“Astrid, you know that your mum isn’t here and can’t help you,” said Edom impatiently. This was the child who’d been rescued by a stranger in Wolf’s caves. Aralorn looked at her with interest. How had a girl as young as Astrid made it to the camp safely without kin? Maybe someone had brought her—she’d ask Wolf. In the meantime, she couldn’t leave Edom so obviously over his head.
“Hello, Astrid,” Aralorn said, and got a suspicious look in return.
After a wary second, the girl said, “Hullo.”
“Boys don’t know how to dress dolls,” said Aralorn, squatting down until she was at eye level.
Astrid looked at her distrustfully for a minute before slowly holding out doll and hat.
Years of being the oldest daughter of fourteen gave Aralorn the experience to twist the hat on at just the right angle so that it slipped firmly over the doll’s wooden head and caught on the notch that had been carved to hold it in place. Astrid took the doll in one hand and smeared her tear-wet cheeks with the other.
“Can you see if you can get all of you young ones over here?” asked Aralorn. Astrid nodded and ran off.
Turning to Edom, Aralorn said, “I take it that you are supposed to be keeping an eye on the children?”
Edom rolled his eyes. “Always.”
“I can relieve you for a while if you like.”
He nodded and took off with a grin before she could take it back. She wondered if he’d be as pleased when Myr cornered him for latrine duty.
She had the children sit in a semicircle around her. Some of them did it with a sort of hopelessness that broke her heart. Astrid was the youngest by several years. Most of them were ten or eleven, with a few older and a few more younger. There were more girls than boys. Wary eyes, eager eyes, restless eyes, children were a much more difficult audience than adults because no one had yet had a chance to teach them that it was better to be polite than honest.
Before she began, she looked at their faces to help her select a story. At breakfast, Stanis had told her that most of them hadn’t been there much over a month. None of them had any family at the camp, and judging by Astrid’s tears, they were all feeling lost.
She sat cross-legged and looked at them. “Do you have a favorite story? I won’t claim to know every story anywhere, but I know most of the common ones.”
“ ‘Kern’s Bog’?” suggested one girl. “Kern’s Bog” was a romantic story about a boy and his frog.
“ ‘The Smith,’ ” said Tobin in a rusty little voice. Everyone looked at him, so Aralorn guessed that it wasn’t just in her company that he was mute. “My pa, he told me it. Right before I had to leave.”
It wasn’t a gentle story, or, really, a children’s story. But, she supposed, sometimes a story isn’t about entertaining.
“All right,” she agreed. “But you will have to help me if I get parts wrong or forget things. Can you do that?”
She waited until they agreed.
“Very well,” she said, sitting back and settling into the proper frame of mind. “Once upon a time, when the old gods walked the earth and interested themselves with the affairs of men, there lived a smith in a small village. The smith was skilled, and his name was known far and wide. Although he was a gentle man, he lived in a time of war and so spent most of his day shoeing the great warhorses of the nobility, mending their weapons, and creating and repairing their armor.”
A hand went up.
She stopped and tilted her head, inviting a dirty girl with two mismatched braids to speak.
“He didn’t do it to get rich,” she said. “It was because the war made food expensive. And if he didn’t make swords and stuff, his family would have starved.”
Aralorn nodded. “These things he did so that he would have money to live, for food was scarce and dear. But at night, in the privacy of the forge, he created other things. Sometimes they were practical, like rakes and hoes or buckles. Sometimes, though, he made things whose only purpose was to be beautiful.”
“The war god,” said a boy, one of the younger ones, jumping to his feet. “The war god comed. He comed and tried to take the beautiful thing for himself.”
“Hands, please,” said Aralorn.
The boy’s hand shot up.
“Yes?”
“The war god comed,” he said in a much more polite voice.
“So he did,” she agreed. “Temris, the god of war, broke his favorite sword in battle. He heard of the smith’s skill and came to the village one night and knocked upon the smithy door.
“The smith had been working on a piece of singular beauty—a small intricately wrought tree of beaten iron and silver wire bearing upon each branch a single, golden fruit.” It had always sounded to her like something a gold-smith or silversmith might make, but it was an old story. Maybe back then a smith did all those things: shod horses, made armor and jewelry. “Temris saw it and coveted it and, as was the custom of the gods when they wanted something from a mortal, demanded it.”
“’Cause he was greedy,” someone said.
She looked around, but no hands went up, so she ignored the comment. They were all old enough to know proper protocol for storytelling. “The smith refused. He said, ‘You who are creator of war cannot have something that is rooted in the hope of peace.’ ”
Stanis raised his hand. “How come a tree with fruit is rooted in the hope of peace?”
Tobin said, “My father said it was because during a war there aren’t any fruits on any trees.”
Aralorn looked at the solemn little faces and wished Tobin had chosen a happier story. “The smith cast the statue to the ground, and such was his anger, he shattered it into a thousand thousand pieces. Temris was angered that a lowly smith would deny him anything.” Aralorn dropped her voice as low as she could and spoke slowly, as befitted a god of war. “ ‘I say now, smith, that you will forge only three more pieces, and these will be weapons of destruction such as the world has never before seen. Your name will be forever tied to them, and you will be known forever as the Smith.’
“The smith was horrified, and for many days he sat alone in the forge, not daring to work for fear of Temris’s words. During this time, he prayed to Mehan, the god of love, asking that he not be forced to build the instruments of another man’s destruction. It may be that his prayer was answered, for one day he was seized by a fit of energy that left all the village amazed. For three fortnights he labored, day and night, neither eating nor sleeping until his work was done.”
“My ma said that if you spent six weeks not eating, you’d starve to death,” said one of the older girls.
“Not if the gods don’t want them to,” said Tobin fiercely. “Not if they have things to do that are important.”
“Quiet, please,” Aralorn told them. “Raise your hand if you have something to help me.”
They settled down, so she resumed the story. “The weapons he created could only be used by humans, not gods. He made them to protect the weak from the strong. He built Nekris the Flame, which was a lance made of a strange materiaclass="underline" a red metal that shimmered like fire.”
A hand was raised. “It kills sea monsters,” Aralorn’s newest helper informed her.
Aralorn nodded. “It was Nekris that King Taris used to drive the sea monster back into the depths when it would have destroyed his city.
“The second weapon was the mace, Sothris the Black. The weapon that, according to legend, was responsible for one of the nine deaths of Temris himself. It was used during the Wizard Wars to destroy some of the abominations created in the desperate final days.
“The last weapon was the sword, Ambris, called also the Golden Rose. There are no stories about Ambris. Some say that it was lost or that the gods hid it away for fear of its power. But others, and I think they are right, say it was hidden until a time of great need.”
“Donkey warts!” exclaimed Stanis wide-eyed. “Your sword is a rosy color and kind of gold.”
She raised her eyebrows and pulled it out so all the children could see it. “Well, so it is.”