Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 1 - The Verdent Passage (10 page)

With her feet dangling off the ground, Sadira pleaded, “Please, at least let me take these
handles to Marut. I'm sure he'll allow me to return to you.”

The templar bit his lip indecisively, then shook his head stubbornly. “I don't know this
Marut. I have no reason to believe he'll send you back.”

“Marut is a trustworthy man, a loyal subject of the king,” Sadira countered, grimacing
against the pain of the half-giant's grip.

The templar scowled at the guard holding the slender sorceress. “If you bruise the girl,
I'll have your head!”

The half-giant nearly dropped her. The jaw of the other one, who was standing next to the
templar, fell slack.

As Sadira's captor put her feet back on the cobblestones, the templar said, “Letting you
go is out of the question. I'm to confiscate every slave that comes through this gate.”

Sadira realized that the templar's fear of his superior was stronger than his desire for
her. The half-elf could hardly believe it, but decided it might be wiser to press along a
different course. She pointed at the bundle of sticks she had dropped in the road. “If I
don't deliver those handles to my master tonight, Marut won't be able to make the picks
he's supposed to give the Ministry of Works tomorrow.”

“You said the handles was for axes,” rumbled a half-giant.

Without looking away from the chubby templar, Sadira hastily explained. “He usually makes
axes, but the ministry needs more picks for the brick pits.”

To her relief, the templar nodded. “I've heard that.”

“Without my master's tools, the ministry will be short of bricks,” she said, locking her
clear blue eyes on those of the portly man. “Maybe
you
should escort me to Marut's shop, then bring me back here after we've delivered the
handles. I'm sure your superior would be most grateful for your initiative, and so would
I.”

She gave the portly official a promising smile, but did not allow it to linger too long on
her lips. The key to bringing him entirely under her influence was to make him believe
that she was truly attracted to him, which wouldn't be too difficult since it was
something he clearly wanted to believe anyway. She just had to be careful not to alert him
to her act by overdoing it.

“Don't listen to her, Pegen!” said the half-giant next to the templar. “You can do as you
want with the girl, anyhow.”

Sadira lifted her peaked eyebrows and allowed her mouth to fall open as if in fear. She
stepped away from the templar, saying, “What does he mean, Pegen? What are you going to do
to me?”

This tactic worked perfectly. The templar scowled at the halt-giant, angered that Sadira's
attraction had suddenly turned to repulsion. “Quiet or you'll be hauling bricks on the
ziggurat tomorrow!” He turned back to the half-elf. “Don't worry. I'm not going to do
anything to you.”

Sadira backed away another step. “I don't understand what they're saying,” she said,
glancing at the guards “What do they think a small slave-girl like me could do to a
strapping man like you?”

Bristling at the imagined insult, the templar scowled at the two brutish guards. “Close
the gate when dark falls” he ordered. “Then wait for me to return.”

“ButÑ”

“Do as I say, Tak!” Pegen commanded, scowling at the reluctant sentinel. “No more
arguments!”

After he had finished chastising the half-giant, Pegen nodded to Sadira. “Lead the way,
girl. I hope your master's shop isn't too far.”

Sadira picked up the bundle of sticks and hoisted them onto her back. With Pegen following
a step behind her, she walked past the rusty gates and through a gently sloping tunnel
that passed beneath the city walls. At the other end, a monstrous block of granite rested
to one side of the exit. Every year or two, when another of Athas's cities ran out of food
and sent an army to steal what it could from Tyr's poorly stocked granaries, a
high-ranking templar would levitate the block and it would be pulled into place to block
the tunnel until the war was over.

Upon stepping past the barrier, the half-elf found the inside of the city more surprising
than the templar's presence outside the gate. In contrast to the cacophony of squeaking
wagons and strident voices that had greeted her on previous trips, Tyr seemed as silent as
the desert. The great boulevard that circled the inner perimeter of the wall was empty
save for a handful of artisans and well-robed merchants dashing along with their eyes
focused steadfastly on the cobblestones The food and wineshops opposite the city wall,
usually lit by torches and oil lamps until the early hours of morning, were uniformly
dark. The rich aromas she remembered Ñ fried rotgrubs, spicy silverbush, fermented kank
nectar-were absent. In their place, she smelled only fetid animal dung and the acrid smoke
of burning black rock.

