The day after his return, Sethlzaar, taking permission from Father Ordan, made for the smithy of the seminary. It lay far to the west of the compound as a boundary between the grey towers and those not just brothers of the seminary but brothers of the church. On the outside it was made of stone, like the towers and buildings in the compound. Its insides, however, reminded Sethlzaar of the seminary vaults beneath the keep.
Father Sigael asked no questions when he entered the smithy. The room proved hotter than that of Naelii's in the Sarkish forests and the priest put him to work on the forges almost immediately. When he'd worked with Naelii, his muscles had ached from never having been used in such manner but they seemed to have grown accustomed to the work in their might.
"Been in a forge before, have you?" Sigael asked him after a moment of observation.
"Yes, Father."
The priest scratched his jaw. "I see."
Sethlzaar made certain not to reveal any information of his time in the Sarkish forest, remembering the Monsignor's instruction to keep it a secret. He wasn't certain how many of the priests in the seminary knew of it, or even how many outside the seminary. After all, one of the secrets not meant to have left the monsignor's room had been used against him in the test of self by people who had not been in the room at the time he'd told it.
He labored under the task of setting the forge and choosing the metals for melding. First, Sigael taught him how to make a sword, having him aid him in the creation of one, and Sethlzaar found the Sarkish blacksmith was right; he had no place in the smithy.
As they worked Sethlzaar wondered at a closed room in the smithy. Something about it rubbed him the wrong way but, like Naelii, Sigael spoke little, and somehow Sethlzaar knew he would get no answer from the man if he asked questions.
The forging of a sword was not so different from his bow, but where the hammer hit the metal upon the anvil with a ting and a care in the forging of his bow, for the sword, Sigael seemed to put all his might into each blow, the sound, a constant boom in the smithy.
Sethlzaar spent three days in the smithy making his first sword, leaving only for his meals and his sleep and an hour of practice with the sword with Father Ordan. These practices he attended using the sword his brothers had made him. Most of the training was taken up with learning how best to strap the sword to himself and how best to draw without delay.
"This is not a quiver, Vi Sorlan." Ordan smacked him across the head with his cane. "Yer don' just pick at it an' expect it to come loose."
It took a while but Sethlzaar learned what the priest had to teach, and in his third day he could draw his sword, smoothly thumbing the straps of leather that held them in their scabbards with ease and pulling the blade free without cutting himself or snagging it. His skill proved mediocre but at least Ordan stopped whipping him for his clumsiness and whipped him for his speed, or lack thereof.
"How would you like your blade?" Father Sigael asked Sethlzaar after they had polished the practice sword on the fourth day.
Sethlzaar thought for a while, gauging his response. He was not certain how to describe what he wanted, and knowing his best option, he asked the priest, "Can I carve it from a piece of wood?"
The priest looked at him, puzzled. "No. Whatever it is you want, we will shape it while beating the metal." Preparing the forge, he added, "And you will aid in its creation."
Sethlzaar manned the bellows, pumping constant life into the forge as Sigael hammered the metals. After the smith was done, he retrieved two other metals from a stack at one end of the smithy. He lifted them in display, inviting Sethlzaar to choose, but Sethlzaar dared not leave the forge unattended. He chose one with lengths three-fourth of a yard and the other quite shorter, perhaps two-third of the former. Unlike the first metal which had been grey, these bore an uneven black, and Sethlzaar knew what they were at a glance.
Vaelusian ore.
"Heave," Sigael grumbled, and Sethlzaar returned to the laboring task of pumping the bellows in earnest, Sigael pounding away at the two metals in turn. The smith pounded for what seemed hours unending and Sethlzaar sweated so much that he feared when he finally escaped the confines of the smithy he would be dry as hay.
Sigael pounded, paused, then returned the metals to the forge before retrieving it for another round, an action he repeated a number of times before setting down the hammer. When he was done, both metals had taken the shape of a three sided strip giving Sethlzaar the feeling they would serve as the edges of the blade.
"Can the edges be curved, Father?" Sethlzaar dared to ask.
Sigael let out a grunt Sethlzaar interpreted as a sign of affirmation, then frowned, and Sethlzaar believed the priest had an idea of what he wanted. A few more strikes and time in the furnace had both rods bending. While the longer bent outward, the shorter bent inward. Beating the initial grey metal, Sigael shaped it to the length of the dark metals, slanting it at its end so one point rose to the height of one while the other descended to the other.
Sigael melded all metals together in silence, offering Sethlzaar no word of explanation, and he found himself wondering if the priest had trained his brothers in the same silence. As he worked Sethlzaar found the sparks that grew as hammer met anvil a hypnotic thing and marveled at it. He watched the three rods fuse together with each blow. In truth, it looked more like the dark rods met, swallowing the grey previously encased between them.
