Ol’ Faithful sounded at around the time when we were used to waking up in the morning. It was a deep, resonating tone that must have been made by a very large gong or bell that seemed to transmit sound even through the solid rock. Remembering that we represented the human race in a way, I didn’t want to be called a sluggard, so I got up immediately and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. Bran did the same. We went outside to the living room and were greeted by the delicious smell of sausage, eggs and potatoes that were already cooking. I waited outside while Bran used the bathroom, then took my turn. Hamot was already wearing his armor and was seated at the granite table as Nalimea was putting the food on. My stomach growled.

  “[Good morning,]” Nalimea said cheerfully. A chorus of greetings were spoken by all.

  Breakfast was as good as it looked. I didn’t notice last night, but Terrans can really eat a lot. I ate as much breakfast as I could, as did Bran, who could always out-eat me. It never seemed to me like we were very competitive, but we did push each other to do better than we otherwise would do at whatever task we were about. Bran usually outperformed me, too. It was a fact of life I was already accustomed to, being the younger, smaller twin. Adopted brother, really, but old ways of thinking were hard to get rid of. I’d thought of myself as a twin all my life, and I really didn’t want to think of myself differently. After all, twins were rare, even if they weren’t identical, and that made a person special in a way.

  When we were done eating, we all thanked Nalimea, and Hamot gestured to our bedroom.

  Our gambesons and padded pants were almost completely dry, thankfully, and we grabbed them from the bathroom where we had left them the night before. Without saying much, Hamot started decking Bran out with the armor on his stand. Bran took a couple steps back and forth to get the feel of it. Then Hamot simply looked at Bran and gestured at my armor, and Bran started putting the armor on me. Bran fumbled a lot but managed the task well enough. When he was done, Hamot tugged at me here and there, and grunted his approval. It really wasn’t made for me, and I remembered what Hamot said last night about looking like an empty wineskin. He was right. There was a lot of space in the armor at the chest, arms and legs. I must have looked foolish, and I think it showed on my face.

  “[Aye, lad. It’s something yer gonna have ta grow into, I’m afraid,]” Hamot said. “[Honestly, though, ye’ll be too tired ta care ‘fore long. Get th’ rest of it, an’ let’s go.]”

  We picked up and put on the helms, gauntlets, and then shields and axes, then went out to the living room. Hamot was fully suited up and waiting by the door. We followed him out and onto the road running beside Dagnar’s Drop, going to the left and into the switchback that went down. We went down three levels, then turned to the right when we got to the chasm again, going deeper into the mountain. We crossed a bridge to the other side, went a little way further, and then went through a pair of granite double doors that were labeled “Thickbeard Foundry.” The air in the corridor was a good bit warmer than it was out in the chasm. There was a particular smell of metal in the air. I’ve always thought it smelled a lot like blood.

  We marched into the main room of the foundry to find a grizzled old Terran in a gray shirt and black pants, wearing a thick, battle-scarred leather apron that covered nearly all of his body leaning against some empty wooden crates. He had a striking resemblance to Hamot, but his hair had a little more gray in it.

  “[Telruk!]” Hamot boomed. “[Good ta see ye!]” I was expecting some sort of Terran greeting about forges and such, but it appears that Terrans didn’t do that with their immediate family members.

  “[Hamot! Likewise,]” Telruk said. They clapped each other on the shoulder hard enough to knock a grown man sprawling, but they barely budged.

  “[How goes th’ work?]” Hamot asked.

  “[Bah.]” Telruk spat on the floor. “[Hard ta find good help, it is. Don’t tell me this is th’ help ye promised],” Telruk said, eyeing us critically. “[They look like dainty little flowers, they do. Nah, fragile little teacups, they are. How do ye expect me ta hit me quotas with th’ likes o’ this ta run th’ place?]”

  “[Methinks these boys ‘ll surprise ye, brudder. They haven’t put on much muscle yet, but they come from great stock, they do,]” Hamot said with surety. “[An by th’ way, they can speak our language.]” Like Telruk, I was a little doubtful.

  “[We’ll see,]” was all Telruk said. The Thickbeard clan didn’t waste words, it appeared.

  Telruk merely pointed at a door in the wall to the left, just behind a big ramp that went downward into another area. “[That’s th’ privy. Ye can put yer armor in there, then I’ll give ye th’ grand tour, I will.]”

