“Your Majesty.”
Brin and Persephone turned to see Frost and Flood jogging up the trail behind them.
“They’re still here?” Brin whispered.
Persephone shrugged.
“A word, Your Majesty,” Frost begged in a breathless voice.
The two Dherg were still in their metal suits, with broad belts and knee-high boots. The interlocked links of their armor jangled as they jogged to catch up.
“Your Majesty?” Brin asked.
Persephone shrugged again.
“Now that you’ve had your clan meetings, I wonder if we could enlist some help in approaching Arion once again? Neith is just a short boat trip away. She’ll only be gone a few days. I can’t begin to express how important her help would be.”
“I’m sorry,” Persephone told them. “We have our own problems to deal with. We’re on the verge of…”
The sun poked out of the rain clouds and the last rays of the setting sun glinted off the Dherg’s metal shirts.
Persephone’s eyes narrowed as she focused on the shimmering rings, then shifted her sight to their sheathed swords. She nudged Brin and pointed.
The girl appeared confused for a moment. Then her eyes widened, and she began to nod. “Of course! There’s many stories about them making weapons. They make fine ones.”
Frost raised his voice. “Belgriclungreians make the best weapons in Elan. We alone possess the secret of metal alloys and we wrought them into works of art for generations before your kind even came to Rhulyn.”
“As good as Fhrey weapons?” Persephone asked.
Both Dherg spat on the ground in unison.
“Everything the elves know, our people taught them,” Frost said.
“They stole, you mean,” Flood corrected.
“Have you seen the sword Raithe carried?”
“Which one?” Flood asked.
“The Fhrey blade. Can you make better swords than that?”
“Well, ah…” Frost looked at his companion. “Not me personally. Flood and I aren’t weaponsmiths. I told you, we’re builders. Walls, pillars, and bridges are our specialty. You want a fortification? We can do that. Rain is a digger. If you need a tunnel, he’s your Belgriclungreian. None of us knows much about metallurgy or swordcraft. Those are closely guarded secrets.”
“But your people can make a decent sword, right?”
Both of the Dherg looked at her, aghast.
“Of course!” Flood declared.
“And how many could be made?”
“What do you mean?”
“If your people were so inclined. How many swords could they make?”
“If you were so inclined, how many loaves of bread can your people produce?”
Persephone smiled. “We can make thousands of loaves in a very short time. Are you saying yours could do the same with swords?”
“If we wanted to, certainly. Once, we were very good at such things. Back in the days of King Mideon, the furnaces of Drumindor provided thousands of swords each day for the war against the elves. And all were better than the one Raithe carries.”
Persephone grinned at Brin, who smiled back.
“The giant you spoke of,” Persephone said. “How badly do you want him dealt with? If I could convince my friend Arion to help you, could you convince your weaponsmith friends to help us?”
Frost and Flood exchanged looks of surprise. Then Frost said, “I can honestly say Gronbach would be most grateful to be rid of the, ah…the…giant we spoke of. While I can’t make any guarantees on his behalf, I think I can arrange a meeting for you to make your case. Would that suffice?”
Suffice: The word sounded so weak and tenuous, especially when the fate of an entire race of people might rest upon it. “Yes,” she said. “I would be in your debt.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Crossing the Bridge
Every life is a journey filled with crossroads. And then there are the bridges, those truly frightening choices that span what always was, from what will forever be. Finding the courage, or stupidity, to cross such bridges changes everything. For me, the life-altering choice was a literal bridge, the one I followed Persephone across on the dock in Vernes.
—THE BOOK OF BRIN
“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” Arion asked. “What it felt like to touch the chords of creation.”
The mystic and her wolf were sitting in the open field, out from under the wool. Suri had a string pattern in her hands. She’d been holding it for some time, just staring. She’d made the same design on countless occasions and knew hundreds of ways to manipulate the weave to construct any number of patterns, but she didn’t move her fingers.
Suri ignored the question, and Arion sat down beside her, wet and smelling of the ocean.
“Did you fall into the sea?” Suri asked.
“I bathed. You should try it. But I’m not as clean as I would like. I still feel dirty.”
“Of course you do. You’re odd that way.”
“No, I think it’s the salt. The water was full of it. Dries the skin something terrible. Fun, though; you would like the waves. They pick you up and heave you along. Like flying.”
Suri gave her a smirk. Arion had spewed nonstop butterfly metaphors for days. “Was raining, you know? Works even better than the ocean. No salt.”
“And yet you look no cleaner for it. Don’t smell better, either.”
Suri glanced down at herself, puzzled. After days of constant showers, during which she and Minna had explored the tide pools of the rocky coast and the windswept fields surrounding Tirre, she didn’t have a spot of dirt on her—except for her legs and feet, where there was no avoiding the mud. Finding no sense in the comment, Suri focused once more on the string between her fingers. She still hadn’t decided what to do next.
Arion watched her, making Suri feel self-conscious.
“What?” Suri snapped in Rhunic.
“That’s the problem with that game,” Arion replied. “And why only beginners play it. Once you’ve touched a real chord, a string is just a string. You realize there are only so many patterns to make. Worse, you see that it’s only a toy in comparison with the chords of nature. With the Art there are an infinite number of possibilities. Everything in the world is woven into the same fabric, all linked, and each moment lived creates a new connection, alterations to this unimaginably complex web of life. Some strands can’t be moved; others can. Some that don’t appear movable at first can be altered if the right conditions are met. Once the strands are aligned, you can strum the chords and play their music. The various tones are a language, the language of creation and the building blocks of all things. At times, it feels as if anything is possible if only you can work out the complexities.”
Arion reached out and stroked Minna’s coat. The wolf opened her eyes but didn’t bother to lift her head. “You have the gift of being able to see behind the veil, to view the mechanics of how the world was made and how it works, and the talent to adjust all that to your purpose. Of course, you yourself are part of that weave. You exist in the web. You create the web.”
“I am a spider?”