The gurgling of churning water and the shouting of the deckhands woke Magali from a fitful and unsatisfying sleep. She bolted upright, startled momentarily from waking up in such an unfamiliar place. For nearly all her life, Magali woke up at the bedroll next to the hearth in her mother's hut in the village. But this afternoon, Magali awoke inside a tent-like canopy upon a raft of rope-lashed logs. She felt her bindings of raspy dumir rope bite against her wrists and ankles, and immediately remembered where she was and how she had come to arrive here.

Those riders who had taken her from mother took Magali to another nameless village on the banks of the Tashgad River. There, she was taken aboard this raft and set off down the river. Magali was not alone on this journey either, for six other girls joined her in the raft's galley. Four of the six were asleep, another girl laid upon the lashed qaubir beams and sobbed, and the other simply stared ahead in a dejected torpor. Looking at them now through the dappled sunlight filtering through the pinholes in the leather canopy, Magali could see they were all dressed in the rude garb of the peasantry, and they were all remarkably beautiful. While she could safely assume their backgrounds, Magali had never really spoke with her fellow captives during the past day or so they had spent in the galley together. Their captors had dissuaded conversation between the girls with leather clubs; a handful of whacks against the first few girls to cry out had been enough to instill silence for the rest of the journey. But now their captors were outside speaking to the vessel's pilots and deckhands, and the girl sitting upright spoke up for the first time.

"What is your name, [i]skhila[/i]?" The girl asked, addressing her with the old Rainlander word for sister.

"Magali," was her hushed reply. "And what is yours?"

"Kadira."

"Do you know why they have taken us?" Magali asked. "Where they are going?"

"I do not know, Magali. I think that they believe we will make good brides and wish to sell us to unmarried noblemen. That is what I think they have taken us for."

Magali was silent for a time. Her mother knew she did not wish to stay in that village, that she wanted to experience the wonders of foreign lands that passing caravaneers told stories of. Perhaps her mother felt this was the best way to get Magali out of that nameless village on the Tashgad. A soft, uneventful life making the home of a wealthy man was not the life she desired, but Magali knew there were worse fates.

"I suppose that is not so bad," Magali decided.

The hushed conversation was punctuated when the girls felt the raft bump softly against something solid. The raft shuddered with the footfalls of deckhands clambering around outside, tossing bundles of mooring rope with a meaty thud. The other girls were waking up now upon hearing this new wave of commotion, their eyes widening with anxiety as they realized their journey was now ending.

Their captors burst into the galley, throwing the leather flap wide open. The younger man with the short braided beard held a shortsword in his hands, and the huge captor carried a length of dumir rope coiled around his wrist.

"Hold still and be silent," the short-bearded captor commanded as he descended upon Kadira with the knife clutched firmly in his hand. "Did I not say hold still?" He growled as Kadira instinctively squirmed away from the knife. Without further resistance, he cut the bindings off Kadira's ankles before doing the same to Magali and the other girls. The huge man then pulled the length of rope through each of their wrist bindings so that all of the girls were tied together. They were all commanded to get up and follow them and that attempting to escape would be a futile effort. With no other recourse, the captive girls complied, following the short-bearded man out of the galley.

As the girls marched out onto the deck of the raft, the deckhands ceased their labors and watched the girls. Magali could almost feel the hungry eyes of the swarthy, sun-baked raft-tenders crawling along every inch of her profile like a swarm of unwelcome insects. Their oogling was cut thankfully short by their captors; the short-bearded man placed a hand on the pommel of his sword, threatening to draw it at the slightest provocation.

"Avert your eyes," he commanded. "If one of you so much as touches these maidens, I will strike you down. Their purity must be maintained for they are not yours to have."

