Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 1 - The Verdent Passage (14 page)

The guard in front of the Red Rank stood with his back to the nobles, looking from one
side of the square to the other.

“Look!” Jaseela pointed at a form standing behind the counter of a nearby shop.

The figure wore a blue robe with a white veil pulled across his face. From beneath the
veil protruded a small yellow tube, directed at a wounded half-giant a quarter of the way
across the square. As the nobles watched, a handful of shimmering balls streaked out of
the tube. When they hit the wounded guard, they erupted into sprays of brilliant flame.
The half-giant dropped with without making a sound.

The guard in front of the Red Rank raised his club and started toward the figure, but
paused when Jaseela called, “There's another!”

She pointed at a nearby alley, where a crackling flame streamed from the outstretched
fingers of a blue-robed figure to scorch another guard's head.

“Sorcerers!” Agis gasped. “It has to be the Veiled Alliance!”

A nearby templar scooped three stones off the ground. “In the name of Mighty Kalak, let
these missiles strike dead the enemies of the king!”

The templar tossed the stones at the wizard attacking with the fire stream. As soon as he
released them, all three shot through the air like arrows and struck their target square
in the forehead. The sorcerer collapsed, spraying the alley walls with great gouts of
effulgent flame.

The half-giant in front of the suphouse stepped toward the first sorcerer that had
revealed himself. In the same instant, Jaseela pulled a steel stiletto from beneath her
cloak.

“What are you doing?” Agis asked.

“Joining the fight,” Jaseela returned. “How about you?”

With that, she hopped onto the wall and dropped down onto the guard's back. As the
noblewoman landed, she threw her free arm over the half-giant's shoulder and reached
around his massive neck, burying her stiletto deep into the guard's soft throat.

The half-giant bellowed in rage. After dropping his club, he grabbed at Jaseela's head
with one massive hand and at her stiletto with the other.

Agis watched the noblewoman's attack with a sense of detached shock. In the flash of an
eye, Jaseela had declared herself in full rebellion against Kalak. If someone later
identified her as a participant in the ambush, which seemed likely given the number of
people in the square, her lands would be confiscated and orders issued to kill her on
sight.

Jaseela ducked the half-giant's clumsy grasp, then slipped down his back, still clinging
to her dagger. The blade opened a long gash in the guard's throat, then suddenly came
free. The noblewoman dropped the rest of the way to ground, her arm soaked with dark blood.

The half-giant spun around. He held a massive hand across the gash in his throat, but
could not stop the flow. Bright red bubbles appeared between his fingers. He gurgled an
unintelligible threat and lifted his free hand to strike.

Realizing that even a wounded half-giant could crush the noblewoman with just one blow,
Agis took a deep breath and prepared to help her. With a little bit of luck, he could use
the Way to save Jaseela and no one would ever know.

The noble focused his thoughts on his energy nexus, then made a fist and turned the
knuckles toward the guard's chest. In his mind he imagined a mystical rope of energy
flowing from his nexus into his arm. Agis mentally shaped the energy he had summoned into
a huge fist. He drew his arm back and punched at the guard, simultaneously releasing his
psionic attack.

The invisible fist struck its target square in the chest. The half-giant rocked back on
his massive heels, but did not fall. Instead, he shook his ponderous brow and peered more
closely at Jaseela, then slapped her with the heel of his open hand. An astonished cry
escaped the noblewoman's lips as the blow sent her crashing into the suphouse wall. She
collapsed to the ground, and the half-giant reached down to pick her up.

Agis cursed himself for being tentative and subtle when he should have been bold. He had
used the Way not because it was the best method of saving Jaseela, but because he was
afraid to overtly involve himself in the revolt Jaseela had shown no such hesitations. She
had seen what was right and done it in an instant.

As the half-giant's fingers closed around Jaseela's limp body, Agis drew his dagger and
climbed onto the edge of the balcony. “Up here!” he called.

The half-giant looked up, blood still seeping from between the fingers clasped about his
throat. Agis dropped off the balcony. He landed on the guard's shoulder and stabbed at his
foe's eye with all his might. The dagger sank to the hilt. The half-giant screamed and
spun away, spilling Agis onto the cobblestones next to Jaseela. The huge brute plucked the
dagger from his eye and stumbled away in pain and shock. A few steps later, he finally
dropped to the ground.

