Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 4 - Obsidian Oracle (22 page)

Agis crashed into something pulpy and warm, stopping with a terrifying abruptness that
sent a fiery ache burning through his abdomen. His head smashed into a bony rib and his
limbs slapped against hairy flesh, then a deep grunt echoed off the walls of the pit.

Agis found himself cradled in Fylo's midriff, more than a dozen yards below the pit's
crystal cover. As he looked around, he glimpsed Kester's motionless form draped over the
giant's shoulder, a dozen Cast-offs teeming over her body. The giant's head was also being
swarmed, with several glowing faces jostling for position as they each tried to slip over
his visage.

The noble rolled onto his stomach, preparing to stand, and found himself peering past
Fylo's hip into the crystal-lined depths of a black shaft. It occurred to Agis that the
half-breed had gotten lodged far above the abyss bottom, then the searing nettle of the
Cast-offs' touch erupted all over his body.

*****

Bawan Nal allowed Tithian a moment to contemplate Agis's fate, then pinched the king
between a massive thumb and finger. “Tell me what reward you expected in return for
stealing our Oracle,” the Saram ordered. He pressed his fingertips toward each other,
painfully compressing Tithian's chest. “Or must I squeeze the answer from you?”

“What does it matter to you?” the king asked. “You have no choice except to yield the
Oracle.”

The Saram's ears twitched several times, and he brought Tithian closer to his eye. “You're
the one without choices.”

As Nal's beak closed, the king heard the soft hiss of a deep breath. The bawan's eye
suddenly grew cold and still, and Tithian found his attention riveted on the yellow orb.
He tried to look away and could not.

Realizing that his mind was about to be attacked, Tithian visualized his defense: an
unbreakable net of transparent energy, so fine that not even a gnat could slip through the
mesh. At its edges, the strands were fused to the feet of a dozen huge bats, with red
flame where their eyes should have been and mouths filled with venom-dripping fangs.

Tithian had barely managed to move his trap into position before a glimmering white lion
with wings came roaring into his mind. The creature hit at a full charge, filling the dark
grotto with sizzling echoes and flashing blue sparks. The beast stretched the net across
half the cavern before Tithian's bats managed to catch up and close their web tightly
enough to bind the immense wings to its sides.

The lion roared in rage, then plummeted straight for the deepest, darkest abyss in
Tithian's mind. The king sent his bats up toward an exit. As they struggled to obey, Nal's
construct changed from flesh to rock, growing heavier and heavier, dragging its captors
deeper into the Tyrian's intellect.

Tithian summoned more energy to enlarge his bats. The effort wore on him, but he did not
stop until each bat was the size of a kes'trekel. If he let the lion escape, he knew it
would require so much energy to recapture it that he would be too weak to counterattack.

The lion's fall slowed for a moment, then the construct changed from rock to iron,
doubling in weight all at once. The beast passed out of the main grotto, dragging
Tithian's huge bats along into the black pit at the base of his mind.

The lion opened its mouth, but it was Nal's voice that came out. “Tool!” he chortled. “You
cannot overpower me. I have the Oracle!”

The construct began to claw at its net, pulling the bats down toward its reach. Calling on
the last of his strength, Tithian tried to dissolve the mesh and let Nal's construct fall
free, but he was too late. The beast had the bats by their legs, and as it continued
through the darkness, it clawed and gnawed at their stomachs. Within instants, it had
devoured the Tyrian's ambushers and was plunging freely toward the center of the king's
mind. It did not even bother to flap its wings and break the fall.

A short time later, there was a deafening reverberation as the lion's iron body struck the
bottom of the pit. It gave a great roar, and golden beams began to shine from its eyes.
“Let's see what you're hiding down here, shall we?”

The lion ran its glowing eyes over the pit walls, until it found a single, winding tunnel
opening to one side. With a low growl of satisfaction, it bounded away. Venomous lizards
leaped out of the shadows and clamped steel-toothed jaws around the beast's legs, while
blood-drinking scorpions dropped onto its head to stab at its eyes with dripping barbs.
The construct countered by crushing the reptiles underfoot and flinging the arachnids off
with vigorous head shakes, but many attacks still found their marks.

