Forging the Sword (The Farsala Trilogy) by Hilari Bell Read Free Book Online

changed my mind,” Jiaan told him. “Mad is exactly what I want right now. Mad will carry them deep into the badlands. Too deep to back out.”
    “I think you’ve relying too much on the desert,’ Fasal grumbled.
    “Remember when I told you that you should spend more time talking to the Suud?” Jiaan asked.
    “Yes, though why you wasted so much time on those barbarians, I’ll never understand. What of it?”
    “You should have spent more time talking to the Suud.”

CHAPTER THREE
S ORAYA

    S HELTERED IN THE DOORWAY of Maok’s hutch, Soraya listened to the soft thud of a hammer on hot metal as she watched the peddler and his Suud apprentice. It had surprised her, that quiet thumping, for she’d thought metal being shaped would clang. She’d since learned that that was only true when a piece was “cold-worked.” Hot metal could be as soft as wood—as soft as dough, depending on how hot it was. She had learned a great deal about metal over the last six weeks. About other things too.
    “We have long needed this,” said Maok, peering over her shoulder. “It costs us, to trade with others for our knives and spear points. Now we can make our own. It is a good joining gift.”
    Soraya, who had brought only grain and dried beans for hergift, gritted her teeth and added jealousy to hatred as she stared at the peddler’s back. He had taken off his shirt, even though the night was cool, just as his apprentices had shed the striped robes that covered their white skin. His britches left him with more covering than the Suud, who wore nothing but a strip of cloth wrapped around their hips. Once the Suud had looked almost naked to Soraya, but that had long since passed. Now she thought the peddler looked overdressed.
    He wasn’t working the metal himself—he could grip neither hammer nor tongs with his weakened right hand. She could see that he longed to take over, but he simply watched, and he didn’t nag his apprentices either, commenting only when they needed his advice.
    Soraya knew that in his place she’d have been muttering things like “keep the strokes firm and steady,” even though the middle-aged Suud man was doing exactly that as he pounded three red-hot iron bars into one. No, she had to admit it—the peddler was a good teacher. She sighed.
    “You’re a fool, girl,” said Maok calmly.
    “For hating him? He killed my father. I have a right to hate!”
    “Maybe. Maybe not,” said Maok, annoyingly cryptic, as she so often was. “He learned to Speak to the shilshadu of metal fast. Faster than anyone I ever seen. But he cannot work it with his own hands. And I think he is a One Speaker, as many with strong …”She waved her hands, as if to pluck the elusive word from the air. “What is ‘feeling for a thing,’ in your Faran?”
    “Affinity,” said Soraya, noticing for the first time that Maok was speaking in Faran. It kept their conversation relatively private, for although many Suud spoke a rough Faran, none of them were as fluent as Maok.
    “Affinity, yes,” The old woman nodded, her silky hair floating around her white face. “He has strong affinity for metals, but no gift for other things. He will not be an All Speaker, as you will. Besides, Duckie is a nice mule.”
    Even Soraya liked the peddler’s mule, but as for the rest of it …
    “I think I’m only going to be a Three Speaker,” she said, though as far as she knew, ‘Three Speaker’ wasn’t a real term. “I’ll never reach the shilshadu of that cursed rock.”
    “Stone’s spirit is slow and still,” said Maok. “While your own shilshadu is filled with anger you will not find it.”
    Ah, here was the scolding. Soraya found that she was in no mood to be lectured about forgiveness.
    “I’m going to the mine,” she said. “Maybe I can reach the stone’s shilshadu better if I handle it more.”
    She crawled out of the low, round-topped tent and stood stiffly. She’d been sitting cross-legged trying to reach the