Ailyne's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The crack in the golden tree stopped spreading. The breathing sound faded. Ailyne kept her sword up until the leaves went still. Then she lowered the blade and turned to Yan. He was on his feet, pale, his hand still marked where the power had left him. She had come back to fight beside him. But she saw now she had no soldier at her side. She had a smith. "When it breaks free, and it will," she said, "I can't fight it and guard you both. You have no sword. You've never held one." Yan wiped soot from his face. "I don't need a sword." He walked past her to the anvil. His hand rested on the timeworn face of it, and something in him steadied. "I need this." "You can't hammer that thing to death, Yan." "No." He looked at the runebound forge behind the anvil, its sigils burning low against the dark stone. "But I felt the power. I know its shape now. I held it in my own blood." He fed coal into the firebox. The flames leapt orange, then flared blue at the edges. "Give me a piece of that tree. A branch. The corrupted wood." Ailyne stared at him. "You want to touch it again? It nearly killed you." "It's mine. My power made it." He set his jaw. "I don't want to carry it in my body. I want to forge it into something I can hold." She understood then. He could not train magic like a warrior. But he could shape it like metal. She cut a branch from the dark trunk. It writhed in her grip. She dropped it on the anvil. Yan worked fast. He laid the branch on the glowing sigils. The runebound forge drank the corruption from the wood and fed it into the iron he heated. He drew a blade from the fire, blue veins running through the steel. He hammered. Each strike rang and threw sparks. The dangerous power that had poisoned the tree bent under his hands. He was not fighting it. He was forging it. Ailine watched sweat run down his arms. The blade cooled from white to deep blue. He quenched it. Steam hissed. When he lifted it, the sword hummed with the same power that had almost burned him alive. He turned the edge in the forge light. "Now I can stand beside you." Ailyne took the blade from him and tested its weight. It was true. She handed it back. For the first time since she returned, the shame left her face. "You can't swing this," she said. "Not yet. I'll teach you the little I feel of power. You'll teach yourself the steel." She glanced at the tree. The crack was widening again. "We're out of time to practice." The trunk split with a sound like tearing bone. Something inside pushed against the light. "Then we learn now," Yan said, and raised his own sword.