The Obsidian Oracle

SIX MYTILENE

To Agis, the shipfloater’s apprentice looked only slightly healthier than her dead master, who had succumbed to a fever just an hour earlier. Beads of cloudy sweat rolled down her brow in rivulets, a murky yellow film clouded the whites of her eyes, and red, cracked skin surrounded her nostrils and mouth. Even the freckles dotting her keen-boned cheeks had turned from pink to gray, while her breath came in labored wheezes.

Agis snapped his fingers in front of the young woman’s fine-boned face. Her puffy eyelids rose a sliver. She turned her listless eyes on his face, but she did not speak.

“Can you hold on alone, Damras?” he asked.

The apprentice nodded.

“Tithian is doing this to you,” the noble said. “I’m going down to the brig to put an end to it.”

“Hurry,” she wheezed.

Agis climbed out of the chaperon’s seat and started down toward the main deck. He had barely set foot on the ladder before Kester laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“What are ye doing out of the chaperon’s seat?” she demanded. In her hand, the tarek held a king’s eye, for the day was a breezy one, with a dust curtain hanging about half as high as the Shadow Viper’s mainmast.

“Damras is dying-”

“She’s just sick!” snapped Kester, cutting off Agis’s explanation. Without even glancing in the direction of the floater’s dome, she added, “Damras is young. She’ll be fine.”

“Denial won’t keep us afloat,” said Nymos, joining them. “If Damras dies, the Shadow Viper is doomed.”

“I told ye, she’ll be fine!” growled the tarek.

“No, she won’t,” Agis said. “Tithian is killing her.”

“That’s blather,” growled Kester. “If he kills the floaters, he sinks with us. Why would he-”

A pained cry from Damras interrupted the tarek. Followed by Kester and Nymos, Agis rushed to the side of the floater’s pit. Damras’s condition had deteriorated. Her chin lay slumped on her chest, and her cloudy eyes stared into empty space. Her trembling hands had slipped to the edges of the dome and were in danger of dropping off the glassy surface altogether.

Agis climbed into the floater’s seat, at the same time speaking over his shoulder to Kester. “You’d better head for that island.”

The noble pointed to the ship’s starboard, where a craggy, crescent-shaped island rose out of the dust haze. Although it was several miles distant, he could see the zigzagging line of a path traversing its precipitous slopes. The trail crested the ridge near a jumble of blocky white shapes that could only be buildings.

Kester shook her head. “That’s Mytilene, a giant stronghold,” she said. “Ye’ll have to keep Damras awake until we can make a safer island.”

Agis laid his hands on top of the floater’s. Her knuckles felt as hot as sun-baked stones. “Damras will never make it to another island,” he warned, moving the floater’s hands back toward the center of the dome.

“Neither will we, if we land on this one,” replied Kester. “Ye’d know that if ye had ever seen how giants treat strangers.”

Damras focused her jaundiced eyes on the noble’s face. Can’t last, but Kester is right about Mytilene, she said, too weak to speak the words aloud. Help me.

I’ll go after Tithian right now, Agis said.

The floater shook her head. No. The Shadow Viper will be under dust by then. I need you here.

Tell me how, the noble answered, swallowing in apprehension. To Kester and Nymos, he said, “Damras is going to teach me how to float the ship.”

Kester and Nymos both winced, then the jozhal said, “We’ll see to Tithian.”

“No,” said Agis. “The king has obviously recovered from his ordeal, and he’ll attack you with the Way. Neither of you are powerful enough to resist him.”

“I have my magic,” the reptile insisted.

“And Tithian has his,” the noble replied. “You can’t open that brig until I’m there to counter his mental abilities. Otherwise, he’ll take control of the crew again.”

“The brig stays closed,” said Kester. “I’ll not have another mutiny on my ship.” She stepped toward the helm, motioning for the jozhal to follow her.

Once they were gone, Damras placed her hands on top of Agis’s, leaving his palms in direct contact with the obsidian. An eerie chill spread from his fingers and into his wrists as icy tendrils of pain writhed up his arms. They spliced themselves into his bones, drawing the strength from his muscles and the heat from his blood.

Let the dome draw on your life-force. Damras’s thought came to him distant and weak, and he felt her hands slip away. See the ship’s hull in your mind.

