Dragon Forge: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Two (28 page)

The canyon walls were too steep in that spot for the worgs to climb, so the archers above could loose their arrows without fear. Many worgs took three or four arrows before falling, but fall they did, adding to the number of the dead as Cart led the soldiers on the canyon floor in a renewed assault.

Soon it was over—the worgs broke ranks and fled back down the canyon, scattering into the hills. Cart ordered all three squads to regroup rather than give chase. Ashara tended to the wounded—Cart was surprised to see the number of breaks and tears in his own body—while Haldren turned his attention to the barrier again.

Ashara used wands to tend her living patients, manipulating the magic stored within the wands to flow into their bodies and knot up their wounds, refresh their spirits, and erase their fatigue. For Cart, though, she ran her bare hands over his wounds, unleashing the magic contained in his own body to help it repair itself. It was, Cart felt suddenly, strangely intimate.

“That was incredible,” she said, working her magic on his shoulder. “I’ve never seen anyone fight like that.”

“It’s what I was made for.”

“It’s more than that. Not every warforged is capable of what you just did. You’ve devoted yourself to it, mastered the axe and shield, trained your senses and reflexes. You’ve chosen to become the best warrior you can be.”

“What are you getting at?”

“You’re a person, just as capable of choosing your path in life as any of us. Other warforged have chosen to excel in magic or artifice. I met a warforged painter in Lathleer once—very skilled, and getting better. House Cannith might have made you to be a soldier, but that doesn’t have to be your purpose in living. You can do what you want—you can be what you want to be.”

“Maybe I want to be a soldier.”

“A soldier?” she said, getting to her feet. “You’re a hero.”

She walked off to treat another of the wounded.

Haldren broke through the barrier and summoned Cart, who helped him pile the bodies together and start a pyre. Once the fire was blazing, Cart gathered the others together to pay their last respects to their allies, then hurried them onward.

After three more bends in the canyon, they found themselves at its head. The worgs’ labyrinth of bones spread out before them, and from the canyon floor Cart could see its focus. It seemed at first like a pool of deep blue water set vertically into the sheer cliff at the canyon’s head. Only after staring at it for a moment did he realize it wasn’t water, but crystal—a glimpse of a larger formation buried in the rock, from what Haldren had said. He couldn’t see any worgs—it seemed they had put everything they had into that last assault.

“The canyon is ours,” Haldren declared.

Two spirits share one prison beneath the wastes, secrets kept and revelation granted
.

They bind and are bound, but their unbound whispers rise to the Dragon Between, calling to those who would hear
.

Their whispers turn to flame, the scouring flame, the refiner’s fire, to purify the touch of Siberys’s hand
.

A
ric drifted through the Labyrinth. The maze of twisting canyons swallowed him, consuming his thoughts and senses. Nightmarish apparitions flitted at the edge of his awareness, some combination of the demonic spirits said to haunt the Wastes and his memories of the warlord, Kathrik Mel—a demonic spirit incarnate. When the wind whistled through the canyons, he heard the tormented screams of Zandar and Sevren. Nothing materialized to threaten him, as though the Labyrinth were content to let him torture himself. It was a much slower and more painful death than anything the demons could create.

The Labyrinth drove any thought of the future from his mind—there was no future, only the Labyrinth. He no longer thought he could escape the maze, so he gave no thought to what he would do if he did. Day wore into night and back to day, and he wandered. He didn’t eat, he barely slept, and by the fourth day his water was gone. After that, he stopped counting days. All his thoughts melted away except one: Abandon all hope for your body or your soul.

His stomach had stopped complaining, but his throat screamed for water. All he knew was his most primitive need. He fell, gravel pressing into his cheek. He didn’t think he could stand up again. Abandon all hope.

He heard the gravel crunch, and again. Twice more, a pair of boots appeared before his eyes, and he realized the sound had been footfalls.

“Who are you?” he murmured, anticipating the Traveler’s inevitable question.

A booted foot rolled him over, and his vision became a field
of reddish sky, framed on two sides by canyon walls. A shadow appeared and blocked the sky—a pair of eyes, a face looking into his. This time, the Traveler had adopted the face of a different fallen paladin, Vor. Light shot out in rays from behind his head, a nimbus of silver.

“He’s alive,” the Traveler said.

“Kill him.” The other voice had no body, and it was almost too far away to hear.

“Not until he’s heard the challenge.” The Traveler’s orc-face bent nearer to his. “You lie on cursed ground. You may proceed no farther into this place of evil, and you may not leave to spread its taint. I offer you a choice: Commit your life to the service of Kalok Shash and the holy calling of the Ghaash’kala, or die where you stand—where you lie.”

A word died on his lips, an echo of the Traveler’s words—“Shash.”

Darkness swallowed the Traveler’s face and the ruddy sky, and lastly the silver halo.

There was no pain. His first experience was absence—no pain. No light. No ground beneath him, no red sky above him. He floated in a void.

He couldn’t move, and panic seized him. He tried to shout, but no sound would come from his mouth. He couldn’t draw breath.

The first sense to return was touch—there was something beneath him after all, a hard bed supporting him in the void. And something heavy weighed on his chest, squeezing the breath out of him and keeping him immobile.

Suddenly air poured into his lungs in a shuddering gasp, and dim light nudged at his vision. His eyes shot open, and all his senses came back to him in a flood. He lay in a windowless room lit by a guttering oil lamp. Except for the lamp, it was bare as a prison cell. The thin door was slightly ajar.

One hand flew to his face to feel his features. Who was he supposed to be?

Scarred cheeks, a thin nose, wide jaw—Aric’s face, he remembered. It seemed he had kept the proper face while he was unconscious. He wondered how long he had been there.

He remembered becoming Aric, taking the face of a barbarian foe. He remembered running with the horde, and shuddered as he remembered Kathrik Mel. Then grief clutched at his heart as he saw the agony of Zandar and Sevren—the torture he’d brought on them. He had stumbled into the Labyrinth, but the rest was a blur. He had no memory of where he was or how he got there, but unless he had somehow escaped the Labyrinth, he reasoned, he must be in one of the cities of the Ghaash’kala.

Which means I’m safe, he thought. For now.

He drifted back into a less troubled sleep.

The door swung open with a creak, jolting Aric awake. An orc leaned through the doorway, and seeing he was awake, came to stand at the foot of his bed. He looked a little like Vor, with an almost triangular face, wider at the jaw than at the brow. Two prominent teeth jutted up over his upper lip, suggesting a young boar’s tusks.

“You are in Maruk Dar,” the orc said, “refuge and capital of the Maruk Ghaash’kala. You are here, rather than being dead where we found you, because I thought you might have uttered the holy name of Kalok Shash before you completely lost consciousness. Tell me clearly now. Will you commit your life to the service of Kalok Shash and the holy calling of the Ghaash’kala?”

The alternative, Aric knew, was death. The Maruk Ghaash’kala would not hesitate to kill him, even after making the effort to nurse him back to health.

“I will,” he said. What was another broken oath? He felt sick.

The orc smiled, revealing the full row of crooked teeth between the tusks. “Then you have heard the call of Kalok Shash, the beacon of hope in the Demon Wastes?”