The Cerulean Storm

EIGHTEEN THE CERULEAN STORM

Tithian opened his eyes to a turquoise dawn.He blinked several times, trying to clear his vision, but the firmament did not change color. He saw that it was streaked with blazing rays of azure light, while a bank of puffy blue clouds slowly formed overhead.

The king sat up and looked eastward. He did not recognize the luminous sphere he found hanging just above the horizon. The orb resembled a huge sapphire, with shining blue facets and an azure fire burning deep in its heart. It was the sun, but not the sun he knew.

Tithian stared at the blue sphere in amazement, until his eyes began to ache and he realized the glow would blind him if he stared too long. He forced himself to look away and saw that the forest around him had been utterly destroyed. The trees all lay on the ground, their tips pointing away from the grove’s center and their boles ripped clean of limbs. In the far distance, there was no sign of the huge wall that had once surrounded the sanctum or of the great edifices that had stood outside it.

As he surveyed the devastation, the king saw that he still sat in the plaza where he had found Rajaat’s prison. The Dark Lens lay on the cracked cobblestones at his feet, murky and cold. Tithian remembered using his serpent’s tail to cling to it when the Black exploded, anchoring himself to the ground and calling upon its energy to keep himself from being torn apart by the blast. The effort had finally proven too much for his body, and he had fallen unconscious as the storm began to subside.

On the other side of the Dark Lens lay the marble basin that had held Rajaat’s prison. The bowl was now filled with a bubbling, foul-smelling ichor as black as obsidian. In the center, the yellowed bones of a hand protruded above the pool. Its crooked digits looked more like talons than fingers, slightly curled and ending in barbed tips.

“What are you waiting for?” snarled a familiar voice.

Tithian looked over his shoulder and saw Sacha floating toward him. The head was badly battered, with deep lacerations on his scalp, a smashed nose, and yellow bruises covering his face.

“Pull him out!” Sacha demanded.

Tithian lay down at the edge of the basin and stretched an arm across the bubbling soup. He closed his fingers around the hand’s naked bones and tried to draw the thing out but only succeeded in pulling himself toward the ichor. The king opened his grip-then hissed in pain as the hand dug its barbed talons into his palm. It dragged him forward, until his shoulder and head both hung over the dark sludge.

Tithian saved himself by thrusting the fingertips of his free hand into a cracked paving stone. He stopped his slide and slowly drew himself back onto the plaza. Once he had anchored himself securely in place, he began pulling the hand toward him. First the arm, then the shoulder, and finally the head rose from the ichor.

The skeleton had a flat, grossly elongated skull with a sharp ridge crest and a sloped forehead. Beneath its heavy brow, crooked forks of blue light glimmered deep in each eye socket. Wisps of white mist puffed from its nasal cavity. Its jaws were lined with curved yellow needles, while a huge mass of knobby bone formed a long, drooping chin.

“Rajaat?” Tithian gasped.

“Who else?” answered Sacha.

Rajaat sank the talons of his free hand into the stone. He ripped his other claw free and drove it down on the other side of the king, pulling himself to the basin’s rim. Tithian scrambled back on all fours, barely saving himself from being stepped on as Rajaat pulled himself from the dark pool. The ancient sorcerer’s frame was about as tall as an elf and completely skeletal, with hunched shoulders, gangling arms, and ivory-colored thighbones as twisted as they were thick.

The creature’s eyes lingered on Tithian’s face for an instant, then flickered over the barren trees lying around the plaza’s edge, and finally returned to the Dark Lens. Rajaat stared at the black orb for several seconds before finally looking skyward. The fleshless jaws parted in a crude imitation of a smile, then Rajaat opened his mouth wide.

“Free!” he bellowed, his voice rumbling over the sanctum like thunder. Streamers of blue fog gushed from his mouth, condensing into tiny droplets and falling to the ground like rain. “Let the traitors tremble and wail! I have returned, and my retribution shall be bloody and painful!”

