Chapter 7

Bishan, Aurim-That-Was

The shell of the keep stood empty, long abandoned to dust and wind. It stood on an outcropping of cracked stone, where pale grass grew in stubborn clumps, which twisted high above the plains and crumbling seashore. It had been one of the mightiest strongholds in Aurim, a fortress that had never fallen, though it had weathered more than a dozen sieges. It was a husk now, lost not to war, but to famine and the poisoning of the land, its tallest tower of white marble jabbing at the leaden sky like a finger accusing the gods.

No one had called Upper Bishan home since its last caretakers died; two brothers and a sister, the last of a line that had held the fort for more than fifteen centuries, they had leaped from the precipice after the Destruction rather than leaving it for hospitable lands. The tale was well known, even among the hobgoblins, as was the rumor that the three siblings lingered as ghosts, haunting the keep, protecting its secrets, stubbornly clinging to that which they valued more than life. Tales abounded of men who had come to the place, seeking glory or riches. Inevitably, those unfortunate adventurers ended up either dying in unspeakable agony or wandering the wastes, their minds gone, wailing in voiceless terror until they perished of thirst. Whether living or dead, Bishan’s victims always bore the same mark: their eyes gone, torn out by the claws of some terrible beast.

It was nonsense, and Maladar knew it. There were no ghosts in Upper Bishan. The dead there were killed not by ghosts, not by monsters, but by men. He knew the truth: a clan of treasure-hunters from the Imperial League dwelt there and murdered anyone who came to those lands without their leave. They had been doing it for generations, using it as a base from which to plunder the ashes of the dead empire.

His empire.

Countless riches had passed out of Aurim’s ruins, through that place, and on by ship to lands far away—the distant Minotaur League, mostly, though the raiders who worked out of Bishan were not picky. They traded with rich men in the Rainwards, in Syldar, even in Thenol. They had made themselves rich off the blood and bones of those long dead, and slain those who came near to discovering what was really going on.

Maladar knew all this for a very simple reason: he had been to Bishan before.

He could still remember the day his slumber was interrupted. He’d lived in darkness, in silence, for so long that he’d almost forgotten what light and noise were. Then, one day, light had spilled into his vault, and with it voices and the scrape of shovels against sand and stone. The men of Bishan had found him and taken him from his vault, bragging about their prize. They’d brought him across water to the old keep. He’d stayed there for forty days—long enough to see the raiders kill and mutilate several hobgoblins and set one lone elf loose, blinded and insane, in the barrens. He’d watched them and listened, committing all to memory, until finally they bore him away on a long journey that would end in the town of Blood Eye, and the care of a minotaur named Ruskal.

Much and more had happened to Maladar since then. He’d gone on to the dwarf lands, then the pirate isles of the Run, then the castle of Coldhope, and finally Akh-tazi, leaving death in his wake wherever he went. But he had not forgotten Bishan and the usurpers who dwelt within its walls.

He stood upon the brow of a razorback ridge, a broken spine of stone ten miles south of Bishan. Night was falling, shadows creeping across the plain. Behind the keep, surf roared as it pounded the rocky shore. He looked upon the fortress and smiled, then turned to gaze down into the valley to the south. Five thousand hobgoblins waited there, huddled around dung fires, sharpening their blades beneath flapping black banners topped with skulls and the dried remains of snakes, their tribal totem. They looked back at him, expectant, hungry. He had told them the truth about Bishan and its occupants, and they were furious. They wanted blood for those the plunderers had slain, of course, but also as retribution for being tricked. They would get it soon enough.

For three weeks he’d traveled across Aurim, from one ruin to the next. Crumbling temples, shattered towns, once-proud castles reduced to rubble: he’d visited each in turn, and every time he’d found new followers. Sixteen other clans had joined him after the Mokuti, and more were on the way. Word was spreading across Aurim, from tribe to tribe of the hobgoblins, and soon, they would all be flocking to his banner. The hobgoblins craved war, but they were clannish and prone to feuding. They’d lacked a strong leader, one who would unite them and rule with an iron hand. They finally had one, and before long Maladar’s host would be ten times as strong as the one in the valley below.

Soon he would have his army. Then he would cross the Cauldron for real.

