The Anvil of Ice (30 page)

Then three great strokes boomed on the high doors, and the guards sprang to haul them open. Smoky red light flooded in,
the
travelers were thrust forward into
it
, and the doors slammed solidly shut behind them.

Blinded at first by the strange glare, they saw nothing, but heard the babble, smelled the strong scent of an excited crowd around them. It was a hostile babble, and the smell was not that of ordinary human bodies. To Elof it was strange and unsettling, though in itself more wholesome than a human crowd, more like the clean sweet smell of the cattle he had tended. But Kermorvan held his head high and wrinkled his nose fastidiously. As their eyes cleared they gazed upon what they had endured so much to find, the court of the duergar.

A high hall it was they found themselves in, the highest indeed that ever Elof had seen. Yet he might have thought himself under the roots of some impossibly vast tree, for so the columns of the walls were carved, gnarled straggling shapes that closed together in shadowy vaultings far overhead. The air under this strange roof seemed at once fresh and smoky, like a late autumn afternoon; the reddish glow came from torchlike objects set high on the walls and burning steadier than any torch. The light danced about the gilded carvings covering the doors, glowed on the sharp-edged patterns set in the polished stone of walls and floor, where flakes of pink granite and green dolerite, purple quartz and ruddy sandstone vied with strange and rare minerals. Shapes or characters they made, hard and enigmatic, save on the far wall, above the heads of the dimly-seen throng. An image was there, so striking that Elof forgot all else in contemplating it, a high silhouette seen from below, like a man through the eyes of ants, a broad figure haloed in glittering flame and with a hammer raised in one firm hand. Before him was an anvil, and he hammered at something held upon it, something shining and jagged. It might have been a short, burly man, that figure, or one of the stranger shapes that now closed in around him.

"Well, men?" a cold harsh voice demanded, speaking the northern tongue. "Feast your eyes as you will. You came to find the wealth of the duergar, through many perils, no doubt. We would not grudge you one brief glimpse of it."

They were not, as Elof had warned, so very small. The tallest, rising on their toes to see, were less than a head shorter than he, though many were much smaller. It was their shape that made them look stunted, wider than most men, with heavy arms on broad sloping shoulders and thick neck. The faces, though, seemed stranger than he remembered, for now not one of them was smiling. The mass of them, the adults, looked carved from old, well-seasoned wood, and carved deeply at that, for almost all were a mass of lines; those framed with white hair might have been made of bunches of cords. But it was the beardless faces, the younger faces, that were the most disturbing. There the unhuman mold showed stark beneath the skin, bared of the trappings common to man and duergh. The forehead was low and sloping, partly hidden by the bushy brows that rode the arched ridges above the eyes; but it was those eyes, huge, wide and deep-set, that banished any trace of the bestial in the face. The noses were almost all large and slightly snubbed, but varied as much as those of men. Below them, though, the duergar face fell away in a great curve to wide thin lips, and below those to a heavy clean-edged jawline with no trace of a projecting chin. High cheekbones and thick jaw muscles hollowed the cheeks; the ears were large, lobeless, curled at the top into a slight suggestion of a point. If they seemed to be set rather far back, that was because the head itself was longer and wider than a man's. All of these things Elof noticed, and yet in the same instant he saw men who were handsome and girls who were pretty—or might have been, had they smiled. But it was not smiles that bared the large teeth, or kindly curiosity that had them milling forward around the travelers.

An angry buzz filled the hall as the voice spoke, and guards sprang forward to clear a path with their spear-shafts. Elof saw then that the hall was a shallow amphitheater centering on a narrow platform, below the vast image. The dais stood head-high to the duergar, with many solid figures seated about its base, their very attitudes at once proclaiming their importance. Kermorvan was right; some things did not change. But more impressive by far, though he lacked their dark-sheened robes and rich furs, was the speaker. He sat atop the dais, in a chair of plain gray stone. Its arched back, upon which thin lines of gold traced out a single straight character, was high enough to diminish the tallest of men. He who sat beneath was not the tallest of duergar, withered and bent with age unguessable, but it diminished him not a bit. The stone around could not have been harder than his voice.

