Ravon Kell slammed his shovel into the stony ground, cursing the hard jungle soil. They had already buried fifty slaves, and there was no end in sight.
The sun threw lashing rays on his back, cooking him in his rags, but the worst heat came from the ground itself, where the grinding magics of the genesis forge blistered the land, killing the jungle for a swath of a thousand feet around their prison.
Nearby, an orc guard wrinkled his snout at the stench of bodies. “Bury ’em three in a hole,” he ordered the halfling Finner.
“That’s against-” Finner started to protest, but fell silent as the orc loomed over him.
Ravon dug his hole deeper. Yesterday’s slave uprising had been doomed from the start. An army officer in the Last War, he’d weighed the odds and had stayed out of the fray. It wasn’t even a contest, here in this lost jungle of Xen’drik where no one knew there was a forge or slaves-both illegal under the Treaty of Thronehold.
Maybe the poor bastards knew the odds and just wanted to die. As the old marching song went, there were nine hundred and ninety ways to die. An orc’s blade thrust being merely one.
He looked up at the massive factory: an arms mill the size of a fortress, soon to produce an endless supply of lances, shields, cudgels, maces, swords, crossbows, spears-not to mention magic-infused spike wire, lightning spheres, and thunder shock implements.
A genesis forge, by the Devourer, though one had not been seen in the world since the fall of Cyre, as they were forbidden by the Treaty of Thronehold. But those laws didn’t apply in Xen’drik, a wild continent far from Khorvaire. Besides, a cloak of magic hid the forge. From the jungle, the misshapen fortress looked like nothing more than a vine-covered crag, not a hulking factory ten stories high, with massive iron walls studded with bulging armories and effluent towers disgorging steam and rank smoke.
At the top of the forge bulged the dome of the artificers’ keep. There, mages with their diagrams, spells, and sigils directed the magical workings of the forge. They drew enormous power from stockpiles of dragonshards and from the latent magic of the very ground on which the forge rested-the ancient burial site of a race of giants, it was said.
Ravon spat. His task-the task of every other slave, guard, and artificer-was to bring the forge to working order, and by so doing, bring the world to war. As a captain in Karrnath’s army, war had been his job, but he would never fight again. In the Last War Count Vedrim ir’Omik had thrown him in the dungeons, stripping him of his commission and very nearly his life. It was one thing to take his punishment like a man, and quite another to take it when innocent of the charges-charges trumped up by the count’s favorite vixen, at that. Earlier in the war a few of Ravon’s victories had come to the count’s attention, but by the Nine Hells, he wished that Vedrim had never visited the battlefield with his entourage. The attractive lady had taken a fancy to the celebrated captain, he’d declined to bed her, the count had been led to believe otherwise, and now Ravon wished that for all he’d suffered in the dungeon, he’d at least had the pleasure of what he’d been accused of.
High up the outer wall, a flat ring protruded like a horizontally embedded plate. Two rings, actually, one within the other. They turned very slowly, in opposite directions, grinding the dragon shards-the raw material of the forge’s magic.
On the outer ring, pacing slowly to keep the slaves in view, the forge master Stonefist glared down at them. Even among gnolls, he was especially ugly. Strutting up there on the outer ring, his presence filled the slaves with further dread, a fact that even the slow-witted gnoll well understood.
Finner pulled out a gourd from inside his shirt, offering Ravon a drink of hoarded water.
Ravon waved it away. “Drink it yourself.”
“You first, Captain.” Finner bent over with another of his coughing spells, but managed not to spill.
Ravon wiped the sweat streaming into his eyes. “I’m not your captain any more.” He glared at Finner. “And I don’t need a steward. Get to digging or that orc will put you in a hole.”
The halfling still held out the gourd. “You’ll always be a captain of Karrnath. Don’t make no difference, in prisons or digging graves.”
Ravon took the gourd, else there would be no shutting Finner up. Tossing off a gulp of water, he nodded at the halfling, getting a worshipful look in return. To his surprise, it shamed him. There was nothing left of him to look at that way. He’d left that man in the count’s dungeons. They had beaten and tortured that man out of him, and then had made him do the same to others.
