The Anvil of Ice (6 page)

He released Alv so suddenly the boy almost fell on the stony slope. "And that is why I came here," the smith went on, in his normal dry voice. "To be away from the stifling presence of massed humanity, the meaningless demands of the herd. Up here, where few things are living save ourselves, we may aspire to a communion with the Absolute. For the moment it is checked by the mountain-barrier, but not forever—no, indeed. It can afford to wait. Before ever man was, those powers set their hands upon this world and they have never lifted it; in their service we can learn much, and achieve great art and power. Here alone is true life, and here I have made my new home." He gestured down into the valley below. "There is my house—and from now on, yours also."

Alv looked down into the shadows. A little way along the valley its wall became a sheer cliff face, down which a mountain stream fell in great cascades from the snowline high above. Just beyond it, founded on an outthrust arm of the cliff wall, rose a squat square tower of stone from within an encircling wall. Its summit was open and flat behind high crenellations, but to one side rose a wide round turret roofed in metal, cold-sheened in the clear pale light. Here and there on the flanks of the tower shone squares of warm yellow and red light and plumes of smoke or steam drifted up like banners into the icy air.

Alv could only gape. He had never seen anything so large, except the Halls of Guild, and they had been low and flat, not many-storied like this. And it was all of
stone
!

He had never even dreamed it was possible to build entirely of stone, and shuddered at the difficulty and danger of it. He found his voice at last, as they remounted and went riding down the steep road into the valley. "Mastersmith—it's amazing! But how was it all built—up here?"

"It was built for me," said the smith drily, "with rather unusual help. I had to pay for that, and I am still paying, when I must. But it is strong, and houses all we need, including great stores of supplies. I think you will find it comfortable."

After the smith's words about the Ice and the meaningless demands of humanity Alv was inclined to doubt that, but when the high gate of polished granite swung silently shut behind him and the door of the tower creaked open, a welcome tide of light and warmth flowed out, and the aroma of baking bread. That almost reduced him to tears, for all his newfound dignity, because he remembered it from years of passing by homes that were not his, doors at which he might only beg, and never enter as his own. But here as the Mastersmith and Ingar went in, Ernan, Roc and the wrinkled old woman who had opened the door all stood aside, and they ushered Alv in before them. The central hall around him was simple enough, stonewalled and flagged, strewn with rough matting; the great table and benches were of plain solid wood, as were the seats around the fireplace that filled the far wall. But it seemed like a palace to him, and almost unbelievable that he was able to stand and warm himself by the fire undisturbed, then join others at the table to eat bread and meat and drink mulled ale. All this was new to him, and he thought then that for all his life long he could want nothing better. And indeed, though others might have found it a lonely or uncanny place, he was happy enough to spend all the years of his growing in that house.

In fashion it was like no other house of men in Norde-ney at that time, being built of stone blocks after the manner of the great towns of the south, but far larger in size, and so dressed that not even the keenest edge of the winter wind could force a particle of snow or ice between them. They were bedded deep in foundations of living rock, not only for strength but for heat. The fires under the Earth burned strong and high in that place, and often the hillsides around would vent great gouts of smoke and steam, and a fearful throbbing like the breath of some great beast; at times the ground itself would tremble and heave, as if that beast stirred under the intolerable weight of the Ice. But no tremor disturbed or weakened the Mastersmith's great house, though at its very roots there opened a deep cleft in the rock, through which its hot lifeblood yet ran; the stone drew up so much heat from below that often the spray of the falls splashed into steam against the wall. But the house was placed and built with a hand and a cunning past that of men, and so remained warm at all seasons in that bitter land, where living men could never otherwise have dwelt. On the stillest of summer nights the grind and crack of stone would resound from the far side of the mountains, under the quarterless siege of the Ice; all through the half year's winter the frost would grip like a steel vise and the snowladen winds would come shrieking down off the Ice, seeking the least crack or crevice to begin their ancient game of splitting the stone. But crevices there were none, such was the work; frost and snow alike steamed away to nothing.

