Chapter 3
I gave Lizzy the translated instructions for the metal alloy to give to Oriel. I had to work the next few nights, so I curbed my impatience and tried to act as though something totally momentous wasn’t happening in my life. After months of walking, depending on public transportation, and begging for rides, I was finally going to have some freedom.
People noticed, though, commenting that I seemed unusually cheerful. A couple of women slyly asked me if I had a new boyfriend. I felt sort of embarrassed to tell them that my happiness was due to me getting a car, which was even better than a boyfriend.
On Monday, I called Wolf Brothers Taxi Service and booked a taxi to take me out to Killarney Village. The address Lizzy wrote down for me seemed pretty weird, but the shifter driving the taxi wasn’t fazed at all. Oriel Garage and Metalworks, far middle meadow beyond silver tree and small pond.
The driver dropped me off in front of a structure that vaguely resembled the one Lizzy and I had visited. I approached the front door and raised my hand to knock, but the world dropped out from under me and turned inside out. When my head stopped spinning, I was standing in front of Oriel at the entrance to a dimly lit room.
“You didn’t include a necessary spell for alloying the metal,” Oriel said as a greeting. He shrugged. “Not a big deal. I don’t expect the Hunters to use anything radically different than the Fae or the Dwarves use for the same alloy. Did you bring the necessary enchantments for the rest of the process?”
“Yes,” I said, handing him the papers with the translated spells. He turned away and walked into the room. I followed him and was hit with a wave of heat. At the far end of the room was a large forge, and off to one side of it sat a smaller forge and a huge anvil. Oriel’s tools were arrayed on a table. Larger tools hung on racks on the walls.
“There is no power in these words,” Oriel said, thrusting the papers back at me. “Go on, read them aloud.”
Shaken, I did as he commanded. He was right. I wasn’t pulling any magic to me. I turned my face up to his.
“I’m sure the translation is correct.”
“Ah. Do you have this in the original language?”
I nodded.
“Read it aloud.”
I pulled the original copy from my pocket and began to read. As I did, I could feel magic stirring around me.
“Louder. More forcefully. Such spells are designed to drive magic into an object, to embed the ley line energy into the metal.”
I started over, speaking the spell the way I would if I intended to bend reality to my will. Ley energy boiled up around us, and I was reminded that I stood almost on the nexus where two major ley lines intersected.
“Enough,” Oriel said. “Now, teach me the spell.”
For the next two hours, I taught him the words and the meanings of the spells written in fifteenth-century Middle High German. Then he took a small bar of metal and stuck it in the forge. When it heated to white-hot, he drew the proper rune in the air, pulled out the metal bar, and began beating on it with a hammer the size of my head while chanting the first spell. When the metal started to cool, he stuck it back in the forge to heat it again. That whole ritual was repeated a twice more, then he drew the second rune, cast the second spell, and quenched the metal in a vat of oil.
Oriel held the cold metal shaped into a dagger up before him, then touched it with his hand. He didn’t look pleased.
“Here. Do you feel any magic?” He thrust the dagger toward me, and I wrapped my hand around the unfinished blade.
“No. Nothing.”
He gazed off into the air for about five minutes. Then he picked up another bar of metal and shoved it into the forge.
“This time, you will recite the spells on my queues,” he said. “Either I don’t have the ability to pull power with these spells, or I’m not pronouncing them correctly, or they don’t work. We shall test that.”
We went through the whole process again, with me drawing the runes and casting the spells. Immediately, I could tell the difference as the magic rose from the ley lines and I pushed it into the metal while he worked it. After quenching the new dagger, he held it out to me. It felt like a Hunter’s blade.
“It is either my pronunciation, or my ability,” Oriel announced. “Let us finish this knife and we shall see what the final product is like.”
“I have a Hunter’s blade if you’d like to compare them,” I said, retrieving the dagger from the sheath inside my coat.
He took it and inspected it. “Yes, the magic is the same.” He held up the piece he had crafted. “This is still unfinished.”
With a grinding wheel, another heating, beating, and quenching, and then more grinding, the raw form gradually took on the shape of a finished knife. He switched to a finer grinding wheel and had me cast the next spell while he sharpened the dagger. Then he buffed and shined it, and I cast the final spell.
