(Thank you to TheBattleSage for editing. Thank you to Ye Banished Privateers for Annabel, which I used as the basis for Taric's chant.)
15 Aine, 997 NE
Shende Hold, Chareen Aiel, Aiel Waste
Clang!
The flat-faced smith's hammer, a product of my own work, descended upon the ingot, meeting the heated steel in a sparking kiss.
Clang!
The ingot writhed and jumped at the blow, bucking against the tongs I had smithed a year ago, which held it firmly in place against the anvil's broad back.
Clang!
The tongs recoiled back into my calloused palm, the now-familiar shock traveling to my shoulder like an old friend coming by for an expected visit.
And like a gracious host, I accepted the reverberating blow. The acceptance had long since become second nature; I no longer had to resist the impulse to clench defensively against the shock. Instead, I let the energy pass through me, the blow I had meted out to the ingot with one arm returning to me through the other.
Clang!
The bellows creaked as Salin pumped air into the forge, maintaining the exact level of heat necessary to soften crucible steel into a workable state. My mentor and teacher was silent as he pumped, his pale eyes keenly observing every move I made as I hammered a brand-new spearhead into our shared Dream.
Clang!
This would be my first spear, for all that smiths were generally forbidden weapons. It was the first I had made entirely by myself from start to finish.
I had smelted the ore myself, feeding charcoal into the bloomery as the hematite mined from the slopes of the Dragonwall was slowly refined into wrought iron within the smoking clay pot. I had mixed my newly smelted wrought iron with molten pig-iron in a ceramic crucible, and for my efforts had produced banded ingots, swirls of black and gray like rising smoke frozen into solid steel.
Clang!
I felt sympathy for the steel under my hammer; over the last four years, I too had been hammered upon the anvil, slowly shaped into a tool useful to the purposes of the sept and clan, and a shape that I desperately hoped would suit my own secret purpose. I could not complain, though, no more than the steel could. I had gone to Salin and asked him to make me a smith, and he had agreed.
And so, my time upon the anvil had come.
Clang!
Like all things in the Threefold Land, my apprenticeship had been a process of three parts. The smelting had come first, the sept's smithy my bloomery. I still lived under my mother's roof, but for my first two years as an apprentice all waking hours had been spent either in the smithy or at the smelter at the mineworks. At all times, Salin had stood beside me, correcting me as necessary and chiding me for my occasional failures.
It had been in those first years that I was first initiated into the minor mysteries of the smith. In a different world, I would have called them his trade secrets, but to Salin, such knowledge was a mystery known only to smiths.
"The Wise Ones have their secrets, aye, and so do the Societies," Salin had explained when I asked why some information, such as judging when to add charcoal to the smelter to increase the carbon content of the iron, was kept exclusive to the smiths. "It is their business and their privilege. So too is it our privilege to know the secrets of our trade."
"Besides," he had continued, "what use would the Spears have for our songs? You know they sing only dirges and battle hymns. To them, singing is a thing of women, save when they prepare to wake from the dream. They would not understand. Their songs are for the passing moments, for those who have awoken and those who are prepared to wake. Not our songs. Only those who listen to the iron will hear our songs true."
After a moment, Salin shrugged. "Perhaps the Wise Ones would understand," he conceded, "but the truly wise know better than to trifle with the forge's mysteries. They have enough to manage, keeping watch on the chiefs and the septs. No need for them to put on aprons and join us around the smelter too."
Clang!
After two years of hauling coal to feed the ever-hungry forge and assisting Salin with necessary tasks like holding ingots steady on the anvil as he worked, the old master was content that I understood and appreciated the basics of the smith's craft. Finally, he began assigning me apprentice-work; small pieces, but my first chance to truly work in the smithy.
The rudimentary projects Salin entrusted to me were those he felt I could complete without his supervision or participation. While my newly assigned tasks were simple, the work was just as important as forging spearheads; if the Aiel relied on a market system for intra-sept exchanges, my tasks would be the bread and butter of the smithy during times of peace. While no such market existed, the tasks still put food on the table for all at Shende Hold.
Farming in the Threefold Land was difficult enough as it was; no need to increase the difficulty by trying to scratch a living from the baked ground without the help of iron tools, after all.
