“How unfortunate for you,” sneered Nibenay. The sorcerer-king stepped toward the slope, emboldened now that he was sure they did not have the Dark Lens. “Then there’s nothing to stop me from repaying the mul for my injury.”
The Oba grabbed him by the stub that had sprouted from his severed arm. “Leave them for later,” she ordered, looking toward the cliff rising above the edge of the plain. “If the Usurper frees Rajaat, we’ll need your help. It would be a shame if we didn’t have it because they were lucky enough to kill you.”
Nibenay jerked away, leaving his freshly grown stub in the Oba’s hand. “It wasn’t your arm he cut off!”
“Then attack if you wish, but you’ll do it alone.” The sorcerer-queen pointed at the distant cliff, where a dark spout of energy was rising into the sky. It had punched a hole in the stormy red clouds of the ash storm. Through this breach poured the golden light of the Athasian moons, casting eerie shadows over the edge of the plains. “The rest of us have other concerns.”
Andropinis cursed. “The fool Usurper has taken the Lens into the city.”
Andropinis started toward the city at a run, simultaneously preparing to cast a spell. The other sorcerer-kings turned and followed. Only Nibenay lingered behind, his palm turned toward the ground.
“This won’t take a moment,” he hissed.
Rikus grabbed the Scourge’s hilt and hurled the broken sword at the sorcerer-king. The weapon tumbled end over end, beads of black resin flying off the blade and creating a line of dark spatters down the slope. Nibenay lunged away, rolling over his shoulder across the coarse scoria. The shard clanged to the ground two paces behind him.
The sorcerer-king jumped to his feet and looked toward Rikus. He started to speak an incantation but suddenly stopped and stared at the hillside in horror. The black bubbles from the Scourge had connected with each other and had stretched into a long thin line. The two sides pulled apart like lips, revealing a mouthful of huge fangs.
“Soon, Gallard,” the mouth said. It was using the name by which Nibenay had gone when he had been a champion. “Very soon.”
A long, green tongue shot from the dark fissure, lashing out for the sorcerer-king. Nibenay cried out in alarm and pointed his finger at the thing, screaming his incantation. A red bolt streaked from his finger, blasting the appendage into a hundred pieces. The mouth laughed, and another tongue snaked out from between its lips.
Nibenay backed away then turned and ran after the other sorcerer-kings.
SEVENTEEN
UR DRAXA
His serpent’s body coiled tightly about the Dark Lens, Tithian lay beneath a looming wall of granite, just outside the tunnel he had bored through an enormous foundation block. Before him stood a silent thicket of trees, with supple trunks that quietly swayed in the moonlit night, like slave dancers welcoming him to the city. Each had only a single blue leaf, as large as a sail and stretched tight over a dome-shaped network of branches. Neatly groomed paths curved through the shadows beneath their boughs, suggesting he had entered some sort of park.
Tithian hardly noticed the beauty of the place; his attention remained fixed entirely on the Dark Lens. When he had emerged from his tunnel, a surge of energy had risen from the ground, through him, and into the Lens. Dozens of smoky tendrils had begun to dance over the top of the orb. They had twined themselves together in a crackling spout of force and had risen into the sky, parting the red storm raging overhead.
“Get moving,” said Sacha, floating through the tunnel. As the head’s words carried into the thicket ahead, they faded without an echo. “The sorcerer-kings are flying across the plain.”
Tithian gestured at the black spout. “Something’s wrong.” he said. “I didn’t do this.”
Sacha rolled his sunken eyes. “Try not to be such a cretin.” he said. “Rajaat’s watching.”
Tithian began to uncoil himself, keeping the Lens gripped in his tail. “What’s happening?”
“The Lens is overloaded, so it’s discharging its excess energy.”
“Overloaded?”
“You’re near Rajaat’s prison. The Lens is drawing energy from the spell that keeps it intact,” Sacha explained, his tone deliberately patronizing. “Did you think the Lens took its power from the sun alone?”
As a matter of fact, that was exactly what Tithian had thought, but he did not give Sacha the pleasure of hearing him confess his mistake.
“Which way now?” he asked, looking deeper into the silent park.
“How would I know?” demanded Sacha. “How many times do you think I’ve been to Ur Draxa?”
A man slipped from behind one of the trees ahead. He wore a peculiar suit of armor fashioned from brightly painted human ribs, with a massive helmet carved from the squarish skull of some fanged race of half-man. The stranger carried a steel halberd with an ornately shaped blade that looked more suitable for displaying on a palace wall than fighting. Though the man moved with no particular care, his footsteps fell as softly as those of an elven hunter-leading the king to suspect the wood’s eerie silence had more to do with magic than tranquility.
The newcomer pointed his weapon at Tithian and motioned for him to lie on the ground. When the king did not obey, the man raised his halberd, and a hundred more warriors stepped from behind the trees. Their leather armor was not so fine as that of their leader, but the spears they carried looked much more practical than the man’s halberd.
“We don’t have time for this,” Sacha snarled. “Kill him.”
Deciding to take a lesson from the Dragon, Tithian visualized a great storm of fire erupting from his mouth. An incredible surge of energy gushed from the Dark Lens, blazing through the king’s body with such ferocity that he feared he would explode. A blinding white cone of flame erupted from his mouth, engulfing the officer and the warriors behind him. Tithian did not even see the thicket burn. The huge leaves and the branches vanished in a flash, then the ground was littered with scorched boles and blackened skulls. Only the edges of the small wood had escaped the instant devastation, and even they were starting to burn.
“Well done,” said a voice at Tithian’s side.
The king whipped his head around. At first, he did not see the speaker, then he glimpsed a pair of flickering blue eyes. They were looking up at him from the faint shadow his moonlit body cast on the ground. As Tithian watched, the silhouette slowly peeled itself off the dirt and changed into a more manlike form-though it was only about the size and shape of a halfling.
“Who are you?” Tithian watched a nose and a pair of lips form on the thing’s face.
“How quickly you forget,” the silhouette responded. “I led you through the Black less than an hour ago.”
“Khidar?” Tithian gasped. “I thought you were a giant!”
“Of course not, you imbecile,” Sacha chided. “The shadow people are descended from the last of Rajaat’s halfling servants.”
“Shadows play strange tricks with size, do they not?” Khidar added, grinning. He now had a fully featured face, with short-cropped hair, blue eyes, an upturned nose, and bright white teeth. “Your ignorance is understandable. There weren’t many of our people. Most halflings of the Green Age wanted nothing to do with the Cleansing Wars.”
Tithian ran his eyes over the devastated park, not at all interested in the history of the shadow people. “I don’t suppose you can tell me where to find Rajaat.”
Khidar pointed a black finger toward the edge of the burning thicket. Although the halfling’s head was now completely solid, the rest of his body remained a mere shadow. “Rajaat has told me you must look for him in the heart of Ur Draxa,” Khidar said. “When those trees are gone, you’ll see a great boulevard running toward the center of the city. My scouts tell me that it ends beneath a great arch embedded in the inner wall.”