by Dragonlance
It was done, over, finished. The last impediment to reclaiming his power, the last realm that could have challenged him: gone.
He had scried the ruins of Suluk, just the previous night, to see what he’d wrought. The city was a home for ghosts, unfit for the few straggling survivors. Many of the Rainward kings were dead. All the hobgoblins were gone too. Maladar sought some sign of Ghashai along the waterfront. The hobgoblin chief was nowhere to be found, lost with the rest of his people, buried beneath tons of stone or already given to the fires. One way or another, he was gone too.
Pyres burned without cease among the shattered stones, fueled by broken timbers and the endless dead. It was wonderful to behold, the sort of ruin he hadn’t caused since his previous life. In those days, he’d drowned Am Durn, caused the earth to swallow Kattaya, and unleashed black fire on the twin cities of Gham and Ushik, turning even their stout stone walls to fine ash that blew away on the wind. What he had just wrought wasn’t as elegant as all that, but it filled him with joy to see Suluk lying broken.
It was all the more joyous because he made Forlo watch too. When the man beheld the vision, saw what had become of the city—the same city where his friends and family had gone—Maladar felt something tear inside him. There was nothing inside that wound but pain, and he savored it like wine.
Forlo had searched, as best he could, while the magical vision drifted among the blasted stones and fly-specked corpses. He’d tried to find some sign of them anywhere—his wife, his son, the barbarian, and the elf. But he saw no one he knew. Everyone was filthy, caked in dust and ash and dried blood. It was hard to tell one from the next.
Morning had found Maladar’s army still on the march. It hadn’t stopped to rest; his stone warriors, crafted over many years and with much spilled blood, didn’t need such things. They ate nothing, felt no thirst, never slept. They were relentless, fearless, tireless. Only their stupidity kept them from being the ideal killing force. They knew only what he told them, did only what he told them to do, for they had no minds of their own. That would be a problem, in time; he would need intelligent creatures to serve him if he were going to conquer all of Taladas. But for what he had to do next, the statues, Kheten Voi in the old tongue, were more than enough.
They’d come to the island’s southern shore just before midday, with the winter sun low and dim before them, coloring the waves the sickly hue of bone. There Maladar had left them, with the waves breaking around their ankles and the tide on the rise. A sending spell, swiftly spoken, transported him to the mainland, about thirty leagues west of the Whitewold. Gazing east, he saw the ghostly, grasping claws of the petrified trees upon the hilltops. Everything else was barren.
He stood at the edge of the sea, on the rocks, watching the waves roll in. He stayed there for hours, motionless, utterly patient. Gulls wheeled overhead. A whale’s tail broke the surface, just once. And that was it—no boats, no lights on the far shore. The place was desolate, bereft. Inside him, Forlo prayed for death. Maladar considered the plea. It would take only a stray thought, the mental equivalent of brushing away a gnat. One thought, and the body would be all his. Forlo would be with his wife and child. It would be a mercy.
Maladar, however, had never been merciful.
Be silent, he thought. I will destroy you, have no fear of that. But now is not the time. Not until the Chaldar rises anew, and my destiny is fulfilled. Now trouble me no more.
Hours passed, and more. Maladar watched out to sea, ignoring Forlo’s weeping. There were terns and gulls. A shark’s fin broke the surface, ran for a time, then ducked back below. The sun westered.
Then something was there: a ripple on the strait’s surface, out at the point where the water grew dark with depth. The ripple moved in toward shore, overtaking the waves, growing more pronounced with every yard. What finally emerged from the brine was a stone head, hewn with draconian features, its eyes gleaming crimson in the gathering gloom. It moved toward Maladar, its shoulders breaking the surface then rising higher and higher above the waves. Behind it, three more heads emerged, and behind them, eight, then thirty, then two hundred … Then thousands.
They marched up out of the ocean, dragging trails of seaweed, one with a speckled fish impaled on the tip of its stone spear, flopping and writhing as it died. They moved as they had on the far side, without hesitation, the waves rolling in and out around waists, then knees, then ankles. The water turned brown with silt.
