The Cerulean Storm

FIFTEEN THE BROKEN PLAIN

Tithian scurried up the slope with just the proper amount of urgency, joining Rikus on the hill’s crest. From this high vantage, the king could see that the abyss beyond the arch was filled with a sea of lava. In some places, it bubbled and shot viscous geysers high into the air, and in others torpid whirlpools slowly sank into unseen sinkholes. Scattered spires of scorched stone rose out of the molten expanse, while the black ribbon of a cliff barely showed on the far side of the vast pool.

The king saw no sign of Ur Draxa, the secret city-prison wherein Rajaat was confined. Still, he felt certain that they were not far away from it, for the great arch and its yellow runes had been created to protect something-and the king did not think it was a sea of molten stone. Soon, he would free the ancient master of sorcery and receive his reward: the powers of an immortal sorcerer-king.

But first, Tithian had the Dragon-and a few former slaves-to kill. The king peered over the cliff and discovered that the ravine below was empty. The blood was still draining from the assorted pieces of what the king assumed had once been Caelum.

In a concerned voice, Tithian asked, “Where is everyone?”

As he spoke, the king searched the broken floor of the valley for some sign of Neeva’s body. He saw nothing but a few pulsing heaps of stone and the arch, its face still covered with writhing yellow runes.

“They’re gone!” Rikus pointed the tip of his sword at the arch. “The Dragon stepped through there with Sadira just as I reached the top of the hill.”

“And Neeva?” the king asked.

“Clinging to Borys’s leg,” the mul reported. “Her axe was buried nice and deep.”

Tithian cursed silently. It would have been better if both Caelum and his wife were already dead. Now, Neeva would be one more person trying to kill him after Borys died. Still, the king was not overly concerned. In the weeks since he had stolen the Dark Lens, he had noticed that the higher the sun was in the sky, the more searing the surface of the Lens. Judging by the orb’s relatively bearable temperature at the moment, the king knew the sun was about to set-taking with it Sadira’s powers. If he could time things so that they finished the Dragon just after nightfall, the sorceress would not be a challenge. That would leave only Rikus and his sword to worry about.

Rikus’s hand flashed out, grabbing Tithian’s long hair. “Bring them back,” he ordered.

“I can’t do that-”

“Then I have no reason to keep you alive.” The mul pressed the Scourge’s tip to the chitinous collar connecting the king’s head and his scorpion’s body.

“Let me finish,” Tithian hissed. He was very careful to keep his tail motionless. “Perhaps we can still save them.”

“How?” the mul demanded.

“We can follow,” Tithian replied, gesturing toward the arch. “And we can do it quickly, if you’ll let me fly us down to the arch.”

Rikus released Tithian’s hair. “We’ve got little enough to lose,” he said. “Do it.”

The Dragon’s foot returned to the ground, and Neeva felt the chasm’s incredible heat at her back. Still clinging to the axe handle, she blinked several times. A wasteland of black scoria sloped gently away before her. It was laced with jagged fissures and twisted ribs of rock, and it appeared more windswept and bleak than any terrain she had ever seen. The plain ended in the far-off distance, where a sheer cliff rose straight into the boiling red clouds of the sky.

In a step, Borys had crossed the sea of molten rock.

The Dragon limped from beneath an arch identical to the one they had departed a moment earlier, then growled in pain. Knowing what would come next, Neeva braced her feet and pulled her axe free. She dropped to the ground just as Borys’s claw slapped the place where she had been hanging.

The warrior swung her axe. The sparkling edge bit deep, then began pumping bolts of mystic energy into Borys’s wrist. The Dragon’s hand swelled to twice its normal size and blew apart, pelting Neeva with beads of fiery, yellow blood and bits of bone.

Borys’s howl shook the ground.

Neeva dived away. She rolled across her shoulders and came up facing the Dragon’s flank, her axe still in her hands. Ignoring the agony of her many burns, the warrior charged, aiming her blade at the leg she had mangled before.

Borys pivoted away. Neeva found herself crossing the open plain without protection. The Dragon fixed an eye on her, and white, blazing pain filled her head.

“No!” She used her last act of free will to hurl the axe at him.

Borys’s eye widened, and he shifted his gaze to the weapon. The axe tumbled through the air end over end, flying straight toward his abdomen. He brought his good hand-the hand holding her son and Sadira-down to block. The blade sliced across his forearm and bounced toward the arch, drawing a whirling spout of yellow blood after it.

The Dragon’s claw sprang open, allowing Sadira’s legs to dangle free. Before the sorceress could fall out, Borys flipped his hand palm-up. Neeva saw her son peering out from beneath Sadira’s sheltering form.

Borys’s fingers twitched but did not close. He glanced down at them, curling the lip of his long snout into a snarl. His claws trembled some more, and Neeva knew her blade had severed a tendon.

“Sadira, get Rkard out of there!” the warrior yelled. When she saw that the sorceress was already reaching for a pocket, Neeva sprinted toward her axe.

