Chapter 1

The Burning Sea

He felt the blade go in. He felt it with each step his body took. Barreth Forlo thought he would feel it forever—every day, every moment, until he died.

And when would that be? Soon, perhaps. Before his next breath, if he had any say. But he didn’t, of course. He hadn’t since that day, that awful day, at Akh-tazi.

Forlo had never considered life to be fair; few soldiers did, and certainly not officers. He’d seen too many good men die untimely, too many cowards escape, too many battles lost to sheer stupid chance. The gods, if indeed there were gods, were a capricious lot at best: vain and detached, if not outright cruel. That could be the only explanation for all the suffering he’d seen in his many years.

It was the only thing that could account for that.

Gods, he’d come so close—chasing halfway across Taladas and back again after the bastards who’d taken his wife. It had been a long road, beginning with the damned statue, the Hooded One, which had come into his possession by chance. He’d thought the statue was simply a valuable relic left over from the long-dead empire of Aurim. He’d hoped to sell it for a fortune, so he could enjoy his recent retirement from the armies of the Minotaur League. But he’d learned different: an elf thief, Shedara of Armach, had come to steal the statue and told him the truth. It was more than just an artifact of an ancient realm, for within it slumbered the soul of Maladar the Faceless, the most wicked of Aurim’s rulers.

Then the horde had come: thousands of horse-riding barbarians, the whole of the people known as the Uigan. Forlo had forgotten the Hooded One for a time, leaving it behind with his wife in his castle of Coldhope, to fight the savages when they crossed the straits of the Tiderun. Against all hope and odds, he’d won that battle, and—even stranger—he had found a true friend in Hult, the bodyguard of Chovuk Boyla, the prince of the Uigan.

It had all been a ruse, though, as he discovered far too late. The horde was a distraction, one that left cities smoldering in its wake, true, but only a small piece on the shivis board… as, he supposed, was he. He’d returned to Coldhope to find it emptied, its few defenders slain, except for Shedara. The Hooded One was gone… and with it his wife, Essana, and the unborn child she carried. It was their first. A black dragon had taken her, and the only clue it left behind was one of its scales, torn off in the fighting.

From there, it had been a race against time. He, Hult, and Shedara, joined by a wild elf named Eldako, had set out on the Hooded One’s trail. Their journeys had taken them to the mighty city of Kristophan, where he’d killed the emperor of the minotaurs, then north to the snowy wastes of Panak, where they learned the black dragon’s name—Gloomwing—from the Wyrm-namer, the oldest dragon in the world. From there they picked up Gloomwing’s trail, following him first to the kender valleys of Marak, then to the dank jungles of Neron. They had fought shadows and tentacle-mouthed creatures born of madness, and they slew Gloomwing himself. In the end, they had found the Hooded One and Essana, atop the ancient alien temple known as Akh-tazi, deep in the jungles of Neron. Her captors, the Faceless Brethren, had killed Eldako, and ensorceled Hult and Shedara. They hadn’t been able to stop Forlo, though, not even with all their magic and trickery. He’d found her, Essana, his Starlight.

But she was not alone.

He vividly remembered the young man who wielded the knife. The memory of his face was as hard a wound as the blade itself; it had been his own face, twenty years younger, beardless, the hair still full and dark, only with his mother’s eyes. Their son, still in Essana’s womb when last he saw her before riding off to battle. Perhaps half a year had passed since then, but the boy had been grown supernaturally and was already a man whose face lit with the fervor of a fanatic. He’d raised the dagger to sacrifice his own mother. If Forlo had had his sword in hand, he would have struck his son down. It would have broken his mind, but he knew it, in his heart: he would have killed his son to save Essana.

He’d lost his sword in the fighting, though. He had only his body to block his son’s blow.

The blade had gone in, and the moment it did, he’d known the blow was lethal. He’d been cut in battle too many times, dealt too many killing strokes himself, to believe any different. He’d found his Starlight, maybe even saved her; maybe Hult and Shedara could get to the boy before he tried a second time to kill Essana. Then it all would have been worth it. He’d let out his last breath—it felt like a sigh—and waited for death to claim him.

Only it hadn’t.

