“King Skella agreed to give me your swords for a time,” the dwarf explained, leaning them against the wall, “yours and Bryon’s. I thought I might take you to my friend and have him inspect the weapons. Something interesting happened when I retrieved them from the King’s armory.”
“Oh,” Erik replied, looking over his shoulder to see both his brother and cousin still asleep, “and what was that?”
“I thought we should take that peculiar dagger of yours, as well, but when I asked the armorer about a golden-hilted dagger, one studded with jewels,” Turk explained, “he hadn’t the faintest clue what I was talking about.”
Erik smiled, reaching under his pillow to retrieve his dagger.
“Careful, Erik,” Turk said.
“Of course,” Erik replied.
“The King finds out you’ve hidden that from him . . .” Turk began to say, but a sudden thought passing through Erik’s mind assured him the dagger would stay hidden.
“Are you ready?” Turk asked.
“Let me wake Bryon,” Erik replied with a nod. He walked to his cousin’s bed and shook his shoulder.
Bryon simply snorted loudly and swatted Erik’s hand away without ever opening his eyes.
“We’re going to take your sword to Turk’s friend,” Erik said, “find out what exactly it is.”
Bryon didn’t move.
“If you aren’t going to wake,” Erik said, “I’m just going to take it for you then.”
Bryon groaned and rolled over.
“I’ll take that as permission given,” Erik said. He nodded to Turk. “Let’s go.”
“Obviously, we want to keep your cousin’s sword sheathed,” Turk said while they walked through the castle grounds. “A glowing sword will cause unwanted commotion.”
Erik laughed at that.
“But I will also carry your sword,” Turk added.
“Why?” Erik asked, looking almost longingly down at the empty frog at his belt.
“It’s just safer this way,” Turk replied. “Guards and constables know men aren’t supposed to be carrying weapons and would not know of the King’s agreement. This will help us avoid unwanted attention.”
Erik argued no further. However unwelcomed he had felt in the cities of Waterton, Venton, and Finlo, the feeling he got walking through Thorakest made those places seem like family reunions. He knew some of it was the simple fact that Thorakest was a large city by any measure, with thousands upon thousands of inhabitants, but Erik also knew much of that feeling came from the fact that he was a man, and thus, very much in a minority. If rumors spread here like they did in any other city, some inhabitants who had heard of their arrival might not be too happy about it given their ‘mercenaries’ label.
“Why did you ask the King to return my sword as well as Bryon’s?” Erik asked. “It’s nothing special.”
“Before you start thinking that sword is nothing but rubbish,” Turk replied, “do remember it may very well save your life. I simply want Ilken to see you with it and test whether or not it truly fits you. My guess is that it does not.”
As more of its inhabitants shot him dirty looks, Erik did see other men in Thorakest. Even in a dwarvish city, he supposed it wasn’t so odd to see a diversity of people. They were working with carts or standing in front of their storefronts. Most of them had families with them. He saw gnomes too. He even saw what he expected to be a pair of ogres—remembering Befel’s descriptions of the giant humanoids from Finlo. Regardless, Erik was a stranger who stood out as he followed Turk through the busy streets.
They eventually stopped at a house with a clay-tiled roof and walls of yellow-painted wood. Smoke rose from the back of the house. Turk knocked on the bright blue door and stood back with a smile, thumbs tucked into his belt. The door opened, and a gruff dwarvish woman stood in the doorway.
Aside from the lack of a beard, she looked almost like the dwarvish men. She wore a yellow dress that covered her feet and a white cap that covered most of her hair—dark brown speckled with gray. She looked hard at Turk, and then Erik, and then Turk again. Turk removed his pointed, feathered cap, and bowed. She cracked a slight smile and grunted a few words in Dwarvish. Turk replied, Erik understanding nothing but the name “Ilken.” The woman nodded and went back into the house.
