Chapter 15

  A storm rose and came upon the mountain of the Thunder God. The skies over the mountaintop temple darkened; wind rushed through the valleys and howled across the canyons; lightning cracked and shattered around the temple.

  An immense figure emerged from the temple. His yellow spines glittered with tiny crackles of static in anticipation. He lumbered up the path to the very height of the mountain, a crater ringed with metal gongs of extraordinary size. Affixed to his fists were gauntlets of iron, studded at the knuckles.

  There, amid the swirling storm, the moaning wind, and the shattering thunder, he drew back his fist, and with a great shout he struck out at the nearest gong. The strike of his iron fist might have shattered a boulder, but the vast gong held fast. A note rang out through the dark afternoon skies, clear and brazen and powerful, like a declaration of war. Pebbles trembled on the stony soil.

  The figure laughed, and his laugh boomed from the mountaintop together with the thunder and the ringing of the great gong.

  He leapt to another gong nearby, of somewhat less size than the first yet still able to withstand his blows. A higher note, pure and magnificent, pierced the dark heavens to join the first in harmony.

  Another note rang out into the windy skies, and then another. And so rose music from the mountain of the temple of thunder, and with it the sound of thunder itself, and intermixed therein the booming of deep, delighted laugher from the mountaintop as though the Thunder God himself orchestrated this simple music.

  Lightning struck the mountaintop. The mighty figure stood ready for it, one fist raised above his head. For an instant, that figure shone with the energy of the strike. The ground at his feet would have blackened, had not all earth atop the mountain charred black from such strikes long ago.

  The lightning struck but did not dissipate; it lingered around the figure, who laughed a great laugh. Electricity bloomed from his fists and arced around him like the lines of magnetic field. He lumbered like slow lightning and pounded another gong.

  And so it continued. The dark tempest swirled about the mountaintop to a slow, simple, grand tune, audible for great distances as it mixed with the thunder and carried unnaturally in the storm. The storm and music became one.

  Another figure, smaller, quicker, and redder, strolled up the long path to the mountaintop temple. This figure followed the road to the gates of the temple, then turned aside and scaled the rocky cliffs to the summit.

  The newcomer cleared the crater’s rim with a leap, unafraid of any lightning. It landed lightly on the gravel at the crater’s edge and watched with cunning eyes as the great one with lightning in his fists struck his melody upon the gongs. She didn’t speak. She appraised this enthusiastic percussionist, and she didn’t like what she saw.

  Lightning crashed around her, but she didn’t flinch; every one of the many bolts which connected earth and sky passed through Rasmus.

  Rasmus laughed and crushed his fists together over his head in a display of power. Light and energy and sound exploded from his gleaming godshatter in an overwhelming torrent that shook the stones and rattled the great gongs in their settings.

  Akkama closed her eyes against the brightness and opened them just in time to see four separate bolts of lightning connect Rasmus to the gongs. They struck a final chord in the music as they flickered briefly into being.

  With this, the song and storm both came to a close. Rasmus, keeper of the temple, stood panting on the blackened soil, yellow bristles sparking, the godshatter on his arms glowing, unclothed but for heavy leather overalls. He steamed with sweat, and he grinned up at the dissipating clouds as though at an old friend.

  Akkama clapped once…twice…a third time. She made each clap louder, and only on the third did Rasmus turn to look at her in surprise. She smirked. His greatest weakness. Getting the drop on Rasmus would be no more difficult than getting the drop on a tree stump.

  “Welcome, Akkama!” shouted Rasmus. His voice boomed across the crater. He plodded toward her up the slope. He was surprised to find her there watching, but not surprised that she’d come. Fiora had forewarned him.

  “What was all that about?” she asked when he came close. She spoke loudly.

  “An offering! AHA! A duty.”

  Akkama scoffed but didn’t reply. No point in making offerings to dead gods, but just as little point in trying to make Rasmus understand that.

  “You have come,” said Rasmus, “for the reforging of your blade.” He still practically shouted, although he had come close. He stomped up the final steep rim of the crater to stand beside her. Akkama assumed a casual defensive stance out of reactive habit. A deeply ingrained instinct forced her to analyze anyone nearby for their potential threat-level, and Rasmus landed somewhere off the charts. She barely came up to his chest; one of his arms probably weighed as much as she did. The sheer bulk of his musculature was imposing. If they fought, if they really fought, it would be over as soon as he laid hold of her.

