The Fire Rose

by Richard A. Knaak

  He stared at the only wound he had. It hurt, but it was not so bad a wound to have hurt him so quickly and terribly.

  “Ta’ki’agrur,” Wargroch rumbled, carefully sheathing the dagger. “The word in Common, it is ‘vengeance.’ Vengeance. It is a Common word that I like.”

  “Ta’ki’agrur?” The dazed and confused Khleeg was finding it hard to concentrate. “Vengeance?”

  “The mongrel, he must pay with blood. For my brothers. For the blood of Nagroch. The blood of Belgroch. The mongrel will pay for their blood. With you. With his dream.”

  Struggling to rise, Khleeg rasped, “N-Nagroch … But he served the Grand Khan—”

  “His life Golgren claimed with a dagger.”

  Khleeg knew the story. Nagroch had failed in a duel with the future warrior-mate of the Uruv Suurt emperor. Golgren had taken Nagroch’s life when she had refused to kill him. “It was n-n—”

  “Necessary?” Wargroch snorted. “That also. Die, Khleeg. The mongrel will be with you soon enough.”

  Golgren’s loyal officer could no longer speak. His vision was fading. He made an awkward grab at his wound.

  In the process he lost his balance. Khleeg sprawled on the floor and lay still.

  Wargroch bent down and turned Khleeg over. He looked closely. After a moment, he stood.

  “The meredrakes are hungry. The poison will not kill them.”

  Two of Wargroch’s guards sheathed their weapons and picked up the body. He watched as they carried Khleeg’s body away. As that happened, another guard approached.

  “The battle is over?” Wargroch asked before the other could speak.

  The guard nodded. “Hand commander dead. Warriors surrender.” He took a breath and added, “Atolgus comes.”

  His task done, the treacherous officer hurried to the front hall of the palace. Barely had he arrived than a large, armed party met him coming through the great outer doors.

  At their head strode Atolgus. He was taller than when Wargroch had seen him last, taller and mesmerizing. Unlike most, Wargroch knew something about why Atolgus looked different, and why someone who had only been a minor chieftain and loyal follower of the half-breed would suddenly become Golgren’s great nemesis. Wargroch knew Morgada, and understood her tremendous powers, both magical and otherwise.

  But Wargroch himself had no need for such temptations. He had desired Golgren’s blood ever since learning of his older brothers’ deaths. Khleeg’s death was one step of that plan.

  Atolgus acknowledged him. “Khleeg?”

  “The meredrakes feast.”

  The new warlord grinned wildly. “Good. She will be pleased.”

  Displaying his sword, Wargroch abruptly knelt before Atolgus. “Garantha is secure.”

  Atolgus accepted the great blade. “Golgren’s …”

  It had been presented early on to Wargroch as a sign of favor from the Grand Khan. “No, Atolgus’s.”

  The warlord grinned again. He sheathed it and presented Wargroch with his own sword. “Yours.”

  Beating his fist on his breastplate, Wargroch stood and embraced the offering. “Great is Atolgus! Great is his power!”

  But Atolgus shook his head. Still grinning, he replied, “No. Great is the power of the Titans.”

  Morgada and the Black Talon had observed the entire tableau from their safe sanctum far, far away. They and every other Titan were exhausted; the tasks given to them by the absent Safrag had been so monumental that more than one sorcerer was in danger of needing elixir to restore themselves. However, Morgada had refused all pleas. Safrag had ordered that no one be given any elixir until word came that he had been successful in his quest for the Fire Rose.

  “Garantha is at last free of the mongrel,” Draug gasped. “The puppet did his job well.”

  “Which puppet?” jested another Titan, despite his exhaustion. “The one full of hate or Morgada’s adoring pet?”

  “Choose one and dispense with both! Neither are needed any longer! Garantha bows to us!”

  “But Garantha is only the beginning,” breathed Morgada with a smile. “Only the beginning …”

  Kulgrath did not share in the good spirits spreading among his comrades. The Titan looked from one side to another before flatly stating, “But it’s no beginning without that for which we’ve hunted! Safrag’s not returned! For all we know the mongrel has the artifact! Imagine the Fire Rose in Golgren’s hands!”

