The Four Forges

by Jenna Rhodes

  Ferstanthe stood near the site of the Vaelinar birthing into the world. A lush green had returned to the valley and hills, forested again although these trees had far to go to obtain the majesty and maturity of the ones blasted to smithereens upon their arrival. He’d seen the weavings, the paintings, heard the tales of land as far as the eye could see laid low by the forces which had brought them. Long ago, the timber and stumps had disintegrated into the soil, as was the way of all life, feeding the saplings which would follow them with rich compost. Still, the devastation left scars as far as he could see, gouges in the granite of hills farther away, and a difference in the green blanket covering all. It was new growth compared to what he’d just ridden through, and it showed in the lighter coloring. This part of the countryside was but a babe compared to the ancient forests and plains surrounding it.

  The domes of the clustered buildings had grown from the last etching he’d seen of the great libraries. Azel d’S-TANTHE of Ferstanthe, always building, always collecting, always protecting the knowledge that he gathered. He reined slowly off the crest, taking a breather as he moved toward the holding, wondering what it is he sought and how he would ask for admittance. Only Vaelinars were allowed here, and Sevryn knew well that he was not Vaelinar enough. He only wondered how far they would let him approach before he would be denied another step.

  He rode all the way into the holding, handed the reins of his mount over to one of the several stable lads who came running, and passed through the archway of the first great building before the magic which held it safe and inviolate began to reject him. It scarcely mattered then, for he was inside the welcoming lobby, stripping off his riding gloves, to see Azel pouring hot tea for another guest, and both looked up at him. Daravan lounged back in his chair, booted feet crossed at the ankles, his whole body swathed in that storm-gray cloak he habitually wore, and his eyebrow rose in mild surprise.

  Azel d’Stanthe straightened. He wore robes of indigo with a light parchment stripe about his frame, which resembled that of a tall robust tree, and he moved with a deliberate, ponderous grace, big even for a Vaelinar, with broad shoulders and a bit of girth. The glasses he wore slipped down his nose as he appraised Sevryn, their faintly violet-colored lenses catching the late morning light filtering in through the many glassed windows.

  “What brings you here?”

  Daravan snorted faintly. “What do you think brings him here, Azel?”

  “Perhaps I misstated myself. What Talent brings you this far?” d’Stanthe pushed his glasses firmly back into place with an index finger as he continued to watch Sevryn intently.

  “As I have not the Eyes, I cannot have the Talent,” Sevryn muttered. He shifted his weight from one leg to another, as if riding weary, and slapped some of the dust off himself with a glove blow to his leg. “I came in hopes of answers.”

  Daravan pulled his cup close to his chin and blew on it gently to cool it before bestowing an enigmatic smile on Sevryn. “Answers here come dearly, and often with a raft of new questions.”

  “All life and knowledge is like that.”

  Azel took a step closer, his robes rippling in rich colors about him, and Sevryn noticed that he wore cuffs about the wrists, to keep ink from staining the luxuriant sleeves. They’d both interrupted him working and while Daravan had extracted courtesy from the librarian, he doubted he’d engender the same feeling. “By what right do you come here?”

  “Come now. Would you make him quest? He’s already done that by getting here.” Daravan sat up in his chair.

  Azel turned his attention on the tall, storm cloud complexioned Vaelinar with a muffled noise of irritation, to which Daravan said lightly, “Really. A puff toad being prodded at by a stink dog would look more hospitable.”

  “Hospitable, is it? If I were anything else, I would have tossed you out on your ass the moment you showed up. I still haven’t forgiven you for stealing a copy of the Accords last time you were here.”

  Daravan only shrugged. “I needed to see if Bistane and his crew were following their private oaths’ addendum to the Accords.”

  “You returned it in abominable condition.”

  “I ran into bad weather.”

  “There would have been no weather at all if the relic had stayed in the library vaults where it was supposed to have been housed!”

  Daravan gave Azel a glance as the librarian drew himself up in outrage before looking to Sevryn. “Perhaps he is more the puff toad than the stink dog?”