  He wouldn’t fight, of course. He was a coward. But it gnawed at her all the same that this great buffoon could, perhaps, overcome her. She could hardly stand it. She wanted to know. She had to know. But to be sure, she first required a functional sword.

  Akkama wordlessly unstrapped her scabbard and held it up in his direction. She hated surrendering her weapon, hated it with all her being. She only managed it now because she knew, she consciously understood, that Rasmus would not attack her. Rasmus would do practically anything to avoid attacking her. In fact, she was safer here on his mountain than almost anywhere else in the world. She knew it, but she could still barely make herself relinquish the fine kverek-hide scabbard.

  Rasmus took it carefully. A jolt of static electricity stung her hand when Rasmus made contact with the scabbard. He drew a foot of gleaming dragonsteel. It looked like a toy in his hand, and the way he pinched the hilt between thumb and fingers only enhanced the impression. He held it up to his golden tiger’s eyes for inspection. “Not a clean break,” he said. Akkama resisted the impulse to flinch at the sudden loud noise. He angled the sheath to slide the remainder of the sword onto his hand.

  “I can fix it,” he said simply. His eyes moved to her, and Akkama realized that he was watching her cautiously, transparent in his effort to gauge her mood. He was on-guard.

  She laughed. “Don’t worry, big guy. I didn’t come here to dance.”

  He relaxed. Then, absorbed in thoughts of the blade, he turned his back to her and proceeded down toward the temple, footsteps thumping heavily.

  “I was wrong,” she said in a soft voice that he would not hear. “Deafness is not your greatest weakness.” He had just casually turned his back to her. Nobody did that. Was it carelessness? Overconfidence? Misplaced trust? Whatever it was, that was his greatest weakness. “Not one I’ll make use of,” she muttered. “When I beat you, you’re going to see it coming.”

  She followed him down to the temple. She had been inside before. Memorials and statues depicting the gods decorated the broad stone courts. Bas-reliefs, ceremonial instruments, chiseled arda—Rasmus protected all of it from thieves and vandals, and he dumped their remains in a ravine to the west. Akkama saw no one besides the two of them in the temple, large though it was. Rasmus led her directly to the back, where the temple gouged deeply into the mountain. Down a broad flight of stairs, and they came to a wide dark place that Akkama had not seen. A portrayal of the Thunder God wrought in iron dominated this room. It looked remarkably like Rasmus, only twice as large. The Thunder God held a hammer aloft, and it was anyone’s guess whether he was about to bring it down upon a piece of hot metal or the skull of some terrible monster.

  The room was spacious, a meeting place, and dim but for a few strips of golden shinestone inlaid in fragmented patterns on the low domed ceiling. Rasmus paused in front of the statue for a brief moment of reverence before striding past. He came to a halt at the far end of the room, where two huge iron doors bore the inscription: The Forge of the Storm. Rasmus did not open these doors by force. Instead, he upheld his hands. The godshatter on his forearms, like jagged runic scars, glowed yellow like arda. The doors shuddered. A brilliant vertical line appeared as they shifted open. The scent of sulfur leaked through.

  Rasmus turned to her when she came up alongside him. “I have been preparing the forge for this task,” he told her in what to him was probably a soft voice. “I know you are a creature of fire, but consider carefully before meddling with anything beyond these doors. There is old magic here.” Without waiting for a response, Rasmus applied his huge hands to the doors and heaved them open.

  Akkama’s eyes widened despite herself as she stumbled through the doors in Rasmus’s shadow. The light in the great forge was intense compared to the darkness of the chamber outside. A fiery radiance flooded the area from glowing furnaces, hot metal, rivulets of what looked like molten rock running down the walls, shinestone and sulfur. Yellow, red, orange, all bright. All hot. The heat struck her pleasantly. Most places felt uncomfortably cool to Akkama; this forge verged on too warm even for her. The sensation of thick, hot air surrounding her, enveloping her, melted away her cares and stress as though she were relaxing in a bubbling hot spring. She sighed.

