Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 1 - The Verdent Passage (36 page)

When the swarm of guards stopped below the gallery, Tithian stepped to the edge of the
porch and regarded the pair with a spiteful glare in his eyes. Rikus and Neeva glared
back, their faces betraying distrust and hatred of the high templar. Agis moved forward,
so he would no longer be hidden in the shadows below the canopy. Neeva's clenched jaw
relaxed, but Rikus's expression merely changed from hatred to defiance.

“Bring your prisoners to the gallery,” Tithian said, speaking to the man who had assumed
command of the mob.

The templar looked uneasy. “We're assigned directly to the High Templar of the King's
Safety,” he said. “Larkyn has instructed us to accept orders only from him.”

Tithian glanced at the chair where Larkyn's body sat slumped. Though the man's eyes were
closed and he was not moving, that was the only visible of evidence of his death. If
anyone in the stands could see into the shadows engulfing the gallery, Agis hoped it would
appear to there that the high templar was merely sleeping in the chair.

“I'm afraid the attack on our king has left Larkyn indisposed,” Tithian said, looking back
to the fighting field. “Bring the prisoners to him, and he'll attend to them from his
chair.”

The templar looked uncomfortable, but nodded his assent. He prodded the two prisoners
toward the edge of the arena.

Tithian retreated into the shadows of the canopy. “Now what?” the high templar asked,
staring at the king's balcony. “Kalak is a thousand years old. I doubt that he'll do us
the favor of dying from his wound.”

Agis could only shrug. He was beginning to think Rikus had been right in hesitating to
attack without a better plan.

A messenger poked his head into the gallery. “High One, a noblewoman insists upon seeing
you.”

“What does she want?” Tithian demanded. He looked past the guard and frowned at the
partition that screened the gallery from the balcony grandstands behind it. “Who is she?”

“Her name is Sadira of Asticles,” he answered. “SheÑ”

“Send her up,” Tithian interrupted. He faced Agis and snickered. “Sadira of
Asticles?”

Agis felt the heat rise to his cheeks. “Not. . . formally, my friend,” he said, wondering
at the implications of the sorceress's choice of title.

A moment later, Sadira stepped onto the porch, her chest heaving. Her silk cape was
tattered and ripped, and the silver circlet was missing from her head. Agis went to her
side and took her arm. “What's wrong? Are you hurt?”

“The mob is getting ugly,” she answered breathlessly. She stopped just beneath the canopy
and braced herself on Ktandeo's cane.

Agis glanced out the front of the gallery. Across the fighting field, the crowd swarmed
toward the gates. Fighting had broken out in dozens of places, most of the brawls
involving spectators trying to force their way into the locked exit tunnels. Outside the
High Templars' Gallery, hundreds of voices were demanding that the gates be opened and
that Rikus and Neeva be freed.

Ignoring the tumult erupting in the stands, Tithian stepped to Agis's side. With a
sarcastic smile, he took Sadira's hand and said, “Lady Asticles,
I can't tell you how it pleases me to see you again.”

He started to kiss her hand, but Sadira jerked it away. “I assume you're with us,” she
snapped. “Agis would have killed you by now if you supported Kalak.”

Tithian cast an exaggerated look of hurt in Agis's direction, but did not seem surprised
or angry. He faced Sadira again and said, “At this point, girl, I'm not against you.”

“Open the exits,” Sadira demanded. She pointed toward the grandstands across the arena,
where Larkyn's half-giants were trying
to
clear the gateways by smashing spectators with their heavy bone clubs.

“The gates can't be raised,” Tithian answered. “Kalak had the chains cut.”

Before Sadira could respond, Rikus and Neeva came up the stairs. They were followed by two
of Larkyn's templars. Both held short swords pressed against the gladiators' backs. Though
Neeva's steps were slow and measured, she seemed to have recovered much of the strength
lost in her battle with the gaj.

Agis leaned close to Sadira and whispered, “Keep your dagger ready and follow
my
lead.”

Though she looked confused, the sorceress slipped a hand beneath her cape and nodded.

Tithian led the two gladiators and their guards to the front of the porch. Agis and Sadira
followed, taking care to stay behind Larkyn's men.

The leader peered over Rikus's shoulder at the slouched body of his commander. “High One?”

