“I am impressed, Zathar Runeforger. You have done powerful work here.”
I can't reply; I remain frozen with shock at what I've created. My eyes run over the runes over and over again.
The structure of the poem remains the same, the basic narrative also. Most of the verbiage is intact too, though the runes for those words are new, and their connotations often reversed. The runic flow also remains surprisingly intact.
The nouns have changed. Nearly every one of them. A flake of ash, carrying on its texture the record of a burning battlefield, is brought down into a twisting cavern by cold and fierce wind, which is said to be like clawed hands. It sinks through broad tunnels, passes by stones in the shape of bones, by piles of dry obsidian sand, around hollow pits and down some of these latter also. Finally it comes to rest in a black place. There is stillness where it rests, the stillness of oblivion.
“It won't work,” I whisper. “The metaphor is wrong. The information must come to an open place, not a closed one.”
“Is that what these runes say?” asks Vanerak. “Read me them.”
I do so. Vanerak nods in satisfaction.
“I think they will work as intended. Is your ear not a cave leading into your head? The underworld is a living place also—what falls into it, should it prove interesting enough, will eventually be uncovered. Equip them.”
“I have not yet forged the band to keep them in place, my Runethane.”
“Then do so. Does it need to be enruned also?”
“No, my Runethane. It's just to hold them in place.”
He steps away from the anvil. I find myself a small sheet of titanium and saw a thin strip from it. Glittering metal-dust coats my hands. I recall Nazak's warning—but Vanerak says nothing. He just stares impatiently.
I heat the band, bend it, quench it. All my movements feel automatic. I'm too exhausted to think, too afraid to worry. I cut notches into the band at either end, polish, and am finally done.
I fix the ears to it.
“Equip them,” Vanerak orders.
I do so. For a few moments I hear nothing, then it comes all at once—every single sound in the forge. I can hear the breathing of each individual runeknight, hear the creak of every one of their armor plates. The one at the third window from the entranceway on the left needs to oil his boots. Their creaking is deafening, nearly as deafening as the gurgling of the furnace as magma is brought up then flows down.
Nazak shifts his posture. Everything seems to spin. A runeknight shifts on his chair. A grinding sound fills my ears, and yet at the same time I can still hear everything else on top of it. Nothing is drowned out. Each new sound becomes a new layer over all the others.
Vanerak is absolutely still, and somehow that silence is worse than the discord that surrounds him.
It's getting overwhelming. I shut my eyes, but nothing changes. Something is wrong. I open my eyes again. No difference.
The blackness remains.
I cry out and tear the ears from my head. For a few moments I do not draw breath, then, by degrees, my vision returns.
“Why did you remove them?” Vanerak asks. “Are they defective?”
“When... When I put them on, I might as well be in that lightless place in my poem. I cannot see.”
Nazak laughs loudly. “Impressive power!”
“Quiet,” Vanerak orders.
Nazak shuts his mouth.
“I crafted these to enhance my forging, my Runethane. But I lost control of my power, and now they are useless.”
“You insult both your craft and your power. There are blind runeknights, some of senior degree. They use their hearing, touch, and heat-sense alone. And you did not lose control of your power. When you forged you were lucid.”
“I don't remember forging. I don't even remember getting the jasperite and grinding it down. Not a bit of it.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“Even if you don't remember, it was you who did it. You did not lose control of your power. You utilized it to its fullest extent.”
“Yes, but in the wrong direction.”
“In the right direction. They are powerful, are they not? I can tell. The runic flow is excellent, and I do not often praise my runeknights' crafts as such. To bring such power out of such poor metalwork and inferior gems is especially impressive.”
“I thank you for the praise, my Runethane.”
“You do not sound thankful—you sound tired, and worried. You have no reason for the latter. Power is not something to be worried over. It is to be harnessed.”
He picks up my runic ears and hands them to me. “Write down this poem on fresh paper. Translate the runes and define every aspect of them also. Then I will take your craft for a short while. Do not worry—you will have it back, unharmed, within the long-hour. Then you can return to your crafting. I am eagerly looking forward to the results of further runeforging.”
“Yes, my Runethane.”
