Chapter 4: A Smith Abroad
- Location
- The Lower 48
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
(Thank you to TheBattleSage for editing. I'm going to say that this is a "better good enough than perfect" chapter, but I hope y'all enjoy it regardless.)
16 Aine, 997 NE
Shende Hold, Chareen Aiel, Aiel Waste
An hour before sunrise, I followed the familiar path to Salin's smithy one last time as a resident of Shende Hold. From long experience, I knew that the open wall of the forge that faced east, out over the broad expanse of the Threefold Land, would already be lit in the gray predawn, the first scouts of the sun infiltrating the vaulting skies that stretched over the low hills and arid plains of my homeland. Soon, those scouts would be followed by the main force of the day, the disc itself rising over the mountains on the far side of the Great Rift.
By the time that disc rose high enough for its light to touch the Hold's adobe walls, I would be gone, the ground falling away behind me as I loped towards Cold Rocks Hold and the Taardad Aiel at my ancestor's command.
But before then, I had one last obligation to discharge.
I had toh.
Behind me, peering around at the unfamiliar corner of Shende Hold he found himself in, Gharadin silently trailed.
Just as he had been his entire life, Ayesha and Leiran's younger son followed in my footsteps.
It was to him that I owed toh, for I had not behaved as an older brother should towards his younger sibling. Before I stepped away from the roof I had sheltered under as a child, I would make that shame right.
We had never been close, Gharadin and I.
Two years my junior, he had tagged after me as often as he could, as closely as our difference in ages allowed. When we were young, he had always been at my heels, joining in with plastering the walls of the Hold or spinning cotton. When I had learned as all young Aiel the art of the spear and knife, the bow and arrow, Gharadin had done his best to keep up before the instructor sent him back to his cohort after his younger arms proved too weak to draw back the bowstring or drive the flat blade of his spear through the target's leather hide.
That had always been the essence of the distance between Gharadin and I. He was a child, a true child, a young man looking to make his way in the world unencumbered by the memories of two previous lives, by the intimate knowledge at how cyclical existence truly was, the Wheel be damned. He was not stupid, nor dim, nor weak, nor rash. He was ignorant, immature, and undeveloped.
Gharadin was a child, and in many ways, I was not. While I had been encumbered by the brain and body of a child and all the affectations that came along when puberty decided to finally grace my body, I had the perspectives of an adult and of a veteran soldier as well.
I had never been the best at relating to people, often finding it difficult to establish more than casual connections with my peers even in my first life. The nightmare scenario of my second life, with so much stacked against me, had made finding common ground with others even more troublesome. Professionalism and the formality of hierarchy had broken a path forwards for me, but alone they could carry me only so far, could only bridge so much of the gulf between myself and the others.
My last moments in Arene proved as much.
As the years passed, the distance between Gharadin and I lengthened despite his best efforts to race after me. Questions that Gharadin struggled with I answered with ease, pleasing the Wise Ones and the warriors who tutored the Sept's youth alike. Where proficiency with the recurved short-bow of the Aiel eluded Gharadin, my shafts never missed their target, a legacy of years of training and killing. In spars with the knife or the spear, only two of the youth of Shende Hold could best me in the Dance; Gharadin was not among them.
When I set foot on the path of the smith and apprenticed myself to Salin, I took the final step that Gharadin, no matter how hard he tried, could not follow. Salin would certainly not take two apprentices at once, and to be apprenticed even as young as I had been was highly uncommon.
With all of that, how could my relationship with my younger brother ever have turned out in any way different from what it had?
I could have tried to teach him, I thought, answering my own question. He isn't stupid; he could have learned. He would have relished the opportunity to develop. Perhaps with some personal instruction, he could have found a place on the fast track towards leadership within a Society, perhaps even our father's own, the Sha'mad Conde, Thunder Walkers. Well trained and groomed for leadership, Gharadin would have represented a valuable resource.
It was an opportunity that I had squandered, a sacrifice I hadn't even fully realized I was making when I set forth to prove myself worthy to Salin.
For that, and for all of the times I could have lent a helping hand to Gharadin, son of Leiran, I had toh.
The forge's door stood ajar, the precious iron-bound timber creaking slightly in the early morning's breeze. Through the open entry, I could see the Threefold Land spread out before the Hold; while only the slightest light fell on the land and the smithy, I knew that the familiar sullen glow of banked embers waited for me on the other side.
"Brother?" Gharadin broke his silence at last, coming to a halt on the smithy's threshold. "Is it… right for me to enter?" His voice, thin and childish, not yet broken to a man's timbre, sounded almost like birdsong as the wind whistled through the portal.
"Cross my threshold and be welcome, Ghardin, son of Leiran," came Salin's familiar baritone, the man himself turning from where he had stood facing out over the Threefold Land, watching as the world woke from its passing dream. "All of my sept are welcome in my smithy, so long as they keep their hands well away from my tools or the forge."
Gharadin glanced up at me, quickly checking to see if it was alright to enter. I nodded, the motion a slight tilt of my head, not looking away from Salin. My teacher, my mentor. My equal.
"I see you, Salin, man of my Sept," I said, raising my voice in ritual greeting. "I see you, hammer-handed Aiel, fellow of the Forge, and by the forge I greet you."
"I see you, Taric, man of my Sept," Salin replied, stepping forwards to stand on the other side of the threshold, Gharadin scooting out of his way and vanishing behind him into the forge. "I see you, Aiel of smoke-caught steel, fellow of the Forge. By the light of the forge I taught you from, I greet you."
Concluding the greeting, Salin stretched out a burly arm and I clasped it, my hand locking on his forearm even as his iron-fingered grip found my own. With a firm movement that was half a welcoming shake and half a tug, he pulled me across the threshold and into the forge. Surrounded by the scents of smoke and steel, coal and rendered fat, I relaxed almost immediately.
In a way, this broad, three-walled room was more my home than Ayesha's roof.
"You have come for your spear, I suspect," Salin rumbled, releasing my arm. "I had wondered if you would remember it before you passed Chaendaer."
That was a joke, as there had never been any chance of my departing Shende Hold without stopping by Salin's forge. For one, it would have been incredibly disrespectful as well as unkind to not bid my mentor farewell before beginning my trek northwards; for another, all of my tools were still at the forge where I had left them the previous day.
I somehow doubt that Roofmistress Lian would be happy if I showed up at Cold Rocks Hold empty handed. A smith without his tools is like a Maiden without her spear; to whit, she isn't.
"I knew I was forgetting something," I replied, stone-faced as I returned Salin's joke in kind. "If you would be so kind, Salin, I have come to collect what is mine."
"Then take, Taric," said Salin, impassive as he looked past me. "Will you take also your father's son and your mother's consolation?"
I followed his gaze to Gharadin, who stood by the banked forge, shifting slowly from foot to foot and clearly trying to take advantage of the meagre warmth of the coals without making it too obvious.
"No," I said, catching Gharadin's eye and beckoning him to my side with a nod, "I have only come for what is mine… And to pay that which I owe."
Slowly, Salin tilted his head to one side, considering. Then he nodded and stepped back, gesturing towards one of the shop tables, upon which a large, box-framed leather pack sat. Next to it, an oblong shape wrapped in leather and bound with a rawhide cord rested.
"I gave your tools a last hone and polish before packing them away in my old pack," the old smith said, his voice even more gruff than usual. "It's yours if you want it, Taric; I do not anticipate much travel in my future, certainly not without the company of sufficient Spears to carry my load for me."
"Thank you, Salin," I said, nodding deeply. It was a fine gift; it was his farewell, a fitting gesture from a master to his departing journeyman. I had no gift with which to reciprocate, save for a promise against my future. A promise I had already intended to swear. "You have taught me much. I shall endeavor to learn yet more, and then I shall return to Shende Hold. When I do so, you may rest easy, content to know that neither the Jarra nor Chareen shall lose a finger of your skill when you awake from the Dream."
"Pwah!" Salin snorted, shaking his head. "It will be years yet before you find shelter and water below the roof of Shende Hold again, if that is to be so. Nonetheless, I will see you again before my last day, Taric. This I know. Now," he gestured again towards the table, "take what is yours and begone. There can only be one smith below the roof of Shende Hold." A smile crinkled the maze of lines worn into his sun-darkened face. "Be at ease, Leiran's son; I will keep the forge warm until you return again."
With that, Salin turned back to the open wall and resumed his place watching as the morning broke over the Threefold Land.
Gharadin at my heels, I stepped over to the table and eyed the pack. It possessed an external frame made of lacquered wood. On close examination, I thought I could make out worn engraving on that frame, and traced the faded vines with a finger.
Trefoil leaves… Chora leaves? The leaves of Avendesora? Or perhaps… of Avendoraldera?
That frame, at least, I suspected had been purchased long ago; purchased or gifted. It was certainly not war booty, because by the engravings, it was a near certainty that it was a product of Lost One hands.
Coincidence, perhaps? Or a subtle message from Salin? And indeed, how did Salin come into possession of a Tinker pack?
Perhaps, one day, I will ask.
The pack itself was, upon closer examination, double-lined, a leather exterior with an interior of paraffin-treated canvas, proof against grit and water alike. Sewn into the interior were many smaller pockets and slots, into which my tools had been slotted. Additional material padded the flat-faced hammer from the tongs, the tinsnips from the punches, and all of the other tools of my trade and works of my hands.
I closed the pack again and turned my attention to the second object resting on the scarred, carefully repaired tabletop. Nine hands long, a meter in the parlance of the worlds I had once known, the leather wrap did little to conceal the identity of its contents. At least, not from me or, judging by the harsh intake of breath from Gharadin, from my brother.
Below my fingers, the bindings fell loose as knot by knot came undone. As I unknotted the last string, I paused to stare down at the pale leather that swaddled this last possession of mine.
