The silence that followed was of a different quality than the one that had preceded the violence. This was not the tense, pre-storm quiet, but the hollow, ringing absence left in the wake of a cataclysm. The air in the workshop was thick with the smell of sweat, fear, and the faint, ozone tang of discharged harmonic energy.
Corvin did not move. He stood as a statue carved from shock and shame, staring at his empty hand, at the few lingering droplets of moon-silver that gleamed on his calloused skin like misplaced tears. The puddle on the floor between his feet was a mirror reflecting the shattered ceiling of his ambition. His men, disarmed and subdued by Jorah's grim-faced fighters, watched him, waiting for a command that would not come. Their belief in his invincibility, in the simple economy of force he represented, had dissolved as completely as the magical blade.
