by John Shirley
“No,” said Malargoten softly, but with authority.
The dreadnought’s claw seemed to strike an invisible barrier, and bounced off.
The foundling stared at the creature, his expression a mixture of fury and contempt. Finally he waved a hand and snapped a finger, and the dreadnought collapsed, convulsing in agony, and died.
Malargoten paid it no more attention. Instead he walked over to Charybole’s body, stared at her crushed skull, and wondered what his people did with their dead.
Zat sat alone in her quarters. She was troubled, and she was confused. The reports had come in: She knew that the dreadnought had killed the annoying female who had withstood so many of her minions … but she also knew that the dreadnought itself was dead, though there was not a sign of violence on its body. And there was no trace of the foundling. Probably the dreadnought had eaten it, but she felt uneasy not knowing for certain.
Suddenly she became aware of another presence in the room, not a physical presence, but a presence nonetheless. She looked around, and saw a shimmering in the air, a shimmering that suggested something tangible, something more.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
You know who I am, a voice said inside her head. And you have made a serious blunder. For all of my life you have hunted me down like an animal. I was never in danger, of course, and until this latest attempt I was always able to protect my mother, even though she was not aware of it.
“You are githyanki!” spat Zat.
I could have been one of you, continued the voice calmly. Until now I bore you no ill will. But now you have killed my mother—
“Your false mother,” interrupted Zat.
The only mother I have ever known. You are safe for the moment, Zat. I will do nothing to you today, or this week, or this year. I will wait for my powers to mature, powers that could have served the githzerai. I wash my hands of your race, and my own kind will not have me after I have lived with yours. I will live apart from all living things until the time is right. And when it is, when I am invulnerable to the combined might of all the githzerai, I will return—and you, Zat, will be the first to know it.
She was about to reply, but before she could she sensed she was alone again.
She considered what she had heard.
Isn’t it ironic, she thought bitterly, that by defending the githzerai race, I may have doomed it?
Well, then, was there a way to soften his attitude? Zat smiled ruefully. Would she give up plans of vengeance were their positions reversed? Of course not.
Finally, was there a possibility, however slim, that he was wrong, that a five-year-old githyanki child was not the most potent and invulnerable force within the Elemental Chaos?
She didn’t hold out much hope for that—but suddenly she knew that she would spend as much time as she had before his return trying to find out.
Mike Resnick is, according to Locus, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short science fiction. He has won five Hugos, a Nebula, and other major awards in the USA, France, Spain, Poland, Croatia, and Japan. Mike is the author of sixty novels, almost 250 stories, and two screenplays, and has edited more than forty anthologies. In his spare time, he sleeps.
THE FORGE OF XEN’DRIK
A TALE OF EBERRON
KAY KENYON
Ravon Kell slammed his shovel into the stony ground, cursing the hard jungle soil. They had already buried fifty slaves, and there was no end in sight.
The sun threw lashing rays on his back, cooking him in his rags, but the worst heat came from the ground itself, where the grinding magics of the genesis forge blistered the land, killing the jungle for a swath of a thousand feet around their prison.
Nearby, an orc guard wrinkled his snout at the stench of bodies. “Bury ’em three in a hole,” he ordered the halfling Finner.
“That’s against—” Finner started to protest, but fell silent as the orc loomed over him.
Ravon dug his hole deeper. Yesterday’s slave uprising had been doomed from the start. An army officer in the Last War, he’d weighed the odds and had stayed out of the fray. It wasn’t even a contest, here in this lost jungle of Xen’drik where no one knew there was a forge or slaves—both illegal under the Treaty of Thronehold.
Maybe the poor bastards knew the odds and just wanted to die. As the old marching song went, there were nine hundred and ninety ways to die. An orc’s blade thrust being merely one.
He looked up at the massive factory: an arms mill the size of a fortress, soon to produce an endless supply of lances, shields, cudgels, maces, swords, crossbows, spears—not to mention magic-infused spike wire, lightning spheres, and thunder shock implements.
