The Fire Rose Read online

  Instead the artifact fragment flew up in the air, rising to a place directly above the lead Titan and just below the white-blue sphere whose light it utterly overwhelmed.

  As it hovered above them, Safrag smiled at his companions.

  “Do you accept what I offer?” he sang, speaking the next line of the ritual.

  “I am an empty vessel,” Morgada led the others in replying. “Let that vessel be filled.”

  “Let that vessel be filled.” The rest concluded the chant.

  “Magic is the blood, the blood is the magic. Take unto you that which I give, and you will live forever!”

  As one, the other Titans declared, “We will live forever! Let the magic be our blood, for we would drink of eternity.”

  Safrag should have brought forth the dwindling supply of elixir that the Titans needed to imbibe every so often to keep their forms and power. If they did not drink it, they were doomed to a terrible fate. There was a monstrous price to pay for becoming a Titan: deprived of the elixir—which included fresh elf blood as one of its chief ingredients—a sorcerer’s body would go through such withdrawals from the loss of magic that it would twist and warp and become a thing so foul even the lowest ogre would turn from it in disgust.

  Donnag, once master of Blöde and believed by many at the time of his ascension to be the one who would restore the ogres to their glory, had joined the Titans at Dauroth’s invitation. Yet Donnag had been far too eager to slay the upstart Golgren. When his plot had failed—risking open battle between the influential half-breed and the Titans—Dauroth had permitted Golgren to condemn the chieftain to no more elixirs.

  There was question as to how Golgren had discovered the Titans’ secret—and all the most likely answers pointed to the sinister Uruv Suurt priestess and empress, Nephera. But what mattered was that Donnag had become an object lesson to all, before his eventual grisly death. His body had bent, his skin had developed boils all over, and his bones had shifted to odd and unsettling positions, making it hard for him to walk or even talk. Even his own clan had finally turned on him.

  There was one fate worse than to be denied the elixir, and that fate was a nightmare in itself. An end to the supply was enough to keep the Titans under Safrag’s thumb. For only he had access to remaining stocks secreted by Dauroth.

  In the days of plenty, each Titan would imbibe on his own. Of late, though, Safrag had insisted that the Talon always drink the elixir together. The inner circle ought to stay strong and united, so his reasoning went. If the Fire Rose was found, its wondrous power would offer the key to the golden age. But it also would free the Titans of the potion they so desperately needed to maintain their might, and the mongrel who currently kept them from its crucial ingredients. With the Fire Rose, they could rejuvenate themselves with merely a touch of its power.

  That is if the tales were true.

  With the fragment still hovering far above him, Safrag sang, “Let the magic come forth to quench our thirst!”

  The other Titans prepared themselves to receive one of the tiny vials. But the elixir did not materialize. As the sorcerers stirred, beginning to comprehend, Safrag raised his hands upward.

  Under the brilliant glow of the fragment, a long shape began to form. Some of the Titans frowned, quickly recognizing its general shape and outline—that of a body.

  But it was no newly slain corpse of one of the elves used to create the elixir. Instead, the body—smaller by at least half than those of the great Titans who observed it—was no more than bones.

  “The ancient!” Draug gasped.

  They all knew the bones well, for the Titans had been the grave robbers responsible for their taking. The bones were millennia old, the remains of a once mighty High Ogre whose tomb the Black Talon had ransacked in its relentless quest for the secrets of the past. The body had been fully intact when Dauroth had led his followers to it. But despite their reverence for their ancestors, he had without hesitation, in order to better seek out any powerful secrets within, destroyed the wards that had kept it in such perfect order for so long.

  After failing to unlock any secrets, Dauroth had returned the bones to the sanctum. Magic was so integral to High Ogre society that even the remains should be preserved.

  And Safrag had found use for them.

  The Titans stared in wonder and pleasure.

  “Do you accept the power and the life?” Safrag sang.

  “We accept,” Morgada and the others replied.

  “Let the vessels be filled, and the desire emptied from them!”

