Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 5 - The Cerulean Storm (10 page)

As the sorceress started to slip the weapon into its sheath, the tower lurched beneath her
feet. Sadira stumbled and nearly pitched over the side, but managed to drop to her hands
and knees in time to keep from falling. Her stomach rolled in one direction after the
other, and a sick, queasy feeling rose into her throat. Although she saw no hint of motion
when she tried to fix her gaze on the haze around her, she felt like the spire was
spinning as wildly as her stiletto had a moment earlier. By plunging her dagger into a
fissure and twisting the blade against the edge, she barely managed to keep herself from
flying off the steps.

For a long time, all Sadira could do was cling to the hilt and pray the blade would not
slip from the crack. If she lost contact with the Pristine Tower, she feared that the haze
would begin to eat at her spirit, and that her life-force would seep away. Even if that
did not happen, the wraiths would certainly find it easier to prey upon her as she drifted
aimlessly through the Gray. Perhaps they were even responsible for knocking the tower into
its crazy spin.

Magnus's voice began to waver, growing much louder each time the gyrating tower pointed in
a particular direction, fading to a mere whisper when it pointed away. At first, the
volume increased every few seconds, but gradually the rotations slowed and the spire
continued to point in the same direction for a little bit longer, until the sensation of
movement ceased and the song came to the sorceress's ears from one direction only: the top
of the stairs.

Sadira breathed a sigh of relief. The wraiths had not caused the wild spinning after all.
The dagger had been unable to point in a single direction because doing so would have led
her not to Magnus's voice, but away from the tower and into the dangers of the Gray.
Instead, her spell had reoriented the whole tower, so that the exit lay in an obvious
direction: up.

Listening attentively to Magnus's beautiful song, Sadira peered under the collar of her
robe. The flesh of her arm had paled dear up to her shoulder. The sorceress guessed that
the magic energy in her body would be I completely drained after five or six more
spells-even less, if they were powerful ones. After that, she would have to find a
different source for her enchantments. And in the Gray, she doubted that she would find
any plants from which to draw the mystic force of life.

Wondering if she would have enough magic to defeat the wraiths when they finally showed
themselves, the sorceress started to climb. The stairs were small, barely wide enough to
accept her foot from the toes to the arch. Often, they were cracked and so worn that they
formed more of
a
ramp than a staircase. A thousand years of dust lay upon the treads, and she passed over
the ancient grime without leaving a track. It took more than a footfall to disturb the
torpor of the Gray.

The sorceress climbed for a long time: minutes or hours or days, she did not know.
Progress, if she was making any, came slowly. The summit remained veiled by distance, and
the base of the tower seemed no nearer. Still, she continued to climb, reassured by the
increasing volume of the windsinger's voice that she was traveling in the right direction.
In the stillness of the haze, distance and time were mere illusions, but not Magnus's
song. It came from the outside, and it was real.

After a time, a glowing emerald floated into view. It hovered next to the wall, several
steps above, and a large eddy of darkening haze slowly circled it. A pair of green
pinpoints appeared in the haze, at about head-height and twinkling with a sinister glow.

Sadira stopped climbing, anxious and ready for battle. Like her, wraiths needed something
important from their lives to serve as magnets for their spirits. Although the sorceress
had never encountered these particular apparitions before the attack on the Cloud Road,
Rikus had. From his description, she knew that for Borys's followers, a brilliant gem
served this purpose. Though she could not be certain, she guessed that Borys had given one
of the stones to each of his knights when he took them into his service.

The sorceress thrust a hand into her robe pocket, watching dark haze coalesce around the
emerald above. The cloud soon formed the cumbersome figure of a woman in a full suit of
plate armor. The warrior wore the visor of her helmet up, so that she could focus the
green specks of her eyes on Sadira. The woman's face was stern and hard, with a deft chin,
sneering lips, and broad flat cheeks.

The wraith pointed the tip of her sword toward the haze below. “Go down,” she ordered.