Another dwarf returned with her, a graying fellow slightly shorter than Turk and wearing a pair of spectacles that hung at the end of a bulbous nose. He wore what little gray hair he had left in tufts just above his ears and along the back of his head. He kept it fairly short, unlike most other dwarves. As soon as he saw Turk, he gave a big grin and hugged him. When Turk pulled away, dark soot stained the front of his shirt.
“Oh my,” Ilken, speaking in Westernese in deference to the visiting man, said, “you are not the little apprentice I remember, my young Skull Crusher.”
“Aye, it has been far too long Ilken Copper Head,” Turk agreed.
“I am sorry about your father,” Ilken said, a smile still on his face, “but I am sure he is with the Almighty now. He was a faithful warrior, always saying his prayers and sitting in the same seat at chapel. It seems An has been good to you.”
Turk just smiled.
“And you have brought a man with you,” Ilken said. “Don’t see many of them around here.”
The woman who had opened the door said something in Dwarvish to Ilken in a somewhat scolding tone.
“Come now, woman, it is not a dog. He is a man. My wife, Lita,” Ilken explained when he saw the crooked expression on Erik’s face, “was asking if you have fleas or worms.”
“Not the last time I checked,” Erik joked.
“I have brought Erik to meet you,” Turk explained, “he has several items—weapons—in which you might be interested.”
“Good to meet you,” Erik said, extending his hand. Ilken wiped his hands on the heavy, cowhide apron he wore and then returned the favor, practically crushing the young man’s hand.
“I am always interested in looking at fine—perhaps even unusual—weapons,” Ilken said, giving Erik a look that was almost one of mischief.
Ilken motioned for them to enter, and Erik and Turk followed Ilken and Lita through a simple house with a large living area filled with two benches and a tall shelf with little trinkets and glass figurines. A wall separated the living area from the kitchen, an equally large room with two large basins for dishes, a wood stove, and a simple box of iron covered in furs.
“It’s a place to keep things cool,” Ilken explained as Erik stopped to look at the thing. “We call it an ice box. We can pack it with ice and put meat or cheese or milk in there, and it will keep for much longer than it normally would.”
From the kitchen, Ilken opened a door to their backyard. It consisted of two orange trees, a small patch of strawberry bushes, roses, and a fenced area for tomatoes and vegetables like beans and peppers. The latrine was there as well, and Ilken’s shop.
“Come,” Ilken said. “Let us have a look at what you have brought me.”
They entered the smithy shop, familiar to Erik with its billow and anvil and cooling tank, and Turk motioned to Erik. Turk first gave Ilken Bryon’s sword. The blacksmith took it with a slight bow and set it on a table, inspecting the scabbard. He then unsheathed the sword, and as a bright purple light bathed the dwarf ’s face, a wide smile spread and parted his lips into a toothy grin. He set the weapon down gently, and it hissed when it touched the wood of the table.
“Just as I thought,” Ilken said, putting on two heavy, leather gloves.
“What is that?” Erik asked.
“If you were to touch the blade, it would burn you. Look at the mark it has made on my table.” Ilken pointed to a black line of charred wood where the blade had touched.
The blacksmith ran his gloved hand over the blade, safe from burning with the thick leather protection. He leaned as close to the metal as he could.
“This is a fine blade indeed,” Ilken said. “Good steel, despite its magic.”<
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“Dwarf ’s Iron?” Erik said.
“No lad, just good steel,” Ilken replied. “Elvish steel if my suspicions hold true.”
“Elves?” Erik questioned.
“Aye,” Ilken replied, a smile still on his face. “You’d never think the fancy little pricks, with all their dancing around and drinking too much, would be capable of making such a fine weapon, but they were, at one time, fairly good smiths.”
“Have you seen an elf-made sword before?” Turk asked.
“Aye, but only one,” Ilken said, looking at the dwarf over his spectacles before he pushed them back up his nose. “They are hard to come by any more, even ones not imbued with some sort of magic. This truly is a treasure. It is your cousin’s you say?”
Erik nodded.
“Is elvish steel different, like Dwarf ’s Iron?” he asked.
“No lad, just steel worked by elvish hands. Well, let’s have a closer look.”
