The Four Forges (3 page)

“It is not a good place we ride to,” Gilgarran acknowledged, meeting his stare. “Once up there, stay with me, but be quiet. Say as little as possible, do as little as possible.”

“Attract no attention.”

Gilgarran nodded. “I will not be shielding you otherwise.”

“All right.”

Gilgarran lifted his reins. His horse shook his head. “Anything to tell me?”

Surprise shivered through him like the fingers of the wind swirling about them. His teacher had told him once never to prophesy for him. Never had he offered or been asked before. His Kernan blood, Gilgarran said, tainted the Vaelinar in him, and his talents were likely to be muddied through no fault of his own. Because of it and his eyes, no one had ever offered to teach him, not even those Vaelinars who had recognized their blood in him, although Gilgarran had been pleasantly surprised at his abilities. Still, his mentor had made that request of him at the beginning and had never gone back on it. It was said the Vaelinars recognized their own by the eyes even more than the ears, the longevity, the agility, and the slenderness of build. It was also said that Talent passed with Vaelinar eyes, but he had proved that axiom wrong. Gilgarran said Sevryn was the only one he’d ever run across who manifested Talent though his eyes were perfectly ordinary, making him even more valuable to Gilgarran’s intrigues. There was an advantage to being discounted in the scheme of things.

Sevryn began to shake his head quickly to Gilgarran’s question, then the words tumbled out in spite of that. “Be careful.”

It happened like that. A darkness filled with sudden lightning, a flash of thought or word. He snapped his mouth shut, teeth biting off his words.

Gilgarran smiled thinly. “That,” he responded, “goes without saying.” He turned his horse about and began to pick his way uphill again, following the hidden trail their elven senses had marked.

“Wait,” Sevryn called, but the howling wind tore the sound from him and swallowed it down, and if Gilgarran heard him at all, he gave no sign of it. He gathered himself to follow, and do what he had been trained for.

FYRVAE STOOD IN THE DARKNESS, back bowed, head down instinctively, knowing where the cavern roof dipped low, his body protesting as he moved, rising from sleep, and braiding his hair back from his face, fingers gaining nimbleness as he worked. The stone crouched about him like the skeleton of another body he knew intimately, cradling and caging him as one might a lover. He listened. The inner mountain no longer beat like a drum, bass vibrato resounding in the bones of the earth and inside his bones, and that meant the thunder and rain outside had ceased. Too soon! Too soon! His jaw clenched upon the lamentation yet he could not quell his dismay. The river nearby swelled and tumbled downward in its rock-cut path through the underground, but not powerfully enough. Not deep enough, swift enough, for his needs, even when unleashed by the Vaelinar who drove it here, who had coaxed it into the caverns of this mountain, away from its natural bed, and kept it tamed for the master who owned them both.

The woman at his feet stirred as if roused by his thoughts of her, and put her hand out, touched his ankle. “Fyrvae?” She spoke softly so as not to disturb the closed silence of the caves. The fragile tone of her voice belied the strength and hold she had on this one river, the strength and hold she had on his soul.

His anger softened, and he bent over, running calloused fingers through her tangled hair. “Lindala. Pray for more rain. Pray for more than your river can hold.”

“It did stop, then.”

“Hours ago, I imagine.”

“Help me light a small fire. It’s so cold.”

He could feel her shiver under his hand, and it hurt him to answer. “No. We need every scrap of kindling. It’s all we’ve got. I can’t steal any more from the forge fires. They’re keeping track.”

“I know, I know.” She sighed. “I can feel the rain. It’s close, but . . . it’s almost as if it’s watching. Waiting for something.”

He could feel it, too. His kinship lay with the earth and the fires deep inside it, but he could feel the pressure of the storm waiting to break. They needed it. They had no hope without it; indeed, had little hope with it. Flood might do what they alone could not. He stroked Lindala’s face, tracing her fine bones with his rough fingertips, brushing his thumb across her chapped lips. Such a beautiful mouth. He longed to see her smiling again, in full sunlight, the glow of happiness lighting her face.

“I’ll be back soon. Try to keep each other warm.”