Clang!
Over the next year, I advanced from nails, chains, and hoes to pots, shovels, and pins. I melted down damaged pickheads and old, dull knives, and forged new tools from the recycled iron. I began to learn the fine art of maintenance as well, of how to put a keen edge on any blade, how to mend a holed pot, and how to carefully band the always valuable wood of tool shafts with rings of simple iron, which prolonged the work life of the handles.
Clang!
And in that same year, the third of my apprenticeship to Salin, the master began to instruct me in the art of listening to the music of the blazing metals. And, also how to sing. More accurately, how to sing the ancient selection of blacksmith's songs, each as well-worn by preceding generations of smiths as the bellows' handles. To the Aiel, it seemed, knowledge of these songs was just as much a part of being a blacksmith as knowing how to temper steel.
When Salin first broached the topic, I had foolishly thought that this would be an easy few days of training. I was soon corrected; the sheer variety of songs was daunting, and Salin was relentless in his demands for precision and recall. Every song had a myriad of uses, and every song had been carefully shaped by generations of ancestors to suit those uses. In this, as in all things Aiel, the invisible weight of tradition was a constant burden.
But, unlike many traditions, the blacksmith's songs were far from pointless. In a world without the resources, incentive or the industry to produce clockwork, in a desert where water clocks would represent a decadent luxury, time was a more abstract thing than it had been in my two previous lives. Seasons passed, and on the shorter scale the sun's progress marked the hour of the day, but neither method was conducive to the precision required for good smithing.
Which was where the songs and chants of the smithy entered. If I were to ask Salin how many minutes an ingot of ordinary steel would require to fully anneal to the softness necessary for the inner core of a spearhead, he would have glared blankly at me from between his creases. If I asked how many verses of "The Maiden's Kiss" I needed to sing to the steel to put it into a good mood, however, he could immediately tell me that five verses would bring the sand-colored band of impurities out to the surface.
"And once the snake slithers to the edge of the bar," Salin had said, wiping his brow with a stained rag, "the steel will be as even-tempered as we may hope to see it in our smithy, and ideal for the inner heart of our spearheads."
Clang!
So I had come to learn all of the chants and the songs that demarcated the times needed to smelt and temper iron and steel to the correct consistencies and degrees of hardness. I had joined Salin's smoke-roughened voice in chorus, chanting to the bloomery and to the forge, to the grinding wheel and the quench basin, marking out the necessary time as we created tools that would in time forge new tools that would feed, clothe, house, and protect the Sept.
Interestingly, the songs needed to time specific grades of metal were often thematically joined to the purposes the tools which would be made from those metals would be put. For instance, the steel that would become a cold chisel, a dusky carbon-loaded gray, received only two brief repetitions of "Stone Tapper", a brief chant extolling the merits of shaping stone, during the initial heating and three in its second trip through the fire.
Clang!
In my fourth year as an apprentice, Salin had given me my first true assignment as a smith, the first true assignment any smith took up. That is, of course, the task of forging his own forge tools, each piece both a demonstration of proficiency as well as a tangible sign of entry into the brotherhood of metalworkers.
"A smith's tools are his hominy and his whiskey, as well as his heart and soul," Salin had told me on the morning that had marked the start of my fourth year under his tutelage. The night's cold still held the smithy in its iron grip, the relentless heat of the day still an hour off and the forge left almost cold overnight, with just enough coals left lit to keep the stone from contracting in the cold.
"The only things a man can truly own are the tools of his trade; all else is merely a distraction or else the common holding of the Sept. Your tools, young Taric, will be your life. Take your time: the chance to forge yourself will come only once."
I had nodded my silent acceptance to his words as I slowly pumped life back into the forge's heart. Stripped of the mysticism, it was clear that my tools were expected to be the first examples of my individual style and competency. They would be my diploma and my resume as well as my means of labor.
This is my chance to showcase my competency, the part of me that had never left the office pointed out. By creating a high quality set of tools customized by what I remember of the industrial style of the tools I used in my first two lives, I can accrue value by producing something novel! Applying a heat-patina to the sides of the hammer would be easy, and texturing the heads of the chisels with a wire brush even moreso!
