Vanerak is kneeling silently in the deepest chamber of his palace. It is also the most recently-made chamber; he ordered it to be dug out upon his return. It sinks close to an underground river that feeds the magma sea, and he can feel the heat of the deep molten stone through his knees and lower legs.
He is not in his forge, yet he wears his forging leathers. He has even removed his mask.
“Sink,” he whispers. “I must sink. Into the sea, I sink.”
No feeling of heat comes around him. It never does. Try as he might, he cannot find the hidden depths from which Zathar's power springs. He cannot take even the first step on the seeking of it.
There is a knock upon the thick door.
“Yes?” Vanerak snaps.
“I have a most important report from one of the guards,” says Nazak.
“I see. You would not have disturbed me unless it was of very great importance, I hope.”
“No, my Runethane.”
“Then what has happened?”
“Zathar wishes for you to inspect his metal.”
“Ah. That is most important.”
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He enters the forge, his mirror-mask reflecting my new armor in its dark-crimson glory upon the armor stand, which I've set near the center of the room. Plain it may be, my tungsten still bears the mark of excellent craftsdwarfship—and of course that mark is a lack of marks. Each piece of metal is seamless, scar-less, smooth.
“Inspect each piece as you please,” I say proudly—using pride to mask my fear. “You'll find no mistakes.”
Without speaking, he walks over to the armor stand and removes one of the fingertips of my right gauntlet. He holds it close to his mirror-mask and turns it over and around, examining it from every last angle. It expands and stretches in the reflection. He replaces it and picks up another fingertip, still without a word. He examines it in the same way, though with this one he takes a little longer.
Icy fear begins to creep into me, but he puts this one back with no word either. He takes up another piece, and another, and another. Each he examines thoroughly before putting back without comment. Their red shades reflect and spread across his mirror-mask each time.
He finishes examining the gauntlets and moves on to the sabatons and legs. I stand statue-still, waiting for the inevitable scathing critique. Yet it never comes.
He takes my breastplate from the stand. Surely there is a mistake here. For all my earlier prideful words, I think it is impossible for me to have created something with absolutely no error. Such a feat is beyond the capabilities of a fourth degree. Even Wharoth's crafts were not totally perfect, and he was of the second degree.
Vanerak turns away from me. He moves one hand up to his mirror-mask, and raises it from his face. My heartbeat jumps a little, but all I can see is the hint of a dark-gray beard.
For a long while he stares at my breastplate with his naked eyes, but even now it seems he can find no issue. He lowers his mask and puts the breastplate back. The backplate he examines in the same fashion, and finally he looks over my helmet. He spends close to half an hour on it, his eyes roaming—I assume—over every millimeter of it. Inside and out, every curve and edge of my helmet undergoes his harsh checking.
Then he lowers his mask again and puts my helmet back on the stand. Only now does he turn to address me. I brace myself.
“You have shocked me, Zathar Runeforger,” he says. “I came down here expecting another suit of second-rate scrap metal, grievously battered and insulted. Instead I come down to a work approaching second degree in quality. Perhaps you do have some talent with metal after all, if you truly apply yourself to it.”
“I thank you most greatly, my Runethane!” And for once I am thanking him genuinely.
“This is not to say it is perfect. There are slight inaccuracies here and there, in the deep structure of the metal. However they are nothing you would have been able to notice. You did not, at least, ignore anything that was a clear failure.”
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“Indeed I did not, my Runethane.”
“The quenching could have been approached with a little more care. That is my only real criticism. But the metal is still plenty worthy of taking on new runes.”
“Then if I have your permission, my Runethane, I shall begin.”
“I assume you are planning to graft the same poems as before.”
“Yes, my Runethane—yet they will be improved. Like you told me on my earlier attempt, it is unknown how many times the First Runeforger iterated on each of his runes. It may have been many times. So I will iterate on my own also. Am I correct in assuming this is what you wish me to do?”
“You are correct.”
“Then with your permission, I shall begin.”
“Begin.”
I detect a touch of impatience in his voice, a sharp edge of steel, and I quickly unroll a portion of my gold wire. I ready my clippers too, then shut my eyes and allow the magma to flow around me.
It comes eagerly. I am not so afraid as I usually am. Vanerak has praised me—though if he is being truthful or his patience for waiting has just run out, I cannot tell. The red heat subsumes me, then intensifies to blazing white heat, and I become filled with vigor. The sphere arrives or else I come to it. Whatever the case, I suddenly sense its weight behind me.
