by John Shirley
Finner gazed up at him, but this time without the puppy look. The beating bashed the puppy out of him, no doubt. Still, there was that gratitude in his eyes.
“By the Dark Six, get some sleep,” Ravon muttered. Then, to escape Finner’s groveling, he stalked into the cell warrens, the walls secreting the usual bubbling pustules like a body with the plague. Eventually he found some solitude on a balcony used for dumping refuse. He sat until a glimmer of dawn seeped into the jungle and the blasted ground near the forge. Fumaroles in the cracked land coughed up sulfurous wisps. On the far side of the clearing, an early morning detail was hammering away on something. A reviewing stand. Getting on time for the end of the world. But if the genesis forge was ready to deliver itself of millions of arms, and if it took two years of accumulated magical dragonshards to create half a sword, where were the stockpiles, the hoards of powerful shards and objects of enchantment? He’d dared to ask a forge artificer once, in a rare hallway encounter. The elite mage had wrinkled his nose at Ravon’s odor and murmured, “Endless stocks, below. Endless.”
He meant the giant graveyard. But somehow Ravon doubted there was enough enchantment below for all that would soon be rolling out of the genesis forge.
A noise startled him. Nastra stood at the door.
He turned back to gaze out over jungle. “So did your goblins report me?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “Well, they started it.”
There was nothing much to say to that, nor did she respond, but rather watched at Ravon’s side as the jungle brightened from black to sewage green.
Below them, Stonefist had come out onto the turning rims and with his henchmen flung a helpless gnome off the ring to his death four stories below. Then another. The guards’ laughter came trickling up.
“Stonefist’s at it early,” Ravon muttered.
Nastra remained silent for a moment, before saying, “How bad was Vedrim’s dungeon?”
“Not pleasant. No hot and cold running water. Lousy food.”
“I’ll bet the count has especially creative tortures.”
That was true, but he wasn’t going to give Nastra any pointers. “It’s an art with him.”
Another gnome went sailing off the ring to his death. Nastra murmured, “It can make a monster of you.”
He turned to her. “What can?”
She stared at him with cold, flat eyes. “Torture.”
Was she accusing him of monstrosity? He stifled a guffaw. “What’s your excuse, lady elf?”
“Each to his own, Captain.” She nodded at Stonefist and his entourage, below. “You could save a few gnomes, though, if you had a mind to.”
Ravon stood up, his peace shattered. “I’m not kicking them off the rings. That would be Stonefist, or are you blind as well as dumb?”
“Stonefist knows you’re up here. He’s throwing the workers off to goad you. Everybody has a breaking point. Our forge master wonders what yours is. Even the slaves are laying wagers.” Walking off, she said, “I’ve got a few coins in the game myself.”
When Ravon got back to his cell, Finner had washed out his second set of rags and hung them up to dry by the window slit. Ravon noted that the cell was newly swept as well. It almost looked decent.
Noting Ravon’s scowl, Finner said, “It’s what a steward does.” Then he turned to pound the dust out of Ravon’s mattress.
“Nine Hells.” Ravon was now thoroughly stuck with Finner, all four feet of him, including his racking cough and broken ribs.
Finner turned to leave. “I’ll fetch your breakfast.”
“No!” At the halfling’s wide-eyed look, Ravon muttered, “Tell them it’s my gruel, but bring it up here and eat it yourself.” Finner started to protest. “That’s an order. A steward does what he’s bloody well told.”
Finner grinned with what teeth he had left.
One night a storm lashed down on the forge. Lightning erupted as though Eberron itself were on fire. It ought to have cooled the forge down, but it only succeeded in turning the warrens into insufferable chambers of steam. Unable to sleep, Ravon left Finner to his exhausted slumbers and walked out to lean against a corridor wall. The thunder was loud enough to wake the dead giants underground. Between bellowing cracks he heard a familiar jangling sound and looked along the corridor to see Nastra heading down the north stairwell—again. He followed.