Simply handing it over, I decided, would be another wasted opportunity. Besides, can a gift like this even be meaningful without some ritual or ceremony? Certainly not to an Aiel!
"Gharadin, my brother," I said, naming the youth. Naming the boy, for I was now a man. "I have toh."
Even without looking up from the leather-wrapped package, I could feel his eyes upon me.
"You have toh," he dutifully agreed, completing his side of the ritual without understanding why.
Ji'e'toh was, by its nature, just as personal as it was universal. Every Aiel held to Ji'e'toh, which meant that every Aiel assigned themself either ji or toh. While the standards of Ji'etoh were universal, implementation was internal. To tell somebody else that they had toh was a great insult, for it implied that they had no understanding of honor; likewise, to tell an Aiel that they had no toh was an equally great insult for the same reason.
And of course, telling somebody that you have toh when you do not, in fact, have toh gives you toh for imposing upon another in an unwarranted manner, I thought wryly, reflecting again on the complexities of a people who I knew the worlds of my previous lives would write off as barbaric. Just to keep things relaxed and clearly understood, of course.
And so I doubted Gharadin understood why I had toh.
Or perhaps I am again underestimating him. But if I am not… I will not leave a cloud between us when I leave.
"I have not been the brother to you that I should have been," I said dispassionately, eyes fixed on the leather as I explained myself. "As your elder brother, you were mine to teach and to guide. That was my obligation, and in that obligation I have failed. Instead of pressing forwards towards my own goals with all of my vigor, I could have diverted some of my energy and time towards helping you along your own road to adulthood. I knew that you wanted to follow me, and I did nothing to help you as you fell in my footsteps."
"...You are talented, Taric," Gharadin said after a pause, his voice thick, but steady. "I could never best you with the spear, and none of the other children of the Hold could outmatch your skill with a bow. Why… Why did you become a smith, brother?"
"Why did you leave me behind?" echoed unspoken behind his question.
"...Bow and blade will not be my path," I answered. Not again. "Save for defense, or the defense of my family, or the defense of those of the Sept or the Clan unable to defend themselves, I shall never take up a weapon."
Not again, I thought, Grantz's horrified face swimming in the pool of my mind's eye. I will not be betrayed and murdered again, nor will I walk the same roads I followed before. I might live again, but my path is mutable, my way unfixed by those I followed before. Wheel be damned, Being X be damned. I am my own person, to the end. Til the Last Day and beyond.
None of which I could say to explain my reasoning adequately.
"To destroy is easy," I said instead, "and it is the province of those who cannot find another resolution to their problems. For some problems, there can be no resolution save through violence; for the Trollocs who boil out of the north, only spear and arrow can quench their thirst for blood. For all other problems, though…" I paused, trying to find an answer. "There are other answers. Consider, brother, that the greater ji comes from taking a foe alive, from putting a spear to their throat and demonstrating mercy. So too must the greater ji come from preservation rather than destruction."
That might have been a bit too far, I thought, annoyed with myself. It is true, but it was perhaps not what a fifteen year old boy wants to hear. For all that… It is true. I killed in my second life, but only because I had to, because the Empire was at war… But what was the value of the war? Wasted resources, ruined lives, devastated land, and millions of marks squandered on mud and blood.
What could have been accomplished had peace carried the day?
I turned to face Gharadin. Predictably, he looked angry. His jaw was thrust pugnaciously forwards, his hands trembled in tightly clenched fists by his side. In his eyes, though, I caught the glimmer of confusion; that was likely the root of his anger.
Behind him, I caught a slight motion from Salin, a nod as he pretended to ignore us in favor of the landscape spread out before him.
He, at least, understands. That much was unsurprising; I had said as much in fewer words when I had become his apprentice. I had hoped Gharadin would as well… Oh well.
"I will become a Spear, brother," Leiran and Ayesha's younger son spat, glaring impotently at me. "Would you say that your honor is greater than mine? That your path is more worthy than mine? Just as it always was?"
Killing words, those, if he said them around someone inclined to take them as offense. Blood feuds stemmed from words like those.
"You will be a Spear, brother," I replied, meeting Gharadin's eyes squarely. "You will find much ji as you follow in our father's footsteps. Your path is your own, just as my path is my own. For your sake, I hope that you find water and shade in abundance along your path, as I hope that I shall mine. As for that which lies between us… I cannot undo the past, but our Dream is not yet over, and so I can yet support your future."
With an almost negligible twitch of my hand, the leather wrapping flipped open. Within it, my spear rested, the first of my hand and just as beautiful as I remembered him. A wide blade three hands long crested a haft twice that length, wrapped in rawhide for a firm grip. As with my hammer, shadows of whorling charcoal-gray gyred up the flanges of that blade, rising from the tip.
Aiel of smoke-caught steel, Salin named me. Fitting.
"It is yours, Gharadin, Leiran and Ayesha's son, youngest greatchild of Sorilea the Wise One, if you would have it." I stepped away from Gharadin, swinging the pack onto my shoulders, grunting as eighty pounds of metal settled onto my back. "Be a Spear, my brother, and carry the first spear forged by your brother. May you find shade and water, and may you spit into Sightblinder's eye on the Last Day… And may that Last Day be far, far in the future for you, Gharadin."
19 Aine, 997 NE
Outside Rhuidean, Jenn Aiel, Aiel Waste
Ahead of me, the Threefold Land stretched out to the distant horizon.
To my left, foothills gray with brittle shrubs and exposed rock rose to embrace the Dragonwall. I knew that, if I turned back to look down the faint peddler's track I had followed for the last three days, I would see similar hills, shaded to blue shadows by the distance, hunching towards the mighty range.
Dug into the split-away face of one of those hills was Shende Hold, my house and home for these last seventeen years. The place where I had become a man once again, and where, for the first time, I had become a smith, a worker of metal. Where I had made a thousand useful things, and where I had worked inert ore into ingots of smoke-swirled steel and then into the blade of the spear that my brother had clutched, even as he watched me take the first strides out from under the shelter of the Hold's roof.
I did not turn to look back. I focused instead on the blue shadow far ahead of me, the distance rendering the lofty peak of Chaendaer, the mighty mountain overlooking forbidden Rhuidean, into little but a mole on the Threefold Land's cracked hide.
I would be skirting wide around that great mountain, though not for fear of ambush. The Peace of Rhuidean, one of the great traditions upheld by all Aiel, guaranteed safe passage to all travelers to or from the empty city held sacred by our people, for all that religion, as I had known it in my past lives, would be an alien concept to the Aiel. Beyond that, I was a blacksmith, likewise held sacred by traditions so deep that I doubted many Aiel would even consider raising a hand against me, even among the Shaido, a clan generally scorned as dishonorable even as far south as the Chareen.
Instead, I would be skirting wide to the east around the city in Chaendaer's shadow because every story the Wise One, my ancestor Sorilea, had spoken of Rhuidean screamed warnings to never set foot in the city.
After all, the best possible outcome would be that I would leave as a chief!
The thought brought a simultaneous shudder to my shoulders and a thin smile to my unveiled lips. The shudder from the prospect of the Wheel turning and once again dragging me into a position of authority, of control, just as it had over my last two lives. Both of which had been cut short by the hands of treacherous subordinates. The smile, to the contrary, rose from the prospect of a blacksmith being named chief over the Chareen Aiel. It was an unthinkable concept, to an Aiel, but one I struggled to describe in the context of the fading memories of my past lives.
A chief was, fundamentally, a warrior among warriors, who could be challenged to dance the spears to defend his decisions and his authority. A blacksmith disdained all weapons and shunned the dance, save for when Shadowspawn raided from the north.
The same direction as the one my feet are carrying me, onto Cold Rocks Hold…
The faint twang of discord that thought evoked within my heart resounded as I heard the faint crunch of footfalls on gravel.
I was not alone.
Keeping my hands by my side, I slowed from the league-eating lope long-perfected by the Aiel to a trot, then a jog, and then finally a walk, my mind waking from the dull stupor the endless footfalls had lured it into as I came to a halt. Muscles great and small, and not a few joints beside, took my renewed alertness to register complaints. Legs ached and my back, laden with almost half my body weight in smith's tools and iron rations, burned like the indomitable sun far above my head.
"Well met," I said to the unseen watchers. "May you find water and shade at the end of your journey, wherever that may lead you."
"Our journey will end in the same place yours will, Man of the Chareen," came the call, and a black-veilled figure rose from a narrow gully some thirty paces ahead, buckler strapped to his arm and brandishing a spear in his hands. "All journeys end in the same place, though some find their journey's end sooner than the rest. What brings you to the lands of the Goshien Aiel? Do you come for Rhuidean?"
Do you fall under the Peace?
That question remained unspoken as I peered at the warrior's cadin'sor, carefully examining the cut of his shirt and searching out familiar patterns in the dappled gray and beige, no doubt as the Goshien Spear did the same. A moment later, he stiffened and all but dropped his weapon as he hastily thrust it back into the leather bow-case strung across his shoulders.
"Apologies, Honored Smith!" he cried out, fumbling to lower his veil as he ducked his head, the cry taken up by another four Spears rising from behind scrub and from the same ditch as the first. "I have toh. May you find water and shade on your path."
"And you as well, oh Spear of the Jihrad Sept of the Goshien Aiel, honorable brother of the Duadhe Mahdi'in, Water Seekers," I said, acknowledging the warrior by his sept and society, giving him his honor back as best I could. There was no need to punish diligence, after all, especially since no harm had been done. "Your society is known to all for your keen eyes; make use of them and guide me to the next seep, for my waterskin is near parched and Imre Stand is yet a day and a night away."