I recall the poem of my boots. It spoke of the slow strength of magma as it rolled over rock, partly fusing to it. It was not a bad poem, but I have never written a poem I thought couldn't be revised by at least a little. I examine each of the runes in turn—like Vanerak told me, some are indeed weak, not sure what they are meant to be.
What is rock to magma? Something to be filled with heat until its form breaks down in surrender. There is solidity, but that solidity is only temporarily. I hold this revised meaning in my head and twist the rune for korl around it. On I go to the next rune, for movement, whar. To magma movement can be quick or slow, but more often it is slow, rolling forward with a sense of impending destruction. I put more of these connotations into the runes.
On I continue through the poem. Each and every rune I examine. Most, close to three quarters perhaps, do not quite hold the connotations they ought to. I twist the new meanings into them, pulling the power into them as I think of what they should mean, and through this make small adjustments to their forms.
Do these adjustments have any logical meaning? None that I can find. If they do mean something specific, if one angle of a line gives the rune some aspect of power, I still cannot see a pattern. For now the shapes seem arbitrary.
I finish the last rune of the poem, then drift out of the magma sea and away from the heavy sphere. My eyes open and I quickly cut and twist the runes into shape. My memory of their form is strong. Before, when I forged my runic ears, Vanerak suggested that after I emerge from my trance I lost some of my memory of what the runes were. But this is not true. If my runes are weak, it is because I have not put the correct connotations into them; they do not fit the original vision for my script.
My fingers blur until the poem lies before me on the anvil. Yet with the changes to the runes have come changes to the runic flow. There are parts where it will, once fused with reagent, spill off and out, or wrap into useless eddies. I lean my elbows on the anvil and focus hard, trying to see where needs to be fixed, what lines need to be altered, what rhymes and alliterations replaced.
It is hard work. No matter how much I rearrange, there are always issues with my calculations. This has happened when I improved runes before, though never to this degree—always on those occasions I was remaking the runes half-unconsciously. It seems that if I'm to manually recreate runes, without relying on some terrifying, uncontrolled inner force, I must also do the hard mental work of runic flow calculations on my own too. Or perhaps the reason is that I've altered these runes of my script more than usual. When I alter the first runeforger's runes I generally make only minor adjustments, after all.
I flick my eyes over to Vanerak. He is standing just one step away from the anvil, head angled slightly down. His focus is fully on my fingers right now. I can tell this, somehow. I wonder where he looks when I'm in my trance. At my face?
After I finish my re-composition, which involves several more journeys into my trance, I take a step back and a few heavy breaths.
“Is this poem finished?” Vanerak asks.
“Yes, my Runethane.”
“To the utmost of your ability?”
“Yes, my Runethane.”
“You will graft them.”
“As you wish, my Runethane.”
I've grown quite tired, both physically and mentally, yet I cannot refuse him. I must obey with haste—and precision too. Very carefully I sprinkle incandesite onto one tungsten loop of my sabatons. I brush it into the shapes of runes—very slowly. I lay the runes on top, taking several minutes at least to adjust each one and make sure every tiny speck of reagent is positioned correctly under it.
I heat a rod to yellow heat and touch each rune in turn. Blood-gold light flashes off Vanerak's mirror-mask, illuminating hints of tiny runes writ over every square inch of its surface. Each must be all but illegible to the un-lensed eye.
With each rune fused to the metal, the runic power grows stronger. Even with each part separate and unlocked, by the time I am done the hairs on my skin are standing on end. I glance over at Vanerak; he makes no reaction. I cannot tell his emotion, but guess that he's impatient. So I twist and lock the loops together and make my sabatons whole. The power that glows out invisibly when I twist in the final pieces sends a thrill through me. I gaze upon them for a few seconds, then step back.
“My boots are complete,” I say.
Vanerak steps forward without warning and picks them up from the anvil. He brings them close to his mirror-mask. The runes are backward in the reflection. I feel disorientated for a fraction of a second.
“These are strong,” he says. “They are powerful.”
“I am beyond pleased that you judge them so, my Runethane.”
“Yet your next pieces can be more so.”
“Do you mean to say that my skills will improve as I remake the next poems?”
He puts the boots down and turns to stare directly at me.
“I mean to say, that you can push your powers further.”
My heart feels as if suddenly gripped. “My Runethane, when I pushed my powers with the ears—”
“In the end, you suffered no injury, and neither did your powers. If anything, the experience strengthened them.”
“My Runethane—”
“Begin the next poem,” he says.