  “The furnace is nearly hot enough,” said Rasmus as though hearing her thoughts. “Come. And fear not: there is no radiation harmful to you at the moment. And be honored, Akkama, for I have permitted only Anthea in this place, until now.” He led her deeper into the forge, past stacks of enormous casting molds, past piles of finished or partly finished gongs, silvery crates of various metals and chemicals in brick, bead, or powder form, between tanks of unknown liquids, along racks of tools, some of them so huge that Akkama doubted she could lift them. She saw among them a hammer that could have been the very one being held by the Thunder God himself in that statue outside. That would make it the Hammer of Annunciation, an artifact of myth. The Thunder God had stood here; had worked here. This was the Forge of the Storm. Akkama was not nor had ever been particularly religious, but that thought made her shiver. She was in a place of legend. She recalled being with Zayana, seeing the death of the Thunder God written in the sky.

  “Here,” said Rasmus at last. He stopped by a huge furnace, the bulk of which descended through the floor and beyond the wall. The heat was intense even with the furnace door closed; Akkama leaned closer to feel that heat. Rasmus set the scabbard upon a massive anvil which matched the giant proportions of the furnace and of Rasmus himself.

  “Would you care to hear the tale of how this blade was forged?” he asked as he set to work gathering materials.

  Akkama considered. On the one hand, she was fairly sure she had no desire to listen to Rasmus ramble on with his stories. On the other hand, the heat was relaxing her against her own will. And it might be interesting to know the origins of her sword.

  Rasmus continued before she had given an answer. “The dragonsteel blades were the result of a collaboration between the Thunder God and the Chained God. Old Steelmind himself requested of the dragons their blessing, that he might forge weapons capable of matching the ten great beasts, including the forvalaca and the shrike, who yet walk and breathe upon this world.

  “The dragons refused at first, for they held themselves above such a use. And the Chained God, together with the Thunder God, crafted other weapons, for at this time the world faced many threats, and monsters rose up from the sea, and beasts crept down from the stars. This is how came to be such legendary weapons as the Vestaglass Spear, the Hammer of Annunciation, which you see there, and even the Shrikesteel Sword. (And the Shrikesteel Sword is even mightier than the dragonsteel blades, though also far crueler and more dangerous.)

  “And the gods themselves took some of these weapons, and bestowed others upon the great heroes of that time. Ah…” Rasmus paused in his work and got a faraway look in his eyes. “How I wish I had been there!” He gazed blankly at the anvil.

  “…but the dragonsteel?” prompted Akkama.

  “Yes! It was the Lucky God who one day came upon a wounded dragon on the great cold heights of the Grungar Fields. He saved the dragon’s life, for it was sorely aggrieved by the anghamaraz. And this dragon, whose name was Map Maker, gave in gratitude the secret of the dragonsteel blades.

  “Behold!” he thundered the word and held before him a jar of thick glass so that Akkama could see it. Shimmering golden threads drifted within. “The whiskers of a dragon.” He set it down and selected another item from the collection of materials he had gathered. “Clear arda from the second ring.” He set the translucent crystal down and took up another jar filled with coiling grey mist. “Dreams.” Another jar, engraved with glimmering runes, empty. “The sight of dawn’s first light.” He took up another empty jar. “One requirement that you know.” He handed the jar to her. She did not hesitate to produce a knife, slice her arm open, and drain a fair amount of blood into the hot glass.

  “And finally,” said Rasmus, “It must be forged with elderfire, using a high-carbon spring-steel as a base metal, alloyed with…well, you would not be interested in the technical details of the process. Suffice to say, Map Maker gave seven whiskers to the Lucky God, and thus were the seven original dragonsteel blades forged. The other dragons of that time were unhappy with Map Maker’s decision, but it was too late to prevent the creation of the blades.”

  “And at first,” added Akkama, “Having one of the blades was dangerous because it made the dragons angry!”

  Rasmus nodded. “Yes. The dragons endeavored to hunt those who bore the blades and so retrieve them. They believed that the blades would do harm in the long unfolding of time. And they could sense the presence of these blades, and it came to be a belief among them that any who bore such a weapon was an enemy of the dragons. They succeeded in gathering most of the original seven, but over many ages the blades were lost, or stolen, or bestowed upon worthy heroes. That was all long ago, of course. So you do know a bit of the story.”

  Akkama nodded.

  “But did you know,” said Rasmus, “that the original seven blades, of which this is one, were not all swords?”

