But their own position remained precarious, and the heavens assailed Golgren as the ground sought to devour him. Black lightning bolts peppered the ogre like monstrous spears.
Then one of the deadly bolts struck.
A rush of dirt and stone filled the air. Stefan and Idaria were blinded. The knight pressed his companion close, using his armor to shield her from the massive rush of debris that was certain to fall upon them. Stefan Rennert prayed over and over to Kiri-Jolith, in the end merely chanting the god’s name.
Huge chunks began pelting them. They clattered against the knight’s armor, battering and denting it. Stefan clutched Idaria closer. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, and raised one arm over his head to try to ward off the deadly rain.
Several heavy rocks struck the knight on his back. Then he was smacked on the back of the head. Pain jolted Stefan, and Idaria let out a muffled exclamation.
Then there was nothing.
XXIII
The signet did not protect him completely. Golgren had brutally discovered that reality. Yet the signet had kept him from severe harm when the one bolt had struck him-no small miracle in itself. The ogre had been shocked and tossed about, and his right shoulder still felt painful and numb, but he lived.
How much longer that would be the case was difficult to say.
He held up the ring and wished for some sort of all-encompassing shield, but in fact there was a new barrage of bolts, none of the bolts coming as close as that first one, thankfully.
Yet he couldn’t stand awaiting the inevitable. Again he shouted, personally addressing the leader of the Titans. “Come, Dauroth! I spit upon your efforts! Never will I kneel to you! Come!”
The air was inundated with dust. Golgren’s pronouncement ended in an unimpressive hacking cough. His lungs felt as if they were filled with acid. He pressed his hand against his chest, shoving aside the mummified appendage that somehow still hung around his neck.
His fingers grazed the cursed vial. Its uselessness bothered him even more than the fact it was sealed to his flesh.
Then his harried thoughts flitted to a face, an elf face.
The face was not that of Idaria, but of a female who, although no older than the slave, looked as though she had lived twice as long. Weathered lines that should have never graced such a delicate face had run rampant over his mother’s visage. Despite everything that she had suffered, her eyes spoke of life and energy. She had stayed alive rather than kill herself because of her child, the misfit half-breed she had been forced to bring into the world and yet had loved more than herself.
The image in his mind lasted but a second, yet it filled him with not only a deep longing and regret, but also a rage that reminded him of what he was and what he sought to achieve.
His hand drifted to the ancient dagger, gripping it tightly. It had been meant for another deed, but better to end his life and gain a small satisfaction that Dauroth would be annoyed.
He brought the point up to his throat.
A new, far more intense tremor ripped through his surroundings. The shining dagger fell from his grasp, tumbling among the rocks. Golgren let out a frantic cry, and the lord of Kern and Blode snatched at the weapon. His mother’s face and the struggle with the ji-baraki in the old temple momentarily overwhelmed him. The dagger had become, in his eyes, a gift from his mother’s spirit, always to remind Golgren of her and of how she had helped him to survive after her own death.
To lose it recalled to him how he had lost her.
As the tremor increased in magnitude, Golgren pushed back the memories and tried to focus. He found no hope, though. Destruction lay everywhere. The ogre glanced around at what would soon become his grave, aware there would not be enough scraps for anyone to bury or burn should his former subjects decide it was even worth their trouble. More likely, whoever found him would strip whatever of value remained then spit upon his ruined body. That was the fate for a failed leader.
Then, as he looked off to one side, Golgren beheld two tiny figures. One was the Solamnic knight, Sir Stefan Rennert, who appeared either unconscious or, more likely, dead. The armored fighter lay sprawled on his back across a small outcropping.
Idaria stood over the man, her left hand on his shoulder, trying to pull him up to safety with her other arm. Yet the elf’s gaze was not on her companion, but fixed on Golgren.
The grand lord tore his eyes from her. It was bad enough he had to die, but to have the elf slave as his final witness …
The chain that held his withered hand seemed to be suffocating him. Swearing, Golgren nearly tore off the lost appendage as he loosened the chain. Again his fingers touched the vial that Dauroth had insisted was of no danger to him. In his desperation, the grand lord wondered: Was there a chance?
Had the Titan lied?
A bolt rocketed down. It tore up the soil just ahead of him. A new torrent of rock and dirt assailed Golgren as he fell back.
He slammed his fist against the vial.
It did not break. Worse, the heavens exploded, and the ground churned as if it had turned liquid. Golgren had only a moment to note that it all took place in his immediate vicinity and nowhere else. Dauroth wanted him and only him, and it looked as if he might be successful.
Golgren was lost.
And yet some mysterious force still protected him, or else the first moment of the new upheaval would have seen him crushed under tons of stone. However, that protection was weak, and was weakening further. It would not last long.
Again his harried thoughts returned to the vial. Golgren could not explain why, but he felt certain that it was his best hope. Unfortunately, he could not seem to pry it loose.
Wrapping his maimed arm around a jutting piece of rock, the grand lord rubbed the side of his scarred and bleeding face with his hand, trying to think even as he fought to keep his balance with the ground shifting beneath him. Another bolt struck, barely missing him. He felt a sharp pain across his face. Adding insult to injury, he had added to his multitude of wounds by somehow cutting himself. As the blood trickled down his face, Golgren saw why. The edge of the signet had scraped against his skin. Some blood even splashed across the signet.
And suddenly the symbols flared a fiery orange again.
That orange glow was reflected in his widening eyes. Teeth bared in a fatalistic grin, Golgren twisted his hand around so the ring faced inward, toward himself and the vial.
“Perhaps we go together yet, eh, Dauroth?” the grand lord hissed. “That would not be so bad an end, then, for me.”
It was a final, crazy notion, yet just as when Golgren had figured out how to wield Tyranos’s staff against the skeletal meredrake, it seemed the right-the only-thing to do.
As hard as he could, Golgren smashed the bloody signet into the vial. He heard the tinkle of breaking glass, and suddenly he felt as though all the air had been ripped from his lungs. Golgren cursed his naivete, cursed having failed so utterly.
The ground rushed up at him from all sides. The sky vanished under a hail of earth.
Dauroth gasped.
He had lost control of the spell; the quake had lessened, and the lightning ceased altogether. The other Titans darted glances his way, but he ignored them, allowing only Safrag, through his deeper connection, to understand even the least bit of what was happening. The apprentice wisely kept silent.
But the pain did not pass as he might have wished. Rather, it grew and swelled. The immense effort had finally begun to take its toll on him. He had to finish it. Then, while the others awaited him there, he would go to his sanctum and be the first to imbibe again from the dwindling supply of elixir.