Finally the forward ranks reached the rocks, and they halted, all at once, without a sound. The foremost statue stood directly beneath the promontory where Maladar perched, looking up at him. Its kin stretched behind it, all the way back to where they’d first appeared, scores of heads poking up among the waves.
They didn’t speak. Maladar’s army was silent; Kheten Voi meant Quiet Host in Aurish. They simply watched him and waited. Maladar looked on, smiling.
“It is time,” he said. “Behold the south, my children.”
They did, in unison. Maladar looked as well. The wastes of Aurim extended for many leagues before him, then rose into black peaks, above which roiled fumes of charcoal gray. Red lightning played among the clouds and lashed down upon the mountains. From where he stood, the march to the Cauldron was only a hundred miles. The army could cover that in two days—one to reach the jagged black crags, another to cross to the other side.
“That is our goal,” he said. “The heart of that darkness, where our old realm once was. And where it will be again. Follow.”
With that, he clambered down from his roost and strode southward. Maladar never turned, never looked back. There was no need. The scrape of stone against stone, of thousands of carved hands and feet climbing up the strand, was sign enough that his army obeyed him. Relentless, tireless, the Kheten Voi followed him onto the blighted plains.
Maladar saw no living being on the long walk to the Burning Sea—indeed, no creatures at all once he left the shore and its seabirds behind. Aurim was nothing but desert and the occasional shell of a village half-buried among the dunes. The mountains were treeless and dry, dotted with lichen the color of decaying flesh. The sky seethed, black clouds reflecting the infernal glow beneath.
His army walked behind, mutely obedient. When he stopped to look back, they stopped too, their gleaming eyes turning toward him. There were no questions there, no emotions, just unholy patience. If he didn’t bid them move on, they would stay there until the world crumbled, until the dust covered them over, until Taladas sank into the sea. On the other hand, if he ordered them to charge off one of the mountains’ many jagged cliffs, they would do so without a second thought as well, smashing to shards on the rocks below. It was an army to be admired; many times during his rule, he would have been glad for a band of warriors who would do what he commanded and nothing more. At the same time there was something forlorn about the Kheten Voi, something lacking.
The answer was simple: he had no one to talk to.
The idea that he was lonely made Maladar’s mouth twist. A chuckle pushed past his lips. There he was, at last, on the verge of regaining all he had lost, and what troubled him was that he had no company! But that was it; he was utterly alone. It reminded him of his long imprisonment beneath the Clovenmont, with only the statues for company. The hobgoblins had been savage and far from intelligent, but at least Ghashai had had a personality. The Voi gave him nothing.
That left Forlo, who was no use at all, with all his mewling about his family and begging to be killed.
So it was that, when he crested the final rise and saw the empty black robe floating on the edge of the ocean of roiling magma, Maladar was more relieved than awed. He all but ran down the sliding gravel slope, his army scraping and rattling behind him. A few of the Voi lost their footing and tumbled down the scree. Some of those didn’t get up again. For the most part, though, the statues could have been goats, for all their sure-footedness.
Looking upon the empty cloak, Maladar sensed that Hith was pleased. Indeed, th
e god made a hollow, creaking sound as Maladar drew near, gesturing up toward the Voi. “Well done, my servant,” he declared. “Quite well done.”
“Thank you,” Maladar replied. “But I am no man’s servant.”
“I am no man.”
“Even so. I serve no god either.”
Hith’s headless hood cocked to one side. “That is a presumptuous thing for a mortal to say.”
“That may be,” Maladar said, “but it is no less true.”
The god studied him in silence.
“I have done as the prophecy said,” Maladar went on. “I have found my army.”
“So you have. And a mighty army it is … even if there’s not a brain in the lot.” Hith looked up at the Voi, who covered the mountainside like some awful forest. Their glittering eyes made the mountain look like a sky full of red stars. “What now?”
Maladar scowled. “You know as well as I do. There is only one thing left. I demand passage.”
