Chapter Four - The Boy Who Came Out of the Trees

The first thing he remembered was the dark.

Deep dark. The deepest of darks. Clinging to his eyes like fog. Filling him up with nothing. Endless. Shifting.

For the longest time, he wasn’t sure he could see at all. An unending whisper of half-known shapes, half-heard sounds. He was not alone in that place, and that feeling gave him comfort. A watchful hand. A silent keeper. But feeling without sight is hard to grasp, and the not-alone he felt then would be left behind, too, in time. Just like everything else.

*

He was a boy of maybe five when he arrived in the village in the shadow of the mountains. He had stopped to dip his grimy feet in the stream as he came up out of the trees. It was spring time, and the thawing snows spread like thin dust over the gossamer dew of the pines, twinkling in the sun as it slowly stole victory from winter’s fingers. His tunic was threadbare and dirty, but he was not cold. He caught sight of his reflection as he washed, and lingered for a while, looking back at his own eyes in water cold as frosted glass.

The door of the inn opened at his knock.

‘What do we have here?’ said the Innkeep, peering down at him from beneath bushy brows, cheeks bristling with lazy fuzz.

The boy did not respond. He could smell food beyond the door, meats scented with woodfire and... what was that smell?

‘What is it, Goran?’ a woman’s voice asked from somewhere inside.

‘Not sure.’ the Innkeep scratched at his stubbled cheeks. ‘You alone, boy?’

The boy thought for a moment, looking up at him with pale eyes. He nodded.

The Innkeep softened a little, and favoured him with a small smile. ‘You have a name?’

The boy was ready for the question. He had carried the answer with him. From the dark.

‘Cal.’

‘Well, Cal,’ the Innkeep said, and his eyes smiled like candlelight and warm fires. ‘You look hungry.’

The boy nodded.

He had stayed there for a while, then. He kept his telling name close, like a blanket in the dark, and started to learn the names of the smells of the inn, cedarwood and lavender, peppered bread and spiced ham, woodsmoke on beams of ebony. There were other children there with names of their own, and he ate and he slept and he smiled for a time. Even after the Innkeep’s wife stopped coming to see them.

But it was not his place. That would come later.

*

The Blacksmith had a bald head smoother than wax and dark eyes set in deep sockets over his bearded cheeks. The boy had never seen anyone taller. He turned to fit his shoulders through the inn doorway, blocking the summer sun.

‘This is the boy you spoke of?’ he asked the Innkeep in a voice thick with tar and smoke.

‘The very same.’ the Innkeep told him, patting the boy lightly on the shoulder. It was nearly three months since he had taken the little boy in from the cold. ‘Reckoned you’d be needing another pair of hands, now you’ve got the old forge up and burning. Say hello, boy.’

‘Hello.’ the boy said. He stared up at the big man with the dark eyes, and he saw that he had a long silver scar on his cheek underneath his coal-black beard. Silver flashed, and the eyes held him, heavy with waiting.

‘What is your name, boy?’ the Blacksmith asked him.

‘Cal.’ he replied.

The Blacksmith’s dark eyes gleamed, and his scar twitched beneath his beard.

‘He will do.’ he said, deep voice rumbling.

The forge was hotter than a stove, and the smell of seared metal caught in the boy’s throat. Slivers of metal flashed on the walls, horseshoes, butcher’s blades, wagon struts and arrowheads and many more things the boy did not yet know the names for. He waited as the tall man stepped over the threshold behind him, closing the door.

‘What is your name?’

The Blacksmith was looking at him again, and his black eyes caught the forgefire like embers.

‘Cal.’ the boy said again.

The Blacksmith watched him closely. His head almost brushed the ceiling of the forge, and his shoulders blotted out the wall behind him.

‘Do you read, Cal?’

The boy thought for a moment. He shook his head.

‘You will learn.’

‘Does a blacksmith need to know how to read?’ the boy asked.

‘Probably not.’ the tall man replied, and his eyes black as jet flashed. ‘But who said you were going to be a blacksmith?’

The boy didn’t know quite what to say to that, so he looked at the forgefire instead, tracing stray sparks as they spat out across the stones.

‘Orphan, aren’t you?’

The boy blinked. He nodded.

‘Bad luck.’ the Blacksmith said. ‘World’s a tough place for orphans, boy. You got lucky. Found the kindness of a stranger. Don’t expect to again.’

‘So…’ The boy hesitated, blinking. ‘What will I learn to be, then?’

