Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 4 - Obsidian Oracle (24 page)

Fylo gave a mighty shout and drove his knuckles straight to the heart of the circle. A
terrific boom echoed through the pit, and the half-breed's hand bounced away from the
cover. The platform beneath his feet did not waver even slightly, nor did the lid break.

“You coward!” Tithian yelled, opening his eyes. “Is that as hard as you can hit it?”

Fylo scowled and started to say something, but Kester cut him off. “Pay him no attention,”
she said, noting that Agis's body was starting to tremble from the effort of keeping his
circle open. “Try again, Fylo. This time ye know the plank won't sink, so ye can hit even
harder.”

The giant looked away from Tithian, then closed his other fist. “Fylo break lid!” he
promised.

The half-breed's knuckles crashed into the crystal. sharp pops and cracks echoed off the
shaft walls, followed by a victorious bellow from the giant. Shards of crystal rained down
on Fylo's head and shoulders, then tumbled toward Kester and Tithian. The tarek covered
her head and felt several fragments bounce off her forearms, opening a series of sharp
cuts in her leathery hide. A moment later, the pit was filled with a lyrical chime as the
jagged pieces bounced into the darkness below.

Kester felt a cool breeze descending over her body and looked up. She saw a star-shaped
fracture centered in the black circle above the noble's head, easily wide enough for a
man-or a female tarek-to slip through. Ragged shafts of predawn light streamed into the
pit, illuminating Agis's weary face in a sickly green glow. To her distress, Kester could
also see a few yellow tendrils of morning sunlight streaming across the sky.

Castoffs began to leave their perches on the yellowed skulls. They streamed out of the
crack in a wild flock, chortling and screaming loudly in mad delight as they escaped into
the open air. Even through the crystalline lid, the morbid and spiteful tone of their
muffled voices made Kester's hide prickle.

“Once more, Fylo!” she urged, climbing toward the exit. “That's wide enough for us, but
not for you.”

The giant glanced down at Tithian, who now had a steady trickle of sweat dripping from the
tail of his long auburn hair. The king gave the half-breed a reassuring nod and returned
his eyes, bulging with strain, to the platform. Fylo drew his hand back for another blow.

A pair of familiar voices spoke from the area beneath his feet. “You're not leaving
without us!” declared Wyan.

“You should know better than to play games with us, Tithian,” added Wyan. “We taught you
everything!”

The sallow faces of Sacha and Wyan rose from beneath the platform. They drifted up past
Fylo's fist and hovered near his head, causing him to hold his blow.

“Get out of the way,” Tithian said. “We weren't going to leave without you.”

“Don't lie to us!” Sacha hissed.

The head clamped his teeth down on one of Fylo's dangling earlobes and began to pull,
drawing a pained howl from the giant. Wyan bit the other one, also tugging on it. To avoid
having his ears ripped away, the half-breed was forced to turn in a circle.

“What do you think you're doing?” Tithian demanded.

“Stop at once!” Agis commanded.

The only answer the heads offered was to pull harder. Blood began to stream down the sides
of Fylo's head, and he had to spin on his heels to keep up with his attackers. The giant
slapped at the pair madly, but succeeded only in battering his own head more than theirs.

Although Kester did not understand the reason for their vicious attack, she did not let
that deter her from responding. She pulled a dagger from her chest harness and flung it at
the bloated head. The blade hit its target in the temple, sinking clear to the hilt. Sacha
cursed through his clenched teeth, but did not fall dead, nor did he release the giant.

Kester looked to Tithian, stunned that her dagger had not dropped the head. “They're your
heads. Do something!”

“Like what?” the king replied. “Let the platform fail?”

She lifted her eyes to Agis and found the noble balanced precariously on the end of a
crystal. He was trying to reach out to snatch one of the heads away from Fylo's ears,
which were at about the same level as he was. Above him, the black circle that he had
created earlier was slowly turning gray. Worse, the magic of the crystal lid was flowing
across the cracks that Fylo had opened, and the star-shaped breach was slowly beginning to
seal itself.

“Agis, no!” Kester cried, pointing at the black circle overhead.

The noble glanced at the graying circle. Then, without a second's hesitation, he returned
his attention to the giant. He barely missed as he snatched at Wyan's topknot.