  We clinked into the room as ordered. It was a twenty by twenty room that had a partitioned area for a toilet in two places, a partition for a bathtub, and another partition for what looked to be a place where water can be sprayed onto a person from above. That was new. I looked to the left, and there were several armor stands evenly spaced against the wall. I helped Bran take his armor off, then he did the same for me. It was pretty warm in this area, so I thought the gambeson and matching pants had to go also. That left me with my shirt, pants and boots. It was a relief to get rid of the heavy armor even though we didn’t wear it for very long.

  “Seems kinda silly to put all this armor on just so we can walk a little way,” I said.

  “Yeah. Do we have to wear the boots?” Bran asked.

  “I think our days of running the streets barefoot are over,” I replied. We had hit a milestone in our lives, and I, for one, just now realized it. “Besides, there may be shards of metal everywhere.”

  “Good point.”

  We walked back out into the main staging chamber to find Telruk waiting for us patiently. Hamot had left while we were changing. I tried to get a handle on which direction we were facing. I was pretty sure that we came into Kurgh Rhamot from the south going generally north, but there was no sun here to check our direction with. Assuming that we were going north when we entered the city, then the chasm of Dagnar’s Drop ran south to north. I supposed that was right, anyway. We entered this foundry going west, so the bathroom was on the southwest corner of this staging area. The whole place had a very high ceiling, maybe twenty feet high, and it stretched north to south about a hundred feet and was half that distance wide. The ramp went down to the south, there were two ten-foot-wide corridors going west, a blackened chute between them going down to who-knows-where, and there was a ten-foot-wide tunnel entrance on the north wall. On the floor of that entrance was what looked to be two square iron bars anchored to large wooden beams by large spikes. The whole area was lit by the usual glowing crystals, but only dimly. The northern passage with the rails didn’t have any light in it at all.

  Telruk pointed at the empty crates in the southeast wall and said, “[That’s where we box up ingots an’ other goodies. Th’ ore comes in through th’ northern tunnel, there. We also get regular shipments o’ coal from that tunnel, which we shovel into that chute there.]” He pointed at the chute on the west wall.

  He started walking toward the northernmost of the west corridors. It seemed as though all the corridors here were ten feet wide and ten feet tall. The corridor was relatively short, and it went into a room where ore was piled up against the walls. When we stepped inside, I saw it was a big room, maybe fifty feet to each side. There was another corridor to our left, going south, that looked like it joined the other western corridor we saw in the staging area.

  “[We take th’ ore th’ miners dump out at th’ end o’ th’ tracks there an’ cart it in here ‘til we need it,]” Telruk said.

  I noticed a cart sitting in the center of the room. It looked to be made of iron with two large wheels in the center of each side and leaning on a couple of struts welded to the bottom on the rear end. It had a couple of wooden poles that a person would lift the cart off its runners with and push. Telruk started walking down the corridor to the south. It was a fairly long corridor that turned back east to the staging area, and it had a double door on the west wall and a large chute through the wall a little farther south. The chute had a heavy metal lid on it where it met the wall.

  “[We take th’ ore down ta th’ chute there, which dumps into th’ crucible on th’ other side o’ that wall. This door here leads into th’ furnace room.]” There were leather aprons on pegs on the wall opposite the double door. I noticed these were not the normal sleeveless aprons most people wore. They were made of very heavy leather, a couple layers thick, and they covered the entire front of a person’s body. The back sides of the aprons were open. There were metal helms on a shelf above the aprons that looked like they had a few holes for breathing and two slits to see through. “[It’s safe enough now, but when we’re smeltin’, you’ll need ta be wearin’ an apron an’ helm unless ye’re on th’ bellows. It’s far enough away, it is.]”

