Beyond the Rim 28

"The forge needs more wind, Oorgo."
The small boy jumped on the bellows again, puffing out his breath just as heavily. Thurgod struck the molten metal with his hammer again. The metal formed perfectly, and Thurgod smiled.
"Why do we have to do this?"
Thurgod pointed his face at the child, aiming a foot above the belt buckle. "You must learn smithcraft."
"Why?"
"Because you are my apprentice, Oorgo. The fire needs more wind, child."
Oorgo jumped again, catching the top of the bellows and pulling it down with his weight.
"You should reach with your arms, child. You must grow in strength."
"But my arms are tired."
"Tired is when you begin to exercise. Exercise is when you get strong."
"But why do we have to do this at all?"
Thurgod set his project back into the forge. "The Fourth Mine needs parts for one of the machines. We must make it. We are the great smiths."
"But you don't need fire for that."
"Eh? Don't need fire? I can bend steel in my arms, but you cannot. And..."
"Not your arms, master. You can just tell it to bend and it does. Why do we need a forge at all? I saw you melt the chain."
Thurgod squatted down, putting his weight on the balls of his feet. He tried to keep his face pointed at the boy's face, but he could never be sure. "Pushing metal by command is a hard thing." Thurgod tapped the metal square that rimmed in his head and blocked his eyes. "I cannot do that all the time. And there is more. You cannot move metal that way. No man can move metal that way. So I forge it, that you may learn smithcraft."
The god and the boy instantly turned their faces towards the door as a tremendous crash thundered outside. Oorgo began to run towards the door, but Thurgod stuck his immovable arm in the way. "Oorgo. Let us play Find Me If You Can. The rule is that you must stay in this forge."
"But it's hot..." Oorgo was torn between his love of the game and his desire to escape the forge.
"The rule is the rule. We agreed that I get to make a rule when we play. Now you should stay."
Thurgod allowed no more disagreement, and stepped past the boy, slamming the door behind him. He reached with his mind and slid the locks shut. Oorgo could not reach the upper deadbolt. Then Thurgod moved his mind's eye in front of him.
A god was here. A demi-god. Thurgod sniffed.
"I can't imagine being blind so long."
"Ah. It is you."
"Indeed, thrall-god."
"What do you call yourself now?"
"I have always been called Gilgod."
Thurgod twitched mildly at the neck. "Welcome to my compound, Gilgod. Why have you broken down the door?"
"Wasn't that a neat trick? I did it by sheer will."
"Is it so much greater to do a thing by power than by your own body?"
The two deities stood in a courtyard of Thurgod's compound, facing one another, in silence for a few seconds.
"I am here for the boy."
"What boy?"
Gilgod smiled."Is that how it is going to be, Thurgod?"
Thurgod smiled. "I do not seem to recall any boys here. Something inhibits my mind."
The visitor laughed. "Very well. You sit right there, and I'll see if I can't refresh your memory."
Gilgod walked over immediately to the smithy from which Thurgod had emerged. "You locked this with your powers, did you? Well, I'll open it by mine." Gilgod placed his hands on the door, then a sharp sound exploded from the spot, and the door flew in.

Beyond the Rim Installment 27

Oorgo clung to the knobby knee of Thurgod's immutable godflesh, as he watched his mother, sister, and father wave goodbye atop a journey cart. Thurgod watched the screws in the frame and the horses bits, and listened to the boys' sniffles.
"Why do they have to leave, Master?"
"For each person is his life, and for each life is a place, and work. They should go back to theirs, and you stay with yours."
"Why can't I go with them?"
"Because the Queen would not allow you to leave."
"Would you let me leave?"
Thurgod pointed his face at the boy. The crude belt buckle could not betray the boy's feelings, but the increasingly sticky mess accumulating on Thurgod's kneed did. "That is a question with no answer, for I am under the Queen, and you know her word."
"But if you didn't have to do what she wanted..."
"All within the Rim must do as she orders, for there is none stronger than her."
"Maybe she wouldn't notice me leaving."
"She would."
"But maybe she wouldn't care."
"She would."
Oorgo slammed his little fist into the back of Thurgod's leg, then clutched his arm and squelched a cry.
Thurgod squatted and caught the boys shoulders. "You must be careful with godflesh, or you will hurt yourself. It does not give to anything."
Oorgo looked up, then brushed his hand along Korlythe where it met Thurgod's forehead. "Anything?"
Thurgod whispered, "It gives to one thing."
"Is it stronger than godflesh?"
Thurgod's teeth chattered. "Yes."

Beyond the Rim Installment 26

Cart wheels clattered along the Way. Thurgod watched their wheel rims, and the bits in the horses' mouths. He watched the chain that linked him to Oorgo roam this way and that, wrapping in a circle around Thurgod's waist as Oorgo cycled from viewing the city over the rail, then back to watching the traffic.
Thurgod had sent the message by way of the town golem many days ago. He knew what to look for. A sack of silver coins, and one boon-coin. Such a cache of metal would not be discernible at a great distance. All traffic entering the city would have to come along the Way eventually.
Oorgo stumbled as he ran out the chain's length. Thurgod felt the child drop to the pavement, relieved to hear him giggling. "Child, if you would not wrap circles around me, you could walk further."
"Come over here, Thurgod. Come over here."
Thurgod followed the voice. "That is not my..." Thurgod paused. The chains were wrapped tightly around his legs.
Oorgo's giggling redoubled, and Thurgod smiled. He pushed on the metal with his mind, melting the links, sewing them together again. But then he winced. He could not push that kind of power.
Oorgo did not seem to notice, and only kept laughing. Thurgod looked at the metal in his mind. The job was half done, but with his recent torture he did not have the heart to finish it. The chain was ruined, until he could devote more time or a natural forge to it.
Thurgod bellowed, "Looks like you'll be learning chain forging this afternoon, child. I am too tired to push it the rest of the way."
Only then did Oorgo survey the oddly curled metal strip which the chain had become. "I can't move with that."
Thurgod said, "Certainly not." He reached to his waist and undid the fastener, then stepped his way out of the metal loops awkwardly. "Today, you walk without the chain." Thurgod knelt down, and undid the fastener on Oorgo's belt, linked to the buckle.
The belt buckle was a crude thing. Oorgo's first smithing practice had mostly resulted in a slight increase in the boy's muscle. His greatest accomplishment thus far was the belt buckle. Thurgod watched it in his mind. Without the chain, it would be his only means of tracking the boy.
As soon as the fastener was clicked off, the belt buckle bolted away, and Thurgod heard a small boy's laughter grow rapidly quieter at the same rate.
"Oorgo!" Thurgod bellowed. He did not understand this sudden burst of energy. For seven days they had not left the compound, and focused on training Oorgo in smith work, and not once had he acted like this.
"Find me if you can!"
This was a game Thurgod knew. "In this crowd? I will blunder into the street, young one." Oorgo had explained this game on the fourth day of smithing practice. They had tried it exactly once, in which Oorgo was only ever found after he grew bored. The blind god was a terrible seeker, and he had told Thurgod so.
"No you won't!" Thurgod kept his mind on the belt buckle, now very small. Then he opened wider and looked at all the belt buckles, the chariot wheel rims, necklaces. There were not a lot of people on the Way, and not many carts.
Thurgod extended a hand in front of him and muttered. "I am blind. I am blind." Thurgod hoped Oorgo would imagine himself hidden and become stationary. He could not travel quickly. After only a few steps he remembered the metal wreckage he had left behind. He backtracked and picked it up, then smashed the thin strips in his unflinching hands. Thurgod focused back on the belt buckle.
It was lying flat and stationary. Oorgo was laying on the ground. Thurgod shambled his way forward, hand extended, muttering. "Oorgo, your master has need of you."
The boy did not say anything, but this did not surprise Thurgod. This was the way the game was played, Oorgo had informed him. Oorgo either did not remember or did not care how little Thurgod had explained that he liked the game.
Finally Thurgod reached the spot, then quickly dropped and put his hand on the boy. But his hand met only the buckle and the stone pavement of the way. The fabric strip was there. The boy had dropped the belt.
Thurgod turned his head this way and that in an ancient habit of looking around. He grabbed the shoulder of a passerby, using a necklace to aim. "Human! Have you seen a small boy?"
The human stood transfixed in fear. To see the smith god was one thing, to be touched by his godflesh, another.
Thurgod withdrew his hand. "My servant has run off. I am blind. Have you seen the small boy?"
"I... I... I have seen many small boys. Running errands. Apprentices are all over the street."
"What about one with no belt, running no errand?"
"I... I... I am sorry, lord, I..."
"I am no lord, sir. If you have not seen my boy, I must be going." Thurgod turned away and walked quickly, bellowing, "Blind! Blind! Oorgo?"
Chariot rims rolled by. Purses on chains. Sandals. A golem approaching down the street. Coins. A journey cart with a depleted sack of silver coins and one boon coin, stopping to a halt.
The boy's parents. Thurgod inhaled deeply and faced the cart.
"Father! Mother! Mairda!"
Oorgo's voice. He had spotted the cart and ran at it, his life spared only by the attention of three different cart operators, all yanking on their horses' bits.
"Oorgo! My boy!"
The elated screams and yells of the family were followed quickly by the curses of the three drivers.
"He's right there!"
Thurgod watched as a small necklace turned to face him. The rims of the journey cart turned as it was pulled to the margin of the street, amid apologies and curses by various drivers and one occupant of the cart.
Thurgod looked down the street. Of course, he couldn't be hurt by anything rolling or walking along, but mortals interacted poorly with implacable godflesh. If a chariot hit him, a charioteer's livelihood might be destroyed with no harm to his divine body.
The golem was very near. Mortals always gave golems a wide berth on the street. Thurgod slipped through the gap and crossed the street.
"My servant has found his family, then?" He said.
"And quite obliged we are to you, Master Smith," said a deep voice.
A feminine voice agreed, but even Thurgod could hear the forced nature of her words, "You do our son a great honor and favor."
Thurgod bowed. "It is a privilege to teach the boy smith craft. But the driver is delayed. He should be let go."
Henlick asked, "Where are we to go?"
"You have come to see the boy. Or have I misjudged?"
"Well, yes. But where are we to stay?" the mother's nervousness was evident.
"Room will be found for you in my compound. And you shall see the city, as well, unless you already know the capital?"
Henlick gathered up a the sack of coins, and the boy's mother a sack of hearty rolls. Mairda leapt down from over the wheel, to the remonstrance of her mother, and the chariot was ordered away.
"Oorgo, why do you have no belt on? Your trousers sag..."
Thurgod answered, "I have it here, lady. He discarded it in a game of Find Me If You Can."
"Thurgod can see metal, but not anything else!"
Nobody said anything for a minute. Thurgod did not understand the silence.
"You... play hide and seek with our son?" There was a catch in the lady's voice.
Thurgod swallowed. "Yes. It is... our favorite game."
The necklace moved quickly, toward the metal buttons on the father's jacket.
The girl's voice followed immediately, "Can we play at your house?"
Thurgod pointed his face towards the voice. The voice was eager. She played the game, too? He muttered an incoherent filler then said, "Of course! But perhaps you two shall seek me?"

