Theros Ironfield

Book Five
Chapter 30

Theros was taking a break from his labors, drinking a large mug of tepid water, when two men entered his shop. He paused in his swallowing to look at them, thinking he’d never seen a stranger pair in his life. One was a warrior, a mercenary by the looks of him, and he was one of the biggest men Theros-who was no small man himself-had ever seen. Big and jovial, he had a bluff, frank face on which every emotion registered like wind ruffling the surface of placid water.

Theros marked the big man as a customer and gave him a nod over the water mug. The smith’s gaze turned to the person accompanying the big man and Theros frowned. The big man’s comrade was a wizard, wearing red robes and carrying an odd-looking staff. Theros didn’t normally pay much attention to staves, unless they needed a new iron shoe for the bottom, but the Seeker guards had been around asking questions about a staff, and so Theros took note of this one.

The staff itself was plain enough-ordinary wood-but the top was adorned with a crystal clutched in what appeared to be a dragon’s claw. The staff was magic; of that, Theros had no doubt. He could have called the Seeker guards, earned himself a steel piece. But Theros’s credo was “live and let live.”

It wasn’t unusual to see a mage in Solace, though it was unusual to see one in the company of a warrior. Solace had become a haven for wanderers. The elves had evacuated the lands to the south, and Verminaard, who was now calling himself a Dragon Highlord, was ravaging the area. Most of Theros’s customers were either from Verminaard’s army, or were heading over to join up. Business was booming in the arms trade.

Solace was a town built entirely in the vallenwood trees. All of the shops and homes were nestled in the limbs and trunks of the trees. Walkways connected the trees to each other, making it easy to get from place to place. Staircases were built from the ground up in various places near the main road through the town.

Theros’s smithy was the only business located on the ground in Solace. There was no way to put a steel forge in a vallenwood tree without the wood igniting. Besides, the weight of the steel and finished products would be too much to move up and down the stairs. His shop looked out onto the main road that ran through the town, and onto the town square beyond.

The two customers stood in the doorway, blinking in the bright light of the forge fire. The big man began looking around. His gaze went immediately to the swords Theros had out on display.

The mage, standing somewhat behind the larger man, said, in an irritable voice, “Get on with it, Caramon. You know I cannot breathe this foul air.”

Theros was about to tell the mage he could go wait at the bottom of Crystalmir lake, if he preferred it, when the big man spoke up.

“You Theros Ironfeld?” he asked.

“That’s my name,” said Theros.

“I’ve heard you are the best weapons-smith in Solace.”

“I am,” Theros said coolly. “What can I do for you?” He laid emphasis on the word “you,” pointedly excluding the mage.

“My name’s Caramon. This is my brother Raistlin. Maybe you’ve heard of us? We used to live in Solace, but we left about five years ago to-”

“Caramon!”

The mage spoke his rebuke in a soft, whispering voice, but it had the effect of immediately silencing the warrior. Theros tried to get a look at the mage’s face, but the man kept his red hood pulled low over his head. The hand that held the staff was thin and the skin, in the firelight, glistened a peculiar color, had a metallic cast to it.

“Uh, yeah, sure, Raist,” the big man mumbled.

He held a long sword in his hands, still in the scabbard. The loop that attached the scabbard to his belt had worn off. When he drew out the blade, Theros saw that it had broken near the middle.

“It’s served me well for years,” the warrior said, “but an ogre proved too much for it. Creature had an iron ring around its neck.”

Theros eyed the weapon. “You want a new blade, I take it. Do you want that scabbard repaired, as well?”

Caramon handed over the sword and scabbard to Theros. The leather had rotted and ripped. Theros examined the sword carefully.

“Very fine workmanship on the hilt,” Theros said. “But it’s already had one new blade and whoever made that wasn’t the same person who made the original sword. Want to sell it? Or maybe trade it for one of these new ones over here?”

