Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 4 - Obsidian Oracle (35 page)

“You'll have to go down and pull him out,” said Agis.

Mag'r frowned at this idea, then shouted, “Hey, you!”

Several yellowed skulls fell from their perches and bounced off Fylo's torso, and the
half-breed opened Ms eyes. He looked toward the top of the pit, his gaze cloudy and
unfocused. “Agis?” he called.

“The Sachem of the Joorsh is coming down to get you,” the noble replied. When Mag'r
frowned at him, Agis added, “Go on-can't you see that he needs help?”

Grumbling angrily, the Joorsh king dropped his captive. When Agis hit the ground his knees
buckled, and he tumbled end over end, landing next to one of the jagged shards of crystal
still protruding from the edge of the pit. Tithian's satchel fell at his side.

In front of the satchel's mouth, a tiny area of the broken lid began to clear, shimmering
with a strange, mystic power. For a moment, the noble simply watched the limpid area
expand and grow more translucent. Then he realized what was happening. The magic of the
Dark Lens was flowing into the crystal shard, and it could only be coming from one place:
the satchel.

As Mag'r started to climb down into the pit, Agis grabbed the sack and pulled it back. He
folded the top over and crawled away from the edge of the hole. The motion attracted the
sachem's attention, and the giant promptly climbed back out.

“What's wrong?” Agis asked, rising and moving away from the shard into which the magic of
the lens had spilled.

“I'm no fool,” the giant replied, grabbing the noble. He went over to the footing of
Sa'ram's Bridge and pointed to the rope which Kester had left tied there “Tie your feet
together,” he ordered, glancing at the highest point of the bridge. “And make the knot
strong, or you'll be sorry.”

“You don't have to do this,” Agis objected. As he spoke, he carefully tucked the satchel
into his sling, knowing that even Mag'r was not a big enough fool to let a prisoner roam
free, “I promise-”

“Tie!” Mag'r growled.

Agis did as he was ordered, once again using the Way to animate his broken arm, testing
the knot several times to make sure it was secure. When he was finished, a fair length of
rope remained.

Mag'r used some of the extra line to bind the noble's arms to his sides. Once the king was
satisfied that his prisoner could not easily slip his bonds, he carried Agis over to the
bridge and tied the other end of the rope to the railing, leaving the noble suspended over
the pit.

“Now I can watch you while I rescue your friend,” the sachem said, chuckling at his
cleverness.

With that, Mag'r returned to the edge of the pit and began his descent, knocking more than
one skull off the sharp crystals lining the pit. As Agis waited, his broken arm began to
throb, and the ache caused him to sweat more profusely. Every few seconds a few beads of
perspiration would roll off his brow and vanish into the abyss below. The noble did not
mind, considering a little pain and a few ounces of body water a small price to pay for
having discovered the location of the Dark Lens-and probably of Tithian, as well.

When the sachem reached his destination, he grabbed the half-breed's arm and pulled him
roughly off the crystal. Fylo cried out in pain and glanced up at Agis. A thankful smile
creased his lips, then he dosed his eyes and slumped into Mag'r's arms.

“Stupid giant!” the sachem cursed.

With that, the sachem laboriously ascended the pit again, dragging Fylo's unconscious body
up behind him. The sharp crystals scraped over the half-breed's gravelly hide, opening
tiny scratches that did nothing to rouse him. Once Mag'r reached the top, he pulled the
half-breed out of the hole and laid him aside.

“Where's the Oracle?” he asked, looking up at Agis.

Agis briefly considered trying to talk the giant into letting him borrow the lens for the
purpose of killing Borys, but he quickly rejected the idea. Even if Mag'r were disposed to
make such an agreement, which seemed doubtful in the first place, the sachem had shown no
inclination that he would be willing to trust the noble.

Mag'r rose. “If you break your word, I'll-”

“I have no intention of breaking my word,” Agis interrupted. “But I didn't say I knew the
Oracle's location. I promised to tell you what I knew about its connection to the satchel
that Beort found,” Agis finished, being careful to remind Mag'r of exactly what he had
said. “You'll have to figure the rest out for yourself.”

Mag'r scowled, then nudged Fylo toward the pit. “Tell me what you know-now!”

