"Yes?" demanded Elof keenly.
"This… did you foresee this? You did, didn't you? I can see it in those cat's eyes of yours. Or… has somebody whispered something in your ear?"
"Foresee what?" grinned Elof.
Roc's mouth twisted impatiently, and he drew a single savage slashing streak across the map, and plucked it up under Elof s nose."
That
!"
Elof whistled softly. "That they'd form a pattern, yes. I learned something about the flow of earthfires from the Mastersmith, and more among the duergar -that within the shell of the world there are vast and shifting stresses, that the shell is broken along many lines…"
"Like fractures in fatigued metal, you mean?"
"Aye, very like. And it is along these that the earthfires break out at their fiercest. One such ran up through the Meneth Scahas in our old homeland, and among the Nordenbergen; but in our Eastland, almost none, and no fire-mountains. Whereas here… But I never foresaw that the line would run
thus!"
His finger traced the streak of dark ash that linked the marked fire-mountains in a single straight line, dead straight across the land of Kerys. And some two-thirds of the way along that line the finger slowed and rested, and a tremor of excitement crept into his voice. "Nor that Elan Gorhen-yan would sit so squarely upon it!"
"You can't be that precise!"
"Close enough! Somewhere here, somewhere by here…"
"Such as?" objected Roc, seeing Elof cast about like a hunting dog on the scent. "Do we not know every corner of this island by now - who better? Have we not trodden over every damned finger's breadth of it, aye, even you, in all the years we've been here?"
"The warmth, the half melted snow!" Elof flung back at him.
"Aye, but how would we get to it? Have we not even seen the forge stripped down to its foundations and rebuilt? So where could anything lie hidden?"
Elof stared at him a moment, then snapped his fingers and swung about on his crutches. He turned towards that last room left of the old lodge, that was still Roc's bedchamber. But Roc seized his arm.
"No, damn you! You're not going to start ripping up walls or floor before I've had my this night's sleep, at least! If there's anything there it won't be gone by morning!"
Elof glared at him, then half smiled and threw up his hands in defeat. "Very well! Till morning, then!" And he appeared to compose himself for sleep no
less
willingly than Roc; to all appearances he had indeed forgotten the coming of the swan altogether. But more than once in the night Roc was awakened by the restless tapping of crutches about the forge, and a muttering voice that seemed to be repeating questions to itself, over and over in a tone of growing desperation. "The fires…
what was she doing here
? .. what did she mean?… what could she hope to gain… would it not work against her… was it mockery?… was it?
Was it
?"
It was as much in pity as in irritation that Roc turned over and stopped his ears with the blankets. But he swore loudly when he was awakened at the very first light by Elof, hunched on his crutches, ripping a length of timber from the rear wall. He had seized a boot to hurl when he stopped, sat back among his blankets and stared at the surface that was being revealed.
It had been covered, once, with some kind of sandy concretion, plastered tight against the surrounding rock; then the new surface must have been hard to tell from old. But now the concretion was decayed, and it was crumbling back to damp sand as if the immense weight of years had suddenly descended upon it. Beyond it was a jumble of heavy rocks, some that looked naturally fallen, others piled clumsily as if by hands hasty or nervous; these Elof was already pulling away, and finding beneath them a blackness that was not emptiness. He plucked away another stone from the pile, and half of it slid into the gap he had opened. But it landed with a dull clangour that no stone ever made. Roc, amazed, put down his boot and grabbed for his clothes.
It was midmorning before the two smiths had the door cleared, for door it was, though all of metal and bound with steel, and set at a slant backward beneath a low arch in the rock; clearly there was a descent beneath."Stairs, I'll wager!" said Elof breathlessly, running his fingers over the surface, stained but only mildly corroded for all the damp. "Now those locks must've been full of muck already when this thing was walled up, they're set solid; but I'd guess we could cut the stone around the bolts, or if not, chisel through to the hinges…"
"Hold hard!" grunted Roc. "First, I want my breakfast, 1 do; second, if you're right, who knows what that door may hold back? Could get more earthfires than you want!" For answer Elof banged his crutch hard down upon the centre of the door, and Roc nodded as he heard the hollow boom die away. "All right. But there's still breakfast!"
