The Obsidian Oracle

ELEVEN THE CRACKED COVER

Fylo’s knuckles landed on target in a blackened corner of the translucent cover. A sharp crack rang off the pit walls, and the impact reverberated through the shimmering platform upon which he stood. The lid did not break. The giant drew back his fist to try again, then suddenly cried out in alarm as the temporary floor dissolved beneath his feet. He plunged, screaming, into the abyss.

Kester heard Agis call, “I’ve got him.”

A black silhouette resembling the Shadow Viper’s foresail appeared just below the giant, stretched taut across the shaft and bound at each corner to a stout quartz crystal. Fylo plunged through the shadow without slowing, vanishing beneath its dark form.

Agis’s curse rang off the cavern walls, then the ineffectual net dissolved. Kester saw the giant clawing and kicking at the jagged walls, ripping deep gouges into his palms and feet. One crystal broke off, sending a glittering spray of silver and crimson light shooting across the shaft.

Finally, Fylo passed through a narrow section of shaft and managed to bring himself to a stop. He hung motionless over the abyss, his ribs heaving and his limbs pressed against opposite sides of the pit. After regaining his composure, he looked up and fixed his gaze on Tithian. One of his eyes was still much larger than the other, but both orbs were slowly returning to normal-as were the other facial defects caused by the Castoffs.

“Tithian liar!” Fylo snarled, beginning the long climb back up. “Promise to hold Fylo!”

“It was a mistake,” the king replied. He sat upon a large crystal twenty-five feet below the lid, at the height of the platform upon which Fylo had been standing. All around him hung discarded Saram skulls, each covered with the translucent, masklike visage of a Castoff. “What do I have to gain by dropping you?”

“If you can float a ship, you can give Fylo a place to stand,” Agis growled, glaring down from his perch at the top of the shaft. “You let him fall on purpose.”

“Yer letting yer temper think for ye,” Kester snapped. She had positioned herself midway between the two, where it would be easy to intercede if their quarreling erupted into a full-blown fight. “Yer king wants out of here as much as we do. If he says it was an accident, it was.”

“Tithian doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes,” Agis insisted. “He must have thought Fylo’s blow cracked the lid. That’s why he dropped the giant.”

“Ye couldn’t know what Tithian was thinking-unless ye were using the Way on him instead of doing yer own job,” Kester said. She paused and pointed at the pit’s crystalline cover, which was already tinged green with predawn light. “If the two of ye don’t work together, we’ll never get out of here before dawn-and if ye let Mag’r sink my ship because we don’t have those gates open, ye won’t have to kill each other. I’ll do it for ye.”

When the noble protested no further, Kester turned to Tithian. “Can ye give Fylo a steady place to stand or not?”

“He’s heavier than I thought,” Tithian replied.

Kester nodded. “I thought as much,” she said. “We’ll have to find another way out.”

“Such as?” asked Tithian.

The tarek furrowed her heavy brow, absent mindedly rubbing her fingers over her leathery neck. The act loosened a small shower of dusty flakes, which fluttered into the darkness below. The tarek pulled her hand away from her throat, reminded that until she fully recovered from the injuries inflicted by the Castoffs, scratching what itched was a bad idea.

After a moment’s thought, Kester started to descend the pit wall, swinging from one crystal to the next on her gangling arms. “If we can’t go up, we’ll try down,” she said.

“No! You mustn’t!” cried Sona, the button-nosed woman who served as the nominal leader of the Castoffs. She floated over to block Kester’s descent. “The bones of the sacrificed animals rest down there. You can’t disturb them.”

Kester eyed Sona warily, remembering the anguish the spirits had inflicted on her after she had first fallen into the pit. “Out of my way,” she ordered.

“No, Kester,” said Agis. “We must respect Sona’s wishes. I’m sure Fylo can smash this lid, if Tithian gives him a sturdy place to stand.” He cast a bitter glance at the king.

Kester raised a brow at the noble. “And how many jails have ye escaped from?”

“I’ve never seen the inside of a prison,” the noble replied, taken aback. “Why?”

