The Forge in the Forest (55 page)

"You wrong yourself in silk," he told her. "You are smoother far to the touch…" She gasped deeply then, and he kissed her from throat to pulsing breast, and pulled her to him.

"But if it were purest folly," he whispered, as his hands flowed over her, "if I were unworthy of you; if it meant death for me, and everlasting doom, still I would venture it, and go rejoicing down into the dark!"

"Rejoicing!" she whispered, guiding his fingertips, matching touch for touch. "Rejoicing, into the dark!" Then she closed his lips with her own, and came to him.

It was full day when they went together down through the stairs and corridors of the palace, and out of the broken doors. The dead had been moved from the square and the streets below, although the stones were still dark with blood. Thus darkened, as later chroniclers have related, they were ever to remain; for so deep into the stone had the stain sunk that a century of rains could scarely lessen it, and as Plen Curau, the Square of Shed Blood, it was evermore known. "But it is a blazon of honor!" said Kermorvan. "For though a thousand and more have fallen today, yet by that sacrifice they have saved many thousands more. And of the Ekwesh not one alive remains, and their masters are dead or vanished." It was a great crowd he addressed, for almost the whole folk of the city had come swarming now into the square, and it was the sound of his voice that had summoned Elof down.
Roc
and
Ils
were beside him, and Erouel the chamberlain, and they would have run in joy to greet Elof, save that they saw Kara on his arm, and halted in astonishment. But Kermorvan smiled, and such a look of relief settled on his hard and wounded features as was seldom seen there. Calmly he nodded to Elof, as one who sees his confidence confirmed, and turned back to the crowd. "A new day dawns for Morvannec! And you must take counsel, that it be a day of growth and healing…"

"We need no counsel!" called a voice out of the far ranks of the crowd, a deep voice that Elof seemed almost to know. "Lord of the West, you have proven your right, and taken already what is yours!
You are the rightful lord!"
And the crowd echoed him in a joyous chant that seemed to spread all across the city, till it rang in the very peal of the bells.

"A king!"

"The lord Kermorvan from the west, he is our king!"

"King Keryn, he lives!"

"We have a lord once again, a rightful king!"

"Keryn the King, hail! All hail!"

But although the words had been in all their hearts, nobody remembered which man it was spoke first, and none there present would ever admit to it. So it is set down; but the chronicler adds that Elof had his suspicions.

But Kermorvan's face remained stern and unyielding under the dried blood that had flowed down one side of his long nose and matted the stubble on his jaw. "A proper prize, stood it in the gift of the Powers of Life themselves! Yet surely you offer it too lightly; little do you know of me, as yet. Therefore learn now my will! Last lord of the line of Morvan am I; and that I shall remain. Let its name lie quiet with its ruins, and so also the division and strife that marred its end! Of a realm so torn, I could never be king."

The crowd murmured, and gazed at one another in dismay. Kermorvan smiled faintly. "But, if you so wish, I might be the first lord of the line of Morvanhal, Morvan Arisen! For so I would see this city now named, and the country and realm in which it stands. And I would have us work together with all folk of good will, of whatever race and kin, that it shall rise indeed, to be a lasting bastion against the evils of the Ice!"

The wash of sound rolled over him once more, and a tide of feeling that did not draw back. He paused a moment, and his face grew grim once more. "Aye, you cheer, and that is well! But to cheer a fair hope is little effort! Will you also endure as gladly the pangs of bringing it to birth? For pangs there must be. From the west that is doomed through folly I shall summon those wise enough to come, and from kindreds of men that you can scarely guess at as yet. All these strangers you shall receive to dwell among you, greet them as gladly as if the kin you have lost this night and in the sorrows of the last years are returned. So shall the dwindling of your numbers be halted, so something of your loss be restored. And so ancient follies shall be buried, timeworn sundering healed!" The crowd was silent now, yet the air quivered as it might in the first breathless advent of a storm. Kermorvan surveyed them calmly, his blue-gray eyes lofty and remote. "Thus far my word is as steel. I shall brook no lessening of it. Here and now I will hear you swear to obey it always, in hard times as in good; and should you turn against that oath, even only once, city and land shall see me no more, and you may fend for yourselves thenceforth. To me you shall swear, and to these my companions, and Erouel the chamberlain; for they shall be my lords and counselors, and you shall hearken to their words as I do. On these terms only shall I accept… this," he touched the crown gently, "and all that goes with it. Well, do I have your oath?"

