Riv sneered. “Ask your lover,” he said. “He’s the mindbender.”
“I’ll know the answer soon enough,” Tithian said, thrusting his hand into his shoulder satchel. “And if you ever again refer to me as anything but King or Mighty One, you’ll beg for your death.”
Riv blanched. The king had pulled spell components from the sack often enough that the headman recognized the gesture as a threatening one. What Riv did not realize was that Tithian could also withdraw a venomous viper, a vial of acid, or any one of a dozen other tools of murder from inside. The sack was magical, and it could hold an unlimited supply of items without appearing full.
Riv glared at Tithian for a moment, then hissed, “As you wish, Mighty One.”
Tithian spun toward the center of the village, signaling for Korla and Riv to follow him. As they moved through the dust haze, they passed a dozen stone huts shaped like beehives. Inside most buildings, haggard women furiously packed their meager possessions-sacks of chadnuts, stone knives, clay cooking pots, and bone-tipped hunting spears. Outside, the men gathered the family goraks, knee-high lizards with colorful dorsal fans. It was a slow, difficult process, for the stubborn reptiles were engrossed in overturning rocks and catching insects with their long, sticky tongues.
The king and his companions reached the village plaza. In the center was the communal well, a deep hole encircled by a simple railing of gorak bones. A small crowd of children surrounded the pit, arguing in panicked voices and elbowing each other out of the way as they struggled to fill their waterskins.
On the far side of the plaza, outside the hut the king had confiscated from Riv, lay an obsidian orb larger than a man, with languorous streaks of scarlet swimming over its glassy surface. It was the Dark Lens, both the source of Tithian’s power and the means through which he would achieve his greatest ambition: to become an immortal sorcerer-king.
The Dark Lens had once belonged to Athas’s first sorcerer, Rajaat. Thousands of years ago, the ancient sage had started a genocidal war to cleanse Athas of races he considered impure. To assist him, Rajaat had used the Lens to make a group of immortal champions, each dedicated to destroying one race.
After dozens of centuries of fighting, the champions had learned that their master intended to strip them of their powers. They had rebelled, using the Dark Lens to lock Rajaat into a mystical prison. Then they had transformed their leader, Borys of Ebe, into the Dragon, appointing him to guard the prison forever. The other champions had each claimed one of the cities of Athas to rule as immortal sorcerer-kings.
Tithian intended to kill the Dragon and free Rajaat. In return, he had been promised that the ancient sorcerer would bless him with the immortal powers of a champion. Unfortunately, the Tyrian king could not hope to kill his prey alone. Borys was a master of the Way, sorcery, and physical combat, and the Dark Lens would make Tithian powerful enough to challenge the Dragon only in the Way.
The king knew who could help him: his former slaves Rikus and Sadira. A champion gladiator, Rikus carried a magical sword that had been forged by Rajaat himself, while Sadira’s body had been imbued with the magical energies of Rajaat’s mystic castle. Together, the three of them would have the power to destroy Borys.
Of course, Tithian realized that it would not be easy to induce his ex-slaves to help. For their own reasons, they were as anxious to kill the Dragon as the king was, but they were also smart enough not to trust the Tyrian ruler. So, to lure them into helping him, Tithian had sent them a fraudulent message in the name of their friend Agis of Asticles. In it, he had claimed that Agis had recovered the Dark Lens and had asked them to meet the noble in Samarah. To convince them the summons was real, he had included the Asticles signet ring. Once they arrived, he would make up a lie about how the noble had died after sending the message. Then the king would convince them to let him take Agis’s place and help them kill Borys.
Tithian had reached the far side of the village square. The sentry the king had left to watch the Dark Lens showed himself. He was a disembodied head with grossly bloated cheeks and narrow, dark eyes. He had a mouthful of broken teeth and wore his coarse hair in a topknot. The bottom of his leathery neck had been stitched shut with black thread.
“What’d you find in the harbor?” the sentry asked, floating toward Tithian.
“It’s a fleet, Sacha,” the king reported.
Sacha’s dark eyes opened wide. “That’s impossible.” He glanced at the obsidian orb. “As long as we have the Dark Lens, Andropinis can’t find us.”
“Then what are his ships doing in the harbor?” Tithian growled.
“How should I know?” sneered the head. “You’re the one who controls the Lens. I suggest you use it.”
Tithian lashed out to snatch Sacha’s topknot, missed, and silently cursed. His slow reflexes still surprised him occasionally, for his body had grown frail and old just a few weeks earlier. In the course of stealing the Dark Lens from the giant tribes in the Sea of Silt, the king had been forced to outwit its guardians: a pair of dwarven banshees named Jo’orsh and Sa’ram. Before he could send them away, the spirits had stolen what remained of his youth, burdening him with aching joints, shortness of breath, and all the other afflictions of old age.
Leaving Korla and Riv behind, Tithian spread his arms and stepped toward the Dark Lens. As he approached, waves of blistering heat rose off the glassy orb and seared his old man’s body clear to the brittle bones. Clenching his teeth, he laid his hands on the scorching surface. From beneath his palms came a soft hiss, and the smell of charred flesh filled his nostrils. The king did not cry out. He looked past the surface and gazed into the utter blackness of the Dark Lens.
Tithian opened himself to the power of the black orb. His hands seemed to meld with its surface, and its blistering heat ceased to bum his flesh. A torrent of energy rushed from the Lens into his arms, flowing down into his spiritual nexus, the place deep within his abdomen where the three energies of the Way-mental, physical, and spiritual-joined to form the core of his being.
Tithian focused his thoughts on Samarah’s harbor, concentrating on what he would see there if the dust haze were not obscuring his vision. In the black depths of the Dark Lens rose an image of twenty schooners, each depicted clearly in ghostly red light. The first ship was just sailing into the narrow strait that served as the harbor’s mouth. Inside his mind the king heard the creaking of masts and the pop of flapping canvas. The visual image was so clear that he could see the gaunt slaves shuffling along with yardarm ropes as they furled the sails. On the main deck, hairless dwarves labored around a capstan as they struggled to raise the keel boards, and in the stern the shipfloater stared into a black dome of obsidian. From his own experience aboard Balican schooners, Tithian knew that the shipfloater was using the Way to infuse the dome with the spiritual energy that kept the ship from sinking into the dust.
“Find out if Andropinis is with them,” suggested Sacha, hovering at Tithian’s side. “If he isn’t, even an incompetent like you can destroy the fleet.”
“And if he is?” Tithian demanded.
Sacha did not answer.
Tithian shifted his attention to a particularly large schooner near the center of the fleet. Unlike the other ships, this one had narrow banners snapping from the top of its masts, identifying it as the flagship. The king focused all his attention on the craft, closing the others out of his mind. He felt a surge of mystical energy rush from deep within his body, and the ship’s image gradually enlarged until it was the only one visible.