“ ’Cause I’ve escaped from dozens. Let me do the thinking,” Kester replied. “We’ve got to take every chance we’ve got, and even then we might not find a way out.”

“There’s nothing down there to help you,” Sona insisted. “You’ll only disturb what should be left to rest.”

“Thanks, but I’ll look for myself,” the tarek said.

“It’s too dangerous!” Sona protested. “The animals-”

“Are a pile of old bones. They won’t stop me from finding a way out of here,” the tarek sneered. She reached for the next crystal.

Sona darted forward and closed her mouth around Kester’s wrist. A sizzling pain shot up the tarek’s thick arm, then her fingers closed against her will. Her fist banged into the crystal for which she had reached, and she narrowly saved herself from falling by grabbing another with her free hand. A foul smell rose to Kester’s nostrils, and she looked down to see a putrid green stain spreading from beneath the spirit’s lips.

“Get this thing off me!” she yelled, lifting her stinging arm toward Agis.

“You’ve made your point, Sona,” said the noble. “I’m sure Kester has changed her plans.”

“In a varl’s eye!” the tarek hissed, clenching her teeth against the pain. “I’m not going to let anything keep me from lookin’. If we don’t find a way out, we’ll die anyway.”

The noble shrugged. “Then I can’t help you,” he said. “This is Sona’s home, and we must do as she asks.”

“Ye faithless snake!” Kester yelled, climbing toward Agis. “By me ship’s name, I’ll rip yer arms off and beat ye dead with’em!”

“You can’t reason with him, Kester,” said Tithian. “When it comes to questions of honor, he really is a stubborn boor.” The king reached into his satchel. “However, I might be able to suggest a compromise.”

Tithian pulled forth a pair of iron cages connected by a heavy chain. Inside the little prisons sat the disembodied heads of two men, their hair pulled into long topknots. One had sallow skin and sunken features, while the other was grotesquely bloated, with puffy eyes swollen to dark, narrow slits.

“Sacha! Wyan!” Agis gasped. He looked to Tithian, then demanded, “Where have you been hiding those two wretches?”

“That’s none of your concern,” Tithian replied. “But perhaps we should have them levitate down to the pit bottom. They could look for an escape route without disturbing any bones, then report back to us. That way, we’d know whether or not there’s any point to this argument.”

“We’d rather see you die here,” said the bloated head, licking his chin with a long gray tongue. “At least we could make a decent meal of you.”

“Sacha’s right,” agreed the other. “What makes you think we’d help you?”

Tithian fished a key from his satchel. Both heads fell instantly silent, fixing their eyes on the tiny piece of carved bone.

“I’m willing to set you free,” said Tithian. “After all, we no longer have reason to remain enemies.”

“Your personality is reason enough,” sneered Sacha.

“His character can be overlooked, if he lets us out of here,” objected Wyan. “But what about Borys? As I recall, he told you never to let us out of these cages.”

“I think you know about Borys,” replied Tithian. “As do I, now. You could have saved me a lot of trouble by telling me he was lying.”

A cruel smile creased Sacha’s lips. “And ruin our fun?” he asked. “Watching you play at being a sorcerer-king was too amusing.”

“Besides, would you have believed us?” asked Wyan. “You had to discover the truth for yourself.”

“Then you’ll help us?” demanded Kester, growing impatient with the searing pain in her arm.

“They will,” answered Tithian, unlocking their cages. “If Sona agrees to my suggestion.”

The spirit released Kester’s arm and drifted away, leaving an ugly band of rotting flesh on the tarek where Sona’s mouth had been. “As long as they’re careful to touch none of the bones,” she said. “Otherwise, everyone in this pit will have reason to regret our compromise.”

The doors to their cages were barely open before the two heads floated out. They dropped into the depths of the abyss instantly, as if they feared Tithian would change his mind and return them to their cages.

“Are ye sure ye can trust those two?” Kester asked, scowling at the pair’s quick escape.

“I don’t trust them at all,” Tithian replied, hanging the empty cages over a small crystal. “But if they don’t come back, we’ll know they found a way out.”

