The Fire Rose Read online

  But one did not lose an entire hand, not even in the wastelands of southern Golthuu. More importantly, the fact that it was the warlord Zhulom’s particular hand bothered the Grand Khan. Zhulom was an ambitious commander who had readily sided with the half-breed early on. But ambition, as Golgren well understood, did not suddenly vanish merely because one’s patron had become supreme ruler. Already so close to the throne, the former warlord might be enticed by the notion of taking the final step and seizing it from his slighter, maimed lord. Golgren had already executed one warlord since the battle, a Blödian who had thought the Grand Khan’s injuries a good enough reason to try a coup.

  Golgren suddenly recalled something else about Zhulom’s force: The commander of one of its five fingers was Atolgus, a young chieftain raised up by the Grand Khan. Commander Atolgus had brought the Solamnic knight to Golgren, stirring hopes of a pact between the knights and ogres. And although that effort had failed, Atolgus had proven very loyal. The Grand Khan had intended the chieftain for greater things.

  If Zhulom had turned renegade, Atolgus and the other young leaders Golgren had been keeping a fond eye on were likely dead.

  “Vaduk and Carku are very loyal,” he said to Khleeg. “They are nearest. They will hunt Zhulom.”

  The officer grinned, revealing sharp, yellowed teeth. “Send word. F’han to Zhulom! Death!”

  “Zhulom’s head. Bring it to me.”

  Khleeg beat his chest again. “Aye, my lord.”

  As the officer rushed off to send the orders, Golgren glanced at Idaria. She said nothing, but both knew what subject crossed the Grand Khan’s thoughts.

  “I do not think him dead, my lord,” the elf woman solemnly proclaimed, referring not to Atolgus or any of the other ogres involved in the missing hand. “I think he was called.”

  “Sir Stefan Rennert of the Knights of Solamnia walks into the wild as the earth quakes and f’hanos surround him, and yet he is not dead, you say.” The Grand Khan bared his teeth, an act that made him look far more ogreish. “May whatever god has taken him return him to me. For I will have much need of him very soon.” His brow suddenly furrowed as he considered another possibility. “Whatever god … or Titan.”

  II

  SAFRAG’S SPELL

  There had been many changes in the Black Talon, the inner circle of the Titans. Their founder, Dauroth, had not been the only Titan to perish that foul day when Garantha had been assaulted by the undead and their leader had finally decided to provoke the half-breed’s demise. The quake would have slain Golgren a hundred times over, save for the fact that he had carried an ancient signet once wielded by the High Ogres. There was still debate among the Titans over where the would-be Grand Khan had obtained such a valuable prize, just the sort of trinket so long sought after by the sorcerers.

  The eleven members of the Black Talon sat in massive, high-backed stone chairs. They were designed not only for the Titans’ great height, but also to give each the appearance of authority to any other of their number who stood before them. The most imposing of the chairs was set in the center and stood more than a head higher than the rest. All eleven were placed behind an arching wooden platform, which gave the appearance of a tribunal. Those on each end, the least in rank of the inner circle, faced one another.

  The chamber in which the Black Talon gathered was itself in the center of the sprawling edifice that was the Titans’ domain. The sorcerers did not dwell in Garantha, though they kept a constant watch on its happenings, especially with regard to the mongrel who sat on the throne there. Rather, their sanctum was located far south of Golgren’s capital, in southern Golthuu or—as the Titans still thought it—the land of Blöde. Indeed, the magically hidden valley in which their headquarters lay was barely two dozen miles from Blöten, previously the capital of Blöde. Had anyone been unfortunate enough to stumble into the valley, it was very unlikely that the person would have survived a journey through the misty forest surrounding the sanctum. The Titans also preserved their privacy through monstrous guardians stalking the wooded land.

  As the supreme voice, Dauroth had formerly held the place of honor at the center of the Black Talon. But both he and his intended successor, Hundjal, had perished that ignominious day. The apprentice had died at the whim of his master, but even so, several seats had opened up in the Black Talon, and there was a new Titan in charge-whose ascendancy to power had been a tremendous surprise to some.

