by Dragonlance
Chapter
4
THE CLIFFS OF GLASS, AURIM-THAT-WAS
It was on the cliffs where Forlo first realized he could still feel pain. During Maladar’s failed attempt to cross the Cauldron, he’d almost come to believe he was immune. After an hour back on solid ground, however, he knew otherwise. He’d been very, very wrong.
The return trek across the Burning Sea had been easier. Forlo had taken a grim satisfaction that the fire minions had turned him back. As the site of the Chaldar receded behind him, he’d come close to gloating over the fact that even Maladar could be thwarted. There were no hopeless battles, as they taught in the military academies of the League, only difficult ones. When he finally caught sight of the Cauldron’s shores again—where the iron bridge ended—he’d begun to hope. With enough skill, and a healthy dose of luck, you could win any fight. He’d done so at Hawkbluff, at the Run, and again at Akh-tazi—hard battles, all.
Maybe he could win this one too.
He just didn’t know how yet.
It didn’t surprise him that the bridge didn’t end at the same place it had when he’d first set foot on it. There was fell magic at work there—Hith’s magic. Instead of the white, ash-covered beach of before, it was jagged, glistening rock, jutting in crooked fingers out over the magma.
The land there had been sandstone hills before the fiery stone fell on Taladas; the blast’s outer edge had broken those hills, melted them, then fused them into glass. Beneath, the ocean of molten rock had cooled enough that large, brittle shelves of black pumice floated on its surface, like ice floes off the coast of Panak. Cracks ran through the crust like rivers of gold; the cliffs, twisted and whorled by centuries of baking heat, gleamed with reflected light. The sky above was not as black as over the Cauldron itself, but clouds of smoke still ran from horizon to horizon. The Glass Cliffs had not seen the sun in centuries.
Forlo longed to stop, to rest, but Maladar pushed on, turning north and clambering over the boulders. It was a steep climb, the cliffs rising to precipitous heights, and Forlo wondered why Maladar didn’t simply use a spell to take them wherever he was going. Listening to the sorcerer’s thoughts, though, he quickly understood. To use a sending spell, you had to have an image of your destination in mind. That was impossible, for Maladar didn’t know the ruins of Aurim. The empire had been intact when last he’d seen it; though he’d walked the lands before, they were as alien as the surface of Nuvis.
And so they went, on foot, struggling up the crags. The glass was hot to the touch and gave little purchase, and Forlo soon lost his footing. He fell and slid, and the fused stones cut and burned his hands as he scrabbled to stop himself, which he did, an arm’s length from slipping over the edge and tumbling onto a heap of jagged shards below. Pain lanced through him, and he tried to make a sound of protest, to yell or grunt or swear. Instead he just lay there, bleeding, and wondered what Maladar was feeling.
He got his answer when his body began to move again, pushing itself to its feet, using its torn hands to shove up off the rocks, heedless of the fresh agony that tore all the way up his arms. Inside, Forlo howled, but no sound came out of his lips. Ignoring him, sharing none of the pain, Maladar started climbing again.
He fell three more times before he reached the top, and by then his palms were in tatters, blood coating his hands and arms, nearly to his elbows. Where it wasn’t cut, his skin had blistered from the heat of the glass. Tiny splinters were lodged deep into his flesh. The pain flared sun-hot with every heartbeat, and Forlo wanted to scream so badly, he thought he might go mad.
Maladar didn’t care. The sorcerer marched on, along the edge of the cliffs. The ground beneath Forlo’s feet was so thin that he could see through it, the blazing ribbons of the sea amid its cooling crust turned into a ruddy haze that showed off the bubbles and imperfections in the glass. There were things trapped in it too—bushes, trees, cattle, even one dim shape he realized was a child. Like dragonflies trapped in amber, they’d been preserved, undisturbed, since the Destruction. Forlo knew, then, that the cliffs must be a tomb to countless people. These were the Aurish: tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands had perished in the aftermath of the fiery stone’s fall, so only a handful had made it to safety in the outermost rim of Taladas: Thenol, the fisheries of Syldar, the provinces of the League, and the Rainward Isles. The mightiest empire in history, reduced in a day to a ragtag collection of petty city-states.
