by Dragonlance
“Don’t go with him,” Essana murmured. “Don’t.”
Azar frowned, glancing at her again, and for an instant it seemed he might obey her. Instead, he turned back toward the Watcher and nodded. It had already happened. It could not be changed, even by a mother’s plea.
“As you say,” he spoke, his voice clear, sounding older than he looked. “Lead on.”
They walked out of the cell together, and Hult and Essana hurried to follow as the Crawling Maws slid the door back into place. Shedara came after him, walking at an easy pace. She kept up without any trouble, and Hult understood: in Azar’s mind, they couldn’t stray far from him. Simply strolling behind him ensured he wouldn’t leave their sight.
Down a passage they went then up a narrow, winding stair and along a wide hall with colonnades of black pillars running down its sides. Another stair awaited them, broader and gentler than the last, giving way to open sky at the top. They emerged at the pinnacle of the ziggurat of Akh-tazi, beneath a black, starry sky. The trees of the Emerald Sea whispered below, all around them, stretching to the horizon in all four directions. Above, a black dragon slowly circled—Gloomwing, dead now too at the hands of the cha’asii.
And there, at the roof’s far side, stood Maladar’s statue, the Hooded One, looming above a massive, bloodstained altar. Around it were gathered the members of the Brethren. With the Watcher joining them, they were five in all—six, counting Azar.
“The Taker graces us with his presence,” said the Master, inclining his head as Azar drew near. “You wear well the flesh in which the Sleeper will soon clothe himself.”
Azar bowed in return. “I do as I am bidden, Master.”
“Come forward, then.”
Hult watched Azar walk to the altar. Beside him, Essana trembled, tensing, her teeth gritted together. He sidled toward her, ready to grab her if she darted forward.
“Whatever happens,” Shedara whispered, “remember—you can’t change it.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Essana hissed, her emotions roiling. “That’s not your child, walking toward that … thing.”
When they reached the altar, the Master held out a gloved hand and laid it on top of Azar’s head. With his other, he made several slow passes over the boy, murmuring words Hult couldn’t hear. Shedara leaned closer, trying to make them out, her brow creased with frustration. Azar had no memory of the spell, so it remained hidden from them.
When the Master was done, he stepped back and gestured to the statue. “Our gift to you, Sleeper,” he proclaimed. “When next we meet, you will awaken. Now, though, we prepare for his coming.” He bent close, whispering in Azar’s ear, but Hult heard his words clearly. “Look upon him, lad. See the one who will dwell within your body when you are no more.”
Azar looked. There was no fear in him, no sorrow. Hult wasn’t sure he was capable of such emotions. He gazed upon the Hooded One, whose stone cowl was thrown back to reveal the mangled, flesh-wreathed skull that had been Maladar’s face in life. Azar’s eyes glistened in the black moon’s light.
He was still staring, his face blank, when the Master seized him from behind, laid a curved dagger at his throat, and cut deep.
Hult gave a yelp as blood poured everywhere, instinct taking over, reacting even before Essana did. He lunged forward, his sword whistling through the air. The blow struck the Master on the crown of his head, simply sweeping through him as if he were made of smoke.
The Master didn’t react at all. He seized Azar by the shoulders and held him up as bright red blood shot from his severed arteries. It was a slaughterer’s cut—the kind the Uigan used to put down horses too sick or old to bear their riders any longer. The boy would be dead in moments.
But that isn’t possible! Hult thought.
Essana screamed and hurled herself at her son, but she couldn’t grab hold of him. Hult seized her arm and so he pulled her to him, then dragged her away from the altar.
“Let me go!” she shouted. “He’s dying! I have to help him!”
He held her fast, though she fought him like a steppe-tiger. “You can’t, milady. You can’t help. I can’t either.”
He looked at Shedara, and the expression on her face made cold dread gnaw his stomach. “Of course,” she murmured. “Light of Solis … it’s so obvious.”
“What?” Hult demanded. “What’s so obvious?”
