The Covenant of The Forge

Others joined her, and Willen allowed himself to be hauled away. Beyond the crowd he turned and bumped into another dwarf. It was Olim Goldbuckle.

Other boats had landed, and suddenly the little cubicle was packed with people. Slide Tolec was there, and Bole Trune leaning on his cudgel and looking thoroughly out of place, and others, everywhere.

“We heard,” the Theiwar said, “so we came. The birth of a child is a — ”

“I’ll tell the lot of you what it is not!” a Hylar woman hissed, glaring at all the males packed into the room. “It is not a public spectacle! Out! All of you, out!”

Sheepishly, most of the leading citizens of Thorbardin were herded from the room by irate females. One, though, remained. Mistral Thrax refused to budge. He clung to his crutch and to a tapestry, shaking his head. “I won’t leave,” he insisted. “I am needed here.”

“Then stay out of the way,” someone said, and turned away to close the doors, shutting out all the other males. For a time the crowded cubicle was alive with bustling, chattering women doing mysterious things, then a silence fell which was broken by a slap and an angry wail. “A boy!” someone said. “A strong, healthy boy!”

The wail had carried through the closed doors, and now they flew open and people thronged in again, deep male voices laughing and chattering, aahing and oohing, hard hands slapping Willen on his armored back as he tried to see past the mob of women. In the bed, a tired and radiant Tera Sharn held her infant close to her and smiled her pleasure.

Mistral Thrax was not watching, though. His hands ached and his heart was pounding, and his gaze was fixed on the open doorway. There was something there — barely visible — something like a whiff of smoke that grew and roiled and formed itself into the tenuous shape of a tall, human man. In dark hollows a pair of spectral eyes opened, and Mistral pushed forward to face the apparition. “No!” he shouted. “No! I forbid you!”

The “eyes” began to glow, a murky red that grew brighter and brighter.

“I killed you once,” Mistral Thrax rasped. “I’ll do it again!”

The smoke flowed but held its shape, and now all eyes in the room were on it, people backing away in fright. A voice like a whisper of smoke said, “The child. The seed. In morit deis Calnaris,” it whispered. “Refeist ot atium — ”

Roaring a challenge, Willen Ironmaul threw himself at the vision … and rebounded as though he had run into a wall. The whispering voice hesitated only an instant, then repeated, “Refeist ot atium — ”

Raising his crutch, Mistral Thrax flung it at the smoke. It seemed to strike an invisible shield, but it clung there and began to glow. It turned red, then brighter red, and its shape changed. The crutch became a spear — a twin-tined fishing spear in the hand of a tattered, ancient dwarf who seemed only partly visible.

“- ot atium,” the smoke whispered. “Dactas ot destis!”

Fires flew from the glowing “eyes,” fires aimed directly at the infant in Tera Sharn’s arms. But they did not get there. Like a magnet drawing iron, the spear in Kitlin Fish-taker’s hand drew the fires. They raged into its point, along its shaft, and into the spectral dwarf who flamed as bright as sunlight. He flamed, absorbing the curse, then thrust the spear forward into the heart of the smoke, and the flames flowed back from him into the specter. For long seconds the two stood motionless, sharing forces that were beyond imagining. Then the flaming shape of Kitlin Fishtaker raised its free arm over its head and opened its hand. In its palm lay a medallion — a fourteen-point star melded from seven metals. Above the roar of fire-forces, the dwarf-apparition’s voice said, “The child’s name shall be Damon. He shall be known as Father of Kings.”

A moment more the glare raged, then it flared out as though it had never been. The smoke-vision of Grayfen the Magician was gone. The spear was gone. Kitlin Fishtaker was gone, and a stunned silence lay on the packed little room.

There was a tiny thump as something fell to the floor, landing on bright carpet at the foot of Tera’s bed. Willen Ironmaul, just getting to his feet, stooped and picked the thing up, looked at it, and then held it up for others to see. It was that same amulet — the one forged by the thanes to bind the agreement among them, the one whose final weld came from the hammer of Colin Stonetooth.

“Father of Kings,” Willen muttered, shaken. He turned, gazing at his wife and their infant child, then gently laid the amulet on the pillow beside them. “Damon,” he said, touching his son’s pink brow with hard, gentle fingers. “Damon. Father of Kings.”

In a corner, unnoticed, Mistral Thrax held his hands open before him and gazed at their palms. The marks were gone. As though they had never been there, the scars of magic had disappeared. “I’m free,” the old dwarf muttered. “I am clean at last … and free.”

Without anyone noticing him, he turned and hobbled out of the room, using a guardsman’s pike as a crutch. Suddenly he had a real yearning for a mug of cold ale.