The Cerulean Storm

ONE SAMARAH

King Tithian of Tyr gnashed his teeth in vexation, accidentally crushing the sweet chadnut upon which he had been sucking. The pulp filled his mouth with sour, peppery seeds that burned his tongue and made his eyes water. He swallowed the kernels in a single gulp, hardly noticing the fiery aftertaste that chased them down his throat.

“It’s a whole damned fleet!” His old man’s voice was hoarsened by the spicy chad seeds.

The hunch-shouldered king stood behind a low stone wall, peering through a curtain of swirling dust. A thicket of masts had just appeared in Samarah’s tiny harbor. While the thick haze prevented a reliable ship count, Tithian could see so much billowing canvas that the flotilla looked like a cloud bank rolling in from the Sea of Silt.

“Why should the fleet anger you, Mighty One?” asked Korla, clinging, as always, to Tithian’s arm. She was the fairest woman in the village, with ginger-colored hair and a sultry smile. That did not mean she was beautiful. A life of heat and dust had framed her brown eyes with deep-etched crow’s-feet, while the sun had baked her skin until it was as creased and rough as a man’s. Korla clasped the king’s elbow more tightly. “Your retainers wouldn’t dare come for you with anything less than a dozen ships.”

Tithian pulled free and straightened his shoulder satchel.

She frowned. “Soon you’ll show me the wonders of Tyr-won’t you?”

“No.” Tithian fixed a disdainful glare on her weather-lined face.

“You can’t leave me behind!” Korla objected. She glanced at the small crowd of villagers gathered behind the wall. “After what I’ve been to you, the others will-”

“Quiet!” Tithian ordered. He waved a liver-spotted hand toward the harbor. “That isn’t my fleet. Rikus and Sadira will come by land, not ship.”

Korla lowered her eyelids and sighed in relief.

“Don’t be too relieved,” said Riv, Korla’s brawny husband and Samarah’s headman.

An elf-tarek crossbreed, Riv had a square, big-boned face with a sloped forehead and a slender nose. Standing so tall that the village wall rose only to his waist, he cut an imposing figure. Normally, Tithian would have killed such a rival outright, but the headman had taken pains to make himself indispensable as an intermediary to the villagers. Besides, the king enjoyed flaunting Korla’s adultery in front of him.

“Your reign as whore-queen will end soon enough.” Riv glared at his wife.

“Why’s that?” Tithian demanded, shuffling around Korla to confront the huge crossbreed. “Is there a reason I should fear those ships?”

Riv shrugged. “Everyone should fear Balican armadas. But I see no reason they should concern you especially,” he replied. He raised the thin lips of his domed muzzle, showing a mouthful of enormous canine teeth. “I only meant that Korla shouldn’t expect to go with you when the time comes. I’ve seen enough of Athas to know she’d only be an embarrassment in the city.”

“You may have seen the brothels of Balic, but you know nothing of life in Tyr’s royal court,” Korla spat back. She regarded her husband suspiciously, then continued, “Now answer the king’s question. We haven’t seen a Balican fleet for more than a year. Why now?”

Riv sneered. “Ask your lover,” he said. “He’s the mindbender.”

“I’ll know the answer soon enough,” Tithian said, thrusting his hand into his shoulder satchel. “And if you ever again refer to me as anything but King or Mighty One, you’ll beg for your death.”

Riv blanched. The king had pulled spell components from the sack often enough that the headman recognized the gesture as a threatening one. What Riv did not realize was that Tithian could also withdraw a venomous viper, a vial of acid, or any one of a dozen other tools of murder from inside. The sack was magical, and it could hold an unlimited supply of items without appearing full.

Riv glared at Tithian for a moment, then hissed, “As you wish, Mighty One.”

Tithian spun toward the center of the village, signaling for Korla and Riv to follow him. As they moved through the dust haze, they passed a dozen stone huts shaped like beehives. Inside most buildings, haggard women furiously packed their meager possessions-sacks of chadnuts, stone knives, clay cooking pots, and bone-tipped hunting spears. Outside, the men gathered the family goraks, knee-high lizards with colorful dorsal fans. It was a slow, difficult process, for the stubborn reptiles were engrossed in overturning rocks and catching insects with their long, sticky tongues.

The king and his companions reached the village plaza. In the center was the communal well, a deep hole encircled by a simple railing of gorak bones. A small crowd of children surrounded the pit, arguing in panicked voices and elbowing each other out of the way as they struggled to fill their waterskins.

