L. Modesitt - Fall of Angels

“They will not be enough.” Relyn smiled. “Three more women arrived at Tower Black today. There was one yesterday, and two the day before. They brought blades, and some brought coins. One rode up bringing her own packhorse loaded with goods. She was willing to give them to the angel even if she could not stay.”

Nylan took a deep breath. “The women of this world are fed up.”

“If I understand you, that is true.” Relyn’s smile vanished. “The longer Lord Sillek waits, the more guards and goods Westwind will have. Two of those who rode up today already had their own blades and could use them.”

“I’m afraid that is why your Lord Sillek will not wait.”

“He is not my Lord Sillek. A disowned man has no lord. That is one of the few benefits.” Relyn laughed. “And few would attack a one-armed man, for there is no honor in that. So, when the time comes, I will depart.”

“Why don’t you leave now?”

“I would see the destruction of Lornth. Then I can tell the world of the power of the Legend.”

“You have a great deal of faith.” Far more than I do, thought Nylan. Far more.

“No. This is something I know.” Relyn slipped off the bench. “You are tired, and I would not weary you more.”

For a time, Nylan sat, eyes closed, but his head ached, and he did not feel sleepy. Relyn was talking as though Ayrlyn and Nylan were the prophets of some new faith, and that bothered the smith, as if his head didn’t hurt enough already.

Finally, he stood and walked to the open south door and crossed the causeway. The large cairn was now twice its formerlength, and Nylan could no longer distinguish the separate smaller cairns that dotted the southeast section of the meadow, almost opposite the mouth of the second canyon from which Gerlich’s men had poured.

A crew of new guards, led by Saryn, had already blocked the narrow passage at the upper end of the canyon and erected a small and hidden watchtower that overlooked the trail leading there.

How much did you let happen, Ryba, wondered Nylan , because you dared not risk going against your visions? Maybe … maybe there are worse things than feeling deaths. Is feeling the deaths of those I killed so difficult compared to your causing deaths that may have been unnecessary-and knowing that those deaths may have been unnecessary … and living with those deaths forever?

A small figure sat on the end of the causeway wall, looking toward the cairns. Suddenly, she turned and asked, “Why didn’t you save Mother?”

Nylan tried not to recoil from the directness of the question.

After a moment, he said slowly, “I tried to save as many as I could.” By killing as many of the invaders as I could, he added to himself.

“They weren’t Mother.” Niera’s dark eyes bored into Nylan. “They weren’t Mother. The angel let the other mothers stay in the tower.”

“Did your mother wish to stay in the tower?”

“No. You and the angel should have made her stay!”

Nylan had no ready answer for that, not a totally honest one, but he continued to meet the girl’s eyes. Then he said, “Perhaps we should have, but I cannot change what should have been.”

At that, Niera turned and looked at the cairns, and her thin frame shook. Nylan stepped up beside her, and lightly touched her shoulder. Without looking, she pushed his hand away. So he just stood there while she silently sobbed.

A stiff and cool breeze, foreshadowing fall, swept from the sunlit meadows and fields through the open and newly hung doors of the smithy. With the air came the scent of cut grass, of dust raised by the passing horses, and of recently sawn fir timbers. Inside, the air smelled of hot metal, forge coals, and sweat-of burned impurities, scalded quench steam, and oil.

Nylan brought the hammer down on the faintly red alloy, scattering sparklets of oxides. The anvil-a real anvil, heavy as ice two on a gas giant, if battered around the edges-and the hammer rang. Nylan couldn’t help smiling.

“Is it good?” asked Ayrlyn. “I’ve been looking for one all summer. I got this from a widow not far from Gnotos.”

“It’s good. Very good. It feels good.”

“You look happy when you work here, when you build or make things, and I can almost feel the order you put in them.”

“You two,” said Huldran, easing more charcoal into the forge. “You talk about feeling. It’s as though you feel what you do more than you see it.”

“He does,” said Ayrlyn. “He can sense the grain of the metal.”

Nylan grinned at the healer. “She can sense sickness in the body.”

Huldran shook her head, and the short blond hair flared away from her face. “I’ve always thought that. I don’t think I really wanted to know. With the laser, I figured that was because it was like the engineer’s powernet … Is all the magic in this place like that, something that has to be felt, that can’t really be seen?”

“In a way you can see it,” responded Ayrlyn, brushing theflame-red hair back over her ear. “It’s a flow. If it’s good, it’s smooth, like a dark current in a river.”

“I don’t know that it’s really magic,” mused Nylan, looking at the cooling metal and then taking the tongs to slip it back into the forge. As the lander alloy reheated, his eyes flicked to the iron that had come from a broken blade. It waited by the forge for the next step of his blade-making when he would have to flatten the two and then start hammer-folding them together and drawing them out-only to refold and draw, refold and draw. If only the smithing weren’t for blades … He licked his lips and then he continued. “You can feet-”

“You can. I can’t,” pointed out Huldran.

“You may be better off that you can’t in some ways,” replied Ayrlyn.

“You can feel,” Nylan repeated, “flows of two kinds of energies. Apparently, the ones I can use are the black ones, or at least they say I’m a black wizard, and you can build and heal, or they help build and heal. The stuff the wizard that came with Gerlich had, and Relyn thinks he was the same one that was in the first attack, is white, and it feels ugly, and tinged with red. It’s almost like the chaotic element in a powernet, the fluxes that aren’t that can still tear a net apart. Well, that’s what the firebolts he was throwing felt like.”

“Like a powernet chaos flux?” asked Ayrlyn with a slight wince.

“Worse, in some ways.” Nylan looked at the alloy on the coals, barely red, but that was as hot as it was going to get. Initially, working with it was a cross between hot and cold forging, and slow as a glacier on Heaven. “I’ve got to get back to this. With all these recruits showing up, the marshal wants more blades, and Saryn wants more arrowheads.”

“You know, ser,” pointed out Huldran. “I could use the old anvil to make arrowheads or whatever, and we could bring in some help with the tongs and bellows.”

Nylan nodded, ruefully. “I should have thought of that.”

“Does this mean we really need another anvil?” asked Ayrlyn.

“Well …” began Nylan. “Since you asked …”

“I search and search and finally get you an anvil, and now you want two.” Ayrlyn gave an overdramatic sigh. “Nothing’s ever enough, is it?”

“No. But no one pays any attention when I say it. We make hundreds of arrowheads, arrowheads that really ought to be cast, and Saryn and Fierral just want more. Ryba wants more blades.” Nylan gave back an equally overdramatic sigh and pulled the metal from the coals and eased it onto the anvil. “And it’s time to work on this blade.” He looked at Huldran. “I can handle this alone. You go find an assistant. One, to begin with.”