The Forge in the Forest (53 page)

Coming in from that reddened night it was dazzling, a place of white walls and mirrors and lamps and candles burning behind bright crystal; even the empty floor was a mirror of black marble. But striding onto it from a dark archway was a tall figure in sweeping robes of white, and at the sight of her, great wrath and chilling fright warred within him.

"
Louhi!"
he cried out. "
Stay!"
She was turning toward the great staircase that ringed the hall, and she was arranging something that glittered about her head. At the sound of his voice she turned, and he saw her clearly, as fair as ever he had thought her, blue eyes wide with astonishment. Then they blazed furiously; she took a step toward him, hesitated, then whirled and ran up the stair. She was swift, past the first flight before he was anywhere near the foot; he could guess whither she hastened, and she would be there long before him. "Stay, lady!" he shouted again, and in desperation he drew the hammer from his belt and slapped it down between his clenched fingers. It felt then as if he held an earthquake in his palm. He swung his arm in a great wheel and threw. With all the strength of his body behind it, and all the pent-up impact of the falling door, the hammer hurtled high into the air, a blur of movement, and, with a crash like the lightning it had forged, it smote into the side of the stair only a few steps beyond Louhi's hastening feet.

The stonework cracked across, sagged, and cracked sharply once again; dust puffed outward, and a great chunk of the stair tore free from the wall and went crashing down in ruin upon the gleaming marble below. On the very brink of the gap Louhi tottered, her dress and robe billowing around her; the glittering thing flew from her head and tumbled jingling down the stairs, coming to rest on a step near Elof as he came running up. He knew it at once, a thing of hooped bronze and ringmail, ornate in copper and gold; he had already guessed, or perhaps his own work called to him. For it was the Tarnhelm.

He raised his eyes to Louhi, pacing down the steps toward him with the measured intensity of a great cat poised to spring, and lunged for the helm at the moment she did. Their hands struck it but did not grasp, it jingled down a few steps and their feces all but collided; for a moment they were as close as lovers, he felt the warmth of her satin skin, he tasted her breath on his lips and found it fragrant as spring. Then she recoiled, eyes blazing, and put a hand to her thigh as if hurt. "My fair young smith! Such a fool I never thought you! Do you not by now know who I am? Would you, fragile as fine works are, go up against a Power?"

The shriek and clamor of battle echoed through the hall, and Elof felt his grin go horribly lopsided. "You are not the first, lady," he croaked, and drew Gorthawer, and leveled it menacingly at her breast.

Louhi stared incredulously at the black blade, and then at his face. "So!" she said. The hand at her thigh suddenly clasped a hilt; from among the folds of her dress a bright broadsword sprang and struck down at his head. So swift was the blow that the black blade barely turned it in time, so hard that he staggered. Then she was at him in a flurry of cuts and slashes, as thick and fast as the first falls of a cloudburst, and the vicious strength behind them startled him. Yet though it seemed too great for those slender arms, it was only human strength, and the skill behind it no greater than his own. The first hail of blows he countered, and then himself sought the attack. But he felt something amiss with his sword arm, and at every blow he struck it worsened, as if the ringing impact numbed his muscles. He cut hard at her, and his point slashed the billowing fabric of her robe; she hurled herself forward, their blades met and locked before their distorted faces, their panting breath clouded their blades. And before Elof's appalled eyes it froze on both surfaces to a skin of rime.

Now he knew what that numbness was! With a shudder he sprang back, feeling his arm bones ache with the spreading cold, and Louhi hewed at him with both hands. But now, instead of Gorthawer, he caught the blow on the palm of his gauntlet, and closed the fingers round the bright blade. To his horror, where blade met mail a faint greenish flame sprang up, sputtering and crackling, such as he had seen upon the Ice, and he yelled in agony as his own mail sucked the heat from his skin. "You would
gather up my strength in your clever little toy, would you
?" breathed Louhi, and her breath smoked like the first airs of winter. "Well, young apprentice, Master Mylio taught you ill, who forged my blade to my design. Or do you not remember that cold cannot be so contained? It is no force, child, but the absence of force, the negation of it in all things, that brings to all stirrings stillness. And peace."

