The Fire Rose Read online

  A dagger suddenly appeared at the base of the Titan’s stomach. The Grand Khan’s face remained a mask. Behind him the guards could be heard giving a start, turning toward Golgren.

  “No …” Golgren called to the pair. They immediately halted.

  The dagger stayed pointed at Safrag’s stomach.

  “Your throat is a bit high for my dagger, Safrag. But a blade to the stomach can be as fatal, I think, even to a sorcerer.”

  The Titan was gracious even in the face of the threat. “But I mean no harm, Grand Khan! I merely have something to show you.”

  Over his open palm there suddenly appeared the vision of a mountainous region. Golgren did not remove the dagger while he studied the vision. He vaguely knew that particular area. It was almost directly south of Garantha, in the midst of the rugged mountain chain that extended there.

  “That is near the Vale of Vipers,” Golgren finally said.

  “So we also found out.”

  “The missing hand last marched in the southern reaches of old Blöde. To be near the vale, Zhulom would have had to march his warriors far and with much good reason.”

  “We thought he might be seeking to build a rebellion,” the Titan suggested.

  The Grand Khan’s green eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “To build a rebellion, Zhulom would need the help of the Uruv Suurt. He would be best served staying in the south of old Blöde.”

  Safrag bowed again. “Your wisdom is great. We considered that also, and perhaps Zhulom has done so previously. But all signs most definitely point to him being near the vale.”

  “The vale …” Golgren withdrew the dagger, which he quickly slipped back into his belt. “So very near Khur.”

  “Imagine the empire with Khur. And, by proxy, imagine Neraka, Grand Khan.”

  Golgren said nothing, showed no emotion.

  Dismissing the vision, Safrag continued blithely, “Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to ride there yourself. We Titans shall look into the matter there as best as possible.”

  “Yes. You are to be commended, Safrag.”

  “The Titans but live to serve you, Grand Khan.”

  Grinning without humor, Golgren replied, “So Dauroth also said.”

  With a shrug, the Titan leader vanished in a brief flash of black flame that left a slight sulfur scent in Golgren’s nostrils. Slipping his hand to a pouch at his waist, Golgren withdrew a small vial. Expertly popping the bound cork off the tiny green container, the Grand Khan briefly inhaled the potion. The elven scent managed to disperse the sulfur.

  Replacing the vial, he summoned back the guards. Without a word to them, the Grand Khan glanced one more time at the wondrous relief, much improved, and continued on.

  Khleeg and a second officer met him outside the palace. Wargroch, also a Blödian, was in some ways uglier than Khleeg. His toadlike face was reminiscent of two other ogres who had served Golgren during his rise to power. There was good reason for that resemblance, for both Nagroch and Belgroch had been elder brothers of the warrior. They too had given their lives—in one way or another—in service to Golgren.

  “Lord,” the pair rumbled, striking their fists to their breastplates.

  To Khleeg, Golgren asked, “Word of Zhulom?”

  His second in command turned uncomfortable. “Nothing, lord.”

  Wargroch grunted. Khleeg glared at him.

  Golgren eyed the younger warrior. “Speak, Wargroch.”

  The other’s grasp of Common was better than Khleeg’s. “Grand Khan, I hear of sightings of ogre warriors coming from the south. I understand they march through Khur—”

  “All j’nari!” insisted Khleeg to them. “All … rumor!”

  The Grand Khan silenced Khleeg with a look. “And the rumor? You hear it where, Wargroch?”

  “Mentioned in reports, in stolen messages from Black Shell riders … in other places …”

  “It is true?” Golgren demanded of Khleeg.

  His second in command shrugged. “True, some word here, some there. How true that word …”

  A brief scowl escaped the Grand Khan, a scowl he quickly smothered. “It is decided,” he murmured to himself. “Khleeg, my horse. Wargroch, you and I, we will ride!”

  “Ride where?” asked Khleeg, clearly not pleased. His brother had been chosen over him; he would be left behind.

  The Grand Khan bared his teeth—not at Khleeg, but rather thinking of the destination he had in mind. “To Sarth.”