This drew a frown from Sona. “If they don’t come back, it’ll be because they disturbed the bones,” she said, returning to her perch. The spirit narrowed her eyes at Agis, then added, “Until then, I suggest you work on keeping your promise. You know how limited the patience of children is.”

Agis looked down at Tithian. “If you fail again-”

“I won’t,” the king interrupted. He returned the noble’s gaze with a hint of pain in his eyes. “Your treatment of me really is unwarranted,” he said. “Especially considering what I intended to offer you, had my hopes of becoming a sorcerer-king not been dashed.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted it,” the noble said.

“Really?” the king asked. “You wouldn’t have been interested in an offer of life?”

“For that offer to have any value, you would have had to threaten me in the first place,” the noble replied. “You could hardly expect me to be grateful for that.”

Tithian smiled patiently. “Of course not,” he replied. “But you misunderstand me. I had meant to offer you life in a different sense-in the sense of living forever.”

Agis narrowed his eyes. “Now is no time for games,” he said. “And you should know me better than to think you could buy me with such tactics.”

A crooked smile creased Tithian’s thin lips, and he clucked his tongue at Agis. “So suspicious,” he said. “It’s no wonder our friendship has always been strained.”

“Our relationship has been strained because you’re a liar and a thief,” the noble countered.

“And a murderer, as well,” Tithian added. “But I’ve never betrayed you.”

“How about when you abandoned your duties to the citizens of Tyr?” Agis replied.

Tithian rolled his eyes. “You’ve always placed too much value in the banal tools of appearance,” the king sneered. “I speak of life without end, and you are more concerned with a few promises we made to a bunch of ex-slaves and paupers.”

“That’s right,” Agis said, without hesitation. “And with bringing you to justice.”

“That’ll be enough arguing,” said Kester. She looked up at the green hues glimmering through the crystal ceiling. “Think about the job at hand. If we’re going to open those gates before Mag’r sinks my ship, we’d better make this try a good one-or hope Sacha and Wyan find a tunnel down below.” She glanced at Sona and pulled her muzzle back in a defiant snarl.

The trio waited in silence as Fylo completed his climb, then Kester directed the giant to wait near Tithian. Agis pressed a fingertip to the pit’s translucent cover and closed his eyes, tracing a wide circle. A black line appeared on the shimmering quartz, outlining the pattern he had traced.

Kester nodded to Tithian, who closed his eyes and swept his hand across the pit. A plank of psychic energy appeared where he had gestured, anchored directly into the base of two massive crystals. The platform was about as broad as the king was tall, constantly changing from one translucent color to another.

Fylo eyed the platform cautiously, then advanced one foot onto its surface. The plank sagged beneath his weight, crackling and hissing blue sparks beneath his heel. The giant retreated to the crystals to which he had been cleaving.

“More solid!” he ordered.

Tithian opened one eye and glared at the giant. “I will-but you must be fast. I can’t support your bloated carcass for long.” The king returned his concentration to the platform, which settled on an opaque, granite red color and ceased to shimmer.

At the same time, the circle Agis had traced above his head began to fill in, darkening to jet black. Wisps of cold fog trailed beneath it, writhing about like street dancers in the Elven Market.

“Now, Fylo!” Agis gasped, already growing pale from the effort of holding his circle’s form against the tides of mystic force flowing through the crystal cover.

Casting a wary eye at Tithian’s face, the giant stepped onto the platform and squatted down with his hand next to his hip. There was a great rush of air as he filled his lungs, then he fixed his eye on the black circle Agis had created. Inside that circle, there would be none of the magic that flowed through the rest of the crystal lid and made it impossible to break.

Fylo gave a mighty shout and drove his knuckles straight to the heart of the circle. A terrific boom echoed through the pit, and the half-breed’s hand bounced away from the cover. The platform beneath his feet did not waver even slightly, nor did the lid break.

“You coward!” Tithian yelled, opening his eyes. “Is that as hard as you can hit it?”

Fylo scowled and started to say something, but Kester cut him off. “Pay him no attention,” she said, noting that Agis’s body was starting to tremble from the effort of keeping his circle open. “Try again, Fylo. This time ye know the plank won’t sink, so ye can hit even harder.”

