Chapter 24

The Shining Lands

By the fifth day, Hult almost didn’t notice the shrieking.

The sound of the boats’ runners gliding along the undulating glass plains was incessant, loud, and piercing. It was the sound of madness, grabbing hold of his spine and shaking it violently. For the first few hours after the Glass Sailors rescued them, he’d truly wondered if the noise would addle his wits for good. How did the sailors endure it without going screaming mad themselves?

A strange thing happened around the second day, however: he began not to hear it. It didn’t happen for long, for there was always something to remind him—a change in pitch as the Xogatai tacked or a sharp squeal as they jounced over a ridge—but for stretches, it was as if the noise didn’t happen at all. As time passed, those stretches grew longer. Then, one evening, as he stood at the boat’s bow with the hot wind buffeting his masked face, he realized he hadn’t heard it all day.

One could get used to anything, it seemed.

He was nurturing that thought when he felt a presence beside him. He turned and saw Shedara—or, rather, her body, for her face was also hidden behind a mask of bone. She stood with one hand on her sword, her cloth wrappings fluttering. She looked in better health than before, but he could still see signs of the toll the magic had taken on her: a stoop in her shoulders, the slightest tremor in her free hand as she brought it up to rest on the gunwale. He had to fight the urge to put his arm around her.

“Nakhil’s mood is worse,” she said after a while. “I think what happened to Suluk hadn’t sunk in until Roshambur died.”

Hult nodded. “Losing your people can be a difficult thing.”

“It can.”

They were silent for a time. He tried to think of things to say that weren’t you should be resting or can we trust Azar or I need you. Even garbed as a Glass Sailor, without any skin showing beneath robes and mask, she enticed him. He’d lain awake through half of the previous night, staring at her hammock, dangling beside his. It was seeing her hurt, maybe dying, that had done it, awakened some part of him that he hadn’t known was there. It was more than just the memory of an awkward, stolen kiss in the chasms of Aurim; there was something deeper at work. Visions of Eldako, lying forever beneath his cairn on the other end of Taladas, flashed through his head. His friend had loved Shedara; what would he think of Hult doing the same?

For that matter, what would she?

“How much longer, do you think?” Shedara asked. She was staring at the red-glowing clouds that hung over the Cauldron.

Hult shrugged. “Depends on the winds. If they hold, we’ll reach the serai by sunset. If they don’t…” He spread his hands.

“And then two more days from there to Bilo,” she said. “If the gnomes are at the serai to begin with.”

“They will be. The sailors say there are always gnomes at the serai.”

Shedara was silent. He wondered what face she was making behind the mask.

“We’ll get there,” she murmured. “By wind or by spell, if it comes to it.”

“By spell?” Hult asked. “Are you sure you should be using magic again so soon?”

It was the wrong thing to say, and he regretted it instantly. He watched her stiffen, saw the hand that had been trembling a moment ago tighten around the rail. “I think I know if I can use magic,” she snapped. “I know better than you.”

Hult flinched. Her tone hurt like a whiplash; there was so much arrogance in it, so much pride. He looked away, across the glassy plain. Sunlight glinted off its ripples, blindingly bright. To the south, the mountains loomed close, black and forbidding.

After a while, he felt her shift, moving closer to him. Her hand rose, hesitated, then rested on his arm.

“I’m sorry. I’m still not myself.” She sighed, looking away. “Also, the noise these boats make is driving me out of my mind.”

Hult chuckled. “You may not believe me, but you get used—”

A sudden shout from behind them cut him off. Hult snapped around, his talga half drawn from its scabbard before he even saw what was happening. He expected to see something terrible attacking the ship’s crew—all sorts of awful things were said to dwell in the Shining Lands, according to legend—but no giant black beetles dropped from the sky, no translucent worms burst up through the glassy ground. Instead, they saw a small knot of sailors, halfway down the deck—and Nakhil, standing among them, waving his arms.

“Get over here!” the centaur shouted. “It’s Azar!”

They ran, Hult outpacing Shedara. The sailors parted to let him through, silent behind their masks. Nakhil pointed at the deck, and Hult saw.

Azar lay on his back, his mask torn off, his face twisted into a rictus of pain. He was bent at the waist, legs tensed, his right hand clutching his left, which had curled into a claw and was twitching wildly. Hult wasn’t sure, but for a moment he thought he smelled burning flesh.

He knelt down beside the boy, Shedara beside him. “Get the healer!” she shouted. “Go!”

Nakhil and several sailors ran, shouting for the tchakkir. While they did, Hult bent over Azar and waved his hand in front of the boy’s eyes. They were vacant, staring at nothing. Blood darkened his lips. Hult tore a strip off his robe and forced the cloth between the boy’s teeth.