Borys cut her off with a single step. “I promised your cur of a child that he would see you die.”

The Dragon fixed his eye on Neeva. Again, a terrible pain filled her head as he forced his way into her mind. She continued to run-then a crimson glow lit the field. It was bright enough to cast shadows on the ground, and she knew that Rkard had cast his sun-spell. The agony in her head vanished. She looked up to see Borys’s head swaddled in a globe of red light.

Sadira pointed up at the Dragon’s face. A bolt of blue energy crackled from her finger, blasting away a large chunk of hide. Then the sorceress gathered Rkard up and leaped into the air. Borys recovered quickly, lashing out at the flying escapees with both maimed hands.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Neeva darted between the Dragon’s legs. He lifted his injured leg to stomp her. She dived for her axe and saw the shadow of a huge foot falling around her. Her face and chest scraped across the rough stone, then the warrior’s hands closed around the handle of her weapon. Borys’s heavy heel settled across her back. A sickening crack sounded down near her waist, sending a searing wave of agony through her hips.

Neeva screamed and tried to pull herself from beneath the beast’s foot, but her legs would not come free. Her toes went cold, then an icy tide of numbness rose through her feet, traveled up past her knees, and spread into her hips. To the warrior, it felt as if her legs had vanished. Her own flesh and bone seemed as remote as the stone upon which she lay.

Growling in anger, Neeva used one hand to swing her axe over her back. She managed only to strain her shoulder and strike a weak, glancing blow. The weapon slipped from her grip and fell to the ground beside her.

Borys stepped away without reacting.

Neeva rolled herself over and tried to sit up. The muscles of her legs and hips would not help her do even that much. She picked up her axe and braced the handle against the ground. As the warrior pushed herself up, the ebony stain suddenly drained from the weapon’s blade. The bone hilt faded from black to its natural ivory color, and the light falling over the plain dimmed from angry crimson to murky scarlet.

Neeva heard her son cry out in surprise, then Sadira cursed in anger. The warrior looked across the plain and saw the pair crashing to the ground from a low height. Their limp forms went tumbling across the broken expanse. His head still encased in the fiery globe of Rkard’s sun-spell, the Dragon turned toward them and watched as the pair came to a stop.

“Get up!” Neeva yelled.

Rkard jumped to his feet and rushed to the sorceress’s side. He started to pull her up, but Sadira stood and pushed him behind her. When she turned to face the Dragon, Neeva saw that the sorceress’s skin was as white as alabaster.

Rikus and Tithian stepped between the pillars of the great arch, Sacha floating a few steps behind. The edifice looked as though it had been shaped from a single block of stone, for if there were any seams in the construction, they were not visible in the polished face of the black granite. They walked farther down the passage. Rikus counted thirteen empty alcoves lining the interior walls, the same number as the golems he had destroyed. They reached the back of the arch and peered into the fiery sea.

“When did Borys vanish?” Tithian asked. “As he passed beneath the front of the arch, or as he stepped out the back?”

“On the front side,” Rikus replied. “A sheet of orange fire covered the opening, and he stepped through it.”

Tithian cursed. “He must have touched something or spoken a word.”

“He growled for a second or two,” Rikus replied. “That’s all.”

“That’s it!” the king said, growing excited. “The arch must be controlled by a command word. Repeat it exactly.”

“If I could sing like a lirr,” the mul replied, growing annoyed with the king. “My throat’s not built for sounds like that.”

“You must-or your friends are doomed,” Tithian said. He motioned across the molten sea, then raised the leathery wings he had grown to lower them from the top of the hill. “It’ll take hours-maybe days-to fly across that.”

“Use the Way to transport us.” Rikus raised the Scourge menacingly.

Tithian shook his head. “I’d have to know what our destination looks like,” he said. “We don’t even know for sure that we want to emerge directly opposite this point.”

“Are you blind?” sneered Sacha. “That must be some kind of signal over there.”

Rikus peered closer and saw a crimson dot shining on the edge of the cliff. It was so tiny and faint that he could hardly separate it from the orange glow rising from the molten rock in the abyss, and for a moment he feared he was imagining it. Then he noticed that despite the speck’s tendency to shift positions in the rippling heat waves of the lava sea, its brightness remained markedly steadily.

“I see it.” Rikus pointed the Scourge at the dot. “That’s Rkard’s sun-spell.”

Tithian shook his head. “It doesn’t matter if I know where they are,” he said. “Unless I can visualize the place itself, I can’t take us there.”

“You incompetent!” snarled Sacha. “Must I do everything myself?”

“You couldn’t teleport us across a door threshold, much less that.” The king gestured at the boiling sea with one of his half-giant arms.

Sacha ignored him, drifting around in front of Rikus. “I assume the boy’s spell is bright enough to cast a shadow?” When the mul nodded, the head swiveled around to look at Tithian. “If you can do as well as a six-year-old mul, then I can get us to the other side.”

Raising his brow, Tithian closed his eyes to concentrate-then a tremendous blast sent him skidding toward the brink of the precipice. He scratched at the ground with all six claws, barely saving himself from sailing into the sea of molten rock.

