Chapter 7

Uld, the Steamwall Mountains

Shedara had traveled from one end of Southern Hosk to the other, and up into the plains to the north. She had witnessed the great necropolises of Thenol, where tombs and mausoleums stretched from horizon to horizon. She had watched a black dragon pulled apart by blood-vines in the dank dark of the Blackwater swamps. She had spied on the dark knights of New Jelek, who had come across the sea not long before the Godless Night and who claimed to worship a goddess named Takhisis—a demon-deity unknown in Taladas. Despite this, she had never been anywhere that made her so uncomfortable as the Steamwalls.

Traveling overland—the hippogriff had taken her only to the edge of Armach—it had taken her three weeks to reach the jagged, smoke-wreathed mountains that dominated Hosk's east coast. Here was where the earth's wounds began, the outer edge of the great ring of fire that still boiled at Taladas's heart, where stone and flame had fallen from the heavens and smashed Old Aurim to oblivion. There were no lakes of magma here, as there were farther in, on the far side of the Boiling Sea, but the land here was still dreadful. The air stank of brimstone and hot metal, making tears sting her eyes despite the perfumed scarf she had tied around her nose and mouth. The air was hot and damp, and great waves of ash blew among the peaks like ghosts, leaving everything caked in gray. After a day, the cinders had mixed with the sweat that plastered her clothing to her skin, making a paste that seemed to cover every inch of her body. It felt like it would take years to get clean again.

The mountains themselves were just as forbidding. The Steamwalls had been thrown up in a day, the result of a massive number of volcanic eruptions in the wake of the Destruction. They were black, jagged things, threatening the skies like bony claws, all sharp obsidian and crumbling pumice, alive with steam vents and geysers that sent plumes of noxious steam billowing high into the air. In the distance, several peaks burned as new eruptions arose. Black smoke curled west on the wind and huge fountains of molten rock sprayed bombs that cooled in the air, then exploded when they hit ground again, spattering death everywhere. There had been no trees for days. Nothing but a hardy, rust-colored moss that made food for white, sickly lizards, which in turn made food for things far worse. Ahead, there were clouds of steam rising from the Boiling Sea—and the fires of Hitehkel, the great flaming wound where Aurim had been—reached miles into the air, painting the sky a sickly yellow.

Shedara hadn't seen anything green in over a week. Threading her way among the tangled passes through the Steamwalls, she thought, to her horror, that she was beginning to forget what the color looked like. Was there anything in the world but sulfur and soot and dark, rippling rock?

She still didn't know where she was going, but each day the path grew clearer. She felt close. Another day, maybe a little more, and she would find the spot where Ruskal had sent the Hooded One. If only the possibilities didn't seem to decrease with every league she walked.

Dwarves, she thought, making a sour face behind her scarf. Why must it be dwarves? The mountain-people weren't as bad as hobgoblins, or the death-lovers of Thenol, in that they did not torture captives before killing them. Still, they had never been friends to the elves. The Silvanaes revered nature. The dwarves destroyed it, ripping open the bones of mountains to prize jewels from the rock and clear-cutting woods to fuel their forges. In the old days, in the faraway lands of her ancestors, wars had been fought between elf and dwarf. Shedara had the suspicion that only two things kept the same from happening here: the distance between their lands, and how few there were of either race in Taladas. In her many years of wandering, she had seen only a handful of the wretched mountainfolk, gods be praised.

There was a rumbling, and the ground trembled beneath her feet. She stopped, putting a hand against the mountainside. The rock—black and flocked with cinders—was warm to the touch. Beneath, the molten stone was coursing. Three days ago she'd seen a volcano erupt from across a wide valley barely a mile away, had watched golden, liquid fire spill down its sides. It had been both beautiful and horrible to see, a beacon of death. If the mountain beside her decided to do the same, there would be no beauty to the sight at all. She would die here, encased forever in stone.

Be still, she bade the mountain. Leave me be, and I will not disturb your rest.

The tremor lasted another minute, then stopped. She tensed, waiting for the mountain's top to blow off, but it remained still, a black cloud covering it like a crown.

The hour was late, so as she crossed a narrow saddleback ridge to the next mountain she studied the face above her, looking for a cave where she could shelter for the night. It got cold in the Steamwalls after sunset, and the constant pall that hung in the air blocked the light of moon and star. With the heat of the volcanoes foiling her elvensight, she was doubly blind. Traversing the passes in the dark was asking to break an ankle, or to step over a cliff and plunge screaming into some chasm.

