Chapter 421 Holdfast

Andraste didn't pick up another blade.

That was the first thing I noticed. After One. After the hall, and the wall of ice I brought down on the far end of it, and a thousand feet of it on top of her blade, still held in a grey hand.

She didn't ask for one. She didn't borrow one. Kyria put her own first blade on the long table in front of her at breakfast on the first morning, the way she put it in front of me once, and Andraste looked at it for a long time and pushed it back across the table to her mother.

She went down to the north field at dawn the way she always does. To drill. With the Hyrrani in their rows.

With nothing in her hands.

She drilled with her hands open.

All of it. The whole form. The one she and Teshka and Kyria go through in the mornings so fast you can't see the edges. Andraste went through it alone in front of the rows with her hands open and empty, every cut and every turn, as if the blade were there.

The Hyrrani didn't say anything. They watched. And then, on the third morning, all of them, forty thousand, put their own blades down on the grass at their feet.

And went through it with her. Empty-handed.

Kyria says it's never happened before. Not in a thousand years of First Blades.

I asked her about it on the roof.

On the sixth night. Where she sits. With her back against the chimney and Vessa on her chest facing out and her bare feet on the slates.

"It was my grandmother's," said Andraste. Before I'd asked anything. She knew what I was going to ask. "Kyria's mother's. Odra forged it for her. When Odra was young and her hair was black." She looked out at the north field in the dark. "I carried it on the salt. And on the ridge. And on every world since." A pause. "It had my ribbon on it."

"I know."

"The white one," said Andraste. "For the fight I didn't need to have. On the tower." She put her hand on Vessa's head. "It was the first one. There were going to be more."

I didn't say anything.

"It's in a grey hand," said Andraste. "Under the ice. Somewhere I can't reach." Her voice was very level. "Holding a blade that wasn't made for it. That somebody else's grandmother carried."

She was quiet for a long time.

"I don't want another one," she said. "Not one that would break the same way."

So I went and asked.

Gilgamesh first.

Because Gilgamesh has every weapon there's ever been on his back, and some there haven't, and he's older than anything on Hearth. If anyone knew what the finest blade ever made would be, it would be him.

I found him on the north field. Sitting on a crate he'd brought from nowhere, watching the Hyrrani drill empty-handed. With his chin on his fist.

I asked him.

He didn't answer for a long time. Then he reached over his shoulder without looking, the way he does, and it was a sword. Long. Very old. Silver. With a blade so plain it was almost not there.

He held it out across his knees.

"The first one I ever made," he said. Isolde gave it to me later; Gilgamesh doesn't speak our language and doesn't intend to. "When I was young. Before Hearth was Hearth. I thought it was the finest blade there would ever be."

He turned it in the light.

"I have made ten thousand since," he said. "Better ones. Stronger. Sharper." He put it back over his shoulder, and it was gone. "This is still the one I reach for first. Every time."

"Why?"

Gilgamesh looked at me for a long time.

"Because I made it for someone," he said. "All the rest I made for fighting."

Then Alexander.

On the bridge across the canyon. Dinraal's bridge, with Isolde's leaves on it and Kwame Osei's road down the middle now. Alexander stands on it sometimes in the evenings with his helmet off and his hundred blades round him in the air, very slowly, turning. He says it's the only place on Avalon where there's enough room under him.

I asked him.

He didn't answer either. He put his hand up. And one of the blades in the air came down to it. A small one. Plain. Not a sword; something more like a long knife.

"Every blade I have," said Alexander, "I hold with this." He turned his hand. Open. The blade sat on his palm without his holding it. "Not with the hand. With what's in the hand."

"I don't understand."

"A blade isn't one thing," said Alexander. "It's every hand it's ever been in. Every reason it was ever drawn." He let the long knife go back up into the air with the others. "If you want to make the finest blade there's ever been, don't make it with one pair of hands."

He looked at me.

"Make it with all of them," said Alexander. "Everyone she'd draw it for."

Then Kyria.

I found her in the kitchen of the house on the rise. At the long table. With her first blade across her knees, sharpening it, the way she does in the evenings. Very slowly. The stone going down the edge and back.

She didn't look up.

"You want to make her a blade," said Kyria.

"Yes."

