In due course, I returned to my quarters at the forge, where I fell into an exhausted and dreamless sleep. Dawn, thankfully, brought with it only the stolid routine of another keep day. Since setting the sword aside, my dreams had not returned.

I sent a sample of the newly struck coinage to Seth for the carpenter's inspection. The oil I purchased arrived, as did some of the clothing I had ordered, which surprised me. These were mostly the new working clothes, which were very welcome. The T-shirts looked rather fancy for casual wear, and were cut more like short sleeveless ponchos with a slight taper, but at least they were new, and covered my chest.

Nudity, while not completely uncommon to this culture, was not the norm. I had often seen field-hands labor virtually naked at some tasks, but clothed public appearances were expected. Besides providing protection, given the rough if temperate environment, clothing provided markers of occupation and title.

The jeans and tee I had lived in since my arrival, even augmented by the handouts from the keep, were by now acceptable only as rags most places off Chord's properties. Gort had somehow managed to assemble a stock of cycles in excess of sales, and I had sent him near the clay pits behind the forge, primed with extensive instructions, to see to the construction of a pottery kiln. A project I had long been hoping to start work on.

My apprentices were well able by now to see after all but the most advanced aspects, so my personal time need only be spent on finicky welds, decorative work, and of course, the close direction of the boys. In the last few weeks, two younger lads had been added on, who fetched, carried, swept, and stacked for my apprentices.Both were only ten or eleven years old. Their eyes watched everything, under the severe direction of my very busy novices. I thought about asking Seth how he handled apprenticeship in his workshop, but as the system seemed to be working itself out here; I decided to leave it be.

Before noon, three short forms emerged from the forest trail-head and began ascending the keep's lane. Even at a distance, I could tell it was Brock, with two of his kin, coming to see Chord. I plunged my hands into the slightly oily waters of my quenching barrel and wiped them dry. With a word to the boys, I left and walked down the wending path, toward the three visitors. They were much as I had seen them last, except that Brock now wore a full red cloak that almost brushed the dusty road as he strode up the hill. The clement weather didn't call for cloaks or wraps of any kind, so I took the cape to be some item of ceremonial dress. By the time I had reached the tower front, Brock's party was already a third of the way up the lane, and attracting a small group of gawkers. I pounded on the keep door, which brought Harold out. I pointed to the visitors.

Harold squinted down the path. "Ah. The Nublin, I see." The Seneschal's sharp eyes stabbed at the on-lookers. "Well?" he roared, "Seen enough, lads?"

The onlookers did an almost choreographed jump, and dispersed like roaches in a flashlight beam. "Bid them welcome, and usher them in. I will advise Chord they are come." I waved at Brock, who likely recognizing me, returned the wave. I strode down from the hilltop to meet the Nublin. The trio had combed and oiled their beards, and had no weapons about them. The oil took some of the fluff out of the huge affairs, and robed as they were, gave the trio a sort of eastern wise-man look, to my eyes.

Brock stopped at my approach. "Good place for a keep. High. Easy to defend. Good drainage."

I smiled. "My forge is around behind it. When you are through with Chord, I will show it to you."

"Aye, I'd like that, William."

We continued up the hill. Chord had come out from the tower and stood awaiting their approach, so I fare-welled the three visitors and went off toward the Forge.

The bargaining went quickly, and later in the day I found myself providing the promised walking tour of the Forge. Brock and I got on well together, save for his annoying habit of kicking anything below knee level, before handling it. I put this to working a lot below ground.

"So, as it is," Brock informed me, "I'll bring six of my best diggers here, and they will fill yer bins with the highest grade copper ore we find on your hill, and open up the vein face for a space, so's to make it easier for you later. In return, Chord will bag up some feed, two barrels of ale, and see us otherwise provisioned while we establish our new camp. Yer to show us the digs you are working, and we'll take it from there.

"Hah! You know, William, this be the first time in memory I've considered trade with your people. Your Chord, he seems an honest and focused fellow."

"He is that," I admitted.

We strolled behind the forge as we talked, stopping at the stream head beside the hill. Brock looked downstream towards the clay pit and froze, a deep frown hiding the slash of his mouth behind his beard. Following his gaze, I noted Gort packing up clay bricks in wooden forms to be used in making a pottery kiln. Bree stood close by, hands on hips, watching and talking to the thing, which, of course studiously ignored her.

"Your people," Brock gritted, "seem determined on their own ending. Likely, ours as well. How many Burlies did it cost Chord to wezen that abomination from the Demons?"

"Uh, five, I think."

"Bah! Well, to the good, that's five less of the bastards running loose, anyway."

I remembered that Burlies had come up in conversation with Brock before, as a nuisance. "We have to travel to the mountain roots for them, they don't congregate in this area," I assured him. Brock glanced sharply at me. I got the feeling I had missed something important in what he had said.

"Mine and yours had a war over them once. They came with your kind, you know. Then we figured out that your folk were blameless, or just tools, anyway, and hadn't inflicted them on us a' purpose. So we let off."

"I was under the impression they were a local animal. No one has ever discussed their origin with me particularly, but Chord thought they were native."

Brock blew out his cheeks, and squatted next to the creek. "Sit."

