I stare, entranced, at the light shining from the end of her wand. It truly is sunlight, I now see. Sunlight somehow brought down here to the deepest and darkest caves of the underworld. How is it done? How does she perform this trick? If her wand does not produce power, only conducts it, how does it pull sunlight down such a distance?

"Watch!" she commands.

How dare she? A human, command a second degree runeknight? It is an insult, and I open my mouth to retort, but then her light flashes and a great image is painted along the far wall of the forge. As if compelled, I turn to look.

I am struck dumb. A human dressed in skins stares up the at the sky—all is wrought in the same shade of gold, yet so detailed are the clouds, the shining sun, and even the texture of the human, that the image needs no color to convey meaning.

"Us humans are a people of the open sky," she begins.

Her voice has lost its fear and age for the moment, and in it I can hear a ghost of Jaemes. She speaks in the same tone he used when he dared to critique Runethane Yurok to his face. My own voice is completely stilled.

"From the first, when we ascended to sapience, we were fascinated by what lies above. The sun and rain would nurture our crops, let us grow powerful and happy, and then in the next moment the heavens would strike us with torrential floods and vicious, burning lightning. Primitives said these events were caused by transgressions against the divine."

The image changes to a woman bound upon a stone altar. A man in flowing robes drives a stone knife into the center of her chest. Golden blood fountains upward.

"We were ruled by priests—a word you may not know, I suppose, even in your own tongue—they claimed to be emissaries of the Gods above."

Across the wall appears an image of a city burning to ashes. A new one arises from the smokey shroud of the old, but that one burns too. The cycle repeats, over and over again, faster and faster.

"But they could not disrupt the cycles of bounty and destitution. A new solution had to be found."

A man appears, pointing a long staff toward the sun. It casts a shadow that wheels around him as the days and night go by.

"The first wizards meditated on the sky above. They stared upward, tracking the movements of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the clouds within their minds. Slowly they began to understand the mathematics of the forces that controlled the sky. And as they began to understand, they began to feel a connection with what lay above. As if their souls and the forces of the sky had become linked."

A beam of light reaches down and illuminates the man's hands. A woman appears beside him, raises a thin wand. A bolt of lightning lances down and alights on its tip—her eyes flare with power.

"Soon after, they learned to control it."

The man strikes with his staff and the beam intensifies a hundredfold. My vision, but for its black scars, becomes nearly totally white. Tears sting in my eyes. The woman flicks her wand and clouds cover the sky. Lighting strikes down, again and again, just like it did upon us on the surface those many years ago.

"Our trials were only just beginning, though. Our newfound powers brought enmity from elder peoples."

Slender beings with ears shaped like knives march across a field toward a human city. A terrible battle commences. The very grass turns against the humans, even as lightning burns it.

"The elves."

From the gate of a mountain stronghold marches a host of runeknights clad in shining steel. They beat at the human army with hammers that shatter their crude armor and shields.

"The dwarves."

A savage horde of long-armed trolls descends upon a human village. They fight with their hands, tearing heads from shoulders, rending out guts with their long claws.

"Trolls."

Then comes a series of other battles, more indistinct. I see hints of tails, and strange maces, and strange spells are cast.

"And other peoples, whose names and forms are lost to time. We humans contended with all of these. Yet, in the end, it was we who triumphed. The power of the sky is truly formidable. You may argue about our relative strengths—but a society whose crops never fail, who never suffer drought nor flood nor high winds—its people will become uncountable."

She shows an elvish army falling beneath a host many times its size. The runeknights before their mountain are overwhelmed, fall back behind their gates. The trolls are caught in a trap and riddled with uncountable spears and arrows. The other peoples diminish, retreat, and vanish. A dragon is brought to the earth by wind and stabbed through by a thousand long pikes.

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"In such a way we have become ascendant, and the surface of the world is ours in its entirety. The elves are gone, the trolls driven underground, and you dwarves have retreated from the hills and mountains which you once also held dominion over."

I cannot help but scowl at this.

"There is plenty room below, is there not?" she says. "Besides, our Kingdom of Hyvaen has no quarrel with your Runeking Ulrike's kingdom."

"I suppose," I say, though I cannot help but feel a little bitter. "As long as you have no designs on the underworld."

"We do not—only the trolls do, and they remain weak and directionless."

Do they? I wonder about that.

She flicks her wand again and the image vanishes. I turn back to look at her. She is breathing heavily and has stooped over. The light from her wand is but a spark. Her age is showing—it appears that unlike us runeknights, the human wizards have not found a way to increase their lifespans.

"Did my tale satisfy you?" she asks.

I rub my eyes to take the stinging away and think carefully for a while. Her tale was impressive, certainly, and beautifully shown. And it was fascinating—it seems the surface is a place that equals the underworld in its strife and has an equally long history. To see elves, long-dead, that also pleased me. I'd always wondered what they looked like.

