The Forge in the Forest

by Michael Scott Rohan

  He was not alone in his troubles. The rising sun struck fierce reflections off the Ice, light that seared streaks of color across their sight, and troubled Ils worst of all: she pulled her hood low to shadow her eyes, but ere long she was all but blind. Her folk, as she remembered, were accustomed to wear a kind of visor or eyemask with thin slits when they crossed such bright places. But they had none, nor anything to make one save a thin silken scarf; with that bound about her eyes she could see enough to guide her own steps. Despite all, though, they made better time than they had feared, for the Ice proved less arduous than they remembered. Here at its southern border it did not press hard up against a mountain wall, as in the north; it lay thinner upon the land, and the moraines and crevasses were further apart, shallower and more eroded, easier to cross and climb. The spring sun gave the travelers warmth and softened the glassy compacted snow of the glacier's surface, but not to deep dangerous slush as it would in the brief days of high summer. They had meltwater to drink, flowing by them in fast rills and streamlets, though they had to warm it in their flasks awhile. Nonetheless it was a wearying land to cross, and Elof and Ils could hardly enjoy even the scant rest Kermorvan allowed them. At length, as the sun fell away into afternoon, he called out and pointed. The white Wastes ahead had suddenly ceased to seem infinite. At the boundary between bright Ice and sullen sky a thread of darkness had appeared, thin and wavering, and with even a few steps forward it thickened and grew more distinct.

  "Land!" cried Roc. "Open land! That's the end of the Ice!"

  Elof had to fight down the urge to run; in his excitement he lost the reins of his pain, and felt it all the more keenly anew. They could not hurry, as it turned out, for even with the scarf across her eyes Ils' sight was failing rapidly and she could scarcely keep up their former pace; it was some hours before they came to their goal.

  All this time the land opened out before them. At first they saw only a flat country, dark and indistinct, spattered and threaded here and there with gleaming surfaces, snow or water or mire, there was no telling which. It seemed all too like the heart of Taoune'la to the west, though still infinitely more inviting than the Ice. But as they drew nearer the rim of the glaciers, they saw the first distant signs of the transformation the changing season would bring. Plaintive cries echoed down the wind; arrows of gray geese beat across the glistening clouds, settling in great flocks upon the bright waters southward. "But no nearer," Kermorvan sighed hungrily. "So close to the rim the meltwaters must be too cold. Still, we may find hardier creatures to hunt. On now to the end!"

  But when at last they neared the margins of the surface Ice, they halted in bafflement and dismay. Thin though the Ice was, its shattered margin stood still a tower and fortress above the lands; beneath their feet it fell away in an unclimbable precipice. Its few breaches led down to perilous-looking slopes of snow-clad rocks and scree such as the Raven had set them down in. Elof tipped down a small stone, and almost at once they had the doubtful pleasure of seeing a whole segment of the slope go bounding and thundering away into shadow. Silently they looked at one another, and at the rapidly sinking sun, and turned to search elsewhere.

  Strangely enough, it was Us, blinded as she was, who found their way down. As they passed across a wide promontory in the cliffs she exclaimed that the Ice sounded hollower beneath her feet, and then that she could hear running water echoing up from beneath. She insisted they follow it. The sound of the water led them some little way along the cliff to the edge of a deep fissure, almost invisible from the Ice behind. And when they peered over, they knew they had found their climb.

  It was as if some great worm had gone burrowing through the Ice, leaving behind it a wide round tunnel with sides as smooth as green glass, which now spilled a small stream out into the fissure. This had evidently once been part of the tunnel, but had worn so wide that the roof had collapsed. Now the floor was eaten away into a fantastic labyrinthine set of falls that wove away down the steep slope toward its shadowy foot, and made a passable stair.

  "But what did the eating?" puzzled Roc, as they lowered themselves gingerly down the glassy surface; he had elected to take the lead, to hammer out handholds with his mace. "Not that piddling little trickle, surely?"

  "Hardly!" said Elof, forgetting the new pain each handhold cost him as he gazed in deep wonder at the weird fluted shapes in the cleft, columns and stairs and baths through which the brown streamlet leaped and chuckled like some merry child, mocking greater waterfalls. "If this much water comes through in the first days of sun, it must be a great cascade by high summer."

