There is a memory which haunts and thrills me in equal measure. For long periods it sits dormant, then, on occasion, without warning, it flares into life. Sometimes it comes while I soar through the sky, sometimes when I settle down to sleep, but most often it comes while I'm picking through mounds of dwarvish treasure.

It thrills me because of the power it promises.

It haunts me because I have never since found that same power.

What that one dwarf had was unique:

The dwarf dragged himself through the cave with his forearms, for his hands and ankles had both been shattered; the latter by the fall and the former by his fellows. His throat was parched and his belly was empty. He knew that he was close to death.

But he refused to die just yet. His mind was made up: he was going to die as a runeknight, with a craft in his hand. He didn't know what craft it was going to be, nor how he was going to make it, but he knew that he would manage somehow. It was in his blood. For him to die as a miner was inconceivable.

Magma. That would be his forge. For hammer and anvil, stone would have to do. For reagent, there were still a few scrapings of incandesite in his pocket. The runes from his dictionary he remembered. Tongs, and most importantly metal... He'd find something. These caves were untamed, untapped. Surely there'd be something.

The tunnel branched. Heat washed over his face from the left, a hot, dry heat that burned his throat when he inhaled. It was unlike any heat he'd felt before, not like that of magma, nor like that from the molten iron that ran through Runethane Broderick's foundries.

It was a strangely cruel heat. It stung his parched throat.

He was in no position to pay heed to these misgivings. He turned to face the heat and crawled down the tunnel, which grew brighter as it thinned. The stone became illuminated in white-yellow. Magma, it had to be. Fate was leading him toward a natural forge, one of those like the dwarves of ancient times used.

Each yard was agony. His hands were swollen bags of pain, the shattered bones of his ankles jabbed inside of his flesh like they were hot nails. It was the kind of pain that is impossible to ignore, yet he did his best, tried to distract himself by imagining the wonders he was going to forge now that he had escaped the mines.

Fate had given him a second chance. He could not throw it away like he'd thrown away his first.

The tunnel opened up into a cave. At its center was a pool of yellow magma, bright and warm. He crawled down to it until the heat on his face grew unbearable. He stared into it, drinking in the beauty. He had indeed found a natural forge, just like what the first runeknights had used.

The magma's warmth brought some vigor back into his exhausted body. His hands and feet were still agony—nothing would cure them short of healing chains—but he no longer felt hungry and thirsty. Greater than this, however, the sight of the magma had turned his already burning desire to craft into a conflagration. The dwarvish desire to beat the metal and twist the runes boiled inside his heart.

He needed only metal now.

But where was he going to get it from?

There would be some in this cave. He was sure of it. He had no basis for this belief other than blind faith, yet Zakath's faith had come through before, when he found that incandesite in the wall.

So he searched. He crawled over every yard and inch of the cave, eyes wide to catch the sheen of metal, tongue out to catch its taste. To his lone observer he looked like a surface rat snuffling over the dirt for grubs.

“Searching for something?”

The voice was like living flame. Zakath froze.

“Lost a ring, perhaps? Maybe an amulet?”

Zakath turned to look at the far corner of the cave where the voice was coming from. The dry heat which had first led him here glowed from the blackness. He felt sudden terror.

“Well, dwarf? What have you got to say for yourself? For intruding upon my abode!”

The black dragon's mouth flashed fire as it spoke. Its green eyes were bright emeralds.

“I... I...”

Zakath could think of nothing to say. His mind was unable to process what he was seeing. The dragons of Hazhakmar were all dead. Runethane Thanerzak, helped by his then ally Broderick, had killed them all five long centuries ago. Why was one still alive? Why was it here?

And what was it going to do to him?

“Well, dwarf? I asked you a question! Answer me!”

“I... I'm sorry,” Zakath stammered. “I'll leave.”

“I didn't tell you to leave. I told you to explain the reason for your intrusion!”

“I didn't mean to intrude!”

“You're still not answering me!”

With one flap of its great wings the black dragon soared across the cave. It landed right in front of the terrified Zakath. The stone shook. The heat from its mouth scorched the dwarf's throat and eyes.

“Answer me!”

“I was looking for a forge!” Zakath screamed. “I'm sorry! I'll leave!”

“A forge?” The black dragon laughed. “Down here?”

“Yes! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come here, I didn't know...”

The black dragon grasped him around the chest with its iron-hard talons, lifted him high. It laughed. Tongues of flame licked from its mouth and scorched Zakath's beard. The young dwarf screamed louder.

“There are plenty of forges up in your city. Why not use one of those?”

“I couldn't! I didn't have the money!”

“Why not earn some?”

“I couldn't earn enough!”

“Why not take some?”

“I'm not a thief!”