‘Whatever you choose.’ the Blacksmith said, and his deep voice cracked against the flames.

‘And what if I don’t know how? To choose?’

‘That’s your burden.’ the man told him, eyeing him with dark eyes. ‘One most aren’t lucky enough to have.’

‘You’ll teach me?’

‘Teach you?’ the Blacksmith said, eyeing him with dark eyes. ‘Aye, I’ll teach you. To read. To write. To make a cooking fire in rain, to snare a rabbit with a piece of string. To run, climb, hide, and to fight doing all of them. You speak Valian? You’ll speak Elahi like you were born on a tree branch, Westri better than a spice merchant. You’ll learn how to think, boy. The thinking man lives.’

‘And how to make horseshoes?’

The Blacksmith’s dark eyes flashed again. ‘Yes, boy, horseshoes, too. The world’s a dark place, for boys like you. While the rest of them are scrapping for coppers in fishing boats and dying in other men’s wars, you’ll be getting ready.’

‘Ready for what?’ the boy asked.

‘Surviving.’ the Blacksmith replied. ‘After that, anything you want. This will be our pact, boy. Our word. Our bond. Secret. Say it with me.’

‘Secret.’ the boy said. The Blacksmith stared back at him, and this time he did smile, scar twisting like knotted wax beneath his beard.

‘Then let’s begin.’

*

His lessons began, then, and his knowledge grew quickly beyond the inn and its names. The Blacksmith was true to his word; he shaped metal, read from books with leather covers, scratched shapes of his own against paper the colour of tallow wax. He ran, feet skipping over mountain streams, and he climbed, over shattered rocks and along branches, nimble as the wind. He set snares, strung bows, hunted, learned how to move through the trees and rocks softer than a mouse. He learned the names of the world around him, each word to its place, how they fit and turned in the waiting, how to spin them to his will, after a fashion. He was still young then, but the Blacksmith began to show him other words too, in foreign tongues from foreign lands of forests and deserts and mountains that spat fire like amber starlight. How the Blacksmith knew these things, and why he was teaching them to him, the boy did not know, but it wouldn’t do to ask, so he took the lessons he was given with the eager ferocity of curious youth, and spoke no further questions.

To the villagefolk, he was the Blacksmith’s apprentice, the lucky orphan boy plucked from the inn. It was the truth, part of it, and besides, the lessons were their secret. Their bond. Their word.

But there was more knowledge out there to be found, should he go looking for it, and he knew it. In the hills, in the shadow of bare-black peaks. He came to know them well. Every rock told a story beneath his quick feet, every cliff sang a song in the wind, and when the storm clouds came and lightning flashed, he knew well the echo of thunder, rumbling against the earth’s bones.

*

He was eight years old when he found the cave.

He had strayed further than usual in his searching, to the place where the pines gave up their struggle against the slopes of broken stone. The cliffs that rose out of the rocks here seemed to him to brush the sky, great black slabs pitted and gouged by the wind. Even the Teeth had vanished behind them. He turned to look back the way he had come, from the west, and looked out over the top of the knife-sharp trees, tracing the lines of distant hills as they wound their way into the haze. Somewhere out there, in the west, the Blacksmith told him, great cities rose like white mountains out of seas of grass, and rivers sharp as diamonds cut the earth to silver ribbons. He had stood staring at that horizon for a long while. So long he did not see the shape stepping out of the shadows behind him.

‘What do you see, boy?’

The boy spun around, startled, and came face to face with an old man. His robes were weather-worn and threadbare, either all colours at once or none at all, and he was barefoot, grubby feet apparently unbothered by the sharpness of the stones. His patchwork head was completely bald, his pale face lined like crumpled leather, and his eyes flashed the tawny gold of a hawk. The boy thought for a moment.

‘Nothing.’ he said. ‘Hills forever.’

‘This is a strange place for someone who is not fond of hills.’

‘I don’t mind the hills.’ the boy replied. ‘I just wish there was… more.’

‘What is your name, boy?’

The boy looked up at the Old Man, and his tawny eyes caught the light, gleaming.

‘Cal.’

‘Ah, Cal. A fine name for finding.’ the Old Man said. ‘Would you like to come in?’

The boy had hesitated, looking at him suspiciously for a moment, then followed him inside his narrow cave, squinting. Candles clung to the broken walls, wax dripping against the stone. In the flickering light, the boy found what he sought. New words, new names for the things the Blacksmith could not, or would not, teach him. Stories. Of the world beyond the hills, and some even older, from a time before, when gods walked amongst men, the Nine and the One. When Temur’s Chosen forged their great cities out of stone and steel, when magic filled the skies, thick as water. Before the Darkness swallowed half the world, and left so few to remember it.

