CHAPTER 837: WATER’S EDGE (PART ONE)

Ashlynn’s hands trembled as she traced her fingers across the elegant, polished metal of the sword’s hilt.

Artificer Erkembalt hadn’t forgotten that this was a sword for fighting and killing and there wasn’t a single feature of his artistry that made the sword less functional as a weapon of war, but despite the need to protect the weapon’s function, he’d brought a true artist’s skill to the form of the weapon.

The S-shaped quillions were similar to the guard on her old sword, with a sweeping knuckle guard that stopped short of connecting to the blade’s pommel and an upward curling quillion that rose toward the weapon’s spine. But while the shapes were familiar, the design was very different.

The blade’s lower knuckle guard resembled a twisted pair of steel ropes, polished until the high spots of the design gleamed like a mirror while the recesses of texture shone with a dark, bluish-black hue. Where the ropes divided around the blade of the sword, they transformed into a rolling, blue-black wave that curled toward the spine of the blade with a brightly polished crest. The work on the wave was so detailed, in fact, that Erkembalt had left several brightly polished dots along the blue-black of the ’water’ to resemble the spray of the sea.

The theme of twin ropes continued along the blade’s handle, which looked like a piece of polished bone. Deep, spiralling flutes had been carved into the bone to provide a sure and steady grip while two braided ropes of silver wire were inlaid in grooves in the bone, forming a double helix of silver that spun all the way down to the sword’s heavy pommel.

At the top and bottom of the bone handle, Erkembalt had set a ring of brightly polished aquamarine gemstones that caught the warm glow of the room’s candle light and sparkled like the shallow waters along the coast under a warm, yellow sun. The pommel itself yielded from artistry to practicality, taking the shape of an oyster’s shell where it met the handle before ’opening’ to reveal a smoothly polished ball, as if the oyster held a pearl of immense size.

"This is too beautiful for words," Ashlynn said as she rotated the sword in her hands, inspecting the elegant hilt from all sides. A heartbeat later, however, she froze, staring in disbelief as she caught the faintest shimmer of sorcery at play within the stones of the hilt. The work was subtle, far more subtle than the radiant sorcery employed in Ignatious’s Holy Flame Blade, but it was very clearly there.

"I fetched the gemstones from Airgead Mountain," Nyrielle explained as she followed Ashlynn’s gaze. "And the handle is carved from a piece of whale bone. Don’t give me that look," Nyrielle teased as she saw the shock on Ashlynn’s face. "I couldn’t risk traveling to the sea for it, but when Erkembalt asked me to find a bone from a great sea creature, I spoke with the Tuscans under Captain Ipiktok’s command. One of his men had a trophy from a hunt long ago that he was willing to part with as long as Erkembalt was willing to help him turn the rest of it into a protective charm."

"What does it do?" Ashlynn asked as she carefully observed the energy flowing through the blade. It seemed to ebb and flow like the tide, never staying still and giving the impression that the surface barely rippled while greater energies moved beneath the surface.

"The blade itself contains no darksteel," Nyrielle explained. "But you are too strong for an ordinary weapon, my darling. So the blade absorbs force that could bend or shatter it the way a waterskin absorbs the force of a blow. It may deform in the moment of impact," she said proudly, as if it had been her own accomplishment. "But it will always return to true."

"Does it have a name?" Ashlynn asked as she continued to run her fingers over the hilt before slipping her delicate digits around the wire-wrapped bone handle and feeling the energy of the blade singing in her hand.

"It’s called ’Water’s Edge’," Nyrielle said as she held out her hands to take the sheath from Ashlynn. "Draw it and you’ll understand why."

The soft sound of steel whispering over leather filled the air as Ashlynn finally drew the blade that Nyrielle had clearly invested deeply into creating, even if Erkembalt’s hands had been the one to do the work. When she finally saw the blade, however, her breath caught in her throat as she marveled at its beauty.

The blade itself was slightly more curved than her previous sword, with a clipped point tip that was sharpened on the back edge of the tip to make the weapon just as lethal in the thrust as it was in the cut. It wasn’t the blade’s clean, elegant lines or the smooth transition from the thick spine to the tapered point that took her breath away though.

The blade had been forged from multiple pieces of steel, stacked in layers and welded into a single piece before it was stretched and pulled into shape, then ground to reveal a smooth, rippling pattern along the entire length of the blade.

To most eyes, the pattern was simple and chaotic, but to Ashlynn, it felt like she was looking at a series of waves on the shore, each giving way to the next until the sharpest, shining steel was revealed at the edge. There were even spaces where the pattern produced little spots like islands in the wave, making it feel like a real, living example of the water’s edge where land met the sea.

"I expect that you will kill Owain Lothian with this blade," Nyrielle said as Ashlynn’s gaze wandered along the length of the sword’s edge. "So I asked Erkembalt to reclaim steel from a few old weapons that I’ve long ago tired of looking upon."

"Edge of Light was the blade Caun Lothian carried into battle during the second crusade," Nyrielle explained with a wistful smile. "My grandsire, Torbin, crumpled it in his fist when he tore it from the man’s hand and the mangled ruin of the blade lay in our vaults ever since. Cellach Lothian’s ’War Spike’ joined it when I finally claimed my vengeance," she said with a slight catch in her voice.

’War Spike’ hadn’t been the weapon that claimed her parent’s lives, or the one that brought down her grandsire, Torbin. But it had been the war hammer that Cellach Lothian carried in every battle of the bloody war that doomed the Vale of Mists and Nyrielle’s loved ones with it. Once, she’d thought that seizing the weapon and bringing it back to the crypts where the ashes of her parents and grandsire lay would help them find peace, but Nyrielle knew better now.

"You mean," Ashlynn said slowly as she ran a finger along the spine of a blade. "This sword was forged from the weapons of fallen Lothian Lords? Is each layer here from a different weapon?"

Ashlynn blinked several times in disbelief at the notion and she had to ask the question to be certain. Because if she understood what Nyrielle had just said correctly, then the blade that Erkembalt had made for her to kill Owain Lothian with had been forged from the weapons of Owain’s own ancestors!