Bear Knight, page 5
“Not exactly. Townsfolk disappeared, but not down the giant’s gullet. While grown men and women slept in the tavern like dogs at the giant’s clay feet, their sons were taken, then their daughters.”
“Orcs?”
Connor nodded. “And barkhides. Once they emptied the houses of the young and fit, they claimed the giant’s captives, sending it into a rage. Teegan and I arrived in town not long after the orcs and barkhides had left. The creature burst upward through the tavern roof as we walked down the central lane. It swung at us with a timber. Elisai yanked us out of the way.”
Master Jairun glanced up from the book. “Elisai saved you?”
“Pulled us into an alley and led us to a meat cellar where other townsfolk had taken refuge. It was only a matter of time before the creature brought the butcher shop down on their heads.”
“Then you should have led the giant away—distracted him.”
“We planned to, sir. But while I watched the street, waiting for our chance, Elisai peppered Teegan with questions. Who were we? Where had we come from? Why come to a dying town when word of the danger had traveled?” Connor leaned forward in the chair. “He was ready, Headmaster. Teegan felt that readiness and shared the Great Rescue just as you and the other guardians taught us.”
Master Jairun made no effort to argue. He only scratched the back of his head. “Yes. We did. And I’m certain Mister Lee and Mister Kaivos will share a similar story. I won’t fault any of you for stepping outside the bounds of your missions.” He met Connor’s eye and raised a brow. “This time. But let’s come back to the orcs and barkhides taking able-bodied townsfolk. We’ve seen it before, haven’t we?”
“Trader’s Knoll,” Connor said, “and the other towns in the Highland Forest. Last time, we saw the mocktree Krokwode recruiting locals for dozens of barkhide camps. But this is something new. The camps in the Highland Forest are gone.”
“All of them?”
“Every one. Not a tent in sight. And in many of the places we traveled, we saw much the same. A town here. A village there. Emptied of the able-bodied, leaving old women and children to tell of the orcs and barkhides who came in the night to drag their sehnas and tehpas, even their behlnas and mehmas, away. Yet we saw no mocktrees and no barkhide camps. Lee and Dag shared the same report on our journey home from the lakes.”
“No camps.” The headmaster stood and walked to his shelves of scrolls and texts, mumbling as if asking the texts for answer instead of Connor. “No mocktrees. Yet many are missing. A purge?” He picked up a tome and thumbed through its pages. “I doubt it. Haven’t had one of those in centuries. No need these days. Not even with Miss Orso drawing their attention.”
At the mention of Kara’s name, Connor looked up. “Headmaster, what’s happening in Tanelethar? What’s going on?”
Master Jairun slid the old book back into place. “I have no idea. But we’d better find out soon, or I fear our ignorance will bring dire consequences.”
8
Kara had left by the time Connor emerged from the headmaster’s chambers, but he had a good idea as to where she’d gone.
Ever since her arrival at the academy, she’d favored a small chamber in the fourth wall where she could work out the usual cadet frustrations on an old Talanian conquest game called Vanquish. She’d found the slate table unused, gathering dust, and had restored its smoothness and repainted the two sets of wooden balls representing the game’s warring armies. On occasion, she roped Connor into playing with her, but he’d never matched her skill.
He found her at the far end of the long table, sending the white command ball into one of the colorful soldier balls with a loud crack. The soldier ball flew to the table’s corner and dropped into a leather basket known as a pot.
“I suppose that one represented Councilor Stradok,” he said, picking up a stick to join her.
“As did the last five.”
“The balls are old. Master Belen says we shouldn’t hit them so hard.”
“I find the sound soothing. Especially tonight.” She had vanquished a striped ball, but now set her aim on one painted with whirls—a ball from the other army.
Connor raised an eyebrow. “Not sure which side you’re on?”
“Beginning to wonder. I suppose it depends on what you have to say.”
“Fair enough.”
