The Hammer of the Sun by Michael Scott Rohan Read Free Book Online Page B

annealed, I was going to say. A long slow heating and cooling, to heal any inward stresses."
    "All right," grunted Roc. "I wasn't going to risk closing it all the way, anyway; guessed you'd be wanting to work on the catch. Can't see how it'd undo, as it is."
    Elof shrugged. "It's important they stay on securely."
    Roc grinned in wry agreement. "Fair enough. She's an active girl, your Kara, more active than most. You'd be wanting anything you gave her to fit close and stay close, all right."
    Elof relaxed, trying not to show how shaken he had been, how vital it was that those clasps should close only at the right time and place, and in no other. It was a fell thing he had shaped here, in its way, but there was no help for it. He had only to think of her drawn back to Louhi's clutches to make it all worthwhile again. He balanced the anklets in his palm, and was startled to see blood on the metal. It was his; he had reopened some of the worse cuts when he snatched the thing back. Well, on the outside of the piece it could do no harm; he turned to wipe it away on a clean rag. Then he froze. On the outside… But he had paid little heed to his injuries earlier in the work; he could have bled at any point, onto the wax, into the silver… The tokens; he could have added his own blood to that feather. And there was no way now he would ever be able to tell.
    "What's amiss with you now?" grunted Roc. "You've a face on you the colour of milk, and sour at that."
    "I… It's nothing. Just… an effect, one that might turn out good or bad, I've no idea." He choked down his sudden flood of anxiety. There was always slight contamination when you touched something, a flake of skin, its natural oils; that mattered little, so why should this? And after all, could he really be bound up any more closely with Kara than he was? It might even strengthen the thing. He smiled wearily. "I was really wondering… I've a fair amount of silver left that I'd like to find a use for. Do you have any notions?"
    Roc fingered his stubbled chin. "Not just now, but then my mind's that muzzy, I've not slept; something to help us on our jaunt south, that's a good an idea as I can hatch right now. Me for the palace, and some breakfast. And a bath; they should have the bathhouse warming nicely by the time I get there. You could use one, after your labours; set you up. Coming?"
    Elof considered a moment. "Why not? But hear me; if Kara is there also, not a word of the gift, remember!" He shut away the anklets in a secure cabinet of iron, and closed up the forge with as much care. Then they went together out of the Guildhalls and into the winding streets of the northerners quarter, at whose heart the great building stood. A light spring rain was falling, making the scale-tiled house-roofs shine, gurgling out of the open-mouthed dragonheads at their gable-ends or running in sheets down their wall timbers, caulked tight as ships with the figures brightly limned in red and black upon them; little rivulets chattered down between the cobbles into the central gutter. Roc looked at the ships rolling at anchor, and up to the ornate weather-vanes on the house-roofs, and groaned.
    "Wind's swinging around the compass again; clear dawn when I came in. Ah well, that's spring for you; that'll give us an interesting time at sea, that will, just like always."
    Elof grinned sympathetically; Roc was unhappily weak of stomach in a lively sea. "You know," he remarked, watching the vanes creak back and forth over the tiles, "That was no bad thought of yours. Something to help on the voyage, indeed. I'll think on that!"
    And so he did; even as they took their ease in the royal baths, stretching out weary limbs on the steam-room slabs and drifting in the heated pools, his mind dwelt on it still. Then friends and fellow-courtiers came to join them, and later Marja and Kara, and the demands of the day took over his thoughts. His other, deeper concern he forgot entirely for that time, the matter