This was halfway a lie, but it had two virtues, the first of which being that the truth of the matter was plainly obvious. Fat waterskins hung at each of my hips, the tanned bladders draped over opposing shoulder and refilled scant hours ago from a hidden spring known to the Chareen. The Goshien Spear shot me an unmistakably grateful look, though, for the other virtue was the short and clear path it gave the man towards regaining his honor after drawing steel on a smith.
"Certainly," the young man replied, and he was young, I realized. Scarcely more than a year or two older than me. "I know of a spring as sweet as you could please, scarcely five hours' run to the north and one to the east. Will it please you to follow us on that path, Honored Smith?"
"Only if you call me Taric of the Jarra Sept, son of Leiran," I said, walking to the man and extending my open hand towards him. "Who is guiding me to the sought-out water, Man of Jihrad?"
"I am Garan," the Goshien spear replied, grasping my forearm and pumping it in greeting. "I thank you for your understanding, Taric."
"And I thank you for the conversation," I replied, smiling politely at Garan. He was, I noted a full two heads shorter than me. "It has been a silent three days for me, since I set out from Shende Hold. Hearing a voice other than my own is a relief sweeter than any water you could bring me, I think."
"Don't say that yet," Garan said, softening the chide with a quick, clever smile. "Not until we reach the spring."
"Lead on," I invited, and fell into step beside the Water Seeker as we began to walk, then trot, then run across the sun-baked clay, the other four Goshien falling in behind us in a loose, tailing column.
As we ran, Garan continued chatting.
"So, I see nothing a smith could seek from Rhuidean," he began, his tone conversational as he hurdled over a low segade, "but yet you follow the track north?"
"Aye," I agreed, not breaking pace as I stepped around the outstretched skeleton of a cholla cactus, "there is little call for a smith in fog-shrouded Rhuidean, but there is much call further north, in the lands of the Taardad Aiel. I go to reheat the cold ashes of the Nine Valleys Sept's forge."
"The Taardad?" Garan puckered his lips into a sour expression, as if he had bitten down into a fruit and discovered it green and unready. "Surely there are smithies in the lands of the Chareen. If there aren't, perhaps you would care to forge spears and mend knives for the Goshien?"
"Alas," I replied mournfully, only halfway pretending as I shook my head regretfully, "my teacher still hammers steel at Shende Hold, and no other sept of my people were in present need of a newly forged smith. The Taardad, however, found themselves short a hammer, and the Wise One of my sept volunteered my services."
The implication was clear: If a Wise One had come to a decision, it would be backed by all Wise Ones as soon as they heard about it. Including those among the Goshien. Garan's wince at the prospect of contravening the decisions of that great convocation made it clear that he got the message and he ceased immediately his none-too-subtle attempt to poach me for his own sept and clan.
We continued on in our talk as we ran the remainder of the afternoon away, reaching the spring as the sun began to drop behind the Dragonwall. Garan offered me temporary accommodation by his small band's fire and I eagerly accepted, more than slightly tired of sleeping in the freezing cold of the Threefold night unshielded by roof or by Roof.
I returned the favor by putting a fresh edge on each warrior's favorite spear, honing each with my grindstone, coarse-grit then fine. I held off on using my strop as we were just squatting by a campfire, not in the relative comfort and ease of a Hold smithy, but the Goshien were all quite appreciative and thankful for the relatively minor and routine servicing of their weapons.
In the morning, Garan bid me find water and shade, and then immediately made that wish come half-true by offering me one of his own refilled waterskins and additional rations, sun-cured capar spiced with fiery chiles and a handful of motai grubs. I accepted both, immediately popping a grub into my mouth and savoring the initial crunch and the following gush of sweet juices as I chomped down on the fat little thing.
Like the shadow hills far behind me, I left the tiny Goshien ambushing party behind me as well, reshouldering my pack as I walked, then trotted, then ran north once more, north and west. Ran on towards Cold Rocks Hold, and towards the smithy that awaited me.
26 Aine, 997 NE
Cold Rocks Hold, Taardad Aiel, Aiel Waste
Before me, the fissure yawned open, a wind-worn mouth into the heart of a mesa rising from the table of the Threefold Land. My tongue flicked over parched lips. The signs of traffic, stone further softened by generations of booted feet, confirmed what I had already known from Sorilea's directions to the Hold of the Nine Valleys Sept.
After ten days of solitary travel, I had arrived at last.
Now, I had to announce myself. It was customary when approaching a hold for purposes other than raiding to come unveiled and with a cacophony of noise, making it absolutely clear to all involved that you came in peace.
Like many Aiel traditions, the announcement was deeply sensible and served multiple purposes, the first and most important being that it reduced the number of instances of mistaken identity, thus likewise keeping the number of accidental stabbings down as well. It also meant that whoever was guarding the entrance to the hold had enough time to send a runner to find the Roofmistress and alert her to the new arrival, so everybody had to spend less time standing around out in the sun.
If I were a warrior, arriving at the hold of a clan in peace, I shout my arrival, roaring for all to hear… But I am not a warrior. I am a smith.
I will allow my steel to announce me.
Thanks to the clever pockets of Salin's Tinker-made pack, it was the work of a moment for steel to enter my hands. Hammer and tongs, as emblematic of the brotherhood of the forge as spear and buckler are to the twelve warrior societies.
Shouldering my pack once more, I took up the long open-jaw forge-tongs with one hand, and with the other I held the flat-faced cross-peened blacksmith's hammer, the capstone of my toolset, whose whorled ash and smoke reflected the spear I had last seen glimmering in my brother's hands.
Holding both tongs and hammer above my head, I took my first step into the gorge in the cliffside.
CLANG!
The echo rang out before me as the jaws of the tongs met the side of my hammer.
Another step, and then another.
CLANG!
Already, I was within the shadows of the cleft, cool and dark. It felt like I had stepped directly into late evening from midday, the first touches of the freezing Threefold night ghosting down from above even as the last of the day's heat radiated up from the stones.
Only the thin slash of blue, bright between the towering walls, belied the impression of night-come-early.
CLANG!
Up ahead, the fissure turned, cornering at a natural chokepoint. Three figures formed a line across that turning in the rock, only one of whom wore the cadin'sor of a Taardad Spear. The other two wore the bulky brown skirts, voluminous white blouses, and light shawls ubiquitous to all Aiel women who had not taken up a spear.
I lowered my tools; my arrival, it seemed, had been noted.
"Who comes to Cold Rocks Hold?" The challenge came from the woman standing in the center, slender and perhaps on the cusp of her upper-middle years, her long blonde hair paleing to white at her temples. "Name yourself, stranger, and state plainly your purpose."
Gold glimmered at her wrists and at her throat, all of it captured war-booty. Amidst the Treekiller gold, however, strings of silver in the traditional Aiel fashion, sheet-silver cold-hammered into chunky rings and bracelets and etched with intricate patterns, shown as well.
None of which was necessary to announce this woman as Lian, Roofmistress of Cold Rocks Hold and wife of Rhuarc, Clan Chief of the Taardad Aiel. The postures of her two companions were more than adequate to make her authority known.
"Roofmistess," I said, nodding in respectful greeting, "I am Taric, son of Leiran and Ayesha. By the recognition of Salin of Shende Hold, I name myself a blacksmith. At the word of Sorilea, Wise One of Shende Hold and my greatmother's greatmother, I have come to Cold Rocks Hold to relight a forge gone dark. I ask leave to come beneath your roof."
"You have my leave, Taric," Lian replied, her ritual stiffness softening as she smiled a more personable greeting. "Beneath my roof, there is water and shade for you. You are most welcome, Sorilea's child."
"I give thanks, Roofmistress," I dutifully said, closing the ritual, "but am I only welcome in my ancestor's name? I was told that there was work to be done."
"Oh, there most certainly is," Lian agreed, her necklaces jangling as she nodded, "and we shall talk, Taric, of roof-rights and payment and many more things. But before all that, Garlvan has asked to meet you, to see for himself Salin's new prodigy."
I nodded slowly. This development wasn't a complete surprise; I was young to be recognized as a journeyman smith, and no doubt Garlvan, the surviving smith of Cold Rocks Hold, wanted to ensure that I hadn't played some trick on Salin to cheat my way into his recognition.
It is a reasonable ask, I told myself, but galling nonetheless. Perhaps that is why the warrior is still here. Young men and their hot-blooded pride, eh? What nonsense.
I was a smith, duly recognized by my master. I would act accordingly.
"I am eager to meet my brother of the forge as well," I said, raising my head to look Lian straight in the eyes. "Roofmistress, where might I find Garlvan? I would go this very moment to lay his doubts to rest."
The other woman, standing in Lian's shadow, let out a cough that sounded very much like a half-concealed laugh. When the Roofmistress turned to stare at her from the corner of her eye, the younger woman quickly stiffened back up, her face returning to typical stoicism, but the corners of her mouth still twitched with a buried smile.
"Aye, you certainly are Sorilea's," said Lian with a sort of familiar, fond exasperation. "I see that she still has spine enough to share with all her line. Well then, Taric, be welcome in Cold Rocks Hold. I'll take you directly on to see Garlvan, and then…" her eyes darted back to the other woman, and then to me. "Then, we will talk."
With that, the Roofmistress turned and strode back into the fissure, sweeping her companion up in the swirl of her skirt as she passed. Unslinging my pack under the Spear's watchful eyes, I quickly returned hammer and tongs to their appropriate pockets before hurrying after Lian… Only to stop, rocking on my heels, as I rounded the corner.
