This time he had an answer, one he would stand by. “I am Aunn.”
The man’s warmth vanished into anger as he took in Aunn’s face. “You’ve stolen my face! You’re a fiend of the Wastes!”
This was no vision of the Traveler. Was it possible Aunn had given himself a copy of this man’s face without ever having seen him? Or had he seen this man before? His thoughts felt muddy. He couldn’t remember. Even the strange man’s clothes and armor were identical to his-it didn’t make sense.
The strange man roared in fury and ran at Aunn, his hands raised like claws before him. A vision flashed into Aunn’s mind-a monster like a horned bear, fire in its eyes, a gaze that was fixed on him as it rushed toward him. He felt again the freezing cold of Frostburn Cut, the icy grip of fear he’d felt when he saw this monster before.
“We are in the Demon Wastes now,” Vor said. “Do not trust your senses.”
The man had become the bear-thing, massive claws raised to tear Aunn to shreds. An instant before those claws reached his throat, he brought his mace up and smashed it into the monster’s face, knocking it aside. It sprawled against the canyon wall, changing back into a human form as it fell and rolled. Aunn followed it, raising his weapon.
The man chuckled and turned his face to Aunn. It was Vor’s face now. “Well done, Kauth,” he said. “You penetrated my disguises.”
Aunn stopped short and nearly dropped his mace. It couldn’t be Vor, but how did it know Kauth’s name? How did it recognize him as Kauth? Was this the Traveler after all?
“You tried to lead me to my death,” Vor said, his chuckle turning into a snarl. “If you had but known the extent of my power…”
“No,” Aunn said. “I saw you dead. You’re not Vor.”
“You’re right,” Vor said, and his face melted away. Dania stood before him.
It was a nightmare, just like the fevered dreams of his illness, but Aunn was sure he was not sleeping. “What are you? Kalok Shash-the Silver Flame? Incarnate in the paladins-”
Dania roared, and the beast’s massive paw slashed across Aunn’s face, knocking him to the ground. “Paladins? Me and Vor? Not at all, Auftane, not at all.”
“There was holiness in you both. So much good.”
“Evil can wear the guise of good when the need arises.”
“Evil-you-you’re the fiend of the Wastes… You’re dredging my memories!”
“Perhaps I am a fiend,” Kelas said, “but does it follow that I am not also Dania, and Vor, and Kelas? Think about it, Haunderk. I’ve been with you all this time. I have guided you all your life. I’ve made you what you are.”
Aunn cowered on the ground, terrified that what Kelas said might be true. Kelas could be an incarnation of evil. He was capable of such cruelty. But could he have been Dania? Vor? No, it couldn’t be “Where did I fail, Haunderk?” Kelas loomed over him, powerful and intimidating. Aunn cringed, awaiting the inevitable slap or kick. “What flaw in your education allowed this… this conscience to take root in you?”
Conscience.
Kelas said the word like it was the name of the most loathsome, despicable creature he could imagine. And Aunn remembered exactly how it had come about. He stood up, face to face with Kelas.
“You did fail,” he said. “You taught me detachment, taught me not to love. But you didn’t teach me not to care. You made me hate you, and you never punished me for hating you. Hatred is just as strong as love, Kelas, and my hatred for you is my greatest strength. Because I hate you, I care-and because I care, I learned to love.”
Kelas laughed-a low chuckle that grew into a great, booming laughter that echoed in the canyon. “Then you have learned to fail,” he said, his face suddenly grim.
Then the bear-beast leaped at Aunn again, knocking him to the ground. With its massive paws pinning him down, its fiery eyes met his gaze. As it spoke, droplets of spittle fell on his face and seared his skin. “I am everything you’ve ever cared about. Except for Kelas, it’s all been a sham. My evil is the only thing that’s ever been real in your life, changeling.”
Despair sank into Aunn’s chest like the weight of the fiend’s paws, and he waited for its teeth to close around his neck. Instead, it brought its mouth close to Aunn’s and drew a deep breath.
Aunn’s lungs screamed their protest as the demon sucked every last scrap of air out of them and still continued its inhalation. His vision swam, and darkness closed in at the edges. The paws lifted off his chest and Aunn felt his body rise off the ground with the force of the monster’s breath. He closed his eyes.
He was a husk, left with nothing inside him but his despair. Kelas had been manipulating and controlling him his entire life, and Kelas was an incarnation of evil. Everything else had been a lie-Dania, Vor, and Farren. The ideals of the paladin that had seemed so virtuous, they were nothing but a quick path to a noble death. And now his own death, hardly so noble, was upon him. Kalok Shash would not burn brighter, he felt sure. If it existed at all, it would soon be extinguished.
In the midst of the blackness, Dania lay atop him as she had in his fevered dream. She moved against him, smiled at him, and asked, “Why do you resist me?”
“I can’t anymore,” he said. “Take me.”
A blast of white fire shattered the darkness, and air poured into Aunn’s lungs. Hope seeped back into his heart as well, and as his eyes regained their normal vision he saw the bear-thing scrabbling at the ground, trying to get its feet under it again. When it did, it vanished from sight, and a moment later Aunn felt its absence.
But there was still a presence with him, a presence that had taken root in his soul and flowered at last into that burst of fire. It was Dania’s smile and Vor’s courage, Rienne’s care and Gaven’s fierce power. It was a flame burning against all the world’s darkness, a purifying fire.
Who are you?
He knew, with every last spark of his soul he knew. He smiled and answered, “I am Aunn.”
Then he climbed up and over the rubble that had blocked his path.
The Demon Wastes lay behind him and the Shadowcrags rose up ahead. Aunn turned for a last look back. The Labyrinth had not changed since his first view of it-an endless maze of winding canyons, scorched as if by the acidic touch of corruption, all spread out beneath a blood red sky. But it felt different. He had approached it with dread, afraid of losing his soul. But he looked back on it with a strange mixture of grief and… something else, something that was hard to name. He lost Vor there. He led Sevren and Zandar to their deaths. He helped kill Durrnak and the orcs under his command, and finally left all of Maruk Dar to the hands of the Carrion Tribes. That grief and remorse might have overwhelmed him, except that he had gained something as well. Vor had warned him to abandon hope, but instead he had gained a shred of hope.
A thin plume of smoke to the right caught his eye, and he wondered whether it was a sign of Maruk Dar’s fate. As he watched, more plumes arose, and more, until they were joined into a great billowing cloud of black smoke rising up and spreading out to cast a deeper pall over the whole Labyrinth.
Maruk Dar is burning, Aunn thought. I should have been there to die in its defense.
He fell to his knees and watched the smoke and occasional flashes of fire rising above the canyon walls. He thought of Farren, probably one of the first to die as he tried to shield the city from the onrushing hordes. He thought of Dakar and the woman with him, and the other Carrion Tribe “converts” among the Ghaash’kala. They, too, were probably early victims, sought out for special punishment by those they had deserted. Or perhaps they turned on the Ghaash’kala, hoping to redeem themselves and rejoin the winning side in the conflict. And what of young Ghaarat, who had just sworn his vow to defend the Labyrinth? How long would a boy last in battle against the Carrion Tribes, even a boy of the Ghaash’kala?
Farren had allowed him to escape the sack of Maruk Dar. Farren had ensured that he would be alive at that moment, able to look back on the billowing smoke that told of the city’s destruction. Farren had broken his vow and allowed Aunn to escape the Labyrinth, and for one purpose: to warn the people of the east, of the Eldeen Reaches and perhaps Aundair and Breland. The Carrion Tribes were on the march, their sights set on the cities of the east, and it fell on him to try to stop them.