As Rajaat spoke, a strange ripple ran through his warped thighs, then through his ribs, arms, and the rest of his bones. Before Tithian’s eyes, his yellowed skeleton grew to the size of a half-giant.

The king gathered himself up, then took a deep breath and walked forward. He stopped before Rajaat and bowed. “I am Tithian,” he said, not looking up. “I opened your prison.”

Rajaat stepped over the king’s head without answering. The black ichor trailed after his heels, rising out of the basin and spreading itself over the ground like a shadow. Tithian leaped back, not wanting to have any contact with the foul-smelling stuff, then spun around to request his reward.

“Wait,” advised Sacha, staring at Rajaat with an astonished expression.

The ancient sorcerer now stood at least two full heads taller than any half-giant. Although he had only a skeleton for a body, the ichor serving as his shadow had arranged itself into the silhouette of a manlike figure, fully fleshed and with an immensely powerful build.

As Tithian watched, Rajaat raised an arm into the sky as though reaching for something. Far above, a turquoise cloud vanished from sight, then reappeared in his grasp. The ancient sorcerer began to work it with both hands, flattening it out like bread dough, then stretching it into a thin sheet. Once he seemed satisfied with its consistency, he stooped down and pressed it over his foot. The misty fabric stretched over his bones like flesh.

Sacha’s jaw fell open. “He’s changed.” A knowing smile crept across the head’s lips, and he said, “This time, he won’t fail. Athas shall return to the Blue Age.”

Another wave of ripples rolled through Rajaat’s yellow bones, and he grew to the height of a ship mast. The ancient sorcerer took a few more steps, positioning himself beneath another cloud, then he reached up and plucked it from the sky. He began to work it like the first, fashioning another piece of skin.

Behind Rajaat, the ground became porous and white wherever his shadow passed. A moment later, circles of brilliant color-scarlet, sapphire, saffron, emerald, and a dozen others-burst across the surface, rising from somewhere deep inside the stone. In the center of these vibrant circles sprouted round nubs, like the seedlings of some strange plant.

Rajaat continued to walk around the sanctum, plucking cloud after cloud from the sky and using them to cover his skeleton. Soon, he stood half-again the height of a giant, with no indication that he would quit growing any time soon. Tithian waited until the ancient sorcerer wandered back near him, then moved boldly forward to present himself. He turned a palm toward the ground to prepare a spell that would amplify his voice.

Before the king could begin to draw energy, Rajaat looked down at him and boomed, “No! Not here.” The ancient sorcerer waved an enormous hand at the strange rock plants that had sprouted from his shadow. “Never in the Blue Lands.”

Tithian closed his hand, satisfied that he had finally won Rajaat’s attention. “I am King Tithian of Tyr.”

“I know who you are,” the ancient sorcerer replied. He looked away from Tithian and plucked another cloud from the sky, then began to work it without paying the king any more attention.

“And do you also know of the promises that were made to me?” Tithian asked in a polite voice.

Rajaat fixed his diamond-shaped eyes on the king and said nothing. Another series of ripples rolled through his body, and he grew even larger.

“Can I expect you to honor those promises?” Tithian called.

“If you wish to serve me, you must learn patience,” Rajaat said, stepping away.

“Serve him!” Tithian hissed quietly. He turned to Sacha. “That wasn’t part of our bargain.”

Rajaat surprised the king by turning around. “You do not wish to serve me?” he asked, a malicious light glimmering in his eyes.

“I wish what I was promised,” Tithian said, swallowing nervously. “The powers of an immortal sorcerer-king.”

The gleam in Rajaat’s eyes grew warmer. “In time,” he promised.

The sorcerer held a closed fist far above Tithian’s head. The king looked up and saw the hand open high above. A cascade of salty water poured down from the enormous palm, hitting with such force that it swept him off his feet. The deluge did not stop for many moments, until Tithian felt a frothing tide of water rising beneath him.

