Chapter 3

The Blackrain Hills, Old Aurim

Knives won’t be any use,” Hult hissed. He swiped at the air with his sword, getting it moving in wide loops between him and the trolls. “These things have thick hides. They’ll just bounce off.”

He peered through the gloom, hoping for another flash of lightning. He was blind out there, a terrible feeling with the trolls so close. The creatures were dangerous enough; even a battle-axe couldn’t always cleave through their horny skin, and when it did, the brutes’ wounds healed with alarming speed. He’d fought creatures that were kin to these two years ago, when his people were at one of their grazing camps near the Ring Mountains. The mountain trolls preyed on cattle, goats, and sometimes the Uigan themselves. Entire herds had been lost, until Hult’s master, Chovuk Boyla, had gathered his warriors and those of several other clans and hunted the beasts down.

The Uigan had lost fourteen good men before the trolls were destroyed. Fourteen out of fifty—and the numbers had been in his people’s favor. Before them were two trolls for each of them, him and Shedara. And he couldn’t see them in the darkness and black rain.

Be with me, Jijin, he prayed. His hand sweated as he swung his blade up-over-down-back, up-over-down-back, a quick and rhythmic pattern that made a whooshing sound as the sword cut through the air. I have not come this far, and through so much pain, to die now, in this desolate place. Get us out of this, and I will kill a dozen goats in your name.

His god didn’t answer; he never did. Hult was no shaman. But he did hear something, a spidery chanting from Shedara’s direction, and glanced her way in time to see a ball of blue-white light flare to life above her upturned palm. He winced, turning away before the spell could blind him, then crept his gaze warily back over. The elf looked ashen, drained, as she pushed the eldritch light up into the air. The ball floated up, glimmering bright enough to make the rocks around them glow like ghosts. The grimy rain became slashes in the air as it fell through the magical luminance.

“Well done,” Hult said.

Shedara smiled. “Glad you approve. Quick, to your right!”

Hult whirled, bringing his sword up in a parry that saved him from being ripped limb from limb. One of the trolls had stolen up, trying to flank him in the dark. The brutes were damnably quiet, particularly with the noise of rain all around. Jagged talons clutched at him, and he batted them aside with his sword, which struck the creature’s wrist hard enough to break the skin. The troll bellowed a wordless roar, full of hate and pain, and stumbled back with black blood coursing from its wound. Instantly, though, the bleeding began to lessen, the skin to knit and heal as he watched. He hacked at the creature two more times but only managed to drive it back a few steps.

The other trolls were close, slouching into the light of Shedara’s spell. They were hideous, even by troll standards: The one he’d been fighting looked like something had chewed off its nose and the entire right side of its face. Another had one normal arm, but the other was a bent and withered thing, no larger than a child’s. A third moved with an awkward, lurching gait, one of its legs so heavy with fleshy growths that it couldn’t bend at the knee. The fourth was emaciated, so disease-devoured that it seemed mummified.

That last one came at him next, its bones sliding beneath its wrinkled skin, moving faster than such a huge creature had any right to. Instinct took over, and Hult spun, snapping his sword around as the skeletal troll’s teeth snapped shut a hand’s breadth from his face. Its breath smelled like a week-old battlefield, and he tasted bile as his blade hacked into the troll’s arm at the elbow.

Into and through.

He heard the snap of bone breaking, felt a brief tug, and the troll’s left arm flew free, spitting black droplets as it spun through the air. The troll shrieked, battering him with a fist that sent him stumbling back. The arm slapped down onto the ground, still twitching.

Then, to Hult’s horror, the arm rose from where it lay. Its fingers lifted up the hand like legs and dragged the rest of the severed limb away into the dark. He stared at it, stunned. Then the noseless one was back, trying to grab him. It barked at him, brown gobbets flying from its maw. The wound he’d dealt before was already no more than a scar, almost healed over. A few more heartbeats, and there would be no sign that he’d cut the troll at all.

Jijin, he wondered, are you listening to me?

There was another flash to his left, and a wave of heat so strong that he smelled his own hair singeing. Half a heartbeat later, a massive thud set his ears ringing, and a bloodcurdling howl answered it. Hult risked a glance, already knowing what he would see: Shedara standing with arm outstretched and one of the other trolls—the one with the withered arm—on fire and screaming. The brute beat at the red flames that engulfed it, growing more frantic every moment, but there was no extinguishing the blaze. A roasted stink stabbed at Hult’s nostrils, making his eyes water, then Withered Arm let out a final wail and made only five long, loping steps before crashing headlong onto the rocks. Its arms, untouched by the fire, tried to drag its lifeless bulk away, but then the flames found the arms too, and the whole creature collapsed into a burning, lifeless mass.