So his learning grew, quite by accident, as it often does, and his lessons continued. If the Blacksmith disapproved of his time spent in the cave, he did not say. The Old Man was not like the other hillfolk, and not quite to be trusted, but the boy didn’t care. He grew, and learned, and dreamed, and came in time to forget the brush of the cold water against his dirty feet, the flash of strange, pale eyes in the water. His eyes. Until the time before was forgotten altogether.

*

Cal stopped in his tracks, frozen against the stones. The dagger-thin pines stirred and creaked, groaning in the wind. It was not yet winter, but, here in the black shadow of the Teeth, the cold had already arrived. Ice glistened on every rock, every leaf. It seeped into his blood, stiffening his fingers, clinging like a leaden weight to his muddy cloak.

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Just then, it did not matter, though. Just then, he had hunting to do.

He took a slow, quiet breath, and let it out, watching as it rose wispy and twisting into the clear air. Through it, a small, brown eye stared back at him from the dirt, lidless. Cal shifted his foot, boot hovering over the loam, watching the other eye carefully. A drop of dew landed on his forehead, trailing across his eyelid, and he blinked, still as stone. The rabbit looked back at him, and for a moment they stood there, frozen, eyeing each other silently.

Then he set his boot down again. It crunched in the icy dirt, and he winced, freezing. But it was too late. The rabbit shrieked, twisted, tumbled in the dirt, clawing at the snare about its ankle. Cal darted forward, hands outstretched, ready to snatch it up. Reaching, grasping...

And took nothing but air. The rabbit’s tiny legs scrabbled at the loose shale for a moment, then it sped off into the brush, squeaking triumphantly. Cal sat back on his haunches, sighing, then straightened, tossing the broken snare away into the trees. Served him right for leaving his bow. There was a hawk floating somewhere overhead, gliding blackly over the pines. Maybe it’d have better luck than he did. He frowned, thinking what the Blacksmith would tell him about luck.

He shrugged himself deeper into the folds of his cloak and stared grumpily at the pines. Trees, trees, and more trees, thrusting up like bladeless spears out of black shale, slopes on top of hills on top of mountains, climbing away to the east. The snowless mountains that marked the edge of the world. That was where his path lay, up into the foothills of the Teeth, where the trees fled and rock reigned. He took a deep breath of the frigid air, and set off again through the boughs, wondering if it would be a wasted trip, after all. Wondering if the Old Man had returned.

The boy is fifteen. It is ten years since he arrived in the village by the mountains. His hair is black, blacker than jet, and his pale cheeks are sharp and lean. His eyes gleam, and in the pale light of the dawn they are almost blue, cold as fresh spring water. He is not tall, but neither is he small, and his wiry limbs have the kind of corded rope strength that comes from long hours of toil.

The cave was waiting for him. The candles glimmered from the walls, and the stories were ready for their telling. The Old Man smiled.

‘What shall talk about, today?’ he asked.

*

‘What do you think?’ The Old Man asked him. The flickering light of the candles clung to the seams of his face, a hundred shadow-lines shifting as he spoke. He would not tell him where he had been, these past few weeks, so they had settled instead to their stories, the first of which he had finished some time ago, and they’d sat in silence since. Gods fighting wars like men. Temur filling the sky with fire. The First Maker splitting the world. The Darkness. Myths. It wasn’t like the Old Man’s other stories. It wasn’t real. He sighed. Five thousand years is long enough for just about anything to be forgotten, he decided.

‘You are distracted, today.’

Cal looked up to find the Old Man watching him with amber eyes.

‘Just tired.’

‘You are not sleeping?’ the Old Man asked him.

‘Bad dreams.’ Cal replied, rubbing at his eyes.

‘There is nothing to fear from dreams, boy.’

Cal shrugged, lowering his eyes.

‘So, what do you think.’

‘I think… it’s sad.’ Cal replied, looking towards the dim daylight of the cave mouth.

‘What is?’

Cal thought for a moment. ‘That so much was lost.’ The story might be forgotten, but not everything built before the Darkness was dust, yet. So the Old Man told him, anyway. In his mind he was soaring over white stone gleaming with water, impossible towers capped with steel the colour of moonlight. The idea of knowing such things, not just hearing about them, but knowing them, filled his belly with a giddy lightness.