Beyond the Rim Installment 25

Thurgod commanded the gate to his compound to open as he flicked his hand. He watched as the latch gave way and the metal swung away. The smith god's rounded shoulders slumped, and his hand trembled at his side. He stepped through the gate, then reached behind and threw the gate shut again. The gate shut with a loud noise.
Thurgod proceeded to the door of his living quarters, but stopped as he saw its hinges turn open before he reached it.
"Is that you, child?"
"I heard the gate bang shut."
Thurgod took a tenuous step forward. "I am sorry, child. I was not thinking of your sleep."
Oorgo stood in the doorway, staring at the moonlit silhouette of the smith god.
Thurgod sniffed, and reached forward with his hand. "If you are  still in the door, I cannot come in, child."
"Sorry, master." Oorgo stepped away, and hearing the footsteps Thurgod stepped inside. He pictured his bed of iron only a few rooms away.
"Thurgod?"
"That is not my name, child."
"Sorry, master."
Thurgod had taken half of a step towards his own door, but then paused and pointed his face at Oorgo. "It is I who should be sorry. I have woken you, and when you have obviously wanted to ask me a question, I have rebuked your sleepy head. What did you wish to know, Oorgo?"
"The Queen. What did she say?"
"What did she say?"
"When you went to talk to her."
"The Queen. Yes. Yes. I spoke with her tonight. She had questions for me."
"Questions about smith work?"
Thurgod remained still, frozen in his half-turn. "Questions from one god to another."
"But what about? Why did she call you away?"
"Are you afraid, child? What is the meaning of so many questions?"
"Are my parents coming?"
"What do..." Thurgod canceled his own question to catch Oorgo as the first sob nearly threw the boy over.
"The queen is terrible. She..."
"Your mind is too small at this hour, child. You need sleep." Thurgod cupped two of his fingers over the boy's mouth, but left his nose open. "Little boys should not be wakeful at this time, not after so much walking."
"...my parents..."
"I think that they are coming, child."
"You do?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"If you were not going to believe me when I answered, why did you ask me?"
"Huh?"
"Why did you ask me to tell you, if, when I told you, you would only ask why I thought so?"
Oorgo began to answer, but his answer was lost as his head flopped onto Thurgod's arm, and he was asleep again. The smith god carried the child back to the bed of straw, and before putting him in he remade the bed.
"The hearts of little boys should not be troubled with so much, but for now it has to be. You will be made stronger."
"Stronger?"
Thurgod's eyebrows raised.
"Yes. Stronger. You will have arms like mine. Metal will bend because you strike it. You will be a fine smith."
"Stronger."
"Yes, child. You will carry a whole crate along the whole Way and not grow tired."
"A magic crate?"
"Yes. You will carry a Queen's Chest, full of secret things that you have made."
"What kind of things?"
"Things you invent. Things I could not make."
Oorgo tried to answer again, but only muttered a whisper.
Thurgod continued. "You will go through the city, and some will say, 'There is Oorgo.' And you will enjoy sunsets. And you will be the smith for people, as I am the smith for gods."

Beyond the Rim Installment 24

“Thurgod. You are delayed in answering my summons. Why?”

Cyllgod was not in her amphitheatric court. She was back in the Room of Green Marble, her personal quarters. It was an austere room, with tremendous ribbed doors as its gate, of metal a few inches thick. This room was hidden away within the mountain, away from natural light. It was only ever lit by the light that emanated from unrestrained godflesh, or the incantations of the demigods who attended.

Her question hung in the air as Thurgod silently took shambling steps towards her. “My lady, do you wear mortal raiment today?”

“I do. Projecting the image of clothes to the human minds may be well enough for thrall-gods, but it was time that the Queen of All Gods distinguish herself.”

“You have distinguished yourself among gods by draping cloth over your body? My queen, the body is but an option to us. It cannot be improved.”

Cyllgod laughed a single syllable. “Advisement on appearances comes from the blind god? You cannot even see what I wear.”

“It is more than your crown, Queen. A coat of mail, ill crafted by a lessor smith, this cannot become a the Goddess for…”

The Queen raised an arm, draped over with a deep blue sleeve. “Kor! Kor! None of that talk here! And I think that your crown would remind you of it. And here you have flattered me and saught to avoid my question. I sent a summons to you by my swiftest demigod, my personal messenger. You received it hours ago, many of them. You might have come during the day. Yet now it is night. I give you a chance to explain yourself.”

“I was summoned while my servant was with me, and he is of a tender age…”

“Now there is an interesting fact! You choose the most unusual servants, Thurgod. This boy cannot have seen fifteen winters, and you have made him the chief servant to the greatest smith there has ever been?”

“A strong arm can be put onto any man with enough labor. Knowledge of metals can be taught. That boy has what cannot be put in by any god within the Rim.”

Cyllgod folded her hands together and crossed her legs. “Oh? Are there gods beyond the rim?”

Thurgod dropped to his knees, beginning to pant.

“You know, Thurgod, you sometimes talk about the strangest notions. You talk about gods being made for something, and not for another thing. You talk about there being a world outside these mountains that is not pure desolation and emptiness. I’ve even heard you to whisper in your deepest soul about a god before all gods, before me. Are you going mad?”

Thurgod dropped to his face, writing on the floor as forbidden memories were aroused, and grunted a gross bellow, followed by something just better than a snarl.

Cyllgod laughed three syllables this time. “Why, you look mad! Look at you, so precious in your limitations! And to think that with your mind and body so castrated as it is that you still have the audacity to scheme against me in my own city.” Thurgod’s neck twitched furiously, but he clenched his teeth against making noise.

“Do you remember when you once walked outside this city? Do you remember what the trees looked like?” She pronounced each of the last three words delicately, with wet lips. “Do you remember having a face that did not appall every mortal….”

Thurgod rolled onto his back, seizing at the smooth floor below him. His roar of pain struck just the note to reverberate a dozen times in that stone room, shaking the metal doors on their hinges. His bass tone was complemented with sick harmony by the ringing laughter of Cyllgod.

Thurgod struggled to articulate. “Torment. You brought me here, to torment me?”

Cyllgod stood from her seat on the raised dais. “Oh no, no sweet Thurgod. I brought you here to ask you questions. But you were not going to answer them. You mean to keep a secret about that boy of yours. So if you will not comply and bring forth what you can but will not, then I will bring forth what you will, but cannot.”

“Liar. Queen of them.”

Cyllgod stepped forward, her leg projecting from dress she wore below her newly sewn robes of state. She stepped with perfect balance, her silver crown never wavering. “Queen of everything, to you, thrall-god.”

Thurgod repeatedly beat the side of his face into the ground, the Korlythe chipping at the floor. Thurgod made every effort to pronounce words, but only managed to produce foam.

With an infinitely graceful movement, Cyllgod was suddenly kneeling beside Thurgod’s head. “Oh, little Thurgod, my favorite little god. You hurt so badly. Shall I lift the pain?”

Thurgod’s breathing stoped, except occasional wheezes. He could only manage to whisper out the L sound repeatedly.

Cyllgod’s voice dropped two octaves from its usual pitch, and she muttered words not ever heard within the rim. Silver streaks churned around her face, concealing her bluish hue, until quietly she voice faded to whisper.

Thurgod took a series of sharp breaths. The air. Except for the scent of Cyllgod, it was clearer. It was like…

The mountain was cold, and the pair climbed in snow that was knee high. They both were fully aware of the cold, but they did not mind it. They were gods.

She did not care. She was with the smith-god, and this was a fine adventure.

“I remember when the flakes were taken from the sea. It will be long before they return.”

“You should tell me when they return. We can… watch them melt.”

She laughed a hearty chuckle, “You’re silly. What fun is there in watching snow melt? It is always melting.”

“Do you know where all of them are? Every drop and every flake?”

“I know when they leave the sea. I know when they return. They tell me all their adventures.”

The smith-god put his thick hand lightly on the other god’s face. “The flakes brushing your face now? What are their stories?”

“That was just an excuse to touch my face, wasn’t it?”

The smith was silent for a moment. “Apparently not a good enough one.”

She smiled. “I didn’t say you needed a better one.”

“Do you like it, Thurgod? Being a god again?”

Thurgod opened his eyes and realized he was breathing evenly again. Cyllgod was kneeling beside his head, which rested on the cool marble, which was wet with his own sweat.

“What. What have you done?”

“Korlythe is just an ornament now. I lifted the curse.”

“I hear. I hear the Sea.”

“Oh, all your memories must be rushing back in. It’ll be fine,” she rested her right hand on his right shoulder. “Just ease back into it. You’re a god again, a real god. Greater than the fledgling demigods.”

“A god again? I have always been a god. A god for doing, a god for doing smith work.”

“Yes. That is how you were made. But here, in this valley, within this impenetrable Rim, there are only two gods, and true gods do not need to stay as they were made. I was the goddess of beauty. I am now Queen of Gods. What could you be, Thurgod?”

“I am always the god for smithing. I should not be any else.”

Cyllgod was silent for a moment, and then she traced the forefinger of her left hand along the outline of Korlythe. “You do not need to wear this anymore. I could call the crystal golems. We could draw it off.”

Thurgod’s voice leveled. “What are you doing, Corsinial of Old? What are you seeking to take from me now?”