“One down,” Shedara said. “That just leaves the thr—”

An angry shout cut her off as the remaining trolls closed in. Hult lost sight of her, pushing back as both his foes came on at once. He hacked at them furiously, dodging their snatching hands and champing jaws, retching at the charnel reek that thickened the air around them. Behind him he heard the hiss of Shedara’s short sword clearing its scabbard.

“Your magic!” he shouted. “Cast another spell!”

“The moons are too weak!” she snapped back. “I don’t have the strength.”

Hult gritted his teeth. Then we’re dead, he thought.

The skeletal brute’s claw darted at him, and he batted it away with his sword, taking off three gnarled fingers that writhed away like worms the moment they hit the ground. Blood spattered his face, stinging one of his eyes so badly that he had to squeeze it shut. He spat, ducked, whirled, and drove his sword deep into the noseless troll’s bowels. The beast made a vicious whooping sound and collapsed, nearly dragging the blade from Hult’s hand. As Noseless lay bawling in its own blood, holding shut its opened gut with its remaining arm, Skeleton got past Hult’s defenses with its maimed hand and clouted him on the temple.

A small sun burst inside Hult’s head, and he staggered, nearly vomiting as gray haze closed in around him. He went down on one knee, flailing with his sword, so that Skeleton had to pull back or lose its snapping jaw. He swore, trying to get his feet back under him. He didn’t have much time; soon Noseless’s belly wound would close, and he would rejoin the fray. He had to find a way to end the fight before that happened. He had to put Skeleton down as well, then start hacking them both to pieces.

First, though, he had to get up on his feet. Groaning, he shoved back the haze, swallowed the vomit, and began to rise… only to feel something lock around his ankle from behind.

Hult knew what had grabbed him without looking, but he looked anyway, if only to confirm that such a mad thought was real. It was the noseless troll’s severed arm. It had dragged itself back into the battle, intent on protecting the rest of its body. Its fingers were wrapped around his leg, its grip tightening until his bones ground together. He hewed at it, trying to cut it loose, but the angle was bad and he nearly took off his own foot.

The arm wrenched him sideways, sending him tumbling to the ground. His elbow hit a sharp rock, a lance of pain ran up through his shoulder into his spine, and his sword skittered from his nerveless grasp.

Not here, Jijin, he prayed while trying with his maimed left hand to pry loose the claws around his ankle. Damn you and the ancestors, not now!

“Hult!” Shedara shouted. “Get up! Look—”

She broke off with a grunt. Hult didn’t know what had happened to her, but his imagination filled with images of the half-lame troll ripping out her throat with its teeth, snapping her neck with its massive hands, or simply pounding her flat. He couldn’t look, couldn’t face the thought that she might be dead too—like Eldako and Forlo before her. He screamed, scrabbling at the severed arm, unable to make it let go.

Noseless was on its feet again, a wide, ugly purple line all that remained of the disemboweling Hult had inflicted. Beside it, Skeleton dropped into a crouch, its stupid black eyes gleaming in the faltering light of Shedara’s spell. He saw their fangs, long and crooked and sharp, and could already feel them sinking into his flesh. He shut his eyes, waiting for the pain to begin.

Instead, he felt something else: a strange, tingling sensation, almost a prickling, all over his skin. He opened his eyes again and saw that all the hairs on his arms were standing straight up. He had the dim feeling he’d felt the curious sensation before, and memories came to him of riding on the steppes as a young boy, during the worst of a thunderstorm.

The roar of thunder was so sudden, so loud, that it seemed to stop time altogether. Later, when he gathered his thoughts, he would think he’d actually seen the lightning arc and fork down from the clouds, striking the two trolls and turning them into seared, fleshy masses. Bits of charred meat splattered across the ground. The severed arm’s grasp went slack, and Hult’s skin crawled as he kicked the dead thing away.

And like that, the trolls were gone. Hult looked over to see the huddled, black, smoldering shape of the beast that Shedara had been fighting and the elf herself, lying dazed on her back, looking at him with an expression so amazed that he couldn’t help but laugh.

Then movement caught his eye, in the last moments before the light spell failed completely. He twisted, half expecting to see more trolls, but it was nothing of the sort. It was a man, standing on top of a boulder near the cave mouth. He looked down at them, his eyes shining.

Forlo? Hult wondered, his thoughts growing muzzy. No, that’s not right.

Then the magic gave out, and darkness surrounded him once more. Hult’s head filled with pain. Groaning, he lay back and let his eyes droop shut.

He awoke again to warmth and shouting. The first came from firelight; the second, from Shedara.

“Damn it, Essana!” the elf was yelling. “This is more important than your son’s feelings! If you’d seen what happened out there—”

“I did see,” Forlo’s wife replied. She was calm before Shedara’s temper, her voice hard and stern. The woman was made of iron, Hult had come to realize. No wonder Forlo had married her. “I tried to stop him from going out in that ungodly storm. I didn’t want him getting killed. I was in the cave mouth when the lightning struck.”