Elof s first idea proved the best; the stone was hard of its kind, but their chisels were harder. They cut clean through to the recess that received the bolts, and all around the sleeve of steel that lined it. Elof levered it free, peered at it and scratched the bared bolt-ends with a sharp probe. "Strong work, scarcely touched by corrosion. There are virtues on it for that, but it owes as much to skilful alloying, I would guess. What of the hinges, I wonder?" Before Roc could stop him he dug in his fingers beneath the lip of the ancient door and heaved. Roc sprang up with a cry; he heard clearly the cracking of Elof's muscles, and a minute later the sharper crack of wood as the prop of Elof's crutch bent beneath the weight. But he was too late to prevent, he could only hurl his weight against the door as it lifted with a metallic screech that tore his ears. Half way it rose in a shower of grime and rubble, and there it jammed, even as the tortured prop snapped beneath Elof's left armpit and stabbed like a blunt knife into his arm.
"Might've been your heart, and serve you right!" raged Roc, tugging out splinters of wood no more gently than he needed to, "Into your fifth year thus and still you won't learn what you may and mayn't manage!"
Elof winced and mumbled rebelliously as the wound was bound up, though till his outburst of the night before he had hardly even grumbled about his infirmity these last two years. He kept staring down into the opening his haste had made. It looked like a well of darkness, gathering from the skies above; for their labours had lasted all the short day. The moment Roc was done Elof seized another pair of crutches, with no sign of pain, lit a plain oil lanthorn and leaned over the sloping lip of metal and into the dark. "A stair it is!" he exclaimed, with grim satisfaction.
"If you're feeling generous," added Roc, looking askance at the roughly stepped stone slabs, covered in dirt and fallen rock, and the dim earth floor they led to. "Do you use your wits for once and let me take the lead!" Elof grinned, and made no protest; Roc helped himself to a stout spear from the litter of arms about the forge walls, and gingerly lowered himself down the metal ramp that led from the rim onto the first step. Then Elof s hard hand landed on his shoulder.
"Stand a moment! Do you not smell anything?"
Roc shrugged. "Stale air; are you surprised?"
"Stale, but not damp; no mould, no nitre, as we found in Morvan, dry though it was."
Roc nodded. "It's warm, right enough; I can feel it in the air. And there's something more…" He hooked the lanthorn over the spearhead and dangled it down into the dark. Its light swung tantalisingly over shadowy shapes along the walls, then dimmed as the wick guttered and flickered. "Bad air."
"But breathable. The lamp still burns. And there's no mine-fume to flame in the air about us, at least." With gasps of painful effort Elof heaved himself down onto the stairs; Roc tactfully ignored him, but swept a path clear as he went. Elof worked his way down after him, clutching at every shelf and outcropping in the rock to steady himself; but before either had reached the floor he stopped. "Feel it?" he hissed, and Roc, reaching out to the stone, started at the distant thrill and quiver that was almost like touching the flanks of a living beast. He knew it well, just as it had shivered through the stone foundations of the Mastersmith's tower where he had grown up.
"Earthfires it is," he nodded, grimacing at the altogether too generous layer of grime that had come off on his fingers. "You were right. And look here!" He stepped down onto the floor and swung the lanthorn around the wall ahead. Rows of murky shapes stood ranged upon stone shelves cut out of the very wall, pot and crucible and mould-case, draped deep in ancient spider-webs that the fine grime had turned to black lace. An encrusted block, like a petrified table, stood in midfloor. "An underground workshop, it must've been! See there, all those shelves, the walls go right back… and those vents in the wall there, full of rubble, they'd be fireplaces, but with the chimneys stopped up or fallen in… Have a care, the floor slopes down!"
