The Forge in the Forest by Michael Scott Rohan Read Free Book Online Page A

gladly turn aside the people's allegiance, that they might more easily be oppressed. Turn it aside from their chosen leaders. From us. " The word was spoken no less quietly, but with the spitting intensity of water on hot steel.
    Elof sat silent, held in icy thrall by the pattern of what was unfolded before him. It was shaped with cunning to appeal to all that was narrowest and most insular in the Sothran temperament, and the typical syndic most of all. They would know, if they remembered truly, that events had not been as Bryhon described them; for one thing, where had the lightning come from, that blasted their walls? But he was presenting them with every inducement to disbelieve and distort their own memories, even an open appeal to their naked self-interest, a hint that Kermorvan threatened their power.
    As if scenting success, the tall man's manner grew more jovial; he grinned, and fingered his bushy beard. "And after all, why should we believe such a man, whom we knew even in his first youth as a vicious brawling braggart? Was this assembly not on the point of trying and exiling him, save that he slunk away in disgrace, to avoid a formal sentence and the seizure of his property? Such as he has. And what did we hear of him then? Tales that he had taken up with a pack of starveling corsairs, and then vanished from their ken, until, two years later, he reappears amid a sudden onslaught of savages. An onslaught he had been threatening us with for…"
    "Warning," said Kermorvan, equally quietly yet so unexpectedly that all started. "Warning, not threatening."
    Bryhon inclined his head. "As you will; it mends nothing. Warning us, then, for years in an attempt to spread a panic, panic that would bring him power. As in the end, it seems, it so conveniently has!" The change in his voice was startling, so loud now that it overbore the first cries of protest. "Those brown-skinned reivers took us by surprise, that is true. But have you not, any of you, asked yourselves how such a thing might come to pass? How a pack of sea-roving savages could dare assault, let alone manage to breach, the walls of the greatest city in this land? How else," Bryhon answered himself simply, "save by treason?" And he looked from Kermorvan up to the gallery, straight at Ils and Elof.
    Elof felt his ears and face flame hot as if he bent over a forgefire. He sprang to his feet at the gallery rail and shouted, "And do you call me a traitor? What manner of man, then, skulks on city walls at dead of night? What manner of man tries to murder those he meets there in secret, though all they ask is to be brought before authority? And there's witnesses enough for that!"
    The crowd seemed to snarl like a slide of falling rock. Kermorvan flashed him a sudden warning glance; Ils plucked him down by the sleeve. Bryhon did not so much as look at him; his voice was calm and smooth as the stuff of his robe.
    "Which brings us to the manner of this singular return. Did he come openly and in brotherhood, offering to take his place among us as an equal? He did not. At dead of night he came slinking over an embattled wall. And he came in strange company. A northern vagrant, the first of many, and, though one would hardly credit it, a creature of the mountains, a race accounted as savage as the maneaters and still more beastlike."
    A rush of memories awoke in Elof, of halls rich and noble in the hollow hills, clam rivers mirror-dark under stone, strong faces lined with lifetimes of wisdom and great craft. Of a folk who had succored a desperate unknown in flight from his own destiny, and set the power in his hands to forge it anew—
    He was ready to spring down, to spit his contempt in Bryhon's face and dash his fist after. But to his surprise Ils at his side remained calm, though her heavy brows were drawn tight. "Be still!" she hissed, and he remembered suddenly how much older than him she must be. "We are but ciphers here, conceits in a debate, no more. It is not for us to