At first, lying there motionless atop his wife’s unconscious form, he hadn’t understood why he wasn’t dead. Then he’d felt it, the presence hanging above him, and he’d known. There had been another waiting near the altar, a ghost bound to a statue that bore its likeness, a horrible creature with a skull for a face, a mad tyrant who should have been dust a thousand years ago. It was Maladar, freed at last from his prison of stone. The sacrifice had been for him: Essana was to have died upon the altar, and her blood would have broken the binding spells, let the hideous specter claim his son as his new body. Forlo had been allowed to reach the temple so he could watch it happen; his grief, his rage, would have given Maladar, once the ruler of Aurim, new power in his son’s body.

Forlo had thwarted that and spared his son as well as Essana. But blood had been spilled upon the altar of Akh-tazi regardless, and the magic Maladar’s ghost had set in motion would not be stopped. Forlo had felt the darkness surround him, suffuse him. It was as if every drop of blood in his body were turning to ice—only this ice burned. If his body had let him, he would have screamed, but he’d only lain there, helpless, as Maladar claimed him instead of his son.

The pain went away. But things only got worse after that.

The ancient sorcerer’s spirit, swelling with power as it found itself in a body of flesh once more, had shoved Forlo aside without a moment’s hesitation, burying him deep within his own mind as it took control of his flesh. He’d only been able to look on from the edges of his own consciousness, like a spectator at a gladiatorial match, as Maladar made him stand and face his friends. He could only listen as the black wizard gloated over his victory. Maladar’s words were spoken in a voice that was at once Forlo’s own and something far darker. Maladar had cast a spell, and Akh-tazi vanished.

The next thing he’d known, Forlo was in an inexact place.

Forlo knew the tales, had learned them when he was a child. Everyone in Taladas knew a version of the story. Four hundred years ago, the continent had been whole, unbroken, most of it covered by a single vast empire, a realm of riches and splendor, a land called Aurim. Maladar had been only one of Aurim’s rulers and far from its last, and while he was certainly the most evil man ever to sit upon the dragon-horn throne, that darkness had not abated after his death. Finally, the gods had tired of the cruelty that lay at Aurim’s heart, and they had sent their punishment: a massive, fiery stone that struck the fabled City of Songs, smashing it into oblivion and shattering Taladas forever.

The survivors of the Great Destruction—and they were few and wretched—had fled from Aurim’s outer provinces, in time establishing new realms on the continent’s fringes. At its heart, however, the wound the gods had dealt did not heal. In Aurim’s place roiled a new sea, not of water, but of molten rock. Hith’s Cauldron, men called it: an ocean of lava and flame that raged beneath a sky black with ash and poisonous fumes. It was said that the gnomes had found a way to survive on its shores and even ply its currents in their mad tinkerers’ boats, but no other mortal had ever set out across it and lived.

And Forlo was crossing Hith’s Cauldron—or rather, Maladar was. The wizard’s spirit remained within his body, working it like a grotesque puppet while Forlo could do nothing to stop him. Under the control of the Faceless Emperor, he, Forlo, walked over the Burning Sea.

True, he didn’t actually touch the ocean of magma, but still, what he was doing should have been impossible. He moved along a narrow iron bridge, the metal cool to the touch even though it hung barely an arm’s length above the sea’s surface. Great geysers of flame erupted to either side, and hurricane winds blew cinders and the stinging reek of brimstone into his face. By rights, he should have burst into flame and died screaming, but Maladar’s magic was as strong as whatever kept the bridge from melting, and it protected him from the inferno. To Forlo, the air above the Cauldron seemed no hotter than a midsummer’s day back home.

He hadn’t eaten, drunk, or slept for days or weeks. Time was difficult, with no sun or stars visible beyond the smoke-laden sky, but he guessed about a fortnight had passed since he’d stood on solid ground. Maladar’s magic was sustaining him, he supposed, for he didn’t feel any hunger, thirst, or weariness. He had no doubt that the wizard would cast his body aside like a child’s forgotten toy if the opportunity presented itself—he’d heard the sorcerer say so, in his own voice—but for now, the Faceless Emperor’s spirit was treating him well.

