The Obsidian Oracle

SIXTEEN THE SHADOW VIPER SAILS

To Agis, the gnawing sounded like a faro-rat clawing at the stones of a thorn silo-though he stood to lose something far more valuable than a few bushels of needles. Each time Wyan’s teeth closed on the rope, the resulting vibration grew increasingly sharp. It would not be long before the line snapped, plunging the noble headfirst onto the crystal pit’s pellucid cover.

“Letting me drop will do you no good,” Agis warned.

The noble struggled to hold back the black curtain of unconsciousness. Even without the burden of a broken arm, he had been hanging upside-down, sweating in the sun, for too long. His dehydrated body was near the limit of its endurance. No matter how accustomed he was to pain, the time would soon come when he simply fainted.

Wyan stopped chewing, then drifted down to look into the noble’s eyes. “If you don’t want to drop, give me Tithian and the Oracle.”

“What makes you so sure I have them?”

“I’m no fool,” replied Wyan. “I saw what happened when you opened the satchel. The magic of the Dark Lens spilled out to repair the crystal lid. And if the Oracle’s in there, Tithian must be, too. He wouldn’t let himself be separated from it.”

“That may be,” said Agis. “But I’m taking him and the Oracle back to Tyr.”

“You’ll find that difficult with a broken neck,” countered Wyan. He started to drift upward.

“Wait!”

The head opened his mouth in the parody of a smile. “Change your mind?”

“No,” Agis said, locking gazes with Wyan’s colorless eyes. “But I’m sure you’ll change yours.”

As he spoke, the noble created a mental image of a carrion-eating kes’trekel, and a surge of energy rose from deep within his body. He sent the gray-feathered raptor sailing toward his tormentor. Agis felt a slight tingle as the probe left him, then he saw its ragged wings flash against the gray irises of Wyan’s eyes. In the next instant, it disappeared into the darkness beyond, carrying with it a part of its creator’s intellect.

Agis was astounded by what he found. The interior of Wyan’s mind was the most desolate thing he had ever seen, a vast plain littered from one end to the other with the corpses of tiny men and women. They were about half the size of halflings, with silver, mothlike wings growing from their backs. They all had slender, sharp-featured faces, pointed ears, and pale, lifeless eyes.

There was nothing else inside Wyan’s intellect; in all the sweeping expanse beneath the kes’trekel, the noble could not see a single animate thought. Agis dropped his kes’trekel down to the corpses. As befitted its nature, the raptor dug into the grisly feast, swallowing the little bodies almost whole.

When there was no response, the noble began to feel confused. The dead flesh was the substance of Wyan’s mind, and to have it devoured should have caused him such unbearable pain that he could not help but counterattack. Yet the disembodied head seemed quite content to let the kes’trekel gobble down all it wished.

After allowing the bird to gorge itself, Agis pictured the kes’trekel changing into Fylo’s animal-brother. He felt a surge of energy deep within himself, then the raptor’s narrow back broadened into that of the bear, and its feathers changed to bony armor. The beast began pawing at the little corpses, throwing them aside and digging a great, deep pit.

The bear had dug down more than a dozen yards, and still Agis could see nothing but more dead, winged bodies. By this time, the noble had burned up so much spiritual strength that he doubted he could win a battle even if he did find an animate thought.

He cut off the flow of energy, withdrawing his probe.

“Satisfied?” Wyan asked, his gray eyes twinkling with amusement.

Agis took several slow, deep breaths. “Why couldn’t I force you to come out?”

In a smug voice, the disembodied head replied, “My mind is at rest. I fulfilled my life’s desire long ago-when I killed the last pixie.” Wyan drifted closer to the satchel in the noble’s hand, asking, “Now, will you give me the sack?”

“No,” Agis replied, clutching it more tightly.

As he did so, the noble made sure to keep the mouth of the satchel open and pointed toward the cover below, so that the Oracle’s energy continued to flow into the crystal. Until he was free, he intended to keep the lid intact, on the chance that Mag’r had survived his fall.

Wyan sighed in mock disappointment, then gnashed his teeth together and began to rise again. “You leave me no choice,” he said. “Tithian will be disappointed, though. I think he intended to kill you himself.”

“He’ll never have the chance,” Agis replied. “If I hit that lid, both my body and this satchel will melt through before you can get to us.”

To illustrate his point, Agis put the hand of his broken arm into the satchel. Next, he pictured something he was sure Tithian would have stored inside: a silver coin. An instant later, his palm was full of them. The noble withdrew his hand and let the coins slip from between his fingers. They hit the lid with a glassy chime, then melted through and dropped into the pit.