Gritting his teeth against the numbing pain in his arms, the noble pictured the weathered planks of the Shadow Viper’s hull. At the same time, he opened a pathway to his nexus, allowing the dome free access to his spiritual energy. A warm stream of life-force rose from deep within himself, coursing through his body and down into his arms. The tendrils in his arms grew warmer as his energy flowed into them, then a golden glimmer flashed beneath his palms and sank into the depths of the dome. Suddenly, it seemed to Agis that the ship had become a part of him.

You must witness the sea as it was.

Inside Agis’s mind, the dust curtain engulfing the ship suddenly lifted, replaced by a sparkling expanse of grayish blue. He heard the lapping of waves, then felt himself rocking back and forth to the gentle sway of the ship. The sky turned the color of sapphires, and a briny, wind-blown spray stung his cheeks. The noble licked a few droplets of the liquid off his lips and tasted water, salty as blood, but water nonetheless.

The sight took Agis’s breath away. In all directions, stretching to every horizon, he saw nothing but water, as endless as the sky and as featureless as the salt flats of the Ivory Triangle. This sea was a stark contrast to the real one, alluring and majestic instead of foreboding and bleak.

When he had finally recovered from his shock, Agis asked. What is this?

The Sea of Silt, long before the sorcerer-kings, Damras explained.

That can’t be, Agis replied. The time before the sorcerer-kings was that of Rajaat. The world was green and covered with trees. I’ve read descriptions-

Your descriptions were wrong, Damras interrupted. But we have no time to argue. The world was covered with water. You must accept that.

Very well.

As the noble spoke the words, a primeval attraction stirred deep within his spirit. He felt a restless longing as painful as it was powerful, and he almost did not notice as the crack of flapping sails sounded inside his mind. An instant later, a floater’s cockpit materialized around him. Agis found himself seated in a chaperon’s seat within his mind as well as that of the Shadow Viper.

Slowly, the rest of the ship began to appear inside Agis’s mind. An unimaginable weight settled upon his spirit, so terrible that his heart, stomach, and all his organs ached as though they would burst. He cried out in alarm, but his pain prevented anything more than a strangled gurgle from escaping his lips.

You are the water, instructed Damras. Your strength carries the Shadow Viper.

As the floater spoke, the foul odor of rot rose from the craft inside Agis’s mind, and his stomach churned in protest. The planks of the caravel’s hull turned filthy dun, and a dark stain of adulteration began to spread outward from beneath the ship’s keel, changing the color of the sea from sparkling blue to vile brown. The stench of decay grew stronger than ever, filling his nose with such fetor that he had to fight to keep from retching.

What’s happening? Agis asked.

The fever, Damras replied. It comes from the ship.

You mean from Tithian, said Agis. He’s poisoning us through the ship’s hull.

Then he’s very powerful. He’s fighting against the dome’s natural flow, replied Damras. I’ll help you resist as long as I can.

You should rest, replied Agis. You won’t be any good to the ship if you die.

You aren’t ready to do this alone, she retorted.

They fell silent, and Agis concentrated on the task at hand. Although he tried to keep the Shadow Viper floating high in the water, the horrid stench of Tithian’s attack and the dome’s steady drain on his strength were difficult to endure. Soon, he found himself feeling light headed and dizzy.

I think I’m about to fall unconscious, he reported.

That’s not surprising, Damras replied. Despite the respite Agis had given her, she still sounded sick and weak. It takes many days of practice before you can control the flow of your life energy into the dome. You rest and let me take over for a few minutes.

Agis felt the ship lift off his spirit as she took its weight. The dark stain of Tithian’s adulteration began to fade from the sea in his mind, and though he still felt tired, he began to feel less sick to his stomach.

The Shadow Viper sliced through the dust as usual, until Damras suddenly cried out in fear. A horrid death rattle escaped from her throat, then she pitched forward, and her hands slipped off the black dome. Before Agis could catch her, the floater slumped to the deck, her lifeless eyes staring into the sky.

The Shadow Viper lurched and slowed, then began sinking like a boulder. Agis caught it, visualizing the caravel riding upon the waves inside his mind. The ship’s weight seemed even more crushing than before, and his stomach churned in protest as Tithian’s foul stain of decay spread over the blue sea. It was all Agis could do to keep his thoughts focused on the lapping waters of the ancient sea, instead of the agony in his chest or the terrible nausea in his stomach.