"Not forge one. Not have one forged." The stone went down the edge. "Make one."

"Yes."

Kyria put the stone down. And looked at me for a long time. The way she looks at me across the long table, the way she looked at me on the salt of Caddoc before any of it, when I was a boy with black eyes who turned three blades to sand.

"On Hyrran," said Kyria, "a First Blade's blade is forged once. By the finest smith on the ridge. From iron out of the ridge itself. And given to her by her mother on the morning she stands at the edge for the first time." She looked at the blade across her knees. "My mother gave me this. On the ridge. Odra forged it."

She was quiet.

"Andraste's was my mother's," said Kyria. "I gave it to her because she wanted it. Because she'd sat on her grandmother's knee and held the hilt when she was three." She ran her thumb along the flat of her own blade. "She has never had one that was only hers."

"Then I'd like to make her one," I said. "That's only hers."

Kyria didn't say anything for a long time.

"Ask Odra," she said.

Odra is on Hyrran.

She hardly ever comes to Avalon. She sends four hundred smiths and keeps the forges on the ridge, the deep ones, under the snow, where the iron comes up out of the mountain hot and the iron sea is very far below. She's been at the forges for sixty years. She forged the armour Kyria's mother wore. She forged the armour Andraste wore on the salt. She forged the ring on Andraste's finger, and mine.

I went through the arch from the courtyard. Onto the ridge. Into the snow.

And down. To the deepest forge.

She was at the anvil.

Of course she was. She's always at the anvil. A small woman, very old, very broad in the shoulders, with her white hair cut short and her arms bare to the shoulder in the heat and scarred all over from sixty years of sparks. With a hammer in one hand.

She didn't stop hammering when I came in.

She doesn't stop for anyone. Kyria says she didn't stop for Kyria's mother.

I stood at the edge of the forge and waited.

When she'd finished, she put the hammer down. And plunged what she'd been making into the trough, and it hissed, and the steam went up into the dark of the forge roof.

Then she turned round.

And looked at me for a long time. With her small dark eyes.

"You're here about the blade," she said. In Hyrrani. Very slowly, so I'd understand. I have some, now. Not much.

"Yes."

"Kyria sent a bird," said Odra. "Three days ago." She wiped her hands on her apron. "She said: he's going to ask you. She said: don't say no until you've heard him."

"Are you going to say no?"

Odra didn't answer.

She went to the back of the forge. To a rack on the wall, where the old blades are. The ones that came back. The ones whose First Blades didn't need them any more, or couldn't carry them.

And took one down.

It was broken.

Snapped. Clean. A hand's width above the hilt. Old iron, dark, worked very fine, like the scales of something.

"Kyria's mother's sister," said Odra. "On the eastern edge. Forty years ago. Against something that came out of the dark that nobody on Hyrran had a name for." She held the two pieces. "My best work. At the time." She looked at me. "It broke."

She put it back on the rack.

"Everything breaks," said Odra. "Iron breaks. The ridge breaks; there are cracks in it from before I was born. The grey ones caught Andraste's blade in their bare hand and it didn't break, but only because they didn't want it to." She folded her scarred arms. "I can forge her another blade. The best I've ever made. It will take me a month."

A pause.

"And it will break," said Odra.

"Then don't forge it," I said.

Odra looked at me.

"Help me make it," I said. "With everyone."

She didn't understand at first.

Then I told her what Alexander said. On the bridge. Make it with all of them. Everyone she'd draw it for. And what Gilgamesh said. Because I made it for someone. And what Kyria said about a First Blade's blade, given by her mother, on the morning she stands at the edge.

And what I could do. With iron. With every atom of it.

Odra listened to all of it without moving.

When I'd finished, she picked up her hammer again. And turned it over in her scarred hands. And looked at it for a long time.

"You'd need heat," she said. "More than this forge has ever had. More than the mountain."

"I know someone."

"And cold. To set it. Cold that doesn't stop."

"I know someone."

"And air," said Odra. "To temper. The right air. At the right time. Every breath of it."

"Yes."

"And something to quench it in," said Odra. "That isn't water. Water's too slow. Water's what you quench ordinary iron in."

I didn't say anything.

Odra looked at me for a long time. Then her face did something. I've known her since the ridge, since the wedding, since the ring. I'd never seen her face do anything.

