The Heart of the Sands, Book 3 of The Gods Within (8 page)

Yim showed him how to
collect horse and cattle dung for the fires. She gave him a large canvas sack,
instructed him to carefully separate those leavings fully dried from those
still fresh, showed him where to pile the dry dung, and where to spread out the
fresh stuff to dry further in the sun. It wasn’t pleasant work,
but it gave him a chance to explore the entire camp and get a feel for the
place.

If he could escape,
could he go to Olivia with the question about his name? She certainly knew more
about names than anyone else he could think of. But then, she’d
find some way to use him, so he couldn’t go to her. AnnaRail! Or
Roland! Perhaps if he went to them in secret.

Moving about the camp
collecting dung, he discovered the corral on the far side of the camp. It was
enclosed by a permanent, stone wall that must have taken generations to build. It
included a grove of trees where horses, cattle and other livestock grazed in
the shadows. Morgin took a break from gathering dung, stopped to look over the
Benesh’ere herds, and while he stood there a strange, though not
unfamiliar, feeling came over him, as if he were being watched, but not by
anything mortal. Then a tall, black mare stepped out of the herd and trotted
his way. It reminded him of the almost identical scene in his dreams when
Mortiss had found Morddon in Kathbeyanne.

She stopped in front
of him just on the other side of the stone wall, snorted at him scornfully as
if to say,
Of course I’m here, you
fool.

He reached out and
scratched her behind the ear, and she let him do so almost impatiently. He
tried to recall when he’d last seen her: at the river, shortly
before France had drowned, and Tarkiss and his Kulls had captured Morgin and
taken him to Durin.

Mortiss spluttered her
frustration at him.
No, it was at Aethon’s
tomb when you laid him to rest.

Morgin found it oddly
comforting to once again suffer Mortiss’ derision. “But
that wasn’t me,” he said. “That was
Morddon.”

She neighed angrily,
How can you be so ignorant?

Most often, he thought
of her merely as Mortiss, but he recalled now that her full name was Mortiss,
the DeathWalker. When he’d first met her he’d had no
idea what that meant, but now the meaning seemed quite clear: death followed
her everywhere.

He shrugged and said, “I
guess if you’re here, the sword can’t be far away.”

Off to Morgin’s
left one of the Benesh’ere tending the herds took notice; he put
down whatever he’d been about and walked Morgin’s
way. There was something familiar about the man, and as he approached Morgin
thought they might have met before, and he struggled with his memory to recall
the meeting. The name Jack the Lesser came to mind, and Morgin remembered the
tall bowman who had accompanied Jerst and Blesset when they’d
first met before Csairne Glen. But while this man looked in every way to be
Jack, there was something about him that put a lie to such a thought, an air of
anger and bitterness and disappointment.

The Benesh’ere
stopped a few paces away—a good safe distance—looked
Morgin over carefully, then looked at Mortiss. “She lets no one
touch her that way; won’t let anyone saddle her. One of these days
I’ll just butcher her for her meat.”

Morgin suspected that
if the fellow ever decided to follow through on such a threat, Mortiss would
simply be absent. Or more likely, when not in her immediate presence, the
fellow would probably completely forget her existence. But he said nothing of
his suspicions and merely shrugged. “She’s always had
a mind of her own.”

It was unsettling to
recognize this man so readily, and yet to know with absolute certainty he was
not the man Morgin had met. “Do I know you?” Morgin
asked.

The Benesh’ere’s
eye’s narrowed. “You think you’ve seen
me before, eh?”

Morgin shook his head
carefully. “No. I’ve met someone who looks like you,
but not you.”

The fellow frowned,
then he smiled. It was the second kind look Morgin had seen on a Benesh’ere
face. The man shook his head slowly with a certain wonder in his eyes. “You’re
the only man I’ve ever met who hasn’t made that
mistake, at least on first meeting. How did you know I’m not my
brother?”

Twin brothers! Morgin
merely said, “I don’t know. You’re just
different. And I have a certain instinct about names, and your name is not Jack
the Lesser.”

“No,”
the man said. His face again hardened and a deep bitterness entered his voice. “I
am Jack the Greater.”

Morgin failed to hide
a frown. “How did the two of you come by such names?”

Jack smiled bitterly. “The
same way you came by your name, Lord AethonLaw.”

Morgin stepped back,
felt as if he’d been struck. “The demon?”

