This content was originally included in an issue of The Duelist magazine. The original article can be accessed via Internet Archive here.

---

Main Magazine Page: The Duelist #8

In February of 1996, Wizards of the Coast^® and HarperCollins^® will bring you Ashes of the Sun, a unique and poignant story set in a clash of cultures among humans, goblins, and minotaurs. First-time novelist Hanovi Braddock tells a gripping tale of loss, betrayal, and renewal that is sure to set new standards of quality for game fiction. The Duelist is a pleased to bring you this special preview excerpt from Chapter 5 of Ashes of the Sun.

By Hanovi Braddock

The day was long. The sun curved north as well as west. Summer days in these northern latitudes seemed to go on forever.

Ayesh, still cradling the wine jar, covered a lot of ground. There was no trail to follow up and down the steep slopes, but nor were there obstacles, save for the fields of boulders. As she walked, she crossed more and more such fields of fallen rock.

And as she walked, she sometimes caught the scent of goblin caves—the stench of carrion and offal. The smell grew stronger, and he could feel her heart pounding in her chest.

Ayesh, you may yet turn back.

Be still! she answered herself. Turn back to what? This has long been my destiny.

At last she descended into a ravine where the stench was almost overwhelming.

“All right, you skulkers, you rot-mouthed murderers,” she said under her breath. “I’m coming for you.”

Se followed the ravine to where the ground leveled off and opened to a shallow lake. Goblin stench fouled the black water. A few trees fringed the lake, sheltered in part by the steep slopes on all sides and protected from the wind even more by the enormous boulders that had come to rest there.

Stopping to listen, Ayesh heard only the wind in the trees. Goblins lived very close by. Why didn’t she sense any lurking behind he boulders or among the trees? The lake shore should be acrawl with them, from the smell of it.

She walked to the edge of the lake. The stink made her gag. But where were the goblins?

When she had gone a little further around the lake, she looked up. The mountain slope here was almost vertical, and from bottom to top it was riddled with goblin-sized holes.

The sight made her heart sink. For all her determination to face her old enemy, the thought of them pouring out of those holes, a gray flood of smelly leather-skinned bodies, made her breath catch in her throat.

See? You want to live!

She unstopped the jar and took a drink. Then she wet her fingers with the wine and smeared it under her nose. The wine’s scent was not pleasant, but it was much better than the stifling slaughterhouse smell of the caves.

Why weren’t they coming for her? They must know she was here. Even from inside the caves, surely they had spotted her by now.

She took another drink, then set the jar down. She took off her pack and set it next to the jar. She’d have no more need for her things. Better to fight completely unencumbered.

Something moved beneath the trees to one side.

Ayesh spun.

She squinted into the shadows. She could see nothing there. She waited a long time, and there was no more movement.

She looked again at the caves. If they would not come to her, she would go to them. She picked up the jar for one more swallow of wine.

“If I must come to you, then I’ll show you who it is who comes!” she said. She took the first stance, closed her eyes, and rooted herself in the earth. Then, with perfect balance on the uneven ground, she began to step and turn and strike and punch the air, advancing toward the caves, dancing the Dance That Breaks Bones.

“Eehey! Ayeen Istini Ayesh ni Hata Kan, e na aihana mey aililla nawti e aifoi li nassa ni kraleen!” she shouted in Oneahn. “I am Istini Ayesh ni Hata Kan, and I come to snap necks and crush the breath from throats! I come to stop hearts with a punch!” She punched the air. “I am death! Come to me, ye goblins who would die! Come, that I may open the maw of never-ending emptiness and cast ye in! Come, that ye may die and die and die!”

She repeated her death invitation in the goblin dialect she knew. “Ounyit, da teyey ekmigyla kofk ke kofk ke kofk!” Come out, that you all shall die and die and die!“

There was a chatter of goblin voices from inside the caves, but still no goblins poured out of the holes.

But they would come, Ayesh’s stammering heart told her. At any moment, they would come.

Closer and closer, she danced.

When she stopped, she was close enough to see black eyes glittering inside the nearest caves.

She clenched her fists. Her arms were rigid with fear and righteous anger. She tried to focus her mind. She must master her feelings if she were to fight well, to fight with quickness and surprise, as she had always done.

