Chapter 32

The Chaldar, Hith’s Cauldron

The city continued to rise, as did the hills around it. Black islands dotted the sea surrounding Aurim, jagged hunks of glass that glistened in the lava’s glow. The vineyards and groves that had once flourished upon their sides were gone, ashes, but no matter. Grapes and olive trees could grow again. They would grow again. Once Maladar’s new followers came, the lands around the City of Songs would flourish as never before.

And they would come. Maladar knew to be patient. When the streets of the Minotaur League ran red with the bull-men’s blood, and the Kheten Voi had conquered that land, the first folk of his new empire would begin traveling east. He had only to make ready for their coming. He had to raise the old realm from its grave.

So he stood atop the Chaldar, gazing down upon the empty husk of his city, hand outstretched as the power of the black moon poured through him. It streamed down to the Cauldron, questing beneath the magma for what remained from the Destruction. Little was left; the heat had consumed almost everything. So the magic turned inward, searching Maladar’s memories instead. It had rebuilt the city that way, drawing from the images that lingered in his mind, then raising Aurim in the shapes it saw there. The magic was doing the same with the surrounding countryside.

Maladar knew the empire would not be the same as it once was; memory was imperfect. But did perfection matter? Was the new Aurim any less real because he recalled some of its streets, some of its towers and arcades and courtyards differently from how they had actually been?

No one else alive remembered the real Aurim, except for the eldest of the elves and dragons. When his war was done, the elves would be no more, and the dragons didn’t care for the cities of men, save to ravage them from above. It certainly didn’t matter to them that Aurim had changed.

“But it matters to you,” said a voice from behind him—a soft, mocking voice. “It matters because it is unreal. It is a simulacrum, not the true thing. Your realm will be a mockery of itself.”

Maladar didn’t turn, didn’t take his focus off the magic. He continued to move his hand, drawing the hills up from the burning depths. He would not release the spell, even for a god.

“Not a mockery,” he said. “An ideal. What it should have been… what I might have made of it. Indeed, it will be better than it was.”

“Perhaps,” murmured Hith, just behind his right ear. “But it will be neither real nor whole. Just like you.”

Maladar hesitated, nearly losing control of the spell. The hills shuddered and began to sink, magma frothing around them. With a snarl, he gathered the threads of magic and forced them to bend to his will again. The hills stopped sinking but rose no further. He growled an incantation through gritted teeth then let the magic end. The hills stayed as they were. Lightning struck one, throwing glowing shards of obsidian down into the magma.

He turned to face Hith, trembling with anger. The god sneered back at him. The empty black cloak was gone, replaced with something much more fearsome. Hith was an ugly, reptilian figure, his hairless skin covered with glittering red scales, his eyes yellow slits. He wore ornate black armor, banded and filigreed with images of screaming faces; on his head was a helm made of a silver dragon’s skull, its long, graceful horns sweeping high and back to make him seem much taller than he was. A crimson cloak, embroidered with images of demons torturing men in obscene ways, draped over his shoulders, and a long, wickedly curved sword was sheathed at his hip. That was Hith the tormentor, not the whisperer of deceits. That was how he looked at the height of his power, and even Maladar felt overcome by awe and the need to bow down and humiliate himself before the god. The temptation lasted only a moment, though.

“Is this why you’ve come?” Maladar demanded. “To taunt me? To lie?”

Hith’s inhuman eyes glittered. “Lies are my trade, mortal. But what I tell you is truth. You deceive yourself, not I. Claim you are Maladar, just as you claim the city below is Aurim. Tell everyone, and they will believe you. None will be the wiser—except for you. In your heart, you will know it is false. You will always know.”

“Then what is true?” Maladar snapped. “Damn you to the Abyss! Who am I?”

The god stared at him, not answering. Hith’s lipless mouth opened, revealing rows of needlelike teeth. A soft, grinding noise came out. It took Maladar a moment to realize what he was hearing was laughter.

“You mock me!” Maladar said, trembling with rage. “You must answer me, though, or I will renounce you.”

The laughter stopped. “Do, and I will destroy you,” Hith said. As he spoke, all the warmth drained out of the air. Freezing winds swept over the Chaldar, and the tower’s white flames flickered and turned green. The tower shuddered and swayed. “Never forget I have more power than you.”

“Perhaps,” Maladar replied. “But you need me. You are a lesser god in the pantheon. If I do not bow to you, you will never elevate your place among your kin. Destroy me and you will never rise higher.”

Hith glared at him. The wind grew stronger, howling, flapping the god’s robes. Maladar felt the force, the wind pushing him off the tower, but he resisted and allowed himself to smile, savoring Hith’s frustration.

“I do not ask for much,” he said. “Only the truth. Tell me who I am, or I will forsake you, and no torment you inflict will ever win back my faith.”

Hith was a devious god, a cheat, a trickster. He could tell, at a glance, whether a mortal was lying. Maladar knew that, and felt the god’s icy thoughts probe his soul, searching for treachery. They found none: Maladar meant what he said. Hith drew back, angry but beaten. The wind ceased, and the broiling heat of the Cauldron flowed back. The Chaldar’s fires shifted back to blue and white.

“The truth, then,” said the god. “You will know what is real.”