Kester’s domed muzzle appeared over the cockpit. “What’s happening down there?” the tarek demanded.

Agis did not have to answer, for Damras’s lifeless body made the trouble clear.

“From the way the ship lurched, I’d say we’re about to sink,” said Nymos, also appearing at the edge of the pit. “Perhaps we should consider landing on the island.”

“If we were goin’ to sink, we’d be choking on silt by now,” growled the tarek. “Agis’ll keep us afloat.”

The noble shook his head. “I’m a mindbender, not a shipfloater,” he said. “I’ll be lucky to last long enough to reach the nearest shore.”

Kester gnashed her fangs for a moment, then crumpled her heavy brow into a wrathful scowl. “All right, we’ll chance the back side of the island,” she snarled. “And when we get ashore, I’m going to snap Tithian’s neck with me own hands.”

As the tarek had her helmsman swing the ship around, the image of a kes’trekel appeared deep within the dome. The raptor’s ragged wings flapped in great sweeps, lifting it out of the black depths and up toward the noble. At the elbows of its wings it had tiny, three-fingered hands, one clutching a many-stranded scourge and the other a curved scythe. On the bird’s shoulders sat a human skull, a tail of long auburn hair dangling from beneath a battered circlet of gold. The bird continued to rise until its fleshless head filled the entire dome.

Agis! came Tithian’s voice. You can’t float this ship for long, but I can. Let me take over.

I’d sooner trust a scorpion, Agis replied.

This isn’t about trust, replied the king. It’s about practicality. By working together, we’re both more likely to recover the Dark Lens.

So you can murder me and steal it for yourself? the noble asked. I’d be mad to give you that opportunity.

Consider the opportunity you’re giving up, Tithian pressed. Isn’t the possibility of killing Borys worth the risk that I might recover the lens?

Not if it’s a risk I don’t need to take, Agis replied. Now leave me alone-before I slip and let us sink.

The embers in Tithian’s eye sockets flashed in anger. You can’t do this alone, he said, diving back into the dome’s black depths. Before this is over, you will let me out.

Kester appeared at the edge of the cockpit. “Look lively down there!” she barked. “We’re taking silt over both sides!”

Agis put the king out of his thoughts and focused on the sea inside his mind. The water had grown slightly darker and more viscous. The difference was so imperceptible that the noble might not have noticed it on his own, but it was clearly affecting the ship.

Cursing Tithian for making his task more difficult, Agis visualized the sea as the floater had first shown it to him, sparkling and pure. He felt a brief surge in the stream of energy flowing from his nexus, then the water faded to a lighter shade of brown. The Shadow Viper in his mind rose a little higher, slipping through the waves as easily as it had when Damras had been there to help him.

“Better,” commented Kester, nodding her approval. “Are ye sure ye can’t do this for a dozen hours or so? We’d be wise to land almost any place but Mytilene.”

Agis shook his head. “By then, I’ll be as dead as Damras,” he replied in a strained voice. “We have to land soon, so I can stop Tithian’s interference and improve my control over the dome.”

“If ye say so,” sighed Kester. “But it’ll be another ten minutes before we round the point, and who knows how long after that before we find a place to land.”

“There must be someplace on this side of the island,” objected Agis.

“There’s one-where the giants wade ashore on the way up to their village,” allowed Kester. “I’m sure ye don’t want to land there.”

“No!” snapped Nymos. “Our chances are much better on the back side. With the dust curtain hiding us, it could be days before they realize we’ve landed.”

“I’m afraid not. Our masts will give us away,” said Kester, gesturing at the great shafts that towered so high above the decks. “I’m just hopin’ it will take ’em longer to catch us.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Nymos, turning his slender head from side to side in an attempt to gain some sense of Kester’s concern.

“The masts extend above the dust curtain,” Agis explained. “I don’t suppose you could hide them, could you Nymos?”

The jozhal thought for a moment, then said, “I can’t hide the masts.” He pulled a small wand from his stomach pouch.

At the end of the stick was a tiny mask. “But I can disguise them as giants.”

Kester rubbed her lumpy head in thought, then shrugged. “Go ahead and try,” she said. “I don’t see how ye can make matters any worse.”