I sat and watched him quietly.

"That be part O' the problem. Since they arrived when yours did, your kind had no way to know they weren't always about. Took it for fact they was natural here. We wanted to make yours take them away, and yours claimed they had naught to do wi' it. Caused bad blood, fights. But we figured it out in the end, just decided to live wi' it, and left men to go to hell by their own hand. Your people really don't know what the Burlies are, save for the bits your mages have conjured, and they are still blind to most of it."

Brock dug an angular fragment of clear quartz out from the pebbles beside the brook, and held it to the light, so that it broke a small rainbow along the ground.

"You know of this, eh? 'Tis a child's pastime, making light bust into rainbows. We are not at all as you are. Look you deeply into my eye, and tell me what you see."

I bent forward and looked at the eye he pointed to. Inside the iris, I caught a glint. Looking closer, the gleam showed fractions, crystalline patterns within the orb, as if I were looking into a hole bored in a fine geode, or well-made refractor. Light seemed to split and split again within his eye, as if it were filled with many small prisms.

The Nublin pulled back, and met my gaze. "We see things...differently. Things you don't see. Ruby lines that grid this world as were not here afore your kind came. The Burlies, they are connected to them. They are the, you would say, Spirit? Animus? Of those lines. The Will from the Meat divided, me Mam would say. When you feed them Burlies to the demons, you feed some 'O that Will, along with the Flesh, to them. It's the Will they are after. Not the meat. That's what we figure. Some say that when the demons have fed enough, they will have common essence with this world, and will cross over ta' stay. But," the dwarf shrugged, "some day the sun will go out too, they say. No one worries about the bad as lies over the far horizon, not even among the Nublin. Enough of this. Let's get on to it, show me your digs now."

We scrabbled up the steep cliff-side without further conversation. I lost myself in thought over what Brock had told me. I knew that physical systems worked by bartering energy, that what you gained somewhere in any system, you paid for somewhere else. Conservation of energy, that stuff. But I had always taken it for granted that magic, if it existed, would as a matter of course be the exception. It was, I realized, part of my very definition of it, a sort of amazing cosmic freebee. Poof! Shazaam! The idea that magic might just be another example of robbing Peter to pay Paul shook the fairy-dust off it. It felt as if a piece of my childhood had been stolen.

We finally reached the general area of the malachite mines. I pointed to the shafts, holes really, that had been sunk to procure the deposits. The dwarf unspooled a line into one to gauge its depth, then drew it up and peered back down the cliff side.

"Wait here," said Brock, then he jumped into the hole, and out of sight. This was as frightening as seeing someone drop suddenly into an open manhole, and it startled me.

I bent down, peering into the pitch shaft, and cried out, "Are you all right?"

"Fine, fine. I told you we aren't like you. Just give me a moment...," the words drifted back up to me out of the darkness. "Aye, there she is. Good, runs off to the front cliff side. Alright then, throw me the rope."

I picked up the coil the dwarf had discarded and tossed it into the hole. There came a thud, then, and an angry shout from the hole.

"Hey! What in six feathers is wrong with you! Why did you throw the rope at me?"

"You said to toss you the rope..."

"Lower the rope, dolt, not throw it into the hole. How am I supposed to get out now, ya great fool!" My face reddened. Evidently, whatever trick allowed Nublin to jump down shafts, didn't apply to climbing back out of them.

"Sorry, I... I'll get a rope from the keep. Wait here." I winced again realizing what I had just said, and a howl climbed back up the hole.

"Just, hurry it up, William. Wait here, Paugh!"

After retrieving Brock from the shaft, we inspected a second site. This time I watched closely as Brock jumped into the bore. His legs hit and rebounded like steel springs from small protrusions in the shaft face as he descended, causing him to bounce from one face to the other in a rapid sort of rappelle. These jarring impacts did not seem to bother Brock at all, who also managed to keep upright , and like a cat, inevitably hit each wall feet first.

Eventually we both descended from the cliff, and after sponging another ale sack off Harold, Brock and his companions left, disappearing down the woodland trail from whence they had come. On my pallet sat a large lumpy sack, and in it several loaves of fresh baked, delicious bread, still oven warm and sweet as honey. Bree poked her head into the cubby and grinned at me

"Me mother came by. Thought you might like some fresh baked fer your trip tomorrow,"

"Mumph," I replied, swallowing in ecstasy. "How goes the Kiln?"

Bree tucked one foot behind the other, and said in a sober tone, "The pottery man finished all the bricks up. Fat ones, curved ones, all sorts of ones. Mom said that Harold said that the baker's wife would put it together while you're gone."

I nodded. A good choice. I had already shown Harold how it needed to be built, and the baker would be well acquainted with ovens and their construction.

"And what are you to do meantime?"

She huffed. "Go back to makin' more copper meld molds. Stay out of the apprentice's way during the pours. Learn all I can from the baker 'bout the ovens. Practice using th' clay wheel Seth made me."

"And?"

"Pick up me Iron markers from Harold every three day."

"Thank your mother for the bread, Bree. This is wonderful stuff."

Bree curtsied and left, leaving me alone with the heady smell of the baked bread, and my packing for Corbell.