Theros was always looking for a bargain. He could easily repair and sell a weapon of this quality in Solace. The town was full of soldiers, mercenaries and hobgoblins.

“No, I wouldn’t sell that sword if I was down to my last steel coin,” said Caramon, regarding it fondly. “This sword has kept me alive for five years. All I want is a scabbard and a new blade. What will it cost me?” The warrior sounded somewhat anxious.

Theros cast a glance at the man’s well-worn clothing and the lean money pouch hanging from the belt. He was about to name his price, when suddenly the mage began to cough. It wasn’t the cough of a winter chill. It was a hacking cough that nearly doubled the young man over.

“What’s the matter with him?” Theros asked, nodding in the direction of the mage.

The big man looked worriedly at his brother. “You all right, Raist?”

“No, I am not all right, Caramon!” The mage spoke the words in gasps. “This air is poison! I’ll … wait for you outside! Be as quick as you can.”

Leaning heavily on his staff, the mage left the forge, went back out into the fresh air. He seemed to take a shadow with him. Theros wasn’t sorry to see him go.

Theros studied the leatherwork. “I can make you a leather scabbard for two steel pieces, or a metal one for ten. The blade will cost you twenty-five.”

Caramon was aghast. “Why so much for such simple work?”

“My scabbards don’t fall apart, and my blades don’t fall apart, like these.” Theros held up the broken weapon and the torn scabbard.

Caramon frowned, then thrust his hand into his money pouch. He pulled out twenty steel. “Here, this is for the blade and the leather scabbard. The rest when you finish.”

Outside, his brother could be heard having another coughing fit. Caramon, looking concerned, was about to hurry out.

Theros shouted after him, “Hey! What he’s got-it’s not catching, is it?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Caramon said hurriedly.

Theros nodded. “Come back this afternoon! Alone,” he added.

Caramon nodded and dashed out the door.

After his customer left, Theros went back to his work. He was forging a number of swords, twenty in all. They were huge blades, made according to a strange design insisted on by one of the Seekers-Hederick, the High Theocrat. He had wanted them finished in less than a week. Theros worked the steel quickly and efficiently, crafting the weapons according to the specifications. He would need more steel, though, to complete the job. In the meantime, he repaired the warrior’s sword with a new blade and drew out a suitable leather scabbard from his back stock.

Later that afternoon, Theros climbed the stairs up the largest of the enormous vallenwood trees, heading for the Temple of the True Seeker. The temple was actually one of Solace’s finer houses, donated to the cause by someone hoping for a blessing in the afterlife. Theros admired the house, which extended upward into the branches of the tree. It reminded him of the houses in which the elves had lived in Quivernost. Theirs weren’t as fine as this, of course, but the architecture was the same delicate handiwork.

Theros knocked on the door. A servant popped his head out, took note of Theros-still dressed in his grimy leather apron-and told him to wait.

“Outside,” added the servant, with a scathing glance at the smith’s dirty boots.

Theros, grinning to himself, sat down on a bench built into the walkway between two vallenwood branches.

Before long, the door opened and the servant showed Theros into the antechamber, then into a room just off of it on the lower floor. There, a man sat at a desk. Theros recognized the man as Hederick, the High Theocrat. Obviously annoyed at being interrupted, he barely glanced up. He was flanked by two Seeker guards, who looked extremely bored.

“What do you want?” the High Theocrat snapped.

“Sir, my name is Theros Ironfeld. I’m the weapons-smith, come to report on the order that you gave me two days ago for swords.”

Hederick was a gaunt, middle-aged man. The flush on his cheeks and his nose indicated that he enjoyed his ale, perhaps a bit too much. Theros was much more interested in the desk than the man. Although Theros didn’t work with wood, he could recognize expert craftsmanship when he saw it, and this desk was one of the finest pieces he’d ever seen. It was a beautifully inlaid vallenwood desk that appeared to have been formed out of the living tree.

