Chapter 6

The Dourlands, Aurim-That-Was

It turned cold that night—as cold as the wastes of Panak, where the Ice People dwelt. Shedara found shelter and conjured a stone-fire to warm them, but the wind still howled down the canyon, slicing through their clothes and shivering their flesh. Hult sat by the ghostly flames with his sword across his knees, watching the darkness. They hadn’t seen another living thing in hours, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Not after how close they’d come to an ignominious death, there in that Jijin-forsaken hole in the ground.

They had decided to wait until the end of the day to question Azar, after Essana had asked him at length, and fruitlessly, about how he’d killed all the scorpions. She was still upset, constantly stealing glances at her son, as if fire might shoot from his eyes at any moment, and shying away from him whenever he came near. That hurt him, and after a while he walked in silence, head bowed and hood drawn low, so he looked all the more like one of the Faceless. He wouldn’t meet Hult’s gaze at all, and his face darkened whenever Shedara glanced at him.

Shedara set wards around their camp to guard them against anything that might approach, drawn by their scent. Hult searched the rocks, digging his knife into any chinks or cracks, to make sure they were empty. The group ate without words—more of Shedara’s tasteless, magic-born sludge—and when they were done, Essana met the others’ eyes and nodded. We must do this now, her expression said.

Azar looked sullen and surly, huddled in his torn and dust-caked robes at the edge of the firelight. His eyes were pools of shadow, his arms folded across his chest. It was a boy’s posture, not a man’s, full of guilt and anger. Shedara walked over to face him, her eyes glittering. He stared at his feet.

Shrugging, she reached into her pack and produced the broken remains of one of the scorpions. She held it up for a moment, grasping it by one of its pincers, then dropped it in front of Azar.

“Look at me!” she demanded.

He did as she bade, his eyes narrowed. There was a sternness in her voice that made even Hult sit up a little straighter. It was more sorcery.

Shedara nodded at the dead scorpion, her eyes not breaking contact with Azar’s. “You did that,” she said. “We want to know how. And no more fooling around, telling us you don’t remember.”

Azar’s face reddened. He glanced away into the night. “I… don’t know how,” he said. “I just killed the one, and I knew. I saw them all dying the same way. Then I wished it were true, and it was.”

“You… wished,” Hult muttered. “Perhaps you could wish we were away from this place and safe in the Rainwards.”

Shedara raised a finger. Not long ago, the gesture would have rankled Hult; the man he’d been when he rode with the Uigan would never have allowed a woman or an elf to silence him. At that moment, though, he nodded and shifted his grip on his sword. The wind gusted down the gorge, making the fire twist like a serpent.

“Essana,” Shedara said.

The woman leaned forward, reaching out to lay her hand on Azar’s arm. He flinched at the touch: another childish thing. Essana’s face creased; then she shook it off. She didn’t let go of her son.

“You can trust us,” she said. “Hult and Shedara wish you no harm; neither do I. You are my blood. But we must know. Too much is at stake for us to have this power among us and not know where it comes from, child.”

“I am no child!” Azar snapped, snatching his arm away from her.

She didn’t move, held him with her gleaming eyes. “Then why do you sulk like one? You must know the answers to our questions, Azar. You may not want to admit it, but you do.”

“And you’re going to tell us,” Shedara added. “One way or another.”

She might have drawn one of her daggers then to emphasize her words. Hult would have. But Shedara didn’t have to. She merely let the moons’ power surge through her for an instant. Hult felt the magic, the hairs on his arms standing up. So, evidently, did the others, for Essana looked alarmed and Azar grew pale.

“You promised you wouldn’t do anything to him!” Essana said.

Shedara shook her head. “I promised he wouldn’t be hurt. But there are other things I can do if he won’t cooperate. I know a lot of spells, Essana, and if you try to stop me from using them, Hult will have to restrain you.”

Hult’s eyebrows rose. They hadn’t talked about that. He looked from one woman to the other, feeling the tension. Essana stiffened, and Shedara’s fingers twitched. It could go very badly, he thought, and it could happen very fast.

“My lady,” he said, “you know us. We are your friends. We crossed half the world to help your husband free you.”

“And to destroy the Hooded One,” Essana said.

Hult shook his head. “Not I. I had many reasons—vengeance for my people was one, I admit—but most of all I did it because Forlo was my friend. He loved you, and so I loved you too, though I never saw you until we came to Akh-tazi. I would have to say the same of Azar. And though Forlo is gone now, that love is not diminished. If Shedara tries to hurt him, I promise you, I will stop her… with my sword if I must.”

Shedara drew back a little at that, and Hult allowed himself an inward smile. He’d thrown that bit in to surprise her. Essana, meanwhile, furrowed her brow, while Azar continued to glare at the fire.

