Chapter 8 – Vale #2
“Hmmm, that’s nice.” She nuzzled my shoulder. “I have to admit, while this tour has been fun, I’ve been a touch distracted—thinking about how comfortable that bed looked.”
“After days of sleeping in snow, a bed will be beyond our dreams.”
“I don’t intend to dream too much tonight,” her tone dipped. My wife was coming on to me. “I hoped for quality time.”
I smirked, all too happy that she was thinking about us together, even if a small, annoyingly honorable voice inside me still whispered I did not deserve her. That by having married her and allowing this relationship to progress, I did Neve a disservice.
Her best chance at gaining support among the other great houses was marriage.
When my parentage came out, as I intended it to, I’d be a bastard of House Riis.
The House of the Ice Spider had much wealth but a very small army, and she’d need swords more than gold if she were to stand up to King Magnus.
I will give her my sword. My life. And free her from this marriage, if it will keep her safe. Thinking such a thing sent my heart racing with denial. I hated the idea but would do whatever was best for her.
“I need to work on my seduction. What stole your thoughts?” Neve tugged on my arm.
“Nothing as important as you.” I stopped following the others and dipping my head, I took her lips in mine.
Neve twisted so that her front faced me and wound her hands through my hair, her lips and tongue dancing with mine.
My blood heated. I’d kissed my fair share of females.
Bedded many too. But this one seemed as though she was made for me, and me for her.
Though I hadn’t told her as much, inside something I couldn’t describe pulled us closer—a sort of magnetism that lived in my chest and deepened by the day.
Bleeding skies, it would be so difficult to let her go.
“Ahem!” Anna shouted. “We thought we’d lost you two, but apparently you slowed on purpose to get it on!”
Neve laughed and broke away.
“We’re here already,” Anna said from where she leaned around a corner, eyebrows arched and a smirk on her face “So come see. The sooner you do, the sooner you two can be alone.”
I straightened. “Close to the forges? But I smell no fire, no metal.”
Anna smirked. “Must be the vents. Prince Thordur was telling us about it, but you were too deep down each other’s throats to hear.”
“That’s enough!” Neve said, though there was no anger in her tone. “We’re coming.”
Anna disappeared, and as much as I wanted to continue what we’d been doing, Neve took my hand and pulled me along.
Something I’d been so interested in before dulled in comparison to getting to explore her, but I followed around the corner. I sucked in a breath. These forges were the largest I’d ever seen.
“There are enchantments around the entire Circle of Steel,” Thordur explained as we caught up with the others. “You cannot hear the work, just like you can’t scent it, unless you are in a specific smithy’s business.”
The Prince of Dergia led us deep into a large market with so many forges that it resembled a maze.
“Zuprian steel daggers!” one apprentice yelled from the door of one of the more run-down forges. He saw me watching and winked. “Half-off, today only!”
My eyes widened, but Prince Thordur wrinkled his bulbous nose, a common feature of his fae race. “Not there. All our smiths are excellent, but you can do far better than that one. I’ll take you to the best and if you wish to buy zuprian steel, you’ll have your pick.”
I shared an excited look with Caelo, drawing chuckles from Anna and Neve.
Laugh they might, but my best friend and I understood the value of zuprian steel and how difficult it was to work.
Dwarves were always the best with the material, and having a blade or other implement from the best of the dwarves would be a prize.
The market kept my attention with so many swords and weapons on display.
Any soldier worth his salt would love to possess a good many of them.
Would that I had the coin to buy them all, but I possessed very little on my person.
I’d have to make do with merely holding and admiring such fine craftsmanship.
“Many here seem to work zuprian steel and make weapons.” I gestured around as we made our way through the workers, metal hissing and sputtering and hammers banging all around. “Your entire army must be outfitted in the best steel.”
Thordur tossed a smirk over his shoulder. “We are. And the excess, we sell.”
“To who?”
“To other kingdoms. To yours.”
I scoffed. “Our metals and gems come from a crown-owned mine.”
“Not all.” The dwarf prince looked smug. “My kingdom supplies much of the zuprian steel in your kingdom. We have our ways to transport and sell without being discovered.”
