The Sword and The Quest: Lady Merlin's Saga (Epic Fantasy) by Kit Maples

for sale in the swordmaking towns and villages scattered around the Island.
    At summer’s end, before the first rush of autumn wind across the forge, I threw the broken sword into the coals and melted it down.  I did all the work myself.  The slaves and apprentices watched.
    I cast the bars and rods.  The bars now were more steel than iron.  I twisted and retwisted the rods and hammered them round.  I hammer-welded the rods to the outside edges of the bars.  I cut the sword.  Chiseled the fuller.  Ground and honed the biting edges to a vivid sharpness.
    The season was done now.  The slaves and apprentices had gone to get across the mountains before the first snow.  I sat on the cooling forge, the sword across my leather-aproned lap, waiting for the boy squire to reclaim his blade.
    I heard him come whistling up the stone stairs this time.
    “Here, Prince,” I said, “is your sword.”
    “Remade out of the old materials?  That’s a dangerous thing, Lady Brynn.  It will be a brittle sword out of old iron or too full of steel for flex and power.”
    “It’s a good sword,” I said.
    “Shall we try it?”
    The boy swung the sword through the air.  “Marvelous balance.  An edge that sings through the air!  I can feel the power of the iron core and the marvelous cutting of the steel edges.”
    “Make the anvil test,” I said to him.
    “Oh, all right.”
    The boy swung the blade down on the anvil.
    The sword shattered.
    “Not good enough,” the boy said, boyish-cheery.  “Next year, my Lady, for another try?”
    I picked up the shattered pieces of the sword.  What had I failed to do?  The wrong oil for the tempering bath?  The wrong incantation over the welding?  The wrong Moon phase at the cutting of the fuller?
    “Yes, next year,” I said.  “Damn you.”
    The boy disappeared in his usual cloud of ash.
    I stood with the sword pieces in my hands and looked down into the still-frozen wine bath holding the bars and rods for the sword that was to be mine.  How could I fashion that great sword if I could not make a sword proof against breaking by any boy squire?
    I curled up in my rags and furs on the warm coals of the forge, hugging the bits of sword, and slept away the winter, dreaming of my perfect sword.
     
    * * *
     
    On new year’s day, the first day of spring on the oldest calendars and my eighteenth year, I woke in my bundle of furs on the nearly dead coals of the forge, Galabes’ great silent hound staring me awake.
    “You?” I said to the dog.  “You, too, passed the winter away dreaming of swords?”
    He and I were all that was left of the High King, thin and weak remembrances of the greatness that was in Arthur.
    “What shall I do to make the greatest of swords for myself?” I asked the dog.
    I showed the beast the broken bits of sword with which I had slept the winter.
    The hound turned away.  I shoved the sword fragments into the pockets of my leather apron.  I followed the dog down the mountain steps, across the valley, up the next mountain, and into the cave of antique war rubble kept by Galabes.
    Galabes was there, waiting.
    “Spring!” he said.  “The turning of the world’s new year and of your eighteenth year, Daughter.  I’d expected you to be a champion by now.  I hoped to be dead by now.  But you’re a stubborn and obtuse child and I’ll have to be satisfied with today.”
    “Today for what?” I said, with a youthful insolence I intended.
    Galabes did now swat me to the ground as he had so often before.  I was ready to club and stab him if he tried.
    Galabes led deep into the rear of his cave where the massive merlin oak grew, its leaves shimmering with faint radiance, its sighs of misery filling the still air. The hound stayed behind in the cave’s war rubble, almost as though it cowered there, startling me.
    “What’s the matter with this tree?” I asked him.  “How can a tree weep?”
    “Have you made your sword?” said Galabes.
    “I can