Ravon was not a small man, but he had long experience with silent tracking, all the easier when walking on stone stairs in iron halls. He followed Nastra down the steps, open at the top but increasingly narrower as they continued down. It was a reckless thing, to follow her. She carried a small dagger at her belt, and he’d seen her use it. A blade at the throat … the hundred and twelfth way to die, and not as bad as some. Still, Ravon had a hankering to die with a weapon in his hand. Call him sentimental. So Stonefist’s promise of a fight with a bunch of his henchmen was always in the back of his mind.
Nevertheless Ravon followed Nastra to see what villainy she was up to. If she broke the rules, he could use it against her when she tormented Finner.
The elf slipped around another turn of the stairs, the descent growing hotter. By now they had surely passed ground level. Ravon hadn’t thought there was anything past ground level, but down they climbed. Then, from around a landing, he heard a scraping noise.
Peering around the corner, he saw that Nastra had opened a door and, releasing the key back to her collection, she disappeared through it. The door clanged shut behind her.
He was not surprised when he couldn’t open it. What surprised him was that when he touched the door, it burned his fingers.
It was the way of the hellish forge that the most interesting things happened at night. Executions, rapes, orc berserker outbreaks—but this night’s entertainment was of a different sort.
A guard came for him, and Ravon tramped down to the bowel room at Stonefist’s order.
When he saw the purpose of the summons, his heart quickened. Stonefist and Nastra were leaning over the forge maw, as though crooning over a newborn baby.
The sword was complete. Its hilt was heavy with cladding, but nicely wrought. The blade, perfect; the length, a good four feet.
Stonefist lifted it from the receiving tray, holding it up and turning the blade to and fro. “Commmbaaat,” the gnoll rumbled. “Yah.” He turned his gaze on Ravon. “You hold.” He held the sword out, then withdrew it with a sly smile. “But not yet.”
“My time has come, then,” Ravon said, feeling a rush of relief like a window thrown open and fresh air wafting in.
The gnoll smiled. “When Stonefist say. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Stonefist choose.”
“But soon.”
Stonefist squinted at Ravon, handing the massive sword to Nastra. “But Captain’s death must be … special. Very sat-is-fying. Nothing …” Words failed him.
“Vulgar?” Ravon supplied.
“No vulgar!” the gnoll boomed gleefully, though Ravon doubted he knew what the word meant. “Nothing … quick,” Stonefist finished.
Nastra locked the blade away in an armory drawer. Ravon realized that she was thinner than ever, wasting away, in fact. Maybe she was sick. The night was just filled with happy thoughts.
With the main event of the evening, the first weapon from the genesis forge, concluded, Stonefist looked for other diversions.
“Lady elf,” he said slyly, “forge need more cage-walk. You get halfling Finner.” He grinned at Ravon, actually drooling. “Night shift.”
Ravon frowned. “He’s already done his shift, boss.”
“Missed work today.” Stonefist put a finger to his forehead. “Stonefist remember. Missing shift.”
“Two shifts in the same day will kill him.” Ravon shrugged. “A waste of a worker when the very important visitor is coming.”
Stonefist paused, processing this idea. Then: “Lady elf—you wake halfling.”
Ravon kept his expression neutral. “Means nothing to me.
You’re the boss.”
“Stonefist boss. Vuulgaaar boss, yah?”
“Yeah,” Ravon said, giving an insolent salute.
Stonefist liked a few military flourishes. But he still sent Nastra up to the barracks.
Soon dismissed, Ravon rushed up the stairs to catch the elf. He found her at the door to his cell. “Nastra,” he murmured.
She turned, her face a mask of indifference.
“What’s he doing to you? You look worse every day.”
Her eyes caught a glint from the everbright lantern high on the wall. “What’s it to you?”
Ravon shrugged. “Just wondering why you want to be a lackey for our lovely forge master.”
“Maybe I like the work.”
That had occurred to Ravon, but he wanted to keep her talking. “Leave Finner alone, Nastra. Show a little mercy. Some day you’ll need a favor.”
She smiled, showing surprisingly clean teeth, not that it was a pleasant sight. “I thought you didn’t care about Finner.”
“I don’t. But I made a promise in battle to Finner’s dying lieutenant. I said I’d watch over his steward. Damned if I know why.”
Her dark eyes held his. “It was a promise.”
“Yes.”