‘Not all that is lost should be found.’ the Old Man said. ‘Perhaps some things should stay forgotten.’

‘And Temur’s Chosen? They are all gone?’

‘Not all. Death is rarely so clean.’ the Old Man told him. ‘Their blood endures, though what remains is scattered to the wind, and that power is not what it was. The slow death cuts the deepest, and the power of blood fades, watered like overripe wine. We live in the ruins of the world before, and there are few now who remember the making of it.’

Cal sighed, looking out towards the narrow sliver of trees and hilltops trailing away into the west. ‘I should like to see them, some day.’ he said softly. ‘The cities, from before, I mean. Uldoroth, and-’

‘You are impatient.’ the Old Man interrupted him, golden eyes flashing.

‘I am bored!’ Cal told him.

‘How long have you been in the here?’ the Old Man asked after a while. ‘With that blacksmith?’

‘Ten years.’

‘And have you been mistreated? Have you ever gone hungry? Ever been beaten?’

Cal hesitated. ‘Uh… no.’

The Old Man sighed.

‘You are impatient, boy. One of the perils of a good education; it’s never really finished.’

Cal did not have anything to say to that. There had always been an uneasy truce between his lessons and his visits to the cave in the hills, the kind of silent understanding that can exist only between two opposed forces of learning; each valuing the other with the grudging respect of old foes who know it is impolite to discuss their quarrels. He had never thought to hear one speak so openly of the other, and it made him uncomfortable. He realised he was frowning.

‘Wait for your right time, boy. Few men appreciate their lot, when it is given. Fewer still use it well, whilst they have it. Do not be so quick to look for the horizon. Someday it will seem all too close.’ The Old Man’s golden eyes caught the candlelight as he spoke, filling them with amber embers. ‘In the meantime, count your blessings. For a stray at the edge of the world, you have more than you should.’

*

The descent back down the hillside was precarious. Even with the binding cold of the encroaching ice to hold the shale firm, the stony slopes would give way at the slightest misstep. But Cal knew the way, slipping soft as a shadow between the trees, feet skipping over the rocks. He took a small detour to check some of his other snares on the way, but the forest seemed empty again after its small brush with inhabitation, and any chance of fresh meat had evaporated. There was less and less game to be had, these days. He cursed his luck again, and kept moving.

Sure-footed though he was, it was well past midday when he crested a glistening hill and looked out over the little village in the rocks, brow beaded with sweat. Rindon was the furthest a man could be from the great stone cities of the grasslands, a patchwork of wood and stone at the furthest edge of Old Valia, where the Teeth loomed black and sharp over the closeness of the eastern horizon. The small cluster of thatched buildings clung like a bird’s nest to the hillside, stony walls moulded from the rock. A narrow stream fell tumbling through the huts, and people in plain, warm clothing hurried about their business, blowing great clouds of steam into the turgid air. In the shelter of the trees, the mountain wind groaned and whined through the boughs like a beast, but on the exposed hillside of the village it rumbled and beat at the thatching, lowering hoods and snatching at cloaks, tearing at the threadbare tufts of hardy grass. Even Northmen would struggle to find a place colder, in the snowy lands beyond the sea.

Cal looked south, past the low buildings, tracing the little path that ran away into the trees. Even from here, he could see the forge glowing in its clearing, smoke trailing like faded string into the sky. The Blacksmith must have been at work for some time, already. He would not be pleased.

He set off again, feet gliding across the loose shale. Leaping over the stream, white water peppering his boots. A passerby glanced up at him with a start, and he tried not to grin. The Blacksmith's home was set a little ways back from the other buildings. Larger too, with a roof that reached a lofty one-and-a-half stories towards the cloud ripped sky and a broad oaken door that creaked irritably when it opened. There was a leathery awning hanging from one stony wall, and he made for it, flinching at the sound of the hammer.

Used to it though he was, the heat of the forge hit him like a stormblast, snatching away his breath. He shielded his eyes and tried not to gasp, feeling the boiling air sear his lungs, eyes watering. The Blacksmith was hunched over the amber glow of the forge, bare arms cording with strain and coated with sweat, metal ringing beneath his blows like a bell. If he heard the boy enter, he gave no sign of it, so Cal waited, rubbing at his muddy face nervously. He could feel himself begin to sweat beneath his cloak, but he dare not move, doing his best to be invisible. Moments turned into minutes. Still the hammer rang, and the Blacksmith continued undisturbed, as was his way. Cal stood still as stone, sweating clean through his clothes. A drop of it rolled down his eyebrow, leaking into his eye, and he blinked, squinting at the haze. Still the Blacksmith gave no sign he knew he was there, and the hammer fell again, clanging against the walls.