A genesis forge, by the Devourer, though one had not been seen in the world since the fall of Cyre, as they were forbidden by the Treaty of Thronehold. But those laws didn’t apply in Xen’drik, a wild continent far from Khorvaire. Besides, a cloak of magic hid the forge. From the jungle, the misshapen fortress looked like nothing more than a vine-covered crag, not a hulking factory ten stories high, with massive iron walls studded with bulging armories and effluent towers disgorging steam and rank smoke.
At the top of the forge bulged the dome of the artificers’ keep. There, mages with their diagrams, spells, and sigils directed the magical workings of the forge. They drew enormous power from stockpiles of dragonshards and from the latent magic of the very ground on which the forge rested—the ancient burial site of a race of giants, it was said.
Ravon spat. His task—the task of every other slave, guard, and artificer—was to bring the forge to working order, and by so doing, bring the world to war. As a captain in Karrnath’s army, war had been his job, but he would never fight again. In the Last War Count Vedrim ir’Omik had thrown him in the dungeons, stripping him of his commission and very nearly his life. It was one thing to take his punishment like a man, and quite another to take it when innocent of the charges—charges trumped up by the count’s favorite vixen, at that. Earlier in the war a few of Ravon’s victories had come to the count’s attention, but by the Nine Hells, he wished that Vedrim had never visited the battlefield with his entourage. The attractive lady had taken a fancy to the celebrated captain, he’d declined to bed her, the count had been led to believe otherwise, and now Ravon wished that for all he’d suffered in the dungeon, he’d at least had the pleasure of what he’d been accused of.
High up the outer wall, a flat ring protruded like a horizontally embedded plate. Two rings, actually, one within the other. They turned very slowly, in opposite directions, grinding the dragon shards—the raw material of the forge’s magic.
On the outer ring, pacing slowly to keep the slaves in view, the forge master Stonefist glared down at them. Even among gnolls, he was especially ugly. Strutting up there on the outer ring, his presence filled the slaves with further dread, a fact that even the slow-witted gnoll well understood.
Finner pulled out a gourd from inside his shirt, offering Ravon a drink of hoarded water.
Ravon waved it away. “Drink it yourself.”
“You first, Captain.” Finner bent over with another of his coughing spells, but managed not to spill.
Ravon wiped the sweat streaming into his eyes. “I’m not your captain any more.” He glared at Finner. “And I don’t need a steward. Get to digging or that orc will put you in a hole.”
The halfling still held out the gourd. “You’ll always be a captain of Karrnath. Don’t make no difference, in prisons or digging graves.”
Ravon took the gourd, else there would be no shutting Finner up. Tossing off a gulp of water, he nodded at the halfling, getting a worshipful look in return. To his surprise, it shamed him. There was nothing left of him to look at that way. He’d left that man in the count’s dungeons. They had beaten and tortured that man out of him, and then had made him do the same to others.
So, Finner, he thought, how do you like the real Ravon Kell?
Ravon entered the forge through t
he iron jaws of the front door. The inner maze of ramps and halls growled with a low throbbing, less heard than felt through the soles of the feet. The goblin who’d fetched Ravon prodded him with a spear. Ravon batted it away from the small of his back, heedless of the goblin’s snarl. No one was going to cut him down before Stonefist said. Ravon’s time had not yet come, and the goblin knew it.
He tramped up the stairs, leaving the guard to return to grave duty. Ravon had more freedom than most of the other workers. Stonefist had conceived the plan to save him for a showy death. Why waste the great captain of Karrnath on starvation or overwork? Maybe Stonefist’s sadistic plan was ready to go, if the gnoll wanted to see him.
Second level, the rat pen. Gnomes and dwarves and halflings ran in their caged circles, turning the great forge rings that wove the spell to cloak the forge from prying eyes. Every kingdom in Khorvaire would rise up to destroy the forge, if discovered. That wasn’t going to happen, though Ravon, in his off-guard moments, hoped for it. Hope made servitude less bearable, a lesson he’d learned well in Vedrim’s dungeon.
A female dwarf grown thin from the endless walk spat through her cage and landed a gobbet at Ravon’s feet. “Think you’re high and mighty, don’t you? Foul slime!”
Ravon made a half salute. “Good day to you as well, Bisreth.”
