Anthology - Realms of Valor

Announcing the services of Forgemaster Inks tain and his wondrous printing device!

More writing is obscured by absorbed ink. In trying to read the rest, it stains my fingers smudgy black.

"Firstborn Foxe!"

Hurried footsteps come up the stairs in response to my excited cry. "What is it, Master Koja?" my flushed secretary wheezes as lumbers up the stone steps of the tower.

"Who is this Forgemaster Inkstain?" Unable to restrain my curiosity, I leave my desk and come face-to-face with Foxe as he plods, face red and puffy, through the arched doorway. The foolscap flutters eagerly in my fingers under his nose. I have never before seen letters so black and methodically drawn. Foxe looks surprised as he takes the sheet and holds it close to his face, squinting to read it in the dim light.

"He's one of the new-fangled printers, sir."

"A printer-some type of scribe?"

Foxe puckers his fat cheeks as he seeks a way to explain it to me. "Like a scrivener, master, except he uses some sort of contraption to copy the pages."

"Like Sister Deara's enchanted copyist?" The sister had been working in one of the vaults to form a perfect scribe from sculpted clays, a creature called a golem. In the one test I witnessed, her hulking brute smashed a writing desk by driving a quill through the wooden top. The thing now stands mute guard over the main hall, porter to occasional guests.

"Not like that, sir," Foxe allows with a smile. "It stamps out the pages, making lots of copies at one time."

"I would very much like to see this. Can you find the place?"

Foxe squints at the sheet again. "It says he's on Scribes' Alley, I think. That's easy enough."

"Then, Foxe, I ask you to take me to Forgemaster Inkstain. If we are quick, your dinner will not go to waste. We must inquire about printing-and its costs."

Foxe stands flustered as I slip past him and pad down the steps. "Printing costs? What for?" Foxe cries as he hurries after me, his paunch jiggling. "The church already has one copy of your work, bound with Goodman Reaverson's history, and we will happily copy your next book. Master Koja, why waste your money to make more?"

I stop at the bottom of the steps, and out of unbreakable habit give the man a polite bow. "Call it this one's wretched vanity, but it would be good for more people to know the truth of the war. Do you not agree?"

"Master Koja, not that many souls can read anyway."

"Perhaps my humble work will inspire them to learn." I hurry on, determined not to be delayed. "Besides, I might be able to avoid Duke Piniago's dinner."

Foxe hurries after because he knows me too well. "At least wait until I get my get my coat," he says with resignation.

* * * * *

The walk to Forgemaster Inkstain's is cold, not the dry cold of my mountainous homeland, but a damp wintry breeze from the harbor, a cold that I have grown accustomed to here. The road that we follow, known here as the Great Way, is quiet, but that only stirs unease in me. The growing shadows from the sun as it sinks toward the swelling waters of the Inner Sea only add to the barrenness. I have never been comfortable with solitude, despite -or perhaps because of-the bleakness of my native Khazari.

I am relieved when we leave the main avenue and Foxe guides me through the gate of the Merchants District, where the narrow streets are close-pressed by the green-roofed workshops and apartments. The air is rich with smells that only cities have, whether from Khazari to Cormyr. Procampur reeks of wood smoke and sewage, overripe fish and buttered pastries. By curious connections it calls to mind the days spent sipping buttered tea around dung fires in my lord Yamun's tent on the open steppe.

"Hurry up, master. This air will make us ill." Foxe has wrapped his face with a thick scarf until I can barely see his small eyes. "It is bitter cold out today."

I almost laugh, since I am walking beside him bareheaded with Only my spring robes on, but that would be impolite. "Firstborn Foxe, were I home in Khazari -then I would be cold. By now the trails to the Red Mountain- where I was a lama-might be barely passable. This is only a little wind, like the spring breeze on the steppe."

"Do you ever miss your home?"

"What?"

"You told me you've been away ten years, first with the Tuigan and then here in the West. Don't you ever get homesick?"

I think about Khazari-soaring mountains crusted with glaciers, isolated monasteries for those seeking enlightenment. I watched Yamun Khahan conquer my homeland; I rode at his side when he did it. Now my lord Yamun is dead and his empire gone. Furo, the Mighty One, forgive me, but I miss the khahan more than I miss Khazari.

"It is my shame to admit I miss proper food, Firstborn Foxe. I may never get used to your Procampan cooking- too many rich meats and raw vegetables. I would dearly like a little kumiss, rice, and tea."

"Ugh-kumiss-soured horse milk. Your stomach is stronger than you say."

"Ah, Firstborn Foxe, in the Yanitsava, it is said all things have their balance. Kumiss fires the blood and purges cooling humors from the body. Those roasts such as you eat unbalance the weak and strong animus within you." I look with meaning at Foxe's broad waist.

Foxe returns my look evenly. "I am balanced just fine, Master Koja. After all, I carry your books up and down those stairs every day. Mind the mud there."

We avoid the puddles in Procampur's unflagged streets, the water fresh from yesterday's winter rain. And as the sodden way clears before us, we hear the bellow of machinery. It comes from a rickety shop through the next alley's archway.

"Oi, watch that bucket, you ink-sloppin' runt o' an apprentice! I'll take every drop out o' yer miserable wage. How'd you like that, eh?"

Forgemaster Inkstain is in.

The shop is nothing more than a lean-to slapped onto the side of a teamster's stable. A paper sign, tattered and water-stained, is tacked near the door. The black ink is streaked from the lettering till it runs into the grain of the pine boards. This is not encouraging, but through the gapped boards comes the squeaking rumble of grinding metal that ends in a thickly padded thump. It is as if a host of rusty knights is stumbling about the room. Foxe's puzzled look tells me he, too, is mystified.

Inside, the clanking bedlam maintains its thunderous tempo. The source is a squat mass of metal and wood crammed into the center of the shed, surrounded by buckets and bales of rag paper in all colors. Nearby, the dwarven master berates his ogre apprentice from atop a crate. The din has concealed our entrance. The thick, hairy back of the apprentice bends and strains in time with the contraption as his thick, warty arms pull on a long lever that wrenches the grinding gears into the motions. Iron arms rise and fall, metallic claws snatching sheets of foolscap from a stack and pushing them into a mechanical maw.

"Don't push her so hard, you lout! Here, ease off an' grease her up. I'll-" Forgemaster Inkstain catches sight of us from the corner of his eye. His demeanor instantly changes. "Gentlemen, I'm favored to have you visit my humble shop," the dwarf shouts as he clambers down from his perch. "I be Forgemaster Inkstain, master printer. Aguul, shut her down, so these gentlemen can hear."

I am afraid I am rudely gawking, having never dealt much with the dwarves-creatures of the West as they are. The master printer is nothing like the fierce ironlord who commanded the dwarves of King Azoun's army. Truly the name does him justice, for Inkstain seems to be a single blot of ink, all four-and-a-half feet of him. His leather apron and starched linen shirt are a smudgy black. I think his beard is white, though now it is a gray mass tucked into his belt for safety. Only the top of his bald head is undaubed.