The Black Talon ot-1

by Richard A. Knaak

  In the end, it was not hatred for Golgren or anger over the betrayal by one of his own that was Dauroth’s last thought; rather it was the long-held dream. He beheld the ancient spirit from his first vision, then the golden city from the more recent. The city stretched out before him, the gates open and inviting. The gleaming figure was there too, and at first Dauroth believed he beckoned the spellcaster toward those gates.

  But then the guardian transformed into the robed spirit. The beautiful male/female shook its head in sorrow. It waved a slim hand, and the gates shut tight.

  You have failed to earn it, the guardian sang. You have failed…

  As the rest of the Black Talon watched, Dauroth reached a shaking hand toward empty air, and the last of him was peeled away until nothing remained but dissipating wisps of smoke.

  In Garantha, the quake came to such an abrupt halt that nobody could question its supernatural origins. The remaining towers, still teetering, very quickly stilled. Dust drifted over everything, so thick as to be blinding.

  Certain the catastrophe would return, Garantha’s inhabitants remained frozen, and the only sounds heard throughout the city were those of the injured and dying calling out unheeded for aid. Only as more time passed and the land remained quiet did more normal signs of life gradually return. Only then did help begin to come to those in dire need.

  With the return of normal life came the shock of awareness of the death and destruction that had engulfed the city. The cries and weeping began anew, for even ogres can stand only so much before their spirits break. Yet for all the violence within the city, an even greater menace, encroaching from the west, had been met in battle. Guards peeking over the walls caught their first glimpses of the ruined land beyond, making them thankful the city had not suffered as much by comparison.

  The call went out for those who ruled to take command of the emergency and issue instructions for relief and aid, but of the self-proclaimed master of all Kern and Blode, the only signs were the mangled and ruined banners and the cracked images.

  Idaria woke first; it was she who first discovered that she was alive. She lay half buried in silt and stone, her body bruised and slashed, but miraculously not badly harmed.

  No, it was not so miraculous. Recalling her rescuer, she looked around hopefully. Yet there was no evidence of any silver armor nearby, no hint of a human hand or limb.

  “Sir Stefan!” she rasped, her wracked voice sounding like it’d be more suitable for a goblin. “Sir Stefan!”

  The elf bent down and started digging frantically, tossing aside loose dirt and small debris. When the first hole she dug did not satisfy her, Idaria tried a second and a third and more. The knight had saved her life. He must be buried there somewhere, crushed by dirt and rocks. She had to find him.

  But each shallow hole ended in sheets of solid rock. Whether that rock was ancient or the result of the quake was impossible to say. Stefan could lay buried yards away or right under her feet. Never had she felt so defeated.

  “Sir Stefan,” the elf rasped again. “Sir Stefan … ”

  Then her fingers scraped against something. Desperate, Idaria scrabbled at the object, finally uncovering it.

  It was the medallion. She recognized both the medallion and the revered symbol decorating it. That drove her to prayer. “Kiri-Jolith! Lord of Just Cause! I call you in the name of one of your own! Help me find him if there is still any hope.”

  What she expected in response, Idaria did not know. The medallion did not flare bright, however, and no ghostly image of the good god appeared, pointing the way to the buried knight.

  But then a clatter of rock to her right made her straighten expectantly. To her astonishment, she saw the armored figure she sought, off in the distance, stumbling away from her over the ravaged landscape. Stefan kept his head turned away from the elf, as if something before him held his utmost attention.

  Confused, Idaria took a step after the human. Stefan was heading toward neither Garantha nor in the direction of distant Solamnia. If anything, he was heading toward the more mountainous regions of Kern and, for that matter, Blode.

  “Sir Stefan!” she shouted after him. “Sir Stefan!” Although her voice was strained, her cry was loud; yet the human did not give any sign of hearing her, nor did he turn around. He continued to stumble determinedly along on his path.

  Idaria hesitated. Golgren’s face formed in her mind. She remembered all she had struggled for in her mission as an ogre slave. And she fought against feelings that had nothing to do with that mission, having only to do with herself.