A hulking shape clambered up the ridge, hoisting himself from one crag to the next. Maladar had named Ghashai his second, a liaison to the rest of his people, and the towering warrior had taken to it with zeal. Under his command, the hobgoblins had learned discipline. They fought better, using tactics rather than simply swarming and rampaging when the scent of blood was in the air. Maladar wasn’t sure the newfound order would last long once the march to Bishan began, but he didn’t think it would have to. There were no more than sixty men in the keep, and the battlements were in shambles. The battle was already decided.

“They are ready,” Ghashai said as he reached the summit. “They await your command.”

“So they do,” Maladar replied. “I will give it… but not yet. There is one more thing I must do first.”

The hobgoblin stared at the fort’s distant shadow, his brow beetling. “Will it take long? My people are not good at waiting.”

Maladar looked down at his horde one more time. He saw hands caress swords, teeth gnash, feet stamp the blighted earth. It was still ten miles to Bishan, but if he bade them, the hobgoblins would run the whole way, howling for slaughter. It pleased him. He hadn’t commanded troops in battle for many, many years.

“Leave me,” he said.

Ghashai bowed, retreating partway down the hill. Maladar turned his gaze back to the distant keep. Those who dwelt there were warriors and thieves, almost to a man, but there was one other, one who could cause him trouble beyond what the rest could wreak with arrow and sword. His name was Randuvos, and he was a mage—a powerful one, at that. His illusions were what gave life to the rumors that Bishan was haunted. Much of the time, he was the one who killed the interlopers. He had even tried, and very nearly succeeded, to unbind the spells upon the Hooded One. A wizard with that kind of power could kill hundreds of hobgoblins before they reached the fortress.

Maladar relaxed, envisioning Randuvos in his mind. The mage was tall and gaunt, bald-headed but with a huge, bristly black beard. He wore robes of deep blue satin, decorated with silver runes. There were gold rings in his ears, his nose, both his lips. A jagged, red scar ran from the corner of his left eye down to his jaw.

Maladar caught the image in his mind, holding on to it as he opened himself to the moons’ power. It flowed into him like the tide, and suddenly he could see Randuvos, standing before him as if he were truly there. Other raiders moved around him, fading in and out of view, but Randuvos, who was busy pondering a large, ivory-paneled dulcimer the robbers had hauled out of the rubble somewhere, stayed still. Maladar focused on him alone, pulling more power into his body with each breath.

Only at the last moment did Randuvos know something was wrong. His nose wrinkling, he straightened up to look around. He put one hand to his temple, as if feeling a headache coming on, then looked directly at Maladar. His eyes widened, flooding with horror.

“You!” he gasped.

Maladar spoke a word and pushed the magic across the distance between them. It flowed into Randuvos, all at once: too much for him to contain or resist. His mouth opened in a silent scream. His back arched. Then, with a ghastly wet sound, his skull exploded. Bits of bone and brain blew in every direction, leaving a fine red mist hanging in the air. It spattered the dulcimer, the ground, men standing or walking nearby. Then the wizard’s body tumbled to the ground, its head a mass of crimson shards above the chin.

“There,” Maladar murmured. “That’s done.”

He let the spell end, and the images vanished from his view. From the distance, he thought he could hear the blare of a horn. The men of Bishan were warned: Randuvos’s death had cost Maladar the element of surprise. But then, with ten miles of open country to cover, in full view of the keep, surprise hadn’t really been his best option.

Maladar glowered at the distant fortress. “Ghashai?”

“Yes, my lord?” answered the hobgoblin.

“It is time.”

Ghashai flashed a bloodthirsty leer. “Plunder and blood,” he growled, then turned to face the horde. He drew his massive sword and raised it high. “War!” he bellowed.

The hobgoblins answered with a ferocious cheer. Spears and axes and swords punched the sky. Clashing their blades against their shields, they started marching.

Half the men in Bishan were dead by the time Maladar walked through its gates. He had to pick his way through the corpses of hobgoblins as he went; drifts of them lay torn and broken around the courtyard, piled in heaps around the bodies of the fort’s defenders. The groans of the injured and a charnel stink rose from the mess. There was blood everywhere: spattered on the walls, pooled on the cobbled ground, dripping in runnels over battlements and down stairs. The clash of battle had stopped for the moment, though not all of the robbers were dead.

