Read Online The Sword and The Quest: Lady Merlin's Saga (Epic Fantasy) by Kit Maples - Free Book Online

all the same rock – hard, veined, dark, and heavy.”
    “Learn more magic!” Llew cried.  “Look at this haggard piece.  It may have merit, yes, but was it mined beneath a Christian prayer?”
    “The gnome sang prayers over each piece,” I said, exasperated.  “Isn’t that enough?”
    “What effective prayers could she know?” cried the prince, flinging another rock at her as she leered from around my knee.
    “Do I go back to the pits for another year to pray over each of my hammer blows, Prince?  Don’t be absurd.  These are rocks as good as any and better than most because they were mined by a pendragon.  Use them.”
    “More insolence?” sang the gnome, smiling up at the prince from behind my leg.
    “There’s no spirit in stone but what gods or men put there,” the prince said.  “This isn’t the finest Armenia I’ve seen and you gave it no spirit.”
    “So improve it yourself – throw a spell or two at it.”
    “Perhaps I can improve it with blood.”
    “It won’t be my blood.  I’ve put enough blood and sweat into your damn rocks.  Make my sword!”
    Galabes thumped the sack of rock onto the citadel’s stone floor and said, “You’ve been paid a Jerusalem coin, Prince, and here’s a bag of ore.  Make her sword.  If you want blood, take mine and let me be done with everything.  I’d be happy for it.”
    Quick calculation came into the prince’s blue-ing eyes.  “I’ll have your blood for the blade,” he said, “but not now, not yet.  When the proofing time comes, I’ll you’re your blood.”
    The prince turned me and said, “You, blood-hungry cutter of arms, digger of iron, eater of flowers.  Now you learn to make the puddles of boiling metal that become swords.”
    “Puddles?” I said.
    “Make my puddles well and I’ll teach you to pour out iron.  Pour well and I’ll teach you to roll iron and make rods of steel.  Roll and make well and I’ll teach you to weld with hammer and heat.  Do all that well and I’ll teach you to shape a blade, to cut and sharpen it.  Then you’ll temper it in his blood.”
    “Galabes’ blood?” I said, stunned.
    The prince took up my sack of ore, the old man lifting the massive sack as easily as a young hero might, and said, “Now we puddle your rocks into iron and make them pure enough for a great sword.”
    Llew swept away the rags and furs that had been his wintering bed on the glowing coals.  He shouted to his apprentices to power the bellows to drive up the fire to its hottest heat.  The thin smoke from the coals shot out of the citadel on the howling wind and rose with the air sweeping up the mountainside like a flag announcing the presence of a king or queen.
    Cheers rose from the retainers huddled in their slip-sliding tents on the mountainside below the citadel.
    “Bring leather aprons!” the prince shouted to his slaves.  “Leather gloves.  The clay crucibles for catching the melt.  Ring the gong for the season’s beginning!”
    The gong rang.  The apprentices leaped to the bellows, to piling on more charcoal.  The slaves brought out the tools and aprons.
    “You,” the prince said to me, “haul out my hammers.”
    I brought his great hammers from their closet.
    “Smash this one,” he said, examining a rock from my ore sack and dropping it to the stone floor.
    I smashed it with the hammer.
    “Smaller!” he cried.
    I smashed the bits into smaller bits.
    “This one is no good,” said Prince Llew, tossing aside a rock.
    The gnome watched it rattle away into a corner of the citadel, her smile constant.
    “Save it,” said the prince to his apprentices, “for some inferior knight’s blade.”
    He plucked out another stone and another and tossed them aside.  Then he pulled out a massive, deeply black rock and said, “Here, this one has the charm,” and dropped it beneath my shattering hammer.
    We worked that way through the day, choosing and hammering, me the only one to swing the massive hammers,