Chapter 34

Risen Aurim, Hith’s Cauldron

Shedara heard Hult scream but didn’t look back. She didn’t dare take her eyes off the Ghelim. The statues stood motionless, as if they’d been sculpted where they stood. But danger radiated from them nonetheless. When they moved, there would be little time for thought.

She had her warhammer, had had the presence of mind to grab it when it looked like the Varya was going to crash into the rocks. It was in a sling across her back; she unhooked it and held it in both hands in front of her. Its weight was unfamiliar, awkward for one used to knife-work; more than four or five good swings, and her strength would begin to flag. She murmured a spell, drawing in a bit of Lunis’s power to bolster her own. Magic sang in her blood. While it lasted, she wouldn’t grow tired.

Nakhil needed no such spell. He had picked up two hammers before the boat sank—both his and Hult’s. He held one in either hand, his thick muscles flexing as he brought them forward to crack their heads together. The sound echoed off Aurim’s derelict halls like a thunderclap.

“This is for Suluk,” he said. “For my people.”

Shedara saw the harsh gleam in his eye. All the centaur had been through, all he had lost, was coming to the fore. He had a sense of doom about him, which reminded her of Eldako standing upon the roof of Akh-tazi, just before he hurled himself and the Master to their deaths.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she said. “If you mean to die here, then die here, but let’s get Azar to the tower. If he doesn’t, none of this will have had any purpose. Your city will have fallen for nothing.”

He glanced at her, sidelong. It took him a moment before he nodded. “Good luck,” was all he said; then he charged.

The statues came to life at once, all of them moving at exactly the same instant. Their actions had a disturbing symmetry, something almost hypnotic. It was as if they all shared a single mind, which guided a single purpose. Their heads snapped up, and they broke to the left and right, parting in front of Nakhil as he galloped toward him, the better to trap him in their midst. But Nakhil leaped to his right, slamming into their flank. He knocked three down with his hooves, then swung both hammers and smashed a fourth statue’s head to splinters. The Ghelim’s body fell to the ground with a crash, reduced to mere lifeless stone.

The statues milled in disarray: their single mind was coordinated but not very intelligent. Shedara let out a battle cry, lifting her hammer high, and half of them turned to look at her while the rest crowded around Nakhil, jabbing with their stone blades while he snapped his hammers at them, one weapon following the other in whirling arcs that never slowed. The Ghelim he’d trampled struggled to rise; one got back to its feet, but he kicked the other two, his iron shoes cracking against their faces. The light in their eyes dimmed, and they lay still.

Six of the statues started toward Shedara, leaving their fellows to confront Nakhil. They walked with startling swiftness, their long strides devouring the street. She dropped her hammer and flung her hands out before her, fingers splayed. She shouted an incantation, and blue lightning flared from her fingertips with a boom so loud, it set her ears ringing. The bolts forked and twisted through the smoky air, striking three of the Ghelim full-on. They exploded in midstride, peppering the ground with shards of broken, smoldering rock.

The others paid them no mind and kept coming. Shedara grabbed her hammer and flung herself forward, tucking into a roll as the statues drew near. She felt the wind as their blades slashed through the air above her, then came out of the roll, swinging her hammer in a low arc that caught one of the Ghelim in the ankle. Stone splintered, and the statue’s leg broke off at the middle of its shin. It staggered, fell to one knee, then pushed itself back up and balanced on the stump, wobbling as it turned toward her again.

Nakhil was bellowing curses at the statues, his rage building. She heard his hammer ring again and again as he battered them. He stood in the midst of a crowd of Ghelim, hammers lashing to both sides. His leather armor hung off him in strips, cut away by the statues’ blades; beneath, red blood bathed his body. He’d lost the advantage and was fighting for his life.

“Suluk!” he cried. “Suluk! Suluk!”

Then the statues came at her, and she had to turn away to face them. The two unhurt Ghelim came on, charging hard. Their swords were quick, and it was all she could do to parry them with the haft of her hammer. She ducked, twisted, spun, and tried to come at them from the side, but they pivoted to face her, too quick. The third, the one with only one foot, tried to lurch behind her, and she had to keep moving to make sure it didn’t. Other spells sprang to mind, but she thrust them aside; she didn’t have time to cast them. It was all she could do to fight, keeping the statues at bay.