  The ogre was a rarity among his kind, so old and wizened that he almost appeared to hail from some other race. His body was barely more than bones, and his flesh was so pale gray that he looked like a f’hanos. His two smallest fingers were missing from his left hand, as were the small toes of each foot. Yet the marks that were all that were left of those impairments indicated that the missing digits had been carefully severed, not removed by accident.

  The old ogre sat in the mouth of a cave hidden in the mountains just east of Garantha. The cave was not deep, but the shape of the opening evoked the fanged mouth of a serpent. The old ogre sat under the stone fangs, drawing with a stick in the dirt.

  The patterns he made were many. Some were recognizable as crude designs of local animals: the huge, elephantine mastarks, the giant reptiles called meredrakes, amaloks of varying sizes, and birds of prey were just some of the drawings. The old ogre mumbled as he drew, and whenever his mouth opened enough, it revealed that other than his two cracked bits of tusk, he had only a few fractured teeth.

  His pate was bald, and what hair he bore on the rest of his gaunt body was spread in gray patches. Although the winds that howled through the mountains were harsh, they seemed not to affect the ogre, who wore only an old, torn kilt. No sandals protected his feet, whose soles were harder than leather.

  In addition to the drawings in the dirt, there were other markings etched into the sides of the cave entrance.

  A sun. A dragon with many heads. A huge tree. A griffon.

  Beside the ogre was a tiny fire made from some of the squat brush that managed to survive in the inhospitable landscape. Tendrils of smoke wafted away from the cave and its tenant, finally drifting toward the two approaching riders.

  “Gya ihul iGuyviri” rasped the elderly ogre sitting in front of the cave.

  Wargroch glanced curiously at his lord. Golgren kept his expression calm, though his eyes briefly narrowed.

  “And I see you too, Sarth,” the Grand Khan returned, “who knows I am Golgren.”

  “And who speaks the tongue that is not the tongue,” countered the elder, his comment followed by a grunting laugh. “As you wish to speak. Golgren you are, Guyvir. What brings you to Sarth after so many seasons? Not since Ka i’Urkarun Dracon iZharangi—The Dragon Who Is Zharang—brought his f’han to him and called him Grand Lord …”

  The elder’s ability to speak Common so well—better, in fact than any ogre other than a Titan—made Wargroch growl suspiciously. Golgren quieted him with a gesture. “A shaman, Wargroch. He is supposed to be a creature of peace.”

  Again came the grunting laugh. “Sarth is Sarth as he has always been. As Golgren has always been Golgren …”

  The wind whipped through the Grand Khan’s hair, and his cloak fluttered as if alive. Yet the air seemed still around Sarth.

  “Wait,” Golgren ordered Wargroch, as he dismounted.

  The younger ogre grunted uneasily, but obeyed. He took the reins of Golgren’s massive steed and hung back, watching warily as his lord drew closer to the shaman.

  Ogres respected various gods. But more than deities—even more than Sirrion perhaps—they respected the land, which they believed was an entity everlasting. A decadent, bestial folk, ogres no longer had clerics like other races. But they did have shamans, who were revered as the watchers of the land, fulfilling its needs and guarding against its enemies. That did not mean that, like druids—perhaps their closest equivalent—the shamans helped cultivate the flora and watch over the fauna. Rather, they were servan
ts of the land, beings who listened to its silent whisperings and did what they were told, no matter the cost to them.

  There had never been more than a few shamans at any one time. But those that had existed had always been treated with the greatest reverence, until what humans and elves called the Chaos War had taken place. The land had demanded that the shamans stand against the forces of Chaos, and they had done their duty and died for it. To the knowledge of most ogres, not one of their shamans had survived. With the mercurial nature of their race, most ogres had soon forgotten that shamans had ever existed.

  But Golgren’s mother had not been an ogre. She had been an elf. And, as an elf, she had looked to the shamans as akin to privileged beings from her own race. And so she had searched for a shaman, and somehow she had found Sarth … Or he had found her.

  “You have grown since your mother’s womb,” Sarth cackled as Golgren reached him. “Not so much, but you’ve grown.”

