Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 4 - Obsidian Oracle (38 page)

“In
the name of Ral!” the noble gasped.

“More like Rajaat,” Tithian replied, glancing at the appendages with pride. He gave them a
tentative flap, then looked down at Wyan, who was hovering at his side. “Shall we go?”

“That's not why I brought you out of the satchel,” Agis snapped. “Look behind us.”

“I saw what became of Fylo,” the king replied. “I always knew your principles would be the
end of you. Now it seems they're also getting your friends killed. I have no intention of
being one of those friends.”

“If you take over here, the whole ship can escape!” Agis said. Even as he spoke the words,
he was visualizing the image of a griffin, a huge eagle with the body and claws of a lion.

“I see no reason to take that chance,” Tithian replied, lifting himself into the air with
a single beat of his mighty wings. “I can escape with the Dark Lens alone.”

“That remains to be seen,” Agis replied, locking eyes with the king. Keeping just enough
of his mind focused on his duties as a floater to keep the
Shadow Viper
from sinking, the noble launched his griffin into Tithian's mind.

The noble found himself flying through a cavern of inviolable gloom. Nowhere in the
blackness could he find even the hint of a light,-much less anything that might be called
illumination. The place seemed the very embodiment of darkness, more so than any of the
times in the past when Agis had contacted the king's mind.

Through his griffin's mouth, Agis yelled, “You can't escape by hiding. I'll find you, and
when I do you'll save this ship!” His words vanished into the murk without echo.

“I've no intention of hiding,” replied the king.

A crimson wyvern flashed into existence above Agis's griffin. The winged lizard had
appeared in mid-dive, its talons extended and its venom-dripping tail barb arcing toward
the griffin's heart. Flapping his construct's powerful wings, the noble rose to meet the
attack. As the two beasts came together, he used one of his massive claws to slap aside
the poisonous tail, then opened his sharp beak in anticipation of closing it around the
wyvern's serpentine neck.

The beasts hit with a thunderous boom. As Agis tried to close his beak on the wyvern's
neck, he sensed a searing heat coming from the lizard's body, and the smell of singed
feathers filled his nostrils. Then, to the noble's astonishment, the lizard began to flap
its wings, driving the griffin back with such awesome strength that Agis could not resist.

The wyvern carried them out of Tithian's mind. In the next instant, they emerged over the
vast blue sea in the mind of the amazed noble. As Agis was still trying to comprehend the
raw force behind the counterattack, the king's construct suddenly separated from the
combat and dove away. At first the noble was confused, but then he saw the object of the
wyvern's assault: a caravel, pitching and reeling in the stormy waters below. The wyvern
was descending on it with tucked wings and extended claws.

Outside the noble's mind, the
Shadow Viper
suddenly lurched to a standstill, and Agis heard the ship slaves screaming in panic. He
looked up from the floater's dome to see the crew standing frozen along the gunnels,
bracing their plunging poles against the deck to defend against a huge crimson wyvern
diving out of the olive-tinged sky.

“This can't be!” Agis gasped.

“It is,” replied Tithian, also looking skyward. “That's the power of the Dark Lens.”

“All the more reason to take it from you!” Agis said, turning his attention inward once
more.

Agis sent his griffin after the wyvern, at the same time attacking from below. The rattle
of a dozen ballistae sounded from the caravel, then a flight of spar-sized harpoons
streaked up from the decks to pierce the wyvern's breast. The lizard's wings went slack,
and it crashed onto the
Shadow Viper's
bow, shaking the entire ship both inside and outside the noble's mind.

Agis descended on the injured beast and pinned it to the deck. The wyvern arced its tail
up to impale him, but the griffin dodged aside, then used his rear daws to rip the
appendage off at the root. The lizard tried to beat him off with its wings, and the
noble's harbinger tore them to ribbons. It rolled onto its back and raked its filthy
talons across its attacker's breast. The griffin retaliated by catching the wyvern's
serpentine neck in its beak and biting down hard. The fanged head came off, and the wyvern
fell motionless to the deck.

Agis had his griffin step back. During the battle, the wyvern's heat had scorched the
feathers from the beast's head and blackened its leathery body in a dozen places.
Nevertheless, the griffin was the one that remained standing, and that was the important
thing.

To the noble's surprise, the wyvern did not fade away, as a construct normally did after
being destroyed. Instead, it simply lay on the deck, wisps of gray smoke rising from
beneath its body.

Without allowing his griffin to vanish, Agis stopped attacking and turned his attention
outward. The noble found himself slumped over the floater's dome, so drained of energy
that he could hardly breathe. He could feel the obsidian drawing the last of his strength
from his body, leaving him with a sick, hollow feeling in place of his spiritual nexus.

As he pushed himself to a sitting position, Agis smelled smoke coming from the bow. There,
he saw that several crewmen had abandoned their posts along the gunnel to rush forward and
pour bucket-fuls of silt over the fires started by the wyvern's searing remains. He looked
over his shoulder and saw that the mountainous forms of the Joorsh warriors had dosed much
of the distance between themselves and the fleeing ship.