“After the rope breaks, do you really think you can streak down to the lid and tear this satchel from my death grasp before I slip through?” Agis asked.

“No,” the head admitted. “But I won’t release you until I have the satchel.”

“Then it seems we’re at a standoff,” the noble suggested.

“I think not,” said Wyan, looking toward Fylo’s unconscious form. “I think it’s time for a snack.”

With that, he streaked down to the giant’s neck.

“Don’t!” Agis yelled. “I swear-”

“You’ll do nothing-as long as you’re hanging up there,” Wyan said, settling down on Fylo’s gullet.

The head’s long tongue slipped from between his teeth and felt along the side of the giant’s neck. After a moment, it stopped probing, and Wyan drifted over to where it touched.

“A nice, strong pulse,” the head called. “I’d say this is definitely his jugular.”

With that, the disembodied head sank his teeth into the giant’s skin, ripping away a mouthful of bloody flesh. A dull moan escaped Fylo’s lips. He rolled his head toward Agis, but stirred no farther.

“Stop!” Agis demanded.

Wyan looked toward the noble. “Certainly not. A few more bites, and I’ll have my biggest feast in centuries-unless, of course, you give me the satchel,” he said.

The noble shook his head. “You’ll never finish your meal,” Agis threatened. “Without you here to harass me, it won’t take me very long to get free of these bindings.”

“I realize that,” said Wyan. “But by then, this compound will be awash in a lake of your precious giant’s blood. It’s a pity Sacha won’t be here to share it with me.”

With that, he buried his teeth in Fylo’s neck and ripped away another mouthful of flesh. Again, the giant groaned, and this time his eyes flickered. Still, Agis doubted that Fylo would wake in time to save himself.

In his own mind, the noble pictured himself as an arrow in a flexed bow, summoning what remained of his spiritual energy to animate the image. Once it was ready, he looked toward Fylo, waiting for Wyan’s next bite and hoping it wouldn’t be the one that sent the giant’s blood shooting into the air like a geyser.

Wyan spit out the flesh, then started to lap at the wound with his tongue. “Tasty,” he called. “I’ll enjoy this.”

Agis loosed the arrow, shooting his probe straight into the dark pupil of the giant’s eye. Inside, the noble found himself adrift in a black fog, illuminated only by distant, flickering flames of pain. “Fylo!” Agis screamed. “You must wake up-you’re in terrible danger!”

The giant’s head, taking the form of the morning sun, poked up from the eastern horizon. “Go ‘way,” he said, his voice rumbling across the darkness like an earthquake. “Fylo hurt.”

The sun sank below the horizon, plunging the giant’s mind back into complete darkness. Agis felt himself crash into something hard and rocky, then he tumbled down a stony slope and finally came to rest on the broken ground of a narrow ledge.

“Fylo, come back!” Agis yelled, using the Way to make his own voice as loud as the giant’s. “This is your friend, Agis.”

A halo of red light suddenly appeared above the horizon, and the noble dared to think he had roused the slumbering giant. His hope was short-lived. The glow faded a moment later, without so much as the crown of Fylo’s head appearing this time.

“Fylo, I need your help!” Agis yelled. “You must wake up and help me.”

This time the halo appeared more gradually, followed by the glowing disk of Fylo’s head, and soon even his eyes showed above the dark horizon. Finally, an entire glowing face rose into the sky. It illuminated an archipelago of craggy thought-islands jutting out of the dark, whirling sea of the giant’s anguish.

“What Agis need?” Fylo asked, peering down at the mountainous island into which the noble had crashed.

The giant’s voice whistled through the archipelago like a windstorm, stirring up shadowy spouts of dust and raising a dark haze that obscured his beaming face.

“I need you to wake up,” the noble replied. “Wyan is trying to bite your neck open, and I’m hanging from a trestle over the crystal pit. If you don’t open your eyes, we’ll both die-” The noble was cut off in midsentence as the stone vanished from beneath his feet. A blinding light burst over the archipelago, and his probe turned to ash in a flash of pain. Agis found himself completely outside Fylo’s mind. At first, he feared the giant’s death had caused his ejection.

Then the noble heard Fylo’s angry voice booming off the enclosure walls and knew that wasn’t the case. At the edge of the crystal pit, the half-breed suddenly sat up and plucked Wyan off his throat. The head’s teeth were clamped on the gray wall of a thick vein, and Agis feared that in pulling his attacker off, the giant would tear it open.

Before that happened, Fylo stopped pulling and squeezed. Wyan opened his mouth, and the giant flung his attacker away. The disembodied head struck a distant wall with an impact that would have cracked the skull of a normal man. Wyan simply bounced off and bobbed through the air, wobbly but uninjured.