For a moment he thought she might be softening, actually affected by Finner’s story. But no, the old sarcasm was at the ready. “Cry me a bucketful,” she snapped.
She turned on her heel and stalked away. But to Ravon’s surprise, she let Finner sleep in peace that night.
The next night, Ravon lay in wait for Nastra.
He hid in a recess by the north stairs and, true to habit, the elf skulked by and disappeared down. Nastra was hiding something, he was sure of it.
What he couldn’t figure out was why he gave a damn.
In the last six months he’d learned not to care, even relishing the prospect of his own death. But then Finner had become his steward, and in Finner’s eyes, Ravon had seen the reflection of the man he used to be. Nine Hells. One foot in the grave and now he had hope again … not a hope to live—no, never that—but hope to have absolution for all that he’d done.
By the Devourer’s Teeth, he wished he’d never met Finner.
But now he was curious. Where did the sovereign bitch go on all these back stair excursions? A lover? His stomach turned at that thought.
He watched from a recess in the wall as Nastra stood before the hot door, fumbling for her keys. She selected a blood red one and, using it, went through.
Ravon plunged forward, catching the door an inch from closing. He worked the latch so that the elf would hear the mechanism click into place. Then he followed her down.
For down it was, a shaft of a stairwell now steeper than before—and hotter with every step. Here the walls streamed with foul excreta, slick and stinking. It brought to mind the question of why the whole forge, not just here, sweated a vile slime. It had always seemed natural to the misery of the place, but now Ravon thought it was something more, perhaps something far worse. The hammering heat itself was a mystery. But the forge was built on top of a graveyard of giants, and places of such ancient magic had a natural affinity for the dark places of Khyber, bringing its hellish heat close.
And down, still—with Nastra rounding the corners of the landings, and Ravon one turn behind, just catching a glimpse of her cloak as it disappeared. No lover down here. Nothing down here. His curiosity mounted.
Abruptly, the descent ended. Nastra was off across a murky cavern, roiling in noxious fumes. Ghostly rock formations jutted up from the floor while stalactites hung down from above, dripping goo … the very pus that infected the forge itself. Ravon followed the elf, the ground thrumming beneath his feet as though the heart of a giant lay just below.
A scream tore through the cavern, stopping Ravon in mid stride. The howl trailed off. He couldn’t see Nastra, lost in the murk.
Voices. One horrid and low, the other a murmur. Nastra was with someone. That low, guttural voice sent a shudder over him. All senses on keen alert, he moved with practiced stealth toward the source of the voices, using rock formations as cover. That voice. Not human, not in any way normal. The list of possible creatures was short and exceedingly nasty; maybe best to slink away now before he risked discovery. Lying flat on the ground behind a massive rock, he crept forward to look.
A creature stood on a rock outcropping. A skeletal, flesh-wasted monster, some seven feet tall.
By all the Six, a death hag. Why had he pulled forward? The hag could probably hear his very breath if she wasn’t so focused on Nastra. He was frozen now, lying flat, but exposed.
The death hag jumped down to where Nastra knelt, screaming, “My master does not wait! The baron of Cannith signifies nothing to such as us. My master does not wait for human lords!”
Then the hag slowly craned her neck, looking around. Ravon stopped breathing.
“Yes, exalted,” Nastra piped up, bringing the hag’s attention back. “Just a day, however. What is a day to your great master? It is nothing!”
The death hag screamed in frustration, raising her hands and wringing them. “A day, a day? You shall understand how long is a day, when my sisters cut a slit in you and slowly draw out your entrails!” The creature swiped her claws through Nastra’s hair, snapping the elf’s head back and forth. “We shall bring up the fires to feed the engine. Open the pipe! Let the sweet lakes of Fernia flow!”
Ravon heard the word Fernia, and his mind opened to a new and most unwelcome surmise.
The hag was still screaming, “Aye, Fernia longs to flow!”
Nastra quailed but answered, “Yes, Fernia shall flow, great one. The glorious day!”
Ravon’s heart cooled at the growing realization. By all that was unholy, the forge needn’t worry about running out of dragonshards. It was going to have Fernia. It would be fueled by one of the planes of the Elemental Chaos: Fernia, the Sea of Fire.
