by Tom Deitz
A pause to straighten the soldier’s surcoat he now wore most of the time, and he pushed through the door. Bingg followed. And would probably stay until someone ran him out.
In any event, he took comfort from the fact that Bingg directed him not into the bedchamber, but to the workroom. Still, Avall found himself holding his breath as he entered. His first impression was of light, for Eellon sat in front of a window wall of glass bricks. A fire burned to the right, however; the Citadel was cool this early in the year. Wine mulled there as it always did. Avall wondered if that was one of Bingg’s duties, or if some other Argen-Hall youth had been conscripted to wait on his Chief. Without thinking about it, he stole a pastry from a tray by the door.
“Still the sweet-thief,” Eellon’s voice rumbled, from where he sat in a heavy house-robe behind a table covered with parchments, books, and scrolls. His face was shadowed by the light behind him. His voice held a raspy quality Avall didn’t like.
Before he knew it, he was dashing forward, slipping around the table to enfold his ancient two-father in a cautious hug. Tears started in his eyes. “Two-father—”
“For about the next half finger, and then you have to be the royal messenger you claim to be, and I have to be Steward of Eron.”
“How are you?”
“Surviving.”
Avall wiped his eyes and finally got a good look at his lifelong mentor. Though barely a dozen days had passed since he’d last seen the old man, that interval had laid years on the Chief of Argen-Hall. Never a big man, Eellon had nevertheless lost weight. His craggy features looked ravaged and worn, the hollows deeper, especially those around his eyes. His skin looked paper-thin, too, and held none of the flush of health. Even his mane of white hair seemed to have thinned, though Avall suspected that was a function of its not being washed and combed very often. A trace of stubble also lined his jaw, which was something he’d never seen.
“I’m sick,” Eellon said, matter-of-factly. “But I’m glad to see you, Two-son. Not that you look the picture of health yourself.”
“I’m not sure if it’s health as much as fatigue,” Avall sighed, rising to claim a chair to Eellon’s right. Bingg handed him a mug of hot cider he hadn’t requested. He tasted it gratefully. There was stronger liquor in it. The fumes danced through his head, warming him. Another of those and a hot bath, and he might feel almost human.
“You said you had a message,” Eellon prompted. “I surmise by the fact that it’s you delivering it, not one of His Majesty’s more typical couriers, that it contains information that might not be suitable for every ear.”
Avall nodded. “You’ve heard about the battle? The light relays should’ve passed on word of that.”
Eellon nodded in turn, toying with a pen. His fingers were stained with ink, Avall noted, all the way up to the second joint. “I know the gist of it: that both sides had to wait until the floods subsided, that the King intended to destroy the bridges but was thwarted. That it wouldn’t have mattered because half of Ixti’s force came up the Ormill. That his forces were hamstrung by fire behind him—which was a damned fine idea if I do say so.”
“Since then—?”
“You’d better tell me.”
Avall took another sip of cider. “I … don’t remember a lot. I was—I tried to call down the fires of the Overworld. We were losing, and I couldn’t stand watching it, and it was all I could think to do. Gynn—the King—had decided to use Strynn and me as observers, to relay information to him through Rann. Merryn was guarding me and—”
“Merryn?”
“That was Bingg’s reaction,” Avall laughed. “The short version is that she escaped. The long version … ought to wait.”
“You be the judge,” Eellon managed through a cough.
“Well, the important thing is that she was feeding me reports to pass on. We weren’t in the battle itself, though right now I wish I had been. But anyway, once I did what I did, I don’t remember a lot. I know Merryn saw that it was a rout—I think I heard the retreat trumpet sound myself—and started back to camp, half-carrying me. She got another view, though—that’s when she noticed Ixti’s reinforcements. It was she who saved what could be saved. She snatched the gem from me and used it to contact Rann, who was down on the field. She kept the King from being cut off.”
“But he lost the vale, and with it the gorge.”
