The Obsidian Oracle

NINE CASTLE FERAL

“Stop there,” ordered a woman’s hissing voice.

Fylo obeyed, halting at the edge of the rocky isthmus. It was not an easy task for him, since each of his feet was almost as wide as the narrow neck of land. He had to stand with one in front of the other, making it hard to retain his balance. “Who that?” he asked. There was no answer. Fylo frowned and squinted ahead. The moons had risen high enough to cast a pale light over the broken ground before him, revealing a gravel apron strewn with boulders and drifts of silt. Farther ahead, at the mouth of a gulch coming down from the peninsula’s summit, a pair of square towers flanked the castle gates. The woman who had spoken was not visible in the tower windows, or anywhere outside the gates.

“Where you at?”

As the giant peered into the dim light, his foot slipped off the isthmus. He nearly fell, saving himself only by hopping forward onto the apron. The bear quickly moved forward to stand at his side, and he laid a restraining hand on its shoulder.

Fylo found it difficult to think of the beast as dead. To him, it looked the same as it had a few hours earlier, before his friend Agis had killed it by mistake. It moved with the same powerful sway to its shoulders, voiced the same deep-throated rumble when he walked too fast, and even reeked with the same rank odor of half-digested flesh.

If the giant had not been the one who pulled the vital organs out of its torso, he might have forgotten that Agis and the others were inside. The noble was using the Way to make the bear walk, roar, and even twitch its ears. Tithian was using his magic to hide the death wound beneath the beast’s leg, as well as the slit they had opened in its belly so Fylo could clean it.

“Fylo come back with bear,” the giant announced. “Ready to change heads.”

An indistinct shape stirred in front of the gate, then stepped forward. The giant quickly recognized the form as that of a female Saram. Save for an ocher breechcloth, she was entirely naked, with a willowy build and pebbled skin that had changed color to camouflage her against the gate’s veneer of yellowed bone. The sight of her lithe beauty stirred a primal desire in Fylo-though the sensation filled him with melancholy loneliness rather than excitement or hope. He knew better than to think such a woman might share her heart with an ugly half-breed like him.

The woman stopped less than a pace away from Fylo. She had the wedge-shaped head of a chameleon, entirely covered by small, rough scales and with a broad flange of skin flaring out from the base of her jaw. Conical eyes bulged from the sides of her head, each moving independently and covered by a thick lid that left only a narrow peephole exposed at the tip. Ridges of serrated bone lined the inside of her crescent-shaped mouth, and from the tip of her snout sprouted a wicked-looking horn of gray bone.

“We weren’t expecting you, Fylo.” As she spoke, a club-shaped tongue flickered from between her lips.

“Why?” demanded Fylo, watching her for any sign that might suggest she was secretly laughing at him. “Brita think stupid Fylo can’t find way back?”

Brita fixed both her peepholes on the giant. “No,” she said. “But it’s not often a convert brings his animal-brother to Castle Feral so quickly.” The woman began to circle him, taking care not to step within paw’s reach of the bear. “Especially not when it’s a beast like this.”

Fylo felt a cold lump forming in his stomach. Agis had taken great pains to explain that he would be killed if someone discovered three men hiding inside his bear, but the giant knew his friend was sorely mistaken-the beastheads, more brutal than the noble could imagine, would not settle for mere death. Despite the danger, the half-breed did not even consider abandoning Agis’s plan. When the Saram had taken him in, a warm, secure feeling had come over him. For the first time in his life, others had looked at him as something other than an unwelcome outcast. The possibility that his acceptance by the Saram had been a cruel joke was his deepest fear. Now that Tithian had suggested the possibility, he could not ignore it, any more than he could have ignored a lirr gnawing on his ankle.

“Nothing wrong with bear,” Fylo snorted, twisting his head to the side so he could look at her. “Brita just jealous.”

This drew a scornful sneer from the lithe sentry. “You might want to be clumsy and rank,” she mocked. “But I don’t.”

Fylo frowned. “What you mean?”

