The black glass boulder in the trommel teeth didn’t budge under Master Borin’s five-foot crowbar.
Giles Croft climbed into the mouth of the steel drum. He carried an eight-pound sledgehammer and two forged steel splitting wedges.
The air inside the hard dark metal tube smelled of warm damp chalk, crushed shale. A faint metal tang like scorched copper wire.
“Borin, set the wedge right along that natural cleavage plane,” Giles directed. He tapped the dark stone with the handle of his hammer. “It isn’t magical armor.
It’s glass-fused dark rock oversize with high quartz dust content. Strike the crystal-clear grain, not the flat face.”
Borin grumbled under his breath, bracing the hardened steel wedge against a faint seam near the top of the inscribed glyph.
“If this thing unleashes a thousand-year curse on my forge, Giles, I’m billing your office for the replacement tongs.”
“If it unleashes a curse, Millicent will write it off as an unbudgeted outside debt,” Giles said dryly. “Hold the steel steady. One, two, strike.”