  Akkama’s surprise must have been evident.

  “Indeed. Three were swords of varying shape. Another was a knife. One was an axe. One was a glaive. As for the last, I do not know.”

  Akkama pondered this. “And what about the Shrikesteel Sword? What became of it?”

  Rasmus turned a disapproving frown toward her. “You should not desire such a thing. You would not, had you ever witnessed the shrike.” He turned back to the furnace radiating heat, to the anvil bigger than Akkama. Rasmus reverently placed a hand on the warm metal of the anvil. “They were forged here, the first dragonsteel blades. They were distributed to seven heroes, one of whom proved unworthy…”

  Akkama could not help herself. “One of them was Captain Shard!”

  Rasmus laughed, and though Akkama listened closely, she detected no mockery in that thunderous sound. “Perhaps, Akkama. We know not. It may be that such a hero lived, and carried this very weapon into battle against great danger as the stories say.”

  Akkama was too surprised to respond. No one believed in Captain Shard. Even Akkama herself had doubts whether such a dramatic tale as Shard’s could be true. Yet Rasmus seemed to accept the possibility with ease.

  Rasmus began. He laid aside the scabbard. He opened the furnace and thrust the two fragments of the blade inside on prepared racks before slamming the door shut. The wave of heat when he opened the door rolled over Akkama like sudden immersion into boiling water. Hot. Rasmus, already drenched in sweat, began some work with the other ingredients: the dragon’s whisker, the crystal, the dreams and sights and red blood.

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  “The hero comes,” said Akkama, not sure why she said it. Maybe she only wanted to try out the sound of the phrase in this place of legend.

  “What was that?” said Rasmus. He had placed a mask of dark glass over his face and was putting on heavy gloves and an apron. He took a deep gulp of water from a jug the size of Fiora.

  “The hero comes!” she shouted at him.

  He laughed; the floor vibrated. “In the darkest light,” he said. “At the starfall.” There was a smile in his voice, and Akkama smiled back before she could stop herself. “Turn away,” said Rasmus. “And do not look, if you value your sight.”

  Akkama, who knew a welding mask when she saw one, understood. She took a seat nearby and faced away from Rasmus atop a low metal table. Whatever he did was not welding; too quiet. But it was tremendously bright, such that Akkama closed her eyes even though she only saw the light’s reflection on the rack of tools before her. She took out a piece of paper and began folding it with her eyes closed.

  The flashing lights made her think of Captain Shard, engaged in desperate pursuits and narrow escapes through the void of space, the outer wilds. “Do you know the one about Captain Shard and Ghroth?” She made sure to speak loudly.

  “Tell me,” he replied. Akkama peeked through her eyes to look at the sharp shadow she cast on the wall. That shadow looked mysterious. Beautiful. Dangerous. It could have been the shadow of Shard herself.

  “So,” she began, still folding the paper, “Shard was pursuing Ghroth through the moons of Axile. The Song of Ghroth left a trail of destruction in its wake. He fled to Axile itself and dove into the seas of vapor, confident that Shard and her ship Nemesis could not follow. And he was right—for a time. But the Song of Ghroth disturbed the storms of Axile, and the storm worms raged. So Shard went to Ilmentesh for help.

  “The heir of Ilmentesh fell in love with Captain Shard, and when Ilmentesh found out about it, she tried to have Shard killed. But Shard was too quick! She made it look like the Nemesis was destroyed in an explosion. In the meantime, the prince commandeered a docile storm worm. The two of them, and Shard’s loyal friend Commander Ross, took the storm worm and followed Ghroth into the storms.

  “They came upon him as he lay unsuspecting at a gas-mine outpost in the heavy reaches. Ross planted explosives in the dark of night, and the prince stole back the charts, and Captain Shard found Ghroth with the captive refugees. ‘The hero comes,’ she said, and battled Ghroth in mortal combat, during an electrical storm, atop the outpost’s transmission tower! It was a fierce fight! Ghroth was very dangerous, and his terrible Song made Shard feel sick. He knocked the blade from her hand, and it looked like he had won, but then she blasted him with fire! She let him stab her so that he got close, and then she killed him with a shard she broke off of her own arda! You know how she would always do that. And they flew away as the outpost exploded. They rejoined the Nemesis, which was hiding in the clouds. And the prince wanted to stay with Shard, but she made him go back to Ilmentesh.”

