The Hammer of the Sun (46 page)

However this may be, there is no doubt that Elof succeeded; for as he gazed upon the ring re-made, it is set down that he wished aloud he could do as much for himself. "Melt myself down in my own furnace, mold myself anew, mended and whole! And in doing it I might even skim away the clinging dross of all my past, all my follies and my cruelties; all the wrongs I have done, all the wrongs done to me, I might forget them all together! I could just escape then, and have done with it, this damnable hunger for revenge! I grow to hate it, Roc; hate what I must do to glut it. It is a master almost crueller than Nithaid! I hate to deal in this way, even with such as they!"

"What's this, then, from you of all folk? Mercy? Compassion?" Roc looked around from the bag he was packing, and his voice grew edged and bitter. "It's never yet held you back from what you thought needed doing. Didn't stay you with poor old Ingar, did it? Or Korentyn. Or Kara. Why then now, with these creatures that are a hundred times the worse?" Elof writhed beneath the sting of the words, but he made neither protest nor denial; for they both knew too well there was none. "You've never scrupled to mess with your friends; why baulk at your foes? Regret's cheap when it comes too late, my lad. What you've planned now, you must do, or all's to wrack and ruin… more, maybe, than you know. You'll not make yourself a better man by turning stupid!"

"No!" muttered Elof, still burnishing at the gold, though it shone bright as it ever had in the midday sunlight. "But I may yet make myself worse. Enough! High time you were on your way; the guard-boat is waiting! And take care!"

Roc nodded curtly, and turned to the door. "I'll do my part, never fear. Only do you yours!"

The door closed behind him. Regretfully Elof wrapped the bright fair thing in a square of dark velvet and laid it aside on one of the benches beneath the window. He leaned there for a moment, resting his weary shoulders, and watched the guard-boat with Roc on board pull away across the great smooth flood of the sunlit Yskianas. It was the last piece he could move, in a play that stood either to lure his foes into the check he had laid with such care, or to rebound upon him so utterly as to sweep him from the board. And Roc with him, perhaps, and many more. Had he been over bold? Too late if he had; he should be thinking of his work. They had loaded the furnace earlier; high time he shut it down.

He limped over to it and began to spin the wheel
back. Beneath him he felt Che door grind across, though
it seemed to be growing harder than usual to move; when it was three-quarters closed, it began to stick. He cursed, tugged at the wheel, wound it back and then sharp forward; it turned a little further, then stuck. Alarmed, he had to jerk it again and again, throwing all his weight upon the wheel till it seemed to clear the obstruction. At last it slid a little way smoothly, then a sharp clang told him the door was shut. He cranked the air-vents open wider, knocked free the bolts on the outer door and heaved it up, ducking back to let the gush of searing air disperse. Then it was only a matter of more waiting, until the stalks had spread their leaves wide enough to show him it was safe to enter. Waiting; and he could not even pace up and down. With rags wrapped around hands and feet he swung himself down onto the stairs and shone his lamp into the mephitic gloom, coughing as the fumes caught his throat. The floor seemed different somehow, its slope changed and less regular; he limped down the steps, though the rags were charring, and saw that at the rear by the door's foot the floor was no longer a smooth incline, but had across its centre an irregular tongue of smoking slag. Small wonder he had had to fight that door shut! Whatever die reason, the earthfires were certainly growing fiercer; now, from out of whatever vein lay open behind that door, they had come boiling up into the furnace itself.

The sight filled him with horror. His labour, his creation, his last gate to freedom all depended on the furnace, his very life even if his play went as he planned. And it was no longer safe to use; yet, safe or not, he must open it again - if he still could - and risk unleashing what dire consequences he might. Suddenly he became aware of the smoke arising round him; his rags were smouldering, and one trailing strip burst into a little yellow flame, easily stamped out. Only he couldn't! He cursed and swung himself up the stairs; but that took time, and the rags were well alight as he emerged. He had the sense to smother them in sand first rather than pour water over them, which would have carried the heat through too swiftly. Angrily he peeled off the scorched cloths and slumped down with his back to an open window; he must think, and fast.

