Myrana threw another stone, putting all her strength behind it. This one reached the hermit, but he batted it away, suffering, she hoped, a bruised hand in the doing. She ducked back behind her sheltering rock and cast about for another stone she could hurl that far. She needed another way. Casting stones would never hurt this wild hermit.
“No!” Kalipher shouted as a huge tangle of vines with dozens of closed white flowers rose in front of him. “Villainy most foul!” He blasted at the flowers, causing some of them to blacken, smoke curling up from them. But others swiveled toward him and opened their petals. Reflective sap coating those petals of the burnflower caught the sun’s light and shone it in concentrated form at the hermit. His gray robe smoldered in numerous places, then exploded in flames. The last she saw of him, he was running toward the shelter of his little rock home, smacking at the fire and screaming curses.
“Where did that burnflower come from?” Sellis asked as she limped toward them.
Myrana shrugged. “Perhaps he was somehow using its heat to attack us,” she speculated. “And caused it to manifest before him.”
“Good an explanation as any I can think of,” Sellis said. “Let’s get away before he returns.”
They started off once more, heading directly for the spring on the far wall. Before they had taken fifteen paces, Kalipher’s furious voice sounded behind them. “You haven’t seen the last of Kalipher!” he cried. “The next intruders in Kalipher’s valley will taste Kalipher’s true wrath, this Kalipher swears!”
“Let’s make sure it’s not us,” Myrana said. “I’d as soon never see Kalipher again.”
“I agree. There’s nothing here we’d need anyway,” Sellis said. He laughed—but he hurried his pace, just the same.
Siemhouk lounged on her pillows, chatting with three of her fellow—but lesser—templars, all as naked as she, when her brother came to the door. “Sister!” Dhojakt barked. “I would speak with you. Alone!”
Siemhouk lifted her eyebrows, and the templars took her meaning. They rose, bade hurried goodbyes, and departed, squeezing through the door to avoid any physical contact with the monstrous form that her father insisted was related to her. He shifted his cilops-like lower half, on its dozens of short, pointed legs, to let them pass.
He wanted something from her, otherwise he wouldn’t have pretended at politeness.
“Come in, then,” Siemhouk said, showing her impatience. The templars had been boring, their chatter inane, their machinations and the ambitions they served petty. But then, few in Nibenay were her intellectual equals. Dhojakt, perhaps. Still, she hated talking to him if it meant having to look at him. His centipede’s legs twitched as he skittered into the room, hooked claws clicking on the floor. He was more human from the waist up, but that insectlike lower section protruding from his sarami was too unpleasant to look at. At least had the good grace to spend most of his time in the shadows.
“You needn’t have snapped,” she told Dhojakt as he settled his ridiculous form. “My friends would have gone if you had asked me with the respect I deserve.”
“Were they offended?” Dhojakt asked. He scratched his muzzle with one hand, as human as hers, but that face—the flaring nostrils, the tiny ears flush with the bottom of his jaw, the bulging eyes, so like the single orb of a cilops but paired, and smaller—was decidedly not. “And is there some reason you believe I care?”
“I know you care not in the least,” Siemhouk said. “And honestly? It’s true, most of our father’s wives are insipid creatures who can’t formulate a thought more complex than to wonder if Father cares more for some other wife than he does them. But I’m human, after all.” She emphasized the word, jabbing him with it like a dagger. “I need company from time to time.”
“Not I,” Dhojakt said. His high voice had an unpleasant rasp to it, like a hinge rarely used. “I need only my studies to keep me company.”
Looking like you do, Siemhouk thought, then broke it off. It would be too easy for him to read her mind, and although she could block him just as easily, who knew what he might pick up in that initial probe?
“Is that what brings you here?” she asked. “Something you’ve learned?”
“I was in Father’s private library,” he said. She knew it welclass="underline" corridor upon corridor lined with shelves, from the floor to a ceiling so high up it took tall ladders to reach the upper sections, and one had to carry a candle or lantern aloft because the light from the wall lamps didn’t reach that high. If there was a larger collection of knowledge anywhere on Athas, she didn’t know of it.
“And?”
“And I discovered some interesting information.”
“About what?”
“About Akrankhot.”
“That city that Kadya is looking for?”
“Don’t feign ignorance, dear sister, it isn’t becoming. I know that you campaigned to have Kadya lead the expedition to Akrankhot. I know that a dead man promised huge stores of metal could be found there, and I understand as well as you the strategic significance of that metal to Nibenay, as well as the benefit to whoever is responsible for fetching it back here.”
“Little escapes you, my brother.”
“Precious little indeed. But I believe I have learned something about Akrankhot that escaped you.”
“Hardly surprising, since I know nothing of the city save what the undead mercenary told us.” Siemhouk shifted her position on the silk pillows. She was growing bored again, and wanted her brother to get to the point. “Will you share what you’ve learned?”
“I suppose.” Of course he would; that was the reason he had come here. Just telling her that he knew something wasn’t nearly satisfaction enough for him.
Dhojakt shifted his many feet again, and picked up a pillow in the claws of a couple. As he spoke, he tore the pillow apart, scattering shreds here and there. “Eons ago, in a time that some scholars call the Gray Age, a war between gods and primordials had ended, but left Athas in a troubled way. Arcane magics had become prevalent, although not nearly to the extent that defiling magic later savaged the world.”
“Defiling magic you’re happy to use, when it suits you,” she pointed out.
“I never said otherwise. At any rate, the primordials, in their battle against the gods, ripped the very fabric of the world. Who knows what they let in, during that time, from the Gray or the Astral Sea? And who knows what the primitive but powerful magics being employed here did to whatever dared enter? At any rate, according to these histories I found, one being that became troublesome in those days was a demon known as Tallik. Perhaps this demon was summoned by some fledgling sorcerer, who then proved unable to control it. There were others about, however, with power enough to intercede, and one of them, or several, imprisoned Tallik beneath what was, at the time, a major city.”
“Let me guess,” Siemhouk said. The story had entertained her, momentarily, but the ending was too easily grasped. And she had already glimpsed the demon’s work, in the undead man who had journeyed all the way to Nibenay to tell the Shadow King about the discovery. “Under Akrankhot.”
“That’s right. So at your suggestion, a templar loyal to you is about to disturb the prison of a demon—one not powerful to stand against the primordials who slew gods, but quite possibly more than powerful enough to threaten all of Athas as we know it.”
“Sounds exciting,” Siemhouk said. “If it brings some color to our lives, then—”
Dhojakt interrupted his sister. “If it’s excitement you want, I can tell Father. His reaction should offer quite a large respite from boredom.”
Now Siemhouk was intrigued. She had to think fast, to strategize. Dhojakt wouldn’t threaten to tell Father unless there was something in it for him—he had to think that Father would be pleased enough by this knowledge to reward him in some way. Why would it please Father? Because if the demon were to become a threat, better to know about it in advance, to be able to prepare for its coming? Or because the possibility existed that the demon, more than the metal, might become a weapon Nibenay could wield against his foes?