D& D - Mystara 01 - Dragonlord of Mystara Read online

  "I expect so," Thelvyn agreed, trying not to sound doubtful. "I have some experience working with the fires at the jewelers. It's the same thing on a larger scale, I suppose."

  "The work of a smith seems a proper choice for someone the size and strength you promise to be." He paused, seeming to wonder whether he should say more. "To tell you the truth, I don't expect you shall make a career as a smith. Sir

  George has always had his eye on you, and I daresay he has his own plans for you when you come of age. But we've all had our reasons for doing things the way we have. For our own part, we've felt obliged to try to make a normal life for you, at least as much as our law and custom permit. Also, Sir George has always been very concerned about your education, not just your schoolwork but also your apprenticeships, for whatever reason he sees fit. He has always insisted upon covering most of the cost of your schooling and your keep. He even offered to adopt you when you first came."

  "He did?" Thelvyn asked, surprised.

  "Of course, that was forbidden by a law that was never really designed to accommodate you," the mayor said, a rather candid admission for a defender of Flaemish tradition. "And you are his heir, should he fail to return from one of his journeys. But the fact remains that Sir George leads a rather dangerous life, whatever else he may want us to believe, and we had to consider the possibility that you would have to find a career for yourself if something happened to him."

  "I have no idea what Sir George's business really is," Thelvyn had to admit.

  "To be perfectly honest, neither do I. He likes to insist that he is a merchant, but many people believe that he is an adventurer, and you cannot convince them otherwise. The good folk of this village feel you ought to be taught an honest trade so that you will not be tempted to take up with that old knight. Sir George is my friend, but I am also bound to do what people want, although it would have been much easier if those same people had been willing to contribute more to your upbringing than advice. As I say, what you choose to do when you come of age is entirely your own affair. Until then, you are compelled to work at the forge until Sir George is ready for you, or until Dal Fer-staan kicks you out."

  "I think I understand," Thelvyn said, still trying not to sound resentful. "It's just that sometimes I can't seem to do anything right."

  "Well, you are rather different from us in many ways," Mayor Aalsten said. "Possibly your people have their own

  way of doing things that works best for them."

  Thelvyn went to his room to pack so he could leave for the smith's house early the next morning. He felt rather hopeful, even excited, to think there were plans for his future other than to be just another villager. If he just had the patience to wait another year, he could decide his own future. But he was also beginning to feel quite disillusioned with the Flaem, whom he had always trusted. True, he had reason to be grateful to them for rescuing his mother from the dragons and taking him in. But he was also a little angry that people who had no interest in his future were dictating the terms of his life without really trying to discover what was best for him.

  At least he would be able to console himself over the next few months with speculation about his future. Whether Sir George was a traveling merchant or an adventurer, Thelvyn thought he would enjoy becoming either one. The only problem was that he knew nothing about either occupation, and that could only mean that he had yet another apprenticeship still ahead of him. But at least

  he would finally be doing something he enjoyed.

  *****

  Thelvyn arrived at his new home soon after dawn the next morning, just as Dal Ferstaan was beginning to fire up the forge. The first shipment of ore had only just come down from the mines in the mountains. One storage bin was already full, and the dirty burlap sacks in which the loads had been brought had been stacked and tied off, ready to be taken back and filled again. The smith's shop was off to one side of the village with a few other shops. This not only kept the smoke and noise somewhat removed from the other houses, but it was also nearer to the main road by which supplies arrived.

  Dal Ferstaan had come to the village shortly before Thelvyn had been born. He had been trained in the lower Highlands, where smiths were common but metals were scarce. While smiths were usually large, hard-tempered men, Dal was short but stocky and strong. He was growing bald and had a round, jolly face and bushy mustache, so that he was rather disarming in appearance. He was a fine craftsman, hardworking and friendly, and more to young thelvyn's liking than most of the dour, suspicious Flaem.