  Looking back, the elf saw not only Garantha, but the great waste that stretched from its walls to as far as the eye could see. Golgren lay out there somewhere, surely dead. Idaria had no more need to stay, no more need to concern herself over his machinations. As for his enemies, the Titans, she could do nothing about them. Only Golgren had been able to keep them at bay … until then. It was best that she follow after the knight and leave Kern behind.

  Her eyes shifted to the Solamnic’s dwindling figure then back to the ruined landscape that had to be Golgren’s grave.

  Squeezing the medallion tight, Idaria murmured, “Forgive me, Kiri-Jolith.”

  She rushed toward where she had last seen the ogre.

  His lungs burned, yearning for air. He tried to inhale, but dirt filled his mouth and squeezed his lungs.

  He wasn’t breathing; he was hacking. The urge to breathe, to live, fought with the temptation to die. He flailed in the direction he thought was up, seeking anything that would tell him he was making the right choice. It was hard to think. His brain and his heart pounded; his chest felt as if it were about to collapse.

  Golgren’s head broke the surface.

  He coughed up more dirt, then madly gulped air. That brought about another hacking fit, but at least something other than the dust and soil finally was entering his lungs.

  The ogre forced his eyes open. They teared painfully, creating a murky effect that reminded him of being under water.

  Then through his tortured gaze, he beheld a gleaming figure of gold, a figure with no countenance, no telling detail. However, though the golden figure had no eyes to speak of, Golgren knew that it was studying him intently.

  A powerful heat radiated from the shining being. Eyes stinging, the grand lord blinked, and in that blink, the golden figure vanished.

  His strength spent, Golgren sagged, his head dropping down, face slamming into the ground. He did not black out, although he wished that he might if only to be momentarily free of pain.

  Then a sound burrowed through the haze of his thoughts: a voice, a familiar voice.

  An elf voice …

  XXIV

  MASTERS OF DEATH

  What remained of the Black Talon stood in a circle. The center of that circle was where they had last glimpsed the prophet of their dream, their leader and founder, Dauroth.

  The Titans were also spent, some dangerously so, but they dared not rest. What had happened only hours earlier still rattled them to the core. Those who were not members of the Talon could not be informed that Dauroth had perished. That unthinkable thing would spread chaos among the spellcasters. It might mean not only the end of the dream, but the end of all of them too.

  “The elixir!” snapped a Titan called Yatilun. His pale, haggard face was the mirror of most others in the room. “Before anything else, we must partake of the elixir!”

  “Then I should be first!” interjected another.

  “Nay! I!” called a third. Arguments began to break out.

  Morgada shook her head, her long, black hair flowing wildly. “We are lost! Without Dauroth, we are lost.”

  “Nay.”

  They looked to Safrag, who stood straighter than the rest, looking less weary than the rest.

  He stood far more confidently than the rest.

  Unlike the others, Safrag was resplendent, handsome, and in perfect command of himself. He glided among them, and they could not but he
lp but be impressed and calm down slightly. “Dauroth’s passing will be known and it will be mourned, but the Titans-and the Black Talon, especially-do not live and die with him. The dream that the master sought is still attainable. Another must merely guide our efforts.”

  “But who?” demanded Yatilun. “There is no other like Dauroth!”

  “Perhaps at one time Hundjal might have led us,” the Titan next to him suggested. “But Dauroth found some terrible, inexplicable fault in him … just as he did with Kallel.”

  Safrag nodded in agreement then, bowing with taloned hands spread, bluntly replied, “I would humbly put forth myself.”

  Morgada had watched Safrag closely from the moment he had begun speaking. The hint of a smile appeared and began to spread across her face. “Yes! Safrag was Dauroth’s apprentice also! Safrag would know all the master’s secrets!”

  “You are correct in your last statement, Morgada. No one knew the master better than I, perhaps not even Hundjal.”

  There were those among the Talon who might have protested such a declaration, but as each one of the Titans stared at Safrag, comprehension dawned. He was not the servile toady many had thought Safrag to be. They all knew they were seeing a new side of the apprentice, a Safrag revealed as never before.

