'Is that what you forge into swords and daggers?' Tanis asked, and Flint guffawed.
'You need a few lessons in metal-smithing, lad,' he commented.
'Me?' Tanis asked. He had watched the dwarf at work at the forge, and he knew how much strength and will Flint exerted to force the metal into the shape he desired. How could Tanis ever make something as hard as iron do what he wanted?
The sparks in Flint's eyes told Tanis there was no room for argument. The half-elf listened carefully as the dwarf explained that pig iron was too brittle to make a good blade; it had to be heated to melting again. Flint showed Tanis how, putting the pig iron in a crucible and setting it amidst the coals in the fire pit by the heavy iron anvil. He made Tanis work the bellows until the coals looked like liquid jewels. As the iron melted, it gave off curls of black smoke. When it cooled, it would be wrought iron, Flint explained, and not nearly so brittle as pig iron.
'But if it's too soft, it couldn't possibly make a good sword,' Tanis complained.
Flint nodded. With a pair of heavy tongs, he heated a lump of wrought iron in the coals until it was glowing hot. He set it on the face of the anvil and sprinkled it with a fine black dust that looked almost like coal dust, except it was shinier. Flint called it Reorx's Breath.
'You see, long ago,' Flint said, 'a wicked thane ordered his smith to forge an iron sword that would not lose its edge. If the smith failed, he would be put to death. It seemed an impossible task, but the smith was a favorite of Reorx's, and the god breathed upon the smith's soft iron sword, making it strong and hard, so that its edge would long remain bright and true.'
With his hammer, Flint folded the glowing lump of metal over on itself and then pounded it flat. He heated it in the coals again, sprinkled on more of the black dust, and then pounded it flat once more. He repeated this several times.
'What we have now,' Flint said with satisfaction, holding the hot lump of metal with the tongs, 'is a piece of metal that will be hard enough to be strong without being so brittle that it will easily break. This, Tanis, is steel.'
Tanis gazed at the glowing metal in a new light. Gold was beautiful, and elves delighted in silver, but in these dark times, steel was the most precious substance on Krynn.
'What are you going to do with it now?' Tanis asked.
'I'm not going to do anything with it,' Flint rejoined. 'You are.'
'I can't forge steel!'
'Neither could I until I tried,' Flint said gruffly, and he thrust a heavy hammer into Tanis's hand.
Obviously, there was no way out of this. Tanis sighed. First he had to decide what to make, but that was easy enough. For a long time, he had wanted a hunting knife like Porthios had.
Guiding his hands, the dwarf showed Tanis how to heat the steel, how to hold it on the anvil with the tongs, and how to strike it with the hammer so that none of the hot, flying scale hit his hand.
'Don't just flail at it, lad,' Flint said. 'It's your will as much as your arm that shapes the steel. Picture what you want it to look like. Get the image good and clear. Then strike the steel and see what happens.'
Tanis followed instructions, thinking how much easier it was to learn from Flint or Miral than from Tyresian. And the knife began to take shape.
Tanis felt a warmth creep up his arm and into his chest. It's only the heat of the forge, he told himself, but somehow he knew that wasn't so, and he thought that maybe he understood a little of what Flint felt when he stood here at the anvil, discovering a blade in a lifeless lump of metal and releasing it with fire and hammer, with heart and mind.
'Now quench it while it's still red-hot,' Flint said, and Tanis plunged the thin, pointed strip of steel into the half-barrel of water by the anvil. Steam hissed into the air, glowing red in the light of the furnace. 'Quenching makes the metal harder,' Flint explained.
Tanis pulled the blacked, rough strip of steel out of the water and looked at it critically. 'It doesn't really look like a knife.'
'Nonsense,' Flint growled. 'Your knife is in there, all right. It just needs to be polished and to have its edge sharpened on the grindstone. You do that, and bind a hilt to it, and you'll see.'
