“You look well,” says Wharoth.

“Well enough.”

“The pain has gone from your shoulder?”

“Nearly all of it.”

“Good.”

“You're sure there's nothing that can be done about my eye?”

“Apparently not, I'm afraid.”

“I see. And any news about my war-pick?”

“It's still being examined. For how long I don't know.”

“But I will get it back?”

“That's what I was told, at least. But to the point: are you well enough to come to the palace?”

I hesitate. My shoulder does still hurt a little. Even after more than fifteen long-hours, it's still not fully recovered. Yet I've been putting off this meeting for too long already. It's time to bite the axe and get it over with.

And who knows? Runeking Ulrike has far greater knowledge of runes than anyone else. Perhaps he'll have answers for me. Perhaps he'll be able to guide me. He did save me, after all. Maybe I shouldn't be so suspicious of his motives.

“I'm ready,” I say.

“Good. I'll have a message sent and a carriage brought here. Get your armor on.”

“And Heartseeker?”

My past crafts have all been returned to me, at least.

“Yes. There are no rules against bringing weapons in. The Runeking doesn't need to worry about what the likes of us can craft.”

I equip myself and walk out into the guildhall, which is a plain, simple, sturdy-looking stone rectangle set with long tables and benches. They are simple too, unpretentious. Warm light floods from roaring hearths. Though this room has grown familiar to me over the past long-hours, the dwarves within haven't. The younger, lower degree ones look at me with a mixture of awe and fear. Most of the older ones, the survivors of the dragon three times over, avoid me.

I may have won back the guildmaster's trust, or as much of it as I'll ever be able to, but I've still got a lot of work to do before I can win the trust of the rest. And no matter how hard I try there will always be some who will never forgive me.

For a few minutes I wait nervously by the doors, then someone informs me that the carriage has arrived. I walk out into the guild's outer premises, a wide cave-courtyard where initiates are practicing how to 'fight like a dwarf', just how I was taught. I am met by an escort of a few senior guild members as well as Guildmaster Wharoth.

We board the carriage, a heavy-set thing, and depart. Unlike my previous carriage journeys through Allabrast, this time there are windows for me to look out of. Through them I witness greater magnificence than I ever imagined: we travel through districts of gold-gilt towers, skirt the edge of a diamond mine that glitters all the way down its shaft, ride over a bridge astride a chasm three-times as wide as the one I fell down, twice, all those years ago.

The splendor vanishes abruptly. We are traveling through a bare tunnel. There is nothing but darkness and I grow nervous. I expect to be stopped at any moment, and see my own face reflected in Vanerak's mirror-mask outside the window.

But we don't stop. The carriage continues its rapid pace, angles down slightly. It gets hot. I begin to sweat. The darkness outside the carriage takes on shades of orange, then gradually it ceases to be darkness at all. We are traveling bathed in the glow of molten metal.

We make a turn, then the carriage slows and stops.

There is a knock on the door.

“Time to get out, Zathar,” says Guildmaster Wharoth.

“Just me? Won't you escort me to the throne room?”

“I cannot. My orders are very clear: only you are to exit the carriage. Only you may enter the palace.”

He looks unnerved. Maybe he's wondering if he'll ever see me again. I'm wondering the same thing.

“Well,” I say. “Goodbye for now then.”

“Goodbye.”

“How long will you wait here for me? I don't suppose you've been told...”

“No.”

“I see. Well, don't disappear immediately.”

“We won't. If things end up taking a while, I'm sure we'll be told when to come get you.”

“Yes. Hopefully. Well, goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Zathar. Good luck. Don't say anything foolish.”

“I won't.”

I open the door of the carriage and step out. Waiting for me is a dwarf in golden armor that covers even his eyes. He beckons me to follow him down a plain passage.

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The rock is suffused by the same golden glow that was illuminating me through the carriage windows. It's hot to the touch, but not molten. I've never seen anything like it. What else but extreme heat could make rock glow? If it even is rock.

We walk for many minutes. I examine the dwarf's armor—it's well made, better enruned, first degree quality for certain, or perhaps higher. A thought occurs to me—is this Runeking Ulrike himself? Surely not. I feel no sense of awe from it, like I will surely feel in his presence.

The passage continues on and on, and there's nothing here but bare stone. I can hear no churning of molten metal, feel no hammering; I see no gold-plated floors and diamond chandeliers. This place seems to be neither palace nor foundry.

“How long until the throne room?” I ask quietly.

The dwarf in gold gives me no answer. Growing more nervous by the minute, I continue to follow him.

Then, finally, the corridor ends, and we are in a massive hall—at least, I feel like it's massive. I cannot see much, for the air is filled with a fog of golden smoke. Occasionally it parts to reveal the shapes of anvils, armor-stands, weapon-racks, tool cabinets.

“Should I walk on ahead?” I ask the dwarf in golden armor—but he's gone.

He was standing beside me only a second ago! Where is he? Where is this? I can see no hint of a throne in the golden mist, just forging equipment. I walk forward. An anvil appears before me. I make to turn and go around it, then the mist sweeps back over it and it's gone.

“Hello?” I say. “I am here, Runeking Ulrike! I am Zathar! You wished to talk with me?”

No answer comes. I continue forward. Swords appear beside me, finely forged though unruned, sharp enough to part my armor like it was naught but fabric. Mist sweeps over them and they too vanish.

And then I see him. A shadow in the golden mist, swinging a hammer onto the anvil again and again, yet each blow is silent.

Atop his head is the Crown of Eyes.