  “The elixir?” Yatilun prodded almost gingerly.

  Safrag smiled broadly, his teeth perfect and so perfectly sharp. “There is enough for now … for the Black Talon. A bit more can be made for others who most urgently require it. We also have the many bones. They will help us for a time.”

  The gathered sorcerers murmured among themselves, reassured about their welfare, their future, and happy to be reminded that the bones would still be of use. Without casting a vote, with little more than nods and glances, they accepted Safrag as their leader.

  “I will be taking over the master’s sanctum. At the midnight hour, you shall come to me one by one to receive the elixir.” Safrag’s gaze flitted among the Titans, finally settling upon one. “Morgada, you shall be first, and thereafter, you will assist me.”

  “I am at your command,” she murmured, curtseying. Her eyes glowed with eagerness. Safrag had as much as declared her his chief apprentice.

  “We must rebuild much and recuperate more,” he informed the others. “The dream will be fulfilled … in the name of the master, of course.”

  The other members of the Black Talon bowed before Safrag, cementing his role as their leader, their new master. As he straightened, Yatilun cautiously brought up a subject thorny but familiar to the spellcasters. “What about the Grand Lord Golgren? What if, by fate or luck, he lives? He will wish vengeance! We cannot permit that, and yet we are weakened.”

  “The mongrel does live,” Safrag informed them, startling more than one there with the new depth of his knowledge. “I sensed it. Whether he retains control for very long, though, is a question. For the time being, while we recuperate, we shall let him live and let him play at ruler. The dream is our ultimate goal and our ultimate destiny. The Grand Lord Golgren may continue to be a useful tool. When we are ready, he shall pass as all grand khans and lord chieftains have passed.”

  “When we are ready …” repeated a Titan. “When we are ready …”

  “Dauroth promised it would be soon, but he never said how we would finally accomplish it!” said a second. “The signets and other artifacts from the tomb were to assist, but that was all! He never told us how he would forever liberate all Titans from the continual need of elixir. The bones are a temporary solution! He never told-”

  “He told me,” the former apprentice turned master replied with a gracious smile, displaying all his teeth.

  As the others stared at Safrag with fresh i nterest, Morgada shifted her position nearer to the new leader. Safrag steepled his fingers in contemplation then expounded, “He told me his intentions only a day ago. The dream finally revealed to him the necessary path. It will take more sacrifice, more determination, but it will at last lead us to fulfilling all!”

  “Pray, good Safrag,” the Titaness asked demurely. “What information did Dauroth relay to you? Can you give the rest of us some hope, some clue? Is that permitted?”

  “I would not leave my fellow Titans wandering in the dark like the rest of our fallen race, dear Morgada. All shall know our course, for all shall be needed for the hunt.”

  Yatilun frowned. “ ‘Hunt’? You almost sound like Hundjal when you speak so, Safrag! What are we hunting this time?”

  The former apprentice smiled in a manner very much like that of his late mentor. He spread his arms wide again, as if to embrace all those present. “A dream in itself, a legend that has been determined at last to be fact. We owe Dauroth a debt for revealing to us the final piece.” His smile widened even more. “We hunt the resting place of the Fire Rose.”

  That brought renewed gasps and gaping from the Black Talon. “The Fire Rose?” someone shouted. “But it is only reckless myth!”

  “A myth Dauroth forbade us even to research,” reminded another, “for all the tales of it, he said, had endings most dire.”

  “I ever found that strange,” Yatilun admitted. “Why forbid seeking something that supposedly did not exist?”

  Safrag waved away all their doubts and superstitions. “The master sought only to protect those too eager to be of assistance. The Fire Rose is our key. You may trust me on that point.”

  Yatilun shook his head skeptically. “But how can we find this thing so long lost? How do we track a legend so ancient?”

  “Like calls to like. Dauroth taught us all that lesson. We can and will find it.”