She caught one in the sword hand with her hammer, and its arm snapped off at the elbow, but before she could press the attack, its fist lashed out and she had to leap back to keep it from turning her skull to pulp. She stumbled over a piece of one of the lightning-blasted Ghelim and wrenched her knee but managed to keep her footing. The statue whose arm she’d broken off stooped, joints cracking and popping and puffing with dust, to pick up the shattered limb. It smashed the hand against the ground, and fingers snapped and cracked, letting the sword fall free. The statue took up the blade in its left hand and came at her anew.

I’m in a lot of trouble, Shedara thought.

She hacked the hammer back and forth. The footless statue lurched around at the edges of her eyesight, and she swatted its blade away as it tried to stab her. The tip of the sword cracked off, leaving jagged stone behind—no great gain. She gave ground and changed direction again and again, always on the move. She was facing away from Nakhil and the Chaldar, looking back down toward the Cauldron. She saw Hult on the shore, and her hopes that he would join the battle died: the Uigan lay still, Azar kneeling over him, head bowed. A faint, silvery light glimmered around them as Forlo’s son attempted his magic, healing Hult’s burned hand.

To the Abyss with his hand, Shedara thought. I’m about to die here.

“Azar!” she shouted. “Help! Azar!”

Either Azar didn’t hear, or he wasn’t listening. He kept his back turned, his focus on Hult alone. Shedara snarled a curse, then ducked as a stone sword whistled at her head. A moment slower, and it would have taken off the top of her skull. Gritting her teeth, she jabbed with her hammer, hitting the statue who’d tried to cut her in the stomach. It didn’t even slow, and she had to leap aside as its sword came slashing down. She hit the ground hard, knocking out her wind, and lost her grip on the hammer, which skipped across the cobbles—only ten feet, but it might as well have been all the way back in Armach. She couldn’t get to it in time, so she flipped on her back, raising her hands to cast one last spell, knowing she couldn’t complete the incantation before the Ghelim cut her apart.

They loomed over her, one tottering on the stump of its leg, one missing an arm, and the third with a crack in its midsection. Their eyes flashed red, unfeeling. They raised their weapons.

As they did, she heard a wild roar, filled with fury, and a shape hurtled over her, slamming into all three of the statues at once. They buried their blades in its flesh, but it didn’t relent, shoving them back and laying in with hooves and hammers.

Shedara stared, stunned, as Nakhil flung the Ghelim away from her. Then, recovering her wits, she sprang back to her feet. The centaur had saved her. As she watched, he pounded the one-armed statue’s head to dust, then broke off the one-legged one’s other foot, sending it crashing back into a blackened tree. The tree came apart in sloughs of gray powder. The statue hit the ground and stayed there, struggling but unable to rise.

Teeth bared, nostrils flared, caked in blood, Nakhil came around to face the third statue… and caught its sword in his belly. His eyes went wide as the stone blade slid in; then his legs gave out, and he went down.

Shedara leaped, hurling herself toward her dropped hammer, then whirling around in time to see the Ghelim yank its blade from the centaur’s flesh. It strode forward, eyes aflame, its sword dark with blood. She braced herself, hammer gripped in both hands.

When the statue got close, however, Nakhil stirred. His horse half didn’t move, but his man half twisted to fling one of his hammers at the Ghelim’s back. The weapon whirled through the air and struck the statue square between its shoulders with a crack that would have killed it, had it been made of flesh. As it was, it staggered forward, knocked off balance, putting one hand on the ground to keep itself from toppling over.

Shedara wasted no time. In three steps she was on the Ghelim, screaming words with no meaning. It made a clumsy attempt to slash at her ankles, but she jumped over the sword, and as she came down, she slammed her hammer into the side of its face. Stone shattered; dust flew as the left half of its head turned to gravel. The red light went out of its remaining eye… and it simply stopped, anchored to the street on both knees and one hand, as if it had been sculpted there.