  "You don't know the half of it, young human!" said Ils wryly from above his head. "So much ice melts that the sheer weight of its flow can drive tunnels like these uphill, or dam up behind rockfalls and send them spilling out across the land ahead, to shatter and flood and finally to freeze. But to the glacier that much water's nothing, less than the sweat on our brows. To the Ice as a whole it's less still, because as much or more will come back in the winter as rime and snow. Three great rivers we've seen since we left my mountains, and it's the meltwater that feeds them all."

  Kermorvan, who was guiding her down, shook his head in dismayed wonder. "We know too little of this. If the last Kings of Morvan had had the counsel of the duergar, they would not have reckoned too little of the menace of the Ice, and so saved more from the ruin. Great evil indeed has come from the sundering of our folk!"

  "From the sundering of all kindreds," said Elof thoughtfully. "The Elder Folk from the Younger, north from south, dying Morvan from newborn Bryhaine. The Powers, even, from men. Wisdom is not passed on, and must be bought anew, and ever more dearly."

  "There speaks as true a wisdom as any!" said Ils forcefully. "But who shall bring it to an end?"

  "Who indeed?" said Elof, guiding Ils across from one steep icewall to another, and becoming thoroughly entangled as he sought to lead her limbs to Roc's footholds.

  "Well, that is hardly the way!" she protested darkly. "Have a care where you lay your hands!" Roc and Kermorvan chuckled.

  "Bear up!" said Roc, clambering down onto the rim of an ice basin. He peered over the edge, and added, "If you'll forgive the words! There's not so far to go now!"

  "All the more reason to make haste!" said Kermorvan, swinging himself after Ils.

  So they slipped and scrambled down the last stages of the fall, only to find that its foot tumbled down over an ice-sheathed boulder in which Roc could cut no proper holds. Bracing himself, Elof pressed flat to the Ice and fought to keep his limbs steady as its bitter flame burned into him and knotted his muscles. He climbed jerkily, like some cunning automaton of lever and cog, and indeed agony was stripping him of thought and feeling. He hardly noticed when the icy fallwater splashed across him, when his feet and fingers began to slip, when at last they slid free and he fell into air. A moment free from pain was almost as agonizing in its suddenness, then came the kiss of soft snow and the jarring slam of the stone beneath. But it was mild, bearable, compared to what had passed, and he lay there laughing weakly until Roc and Kermorvan had made Ils safe and hurried to help him up. "At least you'd only a step or two to go!" said Roc, as they dusted him off: Elof did not tell him that for all he had known then, or cared, it could have been one or a hundred.

  He had been at the end of his strength, but the moment he was free of the Ice it returned to him very quickly. They had come down upon a rockfall like the rest, but less steep and unstable. The stream chattered away among the heaps of snow-clad rock, and they decided to follow its course downward. Across the snowfield it led them, and at last out of the lowering shadow of the icecliffs above.

  It was only then, on the brink of a long slope, they turned and looked back. Ils tore the bandage from her bloodshot eyes, and gazed with the rest upon the bulwark and rampart of their foe.

  In looming heights of strength, dazzling as gilded steel in the light of the sinking sun, those cliffs arose across the skies of the ruined land of Morvan from east
to west unbroken, unbreached, buttressed by immense ridges of fallen rock, whole ranges of rubble hills. A strength and fortress, it seemed, that mere men should not dream of resisting, could not hope to challenge. "Yet we passed beneath you, over you, through you!" said Kermorvan softly. "We came back to Morvan. And we won free. Free, and with a prize of infinite worth!" Then he drew the sword Elof had made him, and cried in a great voice in the two tongues of his folk, "Morvan Morlanhal! Morvan shall arise!"

  Word and blade together sparkled defiance in the free air before those sullen faces of ice and shattered stone. As the last echoes died he turned the sword gracefully in his hand and slid it back into its scabbard. "It is a lord of Morvan tells you!" he muttered. Then he turned his face from his lost domain, and strode down the slope. The others followed quietly, and let him be, and it was not until much later that he spoke again.