“Where—”

“I’ve got to make sure the forge is hot enough. Buyers are coming. They’ve put aside the veil on the mountain. They’re at the talus now, working their way up.” No one found their way to the forge unless Quendius allowed them, and he’d felt their steady progress at the edge of his thoughts. “Quendius will want a blade finished to show the quality, and I want the forge ready. It’s another workday for me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I . . . I understand.” Lindala repressed another shiver, and grasped his hand with both of hers, her strength grown frail over the past seasons, the natural slenderness of her hands now gaunt, and he swallowed tightly as he felt her bones just under the skin in his hold. They both gave food up for the third, but they didn’t think about her, couldn’t, lest Quendius or another sense her. Lindala hid her with all the meager strength of her waning talents, and even that might not be enough much longer.

Rain! Let the storms come again! He clasped her, and brought the fire up in his body, heating himself from the inside out, and knelt beside her, taking her in his arms, warming her. He couldn’t sustain the effort long, but she stopped shivering, her face buried in the hollow of his neck. Little enough to do, and yet never enough. “We are truly the Suldarran, the Lost,” he murmured to her softly. “But I will do everything in my power never to lose you. Believe in me.”

She made a wordless sound in answer, holding him tightly. After a long moment, he began to draw her arms from about his neck, and she whispered to the curve of his ear, “I am with child again.”

He stiffened. She felt it in him, could not help but feel it, and a dampness trickled between their pressed together cheeks. He cursed at himself for bringing tears from her. She tried to draw back from him, but he did not allow her. “It is a joy,” he said to her, finally, his voice and words muffled against her skin. “We are blessed twice over with what many Vaelinars can only hope for. Can you carry it?”

“How can I not? It is as much a part of me as I am part of it.”

“You’re so thin . . .” he stroked her forearm. The birth of the other had nearly done her in, and he did not see how Lindala could do this again.

Fyrvae drew back reluctantly and stood, bowed, under the low ceiling. Lindala curled up, murmuring, and he could hear the prayer in her softly chanted words. All Vaelinars were lost in this world, and some more than others, he thought. No one would look for him or those of his family, for his blood no longer existed, and if his slavery were known, the Vaelinars would simply say to him, “An ironic punishment.”

She had left her people, her lineage anchored securely in the House of Vayernol, to follow him, and he had promised her a life worth living, only to bring her to this. Yet she had done it of her own free will, and for love of him. Their child . . . children . . . had not made such a choice. He leaned down, and tucked the soft rags of her tunic and skirt about her. His father Briban had destroyed his family by attempting to raise a Way, to establish a House for his lineage, centuries after the Accords had abolished magical meddling with the elements. Those of the DeCadils who’d survived had been hunted down by the Council and dispatched. He’d barely escaped both the disaster and the Council by fleeing, and Lindala had insisted on going with him. To what end could he hope to bring them now? Then, he’d been young and foolish with hope. Now he could only hope to endure, like the metal he folded and pounded on the anvils. But what he would be forged into only time would determine.

Fyrvae made his way out the winding depths of the caverns, the red glow at the tunnel’s end guiding him to the forges, their heat blasting him like the sun in the desert as he emerged, the sting of the mountain’s chill and wind and fomenting storm swirling about him, held at bay by the fierce heat of the furnaces. The blast and smell of the hot metal and charcoal and smelting stopped him in his tracks for a moment. Fyrvae breathed deep then, and moved out into the open.

A Bolger swiped at him, grumbling, rattling his chains, the rankness of his body almost overpowering even with the pungent smell of the smithy about him. His ivory tusks clacked as he swore at Fyrvae listlessly.

Fyrvae did not deign to dodge. “Touch me and die.” He stood his ground, well within reach of the vile creature, and stared him down. The Bolger moved back, grumbling to its guard mate in broken grunts with only the rudimentary semblance of a language. They could speak Common well enough if they chose, and just as obviously did not wish to. The other hooted in laughter at his fellow and the Bolger growled as he hunkered down, glaring at Fyrvae.