“It’s all right,” he said. “He just bit his tongue. One of the elders in my tribe used to have fits like this. He’ll be all right, once—”

“Mother of Hith!” Shedara swore. “His hand! Look at his hand!”

Hult looked, his eyes widening. Shedara had taken off Azar’s left glove; the flesh beneath was red and swollen, huge blisters rising as he watched. The smell was even thicker than before, sickening him. The Glass Sailors drew back, clapping their hands to ward against evil.

“Did that ever happen to your elder?” Shedara asked.

Hult shook his head, then looked around for a fire, a hot piece of metal—anything that could have burned Azar like that. There was nothing, though, and the glove wasn’t even scorched. What in the Abyss was going on?

Just then, Nakhil returned, the tchakkir following right behind. “Back to your jobs,” the healer told the other sailors in their clicking language. “There is nothing for you to do here but gawk and get in the way.”

They did as she bade, returning to the halyards and climbing back up the rigging. The boat leaped over a rise in the glass, was momentarily airborne, then came down again with a squeal. Hult grunted, feeling the impact run through his body. The tchakkir, however, didn’t seem to notice; instead, she touched Azar’s forehead, then his throat, then his injured hand. He howled.

“Has this happened before?” she asked.

Hult shook his head.

“What’s wrong with him?” Nakhil asked. “Some sort of curse?”

“I do not know,” the tchakkir replied. “We should get him below, where he can be comfortable. He is in no mortal danger right now.”

Together, Hult and Shedara lifted Azar and carried him to the ladder leading below. They left Nakhil up on deck; there was no way for him to climb down. They brought Azar to one of the hammocks. The tchakkir disappeared a moment, then came back with a wet rag, which she wrapped around Azar’s swollen hand. She laid her hand on his forehead again and murmured a word. At once his eyes drooped closed, and the lines of pain in his face began to smooth.

“He will sleep,” she said. “The fit will pass. I can heal his hand, as well, once it stops getting worse.”

“But why is he burned?” Hult asked. “What did that to him?”

The tchakkir looked down at Azar, and though he had yet to see her face, Hult could imagine the scowl of frustration there. The Mislaxans who roamed among the Uigan sometimes looked like that when encountering a sickness they’d never seen before.

“I know,” Shedara said.

Hult stared at her. So did the tchakkir. Shedara pulled off her mask to reveal her grave face.

“It’s Forlo,” she said. “Something’s happened to him, and it’s happening to Azar too.”

Azar didn’t worsen any more; under the tchakkir’s care, in fact, he slowly got better. Glistening scars covered his hand, and would for the rest of his days, but it was better than losing it entirely. He slept, and they went back up on deck to tell Nakhil what had happened.

“How is that possible?” the centaur asked when Shedara told him her theory about Forlo.

She shook her head. “I’m not sure. Maybe because he’s Azar’s father and they share a bond, each of them carrying a part of Maladar.”

“Wait,” Hult said. “I thought we’d agreed Forlo was dead.”

“Maybe we were wrong.”

Hult stepped back, glancing toward the Cauldron. “You can’t know that.”

“No,” Shedara replied, “I don’t. But… well, didn’t you see Azar’s face when he was lying there? The way he looked when the tchakkir put him to sleep?”

Hult thought back, picturing the way the pain had faded from his face. And yes, just for a moment, there had been something else… almost a smile ghosting his lips. He’d never seen Azar smile like that before, but he had seen it on someone else, one who shared Azar’s features. A chill ran through him.

“That was him,” he murmured. “He… came through when Azar lost consciousness.”

“I hate to keep asking the same question,” Nakhil said. “But how?”

Shedara shrugged. “I may be a mage, but I don’t have a lot of experience with long-dead emperors possessing men who let their own sons stab them on sacrificial altars. We didn’t get much of that in Armach.”

“Jijin’s seven steeds,” Hult swore. “Essana may have been right about Forlo after all.”

Shedara looked down. Hult could almost see the pain and regret on her face: she’d been so sure their friend was dead.

“Does it make any difference?” Nakhil asked. “Even if the father’s still alive, it’s not as if we can afford to spare Maladar.”

“True,” Shedara said. She steepled her fingers, then sighed. “But it does change things. It’ll be harder for us to kill him if we know there’s a possibility that Forlo’s still in there.”

“Maybe it will be harder for him to kill us as well,” Hult said.

Shedara’s masked face turned toward him, her eyes hard. “Don’t count on it.”

For a time, the only sound was the screaming of the runners on the glass. Hult shook his head.