Shedara laughed, a mocking sound. “Oh no, milady. No. Maybe you weren’t close enough, or maybe you refuse to admit it, but the lightning didn’t just strike. Your son called it down.”

Hult was willing to lie there and listen for the moment, but his body had other ideas. A wave of nausea coursed through him, followed by pain that seemed to fill his skull with fire. He rolled on his side and retched on the floor of the cave. Essana had begun to shout back, but she stopped.

“He’s awake,” she said.

“I see that,” Shedara replied.

Hult heard the creak of the elf’s leather armor as she crouched beside him. He tried to open his eyes, but the firelight was too bright. He had the vivid feeling that the only way to relieve the pain in his head would be to split it open with an axe. Fortunately, he knew better. He’d felt that pain before, once, when he fell off his horse as a child. He’d be dizzy for a few hours and probably shouldn’t move, but he would recover—assuming no more trolls found them, of course.

“Easy,” Shedara said. “You’re concussed. Here, drink this.”

It was wine, made from some bulbous green fruit the cha’asii harvested in the jungle. It tasted sour at first, then gave way to a soothing, flowery sweetness. He took a sip, swallowed, then drank some more. His strength began to return, and the pain and nausea receded. He tried to look at Shedara again and managed to keep his eyes open. She was a slender blur, dark against the fire’s glow.

“You’re lucky,” she said. “That troll nearly painted the rocks with your brains.”

He managed a shrug. “Wouldn’t… feel this… bad… if it had.”

She stared at him a moment, then chuckled. “Was that a joke, Hult, son of Holar?”

He gave her a feeble grin. Essana moved into his view as well, her swarthy face lined with concern. She kept her distance, though, letting Shedara inspect his wound. The elf used a damp cloth to pat his temple then laid it over his forehead. It was cool, soothing. Hult sighed.

“You two were… talking,” he murmured. “I did not mean to interrupt.”

Shedara and Essana looked at each other, abashed. “I’m sorry,” the elf said. “I was angry. I didn’t mean to yell. Only… I don’t know what happened.”

Hult raised his eyebrows. “What is so difficult to understand?” he asked. “The boy used magic.”

The cave was silent. Essana shook her head, looking away. Hult expected Shedara to agree with him, but a dark crease appeared between her brows.

“That’s the trouble,” she said. “That spell was more powerful than anything I can manage, or ever will. Maybe five wizards in all of Taladas could have commanded the storm like that.”

“My son is no mage,” insisted Essana. “It’s not possible.”

“Your son is fully grown, a man older than I am, milady,” Hult said. “Yet only a month ago, he was still in your womb. Tell me, is that possible?”

She bit her lip, saying nothing.

“You don’t know what the Faceless Brethren did to him,” Hult pressed. “They could have taught him sorcery.”

Shedara scowled. “Not in so short a time. Sorcerers have to study for years in order to cast the simplest of spells. You don’t just give someone that kind of power.”

Hult spread his hands. “How, then? You saw him do it, Shedara; you just said so. How is it possible?”

She gritted her teeth, the furrow in her brow growing deeper. “I have no idea. That’s why I need to question him. I have to know where the magic came from.”

Hult’s eyes flicked to Essana. “Well, lady?” he asked. “I am inclined to agree with her. Strange magic is seldom a good thing.”

He thought of Chovuk Boyla, of the sorcery he had wielded. He had come by it mysteriously, and it had proven his undoing. The Faceless had taught it to him, let him use it again and again as he brought together his horde and sent it to war, then abandoned him to die when they had no more need of him. If Azar was taking his first steps on such a road, they had to know.

Essana, however, refused to be moved. “He is sleeping,” she said, and nodded out into the night. “Whatever happened out there, it exhausted him. And he may be grown, but he’s still my son. If he needs rest, then I will let him rest. There’ll be plenty of time for questions.”

She turned away before anyone could say anything more. Hult had lifted his head without realizing it; feeling faint, he lay back down. Shedara took the cloth off his forehead and dabbed at his wound.

“Guess we’d better wait,” she said, then lowered her voice. “Hult… I didn’t want to say anything else in front of Essana. I’ve upset her enough tonight already. But… well, there’s another possibility.”

“Yes?” he asked.

“The moons don’t give that power all of a sudden,” she whispered. An edge of fear crept into her voice. “But a god might.”

Hult swallowed. “Which god?”

“That’s the problem,” Shedara said. “It could be any of them. Manith, Jolith, Mislaxa…”

She trailed off, glancing over her shoulder at the back of the cave, and bit her lip.

“What?” Hult asked. “Shedara—”

“Listen to me,” she hissed, snapping back around. “It could be one of those gods… or it could be Morgash, or Chomos, or Hith. That’s why I’m worried, Hult. Because… well, think about Azar’s life so far. Where do you think he’d be more likely to get this power from? The light gods, or the dark?”