The giant looked away from Tithian, then closed his other fist. “Fylo break lid!” he promised.

The half-breed’s knuckles crashed into the crystal. Sharp pops and cracks echoed off the shaft walls, followed by a victorious bellow from the giant. Shards of crystal rained down on Fylo’s head and shoulders, then tumbled toward Kester and Tithian. The tarek covered her head and felt several fragments bounce off her forearms, opening a series of sharp cuts in her leathery hide. A moment later, the pit was filled with a lyrical chime as the jagged pieces bounced into the darkness below.

Kester felt a cool breeze descending over her body and looked up. She saw a star-shaped fracture centered in the black circle above the noble’s head, easily wide enough for a man-or a female tarek-to slip through. Ragged shafts of predawn light streamed into the pit, illuminating Agis’s weary face in a sickly green glow. To her distress, Kester could also see a few yellow tendrils of morning sunlight streaming across the sky.

Castoffs began to leave their perches on the yellowed skulls. They streamed out of the crack in a wild flock, chortling and screaming loudly in mad delight as they escaped into the open air. Even through the crystalline lid, the morbid and spiteful tone of their muffled voices made Kester’s hide prickle.

“Once more, Fylo!” she urged, climbing toward the exit. “That’s wide enough for us, but not for you.”

The giant glanced down at Tithian, who now had a steady trickle of sweat dripping from the tail of his long auburn hair. The king gave the half-breed a reassuring nod and returned his eyes, bulging with strain, to the platform. Fylo drew his hand back for another blow.

A pair of familiar voices spoke from the area beneath his feet. “You’re not leaving without us!” declared Wyan.

“You should know better than to play games with us, Tithian,” added Sacha. “We taught you everything!”

The sallow faces of Sacha and Wyan rose from beneath the platform. They drifted up past Fylo’s fist and hovered near his head, causing him to hold his blow.

“Get out of the way,” Tithian said. “We weren’t going to leave without you.”

“Don’t lie to us!” Sacha hissed.

The head clamped his teeth down on one of Fylo’s dangling earlobes and began to pull, drawing a pained howl from the giant. Wyan bit the other one, also tugging on it. To avoid having his ears ripped away, the half-breed was forced to turn in a circle.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Tithian demanded.

“Stop at once!” Agis commanded.

The only answer the heads offered was to pull harder. Blood began to stream down the sides of Fylo’s head, and he had to spin on his heels to keep up with his attackers. The giant slapped at the pair madly, but succeeded only in battering his own head more than theirs.

Although Kester did not understand the reason for their vicious attack, she did not let that deter her from responding. She pulled a dagger from her chest harness and flung it at the bloated head. The blade hit its target in the temple, sinking clear to the hilt. Sacha cursed through his clenched teeth, but did not fall dead, nor did he release the giant.

Kester looked to Tithian, stunned that her dagger had not dropped the head. “They’re your heads. Do something!”

“Like what?” the king replied. “Let the platform fail?”

She lifted her eyes to Agis and found the noble balanced precariously on the end of a crystal. He was trying to reach out to snatch one of the heads away from Fylo’s ears, which were at about the same level as he was. Above him, the black circle that he had created earlier was slowly turning gray. Worse, the magic of the crystal lid was flowing across the cracks that Fylo had opened, and the star-shaped breach was slowly beginning to seal itself.

“Agis, no!” Kester cried, pointing at the black circle overhead.

The noble glanced at the graying circle. Then, without a second’s hesitation, he returned his attention to the giant. He barely missed as he snatched at Wyan’s topknot.

The two heads whipped their chins harshly to one side, giving Fylo’s ears a terrific yank. The half-breed spun around quickly, and one foot slipped off the platform. For several moments, he tottered precariously on the edge of falling. Kester reached for another dagger.

Sacha and Wyan gave their chins another sharp jerk, and Fylo stepped off the narrow platform completely. He fell with his back down, his confused cry echoing through the pit. The two heads finally released his ears and darted for the exit.

