Chapter 14: Chapter III.2: A Sword in the Dark

Four days after he had voiced his concerns though, his prayers were answered, late one night when the weather had begun to storm terribly once more. The shore battered by the sea, boats overturned and thunder sending a great volley of noise all throughout the land.

Appearing in the dark of night, the holy-man arrived shortly after Cormac had gone to sleep, only for Daegan to arrive to fetch the youth for her father. Announcing that Wulfnoth was at hand, she informed him, “Father has need of you, it is the sword… it is behaving most strangely since Wulfnoth’s arrival!” She said all of this so swiftly that it took him a few minutes to properly put together what it was that she had uttered, and to formulate a proper thought in response, due to his still being drowsy with sleep. “Well do hurry up! I’faith, now is hardly the time for slow wits Cormac!”

Grumbling, he heard his mother sleepily called down, having heard the savage knocks of the lass upon their doors, even if she was slower to leap from her room to respond than he was. “Who is it?”

“Dae, Ma,” He called back, only to add hastily, “Her Da needs help, do not trouble yourself about it now hurry back to sleep.”

She answered drowsily before doing as instructed, too sleepy to rebuke him or to complain about Corin, beyond a muttered profanity that he heartily agreed with at that moment. Good sleep was so difficult to find these days, he thought to himself as he raced into the night after his friend who appeared, as wide awake at that moment as though it were the middle of the day.

Her long green wool dress, clung to her in the rain he noticed from the corner of his eye, an observation that might well have embarrassed him under other circumstances. Yet at that moment, he hardly paid this sense of timidity any mind, caught up as he was with his frustrations towards the thunder that boomed in the distance.

Putting an arm around Daegan, whilst pulling up his cloak that he had hastily grabbed upon their departure, to cover the both of them, won him a swift, if warm smile from her. One that made his cheeks and neck turn red. Looking away as he did so to hide his now crimson features, he could not resist a certain gratitude now for the storm. As Corin did not live far away, they were to arrive within the hour to find Wulfnoth having changed into an orange woollen tunic and cloak, cinched together so as to properly cover his person.

A plump old man of at least sixty years, he had a fine moustache, dark eyes and grey hair, with a purposeful bald patch on the summit of his head in the style of a Scotian monk. Judging by the dark colour of his habit which Corin was in the midst of throwing over a nearby chair, he likely belonged to the order of the Grey-Monks. Those monks who followed the strictest variant of the Rule of the Paragon Henri de Léorène, a Gallian reformer Archdruid of the mentioned city who had sought to enforce ever stricter and more vigorous rules upon the monks almost a century prior to the present day.

“Welcome, welcome young Cormac, how are you my lad?” Wulfnoth received the soaking wet youth, before he turned his warm gaze to the scarlet-haired lass by his side. “Ah Daegan, you have done most excellently.”

“Thank you, O Brother,” She replied in a voice that was unusually humble. Evidently, every bit as awed by him, as Cormac felt at that moment.

“Now, now no need to be shy, either of you especially as I will have need of both of your assistance with the matter at hand.” Said the clergyman, who proceeded to fuss over them and to encourage them to go stand by the fire, and warm themselves. Wherefore Corin brought out the black-sword, from his bedchambers, to unroll it from the containing cloth onto the ash-wood table in the middle of the room. Once he beheld the gold-gleaming blade, the druid leaped what had to have been thirty- nay fifty feet into the air with a great cry. “I’faith! What a terrible, unholy sight to behold! I had thought I had seen the last of those scales!”

“Scales?” Now it was Corin’s turn to be bewildered, “Whatever do you mean?”

“Er-hem, yes well that there is without a doubt one of Razenth the Foul’s scales,” Wulfnoth blurted out pointing at the blade with a trembling hand. “However did you come by such a material? I had thought most of those bones and scales had been left in his nest to be burnt to ash, by his cousin Donata.”

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“It was Wiglaf,” Explained Daegan in the same quiet voice as before, “He said that it was some rider from laird Badrách’s keep, who brought the black-bone to him; with the request, to make a mighty long-sword for our laird and Mormaer MacDuibh.”

This news was met with stunned silence, from the druid. He gaped at her, with open shock apparently struck dumb by this revelation, he was not to remain silent for long though.

“I’faith,” Cormac cried out, calling out the familiar curse that was always quick to fall from any Caled’s lips, “The black-sword appears to be trembling! It is quaking, how is such a thing possible?”