“The satchel belongs to my companion, Tithian,” said the noble. “Because of where we found
it, we can assume he found the Oracle.”

“Where'd he go?” the giant demanded.

“As I said, you'll have to figure that out for yourself,” Agis replied. He did not feel
honor-bound to give a more direct answer, since he had not known the information when
Mag'r had plucked him from the fissure-and certainly would not have agreed to reveal it if
he had.

The sachem started to nudge Fylo toward the pit again. “Tell me!”

“Don't hurt him!” Agis said. “I'm not certain, but I suspect you've been closer to the
Oracle than you think.”

“Down there?” Mag'r asked, pointing at the pit.

When the noble did not answer, Mag'r knelt at the edge of the pit. “Perhaps Nal had
nothing to do with your friend's injury,” the giant suggested. “Perhaps your friend was
trying to hide something when he fell?”

The sachem peered into the darkness for several moments, and at first Agis could not think
of what he expected to see in the murk. Then he remembered how, as Beort had come crawling
down the mica runnel, the youthful giant had called out that he could see a red glow
coming from the chamber.

Agis waited until a few drops of perspiration had gathered on his brow, then closed his
eyes and visualized the beads slowly beginning to glow with a red light. He felt the
tingle of spiritual energy rising from deep within himself-and remembered something else
about the exchange between Beort and Mag'r. The moment the youthful giant had described
the glow as bright, the sachem had realized that something was wrong.

After softening the red glow in his mind, Agis shook his head to release the beads of
sweat on his brow. They plunged into the pit, and as they passed into its black depths,
they began to flicker with a scarlet light so faint it was almost imperceptible.

Without a word, Mag'r clambered into the pit and began to climb down. Agis waited until
the sachem had descended past the narrow neck where Fylo had been impaled, then began
twisting his good arm back and forth within its rope bonds. He managed to open up enough
space to twist his hand around and grab Tithian's satchel.

Pausing just long enough to make sure he had a secure grip, Agis pointed the mouth of the
sack at one of the crystal shards still protruding from the side of the pit. A faint
stream of glimmering energy poured out of the sack. As soon as it touched its target, the
milky color faded from the crystal. The shard slowly expanded along the rim of the pit,
its limpid edges reaching out to connect with the adjacent pieces.

As the shards connected with each other, the lid seemed to draw more energy from the
satchel, and the crystal restored itself at an ever-increasing pace. Still, the process
seemed to take forever, and Agis began to worry that Mag'r would discover his error before
the pit sealed itself.

At last, the final sections of the lid connected to each other and formed a complete ring
around the edge of the pit. About the same time, a muffled roar of rage rumbled out of the
hole, and Agis knew that the sachem had reached the bottom. A distant rattle began to echo
up from the pit, presumably as Mag'r angrily searched through the ancient bones covering
the floor. It was followed a moment later by the vicious shrieks and roars of wild
animals, and the giant's pained howls began to echo up from the depths of the abyss.

Mag'r's voice began to grow louder, and the noble knew that his captor was climbing up
from the depths. Agis watched helplessly as the crystal ring expanded inward, closing the
pit's entrance at the pace of a stone-worm. Soon, the sachem's curses became intelligible
as he swore at the animal spirits pursuing him. The opening to the pit remained large
enough for an angry Joorsh to push through, and there seemed no possibility that it would
dose in time to save Agis.

“You'll die slow, you little trickster!”

Through the opening below, Agis could see the giant's plump head weaving its way up
through a tangle of crystals just a few yards below the lid. The sachem's eyes were
burning with hatred, and a pale swarm of bones was swirling around his ankles. Mag'r
thrust one, then two hands through the opening and tried to pull himself out.

His hands began to pass back through the crystal, much as Agis and his companions had sunk
through it earlier. Mag'r cried out in alarm, trying to move his hands so he could renew
his grip on a more solid surface. His efforts were in vain, for his fingers were already
caught deep inside the crystal.

“Brace your feet, or you'll fall and end up like Fylo!” Agis called. “Then be patient. One
of your warriors is bound to find you sooner or later.”

Mag'r did not take the noble's advice, choosing to glare up at him instead. “You'll never
leave the island!” he hissed. “My warriors-”

The giant's hands passed through the bottom side of the cover, bringing an abrupt end to
the threat. Mag'r plummeted into the darkness, his screams ringing off the walls of the
abyss. A moment later, his voice fell abruptly silent as the crystal lid sealed the
opening through which he had tried to climb.