  Only the narrowing of the Grand Khan’s eyes gave hint to the emotions he smothered inside. Sarth had not been a shaman with any connection to the half-breed’s village, but he had nonetheless been there the night the captive elf had given birth.

  The shaman looked down at his drawings and erased all of them with one sweep of his bony hand. As Golgren seated himself cross-legged before the cadaverous but still tall figure, Sarth started making new drawings. A circle with a cross on one side. A warrior with a club. A sickle moon with a reptilian head atop it.

  The drawings were immediately recognizable to the half-breed. The warrior was meant to represent his father. The circle with the cross was his pregnant mother. The sickle moon with the head of a meredrake marked the time of Golgren’s birth.

  “Halu i guyvari zuun delahn,” said the shaman, briefly reverting to Ogre. “Such a thing cannot be born between the races. No ogre and elf may breed a child, but a child is bred,” he concluded, peering up at Golgren. “A son is wealth and power. The father must have the mother. He lets live what should not exist for lust of the mother.”

  “I know the story,” interrupted Golgren coolly. “Sarth wastes his breath telling what is already known, yes?”

  But the shaman continued to draw his pictures and symbols. The head of an Uruv Suurt with a collar around his throat. An ogre standing upon a scale that was tipped to the left even though the ogre stood on the plate on the right.

  A burning flower above the ogre.

  “Sarth knows those things only because I have told Sarth those things.” The Grand Khan deftly rose. As he did so, he saw by the cave a few small items that clearly had been brought as tokens for the shaman. An amalok horn. A necklace of meredrake teeth. A small clay figure of a female ogre. To Golgren’s kind, each of the offerings suggested a specific purpose or need.

  “Few believe in Sarth anymore,” Golgren added. “Fewer yet come to see Sarth. Small wonder.”

  The shaman remained unperturbed by his visitor’s insults. He studied his drawings as if seeking something.

  “Dalu i surra fwaruus,” Sarth muttered, sounding annoyed with himself. The bony finger thrust out and began a new drawing above the ogre on the scale.

  There was a sharp, uncharacteristic intake of breath from Golgren. The shaman was busy with a simple figure that could have been an ogre, a human, or an elf. Yet where the other drawings had included details such as eyes or a nose at least, the figure had an oval head devoid of any features.

  Sarth drew lines stretching forth from the body of the figure. Each line had three jagged sections to it. In such a manner did the old pictographs of ogre language indicate something that was bright or that shone.

  A figure that shone.

  Going down on one knee, Golgren leaned close to the shaman. His voice low, he murmured, “What do you know of that?”

  “Kesu idwa. Sarth is told. Sarth does not question what is told. He knows that it is.”

  The Grand Khan’s fingers came within inches of the old ogre’s throat, itching to strangle him. Although, if standing, Sarth would have been much taller than Golgren, his body was very frail for an ogre. Golgren could have snapped his neck in two without trouble.

  Sarth did not react to the potential threat, save to say, “Yawa idwa i tuz iGolgreni. You are not told what to do, Grand Khan. The choice was and is always yours.”

  Edging his hands away, Golgren leaned back. The half-breed slowly ran one foot over the drawings, eradicating them.

  “That is the answer to such,” he said to Sarth. “It is as you have said: I make my fate, as I have always. No drawings, no prophecies, no shamans who may speak as surrogates for the Titans …”

  Once again ignoring Golgren, Sarth started new images. There were only two. One was a serpent coiled above a mountain; the other was a sword drawn with uncanny precision.

  The Grand Khan recognized the first. Sarth had drawn an illustration representing the name of a place.

  The Vale of Vipers.

  But the sword, on the other hand, could suggest many meanings. A battle that would take place there, perhaps. Hardly astounding, considering recent news. Yet Golgren doubted that Sarth had drawn the sword for that purpose. It looked familiar, a specific design that did not look ogre in cast. It was more like …

  Sarth was reconstructing the minotaur head, shaping the image differently.

  It suddenly became obvious that the head was larger and rounder than an Uruv Suurt. The muzzle, meanwhile, was much shorter, almost crushed into the face.

  “Yawa idwa i tuz iGolgreni,” Sarth repeated, looking down with satisfaction at his latest piece of artwork. “You are not told what to do, Guyvir.”