Since Kara seemed content to play both armies, Connor returned the stick to its holder and took a seat by the windows to watch. The mists of the nine waterfalls cascading from the fountain chapel above hung heavy in the lantern light spilling past him. “You could’ve waited. Our meeting didn’t take long.”
She sent the whirled ball crashing into one of the stuffed leather rails lining the table. It bounced away and dropped into a side pot. “I couldn’t face him—Stradok, I mean. I didn’t want to be there when he came out.”
“Doesn’t sound like the brave girl I know. An unfriendly face never sends you running.”
“It’s not about friendly or unfriendly.” Kara bent close to the slate, as if eyeing her next target. The rules required players to pot the low-ranking balls first, known as corporals, and then the higher-ranking captains. To follow this order, she’d have to sneak the command ball around a captain. With a sharp jab she sent the white ball spinning on a curving path, and another corporal fell. She let out a satisfied grunt and straightened. “It’s the way Stradok looks at me. His cold gaze. He sees me as a token, not a person. I’m a novelty, a talisman.”
“If it helps, he means well. He told us he thinks you can give our people hope.”
Kara straightened and turned, scowling. “I came to Keledev to gain hope, not grant it.”
“It works both ways. The Rescuer is the source of hope, but the Keledan must still encourage one another.”
“So you think I should go?”
Connor held up his hands. “I didn’t say that. Besides, Master Jairun made it clear I have no say in the matter. He made the decision on his own.”
She left the table and came closer, gripping her game stick the way she might grip a spear. The flourishes of blue-gray freckles on her arms and hands remained hidden under the sleeves and wristers Teegan had sown for her, but those on her cheeks and forehead darkened against a red flush. “And?”
“You’re staying. Master Jairun wants you to focus on the quests.”
A heavy breath escaped her. “Thank the High One. I’m struggling as it is to be ready for the worst of the Five Quests. A journey south would have done me in.”
“The worst of them?” Connor tried not to smile. “You mean the Tinker’s Quest?”
That earned him a short smile, and Kara pretended to swing at him with the game stick. “Go ahead. Laugh. Enjoy yourself.” She raised her hands. “These are not the arms of a blacksmith, and they’ll serve me no better for the Quest of the Vanguard. Two failures will set me back so far as to make passing before the Turning of the Spheres nigh impossible.”
Connor’s smile faded. “Oh yes. The Vanguard. Not to be discouraging, but that’s the one that should worry you. Cadets who’ve passed must keep the secrets of the Five Quests, but I’ll say this, the Quest of the Vanguard proved far harder than I’d imagined.”
Her arms dropped. “Harder? Didn’t you know beforehand that you’d be fighting our overlarge swordmaster and his twin axes?”
“I did. But there was more to it. I can say no more.”
“No matter.” Kara returned to the Vanquish table. “You needn’t share any secrets. Just . . . be here.” She lined up another shot at one of the striped balls. “Now that you’re back to help me prepare, I know I can do this.”
Be here.
Connor winced. “Kara, Lee and I are going to Sky Harbor in your place.”
“What?” Her game stick clacked against the table, and the command ball rolled lazily past its target and dropped into a corner pot. She faced him again. “Connor, you can’t leave me right now. Why can’t Tiran go?”
“Tiran wasn’t sent. We were. Besides, he and Teegan are riding for Thousand Falls soon. Their tehpa joined the watchmen there, and they want to escort him back here for the Turning of the Spheres. They’ll leave four days after I do.”
She planted the butt of the game stick on the pavers between her feet and rested her hands and chin on its hard leather tip. “So you’re all abandoning me.”
“Dag will be here.”
“Dag can’t help me with the smithing. He’s near as bad as I am. Don’t you remember?”
Connor did remember, with a mix of mirth and revulsion. For their Tinker’s Quest, the class had been tasked with building field forges and using them to make weapons. The moment they’d learned the details, Dag had ejected part of his breakfast over the barracks balcony rail. And then he’d sent the rest over the third-level battlements during the march to the quest. Despite his weakened state, he’d pounded out a serviceable axe head, beating the metal into submission with brute force. Kara could not depend on strength like that to save her.