“Aye. The
demon.” He looked at Morgin carefully, waiting for some sort of
reaction, then he added, “Beware of that great name of yours, Lord
AethonLaw. And don’t waste your time trying to live up to it.”

Jack waited for
another moment, perhaps to see if Morgin had some comment to add. But then, in
silence, he turned away and walked back to his work.

~~~

When Morgin returned
to Harriok’s tent a crowd of whitefaces had gathered waiting near
its entrance, all seated quietly in the sand like statues. As he approached he
noticed the bully Tallik sat among them and a knot formed in his stomach. Morgin
guessed he’d now pay for humiliating the bully, and he wondered if
he might get by with a simple apology.

Waiting with Tallik
were LillianToc, Yim, the two boys who’d accompanied Tallik that
morning, and an older Benesh’ere man who stood as Morgin
approached. The rest stood with him, but the man stood above them all, tall and
angry and impatient. The man’s eyes narrowed, and looking at
Morgin he grew even angrier. “You’re the Elhiyne?”
he demanded.

Morgin stopped out of
reach of any impulsive attack. “Yes,” he said
tentatively. “About this morning. I—”

“Silence!”
the man shouted, and Morgin obeyed.

The man turned to
Tallik. “This is the man struck you down?”

Tallik averted his
gaze respectfully. “Yes, father.”

The man nodded and
looked from Tallik to Morgin. Then to Tallik he said, “And he
bested you rather nicely, I hear.”

Tallik lowered his
eyes. “Yes, father.”

The man walked over to
Tallik carrying a long, thin strap of brown leather Morgin hadn’t
noticed before. He stood behind the boy, and wrapped a length of leather around
his throat, then began weaving it with intricate knots. When he finished Tallik
now wore a debt collar not unlike Morgin’s.

Tallik’s
father stood and looked down on his son angrily. “You’ll
take his duties now, and he yours. And you’ll do so until I’m
satisfied you’ve learned to be a man, and not a bully.”

Morgin suddenly
realized he was looking at these whitefaces through Morddon’s
heart. Back in Kathbeyanne all those centuries ago, he’d rather
liked the whitefaces with whom he’d ridden and fought. And while
Morddon had been an angry grouch, he’d actually loved his Benesh’ere
brethren. Looking at Tallik through Morddon’s heart, Morgin felt
oddly sorry for the boy, especially since it appeared his father would take pains
to be sure he learned the right lesson from the fight. The kid would probably
grow up to be a nice fellow, though Morgin still wasn’t sure if
Tallik’s punishment was for picking the fight, or for losing it.

~~~

Tallik’s father tasked Yim with leading Morgin
to his new duties. She led him through the tents of the main camp, and as they
approached its edge he picked up the faint ring of hammers pounding on steel, a
sound that grew louder with each step. She led him to a cluster of tents
separate from the main camp, tents different from a typical Benesh’ere
tent. The tents were complete in and of themselves, but each had a large flap
that extended out from the tent proper, with two corners supported by long
poles. It created a shaded workspace next to the tent, with a table and a rack
of tools, and, most obvious of all, a smith’s anvil. There were
about a half-dozen such tents in all, with about half of the shaded workspaces
occupied with smiths working metal.

Yim stopped outside one of the tents and spoke loudly, “Master
Chagarin, I have the Elhiyne.”

She turned to Morgin and whispered quickly, “Be
respectful, for he is very close to the steel.”

Close to the steel!
Morgin
had heard that phrase before. He knew he didn’t fully understand
what it meant, and hopefully he’d now have a chance to learn.

Chagarin threw the tent flap aside and stepped out into
the sun. He was short for a Benesh’ere, which meant he stood only
a few finger-widths taller than Morgin, who was taller than most clansmen. But
like any smith, Chagarin was broad-chested, with thick ropey muscles rippling
over his entire upper body.

He looked Morgin up and down and demanded, “And
where’s Tallik?”

Yim lowered her eyes. “His father feels he
should wear a debt collar for a time.”

Chagarin threw his head back and laughed. “Picked
another fight, did he? Who did he pick on this time?” He looked at
Morgin and his eyes narrowed. “Not the Elhiyne, here? Don’t
seem too hurt to me.”

Yim described the fight of that morning and Chagarin
laughed even louder. Then to Morgin he said, “Was it luck, or do
you know how to fight?”