The narrow walls of the fissure immediately widened into a short, broad expanse, which only a hundred paces ahead widened again. And in that wide hollow space, ringed on all sides by the towering walls of the mesa…
By the standards of my past lives, to eyes jaded by the brick and marble of Berun and even moreso by the glass and steel of Tokyo, Cold Rocks Hold was nothing, barely even a village. But to Aiel eyes though… It was a vision. The air was thick with moisture, the humidity shocking after the bone-drying hammer of the Threefold Land. Vegetation of an almost shocking green climbed the walls of the hidden canyon, and everywhere farms rose on terraced plots brimming with t'mat and algode, pecara and above all zemai which grew in heavy-kernaled abundance.
Between the garden plots, low-roofed houses rose from the ground, built with yellow adobe blocks similar to those that made up the walls of Shende Hold, though without the coats of white-washing plaster necessary to keep those walls safe from the driving rains occasionally escaping over the Dragonwall.
And in the center of it all, in the middle of the hold… Water. So much water. An abundance, an over-abundance, in a land where clans would trade the blood of dozens of Spears for a pool three paces wide and half a handbreadth deep. Flowing from a spring in the wall of the mesa, the water poured forth and pooled in a central oasis, from which Gai'shain filled pitchers they carried up to the rising terraces, watering waiting lines of peppers, melons, squash, and beans.
"First time you've seen so much water in one place, I'll wager." It was Lian's shadow, the laughing woman, who had hung back to watch my reaction. Judging by her smirk, whatever had crossed my face had pleased her. "Do you have anything like our hold back in the lands of the Chareen?"
"Not that I have seen," I acknowledged, "though I cannot claim to have traveled to all the holds of my mother's clan. From what I have seen, though…" I shook my head, still stunned by all the green, all the water after days spent running through the desert. "Truly, I wish you to find water and shade, but it seems clear that you already have both in abundance. I am Taric, though I suppose you know that already."
"Aye," she bobbed her head, a smile flickering across her lips as she fell into step with me. Lian, I noticed, was a full ten paces ahead of us and carefully maintaining that distance. Just close enough to listen in, while still far enough away to offer an illusion of privacy. "I suppose you know my name as well."
"Lea?" I hazarded, drawing on the only name I knew from Cold Rocks Hold, save for Lian and Garlvan's. "Daughter of Amys the Wise One?"
"Aye." This time, the reply came out almost more as a grunt. Not quite surly, but certainly far from happy. "That's me. Daughter to a Wise One and a Clan Chief."
How am I supposed to respond to this? I had never met any of the kin of Erim, Chief of the Chareen Aiel, but none of Parrag's family, the family of the Jarra Sept Chief, had spoken of their high-placed kinsman with such tetchiness. I should respond in kind, clearly.
"...Is that why you have no suitors?" I asked, my voice innocently open and brimming with simple curiosity. "Surely it would take a bold man not to flee when a Wise One's daughter pursues."
"Few are the men bold enough to wed a Wise One," Lian observed from up ahead, discarding any pretense of privacy. "Even one who has yet to accept apprenticeship, much less become a Wise One in truth."
Lea scowled at her mother's sister-wife's back, but perhaps wisely kept her mouth shut.
"And yet your husband accepted a bridal wreath from Amys," I said, speaking to Lian, "as did my greatfather from my greatmother, Amaryn. Rhuarc in particular is known as a chief of great honor. Surely," I mused, looking up as if tracking a stray thought, "if dancing the spears while outnumbered and barehanded earns a Spear great ji, then taking up a wreath of braided thorns and herbs must be like taking a chief gai'shain while armed only with a paring knife. I see your conundrum, Lea. You have my sympathy."
At this comment, both Lian and Lea turned to stare at me, the Roofmistress coming to a complete stop to turn and look back.
"After all," I continued, smiling at the brewing rage on Lea's face, "both a Spear and a Wise One's husband may wake from the Dream at any point in their dance, but one must hold out for only a few hundred heartbeats, while the other must last for a few hundred months. Scarce indeed are men with such endurance!"
That earned a laugh from Lian, as did Lea's look of scandalized betrayal. "Aye," the Roofmistress said, a younger woman's smile in her eyes, "Rhuarc may be getting up in years, but he still has the stamina to wield his spear with strength and fortitude. With the seasoning of years, his precision only improves."
"Beware the old warrior," I nodded sagely, grinning at Lian as Lea, eyes burning, turned back to me. "While sap may dry and leather might curdle, the shaft remains long and grindstone and grease can only make the head grow keener."
"Roofmistress," Lea said, her voice tight, "if you do not need my help in guiding Taric to the old smith, then I must be about my duties."
"Go on, then," Lian said indulgently, taking mercy on her sister-wife's daughter. "Thank you for joining me in bidding welcome to our new smith."
I didn't need Lian's sideways look to prompt me to make nice. "It was good to meet you, Rhuarc's daughter. May you work in the shade today, and may the fields you tend soon bear fruit."
This last comment was a somewhat novel twist on a traditional farewell, generally wishing the receiver good luck with whatever project they set their hands to. It was also, however, a farewell reserved almost exclusively for young wives, or those who would soon be wives.
Rejection, after all, was hard and unpleasant. Especially if the rejection rose from a factor over which one had no control. Lea had not chosen to be born to two high status members of Aiel society, nor had she chosen to be a Wise One, though from Lian's remarks it was clear that the Wise Ones had marked her for their own.
For all that I had teased her about the high bar to entry that came with forming a relationship with a high status member in a society as centered on obligation and duty as the Aiel, I had spoken truly about the sympathy I felt for her. I had no wish to make an enemy from that misunderstanding.
By the way her eyes widened, I thought Lea understood the message.
Though by the speed she fled, perhaps not.
"Smiths have much endurance," Lian idly remarked as she waited, resuming her path forwards into the hold only after I had caught up by her side. "Apparently, smiths have clever tongues as well."
"As you say, Roofmistress," I murmured, trying to evaluate her mood from the corner of my eye. She didn't seem upset; indeed, she still looked mildly amused. "It takes a degree of deftness to work the raw steel into something more malleable without ruining the temper."
"Is that what you were doing?" An eyebrow arched as she turned to look at me, the white wings at her temple flashing. "See to it you don't mistake my near-sister's daughter for an ingot, then."
Ah, perhaps not as amused as I thought.
I still didn't feel like I had toh, though. The only time I had addressed Lea directly had been in offering my sympathy, which had been sincere. The other comments I had made, while perhaps somewhat mocking, had all been broad in their subjects and of mild fun at most. Indeed, I had referred to Lian's husband and my greatfather as honored by their long and happy marriages to Wise Ones.
No… That's not the issue. It's not that I have toh, but rather that Lian is ensuring that neither Lea nor I end up overstepping ourselves in the future, thus incurring toh. A pinch of prevention outweighs a pound of cure, after all.
"I will keep my hammer confined to my forge, Roofmistress," I said, assuring her.
I have no intentions of dishonoring your husband's daughter.
"So long as you do, I can assure you water and shade," she replied, motherly smile returning. "You must be hungry from your trip, Taric. If you would like, Garlvan can wait until this evening, if you would prefer to eat and rest before seeing him."
"Thank you for your offer, Roofmistress," I replied, shaking my head, "but I am certain that I would rest more peacefully knowing that I have found recognition in my forge-brother's eyes."
Garlvan, as it turned out, was not as I had envisioned. I had halfway expected to find a second Salin, a thick-limbed man almost as broad as he was tall and sporting both a beard and prodigious body hair. Instead, Garlvan was thin, almost lanky, though the long ropey muscles that stood out like cables on his arms whenever he clenched his fists showed that he had spent many a long hour pounding away on his anvil. He had a long, clever face sporting a wide mouth that, when he opened it, almost seemed to split his jaw away from the rest of his head entirely.
He was also only seven years my senior, for all that Lea had called him the "old smith".
After Lian made the introductions, we were left on our own. The battery of questions began immediately.
"What color should the ingot glow in preparation for the first stages of forging a spearhead?"
"What is the correct ratio of coke to iron for wire-steel?"
"Let me see your hands."
At the last, I held out my hands to Garlvan, who peered down at the banded calluses running across my palm and lumped along the pads of my fingers.
"You have a smith's hands," he allowed, stepping back as I dropped my hands by my sides. "And you know the basics, at least. You've forged your tools?"
I nodded towards the pack, which I had left resting on a table by the door to the smithy. "See for yourself."
Garlvan did so, flipping the rawhide strap up free of the toggle holding the pack closed and whistling appreciatively at the contents. "All your handiwork? By your honor, Salin didn't hold your hand at all."
"By my word as a smith," I confirmed, "I bartered for the raw ore, I smelted it down into steel and coked the bloomery myself, and every hammerblow was delivered by mine own arm."
"Well then…" Garlvan looked down once more, eyes resting on my hammer. "What did your master name you then?"
"Smoke-Caught Steel," I said, parroting the phrase Salin had coined only a week and a half ago. "And you?"
"Wire-Armed," Garlvan said, grinning as he held his arms up for inspection. "The name proves itself."
"So it does," I agreed. "I see you, Garlvan, man of the Nine Valleys Sept. I see you, wire-armed Aiel, fellow of the Forge, and by your forge I greet you."
"And I see you, Taric," Garlvan replied, "man of the Jarra Sept, at least for now. I see you, smoke-caught Aiel, fellow of the Forge. May your arms be strong, your fingers quick, and your skin unburnt."
"And may sparks never fall in your beard," I returned, falling for a moment into the banter Salin and I had enjoyed. "I look forward to working with you."
"And I look forward to seeing what you are truly capable of." Garlvan shook his head. "Seventeen years… Bloody ashes, but you move fast? Well, skill will out… I will tell Lian that your iron is true, but first?"
Arms like steel ropes lashed around my shoulders and pulled me in tight. Off-guard for a moment, I quickly returned the embrace.
"Welcome to Cold Stones Hold. May you find water and shade, brother."