Ilken removed his spectacles and set them on the table before temporarily sheathing Bryon’s blade. He then rooted through a box that was sitting on a short shelf behind him. He tossed aside wooden measuring tools and other trinkets when he grunted with satisfaction and held up another pair of spectacles, only these had lenses a pale shade of blue.
Ilken put on the new glasses and unsheathed the sword again. The purple light reflected brightly off those blue lenses. As the blacksmith mulled over the blade, he hemmed and hawed.
“These are certainly elvish runes,” he said, still examining the sword. “They are old, predating even Middle Elvish. But I do not believe this sword is that old. These runes were old and outdated a thousand years ago. This is good steel with no impurities that I can see. That will keep the metal sturdy. The magic will help preserve the metal for even longer, but even then, after a thousand years, this blade should have begun to fade, lose its luster and essentially, fall apart.”
“Can you read them?” Erik asked.
“A little,” Ilken said with a shrug. “A dwarf is not supposed to know how to read any form of Elvish, but it can be very helpful to a blacksmith. I see a rune for fire, and that would make sense. I see another one for the elements. That leads me to believe this is elemental magic. And then, I think some of these are family names, perhaps. Where did your cousin get it?”
“He got it from a man, a mercenary, he killed,” said Erik. “After the man tried to kill him, of course,” Erik clarified.
“A lesser blacksmith might date it back to the Elvish Wars,” Ilken said, a slight hint of haughtiness in his admission, “but that was a thousand years ago . . . too long. I would date it no more than four hundred years, to Evum Obscurium, the Age of Obscurity. Even with the elves retreating away from the world and into their hidey holes like the forests of Ul’Erel, there still would have been a good number of these weapons produced then. Some elvish knight probably owned it, and he died. A man who knew no better retrieved it, sold it, traded it, or died, and the rest is history.”
Ilken looked it over more, turning it in his gloved hands.
“Elemental magic is such a fickle thing,” Ilken said.
“How so?” Turk asked.
“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. One thing I do know is that most elemental magic is good.”
“Good?” Erik muttered.
“Aye, magic can have alliances. It can be good or evil. In fact, in the hands of a man with a wicked, twisted heart, this sword probably won’t even glow. Does it radiate its aura when your cousin holds it?”
Erik nodded.
“That is good,” Ilken said. “At least you know your cousin isn’t evil.”
“You could fool me sometimes,” Erik muttered.
Ilken laughed.
“Has he used it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, let’s try it,” Ilken said. “What do you say?”
Erik just shrugged.
Ilken lifted the sword high over his head and, with a hefty grunt, struck the heel of his anvil. Erik closed his eyes, felt a puff of hot air hit his face, and heard a sound that sounded like metal scratching against metal and meat searing over a fire. When he opened his eyes, he saw Ilken Copper Head holding his cousin’s blade, eyes wide and smile even wider. The heel of the anvil lay on the floor, the side once attached to the rest of the anvil glowing red.
“I would say it works,” Ilken said with a hint of excitement.
When Ilken held the blade close to Erik’s face, he could feel its heat. Sweat trickled down his face. It looked perfect, as if Ilken had just forged it.
“This is indeed a treasured blade,” Ilken said as he slid the sword back into its scabbard. “Hopefully, your cousin keeps it, uses it well, and passes it to his son when that time comes. Is that all?”
Erik looked to Turk, and the dwarf nodded. He grabbed his jeweled dagger, stuck deep into his belt. His palm tingled as he grabbed the weapon. The tingle moved to his spine, and a jolt, like a hundred spiders crawling up his back, shot through his body. He shook.
“Are you okay?” Ilken asked.
“Yes. Just a shiver,” Erik said. “Sorry.”
Erik removed the dagger from his belt and handed it to Ilken. The dwarf reached out to the weapon, and when his fingers touched the handle, he quickly retracted his hand.
“What’s wrong?” Turk asked.
“It stung me.” Ilken rubbed his hand with furled eyebrows and a frown.
“Maybe I’m not going insane,” Erik said.