Morgin shrugged. “I’ve had to
fight a time or two in my life.”

Again, Chagarin looked him up and down carefully. “
Had
to fight, you said. Didn’t choose to
fight.”

“I choose to fight only when I must.”

Chagarin eyed Morgin, clearly evaluating him. “That’s
the kind of attitude comes from an experienced fighter. Bet you’ve
had to fight for your life a time or two, huh?”

Again, Morgin shrugged. “I suspect that gave
me a little advantage over Tallik.”

Chagarin turned to Yim. “He’ll
do. Now be gone with you, girl.”

Then to Morgin, “Come with me.”

Chagarin led him into the shaded workspace, indicated a
table on which tools were strewn haphazardly, with the anvil mounted at one end
near a firebox and bellows. “Know anything about steel?”
he asked.

Morgin flashed back to Morddon and his memories of
centuries spent at the forges—or were they Morgin’s
memories? Of that, he couldn’t be certain, and that frightened
him. “A little,” he said, not willing to visit that
place in his memories. “I helped our smith now and then, but not
as an apprentice, just a simple helper.”

They’d attracted a small crowd. The other
smiths had put down their work and gathered around Chagarin and Morgin to look
over
the Elhiyne
. Morgin would love to learn why
Benesh’ere steel was considered so superior to any other. He
asked, “Are you making blades?”

Chagarin shook his head. “Not out here on the
sands. Working the good steel requires a lot of fuel for a hot, controlled
flame, and for that, we need good coke, and lots of it. Out here we just fix
things, buckles and harness and horseshoes and such. No, the coke and the raw
steel await us at the Lake of Sorrows.”

The implications of that statement were clear enough. He
now understood that Tallik’s punishment was a harsh one, to go
from working the steel to collecting dung for the fires. “Is
Tallik your apprentice?”

Some of the other smiths chuckled at that question, but
Chagarin merely looked thoughtful and shook his head. “No. He hopes
to be, but I don’t think he’s close enough to the
steel. In any case, the steel will decide that.”

Morgin wondered if he had finally met a true SteelMaster. “Yim
called you Master Chagarin. Are you a SteelMaster?”

Everyone got a good laugh at that. “No, young
man, there are no SteelMasters. The last died centuries ago. I’m
just the Master Smith. But that’s master enough, and questions
enough, too.”

He clapped Morgin on the back of the shoulders, the first
comradely gesture any Benesh’ere had ever made toward him. “Let’s
get you to work, man. We’re leaving for the Lake of Sorrows
tonight and we’ve got to clean this mess up.”

~~~

The smiths put Morgin to work helping them pack up their
equipment: tongs, peen hammers, flat hammers, farrier’s hoof
nippers and end nippers. Morgin was surprised he knew the names of all the
tools so clearly. He even knew their proper use, had quite a string of old and
long forgotten memories of using similar tools at one time or another. That was
odd, because, as he recalled, when he and JohnEngine had spent several days
helping the Elhiyne smith, the fellow had taught them next to nothing of the
smith’s crafts. To the smith they’d been no more than
a pair of strong backs, and the smith guarded the secrets of his craft quite
carefully. No, this knowledge came from the memories he shared with Morddon.

Late in the afternoon, the smiths took up swords and began
practicing in pairs. With seven smiths that left one of them, a fellow named
Baldrak, without a partner. He told Morgin, “Swinging a hammer all
day might make you strong, but if that’s all we do we lose our
sword skills.”

The other smiths were sparring, practicing, no animosity
in the various contests. And Baldrak looked like he’d dearly love
to join them. But he had no partner, so Morgin said, “I wouldn’t
mind a bit of practice.”

Baldrak frowned and considered Morgin for a moment. “Why
not? You won’t be much of a match for me, but I’ll
take it easy on you. Come with me.”

He turned and led Morgin to his tent, retrieved three long,
thin bundles wrapped in oiled cloth. “Got some old blades here. See
if one of them feels right.”

Morgin hesitated for a moment because he knew perfectly
well what was coming, though his hesitation made Baldrak look at him oddly. He
reached out and took one of the bundles at random, knew exactly what he’d
find within it. He removed the oiled cloth and hefted the sword, his sword, his
one sword,
the
sword, the blade that always found
him. He held the steel up close to his face and whispered, “Old
friend, old enemy, which are you?”