The king managed to back two steps away from the edge, then a shaft of golden light flashed behind him. His tail and wings disintegrated into a hundred tiny bits. The Dark Lens rolled off his back and dropped to the ground. As soon as he lost contact with the Lens, Tithian howled in pain and began the change back to human form. His carapace shrank into a pair of shoulder blades, while the stump of his bleeding tail retracted to become a tailbone, and his shredded wings folded down to form the flanks of his torso.

Rikus grabbed Tithian and hurled him toward the Lens. Paying little attention to where the king landed, he whirled around to face the front of the arch. At the entrance stood two figures: a silky-haired woman with dark skin and a fang-filled mouth, and an imposing, androgynous figure that resembled a miniature version of the Dragon. Their gazes were fixed on Tithian, and it seemed likely to the mul that they were responsible for the spells that had nearly destroyed the king.

Rikus assumed the woman to be Lalali-Puy, the Oba of Gulg, since Sadira had killed the only other sorcerer-queen on Athas. He did not know the identity of the dragonlike figure.

The mul started forward to meet them. Three yellow runes streaked down from the face of the arch and exploded on the ground, spraying rock and dust high into the air. When the haze cleared, three more figures stood outside the edifice: a remotely avian man with a scaly, beak-shaped muzzle and recessed earslits; another man with a muscle-knotted body and a fringe of chalky hair; and a tall figure with the slit pupils, heavy nose, and thick mane of a lion.

Recognizing this last figure from the war with Urik, Rikus gasped, “Hamanu!”

The sorcerer-kings ignored the mul, but the bird-featured man at Hamanu’s side said, “Perhaps I should not have doubted this plan of Borys’s. It seems to be working well enough.”

“Divide and conquer,” responded the chalky-haired sorcerer-king. “When will you learn, Tec?”

“Andropinis, you will address me by my full name,” Tec hissed. “I am King Tectuk-”

“Your name is too long,” Hamanu interrupted. “We have more important things to do.”

With that, Hamanu walked beneath the arch. Tithian shoved Rikus forward to meet him. “Go on,” the king said. “With the Scourge, they can’t touch you.”

Though Sadira had told him the same thing before, Rikus frowned as he advanced. “Something’s wrong with that theory,” he said. “I fought Hamanu in the war with Urik. He struck me then-in fact he almost killed me.”

Hamanu chuckled. “This time, I won’t fail.”

The sorcerer-king leaped at the mul. Knowing better than to meet the charge head-on, Rikus threw himself to the ground and rolled. He passed beneath his foe and slashed up at the belly. A blue aura flashed around Hamanu’s body as the Scourge sliced through the magic defense, but that was as far as it sank. As it had nearly a decade ago in Urik, the blade simply stopped cutting when it hit the sorcerer-king’s flesh.

Rikus rolled once more, then brought his legs around beneath him. As he returned to his feet, he slashed at the sorcerer-king’s waist. Again, Hamanu’s aura flashed, and the blade clanged off his flesh without biting. The mul did not even see his foe’s counterstrike. He merely felt the sorcerer-king’s heel smash into his chest, then found himself sailing toward the front of the arch.

Rikus landed on his back, gasping for breath. Throwing his legs over his head, he rolled on his shoulder and glimpsed the other four sorcerers close by. He sprang to his feet and spun, slashing at the androgynous figure that resembled the Dragon.

A golden aura flared around the sorcerer-king’s body, and green sparks sputtered high into the air. The Scourge bit deep into the figure’s withered shoulder. The gaunt arm dropped to the ground, sickly brown blood spewing from the wound.

The figure howled in pain and lashed out at Rikus. The mul experienced an instant of blackness then found himself standing back at Tithian’s side. The king had assumed the form of a human-headed viper, with his giant tail wrapped around the Dark Lens. Along his spine were several nasty burns, where he had used the Lens’s heat to cauterize the wounds he had suffered from the first attack. Tithian and Hamanu had locked gazes and appeared to be engaged in a battle of the Way.

Rikus felt more relieved than disoriented by his sudden change of location. This was not the first time the blade had moved him. Once before, when he had helped Sadira chase the Dragon away from the village of Kled, it had simply transported him out of harm’s way whenever Borys struck.

“Hamanu!” screamed the wounded sorcerer-king, raising the stump of his arm. “This is your fault!”

The distraction did not seem to affect the battle between Hamanu and Tithian. Both men remained motionless, staring into each other’s eyes.

Sacha appeared at Rikus’s side, gripping Tithian’s slender dagger between his teeth. The head dropped the weapon into Rikus’s hand.

“Hamanu wasn’t one of the original champions,” Sacha whispered. “Rajaat created him to kill the idiot Troll Scorcher, Myron of Yoram, so the Scourge’s magic works backward against him. The blade won’t injure him, and while you’re holding it, you can’t defend yourself against his blows. Use plain steel against him.”