On the far side of the plaza, outside the hut the king had confiscated from Riv, lay an obsidian orb larger than a man, with languorous streaks of scarlet swimming over its glassy surface. It was the Dark Lens, both the source of Tithian’s power and the means through which he would achieve his greatest ambition: to become an immortal sorcerer-king.

The Dark Lens had once belonged to Athas’s first sorcerer, Rajaat. Thousands of years ago, the ancient sage had started a genocidal war to cleanse Athas of races he considered impure. To assist him, Rajaat had used the Lens to make a group of immortal champions, each dedicated to destroying one race.

After dozens of centuries of fighting, the champions had learned that their master intended to strip them of their powers. They had rebelled, using the Dark Lens to lock Rajaat into a mystical prison. Then they had transformed their leader, Borys of Ebe, into the Dragon, appointing him to guard the prison forever. The other champions had each claimed one of the cities of Athas to rule as immortal sorcerer-kings.

Tithian intended to kill the Dragon and free Rajaat. In return, he had been promised that the ancient sorcerer would bless him with the immortal powers of a champion. Unfortunately, the Tyrian king could not hope to kill his prey alone. Borys was a master of the Way, sorcery, and physical combat, and the Dark Lens would make Tithian powerful enough to challenge the Dragon only in the Way.

The king knew who could help him: his former slaves Rikus and Sadira. A champion gladiator, Rikus carried a magical sword that had been forged by Rajaat himself, while Sadira’s body had been imbued with the magical energies of Rajaat’s mystic castle. Together, the three of them would have the power to destroy Borys.

Of course, Tithian realized that it would not be easy to induce his ex-slaves to help. For their own reasons, they were as anxious to kill the Dragon as the king was, but they were also smart enough not to trust the Tyrian ruler. So, to lure them into helping him, Tithian had sent them a fraudulent message in the name of their friend Agis of Asticles. In it, he had claimed that Agis had recovered the Dark Lens and had asked them to meet the noble in Samarah. To convince them the summons was real, he had included the Asticles signet ring. Once they arrived, he would make up a lie about how the noble had died after sending the message. Then the king would convince them to let him take Agis’s place and help them kill Borys.

Tithian had reached the far side of the village square. The sentry the king had left to watch the Dark Lens showed himself. He was a disembodied head with grossly bloated cheeks and narrow, dark eyes. He had a mouthful of broken teeth and wore his coarse hair in a topknot. The bottom of his leathery neck had been stitched shut with black thread.

“What’d you find in the harbor?” the sentry asked, floating toward Tithian.

“It’s a fleet, Sacha,” the king reported.

Sacha’s dark eyes opened wide. “That’s impossible.” He glanced at the obsidian orb. “As long as we have the Dark Lens, Andropinis can’t find us.”

“Then what are his ships doing in the harbor?” Tithian growled.

“How should I know?” sneered the head. “You’re the one who controls the Lens. I suggest you use it.”

Tithian lashed out to snatch Sacha’s topknot, missed, and silently cursed. His slow reflexes still surprised him occasionally, for his body had grown frail and old just a few weeks earlier. In the course of stealing the Dark Lens from the giant tribes in the Sea of Silt, the king had been forced to outwit its guardians: a pair of dwarven banshees named Jo’orsh and Sa’ram. Before he could send them away, the spirits had stolen what remained of his youth, burdening him with aching joints, shortness of breath, and all the other afflictions of old age.

Leaving Korla and Riv behind, Tithian spread his arms and stepped toward the Dark Lens. As he approached, waves of blistering heat rose off the glassy orb and seared his old man’s body clear to the brittle bones. Clenching his teeth, he laid his hands on the scorching surface. From beneath his palms came a soft hiss, and the smell of charred flesh filled his nostrils. The king did not cry out. He looked past the surface and gazed into the utter blackness of the Dark Lens.

Tithian opened himself to the power of the black orb. His hands seemed to meld with its surface, and its blistering heat ceased to bum his flesh. A torrent of energy rushed from the Lens into his arms, flowing down into his spiritual nexus, the place deep within his abdomen where the three energies of the Way-mental, physical, and spiritual-joined to form the core of his being.