The second Bolger made crude gestures as Fyrvae strode past, headed toward the main furnaces which were his domain and responsibility and stayed stoked despite any weather, ready for his usage at the slightest notice. Yawning gap of a mouth, blackened at the edges and fire red inside, it consumed whole forests a log at a time when needed, and the Bolgers who stoked it snarled at him, but did his bidding even as they slunk back and forth, bodies dripping with sweat from the heat. These had already sweated the rankness out of their Bolger skins and smelled only of the furnace, and moved to obey when he beckoned. He reigned here, and they dared not forget it. His tongs could and had branded the disobedient. Better to face Fyrvae than Quendius, even at that. While the other forges worked on armor endlessly, he made weapons, fine weapons, and the craftsmanship he taught them would some day elevate them over their more brutal kin.

Did buyers come? He didn’t know for a certainty. Quendius had not told him of an upcoming sale, but that meant nothing, and he knew that someone came, he could feel their presence on the slopes, steadily approaching the hidden fortress. His senses pinged with every step upon the stone and earth. Who else would come but buyers?

He buried his senses in the fires and the metal, and waited for rain.

 
Lindala curled her body about her daughter, and tried to keep the heat that Fyrvae had generated for them, but the earth and stone and even the river sipped at it, draining it away, till she felt even colder than before. Her daughter sat up, long hair swinging away from her face, and patted her mother’s hand. She spoke little, as they all did, enslaved to the darkness of the caverns, but she hummed under her breath as she played small games with the twigs and stones about her. Lindala watched her, wondering what hues the sun would highlight in her hair, what colors lay in the depths of her eyes, seeing a mystery before her, a child growing slowly in the way of the Vaelinar race even though her entire life had been spent in the gloom of the caverns. They rarely spoke of her, or to her, as if that alone could shield the knowledge of her from Quendius. Lindala joined in her humming, her song one she used to keep the strength of the river in her thoughts. The swollen stream itself roared past them, a constant wind, its froth misting the air, adding to the chill. What would her daughter do when the baby swelled her belly? Would she welcome it? Would she press her face to her mother’s stomach and listen to the gurgle of the unborn and feel the kicks of its movements?

If it lived. If she could stay strong enough to nurture it. Lindala sat, hunched over, her hands touching her daughter’s, playing at the patterns of the sticks and stones, her mind plotting at getting food into the cavern depths. A chicken would be wonderful. It could eat the small bugs and lizards that skittered among the earthern cracks and walls, and an egg a day . . . even every two or three days, oh yes, that would be as if Godsent. She would have to coax the Bolger into stealing one for them, and she could do it, she thought. Winter crouched over them. If he brought her leather, even scraps, she could fashion protection for him. He had to feel pain, even though they’d been taught not to feel much at all. His tribe had been enslaved by the Bolger mercenaries who strengthened the will of Quendius. He was little better off than she, unshackled from the forge only long enough to bring wood in and stack it, and help bring mine carts up now and then from the caverns to work his muscles and remind him that there were worse places to be chained than the forge. Bolger enslaved Bolger even as Vaelinar enslaved Vaelinar, and those in the lands above turned their faces away from the atrocities. He might help them. Lindala determined that he
would
help them. She would find a way to reach him. She would have to convince Fyrvae to tolerate him even more than he did now. Kindness, like water dripping upon a stone, made pathways where none existed before.

Her daughter stopped humming, turning her face upward. She wrinkled her nose. “Stinkers,” she said quietly. Her fingers tightened about a stone even as she smiled in anticipation.

Lindala smelled it, unworried. Then the stench blanketed them heavily, and she lurched to her feet. More than one. No more than one ever came down here! Heavy footpads and the sounds of boots echoed down to them, and her heart quickened in her chest like that of a frightened bird trying to wing away from danger. She pulled her daughter behind her as orange light flared into the shadow, and the heat of a torch seared across her vision and her skin. Encircled, they had no place to run except into the raging water itself, and that she would not do. Bolgers grunted and clashed tusks at her, but it was the figure hulking behind the torch who struck the greatest terror into her, yet she refused to turn her eyes from the glare.