The Four Forges Read Online Free PDF

were waiting to be settled onto the blade’s tang, the whole being a work of art, something he’d done to keep his mind occupied, something to keep him on the edge of sanity. He hadn’t hidden it, for nothing could be hidden from Quendius. Still, it had never been meant to be one of his workings.
    “Finish it, then. And then ...” Quendius leaned over him, his presence more oppressive than even the heat of the furnaces. “Imbue it. Finish it. ”
    Fyrvae inclined his head to study the ground and did not move until the other had left, then he stood wearily, and took up his tongs and hammer. The forge seemed lessened without Quendius hulking inside it, and even the Bolgers shuffled a bit. His leather apron, charred and weathered, hung on a peg, and he took it down for whatever protection it could afford, knowing that there was no protection on this earth, this Kerith, to be had from what Quendius asked of him.
    Fyrvae bent over his work and added his silent prayer for rain to those being murmured in the caverns beyond and below. Born of the earth and tempered with fire, he knew his creation better than it knew itself. The time passed and he did not hear the rains open up, pelting the roof overhead, or smell the hot water steaming off the furnace-heated buildings, or sense the guard force gathered outside in the yard and given orders to round up those who drew near the fortress without permission. He knew only the mutterings of the Bolgers as they banked the fires, waiting to see if he would heat the blade again, readying to turn the grindstones if he directed them to, although he preferred to do that work himself. Rufus closed on him, doing small things he caught at the corner of his attention, stoking the fire, adding water to the cooling vats, watching him.
    He did the grinding with Vaelinarran precision, ignoring the sparks as they flew up, scorching apron and hands and forearms, intent only upon bringing out the fine edge he knew waited in the sword, preparing it for its ultimate possession. He heated the blade for its final tempering, and sweat ran off his torso in rivulets under the leather apron as he hammered. The metals reverberated against each other, resisting and tempering, and he could feel the power rising to run through him, drumming in his veins, roaring through his muscles. As he examined the blade and saw no flaw in it, he put it in the salted bath to ensure an even heating. He would grant the demand made of him. Grant it, and more. They would be free or die trying.
    Finally, he plunged it into the quenching tank, cooling it quickly and thoroughly, listening to it hiss as he did.
    He fastened the hilt to the blade. He wet the blade and wiped it clean, marveling at the sheen of the alloy. Deadly, balanced, elegant, strong, two-edged. Fyrvae had made a weapon worthy of being wielded.
    He laid it across his anvil and closed his eyes, sifting through the planes of elemental existence, drawing his power together, feeling the tide rise in him as it had built all day.
    “You, Fyrvae, should have been a priest not a smith,” Quendius had told him when he put the slaves’ ring on him. An odd thing to say, then.
    Now it frightened him that Quendius knew him better than he knew himself. It made him even more of a slave than the bonds of fear and consequence holding him, than the hostage held in the caverns below, than the fears of his childhood buried deep in his mind, even that of the lost heritage of his people.
    He did not fear now. Now he was master of the elements and of the weapon in front of him, and he opened himself to the Talent, to the Calling. Around him, he could hear the Bolgers shuffle to the far corners of the forge, their chains rattling quietly, their guttural words muffled so as not to attract his attention.
    That’s right, you sorry sons of bitches. You know what I am doing. Fyrvae opened his eyes to feel them cowering in the corners, and looked at them, their bare scalps wrinkling with