“You swear it?” Essana asked.

Hult dipped his head. “On my ancestors.”

She thought about it a moment longer then, finally, nodded. “Go on, then,” she said. “Do what you will.”

“Mother!” Azar cried, beginning to rise.

She shook her head, her eyes shining. “It must be this way,” she said. “If this power of yours is born of evil—and does any of us truly doubt that it is?—we need to know. I’ve already lost your father to darkness. If I can, I’ll keep it from claiming you too.”

Azar gaped at his mother. His sullenness had given way to outrage. His hands curled into fists, and in his mind Hult envisioned him clapping his hands and Essana falling over dead, her bones crushed like the scorpions’ shells. He stood up and held his sword ready.

“Where will you go, Azar, if you flee?” Shedara asked, not moving from where she sat. “It’s too hard to climb around here, so you only have two directions to choose. Hult is a skilled hunter. I have my magic, and I can see in the dark. Now sit down, and either tell me the truth, or let me seek it myself.”

For a moment, no one moved. Somewhere in the distance, something howled. It wasn’t a wolf, not quite; there was too much human in the sound. Some monster of the wastes, Hult was sure. Perhaps a skin-changer, like Chovuk Boyla had been.

Azar glared at Shedara. “I don’t know!” he said. “I really don’t. You have to believe me.”

“I do, Azar,” she said. “But there is a way to find the answers we seek. I cast a spell on your father, once, to learn why he was having nightmares about his last campaign in Thenol. It didn’t hurt him; if anything, it set him free.”

His hands found each other and began to twist. “You wish to cast the same spell on me?”

“Only if you agree to it. I can’t cast it on someone unwilling.”

Far away, the howl rose again. It went on and on that time until it finally faded into the wind’s moaning. Everyone stared at Azar, waiting. His hands wrung and squeezed. When he finally answered, his voice was small and trembling, like a child’s.

“All right,” he said and bowed his head. “I want to know too.”

The world seemed to constrict around Hult, as if none of it truly existed. The Tamire, Neron, even Aurim beyond this canyon… it was all a dream he’d had once and was beginning to forget. He breathed deeply, trying to slow his hammering heart. He had to submit himself to the spell, or it would never take hold of them all. Millennia of Uigan tradition fought against his need to know the truth about Azar.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

Shedara chanted, her hands moving like moths, fluttering from one place to the next. Essana and Azar sat before her, cross-legged, waiting. Hult watched them both, ready to act if either of them did anything to disrupt the elf’s casting, as the world continued to fade, leaving only the smoldering campfire, bright in the darkness.

Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

The air shimmered, and all at once the fire didn’t really exist anymore either. There was only the four of them, sitting in a place that was no place at all. No stars shone above; no ground lay beneath them. Hult’s stomach lurched: he was floating in a void, a great, cold nothingness like the ocean. Wind howled, buffeting him. Even Shedara and Essana flickered away, and there was nothing but Azar, his eyes shining with some sourceless light. Those eyes drew Hult closer, closer, pulling him in.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

A flare of magic ran through him like lightning. Hult shuddered, his eyes squeezing shut, and when he opened them again, he was somewhere else.

It was a small, dark room. A monk’s cell, windowless, the door sealed shut. A bed lay in one corner, a chamber pot stinking nearby. The remains of a meal sat on the floor: gnawed bones, blots of some sort of porridge, an empty wine cup. The only light was a dim, violet glow from some undefined place near the ceiling. It gave him enough to see by, just barely. Shedara stood to his right, hands on hips; Essana to the left, her eyes narrow. Azar was nowhere to be seen.

“Where are we?” Hult whispered.

“Exactly where we were a moment ago,” Shedara replied in a low voice. “Sitting near the fire. As for this place… it’s Azar’s memory.”

“Akh-tazi,” Essana said, giving a shudder. “I know it well. I lived in a cell like this, for a time. I had hoped never to see its like again.”

“I know, milady,” Shedara replied. “But it is necessary. Azar will have no memories of anyplace else.”

Hult fought the urge to bite his hand and ward off the spell. He was sharing another man’s mind. Among his people, the punishment for that kind of witchcraft was to be tied up and dragged behind one’s own horse for three miles, then exiled forever into the wild steppes. Under some chiefs, it was even worse. All his instincts warned him to get out or be damned, forever forbidden to enter Jijin’s halls, barred from seeing his ancestors in the afterlife. He shook his head, forcing himself to remain there. The Uigan’s ways had failed him. He must try new ways.

“What about Azar?” he asked. “Where is he?”

“There.” Shedara nodded.