Tithian focused his thoughts on Samarah’s harbor, concentrating on what he would see there if the dust haze were not obscuring his vision. In the black depths of the Dark Lens rose an image of twenty schooners, each depicted clearly in ghostly red light. The first ship was just sailing into the narrow strait that served as the harbor’s mouth. Inside his mind the king heard the creaking of masts and the pop of flapping canvas. The visual image was so clear that he could see the gaunt slaves shuffling along with yardarm ropes as they furled the sails. On the main deck, hairless dwarves labored around a capstan as they struggled to raise the keel boards, and in the stern the shipfloater stared into a black dome of obsidian. From his own experience aboard Balican schooners, Tithian knew that the shipfloater was using the Way to infuse the dome with the spiritual energy that kept the ship from sinking into the dust.

“Find out if Andropinis is with them,” suggested Sacha, hovering at Tithian’s side. “If he isn’t, even an incompetent like you can destroy the fleet.”

“And if he is?” Tithian demanded.

Sacha did not answer.

Tithian shifted his attention to a particularly large schooner near the center of the fleet. Unlike the other ships, this one had narrow banners snapping from the top of its masts, identifying it as the flagship. The king focused all his attention on the craft, closing the others out of his mind. He felt a surge of mystical energy rush from deep within his body, and the ship’s image gradually enlarged until it was the only one visible.

On the foredeck, four ballistae sat ready to fire, massive harpoons nocked in their skein cords, with a pair of lumbering half-giants standing nearby. Two sorcerers stood in the prow, inspecting the dust-swells ahead of the ship for signs of buried obstacles. To aid in the search, each man held the base of a large glass cone to his eyes. The glass cones, Tithian knew, were king’s eyes, unique lenses especially enchanted so the viewer could peer through the dust hazes so common to the Sea of Silt.

To the king’s surprise, there did not appear to be any slaves on the main deck. Half-giants stood next to every catapult, while the crew struggling to turn the capstan wore the plain togas of low-ranking Balican templars. Even the men and women crawling over the yardarms showed no whip scars on their bare backs.

When Tithian’s gaze fell on the quarterdeck, his stomach coiled into a tight knot. “In the name of Rajaat!” he cursed. “It can’t be!”

Behind the helmsman stood Andropinis, sorcerer-king of Balic. He was muscular and huge, with a fringe of chalk-colored hair hanging from beneath his jagged crown. He had a slender face, a nose so long it could almost be called a snout, and dark nostrils shaped like eggs. His cracked lips were pulled back to reveal a mouthful of teeth filed as sharp as those of a gladiator. Beneath his sleeveless tunic, a line of sharp bulges ran down his spine. Small pointed scales covered his shoulders and the backs of his arms.

What disturbed Tithian more than the sight of Andropinis were the five people standing silently at the sorcerer-king’s side. Two were male, two female, and one of uncertain gender. All stood close to Andropinis’s height and appeared just as menacing. One man, with slit pupils and the heavy nose of a lion, had a thick mane around his neck. The other seemed remotely avian, with a scaly, beak-shaped muzzle and recessed earslits on the sides of his head.

The taller woman appeared as cold as she was beautiful, with long, silky hair, dark skin, and narrow eyeslits extending from the bridge of her nose around to her temples. She had a small, oval-shaped mouth, with dainty fangs pressed against the flesh of her lips. The other woman was of lighter complexion. Her huge eyes constantly roamed about and never seemed to focus on anything. Save for the curled claws at the ends of her fingertips, she looked more completely human than anyone else with Andropinis.

The last figure stood half-again as tall as the others. It seemed a miniature version of the Dragon, with a gaunt build neither male nor female. A glistening hide of leather and chitin covered its willowy limbs and androgynous body, while huge claws with knobby-jointed fingers hung from the ends of its skeletal arms. At the end of its serpentine neck was its head, little more than a slender snout with a glassy, bulbous eye on each side and a bony horn at the end.

“Who are they?” asked Korla, coming to stand at Tithian’s side. She held her hands out to shield her face from the blistering heat of the Lens.

“The six sorcerer-kings and -queens of Athas,” supplied Sacha.

The head had hardly spoken before Korla glanced toward her husband. “Riv!”

Sacha faced Tithian and growled, “You should have killed the half-breed when you decided to bed his wife.”

“It wasn’t me,” Riv objected, joining them. Over at the well, the children had formed a neat line and were working efficiently to fill their waterskins. “The last things I want in Samarah are sorcerer-kings. Most of my villagers are slaves who came here after escaping the cities.”

“I’ve seen jealous fools risk more,” pressed Sacha.

“Riv didn’t summon this fleet,” Tithian said. Inside the Dark Lens, he could see Andropinis’s ship passing between the two spits of land that formed the mouth of the harbor. “Even if Riv has a way to contact the sorcerer-kings, he has no reason to think they’d be interested in me-unless you told him, Sacha.”