Fylo shook his head clear, then raised his hand to the ghastly wound where his shoulder had been impaled. As his fingers explored the cavernous hole, he winced in pain and gazed up at the noble with a dazed expression.

Agis cast an anxious eye toward Wyan and saw that the head was already recovering his equilibrium. “Fylo, get me down from here!”

Squinting at the noble’s form, the giant pushed himself to his hands and knees. He crawled over to the bridge footings and, with a loud groan, used his uninjured arm to pull himself to his feet. He reached for the noble, then abruptly drew his hand back and braced himself against the bridge. His eyes closed. He began to sway, and Agis thought he would fall.

Wyan drifted toward the pit along a weaving, bobbing path. “Fylo, hurry!” Agis called.

The giant opened his eyes, then thrust out a shaky hand and grabbed the noble’s rope off the trestle. When he tried to pull the noble to him, however, the rope went taut against its anchor, almost unbalancing him. With an angry growl, Fylo threw himself away from the pit, giving the line in his hand an angry jerk. Agis heard the clatter of stone, then the railing to which the rope was tied broke away. Fylo tumbled back and flailed his arms wildly in an attempt to keep his balance.

The rope slipped from the giant’s grasp, and Agis sailed away. He crashed to the enclosure’s granite floor a short distance away, rolled more times than he could count, and came to a stop against a crystal wall. Despite the sharp pangs throbbing through his broken arm, Tithian’s satchel remained clutched firmly in his good hand. Somehow, he had even managed to keep the mouth pointed in the general direction of the crystal pit.

Wyan came streaking down on Agis. The disembodied head clamped his teeth firmly onto the edge of the satchel mouth, then began trying to tear the sack free.

“Wyan!” gasped Sacha.

“I can see who it is,” Tithian snarled. “Tell him not to move!”

Like Sacha, the king was staring at the sallow-skinned head that had just emerged from the gray mists ahead. It was visible only from the upper lip to the brow, as if it were peering at them through a narrow opening. More importantly, at least to Tithian’s way of thinking, it had appeared straight ahead-which suggested he was still flying in the right direction.

Sometime earlier, a stream of mystic energy had begun to pour from the Dark Lens. Tithian had started to fly in the same direction as the flow, hoping it would lead him to the exit. As hard as he had flapped his wings, however, he never seemed to reach the end of the glimmering beam. He had almost stopped following it, fearing that the effort was as pointless as every other attempt he had made to escape this place.

Then the beam flickered several times, and now here was Wyan, peering in at them. It could only mean they were approaching the exit. Tithian beat his wings harder, dragging the lens and Sacha through the gray as fast as he could.

“Wyan, can you see us?” Tithian asked.

Who? the head replied. Instead of speaking, he used the Way to ask his question.

“Tithian and Sacha, you fool!” Sacha snapped. “We’re in the sack.”

I thought so, he answered. Come out.

“We’re trying!” Tithian yelled.

In spite of the king’s best efforts, he and Sacha appeared to be no closer to Wyan than they had a few moments earlier.

Hurry! I can’t fight him much longer, the head replied.

“Who are you fighting?” Tithian demanded. “What’s happening?”

Agis has the bag, Wyan reported. I’ve got a bite on it, and I’m trying to pull it away, but he has a tight grip. And Fylo will be coming over to help him soon.

“Then get us out of here,” Tithian ordered.

How? demanded Wyan. The way this fight is going, I’ll be joining you.

“No!” Tithian and Sacha screamed in unison.

“Whatever happens, don’t let him push you in here. We’ll all be stuck,” the king added.

What do you want me to do? the head demanded.

The king thought for a moment, then said, “Before I got trapped in here, I heard the Shadow Viper’s catapults. Is it still dustworthy, and is the crew still alive?”

Probably, replied Wyan. Mag’r’s been very busy since the battle ended. I don’t think sinking the ship would have been a priority for him.

Tithian smiled, then ran his liver-spotted fingers over the serpent-headed dagger in his belt. “Good,” he said. “Make sure Agis sees them before he leaves, Wyan.”

And?

“That’s all,” answered the king. “Agis will do the rest for us.”

Wyan suddenly released his hold on the satchel. “You win,” he said, backing away. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“What?” Agis demanded. “You’re giving up?”

“For now,” the head acknowledged. “After the way Fylo screamed when I bit his throat, we don’t have long before the Joorsh arrive. Now be still, and I’ll bite you free.” Wyan floated over to Agis’s side and began gnawing on the rope.

When the line slackened, the noble began to untwine himself. “That’s enough,” he said.

Wyan drifted away, waiting patiently while the noble untied his legs and stood.