As the captors chastised the deckhands, Magali gazed up to the structure the raft had docked alongside. It was a towering Saliszi ziggurat built upon an artificial island in the channel of the river that dwarfed the floating plazas around it. Atop the highest level of the edifice minaret-like chimneys rose high above the surrounding city belching thick black smoke into the hazy blue sky above. Gazing upon this structure, Magali could not help but wonder for whom she and her fellow captives had been summoned.
_____________________________________________________________________________

Remun opened his eyes at long last, returning to the world after perhaps an hour of meditation. He found himself sitting crosslegged atop a cushion beneath an awning of purple silk upon the opulent Sashul's barge. He allowed the sounds of the world to enter his ears once more. The babble of waves falling below the twin hulls of the barge, the cawing of overhead seagulls, and the crashing of oars through the water all gradually returned to Remun after willing silence upon himself.

The young Sashul found himself performing the B'zuri meditation rituals many times per day now. Allowing himself an hour or so of complete peace every day was the only way Remun could maintain sanity through the tribulations of being Sashul. To a low-born man, being Sashul must have seemed a decadent, carefree existence. But the luxuries and spoils, Remun had come to learn, were nothing but an opulent veneer to impress the Salished lords and vassals. Being fanned by servants or fed decadent foods were scarcely worth the myriad anxieties and woes that beset the Sashul. Constant fretting over this flailing empire, the dwindling imperial coffers, and the looming threat of a Drathan invasion. Under such pressures, Remun wished he could trade lives with one of the oarman pulling this barge up the river.

"I trust you are now fully refreshed, your majesty?" Irssun asked, watching over the various servants milling about on the barge with all the focus and diligence of a hawk. 

"Somewhat refreshed," Remun admitted, turning his attention to a servant woman approaching with a wide dish of plump figs.

"Then that will have to suffice, your majesty. For today, we have an important appointment with the Priests of the Forge," Irssun said as he watched the servant approach the Sashul and present him with the platter. Remun went to pluck a fig from the bunch, but before he could pop the succulent bulb in his mouth, Irssun snatched it from his fingers. The servant was taken aback, but Remun merely sighed in annoyance as Irssun carefully examined the fruit, twirling it about in his long, wrinkled fingers. He sniffed it, and then nibbled gingerly upon the fig's purple skin. Finally, Irssun popped the whole fig into his mouth and chewed it for the longest time, pressing the seedy pulp up against his palate. Detecting no hint of poison, Irssun at last gave a nod of approval to the servant girl, who presented the plate to Remun once again. Remun took a handful of choice figs from the plate before dismissing the servant.

"Regrettable though it may be, the soul priests are a powerful clique and we must take care to show them our respect," Irssun continued. "Their barbaric cult goes back to the days when the Saliszi still lived high in the Godsfang Mountains, when our forebears forged pig iron in mud kilns. Arms fashioned from such crude metal were brittle and weak, and so those ancient smiths beseeched the Red Gods for a means to make a better weapon. Their gods answered the requests, offering a rich, pure steel. But the Forge Gods are a deviant and malicious sort, and they demanded sacrifice in return for each blade forged: a soul."

"Soulsteel." Remun recognized.

"And as you are so hellbent on listening to the counsel of that idiot Dimaza, we must have soulsteel blades prepared and so they must be finished today."

"Why today?" Irssun asked in between figs. "My understanding was that it would take a fortnight for the viziers to mobilize the armies. Can we not wait until the armies are marching to the Shelf to forge these blades?"

"Normally, yes. But I have been informed that our friends from the Congress are fast approaching the capital. The Masters' emissaries will arrive tomorrow, and it would hardly be diplomatic of us to be forging weapons of war at full capacity while the Dratha are in the city. It is vital that we have all diplomatic options available to us."

Irssun gestured to the approaching destination, a floating plaza dominated by a tiered structure covered in a thin patina of black-gray soot. The spirelike chimneys of the Soul Forge spewed roiling clouds of sooty smoke that could likely be seen ten leagues away from Nyssos.