Cyllgod leaned over, putting eyes just peering into the top of Thurgod’s vision. “Take from you? I am seeking to give to you. To make you great. Let you become a true god.”

“Speak the truth plainly, Corsinial. It is unbecoming of you to conceal from me still yet, when you say you are releasing me from a curse.”

“You could be the Prince of Gods, and we could reign together. No mortal and no demigod should see a difference.”

“What?”

“You and I. We are the only read gods here. Gods who have climbed the hill were First God once reigned.”

Thurgod was silent.

Cyllgod leaned her face directly over Thurgod’s face, only a few inches from his. “Together. Gods and rulers, together. As I wanted when first we came.” She paused, but Thurgod did not respond. “I was so glad when you were found in the camp. Not for the gems you carried in your belt, or for the golems you would build for me, but for you, Thurgod, my sweet…”

Thurgod spat, catch her full in the face. “I rule no humans. I rule no…”

Cyllgod struck him across the face as she stood up. “How dare you? How dare you assault…”

Thurgod was on his feet, “Are we not both gods? One god to another, Cyllgod, you are a liar, the Queen of Liars, a murderess, who plotted the death of Meldus, who ousted First God from the world.”

“I killed Meldus and I killed First God, and I’ll kill you, too if you do not learn to keep silent before your betters! Korlythe, awake!”

Thurgod felt the metal band tighten around his mind.

The cold snow did not bother his back. It did not bother her. They were gods. Her foam white hair spread across Thurgod’s chest from where she had lain her own head, watching the sky display Meldus’ glory. Rainbows of color flickered in the sky, and the smith scarcely cared for them. They were a good excuse.

Then there was a void, and there was no snow, and no foam white hair.

Beyond the Rim Installment 23

Oorgo and the smith god arrived at last on the fringes of the city as evening arrived. The evening was grey as the sunset was veiled by cloud, and the shadows of the mountains were now creeping up into the city. Still Oorgo's pace had not slackened, and he kept the chain taught as he went on ahead, fascinated again by the wares of this city's edge marketplace through which they had passed that morning. By now though the merchants and sellers were gathering together their wares and sealing them up, either to carry home or to leave in Queen's chests, metal boxes able to be opened only by the owner, a device of cunning for which Thurgod was surely responsible, though they bore the Queen's name. Oorgo paused and stared at one of these, fascinated as the merchant spoke to it.
The merchant muttered a nonsense password, "Cumunreal," and the box flipped its lid open. Oorgo jumped back, and blundered into a porter carrying away the greater half of another merchants wares.
The porter turned and muttered a curse as his load, carefully balanced across his shoulders, wobbled. Then seeing the chain he through down his load and said, "So now the gods make slaves of our children, eh?" He stooped and picked up a stone.
"Have not gods held humans by the nape of the neck all of your history?" said Thurgod.
"To think you lead a child around on a chain!" and he hurled the stone at Thurgod.
It struck the smith square in the face, but then rebounded in a random direction at the same speed with which it had flown in. A woman selling pottery ducked as one of her largest pots was shattered.
Thurgod bellowed in the direction of the porter, "Fool! How is that it is I that am blind, but it is you who cannot see? The child leads me!" and he gave a shake to the chain that connected him to Oorgo. "See, even now your anger is misplaced, and your own kind are hurt for it, and the gods pass on untroubled."
"I'd soon live to see the day you die, smith-thrall."
"And I have lived to see a hundred generations of men die, and am but a day older. It would be better if you let your anger pass, for it is fruitless."
The tension hung in the air for a moment, but knowing that another stone thrown could do no good, the porter turned and balanced his burden on his back again. He meandered to a side street, muttering, as the pottress chased after him howling her remonstrances, and asking who is employer was.
Thurgod resumed his walking, giving a tug on the chain to wake Oorgo from his petrified state. "The Queen waits for me, Oorgo. It would be better if we did not make her wait long." As Oorgo caught up to the god Thurgod scooped him up and placed him on his shoulders again, walking quickly.
"He broke the woman's pot."
"I am sure the courts of the city will settle that dispute."
"The queen's court is gonna do something about it?" asked Oorgo.
"No. There are other courts. Magistrates."
"I saw some magic crates. They opened when the man spoke to it."
"You have the wrong word again, Oorgo. A magistrate is a man who tells other men what to do when they are upset at each other."
"So are you a magistrate?"
"Am I man?"
"No."
"Then I am not a magistrate."
"Did you make the boxes?"
"They are called Queen's chests."
"Why didn't the stone hurt you?"
"I am made of godflesh, and godflesh does fear to be struck by a stone thrown in anger."
"What about copper? Can godflesh get hurt by copper?"
"No. Godflesh cannot be wounded by copper."
"Iron?"
"Godflesh cannot be wounded by any thing you will find on the planet, child?"
"Then what's wrapped around your face?"
Thurgod stumbled, and toppled to the ground, forcing Oorgo to make a rough dismount, and also crash to the ground.
The child immediately began to breath deeply and to whimper. Thurgod had known children enough to know what would come next, so he roused himself from his reeling and said, "We are already too slow. We must move on."
"My arm hurts. It hurts."
"Did it crack?"
"No."
"You do not walk with your arms; your are not so small a child as that, nor are you an ape. The Queen requires that we move on."
"What's an ape?"
"I will only answer that question if you are walking."
Oorgo hopped up, but then winced as he felt his shoulder. Thurgod began speaking immediately, "An ape is a creature with huge arms, so huge that it walks with them like feet. And instead of feet, it may have hands."
"I saw a juggler once. Can apes juggle?"
Thurgod skipped a stride as he walked. "Can it juggle?"
Oorgo just nodded and made a little skip forward, gaining a half-stride lead on the smith god. "You know. Throw balls or things in the air and catch them and throw them."
"I, I, I have never seen an ape juggle."
"Have you ever seen anything?"
Thurgod slumped his shoulders slightly. "Yes."
"I mean besides metal. Have you seen things that aren't metal?"
Thurgod did not respond, but his breathing deepened.
Oorgo looked down and slowed his pace. "I guess you must have. You knew that sunsets on the mountainside are beautiful."
Thurgod jiggled the chain idly, toying with the slack as they walked together. "Yes. They are."
The pair then walked in silence for a few minutes, Oorgo hanging closer to the smith god as the darkness fell and they reached where the shadows of the mountains fell onto the city. They finally obtained the Way again, and walked with the sunset before them, just showing between the jagged mountain peaks.
The cobbles of the Way were cool before they descended onto the city streets, and the iron of Thurgod's gate cold when they arrived. Thurgod opened the gate and let Oorgo in, then released himself from the chain. "It is the privilege of humans to close their eyes and no longer see the world. May your dreams be good, child."
"When will you be back, Master?"
"When you are asleep, if the Queen does not delay me."
"Do you know what she wants you for?"
"I think I do, but the mind, or whim, of the Queen is unknowable to most."
"Who can..."
"No more questions. It is not the time for it." Thurgod shut the gate and turned away, lumbering his stocky form as he retraced his steps towards the Way.

Beyond the Rim Installment 22

Thurgod was suddenly interrupted in the midst of the story. He and the child were only one terrace from the top of the final descent to the Sixth Mine, preparing for the long and level journey along the causeway. As they approached the last turn there appeared a sudden flash of brightness before them, and after the flash an altogether more amazing sight.
A human shape between seven and eight feet tall stood before them, its form made of twisted vines of blue, just slightly deeper than the sunniest of skies, and a color altogether foreign to those within the Rim. Obscuring his woven blue interior was the wreath of flame, blue at its base and green at its tips, which robed every part of its body save for the face and hands, and the face was obscured by a red-flame beard. Oorgo jumped back behind Thurgod, unexpectedly called out of the story which Thurgod told.
"Thurgod, thrall of Cyllgod, and Master of Smiths, you are summoned at once to the Queen's Court." The demigod's voice betrayed not even a hint of the flame that surrounded him, but was interrupted with frequent noises of snapping.
"I will come," said Thurgod. "Tell our mistress I shall come when the child is returned to my compound."
"The walk is long. You will not then be to her court by nightfall, and will make excuse to come another day. She says you must come at once."
Thurgod inclined his head slightly to be pointing his face at the messenger. "Is this how I have been in the past? When has the smith god said one thing to the Queen and then done another? Am I now suspected of deception?"
"You should be silent and do as you are commanded, thrall. It is not yours to ask questions."
"Nor is it yours to command me, nothing-god."
"I am the emissary of the queen. You are to come at once."
"I will come when the child," Thurgod tugged on the chain that connected him and Oorgo, drawing the child close to him again, "is safely returned to the compound. You know that evil men do wicked things to children caught on streets at night."
"I will take the child home; he will be in my care." The demigod spread his arms wide, a sight which caused Oorgo to stand beside Thurgod's leg, peering out at the mosntrous arms that might have embraced a dozen men at once.
"Tell the Queen this, that the smith god will come to her court when he has taken his servant safely home, and then come to her at once."
"It will be late. The stars will be bright before you could arrive."
"Has the Queen learned to need sleep? Are we not gods, free of being ruled by daylight? Did we not once..." Thurgod did not finish that sentence, clenching his jaw.
"You dare the question the queen's power of divinity? To her own emissary?" The green flares of the god's flame increased, and he stepped toward the diminutive pair.
"Emissary is a grand word to describe a nothing-god. Stand aside, and the child will go home with me."
"I will not return to my Queen without your consent to come at once."
"Then you will walk with us, and be yourself late on your return."
The demigod completed his stride toward them. "It appears your servant is a distraction to you from your duties. I will take him home now."
Thurgod stepped forward to meet the demigod, leaving only two more of his own paces, or one of the messenger's, between them. "And if I disallowed it? What then, nothing-god?"
The demigod swung his elongated limb at Thurgod, grasping his shoulder and tightening the grip, with crackling and snapping intensifying as his flame beard changed to white in fury. But the smith god stood still, his metal-wound countenance unflinching.
Thurgod opened his mouth to speak, but snapped it to again, forestalling words that would have caused him pain. He reached up and flung the arm off his shoulder, and then said, "It is now you who delay me. Leave me now to return my servant to his home, or I will have the Queen know it was your own vanity that delayed me."
The messenger leered, glancing at Thurgod for only half a moment, and then rested his eyes on Oorgo. He said the boy, "We will meet again, child," and then he started, as though to leap at the boy. Oorgo  tried to run away but the line that held him to Thurgod caught him, and he fell backwards onto the seat of his trousers.
With a flash the emissary disappeared, with only half a laugh in the air.
Oorgo ran to Thurgod, sobbing. He gasped for breaths, "He had fire and...." "How did you..." "...so scary..." "...why did he..." "what did he..." "I hate..." but Thurgod clapped his hand over the boys' mouth.
"Have you not seen, child, that the business of gods is beyond a boy? Then it would be better if you cared not for it, no more than it affects you or your human kind. If I and a god should disagree then it would be better if you did not think of it until you may learn from it, and you are small child. The hour grows late, and we are far from home."
Somehow the words quieted the boy, though they were little comfort. The thought of the bed of straw and waking to Thurgod's hammer on an anvil latched onto the boys mind. Within five minutes he was running ahead of Thurgod again, nearly dragging the smith god forward.
"Why do you live so far from the mine?"
"I live very far from the Sixth Mine. I live above the First Mine."
"There is a mine under my bed?"
"Yes."
"Then why don't I hear picks and golems, and there are no carts?"
"There are none who mine there now."
"The causeway is like a big spine, if the city were a really flat animal."
"Yes, child."