The two heads whipped their chins harshly to one side, giving Fylo's ears a terrific yank.
The half-breed spun around quickly, and one foot slipped off the platform. For several
moments, he tottered precariously on the edge of falling. Kester reached for mother dagger.

Sacha and Wyan gave their chins another sharp jerk, and Fylo stepped off the narrow
platform completely. He fell with his back down, his confused cry echoing through the pit.
The two heads finally re-eased his ears and darted for the exit.

Kester threw her dagger, and it sliced through Wyan's cheek. Other than knocking him
temporarily off course, it had no effect. Agis nearly fell from his perch trying to grab
them, but they dodged his perilous lunges and slipped through the exit, along with a small
stream of Castoff stragglers.

“Don't let it close, Agis!” Kester yelled, pointing at the crack.

The noble stared after Fylo for an instant, then pulled himself upright and reached up to
touch the graying circle. When it began to darken and the crack stopped filling, Kester
breathed a sigh of relief. Only then did she look toward the bottom of the abyss to see
what had become of the giant.

Fylo lay in the narrow place where he had gotten lodged before, the bloody tip of a sharp
crystal poking through his shoulder. His eyes were glassy and vacant, though it was
obvious that he had survived by the rise and fall of his rib cage as he breathed.

Kester had a sinking feeling in her twin stomachs. If she knew Agis, the giant's condition
was sure to interfere with what little chance they had of opening the gates in time to
save the
Shadow Viper.

Tithian's voice broke the uneasy silence. “I should have had Borys throw them into the
firepits of link!” he shouted, climbing past the crystal where Sona's glowing visage still
clung to a yellowed skull. “I should have had Fylo stand on their faces until their bones
crumbled into dust!”

As the king reached her level, Kester asked, “Why did your heads do this? It makes no
sense.”

“They're treacherous ingrates!” Tithian snarled, hardly pausing as he continued his climb.

From the top of the pit, Sacha sneered, “Flattery won't help you now.”

He was peering down through the crack. Kester could see that her dagger was gone from his
temple, leaving a bloodless, gray-edged wound in its place.

“True,” added Wyan, who still had a knife lodged in his cheek. “We've already decided who
we're going to let out-and who we're not.”

The tarek was up and climbing instantly, her powerful arms pulling her from one crystal to
another with ease. When she reached Agis's side, she did not pause even long enough to
lean out and grab the edges of the hole. Instead, she simply leaped from the highest
crystal, thrusting her gangling arms up rough the breach and slapping her hands down on
the freezing stone outside.

The tarek drew herself into the breach, barely able a force her broad shoulders into the
small opening. The
sharp edges scratched and scraped at her hide, but she was more aware of the crushing pain
in her rest as she tried to squeeze through. Nevertheless, through a determined
combination of squirming and willing, her massive torso soon emerged on the top side of
the cover.

Sacha and Wyan had already retreated out of sight. Kester found it much easier to pull her
hips through, and soon found herself standing atop the crystalline cover. There was no
magic running through the lid inside the area protected by Agis's black circle, so the
footing there was as solid as granite. The edge of the pit lay just a short leap away, and
a few feet beyond that lay the dagger that had pierced Sacha's temple.

Kester slowly turned around, searching for the heads. The sky now glowed with the full
radiance of early dawn, casting a harsh yellow light over the around. The tarek found
Sacha and Wyan hovering beneath Sa'ram's Bridge, where even her long arms could not reach
them unless she first crossed a wide expanse of shimmering crystal. The rest of the
enclosure was deserted. Even the Castoffs had already gone, though their maniacal chortles
were drifting back over the crystal walls. There were no sounds to suggest that the Joorsh
attack had begun, and the Tarek dared to hope that Mag'r would not sink her ship before
they could get the gates open.

“I'm sending Tithian up next,” called Agis, his voice rising through the narrow crack
beneath her feet. “Keep a close watch on him and kill him if he tries anything.”

The king's gaunt hands reached through the narrow opening and began searching for a hold
on the cold stone. Kester grabbed his wrists and pulled. As he rose out of the narrow
crevice, the sharp edges of the pit marked him with a trail of red abrasions.

“I don't have the hide of a baazrag!” Tithian hissed, clutching his satchel to his chest
so it wouldn't be scraped free. “Be careful.”