“Don’t come too close,” Agis said. “I don’t trust your change of heart.”

“Of course not. You know me better than that,” sneered the head. “But it will be easier to take the satchel from you than from the giants.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” Agis replied.

Fylo came over to join them. The giant looked only a little better than he had a short time ago, though he had apparently recovered enough of his balance to stand on his own. “What now, friend?” he asked.

“We leave,” Agis answered, glaring at Wyan suspiciously.

“I’m the least of your troubles,” sneered the head, looking away.

Agis followed the head’s gaze and saw that Mag’r’s young assistant, Beort, had finally tracked down his master. The youth stood in the gateway, staring at Agis and the others.

“Where’s Sachem Mag’r?” he demanded.

“Not here.” Fylo shrugged and looked around the compound.

The boy pointed at Agis. “He must be here. That’s his prisoner.”

Fylo seemed at a loss to answer, so Agis spoke up. “The sachem told him to watch me.”

The youth scowled at Fylo, then asked, “Who are you, ugly?”

“Me Fylo,” the half-breed answered, his tone sharp.

“I’ve never heard of any Fylo.…”

The youth let his sentence trail off and backed out the gate, his eyes going wide. Fylo tore a crystal from the wall and started to hurl it after him.

“No! He’s just a child,” Agis yelled. “Besides, attacking him outside the compound would raise the alarm anyway. Just pick me up, and let’s get out of here.”

The giant did as asked and limped out the gate. Once they were outside, the noble saw Beort scrambling toward the far end of the compound, where Chief Nuta continued to expound on the evils of keeping the Oracle past the proper time. The young giant was screaming for help, and Joorsh warriors were already turning to see what was wrong.

“Where go?” Fylo asked, his eyes searching the citadel for a likely escape route.

“In your condition, there’s only one way out of here,” said Wyan. “You’ll have to go through the gate.”

Fylo’s eyes went wide. “Sachem Mag’r smart,” he objected. “Put guards there.”

“Wyan’s right,” Agis said. “Neither one of us is in any condition to be climbing over walls or down cliffs. I’ll tell you how to get past the guards on our way.”

By the time they reached the path descending into the courtyard, Chief Nuta was leading a dozen giants after them. The pursuers were still near the back of the citadel, but their angry shouts echoed throughout Castle Feral. In every corner of the fortress, exhausted Joorsh warriors were rousing themselves from their campsites and looking toward the source of the disturbance.

Fylo remained calm, as the noble had instructed, and brushed his hand over his beard. Agis grabbed onto a greasy braid of hair and clung there, with Wyan hovering close by. Then, without looking back toward his pursuers, the giant picked up a large boulder and lumbered down into the rubble-strewn gateyard.

On the other side, two weary sentries guarded the great breach where the gates had once hung. They seemed more puzzled than concerned by the commotion above. Although they had risen from the stone blocks on which they had been sitting, their heavy clubs still leaned against the shattered remains of the wall. One of them was not even watching Fylo, but instead kept his attention fixed on something outside the castle, in the Bay of Woe.

As Fylo approached with his burden, the sentry watching him raised a puzzled brow. The half-breed ignored him, keeping his eyes on the ground and attempting to trudge out the gate without having to give an explanation.

The sentry, a thick-waisted giant with the tattoo of a goat on his forehead, held out a hand to stop Fylo. “What’s going on up in the castle?” he asked.

“Beastheads,” Fylo answered.

The second guard, who was almost gaunt by comparison to the first, looked away from the Bay of Woe. “We know they’re beastheads,” he said in a sarcastic voice. “What are they doing?”

Fylo met his gaze, as if to answer, and swung the hand holding the boulder. The blow caught the guard completely by surprise, connecting beneath the ear, exactly where Agis had instructed Fylo to aim. The giant’s eyes rolled back in his head, and his knees buckled.

As the unconscious sentry collapsed, his partner reached for his club with one hand and clamped his other on Fylo’s shoulder, spinning him around. “What are you-”

The half-breed hurled his boulder at the sentry’s foot, and the question erupted into a pained howl. Fylo ran for the causeway, following the path the granite ball had cleared earlier as it blasted across the debris-covered apron. Although he was not a fast runner, his clumsy gait was more than adequate to escape the sentry hopping after him.

As Fylo lumbered across the narrow isthmus, Agis poked his head from behind the giant’s beard. “Well done!”

That was when the noble saw what the gaunt sentry had been watching in the Bay of Woe. The battered Shadow Viper lay a short distance from the causeway. Without a shipfloater, it rested up to its gunnels in silt. Otherwise, the ship sat on an even keel and looked reasonably dustworthy, despite its pock-marked decks and snapped masts. Dozens of slaves stood along the rail, watching Fylo’s escape with envious eyes. Now that there was no longer a sentry watching them from the gate, a few were probing along the side of the ship with their plunging poles, looking for a place shallow enough that they could wade ashore.