  The Grand Khan said nothing. He touched neither the shaman nor the drawings, but simply turned and headed back to a perplexed Wargroch.

  “My lord, did he tell you what you want?”

  “No, he told me what he wanted. And that is how it has always been.”

  The toad-faced officer reached for his weapon. “Gerad ahn if’hani—”

  Golgren stopped him with an unexpected glare. “No one shall touch Sarth, ever.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “And remember, all officers are to speak Common.”

  More befuddled than ever, Wargroch beat his fist against his breastplate. “I have dishonored my Grand Khan! I give my life—”

  “Stop. We ride.” Without another word, Golgren took the reins of his horse and mounted. Wargroch hurried to climb atop his own.

  As the Grand Khan began to turn his mount around, he suddenly heard Sarth chanting in Ogre.

  “Zaru iVolantori igada tur iVolantori.”

  “Hear the tale of Volantor, Volantor the Mighty,” was the closest translation. Like all ogres, Golgren knew the story of Volantor. It was told as a parable among his kind. Volantor had been a great warlord, with victories over the Uruv Suurt, humans, and dwarves. He had dispatched many a foe himself with his huge axe, called “Throat Eater” in legend. Volantor had become a khan in his own right and had gathered more wealth and power than most ogres could imagine.

  Standing ever at Volantor’s side had been his friend and comrade, Jaro. Throughout Volantor’s rise to power, Jaro had guarded the warlord’s back just as Volantor guarded his friend’s. When Volantor became a khan, he made Jaro his second in command.

  And it was as khan that Volantor achieved his greatest victory over a jealous rival. Volantor himself dispatched the other warlord, but not without receiving a wound to his chest. Fortunately, while the wound had been a large one, it had not been fatal. Volantor handed his axe to Jaro and began binding his chest.

  At which point the patient Jaro took Volantor’s prized axe and removed his friend’s head. All that Volantor had built up became Jaro’s.

  Whether or not the tale was true, the moral was clear to any ogre. One’s friends and allies were only such until it was no longer worth their while to be friends. It was more often those closest to power who dealt the killing blow.

  Zharang had learned that lesson too late, using the
ambition he saw in Golgren to further his own ambitions and thinking that he controlled the upstart. Golgren’s former lord had ended up with a sword through his chest, his body sprawled across the shattered table where the Grand Khan had been supping with guests.

  Golgren had played the role of Jaro, but now he wore Volantor’s guise.

  And if Sarth could be trusted to be right—as he generally was—one or more Jaros now awaited their turn, bearing some variation of Volantor’s treacherous Throat Eater.

  One of whom might even be … Sir Stefan Rennert?

  IV

  SACRIFICES

  The meredrake hissed and spat, struggling to pull itself free from the heavy boulders linked to a chain around its thick neck. The dull green and sandy brown reptile was as long in body as an ogre and could easily drag the heaviest foe down if given the chance. The size of a horse, meredrakes were among the worst predators of the ogre lands. Their paws were clawed, and their teeth designed for two things: ripping flesh and crushing bone.

  Slapping its heavy tail on the dusty ground, the meredrake opened its mouth and tasted the air with its long, red tongue. Its fiery eyes squinted, and the huge round nostrils at the end of its muzzle flared.

  A small bit of rancid meat lay just beyond the meredrake’s reach. Driven by its basic instincts, the reptile tried again to reach the still tasty morsel. It never waited longer than several moments before attempting yet another futile lunge.

  It was such determination to keep trying and fighting that was part of the reason the beast was kept prisoner.

  The sun hung low on the horizon. The meredrake had been bound for some hours. The slavering beast’s claws had dug deep ravines into the harsh ground, and more than once it had defecated in its frustration.

  The jaws again snapped at the tantalizing meat. The meredrake hissed … and its entire body froze as if some spell had turned it to stone.

  Its nostrils flared. The meredrake forgot the morsel for which it had struggled so hard and so long. Suddenly the reptile turned and scrambled as best it could over the boulders holding it anchored in place. However, those who had secured the beast had done their job well, and no matter where the giant lizard skittered, its tether always allowed it to go only so far.