She seemed to sense Connor’s mind and lifted her chin. “Passing through the Shar Razel depended on the Rescuer, not me. I had only to accept his will. But passing the Five Quests is all about skill, Connor, and smithing isn’t a skill I have. How can the Rescuer let me enter his service and then ask me to do something I can’t?”
His lips parted for a reply, but she hit him with a glare. “Do you really think I want an answer to that question right now—one that will surely become a lecture on the Rescuer’s will over ours?”
“Um. No?”
“Correct.”
Kara went back to her game for a while, until all the corporals and captains of both armies were vanquished and only the black ball remained—the dragon. She’d sunk the others with force, but she gave the dragon ball barely a nudge, as if all her anger was spent.
The ball teetered on the edge of a side pot, then dropped in.
Kara laid her game stick on the table and returned to the sill to sit with him. “The road to Sky Harbor is long. You’ll be gone nigh on a month—barely home in time for the Turning of the Spheres. When do you leave?”
“Sunrise. A little before, if I know Lee.” He watched the mists sparkling in the lantern light outside, the caldrons burning below in the tall barbican gates with their giant figures. “Kara, you can pass the quests without me. I know you can.”
“Perhaps. But I do better when I’m at ease.” She bumped his shoulder with hers. “And I’m far more at ease when you’re near.”
9
KARA
THE FORGES
RAS TELESAR
“No, no, no. That’s not it at all.”
Kara could feel Master Baldomar’s frustration—almost as strong as the heat from the Aropha-built forges. Connor had only been gone a few hours, and already she missed the calm he’d brought her in his short time home between journeys. She supposed she ought to get used to it. Such was life in the Order, or so they’d been taught—gone, home, and gone again, sometimes without so much as a sunset in between. And every mission brought the chance that a friend or two would pass on to Elamhavar instead of returning to the academy.
If the past bore any resemblance to the future, Kara could expect half their class’s small number of six to leave their world of Dastan in the grim valor of battle well before any reached the rank of Guardians of the Light.
“The hammer is an extension of your hand,” Baldomar said, shaking her from her thoughts. “It is a tool of your will, not a mindless, clamorous chunk of steel.”
“I know. I know.”
“Do you?”
Kara shrugged. What other answer could she offer? Baldomar had spoken those same words a hundred times. Spoken them, whispered them, groaned them. Lately, more often than not, he’d shouted them. But hearing had not become understanding. How could Kara make a heavy hammer part of her hand? Such a thing sounded terribly uncomfortable.
To her relief, Baldomar took the tool away. “Rest your arm. Let me show you again.”
Under his guidance, her misshapen stick of metal lengthened and broadened, approaching the shape of a hunting blade before the anvil sapped the orange glow of its heat away. It took him mere moments to do what she’d failed to accomplish in a full half-tick of pounding. He laid the metal in the fire once more. “Did you see?”
As always, Kara tried to temper her answer with tact. “I . . . saw the pattern of your strikes. I saw you change the angle of the hammer in the fullering of the steel as you drew it down.”
“Yes. Good. But did you see?”
Tact failed her. “See what? The skill of a master with five times my strength?” She wanted to clap her hand over her mouth. And she would have done so had she been able to lift her arm after a full morning in the forge. Instead, Kara lowered her gaze. “Forgive me.”
“Still using the same old excuse, are we?”
Kara, eyes still down, stiffened. “Same old excuse?”
Baldomar gave her no chance to say anything else, perhaps as a mercy. He set his hammer on the anvil and walked out.
Just as Kara began to think he’d given up on her for good, the master smith returned with Dame Silvana. “Since you view the Rangers’ Sphere with admiration,” Baldomar said, “and your own strength with acrimony, I thought a different guardian should demonstrate the technique.”
“Quite.” Dame Silvana tied her leather-wrapped braid into a bun and strapped on an apron and glove. With her short stature, even the smallest apron in the forge hung near to her toes. “Thank you, Master Baldomar.” She drew a hot stick of metal from the fire and set to work.