Sadira pulled a tiny satchel of copper dust from her pocket. The sorceress tore the packet
open with her teeth, then waited as the wraith charged. When her attacker was almost upon
her, she blew the brown powder toward the warrior's open visor. The stuff coated the
woman's face.

The wraith's sword came down.

Sadira twisted away, diverting the blow with a crashing block to her foe's elbow. From the
solid feel of the armor, it was hard to believe the warrior had coalesced out of gray haze
just a moment earlier. The wraith stumbled, then caught herself and braced to swing again.

The attack came too late. Sadira spoke her spell's command word, and the copper dust
covering the wraith's face flashed blue.

A tremulous, ear-piercing shriek burst from the wraith's lips. She dropped her sword and
clutched at her face, pitching forward. Before she could clatter to the ground, a blue
glow ran through her armor. Her body instantly dissolved into a gray fog and drifted away,
leaving a glowing emerald floating where her head had been an instant earlier.

The sorceress plucked the gem out of the air. It was as large as her thumb, cut into an
eye-shaped marquise oval and deeper in color than any emerald she had ever seen. The sheen
of its many facets looked almost black, while a faint green light glimmered in the center.

Sadira laid the stone on a step, drew her dagger, and smashed the pommel into the gem. The
stone did not shatter so much as crumble into a coarse, lime-colored powder. A shimmering
radiance hung over the crushed stone, slowly expanding outward in a cloudlike mass.

Save for its green tint, the light resembled the mystic energy that normal sorcerers drew
from plants to cast their spells.

The cloud burst apart with a deafening crash. Bolts of green light shot through the Gray,
lighting it with a spectacular show of brilliant flashes. The storm continued to rage,
filling the vast abyss with a tempest of resounding booms and effulgent flares, stirring
the ashen haze into a froth of swirling green light.

Sadira was surprised by the tumult. She had known crushing the gem would release a certain
amount of life-force, for even wraiths needed some energy to bind their spirits together.
But the stone had contained at least as much power as she would expect to find in a living
woman. Perhaps that was the reason Borys's knights had been so dedicated to him. If the
gems served as repositories for their life-forces, it would be possible for him to
resurrect them.

After a time, the storm gave one last rumble and died away in a wave of flickering color.
Once more, Magnus's voice descended from the tower summit clear and unimpeded. Before
starting up the stairs, Sadira paused long enough to look under her robe to see how much
mystic energy her spell had consumed. The enchantment had been a costly one. Most of her
upper torso had paled to the normal hue of her flesh. If she was going to get past all the
wraiths, she would have to find a more efficient way to use her magic.

The sorceress began climbing. By this time, Magnus had repeated his sibilant rhymes so
many times that she knew the syllables by heart, even if she did not understand the
meaning of the words. Sadira began to sing along. The melody lifted her spirits, and,
keeping a watchful eye for more wraiths, she bounded up the stairs two at time.

Finally, the sorceress rounded a curve and the staircase broadened into a small apron,
which sat before the open gates of a white bastion. The ramparts were built of alabaster
and finished with undulating caps of ivory. Beyond the entranceway, a pool of shimmering
blue water filled the inner ward of the citadel, with a single pathway of limestone blocks
leading toward the center. The walkway stopped at the base of a minaret rising directly
out of the water. This slender steeple was faced with white onyx and crowned by a crystal
cupola.

Although she had reached the summit of the Pristine Tower, Sadira's singing croaked to a
stop. Between her and the gate stood ten wraiths, all armored in gray plate similar to the
first woman's. They wore their helmet visors down, so that all the sorceress could see of
their faces were the jewel-colored slivers of light emitted by their burning eyes: ruby,
sapphire, citrine, amethyst, and more. None of them carried weapons.

The largest wraith stepped forward. He extended a mailed hand and, in a raspy voice,
ordered, “Go down.”

Sadira reached into her robe and shook her head. She was vaguely aware that Magnus's
booming voice had grown urgent. Directly above the citadel's minaret, the pearly haze
swirled about in two great eddies, each spinning in the opposite direction.

“Stand aside-” She paused to clear a nervous catch in her throat, then continued, “Let me
pass.”