  Indeed Thelvyn's oldest and best friend was Celmar, Dal ferstaan's only son. But Celmar had by misfortune inherited his father's short stature and also his mother's frailty, having been a small, sickly child, and he possessed his father's talent for metalwork but not his strength. So it was that Celmar had recently been apprenticed to the jeweler, which had proven to be an excellent arrangement, and now thelvyn was to be apprenticed to the smith.

  That morning, Celmar was on his way to the jeweler's even as Thelvyn was arriving. Celmar paused and turned back, feigning surprise. "So what is this? My father isn't commonly given to acts of charity."

  "I've yet to meet the Flaemish gentleman who was," thelvyn answered.

  "And do you think you'll be able to focus your gaze on the anvil before you?"

  "It helps that I'm tall and my arms are long," he said. When he had been younger, folks had assumed he was quite farsighted. When Mage Eddan had come to the village to assume the medical and educational responsibilities lor the populace, he had tried several spells in an attempt to correct Thelvyn's vision. Unfortunately his magic had been to no effect, proving that this was a natural condition and not a failing of Thelvyn's vision.

  "I think you'll do well enough," Celmar said, more serious now. "Don't be afraid of my father. You've had troubles, but you're not afraid to work. That's all he asks."

  Thelvyn knew that to be true, for he had visited the Ferstaan home often while growing up, and he had even lived here briefly from time to time. He knew the house, and he knew the people there. He had always found it to be a happy household, with good people who made him feel welcome and at ease and never found reason to remind him that he was not of their own kind. He found Dal Fer-staan in the kitchen, preparing himself for a day's work.

  "There you are, lad," the smith said. "Are you ready to

  go at it?"

  "If I can have a moment to change into proper clothes," Thelvyn agreed.

  "Take your time and put away your things," Ferstaan told him. "You'll have Celmar's room. Now that his apprenticeship is to become final, he'll be living at the jeweler's home."

  Dal Ferstaan was indeed a kindly man, having never made his son feel guilty or ashamed because he was too frail to do the work of a smith. It helped that Celmar was comfortable doing the work of a jeweler, and his father's new apprentice was not only a friend but also something of a misfit. Even a few minutes in this house was enough to make Thelvyn feel more charitable toward the Flaem, in spite of his previous misgivings.

  Between his own brief experience with the jeweler and the time he had spent in this house when he was younger, Thelvyn knew what to expect. If the first shipments of ore had only just arrived, then there hadn't been time for any of it to be refined. The ore was bought from the miners for the value of its metal content, and better ore demanded a higher price, so the miners did what they could to remove the unwanted stone. Most of the metal from the frontier was shipped south into the Highlands to be worked there. The distance and the state of the roads being what they were, the merchants found it practical and profitable to ship ingots of the metal. This meant that the ore had to be refined there at the smith's. Graez had several smiths, but much of their work consisted of turning ore into ingots rather than finished goods.

  The actual process of refining the ore varied according to the metal involved. Iron was one of the most difficult, since it was almost never found in the pure state but had to be reduced with hard work, much time, and a very hot fire. The first problem was preparing a hot enough fire, and all the village charcoalers were kept busy reducing timber to charcoal to feed the foundries. The ore itself was reduced by heating it and forcing air through it from underneath, so that the metal became liquid and flowed down through the crushed stone to be gathered below.

  Dal Ferstaan and his two journeymen assistants set to work preparing the fires, their efforts a little awkward at first from lack of practice over the winter. Thelvyn, with his Mrength and endurance, was assigned to work one of the great bellows, forcing air through the ore and fanning the lire to greater heat. The bellows had to be worked in slow, steady strokes, directing the air at just the right intensity.

  Dal Ferstaan came over for a look. He seemed to upprove. "You're doing fine, Fox Eyes."

  Thelvyn was pleased to be doing something useful for a change. All the same, he thought that if donkeys had arms, they could be taught to do the same work.

