THE FORGEMASTER

Part Three

The next morning, he came to the forge with an eagerness that surprised him. He had melted the ore and poured the skymetal into the mould. It had cooled and he had brought it to the anvil for shaping. He struck with the hammer once, twice, three times. He smiled as the wondrous metal he loved so much began to take shape under his care.

He smote once more. The hammer came down on the metal, making a hollow, tinny sound. It might have been a false note. He stared in horror. A webwork of minute cracks ran through the skymetal. Then it broke into two jagged shards. It had cooled too long!

How? He had not erred so grievously since he'd been a journeyman. Mayhap he was still fatigued. Yes, that was surely it. He returned the shards to the mould, fired the forge and melted them together, then let them cool again. This time he closely watched as the ore flickered and changed with the cooling. Then he took a deep and tremulous breath. And smote it. The hammer came down. Again the false, tinny note. The skymetal shattered into six pieces. Unthinkable! Was it beyond even an apprentice's skill to do this? He tried again to the same effect. And again. A dozen times at least, until he was a raging mess of sweat and soot. He wiped at the sweat stinging his eyes and realized he was weeping.

He was still taut and drained from crafting that horrid blade, he told himself. He would sleep and try again in the morning. It took him four glasses of cherry brandy to drive the stranger's ominous final words from his mind. And when sleep finally came, it came as a stupor full of dark portent. The black-fanged devil was waiting, marshalling the legions of nightmare.

The next morning's efforts yielded the same results. He had grown haggard and drawn, his skin yellow-gray from seclusion. His belly's dull ache told him he had not eaten anything in more than a day. Who would desire food? His livelihood, his craft, the thing he loved best in life to the exclusion of all else—had departed from him. As suddenly as the darkening of the sun that marked the first day of Low Winter. He tossed his hammer aside and sunk down on his workbench, weeping fresh tears.

Abruptly the answer struck him like a thunderbolt hurled by the Storm God. The sword. The black sword. Somehow it had...taken it from him. All of his genius and passion for his craft, the weapon had, in the course of his forging it, stolen away. How could this be? Certainly there were tales in the Legendarium, stories of weapons forged with the aid of demigods or sorcerers, of blades that would burst into flame on command or slice through granite or blind with scintillating beams of light. But nothing so cruel, nothing so capricious, as this. He was certain, down to his marrow, that he had the right of it. What else had changed in his life? Nothing. Nothing at all, save for the arrival of that cursed dark stranger with his lump of cold black ore.

A knock interrupted his reverie. Guthiel again? No. He never called at the smithy door. And the tempo was not his. It was polite and soft, persistent and commanding. And altogether too familiar. He rose from the workbench, staggered to the portal, and pulled it open. He did not ask the caller's name; he knew who it was.

The dark stranger stood on the threshold. He sketched a courtly bow and his short ebon cloak flitted about on currents of red autumn wind.

"May I come in?" he said.

Samael moved aside to let the stranger pass, and shuddered with a sudden chill. He closed the door behind his visitor. They stood in the ambient orange light of the forge, neither speaking at once.

"You do not appear as hale as last time we met, Forgemaster. I suppose you have discovered the black sword's secret. Well, one of them."

"Bastard! You knew this would happen! There is no sum of gold you could pay that would cause me to offer my soul. And that is what the cursed thing has done, stolen my soul!"