There is nothing wrong with the forge itself. That's not why my heart sinks. It's equipped as well as any forge I've ever seen, with an anvil the size of a small boar, a heavy-duty, if primitive furnace, and a rack of hammers and tongs of every size and shape I might want spans the length of one wall. It is ventilated with small openings behind the furnace and over the top of the anvil, so despite the somewhat low roof I will not be choking. Light is provided by a dozen lamps of daycrystal, each of which catches the sun in its facets through a hundred miles of stone, or at least this is the spectacular effect they give off.
No, my heart sinks because of what is around the forge. High in the walls small, barred windows are set, ten of them. Through each I can see a plain seat. They are positioned at just the right distance so that the viewers can observe the whole forge, everything I'm doing in it, and attached to each window is a lens on an adjustable arm as well, for when the viewers want to get a really close look at my runes.
“I'm to be watched while I forge?” I ask.
“You were in your trial, so why wouldn't you be also in your punishment?” says Nazak.
“That was to ensure I wasn't cheating. Why am I to be observed here?”
“I think you know.”
“I will be able to create new runes easier with some privacy.”
“You managed just fine during your trial.”
“Those were not my greatest works.”
“Is that so? Our Runethane disagrees. If you have a problem, you may take it up with him.”
“Is it he who will be watching me?”
“When he has the time. When he does not, I will watch you, or else another senior runeknight will. We will take extensive records which our Runethane will peruse when he sees fit.”
“I see.”
There's no argument I can make which will sway him, nor Vanerak. That my work in the trial was some of my best is certainly no lie, and Vanerak is not going to throw away the opportunity to watch the second runeforger perform his magic just because of a minor taboo. In the future I'll find some way to get rid of them. For now I'll just have to bear the discomfort.
“Are you ready to get to work now, or do we have to walk you all the way back to your room? Do you need to sleep off the shock?”
“I'm ready to do some work if I have the materials. Do I?”
He points. “Check through that door.”
I walk over to a tall door in the wall. I open it. A few strides down a short corridor and I come into a large storage space.
A very large storage space. I stop still in shock, look from left to right. Before me are shelves bent with the weight of blocks and bars of steel, bronze, titanium, and tungsten. Rolls of silver, copper, gold, platinum and palladium wire lie upon others. At one side are open cases of glittering gems, and at the opposite side, on higher shelves, are labeled boxes, though boxes may be too small a word—each is a chest, and the labels read:
Incandesite, jasperite, glasolite, quizik, jadyl, ratrag, wexspyr and hytrigite.
All the eight major reagents, and all in great quantities. The air around me shivers with their power. In my nose is the smell of burning metal and molten glass, of dry ice and incense and distilled poison. I look back and forth over the boxes once more, taking in the various shades they glow in. I take down one of the boxes of incandesite and open it up.
Inside are seven fist-sized nuggets of dark orange. Their warmth is stronger than that of burning coals, and the power I feel from them makes me giddy.
The nugget I found buried in the wall, all that long time ago while I was a miner, was half the size and quality of even the smallest one in this box. My head begins to spin. I put the box back, and turn around, take in the sight of metal again.
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This is a truly vast storage space for one dwarf, I realize. The scale didn't quite hit me when I first walked in, not properly, but now it does. This room is about half the size of one of the Fort's storage chambers, and those contained materials for the use of over two hundred.
I look at the shelves with coils of wire on them. It cost half a year's savings to buy just one coil of palladium, and there are ten here waiting for my use. And I have no doubt that if I exhaust my supply, the next time I return to the forge, there will be ten fresh ones sitting there.
Advancement as a runeknight is as much about wealth as it is skill at the forge and ferocity in battle. I know this well—the armor of Broderick's slain, fished out from the chasm river and melted down, was in large part to thank for my advancement from tenth to fifth degree.
And now my resources are unlimited.
Xomhyrk told me to become stronger. I can do this here, become much stronger. I can get to second degree at least, first degree if I can figure out the secret to true metal or maybe coax it from my watchers somehow, or even Vanerak. I was wrong to complain just before. Being observed is a small price to pay for a treasure trove such as this.
