“After the rope breaks, do you really think you can streak down to the lid and tear this satchel from my death grasp before I slip through?” Agis asked.
“No,” the head admitted. “But I won’t release you until I have the satchel.”
“Then it seems we’re at a standoff,” the noble suggested.
“I think not,” said Wyan, looking toward Fylo’s unconscious form. “I think it’s time for a snack.”
With that, he streaked down to the giant’s neck.
“Don’t!” Agis yelled. “I swear-”
“You’ll do nothing-as long as you’re hanging up there,” Wyan said, settling down on Fylo’s gullet.
The head’s long tongue slipped from between his teeth and felt along the side of the giant’s neck. After a moment, it stopped probing, and Wyan drifted over to where it touched.
“A nice, strong pulse,” the head called. “I’d say this is definitely his jugular.”
With that, the disembodied head sank his teeth into the giant’s skin, ripping away a mouthful of bloody flesh. A dull moan escaped Fylo’s lips. He rolled his head toward Agis, but stirred no farther.
“Stop!” Agis demanded.
Wyan looked toward the noble. “Certainly not. A few more bites, and I’ll have my biggest feast in centuries-unless, of course, you give me the satchel,” he said.
The noble shook his head. “You’ll never finish your meal,” Agis threatened. “Without you here to harass me, it won’t take me very long to get free of these bindings.”
“I realize that,” said Wyan. “But by then, this compound will be awash in a lake of your precious giant’s blood. It’s a pity Sacha won’t be here to share it with me.”
With that, he buried his teeth in Fylo’s neck and ripped away another mouthful of flesh. Again, the giant groaned, and this time his eyes flickered. Still, Agis doubted that Fylo would wake in time to save himself.
In his own mind, the noble pictured himself as an arrow in a flexed bow, summoning what remained of his spiritual energy to animate the image. Once it was ready, he looked toward Fylo, waiting for Wyan’s next bite and hoping it wouldn’t be the one that sent the giant’s blood shooting into the air like a geyser.
Wyan spit out the flesh, then started to lap at the wound with his tongue. “Tasty,” he called. “I’ll enjoy this.”
Agis loosed the arrow, shooting his probe straight into the dark pupil of the giant’s eye. Inside, the noble found himself adrift in a black fog, illuminated only by distant, flickering flames of pain. “Fylo!” Agis screamed. “You must wake up-you’re in terrible danger!”
The giant’s head, taking the form of the morning sun, poked up from the eastern horizon. “Go ‘way,” he said, his voice rumbling across the darkness like an earthquake. “Fylo hurt.”
The sun sank below the horizon, plunging the giant’s mind back into complete darkness. Agis felt himself crash into something hard and rocky, then he tumbled down a stony slope and finally came to rest on the broken ground of a narrow ledge.
“Fylo, come back!” Agis yelled, using the Way to make his own voice as loud as the giant’s. “This is your friend, Agis.”
A halo of red light suddenly appeared above the horizon, and the noble dared to think he had roused the slumbering giant. His hope was short-lived. The glow faded a moment later, without so much as the crown of Fylo’s head appearing this time.
“Fylo, I need your help!” Agis yelled. “You must wake up and help me.”
This time the halo appeared more gradually, followed by the glowing disk of Fylo’s head, and soon even his eyes showed above the dark horizon. Finally, an entire glowing face rose into the sky. It illuminated an archipelago of craggy thought-islands jutting out of the dark, whirling sea of the giant’s anguish.
“What Agis need?” Fylo asked, peering down at the mountainous island into which the noble had crashed.
The giant’s voice whistled through the archipelago like a windstorm, stirring up shadowy spouts of dust and raising a dark haze that obscured his beaming face.
“I need you to wake up,” the noble replied. “Wyan is trying to bite your neck open, and I’m hanging from a trestle over the crystal pit. If you don’t open your eyes, we’ll both die-” The noble was cut off in midsentence as the stone vanished from beneath his feet. A blinding light burst over the archipelago, and his probe turned to ash in a flash of pain. Agis found himself completely outside Fylo’s mind. At first, he feared the giant’s death had caused his ejection.
Then the noble heard Fylo’s angry voice booming off the enclosure walls and knew that wasn’t the case. At the edge of the crystal pit, the half-breed suddenly sat up and plucked Wyan off his throat. The head’s teeth were clamped on the gray wall of a thick vein, and Agis feared that in pulling his attacker off, the giant would tear it open.
Before that happened, Fylo stopped pulling and squeezed. Wyan opened his mouth, and the giant flung his attacker away. The disembodied head struck a distant wall with an impact that would have cracked the skull of a normal man. Wyan simply bounced off and bobbed through the air, wobbly but uninjured.
Fylo shook his head clear, then raised his hand to the ghastly wound where his shoulder had been impaled. As his fingers explored the cavernous hole, he winced in pain and gazed up at the noble with a dazed expression.
Agis cast an anxious eye toward Wyan and saw that the head was already recovering his equilibrium. “Fylo, get me down from here!”
Squinting at the noble’s form, the giant pushed himself to his hands and knees. He crawled over to the bridge footings and, with a loud groan, used his uninjured arm to pull himself to his feet. He reached for the noble, then abruptly drew his hand back and braced himself against the bridge. His eyes closed. He began to sway, and Agis thought he would fall.
Wyan drifted toward the pit along a weaving, bobbing path. “Fylo, hurry!” Agis called.
The giant opened his eyes, then thrust out a shaky hand and grabbed the noble’s rope off the trestle. When he tried to pull the noble to him, however, the rope went taut against its anchor, almost unbalancing him. With an angry growl, Fylo threw himself away from the pit, giving the line in his hand an angry jerk. Agis heard the clatter of stone, then the railing to which the rope was tied broke away. Fylo tumbled back and flailed his arms wildly in an attempt to keep his balance.
The rope slipped from the giant’s grasp, and Agis sailed away. He crashed to the enclosure’s granite floor a short distance away, rolled more times than he could count, and came to a stop against a crystal wall. Despite the sharp pangs throbbing through his broken arm, Tithian’s satchel remained clutched firmly in his good hand. Somehow, he had even managed to keep the mouth pointed in the general direction of the crystal pit.
Wyan came streaking down on Agis. The disembodied head clamped his teeth firmly onto the edge of the satchel mouth, then began trying to tear the sack free.
“Wyan!” gasped Sacha.
“I can see who it is,” Tithian snarled. “Tell him not to move!”
Like Sacha, the king was staring at the sallow-skinned head that had just emerged from the gray mists ahead. It was visible only from the upper lip to the brow, as if it were peering at them through a narrow opening. More importantly, at least to Tithian’s way of thinking, it had appeared straight ahead-which suggested he was still flying in the right direction.
Sometime earlier, a stream of mystic energy had begun to pour from the Dark Lens. Tithian had started to fly in the same direction as the flow, hoping it would lead him to the exit. As hard as he had flapped his wings, however, he never seemed to reach the end of the glimmering beam. He had almost stopped following it, fearing that the effort was as pointless as every other attempt he had made to escape this place.
Then the beam flickered several times, and now here was Wyan, peering in at them. It could only mean they were approaching the exit. Tithian beat his wings harder, dragging the lens and Sacha through the gray as fast as he could.