The Hammer of the Sun Read Free Page B

hour Kermorvan kept Elof so busy discussing shipyard problems that he should have had no time to think of anything else, and perhaps that was in part his purpose. But instead Elof found himself answering and eating in a kind of abstracted daze, while the core of his mind wandered along other paths. He heard his own voice as if it was another's, though it spoke sense enough, while through his inner self fears and worries stalked. He found himself longing for Kara to return, constantly fighting down the urge to run and find her, to be sure she had not somehow vanished away once more. When he heard her laughter, soft and bright as fine gold, echo unmistakably out of the shadows of the hall he felt his whole being relax in reassurance. Yet only minutes later he was anxious again. Wait ! he told himself sarcastically, Have patience ! That was not the turn of a smith's mind; they could be patient only in action, not inaction. No more was it their way to leave weak links lying; they would sooner forge the whole chain anew.
    All throughout that day it was that vision that haunted his thoughts, of a chain stretched to breaking. How he got through the many tasks that devolved upon the Court Smith and chiefest counsellor of so active a king, he never knew, for Kara was ever in his mind, Kara whom he loved too well to risk losing once again. Yet somehow it was evening, and he came to the door of their chambers in the palace, those high rooms where Kara's chains had been broken, and they had first become lovers. A great weariness was upon him, and a need for comfort, and the sight of Kara, reclining upon a daybed on the balcony, was balm to his tormented heart. She sat there in silent silhouette, contemplating a sunset of eggshell greens and blues beneath a canopy of clouds streaked fiercely red and gold, and when he approached her she did not turn, but waved him to the couch beside her. He stooped to kiss her, then stopped as he saw tracks of fire upon her cheeks, as though the angry clouds wept, and not she. She looked up sharply into his face, and began to speak, then hesitated. "You .. you asked me earlier… if there was any other voice that called me… that sought to part me from you… And I denied it. But, heart, you were right."
    For a moment he felt a vast sinking away beneath him, and then a sudden recovery; at least she was admitting it. He would help her now. "Yes. It's that she-wolf Louhi, isn't it?"
    Kara gave a short bitter laugh, and gestured dismissively. "Her! Oh yes, she is always there, far off, whispering, tugging. But I had almost ceased to think of her. This is something more, a thing hard to understand. Something I cannot know for certain… yet with every fibre of my being I sense it . A great change coming, a balance swaying this way and that, and whichever way it tips it must alter the world." She turned and leaned on the low railing of the balcony, gazing out at the sea; the wind had turned westerly now, by the gilded vanes on the high roofs below, and it was driving grey breakers in against sea wall and shore, booming upon block and gravel. Above them flocked gulls, bright in the last of the light, and their harsh cries awoke new fear in his heart, that at any moment she might fly up from him and be lost in their numberless throngs. "A wave rises over all things, and soon it will break… Much that is new must flow in, much that is old must be swept away. And I am old, heart, very old."
    Elof caressed her crisp dark curls, stroked her smooth cheek. "You are no older than when first I set eyes upon you. And you have little memory of the years, you have said."
    "Little, till first I came into bondage. Till first I set eyes upon you."
    Elof frowned. "Are the two then so close?"
    "Only in time. You do not bind me; I am not your property, your instrument and plaything, as I was… hers. Once I roamed the world uncaring, unremember-ing, save when I served the Steerers in war, and that too was in my nature from the