Woman, babe and child began to wail, but the infant was pulled away and shoved into the girl’s arms. Once more a forger appeared-perhaps the same, perhaps another-and hauled the woman to her feet.
“No? No! NO!” He shrieked then, the sound dwindling away without losing intensity, as though the screamer had been yanked into unimaginably far distance. The forger shuffled back inside, and suddenly a man’s voice raised a desperate shout. When the metal came out again, it was dead black. Whatever semblance of life it had could be ended by the touch of that water. Alive or not, the forger took care as it dipped the gleaming metal into the dark stream. This one’s two hands held a sword blade in long tongs, a blade already quenched, pale like moonlit snow. Nor were they smiths as such they made nothing but the swords. The forgers were not truly alive carried any distance from Shayol Ghul, they turned to stone, or dust. One of the forgers emerged, a thick slow-moving man shape that seemed hacked out of the mountain. Their blades failed after a time and had to be replaced, no matter that raids into the Borderlands had been curtailed. But so few the Myrddraal must be gnashing their teeth. Prisoners from a raid down into the Borderlands, no doubt. A ragged woman crouched in a hopeless heap against the forge’s rough stone wall, clutching a babe in her arms, and a spindly girl buried her face in the woman’s skirts. Hammers rang inside, and with every ring, white light flared in the cramped windows. There was water, of a sort, an inky rivulet oozing down the rocky slope beside a gray-roofed forge. A few hundred leagues north the world was pure ice, but Thakan’dar was always dry as any desert, though always wrapped in winter. Feathery mist marked his breath, barely visible before the air drank it. Despite the steam it was bitter cold, now he did not allow himself to feel it, but instinct made him pull his fur-lined velvet cloak closer. In what was now called the Age of Legends, this had been an idyllic island in a cool sea, a favorite of those who enjoyed the rustic. Besides, here only a fool would want to see or smell or feel too clearly. The absence of saidin left him hollow, yet here only a fool would even appear ready to channel. He released the One Power immediately, and with the vanished sweetness went the heightened senses that made everything sharper, clearer. Across the slope steam and smoke rose from scattered vents, some holes as small as a man’s hand and some large enough to swallow ten men. Lightning streaked up at the clouds, and slow thunder rolled. Below, odd lights flashed across the barren valley, washed-out blues and reds, failing to dispel the dusky murk that shrouded their source. Above, roiling gray clouds hid the sky, an inverted sea of sluggish ashen waves crashing around the mountain’s hidden peak. The lions sing and the hills take flight.ĭemandred stepped out onto the black slopes of Shayol Ghul, and the gateway, a hole in reality’s fabric, winked out of existence.