“Perhaps,” Ilken replied. “Or maybe we both are. Erik, set it on my table please.”
Erik did, and the smith put his colored spectacles on and looked over the dagger.
“Can you unsheathe it, please?” Ilken asked.
Erik did. Ilken looked over the blade again, with his spectacles, making sure not to touch it.
“I have never seen anything with this type of aura.”
The dwarf removed his spectacles and folded them, dropping them into one of the pockets of his apron.
“It is as if a thousand different types of magic are all working together. I can’t even explain what I am seeing. There are no markings on the blade. These gems are clearly magical, but I can’t tell how or why. The handle is magic. The blade itself is strong with a magical dweamor. This is something I have never seen. Where did you get it?”
“It was a gift,” Erik replied. “From a gypsy friend.”
“Gypsies, eh.” Ilken continued to look over the weapon, making sure not to touch it. “This is certainly something that a gypsy might come across, in his dealings all over the world. Have you used this dagger?”
“Yes,” Erik said.
“And what did it do?” Ilken asked.
“I threw it. I imagined it striking the back of the man I threw it at, but my throw was clearly off my mark,” Erik explained. “However, as it wobbled through the air, the dagger glowed red and turned into an arrow and struck the man exactly where I thought I had aimed. When I went to remove it, it was a dagger once again.”
Turk nodded in affirmation.
“I do not know what to say.” Ilken scratched his bearded chin.
“I feel as if . . .” Erik began to say, but then stopped.
“What, Erik?” Turk asked.
“Sometimes I feel as if it communicates with me,” Erik finally said.
Ilken straightened his back and moaned. “Are you sure?”
“I don’t know,” Erik replied. read “I have a thought, but it’s not my thought and I feel like it is this dagger communicating with me. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“If that is true,” Ilken said, removing his regular spectacles once again from the pocket in his apron and putting them on, “then this is a powerful magic, a legendary magic, even.”
“Elvish magic?” Erik asked.
“No,” Ilken said, shaking his head. “Something much more powerful.”
Erik’s stomach twisted. “Should I be worried?”
Ilken shrugged. That was not the response Erik had wanted.
“I would be careful,” Ilken said. “History has plenty of tales about magic weapons and items having a conscience. Some were good, some were evil. Those that were good helped make men heroes, saviors, warriors of justice and righteousness. Those that were evil normally took over their possessors, used them, twisted them, caused them to do great harm to the world and those around them, and then discarded them, looking for a new host like a disease.”
“So, if it is evil, then I just throw it away?” Erik asked.
“That is easier said than done. The connection between master and weapon becomes addictive, more so than Black Root, Kokaina, Tomigus Root, or anything else you could think of,” Ilken explained. “Some say Stone Axe’s axe had such a conscience and, even though it was a weapon of goodness, the mighty king would spend nights away from his wife, talking to his axe. Carry this with great caution, Erik, if you choose to keep it.”
Erik picked up the dagger and sheathed it, putting it back in his belt. He felt a familiar tingle at his hip and, for a quick moment, he smiled. It felt . . . good.
“Was he going to look at my sword as well?” Erik asked Turk.
“Was your blade made for you?” Ilken asked.
“I haven’t even used it.” Erik shook his head. “My cousin took it from the friend of his sword’s owner.”
“Interesting,” Ilken said. “Hold it.”
Turk offered the sword to Erik, handle first, and the young man took it, holding it as naturally as he could.
“May I?” Ilken reached out with his hands.
The young man nodded and handed the dwarf his sword, handle first.
“Yes, yes, this was clearly not made for you,” Ilken said. “I am not sure who it could be made for. It is heavy, a blade that should be used with two hands, but the handle is only long enough to be used by one.”
Ilken gave the sword back to Erik.
“Do not worry. It will do the job. You have strong arms and shoulders,” Ilken said. “You have a strong back and strong hips. You will be able to effectively use this sword. Let me ask you a question. If you were to have a sword crafted for you, would you rather wield it with one hand or two?”
Dark Winds Page 24
