As soon as we arrive back through the stone doors of the guildhall, the rest of the guild slams down their mugs of ale, drops their knives and forks, or emerges hurriedly from their rooms to rush over and hear what we have to say about Xomhyrk. The hall fills with shouting. Opinions are varied:
“He's a fool and a fraud!”
“I've never seen armor like it!”
“What kind?”
“A thief!”
“How come?”
“Underestimates the dragon a thousand times over!”
“That spear, deadly!”
“Icemite, right?”
“Going to get himself killed!”
“And everyone who goes with him!”
“Silence!” shouts Voltost. The babbling dies down.
“Guildmaster Wharoth is keen to hear what you have to say,” another senior guild member says to him. “He wishes to see you down in his forge.”
“Very well.”
“Though he says not yet. I've never seen him so focused.”
“I see.” Voltost turns to us. “Go about your business, runeknights. I'll deliver the news to the guildmaster when he's ready, and then we'll make a decision about whether or not to go on this expedition.”
“What's your opinion?” someone asks.
“My opinion is that we should not. But we'll see what Wharoth has to say.”
“Something tells me,” says Faltast, stroking his golden beard, “that Wharoth will not be keen to see us rushing off to the surface under the command of dwarf we know nothing of.”
“We'll see. For now, you are dismissed.”
Most go sit down at the benches to tell all the detail they can remember about Xomhyrk to those who weren't with us, and argue more about whether he's a fraud, fool, or true hero with those who were. I, however, am in a different kind of mood.
“Not coming?” shouts Jerat, already halfway to the table piled highest with food and drink.
“I'm off to the forge,” I say. “I've got a lot of work to do. Come get me when the guildmaster emerges.”
“All righty.” He tilts his head. “Funny, Zathar. You seem like you're contemplating going with this Xomhryk.”
“You're against the idea?”
“Something tells me it'll end up like my time with the redboar.”
“Maybe. But I did swear an oath.”
“True, true. Well, we'll save a few barrels for you. Later.”
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Back in the forge. This is my first time here since the examination. Strangely, it feels much more like home than the guildhall does. I switch the furnace on to low and bask in its glow. The warmth softens some of the pain still resident in my flesh and joints.
I kneel in front of the anvil and lay out some blank sheets of paper on it. I hover my writing stick over the yellow-white, unsure of where to strike. I put it down. I scratch at my beard.
What kind of armor do I want? Something tough, obviously. That's the minimum requirement for armor—if it can't protect you, everything else is superfluous. You might as well sew runes onto your clothes.
But should every square inch of metal, every single rune, be fully devoted to protection? Some dwarves—many dwarves, maybe even most dwarves—would argue yes. Armor is to protect you. Killing power comes from your weapon. To my mind though, that's an oversimplification.
After all, your weapon protects you when you parry with it. So why can't armor be an offensive tool also? I've fought dwarves wearing armor that was covered in runes to amplify their killing power before—those two who threw me into the chasm, for one example.
I recall them: one was covered in runes of speed, platinum on gold. He moved blindingly fast, too fast for me to match. The other was in scales of lead, whose runes removed their weight only for the wearer.
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Ah, I killed that one, didn't I? Just before the black dragon incinerated everything. Though it was no easy task.
I don't want to go for anything too unorthodox. Plate armor with chainmail underneath the gaps is what I know best, and for two pieces as important as my breast and backplates I don't want to take any foolish chances.
What for the runes? Speed is tempting. My pickaxe is unwieldy, and I need to be able to close faster with it, parry quicker too. However this idea strikes me as too dull. My abilities will lend themselves better to a more original idea,.
I shut my eyes and try to envision what I want to create. I see a titanium plate, sculpted perfectly to fit my chest, gleaming under the pale winter's sun of the surface. What runes to go across it?
Poems of ice appear. I shake my head. Copying another's craft, the shame of it! I imagine poems praising speed, a few verses, but the themes seem uninspired. I imagine fire—is to fight dragons with fire not a well-known saying? Yet though flaming armor may look impressive, it's usually just inconvenient, and in any case extremely difficult to get right.
From fire back to ice. I imagine glassy crystals spreading over the titanium. I can't equal Xomhyrk's armor, for me to try would result in nothing other than laughable parody and, besides, I still haven't made up my mind about if he's genuine, a fraud, or delusional, but the theme of ice intrigues me.
It more than intrigues me: it's grabbed hold of me and won't let go.
I pace around the anvil. What kind of power could ice give me? It's brittle, so it's certainly not going to lend the metal any toughness, and it's impermanent in other ways too. Ice melts—exactly what you don't want to happen to your armor when you fight a dragon. Somehow, though, Xomhyrk has found a way around these problems. His armor is all but immune to heat, and certainly doesn't look brittle.