The great stone doors of Bishan’s manor were shut, barred and bolted from within. Arrows lanced down from high slits in its walls, keeping the hobgoblins back. As Maladar watched, one of his troops strayed too close, and a heartbeat later lay on the stones, a shaft bristling from the top of its head.

Maladar was annoyed with how the fight was going. True, his forces had won the battle, or would once they got into the manor, but that had been a foregone conclusion. It would have taken true bumbling or a miracle on the tomb-robbers’ behalf for two and a half legions’-worth of bloodthirsty hobgoblins not to overthrow the place. The trick to such things was minimizing losses on one’s own side. There once were libraries in Aurim full of books devoted to the tactics of warfare. There had been no art to the hobgoblins’ attack, though, no strategy at all, once the attack began. And so he’d lost at least twice as many of his warriors as he might have with a properly trained force of Aurish soldiers.

It was disappointing but not unexpected.

The hobgoblins had charged the keep head-on, all five thousand of them sprinting toward its main gates with weapons held high. Bishan’s defenders had bows, though, and they’d responded with ruthless efficiency, loosing volley after volley into the onrushing horde. The hobgoblins had gone down like barley at reap-time, their bodies tumbling back down the slopes, sporting so many feathers that Maladar thought of the peacocks who had once wandered the gardens of his palace. Two hundred of them had died trying to reach the keep’s gate, another hundred as they battered it to splinters with axes and mauls, then two hundred more in the skirmishing within. The raiders of Bishan were mighty warriors, men who had once fought in the legions of Thenol and the League or upon the sands in gladiatorial arenas. They didn’t die easily.

Five hundred of his warriors dead, out of five thousand, and the battle not yet done. Maladar wanted to spit. If one of his generals had lost a tenth of his forces on such a straightforward maneuver as storming Bishan, the man would have found himself lowered slowly onto a spike in the Square of Spears, to be left for the skyfishers… or screaming in Aurim’s dungeons while Maladar researched new ways to use magic to cause pain.

These were hobgoblins, though, not men. They were savages, unworthy heirs to the bones of his empire. The world was a better place for each of them that died, and there would be scant space for them once Aurim was reborn. They served a purpose, but only for the moment.

“My lord!” called Ghashai from near the killing zone around the manor. He pushed his way back through the throngs. “We have the rats cornered. It’s only a matter of time.”

Maladar regarded the warlord, his eyes dark. Ghashai was leering with pleasure, enjoying the bloodletting. Red dripped from his sword’s notched blade.

“You need no time,” Maladar said with a shake of his head. “Ready your men. I will sunder the doors for you, just as I slew him.”

He pointed at a body, clad in blue satin, that had toppled from Bishan’s wall. The shattered pieces of a dulcimer lay beside it among shards of bloody skull.

“As you bid, my lord,” Ghashai said, eyeing what was left of Randuvos. He hefted his sword. “We’ll clean the place out within the hour and take the slime’s heads as prizes with their treasure.”

“Not all of them,” said Maladar. “I want some alive. A dozen, perhaps. That should be enough.”

Ghashai’s eyes narrowed. “Enough for what?”

“To send to the other chiefs of your people.”

The hobgoblin thought about that, then began to laugh. “Oh, yes! They will make fine gifts, indeed!” he cried, slapping his leg. Still chortling, he went back to his men to pass on Maladar’s orders. More laughter rose from their ranks.

Maladar sneered. There was no civilization to be found among the hobgoblins. Already some were feasting on those who had died atop Bishan’s walls. It didn’t matter, though. It was only one step in his journey.

He walked forward, stopping just outside bowshot of the manor, and raised a hand to point at the doors. With the other he began to gesture, chanting words that writhed like serpents. Finally, raising his voice to a shout, he forced the magic out through his fingers.

There was a flash of light, a crack of thunder, the stink of burned metal… then a boom and an eruption of billowing dust and tiny shards of stone. When it cleared, the doors of the manor were gone, blown apart by lightning. In their place was a jagged, smoking hole leading into the manor.

Ghashai howled a war cry. The hobgoblins charged. Up high in the manor, the archers poured arrows down into the mob.