Others doing cage duty took up the catcalls. “Lackey.” “Traitor.” They thought he was in close with Stonefist—even liked the forge master. The very thought gagged him. It was true that Stonefist gave him the run of the place, within reason. Ravon provided entertainment for Stonefist—and banter the forge master had come to relish.
The thought festered that he was also a model slave, dependably doing what he was told. Once, he would have called such a man a craven coward. Well. Perhaps one day Stonefist would push him too far, and he’d show himself a man, after all.
Snapping whips in the air, the goblin guards silenced the rat pen outburst, ignoring Ravon as he passed through.
Arriving at the third level, Ravon found Stonefist waiting for him. The gnoll was seated next to a wall of the forge proper. The ten-story heart of the edifice sweated out a putrescent goo in spots. This was the bowel room, slave talk for the place where the forge shat out its weapons. Or would, come the word from on-high. Some high lord or other, but such things mattered little in the end. What mattered to Ravon was a decent death. He’d put more than his share of thought into choosing a good one.
Seeing Ravon approach, Stonefist kicked at the cringing slave filing the gnoll’s toenails. “Enough!” he roared. She fled the room. At Stonefist’s side stood an elf, the ever-watchful, the ever-grim Nastra, a bulging ring of colorful keys at her belt.
Noting Stonefist’s daggerlike toenails, Ravon said appreciatively, “Nice job. Except for the stink. Need to wash those feet sometime, boss.” Over the weeks he and Stonefist had fallen into an exchange of insults. The gnoll was doubtless stirred by verbal abuse from a man he could torture to death at a whim.
Stonefist grinned. “Maybe you lick feet?” He turned his foot to one side, then the other. “Lick clean?”
Ravon gave an elaborate sigh. “A slave’s work is never done.”
“No slaves!” Stonefist blared. “Slaves against the law.”
“Well, if not slaves, how about happy workers?”
Stonefist roared a laugh. “Happy workers!” He socked his fist against the forge wall, leaving a dent. “Happy workers!” Even Nastra smirked. “Big boss will like happy workers,” the gnoll said, his good mood growing.
“You never said who the big boss is, Stonefist.”
“Hah! Big boss is …” His grin fell away. “But Stonefist don’t tell.”
A flicker of interest flamed high in Ravon. It would be good to know one’s real enemy. But it was a soldier’s instinct, and he was no longer a soldier.
“I save you from shovels, Captain,” the gnoll said. “Not die of too much work. Stonefist save Captain for commmmbaaat,” he said, as his eyes grew rapturous.
Nastra made a distorted smile.
“Maybe I won’t do your combat,” Ravon said lightly. He’d been wondering what he would do when Stonefist ordered him to fight. It might not be a bad way to die: Ravon against a few orcs and goblins. But then again, it would mean contributing to Stonefist’s sadistic pleasures.
The forge master frowned. “Then Captain die. I cut your heart out.”
No heart in there, Ravon thought, but have at it, you sack of pus.
The pleasantries concluded, Stonefist heaved himself from his chair. Ravon was a big man, but the forge master stood a foot taller.
“Stonefist show you a thing, yah?” Waving Ravon to follow, he lumbered toward one of the forge portals.
“Foul bitch,” Ravon muttered to Nastra as she walked at his side. Skinnier even than most elves, she still possessed a fluidity that might be called grace, if she hadn’t been a sadistic freak of a gnoll’s minion.
“I pissed on your bed this morning,” Nastra crooned. “Think of me tonight as you dream.” As she walked, her hundred keys clinked like bells.
“I do think of you. You perform all my delights, lady elf. Think of that.”
She hissed in response. Oh, how the vile creature would love to carve him up a little with the handy knife on her belt. It was one of Ravon’s few remaining pleasures to provoke her. Even Stonefist liked to see her taken down a notch.
They came to the egress gate in the forge wall, the place where the weaponry would soon pour forth. To Ravon’s surprise, the process had begun.
