The Legend of Broken (74 page)

“Save your anger, Great Cat—she is not worth the effort. The time for killing will be upon us soon enough. And so—save your anger …”

And again Keera was amazed that Stasi complied with Heldo-Bah’s suggestions, the two seeming to have, against all probability, developed not only some newfound affection, but a means of communication.

“Let us hear Lord Caliphestros out,” the Groba Father announced at length. “We owe him at least that much, and no one in this tribe, however high or low, can say they are exempt from that debt.” General agreement to this appraisal having been reached once more, Caliphestros pressed forward:

“I do not wish to discount the role that faith will play, in the coming days,” the old man conceded graciously, although his words did not mollify the High Priestess as greatly as they should have. “For in times of war, such faith is a great comfort to those soldiers and common folk who are made to suffer most. In our own case, Yantek Ashkatar has told me that, whichever forces of Broken arrive on Lord Baster-kin’s Plain in the hours to come, it is his desire to draw them into the Wood, where they will be unable to execute their maneuvers, and will instead become confused and terrified, and therefore may be defeated piecemeal—perhaps even annihilated. An admirable opening move.” The old scholar studied the Groba Fathers in turn once again. “But there are ways in which the fight can be further weighted in the Bane’s favor—if you will but avail yourselves of methods I have developed.”

“Methods of science,” the Priestess declared distastefully.

“That’s the limit,” Heldo-Bah suddenly pronounced, rising from his place at the fire. “Don’t even try to explain, Lord Caliphestros—one demonstration will do the work of hours of argument.”

As he crossed toward the Priestess and the Outragers who stood behind her, Heldo-Bah drew the blade that he had been given by Caliphestros in Stasi’s den, causing the two Woodland Knights to suddenly move in front of the young woman. At this, the panther got to her feet, growling deep within her throat again, and letting her teeth show for a moment in a quick snarl.

“Heldo-Bah!” Keera said as he passed her by. “Be careful what you begin!”

“I begin nothing,” answered the angry forager. “Instead, I will
finish
all this useless talk.” Then, to the Outragers, he challenged, “Go ahead, either of you—or both. Hold your blades forth, try to thwart me.”

The Outragers moved farther in front of the woman whose life they were sworn to protect, their blades yet before them, as Caliphestros and Keera moved to restrain and calm the panther. The Priestess looked supremely confident, seeming to believe that she was at last on the verge of witnessing the impertinent Heldo-Bah’s death, when suddenly:

With two resounding clashes of metal upon metal, Heldo-Bah left the Outragers holding mere pieces of their blades; and the expressions on their faces were even more awed than Heldo-Bah’s had been in Stasi’s cave.

“There,” said Heldo-Bah, sheathing his blade, wiping at his forehead, and returning to Stasi. “I don’t know what you’d like to call that, Priestess, but your ‘knights’ carry blades taken from Broken soldiers—this much is known. So you go on explaining how we can ignore such advantages, if you must—or let us proceed, in the name of your precious Moon, to go about the business of exploiting them …”

Hobbling back to his place before the Groba, Caliphestros pronounced, “Heldo-Bah’s methods are perhaps crass, but his conclusion is wise. This
is
the sort of result that my scientific arts can offer you—this and more, if you will only allow me to assist you.”

“But—” The Groba Father was still staring at the Outragers, who were in turn staring at the pieces of blades in their hands. “But
how
?” the Father asked at length.

“I can explain it,” Caliphestros replied, “although I would recommend that we do so as we undertake the work of preparation.” Glancing at the cave walls about him, which were so much like those in his own longtime home, Caliphestros continued, “These chambers of yours contain internal passageways that will be ideal for the work that we must do—and, if my experience is any guide, the chambers atop the mountains higher above us will suit our purposes even better.”

“You believe you truly can produce this superior steel in our mountains?” the Father asked, with an urgency none of the foragers had ever heard him employ.

“Within their highest caves,” Caliphestros replied, “as I learned to do during my years of exile far to the west. For we will be harnessing the winds that blow and are channeled through the passages in these stone walls, just as they draw the smoke of your fire instantly from this chamber. Not even the great bellows that power your Voice of the Moon can direct such prodigious winds onto any one specific point.”

