“Then all you have to do to save the Dragon is kill one child and return to the Oracle. But I’m sure you’ll see that your king is right, or I would never suggest such a thing to you,” Tithian said. In truth, it did not matter to him whether the spirits protected Neeva’s child or killed the young mul, so long as they left Tithian alone with the Dark Lens. “Now go! You have no choice, for your king has summoned you. You must keep the pledges you made when you were alive!”
He’s right, Jo’orsh, said Sa’ram. We must see what has become of the world. It may be that we’ve done more harm than good.
“And it may be that we’re about to,” Jo’orsh responded. “But we shall see.”
The two spirits started up toward the surface, Sa’ram carrying the belt and Jo’orsh the crown. Tithian watched them for a short time, then started down the tunnel. With the two spirits gone, all that separated him from the lens were a few yards of darkness.
THIRTEEN
THE BATTLE OF TITANS
“Forget Mag’r! You’re going to lose the oracle to Tithian!” said Agis.
“The Oracle can take care of itself,” grunted Nal, paying little heed to his prisoner.
Agis sat in the crook of the bawan’s elbow, where he had been trapped since being delivered by the Poison Pack. The noble and his beasthead captor were peering out from behind a jagged merlon, watching Joorsh warriors wade back and forth through the Bay of Woe. The giants were filling the sails of Balican schooners with boulders from Lybdos’s rocky shores, then slinging the makeshift sacks over their shoulders and returning to their battle posts in the silt to hurl the stones at the Saram castle.
As Agis and Nal watched, a group of Joorsh launched a flurry of boulders in their direction. A half dozen smashed into the ramparts with thunderous booms, shaking the castle to its foundations and dislodging jagged chunks of wall. One missile knocked a hanging turret from its buttress, plunging the screaming beasthead inside to his death. Two more struck Saram warriors in the heads, drawing geysers of hot blood and stunned death cries. Another stone shattered the merlon behind which Nal stood, sending a painful crash through Agis’s ears and gashing his face with jagged shards of stone.
“It seems the battle is going against your tribe,” Agis observed, using his sleeve to wipe the blood from his face.
“I didn’t have you removed from the crystal pit because I value your observations,” replied the bawan.
Nal moved past several of his own stone-hurlers to find a new position on the wall. He stopped behind a free merlon and peered out over the isthmus connecting Castle Feral’s peninsula to the forests of Lybdos. At the far end of the causeway, Sachem Mag’r stood on the island’s shore, as tall as the thorny trees behind him and twice as round. He was flanked by thirty of his largest warriors, all with kank-shell bucklers strapped to their forearms and spiked, schooner-mast war clubs resting over their shoulders. In front of this company stood twelve more warriors, six to each side of the causeway and waist deep in dust. Between them, the two lines held a massive battering ram, capped with a wedge-shaped head of granite. To deflect boulders dropped on them from the castle walls, these giants wore crude, mekillot-bone armor over their shoulders and heads.
To one side of the isthmus sat the Shadow Viper, half-submerged in the silt bay and turned so that its bow ballistae and the port catapults could fire at the castle. Behind the ship stood a pair of Joorsh warriors, using mekillot shells to shield the decks from Saram boulders and shouting commands at the weapon crews.
The catapults and ballistae clattered, launching two massive spears and a volley of stones. Nal ducked as the boulders sailed over the walls, but the crow-headed warrior at the next merlon was not so quick. The barbed tip of a harpoon came shooting out of his neck, scattering blood-soaked feathers in all directions. A garbled cackle rattling from his beak, he fell at his bawan’s side.
Nal put a foot on the warrior’s chest to hold him still. Cradling Agis in one arm, the bawan grabbed the base of the spear with his free hand.
“As bad as this looks, the Joorsh are the least of your worries,” Agis said, cringing as the bawan snapped the shaft off. “You’ve got to do something about Tithian, or neither you nor Mag’r will have the Oracle when the battle is over.”
“Even if the Oracle did not have its own defenses, it is protected,” the bawan said. He rolled the wounded warrior over, grabbing the spear just behind its barbed head. “A Poison Pack sentry remains with it.”
“One sentry!” Agis objected, realizing that Nal had just inadvertently revealed the location of the lens. When the noble had been plucked from the crystal pit, the bat-headed Saram who had been sent to fetch him had spoken of being summoned from the Mica Yard. “A single guard won’t stop Tithian.”
“A member of the Poison Pack is no ordinary guard,” Nal responded, slowly pulling the shaft through the crow-head’s throat.
“Tithian is no ordinary man,” Agis replied. “If you won’t kill him yourself, let me do it for you.”
“What kind of fool do you take me for?” scoffed the bawan. The broken end of the harpoon emerged from the wound. “Do you expect me to believe you’d kill your companion on my behalf?”
“Not on your behalf,” replied Agis. “On my own. Tithian betrayed me.”
“You’re wasting your breath,” said Nal. “I won’t fall for your ruse.”
“It’s no ruse,” Agis insisted. “Tithian and I were never partners. We each wanted the Oracle for our own reasons.”
“And I suppose you no longer want it?” mocked Nal. He tossed aside the broken spear. “You’ve suddenly decided that killing Tithian is more important than the Dark Lens?”
“You were inside Tithian’s head!” Agis objected, avoiding a direct answer to the question. “You know what he’ll do if he gets the Oracle!”
The bawan nodded. “That’s true. I also know what he intends for you.” He ripped the crow-head’s breechcloth off the warrior’s loins, then stuffed the filthy rag into the gaping wound to stanch the bleeding. “If you know as well, you could be telling the truth.”
“Let me go after him,” Agis pressed.
Before replying, Nal rose back to his feet, pulling the wounded warrior along with him. “Back to your post!”
The crow-head obeyed, looking dizzy and weak. His feathery ears twitching in irritation, Nal turned his full attention to Agis. “No. However much you despise Tithian, you still want the Oracle for yourself,” he said. “Besides, you must repay me for all the trouble you caused by freeing the Castoffs.”
“How?” Agis asked.
Nal pointed across the causeway to where Mag’r stood with his bodyguards.
“Surely, you don’t think I can kill the sachem single-handedly?” Agis asked.
“No, but if Mag’r has not yet assaulted the gate, it’s because he still hopes you’ll open it. I want you to oblige him,” said the bawan. “The Poison Pack will take care of the rest.”
The bawan pointed toward the gate area. The company of fanged warriors that had fetched Agis from the crystal pit now stood waiting on the cliff overlooking the entry yard. In addition to their steel-tipped lances, each member of the pack had an entire cartload of boulders sitting nearby.
“It seems a risky plan,” Agis observed. “Once the gates are open-”
“I’ll kill Mag’r, and that will end the battle-if not the war,” Nal interrupted. “The Joorsh chiefs will fall to bickering over the next sachem. By the time they sort the matter out, my reinforcements will arrive from the outer islands to replace our losses against the Balican fleet-and I will have returned the Castoffs to their pit.”
After he spoke these last words, he snapped his beak closed with an angry clack and lowered his head toward Agis. For a moment, the noble feared that Nal would attack him, then the bawan said, “It’s the least you can do to repay me for what you have done.”