He pressed onward. Cinders fell like rain—fat, glowing embers that stung when they lit on his skin or got in his eyes. In time his hands stopped bleeding, the pain fading to a dull throb. The wounds began to heal, scars forming beneath the drying blood. The sight unnerved him: he’d never been a slow healer, but what he’d done to himself should have taken weeks from which to recover without a Mislaxan’s help. Before two hours passed, though, it was as if he’d never hurt himself at all. Maladar’s power had cured him.
An hour or so later, he caught sight of the city. Rather, it was half a city, split down the middle, its western half swallowed by the Cauldron along with most of the rest of Aurim. The remainder still stood, though many of its stone buildings were bent and malformed, having crystallized like the cliffs. It reminded him of Kristophan, the minotaur capital, which had suffered a similar collapse in an earthquake less than a year ago.
Of course he headed straight toward the ruins. Maladar even picked up his pace, moving at a reckless rate along the cliff’s edge. As he got closer, details became clear. Its walls had melted and pooled around it, scattered with bubbles where the bodies of guards in green-plumed helmets lay forever entombed. Its towers bent toward the east, away from the center of the blast, like trees in a storm’s wind. Its domes had sagged and buckled, looking like weird scarlet blossoms. Of whatever gardens and parks the city once might have had, nothing remained; anything that wasn’t stone had long since crumbled into ash, blown away on the hot winds that gusted off the Cauldron.
Looking upon the ruins, Forlo had an uncomfortable feeling. There was something familiar about the place, besides its resemblance to Kristophan. He knew the city: memories of it as it once had been flashed through his head. The stones had been scarlet, the color of sunset, rather than the dark and muddy hues they were now. Spikes of green serpentine had topped the towers when they stood straight and tall; the domes had been white chalcedony, laced with rose. Its people were tall and dark skinned, the men fork-bearded and shirtless, the women clothed in silk. Both sexes wore golden jewelry all over their bodies—neck and wrist, arm and navel, earlobe and nostril and lip. They kept chains of naked slaves, who toiled in the vast groves and vineyards that covered the hills for miles around, turning out the finest olives and grapes in all the empire.
Sha Moku, the city had been called. The Wine City had been one of the richest in the empire, besides Aurim itself. It was a dead place, its prized vintages lost forever.
Forlo had never heard of the place before. Perhaps it appeared in some of the ancient histories that had survived the Destruction, but he’d never read them: he was a soldier, not a scholar. Still, he realized that somehow he knew everything about the city. There was a temple of Bran in its center and another dedicated to Morgash. It was ruled by a council of nine men and women, the heads of its most powerful wineries. They once spoke Kurfan there, though the wealthy and the learned knew Aurish as well. Its best wines were the same dark red as its stones, with a complicated, spicy flavor relished by connoisseurs all across the empire. Hundreds of bottles stocked the cellars of the imperial palace, particularly the type known as Elvenblood. It was one of his favorites.
Forlo stopped, wondering. His favorites? He’d never tasted Mokuti wine; no one alive had. He’d never heard Kurfan spoken; it was a dead tongue. And yet he recognized the language’s musical tones, just as the piquant flavor of the vintage flooded his mouth.
They weren’t his memories after all. They were Maladar’s. He was inside the Faceless Emperor’s mind, at least partway. And what
was more, he had the feeling Maladar didn’t know that he was.
Forlo thought long and hard about that revelation as Sha Moku drew ever nearer.
The cities of Aurim, what remained of them anyway, were dead places. Dust whirled down their streets. Their shattered halls and palaces were yawning caverns of rubble, old shells of their former glory. But derelict though they might be, they were not empty—far from it. Most were still occupied, though not by men anymore. The ashes of the old empire were too harsh for humankind to live there long, but there were others who could.
The Brethren had told Maladar that, and as he drew near Sha Moku, he saw that it was true. The Wine City’s occupants tried to remain hidden, waiting in ambush for the lone traveler who approached their walls, but he saw them nonetheless: bits of shadow moving on the battlements, skulking down behind the melted merlons.