"Lightning," said Odra. "You've got a wife who's lightning."

"And iron," said Odra. "Out of the ridge. That's the law."

"Out of the ridge," I said.

"And given," said Odra. "By her mother. On the morning."

"Yes."

Odra put the hammer down on the anvil.

"Then bring them," she said. "All of them. To my forge." She turned back to the fire. "And I'll swing the hammer. Because nobody else is swinging a hammer at a First Blade's blade in my forge while I'm alive."

So I brought them.

Not Andraste. Andraste didn't know. That was Kyria's idea; she said a First Blade's blade is given, not shown, and that if Andraste walked into the forge and saw it being made she'd want to help and then it would be hers and not given and the whole thing would be wrong.

So Andraste stayed on Avalon. On the north field. Drilling with empty hands. With forty thousand Hyrrani drilling empty-handed behind her.

And everyone else came to the forge.

Kyria came first. With her first blade.

Odra looked at it for a long time. Then at Kyria.

"You're sure," said Odra.

"Yes," said Kyria.

And laid it on the anvil.

I hadn't known she was going to do that. Nobody had. Kyria's first blade. The one her mother gave her, on the ridge, on the morning she stood at the edge. The one she gave me, once, at breakfast, and took back, and gave back, and took back again. The one she sharpens every evening at the long table.

"Iron out of the ridge," said Kyria. "That's the law." She didn't look at me. "This is out of the ridge. My mother's mother dug it." She put her hand flat on it. "It's been at the edge longer than any iron on Hyrran. It knows what it's for."

She took her hand away.

"Make it into hers," said Kyria.

Then Sera.

She came down into the forge in her apron, glowing faintly at the hands, and stood at the fire and looked at it for a long time. The fire Odra's kept burning for sixty years. The hottest on Hyrran.

"It's very small," said Sera. Kindly.

Odra didn't say anything.

Sera put her hands in it.

And let go. A little. Not the way she did in the valley; she'd have melted the mountain. A little. Enough.

And the forge went white.

Odra didn't flinch.

She put Kyria's first blade in the white. With her tongs. And held it there. With the heat coming off it so hard that the snow on the roof of the forge, a long way above us, began to run.

And when it was ready, she took it out. Glowing. Not red. Not orange. A colour iron isn't supposed to go.

And put it on the anvil.

And looked at me.

I put my hands on it.

I'm not going to write what I did. I've written it enough. I asked. Every atom. The way I asked the stations, and the window, and the valley. Except this time I didn't ask anything to come apart or go anywhere or be something else.

I asked it to hold.

Every atom of it. To every other atom. All the way through. Not the way iron holds, which is well, and for a long time, until something's stronger. The way silver holds when it's finished. The way Dinraal's bridge holds over the canyon with nothing under it.

Its own shape, I asked. Forever. Whatever comes. Whatever hand. Whatever it hits.

Never let go.

And Odra swung the hammer.

She swung it all night.

I held. She hammered. Sera kept the white. And between every stroke, Hana breathed.

Hana came down into the forge at dusk and stood at Odra's shoulder and didn't say anything. And every time Odra lifted the hammer, Hana moved the air. Round the blade. Over it. The right air, at the right time, every breath. The way she moves it in and out of someone on the long ward who's forgotten how.

Odra looked at her once. Over her shoulder. Between strokes.

"Where did you learn that," said Odra.

"A cistern," said Hana. "In a dome. When I was twelve."

Odra didn't ask anything else.

And at midnight, Luna.

She came down into the forge with frost in her hair and stood at the trough. The one Odra plunges everything into. And put her hand in the water.

And it went to ice. All at once. Clear and blue and very, very cold. A trough of ice in a forge so hot the snow on the roof was running.

"Not yet," said Odra. Without looking round.

"I know," said Luna. "I'll keep it."

And stood there. All night. With her hand on the ice in the heat. Keeping it.

The blade took shape at the hour before dawn.

I watched it. Under my hands. Under Odra's hammer. Long. Longer than the old one. Thin. Very plain. Almost not there, like the first one Gilgamesh ever made. With a curve in it, very slight, that Odra put there without my asking, and when I looked at her she said: Andraste's grandmother's had that curve. And Kyria's. It's how her hand goes.

