Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 5 - The Cerulean Storm (41 page)

“No!” Neeva gasped.

The warrior pushed herself up, bracing her back against the boulder. The effort of
standing made her cold legs ache to the bone, while the small of her back felt like
someone had plunged a burning dagger into it. Still, Neeva was thankful that she could
stand at all. When her son had cast his healing spell on her at sunrise, it had taken a
long time for the feeling to return below her waist, and she had begun to fear that her
injuries were too serious for him to repair.

Leaning against the boulder, Neeva turned to watch the cyclone, hoping to see what became
of Sadira. Instead, she saw a gaunt and bedraggled figure pulling himself from the
floodwaters. Even from twenty paces away, she could see that he had a hooked nose and a
long braid of gray hair,

“Tithian!” she hissed.

The king looked up the hill toward Rkard, whose attention was raptly fixed on the crater
basin. Not even pausing to gather his breath, Tithian rose and started up the slope on
trembling legs.

Neeva grabbed a fist-sized rock and, gritting her teeth against the pain, took her first
step across the slippery hillside. Rkard had told her that it was risky for her to walk,
but with Tithian on the loose, she knew it was more dangerous not to. The warrior managed
half a dozen steps before the king glimpsed her and stopped.

Tithian faced her and sneered, turning his palm toward the ground. “I thought you'd be
dead by now.”

Neeva braced her feet and threw the rock in her hand, aiming for the throat. Tithian
ducked, and the stone struck him in the temple with a sharp crack. The king dropped to the
ground. Though it was possible the blow had killed her target outright, the warrior knew
better than to count on that. She hobbled over to her prey and found his eyes rolled back
in the sockets. She grabbed a large stone and raised it over his head, taking no chances
with the treacherous king.

Tithian's hand suddenly shot up, directing a brilliant flash into the warrior's eyes.
Neeva's vision instantly went white. She slammed the stone down and heard it clatter
harmlessly off the ground. The warrior went into a blind -fighting pattern. She pivoted
away from the last place she had seen the king and circled her hands in front of her body,
frequently changing directions to prevent her enemy from predicting where the gaps would
appear.

A cruel chuckle sounded at Neeva's side. Sweeping her arm around in a circular trapping
motion, she stepped toward the sound-then stumbled and nearly fell when her lethargic legs
did not respond as she expected. The warrior felt Tithian's hot breath on the back of her
neck and realized that he had used a spell to throw his voice.

Expecting to feel the bite of a dagger blade in her kidneys at any moment, the warrior
arched her stomach forward and swung her head back. She heard a loud crack as her skull
smashed the king's nose, then felt his arm draped across her shoulder. He had been trying
to cut her throat. Neeva drove her hand up inside Tithian's arm and forced his wrist away
from her neck. She bent forward, pulling him over her back, and heard him land in a heap
in front of her.

Neeva tried to raise her foot to stomp the king's head, but succeeded only in sending a
fiery pang of agony shooting through her leg. Tithian clattered across the rocky ground,
rolling or crawling away, and the warrior lost track of his exact location. Gray spots
were beginning to appear in the white glare of her vision, but she still could not see.
The king stopped moving and fell silent. Neeva felt sure that he was preparing a spell,
but had no idea of how to avoid it.

She heard something rising out of the water, then Rikus's voice shouted, “Dive roll,
quarter right!”

The command called for a maneuver they had used during their days in the arena together,
and Neeva knew exactly what it meant. She threw herself forward at an angle, crashing into
Tithian's soft midsection before she hit the ground. The king cried out in surprise. She
heard the hiss of mystic energy discharging into the air, then came down on top of his
body.

The air left Tithian's lungs in a sharp grunt, but he did not stop fighting. Neeva felt
him pull both arms out from beneath her body. She raised her arm to block the right one,
assuming it held the dagger.

“No, left!” Rikus called. By the sound of his voice, he was almost upon them.

Neeva could not switch blocks, so she rolled toward the king's left arm and pinned it
beneath her weight. She brought her hand down and found his wrist, then gave it a sharp
twist and heard the hollow pop of a bone coming out of its socket. Tithian cried out in
pain, then smashed his right hand into his attacker's back and shoved her off.

Neeva heard him scrambling away, then found the dagger on the ground where he had dropped
it. Her vision was now growing clear enough that she could make it out as a gray blur
lying on the black smudge of the ground.