Her heart hammered. The wine made it hard to center herself. “Come out!” she shouted. “Ounyit!”

In the shadows, the goblins muttered. Then one said, “Mi. Ounyahk.” No. You come in.

Goblin laughter followed. It was like the sound of someone choking. Other goblins took up the invitation. “Ounyahk! Ounyahk!”

The mouths of the caves were smoke-blackened. Just a few feet from the entrance, the shadows were as deep as the emptiness between stars.

“No,” said Ayesh. “I’ll murder you in daylight, thanks. Come out. Oh, you rot eaters, come out!”

Something big moved in the forest behind Ayesh. She whirled.

Nothing there.

Behind her, the goblins were laughing. “Come in, come in,” one invited in the Voda tongue. “Come be safe with us. Yes, it be safe in here. Come!”

Ayesh picked up a rock, turned toward the caves, and flung it with all her strength. A goblin inside yelped, and the others laughed. “Ounyahk!”

“You’ll come to me.” She looked down at her pack and wine jar. Ordinarily, goblins would have darted out to make off with these by now. “You’ll come to me, because I have treasures. Lots of pretties. But some of you, many of you, will have to die to get them.” She repeated it all in their language.

She turned her back and walked back to her belongings. The goblins chattered, and some kept calling, “Ounyahk!” but none pursued her. None tried to dash from the caves to snatch her pack before she got to it.

“Stones from Heaven!” she said. She sat down. Never before had she found goblins so shy. Something had them badly spooked.

She looked into the trees again. A bear? But surely so many goblins would not cower from a bear. More likely they would swarm and kill it. Besides, would a bear stay concealed like this?

Not a bear. A stone giant, perhaps.

She squinted into the shadows. She was prepared to die, but if she died fighting aught but goblins, then even her final gesture would be without meaning.

“Go away,” she mumbled. “Whatever you are, clear out. This is between me and them.”

As the sun skimmed the southwestern horizon, Ayesh ventured into the trees to gather firewood. She heard nothing, and she saw no obvious tracks on the carpet of pine needles.

Whatever had been here was apparently gone.

In a ring of stones, she built a fire. She piled on the wood so that the flames leapt high. This was more than a campfire. It was a taunt aimed at the goblins. Here she was, at their very door. Come and get me, she thought. Come and die, you maggot-eating rotters.

She opened her tinderbox, kindled the unsmoking fire, and charged the flute. She turned to watch the caves, though as the sky darkened, she could soon see nothing beyond the light of her fire.

It didn’t matter. She’d know they were coming by the sound of them, by the smell of them.

She played a song, one that had words to it. She wished she could sing as she played. Wondrous though it was, the flute was not quite so wondrous as to let her both play and sing.

It was a wrestler’s song that she played, a song that called for strength, for grace, for beauty in the ring. Victory or defeat were not what mattered, but the struggle of Powers, the flow of moments, the endurance of the Now.

She stopped playing.

Outside of the ring, it did matter who won and who lost. For Oneah, in spite of its beauty, in spite of the strength and grace of its defenders, had drowned under the goblin tide. The unity of victory and defeat, that was not a lie. One was necessary for the other. But there had been no beauty in the defeat of Oneah. There was no beauty in the victory of goblins.

What was true beneath the Roof of Lights, what was true within Oneah, was not true in the wider world.

More than a civilization had fallen in the Goblin War. A reality had been tested and destroyed.

Ayesh extinguished the flute, but she didn’t bother to rekindle the flame of unsmoking fire. Instead, she drank wine and watched the flames die in her ordinary fire. Then, eyelids growing heavy, she watched the embers fade as she drank the last of her wine.

She slept.

---

She woke suddenly, her heart hammering, though she did not know what had awakened her. A sound?

The stars over her head were brilliant. The Glittermoon was right overhead, but the Mistmoon had not yet risen. All around her was blackness.

And five or six large silhouettes blotted out the stars. The creatures were too big to be goblins. Much too big.

One leaned close to her. It said, “Maynoonzhanrax.” And it moved closer still. Fingers closed on her wrist.