Dark. Not the dark of old iron. Something else. A dark with a light in it, deep down, like the inside of Sera's hands at the end of a long day.

And then Odra put the hammer down.

And looked at the door of the forge.

Risa was standing in it.

In her flying leathers. With her one grey cloud over her head. With Kesh on her hip, frowning at the fire.

"Now," said Odra.

Odra lifted the blade with her tongs. Glowing. And held it up. In the air. Over the trough of Luna's ice.

And Risa put her hand out.

And the lightning came down.

Not from the sky. There's no sky in a forge under the snow. From Risa. Out of her hand. Straight. White. Into the blade, where Odra was holding it over the ice. And through it. And down, into the trough. Into Luna's ice.

And the ice went to steam all at once, and Hana caught the steam before it could go anywhere and turned it round the blade, and the forge was full of white, and sound, and light.

And Kesh frowned.

I felt it. Under my hands, still on the blade. Something extra. Very small. Very cross. Coming down after Risa's, a thin bright thread of it, out of a small grey cloud over a baby's head.

Into the blade.

Risa looked down at her daughter.

Kesh looked back. Furious. As if she'd been left out of something.

"Badly," said Risa. Very quietly. With her voice not quite steady. "But yes."

Then the steam cleared.

And the blade lay in the trough. In the last of Luna's ice. Dark. Very plain. With the light deep down in it.

Odra took it out with her bare hand.

She shouldn't have been able to. It should have been hot enough to take the hand off her. She took it out of the trough with her scarred bare hand and held it up and it was cool. As if it had never been in a fire.

She looked at it for a long time.

Then she put it on the anvil. And picked up her hammer. And brought it down on the flat of the blade as hard as I've ever seen anyone bring a hammer down on anything.

The hammer broke.

The head of it. Iron. Sixty years old. Odra's hammer. It came off the handle in two pieces and went across the forge and hit the wall.

The blade didn't move.

Odra looked at the handle in her hand for a long time.

Then she put it down. Very carefully. On the anvil. Beside the blade.

"That was my mother's," she said.

Then the twins.

Kyria said they had to. She said it at the long table, when she was telling me what the law was. A First Blade's blade is given by her mother. But on Hyrran, when the First Blade has children, the children touch it first. Before she does. So it knows who it's for.

So that night, the second night, Mother brought them through the arch from the courtyard. In their nightclothes. Corin and Thessaly. A little over a year old. With their mother's short black hair and their mother's way of sleeping with one fist closed.

And Vessa, in Kyria's arms. Who's Andraste's too. Who hears the Ashen.

Corin went first.

He toddled across the floor of the forge with his weight on his back foot, the way he does, and stopped at the anvil and looked at the blade for a long time. Carefully. With Father's eyes.

Then he put his hand on it.

Flat. On the dark. Where the light was, deep down.

And I felt it.

A door.

Very small. The smallest one he's ever made, I think. Not to anywhere. Not to the heap or the edge of it or the ridge or a cot in the children's room. A door in the blade. Right in the middle of it. Where the light was. Opening.

And not shutting.

Then Thessaly.

She came after her brother and stood beside him and put her hand next to his. The way she put it on Tiamat's face on the plain, the first time, and gave her something.

And gave the blade something.

I don't know what. I never will, I think. But I felt the door Corin had made in the middle of it go very still, and very wide, and stay that way.

"What did they do?" said Odra. Very quietly. To me.

I didn't know how to say it.

"If it's ever hit," I said. In the end. "By anything. Hard enough to break it." I looked at the small door, open, very still, in the middle of the dark. "There's somewhere for the break to go."

Odra looked at me.

"It goes through," I said. "Somewhere else. And the blade stays."

Then Vessa.

Kyria knelt down by the anvil with her granddaughter in her arms. And Vessa looked at the blade.

She doesn't do much, Vessa. She's very small still. She sleeps, mostly, and wakes, and looks at things, and once in a while turns her head toward something nobody else can hear and Andraste says so.

She turned her head toward the blade.

And then away from it. Toward the wall of the forge. Toward the east. Toward nothing.

And back to the blade.

And put out her small hand. And touched it. With one finger.

And the blade hummed.

Very low. Very quiet. A sound I almost didn't hear. Like the queens under the garden before an arch.

