With a nod, Wargroch gave them permission to leave. The commanders hurried away, grunting their eagerness. Avid as they were, they would have their forces on the march by morning.
Alone save for his pair of trusted guards, Wargroch rose. Briefly through the young officer’s mind ran the images of his elder brothers, Nagroch and Belgroch.
“It is done,” he muttered under his breath. “It is done.”
But above the throne room, secreted in a place where he could hear all, the massive gargoyle, Chasm, let loose with a barely audible rumble. The master would be interested in all of it, of that Chasm was certain.
The gargoyle took to the air. He rose straight up and aligned himself between the sun and the ground. No ogre would see him high up there. His second eyelids slipped into place, protecting his own vision.
Chasm smelled the air, but he was not searching for any normal scent. He was linked by a magical bond to the wizard, a bond that enabled him to locate Tyranos wherever he was.
Finally the winged fury found his master, and a fresh growl escaped him. Tyranos was still in the place of the shadowed ones. They would take special pleasure in capturing Chasm and tearing him to shreds. The rivalry between his flock and theirs preceded his almost-lifelong servitude to the spellcaster.
But Chasm did not falter. If his fate was to perish under the tearing claws of his own kind, he would take many of them with him. What mattered was that he must reach his master as soon as possible.
Above all, he had no choice. Tyranos and the shadowed ones had made certain of that.
In departing so rapidly, the gargoyle missed the arrival of a sweating, dust-covered rider who leaped up the steps of the ancient palace and rushed past the rearing statues of the great griffons that flanked the entrance. The gasping rider clutched in his right arm a leather pouch that was not of ogre make. Behind him, his sturdy steed gasped from exertion, the rider having pressed the animal hard even during the height of iSirriti Siroth. The messenger had pushed himself just as hard, sleeping little and eating less.
A sentry stopped him.
“Wo usan i-” The rider paused for breath. When he spoke again, it was to shout. “The Grand Khan! Must see the Grand Khan!”
His echoing cry reached Wargroch, who, accompanied by his two guards, had left the chamber of the throne with other duties in mind, but had paused to study a relief that often riveted his attention. In the picture, a beautiful female High Ogre used magic to raise from the ground a field of exotic flowers. Behind her was a hilly landscape that had, despite the centuries, remained identifiable even to that day. Wargroch easily recognized the area where his clan made their home and thus felt an affinity for that particular ghost of the past.
He heard the cries for the Grand Khan’s attention. Wargroch signaled to one of his guards and, moments later, the warrior returned with the rider in tow.
“Must find the Grand Khan!” the newcomer continued to gasp. He clutched the leather pouch tightly, as Wargroch stared intently at it.
“I guard Garantha for the Grand Khan. Speak to me as you speak to him!”
The rider looked dubious. “The Grand Khan not in Garantha?”
With a growl, Wargroch signaled the guard nearest the newcomer. The guard put the edge of his sword against the rider’s throat.
Grunting, the courier handed the pouch over. Wargroch nodded to the guard, who lowered his weapon.
Golgren’s officer turned the pouch around in order to open it. Yet his hand momentarily froze over the leather strap sealed in thick wax, for the emblem imprinted there-the weapon, the flower, the bird-were familiar to all who knew the Grand Khan.
It was the symbol of Solamnia.
XII
At the birth of every healthy male child-females were only considered important for breeding and domestic work, even if they did actually help fight too-there was a ceremony to mark another potential warrior to strengthen the tribe and clan. It always began at the beginning of iSirriti Siroth, for if a warrior could not face Sirrion’s Burning each day of his life, he was certainly not capable of facing his tribe’s enemies. Weak children perished quickly among the ogres.
Only males were allowed at the ceremony, for according to ogre thinking, a female presence would weaken the spiritual might the father wished the land to bestow upon his son. Gathered were some fifty armed males from as young as ten summers, to one lone figure known to be at least an astounding sixty summers in age. They collected at the settlement’s most sacred site. Ogres always counted their age by the number of summers survived, for the Burning was most intense.
Indeed, the site itself was a place where the sun shone fiercest in that part of old Kern. The Aur nu iSirriti, Sirrion’s Eye, was shaped much like a vast oval bowl scooped out by the god. It was a spot where even the hardiest ogre had to wear straps of cloth over their eyes merely to see normally, for the region wasencrusted with crystal growths that caught every aspect of the day’s light and magnified it. Shamans among the local tribes claimed to observe the land’s spirits, even servants of the fire god who frolicked during the height of day, although only shamans were foolish enough to peer into the Aur nu iSirriti at that time and without any eye protection.
Sarth was the only one among the males who moved with ease through the bowl. Although he was spindly and much past his prime as a hunter, everyone treated him with deference. The shaman had survived far more than any of them could imagine, from the rule of dragonlords and the dread goddess known to most of the world as Takhisis, from the constant battles against the Uruv Suurt, the Skolax G’Ran, and, of course, from the eternal infighting among their own kind. Sarth had survived all.
At the edges of the bowl, four ogre warriors had set up goatskin drums nearly as large as themselves. The frames of each drum were made from the rib bones of young meredrakes; nothing was ever wasted among ogres. As Sarth entered the bowl, the four warriors began to beat a slow rhythm like that of a resting heart.
In the center of the bowl was the even more obvious reason for it being called Sirrion’s Eye: a wide, onyx outgrowth that almost did resemble a staring pupil. Sarth walked alone to the outgrowth before turning in the direction from which he had come.
Among the assembled males, a towering warrior with a face savage even by ogre standards stepped forward. He carried in his meaty hands a brown cloth in which squirmed the child to be honored that day.
As the father entered the bowl, the other warriors congregated around the edge and began beating the tops of their clubs, the heads of their axes, or the tips of their swords and spears against the rocky soil, grunting in unison with the drums.
“Carn i f’dar iBraagi jusuun,” called Sarth to the father, making a sign from the sire to the infant. “Husoch i iBraagi tu d’lach?”
The father nodded. He did not wear the face of a proud warrior who carried a son by his seed. Rather, he looked as if he wished he could hand the bundle to anyone else.
“Husoch i tu sadi d’lach.” He held up the squirming bundle, which was, to the eyes of all there, puny in comparison to what an ogre infant generally weighed at birth. “D’lach i iGuyviri”
There were startled grunts from the other males. The drumming ceased in mid-beat. The shaman, clad only in an old, dirt covered loincloth, bared his teeth-a rare showing of consternation on the shaman’s scarred and wrinkled visage.