“When you cross Sa’ram’s Bridge, you’ll change more than your head,” she said. “You’ll take the spirit of your animal-brother into yourself. From that moment forward, his nature will be yours.”

Brita stepped back and waved a hand down her body. Her skin color changed from pale yellow to dark blue, her long tresses darkened to obsidian black, and her beauty became dark and sultry rather than lithe.

“From my chameleon sister, I inherited the ability to change appearances,” Brita said. She pointed at Fylo’s bear, then snickered, “You, on the other hand, will be ungainly and smelly.”

“Fylo be strong and fierce!”

Ignoring the outburst, Brita stepped over to the bear. “He doesn’t look very fierce to me,” she said. “In fact, he seems kind of languid.”

“What languid?” Fylo asked, knitting his brow.

“Sleepy, like he was drugged,” she said, focusing one of her conical eyes on the giant. “You didn’t happen to slip the bud of damask cactus into his last meal, did you?”

“Bear not drugged,” the giant growled. “Fylo not know about poisons.”

“But he’s so docile. Hardly what you expect from a ferocious bear.” She leaned over to peer into the beast’s eyes, and both her eyes darted to the dust-crusted slash on its nose. “What happened to his nose?” she asked, running her finger over the wound.

Fylo shifted his eyes away and ran a finger through his scraggly beard. When he could not immediately think of an explanation, he began to feel agitated and suspicious. “Why Brita ask questions?” he demanded.

“I’m the sentry. That’s my job,” she replied, keeping her attention fixed on the bear. “Why does that bother you?”

“Brita not want Fylo to be beasthead!” the half-breed exclaimed.

“Not if he doesn’t deserve it,” said Brita, her voice spiteful and domineering. “Which he won’t, if he can’t remember that we call ourselves Saram-not beastheads! Now, what happened to your animal-brother’s nose?”

Her threat humbled Fylo. “Bear go to Knosto to eat Joorsh and their sheep,” he lied, forcing himself to calm down. “Get full and fall asleep. Wake up with knife cutting nose.”

Brita flapped the flange at the base of her neck. “You expect me to believe a story like that?” she spat.

Suddenly, the bear opened its mouth and roared as loudly as Fylo had ever heard it roar in life. It bared its mighty fangs and stepped toward Brita, taking the half-breed so by surprise that he did not move to stop the beast as it followed Brita to the gate.

“Don’t let it attack!” Brita screamed, grabbing a long lance propped against the wall.

“Bear!” Fylo yelled. As he stomped after the beast, he could not keep from chuckling, for he was imagining how embarrassed the woman would be if she knew she was running from a dead bear. “Leave Brita alone!” he said, grabbing it by a plate of shoulder armor.

Brita leveled her spear at the beast’s eyes. “You can’t take that thing inside!” she hissed. “You can’t control it!”

A hooting laugh, as loud as it was mocking, rolled over the top of the gate. “If Fylo didn’t have control over his bear, you’d be dead by now-isn’t that so, Brita?” The voice sounded as deep as the Sea of Silt, but there was also a haunting, melodic tone to it. “Now stand aside and let our friends enter Castle Feral.”

Brita folded her neck flange over her shoulders and turned her eyes toward the ground. “Yes, my bawan,” she said, stepping aside and graciously waving the half-breed forward.

As the huge gates ground open, Fylo looked toward the top of the wall. The giant saw Nal’s owlish head peering down at him. The bawan’s face consisted of a circular mask of gray feathers, with a pair of huge golden eyes and a black, wickedly hooked beak at the center. His pointed ears resembled nothing quite so much as a pair of feathery horns, which he could turn at various angles according to what he wished to hear.

When the gates were at last fully spread, Nal waved Fylo inside. “Enter, my friend,” he called. “Your return comes much before we expected it, but you are no less welcome.”

The half-breed obeyed, stooping over to avoid banging his forehead on the gate’s crossbeam. At the same time, he heard Nal’s voice echoing inside his mind as the bawan used the Way to address the bear. And will you grace us with your presence as well, my beastly friend?