  “Imagine that if you will,” interrupted another, familiar voice. “But you would be indulging in flights of fantasy.”

  Safrag stood in the center of the chamber, exactly upon the symbol of the Black Talon. His once immaculate garments were torn and stained; there were bruises and cuts on his arms, torso, and face.

  But his expression was triumphant. As the rest of the inner circle gaped, he stretched forth his arms and revealed the Fire Rose.

  Its blazing light filled the chamber and brought a reddish orange cast to the face of each onlooker. The Titans sat speechless, until Morgada was the first to find her tongue.

  “It is beautiful.”

  “It is the future,” Safrag corrected.

  “And Golgren?” gasped Kulgrath, unable to tear his eyes away from the dancing flames within the Rose. “Is he—?”

  Safrag’s song was glorious as he shouted, “Golgren is a monument to his folly! Golgren the mongrel is no more!”

  As one, the rest of the Black Talon smiled, joining him in celebrating the Grand Khan’s demise.

  “The Fire Rose,” one murmured. “Is it all we hope it to be? Can it truly do so much?”

  “You would have a test?”

  “Is that possible?” asked Draug. “Can you wield it already?”

  In answer, Safrag stepped aside and gestured to the spot where he had just stood.

  A terrible stench filled the air. Many of the Titans sat back in disgust as a dripping horror materialized.

  Falstoch looked around. The abomination was still bent in pain from the wound he had suffered.

  Safrag nodded to the monstrosity. “Shall we try again?”

  Without preamble, he held the Fire Rose before Falstoch’s constantly melting face. The abomination raised a deformed limb as the artifact’s burning light bathed it in reddish orange. Falstoch let out a cry that shook even the hardened Titans.

  Falstoch began to transform. His body straightened and solidified. The wound vanished. The melting wax that had been his flesh became sleek blue skin. Features aligned differently on his face, molding themselves into a handsome visage. A lush mane of hair thrust out of his skull and fell back.

  The garments of a Titan materialized around the changing Falstoch. As he finished his transformation, the garments clad him.

  The newly rejuvenated sorcerer stood trembling. “Will it … Will it hold?” he sang in faltering Titan speech. “Will it?”

  Safrag only beamed. After a moment, Falstoch let out a dark howl of joy. He gazed at his hands, felt his face, and howled again.

  And the Titans of the inner circle reveled in his joy, in their triumph. It had been the least of tests. The Fire Rose not only wielded great magic, but it could be wielded by them.

  Safrag held it high. “The dawning of the new Golden Age is upon us!” he sang exultantly. “The dawning of the rebirth of the High Ogres.”

  XXII

  GARGOYLES

  Tyranos groaned as he awoke and immediately realized what he had done. Whoever was master of the gargoyles would have set some insidious trap for the rare intruder who might be searching for the Fire Rose. Yet Tyranos had not considered that possibility. Admittedly, he had a streak of smugness, which his earliest teachers had said would someday kill him despite his skills. It looked to be that day.

  The massive spellcaster looked around and saw nothing. He was in utter darkness in a place that smelled to him like the grave. The reason for that became apparent as his eyes adjusted.

  Corpses. Three. From the looks of them, they were all ancient
, yet the smell of death still pervaded the dark, moist area. Tyranos guessed that was because there was nowhere for the smell to go. That boded ill as much as the dead themselves.

  The three hung as he did, floating in what seemed to be midair with their arms and legs spread out. Tyranos could tell little about them save that one looked to be a gargoyle by its shape, while the others were closer to human or elf in form but taller.

  The wizard squinted. High Ogres, perhaps. If so, the bodies had been trapped a long, long time.

  He tried to turn his head, but only half succeeded with the movement. Still, he could turn enough to enable him to see that he was not floating, but rather seemed to be attached to several tiny strands that looked like nothing less than webbing.

  “No damned spiders, thank you,” Tyranos rasped, more to hear anything than because he truly believed it was the work of any arachnid. What he could make out of the corpses gave no indication they had perished from having their life fluids sucked out of them. The webbing itself had been the cause of their demises. They had been trapped and had starved to death.

