Cliffside Lake was beautiful, but we had no time for sightseeing. Eight hours after we had left the Keep, we stood by a mountain scoured with white lightning whip marks.
I had expected an altar, or some sort of mark to show the right spot, but there was nothing. Just a cliff.
I dumped a bowl full of jewelry and bullets onto the rocks. They scattered clinking. "Ivar?"
Nothing happened.
Doolittle's face fell.
"Ivar, let us in!"
The mountains were silent. Only Roderick's hoarse breathing broke the quiet.
We should've gotten here sooner. Maybe the offering worked only during magic, but as soon as magic hit, the necklace would snap Roderick's neck.
"Let us in!" I yelled.
No answer.
"Let us in, you f**king sonovabitch." I hit the mountain with the bowl. "Let us in!"
"Kate," Curran said softly. "We're out of time, baby."
Doolittle sat down on a rock and smiled at Roderick, that patient calming smile. "Come sit with me."
The boy walked over and scooted onto the rock.
I sagged against the mountain wall.
"It's pretty up here," Roderick said.
It wasn't fair. He was only a boy... I put my face into Curran's shoulder. He wrapped his arms around me.
"Can you hear the birds?" Dolittle asked.
"Yes," Roderick said.
"Very peaceful," Doolittle said.
I felt Curran tense and turned.
A man walked up the path. Broad and muscular, built like he had to wrestle bears for his living, he had a wide face, lined with wrinkles and framed with a short dark beard and long brown hair. He wore a pair of soot-stained jeans and a tunic.
His gaze fell on Roderick. Thick hairy eyebrows crept up above the pale blue eyes.
"What are you guys doing up here?" he asked.
"We're looking for Ivar," Curran said.
"I'll take you to him." The man looked at Roderick and held out his hand. "Come, little one."
Roderick hopped off the rock and walked over. The dark-haired man took his hand. Together they walked up the steep mountain path. We followed.
The path turned behind the cliff, and I saw a narrow gap in the mountain, its walls completely sheer, as if someone had sliced through the rock with a colossal sword. We walked into it, stepping over gravel and rocks.
"Where are you folks from?" The man asked.
"Atlanta," I said.
"Big city," he said.
"Yes." Neither of us mentioned the necklace choking the boy's throat.
Ahead the sun shone through the gap. A moment and we passed through and stepped into the light. A valley lay in front of us, the ground gently sloping to the waters of a narrow lake. A watermill turned and creaked on the far shore. To the right a two-story house sat on the lawn of green grass. A few dozen yards to the side a smithy rose and behind it a garden stretched up the slope, enclosed by a chain-link fence. Further still, pale horses ran in a pasture.
The necklace clicked and fell off Roderick's neck. The dark-haired man caught it and snapped it in a half. "I'll take that then."
Roderick drew a breath. Tiny red dots swelled on his neck, where the necklace had punctured skin.
"No worries," the man said. "It will heal in the next magic wave."
A shaggy grey dog trotted up to us, spat a tennis ball out of his mouth, and pondered Roderick with big eyes.
"That's Ruckus," the man said. "He'd like it if you threw the ball for him."
Roderick picked up the tennis ball, looked at it for a second, and then tossed down the slope. The dog took off after it. The boy turned to us.
"Go ahead," Doolittle told him.
Roderick dashed down the slope.
"So you're Ivar," I said.
"I am."
It finally sunk in. The necklace was gone. Roderick was safe. My legs gave a little bit and I leaned against the nearest tree.
Ivar studied me. "Oh now, that's not good. Why don't y'all come down to the house? Trisha was making iced tea before I left. It should be about done."
As if in a dream I followed him down to the house. We sat on a covered porch, and Ivar brought a pitcher of tea and some glasses.
"Why make the necklace that would strangle a child?" Curran asked.
"It's a long story." Ivar sighed. "I take it you know what I am?"
"A dverg," I said.
"That's right." Ivar looked at his hands. They were large, out of proportion to his body. "I work with metal. As long as I remember myself, the metal spoke to me. Some things I make are harmless. Plows, horseshoes, nails. Some are not. I have made a blade or two in my time. The thing is, once the blade is out of your hands, you can't control what it's used for. I try."
"Like with Dagfinn?" I guessed.
Ivar nodded. "How is that boy doing?"
"Well," Curran said.
"Good to hear. He had a bit a temper, that one." Ivar looked out, at the river's shore where Roderick and Ruckus chased each other. "Trisha is my second wife. My first one, Lisa, well, she was... The best I can figure, she was elfen. No way to know for sure, of course. She showed up on my doorstep one day and stayed. She was beautiful. We had a daughter, but the valley life wasn't for Lisa, so one morning I woke up and she was gone. Left the baby with me. I did my best to raise her. She had hair like gold, my Aurellia. But I did a lousy job raising her. There was never any warmth in her, no empathy. I don't know why. She was fully grown, when a young man came down to the valley. He said he wanted to apprentice himself to me. To learn about smithing. I don't take apprentices, but the boy had talent, so he and I made a bargain. He would stay with me for a decade."
"Ten years is a long time," I said.
"It's enough to learn how not to do harm," Doolittle said.
Ivar threw him a grateful look. "You understand. You can't teach the craft in ten years. I'm sixty and I still learn new things every day. But I thought a decade would be long enough to teach them what one should make and what on shouldn't and when. Can't just hand that kind of power to a man and let him loose in the world without guidance. So Colin and I made a bargain. He would wear the collar and stay here in the valley to learn all I could teach him. If he left the boundary of the valley before the time was up, the collar would kill him. He understood that there was no turning back. Once he put on the collar, he has to stay here for ten years."
"Aurellia decided to leave?" Curran asked.
Ivar nodded. "She had no skills. There is a school down in Cashiers, and I tried to take her there, but she quit. Didn't care for it. Didn't care for the metal work either. Thought it coarse and common. It's my own fault: I had explained money to her and that in the outside world one can't just live off the land and barter the way we do here. So she decided Colin would take care of her. One day I went up in the mountains to the old Cooper mine, and when I came down, they were gone. I had warned Colin that if he'd managed to take the collar off, it would try to find him again and he wouldn't be able to resist. The way I figure, Aurellia got it off him somehow and they must've sold it. There was a lot of gold in that collar."