Beyond the Rim Installment 21

The two boys approached the cliff softly in a spirit of reverence and not of stealth. Their risk of detection was no less here than any other earth they tread. Their people had known these cliffs to be magical for years, but only the elder of the boys here truly knew anything of why, and he very little.
At the brink of the vertical stone face the boys paused.
"You must tell me when, Threader."
"I have only a little idea myself, Holder."
They stood looking below toward the floor of the abyss before them. At this time of morning fog lurked, and the bottom could not be seen. Neither of them knew if a river lay at the bottom or not. They had never fallen so far.
Then without warning Threader jerked over the edge calling, "Now!"
Holder barely had time to catch the leader's hand but was soon falling with him. To Holder's sight, this was a suicidal leap, but his faith in Threader and their master told him otherwise.
Threader could see the Gaps. Called "hihms," being the plural of a single "hihm," the Gaps appeared as rapidly fluctuating bubbles with neither shell nor center. They were not vacuums, as though air had lost its place, but voids, tears in the fabric, or otherise ripples in a river, made by the dropping of an immense stone upstream. Threader could never say what they looked like, but when pressed he said it was like having your eye in glass, an unending sea of clarity.
As Threader gained speed, the Gaps became more manageable. With any luck or happy providence he would find one of them before he found the ground, and his gift would save him, and any he pulled along.
Shortly before the mist would have enveloped the boys utterly Threader found his Gap. Racing as fast as gravity would draw him the Gap took shape just below his feet, and then for a moment neither he nor Holder knew anything. Then Holder would awake in a new place, as snapping to from an unplanned sleep. Threader's mind strained under the journey. He traveled through colors, as though they were brushing limbs of trees. He said it was like "falling outside," not in any particular direction, just out. Afterwards he would only have scattered impressions and lingering visions, recollections of meeting beings with too many faces or with too little other than faces, with the faint notion that he had, while away, met a god the sight of which defied words that asked him where he was going.
The landing was narrowly made. The tandem team alighted from that glassy dreamland on the sill from which they had last escaped.
"A dangerous choice, Threader."
"I asked," then he corrected himself without pause, "aimed for the scroll room itself. Sure beats sneaking here with the Guardian's ears on the ground."
"I heard you. You said 'asked,' again. There is a god."
"There is no reason to think there is a god. I speak where I wish to go and go there. Only because there are some gods do we imagine there must be another."
"They say you are in another place while you make your way here, dragging me along."
"They also say that you are to waste no time while we are within his bastions." Threader pointed to the jars and chests they had left.
Holder stepped lightly over to a drawer in a tall chest, withdrawing the slender scroll from which he had been reading when last he and Threader had ventured there.

Thurgod soon passed under the Wild Gate, made when he had learned from Bendu the image of wildness, and forged the watcher which ruled the portcullis. The image of the true wild glowered down at the smith-god, the tension of every beast waiting to spring inscribed in its folding metal. Without a word or a motion the will which Thurgod had forged into it lifted the portcullis, and the smith-god entered the first city.
The Wild Gate opened upon Bendu's Quarter, where the people answered to him. That tract was wide, and though it was called a city there were forests within its walls, or so in Bendu's Quarter.
Bendu's quarter offered little material to Thurgod, but always a trickle of inspiration. From vine was learned chain, and from from branch was learned beam. From wing was learned wing, and from from tooth, saw. But what Thurgod needed was not in Bendu's Quarter.
Deep into the city Bendu's Quarter came to an end, it's wide swath suddenly cut by a gigantic circular way, paved with stone perfectly smooth and without crack, maintained pristine by Endro himself, when business should call him there. Thurgod cut straight across the stone slab, stepping over the grate he had made to the ditch below, where rain would run into the sewer, which was of Itris' design.
It was the genius god whom he saught. Itris, whose mind was broader than that of any other god. She had made the sewer in her mind; Endro had delved it with his command. She had framed the tower in which she lived on paper, and the many lessor gods of clay-baking and wood-cutting had built it. It was the most austere of her designs, a block of brick framed in wooden beams, with dingy clay of brown color just paler than human skin, but it served her purpose.
Thurgod rang upon the door, clanking a knocker which he himself had made, after her design. At the first clang a shutter opened above the door, revealing a glass eye, which shut itself again in an instant. A moment later the door was opened inward, and Thurgod progressed onto a platform and said, "To the Lady."
The platform immediately rose into the air, with a graceful acceleration. Thurgod rushed past windows and balconies as he stood tensely maintaining his balance. With equal grace the ascent ceased, and Thurgod stepped onto a carpeted projection from a more distant balcony. Aesthetics and the use of empty space in pronouncing grandeur were not lost on the genius god when she could see a purpose in them. For the entrance to her private study, nothing else could suffice. Thurgod passed by a dozen golems of pure glass, difficult to spot in that pale blue light which glowed from hallowed crystals which Endro had given Itris as a gift. And then the door into her study opened.
Itris needed no throne room; a throne could not add to the perception of her deity, for any who made eye-contact with her felt their own minds grow small and dim in comparison, though when they walked away they knew they were in fact more capable than ever before. On a plush cushioned stool sat the genius herself, her mind pouring into a book, upon the pages of which were scrawled notes in a letters and organization more efficient than lines, but the pattern of which perhaps none but herself could discern. Her hands were idle on her knees, and not for her bright clothing her entire appearance might have been missed in that dim room.
"Master Smith? I do not recall summoning you. Have you come to learn of me again? Your thirst for knowledge is uncommon."
"Your assumption of knowledge is all too common, Scholar Queen," said Thurgod, smiling.
"Ah, there again I have assumed motive where no motive force was visible. You make me wiser."
The door shut behind Thurgod as he entered the room, carefully avoiding stepping on the tools and rubbish. It was hard to discern the difference when in her study, so many devices beyond comprehension of both mortal and divine littered her private chambers.
"I hope you can make me wiser. I have found a metal that bends neither to my command nor to my hammer."
Itris showed surprise, but said nothing, until Thurgod allowed a protracted silence. "Go on," she said.
"Meldus took me into a cave, and through a crack in the cave into a hall, wherein was a flat space, and then a raised dais."
"Is this the Hall to Bendu that Endro said he was making? It was to be a surprise, Thurgod."
"It is not that hall. While Meldus and I wondered at its common beauty, and its unexpected existence, I smelled Xerphii."
Itris involuntarily closed her book. "Go on."
"No Xerphii appeared, and no challenge was made to us. In worry Meldus broke his body and streamed into the sky, sending Endro to meet me. There we searched out the scent, and found behidn the dais, buried a few feet, a metal which would not break for him, nor be bent by me. Instead, when I had summoned up a hammer, the shaft was bent and head shattered."
"From what was it made, your hammer?"
"Endro summoned up the finest iron ore he knew, and gave it to me pure, unsmelted."
"There are harder things that can be made."
"And my shaft was of my own divine making, and it was bent."
Itris bit her lip. "Certainly something from out of the world, then."
"And it smelt of Xerphii."
"Then we should call it xerphyn, the metal of the Xerphii."
"What is more, Scholar, behold this," and Thurgod showed his right hand in a patch of light from a narrow ceiling window.
"You bleed?"
"The hand that struck the xerphyn is pierced, as though slashed by claw, in many places."
"You must visit Derad and have him heal you. He understands godflesh as well as mortal flesh or the flesh of beasts."
"It hurts no more than to have wrung hard metal. I will attend to that at my own time. The God of Growth need not be disturbed by the Smith-God's pains."
"A wound made by xerphii or xerphyn are both grave. He must learn from this, in case there is another war beyond heaven."

A crash awoke Holder from his reading. A stone spike had whizzed by him and smashed a clay jar behind him into pieces. The same sound woke Threader from his unplanned nap.
"I'm an idiot!" blurted Threader as Holder leapt to him, catching his arm.
"Obviously. Now out the window!" They leapt to the sill and bent to dive out. Holder kicked off the wall, but was brought back by Threader's grasp, as Threader tumbled back into the room. His waist had been grasped in the stone grip of the Guardian.

Beyond the Rim Installment 20

"In the western foothills, far from this city and far from the Queen, lived a peaceful people. They harvested the crops of the wild trees of that region, a fruit of which I cannot even begin to tell you, and herded cattle. There were among them no rulers, for each house was far from the other, and against one another there was no ill will. Thieving was harder than honest work in those days, so far apart did people live, and also because the wilderlands were not without danger. Though humans did little that was unfair to one another, nature himself was harsh, for he did not care to have humans in that place. The hills were sacred to him; they were to him an art he had made, and to see them sullied with human flesh made him angry.

"Nature sent his manticores down from his sacred slopes, from those temples to him above mist and cloud, and they scoured the hillsides, gobbling goats and sheep, and chasing people into caves or under roofs.

"A certain of the manticore descended upon a lonely lodge, where lived a young man by himself, without wife or child. The beast descended from the sky with a roar, invoking that unutterable name of Nature, which no ear but..." and Thurgod winced, "no ear in this valley can hear in total. The roar was terrible, but the man was brave, and he burst from his lodge with a long spear.

