Shadow of the Flame - Chris Pierson

by Dragonlance

  Maladar smiled. He had two armies, fire and stone.

  “What is your will, Great One?” the dragon asked.

  Maladar held his breath, relishing the moment, the time that had been so long in coming. Then, triumphant, he exhaled. “The Chaldar,” he said. “Take me to it now.”

  A dragon. He was riding a dragon.

  It was enough, briefly, to make Forlo forget his predicament. The exhilaration of it was like nothing he’d ever experienced before; among his life’s experiences, it ranked below only winning his first battle as the marshal of the Sixth and making love to Essana for the first time. Gods, tell the truth, she wasn’t there—it might have been even better than that.

  Just touching the great wyrm ought to have killed him: made of living fire, encased in scales of pitted pumice, the beast should have burned him to ashes before he could climb up onto its back. That it hadn’t was Maladar’s doing, of course: a quick spell and Forlo was aware of only a faint warmth beneath him as he’d settled among the stony crags of the dragon’s back.

  And, like that, the beast was up in the air—no running to gain momentum, barely even a leap from the bridge. The wyrm simply spread its wings, flinging embers in all directions, and caught the hot winds that gusted above the Burning Sea. It rose like a child’s kite, higher and higher, riding the updrafts toward the choking clouds.

  “Stay below the smoke,” Maladar commanded. “I want to see where we’re going.”

  The dragon glanced back, one white eye ablaze. Steam billowed from its nostrils. “Do you think I will betray you?” it rumbled.

  “I think everyone will betray me. I thought otherwise of my own cupbearer, and he murdered me. Why should I trust you more than I ought to have trusted him?”

  The dragon inclined its head, a simple gesture, strange coming from such a massive monster. It turned back around and dipped slightly, taking them below the murk. Beneath, the bridge stretched on toward the Cauldron’s heart; from that height, Maladar’s army of Kheten Voi seemed little more than a long column of insects, like the warrior beetles that plagued the marshes of Syldar.

  The fire minions swarmed around them, above the lava on either side; from there Forlo could see that there were many more than Maladar had thought—enough to have destroyed his horde of hobgoblins without much effort. And even more were flocking to join them, from all directions, small storms of flame making their way across the sea.

  The dragon banked, riding the breeze. It gave its wings one great pump, then left the statues and the minions behind, following the black line of the bridge, onward across the Cauldron.

  That, more than anything, was when the euphoria took hold. He was riding a dragon! The miles flew past in heartbeats; hot wind buffeted his face. It stank up high, even worse than below—char and sulfur and burning metal—but up there, well above the earth, it felt as though nothing mattered. For a time Forlo forgot about everything—his wife, his son, even Maladar, who stayed silent and still. There was only the air rushing past him, the Cauldron far below, and the dragon’s massive wings, creaking and stretching as it rode the winds.

  Soon, he felt a change in Maladar: a tightening, for want of a better word, of the soul that shared his body. It was as if the Faceless Emperor were leaning forward, almost ripping free of Forlo’s flesh in its eagerness to cover the last few leagues to its goal.

  Go on, Forlo urged him. Leave me. I’ll burn and die, but at least I’ll be free of you.

  Of course, Maladar did no such thing. Instead, he crowed with exultation, his gaze—and therefore Forlo’s as well—fixed on the sea far below.

  It was different there than back where they’d come from, in a way that awoke a new horror inside Forlo. In what he’d seen of the Burning Sea before that moment, the magma had been cool, sluggish, crusted over in many places and barely warmer than blood-heat elsewhere. Here, however, there was a definite current, running in the same direction as the bridge, and the lava had grown hotter, now the bright orange of candle flames. Miles ahead, it turned to shining gold, then fed into a maelstrom of molten rock that had to be a league across. At the whirlpool’s eye, the magma poured down into a fathomless black hole, thundering in great, blazing showers down to the heart of Krynn … or perhaps all the way to the Abyss itself.

  Khot, Forlo thought.