Half a league on, she found what she was searching for. Fifty feet above her, a cleft opened in the stone. She stopped, watching it for a while to make sure no steam was coming out that might cook her alive in the middle of the night. It remained dark and quiet, though, so she started climbing, grabbing cracks in the rock and stepping on tiny ledges. She didn't need her magic to help her with this. Though steep, the slope was rough enough to let her handle it with her own muscles.

The cave mouth was an overhang, which made the last part of the climb more difficult. She eyed it carefully, looking for the right purchase, then found it and pulled herself over. Gritting her teeth, she got hold of the stone lip, then kicked away from the cliff, leaving her legs to dangle over two hundred feet of nothing. She glanced down at the tangle of broken volcanic glass far, far below, grimacing.

Then, with a determined grunt, she began to swing, side to side, legs churning the air, each time her feet windmilling a little higher, left, right, then left… until her heel dug into the ledge beside her, bringing her to a stop. She paused for a breath and, clinging to the rock, pulled herself up the ledge and rolled over onto the floor of the cave. She lay panting for a moment, then reached down, drew a dagger, and peered inside.

The opening was shallow, and there was some old, dried guano on its floor, but nothing seemed to dwell within the cave. It would be enough shelter for one night, though her bones ached for the comfort of pine needles and soft earth. She cleared the floor of rock shards, then spoke a quick word of magic and passed her hands over the bare rock. A low fire sprang up, burning bright and warm despite the lack of fuel. That done, she took a blanket from her pack and used her throwing knives to pin it over the cave's entrance. The magical fire gave off no smoke and she sat down beside it, took a drink from her water-flask, and stared into the dancing flames. As she did, her mind cast back, as it did every evening, to the third night after she left Armach-nesti.

That night, the pearl medallion had grown heavy and warm against her breast, and began to shimmer with pinkish light, as if both Solis and Lunis were trapped inside. The moment she reached for it, a strange feeling had struck her, as though there were another mind in her head. Fighting off the urge to let go of the amulet, she had focused all her thoughts upon the other presence within her brain.

When the presence finally spoke, she hadn't been surprised. "I have tidings for you, Shedara," the voice of Thalaniya had said. "I have spent these days in study, reading books of ancient lore, written in the time of my grandmother's grandmother, when Old Aurim was strong and ruled Taladas. Now I must tell you what I have learned."

"About the Hooded One," Shedara had said—thinking the words, not speaking them aloud.

"Yes."

"In its youth, Aurim was a bright realm, the center of human civilization in Taladas: a land of art and magic, philosophers and heroes, that warred against dragons and ogres to forge civilization in the wilderness. Squabbling city-states and ancestor-worshipping barbarians came together, forming the only great empire this continent has ever known. Unlike long-lost Ansalon, where Ergoth gave birth to Solamnia, which birthed Istar in turn, there had only been Aurim, mighty and unchallenged, covering more than half of Taladas at its height.

"As the centuries passed and its power continued to grow, however, the golden realm's emperors grew degenerate, no longer caring about those who dwelt beyond the walls of their lofty, rose-shaped palace. They studied the arts of Nuvis, the black moon, and sought the secrets of the wild-wizards of old, in the days before the taming of magic. For seven generations, each fouler than the last, this dynasty of dark sorcerers and its disciples enforced a reign of terror across the empire and beyond.

"The last and worst of these was Maladar an-Desh, called Maladar the Faceless in his later years. The histories did not tell how he lost his face, though every sage had theories—a conjured demon from the Abyss had turned on him, or a horrible spell had gone wrong, or he had ruined his own face deliberately, to gain some unusual power—but all agreed he was hideous. His eyes, ears, and nose were mere black pits; the bones of his cheeks were laid bare and surrounded by black, puckered flesh; and his lower jaw was gone completely, so that all that remained of his lipless mouth were his upper teeth and the stump of his tongue, jutting from a ghastly hole at the top of his throat. To hide his hideousness, Maladar kept his face hidden beneath a hood, revealing it only when he wished to strike terror into those nearby. His magic allowed him to see, hear, and speak from within the cowl's shadows.