"But this manticore was more terrible than others. His tail was long, and split into three on the end, each spiny spike dripping with greedy venom. From his jaw draped a beard longer than the man in height, advanced by two fangs nearly like tusks."

"Like what?" asked Oorgo.

"Like teeth the size of arms, little one."

Oorgo had learned that perfect balance of fear which makes the story more exciting but does not distract from it.

"The manticore was most beautiful, perfect in each dimension, sullied only by its love of human blood and even, when most enraged, the blood of manticore."

Oorgo gasped a little, as he had learned that the bard enjoyed. He had heard that manticore and yeti were too civilized to eat one another.

"The sight that greeted the man was terrible. Even in the moment it had been on the ground it had slain nine of his animals in the very fold, each now writhing on the ground as the venomous tail slashed about, looking to catch more. In a surge of bravery the man leaped forward, plunging his spear into the flank of the brute, caught unawares, for the lodge of that man was carved into the hill, and few would have seen it even from the ground.

"The manticore whirled about, its tail indiscriminately swatting down a few living animals, which lay still on the ground in petrified fear. The suddenness of the turn caused the man to drop the spear, and he lay sprawled on the floor of the fold, the manticore staring into his own eyes."

"The manticore said, 'Fool! I am a beast of majesty, and you a petty human. Your wound is nothing to me,' and even as it spoke thus one of its tails curled around the weapon, still lodged in its flank, and cracked it off, then dug out the head. The venom expunging from the tail proved a balm to the flank, and its blood ceased quickly.

"Then in a flash the middle tail of the manticore slashed over its own head and struck the man in his foot, pinning it to the ground. The greedy venom rushed in, and slowly seeped from the foot to the ankle, and then towards the knee.

"'Nature will have its way with thee,' growled the beast, and then it launched into flight. The man dragged himself back into the lodge, where he found his own ax and severed his leg just below the knee, just above where the venom had reached.

"In the following dayshe built for himself a false leg so that he might still walk, and tend to the animals. For a year he lived thus, until the leg was no pain to him. For another year he lived, and soon none could have told he had ever fought a manticore. In another year he took a wife, and in another year he had a son. In another year, the manticore returned.

"It was the same noble beast that had come before, and now it had spotted the fold again. When it struck the ground it remembered the lodge, and forgetting the animals it strode towards the door. It could smell the human smell. But before it even reached the door the door was flung open, and the man emerged, holding again a long spear. He said, 'Take the animals and go, or I will spill your blood again.'"

"The beast laughed, 'Was my blood spilt in a time past? I have no fear of you.'"

"'The scar on your left flank belies you, as does the grass which never grows where your life was drained, if even only for a moment.'

"'Shall I flee and be left hungry, because a man pointed a bit of a tree and a stone at me?' it bellowed, bristling its tails.

"'Do not flee hungry, but full, for all the animals may be yours, and you need not fear to spill blood.'

"The beast replied not at all, but turned and in a handful of moments had slain every creature in the fold and devoured it, and then it flew away."

"After five more summers the beast returned, and said, 'Not your animals this time, human. I must bring home human blood. Give me your son.'

Beyond the Rim Installment 19

Thurgod's face betrayed feeling less readily than most, primarily because it's expressions were nearly void of movement in the upper face. His eyebrows might still move about, and the far regions of his face twitch as though trying to move his eyes emotively, but the expressions did not resolve. Oorgo was shocked at the expression, of extended jaw and knit brows, that was revealed despite the unholy band.
"Stallid, this part that I have repaired by my skill, it belongs to an augury golem, does it not?"
"You know it does. The augury golems were of your design."
Thurgod winced, "I fashioned them, indeed. And they dig very deep, searching for the rarest metal ores. That is why the Sixth Mine is here?"
"Yes."
Where a man might have approached uncomfortably close to the golem, Thurgod did not, but kept his distance of a few paces. "Then why, in the Queen's name, are there men down there? It was so that no men should risk those hot and hateful depths, tunnels and seams that despise mankind and light, that I constructed the augury golems."
"It was ordered that the mining not cease. With the augury golem out of commission I was forced to send worthless men..."
"What? Is it Stallid that is speaking?" Thurgod stepped closer to the silver golem, his nose turned upward, the movement he would make instead of cocking his head when other men squinted to see.
"You know it is."
"Then why do you call them worthless men? I built you to know that... that... that there was not such a thing," said Thurgod, drawing a corner of his nose tense.
"That is what they are called. It is how I know them."
With a sudden motion Thurgod lurched forward, catching the back of the golem's head with his left hand and drawing it down into his shorter forcefully, though with gentleness. Then in an instant he had pulled out the little metal strips again and was carefully investigating their grooves in his hands, and then under his nose. He replaced them carefully and stood Stallid up again.
"Do you remember the day you were fashioned, Stallid?"
"Yes."
"Tell me of it, servant."
"Of course I do not know from where in the ground came my substance. Yet I do remember the heat, as my metal was made hot and fluid, flushed around to take on a shape, though the shape was not mine. And then I arose, still red hot, but solid, and had mind as metal has. I stood before my lady, the great Queen, and there was told my duty. Why do you ask me to tell you this, Master?"
Thurgod's jaw quivered. He asked as though in a dry throat, "Stallid. Has another, besides myself, come and done the work of the smith-god, to change metal by mind? Has another taken out the slats of thought I gave you and changed them?"
"The Queen herself. She has changed me. Why do you ask?"
"Have any died?"
"Any?"
"Any of the," Thurgod mouth moved to spit but his throat to swallow, "worthless men?"
"One has died, as stone gave way above him. Because I knew this would make the Queen angry I sent you the Flying Word requesting a hastier repair."
Thurgod said nothing until he had breathed three times, while the golem stood still with infinite patience. "He was one of the Queen's worthless men, who owe to her a great debt?"
"Yes."
Thurgod breathed once more, then said, "When it rains, Stallid, you must get under a solid cover," and he turned away, Oorgo forgot to walk until the tug on the line that connected him to Thurgod reminded him, and then he bounded ahead.
"Did the golem say that a man died?"
"Yes, he said that." They walked past the squared golem, but it did not move, as Thurgod inhibited it. The two humans passed through the gate.
"One that owed her a great debt?"
"What, child?" Thurgod was recalled from another thought.
"A man who owed her a great debt died?"
"Yes, child."
"I owed her a great debt."
"In her words, child."
Oorgo said nothing, until, "Would I have died?"
"Whether the Queen would have sent a child to the Sixth Mine I cannot know, nor even if she would have known it."
An off-beat breath escaped from Oorgo's nearly heaving chest, and at last Thurgod thought of the mortal beside him.
"It would be better if you made your mind quiet. This is not a thing for you to think."
Oorgo fell sideways, his head flopping into Thurgod's leg. The child did not struggle with his tears.
"There is no need for you to fear today, Oorgo. You have a master who is a god."
"But you can't keep me safe from her, you said it, you said it..." he clutched his arms around Thurgod's knee, and the deity ceased attempts to walk.
"She hates me and my sister and I've said bad things about her and..."
"And she will do nothing about them. Cyllgod is a foolish..." and the Thurgod too collapsed, narrowly missing Oorgo, and they were left there, Thurgod on his knees gasping as he leaned into the child, and the child with his face plunged into the smith god's chest just under his neck.
The two of them knelt there for nearly a minute, the block shaped golem observing without evaluating. At last Thurgod stood up suddenly, and Oorgo leaned again into the god's hip. Thurgod reached down and grasped the side of Oorgo's head. "Now child, it is not good for us to think so. I may not think the true words, and you do not know them. It is best for you to trust me that this is not your fate, and that if it were, it would be well."
"How can it be well?"
"Your question is large. It must be answered while walking."
"I can't walk," said Oorgo, beginning to breathe faster.
"Yes, you can," said the god, "I have seen you, and there is nothing but yourself stopping you."
Oorgo tottered forward, shaking in trepidation.
"Before I answer your question, I will tell you a story."

Beyond the Rim Installment 18

From this point in the West of the city even Oorgo, at his height, could see a fair ways. Because of the elevation of the Way the great road lacked cross-ways, and all traffic moved along its length. Most traffic kept to the outsides, with the center lane reserved for the royal chariots of state. Thurgod and Oorgo kept to the right edge, as foot traffic heading towards the Gate was expected to do. Within a few minutes of starting along the Way, a chariot driven by a servant of Cyllgod and carrying in it one of her demigod agents thundered through the middle of the street.

"Why don't you have a chariot for you, Thurgod?"

"It would be better if you called me Master, child. Others may call me by that name, but you may have a better one."

"But Thurgod's your name. Why can't I call you by your name if everyone else can?"

Thurgod cocked his head once before he got it straight again, but even in that time Oorgo's face went pale. "Because to you the important thing is not that I am called Thurgod, but that I am Master. But I have been a brute and ignored your question. I do not have a chariot because the Queen has not given me one."

"Why can't you have one?"

"Horses are rare, even now."

"But surely a god..."

"There are many gods, have you not seen? Were there not many in the Queen's Court when you went to make your request?"

"But aren't you greater than them?"

"If you want me to answer questions, you must learn to ask them while walking, child."

Oorgo skipped ahead of Thurgod then said again, "But aren't you a greater god than all of them except her?"

"Well, what would make one god greater than another?"

"Being able to do... things!"

Thurgod laughed, and his gait slowed as he did so. "I suppose you mean that I am greater because I can smash metal from one shape to another? Do you think that no one else can do this?"

"And you can make golems! No one else can do that."

"What you say is not strictly true, but nearly enough," he said. As the words left the god's mouth his face might have been seen to wince very briefly, but Oorgo paid no attention, neither did the child see the mirth of the previous question melt completely from the deity's face as he elevated his chin slightly.

"But they can do that thing where they turn into light and fly away. I saw them do it in... what did you call it?"

"Probably the Queen's Court."

"Can you do that?"

"Turn into light? Why would I want to? Light cannot bend metal on this planet."

"What's a planet?"

"It's like a ball of rock very far away up by the stars."

"But can you do it? All of those gods had funny shapes their light came from. Do you have a funny shape inside you?"

