If I look back I can see the arresting image of the Black Amarai silhouetted against the moonlit sky, rising above the sea of smaller tombs and dwellings that cluster around it like young things around their mother.
I’ve been walking for fifteen minutes, or perhaps twenty, it’s hard to be sure since I stopped wearing a watch. Its like foreign food I guess, best not to enquire to closely. I mean the little brass thing that scurries around inside is cute…but, let’s be fair, anything with that many legs is only a step or two from a spider and I can do without it strapped to my wrist.
Ahead of me the patch winds up to the gap between the hills at the end of this little valley – between which a stone arch has been set. As I get closer I can read the inscription set into the archway, the fact that it’s in a language I didn’t used to be able to speak doesn’t bother me as much as it used to.
“The iron ore thinks itself senselessly tortured in the furnace.
The tempered steel blade looks back and knows better.”
I remember the day those words were set into the archway. I mean I should, I was the one that picked that particular phrase. The problem is the archway has been here since before I was born. The I that is Blades remembers because I was there, but it is something that the Me that is Faith never did. The memory doesn’t even feel foreign, I mean yes it was a whole different person, but I remember it as ‘what I saw when I used to be so and so’. To be honest I don’t find these other memories strange….and that’s the weirdest part of all.
I make my way under the arch, hitching my dress up slightly to avoid dragging it in the mud as I go. The archway is at the bottom of a depression so I can’t really see anything until I’ve climbed to the top and am able to look over.
Now that I have I can see it all spread out before me like a scene drawn by some fantasy artists. The Thousand Forges. The single greatest collection of blade-smiths ever gathered. The rise I’ve climbed is the lip of a vast shallow crater – the floor of which is alight with flickering flames from the forges. Forges of every shape and size, forges of every type and method, forge upon forge upon forge, covering the ground like a blanket until all merge together into a single crimson glow lighting up the night sky above the crater. Anvils andhammers ring in a cacophony of industry and toil. Clouds oif steam and smoke roll across the crater like a mimicry of clouds. Silver blades twinkle like stars in the darkness as they catch the light around them. It is beautiful – a grand and terrible endeavour but the scene sings in my soul and fires my blood in ways I cannot describe. Truly glorious.
I make my way down to walk among the craftsmen. All know who I am by now (the wings of course make me easy to pick out) and many are cowed by my presence. I move among them with words of encouragement and reassurance – enough to inspire but never enough to frighten or distract, finding the balance comes so easily to me now. I can read their emotions like an open book and it is simplicity to murmur exactly what each person most wants to hear. This to is new to me, who used to become tongue tied in front of any kind of group, but as with everything else I am quickly becoming used to it.
The crafters and smiths who have built the forges of this place are many and varied. Many are mortals who felt compelled to undertake a journey to come to this place at this time. Others are the spirits of ancient masters who toil still in the service of creation. Still others have come to us from times past or times to come – walking secret ways to lend their skill to our great construction.
It is like the statues in the garden of blades – the fields of honour. Forges and workshops are arranged across the crater floor in no discernible order or arrangement. Here may stand a traditional medieval forge, such as was used to fashion the weapons of the knights of the realm. Next to it is a compact forge of the style favoured during the renaissance for individual weapon-smiths, suited to the forging of single blades for duellist’s rather then an army. Next to that may be a Japanese sword-smith with a many-folded katana blade being worked back and forth in his hands. Still another uses sorcerous techniques and bound fire elementals in order to provide sufficient heat to mould exotic foreign metals. Here are weapons forged of simple iron, here beautiful Damascus steel, here a silvery essence that seems to flow within the blade, here finely polished glass, here a dark black metal that acts to bind the lightning that plays up and down it, here a modern carbon-steel composite, here a sharpened bone from some long extinct animal, here a serrated blade whose teeth are edged with diamonds.
Some nights I might work for a while at a forge – teaching or learning or just glorying in the joy of a newly birthed blade. But tonight I don’t have the time. Very occasionally I will pick up a blade to heft it in my hands, feel its weight and see if it comes alive to me. Twice I nod in approval at the creator of such a fine weapon. Once I shatter a blade across my knee so that I can show the smith how uneven heating has created a defect that runs the entire way up the blade.
On and on and on, each different from the last, and all working with a feverish intensity. Why so many? Because we loose so many. Of the thousands of blades that are forged here each day only the most perfect examples of their craft are chosen for our great work - perhaps a hundred on a good day. Blades that are not quite perfect (but even our cast-off’s are likely better then any seen on earth) but still perfectly serviceable will be given to the militia. Others may be used as practice weapons or perhaps even melted down for materials or carefully dissected to uncover the flaw in their forging. The hundred or so blades that might make it through the initial screening are then subjected to a gruelling series of tests. Dashed against rocks, seared by lightning storms, used to hew wood as axes, smashed repeatedly into shields, twisted or compressed in vices, doused in the blood of holy or unholy creatures…for if they cannot stand up to such testing they will not be strong enough to survive the imbuing process.
Perhaps a handful of the original blades emerge from the testing – with such attrition you can see why we must maintain such a prolific production. These paragons of the art are then taken reverently down to the bottom of a deep, deep pit in the centre of the crater. It is in this pit that the next stage of our endeavour takes place. It is there that we will attempt to imbue the blades with the essence of the raw emotions harvested by my brothers. In their pure forms these are more dangerous and caustic then any material the weapons have yet been exposed to – that is why all attempts are performed in the pit, where damage can hopefully be contained. The details of the imbuing are mostly unknown to me. Once the selected blades pass into the pit they move beyond my area of responsibility and ken. So far no blade has survived the full imbuing process – though a few have been successfully attuned to one particular emotion. From each failure we try to learn what amongst our myriad construction techniques might yield the most suitable blade for our goal, every failure bringing us closer to success.
I heft another blade in my hands – this one of a flexible metal I am unfamiliar with. Will this be the formula that finally takes our proffered harvest? I hand it back to its maker and make my way out of the crater once more. Around me sparks and smoke whirl on the air in a continual dance. Off to my left a single bolt of lightning arcs down from the night sky – called by a sorcerer to energise the blade he has just completed. On my right a burly smith uses his still glowing blade to cleave through a solid block of stone.
They are creating wonders in the shape of blades, heart-stopping, beautiful, pure expressions of the crafters will…and yet still our goal eludes us. We must continue. We must find the elusive method that will allow us to finally produce a weapon that will hold. It is for the very defence of creation that we undertake this.
I wend my way slowly back towards the Black Amarai, towards my new home. Behind me I can hear the chorus of creation and it fills my heart with joy.
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