by James Wyatt
Vor snarled at the warlock, and Kauth laughed. Zandar had not spoken while they traversed the pass—either because of the thin air and driving snow or because something else weighed on his mind—and Kauth felt relieved to see him back to his normal, sardonic self.
The valley was a fitting introduction to the Demon Wastes. The sky churned with storm clouds, but an angry glow like magma suffused the clouds as though they might rain down fire instead of water. Boulders that might have been the remnants of some incredibly ancient watchtower littered its slopes, and shadows seemed to flit among them in the strange light of the ruddy sky. Not only trees but grass and even lichen had long since abandoned the dusty soil. The air grew warmer with every step they took away from the freezing peaks of the Shadowcrags and toward the wasteland below.
The valley channeled them quickly down the mountainside before spitting them out on a low bluff overlooking a wide, open plain. It was a commanding vantage point, and Kauth was reminded of the view they had enjoyed from the Eldeen side of the mountains, looking out over the vast expanse of the Towering Wood. He could not imagine a starker contrast to that placid scene than the vista spread before him.
If the corruption, the distilled acidic evil of the Demon Wastes, had corroded the earth, burning away what it touched and leaving a blackened, twisting residue, that residue might have resembled the Labyrinth. Mile upon mile of winding canyons, scorched plateaus, and jagged outcroppings stretched from the feet of the Shadowcrags as far as Kauth could see. On the horizon, only tall fires licking at the blood red sky marked the land beyond the Labyrinth.
Abandon all hope for your body or your soul, Kauth thought. I have consigned us all to damnation.
PART
II
In the Time Between, ten eyes gaze brightly upon the City of the Damned, watching as the pilgrim arrives.
The pilgrim comes to the damned dragon’s home, his dreams full of fire and blood.
The touch of Siberys’s hand is upon him, the storm is in the blood of the Storm Dragon.
CHAPTER
15
The first alteration of the plan was the result of a simple oversight. Arcanist Wheldren was called away to the royal court before Haldren’s entire team could be assembled, and the less experienced wizard of Arcanix who was appointed as his proxy couldn’t transport the assembled party with a single ritual.
Haldren had assembled his troops in the sanctuary of the cathedral. Cart looked them over and was pleased to see that none of them showed signs of impatience. Disciplined troops would accept a delay, and this mission called for disciplined troops. Ashara smiled at him as his gaze fell on her face. Still uneasy with her presence, Cart had asked Haldren not to include her. But Baron Jorlanna had appointed her, and Haldren couldn’t gainsay the Baron. Four squads of veteran soldiers, hardly the best Aundair had to offer but the best Kelas could muster, stood at attention, their eyes fixed on some point at the back of the cathedral. Those four squads were the problem.
With a few hundred extra gold galifars, two arcanists could transport the entire group. With the budget they’d been allotted, they could transport two squads. Haldren quickly decided to teleport the two squads and send the other two by foot. Ten soldiers could hunt wolves as well as twenty, he argued, even if it took them a little longer. The other squads would arrive in time to hold the canyon against any new or renewed threat.
The chain of command, though, required that Haldren wait for Kelas’s approval before acting on this change of plans. Haldren’s blood boiled while he waited for the runner to return. As a general in the Last War, he gave orders and they were obeyed, and he let the royal treasurers figure out the consequences. This was just one more example of Haldren’s total subordination to Kelas. The Lord General believed Kelas delayed his response intentionally, to remind Haldren of his proper place.
Finally Kelas’s approval came. Haldren put the more competent of the two sergeants in charge of the overland expedition and sent them out. Then the Arcanix wizard performed his ritual, opening a glowing portal in the air. Beyond it, Cart saw another great hall, richly furnished and inscribed with arcane sigils. Haldren strode through the portal first, leaving Cart in command. That part, at least, went according to plan. Cart was the last one through, and it felt no different than walking across a threshold—a single step that carried him across five hundred miles.
