Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 3 - The Amber Enchantress (8 page)

After Osa had led them down what seemed the hundredth side trough, Sadira heard the twang of a bow. The blue streak of a tiny arrow flashed past her head, and the sorceress cringed in fear. Though the dart itself would cause little injury, the last halfling arrow she had seen had been tipped with a powerful poison.

Another half-dozen bowstrings hummed, and more arrows flew toward Sadira and Osa. Fortunately, even half-ling archers were not very accurate when firing on a dead run, and the darts all hissed harmlessly into the sand. Still, Sadira was far from relieved. It would not be long, she knew, before one of the shafts found its mark.

“We've
got to do something,” Sadira hissed.

Knowing it was useless to call out to the earless mul, Sadira opted for direct action. As they approached the next intersection, the sorceress pumped her legs as fast as she could and slammed into the other woman's back. Osa sprawled headfirst into the sand dune, dragging the half-elf down and hissing in pain as she banged the javelin still protruding from her thigh.

Sadira rolled onto her back and faced the halflings. Her maneuver had confused the warriors only momentarily, and those in front were already moving toward the sound of her labored breathing. The sorceress pointed her cane at them, allowing the hem of her robe to slip off its glowing pommel. The halflings swung their spears and tiny arrows in the direction of the purple light.

The warriors loosed their weapons in the same instant Sadira cried the name of her spell, “Clear-river!”

With a loud roar, a stream of force rushed from the sorceress's cane. The invisible river hurled the spears and poison arrows back toward the halflings, then slammed headlong into the warriors themselves. The little men opened their mouths to scream, but their voices could not be heard above the raging torrent of magical energy. They stood against its current for only a moment, then were ripped from their feet and sent rumbling into the darkness.

A few moments later, after the river and its roar had finally died away, Sadira grew aware of Osa lying at her side. The mul woman was studying her with an expression that was equal parts awe and fear.

“Let's go,” Sadira said, motioning toward the music from the camp.

Osa
shook her head, her blank gaze fixed on the sorceress's cane.

“I won't hurt you,” Sadira said, speaking slowly so the deaf woman could read her lips. “I want to help the caravan.”

The expression returned to Osa's eyes. Seeming to collect her wits, she said, “No. I send sentries back before Milo die.” The mul's eyes grew sad for just a moment, then she clenched her teeth and fought her emotions back. “Wait here for better time.”

Sadira frowned in confusion, but nodded.

Osa
smiled, then motioned at the steel dagger hanging on Sadira's hip. “Let me borrow.”

The half-elf unsheathed her dagger and gave it to the mul woman. Osa immediately sat down and began cutting the barbed javelin from her wounded leg. Sadira turned away to stand guard, in case any of the halflings still scurrying through the dunes happened to stumble upon them.

A few minutes later, the distant melody of the ryl pipes grew louder and more inviting. The halflings fell silent, and the sorceress suddenly found herself shuffling toward camp. She tried to stop, but the song could not be denied. Her body swayed and rocked of its own accord, the music filling her head with colors and gripping rhythms that she could not chase away.

Osa
came up beside Sadira and slipped the sorceress's steel dagger back into its sheath. “Now we go,” she said, speaking with her usual thick-tongued loudness.

Through a rip in Osa's sarami, Sadira saw that the woman had removed the spear and bandaged the wound with a strip of cloth. The mul still moved with a slight limp, though it was much less pronounced than when the javelin had been embedded in her thigh.

Osa
took the sorceress by the hand and, with a considerable exertion of strength, prevented her from dancing straight toward the music. Instead, she guided Sadira back through the dark furrows between the dunes.

As they came within sight of camp, Sadira saw that the halflings were also dancing toward the music. The short warriors were whirling through the air in a frantic swarm, hurtling spears or firing arrows toward the campsite. On the other side of the ancient walls stood the caravan drivers, swaying to the melody and shooting arrows into the savage horde that the ryl pipes had drawn out of the desert.

“We go around,” Osa said, pointing to where the inixes and Sadira's kank were still tethered. As the sorceress had told
Milo
earlier, the halflings had indeed approached from downwind. The area on the other side of camp was completely free of enemy warriors.

