I chime my breastplate. Its music is now as that of an orchestra's, except even the greatest orchestral performance of brass trumpets and steel cymbals and mild silver triangles has its errors, its mistimed or out-of-tune notes. My breastplate, on this thirty-second improvement, has none of those.

Each curve and bend rings with a perfect note, in perfect harmony with each of the others, and there is not a single discordance that my ears can detect. Neither can my hands feel any mistakes, and the color is unmarred too. After I quench it a dozen times, it is a perfect dark crimson.

I set it aside and over the next many long-hours I work on its counterpart, the backplate. It only takes me twenty-three improvements. My skill is growing. My accuracy with each hammer-stroke has more than doubled. The power in my arms, in their base muscles, has increased and I have firmer control over how much of this power I push into each movement. No longer do I make mistakes with the temperature of the metal either. The heat from it speaks to me clearly as to whether it's ready to bend or not.

Now for the arm-plates and loops. Creating them is noticeably easier than creating the similar leg-plates and segments of my sabatons was. Though, this is not to say it is easy. I still make mistakes. I still insult the metal and have to apologize to it a hundred times over before I feel that it has forgiven me.

Is this the secret of true metal? I often wonder this, but always come to the same conclusion: it is not. Metal flows into the Runeking's foundry-palace but never out. Yet I am using the same amount of metal I always have. To throw it out, discard it before it's had a chance to become a craft would be an insult, as I have been reminded time and again.

Perhaps the secret is that the metal must be condensed somehow. Could a bar of metal be enruned so that when it is melted down, it decreases in volume? I think this would be possible, yet at the same time, I still think I'm missing the mark. I have a feeling that the secret does not involve runes, at least not directly.

After many more long-hours I reach the finger-tips of my gauntlets, the pieces that caused me so much shame on my first attempt. They cause me trouble here too. Their concave-curves are so small and exact that even with my improved skill, striking with just the right amount of power proves nearly impossible. Perhaps I should create a mold to pour the tungsten into—yet this would be a surrender. And their character would be different to the rest of the armor, inferior, and insulted by how little effort I put into their shaping.

So I hammer, heat, hammer, heat. Eventually they are done, perfect, their chimes more harmonious and purer than those of any bell I've ever heard rung. My striking is more accurate for the effort I've put in also. If I concentrate, subtle movements that were impossible for me before become possible.

I shake my head. How could I ever have been so foolish as to rush my first pair? Why did I have to ruin them?

The stone shakes and I look up. The daycrystals are rocking slightly. Some of the guards have grabbed onto the bars to steady themselves—I do not see all this, but hear it. And I hear that this quake has a note of violence in it that none yet has had.

“Fucking miners,” one of the guards mutters under his breath, so quietly that only I can hear him.

Yes, damn the miners, rending and tearing the rock with no respect for it. All they can do is destroy, never create. That is why they are hated so. But it is Vanerak pushing them to do this. I'd rather curse his name.

I think I have a meal and sleep after the quake—but soon I'm back in my place of metal. The quenching of the finger-pieces goes well—I make no fool mistakes with the quantities or heating.

Six inches an hour, I slice out the base shape of the helmet. There's another tremble through the stone and my hand slips a millimeter. I spit a curse, and add the name of our Runethane to the end of it inside my head.

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After I've cut it all out, I trim a sliver out and weld it to where the mistake is. Then I heat, fold, hammer, heat that patch a hundred times until the insult has been forgiven.

I start to bend the white-hot tungsten. Even though I am seeing it with sound as I work, it is still white: the shimmer of distorted noise around the hot metal is color to me. Each level of heat has its own shimmer—though even if there was no shimmer, I'd still be able to tell the temperature by its feel on my face.

The bending proves just as difficult as anticipated. The shape of the helm is complex, with curves that flow in precise ways, and all are more extreme than those on my breastplate were. Yet my skill does not fail me.

I only have to re-do the craft nine times before it is perfect.

Now for the final quenchings. I wheel out the tank of blood and fill the bath—an ordinary, unruned one, of course. I heat the helm to the correct heat, just a touch higher than if I were to quench it in cooled blood, and push it under the surface with quickness born from confidence that all is well with every aspect of my action.

Bloody steam fills the air. It clouds and muffles the sounds of the forge, and my nose is filled with its scent. My ruby shivers with delight. I pull the helmet out of the bath and chime it. No distortions. I take off my runic ears—after a few moments I see that the slight redness has been taken on evenly.

I refill the bath back to the correct volume, and quench again. Again. Ten times the metal sinks into the bloody bath and comes out a little redder than before. Finally, it is the same shade as the other pieces, and I mount it on the armor stand.

And here my craft is finished. I have no need for glowworm threads, or fabric studded with welds. Each piece fits tighter to its neighbors than the pieces of my last attempt did, and they should glide more smoothly against each other too.

I test this by equipping the armor: first I put on the pauldrons. They have loops that go around my armpits, and into these loops I twist and lock in the loops that make up the flexible first section of the arm, then I attach the long upper-arm plates, then I fit in the loops that go around my elbows, to which I attach the forearm plates. I twist and fit in the wrist-loops. To these I fit the many clever loops that make up my gauntlets. Each new piece attached makes only the slightest of sounds.

I flex my hands. When I clench them, the back of my fists become sharp with jutting metal edges, yet no gaps are formed, even though there is nearly no hindrance to how tight I can close my fingers. I should have no trouble gripping a weapon.

Next I clasp together my breastplate and back-plate, and under them I fit the wide loops to go around my belly, which are shaped so that I can twist and bend my body as needed. Then I attach my codpiece, then I fit the plates of my legs and feet together just as I did with my arms. On I put the neck-protection, and finally I pull off my runic ears and equip my helmet.

Through the thin slits of my visor I can see only a sliver of the forge. That's the disadvantage of this suit, and it will take a fair bit of getting used to after having perfect vision through my cold skull-helm. Yet I don't want any flecks of magma in my eyes.

“Finished already?” Helzar sneers, in that sand-and-gravel voice of hers. “Are you sure you want to show that thing to our Runethane?”

“I am nearly finished,” I say, refusing to rise to the bait even a little.

I walk around the forge. The unruned tungsten is certainly heavy, but for all its weight it doesn't impede my movements very much.

“I'm finished,” I say. “You may call on our Runethane.”

“I may?” Helzar tightens her grip on her barbed spear. “You speak as if you are giving me permission.”

“I apologize, honored runeknight Helzar. I mean to say that I am ready to begin runeforging, and that if you believe it appropriate, now is the time to inform our Runethane, so that he may judge if my metal has been worked well enough.”

“I shall inform him. Porok! Run up to the palace!”

“Yes, honored runeknight Helzar!” shouts a guard, and he vanishes through the door.

I twist and pull each loop and plate from my body and return them to the armor stand. I take a coil of gold wire from the storeroom and place it on the anvil. I place my bowl of fine incandesite beside it, and then I wait.

Fear settles in my stomach like a cold stone, yet it's not so heavy as it usually is. I am confident right now. This armor is a fine piece, and Vanerak will have no cause for complaint.

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Guthah wakes in a cold sweat. His eyes open so wide they hurt; he sits up and only just manages to suppress his scream. The nightmare was a terrible one, and its memory is not fading fast enough.

In it he was standing opposite Pellas, and between them was a barbed spear, and it was spinning, pointing at him, then her, then him again. It was Helzar's spear, already drenched in blood, tracing a circle of crimson between them.

It had just begun to slow when he woke.

“What is it?” Pellas asks sleepily.

“Nothing,” says Guthah. “Nothing at all.”

Yet he feels that it was a premonition.