  The end.

  “Hmm…” said Rasmus after a moment. His tone made Akkama’s hackles rise.

  “Hmm, what? What’s wrong?”

  “It is a fine tale, Akkama. But…when telling it, you should explain who Ilmentesh is.”

  “Everyone knows who Ilmentesh is!”

  “And you should say why Shard was chasing Ghroth. And tell more about the danger of his Song, and the importance of the charts, and of the refugees. And about the void wraiths. Such details must be a part of the story itself, to lend it weight.”

  Akkama didn’t know how to respond. Outrage? Who was he to critique her story?

  “Also, you must note the passage of time. Shard spent months with Ilmentesh, according to the tale. And you passed over her turbulent and dangerous love affair with the prince, whose name you did not even mention! Many would find this to be the most engaging aspect of—”

  “I don’t need any lectures from you, Rasmus!” she declared. She peeked against the blinding light to observe the completed origami figure in her hands. A paper tiger. Pleased, she held it up in the palm of one hand and made her arda burn hot. The tiger singed at the edges; it began to smoke. At last it burst into flame. The fire was almost invisible in the glaring light from behind. She let it burn for a few seconds before crushing the ashen paper in her fist with a grin.

  “A story is more than a mere succession of events,” Rasmus continued.

  “Fine,” she said. “Then you tell a story. Show me how it’s done.”

  “Hmm…” His hum sounded like the nearby buzzing of a house-sized bee. “Very well.” This was followed by a moment of silence, during which Akkama heard only the low rumble of the furnace and the irregular squeaky hiss of whatever Rasmus was doing to the ingredients.

  “This tale belongs to the Bleeding God,” he said. “Long ago, when even the gods were young, the Bleeding God looked upon the daimon of Infernus. She walked among them, and she saw their pain and their sorrow, the many miseries and ordeals of life. Her heart broke and broke again every time she saw a child in pain, or a lonely man, or an old woman weeping with regret.

  “She said to herself: this shall not be! Am I not a god, and a god of compassion? I will not allow innocents to suffer, nor for children to go hungry. I shall remove pain from this world.

  “She bled, therefore, and her blood fell like a rain of emerald, and with it fell her Song like a dew over the land. She set herself to remove pain—first from one small town, and then a single city, and then many cities. She healed the sick, she restored the wounded, she gave life to those on the verge of death.

  “Her power was great, but even she could not stop all wounds, prevent all death. She called other gods to her aid: the Mirror God, the Winged God, the Lucky God. She enlisted the green daimon of the world to give their blood for healing.

  “And so it soon came to be that many of the daimon of Infernus feared no wound nor injury. They dared greatly and fell often, for they knew the Bleeding God would be there to catch them. Yet there was no greater happiness for all of this. There was no greater joy in the world, nor greater love. Indeed, to the Bleeding God, it seemed the opposite. The daimon took health and safety for granted, and those that wished for death often could not find it. Soon the Changing God and the Frozen God began killing many daimon, the old and the weak, in defiance of the Bleeding God—and in her aid.

  “For the Bleeding God was in great pain, and very weak. Her great project had seemed good to her at first, but she saw that the daimon were not grateful to her, and were more unhappy than they had been before. At last, the Mirror God came to the Bleeding God. The Mirror God told her that people need their pain. By removing it from them, the Bleeding God robs and impoverishes them.

  “And the Laughing God spoke also to the Bleeding God, saying, ‘You can only heal physical wounds, which are the lesser. I can heal the deeper. Yet I seldom do, for this pain too is needed.’ And the Laughing God revealed to her the great pain that lies within every heart, and the importance of that pain.

  “Then the Bleeding God was sad, for she saw herself as powerless where before she had thought to redeem the world. She stopped healing, and on that day many daimon perished. The Bleeding God wept bitter tears, and the pain in her heart grew from those tears to become the shrike.”

  He spoke no more, though to Akkama it didn’t sound as though the story was quite over. What about the Shrike? She harrumphed, not convinced that his story was any better than hers. No action. No excitement. Just dumb moralizing.

  Rasmus had finished whatever he was doing with the light. Akkama peeked behind her, but his bulk blocked her view of the anvil.

