Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 5 - The Cerulean Storm (26 page)

The young mul bounced off Borys's leathery knee and tumbled to the ground. As his mother
had taught him, Rkard tucked his chin against his chest and stretched out to his full
length. He landed on his uninjured side, slapping his forearm against the rough basalt to
help absorb the impact.

The maneuver did him little good. From his feet to his shoulders, Rkard's body exploded
into a stinging ache. He heard himself scream. The sound was choked off as pain filled his
chest and the air rushed from his lungs. He could not rise, could not even shift his
hand-still glowing red with the sun's healing magic-down to his broken rib.

Far above, Borys jerked his wrist off Jo'orsh's jagged stump, spraying an arc of hot
yellow blood over the ground. Though the Dragon's snout and face were scorched, his dark
eyes showed no hint of injury-only anger.

“Perhaps I can't destroy you, but there are those who can,” Borys hissed. He stood so
close to Jo'orsh that the yellow fumes of his breath swirled over the banshee as he spoke.
“The lens.”

“Destroy me or not,” said Jo'orsh. “The Dark Lens will remain hidden.”

“Not from my lords!” Borys's hands shot up and pushed the banshee back toward the
submerged lava channel. 'Take him, my kaisharga!"

The basalt burst into shards around Jo'orsh's feet. Six gaunt, withered corpses rose from
the lava channel, runnels of molten rock pouring off their blackened hides. A little
larger than humans, they had emaciated builds and white-hot talons instead of fingers.
Their shriveled faces all looked alike, with gaping dark holes where their noses should
have been and eyes of green fire. In spite of their other similarities, each had one
feature that set him or her apart: lacy wings of fire, smoking horns, fingernails as long
and sharp as needles, huge pulsing eyes, chitinous scales of armor. One even had a mouth
shaped like a trumpet.

“Jo'orsh, go away!” Rkard yelled.

“Stay!” commanded Borys, his tiny eyes fixed on the banshee. “If you leave, my servants
shall have the child in your place.”

Jo'orsh made no move to flee, and the dead lords began to close in around him.

“He'll kill me anyway!” Rkard cried. He forgot about his own pain and struggled to his
feet. “Disappear!”

Jo'orsh shook his gnarled head. “For better or worse, my long battle is at an end,” he
said, keeping his orange eyes fixed on his foes. “I knew that when I freed you.”

All six of the dead lords leapt at the banshee's gnarled shins and began climbing. The
banshee swung his twisted arms at his attackers, knocking the armored ghoul away before
they reached his knees. The remaining corpses tore at his legs, ripping away so much bone
that the limbs buckled and pitched Jo'orsh backward into a sputtering stream of molten
rock.

White flames began to dance over the banshee's twisted bones. He flailed at his attackers,
splashing great arcs of fiery rock into the air.

The corpse Jo'orsh had knocked away earlier dived into the fiery river, then all six of
the dead lords began tearing his gnarled ribs away. The banshee's eyes grew dimmer, and he
sighed, expelling a cloud of golden mist.

Rkard's hand still glowed with the energy he had summoned earlier. The boy stepped toward
the fiery stream, intending to cast his sun-spell. He hoped that it would distract the
lords long enough for Jo'orsh to escape.

“Rkard, no!” the banshee yelled. “The time has come for you to kill the Dragon-before his
minions dispel my magic and learn where the lens is.”

Rkard stopped. “How?” The heat of the liquid rock was so terrible that he had to shield
his face behind his arm. “Tell me what to do.”

Borys stepped forward to straddle the young mul. “Yes,” said the Dragon. His wounded wrist
dripped beads of fiery blood all around Rkard. “We're
both
very curious.”

Jo'orsh's orange eyes remained fixed on Rkard. “I can't tell you how to do it,” he said.
“If you can't find the answer within yourself, then Athas is lost.”

The dead lords pulled away a last rib. Liquid stone poured into the banshee's chest, and
the corpse with the huge pulsing eyes rode the viscous stream inside. Jo'orsh's orange
eyes began to dim.

The Dragon reached down to pick Rkard up, spattering the boy with droplets of fiery yellow
blood. The young mul hardly noticed, for he was concentrating too hard on what Jo'orsh had
said to him. If he could find the key to slaying Borys within himself, then it seemed most
likely that the banshee meant it was a matter of knowledge.