In nearly as short a time as Baldomar, Silvana finished her strikes and showed Kara the taper, the point, and the edge. She’d fashioned the steel into the clear shape of a dagger.
Kara shook her head. “How?”
“Let go of the idea that smithing is about physical strength, child. There are some in this fortress who can force steel into submission. You and I are not among them. We must understand the steel and lead it where we want it to go.”
The dame cast her handiwork into the scrap pile and laid another hot stick from the forge on the anvil. She gave the hammer to Kara. “Start again.”
Understand the steel. Lead it. How could Kara do either with an inanimate hunk of metal?
After a quarter tick of pounding and sparks, she lost control and the hammer clattered onto the floor. She let out an audible moan of pain.
Master Baldomar knelt to pick the hammer up, staying low so that his eyes were on a level with hers. “I think you’ve had enough for today.”
Kara heard resignation in his voice. “No, I haven’t, Master Baldomar. Please. My days are running short.” She tried to take the hammer back and winced, unable to reach it, let alone grasp it in her aching fingers. A tear fell, mingling with her sweat.
“Come,” he said, and led her out to the coolness of the ramparts. “Rest for the remainder of the day. Breathe. Study.” He pointed upward, toward the fourth level and Ras Telesar’s grand oak library. “Have you read Master Gof’s The Sword Inside as I suggested?”
“Twice.”
“Then read it again. And this time, let chapters one through six sink in.”
Every step in the face of the fourth-level wall felt like a jab in Kara’s sore arm. Her body wanted nothing else but her mattress.
In chapters one through six of Master Gof’s century-old text, he pontificated on the relationship of the unseen sword within a bar of steel to the unseen soul within a Keledan. Not that Kara didn’t appreciate Gof’s references to the Rescuer and the profession he chose at the start of his walk among his creations, but she could hardly find a drier read, even among the Nine Laments of Lakarius. She’d be fortunate if one of the younger cadet stalwarts didn’t find her later, passed out on the library floor.
Wise counsel or not, Kara wanted no more instruction from a master who, in his time, wielded a hammer as if it were as light as a quill like Baldomar. She’d seen something new today—a hint of knowledge she desperately needed. She trudged past the library door to yet another staircase and kept climbing to the seventh level of the fortress. There, she walked east along the rear battlements to a squat tower that seemed to merge with the sheer rock face of the mountainside.
Dame Silvana was waiting for her—door open.
“Ah. Kara.” She stepped back and motioned for her visitor to enter. “I thought you might stop by.”
The guardian walked her into the tower’s lower study and hearth room, which extended well back into the mountain, making the space larger than appeared possible from the outside. Kara found it warm and sparing at the same time. The head ranger and her predecessors had kept the furnishings sparse enough to let the fluid style of the Aropha builders shine through.
Kara examined some of the old artwork. Flaming hands making a winged warrior were sculpted into the wall. “Is this an Elder Folk view of the Maker?”
“Yes. Good. And over here as well.” On the opposite wall, Silvana showed her a depiction of a fountain. A pair of Rapha filled their bowls from its basin.
In both pieces, smaller flying creatures surrounded the larger Aropha figures like stars. From her studies, Kara knew them to be Dynapha, shining with light as they sang the High One’s praises. But she had always struggled with the two opposites. “Why is there always a fountain and a flame? Aren’t fire and water opposed to each other?”
Dame Silvana took a chair by the hearth and motioned for Kara to join her. “They can be, in our hands. But both are gifts from the same Maker, and the Aropha chose to see him that way. The fountain represents the truth flowing from him and the life with which he nurtures his creations. The fire represents both his justice and his artistry—molding and baking clay, shaping and tempering iron.”
“Shaping and tempering iron.” Kara took the offered chair and smiled. “I get it. The Maker was a blacksmith even before we knew him as the Blacksmith. But to me, he is one more smith who is stronger than I am. Infinitely so.”
