Melted, twisted, ruined titanium leans against the left wall of my forge. Broken runes glint, accusingly, under the light of the daycrystals. Solidified slag clings to the stone. A few cracked rubies lie within the wreckage, scorched and blistered by runaway heat.
This mess is all I have to show for my long-hours of effort. Each of my half dozen attempts at the runic furnace has ended in catastrophic failure. Either the runic calculations are wrong, or the spars not precise enough, or the stanzas and their runes oddly low in quality.
The failures do not surprise me. I have seen each coming. Even as I work now, on my seventh attempt, I know I am going to fail again, that my work is not good enough. My hands won't move properly—they are lethargic, like salamanders that have been too far from magma for too long. My strikes are devoid of power and inaccurate.
Inaccurate is wrong: I do not even have a clear vision of where to hit. It is not that my aim has grown worse, but that I do not know where I must aim. I plan out each craft carefully on paper, in great mathematical detail, but when it comes to executing them, my vision of what they should be is muddled and confused. The runic flows are clogged with minor errors. Even the rhyming and alliteration of my poems is suspect, when I read back over them.
I weld the struts to the open loop. I go carefully, slowly, but I am not being slow enough. I feel myself making mistakes but cannot bring myself to correct them.
Why should I? What is the point? This thought comes over and over again. What is the point? This craft is not for my use. It is for Vanerak's use. My true metal, if I ever can forge with it, will become part of a weapon whose only purpose is to provide Vanerak more runes.
There is no point! I continue to work only because I have nothing else to do. A kind of gray haze, like that of rock dust, has come over my sight. It has clogged my hearing. It has worked its way into my very blood, my very bones.
Hayhek could help me. If he was to come to me in my quarters, I would be able to see that my crafts do mean something, that they have helped someone, someone who is not Vanerak. That would give my work a little meaning at least. Just a little—yet no one has come for a while.
No one has come for a very long while indeed, I realize one silent and lonely mealtime. I must have spent nearly ten long-hours on my futile attempts at building a runic furnace, and yet throughout all that time, not one runeknight has come up to talk to me. Not even Hayhek or one of the other lower degree regulars.
Why is this? Have they been ordered not to see me? Why would Vanerak do that? He has allowed visits so far because he knows his soldiers must enrune their weapons and armor as best they can, if they are to eventually gain access to the city, and that ultimate goal has not changed.
Has he decided to slowly torture me once more? Does he suspect that I am hiding something from him? I am not!
Or could it be that there are no runeknights left? Perhaps Nazak led them on a great assault, from which no survivors returned. Indeed, I have not seen Nazak for a while, only Halax.
That can't be right—I would know somehow if such a catastrophe had occurred. Sensed something. Or would I have—no, I would not.
I calm my breathing. There's nothing I can do in any case. All I can do, all that is left for me to do, is to forge, uselessly, until I can no longer.
----------------------------------------
The traitors, rebels, criminals—whatever name best suits them—are proving elusive. No matter how hard Helzar and her most loyal try, they can find no one who is beyond a doubt behind the letters. A few they suspect are tried and punished on the basis of tenuous evidence, but this seems to do nothing to stop the letters appearing. Soon every dwarf in the realm has read it or had it read to them, even the masons and miners.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Nazak believes Helzar's methods to be foolish and counterproductive. The best way to quell the rebellion, he decides, is to keep everyone so busy that they can think of nothing but forging. The coffers of the realm are emptied for the purchase of great quantities of tungsten and reagents. He announces that everyone is to reforge their weapons and armor in preparation for a final assault on the sunken city, which he believes Runethane Vanerak will eventually announce, once his own forging is complete.
The number of letters appearing diminishes, but Nazak suspects this has little to do with his efforts, and in any case doesn't matter. The message is out—and those discontent enough to believe, believe it. The rebellion has not been vanquished, but simply made invisible, hidden deeply in the hearts and minds of those runeknights who feel unfairly treated.
And who with any sense can blame them for feeling that way? Too many have perished, and worse than this, have perished for a cause that is too vague. They are not chasing after great treasure and riches, and nor are they hunting down monsters that pose any great threat—the letter tells the truth that the demons make only defensive actions. To many it must feel as if they are dying for nothing.
Yes, Runethane Vanerak remains the great hero who led the survivors of the dragon down to Allabrast. No one will forget this. Yet that was then and this is now—the goodwill he earned is running out. They need another great victory, and soon, and it must be a victory with meaning: the runeknights must be shown that the runes of stone and ancient reliefs are going to improve their lives and forging or at least make them rich.
As Hayhek forges, he worries. As his hammer beats upon the tungsten that will become a new pair of gauntlets—this is all he can afford to reforge, for despite the massive importations, the price of tungsten has not gone down by so much—as his hammer beats he worries for his family. How long are they going to have to live like this, locked in a realm that is half a prison, and one on the edge of an unending and seemingly pointless war? How are they going to do without him once he finally falls? He has no doubt he will. He has been lucky so far—he has not been sent on any of the more dangerous incursions.
But he has a bad feeling about Nazak's talk of a final assault.
Guthah forges also. As he works on a blade to destroy demons, he laments that it is not one to destroy dwarves instead. The letter has shaken him—many have asked him questions which he knows he must not answer.
Zathar is the root of all his terror, all his suffering. If only, Guthah thinks, he had not followed the Runeforger up to the surface! If only he had not persuaded Pellas to do the same! They might still be in Allabrast now, drinking ale with the rest of the guild.
He cannot undo his mistakes, yet if given the chance, maybe he can make sure Zathar never drags another innocent down to her death.
Runethane Vanerak's forge rings with the sound of hammer on metal also, and the echoes are strange, and the sparks strangely shaped. He forges with true gold—and it is nearly into shape. The first runes are in place, forged expertly into the metal. The gems are cut. Yet there remains something missing—some great power he cannot quite grasp.
Zathar's power. It is the key to what he needs to make a crown worthy of a Runeking and yet he has been unable to extract it.
As he works his metal-cold mind turns with thought. He goes through every word Zathar has said to him, every rune that young dwarf has written.
Zathar's power seems locked within himself, and available only to him. But Vanerak believes he has worked out the essential nature of it.
Old power—that is what Zathar has. But perhaps new power can be created, if one is clever enough. Maybe the First Runeforger's power was not inborn, as Zathar's seems to be, but artificial—crafted.
Crafted from what, though, and how?
Vanerak's cold mind continues to turn.
----------------------------------------
I eat in small bites, listlessly, not tasting any part of my food nor my ale. The gray haze seems to have grown in intensity, so much so that I am no longer sure that it's simply a product of my mind—the scars in my vision seem blacker, and my ruby no longer feels as hot against my skin.
Every attempt at the runic forge falls to pieces in a clatter. It does not matter how accurately I try to aim, how hard I attempt to beat, how cleverly I try to compose stanzas; my forging fails each time.
Why would it succeed? It is a craft for a dwarf who has wronged me greatly, beaten me down until I am no more than a miner-slave, digging out runes from no one knows where. And whoever heard of a miner-slave being able to craft anything?
Something bumps against my lips as I drain the last dregs from my ale-mug. With lethargic fingers I pull it out and inspect it under the wormlight. I blink slowly. It is a pouch of brown leather almost the same color as the last drops of ale dotting it.
It is folded and tied with a thin string; I untie and unfold it. A piece of paper, small and folded smaller, falls out. I unfold that.
I read.