Hult’s eyes followed the gesture. At first, he didn’t understand what he was seeing, but he quickly figured it out. Lying on the cot, covered by a rough-spun blanket, was a mannish shape, only a bit over four feet tall. As big as a large kender, or a small dwarf, or even a goblin… but no. It was none of those things.

It was a child.

“Yagrut,” he swore.

One of Shedara’s eyebrows rose. “You didn’t expect this?”

“I…” he began, then stopped, frowning. “I didn’t believe it, I suppose. I know he’s less than two months old, but I couldn’t picture him as a child.”

Essana stepped forward, crouching down at the boy’s bedside. She reached out a trembling hand toward him. “My son,” she breathed, but her fingers passed through his shoulder when she tried to touch him. She turned away.

“He can’t hear you,” Shedara said. “We weren’t here when this happened, and we’re not really here now. You can’t change things in the past. You can only watch.”

Hult glanced around. The walls were black stone, carved into hideous reliefs of grinning skulls and bloated, many-eyed horrors. The whole cell was maybe three paces on a side. From the smell, Azar’s bedclothes had never been changed. He stared at the boy, longing to reach out and pull back the covers, see him as he was.

A sound came from the door: the scrape of a bolt being slid back. Hult recoiled, reaching for his sword, then held still at a look from Shedara. Do nothing! echoed her voice in his head as the door rumbled open.

Two Crawling Maws, the tentacled monsters who called themselves yaggol, stood in the passage outside. Both wore plain, gray cassocks. One had skin the color of spoiled milk; the other was a blotchy, deep crimson. They gazed into the cell with their white, pupilless eyes but looked right past Hult and Essana and Shedara. Instead, their sight fixed on the boy.

With a whisper of velvet robes, another figure stepped into view. He was cloaked head to foot in black, his hood pulled down low. Hult did bite his palm at that sight, though the man who entered Azar’s cell must have been dead now. All the Faceless Brethren were. The air around him turned cold as he walked to the side of the cot and knelt down. It was the Speaker, perhaps, or the Watcher. It was hard to tell one of the dark sorcerers from another; they all wore the same garb, and all had cut the flesh from their faces as a sign of loyalty to Maladar. Whoever this one was, he reached out a gloved hand and shook Azar awake.

“Taker,” he spoke, the voice harsh, distorted by his disfigurement. “It is time to rise. The Master awaits.”

Azar stirred, shaking himself awake. A youthful face appeared from beneath the blanket, and indeed it was Forlo’s son. There was no way of mistaking the prominent nose or the strong jawline, even in a boy of perhaps eight summers. Azar blinked, rubbing his bleary eyes, and looked right at Hult and Shedara and his mother. He nodded.

He can see us, Hult thought. The others won’t, but this is his mind. He knows we’re here.

“Watcher?” he asked, his gaze sliding back to the Faceless. “What is the time?”

“Still two hours until dawn,” the sorcerer replied. “But the black moon rides high; the Master summons you. All must obey the Master.”

Hult nearly laughed aloud. He’d watched the Master die, dragged off the roof of Akh-tazi’s temple by Eldako—the merkitsa’s last, heroic act. That even the other Faceless had feared the old man seemed downright ludicrous. There was no hiding the tremor in the Watcher’s voice, though, nor the widening of Azar’s eyes as he rose from the bed. He was also clad in black: the Brethren’s newest member, born only days ago, but already halfway to manhood.

“Don’t go with him,” Essana murmured. “Don’t.”

Azar frowned, glancing at her again, and for an instant it seemed he might obey her. Instead, he turned back toward the Watcher and nodded. It had already happened. It could not be changed, even by a mother’s plea.

“As you say,” he spoke, his voice clear, sounding older than he looked. “Lead on.”

They walked out of the cell together, and Hult and Essana hurried to follow as the Crawling Maws slid the door back into place. Shedara came after him, walking at an easy pace. She kept up without any trouble, and Hult understood: in Azar’s mind, they couldn’t stray far from him. Simply strolling behind him ensured he wouldn’t leave their sight.

Down a passage they went then up a narrow, winding stair and along a wide hall with colonnades of black pillars running down its sides. Another stair awaited them, broader and gentler than the last, giving way to open sky at the top. They emerged at the pinnacle of the ziggurat of Akh-tazi, beneath a black, starry sky. The trees of the Emerald Sea whispered below, all around them, stretching to the horizon in all four directions. Above, a black dragon slowly circled—Gloomwing, dead now too at the hands of the cha’asii.

And there, at the roof’s far side, stood Maladar’s statue, the Hooded One, looming above a massive, bloodstained altar. Around it were gathered the members of the Brethren. With the Watcher joining them, they were five in all—six, counting Azar.

“The Taker graces us with his presence,” said the Master, inclining his head as Azar drew near. “You wear well the flesh in which the Sleeper will soon clothe himself.”

