"Gendry?!"
Tobho Mott and his apprentices recoiled, their gazes hitting the bastard boy like physical blows. Disbelief warred with a sudden, sharp fear on the old armorer's face. "Impossible. I never taught him the reworking... how could I teach what I do not know?"
Tobho's lips trembled, his voice thin and panicked, like a man whose darkest secret had been dragged into the noon-day sun.
"Of course you didn't teach him," Aldric said, his lips curling into a dry smile. "I did. Forging patterned steel isn't the mystery the world makes it out to be, Master Mott. It is simply the marriage of two different tempers, folded until they become one. Is that not right?"
"Yes—" Tobho's eyes never left Gendry, who was turning a white-hot ingot in the furnace. Resentment flared in the old man's gaze, quickly cooled by awe. "I have forged patterned steel in secret, many times. But I never dared call it Valyrian. Any knight with a drop of sense would know the lie the moment they gripped it. It was never light enough... it lacked the soul."
He sighed, a bitter, helpless sound. The true art of Valyrian steel had been lost when the dragons died and magic bled out of the world. In Qohor, the masters chanted empty incantations over cold iron, hoping for a miracle that never came. They had tried blood sacrifices, offering the veins of slaves and the cries of infants to the Black Goat, yet the steel remained mundane. They guarded their "secrets" not just for a monopoly, but to hide the fact that they were failures.
"My wife is the daughter of a master smith of Qohor," Tobho whispered, his eyes unfocused. "I swore an oath to the Black Goat and the Seven never to reveal the truth of our impotence. That was the price for leaving that city with her."
"And now you tell me?" Aldric asked, his brow arched.
Tobho watched Gendry strike the first blow on the anvil. The old man shook his head dejectedly. "It is meaningless now. Gendry has the steel. The secret is out of the bag and running wild. Why hold onto dust?"
Aldric nodded. "Then watch. Witness the birth of Sun-Steel."
He turned to Gendry. "Can you finish the fold today, boy?"
Gendry wiped sweat from his eyes, his voice steady. "With you behind me, Master."
Aldric stepped forward, his hand hovering over Gendry's shoulder. He began the rite, his voice low and rhythmic. "Great Anshe, grant Might to the hammer and Will to the arm."
A golden-white radiance flared around Gendry, faint but unmistakable in the sunlit forge. As the hammer fell, Aldric cast Solar Vitality. The boy's muscles, which should have been screaming with fatigue, surged with a secondary life.
Folding steel is a grueling trial of endurance. Without the hydraulic hammers Aldric had built for the plows, doing it by hand was a three-day ordeal. But under the constant pulse of the Light, Gendry worked with the speed of four men.
By noon, the steel had been folded eight times. Gendry finally collapsed, his lungs burning, his skin slick with soot and sweat. Aldric used heavy tongs to plunge the cooling bar into a trough. The hiss of steam filled the shed.
"Master Mott," Aldric said, handing the cooled, darkened bar to the armorer. "What is your verdict?"
Tobho took it with trembling hands. He ran a thumb over the surface, his eyes widening. "Uniform. Balanced. The weight..." He looked up, stunned. "It is lighter. Significantly so."
He looked at Gendry, then at Aldric. "You are using magic. The boy is a vessel."
"He is a craftsman," Aldric corrected. "But to forge Sun-Steel, a Sunwalker must walk beside the smith. One provides the steel its soul; the other provides the smith his life."
"Let me try," Tobho whispered. Curiosity had finally burned away his fear.
He rolled up his sleeves, his old muscles knotting. He pulled a fresh bar from the furnace and looked at Aldric. "Show me your magic, Lightbringer!"
Aldric raised his hand. "Great Anshe, restore the strength of the elder. Let the fire of youth return."
Tobho gasped. A phantom heat rushed through his limbs, his heart pounding with a vigor he hadn't felt since he was a youth in Qohor. He felt the silver hairs on his arms stand on end. With a roar of pure exhilaration, he brought the hammer down.
The impurities flew from the metal like sparks. Tobho wept as he worked, his tears vaporizing against the red steel. He felt the Light flowing through his palms and into the grain of the sword. He wasn't just hitting iron; he was shaping destiny.
When the tenth fold was done, Tobho set the hammer down. He wasn't sore, only empty—a hollow, clean sensation. He bowed deeply to Aldric.
"Thank you. I have seen the sun before my night comes. If I die now, I die content."
"Why speak of dying?" Aldric laughed. "I have no intention of killing you, Master Mott."
"I know the rules of the guild," Tobho said, his voice dropping. "This secret... this wealth... you cannot let me return to the capital with it."
"And if you did?" Aldric leaned against the anvil. "Could you find another Sunwalker in King's Landing? All my brothers are sworn to me, and to the liberation of the smallfolk. Even if you have the technique, you lack the Source. You can stay here, or you can leave—the result is the same."
"Come," Aldric said, steering the shell-shocked smith toward the common mess. "It is noon. We eat."
Aldric had implemented a three-meal-a-day system, a luxury unheard of for most laborers in Westeros. In the communal hall, he and Gendry took their wooden bowls and queued with the stone-masons and apprentices.
Tobho watched in disbelief as the "Lightbringer" sat at a rough trestle table, eating the same salted meat and pumpkin soup as the lowliest boy.
"You eat this... with them?" Tobho asked.
"In the Alliance, we eat as one," Aldric said between bites of potato. "The Seven Gods have many faces—the Smith, the Warrior, the Mother. But the Lords have stolen the Father's rule and made the others slaves. They wage wars for vanity while the craftsmen and farmers bleed. I am here to put the world back on its axis."
Aldric looked Tobho in the eye. "The Lords will hate what we build here. They will come with fire and steel to put the 'lowly' back in their place. That is why I need the steel. And that is why I need you."
Tobho felt the trap closing, but it wasn't the cage he had expected. They didn't want his gold. They wanted his soul.
"Todd was right," Tobho muttered to his apprentices. "It is a trap. But I find I don't want to leave."
He raised his wooden bowl to Aldric. "To the collaboration, Lightbringer."
"To the steel, Master Mott."