For good measure, she pulverized what remained of its head.

The statue with two broken legs was still thrashing, silently: she approached it carefully, avoided its flailing arms, and smashed its face. It stopped, stiffening. She glanced around, making sure none of the Ghelim were left. There was a heap of blood-spattered pieces where Nakhil had been fighting before he came to her rescue, but none moved, and no more were coming, so she went to the centaur and knelt down beside him.

He was almost gone, his face pale in the Chaldar’s blue light. Blood welled from his stomach in weakening pulses, pooling on the black cobbles. When he licked his lips, his tongue was dark red.

“I… did what I… could,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered, brushing his mane out of his eyes. His eyes were glassy, his sight already gone. “You will be remembered. We’ll tell them, back in the Rainwards. They will build a memorial to you.”

Nakhil smiled, his teeth pink. “A… statue… I hope. It would be… ironic.”

Then he let out his final breath. Shedara bowed her head. It was too hot for tears. She closed his eyes and sat by him a while, heedless of his blood soaking into her armor.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed, but after a while she heard movement. She turned, reaching for her hammer, and stopped when she saw Hult and Azar. The Uigan was grim, his face creasing with grief as he gazed upon Nakhil’s body. The hand he’d burned was whole again; only a slight puckering of the flesh betrayed the wound.

Azar had fared much worse. He’d aged again: whatever he’d done to heal Hult had drained him considerably. He could have been Forlo’s father instead of the other way around. His hair was completely gray, his face wrinkled, his hands spotted with age. Only his eyes still looked youthful. Seeing him like that made Shedara angry. All of it made her angry. Her rage was like a smoldering coal inside her.

“He saved me,” she said, resting a hand on Nakhil’s forehead. “He saved me and paid the price.”

Hult looked stricken. “I should have been with you. If there had been three of us…”

“Don’t think that way,” she said. “Don’t. There are things we all could have done to keep things from being the way they are. But this is it. This is what it is.”

Shedara rose, looking Azar up and down. She could tell he didn’t have it in him to heal anyone again. It would leave him a withered husk if it didn’t kill him altogether.

She looked up at the Chaldar. “Is he still there, Azar? Can you sense him?”

He shut his eyes. His lips moved, just slightly, then he nodded. “He is watching us. He knows we’re here.”

Shedara glared at the burning tower. She could sense Maladar’s gaze as well—a prickling deep inside her mind, as if some unpleasant insect had burrowed there. Hate boiled in her breast.

“Let him watch,” she said. “Let him see us coming.”

In a just world, they would have had the chance to bury Nakhil, or at least burn his body. But there was no soil there and nothing for fuel; they couldn’t even cover him over. They had to leave him sprawled in his own blood as they walked on toward the tower.

Nothing else stirred in Aurim. The statues they passed were all of Forlo—a gaunt, wasted Forlo with cruel eyes—Forlo as Maladar. Azar stared at the faces as he passed, studying them, but Shedara couldn’t even glance at them without rage billowing inside her. Another friend had been destroyed by Maladar. Like Thalaniya, Eldako, and Roshambur… and Nakhil. Everything she had loved, gone, lost… only the three of them were left. It almost seemed as if there were nothing left to save.

That wasn’t true, of course. There were entire kingdoms that would fall to ashes and rubble if Maladar weren’t stopped. The League would be destroyed, Thenol too. The other Rainward realms were in danger as well. And what about her estranged brother and the surviving Silvanaes? Yes, they were endangered too. And the cha’asii. The merkitsa. The kender of Marak. Whatever Ice People were left, up in Panak.

The boulevard led straight through the heart of the city, uphill to the gates of a wall, surrounding a broad plaza. Forlo’s face stared down from the arch above the open gates, graven into the keystone. She refused to look at it, kept walking, on through gardens of cinders and soot, to where the tower awaited. It loomed before them, massive, five hundred paces from one side to the other, so tall that her head swam when she looked up. The storm clouds that covered the Cauldron parted to let it through, and beyond, Nuvis loomed fat and full, blocking out the stars. The same unholy radiance she’d seen at Akh-tazi, the not-light of the black moon, shone down. All the colors were wrong. The flames of the Chaldar shifted and shimmered, pink and blue and silver and green. Nakhil’s blood on her body was deep violet. Her own skin was yellow-gray.