Rikus glanced back at Hamanu. The sorcerer-king remained locked in mental combat with Tithian. His contorted face showed the strain of the long battle, with flaring nostrils and beads of cloudy red sweat pouring off his leonine brow.

The mul slipped the dagger into his belt and started forward. As he advanced, he kept a careful watch on his enemies and held his sword directly in front of him.

The injured sorcerer-king moved back. Rikus guessed that he was Nibenay, since that was the only sorcerer-king’s name the mul had not yet connected to a face.

The other three sorcerers hissed spell incantations. Rikus cringed, uncertain as to whether the sword would protect him from their magic. A black shield appeared on Andropinis’s arm, while a cylinder of golden light rose up around the Oba of Gulg. King Tec’s flesh turned to bronze.

“What’s wrong with you?” Sacha screeched, catching up with the mul. “Attack Hamanu.”

“No. It makes more sense for me to attack the others,” the mul said. “They can’t injure me, and Tithian has Hamanu under control.”

“Idiot! That’s what they want!” Sacha hovered close to Rikus’s head and hissed the words into his ear. “Why do you think they’re waiting instead of helping Hamanu? They’re trying to waste your time while Borys deals with Sadira. Then, after you’re tired from fighting the sorcerer-kings, the Dragon will come back and finish what they started.”

Rikus stopped and turned sideways, so he could see both into the ravine and back toward the chasm. He was near the front of the arch, less than a dozen paces from the sorcerer-kings.

“This isn’t working,” growled the Oba. “We’ll have to kill the Usurper!”

She locked her eyes on Tithian, as did King Tec and Nibenay. Andropinis stepped to the front of the arch, positioning his black shield between Rikus and his fellow sorcerer-kings.

Tithian groaned, then his tail slackened and began to come untwined from around the Dark Lens. Blood trickled from his nostrils and ears, and his eyes bulged from their sockets. His jaw began to quiver, and Rikus knew that even with the Dark Lens, the king of Tyr was no match for the sorcerer-kings.

Shifting the Scourge away from his throwing hand, Rikus drew the dagger Sacha had given him and hurled it at Hamanu. The blade sailed straight for the sorcerer-king’s back, and it looked like it would be a clean kill. Behind the mul, Andropinis spoke the syllable of a mystic incantation.

Rikus spun and leaped, slashing his sword at the sorcerer-king’s rising hand. Reacting impossibly fast, Andropinis brought his shield up to intercept the blow. The Scourge hit without so much as a thud and stopped cold.

Andropinis’s spell misfired, and a silent burst of silver light flashed between the sorcerer-king and Rikus. The mul felt a tremendous force pushing on his chest, not so much an impact as overwhelming pressure, and his feet left the ground. He sailed a dozen paces through the air before he crashed down, rolling head over heels and coming to a rest at Hamanu’s side.

To Rikus’s amazement, the sorcerer-king still stood, even with the dagger planted deep in his back. His teeth were clenched in pain, and sweat soaked his entire body, but the injury had not forced him to break off the combat with the Tyrian king. In contrast, Tithian looked ready to collapse, with tears of blood running from his bulging eyes and his serpentine tail barely contacting with the Dark Lens.

Rikus glanced toward the front of the arch and saw that Andropinis’s misfired spell had hurled him into the Oba. They were both picking themselves off the ground. The other two sorcerer-kings were still helping Hamanu, their gazes locked on Tithian’s face.

Leaving the Scourge on the ground, Rikus leaped up and reached for the dagger in Hamanu’s back. Without looking away from Tithian, the sorcerer-king lashed out. The attack was as fast as a viper strike, but at least this time Rikus saw it coming. He twisted sideways, trying to slip past the blow, and felt a hard fist skip along his jaw. Normally, the mul would hardly have noticed a glancing blow, but Hamanu’s strike snapped his head around.

Rikus spun with the impact, turning around in a complete circle. He stopped directly behind his foe and grabbed the dagger, pushing it in to the hilt. When the sorcerer-king still did not fall, he twisted the blade and forced it upwards, driving toward the heart. Hamanu screamed and stumbled back, as if Tithian were driving him away.

A kes’trekel came streaking out of the Dark Lens, its curled talons and hooked beak poised to strike. The giant raptor seemed as real as any Rikus had ever seen-which surprised him. The mul was not a complete stranger to the Way, and he knew that battles between mindbenders were fought inside their minds.

When the bird hit, any doubts about its reality vanished. The kes’trekel’s talons sank deep into Hamanu’s shoulders, bowling him over. The mul released his hold on the dagger, then watched the great bird carry the sorcerer-king’s screaming form toward the front of the arch.

As he realized what he was seeing, Rikus did not know whether to rejoice or be sick. With the Dark Lens, Tithian could create physical versions of his mental constructs. While that ability was proving useful now, the mul knew that when the time came to kill the king, it would be every bit as dangerous to him and his friends as it was to the sorcerer-kings.

