"Even when you can capture sun and fire in your crystal lamps?"
She grimaced. "Could we but craft them like that one in your gauntlet, we'd have less swink, aye! But we've not matched it - not yet!" she added hastily. Elof kept his face rigid; for all her friendship with men Ils ran true to her race. "Maybe when some more of our folk come east…"
He was careful to avoid offering his own help. "You think they will? There've been few enough till now -"
"We're a slower folk to change, Elof, not like you mayfly men; they'll be watching and waiting to see how the first few have fared ere they up roots that go back many a thousand years. Even Ansker's of that mind; we've never before lived so openly around men. But now we've reopened the ancient mountain-halls and have some rich workings of our own to tempt them, away from human gaze, aye, more'll come. And if they can't manage…" She regarded him levelly, and took a deep breath. "Why then, Elof Valantor, you might teach us much."
He blinked in astonishment, and with a wicked glitter in her eyes she added "Never thought to hear that, did you? But I only said
might
, mind! Well, the sun's all but up; I'll have the silver sent over to the Hall of Guild in the noontide, and my lads when they've rested. Right now I want some breakfast! So we'll go pay our respects at the palace, though it's plain enough eating there, in all conscience." A note of amused affection crept into her voice. "How fares the long lad, by the bye?"
Elof smiled. "Still king, driving himself harder than any servant, and looking well on it. But all the better for seeing you, I've no doubt. Roc's down south in Pendyra port on business for him, but he's due back within the week."
"And your lady?"
"She's well as ever, thank you." Elof was sure he had spoken naturally, he had taken pains to, but he was suddenly uncomfortably aware of Ils' piercing dark gaze.
But all she said, equally naturally, was "So? I am glad to hear it. That we've travelled those hard hills before won't make them the less perilous; we'll be happier, having her with us." She hesitated a moment, then, before adding "Take good care of her, Elof. She is a rare creature."
He nodded, knowing that her concern was not for Kara. "I intend to, Ils. Believe me, I do."
Thus it was the coming of the duergar smiths that left him free to put his purpose into effect; and how matters might have gone otherwise, none can say. That afternoon, when he had sent them about the many tasks he had in hand, he found himself suddenly with a little time to spare. Quitting the great forge that was his in the vaults of the ancient Halls of the Smith's Guild, he strolled along wide corridors that rang and chimed with the strokes of heavy hammers, roared with the breath of bellows and furnace; the weighty hangings that were mounted over the walls of smooth stone to deaden these echoes had long since darkened to a sooty black. He mounted the wide stairs into cleaner air and quieter, past the newly refurbished libraries and scholar's rooms to the upper floors in whose smaller chambers the master jewellers and fine artificers kept their workshops. Here the din echoing along the walls was shriller, swifter, a tingling and chiming of light hammers and fine instruments against rare metals and gems; here it was the acrid stench of solders, corrosives and cleansing pickles that tainted the air, the hangings stained and faded and in places charred or withered through. At a high window a bent old mastersmith, surrounded by a gaggle of black-garbed apprentices, was demonstrating a delicate instrument, explaining the virtues of orientation and steadiness worked into its metals. Elof nodded to them as he passed, thinking back to his own apprentice days. He knew the device, an aid to navigation made to determine very precisely the elevation of sun, moon and stars; he wished devoutly that some instrument might measure as minutely the courses of their Steerers.
He paused before a tall door of hardened oak marked with a name in fine-laced silver, knocked lightly and entered at the muffled summons. A lean woman of about his years looked up from the gilded chalice she was burnishing, and her large eyes widened further. "Good day, Master!" She rose awkwardly from her bench, but he motioned her back with a smile.
"And to you also, Master; don't let me disturb it!" She smiled hesitantly, brushing brown locks back from her forehead; a nervous gesture it seemed. He knew from Roc that Marja was always nervous in his presence, yet she looked at him with the eyes of a fellow smith. "My errand should devour little of your precious time, a minor matter upon which I would know the mind of a master jeweller, one whose craft is turned so closely to adorning the body. Which, think you, of all the noble metals, has the greatest affinity with the body, with human flesh and blood?"
Marja subsided slowly onto her bench, her face already slackening with the distraction of thought. "Why… gold, I suppose many would say. That is the tradition, anyhow. For the softness of it, they say… and the seeming warmth…"
Elof sat down in front of her. "And you?" he prompted.