At the base of the tower the heat was fiercest, for there was the Mastersmith's great forge, a wider chamber like a cave in the living rock, but with high vaultings curiously carved. When the Mastersmith first led Alv down into it, the day after their arrival, the boy fought not to flinch at the thought of the great weight of stone overhead. But as his eyes grew used to the reddened, flickering light he forgot his fear in wonder at the look of the place. He had grown up wondering and marveling at the village smithy; this place so far surpassed it that he was moved with a feeling almost of worship.

It had something in common with Hervar's lair, the fire-pit at one end and the scatter of anvils around it. But here, instead of two or three, were a hundred or more of all shapes and sizes, ranging from small shaping blocks on workbenches to an immense slab, as high as his shoulders, that seemed too huge for any merely human hand to work at; some hero of old such as Glaiscav might have forged arrows here, or Vayde his sword. As he peered more closely he saw poised over it in the gloom what almost confirmed his feelings, two immense metal hammers with wooden hafts thicker than his thigh.

"Do you wonder at them, then?" said the Mastersmith. "Yet once again they are simple things, true smithcraft's servants, rather than its creation." He strode to the wall and turned a wide wheel set there a little way, and the cavern filled with the thunder of falling water. Below the wheel were rows of levers in the floor, and he pulled first one, then another. There was a long, loud creak, a slow ticking sound, and in the shadows behind the great anvil something stirred; the firepit casting a moving, plunging shadow on the wall. Alv had barely time to see it was a bladed wheel before the Mastersmith slipped yet another lever by the high anvil. The suspended hammers jerked, rose and came crashing down in turn on the great block of metal with a mighty clanging that shook the sandy paving of the floor, echoed in the vaults of the ceiling and went reverberating through the boy, so that his body felt insubstantial and frail. The Mastersmith shut the levers off one by one. "Thus are the sternest ores crushed and the hardest metals tempered. But before you use it, guard your ears!"

He stood a moment, with the faint half-smile on his face. "You see there, a vent channels in a part of the waterfall to turn the wheel. That works the hammers, and other such devices—bellows, grindstones, heavy hammers, lifting tackle, metal-benders and wire-drawers, all with greater power than ever came from a man's arms. And that is not all… Ingar!"

The older apprentice, over by the firepit, took hold of another wheel, set this time on a thick shaft in the floor, and with immense care moved it a little way. There was a sudden deep coughing rumble, the flames of the pit leaped and blazed to twice their height and spat a column of dark smoke toward the ceiling, where a wide gap swallowed it.

"You see? The rock itself bleeds to aid our forging." The Mastersmith nodded, and Ingar hastily spun the wheel back, grinning at Alv.

"A forge fit for the gods!" he called. "All four ele-ments ours to command! The stone around us, the wind in our airshafts, the water in the wheels and this—" He locked the shaft with a bolt. "Better than having a dragon on a leash! Here we can work wonders!"

Roc, pouring fine sand around some impossibly delicate wax thing in a mold, laughed scornfully. "
We
?"

A
single glance from the Mastersmith silenced him, and Ingar's angry retort died in his throat. The man smiled. "Ingar is a competent craftsman, but more interested in the theory of our art. He prefers—" he gestured at a low arched doorway to the right "—to bury himself in here."

The door was of bronze, and heavy, and when it opened there was a sucking of air. Alv stepped through, and stood blinking in the change of light, clear, cool and coming from nowhere he could see. And when the shapes and flecks of color around the walls resolved into solidity, he was still blinded.

"You know what these are, then?"

"Yes, Mastersmith, of course! The town had some, three or four, very old—they were proud… But—am I stupid? I never knew there could be so many!" From floor to ceiling, and across the center, the room was filled with books. Books of every kind, from the usual scrolls and fanfolded links to leaves of paper, parchment or even bark tied up in clumsy sheaves or, oddly, fastened together along one edge.

"No," said the dry voice, "you are not stupid. It is an immense expanse of knowledge, more than you will find in any other library save that of Kerbryhaine, which is now little regarded, or those of lost Morvan itself. And yet no more than a fraction, a grain of what there is to know. Ingar prefers to be a scholar, and makes himself useful as such. But a true master of the art, as I am, as I judge you might one day be, must balance both, the learning and the craft. I assume you cannot read?"

