To learn so much he drove himself very hard, and rarely had leisure to resent his confinement to Ansker's forge and halls. These were in a cavern chain of their own, high in the mountain that was the duergar capital. "It is an ancient place," the smith said, "and so hallowed—the forge has served my line since the duergar first settled in these mountains, many an age past. There are virtues of many kinds to be gained simply from working in such a spot, and it is always best to have your own settled forge, when you can."
Elof stared into the rich flames. "And I do not even know who my parents were. I am a wanderer in this world, nowhere at home for long. Would that I might find such a place! But my heart misgives me, when I think of it."
"May you never have cause to rue it, then," said Ils softly.
But where Elof stayed in one place, Kermorvan did not. Ils, who traveled widely, brought him news of his friend whenever she could, and it grew ever better. Set to labor in the mines, he impressed the duergar first with his unrelenting endurance, which matched their own, and later with his great valor and prowess. Dark things stalked the mines, for there were old workings which ran out under the Ice, and guarding them was no easy task. Once his party had to face a great snow-troll, of the kind that had hunted him and Elof into the mountains. Armed only with a pick, Kermorvan held the passage against it till guards could come, and struck its deathblow in the fight, a feat that won him great honor. For that, against the will of Andvar, he was himself made a guard, and at last was being sent the length and breadth of the duergar realm, helping to guard the miners and the precious trains of ore.
It is said, though, that he always pined in this world of twilight for the sun and open air, and seized every chance he could get of duty that took him near the open, even in the depths of winter. But though far enough south at times to be within reach of his own land, he never broke his trust and stayed to serve the duergar faithfully. For that, perhaps, they honored him most of all. He was never permitted, though, to speak with Elof. Ils took word to him, however, and no less encouraging. Elof's burgeoning craft amazed the duergar, who had never suspected humans were capable of such skill. Many called upon Ansker to see and sneer, and went away marveling.
So both men prospered in their way, and won the regard of some, at least, of a secretive and suspicious folk. But one thing tormented them both, and that was the lack of word from the world outside. Most duergar cared little for the affairs of men and avoided any contact. The only word came from outlivers of both peoples who might occasionally meet by chance in the wild lands around the mountains, and since they were equally solitary and eccentric their word was not to be relied on. Once some young and adventurous spirits able to pass for men had walked briefly among them; Ansker had been the most daring of these now living. But Andvar had long forbidden any such practice. The best Elof and Kermorvan could glean was that the Ekwesh, though powerful in the north, had not yet made any decisive strike southward, and with that they had to be content.
But there came a day when Kermorvan was taken from his post, and told he was summoned to the capital. And as he took ship northward, he reckoned up the days, of which lately he had lost track, and realized with a thrill that their allotted time was almost up. A great excitement and a cold fear swelled up within him then, all too closely mingled. He was glad when he came to the door of An-sker's forge, a vast cluttered cavern hall strewn with anvils, benches and weird devices, and saw his friend's bulky shadow on the rough rock wall, hammering away at something on a small anvil with strokes that fell heavy but minutely judged. Only when he had finished did Elof lay down his hammer and look up.
"Kermorvan!" They shouted with laughter, and wrung each other's hands. "Welcome, wanderer! You great fool, what kept you hovering there? You should have called out!"
Kermorvan smiled wryly. "I know better now than to interrupt a smith at his work. These duergar folk are an education; the mildest of them might cleave your skull for that. I feared you might have picked up their habits—and in truth, you have something of their look about you now! Leaner, more lines on your face, and the only color in it the forge-tan, heat and smoke."
"And his
eyes,'"
smiled Ils. "How they take the fire now, eh?"
Kermorvan, smiling, turned to bow, then froze, blanched slightly and whirled away to eye some pieces of armor
lying on the
side bench. Ils shrugged, and turned her back. Elof strove to conceal his amusement; it was only reasonable that in this heat she should work as he and Ansker did, stripped to the waist. But to spare his friend he changed the subject. "Well, I won't say you've not changed since we last met. Didn't think you could look much harder, but you do! And how'd you come by that color under hill, eh?"
