The Hammer of the Sun (68 page)

"How soon?" demanded Roc in horror. "
How soon
? Are you telling us we've no home left awaiting us over the horizon there? Was that why you waited?"

Elof smiled, and lifted a hand. From overhead came a joyous cry. "
Morvanhal in sight/Morvanhal to starboard, palace and tower! Home, we're home
!"

"That at least I can spare you," he said. "It comforts me somewhat. And you did not notice the glaciers shrinking before we sailed, did you? They almost made themselves the ruling forces in the climes of the world, and such a presence will be slow to disperse. It will take time; many lifetimes of men, I think. But not so many; three, four, five perhaps, before the waters begin to swallow the coasts. But after that it will become swift."

"New lands will be laid bare, when the glaciers melt!" said Ils encouragingly. "As they were before! That's something, isn't it?"

Kermorvan did not lift his head when he spoke. "As I feared. That cannot be enough time to find and clear enough new land, even if the Powers that linger will let us. And the lands that were under the Ice will take longer still to recover. Oh, we will manage something, somehow, with your folk to help us. Men will endure; but not their realms. We will dwindle, as did your folk, or revert to simple, rustic folk; even savages and barbarians. It happens even now to Kerys; but soon we also shall be devoured!" He stood suddenly, and his face was bitter and bleak, his fists clenched white at his breast. "So ends my fool's dream! My dream of founding a realm and a dynasty, a land of prosperity and wisdom, of strength and justice. Not one that would last forever; I needed no Raven to tell me that. But that would last as long as Kerys, and leave as great a name; or at the least, some tangible mark and memory in the hearts of men. But whatever I achieve still, it will melt and vanish, and be dissolved in the eternal changes of the seas. I should have known better, this world being what it is. It was all in vain."

Elof also rose, though with difficulty. "No," he said quietly, and put a hard hand on Kermorvan's shoulder, "it was not. And it will not be."

The tall man turned, his bronze hair streaming in the breeze with the look in his face of one who hears a distant horn-call.

"It will not be!" repeated Elof. "I did you an injustice, my old friend. You spoke still of the future, of what you might still achieve, hopeless or not; had I been sure you would, I would have answered you sooner, and not delayed till I had to. Hear then, and hope on! Without your kingship, without
you
, there would have been no victory, no chance of any men at all surviving, civilised or not. But they will, now. Civilisation will come again, where without you, without all of you, it could not have. It will come again, because from the fires you light in the years to come, small sparks will be kept alight, little enclaves of wisdom in a world newborn, and ignorant as all things newborn are. Some of their knowledge, some of their wisdom, that will survive to pass down the years, even if men forget whence it came, and keep only a dim memory of legend, of an age of vanished glory. All save that memory may be lost, yet still it will inspire them to glories of their own. Your name, all our names they may forget, but the image of your kingdom, your line, shall burn bright in their hearts. They will cross seas in quest of it once more, and perhaps the name of Kerys, of the glorious City of Ys, will not be wholly forgotten. Men may hear its bells ringing still, there beneath the waves. You shall have your dynasty, Keryn Kermorvan; and no king ever founded one greater. It shall be all mankind."

When Kermorvan spoke at last, it was with difficulty. "It is greater than I deserve, then. I am comforted. And I am humbled; I can hope, still. May our children and theirs be worthier - eh, my lady Ils?"

She smiled then; but she also could not speak. It was Roc who spoke first. "That goes for me also - but Elof… I don't know if I should ask, but… how can you be so bloody
sure
?"

"And you said you
had
to tell now!" whispered Ils. "Why, Elof, why?"

Kermorvan nodded. "I wonder also. Yet I do not doubt you. What sight is given you, Elof Valantor?"

Elof smiled again, though a cough racked him painfully. "The sight of the bird that breaks its shell. As a bird indeed I saw it first, blown this way and that on the heights. A light shone all about me, it seemed; and only my own poor self was in the way of it. As Louhi said, we do not die so easily, our kind; but Kara was right to sense a change coming. It was for us both."