Agis turned to Jaseela. The noblewoman's eyes were closed and her breathing shallow. He
ran his hand over the back of her head and felt a huge knot forming where it had struck
the wall. She was covered with blood, but he could not tell how much of it was hers and
how much was from the dead guard.

Agis poked his head into the shadowy door of the Red Kank. “Carol” he yelled. “I need you!”

Though he had no doubt the other three nobles were also inside the suphouse, he did not
bother calling them. If he was disappointed in himself for letting Jaseela attack alone,
he was disgusted with them for abandoning her altogether. Besides, he and Caro would have
an easier time getting the noblewoman out of the Elven Market if there was more than one
group of nobles for greedy pickpockets and vengeful templars to follow.

As Agis turned away from the Red Kank, he saw that the elven merchants had fallen upon the
templars. He knew the elves were more interested in stealing the bureaucrat's fat purses
than resisting Kalak's oppression but he was glad for the diversion. The more chaotic the
scene in Shadow Square, the less likely templar informers would be to take note of him and
Jaseela.

Agis gently stretched the noblewoman out on the cobblestones, then kneeled at her side and
checked once more for obvious wounds. As far as he could tell, all of the blood had come
from the half-giant.

Caro stepped out of the suphouse. “What happened?”

“No time to explain now,” Agis said. “I'm going to need you to keep Jaseela from being
jostled as we leave. Do you feel well enough for a little pushing and shoving?”

The dwarf nodded. “I'll do my best.”

Without further comment, Agis laid his hands on the ground next to the noblewoman, then
called on his psionic powers to create an invisible bed of pure force beneath her. His
fingers and hands began to tingle, and Jaseela's body rose off the ground. Agis laid a
palm on her stomach to keep her stable and used his other to take her hand. He stepped
toward the alley through which he had entered the square, thinking he might be strong
enough to keep her levitated until they had left the Elven Market.

When Agis lifted his eyes from Jaseela's unconscious form, he found himself facing a large
man wearing a blue robe, a white scarf pulled across his face. The brown eyes peering out
from beneath the white brow seemed as ancient as Caro's, but there was a depth and power
to them that Agis found both alarming and awe-inspiring. In one hand, the wizard held the
noble's bloody dagger, and in the other he carried the obsidian-pommeled cane that Agis
recognized as belonging to the old man who had given him directions to Shadow Square.

The figure offered the dagger to Agis without saying a word.

“You?” the noble gasped.

The sorcerer ignored the question and placed the dagger in Agis's hand, then turned to go.
The senator caught him by the shoulder. “Wait. We're part of this now. We want to help.”

Using his cane, the sorcerer knocked Agis's hand away. “We don't need your help.”

With that, he took a single step away from the nobleman. Before Agis's eyes, the old man's
body grew translucent and faded from sight.

Debt of Honor

Rikus stood atop a peninsula protruding from a cliff of orange shale. A cool breeze danced
over his face, and tall, wispy rods of ruby thornstem scratched his bare shoulders. At his
back lay a vast plain of rusty desert, mottled by delicate clumps of white brittlebush and
green globes of tumbling spikeballs. Before him hung a void filled with still, ashen haze
that stretched from below the cliff to the zenith of the sky.

The mul had been peering into the gray murk for a long time, he couldn't say whether it
had been minutes or hours or days, hoping for some glimpse of what lay on the other side.
So far, the curtain had not parted, and he was beginning to think he was looking at the
Sea of Silt.

Rikus did not remember crossing the desert at his back, and he had no idea how he had come
to be standing on this cliff. The last thing he recalled was seeing his friends rush to
his rescue as the gaj burned his mind. He feared that his lapse of memory was due to
damage caused by the creature's attack.

To the mul's right, the gray haze finally stirred, churning itself into an oval eddy as
tall as a man. Rikus stepped away and raised his fists to a fighting guard, prepared to
defend himself. The eddy simply continued to whirl.

“Step through,” spoke a voice at Rikus's back. It had a smooth, melodious timber that was
neither male nor female.