It was a practical thought. By creating a set of tools stamped with a truly individual style, I would draw the attention of all who saw them. If I could create the smooth bevels and artful curves I saw in my head, I would be able to teach that style to any who cared to learn. I would create a new style, and would bring recognition to myself and my sept.
It wasn't even a necessarily foreign thought to the Aiel mindset. Warriors, although almost always the young warriors, wore plenty of seized booty with their cadin'sor and shoufa. Particularly comely Maidens would even wear the gifts present by their suitors as war trophies, multiple necklaces jangling around their necks. For all that the Threefold Land had sunk an indelible streak of asceticism into Aiel sensibilities, material displays were not explicitly against Ji'e'toh.
Or, I considered, such displays aren't against a surface level interpretation of Ji'e'toh. Parrag, the Sept Chief, wears no jewelry nor does he boast of his accomplishments. Nor do most of the seasoned warriors. Nor do the Wise Ones. Nor, I thought, turning to look at the tools arrayed over the smithy's workbench, does Salin, who made his own tools to be simple yet of high quality.
Perhaps that's the point? Only the young brag, because they know no better. Killing an enemy might earn some minor ji, but true honor comes from taking the enemy alive to be made Gai'shain. Similarly, true ji comes not from announcing one's victories, but from your competency being known without any announcement necessary.
I remembered Salin's very first lesson, imparted four years ago to this very day. Good iron cannot be rushed.
"I hear you, Salin," I said aloud, ducking my head without taking my hands away from the bellows handle. "I request time to think. I must consider who I am, and what I would make."
A brief glow of satisfaction radiated from Salin's face, between his bristling beard and his furrowed brow, before Aiel stoicism reasserted itself. "Think as you will," he grunted, "but don't stand around, boy. There are nails to be drawn, hoes to be sharpened, and that forge will not heat itself. Get to it."
Good, I thought as I pumped the bellows, the first tongues of flame darting up to lick as the fresh black coal Salin shoveled into the pit, that was the answer he was looking for. A smith thinks carefully and only starts to work when they understand what they will make.
I have earned ji in Salin's eyes.
To my surprise, the thought warmed me to my core. It was strange that a society where all of the rules were as unspoken as they were carved in stone, but I had never felt like I had understood Germania with the certainty as I did the Aiel.
Sincere compliments masqueraded as mocking insults among the Aiel, with only subtle clues to conveying the true intent. Blood feuds spanning across generations rose from barbed compliments, while killing insults were salted with false geniality. The loudest brags were air and dust, yet quiet competency rumbled like the summer windstorms. Waste, sloth, and thoughtlessness were dishonorable, and true honor never needed to draw attention to itself.
It all seemed so clear. The rules of Ji'e'toh weren't written down because any written code of honor was meaningless. The only meaningful understanding was internal, and comprehension could only be demonstrated through acts, not words. It was an entire society explicitly built around signaling theory as a means of inspiring competency.
More than ever, it is such a tragedy that it is married to a self-destructive death cult, to a culture wide suicide pact, to the atonement for crimes so ancient that nobody can truly remember them anymore. That story has long since faded from fact into legend and then out of memory entirely, and yet it still blights the heart of the Aiel with an inexplicable shame that no amount of honor can fully extinguish.
It was not the home I would have chosen, this cliff-dwelling amongst a people who believed that life was but a dream, and yet it was my home now. I was Aiel, and so I would follow the path that was honorable for an Aiel as much as I could, without succumbing to my new people's fatalism. Through honor, I would gain worth, and through worth, I would gain respect and affection and would finally be safe from the treachery that had brought both of my previous lives to a shattering end.
I would not stand alone, by trackside or atop a shattered building. I would walk with the sept and the clan, never a leader but always valuable. In doing so, I would live in peace, and prove the Wheel a lie, the pattern of my lives mere happenstance.
Clang!
Six months had passed before I finally set to work on my toolset in earnest. Six months of pondering what it meant to be a smith in the Threefold Land as I sharpened knives and mended pots, knocked molding off freshly hardened ingots and, always, hauled more coal to the eternally gluttonous forge.