"I cannot change into light. And the funny shapes, cores they are called, are only there when a god looks like light."

"How far is it to the Sixth Mine?"

"Long enough that I expect you will ask me that question probably five more times before we get there."

"I wish we had a chariot."

"You might wish it for a moment, child, but from how taught you keep the line I expect you would want to be out of its seat before we got there."

"You said you can see the wheels of the chariots. Are my parents coming here soon?"

"Are your parents made of metal? Or how should I see them?"

"If you could see the wheels..."

"Then how should I know who rides in them? Besides, I cannot see forever. And even did I know I might not tell you that I did."

"Why?"

"I can neither tell you what I know nor why I will not tell it to you."

Oorgo opened his mouth, but Thurgod preempted him, "Nor will I tell you why I will not tell you why I will not tell you, and neither will I be tricked into answering that monosyllabic question again."

"Monoslabbic?"

"Monosyllabic. It means it only little grunt to say it."

New words slowed down Oorgo. They stuck in his mind as he tried to fill them out with memories and unconscious associations as he had done with all other words. Thurgod did not mind the respite from questioning.

Within a few hours the pair had escaped the Way and then the city proper, descending the winding path which trekked across the steep hillside descending from the capital. The Sixth Mine began down below the ridge, slowly eroding the base of the North Spire, which lay at the north extreme of the Gate. By time they had accomplished only a quarter of the descent Oorgo had grown tired, and rode the rest of the way on the shoulders of the smith god.

At the bottom of the track they were greeted by a stone fence, and in it a gap serving as a gate, guarded by a stone golem with a block shaped head. "State your business here, and show your authorization to enter."

Thurgod set Oorgo down and whispered to him, "The golem asks you a question."

Oorgo just stood, staring at the golem and its curiously squared limbs.

"Why are we here, child?"

"To bring this."

"That is what he wants to know."

Oorgo stepped forward. Somehow this machine was more intimidating even than the butcher or Mister Henlick. "I... I am here to bring this."

The golem looked down at him. This was not a phrase it knew. It did not know how to look at a thing and know what it was. It had been given gate duty because it had grown old, and not useful for swinging a pick. But with a silent command from Thurgod's mind it said, "Good. What is your authorization to enter?"

Oorgo looked back at the god. "What does it mean?"

"It wants to know who says you can be here."

"Thurgod, Master Smith, says I can be here," he repeated to the golem.

This command it understood, and after a moment of searching its own mind for the truth it found that indeed, Thurgod had told it from afar that a small boy would be there that evening.

"You may enter," it said, and then resumed its stature looking out from the gate, as it had stood most of each day for dozens of years.

After they passed it, Oorgo asked Thurgod in a whisper, "Is that golem dumber than the other ones?" He looked behind them to be sure it did not here.

"Yes. It was made for swinging a pick, and blocky stone does not hold wisdom well."

"Why doesn't it mine anymore?"

"A fall chipped its right foot, as may have escaped your notice, but enough to make it unworthy of mine work, where a stumble is very dangerous." Then Thurgod raised his voice, "Sallid! Your master needs you here."

Suddenly a tall golem with metal limbs, covered all over in gears, levers, and sliding joints, turned. Its limbs were spindly, thinner in each part than the crystal golems of Cyllgod's house. It strutted over to the pair, other lessor golems adjusting their routes to avoid his as they moved hither and thither carrying loads.

"How can I serve the Master Smith?" the voice clanked. Unlike other golems of a more solid make, Stallid had no definable exterior shell except for the top and front of his head. Where his mouth was to be, as his face was clearly designed, there was a small aperture into a metal box, the most solid thing about him besides the dome which made the top. What wonders went on within the box to produce speech were known only to Thurgod.

"First, you must meet my new mortal servant, the child Oorgo."

Stallid's metal eyes turned unnaturally towards the boy. With the limited dimension of his skull, he occasionally looked through his own head, in this case rolling his eyes downward to look through where a human would have had a jaw.

Thurgod interrupted the golem's greeting, "Have you been out in the rain, Stallid? This is not how I built you to behave."

"No."

"An underground sea, it was then? Have you felt any water lately?"

Stallid's eyes rolled back to look straight at Thurgod, and he knit his brow, "I do not recall meeting water, but is the nature of water that I would forget it. What part of my service is unsatsifactory?"

"You forget to turn your head when you look towards things near you, instead rolling your eyes freely. Humans find that unnerving." Oorgo was clutching Thurgod's leg.

"I am sorry, Master Smith..."

"That is not all, Stallid. You I suppose it was that sent me the Flying Word?"

Oorgo looked up and whispered, "Is that the bug machine with the message?"

Thurgod pointed his face down and said, "Yes," in an undertone.

Stallid responded, "Yes. I had not received a golem part back from you which I desperately needed. I have been forced to great pains without it..."

"You wrote your message on parchment, Stallid."

"Yes, sir. That is how I usually send messages of an official nature."

"You have forgotten, then, that I am the blind god."

"A god, blind?"

Thurgod sighed. "Yes. You must have been in water. You have forgotten to use the metal messages I gave you. Kneel down, Stallid."

Stallid knelt into the dirt without protest, sullying his silver limbs. Thurgod reached into the golems head, then drew out a thin bar of metal, covered all over in tiny grooves. He blew on it, then into the compartment from whence it came, and the rust scraped off.

The smith god replaced the thin bar, and then did this action seven more times on other little bars. At last he replaced the last one and said, "Stand up, Stallid."

The golem stood, and for a moment its eyes flicked about, but never beyond their expected places. It even moved its head down to look at Oorgo, and then back up again. It clanked, "It is good. It is like a haze has been blown away. I see much better now."

"May I leave this part with you and have you replace it, Stallid? I am eager to return home."

Stallid reached down and accepted the golem piece from Oorgo. "Yes, this will be easy. When I have done so, I will tell the men to come up from that mine as the golem returns."

Thurgod had begun to turn when he arrested his own movement. He turned back to Stallid and said, "Repeat that. Are you sure the haze is gone?"

"Yes, and you would know better than I. I said I would bring the men back up from that mine when this golem was ready to return."

Oorgo did not like the expression which Thurgod's metal-marred face took on at that moment.

Beyond the Rim Installment 17

"Now, Oorgo, we must go out of the compound and return to the main thoroughfare. Do you know the way?"
"I think I do, Master."
"Good. The sixth mine is against the Setting Wall; we avoided it when we climbed into the mountains."
"When I explored the little cave high up there, and then told you about the sunset because you could not see it?"
"That is not why you told me about it, but it was that day. Unless you learn to talk while moving your feet we will have to cease talking, if we are to make our transit there and returned before the day grows late. I do not prefer to walk back in darkness."
"Doesn't it all look the same to you?"
"That is a question which I think I am unable to answer honestly, because neither yes nor no speaks the truth. But see here, your feet are still planted. I'll not answer another question until we are out of the gate."
Oorgo bounded, Thurgod feeling the tension increase on the guiding chain increase suddenly, and began to walk. Within another moment Oorgo called, "I'm out of the gate!" then Thurgod heard the sound of his feet pattering along the stone road.
Thurgod grinned as he stepped beyond the door into his walled compound. "You're out but not going far. This chain is for more than my guidance." And immediately there was a thud as Oorgo tripped up, held back by the god's planted feet as the deity dropped the metal latches of his door shut again. "Now we may move forward, boy."
Oorgo ran along excitedly, with Thurgod stomping along his short strides behind him. The line that connected them stayed nearly taught. From its varying direction, Thurgod could tell that Oorgo was running hither and thither across the street, looking down the streets that crossed with theirs.
Thurgod lived on what been the western edge of the city a thousand years ago, but was now surpassed by two more quarters of the city, a distance which the city had grown in the first few centuries of the city's growth, whereupon population growth, except by immigration and forced resettlement, ceased. His home lay within a walled compound - the exterior walls of his home were the walls - all surrounding that inner courtyard in which the messenger machine had landed. His living quarters occupied less than a quarter of this ring, with storage sheds and work chambers forming most of the rest. The gate of his compound faced south, towards that main causeway of a road which ejected from the Rim Gate, which, truthfully called, was merely a door into Cyllgod's castle, for none ever ventured beyond the Rim. The road was more of a causeway because it insisted upon remaining perfectly level, ignoring the fluctuation of terrain, and so was, by time it reached this distance from the Rim Gate, being considerably beyond the tallest foothills, nearly forty feet above Thurgod's home.
What it lacked in practicality, Cyllgod's Way made up in grandeur. Built in an era before Cyllgod's attending demigods had grown proud and lazy, each of its stone was laid by immortal hands which did not tire from lifting, and which might work for five hundred years at one task and not grow weary. Oorgo could hardly help but find a path to it, as the road loomed overall the houses, apartments, and shops which lay between Thurgod's compound and the Way.
On the north side of Thurgod's compound the ground had been worthless before the compound was built. When Thurgod had been established there and had drilled down for water he had discovered a great lake of it, fed by snowmelt draining through the mountainsides and into subterranean rivers. The stories said that he and an army of golems had descended thither, and below the ground built mighty waterworks which provided the moisture for the soil downhill, and thus was established the Smith Farms, a colony of growing food in the valley.
By now they had reached the foot of the Way, and Oorgo had stopped, forgetting in which direction the stairway was located. Thurgod's legs, though, knew the way, Oorgo to guide or no, and he naturally turned to the right, against the way their little road up from his gate, which lay at the end of a north-south road, had veered. Oorgo immediately agreed and came up along Thurgod, this time not running further on.
"So does it all look the same to you?"
Thurgod's mind had been otherwise occupied, but he quickly recalled the topic from which this question sprung. "My eyes see things no differently, but I see different things."
"I thought you didn't see anything."
"Now, child, you know I see some things. Or how else did you think I could make the device you carry far too unsteadily?"
Oorgo unconsciously tightened his left arm. "You can see metal. But metal's the same in the day or the night."
"What men do with metal is different. More knives and, whether you would believe it or not, more coins move around at night than at day."
"Can you see other people's coins?"
"They are all my coins. Every coin with which every thing is bought and for which everything in the Rim is sold was made by my strike, by my mold, or by my golem, and they all bear my seal. I have given them to the Queen's nation, so that it may profit by trade."
"How far can you see?"
"Far."
"But how far? Can you see the Queen's crown from here?"
"If I stopped to look for it, yes."
"And the rims on the wheels of her chariots, can you see them?"
"If I cared to."
"And the golems with metal heads in other towns, do you see them?"
"There is no golem within the Rim that I do not see."
"Are there golems outside the Rim? I was taught there was nothing outside the Rim?"
Thurgod suddenly sat down and drooped his head. He rubbed his hand against the Band, but then quickly withdrew it.
"Can't you talk about things beyond the rim?"
"No, I can't, Oorgo. It is forbidden."
"Does the Queen not want anyone to know about things past her gate?"
Thurgod fell down flat on the stone pavement, and Oorgo began to cry.
"I am sorry, Master. I am sorry. I..."
Thurgod put up a hand to tell the child to stop, or otherwise to grasp the child's shoulder, but instead ended up palming the boy's face. This, by reason of its strangeness, had the desired affect of ending the child's blubbering. Thurgod stood up, then released the boy's face.
"There is no need to cry for my pain, child. When I chose you I might have known you would have questions on questions, and some I could not answer. I am older than this pain, and fear it not. See, even now it is gone. We must be walking up the stairs"
Before Oorgo could wimper any more he found himself being pulled along by the leading line, and then in another minute he had forgotten the last time he made his master drop down short, though anyone who was the pink lines of tears which had appeared as rapidly as they do for children would have known something had happened amiss.