Kester threw her dagger, and it sliced through Wyan’s cheek. Other than knocking him temporarily off course, it had no effect. Agis nearly fell from his perch trying to grab them, but they dodged his perilous lunges and slipped through the exit, along with a small stream of Castoff stragglers.

“Don’t let it close, Agis!” Kester yelled, pointing at the crack.

The noble stared after Fylo for an instant, then pulled himself upright and reached up to touch the graying circle. When it began to darken and the crack stopped filling, Kester breathed a sigh of relief. Only then did she look toward the bottom of the abyss to see what had become of the giant.

Fylo lay in the narrow place where he had gotten lodged before, the bloody tip of a sharp crystal poking through his shoulder. His eyes were glassy and vacant, though it was obvious that he had survived by the rise and fall of his rib cage as he breathed.

Kester had a sinking feeling in her twin stomachs. If she knew Agis, the giant’s condition was sure to interfere with what little chance they had of opening the gates in time to save the Shadow Viper.

Tithian’s voice broke the uneasy silence. “I should have had Borys throw them into the fire pits of Urik!” he shouted, climbing past the crystal where Sona’s glowing visage still clung to a yellowed skull. “I should have had Fylo stand on their faces until their bones crumbled into dust!”

As the king reached her level, Kester asked, “Why did your heads do this? It makes no sense.”

“They’re treacherous ingrates!” Tithian snarled, hardly pausing as he continued his climb.

From the top of the pit, Sacha sneered, “Flattery won’t help you now.”

He was peering down through the crack. Kester could see that her dagger was gone from his temple, leaving a bloodless, gray-edged wound in its place.

“True,” added Wyan, who still had a knife lodged in his cheek. “We’ve already decided who we’re going to let out-and who we’re not.”

The tarek was up and climbing instantly, her powerful arms pulling her from one crystal to another with ease. When she reached Agis’s side, she did not pause even long enough to lean out and grab the edges of the hole. Instead, she simply leaped from the highest crystal, thrusting her gangling arms up through the breach and slapping her hands down on the freezing stone outside.

The tarek drew herself into the breach, barely able to force her broad shoulders into the small opening. The sharp edges scratched and scraped at her hide, but she was more aware of the crushing pain in her chest as she tried to squeeze through. Nevertheless, through a determined combination of squirming and pulling, her massive torso soon emerged on the top side of the cover.

Sacha and Wyan had already retreated out of sight. Kester found it much easier to pull her hips through, and soon found herself standing atop the crystalline cover. There was no magic running through the lid inside the area protected by Agis’s black circle, so the footing there was as solid as granite. The edge of the pit lay just a short leap away, and a few feet beyond that lay the dagger that had pierced Sacha’s temple.

Kester slowly turned around, searching for the heads. The sky now glowed with the full radiance of early dawn, casting a harsh yellow light over the ground. The tarek found Sacha and Wyan hovering beneath Sa’ram’s Bridge, where even her long arms could not reach them unless she first crossed a wide expanse of shimmering crystal. The rest of the enclosure was deserted. Even the Castoffs had already gone, though their maniacal chortles were drifting back over the crystal walls. There were no sounds to suggest that the Joorsh attack had begun, and the tarek dared to hope that Mag’r would not sink her ship before they could get the gates open.

“I’m sending Tithian up next,” called Agis, his voice rising through the narrow crack beneath her feet. “Keep a close watch on him, and kill him if he tries anything.”

The king’s gaunt hands reached through the narrow opening and began searching for a hold on the cold stone. Kester grabbed his wrists and pulled. As he rose out of the narrow crevice, the sharp edges of the pit marked him with a trail of red abrasions.

“I don’t have the hide of a baazrag!” Tithian hissed, clutching his satchel to his chest so it wouldn’t be scraped free. “Be careful.”

“No time to be careful.” Kester deposited the king roughly at her side and motioned toward Sacha and Wyan. “Keep an eye on yer two heads. After what they did to Fylo, I don’t trust ’em much.”