But the world was changing, constricting again. The Emerald Sea vanished, as did the dragon above. The Brethren receded, as did the statue and the altar. All that remained were him, Essana, Shedara, and the slumping, dying shape of Azar. Hult cast about, confused, and found himself back where he’d started, by the fireside, deep in the crevice in the heart of Old Aurim. Shedara knelt before him, her skin the color of alabaster, her eyes wide. He still had Essana in a bear hug, though she’d stopped struggling and just lay limp, making a low, keening sound that made him shiver. To his left, Azar had collapsed, and at first Hult thought he’d really died, just as in the vision. There was still color in his cheeks, though, and his breast moved with his breath, very slightly.
A shudder ran through Hult, deep down into his core. He’d just seen something terrible, he knew, but he didn’t understand it.
“What just happened?” he asked.
Shedara just looked at him, her face blank. Then Essana threw her arms up with such violence that he had to let go. Yelling at both of them, she threw herself forward and gathered her son in her arms, telling them to go, get away from him, and to the Abyss with both of them.
Hult listened to her tirade, too bewildered to be offended, even when she called him a dirty barbarian, a motherless savage from a people who loved horses more than women. The things she called Shedara were even worse—words he’d never heard pass a woman’s lips before.
He rose and walked away. Shedara followed. He saw she was trembling.
“What did they do to him?” he asked.
The elf licked her lips, staring up at the stars. “They killed him.”
“But he’s alive,” Hult pressed, then stopped, gritting his teeth. “Isn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said. “He’s alive. They must have brought him back later. But he wasn’t when he earned his powers. That’s why he doesn’t remember. He was dead when it happened.”
Hult bit the heel of his hand so hard, he was surprised he didn’t taste blood. He glanced back at Azar, saw hate in Essana’s eyes when she caught him looking at them, and turned away again.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” he asked. “He’s the source of the boy’s power.”
He didn’t have to say Maladar’s name for Shedara to understand.
Shedara swallowed, biting her lip. “It must be.”
“But how? We saw him enter Forlo’s body. We heard him talk through Forlo’s mouth. How can his power be in Azar too?”
Shedara was silent a long time, staring up at the silver moon, shining down from high above them. “I have no idea,” she said.
Chapter
7
BISHAN, AURIM-THAT-WAS
The shell of the keep stood empty, long abandoned to dust and wind. It stood on an outcropping of cracked stone, where pale grass grew in stubborn clumps, which twisted high above the plains and crumbling seashore. It had been one of the mightiest strongholds in Aurim, a fortress that had never fallen, though it had weathered more than a dozen sieges. It was a husk now, lost not to war, but to famine and the poisoning of the land, its tallest tower of white marble jabbing at the leaden sky like a finger accusing the gods.
No one had called Upper Bishan home since its last caretakers died; two brothers and a sister, the last of a line that had held the fort for more than fifteen centuries, they had leaped from the precipice after the Destruction rather than leaving it for hospitable lands. The tale was well known, even among the hobgoblins, as was the rumor that the three siblings lingered as ghosts, haunting the keep, protecting its secrets, stubbornly clinging to that which they valued more than life. Tale
s abounded of men who had come to the place, seeking glory or riches. Inevitably, those unfortunate adventurers ended up either dying in unspeakable agony or wandering the wastes, their minds gone, wailing in voiceless terror until they perished of thirst. Whether living or dead, Bishan’s victims always bore the same mark: their eyes gone, torn out by the claws of some terrible beast.
It was nonsense, and Maladar knew it. There were no ghosts in Upper Bishan. The dead there were killed not by ghosts, not by monsters, but by men. He knew the truth: a clan of treasure-hunters from the Imperial League dwelt there and murdered anyone who came to those lands without their leave. They had been doing it for generations, using it as a base from which to plunder the ashes of the dead empire.
His empire.
Countless riches had passed out of Aurim’s ruins, through that place, and on by ship to lands far away—the distant Minotaur League, mostly, though the raiders who worked out of Bishan were not picky. They traded with rich men in the Rainwards, in Syldar, even in Thenol. They had made themselves rich off the blood and bones of those long dead, and slain those who came near to discovering what was really going on.