Osa
skirted the open sands and crossed the cobblestone road north of the tower, still dragging Sadira's squirming form by the hand. Although the sorceress appreciated the wisdom of drawing the little warriors into the open, she also saw that the results of the effort were far from certain. With their double-curved bows and the protection of the stone wall, the drivers had a distinct advantage over their charging foes. On the other hand, two dozen of their number already lay in the bottom of the sandy pit, and the rain of halfling shafts was taking a steady toll on those who remained standing. If many more of the caravan's archers fell, there would not be enough of them to keep the halflings from pouring over the wall.

Osa
stopped near the inixes, a couple of dozen yards from the tower. “Safe. No one mistake you for halfling,” she said. “I go back for
Milo
.”

Sadira's feet shuffled forward. Despite the situation, she found herself actually enjoying the compulsions of the music. She guessed that the ryl pipes relied on some manifestation of the Way. Although magic could be used to influence a target's thoughts, it seldom exerted such control over the raw emotions of so many. It was unfortunate that the ryl players could not use their powers to achieve a more physical effect on the halflings.

That was where she could help, the half-elf decided. As Sadira danced forward, she raised her cane into the air and spoke the word to activate it. Again, she felt it drawing its energy from deep within her body, and a purple light came to life within the pommel. When the sorceress reached the campsite, she would use Nok's own magic to chase off the warriors he had sent.

Before Sadira had taken two more steps, a complete silence suddenly descended over the area. Her body abruptly stopped dancing. She stumbled over her own feet and fell sprawling to the ground.

The sorceress started to rise, but stopped when a half-ling's words shattered the silence. “Lay down your weapons,” he ordered. Though it had been almost two years since she had heard the voice, Sadira immediately recognized it as that of Nok himself. “You will not save yourselves by fighting.”

Realizing that there was only one way to rescue the caravan drivers, Sadira sprinted to her kank and undid its rope. She climbed onto its back and turned her mount away from camp, then lifted her cane above her head and cried, “Skyfire!” Three bolts of crimson flame shot from the tip of the rod, filling the sky with ruby light and casting a scarlet haze over the yellow moons.

Confident that Nok would correctly identify the source of the magical display, Sadira whipped her cane across the kank's antennae and launched the beast into a furious gallop.

The Ancient Bridge

Had her throat not been so parched, Sadira would have screamed for joy. A short distance ahead, the red sands ended abruptly, dropping into a dark chasm stretching in both directions as far as she could see. On the other side of the gorge, the road climbed a scarp of brush-flecked ground, then faded out of sight against the olive hues of the morning horizon.

Between the dunes and the scarp hung a magnificent bridge, nearly a hundred yards long.
Built from huge blocks of stone in seven different colors, the structure spanned the chasm in a great arch that resembled nothing quite so much as a man-made rainbow. Its roadway was paved with yellow cobblestones, save for a single black stripe where the edifice's massive keystones had been laid. To Sadira, the ancient trestle was as much an omen of good fortune as any harbinger of rain.

“Carry me to the other side, that's all I ask,” the sorceress said, speaking to her kank in a croaking voice that even she barely understood.

Sadira tapped the creature's antennae with her cane, urging it to greater speed, but the kank could not obey. Last night, the beast had begun their flight with a powerful six-legged gallop that had set the sorceress's hair to waving in the wind. As she had hoped, Nok had followed immediately, leaving the caravan to mourn the death of its captain. At first, Sadira had been confident of escaping, for halflings were no match for a kank's speed. Yet, as the night wore on, the chief and his warriors had kept a steady pace, and she had never left them behind for long. By dawn, the gait of her exhausted mount had diminished to a jittery scramble that even she could have matched for a short distance. The halflings, showing no signs of tiring, had been slowly catching up to her ever since.

Sadira twisted around to look back. The effort sent waves of agony shooting through her hips, for the jarring ride had been almost as hard on the sorceress as it had on the kank. From the knees to the collarbone, her muscles burned with exhaustion. Her stomach had been aching for hours, and now it was seized by painful cramps that threatened to double her over at any moment. Even her head hurt, throbbing with a terrible ache caused by a dozen hours of mortal fear.