  Telruk went through the double doors, which were made of stone and were six inches thick. The doors opened easily on their heavy hinges, and a wave of heat hit me like I’d just been chucked into an oven. There was a small landing beyond the doors with a ramp going down to the floor of a large chamber. The room went about forty feet to the west and what looked like seventy feet to the south. There was a five-foot-wide balcony to the left (facing south) with the top of the crucible visible at the end of it. The crucible was made of some sort of silvery metal, and it had Terran runes cut into the lip, which looked like it had a spout at the far end and a dip in it close to the balcony. There was a fire burning in a pit under the crucible that was uncomfortably hot, even here on the ramp. A large chimney was over the crucible that extended into darkness above. On the west side of the crucible was the biggest set of bellows I’d ever seen. It was around ten feet wide and it channeled air into a metal pipe bending down through the floor close to the fire pit. There were a lot of ashes scattered in a ring around the pit that looked like they were flung from the pit somehow. The last feature of the room was a pool of water in the southwest corner of the room. There was a double doorway in the eastern corner of the south wall.

  “[This is where th’ magic happens,]” Telruk said. “[That crucible cost our ancestors near everythin’ they had. Worth it, though, as there ain’t many bowls that can hold molten steel.]”

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  We followed Telruk down the ramp to the furnace room floor. He pointed to a doorway under the ramp and balcony that went into a blackened room. We couldn’t see it from the ramp because we were standing on top of it.

  “[That’s the coal room. Ye shovel th’ coal into th’ fire pit. Ye see, a coal fire ain’t hot enough ta melt steel, not by a long shot. That’s where Cuddles comes in. Come on, I’ll introduce ye.]”

  Bran and I shared a look. “Cuddles?” We were both wondering if we heard him right. Telruk walked over to the edge of the fire pit, which was luminous with a red glow. Waves of heat came up from the pit, distorting the air. It was what I imagined the doorway to hell must look like. He looked down into the pit despite the heat radiating from it and waved us over.

  “[Cuddles, we’ve got some new lads that’ll be workin’ here fer a while. This is Bran, and that’s Jeron.]”

  Telruk was talking to someone down in the infernal pit! Surely, no one could survive down there. I strained to see what was in the fire, and suddenly the fire itself moved. I was so surprised that I could barely blink. The fire seemed to roar louder, and fiery tentacles pointed up the pit towards us. The tentacles looked like they were actually made of fire and were held in shape by some sort of magic. There were eight tentacles that I could see, and were attached to some kind of large, amorphous body that had what looked like two dark spots in it like eyes. My mouth went dry as the tentacles ascended the pit. It looked like it could reach out of the pit anytime it wanted to.

  Telruk looked at us with a smirk. “[Well, don’t be rude. Say hello, lads.]”

  “[Uh, hello, Cuddles,]” I said.

  Bran just gave a little wave.

  One of the tentacles actually waved back. It then pointed at the blackened doorway.

  “[Aye, Cuddles. These lads here’ll be feedin’ ye shortly. Lads, ye’ll be seein’ shovels in th’ coal room. Give Cuddles a snack, ‘bout twenty shovels full, an’ then we’ll finish yer tour, will ye?]”

  Bran and I went into the coal room under the ramp, which led into a twenty-foot-wide by forty-foot room with barely enough room to walk, it was so full of coal. We each grabbed a flat-bottomed shovel and scooped up some coal. I dumped mine into the fire pit, and Bran followed suit. We shoveled in the amount we were told, already sweating profusely in the heat. The fire got a little brighter and the fiery tentacles withdrew into the pit. The heat from one of those tentacles would make ashes out of me in seconds. We set the shovels against the wall where we found them and walked back over to Telruk. Bran dragged the back of his hand across his forehead to wipe away the sweat and left a blackened mess behind.

  “[That went well. He must like ye. He doesn’t always like th’ newcomers, he doesn’t,]” Telruk said thoughtfully. As he walked over to the double doors to the south, he explained. “[Cuddles doesn’t need th’ coal ta live, ye see. He jus’ likes ta burn stuff. Givin’ him coal an’ usin’ th’ bellows makes ‘m feel good an’ makes his work easier, an’ he repays th’ favor by meltin’ our ores fer us. Oh, ‘at reminds me. If ye find yerselves set on fire, jump in th’ pool there. No particular reason ta mention that. Don’t ye worry a bit. Th’ water’s fresh, so drink as much as ye need as often as ye need it. Jus’ don’t go lollygaggin’ around so much when there’s work ta be done.]”

  Telruk walked through the stone double doors to the south, and down a short corridor into a huge room. It was about thirty feet across in front of us, but it extended easily over a hundred feet to our left to the east. There were large metal tables with wheels on the bottoms that looked like they held casts and molds on top of them. There were all kinds of tools neatly stored on the walls, and here we saw the first signs of others working the foundry. There were two Terrans working there. One was making a cast out of a metal box with something sandy in it, and the other Terran was filing down the rough edges of some metal wheels with a large rasp.