A dozen spells raced through his mind, ready for casting. He would wait for the shadowy forms to make the first move; then he would act swiftly. They would not get a second move.
It hurt, more than a little, to see Sha Moku like it was. The last time he’d been there, the city had been whole and thriving, its gardens alive with talk and laughter beneath its scarlet towers. The gardens were dead and gone now, the towers bent and misshapen, and the only sound besides the whisper of his feet through the ashes was the moaning wind. He would have to make sure the Wine City was restored to its former splendor, once he’d reforged his empire. That was still a long while off, though. For the time being, he needed those who lived among its bones.
They were more patient than he’d expected, which was good: it meant they had discipline. He was nearly to the city’s southern gates, the great stone doors only shards of broken glass, when the hobgoblins finally appeared.
There were thirty of them that he could see, heads appearing behind the battlements, and likely five times as many that he couldn’t detect. Bows creaked as they drew back arrows the size of small spears, fletched with grease-stiffened hair. Small, yellow eyes glinted from the depths of helms of corroded bronze and iron, ancient bits of armor scavenged from the empire’s countless dead. Fangs jutted between blistered lips. Flat red snouts twitched in anticipation of the kill.
One of them barked something in a guttural tongue. Maladar had cast a spell of listening, and the magic took hold of the words and translated them into High Aurish: Turn back now, wanderer, or the skyfishers will pick clean your bones.
He found that unlikely. Hobgoblins relished the taste of human flesh, all the more so in a place such as this, where humans were seldom seen. If he turned his back, they would fill it with arrows and feast on his cooling carcass, so he stopped where he stood instead, his gaze sweeping up to the creatures on the wall.
“The skyfishers will only have your rancid meat to eat tonight,” he spoke, the words coming out in the hobgoblin language, changed by the same spell that let him understand them. His eyes glittered as they shifted from one archer to the next. “They will scorn it as foul, though, and leave it untouched.”
A few of them laughed, enjoying what they took to be his hubris. Most shook with anger, however, and began to snarl curses until one of their number, a fat beast with a long spike welded to the crown of what had once been a gladiator’s helm, held up a hand and commanded them to be silent. It was the hobgoblin that had first spoken, and it glowered down at Maladar from the wall and answered.
“Oh, ho!” it called. “We shall see. Shoot him!”
As one, the hobgoblins loosed their volley. Thirty arrows flew, darkening the sky. Maladar smiled, raised his hands, and spoke a single word. A wall of blue light rushed outward from his fingers and struck the arrows in the middle of their flight. Each vanished in a white flash, leaving only a cloud of dust behind.
But he wasn’t done. Chanting in the language of magic, he pointed at the fat captain. The hobgoblin had time enough to scream; then there was a hideous series of snaps as every bone in its body broke, one by one, swiftly. The hobgoblin’s body toppled forward, limbs flopping as they bent in all the wrong places, and plummeted to the ground.
Then, silence. No skyfishers came to feast on the captain’s corpse. The archers looked at what was left of their leader, then at one another. None of them drew another arrow.
Maladar wasn’t going to take any chances, though. “Lay down your arms,” he said, blue light flaring around his fingertips. “I will not say it again.”
They dropped their bows. None even hesitated. Good, Maladar thought.
“Listen to me, folk of Sha Moku,” he proclaimed. He did not shout, but magic made his voice loud enough to carry behind the city’s buckled walls. “Once, I ruled these lands as emperor. I have returned to reclaim what is mine. You have stolen this city, and for that I could slaughter the lot of you, but instead, I tell you this: I am your master now. You will follow me, and I will lead you to war. The blood of men shall be yours. You will burn their homes, devour their corpses, and take their riches for your own.
“This is not a choice,” he went on. “You belong to me now. Any who refuse me will know the pain your captain felt. And the skyfishers will scorn your flesh when I am done with you.”
