I hammer, I heat, I hammer, I heat. That is all I know, and all I have known for a time indeterminate. How long have I spent on this single segment of my armor? I feel that I have remade it ten times fifty times over. Each time I think I have finished, I run my hands along it, feel that it is finally good enough, and then I equip my runic ears and know that it is not.
The bright glow of the loop fades. The forge becomes dark. I equip my runic ears and it becomes darker still, until there is no light at all; there is only sound.
I hear the breathing of the guards. I hear the scrape of metal as Helzar shifts in her seat. I hear the burble of magma from the inner parts of the furnace. I hear the low hiss of wind as air moves in and out the vents in the ceiling.
I can also hear a very low and continuous rumble through the stone. This is a relatively unfamiliar sound; it started only a few long-hours ago.
I chime the loop of metal. Its tone is clear and pure. Its melody, the wave of increase and decrease of pitch, is perfectly even—ah, no, not quite. There is a kink somewhere. I listen more closely, searching for its origin. I cannot find it so I chime again, and again a third time.
There, I think: a slight bend in the metal where the lower part of the loop starts to widen. It's an error of less than a millimeter, but for metal to be worthy of runes, and to be worthy of its own self-respect, there must be no errors.
I have only one chance to correct it. If I over-correct, the metal will know. Vanerak will know too, but that is not so important. In this place my thoughts are only of metal.
For many minutes I adjust my hammer's angle. I focus hard to decide the speed at which I'll strike. I cannot see the metal, but that is no matter. I can hear how other sounds shift around it. The shifting is regular. It is almost breathing.
My runic ears are not the sight-mutilating beasts I'd feared them to be. There is no death in their poem, I've realized, just calm and knowledge, and even if that knowledge be of things that were once alive, when the fleck of ash passes their bones, it is like some part of them has come alive again to be brought down to me.
I heat the loop once more, to an exact temperature—which I do not tell by color, but by the feel of warmth on my face, as a dragon might tell the location of its prey by its warmth alone. I do not mind making this comparison—this place is far from dragons.
It is a place of metal and metal alone.
I aim. I tap. I go too far, and hold back a curse—it's not the metal's fault—it is the fault of my own inferior skill.
Yet this is the closest I have come to perfection. Another few attempts and this piece will be complete.
This one segment of more than a hundred.
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I heat, I hammer, I heat, I hammer, I heat again and hammer again over and over and over. Time does not seem to pass here in this place of metal. Once in a while I will be forced to take a break, when my strength runs from me and I fall to the stone sweating yet already struggling to stand back up and wield my hammer again. On these occasions I am returned to my quarters for food, drink and rest, but am always soon back in the forge again, remembering nothing of what I consumed or what dreams I had.
Nazak will speak to me sometimes, or Helzar will or Halax. I reply—yet I can't remember what it is we discuss. Likely Vanerak is often mentioned, and some crude remarks are made about my skill. Yet I am in a place of metal and am not concerned.
The loop is ready to test once more. I run my fingers around it and can feel no imperfection. I chime it and hear low music, which becomes high, then low again. There is no disruption to the pattern.
None at all. That cannot be right. I chime again, but can still hear no disruption. I chime a third time, this time concentrating to my fullest.
Yet there is still no disruption. It follows that there must be something wrong with it visually; I remove my runic ears.
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The silence startles me. The brightness and color that comes after a few seconds is strange to me. I blink a few times to focus my vision.
I bring the loop up close for examination and yet there is no mistake. The color is pure, unmarred by shaded patches or too-bright patches, or parts where the light reflects off in an odd manner.
Finally, after what must have been two dozen long-hours, I allow myself to smile. It is complete. For the first time in my life, I have forged a piece of armor worthy of applying runes to. Now I truly understand what Wharoth meant when he told me of patience—why a single circle of metal took him three years in the forge to create, though perhaps he should have spent even longer on it.
One segment of armor does not a suit make, however. There are still more than a hundred to go, and some will prove to be far trickier. I fancy that my helmet will take me more than a year.
But time has no meaning in the forge. There is only metal. I measure the next piece of tungsten, and apply myself to cutting it from its sheet with my diamond blade.