When I left Shende Hold, I left a brother in blood behind. But, I dared to hope, perhaps here among the Taardad, I have found a brother in craft.
That alone would make the run worth it.
16 Aine, 997 NE
Shende Hold, Chareen Aiel, Aiel Waste
An hour before sunrise, I followed the familiar path to Salin's smithy one last time as a resident of Shende Hold. From long experience, I knew that the open wall of the forge that faced east, out over the broad expanse of the Threefold Land, would already be lit in the gray predawn, the first scouts of the sun infiltrating the vaulting skies that stretched over the low hills and arid plains of my homeland. Soon, those scouts would be followed by the main force of the day, the disc itself rising over the mountains on the far side of the Great Rift.
By the time that disc rose high enough for its light to touch the Hold's adobe walls, I would be gone, the ground falling away behind me as I loped towards Cold Rocks Hold and the Taardad Aiel at my ancestor's command.
But before then, I had one last obligation to discharge.
I had toh.
Behind me, peering around at the unfamiliar corner of Shende Hold he found himself in, Gharadin silently trailed.
Just as he had been his entire life, Ayesha and Leiran's younger son followed in my footsteps.
It was to him that I owed toh, for I had not behaved as an older brother should towards his younger sibling. Before I stepped away from the roof I had sheltered under as a child, I would make that shame right.
We had never been close, Gharadin and I.
Two years my junior, he had tagged after me as often as he could, as closely as our difference in ages allowed. When we were young, he had always been at my heels, joining in with plastering the walls of the Hold or spinning cotton. When I had learned as all young Aiel the art of the spear and knife, the bow and arrow, Gharadin had done his best to keep up before the instructor sent him back to his cohort after his younger arms proved too weak to draw back the bowstring or drive the flat blade of his spear through the target's leather hide.
That had always been the essence of the distance between Gharadin and I. He was a child, a true child, a young man looking to make his way in the world unencumbered by the memories of two previous lives, by the intimate knowledge at how cyclical existence truly was, the Wheel be damned. He was not stupid, nor dim, nor weak, nor rash. He was ignorant, immature, and undeveloped.
Gharadin was a child, and in many ways, I was not. While I had been encumbered by the brain and body of a child and all the affectations that came along when puberty decided to finally grace my body, I had the perspectives of an adult and of a veteran soldier as well.
I had never been the best at relating to people, often finding it difficult to establish more than casual connections with my peers even in my first life. The nightmare scenario of my second life, with so much stacked against me, had made finding common ground with others even more troublesome. Professionalism and the formality of hierarchy had broken a path forwards for me, but alone they could carry me only so far, could only bridge so much of the gulf between myself and the others.
My last moments in Arene proved as much.
As the years passed, the distance between Gharadin and I lengthened despite his best efforts to race after me. Questions that Gharadin struggled with I answered with ease, pleasing the Wise Ones and the warriors who tutored the Sept's youth alike. Where proficiency with the recurved short-bow of the Aiel eluded Gharadin, my shafts never missed their target, a legacy of years of training and killing. In spars with the knife or the spear, only two of the youth of Shende Hold could best me in the Dance; Gharadin was not among them.
When I set foot on the path of the smith and apprenticed myself to Salin, I took the final step that Gharadin, no matter how hard he tried, could not follow. Salin would certainly not take two apprentices at once, and to be apprenticed even as young as I had been was highly uncommon.
With all of that, how could my relationship with my younger brother ever have turned out in any way different from what it had?
I could have tried to teach him, I thought, answering my own question. He isn't stupid; he could have learned. He would have relished the opportunity to develop. Perhaps with some personal instruction, he could have found a place on the fast track towards leadership within a Society, perhaps even our father's own, the Sha'mad Conde, Thunder Walkers. Well trained and groomed for leadership, Gharadin would have represented a valuable resource.
It was an opportunity that I had squandered, a sacrifice I hadn't even fully realized I was making when I set forth to prove myself worthy to Salin.
For that, and for all of the times I could have lent a helping hand to Gharadin, son of Leiran, I had toh.
The forge's door stood ajar, the precious iron-bound timber creaking slightly in the early morning's breeze. Through the open entry, I could see the Threefold Land spread out before the Hold; while only the slightest light fell on the land and the smithy, I knew that the familiar sullen glow of banked embers waited for me on the other side.
"Brother?" Gharadin broke his silence at last, coming to a halt on the smithy's threshold. "Is it… right for me to enter?" His voice, thin and childish, not yet broken to a man's timbre, sounded almost like birdsong as the wind whistled through the portal.
"Cross my threshold and be welcome, Ghardin, son of Leiran," came Salin's familiar baritone, the man himself turning from where he had stood facing out over the Threefold Land, watching as the world woke from its passing dream. "All of my sept are welcome in my smithy, so long as they keep their hands well away from my tools or the forge."
Gharadin glanced up at me, quickly checking to see if it was alright to enter. I nodded, the motion a slight tilt of my head, not looking away from Salin. My teacher, my mentor. My equal.
"I see you, Salin, man of my Sept," I said, raising my voice in ritual greeting. "I see you, hammer-handed Aiel, fellow of the Forge, and by the forge I greet you."
"I see you, Taric, man of my Sept," Salin replied, stepping forwards to stand on the other side of the threshold, Gharadin scooting out of his way and vanishing behind him into the forge. "I see you, Aiel of smoke-caught steel, fellow of the Forge. By the light of the forge I taught you from, I greet you."
Concluding the greeting, Salin stretched out a burly arm and I clasped it, my hand locking on his forearm even as his iron-fingered grip found my own. With a firm movement that was half a welcoming shake and half a tug, he pulled me across the threshold and into the forge. Surrounded by the scents of smoke and steel, coal and rendered fat, I relaxed almost immediately.
In a way, this broad, three-walled room was more my home than Ayesha's roof.
"You have come for your spear, I suspect," Salin rumbled, releasing my arm. "I had wondered if you would remember it before you passed Chaendaer."
That was a joke, as there had never been any chance of my departing Shende Hold without stopping by Salin's forge. For one, it would have been incredibly disrespectful as well as unkind to not bid my mentor farewell before beginning my trek northwards; for another, all of my tools were still at the forge where I had left them the previous day.
I somehow doubt that Roofmistress Lian would be happy if I showed up at Cold Rocks Hold empty handed. A smith without his tools is like a Maiden without her spear; to whit, she isn't.
"I knew I was forgetting something," I replied, stone-faced as I returned Salin's joke in kind. "If you would be so kind, Salin, I have come to collect what is mine."
"Then take, Taric," said Salin, impassive as he looked past me. "Will you take also your father's son and your mother's consolation?"
I followed his gaze to Gharadin, who stood by the banked forge, shifting slowly from foot to foot and clearly trying to take advantage of the meagre warmth of the coals without making it too obvious.
"No," I said, catching Gharadin's eye and beckoning him to my side with a nod, "I have only come for what is mine… And to pay that which I owe."
Slowly, Salin tilted his head to one side, considering. Then he nodded and stepped back, gesturing towards one of the shop tables, upon which a large, box-framed leather pack sat. Next to it, an oblong shape wrapped in leather and bound with a rawhide cord rested.
"I gave your tools a last hone and polish before packing them away in my old pack," the old smith said, his voice even more gruff than usual. "It's yours if you want it, Taric; I do not anticipate much travel in my future, certainly not without the company of sufficient Spears to carry my load for me."
"Thank you, Salin," I said, nodding deeply. It was a fine gift; it was his farewell, a fitting gesture from a master to his departing journeyman. I had no gift with which to reciprocate, save for a promise against my future. A promise I had already intended to swear. "You have taught me much. I shall endeavor to learn yet more, and then I shall return to Shende Hold. When I do so, you may rest easy, content to know that neither the Jarra nor Chareen shall lose a finger of your skill when you awake from the Dream."
"Pwah!" Salin snorted, shaking his head. "It will be years yet before you find shelter and water below the roof of Shende Hold again, if that is to be so. Nonetheless, I will see you again before my last day, Taric. This I know. Now," he gestured again towards the table, "take what is yours and begone. There can only be one smith below the roof of Shende Hold." A smile crinkled the maze of lines worn into his sun-darkened face. "Be at ease, Leiran's son; I will keep the forge warm until you return again."
With that, Salin turned back to the open wall and resumed his place watching as the morning broke over the Threefold Land.
Gharadin at my heels, I stepped over to the table and eyed the pack. It possessed an external frame made of lacquered wood. On close examination, I thought I could make out worn engraving on that frame, and traced the faded vines with a finger.
Trefoil leaves… Chora leaves? The leaves of Avendesora? Or perhaps… of Avendoraldera?
That frame, at least, I suspected had been purchased long ago; purchased or gifted. It was certainly not war booty, because by the engravings, it was a near certainty that it was a product of Lost One hands.
Coincidence, perhaps? Or a subtle message from Salin? And indeed, how did Salin come into possession of a Tinker pack?
Perhaps, one day, I will ask.
The pack itself was, upon closer examination, double-lined, a leather exterior with an interior of paraffin-treated canvas, proof against grit and water alike. Sewn into the interior were many smaller pockets and slots, into which my tools had been slotted. Additional material padded the flat-faced hammer from the tongs, the tinsnips from the punches, and all of the other tools of my trade and works of my hands.
I closed the pack again and turned my attention to the second object resting on the scarred, carefully repaired tabletop. Nine hands long, a meter in the parlance of the worlds I had once known, the leather wrap did little to conceal the identity of its contents. At least, not from me or, judging by the harsh intake of breath from Gharadin, from my brother.
Below my fingers, the bindings fell loose as knot by knot came undone. As I unknotted the last string, I paused to stare down at the pale leather that swaddled this last possession of mine.
