Age of Swords (The Legends of the First Empire #2)

“The Old One?” Moya asked.

“Except he didn’t call himself that. As far as I can tell, his name was The Three. He was killed by his own brother, I think. A dispute over a woman. Both were in love with someone who was…real? Something like that. There’s a whole lot about this woman that I skipped over, but—”

“Killed?” Moya asked. “How could he be dead and here as well? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Yeah, I know.” Brin made an embarrassed face and shrugged. “But just listen anyway. So this Three person—the Old One—was trapped, sort of like us, okay? He couldn’t escape.”

“But he did,” Roan said.

Brin nodded. “The dwarfs made that possible. According to the tablets, The Three heard their hammers and shouted for help. They came closer, but they wouldn’t open the prison. He begged them, but they were afraid. They thought he was Uberlin.”

“Who’s that?” Moya asked.

Again, Brin shrugged. “Someone bad, I guess.”

“The Evil One,” Flood spoke. “Ancient lore speaks of one who brought wickedness into the world. Uberlin is the great enemy of everyone and everything.”

Brin nodded. “It fits. So, The Three apparently knew many things and offered to give the dwarfs a powerful gift if they let him out. He had learned that they used only stone tools and he offered to share the secret of a metal called copper.”

“Wait,” Moya said. “The dwarfs didn’t know about copper? Isn’t that what Roan made her ax out of?” She looked at Roan, who nodded.

“This was a very long time ago,” Brin explained.

“Humans didn’t even exist then,” Flood said.

“Oh, no. We did,” Brin said. “I saw references to the Three Peoples.”

“The what?”

“The Children of Ferrol, the Children of Drome, and the Children of Mari.”

Persephone smiled when Brin said that last word.

Brin smiled back. “I have a feeling there’s a lot more about that in the other tablets that I’ve yet to go over. There’s so many of them. Must have taken decades to make them all.”

“How many did you decipher? How many have you gotten through?” Persephone asked.

“Just two. And I helped Suri work out the table tablet.”

“So, to get back to the story…” Moya paused to yawn, and then she looked in Arion’s direction. “You were saying that this prisoner asked the dwarfs to set him free and…?”

“Right,” Brin said. “The dwarfs said they needed to test the gift, and they went away for a long time. When they returned, they said it wasn’t good enough because copper is too weak.”

Roan nodded. “It’s true. You can’t do much with it.”

“So The Three offered a better gift, the secret to making bronze. Again, the Dherg went away for a very long time. When they returned, they complained that copper was too scarce, and the gift was worthless.”

“Bronze is made from copper?” Roan asked excitedly.

“And tin, apparently. The whole formula is right here.” She pointed to the tablet that lay between them. “You see now why I wanted you to hear this?”

Brin’s tales were usually good, but Roan had to admit this one was particularly interesting.

“Bronze wasn’t good enough?” Persephone said with a smirk, looking at the dwarfs.

“We weren’t there,” Frost reminded her.

“Anyway,” Brin went on, “The Three was getting irritated by this time, thinking he was being used by the dwarfs.”

“I know how he feels,” Moya said, and Persephone nodded with her, making Frost and Flood frown.

“But he offered them one more gift if they absolutely guaranteed to let him out. He then gave them the secret of something called Eye-run.”

“Iron,” Frost said.

“Iron?” Brin looked at him thoughtfully.

“Is that in there too?” Roan asked, staring down at the flat stone at Brin’s knees and daring to touch the engraved marks on the surface “How to make it, I mean?”

Brin nodded. “Just like bronze. I think it might be the gray metal we saw.”

“Happy birthday, Roan,” Moya said.

Roan looked at her confused. It wasn’t her birthday, at least she didn’t think so. Roan’s mother, Reanna, lived until Roan was eleven, but never celebrated the day her daughter was born. Iver told her Reanna called it “the worst day of her life.”

“Anyway…so, the dwarfs went away again, okay? For a very long time. And when they came back, they said it’s still not enough. They wanted more. The Three then promised the key to immortality, which is to eat the fruit of the First Tree. He explained that he had a seed, and if they planted it, they could have all the fruit they wanted. This was very clever because the other gifts were just knowledge, but the seed was a physical thing and they would have to open a tiny hole in the stone for him to pass it through. The dwarfs went away again to think about it. By then The Three knew he had tempted the dwarfs with something they couldn’t resist.”

Frost and Flood made huffing sounds and grumbled. “What a pile of silt.”

Brin pretended not to hear. “The small hole was all The Three needed to get out. But by then he hated them so much for their greed and treachery that he couldn’t bear to let them get his treasure, the tablets and the wisdom they contained. So, he determined how to create Balgargarath, but he didn’t call it that.”

“Balgargarath is our word,” Flood said.

“The Three used another name.”

“A shorter one, I hope,” Moya said.

Brin shook her head. “Sadly, no. And I have no chance of pronouncing it. He also referred to the creature as almost alive. The sentinel would live forever and prevent the dwarfs from accessing the tablets. He gave it rein to roam all of Neith and permission to punish the dwarfs should they enter.”

“Oh!” Frost exploded. “He curses us? Claims it’s our own fault?”

Moya shook her head. “You told us yourself that you came here in search of riches. Your habits don’t seem to have changed.”

“Quiet, the both of you,” Persephone said, raising her voice. “Go on, Brin.”

“The Three forbade his creation from going beyond this mountain, to prevent it from becoming a curse on the rest of the world.”

“Wait. What? It can’t leave Neith?” Frost said.

“Not according to this.”

“Well, that’s something,” Persephone said. “At least we don’t have to worry about it coming to our shores.”

“So what happened next?” Moya asked.

Brin shrugged. “That’s all there was. This last tablet was never finished. I think because the prisoner left. It spoke about his sacrifice, and how he would escape and create Balgargarath.”

“How’d he get out?” Persephone asked.

“I guess the dwarfs returned and made that small hole.”

“And that was enough?”

“It would appear so.”

—

“Arion wants you,” Brin told Suri, who had been going through the enchantment one last time. “I think…” Brin sat back down with the tablet pile. “I think I won’t have time to study all of these.”

Her expression was one of the saddest things Suri had ever seen.