  Parn, one of the journeyman smiths, came over after a time to give him a rest. Dai's other assistant showed him how the molds were laid out to receive the collected iron. The ingots were cast just like any other metal object. Since the ingots were only an intermediate form, to be melted later for further refinement, they were sand-cast by a simple method that took the least effort and time. The molds were prepared hy forcing an impression into the sand of a large tray with a lorm of carved stone, producing ingots that were uniform in size and weight. There were surprisingly few ingots, especially considering Dal Ferstaan's claim that he always prepared a few extra. Their day of hard work had produced only a few crude plates of finished iron.

  Thelvyn returned to working the bellows. Dal Ferstaan was called away by visitors in the middle of the morning, leaving his two youn
g journeymen to watch the furnace. They were now in the middle of the long, uneventful process of getting the furnace and the ore itself up to heat, and so they remained unconcerned even when the smith did not return for some time. A cool, welcome wind came up late in the morning. The furnace room was separate from the forge, being a long shed attached to the rest of the house at one end. The side walls were great wooden panels, hinged to swing open and large enough to allow all die smoke and fumes to escape.

  Shortly before noon, Thelvyn was taking yet another turn at the bellows when he happened to notice Mage Eddan standing at the outer door of the furnace shed. The wizard had come to the village only a few years earlier, but Thelvyn knew him well, since he served as the teacher for the older students as well as the local physician. He was young for a wizard of his standing, competent but not brilliant. He had come to the frontier to establish his professional reputation without competition from his fellow wizards. Perhaps because he was so young, he tried hard to be stern, commanding, and aloof to gain his students' respect. He combed back his fiery red hair into a lion's mane and always dressed in dark clothes in the style of the Flaemish nobility, wearing a long, elegant jacket with a flared stiff collar and a short cape.

  Having noticed that Thelvyn had seen him, he seemed about to say something, but in the next moment, he was joined by the mayor and Dal Ferstaan. They spoke together briefly. Mayor Aalsten deliberately stood with his back to the door, so he wouldn't have to look inside. Then the mayor and the wizard left together and headed back into the village. The smith stood for a moment, apparently lost in his own thoughts. At last he stepped inside.

  "Parn, Merron . . . can the two of you watch the furnace for a few minutes more while I have a talk with Thelvyn?" he asked.

  Thelvyn gave the bellows to one of the journeymen, then hurried to follow the smith around the outside of the furnace shed to the kitchen. He knew something was wrong, for the smith seemed troubled. He thought he could guess what the problem was. The wiser minds of the village had invented more restrictions to place upon him to make his life more difficult—all in the name of doing what was best and fair for him, of course. Any charitable thoughts about the Flaem he had been entertaining immediately disappeared. He had always before assumed, perhaps in his innocence, that they were just carrying out the letter of their restrictive law as it applied to resident strangers. Now he was beginning to wonder if they were deliberately making things difficult for him in the hope that he would go away.

  Dal Ferstaan took a seat at the head of the kitchen table, indicating for Thelvyn sit across from him. "I'll get right to the point, lad. Some folks in the village, Mage Eddan in particular, seem convinced that you have finally found work suited to you, and they've insisted that I take a five-year contract on your apprenticeship. I think you know what that means."

  "It means that you own my services for the next five years, and I cannot leave unless I can buy out the remainder of my contract," Thelvyn said, still trying to underhand why such terms had been ordered. It felt like a prison term to him, restricting him to a life he hadn't chosen until he was twenty years old. By that time, he feared, it would likely be too late for him to begin training for a new career.

  "Mage Eddan is behind this if you ask me," the smith continued. "Why he should care is beyond me, seeing that you finished your required schooling more than two years ago. It might be nothing more than a well-intended plot to keep you at honest work and save you from Sir George, who is looked upon as leading a wild and mysterious life, even though everyone trusts and respects him. The mayor seemed reluctant to have a hand in this, and he arranged certain terms to make things as easy as possible for you."