Sadira peered over the tangle of floating logs, studying the looming figure she took to be Rajaat. He stood twice as tall as any giant, with a crown of lightning crackling around his head. A constant crash of thunder belched forth from his fang-toothed mouth, and whenever he exhaled, billowing blue fog shot from his gaping nostrils and dissolved in a torrent of rain. His entire body was swaddled in roiling clouds the color of turquoise, and great torrents of salty water poured from the claws at the ends of his gangling arms. Even his shadow was part of the tempest, causing the water to churn and froth wherever it fell.

“How’re we going to kill that?” asked Rikus, crouching at Sadira’s side. “He’s a walking storm.”

The sorceress shook her head. “I don’t know, but we’d better think of something fast,” she said. “This water isn’t getting any shallower.”

Using the log tangle as camouflage, Sadira and the mul were wading through a shallow lake that, not long before, had been a vast grove of trees. It was filled with fish and strange, scuttling creatures that vaguely resembled scorpions. The sorceress pushed the heavy load of timber before them, since her ebony skin and magical powers had returned with the peculiar blue dawn. The mul devoted most of his efforts to his axe, trying to keep it out of the water without letting it show above the logs. Glowing eddies of red and green light swirled over the blade, the result of a magical spell Sadira hoped would prove effective against Rajaat’s vapor-covered form.

“There’s Tithian,” Rikus said.

The mul pointed at a jumble of logs about fifty yards away and sticking out of the lake at all angles. In the center of the heap sat the king, resting cross-legged atop the Dark Lens. The black orb seemed strangely dark and murky, with only a single flicker of blue light showing deep within it. At Tithian’s side hovered Sacha. Both the king and the disembodied head were watching Rajaat, and so far they seemed oblivious to the presence of Sadira and Rikus.

Sadira pushed the log tangle in Tithian’s direction, sending a school of fish with squarish heads and writhing tentacles scurrying away. “We’ll take the Lens first.”

“Good thinking. That’ll keep Tithian out of the fight,” agreed Rikus. “Then what?”

“I’ll try fire,” Sadira said.

“It makes sense, given what Rajaat’s made of,” Rikus agreed. “Still, I’m beginning to wish the sorcerer-kings were doing this, instead of us.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Sadira said. “A little thing like being trapped under a collapsed wall isn’t going to kill the sorcerer-kings.”

Rikus frowned. “I suppose that’s true,” he said. “Maybe we should wait and let them attack first.”

“So they can send Rajaat back to his prison and make another Dragon to keep him there?” Sadira scoffed. “I’d rather take our chances attacking him ourselves.”

Rikus gave a reluctant nod, and they continued toward Tithian in silence. As the pair approached, they saw that the logs around the king were covered with a lumpy brown crust of minerals and shells. Sadira cursed silently. They had seen several areas where the tree trunks were covered by similar crusts. Such places were usually surrounded by hedges of submerged rockstem, brightly colored plants that grew in fingerlike formations as hard as rock and as sharp as obsidian.

Sadira heard a muffled clack as one of her logs hit a finger of the rockstem. She and Rikus ducked down, watching through the tangle as Tithian and Sacha spun around. The king and the head peered in their direction for several moments.

Finally, Tithian’s voice drifted across the water to Sadira’s ears. “It’s nothing, just floating logs,” the king said, facing Rajaat again.

Sadira motioned for Rikus to ready himself, then pulled a splinter off of a log and held it in her open palm. As she whispered her mystic syllables, the sliver floated out of her hand, growing to the size of a war lance. Red smoke poured from all along its shaft, and scarlet sparks shot from its end. The sorceress leveled her finger at the king’s head and the spear sizzled away.

The lance had hardly passed out of the log tangle when Rajaat’s head snapped around. A blue spark flashed in his eyes as his gaze fell on the sputtering shaft, then he flicked a finger toward it. An enormous bug-eyed fish leaped out the lake and snatched the weapon from midair. The spear exploded in the creature’s mouth, blowing its head into a thousand small bits.

“Tithian is my servant,” boomed the ancient sorcerer. “Only I may destroy him.”

