Shadow of the Flame - Chris Pierson

by Dragonlance

  Five hundred of his warriors dead, out of five thousand, and the battle not yet done. Maladar wanted to spit. If one of his generals had lost a tenth of his forces on such a straightforward maneuver as storming Bishan, the man would have found himself lowered slowly onto a spike in the Square of Spears, to be left for the skyfishers … or screaming in Aurim’s dungeons while Maladar researched new ways to use magic to cause pain.

  These were hobgoblins, though, not men. They were savages, unworthy heirs to the bones of his empire. The world was a better place for each of them that died, and there would be scant space for them once Aurim was reborn. They served a purpose, but only for the moment.

  “My lord!” called Ghashai from near the killing zone around the manor. He pushed his way back through the throngs. “We have the rats cornered. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Maladar regarded the warlord, his eyes dark. Ghashai was leering with pleasure, enjoying the bloodletting. Red dripped from his sword’s notched blade.

  “You need no time,” Maladar said with a shake of his head. “Ready your men. I will sunder the doors for you, just as I slew him.”

  He pointed at a body, clad in blue satin, that had toppled from Bishan’s wall. The shattered pieces of a dulcimer lay beside it among shards of bloody skull.

  “As you bid, my lord,” Ghashai said, eyeing what was left of Randuvos. He hefted his sword. “We’ll clean the place out within the hour and take the slime’s heads as prizes with their treasure.”

  “Not all of them,” said Maladar. “I want some alive. A dozen, perhaps. That should be enough.”

  Ghashai’s eyes narrowed. “Enough for what?”

  “To send to the other chiefs of your people.”

  The hobgoblin thought about that, then began to laugh. “Oh, yes! They will make fine gifts, indeed!” he cried, slapping his leg. Still chortling, he went back to his men to pass on Maladar’s orders. More laughter rose from their ranks.

  Maladar sneered. There was no civilization to be found among the hobgoblins. Already some were feasting on those who had died atop Bishan’s walls. It didn’t matter, though. It was only one step in his journey.

  He walked forward, stopping just outside bowshot of the manor, and raised a hand to point at the doors. With the other he began to gesture, chanting words that writhed like serpents. Finally, raising his voice to a shout, he forced the magic out through his fingers.

  There was a flash of light, a crack of thunder, the stink of burned metal … then a boom and an eruption of billowing dust and tiny shards of stone. When it cleared, the doors of the manor were gone, blown apart by lightning. In their place was a jagged, smoking hole leading into the manor.

  Ghashai howled a war cry. The hobgoblins charged. Up high in the manor, the archers poured arrows down into the mob.

  It wasn’t enough to stop them, though. It wasn’t even close.

  The screams were barely human anymore. It was closer to livestock in a slaughterhouse. Forlo needed to vomit. He wanted to turn away, to flee, to go wild and kill hobgoblins until they killed him. But he couldn’t; he had no way to wrest back control of his body from Maladar. He could only look on helplessly as, one by one, the survivors of Bishan met their fate.

  When the fighting was finally done, the hobgoblins brought fifteen men to Maladar. Two he had judged too badly hurt to live; their bones lay on the flagstones, gnawed clean by the monstrous warriors. The rest he had ordered bound and brought to him, one at a time. When he was done with them, the hobgoblins dragged them away, but the screaming went on and on, growing louder and shriller with each victim.

  He had done his work to twelve of the thirteen. He signaled to Ghashai, who brought forward the last. The man was older than the others, with scars on his face and gray in his beard. His sword arm hung limp by his side, and he ground his teeth with every step as the hobgoblins shoved him forward. He’d been the last one left and had killed thirty hobgoblins before they broke his shoulder and dragged him down. He walked forward, trying not to show fear but sweating and trembling just the same, a brave and heartless killer reduced nearly to the point of tears. He’d watched what happened to the others. He heard their cries. Even a minotaur couldn’t have sat through that without feeling afraid.

  When he got close to Forlo, though, a different expression crossed his face, overwhelming the fright and pain. His eyes widened, his mouth dropping open in surprise.

  “You!” he said. “The regicide!”