The attackers' venom did not slow the lion down at all. Beads of syrupy fire dripped from
the wounds on its legs, and tears of acid poured from the eyes. Both fluids neutralized
the poison long before it could cause any damage to the beast.

The tunnel opened into a chamber supported by hundreds of ebony pillars. On each column
hung a single torch, burning with a black flame that absorbed light instead of casting it.
The only sound was of a man chuckling in a soft, maniacal voice.

The fur along the lion's spine stood fully erect. It dropped to its belly and slunk
through the murk until it reached the front of the room. There, in a throne of human
bones, sat King Tithian of Tyr. In one hand, he cradled the obsidian scepter of a
sorcerer-king, in the other, the disembodied head of his only friend: Agis of Asticles.

“Now you know what Borys promised: my heart's desire,” said Tithian's figure.

A purple light glimmered deep within his scepter's pommel, then Agis's head spoke. “You
may leave now. His Majesty prefers to be alone.” To reinforce the command, Tithian pointed
the scepter at the unwelcome intruder's head.

The lion opened its maw as if to roar, but the sound that filled the little room was a
deep, booming laugh.

* * * * *

The Castoffs swarmed over Agis, pressing their ethereal mouths to his skin wherever it was
exposed. Each touch sent a searing pain deep into his flesh, raising a ghastly red welt
that continued to bum long after the agonizing kiss had ended. Although most of the lips
pressing against him belonged to children, they were easily two or even three times the
size of his own, and the blisters they left were enormous.

Agis rose. “Stop it!” he yelled, almost losing his balance as Fylo's stomach shifted
beneath his feet. “Leave me alone!”

The Castoffs rushed away from him, staring in astonishment at his upright form. “How can
he stand the pain?” gasped one.

“He must have a strong mind,” said another.

“No, it's something else,” replied the face of a button-nosed woman, one of the few
visages that appeared to be an adult. “It might be wiser to leave this one alone.”

As the faces voiced their opinions, Agis climbed toward Kester and had his first clear
view of the pit. The shaft had an irregular, rectangular shape varying greatly in width.
As he had noted earlier, the walls were covered with huge quartz crystals, and from the
interior of each one shined a silvery light By this pale glow, Agis saw more than a
hundred yellowed giant skulls hanging on the walls, each carefully positioned on the tip
of a crystal.

When Agis reached the tarek's side, the Castoffs descended on the noble again. They began
to rub their cheeks against his skin, causing long streaks to turn brown and slimy. The
putrid stains filled him with a dull anguish, and he felt instantly queasy and feverish.

Agis closed his eyes and focused his concentration on the core of his being, letting the
sickening anguish of decay wash over him without fighting it. He focused all his thoughts
only on the mystic truths of the Way, truths that allowed him to accept his pain and use
it to transcend his mortal body.

Once he felt in control of his agony, the noble said, “Enough games. Leave us alone, or
you shall regret it.”

A few Castoffs stared at him in amazement, but most continued to assault both him and his
friends. Agis closed his eyes and drew energy from his spiritual nexus. Soon, his tortured
body buzzed with the power he needed. In his mind, the noble visualized more than a
hundred open hands, then opened his eyes and projected one from inside his head to each
spirit's cheek. The palms struck their targets with resounding slaps, melding into the
face and leaving behind black impressions of themselves.

Once he had marked the Castoffs, the noble said, That's to let you know I can carry out my
threats. If I must defend us again, I won't be so lenient"

Crying out in alarm, the Castoffs rose into the air and hovered above his head.

Agis knelt down to examine Kester. Where the glowing faces had been rubbing against her
back and shoulder, her thick hide had shriveled into a desiccated, wrinkled mass. The
noble turned her over and found her front side in even worse condition. She had long since
fallen unconscious, but her face remained racked with pain. The hide covering her neck and
breasts was as grotesquely creased as that on her back, save that the outer layers of skin
were falling away in a dusty powder.

Agis used a few strands of scraggly beard to secure her beneath Fylo's chin, then turned
his attention to the giant. The half-breed's face had become as grossly misshaped as that
of any Saram child. One of the eyes had nearly doubled in size and now bulged from its
socket with all the precariousness of a ball at the edge of a shelf. The other had grown
smaller, sinking so far beneath his brow that it was barely visible. His nose had somehow
been rearranged so that it had a separate passage running down to each nostril, with a
long cleft in between. Even his buck teeth had not escaped alteration, and now splayed out
in opposite directions like the two branches of a forked stick.