Then, without fanfare, I began. Under Salin's watchful eyes, I started with the simple, ancillary tools: A leather-punch, a crowbar, an awl, a set of three chisels, an etched file, and a set of two tongs, large and small. Each I presented in turn to Salin's watchful eye, carefully attentive to his grunts and muttering over the details. Thankfully, those mutters were confined to trivialities, and without even a mild reproach over anything of note.
So encouraged, I moved on to my first tool that would create other tools: a set of stone-worker's chisels, a one-point, a claw, and a bush. These would not be part of my permanent set of trade tools, but were instead the prerequisite for a crucial part of my kit, my sharpening stones.
The chert necessary for the gritstone I acquired from one of the sept's miners in exchange for a new knife to replace his worn blade. From the hard metamorphic stone I carefully roughed out a coarse-grit side and a fine-grit side, massaging rendered lamb's fat into the pores of the stone to seal the surface against grit and filings. Finally, I smoothed and polished the sides to sculpt in a comfortable handhold.
Then, I followed a similar process in refining a honing stone from the finer-grained flint, chanting to the stone as I knapped the edges into the perfect tool to grind fine edges.
Finally, I made a deal with the tanner to provide a new scraping knife in exchange for several strips of variable grade leather, treated in oil. From these, I made the strops necessary to add the killing edge necessary for arrowheads and spears.
Clang!
More tools had followed. Hammers great and small took shape on the smithy's anvil, from the mighty sledge with its hand-and-a-half handle to the ball peen hammer, perfect for tapping pins and fine nails into place. Vices, tongs, pliers, hand-drills of multiple sizes, shears, tinsnips, and a matched set of fire-tongs and a poker all came next.
The crowning jewel in my burgeoning kit was, of course, my blacksmith's hammer. More accurately classified as a cross-peen hammer, it has a slightly rounded flat face paired with a tapering chisel-like tail. I had worked my way up to the chief tool of my trade and, in my opinion, it showed. While completely free of any decoration or ostentation, the hammer's lines were clean and the steel as refined as I could manage in Shende Hold's smithy.
The haft was a gift from my teacher. Among the Aiel, quality wood of sufficient length and hardness for use in tools was valued almost as highly as water. For the clans whose territory touched the Dragonwall, there was no shortage of easily mined iron, copper, and coal, but no trees grew on this side of the great mountain range, and so frequently the haft of a tool was more valuable than the ironmongery.
"Teak," Salin had said, by way of explanation, as he'd handed over the smooth-grained blank, "from Shara, brought over the Cliffs of Dawn. It's not the easiest wood to work with, lad," he cautioned, "but then, what point would there be in anything, if it did not test us?"
Following my teacher's lead, I had chanted to the wood as I had carefully shaped it for my purposes. I had likewise chanted to the steel as it ran like water into the ingot mold, and again as I'd beaten the ingots into hammer-form, using Salin's hammer for the last time.
When I held the final product aloft for one last critical look, when I saw the whorls of ash and smoke in the steel that almost looked like wings, when I let my eyes trace the multitude of engravings I had etched onto the teak's surface before lacquering the surface against the desiccating heat… I could only think one thing of my hammer as I offered him to Salin for his inspection.
He was beautiful.
Clang!
And now that hammer swung down, as natural an extension of my arm as my own hand, meeting the nearly finished spearhead in a resounding Clang!
"-Met my lass from Hot Springs Hold," I sang, turning on my heel and plunging the glowing spearhead into the bath below. My tenor cut easily across the hissing sputter as the liquefied goat fat was suddenly brought to a boil by the heated steel's intrusion. "Heave away, haul away!"
My hammer, his steel brightly polished, gleamed in the orange light of the banked forge as I set him to rest upon the anvil. His work was done, at least for now, with this spearhead. Now, I would need my file to coax the rough contours that my gritstone would grind into killing edges.
"Eyes she had of green and gold." My file found a resting place beside my hammer as I pulled the spearhead from the grease bath. I let the newly cooled weapon drip clean for a moment as I reached for the rag resting on the shelf, my song continuing as I managed what was normally a two-man job in the Shende Hold smithy by myself. "All I want is water."
The rag in my hand made short work of the rapidly congealing fat; the work of scraping away at the spearhead took much longer. Fortunately, I had no end of verses to accompany my careful rasps.