The Groba Father shook his head. “These matters are quite beyond me, as I dare say they are beyond all of us—though perhaps you will tell the tale of their discovery as we begin our work.”

Caliphestros nodded in grateful relief. “I shall be pleased to—
as we work.
But work we must, and quickly. As it is, we shall not have time to so arm
all
of your warriors—Yantek Ashkatar must choose his very best troops, and even at that, it will be a close-run affair.”

The foragers and Caliphestros began to rise, Keera helping the old man to remove his walking equipment, so that he was able pull himself onto the white panther’s powerful shoulders as she dipped her neck to receive him.

“It seems to me,” the Priestess of the Moon declared, “that we are being asked to put faith that would better suit a god than a man in ‘Lord’ Caliphestros.”

Veloc bravely stepped forward, a trace of uncertainty nonetheless present in his words. “We ask you only to believe the words of a man who has made as much of a study of these matters as you have all made of the power and workings of the Moon.” There was no member of the Groba who was able to protest to this, and Veloc was encouraged to press on: “And now, I would ask your most honored and revered persons to allow us to withdraw and to host Lord Caliphestros at our family’s home. Keera has had but a few minutes’ reunion with her children, and my lord Caliphestros has had a most arduous journey to Okot—”

“A fact to which I can attest,” Yantek Ashkatar said, nodding certainly. “The journey of Keera’s party has been an arduous one, indeed—why, even Heldo-Bah—”

But Ashkatar was interrupted, and further explanation was made unnecessary, when the loud sound of Heldo-Bah’s snoring came from the direction of the hearth of the enormous cavity that was the Den of Stone’s fireplace. The moment might have been cause for still more argument and insult, and the Priestess of the Moon looked ready for both; but the Groba Father quickly stepped in to offer Veloc a moment to go and kick his friend awake, and to let the troublesome forager gather himself for departure, as the man who occupied the chair surmounted by Moon horns inquired:

“Are you certain there are no more splendid quarters we can offer you, Lord Caliphestros? Keera and Veloc come from good, honest stock, who were generous enough even to have taken so troubling a boy as Heldo-Bah into their home, for many years; yet they are humble people, as is their home, and we can certainly arrange—”

“It shall not seem humble, to me, Father,” Caliphestros replied. “For it has been ten years since I knew such surroundings, and longer still since I knew such company. Besides, Stasi and I will sleep out of doors, as is our custom during these months, and therefore we shall not frighten the children too much, nor keep the others awake with the strange hours we keep.” He glanced at Keera quickly. “Better Stasi feel safe among such a family than that she feel excessively honored. And I might say the same for myself—”

At which Heldo-Bah’s tired voice growled, “I am
awake,
damn you, Veloc, and ready to leave this place, I assure you—so stop kicking me!”

“Perhaps a quick departure for a night’s rest, Father,” Keera suggested, “would be best after all.”

“As you say, as you say,” the Father replied, with a wave of his hand.

As the party turned to go, Caliphestros paused to mention only one thing more to the Priestess of the Moon: “And, Priestess, such remove from the great activity of the center of Okot will give me further chance to consider a problem with which, I believe, yourself, the Fathers, and all of the Lunar Sisterhood have been struggling.”

“Oh?” the Priestess said doubtfully. “And what might that be?”

Caliphestros paused, studying this remarkably prideful young woman, and determining that had he, like Veloc, been summoned to her bed, he, too, would certainly have refused. “You have, unless I am mistaken, been casting the runes in connection with this crisis.”

The Priestess scoffed. “There is no great revelation in that—it is our way to cast the runes, to assist in any troubles that face our people.”

“Indeed,” Caliphestros replied carelessly, turning Stasi toward the exit to the Den. “Then perhaps I am wrong—perhaps you have determined just what ‘the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone’ is, and are aware of how its solution may very soon aid in the struggle against Broken.”

For the last time during this audience, the faces of all at the Groba table reflected utter confusion. “How—?” the Priestess managed to express in alarm; and then the Father asked, in a more coherent expression of concern:

“My Lord Caliphestros—how can you know of the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone? And what can you tell us of its meaning and use?”