  The Titans raised their upturned hands shoulder high. They bent their heads back and closed their eyes.

  A faint aura surrounded each of them, a sign that the individual sorcerers had opened themselves up to receive what their leader offered. It was the only moment, waking or sleeping, that Titans left themselves unguarded, even before their own leader. Otherwise, all kept their own hidden defenses, just in case of argument or ambition. Or worse.

  Seen from above, the eleven formed a five-pointed star within a five-pointed star, with Safrag occupying the center point. The skeleton hovered directly over him and just below the fragment.

  Safrag stared up at the skeleton. His golden eyes flared. With one finger, he drew the star within a star pattern. The pattern blazed red and floated up to the remains of the High Ogre.

  As it touched the floating skeleton, the pattern grew to envelop the bones.

  Safrag muttered under his breath and his eyes closed.

  The pattern became the skeleton, which burned a bright crimson. From the center of the ancient corpse, tendrils of energy shot forth to strike each Titan, hitting them full on the chest.

  One last tendril rose to touch the fragment of the Fire Rose.

  Some of the sorcerers gasped when struck, but for the most part they remained silent. Only Safrag could be heard, murmuring. The lead Titan opened his eyes to slits, his gaze taking in those within view. A slight smile crossed his lips as he finished the incantation.

  More and more the tendrils fed the Titans, and as they did the bones began to wither. They cracked and crumbled, and even the dust that they formed burned away as the Black Talon received the inherent magic flowing from them. All semblance of a body faded away until eventually only the crimson glow remained. Even that finally faded away, and with it went the tendrils.

  Yatilun was the first to find his voice. His eyes wide in awe, the Titan rasped, “Never … never have I felt so alive! So powerful! So—”

  “So truly as one of the ancients,” Safrag finished for him as the other Titan nodded. Their leader looked to the others. Each face—even Morgada’s—was marked by the same rapture.

  “There is nothing beyond us!” Draug managed. “We could flay the mongrel alive and take Garantha in a single minute! We could wash away Uruv Suurt Ambeon with one vast wave taken from the sea, sending all those horned devils back to Mithas to lie dead at the feet of their emperor—”

  Others began to babble similar sentiments. Safrag watched them with amusement. Such euphoria was not uncommon after a Titan’s imbibing of the elixir. But the power given to them by the bones had magnified that effect several times over.

  “There is only one purpose for our mighty gift,” he finally interjected, his brusque tone silencing all objections. “Keep to your positions.”

  They immediately obeyed. Safrag gazed up at the fragment, which shimmered. He raised his hand toward it. At the same time, the other members of the Black Talon pointed at him.

  New tendrils of the same hue as those that had struck the Titans spread from one sorcerer to the next. The star within the star pattern was recreated; the focus of its energies was the figure at its center.

  And he, in turn, focused those energies upon the fragment.

  The moment the tendrils struck it, the Titans stood as if frozen. Their golden orbs turned utter white, and their skin grew so pale they looked as if death had claimed them. Only a faint rising of their chests gave any c
lue that life remained within them.

  Safrag’s mouth opened suddenly, and the voice that emerged sounded like nothing mortal.

  “South … South to east… East to north and north to west and west to south … Under the raven’s beak, and at the mark of the burning sun… He claims his child, and his child claims the world …”

  Safrag jerked. His voice changed, sounding female but powerful. “The wings stretch long and over the land. The gargoyle king seeks his hand … The fire calls his heart and has eaten his soul, and the king sits upon his throne, the Rose’s sweet scent calling …”

  Again, the Titan leader jerked spasmodically. He struggled to turn his hand clockwise, but with his face contorted with the effort, his hand completed a circle.

  The sorcerers shook. A vision formed before Safrag. He gritted his teeth from the effort and pain. The vision defined itself. The key to the Fire Rose revealed itself to him.

  And caused him to roar in fury and disbelief.