"There will be no hiding [i]that[/i] from the emissaries," Irssun declared, pointing to the smoke clouds rising high above the city. "The forges must be cold when the Dratha arrive."
_____________________________________________________________________________

Magali and her fellow captives ascended the hundreds of steps up the tiers of this structure, her bare feet covered in soot from the dusting of fine ash that filtered down from the chimneys above as she climbed ever upward to the top. From this height, one had a gull's-eye view of the capital of the Salished Empire. On islands built directly in the channels of the intersecting Nabal and Tashgad Rivers, plazas and gardens had been built amongst a network of canals and domed spires rose up from these plaster-built islands. Across the skyline of the city, a sprawling palace surrounded by teeming gardens was built upon a peninsula carved out by the intersecting rivers - without doubt the home of the Sashul himself. On the outer banks of the river channels, however, the splendor of the floating city gave way to a teeming slum rickety jetties and huts built on stilts. The slums radiated inland from the rivers for miles up and downstream, gradually giving way to thousands of acres of rice paddies whose flat, watery surfaces reflected the midday sun like a thousand shards of glassy mirror.

But Magali could scarcely pay any mind to her surroundings. Her attention was devoted to the footfalls of the girls in front of her - that she would not trip and fall down the hundred feet she had already climbed - and their destination above. One girl up in front stumbled and fell upon the steep steps before her, halting Magali and the other captives dead in their soot-sullied tracks. The captors quickly descended upon her, yanking her up by her shoulders and pulling her back onto her feet, threatening to cudgel her with their leather clubs if she did not keep moving at once. Wherever these men were taking them, it seemed there was no time to waste in getting there.

Upon reaching the uppermost tier of the structure, the girls were presented with a boxy structure of arched walls with vaulted alcoves inset within. Each of these alcoves housed a statue carved out of red marble depicting some sort of monstrous being. There was a four-armed humanoid with the fanged visage of a hooded cobra, with hammers and balls of fire in each hand; another alcove housed a braid-bearded demon, with tusklike fangs and intricate swirls of smoke streaming from the corners of his mouth and nostrils; and most unsettling to Magali was a naked man, stroking an enormous phallus with a fire-breathing panther's head on the end. The captors paid no attention to the garish statues that so startled the girls, and directed them through a vaulted portal with a curtain of red and gold beads.

Magali and the others found a themselves within an antechamber illuminated by a score of flickering torches. It was a spartan space, and excluding the torches the only thing of note within this space were a series of stelae carved upon the walls. Magali could not read and so had no idea what the lengthy inscriptions carved upon them said, but the top of each stone slab was decorated with carvings that depicted an event that presumably illustrated whatever the inscriptions said below. There were images of battles, skulls, demons, and fire. That seemed to be a recurring theme in the images: tongues of fire in every carving.

Out of the dark corners of the chamber, the captors and the girls were joined by a number of ancient, withered men. They wore billowing crimson robes: long, flowing, and sashless unlike the sort of robe fashionable among Saliszi nobles. Their heads were utterly bald, and their faces were wrinkled and sunken. Magali and the other girls recoiled as the men in red approached.

"You stand now within the Narthex of Ashtobal, portal to the font of all Salished strength." One of the men declared with a raspy, quivering voice.

"Noble priests of Ashtobal, Ignosalob, Ghirnaad, Zimol, and all the Gods of the Forge," the short-braided captor began, "we come bearing virgin souls to quench the thirsts of your Gods, that they may impart their power into the blades forged here today."

"Yes, yes," the chief priest replied. "The Sashul prepares for war, and what is a war without blades? Our Gods of the Forge will acquiesce in this request, but they do not grant their power freely. Sacrifice must be meted out, thirsts must be quenched. The Gods of the Forge thirst for souls - virgin souls."

Sacrifice? Souls? Magali could not understand what monstrous place had these men taken had delivered her unto.

"Of course, noble priest." The short-bearded captor replied. "These maidens are all choice virgins. The Gods will surely be pleased with such a sacrifice."

