Chapter 3 – Part 4 – The Amethyst Sword
Bewildered, Rhayd made his way back to the end of the column and claimed an errant cart. There seemed to be no shortage yet, though judging by the number of students beginning to filter into the armoury, having had a longer tour than the Blackcards had, there may be soon. It was an effort, dragging the huge core of rock onto the cart, but Rhayd assumed no one else had made it this far out in the stacks yet. His examination had been thorough enough for his purposes, but others he could see closer to the entryway were literally picking up and feeling every stone. Kintere seemed to have settled on a block of what looked like rusted iron and had cornered Anrui with it much as Rhayd had done, but Mireya was nowhere in sight.
Upon reaching the forge proper with his cart, the forge master found him immediately. A low, wide slab of a man with a great bushy beard, Bross didn’t say much, simply directed Rhayd to a workstation and grabbed one of the many apprentices by the scruff of his neck as he ran past, dropping him almost in Rhayd’s lap.
“This is Emura,” Bross rumbled, patting the red-faced boy on the back and turning to other, clearly more pressing tasks.
“So. New intake, ya?” Emura muttered noncommittally, upending the cart almost single-handed, much to Rhayd’s surprise. “Which did you get stuck with?”
“Oh,” Rhayd said, trying to find a place to help, once he realized the boy meant which instructor. “I’m a Blackcard, apparently. Anrui Frost is my instructor.”
“Good on ya,” the boy said with a grin, settling the waist-high core of stone in a harness and hefting on the chain to lift it a few inches from the ground. Clearly this had the ring of routine here. “Always feel sorry for old Gravy’s young’uns, few as he gets. Cas is a fair man, but Anrui is my Instructor as well. I’m one of his Upperclassmen.”
Gravy? Cas? Rhayd had no idea what the boy was talking about.
“So,” he said instead of asking, not certain he would understand the answer anyway. “Where do we start here?”
“Simple,” the boy declared, claiming a set of callipers and a mallet from the bench. The former he fit about the core, measuring its size; the latter he used to crack off a few of the protruding bits of stone encasing the gem beneath.“What kind of Athama are you aiming for, here?”
“I’m not sure what I should be looking for,” Rhayd admitted.
“Well, that actually makes it easier,” Emura admitted, discarding the callipers without making notes on size and continuing to remove bits of rock. “If the stone spoke to you, but a shape didn’t, it’ll come naturally. Lots of students expect a knife or a bangle to fly out of the matrix – that’s this rocky bit stuck to the stone proper – and never get what they want. SO much raw material gets wasted that way around here. Best way to do it is just start hacking, especially with a bit this big, and wait for the shape to show itself. Here,” the apprentice said, handing over the mallet and pulling a chisel out of his belt. “Give it a shot. Just pick a spot and chip off a bit.”
Rhayd was sceptical, but accepted the boy’s instruction as the voice of expertise, or as close as he was likely to see of it anyway. After a few false starts, followed each by exasperated glances from Emura, Rhayd settled the chisel against a crack in the stone and set the mallet to it – hard. With a resounding crack, a foot-long chunk of purple stone flew to the floor and skittered along the flagstones.
Skidding to a halt at Mireya’s feet. The girl bent and picked up the chunk, a strange look of recognition coming over her face.
“What do you want?” Rhayd snapped, suddenly angrier than he had a right to be.
“I came to find you,” she returned, her hands snaking about the stone almost protectively. “Kintere’s finished working his Athama already. Just made a pair of iron sticks.” She shook her head, nose wrinkling. “He’s gone off to see one of the higher ranking mages here. Something about an Assessment. Said you’d want to know.”
“Well, now I do,” Rhayd spat, turning back to his stone. “Put that down, it’s just waste rock.”
“No!” Mireya gaped, hugging the gem to her chest, and furrowed her brow. “I’ve been looking for just the right piece, and I think I’ve found it, thank you, waste or not!”
Rhayd bit back a response and continued to smack the chisel through bits of matrix, clearing away the brown and grey stone, revealing the umbral indigo gemstone beneath strips at a time.
“What are you making anyway with a piece that big?”
“A sword,” Rhayd said without thinking – and realized it to be the right answer. He smiled, looking at the stone, and spent a moment developing his vision. A long, narrow blade, with a hilt made from the polished matrix detritus. “Yes. I studied swordplay under one of my brother’s men in Penance. I may as well stick to what I know.”
“Won’t it just get in the way? Athama have to be easily accessible, I thought.”
Annoyed, Rhayd looked back at Mireya, who was absently pulling pieced of fragmented amethyst from her small chunk, her too-bright eyes stitched to the side of his own piece of the great gem.
“Anrui told me that a piece this big could be a sword, so it might as well be. You’ll be lucky to get a small knife out of that thing”
Mireya’s eyes left the tall purple stone for a moment, and rested on Rhayd with a completely undisguised look of wry amusement.
“Size isn’t everything,” she said softly, turning on her heel and making for the next workstation, setting her stone down on the bench and staring at it with a hand on each side.