Bear Knight, page 23
Kara lifted the pendant in her palm, the polar sapphire, as dark blue as the deepest, coldest sea, hugged by a silver bear. She remembered the terrible night on which it had come to her. Liam, her eldest brehna, died in her arms as Faelin Enarian defended them from an attacking horde of iron orcs. In his last moments, he had drawn it from under his blood-soaked shirt.
This was Mehma’s. She’d want you to have it.
Ioanu lowered her paw. “I am the bear in your hand, Queensblood, as is my mother and her mother’s mother. Your clan and mine are joined by the ages, and only the Maker could have brought us together this way. Hunted and hidden, we walk side by side once more.”
Your clan and mine. Family. Keir.
Ingaru seemed quick to correct her behlna. “Ioanu means to say we will walk together across the moor. Our clan and the others have remained here in safety for a long time. We will not put that safety at risk.”
Kara gave the younger she-bear a sad but grateful smile, then shifted her gaze to Ingaru. “Even so. If our families are joined by shared history, then show me the courtesy of trust. Share what you know of my brehna.”
44
“The camp is deep in Sil Shadath, Queensblood—the Black Forest, which the Aladoth now call the Forest of Horrors.”
Ioanu fell through the mist, with Kara on her back and Ingaru and Tiran falling ahead of them. The bears had invited them on a ride to some special place in the ancient Suvoroth capital. Though in their usual roundabout way with important information, they had not yet given a reason.
The bears had, at least, shared how Ioanu found Keir. Patrolling beyond the borders of the Tagamoor to the north, well beyond the bounds her mehma set for her, she’d caught Keir’s scent the same way she’d caught Kara’s. She’d never known the smell of a queensblood, but the clan had passed the description down across the generations—ice and lux flowers, iron, and cinnamon. Using her ability to almost float on Gloamwood’s ground fog, Ioanu had crept past ghouls and wanderers deep into the forest, near to a high fence, in time to see Keir’s companion fall. Dark creatures rushed in, too many for her to fight alone. And she was forced to let them carry both men off.
“He has spirit, your brother, but spirit alone will not get him out of the camps.”
“And your love alone,” Ingaru said, looking back at Kara, “will not be enough to save him. You must be fully ready for this fight.”
The speed of the fall slowed as the mist thickened, until Ioanu and Ingaru alighted on a road of bricks so dark green they were almost black. Kara heard the moor river close by—very close—but could not see it. Perhaps that was the reason for its name. She slipped from Ioanu’s back. “Thank you for carrying me. I sense that was never part of the life our families shared together.”
She heard a low rumble in the bear’s throat. “No. It was not.” But then Ioanu brightened. “Of course, neither were the Lightraider Order or the mists on the Tagamoor. A new history together is being wrought. And we shall take it as it comes.”
Kara smiled, and without thinking, rested her hand in the deep blue-gray fur between Ioanu’s shoulder blades. The bear didn’t seem to mind.
“Come along, Ioanu,” Ingaru said. “Do not delay our guests. They’ve much to do.”
The vapors on the moor road, with their metallic taste, threatened to choke Kara. But the bears believed she could safely walk there. She had asked them to trust her, and now she would trust them—an effort made all the more difficult by the poor visibility. “How far to the—”
Before she finished the question, great shadows materialized ahead—giant horns forming an archway over the road.
“Sel Suvor’s Passage,” Ingaru said, looking up. “Welcome to Tagamar, the Green City.”
The horns spread to the east and west, becoming a great circular wall. The moor hills ended, giving way to a monstrous plaza of the same dark brick as the road. With the fog around them, the plaza seemed endless, until the four passed between the first columned buildings of the city. Open doorways high up and rooftop gates suggested the long-ago residents stepped out into the air and floated down to the streets the way the bears had floated down to the road earlier. The idea would have painted a lovely image in Kara’s mind had it not been for the rubble on the street corners and the scorch marks and deep gouges on every building.
“Where are we going?” Tiran asked after they had passed several blocks.
“There.” Ingaru thrust her snout toward a smaller version of the outer horn wall. “The citadel. That’s where we’ll find the forge and the metals you’ll need.”
“A forge?” Kara slowed. “What for?”