"We shall ensure that is true." The chief priest turned to his associates, some drawing daggers from within folds in their robes. "Ascertain their womanhood."

Some of the girls screamed as the priests drew in close, but none were allowed to escape before wrinkled handles seized them. Two priests tried to hold Magali still, but the spry young girl was putting up too much of a fight for the elderly priests. Another priest came to hold her down while a fourth arrived with a knife and proceeded to cut the clothing from Magali's body. Her linen shirt and roughspun pants fell in a heap at the floor, exposing her nubile body in its entirety. She howled and struggled as two of the priests pulled her legs open. A shiver went up her spine as she felt cold, clammy hands feel about between her legs.

Satisfied, the priest withdrew his fingers and the others released her. Magali could do naught but coil into a ball on the floor while the other girls were examined.

"Their womanhood is intact," the chief priest said at last. "Take them to the Soul Forge."

Magali was still too dazed to resist when several priests pulled her onto her feet and dragged her along through a second set of curtains on the far side of the chamber. Down a series of stairs, and through a third set of curtains.

There, in the orange glow of a mighty fire, Magali bore witness to the Soul Forge in all its infernal glory.

This structure encompassed the whole interior space of the second tier. Mounds of black ore and char were piled up along the outer walls of this space. Soot-covered smiths operated bellows the size of a fully-grown gaan, which pumped air through a copper tube into the structure in the center of the chamber. The space was dominated by the forge itself. It was dome-like structure that dwarfed even the largest house in Magali's village. It was carved into the shape of a demon's head with three fanged, yawning mouths, which served as separate apertures for the ore and charcoal. Hot gas vented through the six eyes of the forge, giving each face a truly demonic visage. And with every pump of the bellows, the fire within those three open mouths roiled up, giving the forge the impression that it was actually breathing fire. The coals within the fanged mouths glowed white-hot, and a giant plume of fire burst forth from the mouths with each pump of the bellows.  The smithhands bellowed with increasing intensity as Magali and the other girls were brought down, and it seemed as though the very forge were breathing faster, as if in anticipation of what was to come.

In front of the largest mouth, a robed priest hammered upon a glowing rod of incandescent steel at a table-sized anvil - seemingly unfazed by the hellish heat of the hot metal and the forge directly behind him. Yellow-orange sparks burst forth from the rod as he hammered. A glowing sword - masterfully crafted - was taking shape upon that anvil.

Without a word, the priests holding down Kadira dragged her forward to the forge. She screamed hysterically as the priests dragged her past the anvil and held her beside the largest mouth of the forge. They waited for the smithhands to below a few more times, and they cast Kadira into the coals, eliciting horrified wails from all the girls. Magali turned her head away, unable to watch.

A terrible howling came from the fire, but was quickly silenced by a few pumps of the bellows. Kadira's remains were quickly reduced to a crumbling, incandescent skeleton laying upon the glowing coals. The priest hammering the sword upon the anvil turned from his work and thrust the glowing sword into the crackling skeleton and the coals beneath it. The tongue of fire springing forth from the surrounding coals began to swirl about the blade, and the sword quickly set about glowing a furious yellow-white as the metal began to absorb the flames. Kadira's remains instantly crumbled into burning ash as the priest drew the sword out of the fire and held it in the air. Slag and impurities in the steel fell away from the sword as burning bits of debris. As the sword sloughed impurities away, the glowing metal gave off a high-pitched ring, building to a crescendo that sounded hauntingly similar to a screaming woman. At the critical moment, the priest plunged the glowing sword into a small vat of oil. The oil burned and bubbled and frothed until the intense heat stored within the blade had all dissipated. And from the vat, a blade of soulsteel emerged.

Magali was next. She could feel the priests dragging her toward the infernal mouth. But another robed priest stepped in front of them, halting his associates with a wave of his hand. He gestured for another girl to be carried over to the forge while inspecting Magali. In his bony, shriveled fingers, he held Magali's chin and inspected her face, caressed the tears streaming down her face, squeezed her breasts. Magali could feel the priest's breath increase in pace.