  By that time they had reached the end of the slope. Their little stream joined with another and larger, a black seam of meltwater wavering away through thinner, softer snow, down toward the more level lands below. They followed the larger stream, which was joined by others and itself flowed into a river of some width. This was still partly frozen over, but now the meltwater below and sun above were swelling it, straining the Ice and cracking it into great loose floes that ground and splintered against each other with creaks and crashes and the musical splintering of glass. Along its bank the snow was turning soft and patchy; here and there plant stems protruded through it, chiefly gnarled patches of willow scrub. On some of these the first soft catkins were appearing, and as the trav-

  elers came to one wide thicket they were startled when a stout white bird flew up almost in their faces with a sharp chattering cackle of rebuke. To their surprise it did not fly off altogether, but flapped heavily to the far side of the thicket and scuttled for cover. Roc cursed. Elof stooped readily for a stone as he had learned to do on the Marshlands, but it was already vanishing into the bushes. Ils blinked and squinted after it. "A snow-grouse, losing its winter plumage; they never fly far. Good to eat, for they live on willow, not pine which taints the flesh."

  "That wouldn't have stopped me!" said Roc.

  "Courage!" said Kermorvan. "Where there is one, even so close to the Ice, there will be others. The more so, as the snow is failing. Next time we shall be ready!" And indeed, at the next large clump of willow, in the shadow of a high boulder, they flushed some four or five of the birds. Into the midst of them hissed Elof s stone, and one dropped in a flurry of feathers. "Bravely cast!" Kermorvan cried, and the others echoed him. He clambered up the boulder and looked downriver. "And only a thousand paces or so southward there are trees!" he announced, springing lightly down. "Shelter and fuel! We have just enough time to reach them ere the light fades." The others groaned, but they knew he was right.

  The march seemed endless, the twilight long and dreary, with the slushy snow caking around their boots, and when they came at last to the trees, a stand of windswept evergreens hunched above the snow, they found little enough comfort there. But it was something to be among life after so long in a dead realm, to squat in a snowless hollow of the riverbank and warm hands at the smoky little flames of a clay oven well hidden in the bank. And never, never, had anything tasted so good as broiled strips of grouse, and the broth they boiled from its tough meat for the morning. "Let us hope it foreshadows better times!" said Kermorvan, as they curled up against the warmth of the oven. "Sleep now, and I will take the first watch!" He smiled grimly at Elof. "May it be briefer than yours, and less disturbed!"

  And indeed nothing worse came about them that night than a northwest wind whining among the trees, and brief flurries of sleet that were uncomfortable but not unendurable. When Roc, who had the last watch, woke them, they found the snow already melting in the rising sun. The day that followed was one of sunshine and showers, which seemed hardly any hindrance to them now, and though the land around was often marshy, they came among many more trees. Elof and Kermorvan cut themselves saplings and made crude birdbows which won them two more grouse, and, later, a large white hare; they smoked some of each as a reserve. Elof, too, discovered some of the marshland roots he remembered, swollen with the stored food that had let them live out the long winter and sprout again, and they carried some of these also. Desolate as it was, this land was kindlier than the eastern marches of the Ice. "Which should be no surprise," Kermorvan reflected over the next day's breakfast, "for it must all once have been the richest grainlands of southern Morvan."

  "Hard to imagine!" said Roc. "This stark plain carpeted from east to west in green shoots, all yellow come harvest! How far south'd they stretch?"

  "I do not know. So little lore of Morvan was preserved. I have seen rough views of Kermorvan the City, drawn from a failing memory and many times recopied, but the rest of the realm I know less of. I do know that the eastern boundary of the king's own lands was a range of mountains, less high than the Meneth Scahas; they marked the boundary with the lands of Morvannec, Morvan the Lesser, which was Korentyn's princedom. Over those mountains, if anywhere, the outcome of our quest should become clear."

  Elof looked at the horizon, south and east. There were signs of the land rising a little, turning into rolling country, perhaps, which might eventually give way to low hills. But sight or sign of mountains there was none. He grinned at Kermorvan. "A long step, then. I'd no idea your ancestors were so mighty. We'd best be on our way."