Rkard's thoughts automatically turned to the greatest source of dwarven knowledge, the
Book of the Kemalok Kings.
His favorite stories described the adventures of King Thurin, who always defeated his
enemies by curing the grievous afflictions that had turned them into monsters in the first
place. Afterward, the beasts always became either his devoted friends and servants, or
they died peacefully, thanking him for releasing them from their eternal agony.

It struck Rkard that as a sun-cleric, his healing abilities were not so different from the
way King Thurin had overcome his enemies. He wondered if that was what the banshee had
been hinting at. Certainly, as one of Kemalok's ancient knights, Jo'orsh knew the stories
of King Thurin as well as the young mul did.

Borys's claws closed around Rkard's body. “So how will you destroy me, child?”

Rkard laid his hand on the seething puncture in Borys's wrist. There was a brief flash as
the red glow drained from the boy's hand and into Borys's scaly hide. The wound sizzled
and smoked, then the drizzle of yellow fire slowly came to a stop. The hole's jagged edges
stretched toward each other and met, leaving a black, smoking scar where the injury had
been.

A knot of anticipation formed in Rkard's chest. His magic had sealed the wound-but had it
healed the Dragon?

Borys lifted the young mul high off the ground and held him in front of a single black
eye. “You are considerate, child,” he chuckled. “To show my gratitude, I shall let you
live to see your parents-as I kill them.”

A sick, hollow feeling formed in Rkard's stomach. The boy could not imagine how he was
supposed to kill the Dragon. Back in Samarah, he had used the only other spell he knew
when had cast his sun beacon at Borys's head. That had worked no better than healing the
beast. And during the long trip to this place, he had tried punching, gouging, biting,
kicking, and every other kind of physical assault he knew. Borys had not even flinched. If
there was some way for a boy his age to kill the beast, the young mul could not think of
it.

Far below, Rkard saw Jo'orsh lying in the fiery stream. The last glimmer of light faded
from his orange eyes. His gnarled bones began to smoke. Finally, his skeleton
disintegrated in a white flash, leaving nothing behind except a few crusts of black
cinder. Within moments, the slow, swirling currents of boiling rock devoured even that
trace of the banshee.

The dead lords waded to shore and stepped onto the black basalt at Borys's feet. Orange
beads of molten stone dripped from their bodies like sweat.

“The usurper Tithian has the Dark Lens and has joined your enemies,” reported the corpse
with the pulsing eyes. He was the one who had slipped inside Jo'orsh. “They want the child
returned alive, but they are also determined to kill you.”

The Dragon nodded. “Good. If we present them with a choice between the two, they may
hesitate at a critical moment,” he said. “Where will we find them?”

“Jo'orsh left them a day ago, so we cannot be certain,” the lord replied. “But the banshee
thought that they would be entering the Baxal Shoals by now.”

“Less than a day from my valley,” hissed the Dragon. His grip tightened around Rkard's
chest, sending sharp pangs of agony through the boy's lungs. “It is a dangerous thing to
attack them so close to Ur Draxa. If they slip away and enter the city with the lens...”
Borys let the sentence trail off, shaking his head.

“Then what?” pressed Rkard.

“You cannot imagine, child,” the Dragon said. “Even your nightmares are not that terrible.”

“The Lord Mariner is lying off the shoals with his fleet,” said the corpse with the
smoking horns. “With good fortune, he might intercept them-”

“You would like that, wouldn't you, Lord Guardian?” spat the lord covered by chitinous
armor. “After the Lord Mariner is destroyed, all his warriors-”

“The Lord Guardian is right. The Usurper and his companions must be intercepted,” said
Borys. “But the Baxal Shoals are a vast labyrinth. Therefore, all my lords will join in
the search. The Lord Mariner will divide you among his ships as he sees fit, covering as
many channels as possible.” The Dragon looked at the fire-winged corpse. “You will inform
the others, Lord Harbinger.”

“As you wish,” replied the lord, stretching his fiery wings.

“I
have not dismissed you!” Borys snapped.

The Lord Harbinger froze in place. Even the flames on his wings did not waver.

“It will be difficult for you to reach the Baxal Shoals tonight,” said the Dragon. “If you
fail, those who find my enemies must attack during the day.”

The dead lords cast uneasy glances at each other, then the Lord Guardian asked, “What of
Sadira's sun-magic?”

