Page 200 of Golden Queen
His arms came around me, and he slid his hands down my forearms. A chill, icy sensation ran all the way to my fingertips as he rested his chin on my shoulder lightly. The feeling of him behind me was a comfort, at least.
I was full of nervous energy as Pettal began to speak, at first muttering under her breath as she held one end of the wire from each cuff in her hands.
The apprentice stood with a pair of massive metal snips poised in the air to cut the cuffs when it was time.
"Wodus tictus wodus conflagrium." Pettal's words were loud and clear as she chanted the spell, her eyes scrunched up under a brow already beaded with sweat. "Wodus tictus wodus conflagrium," she repeated, her voice rising.
The metal of the cuffs began to smoke and blacken. The mellitrium made a popping, cracking sound, and then gold began to bubble up and run down across the leather.
"Wodus tictus ignittus mettribium," the armorer said, the words slightly altered as her voice carried down the chamber. Sweat began to slide down her forehead even though the room had grown chilly.
When a thin stream of molten gold ran past the edge of the leather and onto the skin of my arm, Io's shield protected me. It rolled off harmlessly, dropping onto the anvil's surface where it cooled into a rounded bead of gold.
"Wodus titctus wodus conflagrium. Wodus tictus ignittus mettribium." Pettal chanted until I felt my eyes glaze over with boredom.
Finally, after what felt like nearly an hour, the metal cuffs began to glow. They grew brighter until they were two burning, red-hot rings around my wrists. I still felt not even a whiff of heat through Io’s shield.
"Now!" Pettal shouted.
The apprentice moved in with the snips, angling them up to catch one of the cuffs in the jaws. He groaned and worked and huffed, trying to break it open.
Even Pettal joined in after spending several more minutes re-working the spell to return the cuffs back to a red-hot state.
When Pettal failed again and again, she grew more and more frustrated.
I suggested Io do it himself, but he refused to let go of the shield between my hand and the burning metal. He assured me the metallurgy of the dwarfs would match his strength, in any case.
Several more armorers came, each of them taking turns to try to remove the cuff, or work the spell, acting together or alone. When all failed, they turned to arguing over the best approach to get them off, their many loud voices becoming a din in the chamber.
I wanted to cry with frustration.
"The spells are too strong. They were crafted with deep shadow magic," one smith said.
"Indeed, too strong," another added, frowning. "I have never seen a binding like this in mellitrium. It's like the magic Penjan uses to bind armor plates to their wyverns."
"Even Penjan no longer does that. It’s unthinkable even for those wicked, ugly beasts!" someone pointed out.
"Who did this to her?" An old, stooped man in a leather apron said, speaking as though I wasn't there. He studied me with one eye squinted in his wrinkled face.
"A necromancer did it to me," I spat, regretting the anger in my tone immediately. But I was so sick of this smoky chamber I could have screamed.
They continued arguing, mentioning spells and mages I’d never heard of. Offering up suggestions for how they might go about removing the shadow magic binding.
I was no longer even listening as I began to undo the metal wires, now gone cold after so long spent bickering.
Io reached out to help me, and as he did so, the shield retreated, and the stuffy heat of the forges hit me in the face like a furnace.
I yanked the wires off and rose, taking a deep breath as I turned to Pettal. Her face was a mask of dejection. "Thank you for trying," I said, giving her a half-hearted smile. I felt my lips tremble with a flood of emotion I would not allow to surface—not in front of all these men who had looked at me like some poor, pathetic bound creature.
"Thank you all for trying," I said and turned to leave the chamber before tears burst free. I didn’t even look to see if Io followed.
I found myself in a round chamber after turning the wrong way out the door.
It was made of darker stone than the rest of the forges and looked similar to the walls of the lava tunnels that led to the mineral hot spring.
The walls were lined with little alcoves featuring full suits of armor on display. The spaces between were hung with shields and weapons of every kind.
A sword made from what looked like the bottom jaw of some fearsomely large beast, sharp teeth intact, lay behind the glass of a tall case.