Rikus rolled across the ground and grabbed the Scourge, then returned to his feet in time to see the kes’trekel hurl itself into the midst of the sorcerer-kings. The mul started forward, knowing he did not have long to attack before his enemies recovered.

“No, Rikus, wait!” Sacha ordered. Then, to Tithian, the head said, “Give me a light!”

As the king uttered an incantation, Rikus watched the sorcerer-kings counterattack the kes’trekel. They made short work of the raptor, reducing it to a cloud of feathers in an instant.

A bright white light flared behind the mul, causing him to cast a dark shadow. A pair of burning blue eyes and a gashlike mouth appeared in the silhouette’s head. The limbs began to thicken, and the figure peeled itself off the ground.

Sacha had summoned a shadow giant.

At the other end of the arch, Andropinis cursed. He and the other sorcerer-kings started forward, yelling incantations and gesturing madly. The shadow giant turned and spewed a black mist in their direction. The passage filled with a thick, impenetrable fog. The vapor quickly rolled back to engulf the mul and his companions in its bone-chilling murk.

“How am I supposed to f-fight in this?” Rikus demanded. His teeth were already chattering, and his flesh was growing numb from the cold.

“You won’t have to,” Sacha answered. “The sorcerer-kings know better than to enter the Black.”

Rikus saw a pair of blue eyes drifting toward him, then he felt an icy hand close over his wrist.

The Dragon turned his remaining hand toward the ground. Sadira saw the telltale shimmer of magic rising into the palm. With both hands injured, she could not imagine he intended to cast a spell, any more than she could imagine where the energy was coming from. The obsidian globes in his stomach were shattered, so the sorceress knew he could not be drawing the power from any animals that might be lurking in this wasteland. That meant Borys was drawing the energy from foliage. Sadira did not see so much as a blade of grass anywhere on the desolate plain, but she knew there had to be plants somewhere. She turned her own palm toward the ground and began to draw. Even when the sun was down, she was a powerful sorceress and could rely on the normal energy sources to cast her spells.

It took a moment, then she felt the familiar tingle of magic rising through her arm. The energy seemed to be coming from the cliffs at the edge of the plain. She would have to be careful not to draw too much power too rapidly, for fear of robbing all the life force from the unseen plants and destroying them.

Before the sorceress’s eyes, the gash on Borys’s forearm slowly began to seal itself.

“We’ll never kill Borys if he can heal himself!” Rkard exclaimed. The boy stood at her side, staring in horror at the Dragon’s closing wounds.

“We’ll find a way,” Sadira replied, infusing her voice with more confidence than she felt.

The sorceress closed her hand to the flow of energy and pulled a small piece of brown tuber from her pocket. Keeping one eye on the Dragon, the sorceress uttered an incantation over the root, then held it out to Rkard.

“Eat this. It’ll make you so fast, Borys won’t catch you.” As Sadira spoke, she saw the fingers on Borys’s useless hand begin to wiggle.

The boy refused to take the root. “You should eat it,” he said. “I tried to tell you before-I’m not supposed to kill the Dragon.”

Sadira frowned. “What are you saying? Of course you are.”

Rkard shook his head. “Jo’orsh told Borys that I decided to kill the Dragon,” the boy explained. “But that’s wrong. When he and Sa’ram came to Agis’s house, I asked them why they were giving me the Belt of Rank and King Rkard’s crown. They said it was because I was going to kill the Dragon-so I thought-”

“They were telling you it’s your destiny,” Sadira interrupted.

Rkard did not answer right away, and the sorceress watched the fingers of Borys’s hand close into a fist. She thought he might come after them then, but the Dragon summoned more energy and did not move. Apparently, he intended to leave them no weaknesses to exploit when he attacked.

After a moment, Rkard said quietly, “Borys told Jo’orsh there’s no such thing as destiny. I didn’t believe him at first, but then Jo’orsh said people choose their destinies.” He paused, then added, “Only, I never chose mine.”

“Then how come he and Sa’ram gave you the belt and crown?”

Rkard shook his head. “I don’t know,” the boy replied. “And I’m not sure how they got them in the first place. The belt and the crown were stolen from our treasuries when the slavers raided Kled.”

“Tithian!” the sorceress hissed. For some reason, the king had made up the whole story about Rkard being destined to kill the Dragon-and had used the belt and crown to convince the banshees that it was true. “I’ll kill him!”

“Only if you kill Borys first,” Rkard answered. “So eat the root yourself.”

“No, I want you safe.”

“You can’t make me safe,” answered the boy. “Besides, Borys isn’t as worried about me. He’ll come after you first.”

The Dragon was still drawing energy from the ground. The wound on his leg had already healed, and the nub of a hand had appeared on the stump of his severed wrist.

“Go see what you can do for your mother,” Sadira said.

The sorceress put the root in her mouth and fixed her eye on the crimson globe encasing Borys’s head. Given that Rkard’s spell had prevented the Dragon from using the Way, she suspected that he would dispel it when he recovered the full use of his hands. Sadira turned her palm toward the ground, wondering if the beast would find it any easier to use his mental powers from inside a sphere of darkness.

