Six months after Konnan screamed beneath the twenty heart trees, Pale Roots had learned two new sounds.
One was the boy's cry.
It was too deep for a child not yet crawling, too angry for something that still needed milk, and too large for the small chest it came from. When Konnan woke hungry, the hollow knew it. When he was displeased by cold, damp cloth, loud voices, or the slow arrival of Lysa's breast, he announced his judgment as if the mountain had personally wronged him.
The other sound was steel.
Not often. Not enough. Never enough. But sometimes, when the forge had burned long and clean, when Gerrik's temper held steadier than his grief, when Dalla watched the color without blinking and Tarek struck where he was told instead of where anger wanted, a different ring came from the hammer. Sharper than iron. Meaner. A sound that made men in the hollow turn their heads before they knew why.
Pale Roots had nails now that did not bend under a thumb. Hooks strong enough to hang winter meat high from rats. Rings for harness. Hinges for store doors. Spearheads that held their shape. Arrowheads that punched through boiled leather and sometimes worse. There were short knives too, ugly things with thick backs and hungry edges, worth more than the stolen bright blades men had once boasted over.
The steel was still rare.
Gerrik guarded it like a sin.
Konnan lay in Lysa's arms near the lower fire that morning, wrapped in dark fur and staring at the world with red eyes that made grown men look away too quickly. He was heavy enough that Lysa shifted him from arm to arm more often than pride allowed her to admit. His skin was still pale as milk beneath the mountain cold, his hair white and fine against his skull, his fists fat and clenched in the fur as if he had been born grasping for something denied him.
The Tree Speaker had called him only large on the night he was born.
Only large, because Lysa had lived.
Only large, because the boy had drawn breath beneath the carved eyes of the twenty heart trees and had not given it back.
Pale Roots had taken the words and made them into a joke first, then a warning, then something close to reverence. Only large, women said when Konnan cried louder than children twice his age. Only large, men muttered when his red eyes followed torchlight too steadily. Only large, Lysa would say when someone stared too long, and that usually ended the staring.
Savar crouched nearby, watching him with open pride.
"He is bigger than other babies," Savar said.
"He eats like a wolf cub," Lysa answered.
"That is good."
"It is loud."
"He will be strong."
"He will be hungry."
Morna sat on the other side of the fire, sewing a torn strap with more care than speed. She looked up at Konnan's face. The baby's eyes had followed the flicker of the flame, slow and fixed, too intent for something so young.
"He watches before he knows how," she said.
Savar grinned. "He knows me."
"He knows noise. You are easy."
Savar scowled at her, then looked back at his little brother. "He has Father's eyes."
"More than Father does," Morna said.
Lysa's mouth tightened, but she did not correct her.
The hollow had made stories of Konnan before he could hold his own head. Born beneath the twenty heart trees. White as bone. Red-eyed. Large enough to make the Tree Speaker curse his size and then call him only large because Lysa had lived. Men who had once whispered White Demon now looked at Torren's youngest son and lowered their voices further, as if the gods had answered a rumor with flesh.
Torren heard the whispers.
He did not stop them.
Stopping a story too early only taught it to hide.
By midday, the twins went up to the grove with Tomm.
The boy had grown leaner in Pale Roots, though not weaker. His bruises from Longmere had faded, but some blows took longer to leave than skin allowed. He carried water now without being told twice. He spoke more Old Tongue than he admitted to Mara. He still stumbled through it, still reached for common words when frightened, but the mountain language had begun to live in his mouth.
Morna had put it there first.
Savar had beaten it into shape after.
The path to the twenty weirwoods was cold even under a clear sky. The grove held its own weather. Red leaves shifted above the children though the air below stood still. The carved faces watched them climb, pale trunks marked with dark red sap like old wounds that would not close.
Savar knelt first, because he liked being first and because he had been born first and believed both things were related.
Morna knelt after him.
Tomm stood for a moment with his hands at his sides.
He looked back toward the lower hollow, where smoke rose from the forge cut. He looked down the mountain, though Longmere could not be seen from there. Then he looked at the nearest carved face.
Its red eyes looked back.
"Kneel," Savar whispered.
Tomm swallowed. "I do not know the words."
"Use ours," Morna said.
He knelt.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Savar bowed his head and muttered quickly, asking for strength, for good hunting, for Konnan not to die, for his father to let him carry a real spear soon. Morna's prayer was quieter. Tomm could not follow most of it. She spoke of roots, blood, fire, and remembering. She asked nothing for herself, or perhaps she did and hid it better than Savar.
Then both twins looked at him.
Tomm's mouth went dry.
He knew how the Seven were meant to be prayed to. He knew the names well enough: Father, Mother, Warrior, Smith, Maiden, Crone, Stranger. His mother had whispered them over him when fever burned him. Longmere women had said them with hands folded and heads bowed. The septon who came twice a year had smelled of wool and sour wine and told children the gods watched all.