  The unexpected cry broke the spell. Some of the Titans collapsed to the floor, while the rest struggled to remain on their feet. Only Safrag retained enough strength to not only keep steady and poised, but to continue his wordless roar.

  Finally able to focus, Morgada stared at him in concern. “Master! What is it? Has the spell turned on you?”

  Safrag turned such a murderous gaze upon her that the Titaness crouched in fear of being reduced to a stain on the floor. Yet his anger was not aimed at her. Instead, he pointed before him. In the chaos of the spell’s shattering, the vision he had summoned—and kept intact through his own magic—stood unnoticed. Morgada gazed at the revelation and was dumbfounded.

  “What does that mean?” she asked, as she stalked around the image. In the center of the vision stood a figure. One by one, the inner circle of the Titans surrounded the figure, staring at it.

  “What does it mean?” Morgada asked again of Safrag.

  The lead Titan eyed the hated face, the mocking smile … the missing hand. He nodded to all the others. Their eyes did not deceive them.

  “It seems that the Grand Khan Golgren is our key to the Fire Rose,” Safrag finally said.

  And very slowly and bitterly, he smiled.

  III

  SARTH

  There were troubles with ruling a realm divided by broken land, mountains, and other geographic divides. Golgren borrowed his ideas in that regard from the Uruv Suurt, who claimed mastery over their mainland colony of Ambeon and many, many islands east of the Blood Sea. No realm was as splintered as the minotaur empire’s, and a constant stream of ships kept communication going between the individual colonies. Under Faros Es-Kalin, the newest emperor—Golgren’s archenemy—those ships had swelled in number.

  The Grand Khan boasted a continuous stream of ships moving between the parts of his realm too, especially the lighter sailing craft that borrowed heavily from the empire’s designs. Yet sailing around the Hollowlands, past the Misty Isle, and through the Bay of Balifor was an overly-tedious and dangerous process. Thus, while that route was necessary at times, Golgren had also opened a land crossing near Ogrebond heading south to the sea just beyond the bay, utilizing a new port town he had dubbed Carduuch, or “Serpent’s Bite”. Even that way entailed wasted time and effort, however.

  And that was why Golgren had begun to study the nearby land of Khur in detail.

  Khur was an arid land filled mostly with human nomads. In many ways, the nomads were respected by the ogres, who acknowledged their strength, cunning, and savagery. However, being human, the nomads had made ties with the Knights of Neraka. And thus to invade them was to end the semblance of peace that existed between Golgren and the dark knighthood. Yet, if the news he had received was correct, the Black Shells had already broken that peace, and Khur was already his enemy.

  Golgren studied the weathered maps on a huge wooden table in what had become his war room. The high-ceilinged chamber had likely been a grand ballroom in the days of his ancestors, for it was vast. The floor and walls still retained remnants of fanciful images, some recognizable as High Ogres in poses of merriment. The Grand Khan cared not a whit that he had turned a place of entertainment into one of planning destruction, for to ogres war was the ultimate entertainment. It gave purpose to their otherwise dismal lives and had a long ogre tradition.

  Khur had been Golgren’s next intended foray into conquest, one that he had felt would not be so disturbing to the Solamnians at least. Uniting the “provinces” of Kern and Blöde through Khur would prove far more vexing to the Nerakians and the Uruv Suurt. And as an ally of Neraka, Khur was an enemy of Solamnia. In Golgren’s eyes, it had been the perfect next step in his master plan.

  His face expressionless, the Grand Khan suddenly swept his maimed arm across the table, flinging away the maps that had been given to him long ago by the Solamnians who had come to “train” his village in warfare against the Black Shells.

  Golgren strode out of the war room, with two hulking guards—one from Kern and the other from Blöde, as he always dictated—following close behind.

  Signs of reconstruction and renovation were everywhere, with scaffoldings lining corridors and raw materials covering portions of the marble floors. The work had slowed over the past months, in great part because very few elf slaves were involved anymore. Having determined that they would be his bargaining chip with the Solamnians, Golgren had not wanted to let his people become too much accustomed to using the elves as slaves. Without them, ogres tried their best to imitate the meticulous skill of the elves. The results were not as pleasing.

