Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 3 - The Amber Enchantress (31 page)

“I'll honor my word
—
though you'll rue that I did,” he answered. “Now tell me what happened.”

Sadira nodded. “The truth of the matter is that you don't deserve to be chief
—
not any more. You steal what your followers earn, you treat your warriors like slaves, and you resolve disputes by taking bribes. That's why Rhayn asked me to poison you
—
her idea, by the way, not mine. Sooner or later, someone else will try it again. For the sake of the Sun Runners, I hope they succeed.”

Faenaeyon listened to the words with no visible emotion, then turned to his other daughter. “Is this so?”

Rhayn glared at the sorceress and started to shake her head, but Magnus stepped in front of her. “Sadira's right
—
there's no use denying it.” He looked to the chief, then said, “You raised me in your own camp, but I also helped.”

Faenaeyon closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he looked incredibly old and tired. “Perhaps there was a time when I was a better chief,” he said. “But that doesn't excuse what you did. Rightfully, I should kill you all now.”

“I demand it!” shouted Huyar, raising his sword. “It's clear that Gaefal saw them leaving the Bard's Quarter, and that's why they murdered him. If you don't give me justice, I'll take it.”

Faenaeyon glanced at Huyar's sword with a disdainful sneer. “Did you not hear me promise Sadira that she would live to see the
Pristine
Tower
?”

“But I must have vengeance!”

“Unless it's me you intend to attack, put your sword away,” Faenaeyon growled, stepping toward the elf.

Huyar's anger changed to trepidation as he looked into Faenaeyon's gray eyes. Although he was armed, and the chief was not, he clearly did not relish the thought of pitting his skills against those of Faenaeyon. Huyar sheathed his sword. Looking at the ground, he said, “I demand
—
”

“You demand nothing,” Faenaeyon snarled. “If you had Rhayn's courage, you'd be chief and Gaefal would be alive.” He looked away from his son and ran his eyes over the rest of the tribe. “But I am still chief, and until someone comes who is strong enough to take my place, that's how it'll stay.”

When no one voiced any objections to this declaration, Faenaeyon gestured at Magnus and Rhayn. “As for you two, I'll be merciful,” he said. “You may choose death, or you may join Sadira on hex journey to the
Pristine
Tower
.”

After glancing at Magnus, Rhayn looked back to her father. “We choose the tower, of course,” she said.

Faenaeyon arched his brow in mock sorrow. “Had you been brave enough to choose death, you would have suffered less.” He motioned for Rhayn and Magnus to climb onto the monolith, then pointed a long finger at the place where Huyar had thrown Sadira's belongings. “Put your satchels, weapons, and waterskins there. You shall leave the tribe as you came into it, except that I will permit you to keep the clothes you wear.”

*****

Sadira and her two companions knelt at the edge of a silver-green heath. The field stretched clear to the horizon, so lush and vast that nowhere did an outcropping of stone or a patch of barren earth show through the thick tangle of brush. On the horizon rose a spire of white rock, so distant that it often seemed to disappear behind the wavering bands of the afternoon haze.

Although the rock could only be the
Pristine
Tower
, the three companions hardly seemed aware of it. Their attention was focused much nearer to their own location, on a herd of wild erdlus that had trotted into view just a few moments earlier.

As tall as elves and as plump as kanks, the featherless birds seemed completely unaware that they were being watched. They worked their way through the field at a steady pace, their serpentine necks thrashing about like whips, flinging out small round heads to snatch cones of silvery broompipe and the ivory blossoms of tall milk-weed plants. Occasionally, an erdlu let out an excited squawk and scratched at the ground, then flapped its useless wings in delight as it impaled a snake on its wedge-shaped beak.

Far above the birds, drifting with the breeze, was a bell-shaped pod of slimy membrane. The floating beast was more than ten yards across, with dozens of wispy tendrils dangling from the rim of its underbelly. Inside its transparent body, a morass of blue organs pulsated at irregular intervals, occasionally giving off a bright yellow glow.

“The floater's back!” Sadira hissed, her pale eyes fixed on the strange beast. In her hand, the sorceress held a shard of quartz they had come across in the desert, and her body tingled with the magical energy she had summoned only a moment earlier.

“It must be tracking us,” whispered Magnus.