“Little more than you yourselves can—just yet,” Caliphestros called over his shoulder, raising a hand as he departed. “But it is good to know that we are all indeed concerned with the same problems, is it not?” Caliphestros and Stasi, without any encouragement, continued on their way out of the Den, seeming weary with the place. “I bid you good night. Tomorrow begins our great work, and we must be rested and ready …”

Keera and Veloc turned to issue more formal and acceptable words of departure to the Groba, while Heldo-Bah, like Stasi herself, simply wandered toward the long stone hallway that led out of the Den, scratching at his head and various other parts of his body.

“If you do not mind, Lord Caliphestros,” he could be heard to say in the stone hallway, “I shall sleep with you and your friend under the trees and stars, tonight. They are good people, Keera and Veloc’s family, but I would rather be in the place that suits me best, and worries me least …”

“And you are welcome, Heldo-Bah,” Caliphestros answered, his voice now fading altogether. “But do not keep Stasi awake with your snoring, for it is one of many human sounds she detests …”

Back in the Den of Stone, the Groba Father looked up and down the great table at his fellows. “Well—what say we: sorcery or science?” Then he gazed at the stone hall once more, as he answered his own question with another: “Or does it really matter at all, when we consider the forces that are even now bearing down upon our people …?”

And to that query, not even the Priestess of the Moon had an answer.

Upon the mountains south of Okot, Caliphestros and his surprising new

order of acolytes create an inferno as fearsome as Muspelheim;

while Keera, for the first time, begins to wonder if the old man’s passion

holds danger for her people …

The three Bane foragers had long since learned that both Caliphestros and Stasi had the capacity to almost instantly distinguish between persons of quality and compassion and those more common humans, ungenerous and cruel in nature. And among the most reliable and generous of people to be found in Okot (or anywhere else) were certainly Keera’s family—not only her own and Veloc’s parents, Selke and Egenrich, but the tracker’s children: the still-recovering boys, Herwin and Baza, as well as the storm of energy, curiosity, and youthful wisdom that was the youngest, Effi, so like her mother in many ways, although more circumspect, and now having been exposed to the kind of tragedy and sadness, brief but scarring, that teaches wise children not to be bitter or selfish.

The morning after Caliphestros, Stasi, and Heldo-Bah slept outside the welcoming family’s home, Keera followed Caliphestros’s instruction to assemble every miner, ironmonger, and smith that lived in the central and outlying settlements of Okot so that they could listen to the requirements of a plan that, in a matter of days, would so arm the central corps of Yantek Ashkatar’s troops that they could hope not only to defeat even the soldiers of Broken, but to do so at a point far north of Okot, thus keeping the exact location of the long-hidden community safe.

Because of this, ancient mines dug into to the sides of the mountains above Okot that had long lain sealed and dormant were now reopened, in order that they could join those few that were still active, as well as allow the Bane to more easily gain access to veins of a special iron ore that had been propelled from the night sky into the Earth countless ages ago. In addition, the miners digging into the mountainside were told to bring their day’s or night’s gatherings of coal (the main substance with which the unique iron ore would be smelted) to Caliphestros, before any thought was given to using them to fuel the new, smaller but far hotter and more numerous forges that the old man designed. The fiery effect of the forges was increased by the thousands of torch lights that lit the way into and around the mines, creating an ever-expanding impression that the Bane had bargained with their old gods, and been allowed to tear open a terrifying gateway into their underworld: the dreaded
Muspelheim.
†

But why, some workers could occasionally be heard to ask, was any deep coal mining necessary at all, when the mountains were already so covered in young and old trees of all varieties—trees that could easily be used to fuel the old cripple’s forges? That the city of Broken itself needed coal was not difficult to understand: the summit of Broken mountain was, as has been seen, primarily composed of stone, and been shorn of nearly all its readily accessible stands of heating timber during the kingdom’s early generations, as had the plain north of the Cat’s Paw. Indeed, it was well known that direct control of new supplies of wood and coal, along with all metal ores found in the great forest (primarily iron and silver), were two of the chief reasons that Lord Baster-kin so coveted Davon Wood. Yet Caliphestros not only insisted on coal, but on personally examining every piece of it that was brought out of the mountains, surrendering much of the little nightly rest that it was his custom to take and instead relentlessly searching through the cartloads that Bane miners, with blackened faces and bleeding hands, dragged under his practiced eye. He was seeking a type of black rock that was marked by certain qualities, qualities that took the miners long days to recognize in the darkness beneath the ground, but that they eventually learned to identify by the light of day quickly enough: qualities of weight and texture, all of which made it well suited to transformation by fire into yet
another
variety of fuel, related but not identical to coal, that was vital to the creation of Caliphestros’s near-miraculous grade of steel.
‡