  “[That’s Tinor in th’ castin’ area, and that’s Nalic in th’ finishin’ area. We’re cousins, we are.]”

  The two Terrans didn’t spare more than a single glance at us, and didn’t say hello, either. Charming folk, I thought.

  “[We make molds in th’ castin’ area. We move th’ molds an’ casts around with th’ wheeled tables ye see, an’ then leave ‘em here ta cool off. We finish th’ products over there, an’ either store things at th’ end o’ th’ room or send it up ta th’ stagin’ room to be boxed up an’ sent out by going up that ramp there.]”

  As he led us through the room and up the ramp, I realized that we had made a big loop, and we were back in the staging area near the bathroom.

  “[That’s th’ lay o’ th’ land, as it were. Ye two ‘ll be responsible ta move th’ ore from here ta th’ storage room, keeping th’ materials separate. Ye’ll be shoveling th’ coal down ta the storage room, too. They ring a bell when they make a delivery, ye see. Ye’ll be feedin’ Cuddles, and ye’ll be workin’ th’ bellows. If’n ye do well, we’ll be lettin’ ye do some other work in a year ‘r so. Fer now, watch an’ learn, an’ don’t make me nag ye ta keep things runnin’. Got it?]” We both nodded. “[Good. I’ll be measurin’ out th’ proper ingredients fer th’ alloys we need. Cuddles gets five wheelbarrows o’ coal ta start th’ day. Then get th’ bellows workin’. Hop to it, lads!]”

  I didn’t remember there being a delivery of ore in the staging room, so I went to the smelting room with Bran to feed Cuddles. I never would have guessed the Terrans had a giant fire monster tucked away in their city somewhere, and even if I did, I would never in a million years have guessed that it was friendly. These were strange times. We should have some pretty good stories to tell everyone when we get back.

  Bran and I got aprons from the pegs on the walls, then picked up the shovels and started filling the wheelbarrow with coal. We found that the wheelbarrow itself was pretty heavy, but one person could move it. I took the first turn. When I got it through the stone door, I was only about ten feet or so away from the pit, where I saw some tentacles waving around energetically. They were only a foot or two above the top level of the pit, and they kept towards the middle of the pit, so it didn’t alarm me much. Without fanfare, I dumped the contents of the wheelbarrow into the pit. I heard a sound almost like a fire was humming, if I could describe it that way, and the heat increased. I could actually see the air warping and shimmering. I brought the wheelbarrow back to the coal room, and we filled it up again. Bran and I took turns dumping out the wheelbarrow, as it was pretty heavy. We knew we were supposed to give Cuddles five loads, but after some discussion we gave him a sixth to see if we could bribe his good behavior. Neither of us wanted to be set on fire.

  After feeding Cuddles we went to the bellows as instructed. The back of the bellows had two stout poles sticking out of the top of the framework which allowed someone to raise the beams, which, by means of a clever valve, let the air rush into the leather lined chamber in the bellows. The poles could then be pulled down, pumping the air out through the pipe in the floor, presumably down into the pit where Cuddles made his home. We each grabbed a pole and lifted the bellows up. Air flooded in, then we pulled the bellows back down, sending the air down to Cuddles. The heat in the pit visibly intensified. Not knowing what else to do, we just kept doing it. It was hard work.

  I heard the ore coming down the little chute though the wall to drop into the crucible from time to time. When the bellows was deflated, we could see the top of the balcony. Soon enough, Telruk came through the double doors, suited up with the helm, gloves and heavy leather apron. He was holding a long pole with a two-foot-long blade of some kind coming out of the far end at an angle. Cuddles reached up out of the pit and began massaging the bottom of the crucible with his fiery tentacles. Telruk waited for the metal to melt, watching us with interest as we worked. After a while, sparks started shooting out of the top of the crucible, and judging from the red, then yellow, then white light coming from the crucible, the metal must have been about ready. Telruk began humming in a deep voice, then lowered the pole into the cauldron, blade end first, and stirred the pot. I could feel the magic in what he was doing, but I couldn’t tell what the magic was doing or how he was doing it. I would have thought a normal person would be badly burned while stirring molten metal, but the heat didn’t seem to bother him much at all. He only hummed, which changed in pitch from time to time, and stirred the molten metal for a time. He then scraped the stuff off of the top with the blade and pushed it through the lowered back lip of the crucible. The slag splattered on the floor on the edge of the pit with a shower of sparks.