The round chamber on the other side was as large as the ruined cathedral. It filled one floor of one of Arcanix’s magically floating towers, with windows on every side looking out over the Aundairian plain, the Blackcrags to the southwest, and the rich blue expanse of Lake Galifar to the west and north. Great columns formed an inner ring, each one carved with a human or near-human figure gazing toward the chamber’s center. Gleaming silver traced weaving patterns along the wall, and other metals outlined smaller circles spaced around the rest of the hall. Haldren circled the chamber with a mix of impatience and rapture—he evidently felt or saw something in this arcane paradise that completely escaped Cart.
Another thing that escaped Cart was any means of egress from the chamber. Though there was certainly more to this tower, no stairway led up or down. The windows on every side proved that there were no rooms or stairs beyond the walls of the great hall. They were trapped—the whole party was at the mercy of the wizards of Arcanix, who could seal them in this room forever if they desired.
Fortunately, the wizards evidently had no such desire. The arcanist who had opened the portal from Fairhaven led Haldren to an inlaid copper circle and, with a simple word and gesture, set the ring glowing with a rich green light. Haldren barked the orders this time, sending one squad into the circle first, where they vanished. Haldren and Ashara followed, leaving Cart to order the last squad through and bring up the rear, alongside the young wizard.
Cart had spent so much time in the maze below Fairhaven’s cathedral that it seemed he had forgotten what open air and sunshine felt like. Even when he left the dark passages, he hadn’t been out of Fairhaven in months, and as green and warm as the city’s streets were, they couldn’t compare to the feeling of sheer possibility he felt standing once more on a wide plain. Lake Galifar stretched out behind him, so wide that its far shore—its Eldeen shore—was lost in the haze of the horizon.
Eager to start the mission, the quicker to get it over with, Haldren pointed to the south and ordered the soldiers to march. Falling back on habit, Cart marched alongside them—eyes forward, attention only on the cadence of the march. Ashara, though, apparently thought of their journey as a pleasant stroll across the countryside, and walked beside him, chatting as though she were on a casual stroll on any sunny summer day.
“What do you make of these reports of demonic wolves?” she asked.
Cart shrugged. Left, left, left.
“I wonder if there’s some wizard behind that,” Ashara continued. “They say there’s a mad wizard in Droaam who was exiled from the Twelve because of his work in modifying living flesh. This could be the same sort of thing, don’t you think?”
“Could be.” Left right left.
“On the other hand, maybe we should take the reports at face value. The Dragon Forge is supposed to draw on the power of an imprisoned fiend—why couldn’t some taint of its presence affect the creatures around it?”
“That’s what Haldren thinks.” Left, left.
“He’s probably right, then.”
Ashara fell silent, a blessed respite from her incessant chatter. Cart let the cadence fill him, move him along in the march, carry him along the road. The greatest joy in the soldier’s life, he had often thought, came from working with a single will, perfectly coordinated, with his fellow soldiers. The march was the simplest example, the first step on the way toward a total union of disparate minds and bodies. The squad, the company, the regiment that could march together would someday learn to fight together.
“Why don’t you like me, Cart?” Ashara shattered the silence and disrupted his rhythm.
>
He stopped beside her and gestured for the soldiers to continue. “Lady Can—”
“Call me Ashara, please.”
“Lady Cannith,” Cart repeated firmly, “we are on a military expedition, not a stroll through a vineyard. Whether I like you or not is irrelevant to our mission.”
“It’s relevant to me.”
For a moment, looking at her so-human face with its contracting muscles and damp eyes, Cart almost believed her. Then, disgusted, he followed the marching soldiers, eager to rejoin their cadence. He didn’t notice what Ashara did after that.
The sun blazed overhead when they drew near the canyon four days later, and Cart could see that the heat was wearing on the soldiers. Sweat rolled down their faces, and their discipline was crumbling—several of them stopped to remove their helmets and shake the sweat from their hair. He didn’t reprimand them. He knew from experience that if they didn’t have a chance to catch their breath while marching, they’d try to do it while fighting. And then they’d die.