Then a fearful seam of chill shot down his left arm, and stabbed like a skewer at his heart. It leaped, convulsed, skipped beat after beat; the breath wheezed out of him, his legs sagged and he shuddered. He could stand no longer; but he could choose his fall. With all his weight he slumped upon the blade. Unprepared, Louhi staggered, the edge was turned away from him, and he tore free his fingers.

The bright blade leaped out of Louhi's grasp. High it sprang, glittering in the brightness, and over the gap in the stair. A loud clatter sounded from the floor far below. Louhi recoiled with a gasp of pain, clutching at her hand; Elof sagged weakly against the balustrade. Then, recovering, she sought to push past him and seize the helm from the step. But she recoiled abruptly as Gorthawer's edge hissed a finger's breadth from her throat. "The cold, no," grated Elof. "But you struck too hard, Louhi.
That
force it could capture, indeed." He clambered to his feet, Gor-thawer leveled again at her breast, and caught up the T&rn-helm. "And now, woman, in this body of yours you can be hurt. So either you will release K—"

He got no further. With a horrible shriek she sprang upon him, striking and clawing even with her broken fingers. But by the sheer force of her spring she ran Gor-thawer through her left shoulder.

Louhi's lips parted in a soundless gasp. She wrenched violently free of the blade; a single spurt of blood drenched her robe, and stopped. Fury shrieked out of her, an endless wailing cry of wrath and frustration that rang with deafening force in Elof's ears, that shook the very walls, that overrode the battle's clamor and brought the fighting for a moment to a frozen halt. Elof let fall Gorthawer and clapped hands to ears as mirrors and crystals all cracked and shattered and rained down in glistening shards. Louder, stronger swelled the cry, like a rushing wind in the hall, like a blast of bitterest winter that whipped the air full of flying splinters. Asunder flew lead and bar upon the windows, they blasted outward in an explosion of wood and glass and through them streamed the wailing wind. Elof, shielding his eyes, saw Louhi's ripped and bloodstained robe billow violently about her and suddenly float free, rippling and gliding out into emptiness like some eerie creature of the seas, wafting slowly downward. Out of the hall shrieked the sudden wind, and all across the northward rim of the city bells jangled as it passed, tower tops were toppled and rooftops torn; the wreckage below sparkled suddenly beneath a crust of white rime, and so also the empty stair.

Elof, rising, forced down all thoughts save one. In shattering the stair he had barred that way to the roof; he could find another, or… He retrieved Gorthawer and with clumsy fingers set the Tarnhelm upon his head, feeling the metal of the mask icy on his skin, as if from Louhi's touch. He pulled the mail closed across his face, and thought hard, thought of the palace roof, of the gallery round its rim and the rows of statues.
There! Among them
! He felt something stir; the few lights left seemed to grow dimmer, the shadows stronger, the sounds of conflict more remote. Yet he was still upon the stair. He cursed; he had made this thing, all save the mask. Could he not now control it? It bore his very name, in both its meanings, in the couplet he had set upon it.

Eynhere elof hallns styrmer Stallans imars olnere elof
…

Aloud he murmured the words, while in his mind he summoned up in the same archaic tongue the words for shadow and roof, to add to the cantrip a final line.

Istans nethel, erand alt!

"
Darkness and shadow, to the height
! It is Elof calls you!" Blackness slid so suddenly across the eyeslits of the helm that he stumbled, fearing himself blinded. His hand found a balustrade of cool stone; a brisk Seabreeze rippled the fine-knit rings of mail. As well he had left Louhi no time to use the helm! For he stood upon a walkway of worn stones sloped for drainage, in the shadow of a tall statue. In the blink of an eye he had been carried to the roof, and not four strides from him, spear held high as if to strike, stood the figure of Kara.