  "He did?" Thelvyn asked, encouraged.

  "That he did. For one thing, they didn't ask me to buy your contract, but in their role as your guardians, they gave it to me. That's the only reason I went along with this. Since I have no stake in it, I can easily set my own price whenever you may wish to buy back your contract—say, perhaps, one hrass penny, which would satisfy the letter of the law. For now, it seems to me that you're better off here than anywhere else in the village, except of course with Sir George."

  "I agree," Thelvyn said, once again feeling slightly more charitable toward the Flaem than he had a moment before. Between their sudden acts of uncaring sternness and great generosity, they certainly knew how to keep him guessing. He decided that in the future he would rely upon the Flaem he knew to be his friends, but not the rest.

  "Well, things aren't as bad as they could have been," Dal Ferstaan said, rising. "What do you say? I think we should get back to work before those ham-handed journeymen blow up the furnace."

  CHAPTER TWO

  The first day of spring was a date dictated by the calendar, but it had precious little to do with the seasons and did not bother to take the weather into account at all. Only the year before, on the night of the spring festival, the crowd had broken up into small groups and moved indoors because the snow was too deep for dancing. This year, spring was ahead of schedule and had already been lurking temptingly for nearly a month before the spring celebration, and thus people were in a better mood for it.The first day of spring was a date dictated by the calendar, but it had precious little to do with the seasons and did not bother to take the weather into account at all. Only the year before, on the night of the spring festival, the crowd had broken up into small groups and moved indoors because the snow was too deep for dancing. This year, spring was ahead of schedule and had already been lurking temptingly for nearly a month before the spring celebration, and thus people were in a better mood for it.

  Everyone, that is, but Thelvyn. The spring festival went very much the way of the harvest festival and the midwinter's feast and the celebration of high summer. Thelvyn was considered too young to drink, and no one ever wanted to dance with him. The dances were intended to bring all the boys and girls of the village together, under disgustingly well-supervised conditions, for them to decide whether or not they liked each other. But the girls never wanted to dance with Thelvyn, since they knew that their parents wouldn't approve of him. So, from Thelvyn's point of view, this was just another Flaemish conspiracy to keep him from having something they wanted to keep for themselves, such as their daughters and all the good trades.

  He had gone to the dance with Celmar Ferstaan, who had conspired with his father to make certain that Thelvyn intended in the company of his friends for fear that he would not otherwise have gone at all. Thelvyn was tall and strong and rather good-looking, in a noble and mysterious way. The girls looked at him like frightened rabbits when they were alone, or pointed and whispered and giggled when they were together.

  By Flaemish tradition, the girls asked the boys to dance, but Thelvyn hadn't been asked once. Celmar, who was skinny and pale and had rather stringy, dull red hair, had been asked no fewer than than a dozen times. In fact Celmar was doing enormously well for himself. He soon noticed that all the girls were asking him about Thelvyn, so he realized he was earning by default all his friend's dances. As the night went on, he finally decided Thelvyn should be apprised of the situation.

  "You could arrange to meet one of the girls in private, you know," Celmar said. "They all want to talk with you— perhaps a little more than talk, if you know what I mean."

  "Why should I bother?" Thelvyn asked. "They just want to gossip about me to their friends. If their fathers found out, I'd have to have a long talk with the mayor and that pretentious wizard. And that would be the least of my troubles."

  "Not if you're careful," Celmar insisted. "Now, listen to me. Merilanda, the jeweler's daughter, has taken a liking to me. She's asked me to dance four times tonight already. She could ask around discreetly and find you a girl who is interested and whose parents aren't so worried by the prospects of having in the family a tall, clever foreigner who seems destined for good things. We're not all a bunch of insufferable snobs, you know. Only the ones you've always had to deal with."

  "If you think it's worth it," Thelvyn agreed reluctantly.

  "You disappear for a few minutes, and I'll do what I can," Celmar said with a wink.