Two weeks of walking, and his journey was barely half done. The Cauldron was vast, perhaps two hundred leagues across. He was bound for its center, the heart of the maelstrom, where the gods’ wrath had fallen upon the City of Songs. There, the legends said, a tower of living flame had once stood, rising high above the sea. Chaldar, scholars called this tower, which meant flame-spire in the minotaur tongue. In the years after the Destruction, it had been visible from the Cauldron’s farthest shores, but when the gods fled the world after the Dread Winter, some forty years ago, they had taken all magic with them. The enchantments that kept the Chaldar aloft failed, and it came crashing down.

As far as anyone knew, it had not returned.

“I will rebuild it,” Forlo murmured; only it wasn’t him, not really. Yes, it was his voice, but Forlo had no more control over his voice than his legs. It was Maladar who worked his lungs, his tongue, his lips. “It will rise again… and Aurim with it. The old glories will return, and all will bow before the might of the City of Songs. The minotaurs, the elves, the men of Thenol and the Tamire… they will bow, or they will burn.”

Forlo’s spirit groaned, trying to push against the bonds that gripped him. If he could just shove Maladar aside, wrest control for even a moment, he could end this travesty. He could leap off the bridge, into the fire. But he couldn’t. He was a hostage in his own body.

Together, Forlo and the dark being who controlled him marched on.

Maladar felt the warrior’s struggles and did not care. Indeed, they pleased him. Barreth Forlo was only one more life, after all. Maladar had ended thousands of lives, most them after great suffering. And, after all, he had been imprisoned for so long—trapped in the Hooded One, well beyond the time his disciples ought to have freed him. His plans had called for his release after only five hundred years, but something had gone wrong, and twice that span had passed instead. And his imprisonment had been far worse than Barreth Forlo’s: no sight, no sound, no senses at all… for ten centuries.

Besides, Forlo had tried to thwart Maladar and nearly succeeded. All of Maladar’s plans had come within a heartbeat of collapsing, his soul a razor’s breadth from falling, howling, into the Abyss. For that, Forlo deserved suffering far worse than being trapped deep within his own body.

There would be time enough for punishing Forlo, though. Maladar forgot about him for the moment and focused on the journey ahead.

He had known these lands when last he lived. Once, the land beneath his feet had been the province of Yush, an ancient mountain realm that had been one of Aurim’s earliest conquests. From its ore-rich mines had come gold and iron, star opals and the blue gems called Manith’s Tears, prized by jewelers all over the empire. Its wealth, mined by dwarf and goblin slaves, had filled the imperial coffers. Yush’s riches alone had financed most of the wars that led to Aurim overrunning Taladas.

Yush was gone, though, like the rest of Aurim. The Master, mightiest of the unlamented Faceless Brethren, had told him of the Destruction and the Cauldron. The tale had unnerved Maladar: Aurim had been the only thing he truly loved, and the place was destroyed, melted away into chaos. Hearing the tale was easy, however, compared with witnessing the devastation firsthand. That the gods would do that, would go so far to cheat him of his destiny, infuriated him.

He understood why his imprisonment had lasted so long. Only fortune had spared him at all, for the easternmost reaches of Aurim were among the few parts of the empire that endured, though even they were mostly dead lands, ashes and dust haunted by hobgoblins and worse. The only habitable parts were the Rainward Isles, far from here, broken off from the mainland by the force of the Destruction.

Other than that, Aurim was gone, lost forever—or so the gods had hoped. They had forgotten Maladar, though… all of them but Hith the Cowled, the Dark One. Hith had dominion over the Burning Sea, and Maladar’s soul had made a bargain with Hith, during the long, sleepless years of his imprisonment. In return for destroying certain realms—the Imperial League of the minotaurs, for one, and also the Rainwards—Hith would let the Faceless Emperor raise the Chaldar once more from the Cauldron. And in the shadow of that blazing tower, the fallen empire would rise anew, first the City of Songs then the lands beyond. Aurim would be reborn, and Maladar would rule over Taladas, as he’d planned all along. All he had to do was cross the Cauldron.

His destination was close. At last, it was so close.