Simply handing it over, I decided, would be another wasted opportunity. Besides, can a gift like this even be meaningful without some ritual or ceremony? Certainly not to an Aiel!
"Gharadin, my brother," I said, naming the youth. Naming the boy, for I was now a man. "I have toh."
Even without looking up from the leather-wrapped package, I could feel his eyes upon me.
"You have toh," he dutifully agreed, completing his side of the ritual without understanding why.
Ji'e'toh was, by its nature, just as personal as it was universal. Every Aiel held to Ji'e'toh, which meant that every Aiel assigned themself either ji or toh. While the standards of Ji'etoh were universal, implementation was internal. To tell somebody else that they had toh was a great insult, for it implied that they had no understanding of honor; likewise, to tell an Aiel that they had no toh was an equally great insult for the same reason.
And of course, telling somebody that you have toh when you do not, in fact, have toh gives you toh for imposing upon another in an unwarranted manner, I thought wryly, reflecting again on the complexities of a people who I knew the worlds of my previous lives would write off as barbaric. Just to keep things relaxed and clearly understood, of course.
And so I doubted Gharadin understood why I had toh.
Or perhaps I am again underestimating him. But if I am not… I will not leave a cloud between us when I leave.
"I have not been the brother to you that I should have been," I said dispassionately, eyes fixed on the leather as I explained myself. "As your elder brother, you were mine to teach and to guide. That was my obligation, and in that obligation I have failed. Instead of pressing forwards towards my own goals with all of my vigor, I could have diverted some of my energy and time towards helping you along your own road to adulthood. I knew that you wanted to follow me, and I did nothing to help you as you fell in my footsteps."
"...You are talented, Taric," Gharadin said after a pause, his voice thick, but steady. "I could never best you with the spear, and none of the other children of the Hold could outmatch your skill with a bow. Why… Why did you become a smith, brother?"
"Why did you leave me behind?" echoed unspoken behind his question.
"...Bow and blade will not be my path," I answered. Not again. "Save for defense, or the defense of my family, or the defense of those of the Sept or the Clan unable to defend themselves, I shall never take up a weapon."
Not again, I thought, Grantz's horrified face swimming in the pool of my mind's eye. I will not be betrayed and murdered again, nor will I walk the same roads I followed before. I might live again, but my path is mutable, my way unfixed by those I followed before. Wheel be damned, Being X be damned. I am my own person, to the end. Til the Last Day and beyond.
None of which I could say to explain my reasoning adequately.
"To destroy is easy," I said instead, "and it is the province of those who cannot find another resolution to their problems. For some problems, there can be no resolution save through violence; for the Trollocs who boil out of the north, only spear and arrow can quench their thirst for blood. For all other problems, though…" I paused, trying to find an answer. "There are other answers. Consider, brother, that the greater ji comes from taking a foe alive, from putting a spear to their throat and demonstrating mercy. So too must the greater ji come from preservation rather than destruction."
That might have been a bit too far, I thought, annoyed with myself. It is true, but it was perhaps not what a fifteen year old boy wants to hear. For all that… It is true. I killed in my second life, but only because I had to, because the Empire was at war… But what was the value of the war? Wasted resources, ruined lives, devastated land, and millions of marks squandered on mud and blood.
What could have been accomplished had peace carried the day?
I turned to face Gharadin. Predictably, he looked angry. His jaw was thrust pugnaciously forwards, his hands trembled in tightly clenched fists by his side. In his eyes, though, I caught the glimmer of confusion; that was likely the root of his anger.
Behind him, I caught a slight motion from Salin, a nod as he pretended to ignore us in favor of the landscape spread out before him.
He, at least, understands. That much was unsurprising; I had said as much in fewer words when I had become his apprentice. I had hoped Gharadin would as well… Oh well.
"I will become a Spear, brother," Leiran and Ayesha's younger son spat, glaring impotently at me. "Would you say that your honor is greater than mine? That your path is more worthy than mine? Just as it always was?"
Killing words, those, if he said them around someone inclined to take them as offense. Blood feuds stemmed from words like those.
"You will be a Spear, brother," I replied, meeting Gharadin's eyes squarely. "You will find much ji as you follow in our father's footsteps. Your path is your own, just as my path is my own. For your sake, I hope that you find water and shade in abundance along your path, as I hope that I shall mine. As for that which lies between us… I cannot undo the past, but our Dream is not yet over, and so I can yet support your future."
With an almost negligible twitch of my hand, the leather wrapping flipped open. Within it, my spear rested, the first of my hand and just as beautiful as I remembered him. A wide blade three hands long crested a haft twice that length, wrapped in rawhide for a firm grip. As with my hammer, shadows of whorling charcoal-gray gyred up the flanges of that blade, rising from the tip.
Aiel of smoke-caught steel, Salin named me. Fitting.
"It is yours, Gharadin, Leiran and Ayesha's son, youngest greatchild of Sorilea the Wise One, if you would have it." I stepped away from Gharadin, swinging the pack onto my shoulders, grunting as eighty pounds of metal settled onto my back. "Be a Spear, my brother, and carry the first spear forged by your brother. May you find shade and water, and may you spit into Sightblinder's eye on the Last Day… And may that Last Day be far, far in the future for you, Gharadin."
19 Aine, 997 NE
Outside Rhuidean, Jenn Aiel, Aiel Waste
Ahead of me, the Threefold Land stretched out to the distant horizon.
To my left, foothills gray with brittle shrubs and exposed rock rose to embrace the Dragonwall. I knew that, if I turned back to look down the faint peddler's track I had followed for the last three days, I would see similar hills, shaded to blue shadows by the distance, hunching towards the mighty range.
Dug into the split-away face of one of those hills was Shende Hold, my house and home for these last seventeen years. The place where I had become a man once again, and where, for the first time, I had become a smith, a worker of metal. Where I had made a thousand useful things, and where I had worked inert ore into ingots of smoke-swirled steel and then into the blade of the spear that my brother had clutched, even as he watched me take the first strides out from under the shelter of the Hold's roof.
I did not turn to look back. I focused instead on the blue shadow far ahead of me, the distance rendering the lofty peak of Chaendaer, the mighty mountain overlooking forbidden Rhuidean, into little but a mole on the Threefold Land's cracked hide.
I would be skirting wide around that great mountain, though not for fear of ambush. The Peace of Rhuidean, one of the great traditions upheld by all Aiel, guaranteed safe passage to all travelers to or from the empty city held sacred by our people, for all that religion, as I had known it in my past lives, would be an alien concept to the Aiel. Beyond that, I was a blacksmith, likewise held sacred by traditions so deep that I doubted many Aiel would even consider raising a hand against me, even among the Shaido, a clan generally scorned as dishonorable even as far south as the Chareen.
Instead, I would be skirting wide to the east around the city in Chaendaer's shadow because every story the Wise One, my ancestor Sorilea, had spoken of Rhuidean screamed warnings to never set foot in the city.
After all, the best possible outcome would be that I would leave as a chief!
The thought brought a simultaneous shudder to my shoulders and a thin smile to my unveiled lips. The shudder from the prospect of the Wheel turning and once again dragging me into a position of authority, of control, just as it had over my last two lives. Both of which had been cut short by the hands of treacherous subordinates. The smile, to the contrary, rose from the prospect of a blacksmith being named chief over the Chareen Aiel. It was an unthinkable concept, to an Aiel, but one I struggled to describe in the context of the fading memories of my past lives.
A chief was, fundamentally, a warrior among warriors, who could be challenged to dance the spears to defend his decisions and his authority. A blacksmith disdained all weapons and shunned the dance, save for when Shadowspawn raided from the north.
The same direction as the one my feet are carrying me, onto Cold Rocks Hold…
The faint twang of discord that thought evoked within my heart resounded as I heard the faint crunch of footfalls on gravel.
I was not alone.
Keeping my hands by my side, I slowed from the league-eating lope long-perfected by the Aiel to a trot, then a jog, and then finally a walk, my mind waking from the dull stupor the endless footfalls had lured it into as I came to a halt. Muscles great and small, and not a few joints beside, took my renewed alertness to register complaints. Legs ached and my back, laden with almost half my body weight in smith's tools and iron rations, burned like the indomitable sun far above my head.
"Well met," I said to the unseen watchers. "May you find water and shade at the end of your journey, wherever that may lead you."
"Our journey will end in the same place yours will, Man of the Chareen," came the call, and a black-veilled figure rose from a narrow gully some thirty paces ahead, buckler strapped to his arm and brandishing a spear in his hands. "All journeys end in the same place, though some find their journey's end sooner than the rest. What brings you to the lands of the Goshien Aiel? Do you come for Rhuidean?"
Do you fall under the Peace?
That question remained unspoken as I peered at the warrior's cadin'sor, carefully examining the cut of his shirt and searching out familiar patterns in the dappled gray and beige, no doubt as the Goshien Spear did the same. A moment later, he stiffened and all but dropped his weapon as he hastily thrust it back into the leather bow-case strung across his shoulders.
"Apologies, Honored Smith!" he cried out, fumbling to lower his veil as he ducked his head, the cry taken up by another four Spears rising from behind scrub and from the same ditch as the first. "I have toh. May you find water and shade on your path."
"And you as well, oh Spear of the Jihrad Sept of the Goshien Aiel, honorable brother of the Duadhe Mahdi'in, Water Seekers," I said, acknowledging the warrior by his sept and society, giving him his honor back as best I could. There was no need to punish diligence, after all, especially since no harm had been done. "Your society is known to all for your keen eyes; make use of them and guide me to the next seep, for my waterskin is near parched and Imre Stand is yet a day and a night away."