Maladar knew all this for a very simple reason: he had been to Bishan before.
He could still remember the day his slumber was interrupted. He’d lived in darkness, in silence, for so long that he’d almost forgotten what light and noise were. Then, one day, light had spilled into his vault, and with it voices and the scrape of shovels against sand and stone. The men of Bishan had found him and taken him from his vault, bragging about their prize. They’d brought him across water to the old keep. He’d stayed there for forty days—long enough to see the raiders kill and mutilate several hobgoblins and set one lone elf loose, blinded and insane, in the barrens. He’d watched them and listened, committing all to memory, until finally they bore him away on a long journey that would end in the town of Blood Eye, and the care of a minotaur named Ruskal.
Much and more had happened to Maladar since then. He’d gone on to the dwarf lands, then the pirate isles of the Run, then the castle of Coldhope, and finally Akh-tazi, leaving death in his wake wherever he went. But he had not forgotten Bishan and the usurpers who dwelt within its walls.
He stood upon the brow of a razorback ridge, a broken spine of stone ten miles south of Bishan. Night was falling, shadows creeping across the plain. Behind the keep, surf roared as it pounded the rocky shore. He looked upon the fortress and smiled, then turned to gaze down into the valley to the south. Five thousand hobgoblins waited there, huddled around dung fires, sharpening their blades beneath flapping black banners topped with skulls and the dried remains of snakes, their tribal totem. They looked back at him, expectant, hungry. He had told them the truth about Bishan and its occupants, and they were furious. They wanted blood for those the plunderers had slain, of course, but also as retribution for being tricked. They would get it soon enough.
For three weeks he’d traveled across Aurim, from one ruin to the next. Crumbling temples, shattered towns, once-proud castles reduced to rubble: he’d visited each in turn, and every time he’d found new followers. Sixteen other clans had joined him after the Mokuti, and more were on the way. Word was spreading across Aurim, from tribe to tribe of the hobgoblins, and soon, they would all be flocking to his banner. The hobgoblins craved war, but they were clannish and prone to feuding. They’d lacked a strong leader, one who would unite them and rule with an iron hand. They finally had one, and before long Maladar’s host would be ten times as strong as the one in the valley below.
Soon he would have his army. Then he would cross the Cauldron for real.
A hulking shape clambered up the ridge, hoisting himself from one crag to the next. Maladar had named Ghashai his second, a liaison to the rest of his people, and the towering warrior had taken to it with zeal. Under his command, the hobgoblins had learned discipline. They fought better, using tactics rather than simply swarming and rampaging when the scent of blood was in the air. Maladar wasn’t sure the newfound order would last long once the march to Bishan began, but he didn’t think it would have to. There were no more than sixty men in the keep, and the battlements were in shambles. The battle was already decided.
“They are ready,” Ghashai said as he reached the summit. “They await your command.”
“So they do,” Maladar replied. “I will give it … but not yet. There is one more thing I must do first.”
The hobgoblin stared at the fort’s distant shadow, his brow beetling. “Will it take long? My people are not good at waiting.”
Maladar looked down at his horde one more time. He saw hands caress swords, teeth gnash, feet stamp the blighted earth. It was still ten miles to Bishan, but if he bade them, the hobgoblins would run the whole way, howling for slaughter. It pleased him. He hadn’t commanded troops in battle for many, many years.
“Leave me,” he said.
Ghashai bowed, retreating partway down the hill. Maladar turned his gaze back to the distant keep. Those who dwelt there were warriors and thieves, almost to a man, but there was one other, one who could cause him trouble beyond what the rest could wreak with arrow and sword. His name was Randuvos, and he was a mage—a powerful one, at that. His illusions were what gave life to the rumors that Bishan was haunted. Much of the time, he was the one who killed the interlopers. He had even tried, and very nearly succeeded, to unbind the spells upon the Hooded One. A wizard with that kind of power could kill hundreds of hobgoblins before they reached the fortress.
Maladar relaxed, envisioning Randuvos in his mind. The mage was tall and gaunt, bald-headed but with a huge, bristly black beard. He wore robes of deep blue satin, decorated with silver runes. There were gold rings in his ears, his nose, both his lips. A jagged, red scar ran from the corner of his left eye down to his jaw.
