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for the moment; he could get back to his carving once more.
    By late evening it was complete, carved surfaces more detailed and more delicate than any he had ever made till now. The living lock and feather he took and set among the patterns, and save for the hues of life they were matched to perfection. He laid them apart, then swiftly turned to preparing the moulds, lest in the warmth of the forge the wax should soften further and lose some tiny point of definition. By that much might its power be lessened; by so much might he lose what he fought to preserve.
    It was with the gentleness of love that his practised fingers worked a soft slip of burnt and powdered chalk about the delicate shapes he had made, to take the finest possible impress of the pattern. Over that he smoothed layer upon layer of clay, gradually firmer, till at last the prepared shapes could be manoeuvered gently into position in his moulding flasks, sprues carefully aligned with the openings, then encased and set to dry well away from forge-hearth and furnace, lest the sudden heat should crack them. Now he brought the water thundering down, washed the clay from his stinging cuts and set the bellows-wheel spinning till the breath of the bellows roared through the coals like buried dragons. Then with long tongs he set the crucible of purified silver among them, and several of other rare metals for his chosen alloy. He sat by the maw of the furnace, humming idly under his breath and watching its dulled surface gradually shiver with remembered heat and change into a flowing mirror. He remembered his tumbledown smithy among the Saltmarshes, these ten years behind him and the breadth of a land away, and the silver wires he had worked there for a swordhilt. Believing his craft lost to him, he had not sought to set within them any virtues; and yet they had absorbed something of his essential self and shown it him as an image of the Marshland skies, a rushing of grey clouds, a sweep of rain and storm. Now he must make this silver do likewise; save that now he would determine the image, and the essence would not be his own.
    He began to sing to himself quietly, vague snatches of that new song, wordless still or with only a single word, yet heavy with a meaning that was growing continually clearer. Firing the moulds, he felt a chain of words take shape in his mind as the wax rushed molten from the sprueholes, spitting and flaming onto the coals, and after it the boiling water to clean them. He set them at the edge of the fire, and took a deep breath; then he lifted the glowing crucible to the furnace door, and one by one, in careful order, tipped in the lesser metals. Some were to make the silver harder and more durable, some to add slight spring to it; but others, added in merest traces, were to bear special virtues of their own. The heavy liquid hissed and seethed sluggishly as he stirred it with a long rod of steel, and all the while, listening carefully to the thin high note of the coals, he sang the chant that had come to him. That swirling rythm went well with the stirring, and the coils it awoke in the crucible's heart.
    In silver the shaping, enclosing, embracing In silver a shield-ring of signs interlacing Set firm within silver the circle shall close.
In silver the melting in silver the blending
As ramparts of steel shot with moonlight defending
No call from without them may pass what they hold.
    Tiny droplets of metal spattered his hand, the rod grew hot through the rag he held it by, the furnace heat drew the skin taut over his cheekbones, cracked his lips, stung his eyes, yet still he sang, dry-tongued, till the last part of the alloy was added and the blend complete.
    As freely you flow now a form shall enfold you,
In cooling, coalescing, a pattern shall hold you,
In shaping in firming, grow strong yet grow fair.
What now I trust to you, embrace it, enfold it,
Against yearning for change, against wandering hold it,
Encase as in armour the heart