The bears and Tiran slowed with her, until they all came to a stop. Ingaru turned her ears outward and furrowed her brow. “For your weapons, dear—those you broke in your fits when you first entered the bridge. The task ahead will be hard enough. The creatures in the forest to our north are unlike any you’ll find in Tanelethar. Many fly, thanks to the Tagamoor vapors leaking into their domain. Some can pass through barriers like ghosts. And their corrupted bodies emulate death. All of which makes them hard to kill. Don’t rush in to such a fight with broken blades.”
Ioanu matched her mehma’s confused expression. “Surely, you can use a forge and a hammer, Queensblood. You have the human blessing of dexterous hands, do you not?”
“I have hands.” Kara cast a glance at Tiran and caught him fighting a grin. “But as Wartroot will gladly tell you, they are not as dexterous as I’d wish.”
The city blocks of the citadel inside the second horn ring were smaller and shaped like slices of Glimwick’s pies, all pointing toward a round edifice, perhaps the ruin of the Suvoroth seat of government. Dark gray clouds poured forth from that central building’s collapsed dome.
“The Tagamoor was not so lost in its own vapors in the ancient days,” Ingaru said, stopping beside an unadorned structure with no windows a half-block from the geyser. “It is true, they seep up all over the moor, but the Suvoroth nobles controlled the primary source—a well within the high family’s palace. They loosed enough to give them flight without hiding the city in a shroud.” She inclined her head toward the windowless building where they’d stopped. “The forge is in here, but the entrance is on the roof. We’ll carry you up.”
After so many months working—or fighting—with the huge anvils at Ras Telesar, Kara found the Suvoroth smithy unexpectedly ordinary. She appreciated the human-size shop and wondered if the intimidation of the academy’s Aropha forges might be part of her problem.
Tiran seemed more impressed. The bears had brought them to the top floor of the building and led them down through an open stairwell. Once they’d descended into the forge, on the top floor, he’d run straight to a pile of discarded armor pieces. “Look at this!”
“That’s scrap,” Kara said.
“Yes, but some of the best scrap I’ve ever seen.” Tiran picked up the lower quarter of a breastplate and carried it to an open window where he turned its edge to the light. “The grain of this steel is so fine, I can barely see it. And then there’s this.” He raised the piece as high as he could reach and let it go. Instead of falling like a rock, it drifted down to the windowsill slower than a feather. “I have so many ideas.”
Ingaru used her head to steer him back to the forge. “You’ve no time to play, Wartroot. I forced you both to rest, but Queensblood was right to hurry us. The longer we wait, the more her brother may suffer.”
“I’m well aware, but you may be forgetting, to use a forge, we humans need more than our dexterous hands. We need fuel.”
“Do you mean coal?” Ioanu hooked a claw into the floral pattern of an iron grate in one wall. She swung it open, and a black chunk tumbled out. “Like this?”
“Yes. Yes, I supposed that’ll do.”
Kara took a set of tongs and stirred the contents of the quenching trough. Beneath a layer of glittering green scum, the oil looked clear. “This quenching oil is still good—or good enough.”
Scrap in the corner. Coal in the locker. Oil in the trough. If not for the film on the tools and counters and the scum on the oil left by the moor vapors, Kara might expect the owners had simply left for the evening. It had been the same with the dishes and such at the home where they’d slept—nothing missing, except for the people. She gazed out the window at the geyser billowing forth from the broken dome. “What happened here?”
“Dragons,” Ingaru said.
Tiran had set to work with a shovel, filling the forge. “The dragons destroyed Tagamar? But the old man we met in Grenton told us the Suvoroth were the first to swear allegiance.”
“True. But as the dragons themselves know, creatures with easily shifted allegiance put no value on loyalty.”
“You mean House Suvor turned against them?”
Ingaru nodded. “Just as the dragons had turned against their Maker. And, as might be expected, nothing angers one traitor more than a betrayal by another. When Dacon Suvor tried to sever his sorcery from dragon control, they destroyed his kingdom.”
Tiran called Kara to the forge. “The fire’s ready. It’s time.” But when she tried to hand him the broken whirlknives, he pushed them away. “You must repair your blades. Not me.”
A hollow opened in her gut. “I can’t, Tiran. You know I can’t.”