"I question her womanhood," the elder priest said to his associates. "I wish to inspect her again, to ensure no tainted soul poisons the forge."

The other priests agreed, and began to drag her away.

"In privacy," he added.

The lower priests surrendered Magali, and the high priest dragged her away. Stunned by the horrors she had witnessed, Magali offered no resistance when this priest took her away. So long as he took her away from here.

The high priest dragged Magali through the curtains leading to the stairwell and immediately set about pressing her against the wall once out of sight. He held her binding-fastened wrists behind her back and began licking her her chin and neck. She cried out in disgust as this wretched, wizened priest moved down to her breasts.

"You are much too beautiful for the fire," the priest whispered as he buried his wart-pocked face in her emergent breasts. "It would be such a waste, be still... be still," He cooed as Magali squirmed.

"The Sashul will not miss a single soulsteel blade... no, no. No one will miss a single virgin." The priest was pressing firmly against her, and Magali could feel his throbbing member pressing against her thigh through the silk of his robe. He hiked his robes up and began licking Magali's face. She squirmed and fought against the priest, but could not push him back. This priest was determined to have her.

But Magali refused to be taken by a geriatric monster in this hellish place. She had fought off such depraved attempts before, and she knew she could resist them again. She resolved to fight back.

The priest slobbered against Magali's cheeks, and at this moment, Magali seized an opening. She opened her mouth and threw her teeth down upon the priest's warty neck, biting down as hard as she could as soon as her teeth found purchase against the saggy flesh of his neck. The priest cried out in pain and tried to shove Magali away, but she sank her teeth into the priest's neck with the same determination as a dog biting down on a hock of lamb. The taste of blood filled her mouth as the priest struggled. With one loud wail, the priest finally released himself from Magali with a deft slap to her face. The priest collapsed to the floor, trying to press against his bleeding neck.

"You ignorant bitch," the priest croaked. "I would have [i]saved[/i] you from the fire."

A number of priests burst through the bead curtain and discovered their high priest bleeding out on the floor, and Magali standing above him with bloody saliva dripping from the corners of her mouth.

"Throw her into the forge!" The wounded priest growled, throwing a trembling finger at the girl backing away from the scene. "Seize her! I will see her burn!"

With that, Magali bolted up to the Narthex, eliciting a cadre of Forge Priests to chase after her.
_____________________________________________________________________________

The oarmen of the Sashul's barge had disembarked from the vessel and swam over to secure mooring ropes over to the wharf at the base of the great flight of stairs leading up to the summit of the Soul Forge. With the Sashul's barge pulled up to the wharf, a handful of servants lowered a gangplank over the side to allow the Sashul an effortless means of disembarking. Remun took another handful of figs from the servant before standing up from his seat and making his way to the gangplank.

"It is possible that the Priests of the Forge did not expect us until later," said Irssun. "But it is possible that they know we are arriving, and care not. The politics between the Priests and the wider Dominion is somewhat delicate, especially following the reign of your father. I would advise you to follow my lead and allow me to handle most of the discussion."

Remun gazed up to the summit of the great ziggurat before him, recognizing the power of those who inhabited this place. During his imprisonment, Remun had read on the history of the Forge Priests. The success of the early waves of conquest of the ancient Saliszi conquerors was tied to the impeccable craftsmanship of the blades fashioned by the smith-priests. Soulsteel, for all the barbarism involved in its manufacture, allowed the Saliszi to triumph against the Rainlander Kingdoms. Soulsteel arms held off pirates from the Sullied Coast, Aelg-men marauders, and Ergfolk raiders pouring through the Gap of Zuag, guaranteeing the special relationship the forge cult held with the Sashul. But in the past two centuries, warfare had started to evolve rapidly. After a Salished army was routed at the Battle of Laqadar, firedust had to be regarded as a potent weapon, not just a curiosity of the wizards. A gradual political consolidation of the Drathan Masters and the magic they wield threatened the Salished hosts. Crossbows, rockets, and cannon rose in importance, diminishing the prestige of sword-armed infantry. Exquisite swords could only do so much to maintain military primacy, and the Forge Priests saw their power wane. But even so, the priests remained a potent political force within the Salished Empire.