  And he spat in Forlo’s face. Maladar didn’t even move, just let it hit him in the eye. There was blood in the man’s spit, and it stung. He left it there, not bothering to wipe it away.

  “You killed Emperor Rekhaz,” the man said. “I know you, Barreth Forlo. I used to fight for the Third Legion, before I came here. I admired you. Now where are you? On the run, your holdings in ruins, commanding these scum instead of honest soldiers.

  “The empire is in flames because of you. Randuvos heard it from other wizards, back home. Cities are burning, the legions are smashing each other to pieces. They say the League may not survive the wars. And it’s all your doing.”

  Forlo cringed, sick inside. He wanted to hear more, but at the same time he wanted this man to be quiet, never to speak again. That part would come true soon enough. But first … first, Maladar had other things in mind.

  There was a knife in his hand. It was covered in blood, tip to pommel. Maladar held it up before the old soldier, letting the man see it.

  The soldier’s lip curled. “I know what you’re going to do with that. You’re not going to scare me any more than I already am. So just get—”

  That was the last coherent thing he ever said. Smiling, Maladar went to work with the blade, and soon the raider was howling and gurgling and sobbing like the rest of them. When he was done, Maladar’s arms were red to the elbows and the hobgoblins had to hold the man to keep him on his feet. Stepping back, he surveyed his handiwork.

  Inside, Forlo wept, as much for what he’d done as for what Maladar made him do. He’d killed Rekhaz, emperor of the minotaurs and his liege-lord, and while he tried to tell himself it had been necessary and even warranted—Rekhaz had hated him, had arrested him as a traitor and forced him to fight on the sands when he should have been searching for Essana—the truth was he’d done it on a whim, for vengeance. He could have let the emperor live, but he hadn’t. He’d murdered Rekhaz, and he’d enjoyed it.

  The League had fallen apart, and it was his doing. He’d saved Essana, but he’d destroyed his nation and would be forever known as a traitor. There was a special place in the Abyss waiting for him.

  “Take him away,” Maladar said.

  They did as he bade, dragging away the half-conscious, keening ruin he’d made of Bishan’s last defender. Maladar made Forlo watch, forced his eyes to linger on the man’s face. That one would go to the Red Claw tribe, one of the largest clans in Aurim. The Red Claw had lost many hobgoblins to the “ghosts” who haunted Bishan.

  Now they will bow to the man who put an end to that threat, Maladar’s voice whispered in Forlo’s head. They will follow me, as will the other tribes. Soon the hobgoblins will be one nation, under my banner.

  Maladar smiled, turning away. He forgot the man in an instant. For Forlo, though, the memory lingered for days, until he wondered if it would ever go away. His face, the old soldier’s face, which he’d made sport of with his blade.

  His tongueless, toothless, eyeless face.

  Chapter

  8

  THE DOURLANDS, AURIM-THAT-WAS

  The canyon ran on for what seemed like forever. They soon lost track of how long they walked: in the constant darkness, lit only fleetingly when the sun was high, time lost its meaning. Shedara thought it was around eighteen days, but it could have been twelve or thirty. The whole time, they met no greater threat than the scorpion swarm. There were no demons, no dragons, no hungry dead—just rocks and more rocks and the occasional centipede or lizard that scuttled away when
it saw them.

  They lived on Shedara’s conjured food and water, their way lit by her magical light. It was a grim and joyless journey, and they spoke little at first, then hardly at all. They were alive, but there wasn’t much more to say about it. Tumbled rockfalls and narrow clefts they had to slip through sideways slowed their progress. Shedara tried climbing out of the canyon a few times to see what the surface looked like, but she had no more bearings up above than down below. The surface was nothing but ash and broken stone and the stubs of old pillars and walls, littering the landscape like skyfisher-picked bones. Wind scoured the plains, whipping up huge twisters of dust. Once there was a dim line of gray mountains, far off to the west. Otherwise there was just devastation, trailing off into haze.

  “We have no idea where we are, do we?” Hult asked her after one ascent, huddled by the stone-fire. He kept his voice low, so Essana and Azar couldn’t hear.