I heat, hammer, heat and hammer.
That is all there is to do in this place of metal.
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My eyes open. I am in my quarters. The wormlight glow looks strange to my eyes, as if it's a shade I've never seen before; it is not gray, nor silver, nor is it burning red and yellow and white.
The fugue dissipates quickly then I'm pushing my body up and swinging my legs off the bed. I immediately go to the door. I knock on it—it's strange to have to knock to get out of a room rather than into it, I think for a brief moment.
It opens. It seems that it is again Halax's turn to observe me.
“You have not eaten, Runeforger. Your breakfast is ready on your table and it would be detrimental to you if you were not to honor its mean cooks, for there can be no furnace without fuel.”
I blink. “Honored runeknight Halax, how long have I been here?”
“You have slept for approximately two short-hours.”
“I mean, since I arrived in this realm of our Runethane Vanerak.”
He thinks briefly. “Around one hundred and fifty long-hours.”
“And how many of those have I spent on remaking this suit of armor?”
“A little over one hundred of them.”
One hundred! So I have spent nearly a year on just this one suit of armor. Yet the idea of spending so long on one piece doesn't appall and confuse me like it once did. Instead the only feeling that assails me is worry: am I rushing things?
“I would request that you inform our Runethane that it may take me two hundred further long hours to have it ready for his inspection.”
“Yet you are halfway through, from what I have seen.”
“The helmet will prove difficult. To make it perfect is beyond my current level of skill. It will be an exceedingly difficult task, honored runeknight. For you it might be easy, but not for one such as me.”
“Very well, Zathar Runeforger. I shall inform him. He will be pleased, I think, that you seem to have learned at least some of the value of patience. What is two hundred long-hours to one of us, after all, whose amulets allow us lives of tens of thousands?”
“Indeed, honored runeknight.”
A sudden tremor runs through the stone. I'm nearly knocked from my feet, must put my hand against the wall to steady myself. The wormlight globe swings wildly. I fancy that I can hear distant cracking, and some of the guards behind Halax look at each other in alarm. This is the biggest one we've had for a while.
“Another eruption?” I ask, though I know it was not. When the magma sea is disturbed, the vibrations are as strong, yet their frequency is not so deep.
“It is of no concern to you, Runeforger. All you must think about is your metal.”
Yet for the first time in a hundred long-hours, my thoughts on the way down to the forge are not of metal, but of stones, and mining. I have heard whispers from the guards that thousands of miners are being poured into the excavations above, to rend hundreds of tunnels through the stone to find the knowledge Runeking Ulrike believes buried here.
For a dwarf of patience, Vanerak is certainly not showing much. I think he is desperate to find something. Why and what, though, the guards do not speculate about within my earshot.
As soon as the door to the forge is opened, these thoughts vanish. I am back to my place of metal where the only thing that matters is my suit of tungsten.
It stands half completed on the armor-rack. The dark reddish tinge from the salamander blood is more vivid than it was on my first attempt.
I've decided to quench and perfect each piece as I go, rather than leaving this process to the end. If I managed to somehow ruin my whole suit of armor in one go, I think my sanity would shatter apart. Most times the quenching went well. I only ruined a few segments.
Now for the breastplate, one of the trickiest pieces. I already cut the sheet I'm to use on my last session. I place it in the furnace. It begins to glow brightly, outshining the daycrystals—they look almost dim. I take it out and place it on the anvil.
Heat, hammer, heat and hammer. The sound of my strikes entrances me. The long-hours vanish, eaten up by the tungsten, greedy for its own perfection. Because the breastplate is too bright to look at, I only listen and feel.
The clash of hammer on metal reverberates. It grows gradually more tuneful, like a mosaic taking form from scattered shards, yet this mosaic is a failure. The tune is too complex. Different ripples and curves make sounds that overlap and create discord.
However much I try, I cannot eliminate them entirely. By continuing, all I am doing is insulting the metal.
“I apologize,” I whisper.
I return it to the furnace, beat it flat, fold, shape with painstaking care, again and again, an apology on my lips with every strike I make.
Heat, hammer, heat. Will this forging ever end?