The Obsidian Oracle

PROLOGUE

Out of the corner of her eye, Neeva glimpsed the crimson flash of a sun-spell. Despite the impending victory of her militia, she felt the cold hand of panic closing around her heart. The flare had come from the direction of the Sunbird Gate, which guarded all the hidden treasures of the village-most especially her young son, Rkard.

To her dismay, Neeva was in no position to rush to his aid. She stood atop the mountainous shell of a dead mekillot, using nothing more than a pair of short swords to fight three men armed with lances and daggers. In the narrow streets of Kled, her militiamen were mercilessly butchering the raiders who had come to take slaves from their village. The few invaders who escaped the dwarves’ bloody axes were fleeing toward one of the many breaches in the town wall, opened at the start of the assault by the mighty reptile upon which Neeva now stood. Considering the speed with which the slavers had struck, the battle was going extremely well, but that did little to cheer the worried mother.

“Enough of this!” Neeva growled, hurling one of her swords at the nearest attacker.

The steel blade split the man’s sternum with a muted crack and sank deep into his chest. The militia commander did not wait to see him fall. Instead, she dropped to a knee and spun, extending her other leg to its full length. As the next slaver stepped forward to attack her back, Neeva’s ankle smashed into his knee and swept him off his feet. She continued her spin, slicing the man’s throat before he hit the ground. The third slaver’s lance came darting for her breast. She batted the point aside with her free hand, then drove her sword deep into the man’s stomach.

Neeva freed her swords from the bodies of the dying slavers, hardly hearing their groans of agony. Her eyes were already searching the streets for her husband, hoping Caelum had been the one who had cast the sun-spell at the Sunbird Gate. She found him on the opposite side of the village, too far away to have caused the flash.

Confident that her militia could finish routing the slavers without her direction, Neeva slid down the mekillot shell. She scrambled over the rubble of several crushed huts, then slipped into a narrow street and ran for the Sunbird Gate. Twice she paused to kill panicked raiders who stumbled across her path, but, in her hurry to reach the gate, she allowed several more to escape.

Fifty yards from her destination, she glimpsed a trio of inixes scurrying down a parallel street, their serpentine tails whipping from side to side and smashing holes into the stone huts that lined the avenue. The lizards were about fifteen feet long, with ash-colored scales, stocky legs, and beaks of bone that could bite a woman in two. On the shoulders of each beast sat a lance-bearing driver, while cargo howdahs, huge boxes made of sun-bleached bone, were strapped to their backs.

Neeva knew instantly that the slavers had not chosen her village by chance. Whoever had planned the attack knew of Kled’s secret wealth and where to find it, for the howdahs of the first two inixes brimmed over with riches stolen from behind the Sunbird Gate: bronze armor, steel axes and swords, even the golden crowns of ancient kings. It crossed the commander’s mind that the slave-taking had been nothing more than a diversion for the inix-mounted thieves, but she quickly rejected that idea. The raiders’ losses were too severe to be a mere distraction.

When Neeva saw the contents of the third lizard’s howdah, all thoughts of the slavers’ motivations slipped from her mind. Instead of treasure, this beast carried two men. One was a burly human dressed in polished leather, holding a steel long sword that he had no doubt stolen from Kled’s armories. The other, a hateful-looking half-elf with a short black beard and sharp features, wore a billowing robe and carried no weapon. Instead, he held the struggling form of a young boy. Although the child was only five years old, he already stood as tall as most dwarves, with a thick-boned body covered in sinew and muscle. Completely bald, he had a square jaw, angry red eyes, and pointed ears that lay close to his head.

“Rkard!” Neeva gasped, sprinting down the alley after her son’s kidnappers.

She had no need to ask herself why the raiders had taken her son instead of filling the third howdah with more treasure. The boy was a mul, a human-dwarf crossbreed who would bring a small fortune in any city with a slave market. Blessed with the powerful frame of his dwarven father and Neeva’s human agility, he would be sent to the gladiatorial pits and cultivated into an arena champion. Having spent her own childhood in the pits, Rkard’s mother knew firsthand the horrors that would await him there.

Neeva reached the end of the alley and leaped the inix’s whipping tail. She plunged a short sword through the scales on the beast’s flank and used it to pull herself atop its rear quarters. The lizard roared in pain and tried to whip its head around to snap at her, but the driver thrust the tip of his lance toward the thing’s lidless eye.

“Forward, Slas!” he cried, and the creature continued to scurry down the avenue.

Neeva yelled, “Rkard, be ready!”

The boy stopped struggling and raised one small hand toward the sky. At the same time, the armored raider leaned out of the howdah, slashing at Neeva’s head with his steel sword. She blocked with her free sword, then circled the blade over the top of her attacker’s weapon to disarm him. Unfortunately, the slaver was no stranger to a fight. He pulled his sword away before she could whip it from his hand.

“What’s wrong with you, Frayne?” demanded the half-elf holding Rkard. “Kill the wench!”

“I’m no wench,” Neeva growled, gaining her feet. “And that boy will be no one’s slave!”

The angry mother pulled her first sword from the inix’s flank and launched herself at the howdah. She attacked with a double chasing pattern, slashing at Frayne’s longer weapon with first one blade, then moving forward to slice at his vulnerable face or throat with the one trailing. The astonished slaver had no choice but to give way, and Neeva leaped over the howdah’s wall with her third series of thrusts.