  A long step it was indeed, as the Chronicles record it, but a peaceful one. For though the lands they moved through bore the imprint of a cold hand, it seemed to be less strong this far south, as if the Ice had overreached itself in the drive to shatter Morvan. The earth was not as frozen in these lands as it was in Taoune'la, nor did that air of death and decay spread across them as it had in the Northland mountains. Spring here was a muted thing, but life flourished nonetheless, and it was life the travelers knew well, much like that of northern Nordeney; they were never again short of food for long. The snow-grouse were seldom far away, their plumage changing from pure white to black around the neck, behind their eyes two absurd tufts of bright scarlet with which they made much play in their spring rivalries. Great flights of geese and ducks settled upon every river and lakelet, and hares were common enough. And it was only a few days later that they came across a herd of large deer moving out onto the plain, of exactly the same kind that flourished in the Northlands; their coats were still in winter gray, and their antlers half grown and still in velvet.

  "I wondered what that white brute preyed on," said Kermorvan thoughtfully. "Probably it had slept out the winter in its deep lair, and awakened to await their return. Other hunters will no doubt be doing the same; we had best be on our guard when the herds are near." At first, though, they encountered nothing save a pack of wolves, scrawny after the long winter, who were more interested in lame deer, hare and small rodents than men. When Kermorvan's bow brought down a young deer they circled and scurried about, but seemed glad enough to squabble over the stripped carcass and leave the travelers in peace by their fire some way off.

  But just after dark, as the first of the Iceglow climbed up the sky, there came a mighty outcry of yelping and snarling, and a deep gurgling growl that no wolf ever made. The travelers sprang up and drew their weapons, lest whatever had appeared should turn on them. Silence fell, was as suddenly broken by the pop and crunch of bones, and then a strange beating, swishing sound, the thud of something falling nearer them. Kermorvan caught up a blazing brand from the fire and strode forward, the others close behind; then he stopped so suddenly they barged into him. A patch of bloodsoaked mud showed where the deer's carcass had lain, but it was there no longer. Neither were the wolves. There were drag marks in the mud, but they went only a few feet and the grass around was unbent. Kermorvan moved the flame about, and they saw in the mud, still oozing, a single imprint longer than a man's foot, a great tridentine talon.

  "There, by the bank!" cried Ils. Kermorvan cursed and swung the to
rch high, and they all saw what she had glimpsed in the darkness. The remains of the deer, much mangled, lay by the riverbank, at the foot of a low rocky outcrop. Atop this, hissing like quenched iron from gaping jaws, perched a dragon. It flared its wings and reared up at them, short legs tucked in against the serpentine body, the long head outthrust and spitting. But it was a young beast, quarter the size of the ones Elof had first seen, and not yet come to its flame. When Kermorvan advanced on it menacingly it spat at him again, then ducked its head to seize the ragged remains of the deer, threshed clumsily aloft and wavered away into the night to find some quieter place to enjoy its scavenging.

  "A good thing it was no larger!" said Kermorvan, shaken. He tossed the brand back on the fire, and glared at the cold glow in the northern sky. "A fond farewell from the Ice!"

  In that he spoke more truly than he knew. From that night on they were no more troubled by strange creatures. As night followed night, and the lands grew warmer, the pale light of those bitter ramparts sank and dwindled beneath the horizon, growing ever fainter until they saw it no more. And it is set down in the Chronicles that many long years were yet to pass ere any of them set eyes on their great adversary once more.

  The deer, and another they took the next day, gave them a good store of meat, which was as well; they encountered no more herds as they walked further to the southeast,

  following the rivers that ran like dark veins through the rising land. On the seventh day of their journey they drew at last into higher ground, a hilly country with many long stretches of evergreen forest. Though they viewed it at first with deep suspicion, it seemed younger and more sparse than Tapiau'la-an-Aithen, and like the Northland forests it wholly lacked that oppressive air of watchfulness. Larger creatures were still scarce here, but there were more birds. Jays screamed, black woodpeckers drummed, swifts shrilled over the treetops and swooped so low over clear ground that their wingtips hissed among the weeds; a thousand small flashes of life bounced and chirruped in spring feather through the woods. The sun shone more often now, and the rain, though often hard, released rich scents into the crisp air. Bare though the land was, after the desolations they had been through they felt they could wish for no better garden.