The question caused Fylo to stumble and fall, though his stomach was so knotted in alarm that he hardly noticed. The bear was just an animal, and, even when it had been alive, it had not understood giant language. The half-breed did not doubt that Nal realized this as well as he did, for the bawan was the smartest giant he had ever met. Why, then, had Nal addressed it in the Trade Tongue?

The bear came up behind the giant and sniffed at him with its nose, then tried to turn him over with its paw. Taking the gesture for a hint from Agis, the half-breed stood. He found himself in a small courtyard, flanked by a pair of lion-headed Saram armed with spiked clubs and dressed in loincloths of tanned hide. Behind the guards rose walls as high as the cliffs that ringed the rest of the peninsula. Fylo felt as though he were standing in the bottom of a deep pit. The only route out of the cul-de-sac was a path that traversed a granite cliff directly ahead. The trail ran through a deep trench that had been carved into the escarpment. At the top of the furrow rested a stone ball, as large as a Balican schooner, that could be rolled down the path to seal the gate tight.

High above, Bawan Nal’s towering form lumbered across a wall to the top of the trench path. Like Brita and the gate guards, he wore nothing but a loincloth. A layer of downy gray feathers covered his stout body.

“Come, Fylo,” he called. “Bring your brother to his new home.”

The bawan’s invitation helped soothe Fylo’s mounting fears, and he obediently started up the path. The bear followed a few steps behind, grunting softly with each step. By the time they reached the midway point, the grunts had changed to a sort of labored wheeze, and the beast was stumbling more often than it should.

Fylo paused and laid a hand between the bear’s massive shoulder blades. “Plan working good,” he whispered, worried that the effort of animating the beast was tiring Agis more quickly than they had expected. “Not much farther.”

The bear brushed past him and kept climbing. Then, three-quarters of the way up the slope, it tripped over a knob in the rocky trail and fell to its stomach. The giant waited for it to rise again, but the creature did not move, and from inside came muted voices. They were so soft that Fylo could barely hear them, but that did not diminish his concern.

“Get up, bear!” Fylo yelled, banging his fist on its mighty rib cage to alert Agis to his alarm.

“Fylo! Is that any way to treat a friend who’s about to give up his head for you?” chastised Nal, waiting at the top of the path. The bawan’s feathery ears were laid flat out to the sides, and his golden eyes were fixed on the bear’s motionless form. “Perhaps your bear is ill. That would explain his fatigue.”

The half-breed shook his head. “Bear strong-but clumsy.”

This did not seem to satisfy Nal, who sent a query to the bear’s mind. What’s wrong, my friend? Surely, you aren’t afraid?

Again, he addressed the beast as though it could understand his words, and once more Fylo’s heart began to pound with fear. He looked toward the bawan, asking, “Bear can’t understand. How come Nal talk to him like that?”

As the half-breed finished his question, the bear rose up on its hind legs and let out a long, furious growl that echoed off the ramparts.

“I think he understands, Fylo,” chuckled Nal. “No bear likes being called a coward.”

The bawan lifted his own head and issued a series of resonant hoots, every bit as loud as the bear’s growl and just as savage. The lion-headed guards in the courtyard below answered with a pair of mighty roars, then a cacophony of wild yowls, bellows, caws, and other calls rolled off the cliff top. Even Brita screamed wildly, her hissing voice drifting to Fylo’s ears over the top of the gate.

Nal turned to the ball at the top of the trench and banged his beak against the stone in encouragement, until the din grew so ferocious that the granite cliff itself trembled. Even the bear’s body armor shook visibly.

Fylo laid a hand on the bear’s shoulder and gently pushed it back down to all four feet, then led it the rest of the way up the path. When he finally stepped past the round stone at the top, Nal raised a hand to silence the maelstrom he had caused. The bawan walked slowly around Fylo’s beast, then gave the half-breed an approving nod. “A handsome animal-brother,” he said, taking Fylo’s arm and leading him into the castle interior.