“Eeyeh!” Ayesh cried. Her shout made the creature flinch. Ayesh sprang, tucked, and rolled. She somersaulted backwards from the ring of creatures.

“Maynoonnaen,” rumbled another voice. Low laughter.

She stood. Her wounded leg throbbed, and her muscles were stiff with sleep. And with wine, she thought ruefully.

The creatures were harder to see now that they were not silhouetted against the stars. Black shapes against the black mountains were all but invisible. Ayesh would have to rely on hearing, on the feel of their approach.

There was no sound from near the fire pit. They had not moved. They all still stood before her. She might back quietly away…

From behind her came a booming laugh. “Qurraxpoylannaenpayanayeennartoonstasee!” The accent was strange, and her sleep and wine-addled brain took a moment to catch up to the sounds and sort them out. “Qurrax, poylan naen payanayeen nartoon stasee!” She knew this language. Qurrax, I’ve not seen you jump like that before!

That told her three things: these were minotaurs; there were more of them than the ones near the fire pit; and they could all see in mere starlight. She had suspected, in Hurloon, that minotaurs saw in the dark. Now she was sure.

“Well, she’s slippery as an otter,” said another in their booming language.“For all I know, she has an otter’s teeth!”

The laugh came again.

“Be not so amused that she escapes you,” said a very low voice. “Tiaraya, put down your trident. I mean for her to be caught, not killed.”

“Tm minded of what Qurrax said. She may have teeth.”

From the first voice came laughter again.

Ayesh almost spoke in their own tongue, but thought better of it. In Voda, she said, “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

“A good question,” said the one who laughed. He spoke in Voda. “Zhanrax, what do we want with her?”

“My interests,” said the low voice in the minotaur language, “are scientific.”

Laughter again. “That one word says much, Zhanrax. I never knew you to harbor such interests!”

Two of the minotaurs snorted. With humor? Derision?

Ayesh felt hot breath on the back of her neck. The breath had the scent of wet grass, the perfume of flowers.

She ducked, then sprang forward. Her shoulder slammed against a boulder she couldn’t see. She stood, aching.

“Almost had her,” said a new voice.

How could minotaurs, thick-hoofed creatures that they were, move so silently?

A hand closed on Ayesh’s shoulder. “Got her.”

Thats what you think, Ayesh thought. She put her hands on the massive wrist, turned the hand just so…

There wasn’t the pop and the howl of pain Ayesh expected. The minotaur’s wrist bent, but the grip only tightened.

Well, she had never made a study of minotaur anatomy. She’d never planned on having to wrestle one.

With two hands, now, the creature pulled Ayesh close. Ayesh let her opponent pull her close, and then…

“Eeyeh!” Ayesh shouted. She slammed her heel down hard, trying to aim at the delicate bones above the hoof.

She missed.

The grip did not lessen, and Ayesh felt pain shooting up her leg. She had bruised her heel. The hoof was as hard as stone.

She aimed another kick at the minotaur’s knee.

Her captor grunted and relaxed its grip. But the knee had given too easily. Minotaur knees were jointed backwards like an animal’s. The minotaur didn’t fall, but Ayesh nonetheless wriggled free.

Again, laughter from the one who had spoken first.

“Phyrrax, be you sober,” rumbled the deep voice. “I can scarce hear my thoughts for all your laughter.” Then it said, “Wellyraya, use the net.”

Ayesh didn’t like the sound of that.

She put her hands before her, and she sprinted.

She tripped. She got up again.

She ran right into a pair of woolly arms, but she pulled free and ran on.

She tripped a second time in the darkness.

The net descended as she tried to stand.

Many hands held her. She tried to kick, to punch. But they had her. And with stout ropes, they tied her. They hobbled her feet. Strong arms pulled her up.

She could walk, but not kick. She was led by three ropes: one ahead and one on either side.

“To the halls,” said the deep voice. “And mind that she doesn’t fall. I don’t think she can see in the dark.”

They began to march her through the blackness.

Hanovi Braddock has published Magic stories in the Tapestries and Distant Planes anthologies; his previous stories have appeared in The Leading Edge. Look for Ashes of the Sun at your hobby or book store in February 1996.