  Around this point, Tinor and Nalim started bringing in the wheeled tables with the molds on them. The two of them were arrayed in the heavy aprons and helms, also. When they had the molds all set up, they brought out a silvery cauldron with a small spout at one end that didn’t have a top to it. The cauldron was carried by the Terrans by means of a metal pole like a spit that had a loop in the center of it where the cauldron rested. The pole had a bar at each end like a T, which was where the Terrans carried it. They began humming like Telruk was, then positioned the cauldron next to the pit in a place where the crucible would pour its molten contents. Telruk waited for them to move away from the cauldron, then he worked one of the levers on the balcony. It must have cranked some hidden mechanism within the walls, because the crucible started to tilt forward. By this means, Telruk poured some of the molten steel into the cauldron, which Tinor and Nalic lifted and positioned over the molds. They filled each mold like they were pouring tea, humming all the while. I could swear each of the Terrans was using some kind of magic associated with their humming. They repeated the process until all the metal was poured from the crucible. It looked like they used every drop of liquid metal, too.

  Telruk signaled to us to halt pumping the bellows, which we were happy to do. I was exhausted, breathing heavily, and sweating more profusely than I ever had before. Bran and I walked over to the water pool as if drawn there by a rope. I really wanted to jump in, but that was our drinking water, so we each just grabbed a mug sitting on the ledge of the pool and dipped them in the cool water. As I greedily drank, I was sure that this was the best water I’d ever tasted. Telruk came down to get a drink as Tinor and Nalic were rolling the tables into the cooling area.

  “[Good work, lads. Th’ ashes aroun’ th’ rim need ta be swept up an’ put in a bin by th’ outer entrance to the stagin’ area. They’re used fer other things. Th’ slag needs ta be scraped up, then wheeled up into th’ stagin’ area also. There’s a bin next ta th’ ashes fer that. When ye get done, get yerselves washed up, get yer meal from Nalimea, then come back here. We’ll have a delivery by that time. Deal with th’ ore an’ coal, then we start th’ process over again. Questions?]” Telruk asked.

  “[Yes, sir,]” I said. “[How are you evoking magic through the humming?]”

  “[It’s called Geomancy. It’s somethin’ we Thickbeards learned millennia past, somethin’ I’m very surprised ye would pick up on.]” Telruk looked at me suspiciously, his arms crossed.

  I panicked, and I spat out all the questions I could think of to distract him from the fact that I could sense what they were doing. “[How come the crucible doesn’t melt? Why doesn’t the pole you used burn your hands or melt? What’s the crucible made of?]”

  “[Yer getting’ at th’ secret o’ our success, ye are. Th’ crucible’s made o’ mithril, a very light an’ strong metal that’s very hard ta come by. Th’ crucible doesn’t melt ‘cause the melting point o’ mithril’s a lot higher than that o’ iron, and it’s preserved by Terran Geomancy. Same wi’ th’ mixin’ rod. That rod’s enspelled ta control how homogenous th’ metal becomes when alloyed wi’ other things. It also gets rid o’ all th’ slag without wastin’ th’ metal. Right handy, that is. It does all that without letting me get burned, too,]” Telruk said. He looked to Bran and me with a hard gaze. “[I shouldn’t have ta tell ye that th’ work we do here’s not ta be blabbered about ta people outside this Kurgh. Someone would find a way ta take it from us if that becomes common knowledge, they would. Bad fer business, that.]”

  I nodded, thinking it over. I decided not to ask him more about the humming magic I had felt, as I’d be spilling a secret of my own that may get me killed. I wasn’t sure how seriously the Terrans thought of Mordonians yet, but I thought it wise to keep it to myself. I finished my mug of water as I reflected.

  “[Enough lollygaggin’. Lunch won’t wait fer ya, an’ we’ll not be leavin’ the foundry while there’s work ta be done. Ye know what ta do,]” Telruk said.

  I wiped the sweat off my brow and got back to it.