Susan King - [Celtic Nights 03] (39 page)

"Its heart," he said, and then the truth of that, the power of it, nearly sank him to his knees. He paused, hammer in one hand, radiant new sword tonged in the other, and looked at Eva.

"Jehanne's sword is now the soul of the new blade," she whispered. He saw awe and understanding in her eyes. A shiver went through him from crown to heel, and he knew then that all this—all of it, over years, encompassing lives, bringing souls and causes together to draw strength from one another—was meant to be.

One day you will know what to do with this sword,
Jehanne had once told him.

Now he knew. He looked at Eva, and he knew.

Chapter 27

Staying by his side through the night as he worked, Eva shared the tasks, though her muscles ached and her limbs trembled with weariness. And yet he drove himself on, and would not rest. She brought him water and insisted that he drink, for he perspired freely; she fetched him food, but he only nibbled lightly, then took up hammer and tongs again. Rain sheeted against the walls of the smithy, but the forge gave warmth, and light, and purpose.

In his capable, driven hands, the lump of steel and the broken blade came together, glowing, and became a new sword. The metal was dark and crude yet, but its graceful shape emerged.

Lachlann brushed his forearm across his brow, rubbed his fingers over his eyes. Eva touched his arm in concern, but he shook his head and kept going, turning from forge to anvil, heating, hammering, shaping the steel. Tending the bellows and pounding the hammer in tandem with him, she felt as if she did little. Lachlann did the work, and Lachlann had the vision.

Later, when the bright heart of the forge pierced the darkness, she faded, losing strength to lift the hammer, or to lift her arm to the bellows handle once again. Yet she forced herself, as Lachlann forced himself, for she would not leave him.

"Eva, come here," he murmured, and set down his tools.

He put his arm around her and guided her to the heather bed, and though she protested, he made her rest. Meaning only to close her eyes, she slept deeply, and when she woke daylight had returned, gray and dismal once again, and the forge was still hot. Lachlann sat beside the anvil on a stool now, bent over the sword, with a file in his hands.

He had not yet rested, she realized, for beside her the bed was undisturbed. The need to finish the sword was yet with him. Still weary to her bones, she rose and went to him.

He smiled at her, his eyes brilliant blue and smudged beneath, his cheeks and chin bristled, his hair tangled. She brushed back the waves from his brow, kissed him, and looked at what he held.

The sword was roughened, dark, without a hilt as yet, but it was whole, and would be magnificent, she knew. He turned it to show her how he had filed the steel to bring out the precise shape and edges of the long, tapered blade.

"When this is done," he said, "it will need more heatings and quenching, then tempering. And then I will need your eyes, my friend, for those colors must be judged true if the sword is to be fine and strong."

She nodded, and he kissed her, and she felt the fatigue running through him like the low vibration of a harp string. Soon she coaxed him back to the heather bed and lay beside him, though the dreary morning light grew stronger. Wrapping her arms around him, she held him until he slept.

* * *

Hours of filing, until his arms and neck and back ached with it, yet he would not let himself stop. Days of filing were more usual for a sword like this, but the work skimmed along without regard to day or night, without regard to time. As the cool and drizzling day faded into a colder, rainy evening, the filing was nearly complete.

He set the blade on the anvil and picked up the pommel, hilt, and cross guard that he had earlier removed, and he slid them on, one by one, to make sure they fit. Nearly perfect, he saw, despite changes to the tang from all the heatings. He removed them again and resumed the filing, the sound a soothing, persistent drone.

Glancing up, he saw Eva sweeping the floor of the smithy, a heathery broom in her hands. He was deeply thankful for her devotion, for her help, for her profound, complete understanding, even for the quiet she afforded him. He was glad she made him rest and made him eat; on his own, he might have crafted this blade until he collapsed from sheer stupefying fatigue.

Watching her, he smiled to himself. Eva glanced over her shoulder as if she sensed his regard, his love, and she smiled too. He held up the painstakingly filed blade to show her the result, and she hurried toward him.

* * *

"The rain has stopped," Eva said later, turning away from the open door. The fresh, damp, cool night breeze swept into the smithy. Her hair, her gown, her very skin seemed saturated with the smells of charcoal, smoke, and metal. She shoved a hand over her thick, saggy braid, and glanced at Lachlann over her shoulder, where he constructed a long, narrow piling of charcoal, into which, she knew, he would slide the full sword blade.

"Your bath is warmed, my lady." He indicated one of the two great wooden tubs in the smithy, one filled with brine for quenching the steel, the other brimming with water, currently being heated by the addition of red-hot iron rods. The water steamed lightly in the cool air. Earlier, when she complained of the grime and the sweat, he had set about heating the plain water in the dousing tub, which had not yet been used.

Delighted at the thought of feeling clean again, she crossed the room. "Perhaps the smith would like a bath, too."

He shrugged. "I will dip into the loch in the morning."

"There are no rose petals in the loch, and it is cold," she said, slipping her hand into the sack that Ninian had given her, sprinkling some of the dried flowers into the steamy water in the low, wide tub.

Lachlann laughed. "True."

She stripped off her gown and chemise, casting them down beside the clean clothing, linen sheets, and soap she had fetched from the house. Lachlann watched her steadily, his gaze piercing blue even across the room. She stepped into the water and sank down with a sigh, bending her knees to sit curled inside, leaning her shoulders back and closing her eyes, grateful for watery comfort after hours of fierce heat, smoke, and hard work.