Kermorvan laughed. "They thought I could use some open air, so they sent me south to their mountain pastures this spring. I've been guarding the herds and the fields on the mountain terraces. Me, guarding goats and deer and herdsmen! But it was welcome work, for all that. You could have used it, by the pale face on you!"
Elof nodded, and his broad shoulders sagged a little. He slackened the band of cloth round his forehead. "It seems a lifetime since last I saw the sky. And I have missed so much the seawind among trees, the birds singing! Few find their way down here, where only the bats are happy." Then he straightened again, and the flames danced in his eyes. "But it was worth it! For I have been hard at work— and not without result!"
Kermorvan's face grew tense. "You've learned something?"
"Learned much, many things. And not only learned them, but put them to good use. Which reminds me—"
He turned suddenly and went to the anvil where he had been working. There he bent over something, wiped it with a cloth, and stood up with a dark-bladed sword in his hand. He tossed it hilt-first to Kermorvan, who caught it neatly, hefted it approvingly, and gazed in wonder at the blade. The metal was not bright, but gray with an odd golden sheen, and as he looked closer Kermorvan could see it was marked with a pattern of minutely fine dark lines that flowed shimmering like water through the metal.
"What magecraft is this," he exclaimed, "to make a sword blade out of silk, water-shot silk?" Then His fingers danced on it, as if it was hot to the touch. "Is this another one of these patterned spell-bound monstrosities?"
Elof smiled tolerantly, and shook his head. "Neither silk nor spellbound, and you may handle it safely. None more safely, in fact, for I made it for you."
"Oh," said Kermorvan. "Ah…"
Elof repressed a smile. Here was the man looking embarrassed again, at his unintentional rudeness! "Well, I owed you one, I thought, since you'd broken both yours, and one in helping me. I had no time to make two, so this is a hand-and-a-half blade. I was only finishing fitting the pommel as you came in just now. But you need not feel uncomfortable with it; there is no magic in it, as I knew you would prefer."
Ils chuckled. "Nothing you would know as magic, in any event. That pattern comes not from twisted ropes of metal, as in the mindsword, but from tiny amounts of flame-pure charcoal in the steel, lending it great strength."
"Charcoal?" said Kermorvan, startled. "Would that not weaken metal? Or is that not some magic? It seems a fine and fair bale—"
"Yes indeed!" said Ansker's voice from behind them. The smith strolled down the steps and held out a hand. "Welcome, Kermorvan; I am glad the message found you so promptly. You'll honor us by accepting a stoup of ale? I thought you might. Ils, stir your stumps, girl, before we die of thirst! So, a fine sword it is, and hard in the making; but there's no spell in that. The charcoal's cooked into the metal as it's drawn living from the ore, and lodges in the very crystals of it. That makes it hard, but brittle—almost like stone. The real art lies in breaking down just enough of the crystals to a springier kind, more like common steel, so you can balance the qualities. A powerful lot of forging that takes, strong heating, hard hammering, slow cooling and quick quenching—a great labor. See how the lines run the length of the blade, but here and here and all the way up they fold in across it; that's where the hammer last struck, tempering the stony metal against the springy. Our dual nature again, stone and steel. But few if any among duergar smiths living could craft you a finer blade than that one."
"High praise indeed for sword and swordsmith!" breathed Kermorvan, and looked at it with new wonder. "And a great gift, Elof, for any warrior among men. My thanks, good friend, and may it repay them in the hand!" He swished it through the air in one hand, then in two. "Or hands, for as you said, it is a perfect hand-and-a-half length for me. I'll wager this one won't break in a troll's pate!"
"True enough!" agreed Ils as she reappeared, lb Kermorvan's evident relief she had donned a patterned brown tunic, and bore two large stone tankards in each hand. "But for proof," she added as she passed them around, "you could try it on your own pate! Not having a troll handy." She sat down on the large anvil, and sipped delicately at her own ale.