“Don’t be absurd,” snapped the head.

“They must have found a way to track the Lens,” the king surmised.

“Impossible,” Sacha said. “As long as Jo’orsh and Sa’ram still walk Athas, their magic prevents any sorcerer-king from finding the Lens-by any method.”

“Then what are all six doing here?”

When the head didn’t answer, the king shifted his attention from Andropinis’s flagship back to the whole fleet. He felt a surge of energy course through his body, then his field of view expanded to take in the entire armada. The ship in the lead was furling its sails and slowing to a stop under the shouted guidance of the first mate. The end of Samarah’s single quay lay just a short distance ahead of the bowsprit.

Fearing that a Balican watchman would soon be able to see him, Tithian searched the sky over the harbor for the silhouette of a mast or crow’s nest. To his relief, he found nothing but a pearly sky full of blowing dust.

Samaran mothers began to pour into the plaza with heavy satchels of household belongings slung over their shoulders. The fathers waited at the edge of the square, clubbing their goraks with bone spears in a futile effort to keep the flocks from drifting.

“Where are your villagers going, Riv?” Tithian asked.

“If we stay here, the Balicans will seize everything we have-even our children,” the headman reported. “We’ll scatter into the desert until the fleet leaves.”

“We’d better do the same,” urged Sacha.

“And forgo a chance to spy on my enemies?” The king shook his head. “We’re staying.”

“We can’t eavesdrop on sorcerer-kings!”

“Of course we can,” Tithian replied. “You said yourself they can’t find us as long as we have the Dark Lens.”

The king returned his gaze to the black orb, then gasped. Several schooners had come to a dead halt in the middle of the harbor, but that was not what had alarmed him. Borys had appeared next to the flagship, his willowy frame so gaunt, it would have made an elf seem stout. Though the Dragon stood waist-deep in silt, his slender head loomed as far above the ship’s deck as the highest mast, with a spiked crest of leathery skin running up the back of his serpentine spine. A menacing light glowed in his tiny eyes, and wisps of red fume rose from the nostrils at the end of his slender snout.

Andropinis stood at the gunnel, conversing with Borys. “How can you be certain Tithian is here, Great One?” the sorcerer-king asked.

“I’m not,” the Dragon replied. “But my spies in Tyr inform me that Rikus and Sadira are preparing to leave for Samarah. Why would they come so far, if not to meet the Usurper and retrieve the Dark Lens?”

“And you summoned us to help you ambush them?”

“Perhaps, if my agents in Tyr fail to stop them,” Borys said. “But first, I want you and the other sorcerer-kings to find Jo’orsh and Sa’ram.”

“The dwarven knights?” asked Andropinis.

“The dwarven banshees,” Borys corrected. “Now that the Usurper has stolen the Lens from them, they should not be so difficult to find. Bring them to me, and my spirit lords will force them to undo the magic hiding the Dark Lens.”

“Perhaps it would be easier to destroy the banshees where we find them,” suggested Andropinis.

“These banshees cannot be destroyed by you-or even me,” said Borys. “Only my spirit lords can do that-which is why you must bring them to me.”

“You’ll be here?”

The Dragon nodded. “Waiting for Tithian.”

With that, Borys stepped away from the ship. The crew began to lower the skiffs, and the sorcerer-kings prepared to disembark.

“Now will you leave?” asked Sacha. He was hovering near Tithian’s shoulder, watching the scene inside the Lens.

“No. It wouldn’t do any good,” Tithian’s heart was pounding, pumping fear and panic through his body, and it was all he could do to keep control of his thoughts. “Running into the desert won’t save me, not from Borys and his sorcerer-kings.”

“So you’ll fight them?” Korla asked in an anxious voice.

Tithian looked up from the Lens and glared at her. “Don’t be absurd,” he spat. “One or two sorcerer-kings, I could kill easily. But not all of them, and not with Borys here. Even I can’t kill the Dragon alone.”

“I don’t suppose you’d do us the courtesy of surrendering outside Samarah?” requested Riv. “It might spare my people some trouble.”

“Why should I care about your people?” growled Tithian. “I have no intention of surrendering.” “I’m happy to hear that,” said Korla.

Smirking at her relief, Riv scoffed, “Why? If he’s not going to run or fight, what else can he do?”