Behind her, Sadira saw that the halflings were moving up for the kill, pumping their knees hard in an effort to catch her before she reached the bridge. They were close enough that she could see they had pushed themselves beyond the point at which normal men would have collapsed. The warriors' faces were drained and gaunt, with their mouths hanging open and their sunken cheeks working like bellows. Their hair, usually bushy and wild, lay plastered against their skulls, dripping precious body water in the form of cloud-colored sweat.

Far behind the warriors came a single speck, moving at
what appeared a relaxed pace. Though the figure was too distant to see in detail, Sadira did not doubt it to be Nok. Even from this far away, the mere sight of him filled her with terror. The one who had created her cane and the Heartwood Spear was no person to offend.

Still, the sorceress did not regret keeping the cane. She had decided long ago to do whatever was necessary to keep Tyr free. So, after Kalak's death, Sadira had kept the cane. With it, she could defend her beloved home from many terrible threats, and the sorceress had been willing to risk her life for that privilege. Even now, with Nok closing in, she had no intention of returning the cane
—
at least not while she lived.

A halfling warrior hurled his bone javelin at Sadira. The spear fell short, but by less than a yard. The next one, she guessed, would clatter off the carapace covering her kank's abdomen. . . . There was little use picturing where the one after that might strike.

“What keeps them going?” Sadira muttered.

Even as she asked, she knew the answer to be Nok's magic. Otherwise, no halfling could have kept pace with a kank. Only elves could do such a thing.

The sorceress faced forward again and whipped her cane across her mount's antennae. If anything, the kank went slower.

The bridge still lay too far ahead. Sadira was just beginning to see the lichens growing on its massive stone blocks. By the time her kank actually set foot on it, she would be lying in the sand with a dozen barbed speartips in her body.

“Time for some magic of my own.”

Bracing her cane beneath her leg, the sorceress reached into the satchel slung from the kank's harness. After a moment of searching, she extracted a pinch of yellow sulfur. She turned her free hand palm down and held it out, summoning the energy for a spell.

A javelin rattled against the kank's abdomen, and Sadira halted her mount, bringing it around to face the halflings. In trancelike unison, the warriors voiced a breathless war cry. Two of them broke stride to throw their spears. At the same time, Sadira flung the sulfur at her pursuers and uttered her incantation.

The javelins struck, hitting the kank in mid-thorax. One spear sliced past Sadira's thigh and bounced off the insect's carapace. The other sank deep into its middle leg socket, sending a violent shudder through its body.

In the same instant, a crackling wall of fire appeared between Sadira and the halflings. The flames, stretching many yards to both sides of the road, completely obscured the warriors from view.

Her heart pounding a little less forcefully, the sorceress picked up her cane again and tapped her mount's right antenna, signaling it to turn. As it obeyed, the rancid smell of kank flesh came to her nose. Sadira gagged and nearly retched, unused to the foul odor the beasts emitted when they were injured. Now she understood why few creatures preyed on the giant insects.

A series of bloodcurdling screams sounded from the firewall. The sorceress looked back to see a half-dozen halflings rushing out of the flames. Their faces were contorted in agony, with flakes of charred skin falling from their bones and streamers of ash hanging off their heads. They stumbled a few steps forward, then hurled their spears in the sorceress's direction before collapsing into smoking heaps.

Sadira pressed her body flat against the kank's back, simultaneously urging it into a gallop. Three of the spears clattered off the beast's carapace and fell harmlessly away, and the others did not even reach it.

Spurred onward by the rattle of spears against its shell, the kank bolted forward in a lop-sided sprint, carrying its injured leg off the ground. Sadira dared to sit up and glance back. To her relief, no more halflings had been rash enough to charge through the firewall, but it would not be long before they began to pour around its ends.

The kank suddenly slowed. Fearing that it was about to collapse, Sadira looked forward again. To her relief, she saw that the beast had only swerved off the road, where the soft sand made running more difficult. She tapped the outside of its antenna to guide the pained beast back to the caravan path, confident she still had plenty of time to reach the far side of the chasm. The bridge was so close now that she could make out the individual cobblestones lining its roadway.