And he’s talking about Asroth? The Demon-Lord of the Kadoshim. But he’s dead a hundred years, or alive and sealed in molten rock in Drassil, an eternal gaol. Everyone knows that.

They both stood in silence, looking at the matt black metal. Nothing happened.

‘Not hot enough?’ Drem said.

Olin stood there, staring at the lump of metal, a dull, impenetrable black, then nodded to himself, drew himself straighter. He unsheathed a knife from his belt and opened his mouth, spoke, but in no language Drem recognized, the words issuing from his throat fluid and unearthly, setting Drem’s hairs standing on his arms and the back of his neck, sending an icy chill trickling through his veins, even in the sweat-heat of the forge.

‘Tine agus fola, iarann agus cruach, lann a maraigh an aingeal dorcha,’ his da said, at the same time drawing the knife across his palm, a dark line welling, with a flick of his wrist spattering the blood on the forge and starstone. There was a hissing sound, a sweet smell, and where the droplets of blood hit the starstone the rock began to bubble, rising like blisters, spreading across the dark metal like spilt ink.

‘Da,’ Drem croaked, his voice dry and cracked. ‘You’re scaring me.’

The black metal began to glow, red first, shifting to orange and then incandescent white.

‘Da!’ Drem said, louder.

Olin ignored him, reaching for tongs and hammer.

Dawn was a glow in the east when they left the forge, turning the water of the Starstone Lake to rippling bronze. Snow had fallen during the night, a thick layer fresh upon the ground, but the roof of the world was cloudless now, a pale, fresh blue that felt like it went on forever, the air cold and sharp. Drem found it refreshing after the night of thick heat and hammer blows in the forge.

Drem rode behind his da, staring at his back with a mixture of dread and awe.

What happened last night? A sword forged, my da casting a spell . . .

His mind tried to pick apart the events, to unravel them and piece them back together in a shape that resembled logic. It wasn’t working.

Who is my da? It was a terrifying feeling, to realize that he did not know the man he’d spent his whole life with, almost like vertigo, as if the world were shifting beneath his feet.

They had spoken little after Olin had started shaping the white-hot metal, hammering, twisting, cooling, heating and hammering again, dross leaking from the metal like black tears. Drem fed the bellows, between hammering he dipped the shaping sword in water and oil, and towards the end he shared the hammer-work with Olin. The din and smells of the forge filled Drem’s senses as he struggled to make sense of what his da had told him. In the end he had become lost in the rhythm and roar of their labour.