  She shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “When will we?”

  “We’re still going the right way,” Shedara answered. “We’re still headed north. In time we’ll reach the sea.”

  “And then?” Hult asked. “How do we reach these islands? We have no boat, and I don’t think there are many ports on the coast.”

  “There are a few,” she said. “The Rainwarders cross the straits sometimes. I’ll know where to find them … once I have any idea where we are.”

  Hult snorted, looking up. The stars wheeled above, a distant slash above the canyon. “Say we do get to the Rainwards—” he began.

  “We will.”

  “All right. We will, and we’ll warn them about Maladar. Do you think anyone there will be able to help with Azar?”

  Shedara glanced over at the boy, asleep by the fire, his mother sitting nearby. Was it her imagination, or did he look older than when she’d first met him? Then, he’d seemed barely twenty. Now, she could see lines on his face and even a few gray strands in his long, tangled hair. That could have been just the arduousness of their journey, she supposed.

  “There are a lot of mages in the Rainwards,” she said. “Including a fair number more powerful than me. Someone should know a spell that can tell us what happened to him.”

  “We know what happened to him.”

  She rolled her eyes. “We have a guess, that’s all.”

  “What’s to guess?” he shot back. “You saw it as well as I did. The Brethren killed him. He’s sitting over there alive now, though”—they’d felt his neck for a lifebeat while he slept, just to make sure—“so they must have brought him back after Maladar was done with him.”

  “If it was Maladar.”

  “Do you really think it wasn’t? Do you think his power came from somewhere else?”

  Shedara shrugged. “Azar’s powers have saved us twice now.”

  Hult spat in the flames. “Chovuk Boyla’s powers saved me too, more times than that. It still came to no good, for him or my people.”

  They sat quietly for a while, gazing at the ghostly flames that danced above the rocks.

  “We might find someone who can help him,” she murmured at last. “But then again, we might not.” She bowed her head, blowing out a long breath through pursed lips.

  Hult leaned forward and laid a hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all right not to know, Shedara.”

  She looked up at him, tears blurring her eyes. Frustrated, she wiped them away. He was smiling, but there was a sorrow in his eyes that she recognized at once. It was the same thing she felt: he was out of his depth, in a place where he didn’t belong. In a just world, Hult would have lived out his life on the Tamire, riding horses and hunting antelope and warring with neighboring tribes. And she would be back in Armach, or abroad doing the elves’ dirty work for them. They certainly wouldn’t be huddled at the bottom of a hole in the midst of a ruined empire, wondering whether the soul of a dead sorcerer might kill their friend’s son.

  She smiled back at him, then started to laugh. Fatigue, and the ludicrousness of their situation, made it hard not to. Hult’s eyes widened; then he started laughing too. She laid her hand on his, felt the stumps where he’d lost his fingers, back at the arena in Kristophan, and waited for him to pull away. He didn’t. They looked at each other. Then, so swiftly she didn’t realize it was happening, he leaned forward and kissed her.

  And she kissed him back.

  She didn’t know why. All she knew was, for a while, with his mouth on hers, with his lip in her mouth, with his teeth on her lip, with their tongues touching, she forgot. She wasn’t in a hole; she wasn’t in Aurim. There was no Azar, no Maladar, nothing but the two of them. She clung to that like a drowning woman.

  Too soon, it was over. He ended it, pulling back. Another time, the look of confusion on his face would have made her laugh. At that moment her heart broke a little. Hult’s face darkened, and he started to turn away.

  “Wait,” she said.

  But he didn’t. With a shake of his head, he turned and stalked into the shadows, lost in his dark thoughts. Shedara started to rise, to go after him, then thought better of it. Hult needed to be alone, and strangely, so did she. Perhaps he was thinking of Eldako. She knew she was. What would the merkitsa think if he’d seen the two of them together? He’d been Hult’s friend—and for Shedara, more than a friend.

  She heard movement behind her and turned to look. Essana had risen from her son’s side and was coming toward her. Shedara raised a hand to her mouth, wiping her lips as if some sign of what she and Hult had been doing might still linger there … as if Essana hadn’t seen. The way the firelight danced in her eyes told Shedara that wasn’t likely.