  Maladar patted the dragon’s neck, pointing to the end of the bridge. The span stopped at the maelstrom’s edge, abruptly, without even a rail. “Take me there,” Maladar said. “I must be on solid ground to work the spell.”

  The spell. To raise the Chaldar.

  It came to Forlo then, in one clarion moment. He had to act, and act right then; he might never get another chance. While Maladar’s attention was fixed on the maelstrom, the place where his palace had stood, the heart of Aurim-That-Was. He had to do it. Now. Now. Now.

  With one great wrench, he seized control of his body. Maladar wasn’t expecting it, and his guard was down. Pushing as hard as he could, Forlo shoved the Faceless Emperor’s soul aside and willed his muscles to move. They did, but reluctantly and with a great deal of pain, shooting from one end of his body to another. Tears welling in his eyes, he heaved himself up onto his feet. The dragon twitched, glancing back, startled. Its baleful eyes met his.

  Forlo jumped.

  No! Maladar roared, battering Forlo’s soul as he wrested back control over his body—too late. He was already plummeting, through coils of smoke and air that shimmered with heat. The molten, amber surface of the Cauldron rushed up toward him. Desperately, Maladar began to move his hands and shout words of magic, but they both knew there wasn’t time. The lava was very close, too close for him to finish his spell before he hit it. Then it would be over.

  I beat you, Forlo thought, laughing silently. You took everything from me, but in the end, I won. I beat you, you bastard, and now—

  A shriek split the air, just above him, loud enough to fill his head with splitting pain. Maladar looked up—and so did Forlo—and saw the dragon’s jaws, opened just enough to show a crack of white-hot flame. Fear blossomed in his mind, then calmed again and became a dark, perverse joy.

  No, Maladar thought. You didn’t.

  The dragon’s jaws closed with a snap around his charred and tattered left sleeve.

  The cloth tore a little but held, and the dragon pulled out of its dive and leveled out, barely thirty feet above the raging whirlpool. It whirled around in a tight arc, the tip of its right wing actually dipping into the molten stone, spraying gobbets of fire everywhere, then spread out its claws and landed on the bridge. Forlo jerked and swung, dangling from its fangs. With surprising gentleness, the dragon stretched out its neck and set him down on the iron surface.

  “Do you trust me now?” it asked.

  Maladar raised his eyebrows. “No.”

  The wyrm chuckled again. “I will return,” it said, “when I am needed.”

  With that, the dragon sprang from the bridge, leaving Maladar behind. It arrowed almost straight up and vanished into the clouds.

  Forlo stood alone, at the end of the bridge, staring into the whirlpool. He felt Maladar’s attention turn inward, on him. The Faceless Emperor’s wrath was like a distant thunderstorm, boiling closer every moment. He looked for somewhere to run, somewhere to hide, but there was nowhere.

  I should destroy you now, Maladar thought.

  You can’t, Forlo replied. You need me.

  Maladar was silent a moment, seething. True. But what you have done cannot go unpunished.

  His hands rose to hang, trembling, in front of his face. Forlo stared at them, a sick feeling settling in his gut.

  Do you see these? Maladar asked.

  Yes, Forlo answered. And you need them as much as I do. For your spells. To raise your precious Chaldar.

  So I do. But there is something you should know, Barreth Forlo.

  Forlo’s soul clenched. What is that?

  And, as Forlo had already guessed he would, Maladar dropped to his knees an
d thrust his left hand into the magma.

  The heat tore through Maladar’s protective spells like a sword through wet parchment. Forlo smelled burning meat and knew it was his own flesh, charring, melting, peeling, then burning away completely, bones and all. It took only a moment. When Maladar rose again and held his arm up before his eyes, there was nothing left at its end but a charred, smoldering stump.

  Then the pain hit … and the nausea, the urge to vomit, but he had no muscles to do it with. Forlo howled, lost in suffering.

  I can raise the Chaldar with one hand, Maladar thought, just as easily as two.

  Chapter

  24

  THE SHINING LANDS

  By the fifth day, Hult almost didn’t notice the shrieking.