But no Seven had watched Harrold's nephew strike him by the well.
Or if they had, they had watched quietly.
Tomm looked at the weirwood's red eyes and tried to speak.
The first words came crooked.
"Stone," he said in the Old Tongue.
Savar frowned. "That is not how you start."
Morna lifted one finger without looking at her brother.
Savar closed his mouth.
Tomm continued, because stopping would have been worse.
"Fire. Father. Mother. Blood."
He hesitated.
Morna watched him.
"Home," Tomm said.
The word sounded better than the others.
That frightened him.
He looked at the carved face and whispered the next words so quietly even Savar leaned closer to hear.
"For my father. For my mother."
His hands tightened on his knees.
"For me."
Savar looked at him strangely. "You ask for yourself?"
Tomm did not look away from the tree. "No one did before."
Morna's red eyes stayed on his face. "Ask then."
Tomm breathed in.
"For the ones below to hear us," he said.
Not Seven save us.
Not Father judge them.
Not Warrior protect me.
Let them hear us.
The red leaves stirred overhead.
Morna nodded once, as if the prayer had been accepted because she had decided it was.
Below the grove, Gerrik stood in the shadow of a stone outcrop with a bundle of charcoal in his arms.
He had come halfway up the path before seeing them.
Now he stood still.
Mara was beside him. She had followed when she saw him stop. For a while neither spoke.
Their son knelt beneath the heart trees with Torren's children, head bowed, Old Tongue stumbling out of him in broken pieces. Not to the Seven. Not to the gods Mara had called upon when Tomm was born. Not to any face Gerrik had known as a boy.
Mara's eyes filled.
"Say something," she whispered.
Gerrik's hands tightened around the charcoal bundle.
"To whom?" he asked.
She looked at him then.
He did not take his eyes from Tomm.
The boy's prayer ended. Savar corrected one of his words, softer than usual. Morna stood and brushed red leaves from her knees. Tomm rose last. He looked smaller beneath the trees and less like Longmere's child than he had the day he was dragged into the hollow.
Gerrik turned away before Tomm saw him.
He went back to the forge.
The sword was waiting.
It had taken him more than a month to make and most of his temper to finish. Not a lord's sword. Not pretty. Not bright. No jeweled pommel, no fine guard, no polished fuller running clean as a river down the blade. It was a plain thing, a little shorter than an Andal longsword and broader near the base, thick-backed, dark in places where the steel had taken color unevenly. The grip was wrapped in blackened hide. The guard was simple.
The edge was not.
Gerrik carried it out wrapped in dark cloth.
Men gathered before he called them.
That pleased him less than it should have. Pale Roots had learned the smell of important work. They knew when to come and watch.
Torren stood near the testing post with Brak at his right and Lysa farther back, Konnan heavy in her arms. The child was awake, red eyes open against the pale morning. Savar and Morna stood with Tomm near the side of the crowd. Mara stood half behind them, her face unreadable.
Gerrik set the wrapped sword across two stones and uncovered it.
No one spoke.
It was not beautiful.
That disappointed some of them.
Gerrik saw their faces and hated them for it.
"Pretty swords are for men who die looking at themselves," he said. "This one is for work."
Brak leaned forward. "It looks mean."
"It is."
Torren stepped closer. "Steel?"
"Yes."
"True steel?"
Gerrik's eyes flicked to him. "As true as I can make in your mountain."
"That is not the same answer."
"No," Gerrik said. "It is the honest one."
Torren lifted the sword.
It did not move like Lady Forlorn. Nothing did. This blade had weight in the wrong places, stubbornness in the hand, a thickness that made it more tool than song. But it held together. It wanted a hard arm, not a courtly wrist. It did not dance.
It struck.
Torren turned it once, feeling the pull.
"What will it do to mail?" he asked.
Gerrik wiped his hands on his apron though they were already black. "Good mail? It will not cut through it like cloth. No honest sword does. Bad mail? Old mail? Village work? It will bite rings. Bend them. Open them if the blow is true. If it does not cut the man, it will make the iron hurt him."
Brak grunted approval.
Torren looked toward the post. An old strip of Andal mail hung there, taken from Grey Throat and tested so many times it had become less armor than memory. Gerrik's mouth tightened.
"That piece is already damaged," he said.
"Then it should fear less."
Torren struck.
The sword hit the mail with a hard, ugly sound. One ring flattened. Another opened where old wear had thinned it. The leather backing split under the force. A murmur moved through the watchers.
Torren struck again.
This time a ring snapped.
Tarek grinned before he could stop himself. Dalla did not grin. She watched Gerrik, and Gerrik watched the edge.
Torren lowered the blade. The sword had marked, but not badly. The edge held.
"Again?" Brak asked.
"No," Torren said.
Gerrik's shoulders eased by a finger's width.
Then Torren reached over his shoulder.