The mul turned. A vaguely human shape stood beside him. The figure wore a gray burnoose
with the hood pulled over its head so that neither its face or eyes were visible. It held
its arms before it, its hands neatly folded into the opposite sleeves.

“Who are you?” the mul demanded. His heart was suddenly beating hard with confusion and
fear,
and he did not like the feeling.

“No one,” came the reply. The figure lifted an arm and pointed toward the swirling eddy.
There was no hand at the end of its sleeve. “What are you waiting for?”

“Nothing,” Rikus answered, staring at the sleeve.

“Then you have found it.”

Rikus stepped toward the figure. “What's happening here?”

“Nothing,” came the reply.

The mul scowled and peered beneath the shadows of the hood. When he saw only empty
darkness, he reached up and pulled the hood away.

The figure had no head. Even the burnoose's collar was as
empty as
the sleeves and the hood.

With a start, Rikus realized why he could not remember crossing the desert. “Is that it?
I'm dead?” he demanded, waving a hand at the curtain of grayness. “This is all a lifetime
of pain and bondage comes to?”

“This is all everything comes to,” the figure replied, its dulcet voice sounding from the
empty space above its collar. With its empty sleeve, it gestured toward the swirling Rukus
shook his head. “It's not enough,” he said. “Not for me.” He turned toward the desert
plain and started. The gray figure appeared in front him. “There is nothing more,” it
said, raising its empty sleeves to block his way. “You can't
escape.”

“I can try” the mul hissed, reaching out to clutch the cloak. “Besides, what's to stop
me?” He wadded the empty robe into a bundle and tossed it over his shoulder. “Nothing.”

He walked for miles, then tens of miles. The terrain never changed, save that the gray
curtain at his back grew more and more distant. Ahead of him, an endless plain of orange
shale stretched to the horizon, the dreary monotony broken only by the white caps of
brittlebush, the green dots of spikeballs, and the barren stalks of thorn-stem waving in
the breeze.

Finally Rikus's legs grew weary. He sat down to rest, then yawned and realized he could
not remember the last time he had slept. The mul leaned back, ignoring the sharp edges of
shale that poked him in the shoulders and ribs. There was no sun in the yellow sky, only
an ethereal haze that radiated an amber glow. Rikus closed his eyes.

When he woke, he was no longer in the desert. Instead, he lay in the center of a square
room. Over his head hung a ceiling of mekillot ribs, lashed together to form a grid of
squares. Above the bone grid, the twin moons, Ral and Guthay, shone through a scaly roof
of stretched hide, filling the room with dim, yellow light.

The walls and floor were of solid stone, save that there was a large gate of iron bars in
one wall. Once unlocked, the gate could be raised into a special slot by means of a sturdy
giant-hair rope and pulleys located outside the cell.

“What am I doing here?” Rikus asked no one in particular.

Beneath him lay a pile of dirty rags that had been serving as his bed. The cell stank of
offal and sweat, and through the gate came the roars, chirps, and shrieks of a dozen kinds
of beasts.

Rikus sat up and shook his head, sending waves of throbbing pain through his skull. His
back, arms, and legs were stiff and sore, and his abdomen burned where the gaj's barbed
pincers had punctured his skin.

The mul groaned, taking his first good look around the pen. In one corner, Yarig and
Anezka lay curled up together. At Rikus's side, Neeva's massive form was stretched out on
the stone floor, covered only by her heavy cape.

“I'm alive,” Rikus said.

“So it would seem,” answered a familiar, sarcastic voice. “What a pity.”

Rikus lifted his eyes to the gate. Boaz stood in the corridor beyond. The half-elf wore a
cape of blue silk and carried an open carafe of milkwine. His eyes were blurry, and he
stood awkwardly braced on stiff legs, as if he would pitch forward at any moment. At his
waist hung a ring of keys and a steel dirk.

“No guards?” asked Rikus. In his mind, the mul saw the trainer standing atop the practice
pit wall, wanting to know which of the mul's friends should be flogged in punishment for
his disrespect. The memory filled the gladiator's heart with bitter anger. “That's
careless of you, Boaz.”

“I'm safe enough with that between us,” the half-elf replied, gesturing at the iron gate.
His words were slurred. “Besides, my guards have all passed out. Not enough to do in this
tedious compound, so they drink too much.”