Kyria went very still.

"She heard something," said Kyria. "Just then. Before she touched it. She turned."

"The Ashen?"

"Further," said Kyria. "Fainter." She looked at the blade. Humming. "The grey ones. She can hear them. Very far. The Ashen made them."

She looked down at Vessa. And then at the blade.

"And she's taught it," said Kyria.

So that was it.

Kyria's first blade, out of the ridge. Sera's heat. Hana's air. Luna's ice. Risa's lightning, and Kesh's after it. Odra's hammer, which broke. My hands. Corin's door. Thessaly's gift. Vessa's finger.

Everyone she'd draw it for.

I went to Pip's stall on the way back.

The one at the bottom of the wheel, where you throw bread-dough balls at Rory's tin cups. Pip was closing up. She looked at me very suspiciously.

"You've already got six," she said.

"I need one more."

"Who for?"

"Same one," I said.

Pip looked at me for a long time.

Then she reached under the counter. And took out a ribbon. White. Like the snow on the ridge.

And held it out.

"You don't have to throw," she said. "She's already had one." She put it in my hand. "They're weighted anyway."

Kyria gave it to her on the ridge.

At dawn. The way it's done on Hyrran. On the highest ridge, in the snow, where every First Blade has stood for a thousand years. Where we were married. Where Andraste named Corin and Thessaly.

Andraste didn't know why she was there. Kyria had sent a bird. Come to the ridge at dawn. That was all.

She came through the arch from the courtyard in her old iron, with no blade, with her bare feet in the snow because she won't wear boots on the ridge, and stopped.

Because everyone was there.

All forty thousand Hyrrani. On the mountains. Silent. In rows. With their blades at their feet in the snow.

Odra, at the front, with the handle of her broken hammer.

Gilgamesh and Alexander and Julius. Dinraal and Isolde. The Mom Squad, all eleven. Luna and Sera and Hana and Risa, with Kesh. Corin and Thessaly, in Mother's arms.

And me.

And in front of all of them, in the snow, on the edge of the ridge, with her back to the long drop to the iron sea, Kyria.

With the blade across her hands.

Andraste stopped.

She looked at it for a long time. From across the snow. The dark. The light deep down in it. The curve, very slight, that's how her hand goes.

She didn't move.

"On the morning a First Blade stands at the edge," said Kyria. In Hyrrani. In the voice that goes through mountains, that I've only ever heard from Andraste. "Her mother gives her a blade."

She held it out.

"You stood at the edge on Isca," said Kyria. "Two hundred yards into the dark. And turned round and said, well? Are you coming?" Her voice didn't change. "And on One. With your hands open. In front of something that was somebody, before."

She looked at her daughter.

"You've been standing at the edge for a long time," said Kyria. "With somebody else's blade."

Andraste walked across the snow.

Very slowly. In her bare feet. Past the Hyrrani. Past Odra. Past all of us. To the edge of the ridge.

And stopped in front of her mother.

And held out her hands.

Kyria put the blade in them.

Andraste didn't say anything for a long time.

She held it. Across her hands. The way her mother held it. Looking down at it. At the dark. At the light.

And then she closed one hand round the hilt.

And the blade hummed.

She felt it. I saw her feel it. All of it. Kyria's first blade, that her great-grandmother dug out of the ridge. Sera's white. Hana's breath. Luna's ice. Risa's lightning, and the small cross thread of Kesh's. Odra's broken hammer. My hands, asking.

And her children.

Corin's door. Thessaly's gift. Vessa's finger.

Her face did something I'd only ever seen it do once. On the ridge. In the snow. Leaning on her blade, the day the twins came.

"What's it called," said Andraste. Very quietly. To her mother.

Kyria looked at the blade for a long time.

"In the oldest Hyrrani," she said, "there's a word for a thing that doesn't let go." She looked at me. "Lucas asked it not to. Every atom." She looked back at her daughter. "I'd call it that."

She said the word.

I don't have it in my letters. Nobody does. The nearest anyone's got, in ours, is what Garnet wrote under her drawing of it, the next day.

Holdfast.

Then I gave her the ribbon.

White. Like the snow.

She looked at it for a long time.

"I haven't had a fight I didn't need," she said. "Not since the tower."