Tithian began to run up the hill toward Rkard, as Neeva could tell by the sound of the
rocks clattering beneath his feet. At the same time, she heard Rikus's heavy steps
charging up from her other side. Neeva took the dagger by the blade.

“Knife, Rikus!”

Neeva flipped the dagger into the air, angling her throw so it flew toward Rikus hilt
first. An instant later, the weapon came hissing back above her head. Tithian screamed,
but she did not hear him fall.

“Damn!” Rikus snapped, stopping at her side.

Neeva felt the mul take her arm and pull her up. Terrible pains shot through her legs as
her weight returned to them, but they did not collapse beneath her. She also discovered
that she had recovered her vision well enough to see the mul's face. He looked as haggard
and weary as had Tithian, with beads of water running off his body and dark circles
beneath his eyes.

“I've been trying to catch Tithian since Rajaat flooded Ur Draxa, and now he's disappeared
again,” Rikus said.

Neeva pointed toward the Dark Lens. “I doubt it,” she said. “He was trying for the lens
when I attacked him.”

The mul's face went white, then he started up the hill at a sprint. Neeva followed more
slowly. Each step was a struggle, but she was determined not to wait idly by while Tithian
took the lens.

A few steps up the slope, she confirmed her suspicions. A trail of blood led up the toward
the Dark Lens. Neeva looked up, preparing to call a warning.

She did not have the chance. Her son had crawled over the lens to the other side and was
staring into the basin, his attention consumed by Rajaat. The ancient sorcerer's crown of
lightning showed above the top of the lens, but that was all Neeva could see of him.

“Give me my lens, filthy child,” growled Rajaat's booming voice.

Rkard pressed his palm to the Dark Lens and cast his sun-spell. A ruby light flared deep
inside the orb, and the entire lens flashed scarlet. Neeva caught a glimpse of Tithian's
gaunt form pressed against the bottom half of the obsidian globe, his arms spread wide and
gripping the lens. The king screamed in agony. Searing red flames burst over the Dark
Lens's glassy surface, and the orb erupted into a miniature version of the crimson sun.
Tithian's silhouette vanished into the inferno.

* * * * *

Rkard heard Tithian scream and glanced down in time to see the king's silhouette vanish in
the inferno. The boy wondered briefly where Tithian had come from, then cowered down
behind the crater rim, waiting for Rajaat to cast the spell that would obliterate him and
half the hillside.

The ancient sorcerer did not attack. Instead, he reached for the crimson fireball that was
the Dark Lens. When his hands came near, the scarlet flames suddenly left the surface of
the orb and shot across the basin. As the fire stream passed Rajaat, the flame evaporated
half the clouds on his torso, then washed over the far wall with a tremendous roar.

Rajaat's shadow vanished beneath the fire storm. His cloud-covered body stopped moving,
and his arms froze in place over the lens. The fire curled back toward the center of the
basin and formed a roiling ball of flame a dozen yards behind Rajaat. The fiery ball did
not look so different from Rkard's normal sun-spell, except that it was a hundred times as
large and a thousand times as bright. Squinting against the brilliant light, the young mul
stood to get a better look over the rim.

“What are you doing?” cried a familiar voice. “Get down!”

A pair of powerful arras seized Rkard by the waist and pulled him away from the rim.

“Rikus!” The boy twisted around and threw his arms around the warrior's neck. In the
distance beyond, Rkard noticed that the storm that had carried Sadira away was breaking
up. “You're alive!”

“Of course I am. Let's make your mother happy and keep you that way, too,” Rikus
responded. “What's going on here?”

Rikus pointed at Rajaat's hands, which were still hanging motionless over the Dark Lens.
The lens itself was no longer burning, but its surface was glowing red. There was no sign
of Tithian, save for a puddle of liquid steel that had once been his dagger.

“I'm not sure what happened,” Rkard answered. “I cast my spell at Rajaat's shadow, just
like Sadira said. But I don't think it worked. He just stopped moving.” Rikus frowned.
“We'd better have a look.”

Together, they crawled to the top of the rim and peered over. Rajaat's cloud-covered body
was beginning to boil away in the heat of Rkard's giant sun-spell. The fireball was
blazing so brightly that even the young sun-cleric could not look at it for more than a
second. Nevertheless, what he saw in that time was more than enough to concern Rkard. A
pair of blue diamonds stared out from inside the flaming orb, and they were staring
straight at his face.

