“I don’t-” Tragor began; then his jutting brows lifted. “The Hollowlands!” he exclaimed, his eyes on the towering peaks. “They called that place the Hollowlands.”
Kurthak nodded gravely. “Not so hollow now, are they?”
“Black-Gazer!”
Both ogres looked toward the voice, which came from the far side of the riverbed. The black-cloaked form of Yovanna emerged from a cleft in the rocks there. Her hood was up again, hiding her blasted face from the glaring red sun-and from the ogres’ eyes.
Reflexively Tragor scowled, reaching up to probe his face with thick fingers. He touched the great, swollen knot where her knee had smashed his nose, then growled, his hand straying toward the hilt of his sword.
Kurthak saw this, and laid a staying hand on Tragor’s arm. His champion hesitated, then relented.
Yovanna had followed Kurthak’s band and its captive kender back from Myrtledew to the valley where Lord Ruog’s horde camped. Once they were there, she had come to Kurthak’s tent at midnight, night’s shadows forming a second cloak about her.
“Malystryx awaits,” she had said.
Kurthak had wasted no time. Gathering his traveling gear, he summoned Tragor and followed Yovanna into the night. He had told Lord Ruog nothing, and the hetman was doubtless ready to gut him by now for abandoning his post.
They had walked for nearly a week through the wasteland. Yovanna would disappear ahead of them, moving swiftly and surely among the crags and boulders, then would reappear a short time later, beckoning the ogres urgently on. Now she called them forward, over the river’s drying bones, toward the towering mountains of the Hollowlands.
“Quickly,” she urged. “The place for meeting my mistress is not far. Come!”
Kurthak gave the river and the peaks beyond it One last suspicious glance, then turned to Tragor and nodded ahead. They slogged on, over the dying Heartsblood, red mud sucking at their boots as they went.
They walked for hours, not even slowing their pace when the sky began to darken with dusk. Yovanna had not so much as paused before leading them into the towering crags. Both ogres, who knew much about highlands, had noticed how new these mountains appeared. They showed no sign of weathering or erosion. Instead, they were all sharp angles and deep cracks, as though someone had pulled them up from the earth’s bones.
The crags were all around them now, stretching leagues in all directions. In the distance, one peak loomed above the rest. Its tip was burning.
“Is that Blood Watch?” Kurthak asked.
Yovanna did not look at him, nor did she break stride.
“It is,” she answered, her voice cool and toneless as ever. “Though the ruins that gave it its name are long since gone. Now it is my mistress’s lair. She has chosen to keep the name.”
They clambered up a razorback ridge, Yovanna moving nimbly from rock to rock. The ogres climbed with greater care, sending rocks the size of their massive fists clattering down the steep slope behind them. When they crested the top, they saw that the ridge was the edge of a great, bowl-like crater. The bowl’s sides were streaked with yellow dust, and the stench of brimstone hung heavy in the air. A black cleft in the crater’s center hissed unclean-looking, brownish steam that rose in a column hundreds of feet high. The ground rumbled faintly beneath their feet.
Wrinkling his nose, Tragor shrugged and started to pick his way down into the crater. Before he could take two steps, though, Yovanna’s black-gloved hand shot out and clamped tight on his wrist. Though her arm was like a reed next to his own, oaklike limbs, he still winced at the tightness of her grasp. He stopped.
“Go no farther,” Yovanna said, releasing him. “We wait for her here.”
“Here?” Kurthak repeated, surprised. “I thought we were bound for Blood Watch.”
She shook her hooded head. “You thought wrong, then, Black-Gazer,” she told him. “Do not worry. My mistress will not be long.”
The ogres looked around. Kurthak squinted at the burning spire to the north. He could see the red glow of lava oozing down its sides.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Yovanna asked. “Malystryx is proud of her work here. Soon these peaks will dwarf the Lords of Doom themselves. After that-”
She stopped, her body stiffening suddenly. For a moment she was silent, then she swept her arm forward and up, her sleeve fluttering in the hot, fetid wind.