"Though he only ruled Aurim for a brief time, the list of atrocities Maladar and his followers committed while he sat the throne was sickeningly long. Among the worst of these was the Great Impalement, when—following a failed attempt by the nobility to overthrow him—he ordered the second son of every lord in the empire brought to the Square of Spears, which stood before the imperial palace. There, as Maladar watched from the highest tower, his followers skewered every one of the young men on stakes of barbed iron. The streets of Aurim echoed with the cries of dying men and boys for two days and nights. It was said that he gathered their blood and bathed in it, then had the bodies fed to giant crocodiles in the rivers outside the city.

"Even worse was the fate of Am Durn. A beautiful city, whose walls were sheathed in silver and whose towers gleamed green with malachite, Am Durn had been the third-greatest citadel in all the empire. It was a city of song, and art, and peace. But when the sultanate of Olm, Aurim's southernmost province, rose in rebellion against the throne, Am Durn's prince refused to send an army to aid Maladar in suppressing the uprising. In reprisal, Maladar called upon the sea itself to rise up and take revenge for him, and the sea obeyed: a thousand-foot high wall of water descended on the city, smashing its academies and amphitheaters, then drowning the pieces. When the waters receded, nothing remained of Am Durn but kelp-choked rubble and broken bodies, swarming with crustaceans. Maladar's wrath had wiped it from the face of Krynn.

"All accounts agreed that Maladar deserved his singular ending. After nine years wearing the emperor's golden helm, after killing countless thousands of his subjects and torturing many more, he fell, in the end, to his own cupbearer. One night, the servant, a boy of eight summers whose father and brothers had died horribly in the imperial dungeons, laced Maladar's wine with the bile of a green dragon. How a servant got such a potent venom no one knew, but Maladar died screaming in agony.

"That should have been the end of it," Thalaniya's voice had said in Shedara's mind, the image of the Faceless Emperor's thrashing body still vivid there. "Maladar was heirless, and his dynasty ended with him. Nobler emperors followed, though Aurim would never regain its old glory, and would fall into evil again in time—an evil only the Destruction would end. It was whispered, though, that Maladar was not dead at all. In case someone slew him, he had placed his soul within an object, to keep it safe from harm. This object was a statue, crafted of black stone in his likeness, cowled to hide a face the sculptor had never carved. The statue was called the Hooded One. His disciples swore to awaken the statue, their master, one day.

"There followed a grand purging—all across the empire, every icon of Maladar was smashed, sanctified, and scattered to ward against his return. For a century, scholars believed that no statue bearing his likeness remained—but eventually rumors arose that a sect of his followers had kept the Hooded One secret and safe. Only the Destruction ended these rumors, for the statue must have been obliterated with the rest of Aurim. So the sages have believed, ever since."

Sorrow crept into Thalaniya's voice. "They were wrong, it seems. The statue remains, and fell into Ruskal Eight-Finger's unwitting possession, brought out of the ruins of Aurim by treasure-seekers. Now someone is looking for this great artifact, and will kill to find it.

"It is said that, if Maladar returns, his wrath will be beyond measure. His power is greater than any we now know. Whoever seeks to free him must be stopped…

"And Shedara, my child… for the sake of Taladas, the Hooded One must be destroyed."

Shedara woke shivering, the magical fire having gone out. She knew it was dawn—the spell that conjured the flames had disappeared when the day's first light appeared in the sky. Beyond the blanket she had set over the cave mouth appeared the sickly, brown glow of what passed for sunshine in the Steamwalls. She rose from where she lay, took a drink of fresh water from her flask—it chased the rotten-eggs-and-ashes taste from her mouth, for a while at least—then broke camp. When she was done, she crouched in the cleft, staring out at the black peaks that stretched off into the poisonous clouds that were heaped on the horizon.

Bough and branch, she swore silently, I want out of this place.

She shut her eyes, concentrating, as her hands began to move before her. The words of the spell scuttled through her mind and down over her tongue. Lunis was waning today, a ruddy fingernail beyond the mountains' haze, and the magic felt sluggish as it poured through her veins—but it was strong enough still to shape the spell she desired. As she concentrated she pictured the statue, as it had appeared in the Seeing-pool. When the picture was fixed in her mind, she held her right hand out, flat before her, and forced the magic out through her fingertips. A part of her went with it, and she had the disorienting sensation that she had leaped from the cave and was flying out across the void between the mountains. It was only her spirit flying, however. Her body remained where it was, sitting safely in the mouth of the cave, an empty shell awaiting her return at the spell's ending.