Avall nodded. “He fell back to Eron’s Belt that night, awaiting battle that never came. I don’t remember a lot of that, I’m afraid. Apparently using the gem like I did isn’t good for one person to attempt alone. As best we can tell, it draws … energy from anything alive around it—anything warm-blooded, anyway. That’s why we get cold. And the fewer people, the stronger the effect. In an army … we’re not sure, just as we’re not sure what the range is. But in a battle, maybe it would draw on so many people the effect would be negligible on any given person.”
“You may have to prove it, though,” Eellon observed, glancing around. Probably for Bingg, who, like his brother, Lykkon, was always making notes about such things. Avall hadn’t the heart to tell him those things were already recorded. “So, what’s the situation now?”
“You know better than I, if the light relays are working.” “I know that as of a hand before you arrived Gynn was still holding the Belt—relinquishing it a span at a time, rather say. He’s had reinforcements, too, for what that’s worth. And there’s something else that should give you heart. What you did—whatever you did, and the relays are understandably vague on the point—it could only have helped.”
“That’s what Merryn tried to tell me all the way here.” “She’s right,” Eellon affirmed, before Avall could elaborate. “It’s a double-bladed sword. In our favor, it heartened our forces because they know that, somewhere, there’s a power we can draw on at need. They don’t know where it came from, and given that your connection to it isn’t widely known, it could be interpreted to mean that The Eight themselves have interceded on our side. That’s especially useful, given the number of Common Clan we’ve had to conscript, and the situation with Priest. Fortunately, rumor of Gynn’s … deficiency hasn’t reached much beyond this gorge, and even here most of the lower clans prefer not to believe it. In any case, the presence of this mysterious power of ours ought to dispirit the enemy; they have to face a weapon they’ve never seen and don’t understand, and whose limits are completely unknown. That could be a big advantage.”
“No more than knowing that somewhere, somehow, you have the power to destroy the enemy completely—but can’t access that power.”
“You will. I have faith. You will.”
Avall shrugged.
Eellon helped himself to a deep draught of wine. Avall caught a whiff of it and wondered if it didn’t also contain some restorative drug. Eellon cleared his throat. “And now I have a more personal question. Besides the obvious need for recuperation, what are you doing here? Surely the King has couriers less likely to be useful at the front.”
Avall shook his head. “Two things. First, the King has bonded with the gems—with all three of them, in fact, though we’ve brought them back here to incorporate into the regalia—it’s just too chaotic at the front to get any work done there, never mind the need for secrecy. In any case, we can contact him if need be through Rann. And there’s a reason we might have to, which is the second reason I’m here.”
Eellon looked troubled. “I suspect I know why, too—but tell me.”
Avall cleared his throat. “You’ll have heard what happened at South Gorge: that Barrax used captured ships from Half Gorge to sail up the river on the side away from Tir-Vonees, and managed to sneak a whole second army in on Gynn’s flank. Well, Gynn’s afraid he’s going to try that again. He’s afraid Barrax has either sent more ships here, to Tir-Eron, or else that he’ll use the same fleet he sneaked by Vonees to attack here. Strynn’s supposed to alert him if that occurs. We’re faster than the light relays, and a lot more informative. In fact, she’s le
aving for the coast tomorrow. She finished the sword on the way back here—as much as she can,” he added cryptically. “But the effort wore her out. She has to rest tonight—and she wants to see the baby.”
Eellon sighed dramatically. “This is not a good time to be a mother.”
“No,” Avall agreed sadly. “But it’s not a good time to be much of anything.”
“Not even a Mastersmith?”
Avall shrugged. “I don’t know. As I said, the sword’s completed, except that I have to add—” He broke off, having found himself about to explain things he wasn’t certain could be explained to someone who wasn’t bonded to a gem already. “Gynn … got into my head when we bonded, and figured out what happens when we reach into the Overworld. He thinks he’s set that pattern in my mind so that I can see it, then make the … connections that’ll let that process … just happen. Only I don’t know it consciously. It’s something going on … in the deep levels of my brain. The way he explains it is that I’ll just know, the same way I know how to draw something, or design something. That it’s locked in there and when I reach the right place in my work, it’ll happen.”