"A few signs I picked up… My name, a word or two…"

"Well enough for you, then. Because you are late to start book learning, and this is one door you must enter soon. But be warned now! Learning is not to be gulped down as you do your food. It must come in courses, by degrees, as you are ready to receive and understand it. Otherwise it may choke you, or worse! The high mysteries of our craft are not to be taken lightly, and need to be guarded. So—you may take and read any book from this South wall, or the center cases, as you will. But on the others a guard is set, surer than any lock or key, and I advise you not to cross it. For the East and West walls, you must first ask leave of me, and it will seldom be refused. But leave the North wall alone!" The soft voice glittered like the Iceglow; Alv shivered, and nodded. "Then go now to Ingar, he will begin teaching you your letters. He has some romances and epics which should be easy enough to begin on. Find me by my anvil in three hours if you weary. But you must be reading, and well, by next spring—no longer!"

He was reading, avidly, before winter. The spring season was in himself, all his pent-up energy and intelligence breaking the crust of his beginnings with the ruthless impatience of a seedling eager for light and air. And over the years that followed it seemed to him that no winter ever came, for he felt himself grow and blossom into new strength and confidence, both of body and mind.

Little can be said of his eight apprentice years, for little is recorded till the events which led to their uncanny ending; in manhood he was never proud of them. Only the lesser part of his early schooling, his learning of simple smithcraft, is mentioned, and that for the changes it wrought in him. Long hours of toil at anvil, vise and mandrel, wielding heavy hammers, swages, tongs and hardies, hardened his body; it was labor that might have killed a thrall, but with good food in plenty and all the force of his will, his driving need, behind it, the work redoubled the strength he was born with. He grew only to middle height, but solid and well made, especially of face. It was the fine work that bowed his shoulders and narrowed his eyes, long hours of carving out inlays in steel and tapping soft gold or silver wire into the channels, endless vigils over tiny molds in which a minute bead of electrum shivered and slid down little by little at the vibration of a stroking finger. One minute he would be hauling bar iron, heated to the point of burning, out of the firepit and under the mighty hammers, the next he would be anxiously coaxing a fire enameled sword pommel out of a miniature kiln. Then, as the snows of the outside winter melted unregarded, he would be off across the mountain land with the Mastersmith and Roc, searching for new seams and sources of metal. In all ways they went, save only to the north flanks of the mountains, against which ground the first outthrust glaciers of the Ice; Roc seemed deeply glad not to venture that way, but Alv was only the more intrigued. Sometimes, many miles to the south, the master would lead them deep into working and mineshafts evidently made by others, and equally evidently still in use. But who the makers and users were, the Mastersmith did not say, and his manner discouraged questions. There they would find many rich and precious ores for the taking, at the faces or from heaps left lying around uncollected. But though Roc was always looking nervously about, they never so much as saw the mineworkers, and only once, as from an infinite distance, did Alv hear the rattle and ring of work in the stone.

Often when they returned from these expeditions there would be horses at the gate, even a line of wagons, for the Mastersmith was no hermit; many visitors seemed to think it worth the long trek out to the house, and they were of many kinds. There were messengers, whom the Mastersmith greeted with cool courtesy but dismissed to the kitchen to await reply. There were men who came by night, hooded or masked, and stayed for no more than a word at the gate. There were pale travelers from strange lands in the south, their errands as enigmatic as their speech. Many visitors were simply merchants, come to sell supplies and perhaps treat with the Mastersmith for special work, though this he seemed to endure patiently rather than do gladly; he had no great need of more wealth. Occasionally men in splendid clothes, with haughty airs and well-armed followers, would ride up to commission weapons and armor, or fine jewelry. But often a chieftain or merchant who took away such work would return, wealthy and beholden to the Mastersmith Mylio, and then Alv saw their relations with him change; they would become confidants, partners, consulting a trusted adviser. When they next re-turned it would be as clients to a patron—or vassals to a lord. The Mastersmith would receive them with his usual mien—suave, reasonable, generous. But nonetheless many left him pale and shaking, or bowed as under a heavy burden.