“No time to be careful.” Kester deposited the king roughly at her side and motioned toward
Sacha and Wyan. “Keep an eye on yer two heads. After what they did to Fylo, I don't trust
'em much.”

Taking Agis's advice and keeping one eye on Tithian, she knelt beside the crack and
reached through for the noble. Although her action appeared to put her in a vulnerable
position, the tarek was not worried. Between herself and the king, there was not much
space left on the black circle of solid ground. If Tithian made any sudden moves, it would
be an easy thing to knock him onto the shimmering crystal with a shoulder or leg. Besides,
she did not really expect him to attack her. Not only would he need her to command the
Shadow Viper's
crew if he wished to leave the island, but he had seemed more willing to cooperate with
others since his dream of becoming a i sorcerer-king had been shattered.

When she did not feel Agis take her hand, Kester I demanded, “What're ye waiting for down
there?”

“He won't leave,” Tithian answered. He reached into his satchel and withdrew a coil of
giant-hair rope, surprisingly large for the sack from which it had come. “He wants to save
the giant.”

Kester sighed in frustration, then peered down the hole. “We'll be lucky enough to save
ourselves, let alone your giant,” she said, addressing Agis's shadowy form.

“We can't leave him like that.” The noble gestured toward the bottom of the pit. Although
Kester could not see the giant from her position, the image of the bloody crystal
protruding through his shoulder remained vivid in her mind. “Now pass me the end of the
rope. I'll go down and see if I can get that spike out of his shoulder, then tie him off.”

“What then?” she asked. “We'll never get him out through this little hole.”

“At least he might not die while we're looking for a way to remove the cover,” Agis
replied.

“It's already past dawn!” objected Kester. “How long do ye think Mag'r'll wait for the
gates to open Before he sinks the
Shadow Viper?”

“He'll wait,” Agis replied. “If he sinks your ship, we have no reason to open the
gates-and he's smart enough to know that.”

“Ye can't know for sure!”

“I agree with you,” Tithian whispered. He knelt at Kester's side, holding one end of the
rope out to her. “Perhaps we should open the gate for Mag'r-now.”

Kester bit her lip, neither meeting the king's gaze nor taking the rope from his hand.
“What about Agis?” she asked.

“He can look after Fylo,” the king suggested, being careful not to look into the pit. “We
can come back for him later.”

Kester fell silent and motionless. Like Tithian, she avoided the noble's eyes, though it
seemed to her that she could feel them watching her from the shadows, like the black gaze
of an owl.

“I can imagine what Tithian's whispering to you,” said Agis, his voice rising through the
crevice clear and steady. “Don't listen to him. We have many things to do this morning:
make sure that we
all
escape the pit, find the Dark Lens, save your ship. But if we panic and start jumping from
one unfinished step to another, we're doomed.”

Kester remained silent, wondering how the noble could think that everything on his list
was still possible at this late hour.

“Weren't you the one who said we had to work together to escape?” Agis pressed. “Did you
mean it-or were you voicing the lies of a pirate?” “Damn ye, and damn yer giant,” Kester
growled. “A wise decision,” Tithian said, starting to rise. Kester grabbed his arm and
pulled him back to her side. “Ye stay here,” she said, taking the rope from his hands and
pushing one end down to the noble.

“Thanks for staying,” Agis said. “You won't regret it.”

“No-but you might,” Kester growled. “If Mag'r sinks my ship, ye'll buy me another-and a
good crew to man it!”

“I'll give you two ships,” the noble replied, smiling. “But you'll have to man them
yourself-with
hired
crews.”

Kester stood and looked at Tithian. “Ye stay here to keep the hole open-and don't think
about leaving. If I see ye step one foot off this circle, I'll kill ye,” she said,
fingering the two throwing knives left in her chest harness. “I'll go tie off our end of
the rope.” i With that, she leaped over to solid ground and walked toward the bridge
footings, uncoiling the rope as she went.

Tithian watched the tarek leave, silently cursing her for a fool. Nevertheless, he did as
she asked, summoning the spiritual energy to take over Agis's dudes. “Go ahead,” he said,
glaring down through the crack. “But remember, you're wasting precious minutes.”