Eellon snorted. “He’s placing an enormous amount of faith on magic.”
“Which, however, never seems to exhaust itself, once tapped. I on the other hand—”
Eellon patted his hand. “Get some sleep.”
As though cued by that admonition, Avall yawned.
“Use my bed,” Eellon told him. “I have other work to do while I still can. I’ll see that you’re not disturbed.”
Another yawn. He blinked sleepily at Bingg. “You can admit Strynn, Kylin, or Merryn. But that’s all.” Then back to Eellon: “And I’ll trust you, oh Steward, not to let me sleep if anything comes up I need to know about.”
Eellon chuckled grimly. “Ah, my boy, you should know better than to trust anyone in this clan by now.”
A third yawn ambushed Avall, and a twin from Eellon seemed to be a sign of dismissal. “Eellon,” he dared, as he rose.
“What?”
“It’s good to see you again.”
“It’s good to see anything I care about these days,” Eellon replied ominously. And reached for another sheet of paper.
(ARGEN-HALL—MIDAFTERNOON)
“He may be the only person in Tir-Eron who’s smiling,” Avall told Strynn, as he peered down at her son, who lay in the same ancestral baby nest that had cradled Eellon, his son, and one-sons. Not Avall and Merryn, because they were twins and it was deemed bad luck to separate such pairs before a year had run its course.
Against the quilted cotton pad of clan maroon, Averryn looked very pale, especially in his white child-robe. But his dark eyes danced, and his smile curved in a way that reminded Avall far more of Strynn than Eddyn. He wondered what they would tell him when the subject of his conception arose. That tale was already translating from gossip into legend, simply from the weight of things that had become attached to it.
About which Avall didn’t want to think.
“He has much to smile about,” replied his nurse, who also happened to be Evvion san Criff: Avall and Merryn’s mother. Around whom Avall was never comfortable.
Not that she was, either. They’d been born not long before the plague, but their father had been in service to the Fateing at the time, and had seen little of them—or her, either; contrary to custom, they’d not been posted together. Already resentful of the restrictions of motherhood as opposed to fatherhood, Evvion had never felt children for husband to be a fair trade, in terms of time spent together. And when Valleen had succumbed to the plague two years later, with her barely having seen him since the twins’ birth, it had drained all the love out of her. She’d essentially withdrawn from life: craft, clan, and family all.
Until little Averryn had—against all logic, for the child was no blood-kin—given her something to hold her interest again.
Avall resisted the urge to challenge his mother’s assertion, seeing that it looked like even odds that Averryn might grow up speaking Ixtian, assuming that, as a High Clan child, he was allowed to grow up at all. Still, for now …
It was as if Evvion read his mind. “He has nothing to worry about,” his mother murmured. “He doesn’t know fear. He doesn’t know want or discomfort or deprivation. The blood of great men and women runs through him. If those who oversaw his arrival in the world survive the next half season, he’ll have a very amazing world in which to grow up, and amazing folk to teach him.”
“His generation will grow up knowing of the power of the gems,” Strynn acknowledged from Avall’s side, reaching down to tickle the child beneath the chin.
Averryn’s smile widened. Dimples appeared that would break women’s hearts in far too few years. Avall wondered how the boy would manage that. For he had no doubt whatever that Averryn would inherit his mother’s famous looks, as well as his father’s height.
Evvion regarded him keenly. “It would be best if you grew to love him, and best if you made another—a brother or sister—for him to love. Childhood can be a very lonely time.”
Avall almost protested that he did love him, as much as he could love something so remote from himself, and almost followed that up with a reminder that unique among men of his time—and maybe all men forever—he’d shared the pains that had brought a child into the world. Finally he smiled at Strynn. “Lady,” he said simply, “you never cease to amaze me with your ability to make wonderful things.”