“Take me to the ship, Fylo,” Agis ordered.

The giant stopped and turned to face the derelict, but made no move to go out to it. “You say run to other side of Lybdos!” he objected.

“I know, but I can’t abandon those slaves,” Agis said.

“Can’t carry them,” Fylo said. “Too many!”

“You’re not going to carry them,” the noble replied. He glanced toward the gate and saw that they were in no danger of being caught by the thick-waisted sentry. The giant was still trying to hop across the wreckage, using his club as a cane. Agis returned his attention to the ship. “The Shadow Viper can escape by itself. All it needs is a shipfloater.”

“You?” scoffed Wyan. “From what I’ve heard of your talents, the ship won’t make it out of the bay before you collapse.”

“I’ll get us started,” Agis replied. “After that, Tithian will have to take over.”

“Tithian!” Fylo blurted. “Him not here!”

“He’s in my satchel,” Agis replied. As an afterthought, he added, “At least I hope he is.”

“He is,” Wyan reported. “I saw him while you and I were scuffling over the bag. He’ll be thrilled to help, I’m sure.” He smiled, a strange twinkle in his eye. “I’ll go tell the slaves to ready their plunging poles.”

With that, Wyan floated ahead to prepare the crew. Fylo stepped into the silt, shaking his head as he waded after the disembodied head. “This too dangerous,” he said. “Head-thing only help slaves so you let Tithian out of sack.”

“Yes, I know,” Agis replied. “But it makes no difference.”

“Does too!” Fylo countered. “Can’t trust Tithian.”

“I know that better than anyone,” Agis replied, clutching the satchel. “But I can’t abandon those slaves just because I’m nervous about letting Tithian out. It’s the same as murdering them.”

“No. Joorsh kill them, not Agis,” the giant insisted.

Agis shook his head. “Those slaves wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t hired Kester to carry me to Lybdos. That makes me responsible for their safety.”

Fylo considered this, then said, “Maybe. But Tithian not care about slaves. Maybe him not want to help.”

“He won’t want to, but he’ll have no other choice,” said Agis. “Once he’s on that ship, he’ll keep it afloat-or sink and suffocate with the rest of us.”

A boulder sailed over Fylo’s shoulder, bringing the conversation to an end. The stone hit a short distance ahead, sending a silvery plume of dust high into the sky. The giant twisted around to look back toward shore. Agis saw the thick-waisted sentry grabbing another boulder off the bank of the isthmus, apparently thinking it wiser not to wade into the silt with only one good foot. The guard hurled the rock at them, nearly falling over as he tried to brace himself on his injured foot, and the stone fell wide.

“Let’s go,” Agis said. “I don’t think he has much of a chance to hit us.”

As Fylo complied, an angry roar erupted from the entrance to Castle Feral, and Nuta led his warriors out the citadel gate. They began picking their way across the rubble-strewn apron, the chief shouting, “Stop, sachem-killers! Oracle stealers!”

Fylo ignored the orders and started toward the Shadow Viper with renewed vigor. As they approached, Agis saw that the battle had taken a heavier toll on the ship than had at first been apparent. A massive crack ran the length of the ship’s keel, which had been raised so the ship could rest on the bottom of the bay without tipping. Half of the catapults sat in splintered ruins, as did both of the stern ballistae. The ripped sails lay draped over the capstans and hold covers, with tangled mounds of useless rigging heaped on top of them. Even the hull, more or less protected by its immersion in the silt, had not escaped the fighting completely undamaged. Through the craters in the deck, Agis could see at least two places where the slaves had fastened makeshift patches to the interior wall.

Despite the ship’s condition, no bodies lay in sight. At first, Agis took this to mean that the slaves had escaped relatively unharmed, but when he saw barely twenty crewmen standing at the gunnels, he realized that was not the case. They had probably thrown the dead overboard, for in the heat of the crimson sun corpses would quickly begin to stink.

They reached the ship, and Fylo set Agis on the rear deck. As the noble climbed over a crumpled sail to slip into the floater’s pit, he found Wyan waiting at the helm, along with a yellow-haired half-elf crewman. The slave’s ankle was swollen and purple, and he managed to stand only by supporting himself on the ship’s wheel.

“You’re a brave man for coming to our aid, sir,” said the half-elf. “Most others wouldn’t have done the same, and the crew is thankful-whether we make it or not.”