Chapter Eleven
- The Mold is Broken

But now the spearpoint was not turned against him. Over the balustrade it pointed, down into the square below, where the bloody surf of battle raged and roared against the palace wall. What he saw looked ill; the bulk of the fighting was outside the palace now, which meant the assault was being driven back. There indeed was Kermorvan, mustering a ragged line for another charge against the uneven shieldwall commanded by a tall man in bright armor, but all around the heart of the battle smaller struggles raged, little knots of fighters swirling this way and that in a mad crush. Forward surged the line; the shield-wall broke at its center, where Kermorvan led the charge, but Bryhon was there at once, the great axe flashing as it cut a terrible swathe through Kermorvan's men. The edges of the shieldwall had held, and now they curved round across the square to trap the front lines of city folk; Kermorvan was falling back hastily, attempting to regroup once more.

It could not last; even Elof, unversed in war, saw that. In the end the iron discipline of the Ekwesh would be the deciding factor, and that flowed from the fanatical strength of will Kara was pouring into them, as he might into some work of his forge to give it unity and strength. With every moment that passed the appalling slaughter grew worse. Elof knew he had no choice. He looked at the slender shape, dim against the last of the dark, swallowed and reached for his hammer. But that lay somewhere under the rubble of the stairway below. So much the worse… He raised Gorthawer and sprang forward.

She became aware of him even as he leaped, and swung round with unhuman speed. He had aimed for the spear; the shield was suddenly there to take the blow, and he half expected it to be immovable as a mountain, the black blade to shatter against it like obsidian. But
it
was the shield that broke; it split, slid down and went clattering over the balustrade. Off balance, as startled as he was, Kara half-stumbled from the rail and down upon the walkway, and Elof flung himself against her. The arm that held the spear stiffened to strike, and, dropping Gorthawer, he seized that wrist in both hands and forced it down against the edge of the roof.

"Kara!" he gasped. "It's me! Elof! Stop this, Kara, stop the slaughter now!" The spear wedged against the balustrade and would move no former; the strain on the hand grasping it must be terrible now. The mailed figure threshed against him, and it took all his strength to hold her. "Louhi compels you no more! I've driven her off! She's wounded and fled! If you ever truly… Kara,
please
…"

The fingers slipped from the spear. He seized it, was about to toss it aside when her legs doubled up under him, caught him in the stomach and catapulted him back against the sloping roof behind. The spear flew from his hand and rattled off down the leads. Kara sprang to her feet. She could dash past him and reach it—

But she limped, hobbling against the silver fetters on her ankles, and the spear rolled out into emptiness. With a shrilling cry she seemed to fall forward, her cloak spreading out along her arms. Then they were slender arms no longer, but wide black wings, and a huge swan with gloss-black plumage sprang from the roof and swooped after the spear. What then? Who would she serve, when she caught it? Elof clapped both hands to the helm. He was terrified, but there was nothing else he could do.
Let him think of a shape, and it masks his own
…

The wings he thought of were black also, and wider yet. The shudder that ran through him was fiery, climactic to the point of pain; again night descended upon his eyes, and when they cleared he was sweeping down the wind. Like the times he had ridden fast it felt, with his cloak streaming out around him, but here the cloak was part of him, and his steed the rushing airs of dawn. How often he had seen the great condors wheel about the upper airs, and madly envied them their serenity and freedom! Now it was his, and he gloried in it, forgetting for a moment all human concerns. But then below him, out over the harbor, he saw a black swan wheel with a shining spear clutched tight in its claws. With a cry of sheer joy he kicked his clawed feet forward, curved his wing closer to his side and swooped down upon her.

She was not expecting him, that was clear, she saw nothing till his shadow enveloped her. His cruel talons raked the spearshaft and dashed it from her, seized her by the wingroot and bore her downward. Struggling, they fell as one, and below them the bright spearpoint twisted and dwindled till a pale splash sprang up from the dark harbor waters. The wing in his claws gave a convulsive leap, and suddenly it was no longer there; something sleek and narrow shot from his grasp, and slid into the water after it. So startled was he that he had no time to brake his dive, the water rushed up to meet him, gray as stone and little less hard. In one last instant of panic an image leaped into his mind, and he felt no impact as that surge of fire again passed over him.