Tanis grinned then. The strip seemed lopsided, and it wasn't exactly flat, but it would be his knife. 'Thank you, Flint,' he said, but the dwarf shook his head.
'You're the one who did it, not me,' Flint answered.
Flint reflected. The autumn days were dwindling. The leaves of the aspen trees shone in the sun like burnished gold, the oaks like beaten copper. More than once, now, the dawn light had sparkled off a glazing of frost on the grass and trees. But as the morning wore on, the frost would melt, the sun would burn the damp mist from the streets, and by afternoon, although the clear air was cool, the warm light spilling through the city would be drowsy.
Behind Flint's shop stood a low wall of mossy stones, and beyond it stretched a small meadow, which ended in the ivy-tangled wall of a grove of aspen and pine. Unlike the countless gardens and courtyards of Qualinost, the meadow and the grove were not tended. Rather, they were simply remnants of the forest, left as they had been since before Kith-Kanan had led his people to Qualinesti. It was a reminder of the time when there had been no city, and no elves, but only the deep, shaded forest and the music of the wind.
Sometimes Flint would take a break from the smoky heat of the forge and come sit on the wall, pulling the clean air into his lungs as he dangled his stumpy legs over the edge. The grove of trees across the meadow tended to make him think of his journey from Solace, through the forest of Qualinesti, and once again he found himself wondering if he shouldn't be on the road soon. These days are bright and warm, Flint, he told himself, but sure as steel is strong, winter's just around the corner. And while I wouldn't doubt its touch is a mild one here within these woods, in the rest of the world that won't be the case, and if you were fool enough to try, you'd be frozen clean through long before you ever reached Solace.
But there always seemed to be one more thing he had to do before he could possibly consider leaving. He had promised the Lady Selena an entire set of goblets, crafted to look like the gilded blooms of tulips. Those alone had taken him a fortnight of work, but when they were finished, he found himself hurrying to fashion a pair of intricate wedding bands he had promised a young noble anxious to court an elf maiden. And then the captain of the Speaker's guard stepped through the door of the shop, despairing of the balance of his long sword, which he claimed the elven smiths had had no luck in correcting. The problem was so obvious to Flint's eye-the decorative handguard on the hilt had thrown the balance completely off-that he would've thought a good bit less of himself if he hadn't agreed to help. Sure as his beard kept growing, the tasks kept coming.
Other than a new set of clothes, compliments of the Speaker, Flint looked hardly different from the day he had first set foot in Qualinost, with his dark hair tied behind his neck and his bushy beard tucked neatly into his belt. However, he had traded his heavy, iron-soled boots for a pair made of soft gray leather, and although his feet were still twice as big as any elf's, at least his footsteps didn't sound quite as much like thunder now.
And his clothes… Green wasn't Flint's usual color, but the tailor the Speaker had sent to him four days ago had clucked his tongue and shaken his head at the rust-colored wool Flint had picked out for his new autumn outfit. The old elf insisted on emerald green, but Flint protested that it was too gaudy. However, when Flint finally tried it on, the old tailor clapped his hands.
'It's definitely you, Master Fireforge,' he had declared.
'You think so?' Flint had asked, scowling at himself in the polished silver mirror.
'Indeed,' the tailor responded firmly. 'You look positively dashing.'
'You do, Flint,' Tanis had said from his seat in a corner.
Dashing? Flint had thought, looking at his reflection critically, and then he grinned at himself. 'Well, maybe I do, at that,' he said. Tanis laughed.
Now, the half-elf, brownish red hair bouncing, sprinted around the corner of Flint's beetle-browed shop-made more squatty-looking by the contrast with nearby elven homes.
'Lucky me. Company,' Flint snorted, though he smiled all the same. 'Where's that imp Laurana? I'm surprised she didn't drag you off to play some noisy game or some such.'
'She tried,' Tanis said. He plucked two apples off a laden tree, tossed the better one to Flint, found a