“We’ll make it,” Agis assured him, slipping into the floater’s seat. “But we’d better move fast.”

“Aye, captain,” replied the half-elf. He looked forward, then commanded, “Ready your plunging poles!”

Agis used his good hand to lay his broken arm across the dome, gasping at the pain it caused. He focused his thoughts on the obsidian beneath his hands. A moment later, he smelled the briny aroma of saltwater and felt himself rocking back and forth to the gentle sway of lapping waves. He visualized the battered Shadow Viper floating on the surface of the sparkling sea, then groaned as a heavy weight settled upon his spirit. The caravel rose out of the dust. The crew raised a haggard cheer and plunged their poles into the silt.

As the slaves pushed off, a series of sonorous grunts sounded from the isthmus shore. An instant later, the bay erupted into a gray haze, boulders dropping all around the Shadow Viper. A loud crash sounded behind Agis, then the helmsman’s broken body flew past the noble amidst a torrent of shattered planks and beams.

A shard of broken wheel struck Agis squarely between the shoulder blades. The fragment did not pierce his flesh, but the impact drove him face first into the floater’s dome. His broken arm exploded in pain, and his concentration lapsed, allowing the Shadow Viper to settle back into the bay.

“Agis!” screamed Fylo’s deep voice. The giant’s fingers closed around the noble’s shoulders, pulling him upright. “You hurt?”

“I’ll be fine,” Agis gasped.

Keeping his broken arm on the floater’s dome, he looked over his shoulder. In place of the helm, a broken-edged hole opened below deck, a gray boulder resting in a pile of rubble that had once been Kester’s stateroom. Farther away, Nuta and his party of warriors were wading out from the isthmus, each giant holding another boulder to hurl at the Shadow Viper.

Fylo pointed toward the mouth of the bay, where the cove opened up into a broad expanse of featureless dust. “Take ship to deep silt. Joorsh can’t follow,” he said, taking a huge harpoon off the rear deck’s rack. “Fylo slow them down.”

“No!” Agis yelled. “We have catapults. You run.”

“Where to?” the giant asked, puzzled. “Agis only friend. Not let Joorsh hurt him.” With that, the half-breed turned and waded back to meet the pursuing warriors.

Wyan floated up from Kester’s stateroom. “What are you waiting for? It was your idea to save this worthless bunch of slaves.”

Grimacing with the pain of his broken arm, Agis pulled the satchel off his shoulder. “Can you get Tithian out of there?” he asked.

“Of course.”

The noble laid the satchel on the edge of the floater’s pit. “Then do it,” he said. “I don’t know how long I’ll last. Besides, when the next boulder hits, it would be better to have an extra shipfloater.”

As the disembodied head drifted over to the satchel’s mouth, Agis returned his attention to the floater’s dome and raised the Shadow Viper. The effort added to his agony, and he began to feel sick. The slaves leaned against their plunging poles. The caravel’s response was sluggish, for it rode dangerously low in the silt.

Agis focused on the smell and the sound of the sea inside his mind, trying to raise the ship higher. The pain of his broken arm intruded on his thoughts, making the waves choppy and unpredictable. In addition to moving slowly, the ship began to lurch and roll. The noble stopped trying to concentrate so hard, and the sea calmed again. If Tithian did not take over soon, Agis knew they would sink.

A pair of thunderous battle cries sounded behind the ship. Now that the Shadow Viper was under way, Agis allowed himself to look back. He saw Fylo charging straight at Nuta, who was raising his boulder to throw. Behind the chief, the other Joorsh warriors were rushing forward to support their leader.

Nuta hurled his boulder, and Fylo ducked. The stone glanced off the half-breed’s injured shoulder. He screamed in pain and dropped to one knee, burying himself up to his chest in silt. For a moment, Agis thought the giant would pitch forward and vanish beneath the surface of the bay. Then, as the chief started to pass him by, the half-breed seemed to gather his strength. With an angry bellow, he rose and thrust his harpoon deep into Nuta’s ribs.

The chief screamed and fell. As the grizzled giant disappeared into the silt, Fylo jerked the bloody harpoon free and, screaming a war cry, turned to charge the rest of the company. His astonished enemies stopped and launched their boulders at him. The half-breed countered by flinging his harpoon at the next warrior in line, then disappeared beneath a hail of gray stones.

A curtain of pearly dust rose where Fylo had fallen. For a long time, Agis could do nothing but stare into it, amazed at the giant’s actions. By attacking so fiercely, he had forced the Joorsh to use their boulders against him, buying precious time for the Shadow Viper to escape. In his death, the lonely half-breed, who had struggled all his life to find a single friend, had committed the ultimate act of fellowship. Now, though he might never know it, he would have a whole shipload of comrades.