The first sign of the wolves came as they were pitching camp that evening. A howl rose from the foothills ahead—an unearthly sound, rumbling with thunder even as it soared to eerie heights of pitch. The soldiers looked up from their work, fear in their eyes. Another howl, and this one was joined by several more, a demonic chorus. The upper notes of their calls clashed in agonizing dissonance even as the lower rumbles flowed together in a rolling boom like an earthquake. An uneasy feeling settled into Cart’s chest at that, and a few soldiers looked on the brink of headlong flight.
Haldren kept his head and barked orders. Two rings of sentries would patrol the edge of the camp, in constant motion to ensure alertness, rotating in short shifts through the night. At the merest hint of wolves, the sentries should wake the camp—better to warn of an attack and be wrong than to keep silence and have soldiers die in their sleep. Cart nodded his approval. The Lord General might have found this assignment disappointing, but he took it seriously once it began.
Needing no sleep, Cart patrolled on every shift. Twice, sentries on the opposite side of the camp from him sounded alarms, but either their eyes had been tricking them or the wolves retreated when the soldiers sprang into motion. The sentries described enormous shapes looming out of the darkness, as tall as a man at their shoulders. Cart suspected them of exaggeration born of fear, but he said nothing.
When he saw a wolf himself, he was glad he had not accused the other soldiers of exaggerating. He shouted the alarm as he sprang toward the creature, swinging his axe with all the strength he could muster. Its eyes were level with his own, not so much reflecting moonlight as glowing with their own inner green fire. Its muzzle was scarred with what looked like intentional designs or even infernal runes. Its foreparts were as much bear as wolf, shaggy and strong, ending in enormous paws. As his axe struck its shoulder and knocked it a step sideways, Cart could see that its hindquarters had no fur, but were armored with obsidian scales.
He wondered if the scouts who called these monsters “demonic wolves” had actually seen them or had just fled in terror from their unearthly howls.
In response to Cart’s attack, the demon-wolf howled, and it was quickly joined by four or five other voices, surrounding the camp. At such close quarters, Cart could feel the low rumble vibrating in the ground beneath his feet and shaking his resolve. Then, as though it sensed his fear, the creature bared a thicket of pointed teeth and twisted its lips in a fiendish mockery of a smile.
Cart’s axe lashed out again, impelled by his revulsion and terror, and bit deep into the wolf’s shoulder, spraying a gout of green-brown blood. It staggered back, then pounced at him and knocked him to the ground. As it stood over him, its teeth clattered against his plated body, seeking softer parts beneath.
He had been vaguely aware of other soldiers moving around the camp, and other wolves tearing them down. But face to snarling face with one of the monsters, he drowned in its burning green eyes, terror numbing his senses and rooting him to the ground. He had managed to wedge his shield between himself and the pouncing wolf, but the creature’s weight pinned the shield and his left arm tightly against his body. He still had a grip on his axe, but he couldn’t bring the blade to bear with any strength.
Instead, he drove the bladed pommel of his axe into one of the wolf’s green eyes. It recoiled, and Cart found his feet, glancing around to get the feel of the battle. Once again, the overall plan for their mission would need alteration. Many soldiers were on the ground, and in some cases wolves still stood over them, ripping at their flesh to feed, heedless of live soldiers who jabbed their spears at the monsters.
“Aundair!” Cart shouted, hoping to rally the soldiers’ courage, and he charged the wolf he’d wounded. A few weak cries of “Aundair!” answered him, but another chorus of demonic howls drowned them out. The wolf reared up on its hind legs to meet Cart’s charge and batted his axe out of the way before clamping its jaws on his shoulder.
Fury began to supplant Cart’s fear. Another military debacle under Haldren’s command was more than he could bear. He jabbed the pointed tip of his axe into the wolf’s belly, pulled it back as the wolf released its grip on him, and brought it around for one final blow with the blade, cutting through the wolf’s neck.
Cart spun around to see where he was most needed, and a blast of fire flared in his eyes. When the fire died down, he saw the blackened corpse of another wolf at his feet, and Haldren glaring at him from a few yards away. Just as Cart nodded his thanks, Haldren looked away and loosed a blast of fire to engulf still another of the demon-wolves.