“My Runeking!” I say. “I am here! It is Zathar!”

He continues to hammer. Giddy from too-fast breathing, I approach him. My head becomes light.

“My Runeking...” I say.

He stops mid-stroke. He turns to me, lays down his hammer. The golden mist dissipates, revealing that the great room is empty but for the singular anvil at its center. I fall to one knee and bow my head low.

“Runeking Ulrike, I have come.”

He throws a silken sheet over his craft, then says, “Stand up, Runeknight Zathar.”

I stand. I feel small, shrunken under the Runeking's gaze.

His face is ordinary enough, his beard bright blonde yet unadorned, and his hands also are normal, just as scarred and rough as any other smith's, and he's dressed in only plain leather overalls, but his eyes are old. They look older than the rocks.

They have witnessed the lives and deaths of untold tens of thousands of runeknights, and so he looks at me as if he's seen a hundred versions of me before, like he knows what words will come from my mouth before I say them.

The Eyes embedded under each point of his famed crown look at me in the same manner. Cream, with pupils like vertical pools of dark, they look more real than those that stand about the city, more real even than the eyes of flesh beneath them. I've never fully subscribed to the belief that gems are alive, but there is no doubt in my mind that these ones are.

“What... What is it you want with me, my Runeking?”

“I wish to appraise you.”

His voice is deep and slow and smooth.

“A... Appraise me?”

“Indeed.”

“Because of my runes?”

“If they truly are your runes, yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Show me them,” he orders, and gestures behind me.

Confused, I turn, then flinch in shock. Another dwarf in gold, or maybe the same one who escorted me here, is standing behind me and, lying on his outstretched palms for me to take, is my war-pick. I grab hold of it instinctively and turn back around.

“Hold it out to me.”

I obey. The Runeking runs his ancient eyes along its spike.

“Alterations,” he says. “As I thought.”

“Alterations?”

“Alterations to existing runes. Not new ones in truth. You should not claim these as your own, Zathar.”

“Then whose are they?”

“The Runeforger's.”

“The Runeforger's?”

“Yes. All runes are his.”

“Then how have I been able to change them?”

“I think it likely that you haven't. Merely discovered lost variations on them.”

“It doesn't feel like that.”

“How does it feel?”

“It's... I can't explain. Like, they just pour from me. From me, though, not from anyone else... Though...”

“Though?”

Should I tell him? Should I tell all? I'm finding it hard to breath, hard to think. It took us hours to travel down here, but now I'm standing before him, everything feels like it's happening in an instant. Maybe telling is too much of a risk. Maybe I'll say something that makes him decide my runes and I are a danger, one that must be eliminated with the swift stroke of an axe, or eternal imprisonment.

Yet on the other hand, maybe he has the answers to my questions, to my fears! I might be about to discover the truth behind my powers, and a clue for how to control them.

I take the risk: “There was one thing that was like a memory, maybe another's memory,” I say.

“Go on.”

“When I was creating the poem for my last craft—the one I grafted with almergris—I saw a memory. At least, when it was over it felt like a memory.”

“Go on.”

“I was in a sphere of mirrors. The sides were polished and very finely enruned. And I wasn't alone. I saw the shadows of two others, and they felt familiar. Then the sphere broke open and I was rushing out, through the magma sea... That's all.”

The Runeking tilts his head. “Interesting.”

“Where was it?”

“I do not know.”

“No idea?”

“No.”

“After the memory ended, the poem was in my mind. And it was made of a combination of many scripts.”

“Not a new script, then.”

“No... It was like an alloy. Yet it was somehow pure.”

“I see.”

I swallow, not sure what to say next. “Can you... Does that give you any ideas?”

A flicker of amusement passes over his face. “And I brought you here to ask you questions.”

“I apologize!” Fear makes me back away.

Alarm flashes in his eyes; he reaches out and pulls me back by the wrist. His grip is fiercely strong.

“I wasn't trying to run!” I say hurriedly.

“Watch your step.”

I look back and my mouth opens in shock. There is a gaping crevasse just two feet behind me, encircling us, and it's in turn circled by another crevasse, which is in turn circled by a dozen more. From each shines the glow and warmth of molten metal.

“What are those?” I whisper.

“Can you guess why my palace here is so far from anything else?”

“You don't want others stealing your secrets?”

He shakes his head. “They couldn't even if they tried."

"Then I don't know."

"It's far away because so much power, unfocused and unbound, can cause tremendous things to happen. When you strike hot metal, you create sound, and sparks, the scent of steel-smoke. Sweat forms on you. When you strike with the precision I have, upon the materials I use... You create other things also. Ripples not just of air and light.”

“I see.”

“You don't. Only I see—I and my rival Runekings. And the Runegods also, of course, deep down in the magma seas.”

“Is that where they live?” I ask, suddenly remembering the strange metal ship I saw on my journey to the fort.

“Live? If they can be called alive.”

“They're dead?”

“No. They are just beyond such concepts as life and death.”

“I see.”

“You don't. Not even I see that. Though of course one day I hope to.”

I look around at the crevasses encircling us, hoping they'll vanish. I don't like being trapped only six inches away from the Runeking, with his old eyes peering into my soul. His stare is even more unnerving than Vanerak's.

“Have you appraised me yet?” I ask.

“No. I thought I had, but you've made me think.”

“Oh?” I can't tell if this is a bad sign or a good one.

“You story about the sphere fascinates me.”

“It does?”

“Yes. Tell me, Zathar: what do you know about the Runeforger?”