With that, the tarek returned to her usual station, and Nymos scurried off to work his magic on the masts. The Shadow Viper skirted Mytilene’s shore slowly, steadily riding lower in the dust as Agis grew sicker and more fatigued. Soon, in addition to his nausea, the noble felt feverish and weak, and rivulets of bitter-smelling sweat ran down his brow. He began to think he would have to call for a chaperon to keep him alert, then Kester’s voice boomed across the deck.

“Foredeck squads to their ballistae!” she ordered. “Crew one, raise the keel. All others, furl the sails!”

At the far end of the ship, a dozen sailors worked the ballistae windlasses, cranking back the arms on three separate engines. Within moments, the weapons were loaded with heavy harpoons, the ends tipped with barbed heads as thick as a dwarf’s body.

On the main deck, a group of nervous slaves gathered around the capstan and leaned into the crossbars, winding a thick black rope around a massive wooden drum. As the line was gathered up, it pulled the keel-a mekillot’s shoulder blade-out of the deck’s center slot. The bone had been laboriously carved into a finlike shape, and polished to a smooth sheen to keep silt from clinging to it.

While their comrades struggled to raise the keel, the rest of the slaves crawled up the masts and out onto the yardarms. Slowly, they pulled the heavy sails up to the wooden beams and secured them into place with quick-release knots. By the time they had finished, the Shadow Viper’s progress had slowed to a near standstill.

Agis heard Nymos utter a magical command word, then saw the jozhal standing amidships, gesturing at each mast with his tiny wand. A trio of giants appeared where the masts had been. They were all somewhat smaller and less hairy than Fylo, with lanky builds and rough, sun-bronzed hides. On the shoulders of the first sat a ram’s head, on the second an eagle’s, and on the third a serpent’s.

“Man the plunging poles!” Kester ordered. The tarek was peering through her king’s eye, her gaze fixed far ahead of the ship. “Ahead slow.”

The crew took their positions and began to push. To Agis, this part of the journey seemed to take as long as the trip around the island. Once he almost retched, while another time he found himself gasping for breath as though he had been running. Still, the noble managed to hang on, and soon the craggy silhouette of a shoreline loomed just a few dozen yards off the bow.

“Ready the gangways,” Kester called, still peering through the king’s eye.

The slaves had barely moved to their positions when a lookout’s voice echoed down from the crow’s nest. “Giant to starboard!” There was a short pause, then he added, “Four more to port!”

“So much for disguises,” Kester growled, lowering her king’s eye. “How close?” she yelled, raising her gaze to the top of the mainmast.

When the tarek saw three beasthead giants standing on her deck, her leathery skin went pale. At first, Agis thought it was Nymos’s illusion that had flustered the tarek, but he quickly realized that was not the case.

“Not beastheads!” the tarek gasped.

In the same instant, a hulking silhouette came into view off the port bow, six braids of hair sweeping back and forth like pendulums as he waded out to intercept the Shadow Viper. Although the dust curtain prevented the noble from getting a good look at the giant’s face, he could see enough to tell that it was more or less human, with a blocky shape and a hooked nose as long as a battle-axe. As the noble watched, the colossus lifted his arms over his head, raising a huge boulder as high as the Shadow Viper’s tallest mast.

“Go away, you filthy Saram!” he boomed.

As the giant cocked his arms to throw, Kester yelled, “Fire at will!”

Agis heard the sonorous throb of a skein releasing its tension. A tree-sized harpoon rasped off a ballista and sailed straight at the titan’s chest. It struck with a loud crack, burying itself squarely in the target’s sternum. The giant’s breath left him in a pained gale. The boulder he had been holding slipped from his hands and plunged into the dust. Casting a slack-jawed look of surprise at the Shadow Viper’s bow, he lowered his hands and closed his fingers around the shaft, narrowly missing the ship’s bowsprit as he pitched forward.

As the firing crew cranked the ballista arms back into the cocked position, Kester whooped in joy. “That’ll teach ye to raise a stone to us!” she yelled.

“Should Nymos drop his spell?” Agis asked.

“Not now,” came the reply. “Let ‘em think it’s beastheads killin’ their friends, not the Shadow Viper.”

She had hardly finished speaking before a second boulder sailed out of the dust haze and crashed through the rigging, tearing the crow’s nest from the mainmast and snapping ropes from the spreaders. Followed by the body of the screaming lookout, the rock bounced off the keel and plunged through the main deck.

