at the Ulin defiantly.
But Agrapax nodded, slowly and with approval. “So because you could see yourself in his peasants, you made him keep his promise. Tell me, how did you manage that?”
“By ... by combat, great Agrapax. Personal combat.”
“Combat! How could you win against him, who was armored and armed with my sword and armor?”
“Ohaern took them away,” Culaehra said simply.
“Took them away!” The Wondersmith turned on the sage. “How did you manage that, O Mortal Smith?”
“I knew your work when I saw it,” Ohaern answered. “I touched it with my staff and bade it fall away from any unworthy of it.”
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