"
Who are you
?" Kermorvan whispered. "I have asked you that before, but… Who are you?"

"A man, like yourself," answered Elof, with only a tinge of amusement. "Exceptional in some ways, perhaps; but then all men are, if only they can discover how. I live by eating and drinking; I grow ill, I feel pain, I bleed, age comes upon me - what more would you have? I have smithcraft in me; but then so do all men in whom the blood of the Powers is still mingled richly enough - yourself included, Kermorvan. But…" He hesitated. "Once, I was something more. No, more than once."

"What in Hella's curlies are you talking about?" demanded Roc.

Elof grinned. "In noplace so arcane. Bear with me; it is hard to explain. There is still so much that I can't remember, or only have a brief glimpse of; more than my mind will hold… Say, if you like, that I have lived many lives -
stay
!" So commanding was the word, so absolute the gesture that instead of springing up in astonishment or fear they swayed towards him, and were silent. "Or that someone has. Each one different, none of them resulting in the man who speaks to you now. How could they, when so many different memo-ries must make up a man? Yet each began from a common core; each was a different path to an end. And that core endured. Most were failures; but I am not." He grimaced. "Not entirely, not at the last. For if I learned one thing in all those lifetimes, learned it with pain and suffering and damnable follies, it was this -" He coughed, so that his whole body shook. "That only a man free of the Powers could free men from them."

He smiled again. "As free they must become in the end, Kermorvan. However great the cost… So I forswore all that was mine, knowledge and power beyond your comprehension - and now beyond mine. Forswore it wholly, as I had never before dared to do. On that path there was no going back. I forgot entirely who I had been. When I became the infant fondling they named Alv, I set myself forever within the limits of men."

"And you chose Asenby…" murmured Kermorvan, as if in a dream. "Where a sceptre was being used as a cattle-goad…"

"A sceptre that would draw me through my great smithcraft to its rightful lord, in the end," said Elof, and became aware of a vast laughter bubbling up within him. "And where an agent of Louhi would come - drawn in his turn, though neither of us ever guessed it! Only I had reckoned without the Raven. He knew of me, none better; no other did, not Tapiau, not even Louhi, though she saw something in me she did not understand. Raven chose to shorten my ways somewhat, in his own twisted fashion. But never freely; I had always to earn his help, however paltry. Of my own I had nothing, save one legacy left myself against great need; and that was the sword Talathar, which I renamed Gorthawer, and the knowledge that lay bound up in it. And both of those I had to find anew for myself."

"Vayde's sword…" said Roc quietly. "As they knew, in Kerys . And you were drawn to Vayde's forge. So it was Vayde you were, right enough…"

"Vayde was himself, and for what he was he perished in the Great Marshes, though nobly enough at the last. Poor creature! He knew too much of what he was, and not enough of men, and both were torment to him; he failed, though not completely. Him you might have feared, for he was more than a man; but I…" He laid his hands in his lap. "I am a man. All my life that is what I have thought myself; and now that I know my history, I feel only the more sure of it. I'm afraid that you might think otherwise; that you, my oldest friends, might not accept me as you always have." He smiled wryly. "Whatever my human failings."

No one answered at first, and the sound of the waves grew very loud in their ears; but then, impulsively, Ils caught his hand and held it tight. "Ass! Of course you're a man! Does it take a duergar girl to tell you that?"

"Well," said Roc thoughtfully. "You
look
like the same lad I've chased around and about half this world with. And I reckon nobody but a man could get in some of the scrapes I've hauled you out of…" He chuckled. "Or haul me out of mine. So we'll give you the benefit of the doubt - eh, Kermorvan?"

"I think that might be arranged," said Kermorvan dryly, though a great wonder was still in his eyes. "Indeed, I have known you too well, too long to think otherwise. And I always thought it an honour, even then. Yet…" But there he caught himself, and said no more.

Ils snorted. "There he goes again, too damned courteous! Elof, you are who you are, and you're a fool to think we'd have you otherwise… after the
first surprise, that
is? But once you were someone else, you've told us. Someone, apart from those other lives. Have you… have you remembered who?"