So, immunity to heat and toughness—toughness like a lake frozen solid, from whose depths nothing can escape. There's an idea for a poem!
I draft it. I write about a cave filled with water that slowly freezes, trapping the hideous monsters within so that they may no longer trouble the dwarves close by.
It's no good. I throw my writing stick down in frustration. This feels like copying—copying someone who might be a fraud, no less.
Ice is firmly on my mind though. What else can the material grant me?
I'm not sure. I don't have any experience with ice. Sometimes in the fancier pubs you'll get it in your drinks, usually in cubes, manufactured by distant humans through some mysterious night process, and imported down to Allabrast in specially crafted containers.
Dwarves in the far, far north and even further south are said to dwell in caves of ice. I wonder if Xomhyrk hails from there, though I doubt it. According to a book of travels I read fairly recently, those dwarves are said to have beard growing over every inch of their skin, and eyes like white glass.
I recall another thing I read about those dwarves, about how they get around their icy caverns. Fixed to their boots are blades that run parallel with the ground. Instead of walking, those dwarves slide, and if the slope is steep, their speed becomes extreme.
A very dangerous method of travel, cautioned the author. It requires an immense degree of skill. I don't intend to try and replicate their ways, but it has given me an idea.
Ice is slippery.
I attempt to write a poem based on this idea, about a dwarf fighting a troll upon a frozen surface lake. He slides around the troll, avoiding the heavy blows, which send shivers through the ice. The troll becomes unbalanced, slips over, and then the dwarf strikes.
But the runes don't flow very well. I cross out more than I write, and by the end my paper is a mess of half-formed stanzas, badly angled runes, and violent scratchings out.
The problem is simple: I don't have any experience with ice. I barely know what it feels like, let alone how it moves, how it breaks, how fast it cracks, or how it forms and spreads.
Yet I think I know a way to remedy this lack of knowledge. Allabrast is a center of dwarven civilization, and dwarves from all places inhabit it, and many have brought their customs with them.
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After arriving back in the guildhall, I learn that Guildmaster Wharoth isn't expected to emerge for some time yet. I enact my idea right away. But drinking alone is no fun.
“Guthah!” I say, grabbing him by the shoulder as he sits down at the table. I've caught him just at the right time.
“Instructor?” he says. “What is it?”
“Keen to learn?”
“I... I'd be glad to, but... I mean, it's an honor, but...”
His short brown beard is sweaty and his face is rather red. Either he's been training hard or hammering hard.
“It's a more interesting kind of training than physical,” I say. “It's intellectual. Maybe you could even say it's artistic.”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
“Come with me. Don't worry, I'll pay. You too, Pellas!” I've spotted her at the other end of the table, just starting to eat. “We need to celebrate you two's victory properly.”
Out we go from the guildhall, along the main road of the Deep Gray District in which the guildhall is located—a place of long, dull corridors, carefully laid out for maximum convenience and whose mechanical elevators are free for use. This latter is no doubt what first attracted the Guildmaster.
Down one of these elevators we go.
“Where are you taking us?” asks Pellas. Her shoulder-length golden hair moves in the ventilation's breeze.
“Somewhere tasty,” I say.
“Why so suddenly?”
“Are you complaining?”
“I've never known you to be this generous.”
“Really? I think I gave you a rather generous amount of instruction.”
“You're in too good a mood.”
“Am I?”
“You are a little,” says Guthah.
I shrug. “I'm feeling better now I'm healed. That's all. I want to get out, do things. Nothing strange about that. How are you two feeling, by the way?”
“A little tired,” says Guthah.
“Very tired,” says Pellas.
“Hard at work in the forges?”
“Yes,” says Pellas.
“Working on my spear,” says Guthah.
“Good to hear. Don't slack off just because you're no longer initiates. From now is where the real danger begins.”
Guthah nods.
“I know,” Pellas says.
The elevator slows with a grinding noise. Sometimes I worry about the strength of the chains that pull them up and down, but not right now. My two students are right—I'm in an unusually good mood. I don't feel worried about anything at all—not Xomhyrk, not the dragon, nothing.
I lead us along to a set of windows in the tunnel. White-blue light glows from them.
“Anticipation,” I declare. “That's what's got me in such a good mood.”
Guthah stops dead. “Wait!” he says. “We're celebrating here?”
“You know it?” asks Pellas.
“When I was young, my father took me. Once. It was expensive even for him!”
“Even for him? But he was a jeweler, right?”
“Yes!”
I laugh. “I said not to worry. I'm paying.”