Forge of Darkness

I am about to be cast out.



The dusty air of the Old Tower stairs swirled round them as they descended, and the peace of this place felt shattered. But soon it would settle again, and the emptiness would return, like an ousted king to his throne, and Arathan knew that he would never again challenge that domain. It had been a foolish conceit, a childish game.



‘ In natural justice, Arathan, the weak cannot hide, unless we grant them the privilege. And understand, it is ever a privilege, for which the weak should be eternally grateful. At any given moment, should the strong will it, they can swing a sword and end the life of the weak. And that will be today’s lesson. Forbearance.’



A redge in a hole — the beast’s life is tolerated, until its presence becomes a nuisance, and then the dogs are loosed down the earthen tunnel, into the warrens, and somewhere beneath the ground the redge is torn apart, ripped to pieces. Or driven into the open, where wait spears and swords eager to take its life.



Either way, the creature was clearly unmindful of the privileges granted to it.



All the lessons Sagander delivered to Arathan circled like wolves around weakness, and the proper place of those cursed with it. No, Arathan was not a simpleton. He understood well enough.



And, one day, he would hurt Draconus, in ways not yet imaginable. Father, I believe I am your weakness.



In the meantime, as he hurried along behind Malice, her grip tight on his wrist, he brought up his other hand, and chewed.



Master-at-arms Ivis wiped sweat from his brow while he waited outside the door. The summons had come while he’d been in the smithy, instructing the iron-master on the proper honing of a folded edge. It was said that those with Hust blood knew iron as if they’d suckled its molten stream from their mother’s tit, and Ivis had no doubt in this matter — the smith was a skilled man and a fine maker of weapons, but Ivis possessed Hust blood on his father’s side, and though he counted himself a soldier through and through, he could hear a flawed edge even as a blade was being drawn from its scabbard.



Iron-master Gilal took it well enough, although of course there was no telling. He’d ducked his head and muttered his apologies as befitted his lesser rank, and as Ivis left he heard the huge man bellowing at his apprentices — none of whom was in any way responsible for the flawed edge, since the final stages of blade preparation were always by the iron-master’s own hand. With that tirade Ivis knew that no venom would come back his way from the iron-master.



He told himself now, as he waited outside his lord’s Chamber of Campaigns, that the sweat stinging his eyes was a legacy of the four forges in the smithy, the air wretched with heat and bitter metal, with coal dust and smoke, with the frantic efforts of the workers as they struggled with the day’s demands.



Abyss knew, the smithy was no factory, and yet it had achieved an impressive rate of stock production in the past two months, and not one of the new recruits coming to the Great House was left unarmoured or weaponless for long. Making his task that much easier.



But now the Lord was back, unexpectedly, and Ivis scoured his mind for the possible cause. Draconus was a measured man, not prone to precipitous acts. He had the patience of stone, but all knew the risk of wronging him. Something had brought him back to the Great House, and a night’s hard ride would not have left him in a good mood.



And now a summons, only to be left waiting here outside the door. No, none of this was normal.



A moment later he heard footsteps and the portal clicked open. Ivis found himself staring into the face of the House tutor, Sagander. The old scholar had the look of a man who had been frightened and was still fighting its aftermath. Meeting Ivis’s eyes, he nodded. ‘Captain, the Lord will see you now.’



That, and nothing more. Sagander edged past, made his way down the passageway, walking as if he’d aged a half-dozen years in the last few moments. At the notion, Ivis berated himself. He hardly ever saw the tutor, who overslept every morning and was often the last to make bed at night — there was no reason to imagine Sagander was anything more than disquieted by the early meeting, and perhaps an understandable stiffness as came with the elderly this early in the morning.



Drawing a steadying breath, Ivis strode into the chamber.



The old title of this room was acquiring new significance, but the campaigns of decades past had been conducted against foreign enemies; this time the only enemy was the mutually exclusive ambitions of the Holds and Greater Houses. The Lord’s charnel house smithy was nothing more than reasonable caution these days. Besides, as Mother Dark’s Consort, there was nothing unusual in Draconus bolstering the complement of his Houseblades until it was second only to that of Mother Dark herself. For some reason, other Holds were not as sanguine about the martial expansion of House Dracons.