Beyond the Rim Installment 16

Oorgo opened his mouth, but before he could say anything Thurgod said, "It would be better if you asked me no more questions of the hammer."
"Is it one of the things you're not allowed to talk about?"
Thurgod was spared the jab of pain by a sudden distraction. A curious sound, a mixture of whirling and whooshing, caught the attention of both master and apprentice. Thurgod proceeded out into the courtyard beyond, with Oorgo coming behind him, still slightly wheezing. His breath was utterly caught when he looked up towards the sound.
A curious device, shaped like a butterfly but with an extra set of wings placed crosswise over the semi-sphere of its body was hovering over the courtyard, slowly descending. It spun about on its own axis even as it flapped its thin, metallic wings.
"This is the work of a master smith, Oorgo," said Thurgod, speaking slightly above his regular volume, to overcome the sound.
The device flew perfectly, though gracelessly and with an increased buzzing noise as it approached to a small half-column that stood in Thurgod's courtyard, capped with metal. Thereupon it landed, and its wings slowed their movement gradually.
"Is it magical, Master?"
"You might call it that, but even the wisest of men would know better. It does not take the word of a god to move this, only the smith craft of one. Perhaps in a dozen lives of men, or in a score, or in a hundred, they will fashion a thing like this." Thurgod gave the underbelly of the machine a twist and it came loose, resembling a basin in his hands. The metal was very thin, and Thurgod held it in his hands very gently. It looked as though even Oorgo might have crushed it in his hands.
"What is it?"
"It is a machine that I made years ago. You must be both young and from a far place to have never heard or seen one of these. These carry the messages of Cyllgod's government."
"Is it a golem?"
"It is less than a golem in intelligence. If a bird struck it while it was in flight, it could not right itself, nor could it tell its master of the problem. Happily, most birds are wiser than to do so."
"Why is it sent to you?"
"That I have yet to gain. Do you read, child?"
"No, but I can count," Oorgo replied.
Thurgod grinned, then grunted, "Yes, I can do the second as well, but on the first I suppose we both struggle. Perhaps I have asked the wrong question. Is there parchment in this carrier, Oorgo?"
The child hopped over and looked inside. "Yes, master, and it has writing on it, and a wax symbol at the bottom."
"Can you describe the symbol to me? Perhaps we will know who has sent this machine to me. Whoever it is is not wise enough to remember that I am the blind god."
"The seal looks like dying moon with a pole coming from its center where the god's grave opens."
"So it is one of the mines. They call that thing a pickax, child. Is there a number below it?"
"There is something that I cannot read. Could that be a number?"
"Tell me what it looks like, and then we'll know."
"It looks like most of a circle."
"Yes, all numbers in this country are that way, child. But which part of the circle?"
"The whole half on the left, and the lower half on the right."
"It is the seal of the Sixth Mine, at the base of the Tranquil Tower on the Queen's Gate. The piece of a golem on which I have been working is from there. Perhaps that is the business for which they write."
"Couldn't you ask the flying bug machine?"
"If it were a golem, I could, but it is not so intelligent."
"But it could see the post. It had to. It landed right there."
"It is made of a smarter metal than anything I have made in your lifetime or that of your father or his father, for as many fathers as are remembered by even his father. But I did not infuse it to be a golem."
"Confuse?"
"No, child, infuse. It is a different word. It means to put a special thing into another one and change how it works."
"Like yeast in dough?"
"Yes. But it is time to restrain your questions until we start walking. I will fetch the things for travel; the sixth mine is across the city and down to the base of the towers."
Thurgod re-emerged from the living quarters with a pack on his back, carrying ingots of iron, his sight coins, and true currency besides. He also carried a chain of very tiny links which had leather loops on each end. "I will need you to hold an end of this, Oorgo. It is long since I walked this path, and it may have changed. I will tell you where to go, but if I am to get there you must tell me where to step. But first I must get the golem-piece that remains in the forge." The god tossed the chain to the child and strode back into the forge, re-emerging carrying the joint-mechanism in his hand.
"May I carry the golem-piece, Master?" asked Oorgo, as they prepared to step outside.
Thurgod turned immediately and handed it to the child, who was immediately fascinated by the number of movable parts. He began to pull and to twist it this way and that. "You may carry it only if you do not do that with it. It is metal, but thin, and if you change its shape I must forge it all over again. I can undo the clasps and buttons the right way, but not you."
Oorgo accepted the instruction and held it gingerly in his left hand, hanging down at his side, while his right was linked to Thurgod's left arm.

Beyond the Rim Installment 15

Oorgo awoke to the seventh loud clang that echoed into Thurgod's common room. The boy stood up and brushed off the straw that had seeped into his sleeping space, simultaneously rubbing the parts of his body that had grown cold against the ground. Oorgo stepped out the back door of Thurgod's abode and crossed the courtyard outside, heading for the building from which smoke poured. The clang, Oorgo had already learned to guess, came from the chains on the deep well which Thurgod had dug himself. It was not properly a well, feeding in fact from a great underground lake and not merely from groundwater. By a screw-like mechanism, Thurgod could pull up water as much as he needed.
Oorgo pressed lightly on the door, and it swung open. This was what Thurgod called the First Mortals Forge. It was the smallest of his smithies, and so named the First. It was also lightly constructed, with many windows and light doors, so that whatever wind would blow so low in the valley might allow the heat from the forge to dissipate, and there mortals might live. To Thurgod the heat was not pain; it was merely heat. He knew it in every degree and measured it precisely as it related to his smith work, neither fearing it nor withering under its oppression. The Last Forge, the Forge of the God, as it was called in the capital, was for Thurgod alone. There resided machines so heavy and heat so great that only his own stone golems were of any use. And there he could practice his craft undisturbed. In days past he had been known to labor in that chamber for days without ceasing, when he forged his greatest wonders. It had for over a decade now sat locked and cool.
Oorgo had been shown these forges in the first days of his serving Thurgod. Into each of them he had stepped and been shown the machines, made of progressively tougher materials and filled with harder and longer tools.The strongest forges required a great amount of fuel to burn, and so it was impractical to fire one of them up for a routine task. Thurgod was the only golem-maker in the valley, a monopoly enforced by Cyllgod. When not building or repairing golems, Thurgod might be called upon to forge any tool or weapon for a government, and occasionally one of the treasures that Cyllgod gave as gifts to her most valuable supporters. The greatest mark of wealth and prestige was to wear a trinket forged by the smith god.
Thurgod was at work on a small part of a mining golem. One of the living metal joints had gone into disrepair when the golem that used it had swung its pick askew. It was delicate work, but did not require much heat. For this, Thurgod would use the lightest forge. In days past he had had more mortal servants, but for a century now Cyllgod had only allowed him one.
"I am awake, Master."
Thurgod swung his hammer again from the elbow, bending back a red hot beam of the joint.
"That is good. The time for sleep is over, child."
"What will you have me to do?"
"You should pump the bellows so that we may have more heat, and I may focus on the shaping."
Oorgo stepped to the bellows, the upper handle of which was over his head, where he could just reach it. He tossed off the latch that held up the heavy handle, and immediately began to pump the bellows. Thurgod replaced the defective part in the fire with his hand, where it slowly began to redden. When Thurgod placed it there, he would stand motionless waiting at the anvil, his face pointed towards the glowing heat, waiting for it to be ready, while Oorgo continued to strain at the bellows.
Within a few minutes, Oorgo could no longer pull down the upper handle of the large bellows without merely holding onto it and slumping towards the floor. With a whimper his hand fell off the handle and he drooped to the floor. "I cannot pull it anymore, master."
Thurgod did not respond, but merely stretched his right arm over to where the child had stood, and began pumping the bellows with that one hand with twice the speed that Oorgo had managed. The fire blazed yellow and red, imparting its color to the metal. "This is the final round, Oorgo. Recover breath and strength."
"Why do you make me do it?"
"You need to become stronger, child." Thurgod reached into the fire and pulled out the red hot metal, setting it back on the anvil. He released the bellows and took up his hammer, making a few last adjustments to the joint.
"How much stronger?"
Thurgod struck the fastener one last time then set down the hammer. "To answer your question, I need you to come closer."
Oorgo did not understand but did obey. Thurgod's outstretched hand found the top of the boy's head then dropped to his shoulder, sliding down his arm an inch. The god's fingers formed a full ring around the boy's arm. "I would say it must be much stronger. That is the smallest of the bellows, and the way of humans is already on you."
"The what?"
"You are already tired."
"But if you wanted me to do hard work you shouldn't have taken me."
"I did not take you to make you do hard work. I do not dislike hard word. You see that I do it with one hand, and so have I done for ages beyond your count, and I have two hands."
"Then what did you take me here for?" Only by reason of his youth could this question went unasked in the first few days of Oorgo's apprenticeship
"You are an apprentice. For what is an apprentice?"
Oorgo grew nervous. Not understanding a grown-up's statement was regular course; he knew there was usually trouble if he did not understand a question.
"Your father. Why does he make your sister bake? Is it because he cannot?"
"Because she must learn."
"Because she must learn to be a baker. And there is the same for you."
"But he's not my master, he's my father."
"The second is the first and more, as I may be, in time."
Oorgo flattened his lips, nervous again.
"I am sorry, Oorgo. I forget that for children not all things are easily seen."
Oorgo's expression did not change.
"You are my apprentice so that I can make you a master smith."
"But that would take years!"
"I have many of those, and you are a child, so you do, too."
"Why would you want a master smith? You are the smithing god."
"And what if I am not here? Then who to fashion golems to do dangerous work which men cannot?"
"Where would you go?"
"Gods may die. You will have heard that one did."
"Cyllgod killed him."
"Indeed, and the world was worse that he had only ever trained one servant among humans. I will train many, so that smithcraft cannot be lost. Men must shape metal, or they shape nothing at all."
"Master, why is your hammer bent?"
This time Thurgod was silent for a moment. "What do you ask, child?"
"Your hammer. The handle is not straight. It is bent like a circle at the end. Why?"
Thurgod pointed his face at the hammer still resting in his hand. His head jolted to a side and Oorgo back, but Thurgod instantly regained composure. Taking a deep breath the smith god said, "Because I bent it, Oorgo."