Sigael deemed the beating enough and Sethlzaar, knowing from his time with Naelii, presented a bucket of brine from one end of the smithy, earning himself a raised brow of minute surprise from Sigael while he stood back.
Holding the tang at the base of the blade Sigael plunged it into the bucket and Sethlzaar watched the water boil, a splash catching the priest in the face. The pain from the impact should have stung but the priest's lack of reaction could've fooled the sharpest of eyes into believing it nothing more than simple water of middling temperature. As the steam escaped the bucket, the fused metal rods cooled.
Sigael, never addressed Sethlzaar by name. 'Boy', it seemed, was the only title befitting for him and Sethlzaar found he preferred it to his own name in the mouth of other priests who somehow managed to imbue all their disgust into it. It was clear they respected his title of adoption more than the name that adopted him. The title 'Vi' couldn't have sounded any more important than 'Sorlan' even if it was shrouded in jewels.
Sigael inspected the blade when it cooled. The metal was joined to form a single one. It was unlike the ones Sethlzaar had found in Groc's study, tempered and forged, but quite boorish to the sight and, Sethlzaar believed, worse to the touch.
Sigael frowned at the sight of the form he had beaten the metal into. "Good," he said, then kept it aside.
They repeated the process again, making a twin for the first. This time Sethlzaar paid the priest little attention while he beat the blade into shape, listening only to the boom of hammer on metal, noting how the frown never left Sigael's lips as if the priest hated the duty.
"Now we will finish your weapon, boy," Sigael told him, the frown still on his lips. "Whatever it is meant to be," he grumbled.
The metals were the right length and width but they proved too thin. However, Sigael seemed satisfied with its thickness, or lack thereof. He motioned into the room Sethlzaar had been curious of from the moment he stepped into the smithy, and they moved.
Inside, the room possessed a chill in perfect contrast to the rest of the smithy, and Sigael closed them in it, banishing the heat, leaving them in an eerily familiar chill.
"In this room," Sigael said, his expression grave, "we will risk our lives to forge your veil."
The walls of the room were adorned in animal parts, from skin to various organs Sethlzaar could not recognize. However, one organ told him what animals the parts belonged to. The jar resting on a table was clean save the red stains inside of it as the organ inside beat in a steady rhythm, pumping blood that flowed from a tube at the bottom into a bucket.
"This," Sigael spread his arms in pride, encompassing the entirety of the room, "is the secret of the seminary. This is what makes the weapons we wield the veils that they are. Not the Vaelusian ore."
Sethlzaar was certain he'd heard contempt in the man's voice, perhaps directed at the ore for reasons Sethlzaar could not understand.
Sigael dipped the metal rods in a bucket of Vulcan blood. Sethlzaar noted the care with which he handled the bucket with gloved hands before pulling the metals from it with a tong, making certain not to spill the blood on himself. It was an odd act and he couldn't understand the reason for Sigael's extreme care.
It was just Vulcan blood.
"Put on a glove, boy, and help me open the furnace."
Sethlzaar moved diligently, putting on the gloves he found on one of the counters and made his way to the furnace where Sigael stood holding the blood soaked metals away from his reach. He reached for the metal door blocking the furnace and it seemed the priest had no intentions of making him light this one as he had done the one in the heart of the smithy.
He opened the door and froze at the sight before him.
"Move, dammit!" Sigael bellowed, suddenly absent of all the patience he'd display through the forging. Sethlzaar moved, startled, and the priest dumped the blades into the flame unceremoniously, blood and all, before setting the tong aside.
There had been no heat from the furnace when Sethlzaar had opened it, only a familiar chill he knew all too well. He understood now what made the priest's weapons so special. Not only were they made of vaelusian ore, they were cast in shadow fire.
"It is a thing of import to take any measure of care possible when dealing with Vulcan blood," Sigael said randomly.
Vulcan blood? Sethlzaar wondered, hoping he hid his confusion well, not shadow fire?
"If it gets on you," the priest continued, ignorant of Sethlzaar's confusion or simply uncaring of it, "it can rot the skin in a matter of seconds and, if it gets in you, it's like poison to the blood. The rain won't be able to save you. Not even shadow water will."
How long did I stand? Sethlzaar wondered, his mind casting back to the early days of his journey with Valerik.
They stood for minutes before the priest pulled out a different bucket made of iron and filled it with water from a part of the room.
"Shadow water," he informed Sethlzaar. "Gotten when Vulcan organs are burned in shadow flame. Rarer, even, than the fire itself."
The words pulled to mind the story of Father Alazath. He had been the one to discover shadow water for the seminary. He had been a healer who'd come across it when he cooked Vulcan organs is shadow fire. The bladder and the liver, to be precise.
Father Sigael opened the furnace door and retrieved the blades from the fire. They seemed to swell, coming out fatter than they had gone in. Black as starless night skies, they were covered in soot, showing only a slight red-orange glow between cracks—as wide as a boy's smallest finger—in the blade as Sigael returned them to the furnace.