"I… I am not of that mind, not wholly. Less so, since I read some scholars of the old Eastlands here. For the greatest affinity might you not need to look beyond metals altogether? To some of those odd stuffs the ancient mastersmiths made, akin to metal in their properties but more malleable?" She knitted her fingers with enthusiasm. "There was a tale old Hjoran told me once, of a stuff that was spun…
spun
… from the very stuff of life itself, living matter reduced to its ultimate pure ash, and it was stronger than any metal, lighter too. It was one of the heroic magesmiths of Morvan made it, I remember… or of Kerys, even. Thyrve, or Aluki Three-finger, or Vayde… somebody like that!"
Elof grinned. "I know; Mylio told me of that, too. They make good tales to fire apprentices with, don't they? Sets them dreaming of discovering such wonders for themselves. But the secret of that strong stuff is lost, if it ever existed, and none of the others we know of will serve. No, it has to be metal."
She had grown nervous again. "Well then… It is a subtle point, on which few can be certain; but whatever tradition says, I… I would choose silver."
Elof nodded with slow satisfaction. "I thought you might, in your hard-won wisdom. Tradition once had it that women did not make good smiths, also."
She flushed at the compliment. "It's that the warmth of gold is an illusion… It can be a barrier to heat, in many instances… and as for being soft, well, flesh is soft, but it holds its shape, and there's bone beneath. And the bonesetters, they come to us smiths, do they not, for alloys of silver - plates and pins of it to join and patch shattered or splintered bones; the bone may well grow out around them with little hurt, the flesh and skin heal over them. A hardened silver will endure the fluids of the body better than any metal save some special steels, and those hard to make and harder to fashion… save perhaps for the Duergar," she added ruefully, "or yourself."
Elof grinned and shook his head. "For armoury, perhaps. Not for fine tasks. Silver is subtler, as you say, readier to take fine shape upon itself, and deep craft. But of course, to maintain the affinity it need not be set within the body…"
Marja smiled. "Hardly! Though I have found serviceable a setting in some way symbolic of the union… a zoning, say, an encirclement. A girdle, a necklace, an… an arm-ring…" She hesitated; evidently she had heard something of that, from Roc or from Kara herself. But Elof only chuckled, putting her at ease again.
"That indeed! Though I was but a prentice when I crafted Kara's, and used gold at my master's behest. There was one who lacked the woman's insight! But for yours I thank you, and leave you to your tasks; I was half of your mind on a difficult point, and now you've settled it well. No word of Roc? Well, he should not be long now. Again a good day to you, Master!"
She looked at him a little curiously as he took his leave, but made no move to ask him why he had asked what he had. It was common enough for mastersmiths to be secretive about their work, especially in its earliest stages, and to pry would be a grave breach of manners as the Guild understood them. That would not stop her thinking, but she, only recently made master, would hardly be likely to guess at his true purpose; he himself had been slow enough to conceive it. Even now he balked at it, half yearned to let that thought remain a thought; but then consuming fear came upon him all the more strongly, and a great horror at the thought of abandoning Kara to the cold mind, dark heart that had first ensnared her. Should he let that happen, when he might so easily prevent it? How could he live with himself if he did? The prentices, still taking sights with their instruments, turned to greet him as he passed, but fell silent. He saw his look mirrored in their dismay, and turned it to a rueful smile.
Back once more in his forge, he sat gazing at the panniers of ore left him by Ils' fellows, picking out chunks and turning them over in his fingers. Silver was among those metals that could be seen clearly even in its natural state; his knowing fingers traced the threads and streaks with which the living rock was shot, as if they were its veins and nerves. And was not that another affinity with the living? It remained for him now to render it, concentrate it, distill the essence of this stony flesh and set within it… Once more his mind shied at the thought, and once more that iron purpose, forged by fear, tempered by desperation, goaded it to its crucial leap. He roused himself, went to the door to call in apprentices from the training forge nearby, then stopped. The fewer hands that mingled in this work, the better, for many reasons. With all his strength he heaved the first pannier from the ground and began to tip the ore into the crushing trough. When all was done he spun a heavy bar pivoted in the stone wall, and water came gushing from a metal chute above, swirling the loose dirt from the chunks and herding them slowly down the trough towards the iron block at the end. As the flow quickened he lowered into it a tall flanged wheel set in a framework among levers, and two heavy shafts tipped at their end with iron blocks as big as his head, shaped to bite against the iron below; the levers worked as the wheel spun, lifting and letting fall the shafts, catching and crushing the ore between iron and iron, the shattered pieces ground to finer fragments as they passed beneath the centre of the wheel, a hub of hard stone.