"Whiskey's not my drink of choice, heave away, haul away!" The steel glimmered as the outermost layers gave way beneath my assault, the inner smokey swirls twirling and swirling under the mid-afternoon sun. "Sharpens my tongue and roughens my voice! All I want is water."
Soon enough, it was my gritstone's turn. Where my file had attacked the steel, defining boundaries and making forceful demands like a strutting Shaido, my gritstone was implacable in imposing its will upon the spearhead-yet-to-be, the Wise One to my file's Chief. And like the shawled women to our septs and clans, it was my gritstone that truly gave shape and meaning to the spearhead: By the time I set my stone aside, fine-grain side up, the blade sported a matched pair of razor edges tapering to a wicked point, deadly sharp and almost glowing with pride and hunger.
"Not for me, the White or Leaf, heave away, haul away!" The polishing cloth glided over the blade, wiping away the swarf and grit from his full three hands length, or, as I internally parsed it, just over a third of a meter of steel. Like my hammer, he was a beautiful piece of work, his blade flat enough to slip between ribs, long enough to find the heart, and broad enough to leave an awful, sucking wound behind, from which a man could easily bleed out in minutes. Just in time, for my song had reached its coda."Just for me the gnawing grief… All I want is… Water!"
Silently, Salin handed me the length of wood, already carefully smoothed and polished, that would become the spear staff. He handled the precious wood, banded near where it would join the head with bronze and bound with leather cords for grip, with immense care. It was by far the most precious part of the spear, and letting it touch the gritty floor of a working smithy would have dishonored the great worth it represented.
I took the prepared shaft from him with equal reverence and in equal silence. For all that fitting tool heads to shafts was a smith's work, it was one of the few tasks that had no song to accompany it. Perhaps it was because it did not directly involve metalworking or preparations for metalworking. Perhaps it was to encourage the smith to focus their full attention on the scarce wood. Either way, the only sound in the smithy was the quiet tapping of my fine ball-peen hammer on the reinforcing nails destined to hold the head's fitted socket close to the shaft no matter how deep its wielder sank it into a foe.
Suddenly, it was done; my first project as a smith, a smith in my own right, was completed. The spear rested in my hand like it was meant to be there, the swirls of leaden and argent shades in the head a brother to my hammer, the leather grip-cords perfectly rough against my palm.
Mutely, I held my first work out to my mentor, the old anxiety familiar from two lives returning in a wave of stress. Salin's brow furrowed as he glared down at the weapon, and suddenly I was back in an office, waiting for a graying general to render his verdict on my plan for a rapid-reaction mage force.
I was surprised how potent the sudden stress was, but upon further reflection, it made sense: Life among the Aiel was different in many ways, after all. While I'd had to worry about training injuries or drawing the ire of my teachers, parents, or my great-many-times-over-greatmother, I had never had to worry about being rejected. Ji'e'toh had been an open path to me, and I had walked with the sept in their ways, following expectations.
More importantly, considering my self-imposed mission to break free of the pattern of repeated betrayals and violent death, following Ji'e'toh had in some ways kept me below notice. As an apprentice to a smith, any praise my work garnered reflected back on the master who guided my hands. As a child, earning ji in the eyes of the people of the sept brought ji upon my parents for raising me well.
In essence, there was no reason for anybody to hate me, no motive for anybody to betray me.
But now, I was being judged on the merits of my work, as an individual, as a man. While I was still moving under the auspices of Ji'e'toh, for the first time in years I was claiming something as my own, something that could provoke jealousy and resentment in others. After so long, it was exhilarating. It was terrifying.
The burst of worry and fear was shameful. I have toh, I thought, and knew it to be true. I had been betrayed in other lives, but that didn't mean that Salin or the rest of the Jarra Sept were eager to sink a knife in my back. Thinking of them as if they were dishonored them unduly.
And yet, that knowledge did nothing to soothe the horrible sinking feeling I felt as I offered my work, my beautiful spear, up for my mentor's approval.
Thankfully, Salin took the spear into his hands before my anxiety made my own pair start to shake. He handled the weapon with a gentleness that would have been surprising to any who hadn't spent hours and years in the man's close company, hands wrapping around the shaft's grips with long familiarity.