  “But to do that, we would need-”

  “A part of the legend. A minute piece of the myth. Yes, Yatilun. Yes, all of you … Dauroth and I managed to discover a small fragment of the Fire Rose.” Safrag’s eyes burned with ambition, though he spoke modestly. “A thing in itself very powerful. We shall use it to find that to which it belongs.” He bowed his head at the empty space where his master had last stood, last stood staring at Safrag. “As Dauroth wished us to do.”

  Idaria tended to Golgren, who had passed out just as the slave reached him, as best she could. She kept his head up, scanning the carnage for another living being who might help them. It was more than an hour before three warriors in breastplates came across the pair. Under her guidance, they carried the grand lord as carefully as they could toward the capital.

  Golgren awoke during his journey and, despite his injuries, commanded the pair to set him down so he could walk. When they protested, he muttered, “It would not show strength to be carried through the gates like an infant.”

  He accepted a supporting arm from two of the warriors out of necessity but kept his head high and his expression defiant. As they wended their way toward Garantha, survivors began to collect behind Golgren. Their numbers were small, but he hailed each. Most welcome was the survival of Khleeg. The officer, ugly even for an ogre, was even less appealing of face, bruised and bloodied and scraped. Khleeg was a ghastly sight. His toadlike mouth was still bleeding, and one tooth was gone. A huge bulge over his left eye made it nearly impossible for him to see out of that orb. His nose was also broken. Yet he silently took up a position near his master and, armed with an axe not his own, marched as if leading a parade of victory.

  By the time they reached Garantha’s gates, a little more than a hundred warriors-many of them limping and even, in some cases, dragging wounded legs-marched with the grand lord. It was a sorry lot, admittedly, but at the same time one that set Golgren’s blood stirring with pride.

  Another familiar figure met them at the gate. Wargroch, fairly untouched and mounted, leaped down from his horse and dropped to one knee. “Grand Lord, I thought all dead! I search and search then return here! When I hear of your living, I bring you this!”

  He turned the horse so Golgren could mount. Golgren couldn’t suppress a grin, in spite of the pain, as he mounted. He looked back to survey the survivors of his force, n
odding at Idaria nearby, then raised his hand and clenched his fist.

  The beaten, broken soldiers shouted out his name. “Golgren! Golgren!”

  Seeing one trumpeter among the guards still manning the ruined walls, the grand lord gestured. The trumpeter hastily put the goat horn to his mouth and blew hard. Another trumpeter farther away picked up the note and joined in. As Golgren started to ride, the capital resounded with one blast after another.

  Khleeg renewed the shouting. “Golgren! Golgren!”

  The other warriors followed suit and, within a minute, many onlookers did too.

  And as the small party rode deeper into the devastated city, more and more ogres came out to line the cracked streets or halted their cleanup efforts to stare at the return of the grand lord. Many joined in the cheers and shouting.

  At they turned toward the palace, Golgren’s eyes narrowed. He suddenly guided his horse in a different direction. Khleeg, Idaria, and the others did their best to keep up, not knowing what he had in mind. But Golgren did nothing by chance or accident.

  As word continued to spread ahead of the march, ogres from various sectors of Garantha joined in the grand lord’s wake. Many were warriors left to defend the city, overjoyed to find their leader alive, even if so badly battered. But many ordinary citizens, in growing numbers, swelled the parade.

  At last, Golgren arrived at his chosen destination. It was not the Jaka Hwunar, where he had once intended his glorious climax to take place, but rather the temple of Garantha’s patron spirit. The ancient edifice was intact-minus one column that had broken free and tumbled down the steps-and the area was clear enough of debris to enable a crowd of citizens to surround the grand lord as he rode the horse up the steps. At the top, Golgren leaped down as if full of fresh energy and entirely unharmed from his ordeal. Not even Khleeg or Idaria were allowed to know the pain that made him wince, the jarring of his bones when he landed on the stone steps. Golgren bound his mount’s reins to one of the columns then turned and stood before the many assembled ogres. Over his chest he still wore his mummified hand, and that he suddenly held high.