"Your coming, you see, was known at once. The rivers bring us messages, and the air, the cave breezes—but most of all the stone." His fingers caressed the rough gray chair arm, almost tenderly. "Always the stone. Our northern outposts are few now, but they are ever alert; they must be, for they watch the Ice! And so you were taken. You—
men
." The word hung bitter on his tongue. "Men. May the day perish on which first we took pity on your kind! Upon which we, the Elders, first sought to raise you up from your animal estate, as we ourselves had been raised long since! Every time we have aided you, misery and pain have repaid us. Across half a world we have fled you, and yet still you leave us no peace. By luck or design you have fallen among us, where no man should, and awoken greater fear and disquiet than I looked to see in my lifetime. I would know why." Angrily he tugged the plain robe of silver fur closer round his thin limbs. "I am Andvar, lord of all the duergar folk in these mountains. I am half tempted to kill you at once and have done. But I will not have it said that I stoop to the level of your folk. Speak, then."

Kermorvan's face colored with anger, but he kept his peace and looked to Elof, who stepped forward. "I thank you, lord, and I think you will not regret hearing us. We are sorry to have alarmed you; the way we came, we were driven to by sore necessity and fell pursuers off the Ice. But we came to these mountains in search of the duergar. We came to gain your aid, not your riches."

There was a rumble of sardonic laughter, and even Andvar's dark lips twisted. "Aid also may be stolen, as we have learned. What is your quest?"

Elof met his gaze. "A quest vital to all who oppose the advance of the Ice, and the Ekwesh its champions. And though I have never spoken with any of your folk, I have once at least proven myself no enemy, and been treated in turn as a friend." A stir of interest ran through the great hall, and Elof held up a hand. "I ask only that you hear my whole tale, before making your judgment."

Andvar waved a wide leathery hand, brushed a straggly lock of gray hair out of his eyes, and settled back on his bleak throne. "So be it. All here will understand your tongue well enough, and fairly you speak it. But I usually know the names of my friends."

"Of course, lord," said Elof uncomfortably. "This is Kermorvan, a great warrior from the Southlands, my companion." Kermorvan bowed, though with a strange smile on his lips, as if there was something sadly lacking in the description. "My name is Elof—"

Derisive laughter hooted through the hall. "A modest name, indeed!" barked Andvar. "That ancient title, The Smith, know that we give it only to one who is truly One Alone." He gestured up to the mighty image above.

"If you are offended, I am sorry!" breathed Elof in utter dismay. "I chose it in all innocence, for I was a nameless foundling, and I am a smith among men. For I was chosen as a boy by the Mastersmith Mylio—"

He stopped, sensing the sudden chill hush in the hall. Andvar's eyes narrowed, and his fingers tapped on the arm of the throne. "That name is no longer any bridge to our favor."

"So much the better for me!" said Elof defiantly. "Will you keep your word, and hear?"

Andvar sat rigid with anger against the stone. "Say on, then. Be silent, all."

From that moment the listening duergar might have been carved from the rock, until Elof told of the forging of the test pieces. Then the whole atmosphere in the vast stone chamber changed, and the stillness grew charged, as before thunder. When Elof finished telling of the forging of the sword, it was Andvar who broke his own command. "You forged
that
thing, boy?
You?" A
long finger crooked at him. "Come here, smith among men. Let me look at you more closely!"

Elof stepped forward to the base of the dais. The duergar lords there rose, leaning on tall staves, and drew closer, their wide eyes staring through and through him. He stepped up on unsteady legs, and the wrinkled face of the duergar lord bent over him. Ancient eyes, yellowed but clear, met his; he held the gaze, and was startled to see a reddish flicker deep in the huge pupils that was no reflection of the torches.

