The wizard sat near the spot where he had last spoken with the half-breed, drawing new strength from his exhausted body. In very many ways, his concentration was akin to that of a trained warrior mentally preparing himself for battle.
Tyranos had no problem with using Golgren for his personal gain. The half-breed would have done the same.
All that matters is the Fire Rose, he thought. With the Fire Rose, I can make things right and make me right.
He suddenly sensed that someone was standing behind him. Tyranos made no move, considering carefully just which of the two possible candidates it must be. The fact that he did not feel any sweltering increase in the temperature helped his guess.
“I thought I’d seen the last of you long ago,” he snarled without looking back. “Let us leave it that way.”
“You know a part of you does not agree with that statement,” said the deep, majestic voice.
With an exasperated sigh, Tyranos rose, using only his legs. He made a fluid turn worthy of any fighter, which produced a nod of approval from the other figure.
“You have not let your skills fade,” the bison-headed giant remarked.
“For my sake only. No longer to serve the cause of any god, even you!”
Kiri-Jolith shook his head. The deity stood more than a foot taller than Tyranos, though the two were alike in the breadth of their great shoulders. “No one serves me, Tyranos. I ask favors of them, and they may choose to grant them or not.”
“Semantics. I’ve seen the proof. I’ve watched the lives that were sacrificed for you, for Sargas, for all the others. That’s why magic became my god, but even there, only the magic itself, not the trio.”
“And they’ve been very patient with you, do you not think?”
Tyranos turned away from the god. “Spare me your philosophical mutterings! We’ve no more ties between us! Those perished with my uncle, my brother, my sisters, and my friends.”
“They gave themselves for what they believed. They saved so many others where your own mentor turned a blind eye.”
That last caused the wizard to angrily glance over his shoulder. “I am not him! I wanted only to bring to my people something so many of them feared and yet that could help them!”
The bison-headed god’s deep brown eyes blinked once, only once, for the first time. “And then?”
“And then they rejected me as Gragnun’s puppet, as dangerous as he turned out to be! Even after I brought him down!”
“They were wrong.”
That concession from Kiri-Jolith momentarily pushed Tyranos mentally off balance. The wizard recovered quickly, though. “They were wrong and I was wrong to believe they could understand! I’ve turned from them, turned from my ancestors! I will become what I should become!”
With determination, Tyranos left. He stalked several steps from where the deity had been standing only to find Kiri-Jolith in front of him again.
“A paltry trick,” the wizard muttered.
“You would risk everything to abandon what you were born to be?”
Tyranos sneered. “Yes.”
Kiri-Jolith nodded. There was an indecipherable look in his gaze. “Then there is hope for you yet.”
The hooded figure was incredulous. “Now what-?”
But the god of just cause had vanished.
“By the Kraken!” Tyranos let out a snort. “So typical.”
Then he noticed that something lay on the ground where the deity had been standing.
It was the staff.
Without thinking, he snatched it up. It glowed brightly, apparently completely rejuvenated.
The grin spreading over his leonine face faltered. The last time he had seen that staff was when Golgren had taken it. What did it mean that Kiri-Jolith had returned it to Tyranos?
The staff was the lone item that he had from his past, an artifact once belonging to his mentor, which Tyranos had taken after Gragnun’s death, after Tyranos had been forced to kill him. Tyranos had tricked Gragnun into putting it aside, and that had been all the opportunity the younger mage had needed.
Tyranos had regrets about the dishonorable method by which he had slain his former teacher, but not about the actual death. Others had already perished due to Gragnun. Just as Golgren, Idaria, and others were likely to perish at the hands-or magic-of either the Titans or the gargoyles’ master.
A low, bestial rumble escaped Tyranos. He suddenly knew exactly what Kiri-Jolith intended. He knew exactly what he was supposed to do.
“Well, I won’t! You hear me?” Tyranos growled at the sky. “I won’t.”
The sky was silent.
The spellcaster grimaced.
“Damn all you gods,” he muttered under his breath.
Raising the staff, he spoke the command and disappeared.
IX
Golgren awoke as though sleepwalking, with chains binding his arms behind his back, and which kept his legs close together as he walked. At best he could shuffle along slowly.
The Solamnic patrol had treated him rather courteously, considering his ogre heritage. They had not run him through the heart nor had they lopped of his head. They had settled for chaining him and slowly marching him back to their leader through the uneven, hilly terrain far west of his beloved city.
They had not offered him a mount nor did he demand one. Golgren intended to accept whatever trials the humans wished to impose on him. Golgren would not make himself look weak before the knights.
Despite his predicament, there was only one concern on his mind, and that did not immediately have to do with his own welfare. Some time during his capture, Tyranos’s staff had vanished. Golgren had not witnessed its disappearance but knew that none of his captors had it in their possession. For one thing, most of them would have looked upon such a magical tool with scorn. While spellcasters were useful at times to the Solamnics, the knights were comfortable with only a few clerics among their number who had been granted powers by their patron gods.
But if the humans did not have the staff, it seemed likely that Sirrion had taken it. Yet Golgren could not fathom why the fiery deity would have first teased the half-breed with its presence, then, without teasing fanfare, removed it from him.
“He’s awake,” remarked one of the knights.
The others, all seated around a small fire, glanced without interest at Golgren. Even though they knew who he must be, his fate was for their commander to decide, not for them.
“Help him up and give him some food,” the leader of the party commanded. His great, brown mustache wiggled as he spoke, almost making it look as if he sported furry tentacles.
Two knights obeyed the order. They set Golgren down carefully then removed the bonds keeping his arms tied. The half-breed cautiously stretched agonized muscles under the watch of his two guards. He then accepted a small bowl of oats that was the same fare upon which his captors had also breakfasted. The faint smell of burned grain wafted under his nose.
Perhaps they expected him to spit out the food, for the guards warily studied each bite he took, as if waiting for him to flaunt his swordsmanship skills. Full-blooded ogres rarely ate such fare, preferring very rare-cooked-even raw-meat and some of the harsh, edible plants of their locale. To most of Golgren’s race, the food the knights ate would have seemed fit for only toothless elders almost ready to die. However, Golgren’s dual heritage had given him a more egalitarian appetite, although the oats were hardly comparable to the fine dishes his elf slaves had been known to cook for him.
Thought of elf slaves reminded Golgren of what he had hoped Idaria might accomplish. By rights, she should be somewhere far ahead of him, perhaps already meeting with the same human to whom his captors were bringing him. Golgren wondered whether she had made it to her destination or whether the wizard or Chasm had interfered with her mission.