  “Milady,” Shedara said as she drew near.

  “I just realized something,” Essana said, crouching beside the fire. “If part of Maladar is in Azar … then all of him can’t be in Barreth, can it?”

  Shedara thought about that. “Maybe. I’m not sure it works like that, like water being poured from one bucket to another. But yes … it’s possible that Forlo doesn’t have all his power.”

  “Then he’s not fully Maladar, is he?” Essana asked. “I mean … there’s a chance.”

  Shedara bit her lip, seeing where Essana was going. “Milady,” she said, “Forlo’s dead. Hult and I both saw him die—so did Azar, for that matter.”

  “You can’t be certain. The Brethren killed Azar, but he’s here, alive. Why not Barreth, then?”

  There was a gleam in Essana’s eyes as she spoke. It took Shedara a moment to realize what that gleam was: hope. Hope, she thought, could be dangerous. It could get us into a lot of trouble if we have to fight Maladar directly. If we have to kill him, she’ll bridle if she thinks Forlo’s still in there.

  Or … she could be right.

  Shedara was still wondering about that hours later, watching the stars wheel overhead.

  Five days later—or was it six?—the canyon finally became too narrow to pass. Even sliding sideways, neither Shedara nor Hult could fit between its walls. Indeed, Hult got stuck, and it took the better part of an hour to pull him loose. When he came out, he was scraped and bloody.

  “I could feel them trembling,” he murmured. “The stones. It felt like they were going to start moving … like they wanted to crush me like a locust.”

  Shedara shuddered, feeling ill. Her people had trouble with confined spaces, fears she’d trained herself for years to ignore. For a moon-thief, tight squeezes were often a fact of life. But the notion of being lodged so tightly that the slightest tremor would kill her … she shuddered.

  “What do we do now?” Essana asked.

  Shedara shrugged. “Only two ways out, aren’t there? One’s back, and we don’t want to do that. Which leaves …”

  She trailed off, glancing up. The others followed her lead. The sky above the rift was lit by the day, yellow-gray.

  “We’ll be out in the open,” Azar said. “Vulnerable.”

  “You don’t say?” Shedara snapped, then sh
ook herself when he flinched. “I’m sorry. I don’t like it any more than you, but I don’t see any other choices. With luck, the chasm will widen out again in a quarter mile or so, or there’ll be another one close by, and we can take shelter again. With luck we won’t be exposed for long.”

  “We should scout ahead, just the same,” Hult said and loosened his sword in its scabbard. He held out his hand. “Give me the rope.”

  She did, pausing long enough to make sure the enchantment was still upon it. “I’ll go with you.”

  “No.” He held up a hand and leaned close to whisper in her ear. “If something goes wrong, it’s best that I’m alone. If both of us were lost, Jijin knows what would happen to them.” He nodded at Essana and Azar.

  An urge came over her, fast and strong, to kiss him again. She held it back. It wasn’t love. Lust maybe, worry certainly, but not love. She couldn’t afford to addle Hult’s wits right then just for the sake of calming herself. She settled for squeezing his hand.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  He looked at her, and she saw that he wanted to kiss her again too. He’d probably wanted to since that night. She shook her head, stepping back.

  “Tie the rope off at the top,” she said. “Just a simple knot—the magic will take care of the rest.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll toss the rest down when it’s all clear.”

  He paused to incline his head toward Essana, glancing at Azar—the distrust on his face was plain—then jumped up and caught hold of an overhanging crop of rock. He was a bit clumsy, with half a hand gone, but he still managed to hold on and swing up a leg to get a foothold. Once that was done, he hauled himself up, leaned back against the canyon’s other wall, and began to scuttle upward. Shedara watched him go, impressed. She could have done the same, but climbing was part of a moon-thief’s training. Hult just did it. He’d told her and the others once—she thought it was while they were sailing to Panak, half a continent and a lot of grief ago—that he’d been a climber since he was a child, so much so the elders had nicknamed him Jasho, which meant monkey in the Uigan tongue.