“The last thing Borys expects: hide in the very place he’s trying to ambush me.” Tithian was untroubled by Riv’s obvious delight at his plight. The headman would pay for his insolence soon enough.

Tithian thought his plan stood a good chance of seeing him through until help arrived. If Borys thought his agents could stop Rikus and Sadira, the Dragon was underestimating them badly. As long as the pair believed they were coming to meet Agis, they would find a way to reach Samarah. Once they did, they would have no choice but to help him slay Borys.

The king studied Riv’s brawny form for a moment, then used the Way to visualize himself growing as large and strong as the headman. A torrent of searing energy rushed from the Lens into his body. The king’s arms burst into agony as his muscles began to swell, taking on a knotted, bulging shape. After his arms came his shoulders and neck, then his chest, back, and stomach. Each transformation brought with it a fresh surge of pain. Tithian clenched his teeth and waited for the Dark Lens to change his thoughts into reality, until at last his legs felt as thick and bandy as Riv’s.

The king slipped his arms, now as sinewy as those of a half-giant, around the heavy Lens. He lifted it easily, then moved toward the center of the plaza, shuffling to keep from banging his knees on the huge orb. The crowd of Samaran children backed away, their half-filled waterskins dribbling precious liquid onto the dusty ground.

“Where are you going?” Sacha demanded, floating at Tithian’s side.

“I told you: to hide,” the king replied.

“What good will that do?” the head whispered into Tithian’s ear. “There isn’t a villager here who’d hesitate to tell the Balicans where you are.”

“I’ve thought of that already,” Tithian replied.

As he spoke, the king concentrated on the people ahead, fixing their faces firmly in his mind. He used the Way to visualize them clasping at their throats, choking and gasping for air. He felt the energy of the Dark Lens flow through his body and into the ground. A column of brown mist whooshed from the well, spreading over the plaza with the fetid, caustic odor of charred flesh. The sound of coughing and gagging filled the air, then Samarans started to drop, their strangled voices calling for help. The instant a body hit the ground, its flesh grew ashen and began to wither.

Heavy steps sounded behind Tithian. The king turned and saw Riv charging, his muzzle twisted into a snarl of rage. “Murderer!” The headman flung himself into the air.

Tithian shifted the Dark Lens to one hand and raised his other arm. He opened himself to the Lens’s power. He felt a streak of mystic energy rush through his body, then Riv’s chest hit his hand. A dark flash erupted from beneath the king’s palm, engulfing his attacker in a pall of absolute blackness. The headman howled in pain, but the cry was strangely muted, as if the ebon fire of the Lens had swallowed it. Riv’s scorched bones clattered to the ground, trailing wisps of greasy, foul-smelling smoke.

Hardly seeming to notice her dead husband or any of the other dying villagers, Korla stumbled to Tithian’s side. “I’m choking,” she croaked. “Save me!”

Tithian shook his head. “You must die as well.”

Korla’s eyes widened in disbelief. “No!”

“If Borys finds you, he’ll tear your mind apart with the Way,” Tithian explained. “You’ll tell him where to find me.”

“I would never,” Korla said, stepping back in fear.

Tithian caught her hand and pulled it to the Lens. A flame flashed beneath her fingers, then her body erupted into a column of crimson fire. The blaze died away quickly, and all that remained where Korla had stood were her bones, a pearly heap of ash, and a handful of cracked teeth. Recalling that they had once nibbled his ear and made him feel young, the king stooped over and picked up the incisors, slipping them into his shoulder satchel for safekeeping.

As Tithian glanced around the square, he saw that most of the people near the well had already died. Their bodies were shriveling into piles of dust and white bone that even Borys would find impossible to interrogate. Farther away, the mist had just reached the edge of the plaza. The stunned fathers were thrashing about on the ground, their purple tongues hanging out. The goraks accepted their fate with more dignity, dropping to their bellies and turning their yellow eyes away from the sun.

The king did not worry that the Balicans would find it strange that an entire village had perished, for such catastrophes were far from rare on Athas. When the sailors walked among the bones, it would be coins and chadnuts they sought, not answers.

Tithian grabbed Sacha and slipped the head into the satchel, then walked over to the well and peered back toward the harbor. Above the huts of Samarah, he could see the faint outline of dozens of masts showing through the heavy silt curtain. From outside the village came muffled Balican voices demanding that the gate be opened.

The king stepped into the well, using the Way to lower himself and the Dark Lens gently into the pit. The gloomy depths swallowed them both, and Tithian settled into the tepid waters to await Rikus and Sadira.