It seemed to Rikus they had been floating in the Black forever, the shadow giant’s icy fingers entwined around their wrists and icy strands of gossamer filament brushing across their faces. The mul ached to the bones with cold, and only the vibrations of his constant shivering kept the ice crystals from completely encasing his body. Save for the red shimmer of the Dark Lens, glimmering a short distance to his side, Rikus could see nothing.

“It’s t-taking t-too long,” Rikus said, hardly able to speak because his teeth were chattering so badly.

“In the Black, time has little meaning,” the shadow giant replied. Earlier, he had introduced himself as Khidar. “But I will deliver you to the other side in a matter of instants in your time-provided Sacha was not mistaken about the light. Normally, we cannot approach Ur Draxa because there are no shadows in this land.”

“A few instants is still too long,” the mul worried. “If the sorcerer-kings know the arch’s password-”

“That knowledge will do them no good,” replied Khidar. “My people will keep the arch filled with the Black until you have killed Borys. If the sorcerer-kings step into it, they will never leave.”

Rikus still wasn’t convinced. “They have powerful magic,” he said.

“Which they will eventually use to dispel the fog in the arch’s passage,” Khidar replied. “But even for them, the shadow people are not easy to battle, and they were not prepared to meet us. You may believe me when I say that by the time they follow, your battle with the Dragon will be won-or lost.”

A crimson globe appeared in the darkness ahead, partially obscured by a thick wisp of blackness that reminded Rikus of a sand streamer blowing across the face of a moon.

“Now you must be quiet,” Khidar urged. “That’s our destination.”

As they drifted closer, the wisp of blackness grew thicker and more substantial, until it resembled a pair of gnarled tree boles rising up to meet high above ground. Only after studying the image for another moment did Rikus identify the dark band as a pair of huge legs. Khidar was bringing them up directly beneath Borys.

In the next instant, Rikus emerged from the Dragon’s shadow and found his head protruding above a vast plain of broken scoria. As his eyes adjusted to the red light of Rkard’s sun-spell, he reached up with sword in hand and braced his arms on the ground. He started to pull himself up, leading the way out of the Black.

The mul made it as far as his waist before Borys’s voice cried an incantation. The red light of Rkard’s sun-spell abruptly vanished, and a terrible, crushing agony gripped Rikus’s hips as he found himself clamped in solid stone.

Biting back the urge to scream, Rikus looked around and saw no shadows anywhere. Below the ground, he could feel Tithian tugging at his cold-numbed legs.

The mul raised his sword and stretched toward Borys’s foot but held his blow when he heard Sadira’s voice behind him. Rikus looked over his shoulder. He saw a black sphere leave her hand and shoot up toward Borys’s head.

The mul cursed silently, then stretched out to slash at the back of the Dragon’s ankle. The blade struck with a mighty clang, spraying blue sparks in all directions, then red smoke and yellow blood poured from the wound.

Borys howled and stumbled away, his head engulfed in a sphere of darkness. He turned a palm downward, then Rikus felt an eerie tingle as magical energy sizzled through the ground around him.

Sadira made her second attack, firing a storm of flaming blue ice at the Dragon. The pellets scoured long, smoking scars into his thick hide but did not penetrate. Borys growled in frustration and dodged, apparently expecting another attack and fearing that it would have more effect.

“Over here, Sadira!” Rikus called, waving his sword in the air.

“Rikus!”

The sorceress rushed toward him. She moved with incredible swiftness and was at his side in an instant, reaching into her robe for a spell component.

“Where have you been?” The words came so fast Rikus could hardly understand her.

“That’s not as important as where I am now-trapped halfway in the Black!” the mul growled. “We need a light.”

Fifty paces away, Borys uttered an incantation and touched his hand to his head. The sphere of darkness evaporated instantly.

“Light, Sadira!” Rikus urged. “Now!”

Sadira spoke a mystic syllable and touched the Scourge. A brilliant glow flared on the blade, casting a long shadow behind Rikus. He felt his waist come free. Before the mul could pull himself out of the ground, a pair of arms shot out of the Black and grabbed the rocky plain. Rikus felt Tithian’s shoulders pushing him up from beneath, then the mul was free of the cold murk.

Rikus stood and held his sword steady. Tithian’s head and torso emerged from the mul’s shadow. Sacha came with him, cleaving to a mouthful of long, gray hair. The king stopped climbing when he noticed Sadira staring at him with a murderous light in her eyes.

“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded.

“Ask later,” Rikus said. “We’re in enough trouble-”

Sadira’s head snapped toward the Dragon. She launched herself forward, giving Rikus a hard shove. Rikus heard the sizzle of a magic bolt crackle from Borys’s direction, then everything went dark. An instant later, the mul found himself standing near the brink of the abyss, staring back toward the center of the plain. Where he had been standing a moment earlier, there was now a smoking crater the size of the Golden Palace. Rikus could not see how deep the hole was, for it was surrounded by a rim of broken stone as high as Tyr’s city wall.