On reflection, he decided, it could have been worse. It must have taken time to rise, that flood. It could only have happened moments before he shut the door. So it would again, most probably; he should be able to work in short bursts, ever watchful for what might be rising beneath. It would slow him, perhaps too much; yet there was no help for that. He would have to work all the faster now. Thoughts of what that would mean, problems present and foreseen, whirled and tangled in his mind and though the forge and its engines stood quiet now, the creak and tick of contracting metal, the wind in the air-vents and the flow of water in the troughs were so loud that he did not hear the hull that ground onto the beach, the footsteps on the grassy slope, till they touched the very sill of the open door. He sat up in sharp surprise.

Upon his threshold stood Beathaill, alone. She was clad now in a light silken gown of a leafy pattern, girdled with silver; the low sun behind
it
made a willowy silhouette of her body. She seemed tentative, almost shy in her manner, but she stiffened as she saw him. He bowed to her from where he sat. "Good even to you, lady. I expected you tomorrow; you return earlier than you said."

A haughty smile quirked her lips. "Why should I not? It is up to me. You have had ample time, in any case. Well? Is it done?" Elof bent to gather up his crutches, and did not reply. "Well?" she shrilled, and stamped her foot. "Have you mended it as I bade…" Then the arm-ring caught her eye, gleaming on the velvet like the sun over stormcloud. "Oh," she said flatly. "You have…" She sniffed contemptuously. "I see you know how to obey your betters after all, like a good thrall." To Elof's acute ear the tinge in her voice was almost clear enough to be called disappointment. She stalked over to the ring, and was about to take it when Elof's hard hand closed over the shining gold.

"Lady," he said quietly. "I have made that fair thing whole again; but I never said it was for you."

"How
dare you)"
she squealed, and stamped again.

"Lady, that arm-ring is not for you. There is a potency in it, a strong one, its virtue a binding bond. It cannot create one where none exists; but where one is, it may act upon it, lend it strength, in what ways who can tell?" She snatched at the gold unheeding, but he did not release his grip. "Lady, I warn you only for your own sake!"

"Give it me!" she said, her front teeth white against her carmined lips. "And have done with your conjurer's cant; have I not worn that ring all these years? Do you think I am still a child, to be frightened with tricks and shadows?"

She shook the ring in Elof's grasp; and though she had none of Kara's strength, the memory defeated him, and he let it slip through his fingers. He caught earnestly at her arm, preventing her donning it. "Lady, upon your head be what follows if you take that ring to yourself…"

"Get away from me!" she cried, springing free and forcing the ring onto her arm. "Thralls have died in torture for less gross offences! Ach, you soil me, you stink of sweat and soot -"

Elof sighed; he would achieve little by offending her, in her nostrils least of all. "Lady, I apologise. I was about to wash when you arrived." Doffing his sweat-stained tunic, he turned to the trough that flowed through the forge, reached for the bag of fatted lye hung beside it, and quickly splashed the cold spring waters about himself. He was half afraid she would simply march out on him, but knew she was still standing there; he could almost sense the intentness of her. Upon the ring? Then he heard her say sardonically "That is a fine crop of scars you bear, thrall. One might almost take you for a warrior or an adventurer, rather than a sorcerer and an artisan."

He laughed, and tasted the bitterness on his lips. "I have been both, at need," he said, without turning. "Once. I have crossed a whole wide land, and sought out the duergar in their mountain fastnesses, and lived with them two long years; I have lived with the
alvar
of the forests, Tapiau's Children, and escaped the forest's power. I have sailed the Seas of the Sunrise, I have fought beside an exiled lord against the Ekwesh by land and sea, and when he won himself his kingdom. I have battled a dragon beneath the earth, and the Icewitch herself on a palace stair - aye, and bested her! And yet I would far sooner be a man whole and at peace, in the land I made my own, with my true love by my side."

He heard her laugh. "A braggart, as well as a boor!"

Elof turned about in annoyance and heard her gasp. She reached out suddenly, and he felt her soft fingertip trace out the faint mark on his breast. "That is a scar also! That is… the same scar! As at the back…"

"Your father remarked on that wound once; shortly before he had me crippled! Before he made me a pinioned swan, a tethered hawk! Less than a man!" He turned away impatiently, and again she caught her breath.

