‘I’m sorry, Loman,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb your contemplation.’
Loman grunted. ‘Only daydreaming,’ he replied, turning the axe one more time and then placing it gently into its place in the rack.
Hawklan nodded. He could not hear the song of the metal, but he knew Loman could, and he knew what this place meant to him for all its tormented implications.
To ease the smith away from his darker emotions, he adopted an ironic tone. ‘Well, have you found a suitable sword for me yet?’
Loman caught the intonation and eyed him nar-rowly, then sweeping his arms expansively around the tiers of weapons he replied with equal irony. ‘They’re all suitable, my lord.’
Hawklan chuckled but continued in the same vein.
‘Master smith,’ he said. ‘My needing a sword is your idea. You’re the metal-seer. The ex-soldier. Just find me something that’ll set your mind at ease and that won’t weigh me down! I have to carry the thing, don’t forget.’
Loman’s intended reply was halted by a metallic clatter ringing through the stillness of the great room. Both men started, and then Hawklan craned forward as if he had suddenly heard a distant but familiar sound.
Without speaking, the two men ran quickly along the wide, straight aisles in the direction of the sound. At the end of the Armoury, several minutes walk away, was a great mound reaching up to and touching the high ceiling. It consisted of weapons and armour, but of such different styles and designs that it was apparent they had come from many diverse and distant lands.
As with everything else in the castle, there was no clue as to the history of the mound, or why such precious items had been stored so carelessly. To Loman, though the styles might have differed, all possessed the same inner harmony as the castle’s own weapons-as he so classified those that were racked-albeit in varying degrees. From this he concluded that they belonged to allies rather than enemies, but he could not imagine why they had been left there, heaped so randomly.
As they stood gazing at the mound, looking for the cause of the sound, it occurred again.
‘Look,’ whispered Loman, pointing earnestly and turning Hawklan around to face the mound directly with a powerful grip on his arm. ‘Look!’
Gazing upwards in the direction indicated by Lo-man, Hawklan saw something sliding purposefully down the mound towards him. He watched transfixed as the object clattered to the ground at his feet. It was a sword. A black handled sword in a plain black scabbard. He looked at it for some moments and then slowly bent down and picked it up.
The atmosphere around the two men seemed to be charged, as if a storm were brewing in spite of the spring sunshine flooding all around them. Both knew that speech was inappropriate. Hawklan stood up and wrapped his right hand firmly around the hilt of the sword. As he did so, he heard a sound like a distant trumpet. A faint, infinitely distant clarion call from another age. For an instant he felt a surge of recogni-tion, also from times past, but it slipped away like a dream at dawn.
‘My sword,’ he heard himself say softly.
‘Hawklan?’ said Loman, almost fearfully. Hawklan breathed out-half gasp, half sigh-and shook his head to assuage Loman’s concern. He turned and offered him the sword.
‘What do you think of it?’ he asked.
Loman took the sword reverently, his eyes still wide in amazement at what he had seen and felt. Carefully he drew the sword from its scabbard. It too was black. For a moment he seemed to go rigid, as if every fibre in him had been assailed in some way. Hawklan watched him, concerned, but did not speak.
For several minutes Loman scrutinized the sword intently, tested its weight and balance, held it up into the sunlight where it shone brilliantly, and looked along it, turning it over and over. Very delicately he touched his calloused finger on its edge. Then he too breathed out; a long whistling breath which seemed to carry away some appalling tension.
‘Well?’ asked Hawklan.
Loman looked at him strangely.
‘This is craftsmanship like none I’ve ever imagined. I sit at the feet of those who made these.’ He waved his arm across the waiting rows of points and edges. ‘But they are not fit to sit at the feet of the one who made this.’
His voice was strained and hoarse, and his breathing was shallow and nervous. His hands trembled slightly.
‘When you said "my sword", did you mean it was or it will be’?’
Hawklan shrugged slightly and made a vague ges-ture with his hands, but did not reply. Loman did not press the question. Slowly regaining his composure he became businesslike.
‘The hilt is some kind of stone, and it has a device embedded in it though I don’t know what it means. We’ll have to ask Isloman about that. The workmanship… ’ His craggy face became almost rapturous. ‘The workmanship needs a poet not a smith to describe it. And look at this edge.’
He lifted a loose hair from Hawklan’s shoulder and dropped it on the upturned edge of the blade. It parted without faltering in its slow fall to the floor.
‘And the black metal?’ asked Hawklan. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before.’
Loman’s composure wavered again. He seemed to be struggling with some powerful emotion. Eventually he shook his head and without looking at Hawklan, said softly, ‘It’s beyond words. Even the finest poet couldn’t describe it. It has a harmony in it that nothing could sully. And it’s killed many evil things. Many.’ A silence fell between the two men.
‘A happy chance find then?’ said Hawklan. Loman looked at him and shook his head.
‘I’m no sage, Hawklan, and I always take travellers’ tales with a mighty pinch of iron. But there’s no denying there are strange forces in this world. Some good, some bad, and most of them beyond the understanding of ordinary men. Over the years I’ve spent many hours in here studying these weapons and nothing’s ever tumbled down of its own accord like that before-nothing. Nor have I felt the presence of such a creation as this, as surely I must have done had… something not been hiding it. Chance never laid this at your feet.’ He swayed a little. ‘This is something from your past. Take an old soldier’s tip… watch your back.’
‘How strange,’ said Hawklan. ‘That’s what Gavor said the other day. But no one would want to attack me. I’m only a healer.’
Loman replaced the sword in its scabbard gently and handed it to Hawklan. His hands were shaking.
‘If this sword sought you out then you have some great need and the enemies you could face will be worse by far than any an unlucky traveller might stumble across in the mountains.’
Hawklan looked at Loman in silence, his dour, down-to-earth castellan, whose only concerns seemed to be his smithing and the day-to-day running of the Castle. He had never heard him speak in such a way before, and the seriousness of the man chilled him. He shuddered in the spring sunshine.
Without realizing what he was doing, Hawklan swung the belt of the sword around his waist and fastened it. Loman watched him silently. The movement was practiced and familiar, and the belt fitted perfectly.
Chapter 6
The ease with which Hawklan had donned the strange sword did not move Loman as it might have done but minutes earlier. The onset of impending change crystallized in Loman’s heart as soon as he saw the black sword sliding down the great mound of weapons to land at Hawklan’s feet. The very movement in that huge, familiar and infinitely still room had unnerved him more than he cared to admit, but the brief touch of the black metal had dwarfed his first reaction by plunging him into another world: a world of perfection and singing voices, of wisdom that spread through every particle of his smith’s soul and told him tales and epic sagas of times and worlds long gone. Of evil victorious, of evil conquered, of terrible prices paid and great rewards reaped, of courage and cowardice, fidelity and treachery.