“She'll destroy you,” Borys answered calmly. “But you have only one chance to attack. If
you wait for night, or pause to regroup, my enemies will escape and reach the valley in
full force.”

“If we are likely to lose, why have us attack, Great One?” asked the lord with the
chitinous armor.

“Your success will not be measured by victory, Lord Warrior,” the Dragon replied. “One of
you must steal the mul's sword. The blade was forged by Rajaat, so I cannot attack whoever
bears it-but you can. If you can do this one thing, I will destroy my enemies.”

“In that case, perhaps we should also take King Hamanu,” suggested the Lord Harbinger.
“His help-”

“Will be required at the Gate of Doom-along with that of the other sorcerer-kings,”
interrupted Borys. “I must be ready in case you fail.”

Rkard frowned, curious as to what the Lord Harbinger thought Hamanu could accomplish in
the battle. From what the boy understood, sorcerer-kings could not hit someone bearing the
Scourge any more than could the Dragon.

“Remember that I created you for just such a time as this,” Borys said, glaring at his
lords. 'To survive without the sword is not to survive all."

From his post atop the mast, Sacha cried, “Five ships!”

Though Caelum heard the warning, he kept his eyes focused straight ahead and did not rise
from his knees. The sun's crimson rays were filtering through the tangled boughs rising
from the shoal ahead, and the dwarf could see by the flat bottom of the orb that the red
sphere would not rise completely for many more moments. He would not allow the appearance
of a few ships to disturb his devotions-especially not when he had such need for the sun's
favor.

“Great Beacon, shine upon my enemy, so that his weakness will glare with a scarlet
radiance that even my unseeing eyes will find,” intoned the dwarf.

Rikus stepped into the bow next to Caelum. “What do you make of those boats, cleric?”

Though he did not respond, Caelum saw the boats. Five of them lay dead ahead, sitting
broadside in a single line. The vessels were all cutters. Their single masts billowed with
gossamer sails, shaped like bat wings and not supported by any sort of yardarm. The decks
bristled with catapults manned by half-decomposed corpses. The hulls were made of
burnished basalt and looked far too broad to have navigated down the narrow channels that
came together to form the bay.

Caelum returned his attention to the rising sun. “Kindle in me the fires of your
vengeance, Mighty Punisher,” he said. “Let the flames of your fury pour from my raging
heart and char my enemy's flesh, melt his eyeballs, scorch his bones until they crack. I
beseech you, let the Inferno of my anger sear his body until it is a black and smoking
cinder.”

“Caelum, get up!” Rikus demanded.

Neeva came to the mul's side. “It's
no use, Rikus,” she said, pulling him away. “Until the sun has completely risen, my
husband's devotion is to it, not us. His own child could be standing on those ships, and
still he would not stand.”

Caelum resisted the urge to refute his wife. Even if he had not been in the middle of his
devotions, there would have been no point to it. She had not greeted the sun since Rkard's
abduction, and that fact alone proved that she lacked the faith to understand the depth of
the sun communion.

The dwarf continued his intonation, “Wonderful Fire of Life, watch over my absent son and
do not let the flame of his spirit darken. Warm his heart, so he will know his father
remembers him and searches for him with a fidelity as fervid as your light.”

Rikus and Neeva left the bow, each slipping around a different side of the Dark Lens.

At the same time, Tithian called, “Pull in the boom!” The king still sat in the stern of
the dhow, for he and Sadira had not yet changed places for the day. “They can't follow us
down there!”

Tithian gave the tiller a shove. The dhow tilted to starboard as it changed directions,
then abruptly slowed and returned to an even keel as the sail went slack.

Ahead lay a dust channel so narrow that the trees flanking it actually touched fronds over
the passage. As Sadira pulled the boom in and caught the wind, the dhow tipped to
starboard and started forward again. Caelum dutifully returned his gaze to the sun,
scrambling around so that he could watch it over the starboard side of their little craft.

The dwarf tried to still his thoughts, to empty his mind so that it would be refilled with
the dawn's radiance. In spite of his efforts, he noticed the cutters' gossamer sails
twisting on their masts. He tried to forget them and focus on the sun's crimson rays. If
he allowed the impending battle to impinge on his meditations, he would absorb fewer
spells than normal, and they would be less powerful.