A great, burnished sword blade, edges honed and glittering, protruded from a portal. The blade was emerging from the door so slowly that Ravon could barely tell it was moving. A tendril of smoke slipped out as well, as though the forge was passing intestinal gas at the effort. But it was still in testing mode. Ravon tried and failed to imagine the hellish environs of a fully enlivened genesis forge.
Stonefist eyed Ravon. “You fight my goblins with sword, yah? Kill and kill, to see if sharp?”
Stonefist had long promised Ravon a good fight with the forge’s first product. A little celebration, as it were. With this weapon, by the look of the sword’s ensorcelled iron, Ravon might last a few minutes even if out-numbered. But he said, “I’d rather fight you, Stonefist. Someone easy.” He shrugged. “If it were up to me.”
Stonefist’s expression darkened. He bent over Ravon, pointing a meaty finger at his chest, his breath fit to knock Ravon flat. “You kill goblins. You kill what I say you kill.” His voice boomed. “You kill lady elf. You kill halfling Finner. Whoever Stonefist say!”
Lightly bringing the gnoll’s attention back to the sword, Ravon asked, “When will it be ready?”
“Soon,” the gnoll muttered. Then, regaining his mood, he said, “How you like sword?”
“Good so far,” Ravon said.
Stonefist nodded over and over, muttering half to himself, “Took much dragonshards. Two years of dragonshards to make. Big pile. Now out come good-so-far sword! Ha!” Stonefist threw wide his massive arms. “Soon come big important visitor. He watch forge get born!”
That was news. The high lord coming. Ravon flicked a glance at Nastra, whose long and almost handsome face showed no sign of surprise, only a patient, cold longing to watch a captain of Karrnath fight to the death. Well, she hadn’t overseen the killing of any slaves for a couple of days.
Ravon wondered who the big visitor would be. Wondered if he would live to see it. Hoped he wouldn’t. “You’ll need a bath, then, Stonefist,” Ravon said. “With company coming.”
Stonefist grinned, showing an impressive rack of teeth. “By Dolurrh, Stonefist miss you when you dead!” That brought on a fit of barking laughter. Even Nastra joined in, as ugly a mewling sound as Ravon had ever heard.
He heard Stonefist’s guffaws all the way up to the fourth level, the slave barracks. Just before he turned into his quarters—by the grace of the Sovereign Host, a private cell—he heard keys ja
ngling and turned to see Nastra slinking around the corner and down the crabbed and steep north stairs. Had she followed him, spying? He wondered where the creature was going. Nowhere to go, surely. This lovely forge was the end of the line.
Deep in the night, ear-splitting yowls erupted down the fortress corridor. Instantly awake, Ravon sprang from his pallet. From cell block eleven, he heard the rasping shouts of goblins and slaves chanting “Finner, Finner!”
Cursing, Ravon stalked down to the slave barracks in time to see a dozen goblins surrounding a bloodied Finner. One of them yanked a fistful of hair from Finner’s head and, grinning, raised it aloft like a captured flag. The slaves stomped and hollered as Finner fell to his knees in a coughing fit.
In the tumult, no one saw Ravon stride in until he grabbed a goblin by his leather belt, holding him a foot off the floor, kicking and growling. He swung the creature around, slamming him into another goblin and clearing a wide swath.
His fit ended, Finner stared at the palm of his hand and a few bloody teeth he’d coughed up. By the Devourer, here was a fine mess. Ravon had promised Finner’s lieutenant that he’d keep an eye on the young halfling. Finner had served tirelessly as the officer’s steward despite a set of bad lungs that would have kept lesser men from service. Ravon owed it to the lieutenant, he supposed. The man had died in his arms on the battlefield.
Still holding the goblin by the belt, Ravon growled, “Anybody want this sack of shit?”
The goblins fell silent, their grins fading to resentful scowls.
“No?” Ravon flung the creature aside and walked over to Finner. The formerly cheering slaves now looked properly ashamed. To watch a fellow slave savagely beaten … Ravon shook his head, glaring at them. The urge rose to slay two or three goblins before the others fell upon him. But then, that would be too much like the old Ravon and it was so much easier not to be him.
He helped Finner back to his private quarters—a rat hole with a slit for a window—and dumped him in a pile of straw.