Tithian said, “He's dead.”

Keeping their daggers concealed beneath their robes just in case anyone outside the shady
gallery could see what was happening, Agis and Sadira stepped up behind the two templars.
They pressed the tips of their weapons to the men's backs.

Tithian said, “You two have a simple choice to make: stay quiet and live, or sound the
alarm and die.”

“The king willÑ”

“Probably kill us all,” Tithian interrupted. “That has nothing to do with your choice.
Drop your weapons or die.” When both men let their swords clatter to the floor, the high
templar added, “A wise decision. Lest you change your minds, remember that I have just
given Rikus and Neeva their freedom. If you so much as move, they'll kill you in the blink
of an eye. Given the chaos in the stands, I doubt anyone will notice.”

Tithian waved the two templars to the front of the gallery, where they would be easy to
watch. Once the templars had done as ordered, Neeva asked, “Agis, what's all this about
Larkyn? I thought Tithian was in charge of the games.”

Agis described the complication he had run into when he asked Tithian to secure their
escape, and explained how they had improvised a solution by luring Larkyn into the gallery
and murdering him.

When the noble finished, Tithian said, “At the moment, Larkyn is hardly the issue. What
are you going to do about Kalak? I doubt your little pinprick will stop him from
proceeding with his
plan.”

“We'll have to track him down and finish him off,” Rikus said coldly.

Neeva regarded the mul with a look of surprise. “Is this the same man who said he wanted
no part in getting his friends killed?”

“I finish what I start. You know that,” Rikus replied. “Besides, if we don't destroy Kalak
now, he won't rest until he kills us. Let's go.”

“The Golden Tower is a big place,” Tithian said. “Perhaps it would help if you knew where
to find the king before you entered it.”

“Of course it would,” Agis said. “Are you saying you can help us?”

The high templar nodded. “I'll want something in return.”

“Isn't living enough?” Sadira snapped. “Help us or die, it's that simple.”

Tithian gave her a condescending smirk. “Nothing is ever that simple.”

“It is this time,” Rikus said, moving toward the high templar. “No purple caterpillar is
going to stop me from killing you now.”

Agis stepped
between the mul and Tithian. “Let's hear him out.”

Rikus shook his head and started to circle around the noble, but Neeva pressed her hand
against the mul's chest. “What is it you want, Tithian?” she asked, still watching
Larkyn's men from the corner of her eye.

Smiling, the high templar said, “I'm not asking for much, but it occurs to me that after
you kill Kalak, Tyr will need a new king.”

“Never!” cried Sadira.

Rikus and Neeva added their protests in the form of disgusted snorts, then Agis asked,
“Why would we change one tyrant for another?”

“Because without a king, Tyr will fall into chaos,” the high templar replied, nonplussed
by the objections.

“Someone will have to run the city. Otherwise, it will fall into ruins as surely as if
Kalak becomes a dragon. Who better to assume that position than a templar? We've been
running the city for a thousand yearsÑ”

“And we all know what you've made of it!” Agis objected.

“Then help me make it better,” Tithian urged. He almost sounded sincere.

Agis suddenly felt the familiar tingle of life force being pulled from his body. He looked
to Sadira.

“I feel it, too,” she said. “Something's drawing power from us.”

A cacophony of panic erupted in the stadium. Agis stepped to the back of the gallery and
pulled aside one of the heavy curtains shielding the porch from the grandstands.

In scattered places, aged men and women clutched at their chests and dropped gasping to
the ground. Stronger spectators screamed in anger, attacking half-giants and templars with
stones or
seats they had pulled from the terraces. They pushed and shoved into the exit tunnels,
trying in vain to force the gates open. The mob succeeded only in crushing those who had
entered the passageways first. In many places, Larkyn's guards organized counterattacks
against the crowd, the templars firing lightning bolts and the half-giants clubbing anyone
within reach.

Amidst all the confusion, more than a few hands were pointing toward the summit of the
great ziggurat. A small geyser of burgundy flame was shooting from the
lop
of the structure. A moment later, a billowing cloud of yellow smoke replaced the pillar of
fire. Rikus and Neeva asked, “What's happening?” “Kalak has started his incubation,”
Sadira answered, pointing toward the obsidian pyramid. “He's drawing the life out of the
spectators.”