Azar bowed in return. “I do as I am bidden, Master.”

“Come forward, then.”

Hult watched Azar walk to the altar. Beside him, Essana trembled, tensing, her teeth gritted together. He sidled toward her, ready to grab her if she darted forward.

“Whatever happens,” Shedara whispered, “remember—you can’t change it.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Essana hissed, her emotions roiling. “That’s not your child, walking toward that… thing.”

When they reached the altar, the Master held out a gloved hand and laid it on top of Azar’s head. With his other, he made several slow passes over the boy, murmuring words Hult couldn’t hear. Shedara leaned closer, trying to make them out, her brow creased with frustration. Azar had no memory of the spell, so it remained hidden from them.

When the Master was done, he stepped back and gestured to the statue. “Our gift to you, Sleeper,” he proclaimed. “When next we meet, you will awaken. Now, though, we prepare for his coming.” He bent close, whispering in Azar’s ear, but Hult heard his words clearly. “Look upon him, lad. See the one who will dwell within your body when you are no more.”

Azar looked. There was no fear in him, no sorrow. Hult wasn’t sure he was capable of such emotions. He gazed upon the Hooded One, whose stone cowl was thrown back to reveal the mangled, flesh-wreathed skull that had been Maladar’s face in life. Azar’s eyes glistened in the black moon’s light.

He was still staring, his face blank, when the Master seized him from behind, laid a curved dagger at his throat, and cut deep.

Hult gave a yelp as blood poured everywhere, instinct taking over, reacting even before Essana did. He lunged forward, his sword whistling through the air. The blow struck the Master on the crown of his head, simply sweeping through him as if he were made of smoke.

The Master didn’t react at all. He seized Azar by the shoulders and held him up as bright red blood shot from his severed arteries. It was a slaughterer’s cut—the kind the Uigan used to put down horses too sick or old to bear their riders any longer. The boy would be dead in moments.

But that isn’t possible! Hult thought.

Essana screamed and hurled herself at her son, but she couldn’t grab hold of him. Hult seized her arm and so he pulled her to him, then dragged her away from the altar.

“Let me go!” she shouted. “He’s dying! I have to help him!”

He held her fast, though she fought him like a steppe-tiger. “You can’t, milady. You can’t help. I can’t either.”

He looked at Shedara, and the expression on her face made cold dread gnaw his stomach. “Of course,” she murmured. “Light of Solis… it’s so obvious.”

“What?” Hult demanded. “What’s so obvious?”

But the world was changing, constricting again. The Emerald Sea vanished, as did the dragon above. The Brethren receded, as did the statue and the altar. All that remained were him, Essana, Shedara, and the slumping, dying shape of Azar. Hult cast about, confused, and found himself back where he’d started, by the fireside, deep in the crevice in the heart of Old Aurim. Shedara knelt before him, her skin the color of alabaster, her eyes wide. He still had Essana in a bear hug, though she’d stopped struggling and just lay limp, making a low, keening sound that made him shiver. To his left, Azar had collapsed, and at first Hult thought he’d really died, just as in the vision. There was still color in his cheeks, though, and his breast moved with his breath, very slightly.

A shudder ran through Hult, deep down into his core. He’d just seen something terrible, he knew, but he didn’t understand it.

“What just happened?” he asked.

Shedara just looked at him, her face blank. Then Essana threw her arms up with such violence that he had to let go. Yelling at both of them, she threw herself forward and gathered her son in her arms, telling them to go, get away from him, and to the Abyss with both of them.

Hult listened to her tirade, too bewildered to be offended, even when she called him a dirty barbarian, a motherless savage from a people who loved horses more than women. The things she called Shedara were even worse—words he’d never heard pass a woman’s lips before.

He rose and walked away. Shedara followed. He saw she was trembling.

“What did they do to him?” he asked.

The elf licked her lips, staring up at the stars. “They killed him.”

“But he’s alive,” Hult pressed, then stopped, gritting his teeth. “Isn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said. “He’s alive. They must have brought him back later. But he wasn’t when he earned his powers. That’s why he doesn’t remember. He was dead when it happened.”

Hult bit the heel of his hand so hard, he was surprised he didn’t taste blood. He glanced back at Azar, saw hate in Essana’s eyes when she caught him looking at them, and turned away again.

“It’s him, isn’t it?” he asked. “He’s the source of the boy’s power.”

He didn’t have to say Maladar’s name for Shedara to understand.

Shedara swallowed, biting her lip. “It must be.”

“But how? We saw him enter Forlo’s body. We heard him talk through Forlo’s mouth. How can his power be in Azar too?”

Shedara was silent a long time, staring up at the silver moon, shining down from high above them. “I have no idea,” she said.