"So it does!" grinned Elof. "And where to, think you?"
"Another door, of course!" Roc announced. "I can see it, too, good and solid, set deep in the stone - sliding back into
it
, I'd say. Looks like there's your furnace, right enough!"
Elof nodded absently, running his fingers along the litter on the shelves. But for the deep layers of grime they might have been his own store, or any true mastersmith's, a jumble of uncompleted pieces, old moulds, leftover metal and offcuts, coils and coils of wire… or was it wire? It felt fine as hair - disturbingly like hair, in fact. He made a mental note to rummage through the mess at the first chance he had; who could say what fascinating relics his predecessor might have left? But then he heard Roc swear explosively, and turned to hobble down the steep floor after him.
The reason became obvious as Roc held up the light. The air here was worse, if anything, and it shed only a faint glow upon the wall around the furnace door. But it was enough
to
show the wheel which must work the door's running gear, and the broken lengths of chain which dangled from it. He pointed up to the ceiling. "Must've run up through those holes there; to some kind of counterweight system, probably, up above. That must have gone with the original forge, decayed or torn down, or both. Be damned to it! We'll have to rig the whole thing again before we can get at the furnace!"
Elof chuckled, and turned away up the slope. "Now who's turned impatient? If we must, we must. I've hauled open doors enough for one day. Let's go and see whether there's any sign of the holes above, or those chimneys; I could use a breath or two of clean air…"
He looked back when he reached the stairs, but Roc was still engrossed, and not listening. "If the wheel still moves," he muttered, "It might just be…" He thrust the spear-shaft through the spokes of the wheel, and leaned upon it hard. Nothing happened; the wheel showed no sign of stirring. But Roc, brushing his hair from his eyes, was not to be thwarted; now he was throwing his whole weight upon the spear, dangling from it almost as his feet left the ground.
"Leave it, Roc!" called Elof. "Later's soon enough."
"No, by Hella! A moment more!" gasped Roc through clenched teeth. Elof wondered if the bad air had gone more swiftly to the shorter man's head. "I'm getting there…" And indeed there was a faint sound, a hum, a groaning of ancient wheels at the edge of hearing; and beyond that the deeper rumble that he had felt in the walls. "It's moving… shifting…"
Elof sighed and turned back to help; but then his glance fell upon those fireplaces in the walls. They did not really look like… Something, a flash of understanding, seemed to whirl around in his head. He shouted aloud, and sped for the wall in great swinging leaps. As was bound to happen, his crutches skidded from under him on the grimy slope, but he flung himself forward and, even as the dark door moaned and squealed into movement, he crashed against the wheel, clutched at a spoke and sagged down so that his weight blocked Roc's leverage. "No!" he yelled. "Don't you see? Those aren't fireplaces! They're air-vents, and this muck, it's
soot-"
"
What
?" bellowed Roc, but he dropped from the spear and let it clatter to the floor.
"That's not the furnace; we're
in
the furnace!"
There was a sudden sharp hiss, and Roc stumbled hastily back as a jet of white fumes burst around the rim of the door. Then Elof's weight told, the wheel sank back that vital fraction and the rumbling died away. Roc staggered over, coughing and contrite. "Belly of Hel, what was I going to do? What was I going to
do
? They'd have seen us on the mainland and never known it, one flash, a wisp of smoke and farewell smiths -"
"And a brace of hot cinders down Nithaid's fat neck!" coughed Elof, and fought to keep from laughing hysterically. "Powers, these vapours, they've got me too! They must pool here like water -"
Roc hauled him loose and got his crutches under him, and they more or less dragged each other up the slope. When they got out into the open, they sprawled gratefully on the cold grass under a sky grown murky and showing few stars, Roc still muttering reproachfully to himself "Why didn't I bleeding well
see
?"
"Those vapours are cause enough!" coughed Elof, hugging his ruined legs.
"Maybe; but
you
saw…"