As they waited a second time, Sethlzaar wondering how often the seminary ate Vulcan meat in the dining hall—if they ever did—asked, "How often do we eat it in the dining hall?"
Sigael regarded him curiously. "No one eats Vulcan meat, boy," he said, as if it was the dumbest question a person could ask. "They are rare animals. Their skin makes for strong leather, and their flesh and organs make for better elixirs, but," the priest shook his head, "their meat is poison."
Sethlzaar had a feeling the man would have loved to have a taste of the animal. The fact that is was poison seemed to fill him with a sadness.
When the blades came out a second time, they were a deep black, like the darkest shadows, darker than that of his brothers; more like Valerik's. A comparison he made having not seen any other priest's weapon since entering the seminary.
Sigael took the blades and dipped them in shadow water. Unlike salt water, the liquid did not boil. It let out a sizzle, calm as if nothing was put in it, and only when it ceased did the smith retrieve them. He took them to a table at the far end of the room, laying them on a bench beside a large pedal driven grindstone as black as the blades.
"A veil pulled from shadow fire is only half ready," he told Sethlzaar. "Like every other blade, it must be sharpened, polished, and honed."
Next, he had Sethlzaar watch as, setting the grindstone turning with its pedals, he put one of the blades to it, finding rhythm counting in twos in the language the priests often spoke with before handing the task over to him.
As the blade met stone it let out black sparks the likes of which Sethlzaar had never seen before, unsettling him at its appearance. He held his wits about him and kept at it a while, moving the length of the blade at the correct angles under Sigael's instructions, increasing and decreasing the speed of the stone through its pedals as per the smith's command so its whole length honed. Then he performed the task on the other side. He did this for both blades for a while before calling an end to the day's work.
The next day had them fitting the hilts. They were made from oak, and seemed to have been recently fashioned. It was as though the priest had reached into Sethlzaar's mind to choose a design for them.
Sigael fitted them to the blades, keeping them in place. He hammered four nails through the tangs within the hilts and filed them down. Then he dipped the hilts in Vulcan blood, wrapping them in strips of skin he retrieved from their place on a wall amongst others and tossed them back in the shadow furnace, hilt and blade together. After what seemed like an hour, employing the tong, he retrieved them.
Finished, he polished the wood with sandpaper and inscribed something on the hilts with a small blade, carving with the adeptness of an experienced sculptor. Upon his completion, he ushered Sethlzaar from the room and into the heat of the smithy where the blade glistened in their beautiful black, and Sethlzaar found himself wondering which of the two rooms was the main forge.
A pattern ran both sides of the blades' lengths, mesmerizing Sethlzaar as he traced them with his eyes, from the tip of the blades to the end, where they began, sprouting from the hidden secret of the hilt where the wood spilled over the blade in a design akin to the blaze of fire in a blackened brown of what had once been Vulcan skin wrapped around oak. On closer inspection he realized they had most likely been cracks in the blades. Flaws at some point in their making, seeming to complement each other
Flaws... He smiled at the thought. there are no such things.
"Your veils are complete," Sigael told him. "Use them well in your service to the credence."
The priest took the blades' measurements, frowning the entire time. He mumbled no words, and took no notes. When he was done he ushered Sethlzaar out of the smithy with a frown, as if ridding himself of an enforced nuisance.
"Yours is different from your mates," he told him. "Harder to make. Only made two like them since I began casting with shadows." He moved to the door, where he stopped to spare Sethlzaar a glance. "Stay away from smithies, boy, you have no place in them." Then he retired into the smithy, grumbling words Sethlzaar heard clearly.
"Foolish boy; making weapons like his father."
Sethlzaar held both veils up, admiring them with nothing but the light from the moon. Somewhere in the smithy he had lost track of time and had missed dinner. He wondered if Father Ordan would deem it fit to punish him if he saw him.
He didn't doubt it possible.
Shaking the thought from his mind, he returned his attention to the veils. They were identical to Valerik's, the wide blades, curved as scimitars, arched less. They proved slightly shorter than the priest's, but Sethlzaar was content. In simplicity, it simply possessed a curved blade. Where his mates' met a rectangle as guards before their hilts, his possessed no guard, the blades simply grew into the hilt.
Yet, something itched at the back of his mind, and it took him a while to realize what it was. It was something he'd learned from Filiis during his training, and had seen on the old man on an occasion.
A falchion, he remembered, the memory of the weapon drawing into his mind.
However, where Fillis' had been arguably the length of a long sword, his held the length of a short sword and was wider, again, with no guard.
He smiled, making his way to the tower. Father Ordan will not be happy.
He retired to his room. There he kept his veils against the wall, next to the Maeldun swords. Somehow—he noticed—he had escaped scarring from two smithies.