Something caught Remun's eye as he stared up at the summit of the edifice before him. A party was running - not walking - down the hundreds of steps toward the barge.

"Irssun, do you see that?"

"I've been watching them for several moments now," the ever-attentive Irssun replied, his eyes fixed upon the ziggurat stairs. A young woman - completely disrobed - was bounding down the steps two or three at a time. A number of priests, clad in robes of bright red, were following close behind her.

"What is the meaning of this, Irssun?"

"I must confess, your majesty, that I do not know."

The girl reached the wharf at the base of the steps, pushing her way through the crowd of oarsmen milling about and charging up the gangplank of the Sashul's barge. The Sashul's Guard encircled Remun and Irssun as the young woman boarded the vessel and, within ten paces of the Remun, drew their swords and presented the girl with a ring of blades.

"Halt! Come no closer!" One of the guards commanded. The girl threw herself upon the deck of the barge.

"Please, help me!" She wailed. "They are going to kill me!"

"Irssun, tell me: what is the meaning of this?" Remun demanded. Irssun remained mum, watching as the robe-clad priests stormed aboard the vessel.

"Come no closer!" A guard called to the priests. The priests stepped forward, making their way to the girl. She backed away from the priests, only to be held back by the swordtips of the Sashul's guard.

"She belongs to the Gods of the Forge," one of the priests declared.

"Don't let them take me!"

Remun strode forward, gesturing for the Sashul's guard to part away as he approached the girl. Remun could not help but gaze on the girl's naked beauty, her sooty, bloody mess notwithstanding.

"Give her to us, she belongs to the gods," the priest reiterated.

"I will do no such thing," defied Remun.

"Remun!" Irssun made his way over to the Sashul's side, worry written all over his face. "This is extremely unwise of you to do," he whispered. "The last thing we need at this moment is confrontation with the Priests of the Forge."

"They sacrifice girls to the forge?! Is that how Soulsteel is made?!" Remun declared, careless as to whether or not the priests could hear him.

"Listen to me, Remun," Irssun whispered in the Sashul's ear once again while glancing nervously to the entourage of priests descending the stairs toward them now. "There are certain political realities that we must abide if we are to-"

"I will not abide the wholesale slaughter of innocent maidens, Irssun!"

"Give her to us, Sashul." A priest repeated. "This matter does not concern you."

"We will end this practice at a more opportune time, Remun," Irssun whispered once again. "Please, just relinquish the girl and let us wash our hands of this affair."

"You will call me by my rightful title, Irssun!" Remun snarled. "Sashul! That is who I am, Irssun. Have you forgetten? Because I suspect that you believe you command me! No, I command you!"

"I am not a servant, you ignorant boy!" Irssun blurted, abandoning his attempts at trying to keep his voice down. "My duty is to keep you from doing foolish things. And, right now, I can scarcely think of a more foolish thing one can possibly do."

"Guards," Remun called out, having had his fill of Irssun's berating, "clear the vessel of these depraved monsters."

The Sashul's guard stepped around the girl laying upon the deck and approached the priests in formation with swords drawn. In spite of their anger, the priests were in no position to engage in combat with the Sashul's guard, and reluctantly backed off the gangplank.

"Have us unmoored and retrieve our oarmen from this wretched place. We are leaving at once." Remun commanded.

"What of the girl?" One of the guards asked once the priests had been forced off the ship.

"Give her something to wear, she comes with us."

"Oh Remun," Irssun sighed. "You have made a terrible mistake today."

Remun shot a furious glance at Irssun, "And remove him from my sight."