Elof laughed suddenly, and fell to coughing so hard his hand clenched tight upon hers. "I'm sorry… My chest seems afire. I was only remembering you and I, Kermorvan, in the earliest days arguing about what your Kerbryhaine philosophers thought, about whether the Powers could take human shape, and why - whether it was to understand men better! I wish they could have met Louhi! It is not the shape that gives understanding, but the life. I as I was, I never understood the hearts of men, and I longed to. So at last I plucked up the courage, and made what I thought a great sacrifice, frighteningly great. Freely I forgot all of myself, leaving only the essence, the inner fire. And fire it was, indeed! For the light and fire that gave life to the world, they were my element once, as the waters are Niarad's and Saithana's, and the forests Tapiau's; as the airs were Taou-nehtar's and Taoune's once, till they armoured themselves in the dead Ice. We were the minds that roved in those forces, set within them to the long labours of shaping a world, destined in the end to change, and become a part of it. To join with men… We take human shape more easily than any other, because that is the shape we must all take in the end, and the destiny we must share. Louhi may, soon, and I wish her joy of it, ill-prepared as she is; though she will still have something of her beauty to help her. I embraced that change, because I knew it must come; and oddly enough I feel more myself than ever before. For I was Ilmarinen, Forger of Mountains, Smith of the Powers; an I am all of him that remains."

"
Ilmarinen
!" gasped Ils, and would have sunk down at his feet, had he not caught her and raised her, though she shivered at his touch. "Small wonder that I… I…"

Elof smiled. "Saw something in me? It is so; and it is not out of place. For in his way Ilmarinen always loved your race as much as they, him. But I would rather be your friend still, than what he has been to you, for I share your world, and not his. Save only in this; we who have dwelt upon the heights, we cannot enjoy the surcease of a single life, a single death. It may be that men cannot, either; of that knowledge only a glimmering remains. But this I know; we at least may rest between our human lives, may find long surcease from our labours. I have earned it, and perhaps more. For when I took courage at last and embraced that change I found something new rewarded me, something I had never managed to find before; and if it is lost to me as a man, then by pursuing that change I may find it yet. You asked me, Ils, why I had to tell you now. It is this; I was waiting for a sign. And that sign has come."

He stood, and they stood with him. "It is time to say farewell, my friends. But not forever; I will never be far from you, in this life or any other. For harsh as the world may seem, yet against all hope we may make things of worth endure. Even that most fragile thing of all, that we call love.
For see there/"

The voice was a man's; but such a weight even of remembered power resounded within it that, as the tale is told, no man on board could look anywhere but where his lifted arm pointed. High above the coasts of Morvanhal, where red stone and white tower gleamed in distant harmony, a dark speck appeared, flying swift against the wind that bore them home. And it seemed to those who had been the friends of Elof Valantor, greatest of all mastersmiths among
men, that
for a
moment that
wind blew strong and fierce and warm about them, as if great wings beat within; and when they turned to Elof the deck was empty where he had stood.

Only a few fragments of silver lay there, and an armring of pale gold, abandoned as things childish are when their need and use is past. No man heeded them, for their eyes were held skyward, higher and ever higher to where two great swans flew up, circling ever closer in a graceful spiral until they seemed to vanish among the clouds, into the last rich light of the sun. And though to them it set, the watchers knew in their hearts that elsewhere it arose again in spreading, undying fire.

Coda

It came to pass even as Elof had foretold. Under the wise rule of Keryn Kermorvan and his queen the last kingdom of men flourished and spread far along that eastern shore, ever joining and mingling more with the duergar as the years passed. King Keryn lived to an astonishing age, far beyond the span of his eldest subjects save only his great chancellor, the Lord Roc, and till their end they both kept strength and vigour. In that, perhaps, the lady Ils had a hand, and the healing arts of the duergar; but it may have been another's gift. After the King's death Us returned to her own folk, and with her aged father long ruled that remnant who would not mingle with men, but chose to live out their lives under stone; and though they stayed long in friendship with the kingdom of her children, she herself never came there again.