Wrought of Iron and Silk, Book One [2014 Watty Award Winner]

Chapter 13 - The Smith's Gift

Chapter 13 – The Smith's Gift

The next two years passed strangely in Nidavellir.

Truthfully, it had only been three years since the commencement of her apprenticeship, yet Cecilia felt as if she'd resided there for over a century and possessed a lifetime of experience. The thick gray mist that filled The Outer Lands, coiling about the trees and grass, sagging the flowers with moisture, was gone. The forest was now in full leaf. Outside the trellwarren, in the warm sun, was a clear sky, and in the west a much more reddish sunset above the light mist shrouding the upper half of the trees in the distance.

The grass beneath her boots was gemmed with wild violets, golden heartsease, primroses, and the startling blue of gentians. Delicate pale anemone and wood sorrel gazed from the pink and white blossoms of tartberry and sweetberry bushes. The sides of the trees tending toward the mist were always darker than the sky, in which the brightest objects were tiny, pinkish-red, flocculent clouds, visible only in the west.

Cecilia had grown accustomed to the lovely vista through the woods to the east: the trees dark against the encroaching twilight, which faded above to pure blue. The nearest saplings ranged from violet to brown; a jutting branch, bearing leaves that were prettily highlighted by ocher yellow sunbeams, as were all the other limbs. Further on, the violet turned hazy, and one prominent tree, which spread its branches even wider, was swathed in a misty bluish gray.

Sadly, she had little time to enjoy it. In her mind, Cecilia stood at the foot of a long, lonely road up the side of a dark mountain. She had dedicated herself to that particular path. Under Loki's stern tutelage, she was acquiring the foundations of magic and essential survival lore. No spell came without a history. No food came without a caution. No effort without sore muscles. With him, Cecilia's journeys had all been to the deepest corners of her psyche, yet now she felt if she'd been given weapons that could be effective against the might of any empire. Cecilia had never imagined that her mind could hold so much danger and power.

There were moments where she missed her innocence.

"Throughout all this, there is one constant I will teach you, Raven. Life itself: the great force that creates and sustains it. It is a power of merciless compassion and compassionless mercy – neither of good nor evil, but beyond both. Whether you accept destiny or not, we are alive and there is an unmistakable energy that has given us that privilege," Loki had clarified many seasons ago. "You will see the darkest aspects of mankind; the darkest aspects of yourself."

That sounds worse than evil, Cecilia had thought to herself at the time.

Nevertheless, every week, she met with Loki in The Outer Lands, where he instructed her in the wisdom of the great philosophers and theorists of the Nine Realms. Occasionally, he brought her numerous manuscripts and papers, and she quickly found that the rigor of her academic enquiry was always informed by a passionate idealism.

They took their meals there together and, from time to time, their conversations continued until dawn, when Cecilia would finally drag herself to bed, dazed by all the things Loki had said to her. Her mind wrestled to assimilate all she had learned, for sometimes, when they spoke of such topics, the philosophers' pronouncements were contradictory.

"Is there any one truth?" Cecilia asked, more than once.

Loki would always laugh. "If there is, I have yet to discover it, but real learning derives from the act of trying."

"I don't know which one I agree with, though," she said. "I'll read one and think, 'yes he's right,' then read another and think, 'no, she is.' It's all so puzzling."