"I see another pair, even more faint! But… one such wound should have been mortal! How did you come by them? And how survive them?"

"Ask rather why!" he said, and went on washing.

Behind him there was silence; until a small voice said "Would you tell me some of your adventures?"

Slowly he rose, and turned, reaching for a cloth to dry himself. "To a wellwisher or a friend, I might. But what joy or profit can there be for a listener who does not care?"

To his astonishment a hand was laid lightly on his arm. "Did I say I do not wish you well? I will listen gladly - if it please you?" He looked down at her, and suddenly her hand seemed to sear him worse than the forgeflame. It was long, long since a woman had touched him. His breath faltered and grew fast, and forgetting all he hoped to gain by patience he crushed her hand beneath his own, hard against him. She stiffened, but made no attempt to pull away. He swallowed, and heard his breath whistle through flaring nostrils. Hesitantly she lifted her free hand, and laid it upon his breast.

"Your heart pounds like your hammer!" she said, and giggled softly, her eyes lowered.

He felt a taut smile settle on his lips. "Does yours?" Her grip tightened on his arm, and slowly tentatively, she bore it to her side. Equally slowly, with deliberate malice, he stroked his fingers down her ribs to her waist, and then up again, to slide one by one across the curve of her breast, gently passing over the peak taut beneath the gown's silken lightness. He bent to whisper in her ear "It does…", and stayed to kiss the lobe of it, the neck beneath, the satin cheek and so, at last, her parted lips.

She met the kiss fervently at first, a little clumsily; then suddenly she squirmed, wrenched free, gasping. "How dare you?" she squealed. "What are you - what have you done? What have you done to me? What spell have you…"

Elof shook his head. "I have cast no spell upon you, my lady. But you took one upon yourself. Will you be able to shed it so easily? It has power. Yet remember, there is none in it to create what is not already there…"

"
No
!" she shrieked, and plucked the ring violently from her arm. It tangled in her gown a moment, fell and rolled against some sacking. But then she let out a despairing wail, hugged herself tight and burst into hysterical sobbing.

Elof reached out to her, cupped her face in his strong hands, and she did not resist. His thumbs wiped the tears from her cheeks and tilted her head back to meet his gaze. Her eyes looked into his, and now his hands ploughed among her crisp hair, stroking her neck from behind her ears to the neck of her gown, tracing its edge around to the front. Her eyelids fluttered and her head relaxed, lolled back, as the topmost fastening parted under his deft fingers and they met and caressed in the hollow of her throat. She clutched at his shoulder to steady herself as they swept back, parting another fastening, and so on down till they curved around her neat small breasts and laid them bare. He clutched her close then and kissed her breast to breast, and she did not pull away, but drank at him as if he were a spring.

He felt her heart flutter, and a flutter of a different pace below her ribs, down the whole front of her body, as though it were a bird imprisoned behind those bars and beating to be free. Slowly, carefully, as her gown fell open and apart, his fingers tracked it about her and down to its source, tracing it tangled amid damp curls. Gown and girdle slid unheeded to the silver sand. Her forehead lay on his shoulder, her shifting thighs imprisoned his fingers as they explored, and she clutched at him in her turn, tugging at his belt, pulling at his breeches. A wave of hesitancy welled up in him suddenly; all these long years he had half believed himself become less than a man, maimed in more than limb, and he feared to find it true. But as her long fingers discovered him, probed and plucked at him, spider-light, his fears were fiercely overborne. He managed to croak a word in her ear, and together they swayed and stumbled towards his bed, her fingers playing about him still, her lips smearing his chest with their colour like so many fresh wounds. He flung aside his crutches, and they toppled together among the coarse blankets. She raised her head to kiss his lips, his throat, his shoulders and armpits where the crutches galled them; he lifted himself on his arms, his lips touched her breasts and lingered, then swept down, drinking her in, a feaster after famine, till her back arched like a bow and her fingers wrung in his thick hair. Then, with a single shuddering gasp that two throats shared, they writhed together like serpents and joined.