Breathe, I told myself as I stepped back. He is your mentor, your teacher, not your enemy. You have the skills necessary to be a smith and the wisdom to use them for your People's best interests. To him, you may be young, but your work will surely speak louder than your years. Be like good iron, and smolder patiently for your time to once again endure the anvil.
My internal monologue and the accompanying deep, healing breaths helped. My heartbeat, elevated by the anticipation more than by the physical work, smoothed and slowed. My hands calmed, as did my thoughts. I crouched down into the comfortable resting squat of a culture mostly free of chairs, letting my weight rest on my heels as I waited for Salin to finish his inspection.
I didn't have to wait very long, at least, not very long by Aiel standards. As darkness gathered in the smithy, the sun already vanishing behind the Dragonwall, Salin looked up from my spear.
"This spear," he began, his voice rumbling like the storms high up in the Dragonwall, "is acceptable. To bring such a partner to the Dance would make any Maiden or Spear weep." Like the sky after those storms, his expression was now almost radiant in comparison to the preceding gloom. "Rejoice, Taric, son of Ayesha and Leiran of the Cosaida. Today, you are no longer a child. Today, you are a blacksmith. Today, you are a man."
"You honor me," I said, standing from my crouch and angling my head respectfully, "Salin, smith of Shende Hold."
"You honor yourself," my former teacher replied, clapping me on the shoulder, thankfully with the hand not currently holding the spear. "Of course," he continued, still smiling with his rare joviality, "The path to recognition as a master-smith is far from short, and a single spear is just a step on that track. You have years and years to go before you can call yourself a forgemaster. But… A journeyman? Oh yes, certainly, Taric, a journeyman you are, capable and competent."
Again, I angled my head in the not-nod, not-bow gesture that indicated an unvocalized but sincere respect among the Aiel. It was a quirk of my new People, just as it had been among the People of my first life, that the most sincere compliments were never spoken aloud.
And of course, since sincere compliments could never be delivered on their own, I echoed my mentor's previous comment. "Your instruction was also adequate," I said, mimicking his ponderous tone. "I'm sure any Maiden would likewise weep to bring a partner such as you to her dance."
It was a joke like my father would tell one of his cronies over a bottle of whiskey, a joke from one man to another, one with whom he was close. A joke one told an equal. If I was still a student, still a boy, I would never have made such a joke about my teacher. To do so would have brought toh upon my shoulders, even if I was the only witness to the joke, even if it had never passed my lips.
But today, Salin just barked a laugh at the joke, releasing my shoulder and swatting me on the back, chivvying me out towards the door. "You smell like ash and goat grease," he announced as he shoved me out of the smithy, "and your thoughts linger too much on the Maidens. Stop stinking up my smithy and get to the sweat tent."
I frowned and pointedly looked at the heap of clinkers piled by the forge, the steel filings strewn across the floor, and the greasy rag I'd absentmindedly left draped across the anvil's horn. It was generally bad form, to say the least, to leave the smithy in such a state.
Salin interpreted my unspoken question with ease. "This mess, I can clean up," he said, before theatrically waving his hand under his nose. "Freeing the smithy of your stench, on the other hand, is a duty you alone may discharge. Begone, Taric, and be content tonight with your labor. Tomorrow…" The burly man paused, considering. "Return tomorrow. We have much to discuss."
And then Salin turned his back on me, a sign of great trust and a dismissal as clear as any shut door. Without further ado, I left the smithy, venturing into the main structure of Shende Hold. It was home, but when I had left my mother's roof this morning, it had been as a child. When I returned home from the sweat tent tonight, I would have to ask her permission for entrance as a guest for the first time.
I was now well and truly a man of the Chareen Aiel, and thus a valid target for duels and raids. Or I would be, if I was not also well and truly a blacksmith, and thus I could walk unarmed and alone with confidence, even in the lands of the Nakai and the Tardaad Aiel, both of whom were currently feuding with the Chareen.
For what felt like the first time in three years, I let myself relax. I was as safe as any Aiel could be. I had done everything in my power to secure a position that would make me untouchable in war and universally valued. I could only hope that I had done enough to prove that while the Wheel may turn, its course was far from fixed.