“By Ral!” The mul was so shocked, he could do little but gape at the immense hole. “Sadira!”

“What are you doing, giving up?” asked a familiar voice.

For the first time, the mul realized that he was standing near an arch similar to the one on the other side of the lava sea. Lying near its base, her head cradled in Rkard’s lap, was Neeva. Though Rikus could not see any injuries, her motionless legs revealed all he needed to know.

“Neeva!” he gasped.

“Go.” She pointed toward the crater. Borys was already limping down into it. “I’ll be fine with Rkard looking after me. See what happened.”

The mul started forward, then heard a strange voice at his feet. “St … ning … oaf!”

Noticing that he only heard the voice when his feet touched the ground, Rikus halted and looked down. Out of the shadow cast by his sword came Tithian, followed immediately by Sadira’s pale form.

“How did you-”

“It was the only place to go,” Sadira replied, cutting him off before he finished the question. “Where’s the Dragon?”

Rikus pointed toward the crater.

“We’d better hurry,” Tithian said. Still in serpent form, the king started to slither toward the crater.

“Wait,” Sadira said. “I’ve got an idea.”

“It’d better be a good one,” Tithian said. “We don’t have long before Borys realizes we’re not in that crater.”

The sorceress took the Scourge, then touched the blade to the Dark Lens. A flash of crimson light flared from beneath the enchanted steel. The sword began to glow red, and Sadira gasped in pain.

“What are you doing?” Rikus asked, horrified at the thought of what the heat might do to the temper of his blade.

“Remember what happened the first time you broke the Scourge?” she asked. “And how terrified Abalach-Re was in the Ivory Plain?”

The mul smiled, then looked to Tithian. “Weaken the blade,” he ordered.

“Are you mad?” the king gasped.

“If you want to kill Borys, do it!” Rikus ordered.

Tithian frowned but directed his gaze at the weapon. His brow furrowed in concentration. Where the Scourge’s blade touched the Lens, a white flame danced over the steel. Sadira cried out and dropped the sword.

Rikus tore a strip off the hem of the sorceress’s robe, then wrapped it around the Scourge’s hilt and picked the sword up. About midway down the blade, a black scorch mark stained the steel.

“That’ll do fine,” the mul declared.

Rikus led the way back to the hole, Sadira sprinting at his side. Tithian crawled behind them, holding the Dark Lens in his tail. When they reached the crater, Rikus signaled the others to hide, then climbed to the top and peered down on Borys. The Dragon was on all fours, still digging through the rubble at the bottom of the pit. The mul picked up a rock, intending to let it drop on Borys to get his attention.

There was no need. The Dragon drew himself up to his full height, and Rikus found himself standing eye to eye with the beast.

“Where’s my Lens?” Borys demanded.

The Dragon raised his hands but resisted the temptation to strike, obviously aware that Rikus would vanish if he did.

Allowing some of his very real fear of the beast to show through, Rikus replied, “I d-don’t have it.”

Rikus raised the Scourge as if to strike, then pretended to slip on the treacherous ground. He flailed his arms wildly, flinging the Scourge down the slope below. The instant the sword left the mul’s hand, Borys’s mouth gaped open, and his head darted for ward. Rikus hurled himself down the hill backward, watching the Dragon’s snapping jaws snake after him.

Tithian struck first, slipping from behind a boulder to make contact with one of Borys’s beady eyes. Rikus saw the psionic image of a winged serpent striking from the Dark Lens toward their foe. The Dragon swiveled his huge head around. The glowing figure of a lava golem shot from the beast’s eyes and intercepted the viper. The snake bit into the burning giant, then erupted into flames.

The serpent continued its attack, coiling its body around the figure and constricting. The two constructs began to wrestle, shifting forms into birds, lirrs, lions, and a dozen other ferocious creatures. The battle raged with such fervor that tongues of real flame came flying off the two images, scorching stones and searing Rikus’s flesh.

Leaving his construct to carry on the battle against Tithian by itself, Borys looked back to Rikus. The mul was still sliding down the hill, grasping madly at the Scourge. Wisps of smoke began to ooze from the Dragon’s nostrils, and his mouth opened to exhale.

Sadira leaped from her hiding place. She lunged at the beast’s eye with a dagger of hissing blue smoke. Borys closed his mouth and looked away. The sorceress’s blade missed its intended target but still slashed down across the Dragon’s snout. The attack drew only a trickle of blood, but it bought Rikus enough time to find the Scourge and spring to his feet.

Borys’s hand flashed from behind the crater rim and closed around Sadira. Now that she was no longer protected by the power of the sun, his claws sank deep into her abdomen. She screamed in pain. Blood began to seep from between the beast’s fingers.

Still holding the sorceress, Borys swung his head back toward Rikus. The mul charged up the hill and drove his sword down through the Dragon’s snout.

The blade sank through both jaws, drawing a spray of boiling yellow blood. Borys threw Sadira down and snapped his head high into the sky, trying to flip Rikus off. The mul hung on tightly, locking his legs around the Dragon’s snout and desperately trying to snap the blade.