The wraith shook his head. “Borys is aware of what you and Rikus are doing,” he said. “He
has demanded your death.”

Sadira tensed, her limbs cold and aching. She wanted to ask how much the Dragon knew, and
whether he had found Agis, but realized that it would be futile. If the wraith replied at
all, his answer was sure to be misleading.

“Then Borys should come for me himself.” The sorceress pulled a tiny, two-tined fork of
silver from her pocket. “You won't stop me.”

She struck the fork against the wall and pointed the quivering tines at the wraiths. The
leader's purple eyes flashed brightly, and he threw himself to the ground. Several of his
fellows followed his lead, but not all were quick enough to react before Sadira finished
her incantation.

A shrill, painful screech shot from the end of the fork and blasted over her foes.
Blinding flashes of colored light flared inside the visors of the wraiths who had not yet
hit the ground. First their helmets, then the rest of their armor burst apart, the shards
instantly dissolving into wisps of gray fume. The whole tower shook with the violence of
the explosion, and the air erupted into a maelstrom of streaking colors: red, blue,
yellow, and all the hues of the prism. Only the leader and four other wraiths, all lying
on the stony apron, escaped the destruction.

The blast knocked Sadira from her feet, making her ears ring and sending her tumbling down
the stairs. The sorceress dropped the silver fork and clawed at the porous stone, breaking
off half her fingernails. As soon as she brought herself to a stop, she reached into her
pocket for another spell component.

By the prickling sensation of her skin, she knew that her first enchantment, one of the
most powerful she could cast, had drained her mystic energy down to her hips. She had
expected that, gambling that the attack would destroy most of her enemies in a single
blow. But she had not expected so many of them to drop to the ground, where the tower's
stone would absorb the magic vibrations she had sent to shatter the gems holding their
life-forces.

Sadira came up ready to attack again, the stairs still trembling beneath her feet and the
maelstrom tearing at her clothes. In her hand, she held a small iron hammer, the first
syllable of her incantation already spilling from her mouth.

When she looked toward the wraiths, she held her spell. To her surprise, they were not
charging. Instead, they stood on the apron between her and the gate, their feet planted
wide to brace themselves against the raging tempest. Behind them and directly above the
minaret, a faint gleam of pink was beginning to show through the swirling haze.

The sorceress raised her hand toward the light, hoping it came from the sun and that its
rays would restore the mystic power to her body, but her flesh remained pale. Sadira
started up the stairs again, catching a few notes of Magnus's song between the storm's
booms and crashes.

The leader of the wraiths held his hand out toward her. Sadira felt her stiletto slip from
its sheath. She lashed out, but the dagger was gone before she could catch it. The weapon
sailed straight to his hand, coming to rest with the iron handle in his palm.

“I believe this weapon once belonged to Agis's mother,” he said, lifting the stiletto. He
had to raise his voice only a little, for the tumult was beginning to fade.

Sadira scowled and stopped a dozen steps below the wraiths, still holding her small iron
hammer. Although puzzled by the warrior's action, the sorceress was less interested in
what he was doing than in selecting her next attack. She estimated that her body contained
enough energy for only one more spell. If she wanted to escape, she would need to pick a
good one.

“What does it matter who owned it?” Sadira asked.

“You shall see.”

A pearly cloud of haze began to swirl around the dagger, coalescing into the face of a
handsome human, a man with even features, a patrician nose, and long black hair streaked
down the center by a single band of silver. The rest of his body took form below the
dagger, and soon he stood with his sinewy arms hanging limply at his sides and his
shoulders slumped forward.

Forgetting about her spell, Sadira gasped, “Agis!”

The noble said nothing. The pupils of his eyes remained milky and vacant.

“Don't worry, he's still alive,” the wraith said in a reassuring voice. 'The Gray often
disorients the spirits of the living."

Sadira's heart felt as though a hand of ice had closed around it. The wraith was lying.
Agis's spirit had coalesced out of the Gray, not been drawn through it. Had the noble come
from Athas, he would have arrived fully formed.