The place was nothing but an offal-littered plain of barren rock, with at least two hundred Saram giants roaming over the stark granite. Like all the beastheads Fylo had ever seen, none wore anything more than a loincloth, and sometimes not even that. They were all going about their business in a state of chaotic disorganization-butchering sheep, sleeping, rolling around in vicious wrestling matches, even making love-with total disregard for what was happening a few feet away. In one place, an eagle-headed mother was trying to lull her newborn infant to sleep, while less than ten yards away, a dozen of her tribesmen danced in a circle, madly screeching, howling, and chirping at the twin moons.

In contrast to their parents, the children all had distinctly human heads, though their features were always marred by some gruesome blemish. Less than ten yards away, a seven-foot toddler was playing in a dust pit. She looked completely normal, save for the trunklike extension dangling off her nose. Near her, two brothers were playing catch with a full-grown ram. With their dark hair and patrician features, they did not look so different than the few Joorsh children that Fylo had seen, save that the oldest boy’s ears dangled down to the ground, and the right eye of the youngest was so large that it covered the whole side of his face.

Beyond the two boys, huge walls of crystal stood scattered across the entire plain, each formed from a different mineral and each enclosing an irregular patch of ground. There were quartz enclosures, mica, tourmaline, and a dozen others. The compounds could not have been called buildings, for they lacked anything that looked like a roof, a door, or a window. Instead, they resembled the cactus hedges that Fylo had seen around the estates of some Balican nobles when he went to steal sheep or grain.

The only thing standing higher than the crystal walls were the blocky fortifications that encircled the top of the stony bluff. The walls stood twice as high as a giant, with huge piles of stones heaped all along their foundations. These mounds were interrupted only occasionally by rough-hewn staircases or murky doorways that led to the hanging turrets outside the castle. In many places, beastheads were passing boulders up the ramparts, where other giants loaded the stones into huge carts and transported them to strategic locations along the wall.

As Bawan Nal led Fylo toward the back of the citadel, he continued to hold the half-breed’s arm. “You’ve done well to win the heart of such a magnificent creature, my friend,” he said, twisting his owl-like head almost completely around to watch it. “Soon, you and he shall be the same.”

“What you mean?” asked Fylo, worried that the bawan meant he would be dead-the same as the bear.

Nal smiled. “You shall see soon enough.” Without stopping, the bawan suddenly tipped his head back and sounded a series of deep hoots that set his feathers to waving. The cries were long and sonorous, more like the trumpeting of a horn than the call of a living creature.

A hush quickly spread over the yard. As Nal led Fylo and the bear toward a quartz enclosure in the far corner of the citadel, Saram giants began to fall in line behind them. The beastheads with the deepest voices sang an eerie lyric composed entirely of long, sad howls. Despite the lack of words, the strange song sent shivers down the half-breed’s spine. When the procession reached the compound, the bawan raised a hand to halt the procession.

The bawan stepped into the entrance of the enclosure-an unadorned break in the wall of quartz-and addressed the tribe. “We will soon welcome a new warrior to the Saram,” he said, his eyes gleaming yellow with reflected moonlight. “Fylo has already proven his worth to us by warning me of the Balican fleet, and he has proven himself worthy of our admiration by selecting as his animal-brother the mightiest of all Lybdos’s beasts: a bear!”

The crowd broke into a chorus of wild growls. Fylo beamed at them in delight, then looked into the bear’s eyes. He nodded, signaling Agis that now was a good time to reveal the secret that would keep Nal from being angry. The half-breed suspected that they did not have long before the bawan was ready to cut the bear’s head off.

Nal continued, “As if he had not already done enough to earn our esteem, Fylo brought his animal-brother to us in a third the time that any convert has ever done it before!” The bawan gestured at the bear. “It only took him five days to convince this mighty beast to give up its head!”

Fylo did not miss the note of mockery in Nal’s voice, but the wild shrieks and whistles that accompanied the crowd’s cheer reassured him that all was well.

Nal gestured for Fylo to enter the enclosure. “Bring your bear inside, my friend.”

The proud smile faded from Fylo’s lips, and he could not tear his gaze away from the bear. He wondered why Agis was waiting so long to tell him the secret that would make Nal happy. The thought crossed his mind that his friend had betrayed him; maybe there was no secret.