But in truth, for all the talk among the Bane townspeople of the mines and forges above Okot resembling, to an ever-increasing extent, some sort of terrible entrance to the most fiery of the Nine Homeworlds,
††
a passageway that would eventually disgorge those agents that would cause the end of the old gods and perhaps of the world, Caliphestros privately told Keera that all such tales were but myths, while the work that he was directing on the mountains above Okot, whatever its sinister nighttime appearance, was in fact, like all undertakings to which he applied himself, based on such scientific learning as had been developed and carried on by men and women like himself for hundreds if not thousands of years. These refinements, which so closely resembled sorcerous transformations to the ignorant, were carried out upon the mountains that brooded over Okot not because the spot had been appointed as the site at which the end of the Earth or the imminent arrival of infamous demons would take place, but because the position of the caves within allowed the Bane metalworkers to capture the only winds in the area strong enough to heat the coal and charcoal in Caliphestros’s furnaces to so great an extent that they could to do the work that must, at this critical hour,
be
done.

One particular mountaintop cave, meanwhile, became both Caliphestros’s private new forge and the scholar’s and Stasi’s temporary home. The panther herself slept above the cave, as much as she did within, during these days, for the old man worked long hours, producing (or so the Bane thought) additional weapons in order to keep some vague pace with the Bane smiths to whom he had taught many of his secrets. During these restless hours, when Caliphestros turned his mental and physical efforts to ever more arcane experiments, Keera became the old man’s sole assistant; and such only after she swore not to reveal what he was in fact doing. The work in the Bane mines and the mountaintop smithies multiplied daily: Caliphestros knew that the Bane had always been extraordinarily clever and imitative people, who, once shown how to do a thing, required little repeated instruction to achieve their object. All the special coal and special charcoal they created did, indeed, create sufficient heat to allow Caliphestros to himself smelt what the Bane workers came to call the “star iron,” because the iron ore itself was brought from deep in the mountains and the mines where it had presumably been embedded hundreds of years ago, after hurtling down from the heavens. That iron was combined, first and above all, with the remarkably high quality charcoal that Caliphestros had taught his smiths to create, a combination that produced a steel capable of not only attaining but holding an edge of fearsome sharpness. Some Bane smiths swore that there were traces of other elements in the ore, a tale that reinforced the other-than-Earthly origins of the “star iron,” although none among these same smiths could even guess at what those other elements might be.
†
This new style of heating and smelting, brought back from the East via the Silk Path by Caliphestros during his youth, allowed even the highest grade of ore, what the Bane called “the star iron,” to be heated to so uniform a consistency that it could be masterfully united with another iron—one of equal purity but also of greater resistance to fracture or breakage—with the object of giving the blades both mighty durability and at the same time astonishing cutting power. After this, the combination was folded and refolded, worked and reworked, pounded together by smiths until there were hundreds of layers in each uninterrupted strip that became a weapon; and any one of these weapons was capable of becoming higher in both strength
and
sharpness even than that which Heldo-Bah had demonstrated to the Groba, and far superior to anything manufactured outside the realms of the East.
†

For, while the occasional daring seeker of a European trading fortune, or traveler of great renown as a swordsman, might journey far to bring back examples of this remarkable steel from the most distant realms of the East to the markets of their homelands, Caliphestros alone had understood the formula for the
manufacture
of the steel well enough to record it, during his travels on the Silk Path. He had then brought it back west with him, and awaited the day when the loosing of this seminal substance would create weapons that would change the very rank of power among kingdoms in the West where they were used—just as they had already done in the East.

And yet, even as Caliphestros made a gift of the knowledge of how to create the star iron to Keera’s tribe of diminutive outcasts, Keera herself—perhaps the most perspicacious member of her tribe—remained far from easy about all the reasons why he might be doing so. His obvious motives—revenge, for himself and for Stasi, contempt for how the Broken state had changed since the death of his former patron, the God-King Izairn, and the desire to end the dangers of disease that seemed not to be
invading
the city on the mountain, but rather to be emerging
from
it—were apparent and easily understood; although Keera nonetheless wondered, at certain moments—moments when the old man’s blood and ire were truly racing—if it would ever be truly possible for her or anyone else to comprehend the inner feelings that drove a man who had lived as long, colorful, and mysterious a life as Caliphestros.