“All back!” Kester yelled.

The slaves dipped their plunging poles into the silt and began to push the Shadow Viper away from the shore. Kester cursed them for being too slow, then peered into the floater’s pit. “Keep us light an’ lively, Agis, or we’re lost!”

Two more giants came into view just beyond the bow, waist deep in silt and coming after the ship as fast as they could plow ahead. The leader held a huge boulder in front of himself, using it like a shield to protect himself and his companion from any more attacks.

“Tell the slaves to raise their poles,” Agis said.

Kester furrowed her heavy brow. “Why?”

“Do you know what ice is?” the noble replied, turning his concentration inward. Without waiting for a reply, he opened his spiritual nexus wide, allowing his life-force to flow through the dome in a torrent. The sea in his mind lightened from a turbid brown to a pale yellow.

Agis heard Kester’s voice yell, “Raise poles!”

The noble took a deep breath and visualized something he had seen only once in his life, on a bitter cold morning during a hunting trip into the high mountains: a frozen pond. In his mind, the yellow waters around the caravel turned the color of ivory and became as hard as a rock. The frost spread steadily outward, changing the sea into an endless white plain, as vast as the stony barrens and as smooth as obsidian.

The noble did not stop there. He visualized a pair of outriggers stretching down from the ship’s gunnels. Where the floats should have been, there were obsidian runners, as sharp as swords and thick enough to bear the immense weight of the Shadow Viper. Agis imagined these outriggers growing longer and longer, lifting the caravel’s hull out of the ice until it sat free, ready to shoot across the frozen sea at the slightest impetus.

A boulder crashed down on the deck of the bow, drawing the noble’s attention away from his preparations. It smashed through a rack of spare harpoons and upended the foremast. As the great staff toppled over, a giant’s angry voice jeered, “You other Saram will die, too!”

“Push off, Kester!” Agis yelled. “And tell everyone to brace themselves.”

“Fast to stern!” yelled the tarek, not bothering with the warning Agis had suggested.

The slaves lowered their plunging poles and pushed. The Shadow Viper shot away from the giants like an arrow from a bow. The ballista crews, who had been holding their fire for the most opportune moment, triggered their weapons. The skeins throbbed and a pair of harpoons whooshed away. The first lance sank deep into a giant’s stomach. He bellowed, clutched the shaft, and crumpled forward into a dead heap.

The second missile gashed across the last giant’s elbow, spraying a cloud of red mist high into the air, then vanished into the dust haze. At first, Agis thought the titan had narrowly avoided death, but the fellow’s eyes glazed over and he began to stagger about as though he were too intoxicated to stand. A moment later, his knees buckled and he fell into the dust, his muscles twitching madly.

“Poisoned harpoons. Now ye know why we call her the Viper,” Kester chuckled, using the king’s eye to watch the giant die. “That makes three of five. What happened to the other two our lookout reported?”

Agis did not answer, for he had broken into a cold sweat and fallen to quivering. His temples throbbed with a fierce, maddening pain, and his intestines burned as though he had swallowed fire. He felt a terrible punishment rising from his gut, and the noble knew he had overreached the limits of his endurance. He found himself leaning over to void his stomach, still struggling to keep his hands on the floater’s dome.

“What’s wrong with ye, Agis?” demanded Kester. “If ye let us down now, we’ll sink!”

“It’s Tithian’s fever!” Agis gasped, struggling to pull himself upright. “I can’t-”

A tremendous boom sounded from the Shadow Viper’s stern, bringing the caravel to an abrupt halt. Agis flew out of his seat and rolled clear to the rear gunnel. He hit his head against a bone stanchion, then found himself lying in a tangled mess with Kester, the helmsman, and a half-dozen other sailors. A foul smell, almost as rank as the one he had left behind in the cockpit, filled his nostrils.

Agis looked up and found himself staring at two sets of immense blue eyes. Beneath each pair of orbs were a craggy nose and cavernous mouth filled with broken teeth as large as stalactites.

“They’re too small to be Saram spies!” growled one giant.

The other scowled in confusion, then raised a sword-length finger to scratch between the mats of his hair. “We’d better take them to Mag’r,” he said. “The sachem will know what they are.”