“Are you not going to call on the Runethane?” I ask. “Well?”

“You must rest. You have exhausted yourself.”

“I can't rest. The runes are ready in my mind. The meanings, the connotations. I can see the shapes already. I have to strike while the metal is hot.”

“Metal can be heated whenever you wish! I am responsible for your continued life, traitor. Do not forget that. Our Runethane will not forget that either. No harm is to come to you.”

“It won't. Get the healing chains—the same ones you used last time. I'm going to push past my own limits. And get the Runethane! He will want to witness this. This craft is going to be—great.”

“You will kill yourself. Rest!”

“The runes—”

“They will wait. You can rest here, if you must. But you must rest!”

His tone brooks no disagreement. “Very well,” I say.

I lie down on the hard stone floor right beside the anvil. My ruby is shivering; it wants me to stand back up, needs me to. I am in the midst of battle, it is saying.

Yet I suppress it. Nazak is right. I need strength for this craft. All my strength. I shut my eyes and sleep takes me in its black embrace. I see no dreams, and when I open my eyes it is as if I simply blinked.

“How long have I slept for?” I ask.

“Barely an hour.”

I get up—the will to forge is burning in me. My ruby is shaking with anticipation.

“I am ready. I must forge now. I must.”

“Very well. I have already called on our Runethane. Get your wire ready, and your reagent.”

I do so—gold and incandesite. I need the heat of life, and these are what will bring it. I take two spheres of hytrigite also, and while I wait for Vanerak to arrive, refine them. The process causes me no trouble at all. It is like the spheres respect me before I even bring down the hammer. They flatten out, ready to graft the power of discord to my warped weapon.

Now all there is to do is wait. Some of my forging-madness fades, and I try to sleep once more, gain a little of my strength back, but worry prevents me. What will Vanerak's reaction be when he first looks upon my weapon? Will he judge it a failure before I can justify myself to him, and order me to remake it—while a broken Guthah watches on, perhaps?

My reasoning falls apart. I went against the direct advice of a first degree and threw my patience down a bottomless void, because of some daft idea that if my poem is bad, it can fit to a bad craft! How stupid—even an initiate knows that a failed craft cannot be salvaged by good runework.

I am the Second Runeforger, I remind myself. I can do what others cannot. This craft will be the exception to that rule—and it is not so terrible. The metal held through the quenching, didn't it? The tungsten was tortured, yet it could bear that torture. It is strong.

He arrives. I stand, but he ignores me. His mirror-mask turns to my twisted trident. He stops still. He's staring at it. He disapproves, I can tell. His anger is radiating out through his armor.

“An interesting craft, Zathar Runeforger,” he says coldly.

“It has to be that way, has to be!” I babble. “The runes—they're discordant—that's how they're going to work, how we're going to kill the demons—not just runes for demons, but runes for—”

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“And that excuses the poor metalwork?” His words cut into my babbling like a blade.

“It looks poor, but it's calculated—the twists, the warping, the dents—it's all for a reason—trust me, my runes—all is for the discord—”

He holds up a palm. “Show me, then.”

“Yes, my Runethane!” I say, and I bow low.

I place my hands on the cool anvil. I shut my eyes. I am ready for this, ready to keep a promise for once. This is for Hayhek—I am going to save his life again, and I am going to save Guthah's also. I let go of the anvil and let the trance take me.

Magma floods over my soul, burning yet painless. The arrival of the sphere sends a ripple through to shake me. I sense power below, and will it to come up. The sphere shines it through me. The heat intensifies; I begin my poem.

Like when I made my skull-helm, I have almost no plan in mind, have made no draft. I improvise. I increase the power, make it painful right from now, from the start, and envisage the first rune.

It means: demon, and into it I put everything I remember of them—their terrible heat, their speed, their single-minded will to destroy us, their cruelty when they take one of us for their own, and most of all the naturalness of their power. They are the native beings of the magma sea. This I recognize and put into the rune.

The shape I form is the culmination of my script of magma. It is the most complex by far—the other runeknights will have a miserable time shaping it. It is composed of three broken triangles overlaying each other, and within them are a dozen lines and semi-circular curves. I am sure my fingers have been cut already in its making.

From this rune for demon, I create the first line, then the first stanza. I praise the demons' power, their strength to rule over the fearsome depths of the magma, a realm where only salamanders and dragons dare to swim. In the next stanzas I write of their disdain for interlopers, the dway, dwarves, and how it is right they should try to destroy us.

Up until the first barb on the haft, I am all praise. I discuss the purity of their nature using new runes than mean line-of-demon's-heat, curve-of-demon's-heat, fabric-of-demon's-heat. These are derivatives of my first rune for demon, and even more complex. Their runic flow is equally complicated, going off in several different directions at different strengths, and seems highly affected by what runes they are next to—almost as if I have imparted some of the complexity of the demons' essence itself into them.

Then I reach that first malformed barb. Until now I have kept control of my power—despite how hot it rages through my soul, I have forged the new runes entirely with my own will. The runic flow I have calculated myself also, with a great deal of thought. The structure of the stanzas has been complex, but still, there has been structure, and thus I have been able to impose order on the lines.

From now, though, I will write of the destruction of demons, and I create the first rune to that purpose: magma-disrupted. Into it I pour my memory of pulling through the magma, feeling the molten rock come apart and eddy around my fingers. I envisage distant eruptions, of deep fumes bubbling the rock and tearing it apart. The rune that results is an unexpectedly simple one, yet the angles are subtly off-kilter by strange fractions of degrees, just like my barbs.

Thus it will fit the weapon. That is good. But the runic flow is non-calculable. I cannot make sense of it. It almost wants to flow outside of the poem, and seems to change as I focus on different lines of it.

How can I use this? What rune can I put next? I was going to place the one for fabric-of-demon's-heat, but that will not work. The runic power will not run properly into it.

I must make something. I do not know what, but it must be something. The time has come for me to give up control—I have always been so afraid of doing that, but my fear of Vanerak is a stronger fear.

More power, more heat! I will the sphere to thrust more of the burning of the world's blood through me, and it obliges. The magma becomes white-hot around me; now it is glowing beyond white. I try to hold myself together, keep conscious in the face of the impossible heat. No dwarf, nothing of flesh should be able to feel this. My very soul should be ash.

I am on the edge of consciousness now. Runes rush through me, twisting themselves into shape. At first come the runes of discord, runes of magma distorted terribly, and then, to be grafted to the barbs and finally the three needle-points of my trident, runes of demons distorted.

My poem ends. I will the magma to leave me. It does not. It continues to burn. The sphere is either merciless or simply uncontrolled—it continues to roast my soul. In the far distance I sense something on my body: cool water or a blanket of chains. But this does nothing to take me from my trance.

I am going to die! To die! The realization shakes me. I need to escape. Where is my ruby? Last time I was this deep, I reached for its power, groped for its unflinching desire to see me live to do battle. Where is it now? Where is its cold influence?

I cannot see it nor sense it. Is it gone? No—there—faintly glowing cold. I reach for it, stretch myself for it—grasp it.

The magma pulls away, yet the heat remains. The forge appears around me, but it's shimmering, and overlaid with golden ripples. There is a rushing in my ears. I can scent charcoal and roasted meat.

The roasting meat is me. I am on fire.

I collapse.