My second fever passes quickly, but the fear that brought it on remains. Vanerak suspects me—this is no longer just a conjecture but fact, for he said so himself. He warned me directly, which he has not done until now.

If I don't want to anger him any further, I best get started on my armor as soon as I can. I tell the guards that I'm ready to go down to the forge. A half hour through the winding passages later and I'm here.

I lay some paper down on the anvil and draw my final designs for the plates. Since I already drafted up a lot of designs back before I started work on my runic ears, I have a solid idea in my head of what I'm making.

The sketching goes perfectly. I go over the lines again, make sure I've measured and calculated everything properly, and I have.

This suit will be the most complex I've ever created. The plates will fit perfectly to each other and slide tightly when I move. I'll be able to wade into the magma sea up to my neck, if I'm ever allowed out on the shore. This lack of friction between the airtight plates will be achieved not by runes—the armor's poems will have to be entirely focused on strength and heat resistance—but by quenching each plate in salamander's blood. It's an expensive resource back in Allabrast, but here in Vanerak's realm there are salamanders by the swarm. It is not an especially egregious request.

Designs ready, I get myself some sheets of tungsten. My first task is to hammer them down to one third of their current thickness.

I switch on the furnace. Magma gurgles and pours forth around the wide heating plate, which is made of a kind of dark gray stone that shines like glass a little and shows no signs of melting even where the magma runs around it directly. I wonder what it is, and how expensive a forge like this would be to hire out in Allabrast.

I wait for the heat inside to become even, then I place in the first sheet. It glows yellow, then goes white, then shining white. I withdraw it and place it on the anvil.

I strike! The clang echoes around the forge. The sound is like the violent clash of hammer on shield, a battlefield noise. A few of the middle degree guards jump a little behind their barred windows. I strike again and again, relentlessly. The tungsten resists my first few efforts, but quickly starts to give in to my superior power. It recognizes my strength and starts to flatten out. This might be a deception though; it could be getting ready to crack, to humiliate me. The white is not quite so blinding any more—I hurry to put it back in the furnace.

Its color becomes blinding again. I take it out and return to violently hammering it. My lengthy practice sessions repairing the block I broke on my first attempt have given me a real feel for exactly how much power I need to put into each blow to distort the metal the way I want. My hammering is violent, but also precise. The thickness evens out.

It's too big to go into the furnace all at once now. I put it aside to cool, and in the meantime start work on flattening another sheet.

When it comes time to return that one to the furnace for a second time, the first sheet has cooled enough for me to cut it. Vanerak didn't seem to mind me using a saw to make the band for my runic ears, despite what Nazak told me—maybe he was just trying to make my life difficult—so I get out a long one and cut the sheet into quarters.

I hammer my second sheet until it is also too wide to place into the forge, set it aside to cool, then I heat and hammer the quarter sections of the first sheet. Each of them becomes the correct thickness. I let them cool as well—while I carefully cut the second sheet—and then it's time to check they're even.

I take off my gloves and run my bare palm over each. They seem very smooth. I've done better than I thought. I then use a small hammer to chime each. The sound seems even, at least to my ears of mere flesh.

I have come to the point, I know, that I ought to put on my ears of titanium and runes. Yet I can barely bring myself to look on them, let alone equip them again. This is not just because of the blindness they caused—they might be nearly as powerful as my amulet. They're at least as powerful as Gutspiercer was. I might find that after a short-hour with them on, I can no longer remove them.

No. I'm not going to wear them. It's just too much of a risk.

Once more I check that the sheets are smooth, then I thin out the four quarters of the second sheet. I check that they're smooth—one isn't and I spend some time correcting it. Then I have to do the third sheet, and the fourth.

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By the time I'm cutting the fourth into quarters, my arms are trembling and my breath is coming in short gasps. I have to continue, though. I need to get my armor done quickly, lest Vanerak's patience grow thin, or he changes his mind and decides that I really am lying, or...

“Drink up, traitor!”

I'm sitting against the wall. One of my guards is forcing a waterskin to my mouth. I take a deep draught of coolness. Nazak is standing over me, looking annoyed.

“If you die in the forge, our Runethane will not be happy.”

I gulp down some more water.

“You should be more careful. Know your limits.”

“He won't be happy if my runes are delayed.”

“He is more than five centuries old. He has more patience than you think.”

“Still—”

“You are to return to your quarters and rest. After a period of half a long-hour you may return.”