Frayne stepped forward to take advantage of the temporary lapse in Neeva’s attack, thrusting at her abdomen. She twisted her body in midair and snapped her front foot around to kick the slaver in the head. His blade slipped harmlessly past her midriff, and he fell against the far side of the howdah, barely raising his weapon in time to block a downstroke that would have split his skull.

With the grace of an elven rope-dancer, Neeva landed between Frayne and the half-elf holding Rkard. Her son’s captor, she noted, had slipped one hand into the pocket of his robe, no doubt to retrieve the components of a magical spell. He was so concerned with Neeva that he did not notice her son’s small hand glowing red with the power of the crimson sun.

Neeva pointed a sword at each of the men’s throats. “Let my son go,” she said. “He’s of no value to dead men-and rest assured, you won’t leave Kled alive.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t your choice,” said the half-elf, withdrawing his hand from his pocket.

Rkard thrust his glowing hand toward his captor’s face. Neeva looked away long enough to beat Frayne’s guard down. A red light flashed behind her, then the half-elf screamed in surprise. She glanced back and saw the sorcerer’s hands over his blinded eyes. Then she separated his head from his shoulders with a vicious slash.

By the time Neeva returned her attention to Frayne, the raider’s sword was already slicing at her unprotected knees. She jumped the slash, bringing one of her blades around low and the other high to block the expected backstroke. To her surprise, the slaver did not follow up his first attack. Instead, he reached up and grabbed the side of the howdah wall, trying to pull himself to his feet again.

Neeva started to move forward, but the inix suddenly lurched to a halt. “Mother!” cried Rkard.

Neeva glanced over her shoulder and saw her son standing over the sorcerer’s headless corpse. The boy was pointing at the driver, who had left his place on the beast’s shoulders to climb toward the howdah. In the street beyond him, the other two inixes, whose drivers were paying no attention to the fight, were slipping out of Kled with their heavy cargoes of dwarven treasure.

Neeva tossed her second weapon to her son. “You know what to do, Rkard.”

Not even waiting to see if the boy caught the weapon, Neeva stepped toward Frayne. The slaver had returned to his feet, a confident sneer on his lips. “A child against a lancer?” he scoffed. “That’s as foolish as facing me with a single short blade.”

“Perhaps,” Neeva replied.

Although she did not allow it to show on her face, she felt more confident than ever. Frayne was an adept swordsman, but his comment suggested that, like so many who learned to fight outside the arena, his attention was focused more on his foe’s blade than on his foe. When fighting a gladiator, a person could make no greater mistake.

Neeva flipped her sword about in a block-and-attack pattern, moving forward behind the flashing blade as she knew Frayne expected her to. Determined to keep the advantage of his longer blade, the raider shuffled to the side, only to have his move blocked when she lunged forward and made a clumsy chop at his ribs. Taking the bait, Frayne whipped his sword at her head in a brutal backslash.

Neeva threw her legs from beneath herself and wrapped them around the slaver’s waist, at the same time falling to her side. Frayne’s blade sailed harmlessly over her head, then she hit the howdah floor and rolled. The sudden twist swept the raider off his feet. He landed flat on his back with her legs still wrapped around his waist. Neeva sat up, pinning his sword arm to the floor with one hand and driving the tip of her own blade deep into his gullet.

Neeva turned toward the front of the inix. She saw the tip of a lance coming straight at her head as the driver leaped into the howdah. Her son picked that moment to rise from his hiding place behind the wall, holding his sword in front of the slaver’s belly. The raider’s momentum carried him onto the blade. He screamed in agony and dropped his lance, burying Rkard beneath his bleeding torso.

Neeva reached out and finished him with a quick chop to the back of the neck, then rose to her knees and rolled the corpse off her son. The boy lay atop the sorcerer’s headless body, covered in blood from head to foot.

“Rkard, are you hurt?” Neeva asked, going to his side.

The boy did not answer. His attention seemed fixed on the floor next to the sorcerer’s body.

“Answer me!” Neeva said, pulling the mul into her arms.

“I’m fine, mother,” he said, holding his hand up to her face. “Look what I found.” Rkard held a square crystal of blood-smeared olivine.

Neeva took the gem from his hand and wiped it clean. “Where did you get this?”

She had to work hard to keep from sounding angry. Twice before, when she had still been a citizen of Tyr, she had seen such crystals.

“It fell out of the sorcerer’s pocket,” Rkard explained. “Can I keep it?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied.

Neeva held the crystal out at arm’s length, and the tiny image of a sharp-featured man appeared inside. He had a hawkish nose, beady brown eyes, and long auburn hair bound in place by a golden diadem. It was Tithian, the man who had once owned her.

“Neeva!” he gasped. “How did you come by my gem?”

“I killed your sorcerer,” she growled. “You’re next.”

Tithian frowned doubtfully. “Come now,” he replied in a smug voice. “I’m the king of Tyr. That would mean war.”

“I doubt it,” Neeva scoffed. “After Agis and his council hear you’ve been taking slaves, they’ll want to cut your heart out themselves.”

With that, she closed her fist around the gem, cutting off her magical contact with the figure inside.