“Good-bye,” Agis whispered sadly. “In all the cities of Athas, the bards shall sing of your great friendship.”

The surviving Joorsh warriors began to emerge from the dust curtain. With their hands now empty, they were free to use their arms for balance. They were wading through the silt with a strange, twisting gait that seemed half running and half dancing, plowing great plumes of silt into the air. Although they no longer had anything to throw at the Shadow Viper, they appeared confident that they would catch the caravel, for it continued to ride low and make sluggish progress.

Returning his attention to the ship, Agis found Tithian-at least he thought it was Tithian-crawling from the satchel. The king’s auburn hair had become coarse and gray, and the ever-present diadem no longer sat upon his head. His skin had paled with age, growing flaky and wrinkled, while dark, angry-looking circles sagged beneath his eyes. Only the darting brown eyes and sharply hooked nose remained the same as the noble remembered.

“Tithian?” the noble gasped. “What happened to you?”

“Do you really want me to explain now?” the king replied sharply.

As Tithian continued to pull himself out, a huge pair of leathery, batlike wings slipped free of the satchel. For a moment, Agis didn’t know what to make of them. Then, as they slowly stretched across the deck, he realized they were attached to the king’s back.

“In the name of Ral!” the noble gasped.

“More like Rajaat,” Tithian replied, glancing at the appendages with pride. He gave them a tentative flap, then looked down at Wyan, who was hovering at his side. “Shall we go?”

“That’s not why I brought you out of the satchel,” Agis snapped. “Look behind us.”

“I saw what became of Fylo,” the king replied. “I always knew your principles would be the end of you. Now it seems they’re also getting your friends killed. I have no intention of being one of those friends.”

“If you take over here, the whole ship can escape!” Agis said. Even as he spoke the words, he was visualizing the image of a griffin, a huge eagle with the body and claws of a lion.

“I see no reason to take that chance,” Tithian replied, lifting himself into the air with a single beat of his mighty wings. “I can escape with the Dark Lens alone.”

“That remains to be seen,” Agis replied, locking eyes with the king. Keeping just enough of his mind focused on his duties as a floater to keep the Shadow Viper from sinking, the noble launched his griffin into Tithian’s mind.

The noble found himself flying through a cavern of inviolable gloom. Nowhere in the blackness could he find even the hint of a light, much less anything that might be called illumination. The place seemed the very embodiment of darkness, more so than any of the times in the past when Agis had contacted the king’s mind.

Through his griffin’s mouth, Agis yelled, “You can’t escape by hiding. I’ll find you, and when I do, you’ll save this ship!” His words vanished into the murk without echo.

“I’ve no intention of hiding,” replied the king.

A crimson wyvern flashed into existence above Agis’s griffin. The winged lizard had appeared in mid-dive, its talons extended and its venom-dripping tail barb arcing toward the griffin’s heart. Flapping his construct’s powerful wings, the noble rose to meet the attack. As the two beasts came together, he used one of his massive claws to slap aside the poisonous tail, then opened his sharp beak in anticipation of closing it around the wyvern’s serpentine neck.

The beasts hit with a thunderous boom. As Agis tried to close his beak on the wyvern’s neck, he sensed a searing heat coming from the lizard’s body, and the smell of singed feathers filled his nostrils. Then, to the noble’s astonishment, the lizard began to flap its wings, driving the griffin back with such awesome strength that Agis could not resist.

The wyvern carried them out of Tithian’s mind. In the next instant, they emerged over the vast blue sea in the mind of the amazed noble. As Agis was still trying to comprehend the raw force behind the counterattack, the king’s construct suddenly separated from the combat and dived away. At first the noble was confused, but then he saw the object of the wyvern’s assault: a caravel, pitching and reeling in the stormy waters below. The wyvern was descending on it with tucked wings and extended claws.

Outside the noble’s mind, the Shadow Viper suddenly lurched to a standstill, and Agis heard the ship slaves screaming in panic. He looked up from the floater’s dome to see the crew standing frozen along the gunnels, bracing their plunging poles against the deck to defend against a huge crimson wyvern diving out of the olive-tinged sky.

“This can’t be!” Agis gasped.

“It is,” replied Tithian, also looking skyward. “That’s the power of the Dark Lens.”

“All the more reason to take it from you!” Agis said, turning his attention inward once more.

Agis sent his griffin after the wyvern, at the same time attacking from below. The rattle of a dozen ballistae sounded from the caravel, then a flight of spar-sized harpoons streaked up from the decks to pierce the wyvern’s breast. The lizard’s wings went slack, and it crashed onto the Shadow Viper’s bow, shaking the entire ship both inside and outside the noble’s mind.