“I need to—”

“You are still not fully recovered from your fever. Your health is my responsibility, traitor. If I say you are return to your quarters, you will return.”

I bow my head. “Yes, honored runeknight.”

So, I return to my quarters to rest. I eat, drink, memorize runes, and then it's back to the forge. When I enter, it seems more real than real—the only solid thing amidst the winding black tunnels of this realm. All that passed between this session and the last one is like a forgotten dream. I don't even remember which dictionary it was I was studying.

Once a fifth and sixth sheet have been thinned, cut into quarters, and thinned again, I have finally prepared all the metal I need to start shaping the armor. I draw the shapes of the plates onto the tungsten with slow precision. I measure everything thrice. Thrice again. Only then do I ready the saw. It'll spill metal dust, and make each plate slightly smaller through the wastage, but I've accounted for this in my measurements.

Time to saw. Tungsten-dust sparks brightly under the daycrystals before transforming into gray clouds. I cough—but even though rock-dust destroys your lungs, it's said that metal-dust strengthens them. I don't let my coughs disrupt my sawing, which I do with almost painful slowness. Before each stroke I take care to check that my tool is angled correctly, and each stroke itself is slow also.

My arms tremble with impatience. They want to move faster. I want to move faster too, to quickly be able to start on the runes, and have something to help diminish Vanerak's suspicions. Yet a shoddy job will only irritate him.

I glance up at Nazak once. He shakes his head.

“Don't blame me when he lambasts you for insulting the metal.”

“Our Runethane had no problem with me sawing when I made the band for my ears.”

“That was not a craft, being unruned. And he had other things on his mind.”

“My new runes will impress him enough.”

“You better hope so, traitor.”

I continue to saw slowly. After many sessions, the plates that will go around my limbs are cut. After many more, those that will wrap my torso and belly are too. It takes longer to make the plates that will come together to form my gauntlets and boots, since they are small and tricky. My helmet and visor pieces do not take quite so long, but the work does not go quickly either.

During the long, enforced rests between forging sessions I work through my dictionaries gradually. I can still see no patterns.

It's time to bend the pieces into shape now. I heat a section of an arm-plate to blinding white, and hammer. Each strike takes intense concentration. I'm not just hammering it flat, but into a precise angle. If I put in just a fraction too much power, then the metal bends too much, and I must bend it back. Each time this happens, the metal is weakened just a fraction.

Just a fraction, but many fractions add up. Quenching will not be able to undo all these invisible cracks.

The finger plates prove the toughest. I can't use one of the larger hammers on these, so most of the force of the blows must come from my arm and body rather than from the hammer's weight. This makes it very hard to put in the right amount of power, especially when I'm half-delirious from heat and exhaustion toward the end of a session.

Eventually the finger pieces are all done. But the metal has been insulted. I can feel it. When I chime them, there is a slight hint of discordancy that I can do nothing to fix.

The helmet also proves tricky. Unlike the rest of the armor, it's to be formed from one solid plate. The curve is three-dimensional, and to hammer so precisely is nearly beyond my abilities. Even though I've left it to last, in order to gain as much experience as possible through shaping the other pieces, it nearly proves a botch-job. Half a dozen times my hammer comes close to tearing through the metal on a badly-angled stroke.

All the while the guards watch on, stroking their beards. Some are half asleep by the end of each session. Only Nazak, Halax, and occasionally the rough-throated Helzar, commanders of the guards, are totally focused throughout. It is frightening how focused they are, actually, how patient, how obsessed. Why do they watch so closely? Do they think that by watching my movements they will somehow gain a clue to my abilities?

I deliver the final stroke to my helmet, evening out a corner. This stroke at least I manage perfectly. I step back, look over my hoard of shaped metal, and let out a long, deep, ragged breath. Finally done.

Now to heat each individually to an exact brightness, quench in salamander's blood for an exact amount of time depending on the weight of each piece, and then, and only then, finally, will I be able to start work on my runes—which means, in this case, creating an entire new script as promised to Hayhek.

So I am not even half done. I lean my forearms on the anvil and groan.

I need a drink, an adventure, an exploration... Anything. Even a dwarf as focused as me needs a break from the forge once in a while.

A drink. That's what I need the most. Not one alone in my quarters: one with my friends, as we laugh together in the guildhall.

But in this life Vanerak has trapped me in, there is no time for any of that. I am to forge, and that is all.