“Demand it?” Hith asked, amused. “Am I your servant now?”
“Of course not. But you wish this to play out as much as I do. Raise the bridge. This time, I will reach the other side.”
Hith regarded him a while longer, his cloak billowing in the Cauldron’s hot winds. “You had best do so,” he said. “For you will not come back this way again.”
With that, the surface of the lava began to roil, and the iron bridge emerged, glowing golden-hot, then cooling to red, then pitted black. It was broader than the last time, wide enough for twenty men to cross side by side: a span an army could cross. It stretched razor-straight across the Cauldron, vanishing into haze and shadow.
“The fire minions will be waiting for you,” Hith said.
“I have my army. They must let me pass.”
“They must do nothing,” Hith replied. “Nothing compels them. They might not have let you pass before because of the prophecy, but your living statues may not convince them.”
Maladar shrugged. “The Kheten Voi will be … persuasive … to anyone who tries to stop me.”
“Good,” Hith said. “Because the fire minions will. And they will not be the last. Some will hunt you, once you come into your power—including a few you already know well.”
An image flashed through Maladar’s mind then: a ship of steel, plying the Cauldron’s fiery surface. Figures stood on the deck, a few of whom he recognized: the damned elf, the Uigan … and a third who shone in his memory like the three moons, one he’d known better than any other: the Taker, the vessel, his rightful flesh.
And like that, the image was gone again.
My son, wept Forlo inside him. What happened to his mother? Where is my Starlight?
Maladar ignored him. “They survived. They escaped from Suluk alive,” he murmured.
“So they did,” Hith replied. “And now they follow you.”
“Let them. That ragged band will not stop me from raising the Chaldar again. They will be lucky to find me at all.”
“Yet find you they will,” Hith declared. “And your fate walks among them.”
“The Taker,” Maladar said.
“The Taker. He must be beaten, or it will be the death of you. He has a piece of you, remember?”
Memories came in a rush. Maladar saw the boy’s body, the vessels of his throat laid open by the Master’s knife. He saw his ghostly hand reach out, enter the dead flesh, take hold of the heart hidden within. The heart started beating again. The ghastly wound closed. The boy’s eyelids flickered, then opened.
All at once he was looking through two different pairs of eyes. He was still the ghost, bound to the Hooded One, but he was the boy as well, looking right back. The sensation was disorienting, like leaning over a bottomless chasm. He shook his head and exhaled, coming back to himself.
“Enough,” he said. “No more warnings. No more waiting. I have an ocean to cross.”
“So be it,” Hith replied. “But this is the last time I will aid you before they come, Maladar. After the bridge, you will get no more help from me.”
“After the bridge, I won’t need it.”
The god inclined his head. Then with a rustle of cloth—and without another word—he drew into himself until he vanished altogether. Maladar stood alone again, except for the Voi.
He glanced behind him, admiring the statues. They stared back, their eyes sparkling in the night. Facing forward, he set his gaze on the distance, the smoke and heat shimmer that hid his objective. The Chaldar waited.
“Follow,” he said and started toward the bridge. The Kheten Voi obeyed.
Chapter
21
MIRRORTHORN PASSAGE, RAINWARD ISLES
They followed the tracks for two days, moving south across the foothills as quickly as they could. It was hard going, full of rocky drops and bramble-choked canyons, and though they had Shedara and Roshambur’s magic to aid them, the magic didn’t last. After the first few hours each morning, the climbing spells ran out and they had to make do with pursuing Forlo and his unseen army on foot.
The trail never diverted. It ran arrow-straight over the edges of stony cliffs and through the midst of iron-hard briars whose thorns could have ripped a dragon to shreds. They found not one body, though, nor a single drop of blood. Whatever had emerged from the crater of the Clovenmont, they were tougher than men or hobgoblins or even horny-skinned disir.
