Taran Wanderer

And so they did, but this time for Taran there remained little of his joyous hopes. He labored grimly and doggedly, all the more dejected when Hevydd ordered him to cast aside two new blades even before they were tempered, judging them already flawed. The reek of hot metal clung in his nostrils and flavored even the food he hastily swallowed; the billows of steam from the great quenching tub choked him as if he were breathing clouds of scalding fog; the ceaseless din almost addled his wits until indeed he felt it was himself, not the blade, being hammered.

The next blade he shaped seemed to him ugly, dinted, and scarred, without the fair proportions of the first, and this too he would have cast aside had not the smith ordered him to finish it.

"This may well serve," Hevydd told him confidently, despite the doubtful look Taran gave him.

Again Taran strode to the block and raised the sword. Doing his best to shatter the ungraceful weapon, he brought it down with all his strength. The blade rang like a bell. This time it was the block that split in two.

"Now," said Hevydd quietly. "That's a blade worth bearing."

Then he clapped his hands and seized Taran's arm. "You've strength in those chicken wings after all! You've proved yourself as well as you proved the blade. Stay, lad, and I'll teach you all I know."

Taran said nothing for a time, but looked, not without pride, at the new-forged blade. "You have already taught me much," he said at last to Hevydd, "though I lost what I had hoped to gain. For I had hoped I was indeed a swordsmith. I have learned that I am not."

"How then!" cried Hevydd. "You've the makings of an honest swordsmith, as good as any in Prydain."

"It cheers me to think that may be true," Taran answered. "But I know in my heart your craft is not mine. A spur drove me from Small Avren, and it drives me now. And so must I journey, even if I wished to stay."

The smith nodded. "You are well-named, Wanderer. So be it. I ask no man to go against his heart. Keep the blade in token of friendship. Yours it is, more so than any other, for you forged it with your own hands."

"It's not a noble weapon, and thus it suits me all the more," Taran laughed, glancing at the ungainly sword. "Lucky it was that I didn't have to make a dozen before it."

"Luck?" snorted Hevydd, as Taran and Gurgi took leave of him. "Not so! More labor than luck.

Life's a forge, say I! Face the pounding; don't fear the proving; and you'll stand well against any hammer and anvil!"

WITH HEVYDD THE SMITH waving a sooty hand in farewell, the companions traveled on, bearing northward along the rich valley of Great Avren. A few days of easy riding through pleasant countryside brought them to the edge of Commot Gwenith. Here, a shower suddenly began pelting down on them, and the wayfarers galloped for the first shelter they could find.

It was a cluster of sheds, stables, chicken roosts, and storehouses seeming to ramble in all directions, but as Taran dismounted and hastened to the cottage amid the maze of buildings, he realized all were linked by covered walkways or flagstoned paths, and whichever he followed would sooner or later have brought him to the doorway that opened almost before he knocked on it.

"Come in, and a good greeting to you!" called a voice crackling like twigs in a fire.

As Gurgi scuttled inside to escape the teeming rain, Taran saw a bent old woman cloaked in gray beckoning him to the hearth. Her long hair was white as the wool on the distaff hanging from her belt of plaited cords. Below her short-girt robe, her bony shins looked thin and hard as spindles. A web of wrinkles covered her face; her cheeks were withered; but for all her years she gave no sign of frailty, as though time had only toughened and seasoned her; and her gray eyes were sharp and bright as a pair of new needles.

"I am Dwyvach Weaver-Woman," she replied, as Taran bowed courteously and told her his name. "Taran Wanderer?" she repeated with a tart smile. "From the look of you, I'd say you've indeed been wandering. More than you've been washing. And that's clear as the warp and weft on my loom."

"Yes, yes!" cried Gurgi. "See loom of weavings! See windings and bindings! So many it makes Gurgi's poor tender head swim with twirlings and whirlings!"

Taran for the first time noticed a high loom standing like a giant harp of a thousand strings in a corner of the cottage. Around it were stacked bobbins of thread of all colors; from the rafters dangled skeins of yarn, hanks of wool and flax; on the walls hung lengths of finished fabrics, some of bright hue and simple design, others of subtler craftsmanship and patterns more difficult to follow. Taran gazed astonished at the endless variety, then turned to the weaver-woman of Gwenith.

"This calls for skill beyond anything I know," he said admiringly. "How is such work done?"

"How done?" The weaver-woman chuckled. "It would take me more breath to tell than you have ears to listen. But if you look, you shall see."