Rajaat stepped toward Sadira and Rikus, crossing two dozen yards of water with a single stride.

“Go, Rikus!” As she spoke, Sadira slipped a hand into the pocket of her wet cloak.

Rikus stepped forward, swinging his axe at the rockstem. The blade’s enchantment sent great geysers of water spiraling into the sky, and the mul smashed a large notch into the top of the hedge.

Tithian leaped off the Dark Lens and disappeared into the tangle of crusted trees.

Sadira pulled a ball of wax and sulfur from her pocket and threw it toward Rajaat, crying out her spell. The yellow ball erupted into a huge sphere of flame. It streaked up to Rajaat’s face and engulfed his head-then began to sputter as soon as it contacted the clouds serving as the ancient sorcerer’s skin. The fireball died away without raising so much as a puff of steam.

Rajaat reached for Sadira with his claw-fingered hand.

Rikus stepped away from the submerged hedge and swung his axe at the ancient sorcerer’s wispy wrist. The steel passed through harmlessly, with no geysers of vapor or swirling fountains of cloud to suggest that Sadira’s magic was working. In fact, it came out the other side clean and shiny, the enchantments on its blade dispelled.

Sadira tried to dive away, but Rajaat’s fingers closed around her waist before she could submerge herself. The enormous hand felt wet and soft yet as unyielding as her own dark flesh. The ancient sorcerer lifted her up before his blue eyes and studied her.

From the high vantage point, Sadira could see much of Ur Draxa. It was a huge city of forests and magnificent buildings, with a wide band of destruction encircling the clear waters of Rajaat’s spreading lake.

“Stupid half-breed,” hissed the ancient sorcerer, pelting her with a gale of cold rain. “Did you really think to use my own magic against me?”

He squeezed, filling Sadira with pain. She pushed against his crushing grip with both arms. It was all she could do to keep her ribs from collapsing. As strong as her sun-enhanced muscles were, Rajaat was far more powerful.

Sadira looked down and saw Rikus far below, thrashing about madly in the crystalline waters as he vainly chopped at her captor’s ankle. It was like trying to cut smoke, save that the blade did not even cause an eddy as it passed through. She tried to yell at him to run, but she could not expand her chest far enough to draw air into her lungs.

Rajaat continued to squeeze for several more moments, forks of lightning dancing in his diamond-shaped eyes. Then, as Sadira’s muscles began to quiver with fatigue, he relaxed his grip. He looked away from his prisoner and gazed down at the lake below. A school of five huge fish was slipping through the gap Rikus had opened in the rockstem hedge and was swimming toward the Dark Lens.

Rajaat smiled and, in a voice so soft Sadira could hardly hear it, whispered, “Finally, the traitors have come!”

The sorceress felt Rajaat’s hand tense and realized he was about to throw her. She dug both hands into her captor’s vaporish flesh, then the ancient sorcerer hurled her down toward the Dark Lens.

A wisp of turquoise cloud came away in Sadira’s hand. As she spoke the single word of her incantation, the vapor spread out beneath her, stopping her fall at the height of Rajaat’s waist. The ancient sorcerer took an absentminded swipe at her, sending her cloud drifting away on an invisible tide of air, then fixed his attention on the water at his feet. The crown of lightning around his head began to crackle and dance more madly.

Sadira peered over the edge of her cushion, and saw King Tec rising from beneath the waters with the Dark Lens balanced on his back. He turned toward Rajaat and stared up at the ancient sorcerer, his beak clattering. A short distance away, the water boiled around Nibenay and Hamanu as they summoned the energy to cast a spell, leaving a huge expanse of rockstem colorless and defiled in the process. The Oba and Andropinis stood nearby, staring intently into the Lens as they prepared to use the Way.

Tithian and Sacha abandoned their hiding places and started toward the Dark Lens. Rikus, who had continued hacking at Rajaat’s ankle until Sadira was freed, stepped away from the ancient sorcerer and moved to attack the king.

“Rikus, no!” Sadira reached into her cloak pocket.