Rkard ducked behind the rim again, pulling Rikus down beside him. “I think Rajaat's caught
inside my sun-spell.”

Rikus smiled. “You trapped him?” “For now,” he said. “But what happens when my spell
expires?”

“We'll just have to make sure that doesn't happen,” said Sadira's voice.

Rkard looked back to see the sorceress stepping off a small cloud. She was still dripping
wet, but appeared otherwise unaffected by her battle with the cyclone. A few paces below
Sadira, the young mul's mother was laboriously climbing up the hill.

Rkard frowned and started to chastise her for walking, but Rikus caught the boy's
shoulder. “I wouldn't say anything right now,” the warrior advised.

Rkard nodded, then asked, “Are you well, Mother?”

“Just fine, thanks to you,” she said.

Rkard smiled, then turned to Sadira. “I don't know how the Dark Lens will affect my
spell,” he said. “But it usually only lasts for a quarter-hour or so.”

“We won't need nearly that long,” the sorceress said. She reached into her pocket and
fished out a small sliver of diamond. “This should keep your fire burning forever.”

Sadira stepped near the Dark Lens and cast her spell. The diamond shard disappeared from
between her fingers, and a stream of white light flowed into the obsidian. It emerged on
the other side as a silvery river of magic energy, engulfing the fiery orb of Rkard's
sun-spell. Pearly wisps of flame began to shoot through the fireball, and it burned with a
new brilliance.

Rajaat's crown exploded into a furious storm of energy, spreading a sheet of blue
lightning across the sky. With a deafening thunderclap, the ancient sorcerer's mouth fell
open, spewing a stream of hail out over the flooded plain.

For a moment, Rkard feared that their enemy would free himself, then Rajaat began to
dissolve. The skeleton came apart first, slipping from the cloud-body and clattering into
the basin in a heap. Next, the arms and legs floated away. The torso flattened out into a
platter-shaped wafer, and the shoulders and head slowly melted into it. The ancient
sorcerer's crown was the last thing to disappear, forks of blue lightning still dancing in
a circle as a turquoise fog spread over the entire basin. The cloud hovered near the top
of the rim for a moment, then suddenly spun up into the heavens and spread over the entire
sky. Bolts of lightning crackled down from the dark shroud, while peals of thunder echoed
off Ur Draxa's distant walls. A heavy rain began to fall, pounding Rkard like a ruthless
enemy, but the boy did not care. A short distance above the eastern horizon, he could see
the sun's halo shining through the angry tempest, and it was crimson.

Seven figures stood on the hill above the Gate of Doom, all lost in their own thoughts.
Neeva and Rkard kneeled at the edge of the cliff, looking down into the valley where
Caelum had died, their heads bowed in silent contemplation. Sadira sat a short distance
away, near Rikus, save that the Dark Lens rested on the ground between them.

The two sorcerer-kings, Nibenay and Hamanu, and the sorcerer-queen, the Oba of Gulg,
waited at the end of the ridge. They were looking across the Ring of Fire, at the massive
wall of steam that had arisen when Rajaat's flood finally overspilled the Draxan plain and
cascaded into the boiling lava lake below. More than anyone, the rulers seemed to sense
that the time had come to rethink old ways, to forget old enmities, to find new approaches
to the challenge of life on Athas.

Rikus found himself wondering what this moment looked like to them, through cruel eyes
that had already seen a countless chain of passing days. They appeared neither sad nor
happy, and the mul wondered if it was even possible for them to have such emotions. Would
this day be a turning point in their long lives, or was it simply a time when it had
become necessary to form new alliances? He did not know the answer and suspected they did
not either. For now, only one thing was important: a truce had been struck, and once the
terms were met, there would no longer be a reason to fight-at least not until they had all
returned home and recovered enough to think of new reasons.

The Oba turned to Sadira and nodded. The sorceress stood and wrapped her ebony arms around
the lens, then picked it up. Rikus did not stand with her, for those were not the terms of
the agreement. Sadira had to do this alone, for Nibenay and Hamanu were as weary and
mistrustful of the Tyrians as the Tyrians were of them.