Taking Agis’s advice and keeping one eye on Tithian, she knelt beside the crack and reached through for the noble. Although her action appeared to put her in a vulnerable position, the tarek was not worried. Between herself and the king, there was not much space left on the black circle of solid ground. If Tithian made any sudden moves, it would be an easy thing to knock him onto the shimmering crystal with a shoulder or leg. Besides, she did not really expect him to attack her. Not only would he need her to command the Shadow Viper’s crew if he wished to leave the island, but he had seemed more willing to cooperate with others since his dream of becoming a sorcerer-king had been shattered.

When she did not feel Agis take her hand, Kester demanded, “What’re ye waiting for down there?”

“He won’t leave,” Tithian answered. He reached into his satchel and withdrew a coil of giant-hair rope, surprisingly large for the sack from which it had come. “He wants to save the giant.”

Kester sighed in frustration, then peered down the hole. “We’ll be lucky enough to save ourselves, let alone your giant,” she said, addressing Agis’s shadowy form.

“We can’t leave him like that.” The noble gestured toward the bottom of the pit. Although Kester could not see the giant from her position, the image of the bloody crystal protruding through his shoulder remained vivid in her mind. “Now pass me the end of the rope. I’ll go down and see if I can get that spike out of his shoulder, then tie him off.”

“What then?” she asked. “We’ll never get him out through this little hole.”

“At least he might not die while we’re looking for a way to remove the cover,” Agis replied.

“It’s already past dawn!” objected Kester. “How long do ye think Mag’r’ll wait for the gates to open before he sinks the Shadow Viper?”

“He’ll wait,” Agis replied. “If he sinks your ship, we have no reason to open the gates-and he’s smart enough to know that.”

“Ye can’t know for sure!”

“I agree with you,” Tithian whispered. He knelt at Kester’s side, holding one end of the rope out to her. “Perhaps we should open the gate for Mag’r-now.”

Kester bit her lip, neither meeting the king’s gaze nor taking the rope from his hand. “What about Agis?” she asked.

“He can look after Fylo,” the king suggested, being careful not to look into the pit. “We can come back for him later.”

Kester fell silent and motionless. Like Tithian, she avoided the noble’s eyes, though it seemed to her that she could feel them watching her from the shadows, like the black gaze of an owl.

“I can imagine what Tithian’s whispering to you,” said Agis, his voice rising through the crevice clear and steady. “Don’t listen to him. We have many things to do this morning: make sure that we all escape the pit, find the Dark Lens, save your ship. But if we panic and start jumping from one unfinished step to another, we’re doomed.”

Kester remained silent, wondering how the noble could think that everything on his list was still possible at this late hour.

“Weren’t you the one who said we had to work together to escape?” Agis pressed. “Did you mean it-or were you voicing the lies of a pirate?”

“Damn ye, and damn yer giant,” Kester growled.

“A wise decision,” Tithian said, starting to rise.

Kester grabbed his arm and pulled him back to her side. “Ye stay here,” she said, taking the rope from his hands and pushing one end down to the noble.

“Thanks for staying,” Agis said. “You won’t regret it.”

“No-but you might,” Kester growled. “If Mag’r sinks my ship, ye’ll buy me another-and a good crew to man it!”

“I’ll give you two ships,” the noble replied, smiling. “But you’ll have to man them yourself-with hired crews.”

Kester stood and looked at Tithian. “Ye stay here to keep the hole open-and don’t think about leaving. If I see ye step one foot off this circle, I’ll kill ye,” she said, fingering the two throwing knives left in her chest harness. “I’ll go tie off our end of the rope.”

With that, she leaped over to solid ground and walked toward the bridge footings, uncoiling the rope as she went.

Tithian watched the tarek leave, silently cursing her for a fool. Nevertheless, he did as she asked, summoning the spiritual energy to take over Agis’s duties. “Go ahead,” he said, glaring down through the crack. “But remember, you’re wasting precious minutes.”

“Minutes that are not as precious as my life,” the noble’s muffled voice replied. “I’ll wait until Kester returns.”

“As you wish,” Tithian said.

As the king spoke, the last of the Castoffs, Sona, drifted into view. She stopped at the noble’s side, casting a faint glow over his weary face, and began to thank him for freeing her and the others. Tithian, even less interested in her gratitude than in saving Fylo, stepped away to prepare his escape.