“In case you haven't noticed, we've been traveling against the wind for the last day and a half,” countered Rhayn. “Besides, without wings or feet, how could it follow us if it wanted to? It's at the mercy of the wind.”

“The wind is everywhere,” answered Magnus. “You would be surprised what's possible for those who know its secrets.”

As the windsinger spoke, four ribbons of blue membrane dropped from the center of the beast's body and slipped around a feeding erdlu. The astonished bird bolted, dragging the floater through the air and squawking in panic. The rest of the flock sprang into motion, fleeing in all directions.

Instantly, Rhayn was on her feet. “Now, Sadira!” she screamed, chasing after the birds. “We can't lose them!”

Sadira pointed her quartz shard at the largest erdlu and spoke her incantation. A translucent bolt buzzed from her hand and struck the beast, scattering brown scales in all directions. Cackling in surprise, the creature took two more steps and dropped to the ground. Rhayn leaped on it immediately, placing one foot on its throat and jerking the head upward to snap the neck.

“Well done,” she cried, looking back to her sister. “You saved the meat.”

Sadira's attention was not focused on Rhayn. The sorceress was enraptured by the scene farther ahead, where the floater had lifted its prey off the ground and was pulling the bird toward its pulsing blue entrails. With its claws and beak, the erdlu slashed madly at the ribbons clutching it, but never managed to tear away anything more than a glob of slime.

The bird's struggles ceased entirely when it came within reach of the short tendrils rimming its captor's body. As the gossamer filaments touched the erdlu, its neck fell limp and its claws stopped slashing the air. Squawking mournfully, it rose slowly upward and passed into the floater's gelatinous body, becoming nothing more than a dark shape in the blue tangle of its killer's gut.

Suppressing a shudder, Sadira observed, “Remind me not to let that thing fly over my head.”

“We've been smart to avoid it,” Magnus agreed. “Still, I'd like to take a closer look. I could learn much from a being that lives in such harmony with the wind.”

The windsinger's musings were interrupted by an angry cry from Rhayn. “Sadira, I need your help!”

The sorceress went over to her sister, brushing past cones of broompipe and long stems of milkweed. Underfoot, the grass was so high that her feet disappeared as she moved, and the soil from which the green blades sprang was not visible at all.

Upon reaching Rhayn's side, Sadira saw the reason for her sister's peevishness. Around the charred wound on the erdlu's flank, some of the scales were changing into downy feathers, while others were fusing together to form a sort of knobby hide similar to Magnus's. Where the beast's neck had been snapped, a writhing lump had formed beneath the yellow scales. Rhayn had torn out one of the bird's claws to use as a knife, and the resulting wound had sprouted a bud of gray fingertip.

From her earlier conversations with Faenaeyon, Sadira knew the bird would go through a transformation after being wounded. She hadn't expected it to occur so fast, or to be so gruesome.

Anxious not to prolong the misery of the last three days, the sorceress put her queasiness aside and knelt next to her sister. Since being banished from the Sun Runners with no weapons or water, the companions had barely managed to survive. They had eaten only once, sharing a single lizard that Magnus had managed to pluck from under a boulder. For water, they had spent hours digging and mashing tubers, then squeezing a few drops of bitter juice from the resulting gruel.

Therefore, after Rhayn had told her that a single erdlu could provide them all with weapons, waterskins, and meat, Sadira had readily agreed to delay their trek long enough to kill one of the birds. And now, it appeared the magic of the
Pristine
Tower
was threatening to rob them of their prize.

“What do you want me to do?” Sadira asked.

Rhayn used the claw in her hand to cut away another talon, which she handed to Sadira. The tip of another new finger began to protrude from the fresh wound.

“We need the claws, the leg tendons and bones, the stomach, the beak, the hardest scales
—
just about anything you can take off,” Rhayn said. “But be careful. If you cut yourself...”

She let the sentence die and gestured at a tiny hand that had just slipped from beneath one of the bird's scales.

“Maybe we should have Magnus do this,” Sadira suggested. “His skin's a lot tougher than ours.”

Rhayn shook her head. “He'd never finish it in time. His fingers are too thick,” she said. “It's better if he keeps a watch on the floater.”