  The sound of the boats’ runners gliding along the undulating glass plains was incessant, loud, and piercing. It was the sound of madness, grabbing hold of his spine and shaking it violently. For the first few hours after the Glass Sailors rescued them, he’d truly wondered if the noise would addle his wits for good. How did the sailors endure it without going screaming mad themselves?

  A strange thing happened around the second day, however: he began not to hear it. It didn’t happen for long, for there was always something to remind him—a change in pitch as the Xogatai tacked or a sharp squeal as they jounced over a ridge—but for stretches, it was as if the noise didn’t happen at all. As time passed, those stretches grew longer. Then, one evening, as he stood at the boat’s bow with the hot wind buffeting his masked face, he realized he hadn’t heard it all day.

  One could get used to anything, it seemed.

  He was nurturing that thought when he felt a presence beside him. He turned and saw Shedara—or, rather, her body, for her face was also hidden behind a mask of bone. She stood with one hand on her sword, her cloth wrappings fluttering. She looked in better health than before, but he could still see signs of the toll the magic had taken on her: a stoop in her shoulders, the slightest tremor in her free hand as she brought it up to rest on the gunwale. He had to fight the urge to put his arm around her.

  “Nakhil’s mood is worse,” she said after a while. “I think what happened to Suluk hadn’t sunk in until Roshambur died.”

  Hult nodded. “Losing your people can be a difficult thing.”

  “It can.”

  They were silent for a time. He tried to think of things to say that weren’t you should be resting or can we trust Azar or I need you. Even garbed as a Glass Sailor, without any skin showing beneath robes and mask, she enticed him. He’d lain awake through half of the previous night, staring at her hammock, dangling beside his. It was seeing her hurt, maybe dying, that had done it, awakened some part of him that he hadn’t known was there. It was more than just the memory of an awkward, stolen kiss in the chasms of Aurim; there was something deeper at work. Visions of Eldako, lying forever beneath his cairn on the other end of Taladas, flashed through his head. His friend had loved Shedara; what would he think of Hult doing the same?

  For that matter, what would she?

  “How much longer, do you think?” Shedara asked. She was staring at the red-glowing clouds that hung over the Cauldron.

  Hult shrugged. “Depends on the winds. If they hold, we’ll reach the serai by sunset. If they don’t …” He spread his hands.

  “And then two more days from there to Bilo,” she said. “If the gnomes are at the serai to begin with.”

  “They will be. The sailors say there are always gnomes at the serai.”

  Shedara was silent. He wondered what face she was making behind the mask.

  “We’ll get there,” she murmured. “By wind or by spell, if it comes to it.”

  “By spell?” Hult asked. “Are you sure you should be using magic again so soon?”

  It was the wrong thing to say, and he regretted it instantly. He watched her stiffen, saw the hand that had been trembling a moment ago tighten around the rail. “I think I know if I can use magic,” she snapped. “I know better than you.”

  Hult flinched. Her tone hurt like a whiplash; there was so much arrogance in it, so much pride. He looked away, across the glassy plain. Sunlight glinted off its ripples, blindingly bright. To the south, the mountains loomed close, black and forbidding.

  After a while, he felt her shift, moving closer to him. Her hand rose, hesitated, then rested on his arm.

  “I’m sorry. I’m still not myself.” She sighed, looking away. “Also, the noise these boats make is driving me out of my mind.”

  Hult chuckled. “You may not believe me, but you get used—”

  A sudden shout from behind them cut him off. Hult snapped around, his talga half drawn from its scabbard before he even saw what was happening. He expected to see something terrible attacking the ship’s crew—all sorts of awful things were said to dwell in the Shining Lands, according to legend—but no giant black beetles dropped from the sky, no translucent worms burst up through the glassy ground. Instead, they saw a small knot of sailors, halfway down the deck—and Nakhil, standing among them, waving his arms.

  “Get over here!” the centaur shouted. “It’s Azar!”

  They ran, Hult outpacing Shedara. The sailors parted to let him through, silent behind their masks. Nakhil pointed at the deck, and Hult saw.