"No proof is needed," said Kermorvan stiffly, and Elof smiled to himself again. Ils seemed to unnerve this stiff-necked Sothran more than a mountain full of trolls. "It bears witness to your teaching, and Elof's skill."
"Aye, it's passable," said Ils, with a curious expression. "But there's better witness than that! Hasn't he shown you yet?"
Kermorvan looked sharply at Elof. "You've made another weapon? Something you can use against the Mastersmith?"
Elof nodded. "Maybe. Worth trying, anyhow." Ils leaned over, and there was no mistaking the excitement in her
eyes
. "He made your sword in the times he had to wait for this! While he was waiting for the crystals to grow—"
Elof motioned her to silence. "Better we show you," he muttered. "You are the warrior, after all. Tell me what you think of this as a weapon." He strode over to a cluttered workbench, and picked up one of the various pieces of armor Kermorvan had been looking at. A great lefthand gauntlet of mail and jointed plate it was, long enough to cover an arm to the shoulder; no joint, no seam in it, but was covered and blocked by finest mesh mail. Every finger was a masterpiece of minute armory, molded in bright smooth steel, and covered in the strange lined characters of the duergar and the swirling archaic script of the north, the joints sealed by welded ringmail as fine as cloth. Heavy as the gauntlet looked, Elof donned it with ease and flexed the fingers as he might his own. Kermorvan peered at the hand as he did, and saw set in the palm what looked like a great white jewel, cut flat, upon which the fingers closed. Elof glanced around the forge, bit his lip, and walked over to the fire. With his free hand he pumped the small hand-bellows till they gasped like a hunted animal and the coals at its heart glowed red-white under leaping blue flames. Ils caught her breath, and Kermorvan stared unbelieving as he saw his friend reach out, shielding his face, and plunge his mailed arm downward.
"
No
!" The swordsman was on his feet in an instant, but he was too late, too far to stop those steel-sheathed fingers dipping deep into the dragon-glare. A sickened look on his face, he watched the hand rise clenched from the flames, like the fist of Surtur stirring under the earth. Fire dripped from it, and the steel of the fingers bore a baleful glow. Then, very slightly at first, they unclenched.
It was like opening a furnace door. Fire roared in the hand, as if somehow still fed there by the bellows blast. A glow spread between the fingers, flames arose and licked around them, and yet the metal itself showed no sign of heat. Slowly, very slowly, the fingers steepled, and a thin cone of flame roared and trembled at their apex. With a grin on his face, tense, taut, triumphant, Elof swung round and thrust out his mailed arm in a defiant gesture. The fingers spread wide. A tongue of fire darted across the forge, licked a scorched circle on the wall, and vanished into nothing. Kermorvan sat dazedly staring at the circle, for though among the duergar he had heard much of smithcraft, he had never before seen its power so clearly.
"A remarkable thing," said Ansker calmly. "It is made in something the same fashion as our lanterns. But in all our long years of craft and learning we duergar have never achieved anything quite like it."
"You see," said Elof in a slightly shaky voice, "it has virtues on it of catching, containing, binding. It could do as much with the sunlight, or the wind, running water, the sound of a voice—any force, anything that has heat or motion it can grasp, gather and turn back."
"Including the force that turns men's minds?" demanded Kermorvan sharply.
"I… think so, I hope so. Ansker and Us could teach me little about it, even when I showed them that strange goad, and the symbols I took from it; the duergar have never sought to learn the skills of domination, not even to withstand them. But I have, to my sorrow. I know something must pass out of that mindsword, to strike so many at once. As I have felt, its power is diminished by distance, exactly like a lamp's light or a voice, or the flight of an arrow. So is it not also some kind of force?"
"A dark light, a voice speaking fell things, an arrow of the mind," said Ansker. "So I felt it. So it laid its hand on me even as I fled."
"And I," said Ils, and the light faded in her wide eyes a moment. She shivered in the forge's heat. "I do not wish to face that ever again. It was terrible."