  The wizard struggled, but to no avail. Physical strength meant nothing, otherwise the gargoyle wouldn’t be among the dead.

  Tyranos looked for his staff. It was nowhere in sight.

  “We can’t have that,” he muttered. Tyranos concentrated on the missing staff, trying to summon it.

  It did not appear in his hand, but not because he wasn’t trying hard enough. The spellcaster could sense the staff attempting to draw near, but some other greater force held it back.

  “Damn!” Tyranos gritted his teeth. After a moment, he murmured a spell.

  The strands lit up as if electrified. The wizard continued to grit his teeth as his body also suffered some from the spell. He stared into the sightless sockets of one of the High Ogre dead.

  After several seconds, the electrical illumination ceased. The odor of something having been burned wafted under Tyranos’s nose, although whether it was the strands or himself that was the source of the odor was a question he could not answer.

  Taking a breath, he tugged as hard as he could on the strands holding his left hand.

  Nothing happened.

  A lengthy epithet escaped the wizard.

  “So,” he snarled to himself. “Only one choice, Tyranos. Only one choice damn it.”

  He set his chin against his chest and concentrated.

  A heat arose just over his heart. Something radiated there, casting a vague, circular shape even though, had anyone looked, they would have seen no medallion, no tattoo.

  To find the truth, they would have had to look much deeper into the wizard.

  Tyranos let out a sudden roar of agony. The circular shape grew more evident beneath his robes, almost as if it were burning its way through to the outer world.

  And as the circular shape glowed bright, the wizard’s form began to alter. His mouth and nose stretched forward, becoming part of one unusual feature. His clean-shaven face sprouted dark hair, even on the forehead and around the eyes.

  With a furious cry, Tyranos threw the power that he had summoned into destroying the strands. He heard them burn with a satisfying sizzle, but at the same time felt the changing of his body worsen.

  “I—will—not—revert!” he shouted to the darkness. “I—am—no longer—that!”

  His left arm suddenly tore free of the snare. His right arm followed suit a breath later.

  Struggling hard, the wizard tumbled forward with such force that he collided with the nearest corpse. Tyranos instinctively pushed himself back for fear he would become entangled in the dead figure’s trap.

  His legs weakened. He collapsed on the floor. As he did, his face began to shrink again, finally returning to normalcy.

  The glow over his chest faded. The wizard lay there, shivering.

  His strength gradually returned enough to enable him to push himself to a sitting position. Yet Tyranos still shivered.

  “Too damned close. But you knew that’d happen, didn’t you?”

  Neither he nor any invisible voice answered the question. The wizard shoved himself up onto his feet. He was free of the strands, yet hardly free of the trap itself.

  “Where are you?” he asked the missing staff. “Close by, but how close by? Ah.”

  Gingerly stepping past the gargoyle corpse, Tyranos followed the sensation he felt. The staff was in some ways as bound to him as Chasm.

  A faint glow emanated ahead. The muscular spellcaster grinned. “So, there you are! I’ve missed you.”

  He reached for the staff, which was also snared by strands. The wizard gave a good pull—

  A tremendous hiss from above was all the warning that he received. The bone white form dropped down on him, its long, sinewy body quickly coiling around the wizard from chest to ankle.

  A ghostly head snapped at him. It was huge snake—a viper—with fangs as long as Tyranos’s fingers.

  He used one powerful hand to grab the beast just under the jaw and thus keep it from sinking those fangs into his arm.

  The snake pulled back its head. Tyranos immediately twisted the creature’s head just to the side of his own.

  A spray of venom shot forth, a spray that only barely grazed his cheek thanks to his swift reaction. Still, the slight touch was enough to make the area burn like the coldest ice.

  At the same time, the coils tightened painfully. The spell-caster felt his rib cage being squeezed impossibly hard. The viper was also a great constrictor, a double threat.

  But Tyranos squeezed back. “There are things in the sea my people have fought that are far worse than you could ever be, worm!”

  The wizard crushed its throat.

  The viper stiffened. The head cracked off and fell near his feet.