----------------------------------------
I am returned to my quarters. I still feel sick, and empty also, and cannot eat nor drink anything. Neither can I sleep. I lie upon my bed staring up into the cheap phosphoresence of the wormlight. My body still feels hot. Sweat soaks into the sheets from my skin. My mind whirls with strange images, and when I finally do sleep, nightmares assail me.
Vanerak features in them heavily.
I wake up gasping, my throat parched. Water is brought to me and I gulp it down. I crawl back into my bed. My door remains open; guards are watching me as I sleep. Maybe they are worried that I might die on their watch.
But I don't die. My fever clears and I manage to sup down some thin broth. Nazak, looking unusually worried, asks when I next plan to go down to the forge.
“I feel drained,” I reply, and this is no lie. “I won't be going down for a while yet. Instead I will study runes. Our Runethane will have no problem with that, surely?”
“He should not.”
For a while, however, I can't find the strength even to open one of the books. And when I do eventually manage to, I find that I don't have nearly enough energy for the gruelling task of memorization. All I can do is lie with my head propped up on my pillow and one of the books stood, open, upon my beard.
I flick through the pages of the Dictionary of Upper Balhalgal, trying to find some pattern to the runes. According to the book's foreword, rusted armor featuring the script was discovered when an eruption diverted the river feeding Balhalgal Lake, resulting in its draining. A further breakthrough was made when explorers broke through the lakebed into a series of caves below, and found more runes carved onto an obelisk in what must have been a Runethane's palace.
In a cavern below that another script was discovered, Lower Balhalgal, yet despite their proximity they are only distantly related.
What is the script's theme?
The foreword does not mention one. It is a script termed 'general', which means it contains runes for all common words and very few for specialized ones. It's not particularly broad either, with few runes for more subtle variations.
For example, it has the rune for zhekh, meaning steel, but no runes that mean bright-steel, sharpness-of-steel, steel-as-power, steel-malleability, white-yellow-of-heated-steel. So if the runeknight wishes to include these meanings in his poem, he must use multiple runes of simpler meanings. This makes the task awkward and difficult, and the final result inferior.
I'm not sure what the point of using this script would be. Maybe if you wanted to emphasize simplicity and directness. In that case, any script could do. Why did the first Runeforger even create this script? Was it an earlier, inferior work? Yet it's said to be newer than the script found below it.
I just don't know. I don't know anything about runeforging, not really. Nausea hits me—it seems that Vanerak knows more than I do!
How was he able to draw that power out of me? How could he know that if I forged while still in a trance, my runes would change further? Did he really just work it out through deduction, or does he know something about runeforging, or about the first Runeforger, that I don't?
One thing is clear to me at least: I cannot allow Vanerak to know more about my powers than I do. I need to work out how they work, exactly how they work, their nature, their limitations. I need to think hard. Perhaps I need to go into a trance and explore the sphere, even.
Not right now. If I go back there now I'll burn myself up. But I can think.
So I think:
What exactly happens when I go into a trance?
I go somewhere, not physically, but my mind or soul goes somewhere. Which? Both mind and soul, I think. Well, are they not one and the same? It doesn't matter. They go somewhere, my conscious self goes somewhere—deep into the magma sea.
Where in the magma sea?
Where the sphere and its three shadows are. Where exactly that is, I have no way to tell. It might not be so deep, though. That's why I didn't feel myself sinking this time. The heat came around me all at once because this time I stood at more or less the same level that it exists at.
Next, I draw power into my runes. No, that's not quite right—I draw power into myself, then put it into my runes. I'm the conduit, the valve through which the power of the world's blood flows, and I shape it into symbols. I then come out of the trance, remembering the symbols, and twist metal into them.
Apart from this time, and the time I made my ruby, when I made the symbols while still in my trance. My body moved while I was still swimming within the world's blood. Somehow that made the symbols more different and more powerful. How?
I think hard. My head begins to ache. I clutch at my temples and groan. I need to find the answer to this. I need to know what Vanerak has worked out.
It's no good. I climb out of my bed and pace around my room, still clutching at my temples.
Why is my power greater when I shape the runes still in my trance?
I cannot find an answer. It's another mystery, like the mystery of true metal, that I cannot unravel.
But perhaps Vanerak can.
One thing is clear to me: I cannot allow him to learn any more of my powers, because if I am only a conduit for this power, the power of the world's blood, then perhaps there is a way for other dwarves to become conduits too.