Even though she had cast the spell many times before, some part of her still wanted to panic, to break the enchantment and cry out in disoriented fear. Shedara was disciplined, however, and had learned well how to control both the magic and herself. She let her mind roam, questing across the Steamwalls for the Hooded One. Wreaths of toxic vapor flashed past, and she passed through the plume of a vent that sent boiling steam rushing a mile into the air. In the distance, a volcano belched ash in a long trail across the sky. Below, a noxious brown stream coursed among the peaks, its rapids foaming orange as it rushed down toward the Boiling Sea. She could see the open water, barely three leagues from where her body perched, roiling and bubbling and giving off steam that poured back down on the hither slopes as smoldering rain. There, perched improbably around the toxic stream's mouth, was a small village of stone houses, carved into the rock on terraces overlooking the valley.

The town was five hundred feet tall, built almost entirely on the vertical, showing little but doors and windows, and occasional friezes and pillars hewn from the living rock. Stairs cut into the slope led from one level to the next, zigzagging their way to the very top, Here and there, small, bearded figures moved on the paths, or stood on ledges overlooking the abyss below.

So it is dwarves, Shedara thought, her distaste growing. They're the ones who bought the Hooded One from Ruskal.

She was about to release the spell when she spied something else: more small figures, darker and more slender than the dwarves, climbing up the sheer slope to the town. They moved swiftly, with a sureness that even her thief-training envied, and there was something strange about their aspect. It was as if they weren't quite there, for every shadow they touched seemed to blend with them, like water-droplets running together. Looking at them for more than a few moments made her feel dizzy.

Miles away, Shedara's body leaned over the edge of the cave-mouth, lips moving, silently shouting a warning the dwarves would never hear. Her enemies had found the statue's trail, and they were a step ahead of her.

Her eyes snapped open, and in a rush of vertigo she was back in her own body, still far from the village. There was no way to reach the dwarves in time, but she jumped up anyway and scrambled down the cliff to the path below. She moved with reckless speed, heedless of how close she came to falling. She could not lose the image of those awful shadow-things, spider-climbing toward the unsuspecting dwarves. Nor did she have any illusions about what would happen when they reached the village. The slaughter would be beginning, even now.

She half-slid the last fifteen feet to the path, landing on the balls of her feet. Then, with the cries of the distant dwarves ringing in her ears, she began to run.

Uld, the place was called: an ugly name for an ugly people. She looked down at the map she had brought, at the tiny dot on the Steamwalls' eastern edge. Then she looked up, and knew the dot of Uld would be marked on maps no more.

Even from here, standing on an outcrop half a mile away, she could tell it was over. She had seen towns, even entire cities, laid waste by war and calamity, but there was something unsettling about this place that she'd observed only once before. An unmistakable stillness about the village—no ruins, no flames… not even smoke. Just the silence of death.

During the Godless Night, she had stumbled across a human town whose inhabitants had all died from plague. It had been weirdly tranquil, empty, the buildings intact and filled with the dead. Uld had that same feeling to it.

She made no sound as she crept down toward the village. There was no sign of the shadow-creatures, but she didn't take chances. She held a flat knife in either hand, blades pinched between her fingers, ready to throw. Ahead, heavy stone gates loomed above the path. They stood open. The dwarves hadn't known there was a threat until it was already among them. The body of one watchman hung over the battlements, his throat cut to the bone. No blood dripped from the ghastly wound, though both carotid and jugular had been severed, on either side.

Another dwarf lay in a broken heap in the middle of the road. He'd been ripped open, entrails spilling out on the stones. He hadn't bled, either. Shedara crept past the corpses, on up the trail. The trail worked its way up the cliff, switching back and forth until it reached the first row of homes. Here were more bodies, sprawled on the ground and slumped against walls. A couple held axes and hammers, and one had a sword, but most had been unarmed when they died, cut and slashed and torn. To her amazement, Shedara felt pity for the dwarves. They were an unpleasant people, but they did not deserve this butchery. No one did.