It wasn’t enough to stop them, though. It wasn’t even close.

The screams were barely human anymore. It was closer to livestock in a slaughterhouse. Forlo needed to vomit. He wanted to turn away, to flee, to go wild and kill hobgoblins until they killed him. But he couldn’t; he had no way to wrest back control of his body from Maladar. He could only look on helplessly as, one by one, the survivors of Bishan met their fate.

When the fighting was finally done, the hobgoblins brought fifteen men to Maladar. Two he had judged too badly hurt to live; their bones lay on the flagstones, gnawed clean by the monstrous warriors. The rest he had ordered bound and brought to him, one at a time. When he was done with them, the hobgoblins dragged them away, but the screaming went on and on, growing louder and shriller with each victim.

He had done his work to twelve of the thirteen. He signaled to Ghashai, who brought forward the last. The man was older than the others, with scars on his face and gray in his beard. His sword arm hung limp by his side, and he ground his teeth with every step as the hobgoblins shoved him forward. He’d been the last one left and had killed thirty hobgoblins before they broke his shoulder and dragged him down. He walked forward, trying not to show fear but sweating and trembling just the same, a brave and heartless killer reduced nearly to the point of tears. He’d watched what happened to the others. He heard their cries. Even a minotaur couldn’t have sat through that without feeling afraid.

When he got close to Forlo, though, a different expression crossed his face, overwhelming the fright and pain. His eyes widened, his mouth dropping open in surprise.

“You!” he said. “The regicide!”

And he spat in Forlo’s face. Maladar didn’t even move, just let it hit him in the eye. There was blood in the man’s spit, and it stung. He left it there, not bothering to wipe it away.

“You killed Emperor Rekhaz,” the man said. “I know you, Barreth Forlo. I used to fight for the Third Legion, before I came here. I admired you. Now where are you? On the run, your holdings in ruins, commanding these scum instead of honest soldiers.

“The empire is in flames because of you. Randuvos heard it from other wizards, back home. Cities are burning, the legions are smashing each other to pieces. They say the League may not survive the wars. And it’s all your doing.”

Forlo cringed, sick inside. He wanted to hear more, but at the same time he wanted this man to be quiet, never to speak again. That part would come true soon enough. But first… first, Maladar had other things in mind.

There was a knife in his hand. It was covered in blood, tip to pommel. Maladar held it up before the old soldier, letting the man see it.

The soldier’s lip curled. “I know what you’re going to do with that. You’re not going to scare me any more than I already am. So just get—”

That was the last coherent thing he ever said. Smiling, Maladar went to work with the blade, and soon the raider was howling and gurgling and sobbing like the rest of them. When he was done, Maladar’s arms were red to the elbows and the hobgoblins had to hold the man to keep him on his feet. Stepping back, he surveyed his handiwork.

Inside, Forlo wept, as much for what he’d done as for what Maladar made him do. He’d killed Rekhaz, emperor of the minotaurs and his liege-lord, and while he tried to tell himself it had been necessary and even warranted—Rekhaz had hated him, had arrested him as a traitor and forced him to fight on the sands when he should have been searching for Essana—the truth was he’d done it on a whim, for vengeance. He could have let the emperor live, but he hadn’t. He’d murdered Rekhaz, and he’d enjoyed it.

The League had fallen apart, and it was his doing. He’d saved Essana, but he’d destroyed his nation and would be forever known as a traitor. There was a special place in the Abyss waiting for him.

“Take him away,” Maladar said.

They did as he bade, dragging away the half-conscious, keening ruin he’d made of Bishan’s last defender. Maladar made Forlo watch, forced his eyes to linger on the man’s face. That one would go to the Red Claw tribe, one of the largest clans in Aurim. The Red Claw had lost many hobgoblins to the “ghosts” who haunted Bishan.

Now they will bow to the man who put an end to that threat, Maladar’s voice whispered in Forlo’s head. They will follow me, as will the other tribes. Soon the hobgoblins will be one nation, under my banner.

Maladar smiled, turning away. He forgot the man in an instant. For Forlo, though, the memory lingered for days, until he wondered if it would ever go away. His face, the old soldier’s face, which he’d made sport of with his blade.

His tongueless, toothless, eyeless face.