  Azar lay on his back, his mask torn off, his face twisted into a rictus of pain. He was bent at the waist, legs tensed, his right hand clutching his left, which had curled into a claw and was twitching wildly. Hult wasn’t sure, but for a moment he thought he smelled burning flesh.

  He knelt down beside the boy, Shedara beside him. “Get the healer!” she shouted. “Go!”

  Nakhil and several sailors ran, shouting for the tchakkir. While they did, Hult bent over Azar and waved his hand in front of the boy’s eyes. They were vacant, staring at nothing. Blood darkened his lips. Hult tore a strip off his robe and forced the cloth between the boy’s teeth.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “He just bit his tongue. One of the elders in my tribe used to have fits like this. He’ll be all right, once—”

  “Mother of Hith!” Shedara swore. “His hand! Look at his hand!”

  Hult looked, his eyes widening. Shedara had taken off Azar’s left glove; the flesh beneath was red and swollen, huge blisters rising as he watched. The smell was even thicker than before, sickening him. The Glass Sailors drew back, clapping their hands to ward against evil.

  “Did that ever happen to your elder?” Shedara asked.

  Hult shook his head, then looked around for a fire, a hot piece of metal—anything that could have burned Azar like that. There was nothing, though, and the glove wasn’t even scorched. What in the Abyss was going on?

  Just then, Nakhil returned, the tchakkir following right behind. “Back to your jobs,” the healer told the other sailors in their clicking language. “There is nothing for you to do here but gawk and get in the way.”

  They did as she bade, returning to the halyards and climbing back up the rigging. The boat leaped over a rise in the glass, was momentarily airborne, then came down again with a squeal. Hult grunted, feeling the impact run through his body. The tchakkir, however, didn’t seem to notice; instead, she touched Azar’s forehead, then his throat, then his injured hand. He howled.

  “Has this happened before?” she asked.

  Hult shook his head.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Nakhil asked. “Some sort of curse?”

  “I do not know,” the tchakkir replied. “We should get him below, where he can be comfortable. He is in no mortal danger right now.”

  Together, Hult and Shedara lifted Azar and carried him to the ladder leading below. They left Nakhil up on deck; there was no way for him to climb down. They brought Azar to one of the hammocks. The tchakkir disappeared a moment, then came back with a wet rag, which she wrapped around Azar’s swollen hand. She laid her hand on his forehead again and murmured a word. At once his eyes drooped closed, and the lines of pain in his face began to sm
ooth.

  “He will sleep,” she said. “The fit will pass. I can heal his hand, as well, once it stops getting worse.”

  “But why is he burned?” Hult asked. “What did that to him?”

  The tchakkir looked down at Azar, and though he had yet to see her face, Hult could imagine the scowl of frustration there. The Mislaxans who roamed among the Uigan sometimes looked like that when encountering a sickness they’d never seen before.

  “I know,” Shedara said.

  Hult stared at her. So did the tchakkir. Shedara pulled off her mask to reveal her grave face.

  “It’s Forlo,” she said. “Something’s happened to him, and it’s happening to Azar too.”

  Azar didn’t worsen any more; under the tchakkir’s care, in fact, he slowly got better. Glistening scars covered his hand, and would for the rest of his days, but it was better than losing it entirely. He slept, and they went back up on deck to tell Nakhil what had happened.

  “How is that possible?” the centaur asked when Shedara told him her theory about Forlo.

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure. Maybe because he’s Azar’s father and they share a bond, each of them carrying a part of Maladar.”

  “Wait,” Hult said. “I thought we’d agreed Forlo was dead.”

  “Maybe we were wrong.”

  Hult stepped back, glancing toward the Cauldron. “You can’t know that.”

  “No,” Shedara replied, “I don’t. But … well, didn’t you see Azar’s face when he was lying there? The way he looked when the tchakkir put him to sleep?”

  Hult thought back, picturing the way the pain had faded from his face. And yes, just for a moment, there had been something else … almost a smile ghosting his lips. He’d never seen Azar smile like that before, but he had seen it on someone else, one who shared Azar’s features. A chill ran through him.