Agis looked up at the faces hovering over his head. “Why have you done this?” he yelled.

The Castoffs descended toward him in a slow circle, their immaterial visages twisted into
bizarre masks of regret or rancor, he could not quite tell which. Ghostly sobs poured from
the lips of several children, while ethereal tears streamed down their cheeks and vanished
into the black air.

“We're scared!” wailed a little girl.

“And lonely!” added a boy.

“Why did they put us down here?”

With each cry, a pang of anguish pierced Agis's breast, filling him with a deep sense of
regret. Every complaint added to his sorrow, and his heart grew heavy and weak. Soon, he
felt like a terrible weight was pressing down on his chest, and it hurt to breathe until
the Castoffs continued to pour grief into him, until he felt so gorged with misery that he
feared he would burst.

“Stop it!” Agis yelled.

The noble summoned the energy to use the Way and closed his eyes again, this time seeing a
hammer with white-feathered wings on its handle. Once he had it locked firmly in his mind,
he looked toward the highest hanging skull and projected the image there. It appeared an
instant later, its white wings keeping it aloft with slow, graceful arcs.

“This is your last warning!” the noble said.

When the Castoffs continued to wail, he drew the hammer back. Before he could strike, the
face of the button-nosed woman who had spoken earlier descended in front of him. She
looked more like a shoorsh than a Saram, with no obvious deformities and diamond-shaped
eyes that had a surprisingly gentle equality to them.

“Please, don't!” she said. “The grief you hear is genuine. They can't help themselves.”

Agis held his blow, but pointed to his unconscious friends. “Could they help themselves
when they did that?” he demanded.

“I know their behavior seems cruel to you, but you don't know the reason for it,” she
replied.

“Tell me,” the noble said, still keeping the hammer poised to strike.

The woman shook her head. “I'll try, but how can you understand what you can't possibly
feel?” she asked.

“You'd be surprised by what I understand,” Agis countered.

“Not this. Your heart is too good.”

Agis frowned, wondering if she were trying to flatter him. “What can you know of my heart?”

“I know that it's purer than those crystals,” she replied, gesturing at the spikes of
quartz growing from the walls. “Otherwise, you wouldn't have resisted the magic we draw
through them.”

Agis glanced at the silvery glow inside a nearby crystal. “Magic from the Oracle?” he
asked, remembering what Nal had said about needing the lens to keep the Castoffs in the
pit.

The
woman nodded. “It's what sustains us-and it supplies the magic that runs through the
crystal lid that keeps us locked in this prison.”

“That's very interesting, but it doesn't explain the cruelty of your friends.”

The woman cast a sorrowful look at the faces hovering above. “That is how children become
when you lock them
away,”
she said. “They'll take out their anger on whatever is weaker than themselves.”

Agis allowed his hammer to fade away. “Then if we don't want them to be cruel, I suppose
we'll have to free them, won't we?”

The spirit looked doubtful. “Don't raise their hopes,” she said. “That isn't something you
can do.”

“I think it is,” Agis replied, craning his neck upward to study the lid. “And you can help
by reviving my friends. We'll need them.”

As he spoke, Tithian's gaunt form landed on the crystal cover with a dull thump. A
high-pitched hum reverberated through the lid, and the king's body began to pass through
to the noble's side of the barrier.

The Castoffs started to rush up toward him. “We'll have none of that!” Agis yelled. To
himself, he added, “Even if the serpent deserves it.”

The faces stopped and looked to the button-nosed woman for instructions. “I suggest you do
as he says if you ever want to return to your bodies,” she said.

As the Castoffs reluctantly dispersed, Tithian passed the rest of the way through the
cover. He plummeted onto Fylo's midriff, causing the giant's body to tremble violently.
For a moment, Agis feared the half-breed would come dislodged, sending them all plunging
into the dark abyss below, but the giant sank only a few feet. If anything, the impact
seemed to lodge him into place even more securely.