  “I did see the Shrike once,” she said. That got his attention. He turned to her, and his lack of a welding mask made her confident that she could spin around again and watch. “In a dream,” she continued, “when I went to see the Desert Watcher.”

  “I have seen the Shrike,” said Rasmus, “but never the Watcher, not even in a dream.”

  “It was made of sand,” she said. “The Watcher. Maybe what I saw wasn’t its true shape. But it looked like a giant serpent made of swirling sand, with glowing red eyes.”

  “Were you frightened? Of the Shrike, I mean. Before you made your wish. Before the Watcher rid you of all fear, for good or for ill.”

  Anger crawled in her. She had been frightened, before. She had been terrified. Full of doubts. That was before she made her wish, before she had been chosen; before she had become a hero, never afraid. Yet she could still see that terrible beast, all sharp and shining, and could still taste the cold dread.

  He shrugged and turned to the furnace. “It is nearly time. And since you are in a talkative mood, may I also ask how you broke the dragonsteel blade? Such a thing is an accomplishment in itself.”

  “Thaevrit,” said Akkama. She bit her lip at once, drawing blood. She hadn’t meant to say it; it had slipped out. She didn’t want to bring it up. But damn. That bitch had been…surprising. Akkama had not expected every magical beast in the gods-damned continent to come to her aid.

  Rasmus grumbled in response, a harsh sound of disapproval. Anger, even. “I had hoped the rumors were only that,” he said. For the first time, Akkama thought that maybe, just maybe, Rasmus would threaten her. She was in the worst possible place for it, and unarmed. She shifted her balance, ready to dash for a weapon should Rasmus make a move.

  “I am disappointed, Akkama,” he said, “Though I know it means little to you. That is a thing you should not have done. For Zayana’s sake, if nothing else. Needless violence…”

  He took up an enormous barrel and held it up over his head. Akkama flinched and nearly leapt for a nearby lance in response, but Rasmus only upended the barrel over himself, soaking his body completely. He drank as he poured—huge great gulps of water. He set aside the barrel, near her, with some water still inside. In case she was getting dehydrated from the heat.

  He did not speak as he strapped a protective mask over his face. He turned once more to the furnace, the door of which glowed dully, and opened the door with a long tool. The heat crawled over Akkama’s skin, pressing her like a physical force. Her eyes watered at the temperature and brightness within the furnace. Her arda flickered in involuntary response. She shivered; her arda sparkled and rang out a tinkling chime of pleasure at the heat.

  Rasmus steamed with luminous vapor as he extracted the pieces of her sword and placed them on the anvil. He took up the hammer and a long crystalline thread that resembled the dragon’s whisker. This thread glittered with an iridescent light. He placed the thread atop the blade. His godshatter shone yellow; similar runes appeared on the anvil and the hammer he held. He struck without hesitation, a mighty SLAM that shook the ground and sent a fountain of brilliant sparks erupting into an atmosphere disturbed by heat-ripples. Akkama’s eyes widened, entranced by the sight of the sparks.

  “I can be killed,” he said. SLAM. A galaxy of tiny sparks, like shooting stars. “Rosma has nearly done it.” SLAM. “I was ordered to kill…” SLAM. “…those that did not deserve death.” SLAM. “That decision is not mine to make.” SLAM. “Nor is it yours.” SLAM. “But judgment upon you…” SLAM. “…is not mine to make…” SLAM. “…either.” SLAM.

  Each strike of the hammer reverberated with such force that the great Forge of the Storm seemed small and confined. And the Forge of the Storm earned its name, for the sound was like thunder, and Rasmus’s spines glowed and crackled with light, flashing like the runes on the hammer and the anvil as sparks flew with each strike—sparks of both fire and lightning. His arda shone, blazing amber, and his Song rang out in harmony with the crashing of the forge in a forceful music. The noise was so great that Akkama clapped hands over her ears. She barely heard Rasmus speaking over the sound.

  And the heat…it was great even for her. Rasmus’s steaming body ran with streams of sweat. Those drops which made it to the ground hissed on the metal floor. Again and again, until Akkama lost track of time, the hammer came down. Sometimes Rasmus turned the blade with tongs, changing its angle or flipping it over. Again and again, he interrupted his rhythm by placing the sword back into the furnace. The heat of the furnace was so great that Akkama wondered what material it was made of that it did not melt. She had been near fresh molten lava cooler than that furnace. Each time Rasmus placed the blade in the furnace, he took a brief break to douse himself again with the warm water, and again to swallow down as much as he could. A dozen barrels were stacked nearby, in easy reach, apparently for this purpose. Akkama took a drink herself partway through, for even she sweated as though in a steam room. The water was warm and somewhat salty, tangy with the flavor of hot metal.