“It is the influence of Razenth the Foul!” Wulfnoth revealed only to pull from his pouch, which lay upon a chair near his side of the table that separated him from the youths and Corin. The gourd he pulled out was held aloft in his left-hand as he sanctified it with the symbol of the flower, the great symbol of the goddess Scota or Marianne, as Corin was wont to call her. “O holy goddess, bless this ale in the name of thee and thy kith and kin, who rule over us all and guard us against all darkness.”

He proceeded to pour the contents of the jug which was to say wine, upon the shimmering quaking blade, only to curse when some of the wine hit the cloth rather than the blade itself. “You lot, hold the sword! See how the whole of the table quakes and shakes with it, so great is its trembling? It is because Razenth the Black’s spirit lives on in the blade, and is aware of what it is we are up to.”

The trio who had hung back in dumb shock, moved as one. Each of them was careful not to touch the blade itself, as they pushed it back down. Cormac being near the point, had to in particular be careful, yet still he ended up cutting the side of his thumb so that he gasped in pain.

Corin who held down the center was the most cautious, and was quick to grab the scabbard which he had forged with Wiglaf’s assistance, to press down upon it. Daegan for her own part, held down at their insistence the hilt and pommel. Her gaze diverted to that of her friend, the moment she heard him hiss in pain.

Such was the strength contained within the sword that each of them struggled to hold down the weapon. Their struggle was not to last for long, as Wulfnoth with all the urgent speed of a man stricken with worry, poured the holy ale over the sword and hilt, with steady hands.

The gourd once emptied was put aside, with it being Cormac who gasped first as the prayer ended and he beheld the purity of the white blade that lay upon the table, no longer quaking and shaking. The coarse midnight darkness of the blade fell off as though little more than scales, the golden gleam that occasionally ran along the sword remained though, rather than appearing ugly to the eye it was now a magnificent sheen. The perfect balance this gold light that dance along the white blade, so that neither Cormac nor Daegan could tear their eyes from it. The first to do so was the former, who glanced over to the latter who continued to gaze upon the blade with eyes full of longing.

“Magic!” Daegan gasped amazed as she hurried to, as her friend and father did, performed the sign of the holy flower of Scota.

“Nay, a ‘miracle’ lass though the two are brother arts,” Wulfnoth clarified with a cough, before he took a swig from another gourd of his, of non-sanctified ale. “My arts are not to manifest the essence of the divine, but rather to purify and clarify for the divine that exists in all things about me, hence, the shift of the blackness of this blade to white.”

“Wait, so sorcery is simply the physical manifestation of the divine such as Scota?” Cormac asked now, amazed by this rather heretical outlook on the nature of magic.

“Indeed, though I know not all the particulars, yet for those of us in the know there is little difference between the two.”

“Incredible.” Daegan murmured, as she performed the symbol once more.

“Aye it indeed is,” the cleric said approvingly before he turned now to Corin, once more, “Now it is time to properly name this blade.”

“Name it?” Cormac inquired amazed at the important tone to the druid’s voice.

“Name it indeed, for there is a power in names and it shall be but the first step towards filling this weapon with a more pleasant spirit than that which once occupied it.” Wulfnoth said knowingly, eyes upon the blade, “Or so I have been told by many a sorcerers who made similar objects as this one.”

Corin eyes the blade. He studied it at length before he turned to his daughter, to ask of her with a small smile, “Daughter, what name would you give unto it?”

“You would ask me?”

“Aye, I have a sense that though I have forged it, Cormac hammered it and Wiglaf welded it with his great flames, and Wulfnoth sanctified it. It is for you to decide the path this blade should take.” Corin said earnestly, his grey eyes meeting her green one with such warmth that it made Cormac ache. He wished he could have such a bond, with his own mother.

Daegan hesitated. Wulfnoth a more quiet-natured man than boisterous Wiglaf, tugged at his moustache, eyes studying her keenly, with Cormac finding this terribly distracting for some reason that escaped him then.

At last, the daughter of Olith the Suns-Blessed as she had once been known, and Corin Steel-Forger uttered a single word as she gazed upon the blade whiter than her own snow-white flesh. A smile on her lips as she spoke, she suddenly exploded with a fairness that awed Cormac. The word she uttered was ‘Defender’ in the Caled tongue. “Cosantóir.”