The sound had barely died away when a familiar, antagonistic voice sounded from Fylo's
direction. “Well done. I didn't think you were that smart,” said Wyan, rising into view
from behind the unconscious half-breed. He began to drift toward Agis, his eyes fixed on
the stream of shimmering energy pouring from the mouth of Tithian's satchel. “Am I to take
it that it was the Oracle's power that sealed the pit?”

To Agis, the gnawing sounded like a faro-rat dawing at the stones of a thorn silo-though
he stood to lose something far more valuable than a few bushels of needles. Each time
Wyan's teeth closed on the rope, the resulting vibration grew increasingly sharp. It would
not be long before the line snapped, plunging the noble headfirst onto the crystal pit's
pellucid cover.

“Letting me drop will do you no good,” Agis warned.

The noble struggled to hold back the black curtain of unconsciousness. Even without the
burden of a broken arm, he had been hanging upside-down, sweating in the sun, for too
long. His dehydrated body was near the limit of its endurance. No matter how accustomed he
was to pain, the time would soon come when he simply fainted.

Wyan stopped chewing, then drifted down to look into the noble's eyes. “If you don't want
to drop, give me Tithian and the Oracle.”

“What makes you so sure I have them?”

“I'm no fool,” replied Wyan. “I saw what happened when you opened the satchel. The magic
of the Dark Lens spilled out to repair the crystal lid. And if the Oracle's in there,
Tithian must be, too. He wouldn't let himself be separated from it.”

“That may be,” said Agis. “But I'm taking him and the Oracle back to Tyr.”

“You'll find that difficult with a broken neck,” countered Wyan. He started to drift
upward.

“Wait!”

The head opened his mouth in the parody of a smile. “Change your mind?”

“No,” Agis said, locking gazes with Wyan's colorless eyes. “But I'm sure you'll change
yours.”

As he spoke, the noble created a mental image of a carrion-eating kes'trekel, and a surge
of energy rose from deep within his body. He sent the gray-feathered raptor sailing toward
his tormentor. Agis felt a slight tingle as the probe left him, then he saw its ragged
wings flash against the gray irises of Wyan's eyes. In the next instant, it disappeared
into the darkness beyond, carrying with it a part of its creator's intellect.

Agis was astounded by what he found. The interior of Wyan's mind was the most desolate
thing he had ever seen, a vast plain littered from one end to the other with the corpses
of tiny men and women. They were about half the size of halflings, with silver, mothlike
wings growing from their backs. They all had slender, sharp-featured faces, pointed ears,
and pale, lifeless eyes.

There was nothing else inside Wyan's intellect, in all the sweeping expanse beneath the
kes'trekel, the noble could not see a single animate thought. Agis dropped his kes'trekel
down to the corpses. As befitted its nature, the raptor dug into the grisly feast,
swallowing the little bodies almost whole.

When there was no response, the noble began to feel confused. The dead flesh was the
substance of Wyan's mind, and to have it devoured should have caused him such unbearable
pain that he could not help but counterattack. Yet the disembodied head seemed quite
content to let the kes'trekel gobble down all he wished.

After allowing the bird to gorge itself, Agis pictured the kes'trekel changing into Fylo's
animal-brother. He felt a surge of energy deep within himself, then the raptor's narrow
back broadened into that of the bear, and its feathers changed to bony armor. The beast
began pawing at the little corpses, throwing them aside and digging a great, deep pit.

The bear had dug down more than a dozen yards, and still Agis could see nothing but more
dead, winged bodies. By this time, the noble had burned up so much spiritual strength that
he doubted he could win a battle even if he did find an animate thought. He cut off the
flow of energy, withdrawing his probe

“Satisfied?” Wyan asked, his gray eyes twinkling with amusement.

Agis took several slow, deep breaths. “Why couldn't I force you to come out?”

In a smug voice, the disembodied head replied, “My mind is at rest. I fulfilled my life's
desire long ago-when I killed the last pixie.” Wyan drifted closer to the satchel in the
noble's hand, asking, “Now, will you give me the sack?”