“Silence!” booms Cathez. “I hear your concerns. I sympathize with them.”
A group of about ten dwarves, Belthur’s friend Lothan on his crutches among them, have pinned him into one corner of the meal hall and are refusing to let him leave. The rest of us—and it seems that half the fort is here—are crowding around, many shouting their heads off about fool orders and a disregard for life and health.
“Just hearing our concerns isn’t good enough!” Lothan yells. “We don’t want sympathy, we want common sense!”
“The Runethane is aware of your opposition. Believe me, both I and Commander Hraroth have raised the issue to him, on multiple occasions!”
“You’re not trying hard enough!” someone yells from the back.
"We are trying as hard as we can. The demonstrations were our efforts!"
"A demonstration is no substitute for experience," growls Lothan. "As you well know!"
"It was all we could persuade him to do."
"And what about the hunt?" Lothan continues, at full volume. "Did you try to persuade him that was a fool idea? Thirty dead, one of the worst single losses the fort has ever taken—and not even by the darkness, but by foolishness!"
"Silence!" Cathez shouts back right in his face. “You have been warned not to go against the orders of the Runethane. We all have. We are his runeknights and we obey his orders for the good of the fort!”
“And what if they are not for the good of the fort! What if they’re just for plain idiocy?”
“You are a fool to insult the Runethane, Lothan. Do not make me report you to him.”
“I’m sure he’ll hear in any case, if not from one worm then from another.”
“Do not insult me. Do you really think I’m happy with the self-destruction our quest for the almergris caused? And these latest accidents in the forges?”
“Then do something about it! The Runethane respects you.”
“He respects all of us.”
“That isn’t true and you know it. He thinks we don’t know what’s good for us. He thinks the only one with ideas worth having is himself!”
“He is Runethane. He has earned that right.”
“Yet he’s wrong! Talk him out of this madness! Will you? Will you?”
Cathez’s shoulders slump. He knows that if he wants to leave the meal hall corner without a brawl, he has no choice but to promise to try.
“Well?” shouts another one of the ten.
“All right. I will. But I cannot promise anything. Please understand this, all of you. The final decision is Runethane Yurok’s to make, in this as with everything else.”
“Good,” says Lothan. “But you’d better try your damned hardest.
They back away from the commander, who walks through the tight-packed crowd to the doors, his armored shoulders slumped as if a terrible weight lies across them. I catch a glimpse of his eyes in his helmet, and see resignation in them.
I have little hope that he can persuade the Runethane of anything.
Gradually the meal hall returns to normal. I finish my water, walk over to my blankets and crawl into them, not to sleep, but rather to dream. A sleep and a dream usually work wonders for the mind, which I am going to have to put to good use in the morning—afternoon, evening, whenever it happens to be.
I shut my eyes and clear my mind of worries: about the killer, about the Runethane, about my guilty past. Right now I cannot help any of that. The only thing I can do now is think about runes of light. They begin to swirl in my vision, shining bright like white sparks scattered across an anvil of dark-iron. Each one is etched into my memory as firmly and accurately as if my mind is the pages of a dictionary that I’ve written the ink into myself.
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Their silver forms gleam on the backs of my eyelids. I shift them about, re-ordering to compose according to the rules of rhyme and rhythm. The shape of lines and stanzas come to me, then I drift out of consciousness.
When I awaken I have in my mind a hundred different poetic variations to calculate the runic flow of. I borrow a roll of paper and a quill from Jaemes, and sit down away from the other dwarves; immediately I start scribbling down ideas over my breakfast of mashed spiced mushrooms and greasy gelthob sausage.
My ideas become a plan, and my plan becomes two stanzas. I feel rather pleased with myself when I finish. I’m nervous too, of course, since actually grafting them will be a trickier and more dangerous job than the welding was, yet even at this early stage I allow myself to feel some satisfaction. My turns of phrase are eloquent, my rhythms flawless apart from a few strokes of brilliance where I’ve broken the beat to add emphasis to the central motif, and each line of each rune is sharply accurate.
My poem isn’t complete by any stretch of the imagination—but these two stanzas are a very promising start.
Two dwarves on their way down to the kitchens pass behind me. Out of the corner of my eye I glance them peek at my sheet. One shakes his head and mutters something under his breath so quietly my runic ears barely pick it up:
“...useless.”
My fists clench tightly. I want to leap out of my chair to swing my fist at the back of his head and teach him a fucking lesson; I restrain myself. My anger cools, slowly, and my head clears. I become nervous. There can be only one reason for his disgust: if he saw something incredibly, fundamentally wrong and amateurish about what I've written.
I read back over what I’ve written, concentrating hard on each individual rune. My heart sinks. Most are not as I remember from the tablet. It’s right here in the meal hall; I walk over to confirm my suspicions. My heart sinks further—what I have scribbled down is not Light Script Two or Three, or even One. Many runes are an amalgamation of styles. They look like an initiate, muddled about which script is which, accidentally combined all three.
Yet the poem works! The lines rhyme and the beats of the meter fall where they ought to. Each rune has meaning and purpose: they are not mistakes.
But what meaning do all of them together make? Such drastic alterations will change my original intent for the poem. To work out exactly how, I will have to complete it.
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I lean my unruned mace against the anvil for reference as I draft the rest of the poem. I’ve placed the box of almergris just above my papers in the superstitious hope that its power will inspire my hand as I write. I must not be in fear of it, I decide. It's just a material: no more, no less. Sitting it here like I might any other reagent is a way to overcome my fear of it.
The scratch of quill on paper heralds new runes forming beneath my hands. Nothing is purposeful: like before, I let the runes flow and the poem take me where it takes me. From a solid beginning pours a heart-rendingly beautiful composition comparing the light of the far moon to its pale imitations below the earth.
Are other runeknight’s compositions so intently focused on beauty instead of more practical aspects? I don’t care. This is what I desire to write, and thus it pours out onto the paper.
Without checking what I’ve written, I take up my silver wire and, after a few calculations as to what size each needs to be so that they’ll fit onto the flanges, I begin to twist the runes into shape. They're tricky to get right, but even so, I dare not look too closely at my hands as I do this. I worry that if I concentrate too hard on getting each stroke perfect, I risk stifling the runes’ uniquenesses like I did on my waist-plates.
A sense of nausea sense grows in me as I work, telling me that I’m making a grievous error. This mace is to be my defense against the darkness, after all. I can't afford for it to be a failure. I am not Galar: I understand when it's time to experiment and when it's time to forge something sturdy and reliable.
My hands slow and the silver wire slides from my sweaty fingers. I swallow hard. Can I really afford to take this gamble? What has come over me? Am I eager to prove the runeknight who sneered at me wrong?
Have I gone mad? Attempting to create new runes is pure madness. New runes—the very phrase is an oxymoron, a paradox, an impossibility.
I look down at what I’ve created. Each is formed with perfect detail, yet detail never once seen before. I shake my head. This is absurd. They will not work, their power will not flow, and any part of me that thinks they do is deluding itself. For what feels like the hundredth time I step away from the anvil and sit down on the steps. I wipe cold sweat from my brow with hands that feel light, as if the marrow has been drained from their bones.
This is madness!
Yet it's madness that's worked for me.
That’s still madness!
Maybe, I tell myself. But you’ve already started and may as well finish. What is there to lose, after all? You can always make another mace. You’ll be allowed the materials for it, and no one is expecting you to get anything right on your first try, except maybe yourself.
I nod, clench my hands hard into fists to stop their shaking, and return to the anvil. I take a deep breath and, mind clear and calm, pick up where I left off.