“You give Fylo bear’s head now?” he asked, already dreading the moment when the bawan found Agis and the others inside the beast.

“We should wait for dawn,” Nal said. “But foolish Mag’r thinks he’s sneaking up on us. The Joorsh army will arrive before dawn, so we’ll have to do this tonight.”

Fylo’s jaw fell open in astonishment. “The Joorsh?” he gasped. “Here?”

Nal nodded. “It’s taken a long time for them to get up the nerve to attack, but our losses to the Balican fleet finally gave them the courage,” said the bawan. He fluffed the feathers beneath his beak, then eyed Fylo thoughtfully. “Strange how that worked, isn’t it?”

The giant furrowed his brow. “How what work?”

“Sachem Mag’r and I had an agreement. If the Balicans interfered in our war, we were to suspend our fight and attack Balic.” Nal reached behind the enclosure wall and grabbed an axe. It had an obsidian blade as large as a schooner’s keel-board. “But instead of attacking Balic, the Joorsh are sneaking up on us!” the bawan yelled, obviously angry.

“Nasty Joorsh!” Fylo agreed, nodding vigorously.

The bawan laid the axe blade against Fylo’s neck. “I think Sachem Mag’r doesn’t need the Oracle as much as he claims. I think he’s smart enough to send you here to warn me about the fleet, so we would attack it-and lose a quarter of our warriors!”

“Fylo no Joorsh!” Fylo gasped. “Sachem Mag’r filthy!”

Nal did not remove the blade. “And do you know what else I think?” he sneered. “I think you’re not as dumb as you act. It’s no coincidence that you returned on the eve of Mag’r’s attack, is it?”

Fylo’s recessed jaw began to quiver, and he shook his head. “Not Fylo’s idea,” he said.

Bawan Nal snorted. “What are you to do?” he demanded. “Wait until the battle starts, then use your bear to open the gate?”

Fylo shook his head. “No. Bawan think wrong.”

“I think right,” Nal replied, raising his axe.

The bear leaped forward, knocking Fylo aside and blocking the bawan’s axe with an immense foreleg. The blow took the limb cleanly off. A trickle of cold blood spilled from the dead beast’s wound, and it crashed face first to the stony ground. Instantly, a dozen Saram warriors jumped on its back and began prying at its bony armor.

The half-breed stepped toward the bear, then abruptly stopped. He still did not know whether Nal had been lying about making him a Saram, so he couldn’t decide whether he should try to correct the misunderstanding or attack Nal.

As Fylo contemplated his decision, the dead bear tried briefly to stand. The giants on its back weighed too much for even its great strength, and it collapsed back to the ground. The beastheads attacked with renewed fury, and a shoulder plate went sailing out of the fray. Soon, the half-breed knew, they would reach the bear’s interior. They were so furious that he doubted they would even notice Agis’s small body before they ripped it to pieces.

The thought of losing his first and only true friend made up Fylo’s mind for him. He stepped over to the fray and grabbed a weasel-headed woman, throwing her off the bear.

“Get up, Agis!” he yelled.

Behind you, Fylo! came the reply. Don’t worry about us.

The half-breed spun and saw Nal standing behind him. His axe was raised to strike again, but, astonished by the bear’s mental message, he was staring at it in wide-eyed astonishment. Fylo gave the bawan a mighty shove, sending him crashing back into the quartz enclosure. Nal’s head hit the wall with a resounding crack, and the axe slipped from his hands. His eyes grew glassy and unfocused, then he reached back to grasp a large crystal and brace himself.

Returning his attention to saving Agis, Fylo pulled another Saram off the pile, then a second, and a third. As quickly as he flung one aside, another leaped into the missing warrior’s place. Other beastheads began to attack him, clawing at his gravelly skin and raining thunderous blows down on his head. The half-breed could see that he would never free his friend in this manner, but he did not know what else he could do.