This was halfway a lie, but it had two virtues, the first of which being that the truth of the matter was plainly obvious. Fat waterskins hung at each of my hips, the tanned bladders draped over opposing shoulder and refilled scant hours ago from a hidden spring known to the Chareen. The Goshien Spear shot me an unmistakably grateful look, though, for the other virtue was the short and clear path it gave the man towards regaining his honor after drawing steel on a smith.
"Certainly," the young man replied, and he was young, I realized. Scarcely more than a year or two older than me. "I know of a spring as sweet as you could please, scarcely five hours' run to the north and one to the east. Will it please you to follow us on that path, Honored Smith?"
"Only if you call me Taric of the Jarra Sept, son of Leiran," I said, walking to the man and extending my open hand towards him. "Who is guiding me to the sought-out water, Man of Jihrad?"
"I am Garan," the Goshien spear replied, grasping my forearm and pumping it in greeting. "I thank you for your understanding, Taric."
"And I thank you for the conversation," I replied, smiling politely at Garan. He was, I noted a full two heads shorter than me. "It has been a silent three days for me, since I set out from Shende Hold. Hearing a voice other than my own is a relief sweeter than any water you could bring me, I think."
"Don't say that yet," Garan said, softening the chide with a quick, clever smile. "Not until we reach the spring."
"Lead on," I invited, and fell into step beside the Water Seeker as we began to walk, then trot, then run across the sun-baked clay, the other four Goshien falling in behind us in a loose, tailing column.
As we ran, Garan continued chatting.
"So, I see nothing a smith could seek from Rhuidean," he began, his tone conversational as he hurdled over a low segade, "but yet you follow the track north?"
"Aye," I agreed, not breaking pace as I stepped around the outstretched skeleton of a cholla cactus, "there is little call for a smith in fog-shrouded Rhuidean, but there is much call further north, in the lands of the Taardad Aiel. I go to reheat the cold ashes of the Nine Valleys Sept's forge."
"The Taardad?" Garan puckered his lips into a sour expression, as if he had bitten down into a fruit and discovered it green and unready. "Surely there are smithies in the lands of the Chareen. If there aren't, perhaps you would care to forge spears and mend knives for the Goshien?"
"Alas," I replied mournfully, only halfway pretending as I shook my head regretfully, "my teacher still hammers steel at Shende Hold, and no other sept of my people were in present need of a newly forged smith. The Taardad, however, found themselves short a hammer, and the Wise One of my sept volunteered my services."
The implication was clear: If a Wise One had come to a decision, it would be backed by all Wise Ones as soon as they heard about it. Including those among the Goshien. Garan's wince at the prospect of contravening the decisions of that great convocation made it clear that he got the message and he ceased immediately his none-too-subtle attempt to poach me for his own sept and clan.
We continued on in our talk as we ran the remainder of the afternoon away, reaching the spring as the sun began to drop behind the Dragonwall. Garan offered me temporary accommodation by his small band's fire and I eagerly accepted, more than slightly tired of sleeping in the freezing cold of the Threefold night unshielded by roof or by Roof.
I returned the favor by putting a fresh edge on each warrior's favorite spear, honing each with my grindstone, coarse-grit then fine. I held off on using my strop as we were just squatting by a campfire, not in the relative comfort and ease of a Hold smithy, but the Goshien were all quite appreciative and thankful for the relatively minor and routine servicing of their weapons.
In the morning, Garan bid me find water and shade, and then immediately made that wish come half-true by offering me one of his own refilled waterskins and additional rations, sun-cured capar spiced with fiery chiles and a handful of motai grubs. I accepted both, immediately popping a grub into my mouth and savoring the initial crunch and the following gush of sweet juices as I chomped down on the fat little thing.
Like the shadow hills far behind me, I left the tiny Goshien ambushing party behind me as well, reshouldering my pack as I walked, then trotted, then ran north once more, north and west. Ran on towards Cold Rocks Hold, and towards the smithy that awaited me.
26 Aine, 997 NE
Cold Rocks Hold, Taardad Aiel, Aiel Waste
Before me, the fissure yawned open, a wind-worn mouth into the heart of a mesa rising from the table of the Threefold Land. My tongue flicked over parched lips. The signs of traffic, stone further softened by generations of booted feet, confirmed what I had already known from Sorilea's directions to the Hold of the Nine Valleys Sept.
After ten days of solitary travel, I had arrived at last.
Now, I had to announce myself. It was customary when approaching a hold for purposes other than raiding to come unveiled and with a cacophony of noise, making it absolutely clear to all involved that you came in peace.
Like many Aiel traditions, the announcement was deeply sensible and served multiple purposes, the first and most important being that it reduced the number of instances of mistaken identity, thus likewise keeping the number of accidental stabbings down as well. It also meant that whoever was guarding the entrance to the hold had enough time to send a runner to find the Roofmistress and alert her to the new arrival, so everybody had to spend less time standing around out in the sun.
If I were a warrior, arriving at the hold of a clan in peace, I shout my arrival, roaring for all to hear… But I am not a warrior. I am a smith.
I will allow my steel to announce me.
Thanks to the clever pockets of Salin's Tinker-made pack, it was the work of a moment for steel to enter my hands. Hammer and tongs, as emblematic of the brotherhood of the forge as spear and buckler are to the twelve warrior societies.
Shouldering my pack once more, I took up the long open-jaw forge-tongs with one hand, and with the other I held the flat-faced cross-peened blacksmith's hammer, the capstone of my toolset, whose whorled ash and smoke reflected the spear I had last seen glimmering in my brother's hands.
Holding both tongs and hammer above my head, I took my first step into the gorge in the cliffside.
CLANG!
The echo rang out before me as the jaws of the tongs met the side of my hammer.
Another step, and then another.
CLANG!
Already, I was within the shadows of the cleft, cool and dark. It felt like I had stepped directly into late evening from midday, the first touches of the freezing Threefold night ghosting down from above even as the last of the day's heat radiated up from the stones.
Only the thin slash of blue, bright between the towering walls, belied the impression of night-come-early.
CLANG!
Up ahead, the fissure turned, cornering at a natural chokepoint. Three figures formed a line across that turning in the rock, only one of whom wore the cadin'sor of a Taardad Spear. The other two wore the bulky brown skirts, voluminous white blouses, and light shawls ubiquitous to all Aiel women who had not taken up a spear.
I lowered my tools; my arrival, it seemed, had been noted.
"Who comes to Cold Rocks Hold?" The challenge came from the woman standing in the center, slender and perhaps on the cusp of her upper-middle years, her long blonde hair paleing to white at her temples. "Name yourself, stranger, and state plainly your purpose."
Gold glimmered at her wrists and at her throat, all of it captured war-booty. Amidst the Treekiller gold, however, strings of silver in the traditional Aiel fashion, sheet-silver cold-hammered into chunky rings and bracelets and etched with intricate patterns, shown as well.
None of which was necessary to announce this woman as Lian, Roofmistress of Cold Rocks Hold and wife of Rhuarc, Clan Chief of the Taardad Aiel. The postures of her two companions were more than adequate to make her authority known.
"Roofmistess," I said, nodding in respectful greeting, "I am Taric, son of Leiran and Ayesha. By the recognition of Salin of Shende Hold, I name myself a blacksmith. At the word of Sorilea, Wise One of Shende Hold and my greatmother's greatmother, I have come to Cold Rocks Hold to relight a forge gone dark. I ask leave to come beneath your roof."
"You have my leave, Taric," Lian replied, her ritual stiffness softening as she smiled a more personable greeting. "Beneath my roof, there is water and shade for you. You are most welcome, Sorilea's child."
"I give thanks, Roofmistress," I dutifully said, closing the ritual, "but am I only welcome in my ancestor's name? I was told that there was work to be done."
"Oh, there most certainly is," Lian agreed, her necklaces jangling as she nodded, "and we shall talk, Taric, of roof-rights and payment and many more things. But before all that, Garlvan has asked to meet you, to see for himself Salin's new prodigy."
I nodded slowly. This development wasn't a complete surprise; I was young to be recognized as a journeyman smith, and no doubt Garlvan, the surviving smith of Cold Rocks Hold, wanted to ensure that I hadn't played some trick on Salin to cheat my way into his recognition.
It is a reasonable ask, I told myself, but galling nonetheless. Perhaps that is why the warrior is still here. Young men and their hot-blooded pride, eh? What nonsense.
I was a smith, duly recognized by my master. I would act accordingly.
"I am eager to meet my brother of the forge as well," I said, raising my head to look Lian straight in the eyes. "Roofmistress, where might I find Garlvan? I would go this very moment to lay his doubts to rest."
The other woman, standing in Lian's shadow, let out a cough that sounded very much like a half-concealed laugh. When the Roofmistress turned to stare at her from the corner of her eye, the younger woman quickly stiffened back up, her face returning to typical stoicism, but the corners of her mouth still twitched with a buried smile.
"Aye, you certainly are Sorilea's," said Lian with a sort of familiar, fond exasperation. "I see that she still has spine enough to share with all her line. Well then, Taric, be welcome in Cold Rocks Hold. I'll take you directly on to see Garlvan, and then…" her eyes darted back to the other woman, and then to me. "Then, we will talk."
With that, the Roofmistress turned and strode back into the fissure, sweeping her companion up in the swirl of her skirt as she passed. Unslinging my pack under the Spear's watchful eyes, I quickly returned hammer and tongs to their appropriate pockets before hurrying after Lian… Only to stop, rocking on my heels, as I rounded the corner.
The narrow walls of the fissure immediately widened into a short, broad expanse, which only a hundred paces ahead widened again. And in that wide hollow space, ringed on all sides by the towering walls of the mesa…
By the standards of my past lives, to eyes jaded by the brick and marble of Berun and even moreso by the glass and steel of Tokyo, Cold Rocks Hold was nothing, barely even a village. But to Aiel eyes though… It was a vision. The air was thick with moisture, the humidity shocking after the bone-drying hammer of the Threefold Land. Vegetation of an almost shocking green climbed the walls of the hidden canyon, and everywhere farms rose on terraced plots brimming with t'mat and algode, pecara and above all zemai which grew in heavy-kernaled abundance.