He heard Sadira yell from the crater rim, “Keep fighting, damn you!”

Rikus looked down and saw that Tithian had ceased his mental attack. Instead of combating Borys with the Way, the king was slithering away with the Dark Lens in his tail.

One of the Dragon’s gnarled claws rose into sight, blocking the mul’s view of the scene below. Rikus cursed, knowing that if he allowed his enemy to strike at him, he would find himself standing near the arch-and away from the combat. Gripping the Scourge’s hilt with both hands, he flung himself away from the claw and braced his feet against the other side of the snout. He pulled with all his might. The blade flexed with a resilient chime but did not break.

Far below, Sadira called Tithian’s name. Rikus looked down and saw the sorceress throw something. The king ducked behind the Dark Lens, then a web of sticky white filaments formed in the air above him and began settling over his head.

Tithian laughed.

Borys whipped his head around in an angry attempt to shake Rikus loose. The Scourge snapped with a sour twang, and the mul fell away. As he dropped, he saw a fountain of black syrup spraying from the blade still half-buried in the Dragon’s snout.

Rikus slammed into the crater rim. His body exploded into pain, and the Scourge’s hilt slipped from his grasp. He tumbled down the slope, the Dragon’s roars filling his ears. Soon, he managed to bring himself to a stop. Everything hurt so badly that he could not tell whether he had broken all his bones or none of them.

The mul rolled over and, grasping a boulder, pulled himself to his feet. To Rikus’s relief, attacking him was sure to be the last thing on Borys’s mind. A huge fountain of black fluid was shooting from the Scourge’s broken blade and had already coated the Dragon’s head with a thick layer of ebony slime. With angry red plumes of smoke pouring from his nostrils, the beast was madly scratching at the steel shard lodged in his snout. He accomplished little, save to coat his claws with the same dark sludge that covered his face.

The Dragon bellowed in horrid pain. He sprayed a fiery red cloud high into the sky, and his hands dropped limply to his sides, his beady eyes glazing over in agony. A series of convulsions ran through his slender face. With each spasm, the snout grew shorter and thicker, until the thing looked more like a nose and drooping chin than a beast’s muzzle. The spiked crest on top of his head broadened into a sloping forehead. Borys gave one last roar, then fell silent and dropped behind the ridge.

Feeling fairly confident that the Dragon would not return to attack him, Rikus looked across the slope. He found the king bound tightly to the Dark Lens by a sturdy mesh of silver filaments. As the mul watched, a huge red spider emerged from the depths of the Lens. The creature lowered its head to the web and drew the glistening strands into its mouth. Once Tithian was free, the creature sprang at Sadira. It sailed across the intervening distance in a flash, then landed square on the sorceress’s face and began savaging her with its maw.

Rikus started forward to help her. As he stumbled across the slope, he watched helplessly as four lacy wings sprouted from Tithian’s back. Still holding the Dark Lens in his tail, the king rose into the air and flew toward the cliff on the far side of the plain. His size dwindled rapidly, and the mul knew that he would quickly pass out of sight.

Tithian flew away, and Sadira rolled down the slope and pinned the spider beneath her. She pulled her head away from its maw. Her face was covered with red welts that looked like burn marks, but there were no punctures to suggest that the thing had been injecting poison into her body. The sorceress grasped her attacker in both hands and picked it up high over her head. She brought it down on a sharp rock. The thing vanished in a fiery flash.

Sadira screamed in shock and covered her face.

Rikus reached her side. “Let me see,” he said.

“I’m not seriously hurt-which is more than Tithian will be able to say when I catch up to him,” Sadira said. She lowered her arms, revealing a face with singed eyelashes and reddened skin. Rikus was relieved to see that there were no critical burns.

“What about the Dragon?” Sadira asked.

The mul pointed toward the top of the rim. “I snapped the sword,” he said. “What’s left of Borys fell inside.”

“We’d better have a look,” Sadira said.

They climbed the slope and peered cautiously over the top. In the bottom of the crater, a huge skeleton of black-stained bones lay curled into a fetal ball. Its shoulder blades were fused into a single large hump, and its gangling arms were wrapped around its knees. The thing’s face was the remotely human visage that Rikus had seen replace Borys’s, with the Scourge’s shard still lodged in the nose and spewing dark slime into the air.

As they watched, sparks of blue energy began to dance in its empty eye sockets. From its fleshless mouth came a sibilant voice.

“Borys of Ebe, Butcher of Dwarves, Leader of the Revolt,” the voice hissed. “Your master has claimed his punishment.”

Inky fluid began to bubble up between the skeleton’s teeth. The ribs broke open and began to gush ebony syrup from the jagged ends. The arms and legs separated at the joints, then the pelvis split down the center, and finally the spine collapsed into a line of disconnected vertebrae. With each separation, more dark slime poured into the basin, until the skeleton itself disappeared beneath a pool of bubbling, frothing, black sludge.