So it went, from delving to delving. She found a forge with the blacksmith slumped over his anvil, his tongs lying just beyond his unmoving fingers. A hundred yards away, an elderly couple sat at a table in their home, a barely, eaten meal spread before them. They had just sat down for their morning repast when the shadow-creatures came and carved them open. Children lay in their beds, murdered as they dreamed. There must have been four hundred dwarves in Uld, and not one remained alive. Nor was there any sign of what she sought.

The Hooded One was gone.

Thalaniya listened to her report, her face white in Shedara's mind. She looked away for a moment, shook her head.

Shedara clutched the pearl medallion in her hand, waiting for instructions. To anyone watching, she might have seemed a madwoman, moving her lips soundlessly and cocking her ears, talking to no one—or, perhaps, herself. But there was no one left alive to watch.

"I must know more," Thalaniya said finally.

"What would you have me do, Highness?"

Thalaniya hesitated, reluctance in her eyes, and Shedara knew at once the terrible answer. The sense of distaste that flooded her mind told her what was required. Shedara gritted her teeth, waiting for the words to be spoken.

"It seems to me," said the Voice, "that the only ones who know the answers… are the dwarves."

Shedara nodded, cold inside. "If that is your wish, Highness. We will speak again after."

Thalaniya nodded. Her image flickered, then faded, leaving Shedara alone. She sat on Uld's highest ledge, the lifeless village arrayed beneath her. Carrion birds circled—mangy, ragged creatures tumor-ridden from the vapors blowing in off the sea. Dwarf-meat was tough, but the sheer number of them promised a rare feast to the scrawny vultures. Shedara watched them dive, and come back up gobbling terrible things.

"We are not so different, you and I," she told the birds. "Not with what I'm about to do."

Necromancy was a forbidden art, and had been since before the First Destruction. The elves, who revered life more than any other people, loathed it in particular. The use of magic to control the dead, like that used by the Thenolite church, was a profane thing, punishable by permanent exile. Still, moon-thieves were versed in all forms of magic—even the unspeakable ones. Sometimes, dire tactics were necessary.

Shedara had only used the dark art twice, the last time more than twenty years ago. Today would make a third. She shuddered at the thought, at the memory of how the necromancy felt. Yet it was the only way to discover what had happened here. The only way to know the Hooded One's fate.

Rising, she made her way down the winding path, back to where the bodies began. She needed a fresh one, and one still relatively intact. The dead did not cling to their shells long, particularly if those shells were despoiled.

It took her a while to find what she sought. The shadows had ruined most of the corpses, and the birds were quickly ravaging the rest. At last, though, she spotted a warrior in armor, unmarked except for a deep gash in his side, which had cloven through his lung. He had died a quick death, which was good. The ones who had suffered were harder to command.

She laid him out, flat upon the ground, and took off his helm. There were flies on his mouth; she brushed them away. His homely face was made uglier by a grimace of agony. Like every other body in Uld—like Ruskal, his minotaur bodyguard, and his pet tylors—there was no blood, not a drop anywhere. The shadows had drained it all, it seemed.

Reaching out with her magic, Shedara sought the black moon. It was there, heavy above her, almost full. Nuvis, the source of all dark enchantments, marked in the night sky only by the stars' absences. Its presence felt like poison thorns digging into her mind. She focused on it, moving her hands and speaking profane words to draw down its power.

The spell came together, making bile rise in her throat. She cried out, forcing the magic out of herself again, and burning as it went.

Into the corpse.

Something appeared above the body: a gray smudge, a wisp of fog. It seeped out of the dead dwarf's nose and mouth, coalesced, grew, and took form. Its shape was the same as the corpse beneath it, writhing and twisting on some unseen wind. Its face was shriveled, its cheeks were sunken, and its lips pulled back to reveal long teeth. The eyes were blank, white. Hate came off the ghost in waves.

She stared at it and felt tears sting her eyes. It was hard, holding the spirit here. Pity reared inside her—and fear. The ghost would harm her if she lost control. It could kill her.

"I will free you soon," she said. "But first, I have questions."

It glared. Its teeth were sharp, like a rat's.

"Will you answer?" she asked.

"I must," the dwarf replied. "Or do you offer a choice?"

She shook her head.

The ghost's eyes flared with white fire. "Then begin."

Tears crept down Shedara's cheeks. She fought the urge to vomit. "There was a statue… ." she said.