Alija watched Pulren leave before hurrying into the forge. She had a lot of work to do, and she had to do it quickly.
"Don, I want you to make ten flat lead plates, about five pounds each. They'll be used as weights, something about adding them to a shirt. Just do what you can, and hope for the best!" she smiled at him quickly, directing him towards the anvil he was standing besides. The young man nodded, starting to weigh out pieces of metal and shove them to one side to be heated before being flattened.
Alija assigned herself the job of making the anchor. She picked out a large lump of lead, placing it on one side of a scale and adding weights to the other. The lump was just a little bit heavier, but Alija left it. It was better to have a little more than needed, to make room for waste material and errors. Besides, an anchor a couple of pounds heavier than asked wouldn't make too much of a difference. It wasn't like she would charge him more for it.
She shoved the metal into the fire, watching as it started to glow. As it did, she planned out how to make it. She didn't know whether it would be easier to make the ring first or last. She decided on last. All she wold need to remember would be to leave some extra metal to form it, which wouldn't prove to be too much of a problem.
After satisfied with the temperature of the lead, she pulled it out with the tongs, placing it onto the anvil. Her hammer quickly smashed down, making the first mark. One by one came the blows, leveling out each face of the pyramid. She twisted the metal slowly, working on all faces but the one that would have the ring. She drew them out with quick taps and harder flattening blows, tapering them into a point before widening it, taking away from the length and adding to the width. Slowly, the shape started to show, although a little too conical.
That was easily fixed. With the section she wanted flat against the anvil face, she pushed the metal down to form a flat face. The blacksmith would alternate between each of the three faces, working until the edges had started to become more clear.
Alija continued working on them until the shape was definite and each of the sides well formed. In fact, she had even managed to make the strip beside the edges slightly thicker than the area in the center, giving it a more decorative look and forcing that metal up toward the top where it would be used to form the ring.
That was the hardest part. After bells of long hard hammering to form three of the pyramid's sides, she began to work on the fourth. This on was a little different, the edges already defined. Instead of distributing the metal between the other sides, she had to pound it towards the center,upsetting the metal to form a large bump, which she drew out to be a rather thin sticking out circle.
Using a punch, the blacksmith started to push a hole in the circle, pushing the lead to the edge while thinning out the middle. She flipped it round and repeated on the other side, slowly making the dent bigger and bigger before only a thin section separated the two depressions. With several final blows, she broke through, all the metal having slowly moved to the edges.
After that all she had to do was smooth the edges of the ring so the rope wouldn't get caught. It was a difficult process as the hole in the ring wasn't big enough to accommodate for the hammer, but she managed to do so rather well, the ring becoming smooth and curved.
Satisfied with the day's work, she brought it out and stuck it under the counter to wait for Pulren's return. Donovan joined her soon afterward, carrying ten seemingly heavy lead weight with him, each rather thin and flat, plate like as she had expected. Hopefully, it would be what Pulren had hoped for. If not, Alija just hoped that he would take them anyway.