The elf frowned at a pair of sharp fangs that had begun to protrude from the erdlu's mouth, then fell silent and concentrated all her attention on butchering the prey. Within a few minutes, they had a large pile of bird parts that had not changed into something else: claws, scales, a pair of long leg bones, sinews, and some meat. They also had a dozen more items the two women hoped would prove useful as substitutes for the spell components they had lost with their satchels.

Rhayn tossed the erdlu's stomach onto the pile. “That will be our waterskin,” she said, looking out over the heath. “Assuming we can find something to fill it with.”

“You know, if this place is as dangerous as Faenaeyon says, it's unlikely all of us will make it to the tower,” Sadira said. “If you and Magnus don't want to go with me
—
”

“We will,” said Rhayn. “I didn't come this far for nothing.”

“But why?”
Sadira asked. “I'm doing this for the people of Tyr, but they mean nothing to you.”

“Will you find the power to defy the Dragon in the
Pristine
Tower
?” Rhayn asked, avoiding a direct answer to the question.

Sadira shrugged. “I don't know what I'll find. All I can say for certain is that Dhojakt is going to a lot of trouble to keep me from looking.”

“Is going?
Does that mean he's still alive?” Rhayn asked, rummaging through the pile of bird parts. “Huyar said you pushed him off a cliff.”

“I did, but I don't think he hit bottom,” the sorceress answered. “And even if he did, that doesn't mean he died.”

“I wonder what he doesn't want you to find,” said Rhayn, pulling a long sinew off one of the leg bones.

“Or to become,” Sadira said. “Faenaeyon raised an interesting point before banishing us. If this is where the New Races are born, who's to say the magic can't be used to give me what I want? Perhaps that's how Dhojakt became half-man and half-cilops.”

Rhayn looked at the transfigured remains of the erdlu. “It doesn't strike me as something that can be controlled.”

“Maybe not out here, but I've seen someone undergo a similar change,” she said. “When we killed Kalak, he was in the process of changing himself into a dragon. I think he would have succeeded.”

“And you believe something similar can happen in the
Pristine
Tower
?”

Sadira shrugged. “I've heard that the original Dragon was created there,” she said. “From what we've seen so far, I'd believe it.”

“That's why I'm coming with you,” said Rhayn. “If that can be done, then I should be able to find what I want in the tower.”

Sadira raised her brow. “What's that?”

“The power to win Faenaeyon's place as chief of the tribe,” Rhayn said. She looked westward, toward Cleft Rock.

“The Sun Runners will never take you back,” Sadira replied. “No matter what we find.”

“Don't be so sure. Elves are a practical people,” said Rhayn. “They'll follow a strong chief
—
especially if they have no other choice.”

“You wouldn't tyrannize your own tribe!” Sadira gasped.

“What I won't do is allow my children to grow up without me,” said Rhayn. “They'll be treated no better than slaves in another woman's camp.”

“Meredyd won't let that happen,” Sadira objected. “After what you did for her
—
”

“By now, Meredyd has already forgotten that my gold bought her child's freedom,” Rhayn spat. She sat down and, using a shard of bone for a needle, began sewing shut the bottom of the erdlu's stomach. Sadira shook her head. “Meredyd is your friend.”

Rhayn laughed. “Friendship is based on mutual need,” she said. “Now that Meredyd stands to gain nothing from me, she's no longer my friend. She won't look out for my children
—
any more than I'd watch after hers if she had been banished.”

Magnus's dulcet voice drifted across the field. Sadira looked in the direction from which it came and saw the windsinger almost a hundred yards away. He stood beneath the floater, his black eyes fixed on the thing's pulsating body. His ears twitched back and forth slowly, as if listening to some sound the sorceress could not hear, and his snout was curled into an expression of utter rapture. “What's Magnus doing?” Sadira asked, alarmed.

The floater lowered its ribbonlike arms and allowed them to dangle a few yards above the ground. A soft warble began to play in the wind, so gentle and faint that the sorceress sensed it only as an uncertain tingle in the back of her skull.

“It looks like he's talking to it,” Rhayn answered, continuing to work. “I'd leave him alone
—
you wouldn't want to startle the thing.”

A few minutes later, the elf tied off the thread and laid the new waterskin aside. After stripping more sinew from the legs, she motioned for Sadira to sit down beside her. The two women busied themselves with making a pair of weapons, tying razor-sharp claws to the ends of the bird's thigh bones.