Hederick was responsible for the souls of the people of Solace, or so he said. In fact, through religious fervor and his troops of bullying guards, he had secured a near-dictatorship over the entire population.

The High Theocrat was a high-ranking member of the Seekers-the clerics who claimed that they were the only ones of their kind left on Krynn. The “new gods,” as Hederick called them, had placed him in this position and he was to educate the populace of Solace in the true ways. As far as Theros could tell, the Seekers were more interested in money than souls and the only true way appeared to be through Hederick’s purse.

“Yes, yes, I recall.” Hederick looked up with more interest. “How are the swords coming? Are they ready yet?”

Theros hid a smile. Twenty swords in two days! It was obvious the High Theocrat had no idea of the difficulty of the work involved in making weapons.

“No, sir, they are not ready yet. Further, I need more steel. I have enough for only fifteen of the twenty blades. I will have to wait until my next shipment comes in from Thorbardin-”

“Nonsense!” the High Theocrat interrupted. “We shall get you what you need immediately. Guard, tell your commander to convey a shipment of steel to Mister Ironfeld’s forgery-”

“Smithy, sir,” Theros corrected. “I’m not in the business of making counterfeit money.”

Hederick didn’t get the joke. “Yes, yes,” he snapped. “Steel to Mister Ironfeld’s smithy by tomorrow.”

The guard appeared baffled. “Where are we to obtain the steel, sir?”

Hederick glared at the man. “There is, as I recall, a shipment bound for Thorbardin. Confiscate it.”

“The dwarves won’t be happy about that, my lord,” said the guard dubiously.

“It is not my life’s work to make dwarves happy!” Hederick roared. “Tell them it is the will of the Seekers and the new gods!”

The guard left to carry out his orders. Another took his place in the office.

“Thank you, sir. If I get the required steel by tomorrow, I will have the weapons ready in time. A good day to you, sir.” Theros bowed. Two more guards escorted him out.

According to Hederick, the High Theocrat was a position of spiritual leadership within the community. In fact, he was a bureaucrat with power, and the will to use it for his own personal gain. He ruled Solace with a mailed fist, his hobgoblins keeping the townsfolk in line, and the mercenaries under his command keeping the peace according to Hederick’s rules.

The weapons that Theros was making weren’t going to be used to protect the people of Solace. They weren’t meant for the Seeker guard. No humans and few hobgoblins could effectively wield a weapon of the size called for by the specifications. The only soldiers whose strength and sheer size allowed them to wield such weapons were those in the armies of the Supreme Circle of the Minotaurs. However, minotaur warriors usually preferred axes. So who could be needing such weapons, and why this far south?

Ogres, maybe, but Theros doubted the swords were meant for ogres. The hilts of the weapons were specifically designed to be used by someone-or some thing-with a clawed hand. Claws, not fingers.

Hederick was selling these weapons for a profit, a personal profit. The temple would see little of the money. No one would question the matter. No one dared. Several people who had been foolish enough to defy Hederick were either languishing in prison or had simply disappeared.

Bad times were coming for Solace. Theros could feel the tension mount in the town from day to day. It was the same sort of atmosphere that he remembered from living in Sanction and near Neraka. There was a taint of evil in the air, like smoke drifting in from a nearby fire.

War was coming, though the people of Solace were doing their best to try to deny it. Theros was engaged in his own personal, internal struggle. War would catch up with him again; there was no place he could go to avoid it. Already, he’d been discreetly approached by the emissaries of the Dragon Highlord Verminaard. Theros’s reputation as a fine weapons-smith had spread far. Theros had turned them down flat.

He wondered at himself, wondered at his reasons.

Theros was familiar with evil. He had served in armies led by evil commanders, and lived in places that were sinkholes of evil. Still, he could not reconcile evil with honor, the guiding principle of his life.