“There must be some way to use this knowledge,” Nakhil insisted. “Some way to turn it to our favor.”

“Let us know if you think of it,” Shedara replied, folding her arms.

The centaur looked as though he wanted to say something else, but at that moment the mood aboard the boat shifted abruptly. The sailors said nothing, but Hult could sense it nonetheless. There was a greater urgency to their movements, to the gestures with which they communicated. They were hauling on ropes, swinging the boom.

“We’re tacking,” he said.

Shedara pointed ahead. “Look over there.”

Ahead, the mountains were different: blockier, squatter, with many flat planes. As they got closer, Hult saw that the stone there was strange: rather than glass or crags, the mountains were made of reddish gray rock that rose out of the ground in straight pillars, tall and broad and weirdly similar to one another, stretching on and on toward the horizon.

“The Columns of Bilo,” said Nakhil. “Here the Cauldron cooled quickly, when it swallowed Aurim’s great inland lakes. The minoi dwell there now, and ply the currents of the Burning Sea.”

“That must be the serai,” Shedara added, nodding toward something at the columns’ base.

There was a notch in the fence the pillars made, maybe a quarter of a mile across and surrounded on three sides by stone. There, in that hollow, stood five other glass ships—three Xogatai, a Churqa, and a much larger vessel Hult didn’t know the name of—and a gathering of tents and low stone huts. It was the closest thing the sailors had to a village; they made their homes aboard their boats, but came together to trade at outposts like that, all around the Shining Lands. There, they had commerce with the gnomes of Bilo, trading artifacts they found beneath the glass for food and metal, wood and cloth. Masked guards stood at ballistae atop the lower columns, keeping watch over the way into the camp; the glass tips of their quarrels flashed golden in the afternoon light.

“I hope there are gnomes there,” Nakhil said. “If we have to travel to one of their cities alone, it will be much—Azar?”

Hult turned, surprised. Azar stood at the top of the ladder, staring south beyond the mountains. His eyes were shut, his lips moving without sound.

“What’s he doing up?” Hult whispered to Shedara.

Shedara’s head turned toward the tchakkir, who hadn’t noticed yet. “I think he’s still asleep,” she said.

“What?” Nakhil asked. “How can he—?”

Before he could finish, Azar’s arms rose, straining as if he were lifting some heavy weight. “ARISE!” he thundered, his voice deep and cold and not his own. The shout was so loud, it felt like a slap against Hult’s ears. “ARISE, MY EMPIRE! ARISE, TOWER OF FLAME!”

All was silent. The sailors stared at him, shocked. The tchakkir whirled about, as confused as the rest of them. Hult swallowed, a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knew the voice; he’d heard it before, at Akh-tazi. It was Maladar, speaking through Azar’s lips.

“ARISE!”

Hult started toward Azar, reaching for his sword, but Shedara grabbed his wrist, stopping him. “No,” she said. “It’s only an echo. He’s not casting the spell. That’s happening in there.” She nodded toward the columns, at the Cauldron beyond.

No sooner had she spoken the words than the clouds above the Burning Sea changed, suddenly contracting toward its heart, leaving long streaks behind. Something was happening beneath them, hidden by the mountains: an orange glow lit the fume, growing brighter every moment. Scarlet lightning roared from cloud to cloud, moving inward as well. The ground shook, and the Xogat rose briefly onto one runner, then slammed down again. Hult stumbled and nearly fell; so did Nakhil.

The sky exploded.

Fire blasted upward from the Cauldron’s heart: a huge pillar of it, rising high and blooming outward like some terrible blossom. The clouds tore apart, spitting lightning in all directions. Great globs of magma streaked away, smashing into the mountains, melting their peaks as they burst open. The sailors cried out in alarm, the first sound Hult had heard most of them make. The plains of glass creaked and cracked, heaving as the Burning Sea erupted.

A massive chasm opened to their right and swallowed the other Xogat as if it had never been there. Working frantically, the sailors steered away from the fissure, ducking as shards of glass the size of spearheads rained down. One of them wasn’t so lucky and fell lifeless with a glittering splinter through his neck. The boat skidded sideways as the ground lifted, the runners making a horrible grinding sound.

Then they were past the worst of it, streaking on toward the serai. The columns still stood, tall and strong. And beyond them…

Beyond…

“Blood of the ancestors,” Hult swore. Beside him, Shedara and Nakhil uttered oaths of their own.

The eruption had subsided—mostly. But something remained: a slender finger of blue and white flame, rising miles above the sea until it vanished into the black pall. Maladar’s command had not gone unheard. The Chaldar had risen anew.