The Anvil of Ice by Michael Scott Rohan Read Free Book Online Page A

Alv, drinking in the mountain air. Darkness seemed to flavor it, like cool, bitter wine. The moon was sinking by the time they neared the top of the pass, and just as they crested the slope it slid down behind the peaks. But instead of the sudden darkness Alv expected, a new radi-ance seemed to hang in the sky, paler and clearer even than the light of moon or star. The crest and the peaks stood out sharp against it, and their snowcaps caught it and sparkled like frozen jewels. Abruptly the Mastersmith reined in his pony and swung down. Frost crunched beneath his feet. He beckoned to Alv, who followed suit, and came trudging up to join him.
    "Look, boy!" hissed the Mastersmith softly, with something as near passion as Alv had ever heard in his voice. "Do you see it? D'you see it there? Look at it, the glory of it, blazing back from the earth into the heavens!"
    "I see it, Mastersmith," breathed Alv, full of wonder. "Behind the mountains… it stretches as far as I can see… shining on the clouds like a reflection from a great still lake… but… what is it, Mastersmith?"
    "No lake, boy. You see in reflected glory the power that has come down to cover the Northlands, the power that ruled this world of old, that was many times dispossessed and thought defeated, and that yet holds it in its grip. And that grip is tightening! You see the, Great Ice!"
    The words were flung out across the mountains, their hollow echoes riding the wind like spirit voices. The glare seemed to grow more intense, and even Alv shivered in his boots; the wind sucked the warmth out of his very blood. "No," said the Mastersmith after a moment, and his voice had dropped to a deep whisper, "you do not see it yet, not truly. But you will, one day. As I did. You, when you have served as apprentice and journeyman, and become in your turn a master, you will set out alone and unattended over the Ice, walking and walking on into the emptiness, enduring its hardships and braving its terrors, and the ordeal will purify you. And if you do not fail at the test you will come at last to the heart of it and there commune with the powers behind it. In their hands you, the master, will again become an apprentice. You will learn new knowledge, new skills, new purposes—new thoughts. Thus you yourself will be made anew—hammered, tempered, forged on the Anvil of the Ice!" The Mastersmith swung round and gripped him violently by the shoulders. His eyes stared deep down into Alv's; the fierce white light blazed and rippled in their depths, and in Alv's brain a piercing point of pain awakened as if in answer. In a state halfway between terror and ecstasy Alv felt his feet leave the ground. The Mastersmith held him out at arms' length as if he weighed nothing at all, as if released he would flutter away on the wind. "Yes, boy," whispered the smith at long last, "there is power in you, true enough—great power. But that is not something you can take for granted. More than any other attribute it must be developed—and disciplined! It must be carefully nurtured, boy, in a climate of thought, pure thought, if petty humanity, the passions of the ape, are not to creep in and weaken it. Pure thought without taint or contamination— that is what lies out there. That is the secret behind the Ice."
    He released Alv so suddenly the boy almost fell on the stony slope. "And that is why I came here," the smith went on, in his normal dry voice. "To be away from the stifling presence of massed humanity, the meaningless demands of the herd. Up here, where few things are living save ourselves, we may aspire to a communion with the Absolute. For the moment it is checked by the mountain-barrier, but not forever—no, indeed. It can afford to wait. Before ever man was, those powers set their hands upon this world and they have never lifted it; in their service we can learn much, and achieve great art and power. Here alone is true life, and here I have made my new home." He gestured down into