After many minutes Andvar sat back in his throne. "It could be!" he said, and his tone was thoughtful. "It could be. The crafts of man and duergh are very different things. Those are strange fires burning in you, but hot enough, indeed—" Then the wrath in him overran his curiosity, and he slumped back, knotting his hands. "And what claims on our mercy does such a feat give you, then? How shall we best reward the making of so evil a thing? At least I shall not now think your end unjust, for there are lives of our folk to pay for, and that one of your own whom you betrayed. An apt pupil you were, of that master! He was our friend at first, and of service to us, and when he sought to settle in our ancient watchtower we agreed, won over by pity for one exiled from among men!
Pity
! We even helped him build his forge, and shared our wisdom freely! And then when we found him delving in our mines, and dealing with uncanny folk, we warned him, sought to have him leave freely. He delayed us for long months with endless pleas and promises, and at last even threats. Even in the end, when we had to send a force to dispossess him, we gave fair warning—and do you know how it was met?"

"I do," said Elof. "I was there, because I was fleeing him, and the thing I had done. I sought to warn your folk, shouting from the hillside above. I am sorry I could not do more. Then I fled myself, in panic as I thought—but I see now that it must have been the sword, its effects tempered by distance. Some of your folk, I believe the survivors of your force, found me and my then companion, and took us to freedom by underground ways. They judged that I was their friend, and I am grateful to them. Will you gainsay them now?"

Andvar stared at him in astonishment, but before he could speak, one of the lords sprang up onto the dais, caught Elof by the shoulder and whirled him round. A hard-planed face, neither old nor young, stared into his a moment from an almost equal height. A band of gold, finely worked, gleamed round his thick neck. Then Elof was clapped on the shoulder with staggering strength. "What he says is true, this man-smith!" barked the duergh. "He has changed, but I would not forget him. He saved most of that party, me and my girl Ils among them, so we got him away through the underhills. He earned that much help, and more, say I."

"That's right!" shouted a female voice from the crowd, um id a growing rumble of dissent.

Andvar raised a hand to quell the hubbub. "You were ever generous
to
men, Ansker. I will not say you did wrong, in that instance. But what this man-smith has unleashed—and why has it taken him well-nigh two years to seek our aid? If there is more to tell, man, you had better do so!"

A bitter despair rose in Elof s throat, though Kermorvan was gesturing to him to go on. Whatever he told them, would this malign old creature ever agree to help a human? Not by the will of his folk, it seemed, unless perhaps
this Ansker
. He
stole a glance at him. It was met by an
encouraging nod, and the dark-haired duergar girl Ansker was talking to waggled her eyebrows slightly, and grinned, so that he remembered her also. He grinned back, and took heart.

His words spilled out into silence, like a stone into a deep pit, till he told of the strange rider at his door. Ansker sat up then with a sharp hiss of disbelief, but the lords around him drew back, and the crowd muttered unre-buked. When Elof had finished, the duergar overlord looked at him long and silent, and when he spoke his voice was deeply troubled. "What then would you ask of us?"

Elof held up his hands. "A key! A key to unlock the power that lies here! I unleashed this evil, as you rightly say. You cannot yourselves counter it, or you would have! Who else, then? Surely I have the power, if anyone—but I lack the knowledge! I have made master's work, but I am an apprentice still, and masterless. Be you my masters now!"

The silence broke like a floodwall, and the duergar voices rose in a great roar to the high roof, disturbing bats there that flittered forth like living echoes. A spate of argument broke out, furious jabbering both in the northern tongue and a sonorous, rolling speech, and many surged down around the throne, milling and jostling. Kermorvan they almost ignored; it was Elof the row was about, and it looked to be savage. One or two of them came charging up the steps of the dais, and had to be thrust back. Andvar's looks grew blacker by the moment, until he sat suddenly straight and gestured to Ansker and the other lords.

Their staffs hammered down on the dais in an echoing drumroll that washed away the contentious voices from the hall. Andvar smiled grimly into the sudden quiet. "So! Humans may be a rare sight, but that is no warrant for imitating them! We will hear my counselors on this, An-sker first who has walked most among men."