Yet no one spoke of those things, or even made note of how strange the tracks were. They were man-sized, or a little larger, with an even stride that never wavered, but they ran deeper than a man’s should have. Hult saw that right away: whatever followed Forlo, they were very heavy. His thoughts turned to ogres and trolls, but that wasn’t right; an ogre’s footprint would be huge, much bigger than those.
What, then? He pondered that well into the night as he sat watch on a boulder near the dell where the five of them made camp. When dawn bruised the sky, he had no more idea than before.
On the second day, the air began to change. It grew damp, carrying the tang of salt. The murmur of waves replaced the moan of wind through the gullies. The thorn bushes gave way to reeds and moss and spruce trees. Finally they reached the top of a rise and came to a beach of ash-gray dunes, scattered with tufts of hardy, brown grass. These rolled on for half a mile until they met the surface of a sea tinted the dull hue of iron beneath the leaden sky. White caps of foam dotted the water’s surface, where the wind whipped up waves that broke over sandbars and rolled gently over beds of silt to the shore.
In the distance, far across the water, rose the dark line of Aurim’s rocky coast, the black knives of mountains almost lost in the haze. Halfway across, long needles of black glass jutted at odd angles from the water, glinting in the muted daylight.
“Another leaving of the Destruction,” said Nakhil, nodding toward the dark, knife-sharp spines. “The blast melted the deserts and turned them to that. When the Rainwards broke away from shore, the glass shattered as the sea poured in. That is what remains.”
“They say you can see men inside some of those spikes,” Roshambur murmured. “Trapped forever, like ants in amber.”
“You can,” Shedara said. “There are lands like this in the west as well. I’ve been there. I expect your sailors give this place a wide berth.”
“Yes,” Nakhil agreed. “For every spike you see, ten more lie hidden beneath the waves. And it only takes one to slit open a galley’s hull, stem to stern. The seafloor is covered with bits of ships that sailed too close.”
“There’s something else,” Azar said. “There, in the silt.”
Hult looked, squinting to see what the boy had spotted. He’d had a hawk’s sight among his people, but he had to strain to make anything out from so far away. Azar’s eyes were that sharp. Even then, all he could discern were a few shapes, like large rocks mired in the ooze.
For Shedara’s elf eyes, however, there was no trouble at all. She caught her breath. “Towers of Silvanost,” she breathed. “That’s … that’s them, isn�
��t it? The army.”
“I see nothing,” Nakhil grumbled. “Describe it for a blind old horse-man.”
“They’re men,” Azar replied. “Men of stone.”
“Magical constructs,” Shedara added. “My people called them nala’ini. Among the men of the League, they’re known as Gulmat.”
“Ghelim in our lands,” Roshambur put in. “Some of the kings use them for palace guards. Leftovers of the old empire—the secrets have been lost since the world broke.”
“They’re still moving,” Hult said, forcing himself to make out details. “Stuck in the mud, but they’re trying to drag themselves out.”
Shedara nodded. “And they’ll keep on trying until they do it or until something destroys them. They can’t starve or drown when the tide comes back in.”
They stood silent, watching the stone men thrash in the surf. There were about twenty of them in all: casualties of a march that must have taken the rest across the sea. Hult thought of an army of such living statues, slogging across the ocean floor until they emerged on the far side, and shuddered.
“So that’s Maladar’s army,” Nakhil said. “Ghelim to obey his commands. They’d probably been waiting beneath the Clovenmont since he ruled Aurim.”
“They were,” Shedara said, her voice very soft. “I had a vision of a cave, when I first learned about Maladar. The Hooded One was there, along with … those. At the time, I thought they were just burial gifts—an army to accompany him to the afterlife, the way the old emperors liked to do. I never thought they might be nala’ini.”
“How many of them?” Roshambur asked.
Shedara shrugged. “Thousands.”
“Jijin’s beard,” Hult swore.
They watched the Ghelim struggle some more. They had been stuck in the silt for many hours—perhaps days—but they didn’t tire. They just kept fighting, trying to pull free, sinking deeper as time passed but never making a sound. The muck was merciless, refusing to let them go.