Strynn smiled back, but that smile proved transitory, as the stark seriousness that had become her mask of late once again shadowed her features. “Speaking of wonderful things, shouldn’t you be about one?”
“You should join me.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. As far as I’m concerned, the sword’s finished. This other thing you have to do, with the gem and the bloodwire, and all—I know you have to do it, but I can’t watch you.”
“This isn’t like you, Strynn.”
She gestured at the child. “Neither is this, but the sword’s finished; Averryn isn’t. And—” She paused. “This isn’t artistic vanity, Avall—not that I’d enjoy watching even you modify something I’d crafted. But it’s—” Another pause. “I don’t like the idea of you going somewhere I can’t.”
“I’m willing to show you,” Avall replied. “If I can,” he added. “I’ve never done this, either. I might get down to the forges and find that what Gynn claims he’s left in my head won’t work. I don’t even want to think about that! But as I said, I’m willing to show you, but you’d either have to watch me do it, or I could try to show you mind to mind, through the gems.”
Strynn frowned. “Be practical, Avall. I’m leaving tomorrow—I have to, by royal command. We have no idea how long these changes will take. Suppose I wasn’t finished when I ran out of time? And if I had to … to read whatever I had to do from your mind, that would still be one degree more distance from the source than if you do it, with a corresponding increase in chances something could go wrong. And—”
He cut her off with a raised hand. “You’ve thought about this a lot, haven’t you?”
She nodded. “And I’ll be honest with you, Avall. I’m at war with myself over this. Part of me wants it so bad I can taste it, but part of me knows that the best thing for the kingdom is for me not to have it. The sword’s finished; therefore it should be the first to get its gem. You have time and the skill to do that. I—at present—do not. You may be pushing it as is: to do this and complete the helm.”
“It shouldn’t take more than a night. Maybe not even that.”
Again Strynn shook her head. “It’s still ultimately my choice. And for this night, I choose Averryn.”
Avall took her hand again. “You’re trusting me with a lot.”
“No, my love,” she whispered back. “I’m trusting you with everything.”
(THE CITADEL—LATE AFTERNOON)
Avall wondered if there’d always been so many steps between his suite and t
he Citadel’s forges, as he took himself there after a second nap that was far too short to have accomplished anything. Strynn had shared it with him—and Merryn and Kylin: the first time all four of them had partaken of that degree of intimacy. It was a completeness, he’d realized, for Strynn, who had the company of a bond-mate and a spouse. He and Merryn and Kylin should be so lucky. If only Rann had been there, too, instead of at the front, where the Fateing had placed him. At least Div was there as well, so he’d have someone to look out for him, now that she’d located some of what passed in her life as kin.
But, as Strynn had said, they had important work to finish, though even now it was hard to believe that the fate of the kingdom rested on what they had little choice but to consider magic—and that they were themselves the wielders of that power. It was funny, Avall thought, as he bent his way down yet another level of the tower, how, when one read stories of wizards and magicians, they already had their magic in hand; their spells, their books of potions. He’d never stopped to consider how those potions, spells, and cantrips were contrived. Would that record Lykkon was compiling even now someday be the founding arcana for the magi of some distant time?
If so—why, then, magic was a mix of rank carelessness, ongoing frustration, and blind luck.
Or, as the Priests would say, Fate.
And then he reached the final turning, and strode into the corridor outside the royal forge.
He heard the hammering long before he opened the door. And almost as quickly knew who wielded that most ancient of smithcraft tools, simply by the force and rhythm of the blows. Blows he’d heard since childhood. Blows he’d never stopped hearing—unlike Eellon, who’d been forced to choose Clan over Craft, and rarely got to forge iron anymore.
Tyrill’s blows.
Holding his breath—one never knew what to expect when one encountered the Spider Chief—he pushed through the door.