“What I know is the forge frightens you—not in the way the wanderer’s infection terrified you last night, but still”—he glanced down at her weapons—“this is a fear you must face.”
Before she could argue, Ioanu stepped in to support him. “Listen to Wartroot, Queensblood. I can smell the fear on you. How can you defeat the terrors of Sil Shadath if you cannot first defeat this one?”
Kara looked to Tiran for aid, pleading with her eyes for him to change his mind. “Even if I could do this, your skill is far better. Shouldn’t the better smith work the forge when time is short?”
“Like I said, you broke the knives. You fix them. I have work of my own that needs doing.” He set off toward the pile of scrap. “If the dark creatures of Sil Shadath are as dangerous as Ingaru claims, we’ll need every advantage, and I’ve thought of a way to gain one.”
45
Kara tightened and loosened her grip on the hammer, preparing the muscles of her hand as Baldomar had taught her, while she watched her bar of Suvoroth steel gather heat. The local ore gave the alloy a light indigo hue, instead of yellow, as it neared the working stage. “Is mine ready?” she asked Tiran.
“Sorry.” He lifted a glowing piece of scrap from the fire. “Busy. Can’t afford to watch your metal while I’m watching mine.”
It seemed a poor excuse. Why wouldn’t he help her the way he’d helped at Ras Telesar?
Still, Kara caught him stealing a glance at her bar, and she gauged by his expression that it was, indeed, time to pull it from the fire—if not past time. With her tongs, she laid it on the anvil and made her first strike.
The Suvoroth steel gave, but not in the direction she’d intended. She let out a sigh. “Tiran, I—”
“No questions, please.” He pounded his metal on another anvil a few paces away, keeping his back to her. “I need to focus.”
She gritted her teeth and kept trying. Again, the metal moved opposite the flow she’d intended. Making this blade might be a battle she couldn’t win.
A battle. Fighting the steel.
What had Silvana told her? Realize neither you nor the metal is the master. The real master is the one who made you both.
“Right.” Kara closed her eyes and prayed. “Aler lavech aduth hal sabetoth rabeh, dar driumi decret ke’Rumosh.”
Whatever my plans, it is your plans that prevail.
“Rumosh, Exalted One, I can no more fashion these blades on my own than I can rescue Keir without your aid. Help me. You placed me here in this moment for your purpose, so I give you control. You are the Blacksmith, the master of this steel and the master of us all. Guide my arms to shape these weapons so that we may both be tools for your service.”
Kara opened her eyes, expecting to see cold steel needing a return to the fire. Yet, the bar blazed indigo-white, waiting for her strike. She let the hammer fall. The steel moved—not in exactly the way she’d intended, but on a path she could envision. She followed this path and struck again.
With each strike and bend, the blade took shape, a different shape than she’d seen in her mind when she began—a better shape. At times, Kara’s will intruded, and her muscles tensed. She finally understood what Baldomar meant in the many times he’d told her to stop overthinking. To combat this, she asked Ingaru to occupy her mind with the full story of House Suvor’s fall. The she-bear’s rumbling tale blended with the rhythm of her hammer.
House Suvor reigned over the Tagamoor from the early days of man. House Leander, who walked with the white lions of the far north, would become the first kingdom to capitulate under the dragon scourge, but House Suvor turned traitor before the scourge began.
Able to leap great distances within their domain thanks to the moor minerals in their blood and bones, Suvoroth warriors repelled every invader until no kingdom dared. Nearing the end of the first age, in the days following Heleyor’s betrayal of our Maker, the Suvor lords fell into brooding discontent. They wanted the lands outside the moor. But, in those days, the canyon remained whole, and kept the mist and the source of their advantage from drifting outside its walls.
Zalcon Suvor, their king, grew jealous of House Leander and House Arkelon’s influence—the expanse of their lands, spreading south from the Frost Islands and King’s Cradle. Nothing, neither the reason of Zalcon’s queen, Kezia, herself an Arkelon queensblood, nor the soothing songs of his youngest son could cool his burning envy. His elder son, Prince Dacon, and the other lords were much the same.