At that, the remaining wolves turned tail and disappeared into the night, leaving a scene of carnage at the camp. Ashara moved slowly among the fallen with a pair of wands in her hands, tending to the wounded and dying. Of the ten soldiers marching with them, two were dead and four were seriously injured. Haldren, Ashara, and the wizard from Arcanix—whose name Cart could never remember—were unhurt, but Cart and the other four soldiers bore minor wounds testifying to their part in the struggle.
Haldren fumed. “Two squads of soldiers torn to shreds by one wolf sortie.” He spat. “And you call yourselves soldiers of Aundair.”
The soldiers hung their heads, but Cart could see resentment, rather than shame, on some of their faces.
“Worgs,” came a voice.
“What?” Haldren wheeled on the wizard.
He was as young as any soldier Cart had ever seen, a downy moustache clinging to his upper lip. He wore a coat of brilliant red—hardly practical in these surroundings—over clothes too elegant for hard travel. He quailed in the face of Haldren’s fury but repeated what he’d said. “Not wolves, worgs.”
“Are you questioning my choice of words, soldier?”
This seemed to steel the young man. “I’m not a soldier under your command, General. I represent the Arcane Congress on this mission, and I assert my right to share the knowledge of the Congress when the situation warrants it.”
Fire crackled in Haldren’s hand and for a moment Cart thought he would actually hurl it at the wizard, but his better judgment prevailed.
“Fine,” Haldren said, rage strangling his voice. “Why don’t you tell us about these worgs?”
“The scouts who described them as demon-wolves were not far from the truth. They’re like wolves with the hearts of fiends, filled with malice and insatiable hunger.” The opportunity to discourse on a subject he knew something about evidently strengthened the wizard’s nerve—his voice was louder, and his body more animated as he spoke. “Most importantly, they’re intelligent. Not geniuses, by any means, but not dumb wolves. They attacked with a plan, and they fled with a plan. We have not defeated them.”
“That fact had not escaped my notice,” Haldren said, “nor does your learning, while fascinating, illuminate how one attack from these worgs could leave two veteran soldiers dead.”
To Cart, this was at last the Lord General’s familiar face, at home on the field of battle,
harsh in discipline, firm in commands, and tactically brilliant. The worgs’ attack had opened Haldren’s mind to what Cart had realized in Fairhaven: this was a military operation, not a hunting party. And from what the wizard had said, the worgs were very much like enemy soldiers.
CHAPTER
16
Kauth’s initial impression of the Labyrinth did not change when Vor led them down the bluff and into its jagged, twisting passages. There was a wrongness to the place that reminded him of the Depravation around the serpents’ lair, but compounded by a sense of brooding evil shrouding the land like a fog. The thick air burned in his nostrils, hot and acidic.
“I will lead you through the passages of the Labyrinth,” Vor said, stopping at the entrance he had chosen. They stood at the top of a steep slope that cut down into the earth, closed in by blackened walls. “I know its passages as well as I know my name.”
“What is your name, again?” Zandar said. Vor’s growl had always impressed Kauth. It was a sound no human could make, as richly textured as a lion’s roar. He resolved to practice the sound in an orcish guise, if he ever had the chance.
“But I remind you,” the orc continued, “that I can’t predict the movements of the Ghaash’kala. They are likely to find us.”
“What will they do?” Sevren asked.
“It depends on which clan finds us. The Khuruk clan will attack without bothering to challenge us or question us. The Darvuks will pause long enough to tell us why we have to die, and they’ll try to pepper us with arrows without ever standing in honorable combat. The Maruks will talk first, offering a choice: Commit your lives to the service of Kalok Shash and the holy calling of the Ghaash’kala, or die where you stand.”
“I take it you were a Maruk,” Zandar observed.
To Kauth’s surprise, Vor didn’t growl or even snarl at the warlock. “I once had that honor,” the orc muttered. His shame was plain on his face, and Kauth felt a pang of sympathy he couldn’t quash.