And what was the nature of evil? Theros had often asked himself that question. He had finally decided that, for himself, evil was denying the rights of other people. It was the determination that what you believed was right and that everyone else was wrong. And because they were wrong, they no longer mattered.

The minotaurs had raised Theros to believe that because he was human, he was inferior. He had even come to think that himself. Now that he was older, he realized that he had truly admired minotaurs like Hran and Huluk because they made him feel that he had worth. They made him feel almost equal.

Almost. And then only because Theros had gone out of his way to prove himself to them.

Now the minotaur army was on the march again, delighting in conquering, enslaving, subjugating. Sargas wanted Theros to be a part of this evil army. But Sargas also demanded that Theros be honorable. How could one maintain honor by denying another the right to live in freedom? The minotaurs did not seem to have any problem with this dichotomy, but Theros did.

Theros wished he could find someone to advise him on this. Someone to share his doubts and feelings with. But no one in Solace knew of Sargas, the minotaur god, or of any other of the “old” gods, for that matter. According to the High Theocrat, the old gods had abandoned the people at the time of the Cataclysm, some three hundred or more years ago. Now new gods ruled Krynn, gods who didn’t appear to have much interest in good, evil or honor. All these new gods seemed to care about was money.

Theros couldn’t see how a money-grubbing bureaucrat would know anything about gods. Then again, how would a weapons-smith know anything more? Sargas had come to Theros twice. The second time-when Theros had just left the army of Baron Dargon Moorgoth-was when Theros first began to have doubts. Sargas may have been a god of honor, but he was also a god of vengeance, retribution, and cruelty.

Since seeing Sargas last, Theros had decided to go his own way. He did not abandon his faith. He did not believe in these “new” gods. He still believed in Sargas, but he no longer prayed to Sargas for assistance. And Theros dreaded the day he had to face Sargas again.

He walked back to his shop, taking the overhead walkways. When he could look down upon the smithy, he climbed down the spiraling staircase to the ground. He was headed over to his smithy, when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement in the underbrush near several outlying trees. Odd. People in Solace didn’t usually spend time on the ground if they could help it. He stopped and looked, thinking perhaps it was children, who sometimes liked to hang about the forge. Theros didn’t like having children around. The forge was a dangerous place and he was always afraid one of them would get burned.

He peered intently into the trees, saw nothing.

He entered the forge to find that he had customers. A hobgoblin was stomping about impatiently, waiting for Theros to return. It was truly a bother not having an assistant to deal with such matters. Theros had come to know himself, however. He knew that he didn’t have the patience needed to train an apprentice. He would always feel guilty for the way he had abused Yuri first in Sanction and then in the army of Dargon Moorgoth. Theros’s temper ran away with him when he tried to work with someone else in his smithy. He could not give up the control that he needed to trust and work with an assistant. The bother of not having an assistant was the price he had to pay for remaining in control. It was a compromise that he could live with.

“Ironfeld!” The hobgoblin snarled. “I wait an hour. Where the devil-”

“Just a minute, please,” Theros said curtly.

Pushing past the outraged hobgoblin, Theros went through the forge and back into the storage room. There he had a window that looked out over the forest-right where he had seen movement. Theros carefully cracked the shutter and stared out. He waited. Nothing.

The hobgoblin shouted for Theros to hurry. “I want my dagger sharpened. This blade is dull! Hurry up!”

“You’ll wait as long as I want you to wait, or you can come and wrestle me if you like,” Theros shouted back.

The hobgoblin fell into a seething silence. Theros, with his massive chest and muscles well toned from use, could easily best a flabby hobgoblin.

Theros kept watching out the window. Suddenly, he spied the movement again. An elf stood up from a crouching position and glided silently back into the woods. The elf appeared to have been keeping a watch on the forge.

“Elves? In Solace?” Theros muttered to himself.

He thought they had all evacuated to Qualimori on Southern Ergoth.

Very curious. Very curious, indeed.

He went back to his customer. “Now, about that dagger …”