The black leather sheath lay across his back, bound over one shoulder and under the opposite arm, made for mountain paths where a long blade at the hip would catch on stone, root, and goat track. Men below wore swords at their belts because roads below were kind enough to allow it. The mountains were not. Lady Forlorn rode high across Torren's back, the heart-shaped ruby at the pommel rising above his right shoulder like a red eye.
Torren loosened the leather catch.
The ruby caught the forge light first.
Then Lady Forlorn came free with a soft, ugly whisper.
Smoke-grey. Long. Clean as winter death.
The crowd changed around it.
Men had seen the sword before. Seeing it drawn was worse.
Gerrik stopped breathing.
"No," he said.
The word escaped before fear could stop it.
Torren looked at him.
Gerrik swallowed. His hands curled and uncurled at his sides. "Not that sword."
"Why?"
"Because nothing I make is that."
Torren held Lady Forlorn in one hand and Gerrik's steel in the other. The difference between them was almost insulting. One blade seemed made of smoke and old blood. The other of sweat, coal, anger, and months of failure beaten into shape.
"Then let us see how far below it stands," Torren said.
Gerrik took one step forward. "If you break it—"
"I will."
The smith's face tightened as if struck.
Torren set Gerrik's sword upright against the testing block, edge turned to meet the blow. Tarek muttered something under his breath. Dalla elbowed him silent. Tomm covered his ears before anything happened. Morna saw and said nothing.
The first blow rang through the forge yard.
Gerrik's sword held.
The second left a bright wound along its edge.
The third made Tarek flinch.
The fourth bit deeper.
By the fifth, Gerrik was no longer breathing.
By the sixth, a thin crack had opened near the middle of the blade.
On the seventh, Lady Forlorn broke it.
The upper half of Gerrik's sword spun away and struck the ground with a dead sound. The lower half remained in the testing block, trembling. No one spoke. The silence was not disappointment. It was measurement. Every eye went to Lady Forlorn.
The smoke-grey blade bore no mark.
Torren lowered it.
Gerrik stared at the broken sword.
For a moment, all the months of work stood on his face. The failed blooms. The ruined edges. The burns. The nights without sleep. The hatred fed carefully into heat. The first true sword he had made in the mountains, broken in front of everyone by a dead lord's stolen ghost.
"You broke it," Gerrik said.
"Yes."
"That was the best thing I have made here."
Torren looked at the snapped half on the ground. "It lasted six blows longer than I expected."
Gerrik's anger faltered.
Torren slid Lady Forlorn back into the black sheath across his back. The leather swallowed the smoke-grey blade inch by inch until only the ruby pommel remained above his shoulder.
"Not bad," Torren said.
Gerrik looked at him as if the words had come in the wrong language. "Not bad?"
Torren picked up the broken half of the steel sword and handed it to him. "Against that? No. Not bad."
No one laughed.
No one dared.
Konnan made a sound from Lysa's arms. Not a cry. Not quite. A low, displeased noise, as if the ringing had ended before he was finished with it. His red eyes remained open, fixed on the broken blade.
Morna noticed.
Babies were meant to startle at such sounds.
Her little brother only stared.
"How many more?" Torren asked.
Gerrik looked from the broken sword to the forge. His face had gone still in the way it did when feeling became too large and had to be locked somewhere work could use it.
"Like that? Not soon."
"Then not like that."
Gerrik looked up.
Torren pointed at the broken sword. "Long swords take too much time. Too much good steel. Too much pride."
Gerrik said nothing.
"Make what the mountains use," Torren said. "Axe-heads. Spearheads. Short blades. Thick knives. Wedges. Hooks that tear shields. Points that go through leather. Edges that open mail where mail is weak."
Brak's mouth twisted into something that was not a smile.
Torren continued. "Good iron for the bodies. Steel where it bites. I do not need every man carrying a lord's sword."
Gerrik's eyes shifted toward Longmere's direction before he could stop them.
Torren saw.
"Longmere has doors, not knights," he said. "Make things for doors. And for the men behind them."
Mara went very still.
Tomm looked from Torren to his father. The Old Tongue word for enemy moved silently on his lips. Morna heard without hearing. This time she did not correct him.
Gerrik held the broken sword half in both hands.
"How many before the next moon thins?" Torren asked.
Gerrik looked toward the forge, then at the apprentices, then at the ore waiting under hides.
"Enough," he said.
"For what?"
"For hands that know where to put them."
"Good."
Gerrik looked toward Tomm then. Only once.
The boy stood beside Savar and Morna, under the watching eyes of the clan, with old gods still in his mouth and Longmere somewhere below them all.
Torren turned from the testing post and looked down the mountain.
The village slept beyond the lower dark, behind fences, under roofs Gerrik had mended, behind doors held by nails Gerrik had made in another life.
"Make them," Torren said.
Behind him, the forge fire breathed.
This time, Gerrik did not answer with words.
He went back to the coals.