  Sevryn kept his face as neutral as he could, under the circumstances, and Daravan’s eyes flashed a little in enjoyment. Sevryn was not sure the other was helping his situation much.

  “What business have you here?” queried Azel again, impatiently.

  “My own. I could tell you it is Queen Lariel’s business, but that would not be the truth, at the moment. What I discover might well become her business, but I won’t know it till I learn what I need to know, and so it is irrelevant until confirmed.”

  “See, Azel? He is no callow youth hoping to find the lyrics to the latest serenade making the rounds. He has serious inquiries for your library.”

  Before the librarian could answer, Sevryn said to Daravan, “Thank you, sir, but I’m not sure you’re helping.”

  “It is hard to tell, isn’t it?” Daravan sat back in his chair, picking up his cup and sipping his beverage with merriment fairly dancing in his eyes.

  Sevryn looked steadily into Azel’s face. “You can turn me away, and I fully expected not to get as far as your lobby, in any case. There are few about who have failed to remind me that I am less than Vaelinar. I can tell you only that what I’m looking for are the answers to questions first posed to me by Gilgarran, and I have hopes what I need to learn I can find here. If you will allow me.” He gave d’Stanthe a bow that was only slightly ironic.

  “And if I do not, I daresay you will be scaling my wall like some little street urchin and in my library anyway.”

  Sevryn’s mouth fell half open in guilty amazement, for he had been thinking along that line, if he failed in diplomacy here.

  “How did I guess? Gilgarran always did have a fondness for ragged orphans with quick hands and wits.” Azel sighed. “All right, then. You can wait in the other room, clean up, rest, and when I’m done with my guest here, I’ll be in to talk with you. Your search will be much easier if I have an idea what resources you’re looking for. Mind you, nothing here can be removed—” he shot a glance at Daravan at that, who happened to be looking innocently downward at his cup of tea, “and I’ve taken precautions to see that reinforced. That way.” He pointed down a side corridor, and Sevryn bowed to take his leave.

  Halfway down the corridor, he heard a muffled sound from Daravan as if he’d had an ear boxed.

  Shade dappled the smaller lobby, and the water bowl was tepid rather than warm, but he doubted it would be stocked just for him. Likely it was set up every morning in anticipation that someone might come. He washed as had been suggested, taking great care to use the small scrub brush on his fingers and nails, leaving the wash-bowl and cloths a great deal dirtier and himself a great deal cleaner.

  There was bread, fresh from baking that morning, and a soft cheese, and fruit, so he helped himself while sitting at a window and watching the holding go about its business outside the library walls. It seemed quite a while before Azel d’Stanthe came to get him, although the sun’s slant did not agree with him.

  “Now, then,” murmured Azel. “Tell me what you seek, if you can, so that I can guide you.”

  “Children’s songs and rhymes, if you have a collection.”

  Azel hid his surprise quickly, only remarking, “To know a being inside and out, one must know his culture, even that which begins in infancy. Follow me.” He moved quickly, in his element, as if the air from the library itself buoyed him, and Sevryn stretched his legs to keep apace. “Have you any more than that?”

  “Unfortunately, no. I hoped I might find something I could re
cognize, if it had been recorded.”

  “Naturally. And not so far from Daravan’s serenades, is it?”

  Sevryn felt his face warm. “Perhaps not,” he admitted. Nothing more would he say at this time, for if he had made up the skipping rhyme that he’d taught to the street children, he’d important information coded in it. However, he might have just taught them something feverishly that, once upon a time, he’d learned himself. The feeling that he needed to unravel that rhyme had begun to grow on him with a kind of urgency, even though he knew time passed for him almost as leisurely as it did for a Vaelinar. He feared to wait any longer to understand.

  They made a few turns and then Azel halted, and spread his arms. “It is more of a collection than merely books. There are toys here, as well.”

  Sevryn looked down the chamber in dismay. Even with help, it might take him days to peruse the journals and scrolls here, and examine each toy, and he looked up to find Azel watching him with an almost benevolent expression. He said hesitantly, “It is a scrap of a song, a child’s rhyme, a street chant.”