Agis turned to Tithian. Although the king's aged face showed the strain of having his
wyvern destroyed, he did not look nearly as tired as the noble.

“Take your place at the floater's dome,” Agis ordered.

Tithian shook his head. “I think not,” he said.

“Don't make me send my griffin in to take control of your mind,” the noble threatened.

“I'll admit that you put up a valiant fight, Agis,” Tithian allowed, a condescending sneer
on his cracked lips. “But do you really think you're powerful enough to overcome the
Oracle?”

A series of terrified shrieks erupted from the bow, then Agis saw one of the slaves who
had gone to fight the fire rise into the air, impaled on the wyvern's severed tail. The
noble turned his attention inward, bringing his griffin to its feet.

Exhausted by the fight and his efforts to keep the
Shadow Viper
afloat, the noble was too slow. The wyvern's tail arced across the deck and pierced deep
into the griffin's breast. The stinging poison flooded through his chest in an instant,
filling it with a scalding vapor that turned everything it touched to ash. Agis felt as
though his heart were bursting into flame. He heard himself howling-not in pain, but in
outrage-and everything went dark.

Tithian withdrew from the noble's still mind and found himself on a sinking ship. Without
Agis to keep it afloat, the
Shadow Viper
was going down fast already, the main deck had disappeared beneath the bay, and dust was
pouring over the gunnels of the quarterdeck in billowing waves. The closest Joorsh was
just three steps away from grabbing the caravel's stern, and panicked slaves were calling
for mercy from the giants.

Tithian went to Agis's side. The noble lay slumped over the floater's stone, blood seeping
from his ears and nostrils, his glazed eyes focused on nothing. A red froth poured from
his mouth. No breath-shallow or otherwise-passed his dead lips.

“Don't try to save him!” objected Wyan, hovering at Tithian's side. “There isn't time!”

“I'm over that folly,” said Tithian, taking the noble's hand. “But I need something of
Agis's.”

The king slipped the Asticles signet off the noble's finger, then the whole ship jerked.
He looked back to see that a Joorsh had grabbed the stern rail and was preventing the
caravel from sinking any farther into the silt.

Tithian let the noble's hand drop, grabbed the satchel, and launched himself into the air,
barely escaping the giant's clumsy attempt to swat him down. With the warrior's angry
voice roaring in his ears, he flapped his wings hard and quickly rose into the olive sky.
Once the king was safely out of reach, he began to circle slowly so that Wyan could catch
up to him.

While he waited, he watched in amusement as the frustrated Joorsh plucked crewmen from the
Shadow Viper's
deck and hurled them at him. The tenth slave was just arcing down toward the silt when
Wyan finally arrived.

“You fool!” snarled the disembodied head. “You nearly lost the Oracle-and for what? A
souvenir?”

“This is no souvenir,” Tithian replied, holding the ring out to him. “Open your mouth.”

Frowning in puzzlement, Wyan obeyed. Tithian placed Agis's ring on the head's gray tongue.

“Take this to Rikus and Sadira,” the king ordered. “Tell them that they're to meet Agis in
the village of Samarah. The time has come to kill the Dragon.”

Cursing the long, echoing halls of the Astides mansion, Neeva rounded the corner at a dead
run. At last she saw the nursery at the end of the corridor. Its ivory door, engraved with
a grinning jackal's face, was dosed tight. She drew both her swords without missing a step.

“Rkard!” she yelled. “What's wrong?”

No answer. For her son, that was even more unusual than the terrified wail that had
alarmed her in the first place. Neeva did not even stop at the closed portal, simply
kicking it off its leather hinges on her way through.

A pair of huge, hideous monsters stood on the opposite side of the room, peering through
the large window where Rkard usually waited to greet the dawn sun. They were hardly more
than skeletal lumps, with twisted shards of bone sticking out of their shoulders in the
place of arms. One figure had a hunched back and a slope-browed skull, while the other had
a squat neck and no head at all Regardless of whether they had heads or not, pairs of
orange embers burned where their eyes should have been. Where the chins had hung, coarse
masses of gray dangled in the air, unattached to bone or flesh of any kind.

As Neeva charged across the room, they backed out of sight. She thrust her swords out the
window, then leaned through, ready to attack with a vicious series of slashes and thrusts.

They were gone. The only thing she saw outside the second story window were acres and
acres of Asticles faro trees.

From inside the room, Rkard's small voice said, “Don't kill them, Mother. They didn't mean
to scare me.”

Neeva turned around and found her son hiding in the corner, his red eyes bulging from
their sockets as he stared at his lap.

“What did they...”

Noticing what her son was staring at, Neeva let the question trail off. Across his tiny
lap lay the Belt of Rank, and on his head, cocked at a steep angle to keep it from falling
off, was King Rkard's bejeweled crown.

Neeva sheathed her swords and knelt in front of her son. “Rkard-where did you get these?”

The young mul fixed his red eyes on her, and she saw something in them that she had never
before seen: tears, ready to spill down his chiseled cheeks. Rkard clamped his jaw closed
to keep it from quivering.

Finally, he seemed to gather his strength. “Jo'orsh and Sa'ram brought them to me,” he
answered. “They said I'm going to kill Borys.”