By the time the hammer stopped falling, Cal was close to fainting, and he almost gasped with relief as the giant man lowered his arm. He didn’t turn though. Not yet, anyway. Instead, he stood looking down at the thimble-sized chunk of metal taking shape on his anvil, broad shoulders hiding his face. The metal had cooled since the fire, and its dark edges were gleaming orange.

‘Where have you been?’

The Blacksmith’s voice was hard as iron and cut with smoke. Punishment, then. More than just a sweat bath. Cal sighed.

‘In the hills.’

Silence. Then, at last, the Blacksmith set his hammer down on the anvil and stepped back, turning towards him. He was a bear of a man, a mountain of muscle, all hulking shoulders and thick limbs, hard as stone even at… what? Fifty? Cal had never really known how old he was, and somehow didn’t feel like asking. As he turned, his frame blotted out the light of the forge, and it spilled redly around the edges of his shoulders, gleaming against the pale skin of his bald head, catching the edges of the knotted scar beneath his coal-black beard.

‘Nothing in the snares?’

‘No luck, today.’

‘A man makes his own luck.’ the Blacksmith told him, fixing him with a dark eye. He turned back to the anvil, staring at the little glowing lump of metal critically.

‘You have spent too much time in the hills recently.’ he rumbled suddenly, looking back over his shoulder. ‘You neglect your time here. The villagers will start asking questions.’

‘I…’ Cal began, then stopped short as the Blacksmith raised an eyebrow. Cal met his black eyes. ‘Of course.’

‘We will speak more on this later.’

The Blacksmith watched him a moment longer, and the long, wax-drip scar beneath his beard twitched and glinted.

‘Name me the three airs of the forest.’ he said suddenly, switching smoothly into the tongue of the High Places.

‘The wind, the water, the leaves.’ Cal replied, also in Elahi, with only the barest hint of an accent.

‘I purchase two hundred gold Vals of dress-silks in Dal.’ the Blacksmith went on, now in Westri. ‘The markets of Arinath should bring twice that. I need a ship across the Sea of the Maker in midsummer. How much profit can I expect to take?’

Cal thought for a moment. ‘One hundred and fifty gold Vals.’ His Westri was not as good as his Elahi, but his accent was improving.

The Blacksmith raised an eyebrow. ‘Fifty is a lot for a ship.’

‘Thirty for the ship.’ Cal shot back. ‘Fifteen to pay off the customs guards and five for a couple of heavies to keep the crew honest.’

The Blacksmith’s lips flicked ever so slightly upwards beneath his beard. They went on like that for nearly an hour, back and forth, question after question, on hunting and history and trade and everything else in between, in Valian and Elahi and Westri to the Beggar Tongue of the lowlands. Cal’s brain whirred and spun with words and names, answers to a hundred questions spilling onto his lips, but The Blacksmith did not let up, and the heat of the forge began to trickle over his brow again, clinging clammily under his arms. The Blacksmith, for his part, seemed not to even notice the heat, which of course made it all the more infuriating.

A moment’s pause, and it took all of Cal’s will not to fall against the wall in his weariness. Black eyes watched him silently, and Cal gritted his teeth, sweat dripping between his eyes.

‘What always runs but never walks, oft’ murmurs, never talks, has a bed but never sleeps, has a mouth but never eats?’ he asked suddenly in Valian.

The boy opened his mouth then closed it again, thinking. The forge hummed quietly, and the distant stream whispered. The boy blinked.

‘A river.’

There was a pause.

‘Your Westri needs work. You have the accent of a drunk Northman.’

The Blacksmith was already unlacing his apron. He stepped past Cal, passing it to him.

‘Uma wants twenty new arrowheads. We are blacksmiths, after all.’ he said, stepping out of awning without looking back. ‘That’s the first.’

Cal blinked, looking over at the anvil. The little chunk of metal had cooled to a sooty grey, its edges blunt and uneven. He sighed, pulling the apron over his head, and went looking for the whetstone.

*

Four hours later, he was done. A little row of short, sharp arrowheads lay on the leather-covered table beside the forge, gleaming wetly. They had a faint barb to their points; Uma’s preference. The steel had been a little more stubborn than usual, that day, his knowing of it a little less familiar. One thimble-sized lump had taken him nearly half an hour to shape. Cal sighed. There would be no time to deliver them for fletching, today. Not before dusk. He would have to be up early, in the morning.