  “Ah. Very regional, those are. Not Vaelinar, I presume, and I would further guess that it is your own past you’re in search of?”

  Close enough. He nodded. “The streets of Calcort.”

  Azel spun on one heel. “This aisle, then, and perhaps the second, although that is more from the Dweller areas fringing on the trade routes of that town.” He studied a high, arched window nearby. “You’ve the best half of a day, and then I’ll send someone for you. If you need someone in the meantime, merely ring this.” And he tapped a wall gong which vibrated boldly even at the slight tap. With a nod, he left Sevryn alone.

  Halfway down the stack, it struck him with a single, sad piercing that he had not had much of a childhood, for he had little familiarity with anything he found on the shelves. The games and tales collected here he’d had only a passing exposure to, being far busier keeping himself alive and fed. Azel and his fellows had gathered their information by racial group, so he had to examine all, for he had no way of knowing whether his rhyme came from Dweller or Galdarkan, Kernan or even Bolger. “Fly, crow, fly, till you can’t fly higher . . .” fixed in his mind and held on there as he handled the items, searching. Knowing that it came from rope skipping narrowed it down for him considerably and although the sun gleamed through the windows at a low angle when he finished, still he had finished.

  He straightened, running his hand through his hair. He’d found nothing similar, both disappointing and disturbing, meaning that what he’d heard had been unique and very likely had come from himself as the originating source, a code meant for him and him alone, in case something happened. And that something had. He couldn’t remember what he needed to know.

  Sevryn did not need the gong to leave. Used to back ways and blind alleys and trained to remember, he retraced his steps easily. At the small lobby, he penned a thank you, promising to keep the vast library in his thoughts as he traveled and to forward contributions to it. Then he slipped out, much more quietly than he’d come in, but words from the front lobby caused him to pause in the shadowy corners.

  Daravan sounded tight and a bit angry, countered by Azel’s soft-toned but equally firm response.

  “I cannot believe you have nothing but one slim tome on the assassin Kobrir.”

  “You came here as a last resort, having done your own searches, and I allow nothing to be added that is not fact, and proved. The Kobrir has always been hidden.”

  “Bah. You cannot tell me that a line of rumor does not breathe anywhere in those works.” A chair made a noise as if Daravan had settled roughly onto it, in disgust.

  “You and I both know there is, but not if I can help it. Nor, if I can help it, will anything be revised. The books will exist as written, as known and perceived. New works will be added as knowledge is expanded but not surplanting the old. That is my pledge. Knowledge and information for any who wish it, a foundation for building.”

  “Save me.”

  A soft groan as Azel sat down, as well. “I can’t, Daravan. There is little known. You, of anyone, realize that.” A rustle of paper, or perhaps sleeves. “Why the sudden interest?”

  “It is not sudden, it is ongoing, but if you must know, the Kobrir are surprisingly active again. Whether it is one or a handful would even be helpful knowledge.”

  “Targets, other than Queen Lariel?”

  “Bregan Oxfort, for one, although the fool never knew it.”

  “Hmmm. Any motivation?”

  “None that I care to discuss now. You, old friend, are too vulnerable.”

  “Me? Here? I am surrounded by a fortress.”

  “Old paper burns far too quickly,” Daravan commented, and his words fell on a sudden quiet.

  Finally, someone cleared a throat. Cloaked in ever lengthening shadows, Sevryn couldn’t be sure who until Azel spoke with that careful deliberation of his. “I have heard two names mentioned. Kosh and Kurtiss. Whether they are two people, or two manifestations of the same, I could not tell you.”

  “Rumor.”

  “Indeed. As is the rumor that they are not Vaelinar but Galdarkan. Or, perhaps even another race created by the Mageborn.”

  “What?”

  From the noise, Sevryn knew that Daravan had leaped to his feet, perhaps overturning an ottoman or small table, and for a moment, the two rustled about, setting to right the furniture and spillage. Sevryn was grateful for that clatter, it had hidden his own sharp intake of breath. It grew quiet again.

