I was a child there, and then an apprentice to Cage, learning the art of the forge. For all the hard tools of the farmers and the coopers and wheelwrights, Cage’s greatest love was in the making of toys. From castoffs, from tailings, from whatever he could find. And not simple creations for the village children, either! No, my friends, Cage crafted tiny mechanisms, physical riddles and elaborate jokes that confounded and delighted all.

For all his size, he was a gentle man, was Cage. Until the day he left the smithy and walked to the far end of the village, went into the house of Tanner Harok, and there broke the man’s neck.

Paradise was a living thing, like a tree, and occasionally, among its many roots sunk deep into the rich earth, one root turned foul and infected, and finally rotten.

Infidelity. A word I’d not even understood until then. A crime of betrayal. The victim was trust, and its death sent shock through the entire village.

Poor Cage. So bitterly perfect in his naming – he’d found his knowing a prison, tormented by what he could not ignore.

And then there were two widows, not just the one, and the village was in need of a blacksmith.

While I, poor apprentice, not yet ready, not yet recovered, I needed a new village.

There are all kinds of betrayals. By the Abyss, that wide-eyed boy who was me learned that fast enough. Fuck one thing and it fucks everything else.

The Legion found me and then pressed me into service. There was a war to fight. As if I cared. I remember my first sight of you, Hunn Raal—

Snarling, Hunn Raal choked off Bilikk’s voice – the squalid memories, each one crowding the next as they mapped out the dull lessons of a dull life. He had no interest in such things, but there was new knowledge in his muscles and bones, skill behind his measuring eye, a timbre to his senses. He knew the art of the forge now.

Stolen talent, stolen skill.

It’d be useful to learn how this is done—

The fire bitch’s harsh laughter echoed in his skull. ‘Then aspire to godhood, Hunn Raal! But no, not even godhood. Become an elemental force, a disembodied will, a flavour in the air, a stain upon the ground.

‘The First Forge’s gift to you will not last, in any case. Once we leave this realm, the ghost of your blacksmith will flee your wretchedly mortal body. You cannot hold what would not have you. Anything else is possession, and I assure you, Hunn Raal, you would not like possession.’

‘Then we’re wasting time here,’ Hunn Raal said. ‘I have a sceptre to forge.’

‘Then descend into the fires, Mortal Sword. I will await your return.’

A sudden suspicion took him and he scowled down at the thigh bone in his hand. ‘Dog or wolf. This creation will not belong to Light – not in its entirety.’