Maladar’s gaze seldom shifted from the bridge ahead of him, stretching on toward the dark and distant horizon. It ran arrow-straight, its black, fire-pitted surface a thread of darkness through the Cauldron’s fire. It continued to the center of the sea, to the place where the Chaldar had once stood and one day would stand again. His eyes flicked up now and again as if he might glimpse the span’s end, but of course there was no sign. He still had fifty leagues to go—two more weeks’ travel in Barreth Forlo’s body. The journey might have been quicker in the younger, stronger body of Forlo’s son, the man-child whom the Brethren had dubbed the Taker. His body was less troubled by the onset of middle age. But fate and ill fortune had kept him from claiming the son, so he’d settled for what he could get. Forlo was not an ideal vessel, but he would have to do.

So intent was Maladar on the road before him that it was some time before he realized he was no longer alone. It was, in fact, Forlo’s own instincts that alerted him—a prickling at the nape of his neck, the itch to reach for the empty scabbard that hung by his side. Maladar hesitated at the unfamiliar sensation but did not stop. He felt no fear; he hadn’t felt fear since he was a child, long ago. He simply relaxed Forlo’s body, flexing its fingers, pressing its tongue against its upper teeth to begin the incantation of a spell. Then, one eyebrow rising, he looked to his left.

Tall walls of flame danced above the Cauldron, ever-shifting, gold and crimson and faint wisps of blue. It was a dizzying sight, curtains of fire parting and closing again, rising into tall whirlwinds or rippling like water across the magma’s surface. There was something different about them now, though: a presence that lurked deep in their heart. No, it was not just one presence; there were a multitude hidden among the flames, flickers of movement that were more than random conflagration. It was hard to count them, so deeply did the fires conceal them, but he thought there might be scores, perhaps hundreds. And they were on the other side of the bridge as well, in a waiting throng.

Maladar moved Forlo’s fingers again, shifting them into a different pose. His tongue dropped back to press against his palate as he chose a unique spell from the thousands he had learned—or created—over his long life. He didn’t delay; stopping in his tracks, he threw up his hands and began to cast.

The black moon, Nuvis, was close to full that day. Its power raced through him, bringing more joy than any wine or dream-smoke or pleasures of the flesh. Forlo’s battle-scarred hands danced in the air; his deep voice intoned words in a language he had never spoken before Maladar took him. The sounds were like the scuttling of creatures across the seafloor. He raised his arms, and the magic burst from him in a blue wave that raced across the Cauldron’s surface and high into the air.

Rain began to fall.

The first drops were small and scattered, hissing away to steam before they struck the Burning Sea. They quickly built to a shower, however, and then to a downpour so powerful that the flames began to hiss and flicker. Great gouts of vapor shrieked into the air as the fire died, leaving his stalkers nowhere to hide.

They were beings of living flame, white at their hearts, hotter than the fires he had just doused. They shrugged off the rainstorm, surrounding him, watching with eyes of green witch-light. They had the shapes of men, more or less, and each stood ten feet high, hovering above the Cauldron’s churning surface. Each held a sword, also made of flame.

The fire minions regarded Maladar without making a sound. He felt their hunger and hate and savored their enmity. These, he thought, might be useful… if I don’t have to destroy them.

“I have quenched the fires that cloaked you,” he said, steepling his fingers before him. “Do not doubt that, should I choose, I can do the same to you. Speak now.”

The minions said nothing, only continued to stare, shifting and sizzling beneath the deluge. So Maladar killed one of them.

It was quick, the movement so sudden the minions had no time to react. He simply spoke one word, rippling his fingers in a motion that took less than a heartbeat, and ending by pointing at the nearest of the minions. A white ray of frost, colder than the winds of Panak, lanced from his fingertip and struck the minion in its left eye. The creature let out a whump, as of igniting oil, then flickered out, fading away to nothing.

Maladar glared at the minions, folding his hands before him once more. They looked at where their fellow had been, then back at him.

“Speak,” he said again.

They reacted that time. One of their number, who looked no different than any of the rest, glided forward and stepped onto the bridge. The iron glowed red where its feet touched; the scent of hot metal stung Maladar’s nostrils. The minion approached him, sword held low, and stopped three paces away. Its heat baked his skin, making sweat trickle down his face. He did not brush the sweat away, did not make any move.

“Who are you?” he asked. “Why do you trouble me?”