“She comes,” she hissed.
Kurthak didn’t see the dragon until she was almost upon them, so heavy was the pall of smoke and ash that hung over the Hollowlands. When she emerged from the haze at last, he could do little but hold his breath and stare, while dragonfear clamped around his innards like a vise.
Malystryx the Red was larger than any dragon either ogre had seen before. She stretched more than three hundred feet long, nearly half of that a sinuous, snaking tail; her wingspan was similarly huge, blocking out half the sky as she dipped through the smoke toward the crater. The air howled with the rush of her passing. She banked sharply as she passed overhead, then began to circle the caldera, scanning the ground with eyes like forge-fired steel. If she saw the three tiny figures atop the ridge, she gave no sign.
Beside Kurthak, Tragor moaned and began to tremble. Kurthak glanced at him harshly, but said nothing, afraid of revealing his own terror.
At that moment, the dragon threw back her head and roared. The ogres clamped their hands over their ears, wincing at the sound. The rock beneath their feet shivered. The shriek carried on for nearly a minute, and when it ended Kurthak wiped tears from his eyes, wondering if the ringing sound that lingered after it would ever go away.
“Mistress!” Yovanna cried, exulting.
The great scaly head whipped around, and Malystryx stared straight at them, her eyes smoldering. Smoke curled from her nostrils, and her lips curled into a vicious leer. She circled once more, then set down on the floor of the caldera. The beating of her wings as she landed whipped stinging chips of stone in the ogres’ faces; when they could see again, the dragon had curled around the sulfur-steaming cleft in the crater’s midst. She studied them, her head angling from side to side.
“Good,” hissed the dragon. “Very good, Yovanna. You may leave us now. Go to Blood Watch and await me there.”
The black-cloaked figure bowed. “Yes, mistress,” Yovanna said. Without even a sidelong glance at the ogres, she turned and walked away, disappearing down the lip of the crater. Kurthak and Tragor watched her go.
Malys stretched lazily, writhing around the warm steam vent. Her claws flexed, cracking stones. A sigh of contentment escaped her lips, accompanied by a puff of flame that could have reduced both ogres to ashes. When she was done, she looked at Kurthak. He stared back, wide-eyed.
“Black-Gazer,” she purred. “Yovanna has watched you for some time now. She has told me great things about you.”
Kurthak goggled for a moment, then bowed abruptly. “I’ve heard far greater things about you,” he responded. Despite his efforts to control it, his voice shook as he spoke.
The dragon chuckled. “Indeed.” Her gaze flicked to Tragor, and her scaly brows knitted. “This one I do not recognize.”
Tragor swallowed, shuddering.
“This is Tragor,” Kurthak stated. “He is my champion.”
“A warrior?” Malys asked, her voice mocking. Her great forked tongue flicked in and out of her mouth. “You wouldn’t use that mighty blade against me, would you, Tragor?”
The champion fell to his knees, weeping. “No,” he whimpered. “Please..
With a snort of amusement and disgust, Malys turned back to Kurthak. “I hope Yovanna did not… disturb you too greatly,” she said.
He shook his head. In truth, though, he had seen the woman’s disfigured face in his nightmares.
“You want to know what she is,” Malystryx declared. “Don’t you?”
Kurthak nodded wordlessly.
The dragon grinned, flames crackling between her tree-trunk fangs. “Call her an experiment,” she said. “When I first came to these lands, I laid waste to a village. Ran-Khal, I believe, was its name. Most of the barbarians living there died, but when the flames abated I found Yovanna still alive, though badly scarred… as I’m sure she has shown you. I took her back to Blood Watch and remade her as my servant. The spells I cast upon her destroyed the peasant girl she once was. Now she is strong and cunning, and she would leap from the top of one of these peaks if I wished it.”