The tower’s gates were shut, the massive stone doors barred with gleaming steel. An army couldn’t have battered them down, even with the largest ram. And then, when they were halfway across the plaza, there was something else: a massive bolt of fire that fell from the sky, like the Destruction itself. The three of them stopped, drawing back as the flaming form came to ground in front of the doors, spreading its wings at the last moment to slow its descent.

Wings. A serpentine neck. A long, forked tail.

It was a dragon made of fire, the largest she’d ever seen, bigger even than the poor, doomed Wyrm-namer. It reared above them, staring down with eyes as white and hot as stars. Terror came off it in waves, making Shedara want to fall to her knees and grovel for pity. She fought back that urge, knowing it would be the death of her if she succumbed.

Hult reached for his talga, but she put a hand over his. “You can’t be serious,” she said. “You can’t kill that.”

“I know,” he answered, shaking off her grasp. The curved sword slid from its scabbard without a sound. “But I refuse to die without a blade in my hand.”

“Good point,” she said, letting a knife drop into her own grip.

Azar, however, stepped forward. He stared at the dragon, unafraid, as if it were nothing more than a small, harmless lizard. The dragon stared back, eyes narrowing, ignoring the puny human and elf and their weapons. Its eyes bored into Azar, its head lowering until it was barely an arm’s breadth away. Its very teeth were bigger than he was. The slightest movement, the barest opening of its jaws, and Forlo’s son would be gone, down its gullet. Shedara’s mind was a white haze of terror.

Still Azar showed no fear. “You know who I am,” he said. “You have already submitted to me. You will do so again.”

“I do not submit,” the dragon replied, its voice the roar of a forest fire. “I do not serve. But yes, I know you, Maladar, just as I know you are also in the tower.”

“Then you know I must pass. And you will let me.”

The dragon wanted to do nothing of the sort, Shedara could tell. It desired nothing more than to destroy them all and rule that place alone. But it couldn’t. There was strange sorcery at work, binding the creature’s will. The dragon sneered, its lip curling to let out a gout of steam; then the fire dragon drew back and was gone, a blast of hot wind erupting as it vaulted into the air. Behind them, the gardens came apart in ash. Shedara stared upward, watching the wyrm rise, then vanish into the clouds. Terror loosened its grip on her heart. She looked at Hult, who rolled his eyes, then turned back toward the Chaldar.

Its doors were open. Smoke billowed out like a dragon’s breath. Within was more fire, shaped into columns and fountains and mosaics. Even from a distance, Shedara could tell that it didn’t match the outside of the tower. She was looking upon the old palace, where the emperors of Aurim had ruled.

Maladar’s home.

“He’ll be in the throne room,” she said.

Hult nodded and raised his talga. He swung it in looping arcs, testing out his mended hand. Satisfied, he brought it to a stop and nodded to her, his eyes glittering.

Shedara looked at the dagger in her hand, then glanced at Azar’s back. One quick stab, at the base of his neck, was all it would take. But as she thought that, he looked at her, and she had a momentary vision of her body tearing apart, the flesh ripping and falling away in bloody hanks to leave her bones and innards exposed. She winced, shaking her head; when she looked again, Azar’s attention was back on the tower.

She set aside thoughts of killing him. But she didn’t put the dagger away.

Azar raised his hands, a gesture of command. “Father!” he cried. “I am here!”

For a moment, there was silence… or as close to it as possible, there in the heart of the Burning Sea. Then an answer came, chilling Shedara’s blood. It was Forlo’s voice—dark and rumbling and evil but still undoubtedly his.

“Enter, then. Enter, and come to me.”

Azar didn’t hesitate. Long strides carried him through the open gates and on into the tower. Shedara and Hult, exchanging glances, followed. The doors boomed shut behind them.