With many words, but one voice, the crowd roared, a thunder of affirmation that started the very gulls from the distant shore. Erouel, his white cloak blowing, stood contemplating the uproar with an air of kindly detachment. "My lord," he said mildly, "you were wounded in the face, I see. Better that you had taken care, and worn your helm." Before Kermorvan could move the old chamberlain had clapped the bright thing upon his head, the scepter in his palm, and now the crowd erupted.

"A fine coronation!" laughed Kermorvan, when he could be heard again. "To take a man unawares, indeed! For my ancestors' sake, we will have to have something more formal one day. But for now…" Kermorvan nodded, and a great tension drained out of him. "It is well. And for that, may the Powers of Life gaze with favor upon our city." He looked then at Elof and Kara, and smiled. "For surely they move among us this day!"

He raised the scepter, and pointed. Over the harbor two great ravens flew up, circling in the eye of the risen sun. And as the free folk of Morvanhal watched them, they wheeled away far out across the gilded ocean, as if they would seek out its easternmost shores.

Coda

At the end of the Book of the Helm is set down only that many a long year of happiness lay ahead for him and his love, and for their friends. Yet the years may not be as neatly closed as a chronicle; for during this very time the snows were massing upon other summits far away, and sundering and suffering were to follow. But also to come, as the Book of the Armring recounts, were the deeds which won Elof Valantor final renown as the mightiest of all magesmiths amid the dark days of the ancient Winter of the World.

Appendix

Of the land of Brasayhal, its form, nature and climate, and of its peoples and their several histories, such as are set forth in that volume of the Winter Chronicles called the Book of the Helm.

The Book of the Helm, being the account of a single immense journey, is more easily rendered into a coherent tale than its predecessor the Book of the Sword: no less living a voice sounds from its pages. Yet as before there remain many instances where much of interest is omitted, and much included that, however fascinating, is irrelevant: for the tale's sake a balance must be found. A brief account of the most important aspects is therefore included here. Though it can
do
no more than sketch in some details and guess at others, it may at least drive back a little the shadows cast by time upon the great deeds of an age that is gone.

THE LAND

In the years of the Long Winter the extent of the land of Brasayhal was very great, a vast continent that stretched some thousand leagues from ocean to ocean across the northern world. The journey of Elof Valantor and his companions took them from the southwestern to the northeastern coasts, an even greater distance, and through a range of the diverse lands and climes it then held. For the most part, of course, it was Forest; yet within that Forest there were as many variations as in the lands about its boundaries.

THE LAND OF TAOUNE'LA

The first of these beyond the Meneth Scahas, the Shield-range which marked the border of the Westlands, was the sinister realm of Taoune'la. For the most part it seems to have consisted of three regions; the northernmost of these appears to have resembled today's Arctic desert, and was seen by the travelers only briefly, at the entrance of Morvan in the Withered Marches, and in a much narrower region at their eastern escape from the Ice. Below this opened up a region of
tundra
, bleak grassland underlaid with thick layers of frozen water known as "permafrost," whose expansion can often cause the hummocky deformations of the land mentioned. Between this and the Forest, and perhaps extending into it, was a region of
taiga
, a slightly warmer, often swampy country in which patches of woodland can often still grow; permafrost may still occur in
taiga
regions, but more sporadically. To judge by the state of the ground the travelers found in springtime, however, the climate was swiftly worsening, and the tundra gradually encroaching on the
taiga
, which would bear out Korentyn's gloomy prediction. The land they came into after their escape from the Ice was some leagues further south, and save for the immediate area around the Ice a much more usual form of southern
tundra
or
taiga
landscape; its sudden burgeoning in spring is characteristic. However, the land there may have been unusually rich; for desert,
tundra
and
taiga
were all relatively recent arrivals. Before the coming of the Ice all the east of Taoune'la had been the
mor guerower
, the "greengold sea," the infinite southern grainfields of Morvan.