The king found Sacha and Wyan waiting for him, hovering at the edge of the black circle. He snatched them by their topknots and slammed their faces into the crystal lid.

“Why’d you do that?” demanded Sacha.

“Because I wanted to!” Tithian replied. He plucked the throwing dagger from Wyan’s cheek, then shook it at the two heads. “Just be thankful I’m not using this to pluck your eyes out!”

“This is not the way to treat your saviors,” objected Wyan, spitting out the broken nub of a gray tooth.

“Saviors!” Tithian roared. “By attacking Fylo, you almost got me stuck down there.”

“A small risk to take,” said Sacha, speaking in a voice quiet enough that no one beyond Tithian’s earshot could hear it. “You can’t have Agis or anyone else around when you recover the Dark Lens.”

Tithian held the heads up and frowned suspiciously. “Why not?” he asked. “After the way the Dragon lied to me, I’d just as soon let Agis kill Borys.”

“That would be acceptable,” replied Sacha. “Except that I’m sure Agis would want to keep the lens afterward-and you don’t want that.”

“Why not?”

“The lens is a tool,” explained Wyan, also speaking in a soft voice. “Like any tool, it’s only as powerful as the person using it. In Borys’s hands, it could never make you a sorcerer-king. But in the hands of someone else, someone even more powerful, it could.”

“No one’s more powerful than the Dragon,” Tithian scoffed.

“Wrong,” said Sacha. “There is one who could give you what you want: Rajaat.”

“Stop wasting my time with your stories,” the king hissed. “Rajaat’s dead.”

“Gone, but not dead,” Wyan replied. “What do you think Borys does with his slave levy?”

“He uses their life energy to keep the Shadow People imprisoned in the Black-at least that’s what Agis and Sadira think, according to my spies in the Asticles household,” replied the king. He cast a nervous glance down at the crack where Agis waited, but saw no sign that the noble could hear or see any of what was happening on top of the lid.

“What makes you think a fool noble and his slaves know what they’re talking about?” asked Sacha.

In a fawning voice, Wyan added, “Rajaat is not dead; he’s locked away-and Borys uses his levy to maintain the spells that keep him imprisoned.”

Tithian accepted the news with little emotion, for he had not yet confirmed its significance to him. “If I take the Dark Lens to him, Rajaat will make me a sorcerer-king?”

“It’s not our place to promise that,” Wyan said. “We’re only his spies in the city of Tyr.”

“But, through the Shadow People, we’ve told Rajaat of your ambitions,” said Sacha. “And we’ve received word back that if you aid him, you’ll be pleased with your reward.”

Tithian smiled and released his grip on the pair’s topknots. “What do I have to do?”

Before the heads could answer, Kester came rushing back from the bridge. She stopped at the edge of the pit, about two yards from the blade that had pierced Sacha’s temple. In her hands, the tarek held the last pair of throwing knives from her harness. Her eyes were fixed on the dagger in Tithian’s hand.

Inside his mind, Tithian heard Wyan’s voice. Get rid of her. She’s sided with Agis.

“What’s going on here?” Kester demanded.

“Not what you think, apparently,” Tithian replied, slowly extending the handle of his dagger to Kester. “I thought you might want this back.” When the tarek made no move to accept the weapon, the king shrugged and laid it on the ground. “I see Agis’s paranoia is catching.”

Kester seemed to relax, but did not sheath her own weapons. “What about them?”

“We came to apologize,” said Wyan.

“Sometimes our jokes get carried away,” added Sacha.

“That was no joke,” the tarek said, fangs half-bared.

“It certainly wasn’t. Fylo was hurt badly,” agreed Tithian. With a scornful look, he waved the heads back from the circle, then returned his attention to Kester. “You should come back over here. Agis doesn’t trust me to keep the crack open, and he won’t take the rope down to Fylo until he sees you.”

“What?” the tarek shrieked, sheathing her daggers. “He’s wasting time waiting for me?”