Yet when it came to her discussion of magic, I feel that she left a good deal unsaid. There were some contradictions—how does their power manifest unconsciously, for one, if they must study the patterns of the sky? And are there really no human priests anymore? Vanerak once spoke of them—he was the one who taught me that word. And Jaemes also spoke of Gods.

"I am somewhat satisfied," I declare. "But I still have only a vague idea about you humans' power."

She shrugs. "For you to learn in detail would take many years of study. But what is important is this—we channel the power of the sky. The elves channeled the power of life. The trolls, as I said before, have power in their own flesh, though they haven't fully awoken to it. And other creatures had their own forms of magic too. All apart from you dwarves."

"We have runes instead."

"Yes. And each one—until now—was created by a singular dwarf, over one hundred thousand years ago. And what lies behind them is totally forgotten with the passing of ages."

"They are recreated many times over, too."

"And each time one is recreated, it draws from the same power. But what power? That is the question. I think you know the answer."

"I do. It's the power of the world's blood."

"The world's blood? Do you speak of molten stone?"

"Yes. I tap into it each time I go down there. The sphere forces it through me."

"The sphere that is intrinsically connected to the First Runeforger."

"Yes. Yes."

A chill comes over me. It's all coming together. All of a sudden, I am seeing and understanding. The First Runeforger—he was a wizard. He channeled the power of magma, the power below everything, that underlies everything. He put its power into meaning that could be unlocked with the combination of metal and certain substances—reagents.

"I understand," I whisper. "Yes, I see it now. The sphere—the one he held—that was the focus for his power. That was how he made the runes."

"But where did the other power go?" says Alae. "The power you dwarves should have—perhaps an affinity for stone."

"Wiped out," I say. "That was what the master mason meant when he talked to me. That was why he hated us so. The runeknights were too strong. Stone could not defeat steel. The carvings in the city were of those first, ordinary dwarves."

"Carvings?"

"Did I not tell you? On the walls beneath the magma were carvings of dwarves, unarmored, with their mouths open. Curiously powerless runes were set beneath each image. I suppose they weren't runes after all, just letters."

Alae's eyes are wide open and fixed on me.

"They were what dwarves should be," she says. "Wielders of stone."

"Yes. I think the master mason was one, in secret."

"Who was this mason?"

"A dwarf in Vanerak's realm. He stole a book of mine, and in the end, I think he took all the masons with him. To where, I don't know."

"Fascinating," she breaths. "To think that the power still remains in some of you."

"Yet none of this tells me why I should have the First Runeforger's power." The light of understanding has been exhausted, and the darkness of further questions descends. "It doesn't tell me why we're linked."

"You spoke of the sphere broken open."

"Yes. If it was broken, though, shouldn't the power have ended?"

"That should be the case, yes. If a wizard's staff or wand is broken, she or he cannot wield the power of the sky."

"The First Runeforger died violently, you know. He was slain."

"How do you know this?"

"Runeking Ulrike told me."

"Personally? He knows of your abilities?"

"He didn't fully believe, but he knew there was something strange in me. I think he was too focused on his own forging to care much."

"And how did he know?"

"How am I to guess at that? But I don't doubt him. Surely, when the Runeforger was killed, his sphere was broken—yet every time I've seen it since, it's been whole."

"Indeed."

"Why?"

She shakes her head. "I cannot fathom why."

"Why am I linked to it?"

"I do not know. I cannot guess. Can you remember seeing anything like it before you gained your power?"

"No. Nothing. And if I had, why would my brother and Hardrick be linked also?"

"I don't know that either. Can they make runes?"

"Maybe my brother could. As for Hardrick—my enemy—I think he can do something else. I don't think it has anything to do with runes, though."

"I see."

I sigh, deeply. I look at the wall she showed her images on, as if hoping that some new insight will flash into existence there. But nothing does.

"There's too much we don't know," I say. "You've given me plenty of answers—yet not enough."

"You may learn more, as you use your power. That is how we wizards perfect our craft."

"I hope so. Well, at least I know a little more than I used to." I glance over at my helmet. "It's said by some that you put part of yourself into each craft you make. I wonder if the First Runeforger put himself into that sphere he made."

"Part of his soul, you mean."

"Yes. Whatever a soul is."

"That's another mystery we've never been able to fathom. Not even us wizards."

I shrug. "Well, I thank you anyway. I best get up to my guild now, and show them these runes. I've been ignoring them for too long. Probably I ought to do a speech or something to them as well."

"I will return to my studies also."

"Figuring out the patterns in the darkness?"

"Yes."

"Trying to form a connection with it, also?"

She frowns. "It is important to know one's enemy. To be able to use its own power against it."

"Quite. Be careful. And be careful who you say that to."

She nods. "Thank you, Zathar Runeforger. This has been most fascinating."

"Likewise," I say, glumly. "Likewise, witch."

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