  No one argued that Safrag was not the true master. There had been some protest early on, but those two grumbling Titans had simply disappeared, and none of the others were at all interested in asking questions as to their fate.

  For the most part, the dread sorcerers were of a kind, and the epitome of what Dauroth had dreamed was the picture of their glorious ancestors. Their skin was of an arresting blue tint, just as was said to be true of their ancestors, in the tales of the High Ogres. Dauroth’s intended golden age was to have been populated by beings who were giants among giants. Thus the Titans were some fifteen feet tall, more than half again the height of their brethren. Built like graceful acrobats, they were not the brutish, muscular warriors that the rest of the race had developed into. No ordinary ogre could match a Titan in hand-to-hand combat, for the latter’s sleek form hid not only tremendous strength, but swiftness and agility.

  The High Ogres had been beautiful and so the Titans were also, albeit with a subtle touch of darkness. Their skin was without blemish, and their golden eyes glowed. The high, sharp point of their ears was quite visible, due to their habit of binding their long, ebony hair into tight, thick tails. Each wore an elegant, silken robe—dark blue with hints of red—that flowed down to sandaled feet. Crimson sashes stretched from the right shoulder down to the left side of their golden-belted waists. A decorative armor plate covered their left shoulders, and their arms themselves were bare, save for a gleaming silver metal band on the right wrist, a red silken one on the other.

  Although they resembled each other enough to be brothers—all, that is, save for one of their number—if one looked close, one could still see distinctive features that remained as faint memories of their former lives. It was the group that was paramount, not the individual. That had been the law under Dauroth, and it was still the law under Safrag—although that law applied to everyone but the leader.

  Gargoyles had been part of the discussion held by Golgren and Tyranos; not at all by chance, they were part of the current debate among the Black Talon.

  The Titans despised the tongue of their base brethren and also eschewed the use of Common, save when having to deal with outsiders or those new among their ranks. Instead, they sang the words of a glorious language Dauroth had claimed was that of the High Ogres. Safrag, at least, knew it was simply another of his late master’s creations. So much of the Titans’ culture was imaginative fabrication, not true fact or history. The former apprentice had no qualms about keeping what he liked about the Titan legacy and gradually changing what he did not.

  But to shape the Titans as he ultimately desired, to shape all ogres as he planned, Safrag needed something special. It was what he had invoked to manipulate Dauroth into slaying Hundjal, before tricking his master into slaying himself with his own spellwork.

  Legend named it the Fire Rose. And whoever was master of the gargoyles was interfering with his attempt to find it once and for all.

  Safrag stood. He was a monumental sight even to the rest of the Black Talon, most of whom suspected him of somehow causing the deaths of Dauroth and Hundjal by his cunning. The other members of the inner circle listened breathlessly as he sang to them of the reason for their summons.

  “Another!” he shouted, his song strident. Outsiders would have perhaps been captivated by the singing but would have been utterly unable to decipher the meaning of his words. “There lies another!”

  He gestured to the center of the chamber, to the floor where a symbol of a great black claw had been set in stone. Directly above the claw symbol, a crackling
sphere of white-blue energy was responsible for what little illumination lit the chamber.

  Safrag stretched out his hand. Each nail was as dark as night, long, and tapering to a sudden, sharp curve. His nails were well matched with the shorter, but sharper, hooks at his elbows.

  Black flames burst from the stone floor, the talon symbol briefly coming alive in the fire. The fire began to transform itself, taking on a constantly shifting shape that seemed to want nothing more than to leap and dance. That shape began to coalesce, and as it did, the flames started to die.

  And in moments, where there had been fire, there struggled a gargoyle, gray-blue in color and with a long muzzle almost avian in its beaky shape.

  “I seek for us the means to achieve our dreams,” Safrag intoned. He glanced at those on his left, and those on his right. His anger was clear and righteous. “I seek that which legend says can transform our realm into the paradise it once was and was meant to be! And what do you give me, instead? Another winged vermin.”