“He hasn’t moved,” Tithian said with a smirk. He leaned down and plucked the slack rope. “See? No weight.”

Kester leaped onto the black circle. She collected the dagger that Tithian had laid down a few moments before and knelt beside the crack. She started to put her face down to speak to Agis, then abruptly drew back as Sona’s glowing visage rose from the hole. Once the Castoff had drifted away, she leaned down and said, “I’ve had enough waiting, Agis!”

Despite her anger, Tithian noticed that she was keeping one eye fixed on him. Smiling, the king stepped over to where she could see him more easily, clasping his hands behind his back. He turned his gaze on the dagger lying at the edge of the pit, the one with which Kester had attacked Sacha, and opened a pathway to his spiritual nexus. Being careful not to alarm the tarek by moving even slightly, Tithian visualized the knife resting in his hand. A prickle of energy rose from deep within himself, then he felt the cold weight of the weapon’s hilt in his palm.

“Now that you’re here,” Tithian asked, “is our friend going after Fylo?”

The king leaned forward as if to look over the tarek’s shoulder. Instead of peering down at Agis, however, he began counting down the prominent row of vertebrae showing between Kester’s muscular shoulders. This had to be done exactly right, Tithian knew, for he had seen enough gladiatorial contests to realize that tareks often fought for many seconds after death. If his strike did not paralyze as well as kill, Kester could easily take him with her.

“He’s climbing down now,” Kester said, frowning at the king’s proximity.

Tithian’s arm flashed, plunging the dagger deep into Kester’s back. The tip entered exactly where he intended, low and between the shoulder blades, so that the blade severed the spinal cord on its way to the heart. The tarek’s astonished cry died in her throat, and her body went limp without so much as a reflexive twitch.

“We should have left when I wanted to,” Tithian said.

The king shoved Kester’s shoulders into the narrow crack, then jumped on her back to force her farther down. If he could jam her body in the crevice securely enough, Agis would not be able to free it before growing too exhausted to keep the lid’s magic from sealing itself.

Once he felt convinced that it would be impossible to dislodge the body within the necessary time, Tithian leaped off the dark circle. His feet had barely touched solid ground before Agis’s muffled voice sounded from beneath Kester’s body. “Tithian!”

The king turned around. He could see Kester’s back jerking as Agis tried to pull her free.

Yes, Agis? he asked, using the Way so his words would not be muffled by the pit cover. You haven’t changed your mind about my offer of immortality, have you?

Don’t flatter yourself, the noble replied.

You could have tried lying, you know, Tithian said. There’s a chance that I might have wanted to believe you enough to fall for it.

Sacha and Wyan floated over to his side and started to urge him to leave, but the king raised a hand to keep them silent.

Whatever else you are, you’re not stupid, Agis observed. Besides, I’m not the liar around here.

True, but look what your honesty’s earned you, the king said. You’re too noble for your own good. There was a note of genuine remorse in the statement.

When Agis did not respond, Tithian kept a watchful eye on Kester’s body, knowing that his old friend was trying to stall him until the passage could be cleared.

Agis took a moment before answering. I’m not as virtuous as you think, said the noble. If I was, your talk of the Dark Lens would never have diverted me from my original purpose.

The lens is real enough! Tithian objected.

I know-but so is my promise to return you to Tyr, Agis said. By putting that off, I’ve stained my honor and broken my word, in principle if not in deed.

I wouldn’t know about such distinctions, replied the king. Perhaps that’s the reason you’re doomed to fail, while I’m destined to become a sorcerer-king.

I thought that wasn’t possible? Agis inquired, the tone of his question betraying both distress and suspicion.

Come now, do you think I’d betray you for anything less? Tithian asked. He started toward the exit, motioning for Sacha and Wyan to follow along. I’m sorry I can’t stay longer, my friend, but I have an Oracle to find.

Don’t think you’ve won, Tithian! This isn’t over!

The king paused and studied Kester’s body for a moment. The tarek’s body was still jerking as Agis tried to clear the exit, but Tithian saw no sign that his friend was close to dislodging the corpse.

The king smiled. Of course it’s not over, he allowed. I still have plans for you.