The gargoyle spun around, clawing at its own body. Fire burst from within it, breaking through the many cracks developing in the gray hide. The creature hissed as flames engulfed it.
But, as the last vestiges of the gargoyle became sheer fire, the fire in turn transformed into another figure.
Sirrion shook a few straggling flames away from his body and beheld the bleeding half-breed.
“I’m hungry. Do you have anything for me to eat?” the god blithely asked. When Golgren only stared, Sirrion reached down and plucked up a rock. As he held it up, the rock became an apple.
The lord of alchemy and fire did not bring the apple to his mouth, however. Instead, Sirrion ignited the apple in his palm, burning it away in a matter of two or three breaths.
“A small tidbit, but it’ll have to do,” Sirrion commented drily. He cocked his head as he surveyed the half-breed’s injuries and wounds. “You look to be dying. Why do you mortals always look to be dying? I barely speak to one of you, and you die. They were the same, you know, the ones who begged for my flower. They asked for it, were given it, and they died.”
He glided over to Golgren, a stream of fire beneath his booted feet. Golgren tried to talk, to say something, to plead, but the effort was too much for him.
“I was curious about something,” the god continued. “Something I hadn’t noticed before.” He raised a hand over the half-breed.
Golgren felt a hotness stir within him. He expected to die as the gargoyle had, but instead, the brief fire faded.
“There it is. I wondered. Good and ill, the balance had to be there.”
Steeling himself, the Grand Khan rasped, “Show me … Show me how it, it does everything.”
“But you know already. And the choice is yours, not mine. I’ve always left it up to those who most want my flower. Yet they die so quickly!”
Sirrion’s body burst into flames. He nodded to Golgren as he turned. Yet the god of fire did not even complete his turn before the flames appeared to consume him as they had the gargoyle.
By the time Golgren drew another ragged breath, Sirrion had vanished. Only a few lingering licks of extinguishing fire marked his departure.
Despite the agony coursing through him, Golgren wondered about the deity, who seemed to have returned for no reason other than to chide him. What reason could there have been for Sirrion’s short and puzzling visitation? What had he meant about not noticing something earlier about the half-breed?
New, sharp pain wracked Golgren. Despite the heat of the Fire Rose, he suddenly felt cold.
The ogre leader turned on his stomach again. He dragged himself farther from the site of the struggle despite each movement sending renewed jolts of agony through his body.
You have brought it to me at last, came a chilling voice in his head. It was the same voice he had heard but moments before.
Another shadow crossed Golgren, a shadow cast by nothing. There was no gargoyle; nor was it Safrag.
There was only the shadow. The moving shadow.
Sirrion’s Gift. Our Folly. The words ended in a deep chuckle.
And suddenly, a black and gray figure that was as much shadow as it was something more raised Golgren up effortlessly with one white, bone-thin finger. Eyes of ice studied the half-breed with far more interest than Sirrion’s had.
So long a wait, but so delicious a victory! You are everything I promised myself, everything you could be.
Golgren tried to strike at the black-gray figure, but his hand came up far short. The veiled figure chuckled.
My impossibility, my enigma. You do me proud.
The finger bent. The Grand Khan suddenly fell face down on the ground.
And you are no longer needed.
As the last statement echoed in Golgren’s head, gargoyles descended by the score. They let out eager hisses, and even when settled on the ground they beat their wings with anticipation.
“No,” Golgren croaked, baring his teeth. “You will not …”
The shadowy form bent down. But you have no choice with me. You would not even be without me.
Golgren’s body did not move of its own volition. His legs bent to kneel, and his arms stretched to do for the phantasm what even Safrag could not demand of him.
A second ghastly hand joined the first to take the Fire Rose away from him. As if recognizing a long lost master, the artifact glowed bright.
What happened next seemed a dream to the half-dead Golgren. A terrible wind arose, one that whipped through the area with a ferocity that enabled it to tear small rocks free and send them flinging into the air. The gargoyles were lifted up with the stones, their wings seeming to catch the wind despite their best efforts. They flew up and whirled away, all the while trying in vain to control their mad flight.
But it was his tormentor who was the most oddly affected. The wind literally tore through him. Still reaching for the Fire Rose, he disintegrated as though he had become air himself.
When the other gargoyles had been burned to ash by the Fire Rose, Golgren had assumed that the magic had been drawn from both Safrag and him. But he had managed by himself to do the impossible. He, who had no knowledge or mastery of magic.
The triumphant smile on his face lasted as long as it took him to collapse.
He lay there on the brink of death. The cold that had earlier filled him returned with a hundred times more intensity. Golgren shivered. His body refused his efforts.
How long he lay there, Golgren did not know. He lost consciousness, regained it, and lost it again. The sense that someone new was nearby stirred him just enough to feel the Fire Rose being tugged from his fingers. What he had struggled so much to defend was taken from him with the utmost ease.
His body suddenly shot up, rising more than a foot above the ground. Golgren tried to discern what was happening, but his eyes would not focus. What felt like ice enshrouded him, but if it was ice, it was ice with a dire blue tint. Like a fly caught in amber, the Grand Khan of all ogres stood fixed in a pose of death that surely presaged the inevitable.
Beyond his macabre prison, someone chuckled. There is your legacy. There is your monument to nothing, mongrel.
Safrag’s chuckle echoed through Golgren’s prison long after the sorcerer had left.
XXI
Garantha was near. It had taken Khleeg the greatest of efforts to lead the hand back to the capital so quickly. The warriors were weary beyond belief, and they had lost a few of the animals in their haste, but the effort had been worth it.
Khleeg looked for some sign of military activity, some hint that Wargroch had set other elements of ogre strength into action. True, Wargroch commanded the city guard, but Garantha needed more of a defense than that, much more. Khleeg had commanded Syln to send messengers to the other hands ordered out by the younger officer, but he could not feel confident that they would return before Rauth’s forces reached the capital. Fortunately, Atolgus and the rest of the betrayers were still far to the south, or else the situation would have been even more dire.
Still, as they came within sight of the capital, Khleeg feared for Garantha. There were hardly any guards visible on the walls. For one of the few times since swearing an oath to the Grand Khan, he questioned Golgren’s decisions. Wargroch had proven himself a fine warrior and clever of mind, but he was obviously incapable of overseeing such an important part of the empire.