Risk death in some foolish escape attempt? Harak would have none of it. Things in the Valley of the Falls were much too interesting to leave, and they promised to get more interesting in the future.
Karada had to hunt a bit to find Amero. He wasn’t with the villagers reconstructing demolished houses, nor was he across the lake with those trying to save the gardens and orchard. To her surprise, she found him in the ruined foundry between Yala-tene and the waterfall, and he wasn’t alone. Riding up the rocky slope, she heard voices ringing loudly off the cliff walls behind the broken building. Thinking there was trouble, she drew her sword and kicked her horse into a trot.
“... can’t possibly make that much heat!” Amero declared.
“With bellows you can,” said an unknown, Silvanesti-inflected voice.
“But how can the melting point of bronze be higher than the melting point of tin and copper? Shouldn’t it be somewhere in between?”
Balif interrupted the discussion by raising a hand and calling, “Greetings, Karada.”
Sitting on her stalwart horse, sword bared, she looked every bit the nomad hero. When she realized Amero and the five elves clustered around him were arguing about metal-making, she felt a little foolish. She started to sheathe her blade.
“No, wait,” said Amero. “Your sword—may we see it?”
Face hard as granite with embarrassment, she dismounted and handed her brother the weapon. It was a spare, taken from Balif’s tent when he was captured—which she wore while the sword she’d used in the great battle with Ungrah-de was repaired.
“This is elven bronze,” Amero said, holding up the sword.
“A fine example,” Balif agreed.
His ironic tone was lost on Amero, who was frowning at the weapon. “How do you manage to make your blades so long? I know about wax and sand molds, but I’ve never been able to cast copper blades more than two spans long.”
“Copper is difficult,” said a mature elf with hair so darkly gray it was almost blue. “In molten form it tends to form bubbles, and it doesn’t like to flow into sharp corners—”
“What is all this?” demanded Karada.
“Meet Farolenu, a master bronzesmith of Silvanost,” Amero said enthusiastically. “I happened to mention my metal-making woes to Lord Balif, and he said he had an experienced smith in his company. We’ve been talking bronze all morning.”
“How exciting.” She took the sword back and slid it slowly into its sheath. “Why is a master bronzesmith carrying a spear as a common soldier?” she asked Balif.
“All my soldiers have other skills,” he said. “House Protector, our caste of warriors, is not large enough to provide all the fighters the Speaker requires. When needed, warriors of the house raise retinues from the Speaker’s other subjects. Males of fighting age serve under those captains to whose house they owe allegiance. Master Farolenu belongs to the Smithing Guild of House Metalline. They lend service to House Protector. On this hunting expedition, he repaired weapons and metal tools.”
“Two years after you’re dead, words will still be spilling out of your mouth,” Karada commented, bored by the complexities of Silvanesti society.
Amero returned to the subject at hand. “So bronze flows better into molds than copper?” he said.
Before the elven bronzesmith could reply, Karada interrupted. “Arkuden, I have something to ask you. Come away, will you?”
Curious, Amero followed her on foot down the slope. Halfway to the lake, Karada stopped.
“Sthenn is dead,” she said.
“I know. Duranix told me last night.”
“Did he tell you what he did with the carcass?”
Amero shook his head, so Karada told him about the newly formed mound where the crater had been, then asked, “Do you think the body will taint the valley’s water supply?”
He scratched his bearded chin, and she noticed for the first time there were gray hairs scattered among the brown ones.
“There’s a ledge of solid stone under that spot,” he said. “It should be safe for Sthenn to remain there. Anything else? No? Then I’ll get back to Master Farolenu—” A sudden thought struck him. “Nianki,” he said, using her old name, which no one else dared do. “You never told me. When the dragons fell, how did you escape being crushed like Ungrah-de?”
His hardened sister looked uncharacteristically amused. “It was the craziest thing,” she said, grinning. “I knew nothing, saw nothing, but Ungrah before me. A bolt of lightning struck the ground between us, and I turned away to shield my eyes. Next thing I knew, a wave of mud picked me up and carried me away. I fetched up in the top of a pine tree a quarter-league from where I’d been.”
Amero blinked in surprise, then began to laugh. Thanks to the all-day rain, his sister had been splashed to safety. The ogre chief, a few steps closer to the center of impact, had been killed outright.
She laughed. “Don’t spread the story, Amero. It was just stupid luck.”
Since she was still seated on her horse while he was on foot, he clapped a hand to her leg as he said, “What you call luck, I call the favor of our ancestral spirits! But let the tale-tellers in your band invent some romance or other. It won’t be as wonderful as the truth, though.” Still chuckling, he added, “Dine with Lyopi and me tonight, Nianki?”
She nodded, and Amero started up the hill to the ruined foundry. “Come at sunset!” he urged. “We’ll have venison!”
He ran back to his conversation about metal. Karada noted with fondness the smudge of soot on the seat of his trews. His woman, Lyopi, would give him what for if he got soot on her fur rugs.
His woman.
Her light mood evaporated like dew on a summer morning. Amero had a right to companionship, but the phrase had a bitter taste. Karada had heard of his infatuation with Beramun, but that was no great concern to her, since the girl obviously didn’t return his affection. Lyopi was quite a different fox in the den.
Lyopi had fought bravely at Amero’s side. Half mother, half mate, she’d defended him with her life. Her love for Amero was something Karada understood. She had loved him too for a long, long time. Could she ever escape her curse? Short of death, she couldn’t imagine how.
Lyopi was a fine cook. They ate well on venison and spoke of trivial things—cooking, hunting, which region of the plains had the most flavorful game. Each of them chose a different point on the horizon—Amero the north, Lyopi the south, Karada the east—and defended it to the amusement of all.
Lyopi stirred the embers on the hearth and set a clay kettle on the resulting fire to heat water for mulled wine. Talk veered from game to the weapons used to hunt it.
“These bows are very interesting,” Amero said. “You say the seafarers showed you how to make them?”
“Yes. Bahco’s people. We traded flint and furs with them for the knowledge. Our bows have made the elves’ lives a lot harder.”
Warming to her subject, she picked up a stick and drew lines in the cool ashes at the edge of the hearth. “At Thorny Creek some years ago, Balif’s host pushed us back across the stream, thinking to drive us into a trap made by the soldiers of Tamanithas, coming up at our backs. We shot down so many elves at the creek ford we could have ridden from one bank to the other across the bodies and never gotten our horses’ hooves wet—”
Mention of bloodshed took the good humor out of Amero and Lyopi. Sensing their disapproval, Karada cut short her war story and brushed away the map in the ashes.
“I talk too much,” she apologized.
“Never mind,” Lyopi said. “We’ve seen too much battle of late. What else did you learn from the seafarers?”
Karada leaned back against the warm hearthstones. “They make this thing Bahco calls ‘cloth.’ They wear it and use it to make the sails of their ships. Bahco says it’s not hide or wool, that it’s made from shredded leaves.”