The Hammer of the Sun by Michael Scott Rohan Read Free Book Online

that is torn.
    With frantic speed he threw his weight upon the great forge bellows, pumping them faster than could the waterwheel, till the hill of coals glowed searing white at its summit, as if earthfires fed it indeed. Urgently he heaved out the crucible in the long tongs, whitehot metal slopping and sizzling against its flanks, and whirled it across from furnace to forge; it seemed to leave a trail like a falling starstone in the heavy air, and hissed onto the angry coals. The lock of hair and the feather he caught up, raised them to his lips a moment, then reached out over the fire to the crucible and dropped them in. A light plume of flame danced up, ghostlike, and they were gone.
    Gathering his strength, he took up the crucible once more, swung it around to the moulds waiting on the forge-rim… then cursed himself luridly. Fool that he was to try such a task without one forgehand at least, to steady the mould, to correct his aim, to vibrate out airlocks and bubbles, to warn him when it was almost full… Hideous difficulties loomed over him; one mistake, one only… But there was no help for it now; delay would only cool the silver further, make it harder to pour. He would have to reheat it, risk dissipating what he had set within it… and would he ever dare to replace it? Better at all events to have no forgehand hear what he must sing now. Gritting tooth on tooth he tilted the heavy thing, saw a swelling of red at its rim, a fine thread falling… Straight into the mouth of the mould. Steam whistled from the other spruehole; he breathed again, and on that note he sang, clear and fierce, that older song his memory had taught him. Yet the words were new; and as he sang his hand never trembled, the thread of falling silver never wavered.
    Sheltered in silver
By craft and by flame
Be no more now drawn from me
And captive again - As once you chose,
Choose to remain!
Your own self shall enclose you,
More firmly than fetter or chain!
    Silver sprang and spat, and he swung the crucible away. But was the mould full, or was it only an airlock which would leave a damaging flaw? Too late to tell; already the mirrored meniscus was dimming, he must pour the other quickly before the silver cooled. This was worse, his arms aching with cramp, his fingers trembling with weakness. His head swam, but he sang the words clearly through the smoky air. A long age it seemed before the silver leaped and spattered down the flanks of the second mould, and so great was his relief that he all but dropped the crucible, and had to set it down at an awkward angle on the rim before coaxing the moulds gently out of the coals; even unshaped, that silver could be potent stuff. He would be safest making some other work of it as soon as possible, set with different virtues. Meanwhile… He left the moulds on top of the coals, to cool slowly as they did; that helped lessen stresses within the metal. Exhaustion burned in his back and arms, and suddenly the air choked him; he flung the air-vents wide and collapsed by the forge, listening to the wind sigh in the passages of the stone. His head drooped on his breast, he jerked upright once, and then it no longer seemed worth the effort; his eyes were hot and sore, his head…
    Thunder crashed around him; suddenly he was in many places, on a storm-wreathed tower-top, a grim and night-bound forest, by a forge in a marshland hovel - or was it in the mountains of the north … Then he knew where he was, shivering by a stone-cold hearth, with pounding, pounding upon his doors. Speechless he stumbled up, his throat ashen as the forge. Something in his dreaming, a memory of other such summons, filled that sound with dread, made his hands clumsy on the heavy bolt. For a moment the figure that stood there in the shadowy corridor, cloaked and hooded, seemed ominous; but he was shorter than Elof, short and rotund, and from beneath the travel-stained hood blazed a mane of red hair. Elof forgot all his alarm and