“Are you not, now? It looks very much to me like your hands are broken. You dwarves like to do that to thieves, do you not?”

“I...”

“You should have taken more.”

“I didn't take anything. I found it! It's mine!”

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“What is?”

“Something that was stolen from me.”

“Something more precious than gold, perhaps?”

“Yes.”

“More precious than these?”

The black dragon turned, bringing Zakath around with it, opened its wings, and with another great flap soared back to the corner of its cave. Zakath cried out in pain at the jolt of landing. Then his eyes widened.

“Look upon my hoard, dwarf.”

The far corner of the cave was overflowing with golden coins, silver coins, cups and jewelry, and hundreds of finely-forged weapons and pieces of armor. Zakath had never seen such riches.

“Impressive, is it not?”

“Gold..." whispered the dwarf. "Metal...”

For a moment all of Zakath's pain was forgotten. The only sensation, the only thing real to him right then, was the color of the gold.

“More dwarves come down here than you might expect,” said the black dragon. It sounded proud. “I sniff them out. I read the disturbances in the heat of the air and I hunt them down. Sometimes, if they come near to my hoard here, I'm kind enough to show it to them before I devour them.”

The black dragon got the sense Zakath wasn't listening. It shook him angrily. The dwarf screamed in pain and shock.

“It's polite to listen when someone is talking to you, dwarf.”

“I'm sorry!”

“It seems you didn't catch the last part of what I said: sometimes I show this hoard to the dwarves before I devour them.”

It waited for the dwarf to scream in terror and beg for its life. Disappointingly, it did no such thing, just went back to staring at the golden coins and beautifully enruned crafts.

“I said, I'm going to devour you, dwarf!”

Zakath continued to stare. He wasn't listening again. The black dragon let go and Zakath dropped twelve feet onto his shattered ankles. The pain was so great he passed out—in fact, the black dragon could have sworn his heart stopped beating for nearly half a minute. But some vital force restarted it and the dwarf woke up screaming.

“That's more like it, dwarf!” roared the black dragon. “I'm going to devour you! Scream!”

But Zakath's scream died away. He noticed a lone coin that had rolled off the pile and brushed a shattered hand over it.

“Gold...” he whispered. “Metal...”

“You're going to die, dwarf. I'm going to burn the flesh from your bones and inhale the ashes.”

“Metal, magma, and reagent... I finally have what I need.”

“Need for what?”

“My craft,” whispered the dwarf. “The craft that will set me free.”

The black dragon nearly incinerated him there. Indeed, the breath was halfway up its throat already. But it stopped the heat and drew it back into its belly.

In truth, plain gold was useless to it. Dragons feed off life, and gold coins have no life in them. Dwarves have some, but although the life of a dwarf tastes fine, it's soon gone. Magical artifacts provide the best sustenance: the staves and crystal balls of human wizards, for example. Elven cloaks sewn from the furs of arcane beasts. But most delicious and long-lasting of all are the crafts of dwarvish smiths, and the more precious the metal and complex the runes, the better.

The black dragon laughed. “You wish to use my gold in your craft, do you, dwarf?”

Zakath looked directly into its green eyes. “Yes,” he said, simply, with no trace of fear in his voice.

“Do it then,” laughed the black dragon. “Let me see what you can make. If it pleases me, I will let you live.”

“Very well,” said Zakath. “I shall.”

The black dragon was expecting failure. The dwarf would faint from the pain and topple into the magma, or perish of thirst before he was done, or, and this would be most amusing of all, fail to make anything worth calling art and die of despair.

Zakath shocked him. From the shattered remains of some minecart tracks and lengths of cavern vine he created himself tongs that he tied to his arm using his teeth. With them, opening and closing them by means of a vine cleverly tied, he stacked a pile of coins beside the magma. Slowly they began to soften and meld into one another. He secured a stone to his arm and, after the pulling the glowing mass of coins a little back from the natural furnace, began to hammer.

At first each stroke brought pain. It was writ clear on his face and in the raggedness of his breathing. Yet after a hundred or so beats, however, the pain seemed to vanish. It was as if he had fallen into a trance, so the dragon thought. Indeed he had fallen into a trance—a forging trance.

The black dragon watched, transfixed, as the axe-blade came into being before its eyes. Power began to glow—the black dragon grew hungry; it needed to devour craft, dwarf, everything. Yet—for the first time in its life—it resisted the urge to strike.

After many hours, Zakath finished forming the craft's shape. He clasped the axe-blade in his tongs and held it up to the light of the magma. There were many imperfections, but his endurance was waning, and he still had to enrune it.

From his pocket he took the tiny scraps of his incandesite. Very carefully he ground them into a powder. One errant spark and they would burn into nothingness, yet somehow he knew the exact amount of force to apply. Some ancestral knowledge, something deep in his blood, told him.