  Hours. Akkama lost track of the time, entranced by the fire, the sparks flying like fireworks. Near the end of it, Rasmus at last took the jar of her blood. He poured it along the glowing blade; the blood sizzled and spat on the metal, bursting into violent gouts of ruby-red flame.

  At last, it was done. The dragonsteel blade lay red-hot atop the anvil. Rasmus turned it this way and that, scrutinized it from every angle, tested the balance in five different ways, tested the edge. He was satisfied. He dropped the hammer and slumped in exhaustion. Akkama had only been watching, but she felt drained and tired just from that. Rasmus looked barely able to stand. She had never seen him appear so weak, so frail. The thought came naturally: she could kill him now. Right now. It would be easy. But that was exactly why she wouldn’t. It would mean nothing to kill Rasmus in this state.

  The runes faded from the anvil. Rasmus pulled a lever nearby, with obvious effort, and a shuddering noise sounded from the furnace. Powering it down.

  Rasmus stumbled over to Akkama and sat on the table from where she had been watching. Akkama shifted, stood, stretched. She was sore from so much sitting on a hard surface. It occurred to her that she could get Rasmus a drink, and she just as quickly discarded the thought. He could get it himself. Instead, she strolled over to look at the blade.

  In shape and length it was almost exactly as she remembered. Somehow, although Rasmus had never sharpened it, the glowing edge looked as keen as ever. The glow faded as it cooled, and Akkama saw lines of runic symbols she had never noticed before running down the length of the blade. They vanished slowly as the heat died.

  “Your blood made those,” said Rasmus, fatigue clear in his voice. “That blade is truly yours now. It will feel…you. Your valor. It is…awake, now, as it was not before. I recommend…a name. For your sword.”

  He stood. She made way as he loomed behind her, seized some tongs, and carefully picked up the blade. He carried it to a metal tank of some dark oily substance. He dipped the sword in. Bubbles emerged with a faint hiss. He withdrew the oily blade, carried it to another bin from which he had to remove the lid. He dipped the sword again. When it emerged, the oil was all gone, along with evidence of the re-forging. The blade gleamed in the dimming red glare of the forge as though it were brand new and had been polished to a mirror-shine. Akkama’s eyes widened. Her breath caught. Her pulse raced. It was beautiful. Cool and sleek and deadly, and so sharp that she practically cut herself just looking at it. Better than it had ever been. Better than any sword, she was sure. A masterpiece. And it was hers.

  “Yet there is this,” said Rasmus as though replying to her thoughts, “that like unto any blade, ‘tis neither more nor less than she who wields it.” It sounded like a quote, but Akkama did not know it. Rasmus lowered the sword to her height.

  She took it with a trembling hand from the grip of the tongs. A static shock discharged itself on her hand, but she paid it no mind. Her tired body felt strong and sure again as soon as she held the sword. It was a part of her—the most important part. She swept it in a few practice arcs. Fast, strong, sharp. She could feel it, somehow. It was better. In some indefinable way, this blade was even more perfect than it had been before. She was sure it could slice cleanly through almost anything in this entire forge like a hot knife through soft butter.

  An hour later, in a guest room in an empty wing of the cavernous temple, Akkama lay down to sleep. She dared not sleep holding the blade, but placed it at her bedside, where her pulse quickened whenever she glanced at it. Flickering light from the fire she had stoked reflected on its gleaming perfection.

  The bed was not as soft or as spacious as her bed back at the palace, but she had long since ceased to care about such things. Of more practical importance was the fact that these sheets weren’t fireproof, but that hardly mattered either. Who would care if she singed them in her sleep?

  When she did finally sleep, she dreamed her usual dreams: of the sun, of the limitless sea of molten metal beneath the crust of Infernus, of her sword, of the fire she sensed within her opponents in the thrill of combat, and of the red eyes of the Desert Watcher when it had granted her wish and taken all her fear away.