"I know," I said. "It's not for that."

She looked at me.

"It's for the one you didn't get to have," I said. "On One. With the grey one. Who was somebody, before." I put it in her hand. "You didn't need to fight him. Neither of you did. Somebody else made you."

Andraste looked at the ribbon in her hand for a long time.

Then she tied it round the hilt.

The second one.

And then she turned round. On the edge of the ridge. With her back to the drop. And raised Holdfast over her head.

And forty thousand Hyrrani on the mountains picked their blades up out of the snow.

And raised them.

And didn't make a sound.

Gilgamesh tested it the next morning.

He asked. Through Isolde. On the north field, at dawn, with the Hyrrani in their rows and their blades back in their hands, and Andraste in front of them with Holdfast.

He said on Hearth nobody carries a blade nobody's tested. He said it was an insult to the blade.

Andraste looked at him for a long time.

Then she held Holdfast out. Level. Flat side up. In one hand.

Gilgamesh reached over his shoulder.

And it was an axe.

I'd never seen it before. Nobody on Avalon had. Dinraal said afterward he'd only seen it once, on Hearth, a long time ago, and that Gilgamesh had put it away again very quickly. It was very old. Older than the sword he made first. Black and silver, with a head as wide as a door and an edge that didn't catch the light because the light didn't want to touch it.

He lifted it over his head.

And brought it down on the flat of Holdfast.

The north field shook.

I felt it all the way down. Through the grass. Through the soil. Through the hollows, where Kwame Osei's grandfathers dropped their drills. Through the rock. The hard sheets. To the heart of Avalon, turning slowly in the dark, which noticed.

Andraste's arm didn't move.

Holdfast didn't move.

And in the middle of the blade, very deep, where the light is, I felt the small door Corin made open, very slightly, the way a door opens in a draught.

And the blow went through it.

Somewhere else.

And shut.

Gilgamesh looked at his axe for a long time.

The edge of it. The one the light didn't want to touch. There was a notch in it. Small. The size of a fingernail.

Nobody said anything.

Then Gilgamesh laughed.

The way he laughed on Isca, on the steepest terrace, finding a gun for the first time. Out loud. On the north field. With the axe in his hands and the notch in it and forty thousand Hyrrani staring at him.

He put the axe back over his shoulder.

And reached again.

And it was a crate.

He put it down on the grass in front of Andraste. And opened it. And it was full of bread. Hearth's. Dark and heavy, with seeds in it.

"For the blade," said Gilgamesh. Isolde gave it to us. "On Hearth, when a blade is better than yours, you bring it bread." He looked at Holdfast. "I have never had to bring bread before."

That night, on the roof, Andraste sat with her back to the chimney and Holdfast across her knees and Vessa asleep on her chest.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

Then, very late, Holdfast hummed.

Very low. Very faint. The way it hummed in the forge when Vessa touched it.

Andraste looked down at it. Then at Vessa. Who was asleep. Who didn't turn.

Then at the east. Where the blade was humming toward. Past the north field. Past Thera. Past everything. Very far.

"Grey ones," said Andraste. Very quietly. "Somewhere."

"Far?"

"Very far," said Andraste. She put her hand flat on the blade. On the dark. On the two white ribbons on the hilt. "It knows they're there."

She looked at me.

"Good," said Andraste.

Days 4704–4719. Holdfast.

Andraste drilled with her hands open, and on the third morning forty thousand put their blades down and did it with her. It was her grandmother's; it had her ribbon on it. Gilgamesh: the first one I made, because I made it for someone. Alexander: make it with everyone she'd draw it for. Kyria: ask Odra. Odra: everything breaks. Then: you'd need heat, cold, air, lightning. Kyria laid her first blade on the anvil. Sera, Hana, Luna, Risa; Kesh, after, badly. I asked every atom to hold. Odra's hammer broke on it. Corin made a door in it that doesn't shut; Thessaly kept it open; Vessa touched it and taught it to hear the grey ones. Pip: you don't have to throw. Kyria gave it to her on the ridge. Holdfast. The second ribbon, for the fight she didn't get to have. Forty thousand raised their blades. Gilgamesh's oldest axe went through the door, and notched; he brought the blade bread. On the roof, it hummed toward the east. Good.