Sadira turned left along the great avenue, following a route that she had traveled not
more than two dozen times in her life. Pegen walked at her side, his heavy boots ticking
an even cadence on the cobblestones. A few minutes later, as night was falling over the
city, Pegen laid a hand on Sadira's shoulder. He pointed down an avenue snaking its way
between two rows of three-story mud-brick buildings.

“Aren't we going to the Tradesman's District?”

Sadira paused and looked down the avenue. It was a broad street, well-lit by flickering
torches in door sconces. The half-elf had no idea where the avenue led. “Marut's shop
doesn't lie that way,” she said, pointing down the boulevard they were already traveling
on. “It's farther down here.” Pegen frowned. “If you say so.”

After another three hundred steps, Sadira paused, then looked down a dark lane weaving its
way into a ramshackle region of dreary tenements and crumbling shanties. Though the
windows and doors of the mud-brick buildings were dark, the slave-girl's elven eyes
allowed her to see the sinister-looking residents who were watching the alley from every
fourth or fifth building.

“Doesn't this lead toward the Elven Market?” Pegen asked.

“My master's just a short distance down the way,” Sadira said. She stepped into the dark
alley before the templar could object.

The half-elf had gone no more than a few steps into the lane before she heard Pegen
stumbling over the loose cobblestones in the street. He laid his hand on her burden and
tugged.

“Wait!”

Sadira obeyed instantly, dropping her bundle on his feet. She reached beneath her cloak
and drew the obsidian dagger she had stolen from the guard in the Break. The human
templar, unable to see in the dark, stumbled over the sticks and fell. Sadira spun,
raising her dagger to strike.

The templar sprawled over the bundle face-first, cursing and struggling to push himself
back to his feet. Sadira realized that it would be a simple matter for her to disappear
into the labyrinth of shabby tenements in this pan of the city. Certainly that was what
the Veiled Alliance would have wanted, for her contact had instructed her never to
antagonize the king's bureaucracy unnecessarily.

“Help me up, you clumsy girl,” Pegen ordered. “I could have you lashed for this!”

“Wrong thing to say,” the half-elf said, deciding that “unnecessarily” was a relative term.

With her free hand, Sadira grasped his bronze pendant. She jerked it up so that the chain
lifted his double chin and exposed his corpulent neck. Pegen's eyes opened wide and looked
toward her face, but remained unfocused and fearful in the darkness. “What do you think
you're doing?” he demanded in a gasping voice.

“Seeing if this knife is sharp enough to cut through your fat throat,” Sadira answered,
laying the edge of her weapon's blade to the thick folds of skin beneath his chin-She had
to press hard, but the blade was sharp enough.

The feel of warm blood covered her hand. Pegen gurgled and clasped his hands over his
throat. He rolled off the bundle of sticks and lay on his back, his life slowly seeping
from between his fingers and his astonished eyes staring up at the night sky. Without
waiting for him to die, Sadira cleaned her hand and the blade on his cassock, then ran
down the dark streets at a sprint.

The half-elf did not slow her pace until she had slipped between a pair of tenements into
a small square where five lanes met. The plaza was bathed in bright yellow light, for it
was surrounded by six wineshops, two brothels, and a gambling house, all of which had
burning torches in the sconces outside their doors. Dozing men, mostly humans and elves,
lay slouched against the sides of the buildings, and half-naked women were wandering to
and fro looking for someone in need of companionship.

Sadira stopped at the edge of the square and removed the blood-spattered cloak she was
wearing. With the inside of a sleeve, she wiped the dust and sweat from her face, then
stuffed the cloak into the satchel that held her spellbook. She ran her fingers through
her amber hair in a half-successful attempt to remove the tangles. Despite her efforts,
she knew she could not look even close to her best. Her recent run had left her chest
heaving and her slender legs trembling with fatigue. Still, once she had done all she
could to make herself presentable, she crossed the square to a wineshop whose entrance was
adorned with a picture of a drunken giant.