Agis looked in the direction the sorceress pointed. The air around the pyramid shimmered
with raw energy, and waves of flaxen light scintillated over the structure's glassy
surface. Deep within the thing's black heart glowed a steady golden light that grew
brighter even as the senator watched.

“Well?” Tithian asked. “The longer we delay, the weaker we become and the stronger Kalak
grows.”

“You
will
have to make Tyr a better place,” Agis said. “The first thing will be to free the slaves.”

“Of course,” Tithian replied. “You have my word on it.”

*****

The Golden Tower was every bit as large as it appeared from the outside. It had a
floorplan as twisted as the tangled branches of a faro tree, with dimly lit halls arranged
in spiral patterns, gloomy rooms built in warped shapes, and dark nooks that sewed no
apparent purpose except to make a passerby wonder what lurked in them.

Nevertheless, the group had little trouble following Kalak. A trail of black, steaming
fluid that Agis took to be blood led the way deeper and deeper into the palace. Every time
they rounded a corner, the noble cringed, expecting to meet some hideous beast Kalak kept
to guard his home. Tithian, however, moved with the speed and confidence of someone who
knew what surprises the palace did and did not contain.

At last, after they had descended to the foundations of the ancient tower, they reached a
cavernous, circular vault. It was lit by an alabaster ceiling panel set into a grid of
copper-plated beams. In the shadowy squares between the beams hung carved reliefs of
beasts and races that Agis had never before seen. At the edges of the ceiling, fluted
columns of granite, capped with sculpted leaves and flowers of strange shapes, rose from
the floor to support the rafters. Between these columns stood dozens of rows of shelving,
empty save for a few ancient steel weapons.

Tithian held a finger to his lips, then led the four companions to the other side of the
room. In the shadows near the wall, the huge bodies of Kalak's two half-giant guards
rested on the floor. The shattered remains of an obsidian ball were scattered over the
area, and two more globes, still intact, sat nearby. Between the two corpses lay the dark
circle of an open trap door.

As they stopped to inspect the bodies, a voice said, “Sacha, isn't that your worthy
descendant, Tithian of Mericles?”

Agis and the others brought their weapons to ready defense positions.

“So it is, Wyan,” answered another voice. “It is. Such a handsome fellow, too. Perhaps he
could find it in his heart to open a vein in those half-giants and feed us.”

To his astonishment, Agis saw that the voices came from a pair of heads sitting on a
shadowy shelf. He grabbed a steel sword and started to approach the abominations, but
Tithian laid a hand on the noble's shoulder and restrained him.

“What are they?” Agis asked.

“Kalak's friends,” the high templar answered. “The last time I was here, they called me a
snake-faced runt.” “That was Sacha!” objected Wyan. “I wouldn't blame you if you left him
to starve.”

“Ignore them. They're harmless, as long as you don't get too close.” Tithian used his toe
to nudge the desiccated body of a half-giant. It fell apart like a wasp's nest. “What
caused this?”

Sadira motioned to one of the obsidian globes. “Kalak drained their life away,” she said.

Tithian's eyes lit up, and he retrieved one of the ebony balls. “Show me how to use it,
and I'llÑ”

“Not in a hundred yearsÑeven if that were the way dragon magic worked,” Sadira said.

The templar frowned. “Dragon magic?”

“Obsidian isn't magical, it's just a tool. Like any tool, it's only as powerful as the
person using it,” the sorceress explained, echoing the words Nok had used to explain the
properties of the glassy rock. “To a hunter, it's just a knife or an arrowhead. To a
dragon, it's a lens that converts life force into magicÑbut
you'll
never use it for that.”

“Why not?'' Tithian demanded, motioning at Sadira's cane. ”You are."

The half-elf shook her head. “The spells are in the cane.
It
draws the energy through the pommel, not me,” she said, her tone somewhat regretful.
“Dragon magic relies on psionics and sorcery together. To use it, you must be a master of
pulling energy from your body and a genius at shaping it into spells. It's the most
difficult kind of sorcery, but it's also the most powerful.”

“And the more time we spend here, the more powerful Kalak becomes,” Agis said, unsheathing
the ancient sword he had taken from the shelf. “I suggest we get on with it.”