The bear’s efforts were just as futile. Pinned as it was on its stomach, it could bring neither its three remaining legs nor its muzzle to bear on them. It tried to roll over and crawl away, but met with no success. The immense weight bearing down on it probably would have been too great for a live bear, and Fylo knew that, as exhausted as Agis must be, he would not be able to infuse its muscles with even that much strength.

“Leave bear!” Fylo yelled, locking his arm around a lizard-headed Saram. “Bear not dangerous-Fylo is!”

The half-breed grabbed the warrior’s chin and pulled, snapping the neck with a loud crackle. A death rattle gurgled from the beasthead’s throat, then he dropped motionless to the ground. The other Saram hardly seemed to notice, save that some of those attacking him added their fangs to the battle.

Run, Fylo! Agis sent. You’ll do us more good if you escape.

“But-”

Do it! Agis commanded. Before Nal attacks you again.

The half-breed grabbed a Saram attacker and spun around to see Nal leaping at him. The bawan held his fingers splayed like claws, while his hooked beak gaped wide-open for the strike. Fylo hurled his captive at the owl-headed giant. Both Saram crashed to the ground with a tremendous rumble, Nal’s fingers and beak slashing wildly at his tribesman.

Fylo stepped away, pumping his legs hard as he tried to sprint to safety. Three strides later, a handful of Saram hit him from the side. The half-breed slammed into the ground and heard himself groan as his breath was forced from his lungs. In the next instant, he found a beasthead warrior sitting on each of his limbs, with two more straddling his chest.

Gasping for breath, he arched his back and tried to roll. His efforts were to no avail. Like his bear, he could not battle the sheer crush of bodies holding him down. Fylo looked toward the beast and saw that the Saram had ripped most of its bony plates away. Now they were mercilessly gouging its dead flesh with their fangs and filthy fingernails. The half-breed summoned his remaining strength and made one last attempt to pull free of his captors, but could not liberate even a single limb.

Nal came over and stood at Fylo’s side, holding his axe near the half-breed’s head. “I accepted you into my tribe,” he hissed angrily. “And you repay me with treachery!”

The bawan brought the axe handle down. A loud crack rang through Fylo’s skull, and everything went black for a moment. His nose went numb, and blood began to stream back into his throat, filling his mouth with a coppery taste.

“Please,” Fylo begged. “Don’t let warriors hurt little people.”

“Little people?” Nal asked.

The bawan struck again with his axe handle. This time, a terrible lancing pain shot through Fylo’s eye. The lid puffed up instantly.

“In bear,” Fylo said, using his chin to motion toward the beast. “They have secret for Bawan Nal.”

Nal stopped hitting Fylo and twisted his fluffy head toward the bear. About that time, the half-breed saw a flash of blue, sizzling light glimmer over the beast’s entire body. The Saram pinning it to the ground screamed in shock and clawed madly at each other in their panicked haste to leap free. With a great roar, the beast rose to its three remaining feet and galloped forward in an awkward hobble, heading straight for Fylo.

Nal stepped between the half-breed and his bear, hefting the axe and hooting an eerie war cry. The bear flung itself into the air, trying to leap over the blade and seize the bawan’s head in its maw.

Nal ducked. At the same time, the bawan brought his blade around in a horizontal slice that severed the bear’s remaining foreleg and ripped the bony armor off its chest. The animal’s long snout plowed into the rocky ground and stopped, while the momentum of its charge carried it head over heels. Its immense rump crashed into the enclosure wall, and it came to rest flat on its back.

“Agis!” Fylo yelled, worried about his friend.

The bawan’s axe flashed three more times, severing the bear’s two remaining limbs and its head. Once the beast could cause no more harm, Nal positioned himself above its chest and swung his blade one more time. When it cleaved the bear’s sternum, Fylo heard a trio of muffled screams sound from inside the beast’s body.

Nal’s ears pricked up. He pulled his axe free with a loud rasp, then reached into the wound with both hands to pull the sternum apart. The heavy bones separated with a sharp crack, and he opened it up like a walnut.

“What have we here?” the bawan asked. He glanced back at Fylo with an angry glimmer in his eye, then thrust a huge hand inside the bear’s chest. “Lungworms?”