Agis descended on the injured beast and pinned it to the deck. The wyvern arced its tail up to impale him, but the griffin dodged aside, then used his rear claws to rip the appendage off at the root. The lizard tried to beat him off with its wings, and the noble’s harbinger tore them to ribbons. It rolled onto its back and raked its filthy talons across its attacker’s breast. The griffin retaliated by catching the wyvern’s serpentine neck in its beak and biting down hard. The fanged head came off, and the wyvern fell motionless to the deck.

Agis had his griffin step back. During the battle, the wyvern’s heat had scorched the feathers from the beast’s head and blackened its leathery body in a dozen places. Nevertheless, the griffin was the one that remained standing, and that was the important thing.

To the noble’s surprise, the wyvern did not fade away, as a construct normally did after being destroyed. Instead, it simply lay on the deck, wisps of gray smoke rising from beneath its body.

Without allowing his griffin to vanish, Agis stopped attacking and turned his attention outward. The noble found himself slumped over the floater’s dome, so drained of energy that he could hardly breathe. He could feel the obsidian drawing the last of his strength from his body, leaving him with a sick, hollow feeling in place of his spiritual nexus.

As he pushed himself to a sitting position, Agis smelled smoke coming from the bow. There, he saw that several crewmen had abandoned their posts along the gunnel to rush forward and pour bucketfuls of silt over the fires started by the wyvern’s searing remains. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the mountainous forms of the Joorsh warriors had closed much of the distance between themselves and the fleeing ship.

Agis turned to Tithian. Although the king’s aged face showed the strain of having his wyvern destroyed, he did not look nearly as tired as the noble.

“Take your place at the floater’s dome,” Agis ordered.

Tithian shook his head. “I think not,” he said.

“Don’t make me send my griffin in to take control of your mind,” the noble threatened.

“I’ll admit that you put up a valiant fight, Agis,” Tithian allowed, a condescending sneer on his cracked lips. “But do you really think you’re powerful enough to overcome the Oracle?”

A series of terrified shrieks erupted from the bow, then Agis saw one of the slaves who had gone to fight the fire rise into the air, impaled on the wyvern’s severed tail. The noble turned his attention inward, bringing his griffin to its feet.

Exhausted by the fight and his efforts to keep the Shadow Viper afloat, the noble was too slow. The wyvern’s tail arced across the deck and pierced deep into the griffin’s breast. The stinging poison flooded through his chest in an instant, filling it with a scalding vapor that turned everything it touched to ash. Agis felt as though his heart were bursting into flame. He heard himself howling-not in pain, but in outrage-and everything went dark.

Tithian withdrew from the noble’s still mind and found himself on a sinking ship. Without Agis to keep it afloat, the Shadow Viper was going down fast. Already, the main deck had disappeared beneath the bay, and dust was pouring over the gunnels of the quarterdeck in billowing waves. The closest Joorsh was just three steps away from grabbing the caravel’s stern, and panicked slaves were calling for mercy from the giants.

Tithian went to Agis’s side. The noble lay slumped over the floater’s stone, blood seeping from his ears and nostrils, his glazed eyes focused on nothing. A red froth poured from his mouth. No breath-shallow or otherwise-passed his dead lips.

“Don’t try to save him!” objected Wyan, hovering at Tithian’s side. “There isn’t time!”

“I’m over that folly,” said Tithian, taking the noble’s hand. “But I need something of Agis’s.”

The king slipped the Asticles signet off the noble’s finger, then the whole ship jerked. He looked back to see that a Joorsh had grabbed the stern rail and was preventing the caravel from sinking any farther into the silt.

Tithian let the noble’s hand drop, grabbed the satchel, and launched himself into the air, barely escaping the giant’s clumsy attempt to swat him down. With the warrior’s angry voice roaring in his ears, he flapped his wings hard and quickly rose into the olive sky. Once the king was safely out of reach, he began to circle slowly so that Wyan could catch up to him.

While he waited, he watched in amusement as the frustrated Joorsh plucked crewmen from the Shadow Viper’s deck and hurled them at him. The tenth slave was just arcing down toward the silt when Wyan finally arrived …

“You fool!” snarled the disembodied head. “You nearly lost the Oracle-and for what? A souvenir?”

“This is no souvenir,” Tithian replied, holding the ring out to him. “Open your mouth.”

Frowning in puzzlement, Wyan obeyed. Tithian placed Agis’s ring on the head’s gray tongue.

“Take this to Rikus and Sadira,” the king ordered. “Tell them that they’re to meet Agis in the village of Samarah. The time has come to kill the Dragon.”