All grew still. Even the wind died down, its gusts dwindling to nothing. Cinders fell upon Sha Moku, throwing up sparks where they struck glass or stone. The hobgoblins glowered at him, then turned and looked at something behind them, behind the wall. Maladar’s gaze dropped down to the gatehouse. It was dark, and he considered casting a spell to blast the whole barbican to rubble, but as his lips were pursing to speak the first word of the incantation, something stirred in the shadows.
It was a hobgoblin, old and stooped, gray bristles hanging down from his cheeks, braided with bones and beads of opal. He was naked, save for a loincloth made of what looked like human skin; every inch of his flesh was covered with scars, arranged to make the shapes of the faces and wings of dragons. His left eye was milky white, but the right was still clear. He leaned on a staff whose head was made from the skull of a dwarf, the long beard still clinging to what little flesh remained. He stepped out from the gates and eyed Maladar, his wrinkled face furrowed with disdain.
I will have to kill this one too, Maladar thought. He didn’t move, though, only watched the ancient shaman, arms folded across his chest.
“I am Ukku,” the hobgoblin said. “I rule this place, not you.”
“Not anymore,” Maladar said, nodding at the captain’s pulverized remains. “Ask your man there if you do not believe me.”
Ukku scowled, but did not look at the body. Instead, he rapped his staff upon the ground three times. “You will not do that to me,” he said. “My magic is too strong. You will not break through it before death finds you.”
Maladar knew something was wrong even before the ground rumbled beneath his feet. Frowning, he looked down. The glassy rock below him was shaking, tiny fractures spreading across its surface. He jumped back, lightning sparking between his fingertips as something rose toward the surface.
Watching him, Ukku let out a croaking laugh and rapped his staff on the ground, again and again. “Bak-su-chag!” he shouted. “Come, hunter of the deep! Answer my call!”
“Bak-su-chag,” murmured the hobgoblins, both atop the wall and within the city.
An instant later, the ground where Maladar had been standing exploded, throwing shards of glass in every direction. One bit into his cheek, others peppered his armored body. He felt the pain only as an abstraction, enough to know it was there, not enough to suffer. He left the suffering to Forlo. He took several more steps back as a rift opened up between him and the ruined city, and the thing he had glimpsed beneath the surface burst forth.
It was a worm, impossibly huge, its rubbery flesh the putrid green of a corpse pulled out of a marsh. Thick, black veins snaked beneath the surface of its skin. It had to be a hundred feet long, eyeless, with tiny hooks for legs along its length and a fanged sucker for a mouth. Bak-su-chag towered over him, tiny feelers aro
und its mouth waving in the air. The stink of rotting flesh hung about it, strong enough to make Maladar’s eyes water. He had never seen anything like it, even in the bestiaries of Aurim’s great library. Perhaps the Destruction had given it birth, or perhaps Ukku or some other sorcerer had dredged it from the depths of the Abyss. Whatever, he knew he had only moments before the worm picked up his scent. After that, it would kill him.
The hobgoblins were wild, chanting Bak-su-chag’s name and shrieking with bloodlust. Within the city, the clash of swords against shields echoed from building to building. Above it all rose the mocking scrape of Ukku’s laughter and the pounding of his staff.
“The hunter answers the call!” cried the shaman. “Claim your prize, Bak-su-chag! I command you!”
The worm’s feelers kept twitching, then froze. Its massive head turned toward Maladar. Its maw stretched wide, and black drool drizzled forth, the drops steaming where they struck the ground. Within its mouth and throat gnashed thousands of tiny, bony barbs.
Maladar raised his hands. Words flashed through his mind, and he spoke them without a second thought. The black moon’s power surged through him. His fingers danced a complex pattern, weaving in and out. At the end of the incantation, he thrust his palms outward, toward the worm. Green flame billowed upward, a vast plume that engulfed Bak-su-chag’s head, chattering mouth and all. The hobgoblins fell silent, crying out in dismay. Then the flames stopped, flickering away to nothing. Maladar lowered his hands, and the worm’s head emerged from the blaze …
Unscathed.
The hobgoblins laughed, clashing their weapons even louder. Ukku raised his scarred arms, howling with delight. “Your spells cannot harm Bak-su-chag!” cried the shaman. “No living being can destroy him. Now, emperor, it is his turn!”
