Richard Knaak: The Fire Rose

The ogre leader stumbled back in surprise.

A golden figure stood atop the oval tower. Tall and gleaming, the figure had no face, yet somehow Golgren knew that it stared into his eyes.

“My lord!” grunted a throaty voice.

Golgren instinctively looked to the speaker, a heavyset but muscular ogre with a face ugly even by his people’s standards. The ogre’s left eye appeared to be constantly squinting, and the upper half of one of his tusks was missing. His flesh was a sickly, mottled brown, and it was clear that he was not of the same hearty stock as either Golgren or the lankier guard who stood several paces behind.

Khleeg was a Blodian ogre, and in other generations his kind would have been at constant war with their cousins from Kern. But Golgren had recruited Khleeg and countless others like him to his cause, creating the first true alliance of ogrekind since the days of the ancients.

Almost as soon as he turned to greet Khleeg, Golgren cursed and glanced back at the House of Night. But he was too late. Of the golden figure, there was no sign.

“My lord!” Khleeg repeated, his expression concerned. Cradling his helmet in the crook of his arm, the ogre strode anxiously to his master. “You are-”

Golgren let out a snarl and swung at his second in command with his maimed arm. Only because there was no longer a hand attached to the limb did he keep from striking the other ogre across the jaw.

The Grand Khan immediately recovered. Khleeg, almost as well-versed in the moods of his leader as Idaria, pretended the attack had never taken place. Since the struggle against the f’hanos , Golgren had displayed bouts of fury that had been uncommon before.

Although Khleeg stood at attention, there was still something in the corner of his eye that made Golgren ask suspiciously, “There is something wrong with me?”

The ogre commander went down on one knee. “My head is yours, my lord,” Khleeg responded, his Common much improved. Very little Ogre was spoken among those of Golgren’s inner circle. Words and the occasional phrase were allowed, but no conversation or prolonged discussion was permitted. Indeed, Golgren considered the current Ogre tongue a mongrel language that needed to be put down. “I speak only as I see!”

“Khleeg’s head is his still. Speak.” Golgren waited for the other to tell him that he had seen the golden figure too.

But, instead, Khleeg muttered, “Your face, my lord! It is red like flame … was red like flame. No more …”

Frowning, Golgren looked past him to Idaria. Her eyes wide, she nodded.

“Stand aside!” The Grand Khan charged back into his chamber, heading directly for the mirror. Crystalline dryads sculpted into the ivory frame seemed to mock him as he stared at himself.

There was no sign of any redness. He spun about. Khleeg stood near the balcony, silent and loyal.

“Not any more,” Golgren said.

“No, my lord. But I saw it. There was a”-Khleeg frowned and with an apologetic look, finished-“ vrakuli?”

The word was a Blodian term for gargoyle meaning “winged vermin.” Khleeg was the only one other than Idaria and Tyranos who knew-thanks to his lord-of the spying creatures. He did not know of the wizard’s existence, though. That was something with which even Khleeg could not be trusted.

“Yes,” Golgren finally answered. “A voru tzyn,” he added, using the more universal ogre name for the creatures. “A gargoyle.”

“Gargoyle” muttered Khleeg, memorizing the Common word. The officer beat a fist on his breastplate. “I find Wargroch! Send him with warriors to search the roofs-”

“It is gone. The warriors will not search. They have other tasks, yes? And you have other reasons for coming, Khleeg.”

The other ogre nodded. “My lord, Zhulom’s hand cannot be found.”

He did not refer to a missing appendage, as in the case of his master, but rather the formal term that Golgren had chosen to mark the ogre equivalent of an Uruv Suurt legion. Each hand consisted of roughly twelve hundred warriors divided into groups of five, as in five fingers. It was Golgren’s latest attempt to organize the ogre might into disciplined units.

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 Blodian 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.”

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 Blode. Indeed, the magically hidden valley in which their headquarters lay was barely two dozen miles from Bloten, previously the capital of Blode. 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.