Retreating from the noise, Elof smiled in satisfaction. He had adapted this engine from those in the forge of the Mastersmith Mylio, and if it was smaller, driven by Morvanhal's ducted water supply and not a mountain torrent, it was also subtler and less cumbersome. One day, perhaps, if he needed more power he might harness the pounding of the waves below, or, as some smiths had of old, the contained and perilous force of heated steam. But not even that could match the blast of the earthfires by which the Mastersmith's furnaces were fed, and which, at times, he missed most sorely in his work. The duergar might have helped him harness them, but there were simply no such fires near enough the surface in this rolling seacoast region. Smithlore had taught him that nature held many other sources of great heat, from the sun's gathered light to the inner turbulence of certain metals subtly purified, but also how hard they were to tap, and how perilous. For one brief minute of wonder and terror he had trapped the lightning in his fist, and seen how small man stood against the compass of such forces. To draw upon the least of them would require long study, and though he had bent some time to his researches, always some matter of greater urgency had intervened; and always there was Kara. He had ideas; but as yet he was far from any answer. He rose, and busied himself about his furnace.
Water drove the bellows; behind the panel of sooty mica in the door their glow changed from red to glaring yellow in the blast, and thence to a core of dazzling white about the foot of the crucible he had thrust in.
The coals sizzled and sang, and as he watched the little pyramid of crushed ore slump and trickle inward he caught the note of the singing, rising and falling, and found within it, as visions are seen in hearthfires, the music of songs. One, ringing and compulsive, he knew well, though from where he could not say. The other was something new, quite new, a slower, lilting, flowing phrase that seemed to lead him on to others. That was good, that the songs sung over this work should arise out of it, one upon another, phrases that grew and burgeoned like twining flowers. Should flowers also be the starting point of the pattern he must set upon his work? But there might be something better; something closer… He ran his fingers idly over the blocks of fine beeswax he had set out, humming vague snatches of tunes, seeking for the shape they suggested within the amber depths of the wax; after a moment, forgetting the array of knives and carving tools beside it, he plucked up a long thin block, and, warming it at the furnace wall, began to work it between his fingers. It flowed and responded under his powerful grasp. "Even so," he muttered. "Even this… you learn well what you must do. Your proper pattern you shall have!"
And that night, as the stars wheeled beyond their balcony and Kara tensed and flowed beneath him amid the tangle of their sheets, he ran his hands through her crisp hair, forcing her head back to kiss her fluttering throat; he had meant to grip lightly, but in the force of his passion his hands clenched tight, and when they fell away, trembling, they grasped a whole wisp of her hairs, not the single one he had need of. But this they could smile at, for he in turn bore the impress of her nails upon his back, sharp as talons. Later, when she slept, he padded over to the chest where her cloak was bestowed, unlocked it and very softly raised the lid. There lay the cloak, gleaming so white in the faint light that when he lifted one corner the blackness of the lining seemed absolute, and he had to riffle the little feathers with his fingers to find their roots. At last he chose one, inconspicuous yet near the garment's edge, caught it between finger and thumb and plucked it loose. There was a sudden slight gasp, and to his horror he heard Kara whimper in her sleep, looked up and saw her, curled up on her side, straighten out suddenly and reach up to rub at one shoulder. He felt moisture on his fingers, a slight warm stickiness he could not mistake, and froze unmoving where he knelt. But her eyes did not open, her arm fell away onto her breast and she slipped back once more into sleep. When he dared move again he reached down, caught the cloak between his fingers; beneath the feathers he felt some fine silken fabric against the outer cloak, no more. He folded it back carefully into the chest, smoothing it with what was almost a caress, and quietly locked the lid once more. He rose shakily to his feet, sick with self-disgust half minded to hurl away the feather and the hairs he clutched, sticky with a spot of drying blood. But instead he forced himself to tuck them into the fold of cotton he had laid ready, and returned it to the aumbry. Then, clambering back into bed, he reached out almost desperately to Kara; sleepily she came to him and clung, and he buried his face in the warmth of her shoulder Had she woken then, he might still have blurted out what was on his mind; but sleep held her as fast as any human. So it overtook Elof also, and so the first light woke them, to love again half sleeping and in loving, forget. By the coming of the day Elof's doubts had receded like a troubled dream, and it was easy to blame the blood on one of his own smarting scratches.