As it only could have, the vital portion of the explanation of the mystery that Keera had built in her mind around the old man and his behavior came without any spoken question on the subject, one night when the winds atop the mountain ridge were building to what seemed an especially portentous fury. With ever more days of massive effort by increasing numbers of Bane laborers piling one atop the other, the southern horizon above Okot had never seemed to crack open with such great and purposeful fire; and, being as the mountaintops upon which the Bane forged the weapons with which they hoped to blunt any aggressive moves by the Tall army or Lord Baster-kin’s Guard stood at an even higher elevation than did the point upon Broken’s mountain where the Inner City, the House of the Wives of Kafra, and the High Temple were all located, it seemed only too likely that the God-King and his family and minions (to say nothing of the average citizen of the walled city) could not help but look out at that southern horizon and wonder what was taking place. Was their own god, Kafra, preparing some divine punishment for the Bane, one that would make the sacrifice of Broken’s young men, whether in the Guard or in the army, unnecessary? Or were, indeed, the demons of the old faith’s fiery Ninth Homeland preparing to enter humanity’s realm, and punish the subjects of Broken for having abandoned them in favor of the strange deity brought back by the followers of Oxmontrot from the world of the
Lumun-jani,
by first weakening the unfaithful with plague and then releasing their own demoniacal powers upon the kingdom north of the Cat’s Paw?

Keera’s secret work assisting Caliphestros in his private cave, guarded against all prying eyes by Stasi, only heightened this air of mystery; for the truth was, as she soon learned, Caliphestros was not producing a marginally additional number of spearheads and dagger and sword blades within that cave, but something altogether different. Every few nights, the forager, the old man, and the panther would journey to bog pits among the mountains above and below Okot, the existence of which Keera had never thought anything more than a danger to passing travelers. From these, the old man would extract buckets of a strangely pungent liquid, lighter and thinner than pitch as well as more inflammable, and then they would bring these back to his cave, where he would combine them in various mixtures with strangely colored powders and extracts from the very Earth, always working toward Keera knew not what, save that he produced a broad array of foul-smelling, combustible half-liquids and fluids, all of which he would speak of, at times, but none of which he would fully explain. Only when she returned to her home and her children, Keera believed, did Caliphestros complete these experiments; and in this fact she found reason for uneasiness as much as amazement.

Still, knowing that the Tall in Broken, from the lowliest worker to the God-King, might well be viewing all the fiery activity in the mountains of Davon Wood with real dread and fear was cause for ever greater joy; just as it was when—with the wind rising to a particular fury, creating especially plentiful fire, and with the heat and sparks of the now dozens of exile forges rising in great upward showers—momentous news arrived from those units of Ashkatar’s army that patrolled the barrier of the Cat’s Paw: a column of Broken troops were advancing on the river. It happened that, when this intelligence came, Keera was outside Caliphestros’s cave, beside Stasi at the jagged mouth of the place, a spot where the panther often sat, ever ready to spring forward, as her human companion within brewed and mixed the strange substance that absorbed him so.

It was, predictably, Heldo-Bah and Veloc who brought the news of this march to the old man’s cave, the pair being the only Bane, beside Keera, who had the courage to approach Caliphestros when he was laboring at his seemingly mad doings therein.

“Great man of science!” Heldo-bah called as he reached the cave’s entrance. “Come with us! Come and see the column of men that approach on the main road from Broken to the Plain, with torches lit in the night to show us just where they are!”

Caliphestros emerged from the cave, his skin smudged with the smoke and ash of his work, his face sweating as he pulled himself along upon his walking platform with his crutches; and it seemed, even to Heldo-Bah, amazing that a crippled man should be capable of such difficult labors of the mind and body. The wind was continuing to blow with true ferocity, causing the old man’s robe to drag directly across his body, and his beard across his face, as well; but his skullcap remained in place, and an expression of wilder emotion than any of his forager friends had ever seen him exhibit soon came into his features.