“How?” I demanded.
“Nearby villages and towns are safe to trade with. As we prosper, their lives become easier. They know as well as any how hard mountain life can be, and they also have connections to larger cities where they can trade without issue. And then there are the dwarven nomads. They know about us, and trade when they need to.”
“Why wouldn’t the nomads live here?” my wife asked. “I understand not wanting to be under King Magnus’s thumb, but I imagine moving all the time is a hard life. This seems like an ideal in between.”
“It is. Yet some prefer to feel more than rock beneath their feet and live to see a true sky above whenever they wish. Who are we to dictate how they wish to live?”
I had no answer for that.
“And here we are. Master Smith Kolmot is the finest smithy in all of Dergia. Dare I say, in all the Land of Winter.” Prince Thordur held open a metal door to a forge, and my eyes feasted on the swooping and lovely lines of gold in the metal as we passed through. An artist and a smith both.
“A hearty claim.” I arched a single eyebrow.
“We don’t call him The Hammer for naught.”
The interior of the forge was as magnificent as the door.
Various metals created works of art, and weapons hung from the wall, beautiful and functional.
Inside the door, I could hear the pounding of metal, the hiss of water as metal plunged into buckets, and the chatter of workers.
The smithy had to have at least ten people working for him.
A young female dwarf entered the foyer. She wore a dress and had not a speck of dirt or grime on her.
“Prince! We weren’t expecting you today. Shall I get you tea so that you might browse the wears?”
“No thank you, Yaggarra. I’m here to show my friends the forge and speak with Master Kolmot on an order, if he has the time?”
“Of course, Prince Thordur. I’ll retrieve him.”
“So this visit was a touch self-serving,” I asked once the dwarf left to get her master.
Thordur shrugged. “Good time management.”
I smirked. I’d have claimed the same.
The Master Smith appeared minutes later, wiping his scarred, wrinkled hands on a cloth. The dwarf was rather old and smaller than many we’d passed by except in his arms, which likely rivaled mine in muscle.
He approached Prince Thordur, a smile on his lips, but when he noticed Neve, the smith stopped walking.
“I’m afraid we haven’t met, miss?”
“I’m a guest of House Fellhelm.”
“An outsider.”
She shifted, a touch unnerved. “Yes.”
“One who comes bearing a blade imbued with shadows.”
I drew in a sharp breath.
“Pardon?” Lines appeared on Neve’s forehead as she arched her eyebrows.
Neve’s blade came from King Harald’s long-hidden rooms. Hence it followed to reason that it was a royal sword. One could assume that meant it was valuable, even famous, but I hadn’t been able to name it.
“Your blade, miss, it has touched the shadows,” Master Kolmot said, “meaning it is old, since the time of the Unification, if not older.” He held out a hand. “May I?”
“Um, sure.” Neve unsheathed her blade and handed it to the smith, who hadn’t bothered to learn her name, so great was his interest in the sword.
“Zuprian steel, made the old way,” the ancient dwarf murmured, “and yes, shadows.” He peered at the hilt, squinting as he did so before he brought the blade to his ear, listening to the metal. His eyes widened, and he looked up at Neve. “Sassa’s Blade.”
“What happened?!” she asked, her tone frantic, but seeing his expression was not one of awe or ire but rather, recognition, understanding dawned on me.
“He means,” I placed a soft hand on my wife’s shoulder, “that your blade is Queen Sassa’s sword. You carry the sword of the queen who unified the realm. It’s a powerful symbol.”
Legendary was more like it. Sassa and her blade had banished the Shadow King and Queen and, it seemed, in doing so, might have taken on the magic of the Shadow Fae that this dwarf recognized.
Master Kolmot nodded. “And a powerful blade, strong in legacy and magic, I think. Perhaps it can call shadows? I do not know, though I sense the darkness of that magic—something my own teachers taught me about. However, I have no knowledge of how to test it, I’m sorry to say.
Only theoretical learning.” The Master Smith passed back the sword. “Use it carefully.”
Neve took it, her hand shaking when she replied. “I’ll keep that in mind.”