‘Star-metal is not so easy to shape,’ uttered the runelord, causing his apprentice to turn.
A partially formed blade, slowly being cogged into shape and then to be edged and fullered, lay upon the anvil. Morek stared at it forlornly.
‘It is unyielding, master.’ He sounded breathless; the sinews in his arms were taut enough to snap and his muscles bunched like overripe fruit grown too big for its own skin.
‘Like the karadurak, it must be coaxed into giving up its secrets,’ Ranuld told him. ‘Strength is not enough. Any oaf can whack a hammer with enough force to split a rock, it will only respond to skill. And much like splitting ever-stone, meteoric iron, gromril, can only be forged by a master smith. Are you such a dawi, Morek of the Furrowbrows?’
‘I think so, master.’
Ranuld scoffed. ‘Werit. Think? Think, is it? Think!’ He bellowed, ‘You must know it. Az and klad will not forge themselves.’
‘Master, I…’
‘And to think it is to you who I must pass on all my knowledge… Kruti-eating wanaz, I should take the hammer from your hand this instant and use it upon your stupid head! Ufdi!’
‘Please don’t, master.’
‘Wazzock,’ spat the runelord. His eyes narrowed on his terrified apprentice then to the slowly bending star-metal he had clamped against the anvil. An axe blade was visible, and once it was finished the runes could be struck. ‘Hit it again,’ Ranuld told him, watching sternly as Morek worked the meteoric iron.
‘Gromril is the ore of heroes and masters. It is only they who can wield it, only they who can craft it.’
Morek kept going, hammering relentlessly, slowly building up a rhythm that Ranuld felt resonate in his very soul.
‘It requires an artisan’s touch to tame and temper. No mere metal-smith can do it. Let them forge shoes for mules or rivets for scaffolds. Theirs is not the way of the rhun. That is the province of our sacred order alone, of which you are a part.’
Hammering, Morek became entranced and the star-metal began to bend to his will.
Ranuld lit up his pipe, took a deep draw as he sat back to regard his apprentice.
‘The rhun is slow, so too the metal that bears it. Many weeks it can take just to make a single ingot. Forge its angles sharp and tight, imbue it with the magic of our elders and become a master.’
The ring of metal against metal was almost hypnotic now. Morek had transcended from the ‘now’ to a place of creation, the rites of forging tripping off his lips like a chant.
‘Aye,’ said Ranuld, ‘now you know, lad. Now you can see.’
Slowly, a smile crept up at the edges of his lips. Morek was learning.
‘As one light dies,’ he said, ‘another ignites.’
Even the skies presaged a storm. Grim, black clouds crawled across the sun to blot out the light. Imladrik felt the cold pull at his clothes and seep beneath the plates of his armour. But it was not just the sun’s absence which chilled him. The look in the High King’s eyes was like ice when he had dismissed Imladrik and the other elves. Suppressing a shiver, he dug his heels into Draukhain’s flanks, urging the beast to fly lower.
Karaz-a-Karak was a bitter memory. He cursed inwardly that blades had been drawn in the High King’s hold hall and wondered if there was any turning back from the course they were set upon now.
The prince’s retainers were on their way back to Oeragor, where he would join them just as soon as he had made this last flight with Draukhain. Others would return to Athel Maraya, Kor Vanaeth and even the vaunted spires of Tor Alessi. After what little he had heard in the entrance hall, Imladrik had decided to track the dwarfs leaving Everpeak. Not those going to Barak Varr but the rangers who had been ordered to recover the bodies of the slain. He wanted to see where it had taken place, and know what had happened in order to make sense of it. One of the dwarfs’ runelords was dead. It was unlikely a bandit’s arrow had killed him. Imladrik suspected something darker was at work and intended to find out the root of it. The only way to do that was to go to where Agrin Fireheart had died.
The prince’s dragon snorted and growled, behaving more belligerently now than when it had been surrounded by dwarfs. It felt the prince’s ire and frustration, echoing and amplifying it.
‘Peace, Draukhain…’ Imladrik soothed, inflecting his voice with a mote of dragon mastery. The beast eased, piercing a layer of cloud.
Below, the rangers were gathering up the bodies of the dead, wrapping them in cloth and placing them reverently on the back of a cart. As funerary transportation went, it was hardly fitting. Imladrik stayed within the lower cloud layer, wreathed in its grey tendrils so if the dwarfs should look up they would not easily see him. The last thing peace needed now was the sighting of a dragon prowling the scene of a foul murder. But then perhaps peace was beyond them at this point. He hoped fervently that this was not the case, and wondered how much his brother knew or cared about what was unfolding on the Old World. Not for the first time in recent weeks, Imladrik wondered if he should return home. The letters he had received at the tournament were still tucked in his vambrace. Their words were burned so indelibly in his mind that he had no need for either any more.
Rising again with a beat of Draukhain’s powerful wings, Imladrik found he was not alone when he returned to higher skies.
‘Can you smell that reek?’ asked Liandra from the back of Vranesh. The beast was small in comparison to the mighty Draukhain but the two dragons recognised each other as kin, snarling and calling to one another in greeting.
Liandra wrinkled her nose. ‘It is dark magic. Like