Inside, a brawny man with a balding head and an unkempt red beard stood behind a marble
counter, using a ladle of carved bone to serve fermented goat's milk to three bleary-eyed
patrons. As Sadira entered the shop, she caught the barman's eye, then casually drew her
hand across her full lips and delicate chin. He nodded toward the back of the shop, then
whispered something to one of his customers. The patron immediately rose and stumbled out
of the shop.

Sadira went to the back and sat on a small granite bench, placing her shoulder satchel
beneath it. To her surprise, the red-bearded server brought her a mug of tart-smelling
sapwine. As he approached, she smiled and said, “You know I don't have any money.”

“I know, but I can see you need something to eat and drink,” the brawny barman said.

“Why?” Sadira demanded, feeling embarrassed. She touched her fingers to her cheeks,
suddenly frightened that she had missed a spot of blood. “Do I have something on my face?”

The barman chuckled and shook his head. “No, you just look like you're thirsty,” he said,
motioning to two drunks sitting at the counter. “At least that's what those fellows must
have figured. They're paying.”

Sadira gave the two men an enticing smile, then downed the mug of fermented tree resin in
a single gulp. As the drink's powerful kick hit her, she closed her long-lashed eyelids
and shook her head. Handing the mug back to the barman, she announced, “I'll have another.”

“I think I'd better have a look at their purses,” the barman laughed, accepting the mug.
Before he returned to the counter, though, his face grew serious. “Are you in trouble?”

Although the half-elf and the red-bearded man were familiar to each other by sight, she
did not know how much to reveal. The only thing she knew about him was that he could reach
her contact in the Veiled Alliance. Otherwise, both he and she had deliberately avoided
prolonged conversations, for if the king's men caught one of them, the less they knew
about each other the better.

"A templar tried to seize me for the ziggurat, she said, leaving the matter with a simple
explanation.

The server nodded. “They've been confiscating slaves all day Press gangs have been through
here three times arresting drunks. That's why the square is so quiet this evening.” He
fetched Sadira another mug of bitter wine, then asked, “Should I expect the templar that
was after you?”

The half-elf shook her head. “Not until the dead can walk.”

The man relaxed, his face betraying his relief. He handed the mug to Sadira, then sat the
carafe next to her. “I'll pull the curtain just to be safe. By tipping that bench over,
you'll open an escape tunnel. Use it if you hear anything strange out here.”

Sadira glanced at the stone couch. “Where does it lead?”

“To UnderTyr,” he said, “and a Temple of the Ancients.”

“No!” Sadira gasped. She knew very little about the ancient temples, except that they had
been built before Athas had become a desert. According to rumor, most were filled with
vast amounts of metal treasure defended by the ghosts of those who had worshiped
long-forgotten, or long-dead, gods. “Under this wineshop?”

“Not directly under it,” the barman answered. “But if something happens and you use the
escape tunnel, don't be in a hurry to find that temple. From what I hear, you'd be better
served giving yourself over to Kalak's templars.”

With that, he stepped away and pulled a drape across the back of the shop. The drape was
made entirely from snake scales that had been pierced and threaded together.

Each scale had been sealed with shiny lacquer to preserve and heighten its natural color.
The result was a scintillating curtain of many different huesÑsandy yellow, rusty orange,
cactus green, and a half-dozen others.

Sadira drank her second mug of sapwine more slowly forcing herself to sip the powerful
drink. Although she felt like gulping the entire mug to quench her thirst, with the
curtain closed, she doubted that a refill would be forthcoming. The fermented resin was
the foulest drink available in the wineshops of Tyr, but the half-elf still wanted to
savor it. On Tithian's estate, all she ever received to drink was water.

As the half-elf sipped the last of her wine, an old man stepped around the edge of the
curtain. He had robust, proud features, with a heavy forehead accented by coarse white
brows, a large, hooked nose between shrewd brown eyes, and a firmly set jaw. His beard was
long and snowy. He wore a white, knee-length tabard, and over his shoulders hung an
ivory-colored cape fastened at the throat with a copper clasp. In one hand he carried a
mug filled with thick brown wine, and in the other a cane of dark wood. The cane's pommel,
a ball of polished obsidian, was both unusual and striking. Sadira found it difficult to
tear her gaze from the beautiful black sphere, but she did, for she knew its owner did not
like people staring into it.