THE OPEN LANDS

Beyond the western margins of Taoune'la the river Gor-lafros flowed down from the Ice into the Open Lands. In the north these were a bleak and empty country of hill and moor, much the same on both banks: it was as if the chill of the meltwater that fed the river tainted and impoverished the soil, and it may be that there also the permafrost was spreading. But the worst of the taint, perhaps, was carried by outflows westward through the Shieldbreach into the Marshlands, and thence to the cleansing ocean. For south of the Breach the western bank of the Open Lands grew more fertile, until they gave way to the wooded country which the duergar claimed as their own. And on the eastern bank the true Forest flourished.

THE FOREST

Here, growing in temperate, hilly country, it was much like its lesser western arm, Aithennec; but eastward, as one approached the Meneth Aithen, the land grew somewhat lower, the climate warmer and moister, and the Forest ever taller and more dense as plant and tree struggled and competed toward the life-giving light, as they do in the
selva
, or tropical rain forest. However, the types of tree described clearly belong to cool temperate forests; it seems, therefore, that the ecology of the whole central Forest must have been of a kind almost extinct in the world today, the temperate rain forest. It may be significant that it was within this ceaseless ferment of growth, fed by a constant cycle of rain and mist, that Tapiau was at his strongest, and that it was an ill clime for civilized men. It was no accident that Lys Arvalen was sited on higher ground, the foothills of the Meneth Aithen.

These mountains were the only break in the rain forest, supporting a drier and sparser coniferous woodland that continued high up into the slopes of the range, yet their effect on rainfall patterns may have helped sustain it. Then as now, they must have been the tallest mountains in that land and a terrible obstacle to travelers, though one would not guess it from the brief account of the crossing the Chronicles supply, or from the extent to which the Forest is shown to dominate them. Evidently the Forest served the travelers as guide, for where it could grow unbroken the easiest passes must be, and spared them the dangers of the greater peaks. But their worries about food are no exaggeration; even for such hardened wanderers the crossing must have lasted many long days. Beyond the Meneth Aithen the land once again grew flatter, and in the central and southern regions the rain forest returned to dominance. In the far south the Forest is said to have become more like the complex tropical
selva
, but if the travelers ever went into that region it must have been in hunting parties from Lys Arvalen, for nothing is recorded. It is known that this jungle very soon thinned out into the Wastes; these began as arid scrubland, not unlike the utmost south of Bryhaine but without the rivers and coastal rains that kept that land fertile. And, as in Bryhaine, after no great distance the scrubland gradually dwindled to bare and searing desert, save where the great rivers of the east flowed to the sea. Such relatively swift progressions were undoubtedly a product of the glacial "compression" of climatic zones, described in volume one. The Wastes were no better places for men than the chill deserts of the north, although, like them, they were not without other inhabitants.

THE EASTERN LANDS

The Eastern Mountains were not as high as either the Meneth Scahas or the Meneth Aithen. But—contrary to what almost everyone seems to have assumed—they proved to be, if anything, a more effective natural barrier, not only to the physical spread of the Ice, but also to its equally lethal climatic effects. They ran at a sharp angle to the Ice, and somewhat further south; it had reached only their northernmost peaks, and would have required an immense effort to spread further into warm climes, without snowcaps to act as its vanguard. Most important of all, however, they were very broad; the fell winters windborne from the Ice, which had so diminished both the harvests and the spirits of the people of Morvan, could scarely cross them. More, they rose in a series of stepped ridges, which broke the impact of the ill winds, and made them spend their furies upon barren peaks instead of the rich land beyond. So it was that the Eastlands were shielded by land, and their coasts were well warmed by sea currents. But amid the shock of Morvan's fall, few if any realized this, or saw the Eastlands as a potential successor to that great realm.