The minion’s eyes bored into his. Its mouth opened, and the fire within was deep scarlet. The rest of them did the same, speaking in perfect chorus. Their voices were the roaring of forge flames, the crackle of forests burning. The words came from all around.

“We do not trouble you,” they said. “ You are the one who intrudes upon our home.”

He smiled—a strange feeling, to do such a thing again. He hadn’t had a face since his first years upon the throne. “Ah,” he said, “but you are mistaken. These lands belong to me, by right of crown and conquest. I am Maladar, once emperor of Aurim.”

The minions glanced at one another. At first he thought they were impressed, but instead they made a strange sound, a thunder of explosions all around. After a moment, Maladar realized they were laughing.

“Aurim?” they asked. “Aurim is no more. It has been cleansed from the world, drowned beneath this molten rock.”

Maladar allowed himself another small, slight smile. “Oh? Then what lies at the bottom of this sea? You know the truth as well as I do, you who have swum its depths. Hith safeguards the City of Songs, awaiting my return.”

There was no sound for ten beats of Barreth Forlo’s stolen heart save the whisper of boiling rain. The minions regarded him without emotion, their mirth gone.

“You are the one whose coming was foretold, then? The Sleeper in the Stone?”

Maladar nodded, saying nothing. Again there was silence, that time for twenty heartbeats.

“No,” the minions said, “you are not. Else, where is your army?”

It might have been his imagination, but Maladar thought there was amusement in those blank, green eyes. Were the fire minions mocking him? He considered killing another—perhaps the one who stood upon the bridge—then decided against it. He’d made that point already. Instead, his brow furrowed.

“My army?”

The minions answered him, but their voices were different. They had taken on a deeper, more sonorous tone, one he recognized at once. It had been his own voice, his old voice in his old body, cremated and scattered long ago. The voice spoke in verse, in an ancient meter:

With that, the rain ended, not a slow draining away, as it ought to have, but all at once, the suddenness of it taking Maladar aback. The flames leaped anew from the Cauldron’s surface, swallowing the minions, all save the one who stood upon the bridge. Now the flame creature was ridiculing him, of that there was no doubt. It rose up off the iron, floating on gusts of scalding wind.

“It is not your time,” the minion said, and its words echoed all around, as before. Its kin were still out there, hidden, waiting. “You may not pass. Try, and we will feast upon your ashes.”

Anger swelled inside Maladar, a cold and glittering stone in his heart. “I am the Faceless Emperor! This is my destiny.”

“Not without your army,” the minions replied. “It was foretold. Now go, and return when the prophecy is fulfilled.”

A shriek tore across the sky, high above. Maladar looked up and saw a shape moving through the fume: a huge, serpentine form made of flowing fire, gone almost as soon as he had glimpsed it. He saw enough to know what the shape was: a dragon, born of the Cauldron, larger and mightier than any mortal wyrm Taladas had ever seen. And he knew the moment he beheld it that it could destroy him. At last, he felt fear grip his stomach. He loathed himself for it.

The fire minions laughed, the flames rising higher.

He was walking again, several hours later, when he felt another presence beside him. He did not need to look to see who it was: the feeling of awe and dread that swept over him was unmistakable. Gliding along beside him was an empty, billowing black shroud: the foul god Hith’s form in the mortal world.

“You have turned around,” said the god. “The Chaldar is behind you.”

Maladar glowered at him. “The Chaldar is beyond my reach… as you well knew.”

The shroud’s shoulders moved, indicative of a shrug. “Perhaps. But if I had told you when you stood upon the shore that it was not yet time to cross the Cauldron, would you have believed me? No. You had a thousand years of hunger boiling in you, Maladar. A millennium of dreams and madness within your prison.”

Maladar considered that. Hith was a liar and a cheat—the tales of the god’s trickery were beyond counting—but here he spoke plainly. There could have been no dissuading Maladar, for his mind had been set when he embarked on his journey. Now though, he had time to reflect, time to plan.

He needed an army, and he knew where to find it.

“I will return to this place,” he said. “And my soldiers will be marching at my back. Those fiery wretches will bow before me… them and their dragon.”

He glanced sideways, expecting an answer. But Hith was gone, vanished into nothingness once more.