Maladar caught the image in his mind, holding on to it as he opened himself to the moons’ power. It flowed into him like the tide, and suddenly he could see Randuvos, standing before him as if he were truly there. Other raiders moved around him, fading in and out of view, but Randuvos, who was busy pondering a large, ivory-paneled dulcimer the robbers had hauled out of the rubble somewhere, stayed still. Maladar focused on him alone, pulling more power into his body with each breath.
Only at the last moment did Randuvos know something was wrong. His nose wrinkling, he straightened up to look around. He put one hand to his temple, as if feeling a headache coming on, then looked directly at Maladar. His eyes widened, flooding with horror.
“You!” he gasped.
Maladar spoke a word and pushed the magic across the distance between them. It flowed into Randuvos, all at once: too much for him to contain or resist. His mouth opened in a silent scream. His back arched. Then, with a ghastly wet sound, his skull exploded. Bits of bone and brain blew in every direction, leaving a fine red mist hanging in the air. It spattered the dulcimer, the ground, men standing or walking nearby. Then the wizard’s body tumbled to the ground, its head a mass of crimson shards above the chin.
“There,” Maladar murmured. “That’s done.”
He let the spell end, and the images vanished from his view. From the distance, he thought he could hear the blare of a horn. The men of Bishan were warned: Randuvos’s death had cost Maladar the element of surprise. But then, with ten miles of open country to cover, in full view of the keep, surprise hadn’t really been his best option.
Maladar glowered at the distant fortress. “Ghashai?”
“Yes, my lord?” answered the hobgoblin.
“It is time.”
Ghashai flashed a bloodthirsty leer. “Plunder and blood,” he growled, then turned to face the horde. He drew his massive sword and raised it high. “War!” he bellowed.
The hobgoblins answered with a ferocious cheer. Spears and axes and swords punched the sky. Clashing their blades against their shields, they started marching.
Half the men in Bishan were dead by the time Maladar walked through its gates. He had to pic
k his way through the corpses of hobgoblins as he went; drifts of them lay torn and broken around the courtyard, piled in heaps around the bodies of the fort’s defenders. The groans of the injured and a charnel stink rose from the mess. There was blood everywhere: spattered on the walls, pooled on the cobbled ground, dripping in runnels over battlements and down stairs. The clash of battle had stopped for the moment, though not all of the robbers were dead.
The great stone doors of Bishan’s manor were shut, barred and bolted from within. Arrows lanced down from high slits in its walls, keeping the hobgoblins back. As Maladar watched, one of his troops strayed too close, and a heartbeat later lay on the stones, a shaft bristling from the top of its head.
Maladar was annoyed with how the fight was going. True, his forces had won the battle, or would once they got into the manor, but that had been a foregone conclusion. It would have taken true bumbling or a miracle on the tomb-robbers’ behalf for two and a half legions’-worth of bloodthirsty hobgoblins not to overthrow the place. The trick to such things was minimizing losses on one’s own side. There once were libraries in Aurim full of books devoted to the tactics of warfare. There had been no art to the hobgoblins’ attack, though, no strategy at all, once the attack began. And so he’d lost at least twice as many of his warriors as he might have with a properly trained force of Aurish soldiers.
It was disappointing but not unexpected.
The hobgoblins had charged the keep head-on, all five thousand of them sprinting toward its main gates with weapons held high. Bishan’s defenders had bows, though, and they’d responded with ruthless efficiency, loosing volley after volley into the onrushing horde. The hobgoblins had gone down like barley at reap-time, their bodies tumbling back down the slopes, sporting so many feathers that Maladar thought of the peacocks who had once wandered the gardens of his palace. Two hundred of them had died trying to reach the keep’s gate, another hundred as they battered it to splinters with axes and mauls, then two hundred more in the skirmishing within. The raiders of Bishan were mighty warriors, men who had once fought in the legions of Thenol and the League or upon the sands in gladiatorial arenas. They didn’t die easily.