  Unlike the members of the Black Talon, the imprisoned creature was not cowed. The gargoyle hissed and spat and tried to reach for Safrag with his claws. Its wings beat, but it did not rise so much as an inch off the floor. There was no sign of what held the beast captive, but it certainly did so thoroughly.

  “It was caught observing our search near Khur,” sang the Titan who had brought the creature to Safrag. Khur was a desolate land northeast of Blöde and the subject of much conjecture as to the likely hiding place of the mysterious artifact. “Better to bring it to the Black Talon and question what it knows—”

  Safrag cut the other Titan off. “It knows as much as those before it, and will tell us none of it … will you, beast?”

  The gargoyle snapped at him again. Such creatures could speak, and there were some scholars who said that they had an intelligence comparable to that of an average ogre. But the greatest tortures that Safrag had devised had proven unable to stir the creatures’ tongues to wagging.

  And so, to the Titan leader, one more gargoyle meant little but irritation. It was their master he desired, their chief—a master Safrag felt certain was somehow tied to Golgren.

  He clenched his fist. The gargoyle howled as it suddenly twisted like a wet cloth that someone sought to tightly wring out. Bones cracked, and its scaled hide ripped open to unleash a sickening torrent of blood, other fluids, and crushed organs.

  Safrag gestured. The black flames briefly burst to life again, completely devouring the gargoyle while protecting the pristine floor from its destroyed body, fluids, and organs.

  The lead Titan surveyed the others with a glare. “Bring me the head of that refuse’s master and nothing less! Otherwise we waste time. There must be no further interruption of our hunt.”

  “What hunt?” blurted Yatilun, one of the first to support Safrag’s ascension and, of late, one of those most frustrated by the lack of progress in their quest. “We find one dead end after another while our cache of elixir depletes. Dauroth would have—”

  A singular look from Safrag sent the other Titan withdrawing into his chair, his mouth clamped shut. The leader of the Black Talon smiled around broadly. But it was no smile of pleasure, rather a reminder that he would tolerate only so much. Like all Titans, Safrag’s handsome facade crumbled when his teeth were revealed, twin rows of sharp teeth more akin to those of a shark than any other creature. Those seated on each side of Safrag surreptitiously leaned away from him.

  But one Titan dared speak. A feminine hand touched Safrag’s. He looked down to his right, where the lone female among the Black Talon, the only representative of her gender to be invited into the inner circle, sat as his favored apprentice.

  “He is only as anxious as the rest of us, master,” the female Titan whispered, her full, dark lips creased in a slight smile. Long lashes partially veiled her brilliant, golden eyes. “Yatilun merely spoke before he considered.”

  Her hand lingered a moment longer than necessary. While Safrag’s expression did not change, he did not pull his hand away from her touch.

  It was not merely because she was the only female among them that most of the other Titans were prey to her allure. The transformation from ogre to sorceress had created a seductress unparalleled in her. Her long, flowing midnight black hair—hair never bound as a male’s was, beautiful hair that streamed down to her waist—framed a face that made the most glorious elf princess appear a hag by comparison.

  Morgada continued displaying her half smile with hints of teeth not so grand in size as a male’s, but certainly as sharp or even sharper. Safrag turned his gaze from his apprentice to Yatilun.

  “We are all anxious to see the destiny of our people fulfilled,” the lead Titan sang in a conciliatory, soothing tone. “And so, I do forgive your outburst, my friend.”

  “Gracious is Safrag,” Yatilun sang back in the Titan language.

  “It is true, all trails have led to nothing thus far, and that must be remedied. That is why I have summoned all of you. I have pored over all matters arcane and have at last determined how best to pinpoint the Fire Rose.”

  “The small piece that Dauroth and you discovered was supposed to help us many, many months ago,” pointed out another Titan. “‘ Like calling to like.’ Is that not how it works?”