  Twisting, Tyranos broke free of the rest of its body. Fragments of the viper went flying in different directions, some of them landing in the strands.

  Studying the pieces still in his hand, the wizard saw that the creature had indeed turned to stone upon dying, much as it was said certain draconians did. Of course, draconians—the dragon men who had once served the dread goddess Takhisis—were living creatures, whereas the serpent had more likely been an animated carving brought to life by some magical trigger.

  Tyranos discarded the pieces and tried to free the staff again. It worked after he had pulled as hard as he could. The wizard inspected his staff for damage, and satisfied, looked around in order to consider his next move.

  The most logical one came to mind. Tyranos raised the staff and concentrated.

  A moment later, he lowered the staff in disgust. “So. Not so easy to escape, eh? Let’s see what else we can find.” He glanced over his shoulder at the representatives of the dead, adding with a mocking tone, “You’ll wait, won’t you?”

  Holding the staff before him, the wizard muttered. The crystal point shone, albeit not nearly so bright as times in the past. Grunting in frustration, Tyranos studied the area around him.

  There was a passage beyond the webbed area, which surprised the wizard. Shrugging, he headed to the passage.

  It was narrow, but passable. The walls were absolutely smooth, even where the stone blocks met. The builders had been craftsmen and—so Tyranos discovered as he held the staff close to one wall—masters of magic. Latent forces swirled within the walls, their purpose undecipherable, and therefore potentially deadly.

  The passage veered at a sharp angle to the right. Tyranos turned the corner and confronted a wall.

  He also encountered another skeleton clad in the robes he was increasingly certain represented some generation of the High Ogres.

  The poor fool had been crushed to death by something. Every bone was broken, the skull in several unattractive pieces.

  But the dead were already familiar and only of mild interest. The wizard stepped gingerly over the remains and used the staff to tap against the wall at the end.

  It sounded very solid.

  “Blasted trick
s.” Tyranos turned back.

  There was a wall where the passage had been.

  He was trapped.

  A grinding noise sounded. The wall that had appeared behind him began moving in his direction.

  The tall spellcaster was not amused. He stretched the staff forth and tapped the moving wall. Like the one he had just investigated, it sounded very solid. It continued toward him.

  “And so I’m to be squeezed to a pulp am I?” It was an old kind of trap, Tyranos knew, a favorite of tomb builders who had some access to magic or very clever mechanics.

  However, Tyranos had no desire to end up like the unfortunate under his feet or any of the many others he had come across in his searches. He gazed up at the ceiling, studying the point where the moving wall and the ceiling met a side wall.

  Tyranos stabbed the staff’s head into the point of convergence. “Tivak!”

  The silver strands of energy burst forth and struck the area.

  Hot stone pelted him as the area exploded. Tyranos kept his head covered by the hood of his robe.

  When he dared look up again, it was to find that the ceiling and the walls had all been scorched black and badly damaged. More importantly, the wall had ceased advancing.

  “And that’s that done.” Tyranos turned to deal with the wall at the other end.

  But the wall was gone and shortly beyond where it had previously stood, Tyranos could see a chamber.

  A lighted chamber.

  Tyranos told himself to be patient, measuring each step as though he were trying to cross a raging river by means of a bridge consisting of a single piece of rope upon which he was balanced. After succeeding with one step, he would dare the next.

  By the time he reached the chamber, his heart was pounding from anticipation. Yet still the spellcaster did not leap inside the room. Instead, he extended his staffjust beyond the end of the corridor.

  A gigantic pattern formed at the entrance, a complex, magical pattern filled with every color of the rainbow and every geometric design Tyranos had ever known. It blazed so brightly that he had to shield his eyes until they grew accustomed to the glare.

  The pattern hovered there, utterly blocking his way. Yet it did nothing more aggressive. Tyranos studied the pattern, noting marks of the three moons, of the constellations as they had been before the ones designated for Paladine—once highest of the gods of light—and dark Takhisis had vanished from the heavens. There were also geographic marks, some of which he did not recognize, others that he did, and a few that were possibly places he knew, but with small variations.