He'd never lied to his little brother. He truly did believe forging was in their blood, and now he was proving the truth of this statement.

The runes also came to him easily, perfectly remembered from his runic dictionary. Then, it was time to graft. Using a splinter of track heated to red heat in the magma, he lit the incandesite under each rune. Each flared bright with power. The black dragon's green eyes widened. Its molten tongue snaked over its teeth.

Now the axehead was done. Zakath held it up to the light and was happy beyond words. He had forged and enruned—he was a runeknight. Maybe if he went back up to the city, others would deny this, for he had no guild, had sat no examination, but what did that matter? Only a runeknight could craft a piece of such perfection.

He felt the dragon's greedy eyes on his craft and pulled it close.

“There's power there,” said the black dragon.

“This is mine!” Zakath snapped. “My craft. I forged it!”

“And now you will give it to me.”

“A runeknight does not make his crafts for the use of another.”

“Is that so, little runeknight? Yet I distinctly remember that you promised me it.”

“I promised no such thing. You said if you were pleased by it, you would let me go. You never said you would take it for your hoard.”

Dry heat washed out from the dragon: its anger manifest. Zakath crawled away around the magma pool.

“It's mine!” he repeated.

The black dragon's tail lashed out and wrapped around Zakath's arm. It flung him sideways at the wall. The golden axehead fell from Zakath's tongs, spinning across the cave floor. The black dragon picked it up by the points of two talons and held it up to its emerald eyes.

“Mine...” it breathed.

“Give it back!” Zakath screamed. “Its mine! My craft! My forging!”

“Get out of here, dwarf!” snapped the black dragon, still staring at the axehead. “I'll keep my promise: you can live.”

“Give me it back!”

The black dragon turned to him. Its green eyes flashed. It opened its mouth. Zakath cried out in despair at the heat pouring from it. He knew he could do nothing to resist.

“Get out of here!” the black dragon repeated.

Zakath ran.

That is my memory. As I devoured the power in the axehead, some of what the dwarf had felt and thought was imparted into me. It was a strange feeling, to see through the eyes of such an inferior being, one of those who creates what dragons consume.

I have taken many a runic craft since then, and of course I'd taken many before then also, in the hundred or so years since I hatched. Most were greater in power, and of materials rarer and more pure, yet there was a flavor to that dwarf's crafts that no other has had since.

Not even his brother's had that flavor.

It was unique.

I wonder when I will find its like again. Probably I never will. It is likely that this Zakath is long since dead, devoured by a salamander or some such, or simply perished of thirst and starvation.

Oh, well. It's not so great a loss. There are plenty of other treats to be had, both on the surface and in the underworld.

I fly on.

----------------------------------------

Hardrick is at the forge. Sparks fly from each perfect stroke of his hammer. The sheet of titanium curves and bends to his will, like all metal always does. Dwarves who watch him say his talent is unmatched for one still comparatively young. Hardrick used to grin at this, his golden teeth flashing in the light of the furnace. Such comments only irritate him now.

“Hit here... Now here... And now here...”

“Get out my ear!” Hardrick hisses at the shadow behind him. “Shuddup!”

The shadow shifts, pivoting around him like the hand of a clock. Hardrick beats the metal more angrily.

“Not so violent...” says the shadow. “Not so brutally... The metal is your partner, not your slave...”

“Will you shut it!”

“Careful now... The others will start to think your mind is starting to go.”

“Half of them already think that.”

“Yes, like the Runethane. I was listening to him last night. He wants rid of you. Thinks you're becoming a threat to his power.”

“Maybe he's right.”

“I wouldn't say that aloud, if I were you.”

“You say everything aloud,” spits Hardrick.

This is not strictly true. These whisperings are audible only to him. Usually they come when he's working at the forge, telling him to hit here, or there, or use this kind of metal instead of that. He's learned to obey them. Things go wrong when he doesn't.

“What's this new craft anyway?” asks the shadow. “A breastplate? We just made a fine one of those.”

“I made a fine one. Me! I did! And yes, it's a breastplate.”

“Why?”

“Need a different one, is why.”

“Why?”

“Shuddup and let me concentrate!”

Hardrick continues to beat the metal. Sparks flash. Those that fall on his arm and down the front of his smock dull instantly, like specks of dust fallen out of the rays of the sun. The shadow is there. It's around him, over every part of him. It's always been there, ever since he made his first sword, though he hasn't truly realized this until recently.

“If I'm going to help you,” says the shadow. “I must know what we are making.”

“A fireproof breastplate.”

“Fireproof?”

“Yes. Orders of Runethane Broderick. There's rumors of a dragon.”