From the way Rajaat had reacted when he first saw the sorcerer-kings, the sorceress suspected he would attack before “the traitors” could execute their plan. She did not want Rikus near the Dark Lens when that happened.

The ancient sorcerer’s crown of lightning suddenly fell silent. His gaze went vacant, and a tempest of sapphire hailstones began to build in his diamond-shaped eyes.

Sadira tossed the tough belly scale of a rock adder toward her husband, uttering her incantation as it fell. A shimmering gray shield appeared over the entire area surrounding him.

Two streams of smoking hailstones hissed down from Rajaat’s eyes. With a deafening roar, the pellets crashed off the sorceress’s shield and bounced away. They dropped into the lake many yards away, sending steaming plumes of water high into the air.

When the storm subsided, Rajaat’s eyes were almost white with anger. He raised a foot to step toward Sadira, flashing sheets of lightning crackling off his crown.

Hamanu and Nibenay pointed toward the Dark Lens, roaring the incantations to cast their spells. Tiny streams of absolute blackness shot from their fingertips into the orb. The currents came out on the other side, magnified into great rivers, and washed over Rajaat, swallowing Rikus and Tithian on the way.

The Oba and Andropinis attacked next, facing each other and moving their hands through the empty air. They kept their eyes fixed on the ebony murk that had engulfed Rajaat, and soon the dark mass began to assume the shape of a sphere. When the globe was perfectly round, the two sorcerers moved closer together. The black orb holding Rajaat began to shrink.

Sadira felt far from relieved. The sorcerer-kings’ plan had been an efficient one, and her intervention on Rikus’s behalf had kept Rajaat’s counterattack from interrupting it. Still, the ancient sorcerer had clearly been expecting the sorcerer-kings-even looking forward to their arrival. Given that, it seemed strange that he had relied on only one spell to stop them, and that his last act before being captured had been to come after her.

This battle, the sorceress suspected, was far from over. Nevertheless, she had learned something valuable from it. The Dark Lens was not only a mindbender’s tool. The sorcerer-kings had used it to increase the power of their spells a hundredfold. Unfortunately, Sadira had already seen that her own magic had very little effect on Rajaat, and she did not think the Lens would change that. But she knew of someone else who might be able to use the orb to good effect.

Sadira took a deep breath, then turned and uttered a soft incantation. When she exhaled, her cloud began to move as though a stiff wind were blowing it across the sky. The sorceress cupped one hand and held it out to her side. Her flying cushion turned toward the Dark Lens. Keeping a watchful eye on the sorcerer-kings, she flew over and slowly circled the area.

Nibenay raised a hand to wave her down. “You’ve served us well,” he said. “You have nothing to fear from us.”

Sadira did not fly any lower. Watching both him and Hamanu even more closely, she asked, “And what of Rikus?”

“In there, with the Usurper and Rajaat,” said Hamanu, gesturing at the black sphere. The Oba and Andropinis had already managed to squeeze the globe down so that it was no taller than a small giant.

Sadira tried not to be afraid. She had retrieved people from the Black before, and she saw no reason that she would not be able to do it again.

Her hopes must have shown on her face.

Nibenay said, “Don’t think that your powers can call your husband back. He’s beneath the Black, not part of it.”

“What’s the difference?” Sadira asked.

“The Black is shadow. It shows what is by what is missing,” explained Hamanu. “But beneath the Black is the Hollow, where nothing is missing because nothing remains-not the future, not the past, not even the Gray. Nothing-simply nothing.”

“Now, come down here as I told you to do,” Nibenay commanded, his voice growing irritated. “It will be better for you and us if we declare a truce.”

Pretending to accept the sorcerer-king’s offer, Sadira circled around to have one last look for her husband. She angled her hands so that her cloud descended, swooping low over Rajaat’s new prison and the Dark Lens. When she saw nothing but the white, lifeless rockstem that Nibenay and Hamanu had defiled, the sorceress curved away.