Heleyor, the cunning Great Red Dragon, had placed spies in every kingdom. Word of House Suvor’s discontent reached him, and he sent emissaries into the Tagamoor under the cover of night—winged corruptions with the aspect of both man and dragon, the first of the granogs.
These creatures lured Zalcon into his throne room, near the well of vapors, and presented him with a chest full of black sorcerer’s gems. Any who wore just one could carry the mists of the Tagamoor far beyond its cliff walls, wearing the vapors like a shroud. The granogs offered as many gems as Zalcon desired. But it was not a true gift. To claim it, House Suvor had to bow to Heleyor and reject the Maker.
Queen Kezia entered the throne room as Zalcon’s knee began to fall. With sword in hand, aided by the thick vapors near the well, she fought the granogs until they fled. Some say that this humiliation—outflown by a wingless human in the infancy of their kind—is the reason all granogs hate to fly. As they fled, a single black gem fell unseen from their chest and lodged itself between the throne-room tiles.
Kezia had stopped her husband from bowing, but the first dark creature infection had been cast, and soon it spread to Prince Dacon through his father’s tales. One evening, alone in the throne room, Dacon found the black gem. In secret, he journeyed beyond the Tagamoor canyon. The granogs had spoken true—as far as he could tell. For a shroud of vapors followed him, enabling him to leap with unnatural strength deep into Sil Belomar, what is now Gloamwood. He rushed home to tell the king.
A year of intrigues followed, enough to fill a book, but by the end, Queen Kezia and her youngest son lay dead, and Zalcon, with his new queen and Dacon beside him, bowed before a crude granog-made effigy of Heleyor. The first betrayal was complete.
Wearing a sorcerer’s amulet and a cloak of Tagamoor vapors, Zalcon led an army west toward the Tarlan Plains. Dacon led the rest of their warriors north into Sil Shadath. And both took whatever lands they wished. For a time.
Heleyor had lied. The dragons, even their leader, are not all powerful. They corrupt and manipulate the Maker’s creation, but they are still bound by his sovereignty. The black jewels could only carry the Tagamoor mists so far. Though the Suvoroth lords studded their armor with more and more gems, they could not carry their power beyond the Green Mountains at the western edge of the plains or beyond the northern extent of Sil Shadath.
Zalcon believed this was a dragon limit on House Suvor’s influence, and submitted. But Dacon railed against it. When his father died, he sought to throw off the dragon yoke by his own might and cunning. He searched every dark street and dingy port in Talania until he found a magician-thief who’d stolen a key from the Aropha temple at Ras Heval, one that opened the lost bread gate of Ras Pyras. The fool claimed that by sneaking into Heleyor’s stronghold and reciting a few incantations, they could wrest the sorcery of the jewels from the dragons and grant it to House Suvor forever.
They tried. Heleyor caught them at the center of his den. Dacon died instantly. The thief escaped, or perhaps the dragons let him flee because their anger burned hotter against the traitor Suvoroth. From all sides, the dragon lords and their orc armies drove the Suvoroth warriors back into the Tagamoor. There, in their homeland, the Suvoroth fought their hardest and most futile battle.
It was not the dragons, but House Suvor that destroyed the dome above the well and unleashed the vapors that still pour forth today. They filled the moor to the tops of the cliffs and fought the dragons in the sky. But the dragons were ready. Their goblins had dug a great tunnel deep into the northwestern rim beneath the Phantom’s waterfall. On Heleyor’s command, they collapsed the cliff. Vapors flowed like water into the hills and, from there, north into Sil Shadath and east into the eastern range, known ever since to common folk as the Muddled Mountains.
Brought down to their own streets, the Suvoroth fell victim to the raging orcs. The creatures dragged every man, woman, and child from their homes and shops and left none alive. Such was the rise and fall of the Suvoroth and Talania’s first traitor-king.
As Ingaru finished her the story, Kara completed her last pass at the grinding wheel. She’d welded the old steel with the new so that the blue-white lightraider steel merged with the Suvoroth steel in a rolling eddy of sea green—blue paired with green, like the starlots at their hinges. The deeper bend of the repaired blades no longer matched the crescent bend of their partners on each whirlknife, but the completed weapons closed and opened well and fit into their sheaths. Perfect or not, the sharpness of the double edges would kill when needed.
