Kage Baker - The Anvil of the World

“At ease,” he said. “This way, Smith.”

He walked to the near pavilion that had been set up for Lady Svnae. Taking a torch from its iron socket, he cleared his throat loudly outside the entrance.

“Daddy?”

“Rise and come with us, Svnae,” he said. “You’re being punished.”

She stepped out a moment later, wrapped in a dressing gown. She looked lovely, frightened, young and—next to her father—small. On any other night of the world, Smith would have been profoundly interested in her state of undress.

They stopped at the next pavilion, and Mr. Silverpoint said, “Come out of there, son.”

There was no answer. Mr. Silverpoint exhaled rather forcefully and tore open the tent flap, revealing Lord Ermenwyr. The lordling was still fully dressed, sitting bolt upright on the edge of a folding cot. He looked at his father with wide eyes.

“You’re being punished, too,” said Mr. Silverpoint. “Come along.”

He led them away through the night, across the day’s field where a banked fire still smoldered, the bones of the slain falling into ashes in its heart. Guards fanned out and walked with them at a discreet distance.

They came to the rock, and Mr. Silverpoint nodded at Svnae, who led them in. The chambers and corridors were deserted; the monks had withdrawn to the camp to tend the wounded. They climbed through the darkness, and their passage echoed like an army on the march.

The pain in Smith’s arm grew less with every step. It was still so cold he imagined waves of chill radiating from it, but it felt supple as it ever had. He looked up at the barrel-vault ceiling as they walked along, wondering who among his ancestors had cut these tunnels. The charnel house of Kast… .

What had taken place, here, that the Yendri had found it crowded with the dead? It must have been in Lord Salt’s time, so long ago it was nearly fable. What had been the cause of the war? Why had the granaries of Troon been put to the torch? That was never clear in the stories; only the great deeds of the heroes were sung about, how they drove the vanquished before them like wraiths, how they enacted wonders with their swords and war hammers, how they triumphed in the last day of glory before the gods had been sick of them and wiped them out of existence.

And only a handful of people had survived, crouching in fishing-huts at the edge of the land, terrified of something in the interior.

Yet from those wretched ashes they had risen, hadn’t they? And built a fine new civilization on top of the old, better than what they’d had before? What other race could do such a thing?

What other race would need to?

It was true that they multiplied until they must build new cities, and it was true that crime and war and famine followed them inexorably … and now there were others in the world, other races who might be more worthy to inherit.

His arm felt fine now. Better than fine. Superior to dull flesh and blood. It was the part of him that belonged to the gods, after all.

Smith heard the sound of footsteps behind him, running, and Willowspear caught up with them.

“Where are you going?” he gasped. “ What is he going to do?”

Mr. Silverpoint’s voice floated back to them along the tunnel. “Nothing, boy. I’m only here to observe.”

They emerged into the chamber. Mr. Silverpoint set the torch in a socket by the door. “Here we are,” he said. “What happens now, Smith?”

Smith blinked at the Keyhole, at the whirling fire before it. He knew that he could raise his cold blue arm and thrust it through that barrier and feel no pain at all. He knew he could grasp the dimly seen objects beyond and draw them out. They were only vials of poisons, and small ingenious devices. Still, once he had them, there would be no stopping him ever again.

He felt History pulling at him, like a tide sucking sand from beneath his feet. All that he had been, all the mundane details of his life, were about to be jettisoned. Once he reached through the fire, he would be purified, perfect, streamlined down to his essential purpose. He would bring a sinful race to its ordained end. It was the will of the gods.

Smith, the old Smith that was about to be cast off like a garment, looked away from the whirling fire.

The others were watching him. Mr. Silverpoint’s gaze was blank, enigmatic. Lady Svnae was biting her nether lip, her dark eyes troubled. Lord Ermenwyr stood with arms folded, doing his best to look nonchalant, but he was trembling. And Willowspear was staring from one to the other, and at the bright fire, and horror was slowly dawning in his face.

Why was the boy so upset? Ah, because he had a wife, and a mother, and a child on the way. Personal reasons. The concerns of mundane people, not heroes.

Clear before his eyes came an image of little Burnbright disconsolate on her perch in the kitchen, and of Mrs. Smith singing in her cloud of smoke. Fenallise.

Smith flexed his hand.

“I need to borrow your axe,” he said to Mr. Silverpoint. That gentleman nodded solemnly and handed it over.

Smith knelt.

He laid his blue arm out along the rock and struck once, severing his hand and arm just below the elbow.

There was one moment of frozen time in which the arm lay twitching in its pool of black blood, and the severed end reared up like a snake and something looked at him accusingly, with glittering black eyes. It told him he had failed the gods. It told him he was a commonplace and mediocre little man.

Then time unfroze, and there was a lot of shouting. Lady Svnae had torn the sash from her dressing gown and knelt beside him, binding it on the stump of his arm, pulling tight while Willowspear broke the axe handle and thrust it through the tourniquet’s knot. There was blood everywhere. Smith was staring full at Lady Svnae’s splendid bare bosom, which was no more than a few inches from his face, and only vaguely listening to Lord Ermenwyr, who was on his other side saying, “I’m sorry, Smith, I’m so sorry, you’ll be all right, I’ll make you a magic hand with jewels on it or something and you’ll be better than new! Really! Oh, Smith, please don’t die!”

Smith was falling backward.

“You see?” he told no one in particular. “It was just a metaphor.”

“I’m impressed,” said Mr. Silverpoint, nodding slowly.

Smith lost consciousness.

He spent the next few days in a pleasant fog. Willowspear never left him, changed the dressings on his arm at hourly intervals and kept him well drugged. Lord Demaledon came often to advise; he and Willowspear had long sonorous conversations full of medical terms Smith didn’t understand. Smith didn’t mind. He felt buoyant, carefree.

Lady Svnae brought him delicacies she had prepared for him herself, though she was not actually much of a cook, and she kept apologizing to him in the most abject manner. When he asked her what she was apologizing for, she burst into tears. When he tried to console her, he made an awkward job of it, having forgotten that he no longer had two arms to put around anybody. So then he apologized, and she cried harder. Altogether it was not a successful social moment.

Lord Ermenwyr came several times to sit beside his bed and talk to him. He chattered nervously for hours, filling the tent with purple fumes as he smoked, and Smith nodded or shook his head in response but couldn’t have got a word in with a shoehorn. Principally the lordling discussed magical prostheses, their care and maintenance, and the advantages of complicated extra features such as corkscrews, paring knives, and concealed flasks.

And there was an afternoon when Smith lay floating free on a tide of some subtle green elixir that banished all care, and watched through the opened tent-flaps as a drama unfolded, seemingly just for his entertainment. Mr. Silverpoint was seated in a black chair, with a naked blade across his knees. The Yendri war-leader was brought before him in chains.