THE FORGEMASTER

Part One

The tomb was a massive spherical affair of painstakingly shaped charcoal granite. A carved alabaster obelisk crowned it, about which snaked the ancient fanged Ice Dragon of Arcturus. The thing was wrought with such minute accuracy that its creator might have been a sorcerer rather than a sculptor. Not so. The edifice had been shaped as much by blood as by gold; in the three winters it had taken to construct, one hundred sixty-six slaves had died for their labors.

The thrall-blood comprising the tomb's mortar was of little concern to the occupant. For that worthy had finally been granted life eternal. Six hundred sixty-six days after being sealed in his black marble sarcophagus, Ghulgrim awoke. His eyes, glacial blue in life, had melted into the dark sockets, consumed in the hellfire of the deep places beneath the grave. Those orbs had experienced lifetimes of agony, each one wholly remembered within a single blink.

Within the infinite Hell Pits that excreted into the Known World through the peak of Mount Caina, he had been forced to watch, a shade of himself, as his mortal form was subjected to the purgations that stripped the spirit of the coils that tethered. He was split in twain, quartered, disintegrated, and reconstituted. He was stretched to breaking, crushed, pierced, rent, ground, impaled, and reconstituted. Every speck of his being was destroyed, a thousand times a thousand times. And then reconstituted.

Such were the joys of Crossing Over. The Dark Powers exacted a gruesome fee for an audience with Their Auspicious Presences; They extracted flesh by the quarter-ton and blood by the barrel. He would persevere. One day, if days could be measured, after every humiliation, every agony, every death had been inflicted; after he had perished a trillion times over, the appetites of those Awful Presences would finally be sated. And They would summon him forth.

When it finally did happen, a gulf spanning infinity later, he could not look upon Them. Their awesome aura flattened him like an insect beneath the heel of a boot. A boot that might stamp out the life of an insect the size of the earth, of the entire cosmos. He could not breathe in Their presence. Then he recalled he no longer needed to. Regardless, there was no air. There was nothing, only a Void of null-space. If there was a Black Gulf beyond Time, he was in it.

The Dark Powers spoke: "YOU HAVE PERSEVERED, GHULGRIM THE DARK. YOUR PAYMENT SATISFIES US. WE GRANT YOUR WISH. SEE THAT YOU ADHERE TO THE SPIRIT OF OUR BARGAIN."

He knew his destiny then. His scream exploded in his head and drew out into eternity.

His name had been different in life. Samael, if he recalled it right. When he was Samael, the world was younger. And smaller. Mighty Arcturus was its greatest realm, far north of the northernmost peak of Snowthatch. Though heavily sheathed in snow and ice, the spires of its crystalline cities broke through the permafrost to pierce the heavens. Its armies were vast, its wealth prodigious, its people beautiful and clever. They were the Great Race of Men, the progenitors of the Aelmric people who would later spread throughout the Known World.

The men were tall, a rare few hitting seven feet, and were often mistaken by Southlanders as the spawn of Frost Giants. The women were golden-haired statues of carved ice, and were called Winter Dryads by the few foreigners lucky enough to glimpse them.

In one of those great crystalline cities, Samael the Smith labored every day at his forge from dawn until dusk. He was the greatest swordsmith in all of Arcturus, and this was saying much, since Arcturian weaponsmiths were famed across the Known World for the strength and beauty of their blades. And so Samael was the preeminent swordsmith of his age. He was also the richest. His work was commissioned by wealthy knights and lordlings, even princes and kings. He could forge only one sword at a time, so laborious and exhausting was his process. So his ever-growing list of clients would wait months, years for their weapons. And when their prizes were finally ready, they would pay exorbitant sums.