The plans he had redrawn were an impressive copy of the original, even in his own modest estimation. He had rendered them on pieces of ancient parchment that had been discovered, in a casket full of rice, on one of the lower levels of the vaults in Gwylliam’s library, sealed with an ancient wax mark; undoubtedly they had once been documents, but the intervening centuries had caused the ink to dry up and disappear as if it had never been quilled into the paper.
Having found a convincing canvas on which to scribe his deception, he devoted the remainder of his waking hours to the careful copying of just enough of the elements of the original plans to, with any luck, be convincing. With a careful hand he drew lines of scale where the piping schematic had been, deleting all references to the wheel, leaving only the very basic diagrams of where the colored glass was supposed to go.
He prayed it would be enough.
Once he put the falsified plans in Esten’s hands, it would be an endless game of cat and mouse, trying to stay out of her sight as much as possible without attracting her notice of his absence. Thinking about it made Omet’s skin erupt in cold beads of sweat.
She had unconsciously given him until the morning to produce the plans, which would afford him the opportunity to stop by the forges and dry the ink on them. He pushed back his chair nervously, blotting the parchment one last time, then slipped quietly out of his room and down the corridor to the tunnels that led to the great forges.
Fearing that Esten and some of the others might be touring the kilns and glass ovens, he climbed farther down the stone tunnels and passageways to the great searing inferno at the base of the mountain, where the steelworks lay.
The heat was searing in this place of melting ore and glowing hot metal. Two separate forges blasted day and night, a commercial smithy that produced the standard weapons sold via trade agreement to Roland and Sorbold, and a specialty forge that produced Achmed’s original designs: svardas, the heavy but well-balanced circular throwing knives with three blades; short, compact crossbows with extra recoil for use in the tunnels of Ylorc; split arrowheads and heavy darts for blowguns, balanced and designed for deeper penetration; midnight-blue steel drawknives that were really razor-edged hooks that replaced the makeshift close combat weapon of many Bolg; and, of course, the disks of the king’s own cwellan.
It was this forge alone that was allowed to run hot enough to shape the blue-black alloy of rysin and steel.
And since Esten had been promised tools of her own design to be manufactured in his forges, no doubt she would be given access to this heavily guarded metalworks, whose source of flame was a vent to the fire that burned at the heart of the Earth itself.
The prickles of cold panic rose from his feet again. He looked past the half-dozen tiered galleries of anvils and fires, worked by three thousand Bolg at each shift, stoking the flames, smithing the ore, forging the steel, running the damper system that vented the heat and soot out of the mountain in summer, or recirculated it, filtered, through the tunnels of Ylorc in winter for heat. Satisfied that no one was watching him, he unfurled the scroll and allowed it a moment’s exposure to the searing wind from the forges, then quickly wrapped it in leather again before it could ignite.
He was under siege, though he did not believe at the moment the enemy that threatened him was aware of it.
What had brought Esten to the mountain was not in doubt for him. She was here to extract revenge. How she planned to do it was unclear, but her means of getting inside Achmed’s impenetrable mountain had been, like all her machinations, flawlessly plotted, brilliantly planned. The wolf was in the henhouse, and the farmer had unwittingly invited her in and held the door for her.
It would not end well.
It was only a matter of time.
Here’s for it, then, he thought as he made his way up the dark corridors to the towering crag of Gurgus that would one day be made into a Lightcatcher.
But not while Esten was still within the mountain.
He only hoped he could live long enough to explain to the Firbolg king what he had done.
Osten waited in the wind at the top of a bluff, watching for the mail caravan to arrive. The sun was setting over the Krevensfield Plain, reflecting on the clouds and the waving fields of grass, blanketing them with gold that turned red at the edges, a warmth that hinted ominously of things to come.
The sweet sensations of summer hung heavy in the air around her. Esten allowed herself the momentary pleasure of closing her eyes and breathing them in: the smell of the wind on which rain would come soon; the odor of verdant grass, bursting with life, arching toward the descending sun in a kind of joyful agony; the relentless whine of insects, the ever-cooling gusts of air, the pinpricks of distant light in farms and outposts as lanterns were lit to battle the coming darkness.
A moment was all she allowed herself. Esten opened her eyes again quickly, watching for the mail caravan that was arriving from Yarim. She pulled her knees up to her chest, thinking, allowing her mind to wander down metaphysical alleyways where death, ever-present, lurked, waiting.
It had been six days since the Bolg king had brought her to this place, and six days that he had been gone.
After almost an hour, the caravan pulled into sight on the steppes beyond the rocky hills where she lurked. In the lead were the first third of the two score and ten soldiers that accompanied it, followed by four wagons and a coach, with the balance of the forces deployed around them.
Following the official caravan was the informal convoy, the travelers who sought the protection of the soldiers and each other, believing that safety did lie in numbers as well as in arms. There was a ragtag group with this particular caravan; a few farmers traveling to or returning from market, some pilgrims on their way back from holy sites.
And one familiar business associate.
While the caravan was putting in to the outpost at Griwen Tower, the guildmistress slipped quietly down from the foothills, clad in her simple black trousers, shirt, and summer cloak, a dark blue shawl over her close-cropped hair, blending in with the growing darkness. She hung back in the shadows, waiting patiently until the convoy dispersed for the night, the soldiers retiring to the guest barracks, the stragglers making camp. Then she stepped silently out into the moonlight long enough for Dranth to find her.
He saw her right away, came to her quickly, following her into the shadows of the cliffs, carrying a small chest wrapped in burlap and a large sack. When she had determined their meeting place to be safe, she inclined her head; the guild scion nodded in return.
“You are looking very well, Guildmistress,” he said quietly. “Is everything unfolding as you planned?”
“Everything,” Esten said confidently. “It was easier than I could have imagined to infiltrate the Panjeri; they took me in without question. I would have never guessed my father’s upbringing would prove so useful to me one day. And the Bolg king is every bit as obsessed with his project as we had heard from the Hierarch in Yarim. A good thing that is; without the distractions he would be more formidable than I ever could have imagined. But between the deaths of the Sorbold royal family, the colored ceiling he wanted blown into the pinnacle of a mountain crag, and whatever took him away unexpectedly, he is not concentrating. He will be caught completely unaware.”
“Good.” Dranth handed her the burlap-wrapped chest. “Here is the picric acid you asked for—do be cautious, Guildmistress. Remember to keep it wet, so it is merely flammable; when it dries—”
“I am well aware. Thank you, Dranth. Did you perform the tests on it that I asked of you?”
“Yes. Glass, being a liquid, holds it in a liquid state, if it is applied after the annealing. Until it is dried by intense heat again. The remaining acid is housed in green barrels and will be delivered by the caravan at sunrise.”