He raised his hands; they were covered with the same scales as his face, with long, hooked talons on each fingertip. Silver light flared around them: a sending spell. The god made no other gestures, spoke no spidery words; the magic simply obeyed at his whim. The light flashed bright, bringing with it an eerie, squealing sound, like a knife blade drawn across crystal. Then everything disappeared.

“I will show you,” murmured the god’s voice in the darkness.

Forlo felt himself tumbling through darkness alongside Hith. As ever when in the god’s presence, his soul seemed to shrink, to curl in upon itself in agony. He had fought against Hith’s followers all his life, and Hith had not forgotten. The god’s rage was a powerful thing, battering him like a terrible storm. Despair washed over him, made him want nothing more than to die as ignobly as possible.

Then they were somewhere again, the sending spell reaching its end, spilling them out of the nothingness and back into… the sky, high above the Cauldron.

Maladar reacted, fingers dancing, an incantation springing to his lips on instinct. He was halfway through the spell, which would bear him aloft before he could plummet into the Burning Sea, when he realized he wasn’t falling. Hith’s power bore him up, making him float high above the magma.

“Be easy,” the god said. “I would not betray you like that. What would I have to gain by it?”

“You could have warned me,” Maladar said.

Hith laughed his grating laugh. “And give up the chance to savor your fear?”

That did little to please Maladar, either. “Where is this thing you were going to show me, then? This truth you promised?”

The god gestured, his clawed hand pointing down at the lava. “Look down.”

Maladar looked, and Forlo saw as well. They were a hundred miles north of the Chaldar, Aurim and the surrounding islands looming behind them. Far in the distance, fire engulfed the columns of Bilo: Maladar’s minions assailing Ilmach. Soon enough, they would destroy the place. There were vents in the stone where the gnomes’ engines expelled steam; the minions would enter that way, the one unprotected route into the citadel. Living things could not enter, for the steam would boil them alive. But the minions were made of fire, and the steam would not harm them. By the time the minoi realized the danger, it would be too late.

He glanced to the west and saw the boats of the Kheten Voi. The foremost ones were nearly to the Indanalis Sea, where the magma of the Cauldron flowed into the water, setting it to boiling. Beyond that bubbling brine lay the League. The Voi would sail down the Tiderun and come ashore near the ruins of Coldhope. It was only a few days away.

And directly beneath him…

Beneath him was a gnomish fireship, a tiny vessel with a spinning paddlewheel that threw up plumes of lava as it cut across the Burning Sea. Maladar frowned at the ship. It was moving south, headed directly for the Chaldar, as fast as the machine that drove it could make the wheel turn.

“Gnomes?” he asked. “They know the truth?”

Hith’s head shook. “No. You misunderstand, Maladar, as always. Look closer.”

Forlo would have screamed, if he had a voice. One moment, they were suspended three hundred yards above the sea; then there was a rush of hot wind and a lurch in his belly as they plunged straight down. In a heartbeat they were barely a foot above the lava’s surface.

He saw them, then, on the deck of the fireship: four tall figures among the scrambling minoi. The centaur he didn’t recognize, but there was the Uigan and the elf. He felt a stab of pain in his soul: Shedara and Hult had survived Suluk after all. They’d given chase. They were coming for him.

To save him… to kill him—he didn’t know which.

But it was the fourth figure, the one standing closest to the ship’s prow, who made his insides twist. It was disorienting to look upon him, for he was almost Forlo’s own image. He had no beard, true, and his eyes weren’t the same color—and, of course, at the moment Forlo didn’t look like himself, he looked like a living corpse—but otherwise they were identical.

His son. Yet he was already Forlo’s own age, maybe even a bit older.

And Forlo didn’t even know his name.

Maladar was even more unnerved. He stared at the boy, stunned, amazed.

“That is who you are,” said Hith. “That boy, now grown, soon to be an old man. You are yourself, Maladar, but you are also him.”

Forlo was confused. What did the god mean?

“Of course…” Maladar whispered, then stopped. Anger boiled within him. “That’s why I cannot raise Aurim properly. Why my memories are flawed. He has part of them… and part of my soul.”

“Indeed,” Hith replied. “You are broken, my servant. Split in twain. And you will not triumph, you will not be Maladar, until you are one again.”

Forlo felt as if the world were collapsing beneath him. Terror gnawed at him. What are you doing? he wanted to shout at his friends. Don’t bring my son here! You’re giving him what he needs! You’ll doom us all!

Maladar tensed, as though he had heard and understood Forlo’s thoughts. And perhaps he had. Forlo couldn’t know for sure.

“Let me take him now,” Maladar said. He reached out his good hand toward Forlo’s son. “Let me end this.”

“No,” Hith replied. “What he has cannot be taken by force. He must give himself of his own free will. He must come to you.”

Tell me his name, Forlo pleaded. I just want to know his name.…

Maladar’s hand fell. The ship moved on, leaving them behind, magma spewing in its wake.

“Very well,” Maladar said. “He will come. But not his friends. They will die before they reach the Chaldar.”

Hith shrugged. “Do what you will with them. I do not care about their fate.”

The god raised his hands, and he and Maladar vanished again, returning to the void between the spaces of the world, rushing back to the fiery tower. Oh, gods, Forlo prayed as they traveled through the nothingness. Jolith, Sargas, Mislaxa… someone must caution them to turn back. Someone must keep this from happening.

He got no answer from the other gods, though—only Hith’s mocking laughter, echoing in the dark.