So, Finner, he thought, how do you like the real Ravon Kell?
Ravon entered the forge through the iron jaws of the front door. The inner maze of ramps and halls growled with a low throbbing, less heard than felt through the soles of the feet. The goblin who’d fetched Ravon prodded him with a spear. Ravon batted it away from the small of his back, heedless of the goblin’s snarl. No one was going to cut him down before Stonefist said. Ravon’s time had not yet come, and the goblin knew it.
He tramped up the stairs, leaving the guard to return to grave duty. Ravon had more freedom than most of the other workers. Stonefist had conceived the plan to save him for a showy death. Why waste the great captain of Karrnath on starvation or overwork? Maybe Stonefist’s sadistic plan was ready to go, if the gnoll wanted to see him.
Second level, the rat pen. Gnomes and dwarves and halflings ran in their caged circles, turning the great forge rings that wove the spell to cloak the forge from prying eyes. Every kingdom in Khorvaire would rise up to destroy the forge, if discovered. That wasn’t going to happen, though Ravon, in his off-guard moments, hoped for it. Hope made servitude less bearable, a lesson he’d learned well in Vedrim’s dungeon.
A female dwarf grown thin from the endless walk spat through her cage and landed a gobbet at Ravon’s feet. “Think you’re high and mighty, don’t you? Foul slime!”
Ravon made a half salute. “Good day to you as well, Bisreth.”
Others doing cage duty took up the catcalls. “Lackey.” “Traitor.” They thought he was in close with Stonefist-even liked the forge master. The very thought gagged him. It was true that Stonefist gave him the run of the place, within reason. Ravon provided entertainment for Stonefist-and banter the forge master had come to relish.
The thought festered that he was also a model slave, dependably doing what he was told. Once, he would have called such a man a craven coward. Well. Perhaps one day Stonefist would push him too far, and he’d show himself a man, after all.
Snapping whips in the air, the goblin guards silenced the rat pen outburst, ignoring Ravon as he passed through.
Arriving at the third level, Ravon found Stonefist waiting for him. The gnoll was seated next to a wall of the forge proper. The ten-story heart of the edifice sweated out a putrescent goo in spots. This was the bowel room, slave talk for the place where the forge shat out its weapons. Or would, come the word from on-high. Some high lord or other, but such things mattered little in the end. What mattered to Ravon was a decent death. He’d put more than his share of thought into choosing a good one.
Seeing Ravon approach, Stonefist kicked at the cringing slave filing the gnoll’s toenails. “Enough!” he roared. She fled the room. At Stonefist’s side stood an elf, the ever-watchful, the ever-grim Nastra, a bulging ring of colorful keys at her belt.
Noting Stonefist’s daggerlike toenails, Ravon said appreciatively, “Nice job. Except for the stink. Need to wash those feet sometime, boss.” Over the weeks he and Stonefist had fallen into an exchange of insults. The gnoll was doubtless stirred by verbal abuse from a man he could torture to death at a whim.
Stonefist grinned. “Maybe you lick feet?” He turned his foot to one side, then the other. “Lick clean?”
Ravon gave an elaborate sigh. “A slave’s work is never done.”
“No slaves!” Stonefist blared. “Slaves against the law.”
“Well, if not slaves, how about happy workers?”
Stonefist roared a laugh. “Happy workers!” He socked his fist against the forge wall, leaving a dent. “Happy workers!” Even Nastra smirked. “Big boss will like happy workers,” the gnoll said, his good mood growing.
“You never said who the big boss is, Stonefist.”
“Hah! Big boss is…” His grin fell away. “But Stonefist don’t tell.”
A flicker of interest flamed high in Ravon. It would be good to know one’s real enemy. But it was a soldier’s instinct, and he was no longer a soldier.
“I save you from shovels, Captain,” the gnoll said. “Not die of too much work. Stonefist save Captain for