  Three ogre workers quickly scrambled to attention as he strode by. They had been seeking to patch a section of wall that had collapsed in upon itself in generations past. The work had been started by the slaves, and where elf hands had sought to ease the cracks and replace the marble, the wall looked almost as though it had never broken in the first place.

  Unfortunately, where the ogres had taken over, the new marble did not match the previous stone in shade, nor were the cracks completely covered over. Instead, great splashes of plaster feebly attempted to bridge the gaps between broken pieces.

  The three ogres had been chosen because of their relative skills at such craftsmanship, but so amateurish was their effort that Golgren paused to survey their handiwork. The trio dropped to their knees and cowered before their much shorter lord.

  Golgren snapped his fingers. One of the Grand Khan’s guards let out a grunt of warning and thrust a sword forward for emphasis. The three workers scrambled to their feet and fled down the corridor.

  The Grand Khan softly placed his hand on one of the ancient reliefs. In the image, two High Ogres rode magnificent steeds in the midst of some activity, possibly a hunt. Their images had been recreated by the slaves, but whatever they were hunting for had been obscured by the pathetic efforts of the ogres.

  “The elves, whatever their faults, were far more adept, weren’t they?”

  The two guards swung around to face the unexpected newcomer. Golgren, unfazed, slowly turned to face Safrag.

  “Such a glorious piece of work,” the new Titan leader murmured. Stepping past Golgren and the wary guards, the gargantuan sorcerer let out a sigh. “Please. Allow me.”

  Raising his palms to waist level, the Titan stood before the center of the relief. He took a deep breath.

  A golden glow rose from Safrag’s palms. He shivered slightly and began breathing rapidly. His eyes fluttered half closed.

  Despite their responsibilities, the guards took a step back. Ogres, more than most races, feared magic.

  The glow rose to envelop the image. While there was no visible change at first, where the work had either been done by ogres, or not touched at all, the energies suddenly grew bright.

  And before the eyes of the onlookers, the rest of the relief took shape. The two hunters were joined by a never-before-glimpsed third figure: a female astride the back of a wingless griffon. Their prey turned out to be a huge, majestic creatu
re that resembled a horse with lupine features and two horns. The strange creature was an amalok, one of the most dominant and useful beasts in all Golthuu. A variety of amalok breeds had once spread from the uppermost points of Kern down to the worst recesses of Blöde. They had been used for their hides, their meat, their horns, and for racing. The spotted variation pursued by the High Ogres was carved in such detail that one could distinguish the strands of hair and the split in the hooves. There could be no doubt that an animal of that kind had once lived, though no such amalok was found anymore.

  With a slight gasp of effort, Safrag stepped back.

  “Arresting, isn’t it?” the Titan commented. “There’s so much to admire of our great ancestors.”

  “Decorum being one of those things,” the Grand Khan blandly returned. “And what does Safrag require all of a sudden, that he appears to me with such brash suddenness? Or has he a desire to offer the Titans as workers to restore the palace for me?”

  Safrag chuckled. “As glorious as the palace fully restored to its former greatness would be, our gifts can be of far better service to you than that, Grand Khan,” the blue-tinted sorcerer said. He gave a low bow that still did not take him down to eye level with the half-breed. “No, I come on business of importance regarding a missing portion of your armies.”

  With a wave of his hand, Golgren dismissed the two guards. They retreated, standing far enough away to not hear, but still close enough to be summoned back to duty, if needed.

  “The Titans are slow to hear. That news is not fresh news to me, Safrag.”

  The Titan leader spread his hands in apology. “Naturally, we knew about it for some time. But it made no sense to alert you without first trying to find out more information. You’d certainly like to know where the missing ranks might be, after all.”

  Golgren did not even so much as arch an eyebrow. “And you know?”

  “We have … evidence. Strong evidence.” Safrag raised a hand toward Golgren.