“Well?” says Nazak. “I'm sure what you need is in there somewhere. And if not, I'm sure Vanerak can find it for you. You're not to have any almergris though, nor any other material that might injure you too badly.”
“That's fine,” I say. “I don't need any almergris. Just some tungsten will do for now.”
“Tungsten, is it? Try not to waste too much. You are to be given all the metal you need, but if you don't accord it the proper respect our Runethane will not be happy.”
“What do you take me for? Even if I am the traitor, I am still a runeknight, and a dwarf. I do not waste my materials.”
“Tungsten is far harder to work with than even titanium. You will have a great deal of trouble at first—but fine, if that's what you want to go with, it's your decision.” He scowls. “It's not as if you'll be losing any money if you fuck up.”
He sounds resentful—well, who wouldn't be? To see your hated enemy be given such wealth—I am starting to feel bad for him, vile though he may be. Two of his comrades died so that I could be brought here and given these riches.
I don't feel bad enough to let his tone affect me though. After donning a salamander leather apron and pulling on a skin-fit pair of gloves of the same, I go to one of the metal shelves at the back where the tungsten is. I wrap my fingers around one of the smaller bricks. It feels cold even through the insulating leather. I grasp and pull it up. Momentum pushes me back, and I stagger a little, then nearly drop it. I end up squatting down in an extremely undignified fashion, straining to keep it from the floor, face going red.
It's not even that big! It's just twenty or so centimeters long, half that wide and half again as thick. Yet it weighs a good portion of my own bodyweight.
I knew it was more than twice as heavy as steel, but to feel it for myself—suddenly the task is daunting.
Grunting and groaning, I manage to stand and carry it out the storage room. I grit my teeth and lift it up onto the anvil. Upon impact it makes a solid-sounding clang. I wince. Nazak is looking at me with disgust. Some of the other guards, who have taken up positions behind the windows, seem to be stifling laughter.
I take a step back, breath deep a few times, and stare at the block of dark metal. Its color makes it more intimidating than steel or titanium. I sense a stubbornness about it, like it's animal that's going to refuse to move no matter how hard I goad it.
I shake my head. I am being stupid—I am a dwarf, a runeknight, and no metal is going to get the better of me. Before the short-hour is out, this brick is going to be a sheet. And through the hammering I will learn exactly the limits of this material.
First it must be heated. I inspect the furnace, find the temperature dial and crank it up as high as it will go. There is a low rumbling, a sudden yellow glow, and magma flows into the heating chamber then around both sides of the tray. A magma furnace! I was wrong to assume this furnace was a primitive design. It is not complex, but it is sleek and efficient. It's already hurting my skin to be too near it.
I inspect the tongs on the tool rack and choose the heftiest pair. I close them around the block and, being very careful about where I put my weight, place it into the bright mouth of the furnace.
Now to wait. I step back and try to remember all I've studied about forging with tungsten. The temperature must always be high, for at lower temperatures the metal is brittle and can shatter, although even at high temperatures the metal resists the hammer-strokes. I have heard it said that this metal is one that must be beaten into submission. It is the complete opposite to titanium. Tungsten doesn't want to change shape; it wants to stay in the form it is. It does not want to be turned into armor—that is why in an unruned state it's one of the worst metals a dwarf could fight in. It's brittle and too heavy, like leaden glass. The poems I'm to enrune it with are going to have to be very clever.
Yet despite all this, the minimum degree for a runeknight of Thanerzak's army was fifth. Xomhryk's Dragonslayers all wore tungsten too, and the lowest of them were fifth degree also. This task is well within my capabilities.
The tungsten is glowing red, now orange. After a while, yellow. Should be about ready. I grasp it with the tongs and lift it back to the anvil. I pick up a lead-cored steel hammer of medium size and line up my first strike.
I bring it down firmly. The impact reverberates up my arm, jangles my nerves and makes my wrist and shoulder hurt sharply. There's no visible change to the tungsten.
Just out of practice, that's all. I need to be firmer, and totally unafraid. It's just metal and I am a runeknight. It will be shaped as I see fit. I bring the hammer down again and there's a sound like a gong cracking mid-ring. The tungsten cracks jaggedly down the middle and I shout out in dismay.