Between the garden plots, low-roofed houses rose from the ground, built with yellow adobe blocks similar to those that made up the walls of Shende Hold, though without the coats of white-washing plaster necessary to keep those walls safe from the driving rains occasionally escaping over the Dragonwall.
And in the center of it all, in the middle of the hold… Water. So much water. An abundance, an over-abundance, in a land where clans would trade the blood of dozens of Spears for a pool three paces wide and half a handbreadth deep. Flowing from a spring in the wall of the mesa, the water poured forth and pooled in a central oasis, from which Gai'shain filled pitchers they carried up to the rising terraces, watering waiting lines of peppers, melons, squash, and beans.
"First time you've seen so much water in one place, I'll wager." It was Lian's shadow, the laughing woman, who had hung back to watch my reaction. Judging by her smirk, whatever had crossed my face had pleased her. "Do you have anything like our hold back in the lands of the Chareen?"
"Not that I have seen," I acknowledged, "though I cannot claim to have traveled to all the holds of my mother's clan. From what I have seen, though…" I shook my head, still stunned by all the green, all the water after days spent running through the desert. "Truly, I wish you to find water and shade, but it seems clear that you already have both in abundance. I am Taric, though I suppose you know that already."
"Aye," she bobbed her head, a smile flickering across her lips as she fell into step with me. Lian, I noticed, was a full ten paces ahead of us and carefully maintaining that distance. Just close enough to listen in, while still far enough away to offer an illusion of privacy. "I suppose you know my name as well."
"Lea?" I hazarded, drawing on the only name I knew from Cold Rocks Hold, save for Lian and Garlvan's. "Daughter of Amys the Wise One?"
"Aye." This time, the reply came out almost more as a grunt. Not quite surly, but certainly far from happy. "That's me. Daughter to a Wise One and a Clan Chief."
How am I supposed to respond to this? I had never met any of the kin of Erim, Chief of the Chareen Aiel, but none of Parrag's family, the family of the Jarra Sept Chief, had spoken of their high-placed kinsman with such tetchiness. I should respond in kind, clearly.
"...Is that why you have no suitors?" I asked, my voice innocently open and brimming with simple curiosity. "Surely it would take a bold man not to flee when a Wise One's daughter pursues."
"Few are the men bold enough to wed a Wise One," Lian observed from up ahead, discarding any pretense of privacy. "Even one who has yet to accept apprenticeship, much less become a Wise One in truth."
Lea scowled at her mother's sister-wife's back, but perhaps wisely kept her mouth shut.
"And yet your husband accepted a bridal wreath from Amys," I said, speaking to Lian, "as did my greatfather from my greatmother, Amaryn. Rhuarc in particular is known as a chief of great honor. Surely," I mused, looking up as if tracking a stray thought, "if dancing the spears while outnumbered and barehanded earns a Spear great ji, then taking up a wreath of braided thorns and herbs must be like taking a chief gai'shain while armed only with a paring knife. I see your conundrum, Lea. You have my sympathy."
At this comment, both Lian and Lea turned to stare at me, the Roofmistress coming to a complete stop to turn and look back.
"After all," I continued, smiling at the brewing rage on Lea's face, "both a Spear and a Wise One's husband may wake from the Dream at any point in their dance, but one must hold out for only a few hundred heartbeats, while the other must last for a few hundred months. Scarce indeed are men with such endurance!"
That earned a laugh from Lian, as did Lea's look of scandalized betrayal. "Aye," the Roofmistress said, a younger woman's smile in her eyes, "Rhuarc may be getting up in years, but he still has the stamina to wield his spear with strength and fortitude. With the seasoning of years, his precision only improves."
"Beware the old warrior," I nodded sagely, grinning at Lian as Lea, eyes burning, turned back to me. "While sap may dry and leather might curdle, the shaft remains long and grindstone and grease can only make the head grow keener."
"Roofmistress," Lea said, her voice tight, "if you do not need my help in guiding Taric to the old smith, then I must be about my duties."
"Go on, then," Lian said indulgently, taking mercy on her sister-wife's daughter. "Thank you for joining me in bidding welcome to our new smith."
I didn't need Lian's sideways look to prompt me to make nice. "It was good to meet you, Rhuarc's daughter. May you work in the shade today, and may the fields you tend soon bear fruit."
This last comment was a somewhat novel twist on a traditional farewell, generally wishing the receiver good luck with whatever project they set their hands to. It was also, however, a farewell reserved almost exclusively for young wives, or those who would soon be wives.
Rejection, after all, was hard and unpleasant. Especially if the rejection rose from a factor over which one had no control. Lea had not chosen to be born to two high status members of Aiel society, nor had she chosen to be a Wise One, though from Lian's remarks it was clear that the Wise Ones had marked her for their own.
For all that I had teased her about the high bar to entry that came with forming a relationship with a high status member in a society as centered on obligation and duty as the Aiel, I had spoken truly about the sympathy I felt for her. I had no wish to make an enemy from that misunderstanding.
By the way her eyes widened, I thought Lea understood the message.
Though by the speed she fled, perhaps not.
"Smiths have much endurance," Lian idly remarked as she waited, resuming her path forwards into the hold only after I had caught up by her side. "Apparently, smiths have clever tongues as well."
"As you say, Roofmistress," I murmured, trying to evaluate her mood from the corner of my eye. She didn't seem upset; indeed, she still looked mildly amused. "It takes a degree of deftness to work the raw steel into something more malleable without ruining the temper."
"Is that what you were doing?" An eyebrow arched as she turned to look at me, the white wings at her temple flashing. "See to it you don't mistake my near-sister's daughter for an ingot, then."
Ah, perhaps not as amused as I thought.
I still didn't feel like I had toh, though. The only time I had addressed Lea directly had been in offering my sympathy, which had been sincere. The other comments I had made, while perhaps somewhat mocking, had all been broad in their subjects and of mild fun at most. Indeed, I had referred to Lian's husband and my greatfather as honored by their long and happy marriages to Wise Ones.
No… That's not the issue. It's not that I have toh, but rather that Lian is ensuring that neither Lea nor I end up overstepping ourselves in the future, thus incurring toh. A pinch of prevention outweighs a pound of cure, after all.
"I will keep my hammer confined to my forge, Roofmistress," I said, assuring her.
I have no intentions of dishonoring your husband's daughter.
"So long as you do, I can assure you water and shade," she replied, motherly smile returning. "You must be hungry from your trip, Taric. If you would like, Garlvan can wait until this evening, if you would prefer to eat and rest before seeing him."
"Thank you for your offer, Roofmistress," I replied, shaking my head, "but I am certain that I would rest more peacefully knowing that I have found recognition in my forge-brother's eyes."
Garlvan, as it turned out, was not as I had envisioned. I had halfway expected to find a second Salin, a thick-limbed man almost as broad as he was tall and sporting both a beard and prodigious body hair. Instead, Garlvan was thin, almost lanky, though the long ropey muscles that stood out like cables on his arms whenever he clenched his fists showed that he had spent many a long hour pounding away on his anvil. He had a long, clever face sporting a wide mouth that, when he opened it, almost seemed to split his jaw away from the rest of his head entirely.
He was also only seven years my senior, for all that Lea had called him the "old smith".
After Lian made the introductions, we were left on our own. The battery of questions began immediately.
"What color should the ingot glow in preparation for the first stages of forging a spearhead?"
"What is the correct ratio of coke to iron for wire-steel?"
"Let me see your hands."
At the last, I held out my hands to Garlvan, who peered down at the banded calluses running across my palm and lumped along the pads of my fingers.
"You have a smith's hands," he allowed, stepping back as I dropped my hands by my sides. "And you know the basics, at least. You've forged your tools?"
I nodded towards the pack, which I had left resting on a table by the door to the smithy. "See for yourself."
Garlvan did so, flipping the rawhide strap up free of the toggle holding the pack closed and whistling appreciatively at the contents. "All your handiwork? By your honor, Salin didn't hold your hand at all."
"By my word as a smith," I confirmed, "I bartered for the raw ore, I smelted it down into steel and coked the bloomery myself, and every hammerblow was delivered by mine own arm."
"Well then…" Garlvan looked down once more, eyes resting on my hammer. "What did your master name you then?"
"Smoke-Caught Steel," I said, parroting the phrase Salin had coined only a week and a half ago. "And you?"
"Wire-Armed," Garlvan said, grinning as he held his arms up for inspection. "The name proves itself."
"So it does," I agreed. "I see you, Garlvan, man of the Nine Valleys Sept. I see you, wire-armed Aiel, fellow of the Forge, and by your forge I greet you."
"And I see you, Taric," Garlvan replied, "man of the Jarra Sept, at least for now. I see you, smoke-caught Aiel, fellow of the Forge. May your arms be strong, your fingers quick, and your skin unburnt."
"And may sparks never fall in your beard," I returned, falling for a moment into the banter Salin and I had enjoyed. "I look forward to working with you."
"And I look forward to seeing what you are truly capable of." Garlvan shook his head. "Seventeen years… Bloody ashes, but you move fast? Well, skill will out… I will tell Lian that your iron is true, but first?"
Arms like steel ropes lashed around my shoulders and pulled me in tight. Off-guard for a moment, I quickly returned the embrace.
"Welcome to Cold Stones Hold. May you find water and shade, brother."
When I left Shende Hold, I left a brother in blood behind. But, I dared to hope, perhaps here among the Taardad, I have found a brother in craft.
That alone would make the run worth it.
