Lacking breath and a heartbeat, he found it difficult to gauge the passage of time, and meaningful rest — to say nothing of actual sleep — was an impossibility. Boric did not tire and he did not recuperate. He simply existed, forever.No, thought Boric. Not forever. There had to be a way to break the enchantment. He wracked his memory, trying to recall everything he knew or had heard about the seven Blades of Brakboorn. He had spent some time after returning to Kra’al Brobdingdon researching the swords, but much of what he had found was — it seemed at the time — superstitious nonsense. He wasn’t interested in fairy tales about magic spells and curses; he wanted to know how the swords had been made. What strange alloy — lighter, stronger, and more resistant to corrosion than even the best steel made by the master swordmakers of the Old Realm — were these blades made of? Who had made them? How had they been forged? When had they been created and why? To most of these questions he had found no satisfactory answers.