Oriel took the knife into an alcove. Half an hour later, he brought it back and presented it to me with a beautifully carved horn hilt and an unusual twisted knob for a pommel. The metal of the guard looked like it had shifting bands of silver and gold.
“I would trade you this for that Hunter’s knife you carry,” he said.
Without a thought, I handed him my knife. “What metal is the guard made of?”
“Elven steel. Iron, titanium, quicksilver, powdered moonstone, gold, and silver. Dwarves would add beryllium instead of the silver and use less carbon in the alloy. Elven steel is stronger but a bit more brittle. The advantage of the silver is its effect on werewolves and vampires.”
“It’s beautiful.” The knife was gorgeous, the workmanship divine. It was perfectly balanced, as was evident when I spun it around in my hand and shifted it from one hand to another. I looked around and found a target with a couple of knives stuck in it on a wall thirty feet away. I flipped the knife in my hand and threw it. It hit the target a bit off dead center but close enough. I would get used to the balance as I worked with the knife.
I retrieved it, and Oriel said, “Come tomorrow and we’ll forge the sword.”
The next thing I knew, I was standing on the street outside his home. I ended up walking a couple of miles, almost to the edge of the Village, before I could get a cell signal to call a taxi. I really didn’t mind. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and it was late afternoon. Some kind of pastry from one shop and candy from another—almost like strawberry fudge—killed my hunger pangs. I also bought a cute hat.
Walking through Killarney Village in seventy-degree weather was a pleasure, but the temperature dropped back into the forties once I crossed the Village boundary. The existence of the Village wasn’t a secret, and it even appeared on maps. How could humans not know something odd was going on there?
Forging my sword took longer than the dagger, but it went far smoother. Try as he might, however, Oriel could not cast the necessary spells himself.
“Let’s conduct an experiment,” I said, and showed him the rune I used to create a bridge over a creek. It was one of the first and easiest spells I had learned, involving a simple rune and a single Word.
He might as well have recited the recipe for lamb stew. There was no result at all. My magic—the mage magic of the Illuminati—was totally incompatible with the Fae and witch magic Oriel had inherited from his parents.
But the sword that we crafted together. Oh, it was wonderous. Oriel questioned me closely and used his magic to create a mockup of a sword for me to wield. The final product he produced was two inches longer than the Hunter’s sword I had carried for years, and three-quarters of an inch narrower. The balance of the sword in my hands was superb.
He carved the hilt from elk antler, with vines and flowers and winged fairies. I thought at first the texture would be rough and interfere with my grip, but so cunningly were the decorations placed that the hilt fit my hands as though molded to them.
The icing on the cake was the scabbard—tooled leather over hardwood with the same vines, flowers, and fairy motif as the hilt.
Oriel sheathed the sword, then held it in one hand and placed his other hand on my head and cast a spell.
“The glamour is now keyed to you,” he said. “Only you and I are able to see the sword when it is sheathed.” He handed it to me. “Does it please you?”
“It’s wonderful. But I haven’t fulfilled my half of the bargain,” I replied.
“Yes, you did. You offered the spells. That I proved unable to cast them is not your fault. The sword and dagger are yours. I ask only that you occasionally help me to craft a few more pieces.”
“Absolutely.” His rash promise to give me the car in exchange for the spells hung over us. I handed him the money I had taken from my cache. “I assume the price for the car hasn’t changed?”
His strange, alien face lit up with a smile that still rather unsettled me. He took the money, counted it, put it in his pocket, and handed me the car’s key.
“I am glad I met you, Erin McLane,” he said. Then, without warning, he reached out and pulled me to him and kissed me. He smelled like exotic wood and tasted smoky-sweet. He pushed me against the wall, pressing himself hard between my legs, and I felt light-headed, as though he was sucking the oxygen from the air. His hands roamed over me, leaving trails of heat wherever he touched.
My mind clouded, not with the persuasion a vampire or a mage might have used, but with intense desire. It was impossible to separate his desire from my own. I had no idea how long that kiss lasted, or whether he kissed me only once. He could have taken me then—against the wall, or on the floor—and done anything he wanted with me. I didn’t try to stop him, didn’t want to stop him.
And then I was staring into his face as he held me at arm’s length. He was panting as hard as I was. My head was swimming, and I was on fire where our bodies had ground together.
“I have wanted to do that since we first met,” Oriel said. “You are a very dangerous female. Now, go. Take your sword and your car and leave.”