He pulled the apron over his head, hanging it on the wall, and set the little shaping hammer down on its peg by the anvil. He had let some of the heat out of the forge, and the fire had dark coals around its edges, but it was still stifling under the awning. He rolled his shoulders, easing the tension from his weary limbs, and stepped out into the pale light of the evening through the flap in the canvas.

The frigid air rushed back in around him like a frozen wave, past the sweat-streaked fabric of his tunic in a moment, and Cal shivered at it, frowning. The evening was pale, touched with amber in the west, and the wind had faded into a murmur through the pines, just the faint whisper of the day’s shrill song. The Blacksmith was there, in the gathering dark between the trees, axe in hand, tunic damp with sweat and thick arms taut as twisted rope. As Cal watched, he brought the axe down over his head, and the chunk of wood on the stump in front of him split at its centre with a crack, then fell tumbling into the dirt. He paid Cal no heed, so the boy bent down and dipped his hands into the pail of stream-water beside the awning, splashing it against his cheeks and doing his best to rub away some of the soot from his fingers. As he straightened again, he glanced away into the narrow trees, catching a glimpse of the village in the candle-coloured light of the dying day. What he’d give for an evening at the Nest. Lokk would be getting bored without him, and that was always dangerous. The steady thunk of the axe went on, and the air murmured.

‘What did you talk about today?’

Cal blinked, wicking the last of the water from his brow with one hand. The Blacksmith had turned away from the stump, and had the axe rested across one broad shoulder. His dark eyes were unreadable.

‘The Darkness.’

‘And what did he tell you?’ Cal hesitated. There was a dangerous edge to the Blacksmith’s deep voice. ‘White cities tall as mountains? Steel the colour of moonlight? What good is that for horseshoes and cleavers?’

The Blacksmith stared at him, and Cal lowered his eyes. The uneasy truce between his master and the Old Man in the hills was well and truly broken now, shattered in a crucible of unexpected acknowledgment. This was not the way of things, and it made him very uncomfortable indeed. He pursed his lips, staring at the dirt. After a few moments, the Blacksmith sighed, looking away into the trees. The axe was still on his shoulder, and his scar glinted like forge-fire beneath his beard.

‘The villagers already grow suspicious of the blacksmith’s apprentice who spends so long away from the forge. Remember our word, boy.’

Cal’s frown deepened. Then he nodded.

‘Magic steel, storms of fire, Gods and bonemen and…’ the Blacksmith muttered, turning back to the stump. He hefted the axe over his head again, and another chunk of wood split like the pages of a book. ‘The world is a hard place, for you more than most. It has enough to fear in it without that old man’s stories. Things you can see. Things you can touch. Remember that.’

He swung the axe again, and the stump hummed.

‘I will need you here, the next few days. There’ll be no time for exploring.’

Cal scowled at his back, feeling heat rise in his cheeks. The trees leaned in around him, a cage of bristled spines, and the heat spread.

‘How many days?’

The Blacksmith did not turn.

‘As many as it takes.’

Cal’s fingers clenched at his side, and his head ached. He needed water. He turned on his heel, making for the oaken door, still scowling.

‘Boy.’ the Blacksmith said behind him.

Cal stopped in his tracks, staring at the door.

‘What is our word?’ the Blacksmith asked.

Cal stood there for a long moment, with the door at the edge of its creaking, fingers white against the wood. He took a deep breath, exhaling slowly.

‘Secret.’ he breathed. Then he stepped inside, closing the door to the Blacksmith’s dark eyes, and the room beyond felt small indeed.

*

That night, they broke their fast in near silence. Cal sat hunched over his bowl on a hard stool, eyes dark, half-scowling, as is a young man’s way. Even the old nightwood chest in the corner seemed more sullen than usual, the lustre of its polished wood black and brooding in the firelight. The Blacksmith sat opposite him beside the fire, silver scar gleaming, and said not a word. Perhaps he knew better. Even the oldest men were young, once.

In truth, by the time their meal was over, most of Cal’s anger had slipped away into the weary warmth of the fire. Still, he made sure to climb as pointedly as he dared into his little attic, feet stomping a little louder than usual on the narrow stairs. He sat for a long while, then, watching the narrow sliver of sky in the roof above him. The moon was shy, that night, but he sought it hungrily as it blinked nervously through its veil of cloud and pine, and watched it till long after sleep took him.