Beyond the Rim Installment 14

"Be quick, Holder. They will know that we have come in again."

"I can only read so quickly and still use the gift, Threader."

"Fine. I hold the torch and hope the guardians don't come down this hallway, while you read in peace."

Holder picked a scroll from the drawer and began to read.

"This cave is grand, Meldus."

"I knew you would appreciate a giant hollow of stone."

"Do you know, wiser one, how it was made?"

"The will of a being greater than the stone was applied."

"Yes, but how? It was not made by humans, it is too perfect. Was it here when First God made the Earth, or was it the will of Endro himself?"

"I do not think that Endro carved this. He would have said something to us about it, and it is not his way to put holes into the stone in such perfect shape."

"And this, this Meldus. It appears like a dais. Some god has made a seat here."

"I do not know any more of these mysteries, Thurgod. I found a crack and wondered of it, and found this hall, and immediately returned to court, seeking Endro to ask him of it. Finding you there and he gone..."

Thurgod held up his hand and stared at the floor. "It would be better if you were silent."

Meldus ceased from speaking, and looked where Thurgod stared. The smith god closed his eyes, dropped to his knees, and stroked his face along the smooth stone of the floor.

"Xerphii."

Meldus' form swelled, and the colors that usually rested amongst his pearled body shrieked out in arcs about his body. His voice assumed a ring he could not hold in, "We ousted them an eon past."

Thurgod stroked his left hand along the floor. "There is no metal in this stone for me. I will be of little help."

Meldus floated off of the floor, his form winding together into a tighter column of pearled magnificence. "Their skill of concealment has increased, or I would have shattered a hand of them already."

"I do not think there are five, but you and I know one might be as evil two hands of them. They are each different."

Meldus relaxed, returning to a shape with arms and legs. "I would rupture them each all the same, and then even Itris could not tell which part was from which," and the great god laughed.

"It is metal, Meldus. I can feel it."

"Metal that reeks of Xerphii?"

"I tell you it reminds me of Xeprhii, and I know it like I know metal. It is below us."

"Then Endro must be summoned. You and he are the ones to retrieve it. We must know the answer."

"Perhaps Itris, as well? She would be the one to look at a thing and understand it."

"You are the smith, Thurgod. Do not let your humility demand the time of a god who loves her studies as much as she. If when you have touched it you still do know understand it at once, and I am most mistaken about how your power is, then call upon Itris. I will send for Endro now, and when I am done, go to First God's home, to tell him of this when he returns."

All at once Meldus disintegrated into ten thousand tiny pearls which set off in a stream out of the cavern by way of the cave through which the two gods had come. Thurgod knew that next the great god's form would ascend in a silver and rainbow pinnacle to the sky, from which he would call to Endro.

Indeed the call came swiftly for a minute later, while Thurgod still rubbed his knuckles on the floor seeking the closer call of that metal which he had never felt, and which had never bowed to his stroke upon an anvil, Endro appeared.

Endro was the most human-like of the gods, having neither remarkable beauty nor ugliness to make him noteworthy, and neither strength nor fatness to recommend him. Alone amongst the gods Endro could sift through earth and unrefined metal at will, and he breathed the grains of sand more happily than air. Endro stepped through the wall of the chamber. Endro's speech was initiated by a spew of dust and gravel from his mouth, which scattered on the floor. "I am summoned by Meldus. I would ask if you had carved this cave without my word, but I know better of you, brother."

Endro approached Thurgod, and each at once placed his right hand firmly on the others shoulder and rapped their heads together sharply, then released the other. "My blood that is in you would have told you, and your blood in me would have not allowed it. I have found trail of Xerphii here, and I am aware of a metal I do not know."

Endro stood stiffly. "I know every ore there is, and every cave that is made I know of, before stream can carve it I have seen its bed. Yet here I stand in air I did not allow. Where is the metal? For if there were Xerphii here, we would not so speak."

"I think it is yonder," said Thurgod, pointing towards the couch of stone which rested upon a platform on the further end of the hall, "but I warn you, it resists being known by me, and no metal has ever done so before."

Endro lurched towards the dais, his feet resting happily a few inches below the floor of the hall, and he sloshed his way through it, as humans walk through knee-deep water. Thurgod followed. As he ascended the dais, he dropped again to his knees, but then faced upwards, wincing. "The metal fights back. Perhaps a Xerphii is made of metal?"

"Tell me its place, Thurgod."

"Behind the dais an arm's length of mine, perhaps an arm and a hand."

Endro stepped where Thurgod indicated, then sneered at the floor, and pointing his finger at it the stone gave way as though driven by an augur. As the stone chips flew he said, "How far, Thurgod?"

"If I lay on my face, I would think I could reach it through a hole."

Then suddenly Endro sprawled backward, and his form fell into the stone utterly. He rose again out of it in an instant. "That is no earth which I put there, nor ore that I left to be found!"

But Thurgod was already standing over the hole his brother had bored. At the bottom was a curious stone, like the largest of fruits, pristine in smoothness, yet reticulated in shape. "It looks like one of Itris' drawings of the brain in a human head."

Endro stood over it, "It is altogether evil, and harms me exceedingly." He held his hand in front of him, shaking it as though to make the pain release it.

"The same would have happened had you tried to order the water or the sky to your will. This is not a thing in your domain. The Xerphii answer only to the authority of Meldus and of First God. To the rest of us, we must use our might, or else work the world against them. You cannot come against them with the decree of your power."

"Speak no longer, Thurgod, but smash it by your might then. How should one of them have hidden so long." Endro swished his arm, and through the stone wall away from which he had swung came clattering chunks of ore, the toughest iron of the earth answering the earth god's call.

Thurgod held aloft his left hand, and into it a hammer formed, leaving only the dust of the ores behind, all the iron being taken up. "No forge to soften thee, nor anvil to shape thee, but only my hand to smash thee, Xerphii," he cried, then swung down with all his might.

All the gravel that Endro had made leapt from the floor, and then the shockwave cast Thurgod into the air, tossing head over heels backward through the air until he crashed into the wall of the opposite side of the hall. Endro recoiled into the Earth again.

After a gasp, Thurgod collected himself, and ran back. There was no dent where he had struck it.

"Were it a Xerphii that blow must have crushed its soul, or it is greater than I."

Endro barely showed his face from the wall of the cave. "I loathe all of this. A cave I did not authorize, a metal you did not know. And Thurgod, your hand!"

Thurgod looked at his left hand. In it he still, absentmindedly, clutched the shaft of his hammer, but the head was no where to be seen, its only trace being the sudden kink at the end of the shaft which held no weight. And Thurgod's hand was covered in blood.

"No metal can shed the blood of a god, brother. This is malevolence beyond us!"

Thurgod turned back to Endro, "Then it should have woken, and destroyed us both. I say it is not Xerphii, but an artefact of theirs. A thing they put here, to do some evil we do not yet know."

"Then I will bury it deeper, and let the heart of my earth destroy it forever."

"We will wait on the word of Meldus from First God, Endro. For it was the will of First God that we only meet the Xerphii when he sends us and tells us all we should know. It was his order in ages past."

"No Xerphii have been seen since we were young, Thurgod, and First God may not return until we are old. We must do what we can."

"Then I would wait on wisdom from Meldus or sight from Itris. We must leave it here, and do no more with this cave, until we know its evil rightly from one wiser or more discerning than ourselves."

"You would have me leave this sore within the Earth?"

"It is hard for you brother, and it is hard for me to leave a metal unshaped. But there was a time when things were always this way, when the Xerphii were frequent, before they were ousted at last. Be patient again, and we will wait until the ones who choose well have told us what to do."

Endro stepped back towards the walls of stone. "I am not as foolish as you imagine, Thurgod, for the earth knows good and evil. It is as old as we, and it tells me that it wills to burn this thing."

"The earth is not our master, but you are its, and another is yours. We will wait until they speak."

Endro bowed, "I will not contradict those who speak down to us, but I say that they can only agree with me, and it may be that we wish I had destroyed it sooner." Then the earth god retreated to his stone, and was seen no more. The smith-god returned to the surface and turned towards the city, to return there, seeking Itris.

"It is the story of how Korlythe was made. We have wanted this secret."

"And what of his name? Have we found his true name?"

"No. It is written here as we know it today."

"Blast! And here they come!" The Guardian appeared in the hallway down which Threader watched. It cried out as it spotted the light in the scroll-vault, lurching forward with titanic speed.

"Time for your gift to come of use, Threader."

The two boys ran for the window, Holder dropping the scroll back into the drawer from whence it came. They linked arms as they squeezed through the window, dropping outside of it just below its sill as a slender spike flew just over them.

The Guardian ran to the window, and glowered down, seeing no one.

"Do you still remember the words, Holder?"

"With perfection, as usual."

"Good. Then the Master will be pleased."