  “Only rumor?” repeated Daravan.

  “So I have heard. It could be true. They are built more like us than most of Kerith, and the eyes are always veiled. I’ve not seen proof that Talent is used in the work, it’s always been the blade and the poison, for all their agility and swiftness. It could be.”

  “I was blind,” muttered Daravan. His voice still carried surprise in it, and Sevryn knew he had been stunned by something he had never considered.

  “The world,” Azel said mildly, “is full of possibilities.”

  “Bless you for reminding me.” A bootstep. “As always, to repay your generosity, I’ll be sending meat supplies your way, as well as any tokens of journals or writings I might find in my travels.”

  “Your company is always welcome, Daravan. Perhaps someday you might allow me an interview.”

  “Interview?” This time, no surprise, but a carefully neutral sound in the other’s voice.

  “You are obviously one of the old ones, of fullest power, yet there is no mention of you anywhere in the earliest recollections of our being lost.”

  “Am I not?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps you are mistaken.”

  “Perhaps. But if I’m not, maybe one day you will humor an aging librarian and allow a recording.”

  “One should always have a dream for the future, Azel. Always.”

  Sevryn stirred then, his senses sharpened by the underlying malice or wariness in Daravan’s voice, as well as the obvious fact that the two were taking their leave of each other, and he wanted to be out the door long before either of them. He slipped out of the purple corners and into the dusk, his mind as curtained with thoughts as the day with the coming night.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “YOU CANNOT ARGUE with him, Da.” Keldan leaned out over the wagon seat, reins firmly in hand.

  “He is charging us for a traders’ caravan, rot his phantom hide.” Tolby crossed his arms over his chest, chin out, and glared at the Dark Ferryman who remained immovable, implacable, hand out for the toll. Behind its ebony looming figure, the Nylara roared in its deep-cut banks, still flush with meltdown from the winter snows, angry and dangerous in spring’s floodtime. Even the reputation of the Ferryman made crossing dubious. He shifted his weight slightly. “I haven’t the coin to spare for his mistakes.”

  “We’re driving one of Mistress Greathouse’s carts . . .” Keldan’s voice drifted off as Garner jumped the cart’s side a
nd landed lightly on the ground beside Tolby. “Perhaps he thinks we’re hauling freight for her.”

  Tolby ground his teeth.

  Rivergrace leaned from behind Keldan, drinking in the sight of the great, fierce river, so different from and yet akin to her beloved Silverwing. So violently did it cascade past, that a fine spray misted them and she lifted her face to it, breathing in its scent. Water, everyone said, had no scent, but she could smell it. Or perhaps it was the earth it flowed over and carried within it, the brew of vegetation along its banks, the minerals of the rocks it tumbled at its bottom? She didn’t know. She climbed down from the cart, even as Keldan snatched at her elbow and missed, and went to join Tolby. The misting grew heavier as she stepped nearer, but her father seemed immune to it as it sparkled along her cloak and exposed skin. For a moment she felt as if the river could tell her where it sprouted from, in the depths of faraway mountains and pristine snowfields as far as the eye could see, but then that moment slipped away and the river merely shouted in her ears of its relentless power and drive to the sea.

  She shivered and put her hands in her sleeves to warm them a bit. Tolby and the phantom both seemed to notice her, then, for the first time.

  “You should be in the cart,” her father said, his voice gruff with irritation and a bit of—she wondered a bit—was it fear?

  “I wanted to see,” she answered softly, and looked at the Dark Ferryman. He towered even over her, his cloak floating on the breeze, but there was nothing to be seen inside his cowl, not even darkness upon shadow. A cold chill washed out of the bottomless pit of his being, swirling in shadow upon shadow. Looking into the aching emptiness made her dizzy and she put a hand on Tolby’s shoulder to steady herself. The being rippled, and she knew she had gained his full attention, and she cowered in spite of herself.

  Garner shouted from behind them. “We can camp here and cross by ourselves tomorrow.”