  Safrag bowed his head in acknowledgment of the words he himself had uttered just after making his claim to Dauroth’s position. “True, but for the first months we were too weak to undertake such an imposing spell. For the months that followed, we made the assumption that our previous conjurations would work as well for the matter in hand, as they have worked for other purposes, yes?”

  “Of course,” remarked Yatilun, intrigued. “Why not?”

  Their leader looked to his apprentice. “Morgada?”

  With a smile designed to draw every eye to her, she answered, “High Ogre magic still eludes us.”

  As her words registered among the inner circle, Safrag added his own satisfied smile to hers. “High Ogre magic. Though Dauroth preached to us about how ours was a power akin to that of the ancients’, he failed to realize they had many, many generations of study and use that we did not.”

  “How can we overcome an obstacle of experience that far dwarfs ours?” asked another sorcerer. Several of the inner circle murmured their agreement with that burning question.

  “Why, by using the ancients themselves, their very powers and secrets, in order to learn where the artifact is.”

  There was a great rumble from the rest of the Black Talon. Safrag looked again to Morgada, whose eyes flashed their approval.

  “How do we do that?” Yatilun finally asked. “What do you mean by that riddle? Must we raise the dead?”

  “Hardly that. We merely have to rob the dead—which we already have.” He gestured at the spot where the gargoyle had stood.

  Another burst of black flame erupted, but it lasted only scant seconds before retreating to the nether reaches. In its wake, the fire left a black metal chest chained by silver strands, hovering at waist level. The box was large enough to hold a small cat, and there appeared to be no separation between the lid and its main body.

  Safrag suddenly stood next to the box and tapped on the top of it with one finger. With a hiss the strands became serpents that writhed and sought his hand.

  Startled, the other sorcerers edged back. However, an undaunted Safrag let the serpents bite him.

  The serpents stiffened as they bit. One by one, the serpent guardians turned to ash that fell to the floor and faded away.

  With what seemed almost reverence, Safrag raised the lid.

  A fiery light filled the chamber that nearly blinded the Titans. They were forced to shield their eyes.

  His own gaze already protected by his spellwork, Safrag reached inside.

  His hand thrust into a clear liquid. He removed something that was easily hidden in his returning fist yet still illuminated the chamber from between his clenched fingers.

  “Behold!”
he proclaimed. “Only a hint of the glory that we seek.”

  The lead Titan opened his hand palm up to display for the rest a tiny, tiny fragment of what appeared to be incandescent pearl. Freed of his grip, it again radiated a brilliant light.

  “Behold! The slightest piece of the greatest artifact of the High Ogres.”

  “The Fire Rose!” more than one Titan murmured. They had all seen the fragment once before—when they had last sought the artifact from which it had somehow broken off—but so great was its power that all marveled at it as if for the first time.

  “But … We have used it before,” the Titan on Morgada’s other side finally spouted. “We came away with nothing!”

  “That is true, Draug. But, as I said, we used only our own, deficient magic. It is true High Ogre power that we need. And a ready source for it has been awaiting us all the while.”

  Draug and the others held their tongues as Safrag dismissed the box almost contemptuously. Still clutching the pea-sized fragment, he spread his hands toward the other ten members of the Black Talon.

  “Come to me and receive life unbound …”

  Several of the Titans started forward warily. His words were the opening declaration to one of the supreme rituals of their kind. More than one looked to their neighbor for verification that they had heard true.

  Rising smoothly, Morgada vanished from her place, only to reappear at a point close to the right of her master. The Titaness turned to him, her face expressionless.

  Her bold action stirred the rest into movement. One by one, the members of the Talon took up their proper places. They glanced around at each other, wondering what their leader planned. He still held the minute piece of the legendary artifact. But surely he did not plan to use it directly on them …

  Safrag whispered something to the fragment. Almost with reluctance, he tossed it from his palm. Yatilun gasped and nearly leaped from his place for fear that it would shatter and explode when it struck the stone floor.