He came toward her, sliding to his knees beside the tub. Cupping his hand in the water, scooping up a palmful of blush-colored petals, he dribbled them where her breasts crested the water. "I wish we could both fit in there, my friend," he murmured, leaning toward her.

"So do I, my friend," she said, and slid her hand along his broad neck, pulling him closer, savoring his slow, delicious kiss. His fingers, sensually shaped and darkened from charcoal and iron, traced over her pale breasts. A shiver went through her as his hand sank into the warm water. "Perhaps we could help each other bathe," she said.

"Ah, now, we could do that," he said.

* * *

"Now the blade needs heat treating," Lachlann told Eva, indicating the long bed of charcoal that he had formed with a crusted exterior and a red-hot interior. Slowly he slid the long blade into the fiery cavern. "When the steel takes on a red heat, then we quench it in the warm brine."

Eva stood beside him at the forge and watched as the blade began to glow red-gold. He handed her the tongs. "Hold it in the fire," he said, as she took the weight of the tool in her gloved hand. "There is something I must do."

He drew out the short dagger sheathed in his belt and quickly made a thin cut across his forearm. Eva gasped, wincing as she saw that. Taking the tongs to draw the red-hot blade out of the fire, he let a few drops of blood fall upon the searing steel, where it sizzled, then vanished.

"Now I am part of this blade, and it is part of me," he murmured, half to himself. Then he spun around and plunged the blade into the quenching tub. The viscous brine bubbled, steamed, then calmed, while the sword glowed like a lantern under the water.

"The blood," Eva said, looking up at him. "Why did you do that?"

He smiled a little, wiping his arm with a cloth. The cut was long and thin as a hair, barely beading. "An old smithing tradition," he said. "One of the secrets to producing a strong, invincible blade. They say that ages ago, new-made swords were sometimes quenched in the blood of virgins." He lifted a brow. "So you are safe." She made a little face at him.

"Is the blood part of making a faery blade?" she asked.

He frowned slightly and did not answer.

"They say MacKerrons can do that," she ventured, trying to catch his glance. "Can you? Would you tell me if you could?"

"There is work to be done," he reminded her as he pulled the sword from the quench and turned it, eyeing it critically. "A good blade," he said, "but the water, though necessary, makes it brittle. It needs tempering—a softening of its hard nature, until it is both strong and flexible, a merging of opposites—heat and cold, fire and water, hard and soft. Male and female," he added quietly, turning the blade thoughtfully.

He raked the charcoal, adding kindling and a few leaves while Eva fed air from the bellows. When the flames flickered gold and blue, he swung the blade into the fire. "Now," he said, reaching out a hand to pull her close, "be my eyes, love."

She pressed next to him, watching. He held the blade as the flames licked the steel. The metal began to glow.

"It will turn from yellow into brown," he said, "then purple into blue. Watch carefully. A sword pulled out at the yellow point will be too hard, at purple and blue it will be too soft. Just when it changes from brown to purple, that is when it must come out. And I cannot trust my own vision to tell me exactly when that is."

She nodded, watching the steel sway over the flames as a rainbow of color bloomed on its shining surface. Bright golden yellow flowed into the steel and darkened into true brown. Then she saw a tiny burst of purple—

"Now," she said, and Lachlann pulled the sword out and plunged it into the brine, where it sizzled. The glow subsided into a deep shine.

"Is it done?" she asked.

"Not yet," he answered. "There is tempering by fire yet—what the devil is that?"

Startled by a sudden, quiet rapping on the door and the distant barking of the two dogs shut in the house, Eva started forward, but Lachlann drew her behind him and advanced. Grasping the hilt of the dagger in his belt, he pulled the door open cautiously, then stood back. Simon stepped inside quickly, followed by Margaret's five brothers and Iain Og.

"Simon, what is it?" Eva asked as she hurried forward. Beyond the closing door, she glimpsed a black sky laced with mist in the aftermath of the rain, and she heard the clear barking of the dogs, and the fainter thunder of horses' hooves. "What is going on? Are the king's men after you? Why did you come here?"

"They may well be after us for this night's work," he said. "Colin Campbell is after us now. He is back from Perth—we just went past Strathlan."

"Is Colin out there?" Eva asked, as Lachlann shut the door.

"He is coming here, though we did not think he would be after us so soon," Simon said.

"So soon? What have you done?" Lachlann demanded.

"Listen, now," Simon said. "We came here to tell you of our decision, and then we must be off. We thought to stay and celebrate, but there is no time for that now."

"Tell us what is going on," Eva said. Lachlann, ever practical and inclined to few words, began to shepherd the visitors toward the back door of the smithy, and Eva followed.

Simon glanced at his kinsmen. "We are in agreement that Clan Arthur will never accept exile. I will take the responsibility of speaking for Donal. Our chief would never approve of the bargain that Colin made for us."

She touched his arm. "But, Simon, that means—"

"It means you will refuse Colin, and we will take a stand for our rights."

"We will petition the king ourselves," Fergus said, "and seek an audience and a fair hearing at the king's own court."

"I will go with you when you ride to court," Lachlann said, placing a hand on Simon's shoulder. As her brother nodded his gratitude, Eva felt tears sting her eyes. Love and fear, relief and apprehension washed through her all at once.

"Eva, we want that marriage annulled," Simon said, "and no more arguments from you. We have another husband in mind for you." He glanced at Lachlann. Nearby, her kinsmen watched, the twins nodding somberly, the others smiling.