Because, he now realized, the genesis forge was sitting atop a manifest zone, where the worlds intermixed. But not even a death hag could create a pipe to extrude the Elemental Chaos …
Nastra looked up at the hag. “A glorious day it will be, but not yet, exalted one. Tomorrow. Stonefist begs the demon lord’s indulgence for one more day—”
Her agitation growing, the death hag rolled her eyes fully around in their sockets.
Nastra went on, “—so that his master, the great Cannith personage, may arrive, may witness the event.”
The death hag emitted a horrid ululation. She bashed her right hand down on her own upper leg, shattering it. Somehow, the witch remained upright. Then she plucked aside her rags and touched her femur, healing it over with gristle. Calmer now after her outburst, the death hag grinned and yanked Nastra to her feet.
“One day only, sweetling. The demon lord shall wait one day. Then the fire comes up. The forge is born!”
“Yes, exalted lady. Tomorrow. You have my word.”
The hag rasped, “What is your word to me?”
“Nothing,” Nastra said. Then she met the hag’s maddened gaze. “But it’s all you’ve got.”
The witch cocked her skull-like head, as though considering whether to eat the elf on the spot or save her for another time.
By the Sovereign Gods, Ravon had space in his mind to think, Nastra just talked back to a death hag.
“Leave me,” the hag spat. “Return tomorrow and tell us Cannith has arrived. Then the gates of fire open!” With a ferocious leap she launched herself away, disappearing into the boiling smoke.
The creature was gone. Even so, Ravon waited a few beats before standing up to face Nastra. He swayed for a moment, temporarily weakened by having been in the death hag’s proximity.
Spying him, Nastra’s look revealed her dismay. The forge’s secrets, or most of them, were now exposed. Her eyes flicked toward the vanished death hag. Then she waved him toward the end of the cavern where the stairs gave on to the audience chamber.
They stood face
to face, eyeing each other. “So,” Nastra muttered. “You know.”
Ravon looked at Nastra’s stringy face and stooped shoulders. Her visits with the death hag had eaten away her life force, until all that was left was this pitiful, wasted creature. He spoke in a stunned whisper. “You’re going to unleash the Demon Lords.”
“Not exactly.”
His temper surged, and he pushed her against the stairwell wall. “No? Isn’t the hag’s master a demon lord?”
With surprising strength, Nastra pushed him away. “Nothing can unleash the Demon Lords. They are banished forever.”
Ravon grabbed her arm, this time holding on with a fierce grip. “But they aren’t. They’ve already found a way to unleash themselves. They’ve got you, Nastra, damn you to the Hells.” He twisted her arm behind her back and she winced in pain. “I ought to kill you. The world would thank me for it.”
“Go ahead,” the elf whispered. “See if that stops the forge!”
Brutally, he threw her against the wall and stepped away, unable to execute her as she deserved. Through his contempt, he asked, “Why, Nastra? Why help the bastards?”
She slid down the wall into a crouch. In the gloaming light from the few brightglobes, she looked a bit like a hag herself. “For love.”
He stared at her.
“The high lord of Cannith has my family. He’ll kill them, mother, father, brothers, cousins. Merrix d’Cannith has already slain my sister.” Her voice went very quiet. “Back when I first refused.”
“Nice story. But you’re not that important. Cannith could use any servant base enough, greedy enough, to do his bidding.”
“Dragonmarked,” she whispered.
“What?”
“I’m useful. My aberrant dragonmark. It shields me—just enough—from the powers of Khyber.” She looked blackly up at him. “Even Stonefist can’t survive down here for long. If you’d come much closer, you would understand.”
He watched her carefully for signs of cunning. But oddly, he believed her. She had a gift. A twisted, awful one. And Cannith had tortured her family to be sure she used it.
“I’m sorry,” he heard himself say. And he was, woefully sorry, about the hellish forge, the pact with the demons, and even Nastra’s family. But pity was useless. It was anger that he needed. A righteous anger. He gazed into the smoke-laden cavern, imagining how all of Fernia would be harnessed for a new and bloody war. He felt something small and burning flicker in him, but wearily, he pushed it away.