That was when she noticed a black shadow swimming through the water behind Andropinis. Though only about the size of an elf, the silhouette retained Rajaat’s basic shape. It was slithering along the bottom of the defiled lake, so that only someone looking down from directly above was likely to see it.

Rajaat had learned a new trick in his prison. While the sorcerer-kings had concentrated on capturing his body, he had been lurking in his own shadow all along.

Sadira smiled to herself. Now she knew how to defeat Rajaat. All she had to do was steal the Lens and return to the crater with it.

Nibenay turned his palm downward and defiled more rockstem, preparing to cast a spell. The sorceress continued to fly, trying not to watch Rajaat’s shadow. The sorcerer-king raised his hand, pointing toward Sadira.

In the same instant, Rajaat’s shadow emerged from the water and threw his dripping arms around Andropinis’s throat.

“For you, eternal confinement,” Rajaat hissed.

Andropinis screamed in alarm as his ancient master’s silhouette swallowed him. The sorcerer-king’s cry fell silent almost at once, and no sign of him remained.

Nibenay changed his aim from Sadira to Rajaat and fairly screamed his incantation. A net of pulsing white energy shot from his hand. It passed through the ancient sorcerer’s shadowy form without effect, but the Oba, who had been standing across from Andropinis when he was seized, had to duck to avoid being hit. Deprived of any chance to cast a spell or use the Way against her former master, she dropped into the water and pushed herself away from him.

Rajaat ignored the sorcerer-queen and stepped toward the Dark Lens, which was still being supported on King Tec’s back. Nibenay and Hamanu, standing between the ancient sorcerer and the Lens, retreated in opposite directions, one summoning the energy for a spell and the other furrowing his brow as he prepared to use the Way.

Sadira circled around and lined herself up behind Rajaat. She moved toward the back of her cloud so there would be room for the Dark Lens, then angled the nose downward and started to descend.

On the other side of the Lens, the Black stopped shrinking. “I need help!” King Tec yelled, still trying to keep the Lens focused on the shadowy sphere. “Nibenay, Hamanu-”

Rajaat stepped up behind him, plucking the Dark Lens off his back. “For you, death.”

He brought the orb down. Tec’s skull split with a tremendous bang, spraying foul-smelling smoke and sizzling drops of fiery red blood in all directions.

Sadira smiled. She was coming up directly behind Rajaat. The sorceress hoped to lift the Dark Lens out of his grasp as her cloud passed through his shadowy body. But if her tactic resulted in a collision instead, she would have a better chance than anyone of recovering the Dark Lens. With her body imbued by the sun’s power, the impact would not harm her, and at least she was anticipating it.

Rajaat faced Nibenay, raising the Lens in both hands. “For you, a thousand years of torment.”

Rajaat stepped toward the sorcerer-king, causing Sadira to pull up the front of her cloud and execute a tight bank. She rose along the side of the ancient sorcerer’s shoulder. For an instant, the sorceress feared he would glimpse her in his peripheral vision, then she was staring up at the Dark Lens.

The cloud lifted the heavy orb out of Rajaat’s hands-then abruptly dived as the extra weight pushed the nose down. Sadira found herself dropping straight toward the dark sphere in which Rikus and Tithian were imprisoned. Behind her, Rajaat cried out in surprise, and sorcerer-kings began shouting orders. The sorceress hardly heard them, for she was too busy trying to pull the Dark Lens toward the rear of the cloud so the nose would rise.

As Sadira approached the Black, a surge of searing energy rushed up from the depths of the Dark Lens. Forks of blue lightning crackled over her body, and she began to suffer muscle spasms. Surprised, she could not prevent her cloud from continuing its dive, and it crashed straight into the murky sphere the sorcerer-kings had created.

Sadira saw a black flash. The explosion that followed was not as large as the one that had destroyed the Dragon’s sanctum, for the Lens was only partially charged. Still, the sorceress found herself soaring through the air backwards. She splashed into the shallow lake some distance away, with the Dark Lens pressing down on her chest and water filling her lungs.