Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 5 - The Cerulean Storm (2 page)

Of course, Tithian realized that it would not be easy to induce his ex-slaves to help. For
their own reasons, they were as anxious to kill the Dragon as the king was, but they were
also smart enough not to trust him. So, to lure them into helping him, Tithian had sent
them a fraudulent message in the name of their friend Agis of Asticles. In it, he had
claimed that Agis had recovered the Dark Lens and asked them to meet the noble in Samarah.
To convince them the summons was real, he had included the Asticles signet ring. Once they
arrived, he would make up a lie about how the noble had died after sending the message.
Then the king would convince them to let him take Agis's place and help them kill Borys.

Tithian had reached the far side of the village square. The sentry the king had left to
watch the Dark Lens showed himself. He was a disembodied head with grossly bloated cheeks
and narrow, dark eyes. He had a mouthful of broken teeth and wore his coarse hair in a
topknot. The bottom of his leathery neck had been stitched shut with black thread.

“What'd you find in the harbor?” the sentry asked, floating toward Tithian.

“It's a fleet, Sacha,” the king reported.

Sacha's dark eyes opened wide. That's impossible.“ He glanced at the obsidian orb. ”As
long as we have the Dark Lens, Andropinis can't find us."

“Then what are his ships doing in the harbor?” Tithian growled.

“How should I know?” sneered the head. “You're the one who controls the lens. I suggest
you use it.”

Tithian lashed out to snatch Sacha's topknot, missed, and silently cursed. His slow
reflexes still surprised him occasionally, for his body had grown frail and old just a few
weeks earlier. In the course of stealing the Dark Lens from the giant tribes in the Sea of
Silt, the king had been forced to outwit its guardians: a pair of dwarven banshees named
Jo'orsh and Sa'ram. Before he could send them away, the spirits had stolen what remained
of his youth, burdening him with aching joints, shortness of breath, and all the other
afflictions of old age.

Leaving Korla and Riv behind, Tithian spread his arms and stepped toward the Dark Lens. As
he approached, waves of blistering heat rose off the glassy orb and seared his old man's
body clear to the brittle bones. Clenching his teeth, he laid his hands on the scorching
surface. From beneath his palms came a soft hiss, and the smell of charred flesh filled
his nostrils. The king did not cry out. He looked past the surface and gazed into the
utter blackness of the Dark Lens.

Tithian opened himself to the power of the black orb. His hands seemed to meld with its
surface, and its blistering heat ceased to burn his flesh. A torrent of energy rushed from
the lens into his arms, flowing down into his spiritual nexus, the place deep within his
abdomen where the three energies of the Way-mental, physical, and spiritual-joined to form
the core of his being.

Tithian focused his thoughts on Samarah's harbor, concentrating on what he would see there
if the dust haze were not obscuring his vision. In the black depths of the Dark Lens rose
an image of twenty schooners, each depicted clearly in ghostly red light. The first ship
was just sailing into the narrow strait that served as the harbor's mouth. Inside his mind
the king heard the creaking of masts and the pop of flapping canvas. The visual image was
so clear that he could see the gaunt slaves shuffling along yardarm ropes as they furled
the sails. On the main deck, hairless dwarves labored around a capstan as they struggled
to raise the keel boards, and in the stern the shipfloater stared into a black dome of
obsidian. From his own experience aboard Balkan schooners, Tithian knew that the
shipfloater was using the Way to infuse the dome with the spiritual energy that kept the
ship from sinking into the dust.

“Find out if Andropinis is with them,” suggested Sacha, hovering at Tithian's side. “If he
isn't, even an incompetent like you can destroy the fleet.”

“And if he is?” Tithian demanded.

Sacha did not answer.

Tithian shifted his attention to a particularly large schooner near the center of the
fleet. Unlike the other ships, this one had narrow banners snapping from the top of its
masts, identifying it as the flagship. The king focused all his attention on the craft,
closing the others out of his mind. He felt a surge of mystical energy rush from deep
within his body, and the ship's image gradually enlarged until it was the only one visible.

On the foredeck, four ballistae sat ready to fire, massive harpoons nocked in their skein
cords, with a pair of lumbering half-giants standing nearby. Two sorcerers stood in the
prow, inspecting the dust-swells ahead of the ship for signs of buried obstacles. To aid
in the search, each man held the base of a large glass cone to his eyes. The glass cones,
Tithian knew, were king's eyes, unique lenses especially enchanted so the viewer could
peer through the dust hazes so common to the Sea of Silt.

To the king's surprise, there did not appear to be any slaves on the main deck.
Half-giants stood next to every catapult, while the crew struggling to turn the capstan
wore the plain togas of low-ranking Balican templars. Even the men and women crawling over
the yardarms showed no whip scars on their bare backs.

When Tithian's gaze fell on the quarterdeck, his stomach coiled into a tight knot. “In the
name of Rajaat!” he cursed. “It can't be!”

Behind the helmsman stood Andropinis, sorcerer-king of Balk. He was muscular and huge,
with a fringe if chalk-colored hair hanging from beneath his jagged crown. He had a
slender face, a nose so long it could almost be called a snout, and dark nostrils shaped
like eggs. His cracked lips were pulled back to reveal a mouthful of teeth filed as sharp
as those of a gladiator. Beneath his sleeveless tunic, a line of sharp bulges ran down his
spine. Small pointed scales covered his shoulders and the backs of his arms.

What disturbed Tithian more than the sight of Andropinis were the five people standing
silently at the sorcerer-king's side. Two were male, two female, and one of uncertain
gender. All stood close to Andropinis's height and appeared just as menacing. One man had
a thick mane around his neck, with slit pupils and the heavy nose of a lion. The other
seemed remotely avian, with a scaly, beak-shaped muzzle and recessed earslits on the sides
of his head.

The taller woman appeared as cold as she was beautiful, with long silky hair, dark skin,
and narrow eyeslits extending from the bridge of her nose around to her temples. She had a
small, oval-shaped mouth, with dainty fangs pressed against the flesh of her lips. The
other woman was of lighter complexion. Her huge eyes constantly roamed about and never
seemed to focus on anything. Save for the curled claws at the ends of her fingertips, she
looked more completely human than anyone else with Andropinis.

The last figure stood half-again as tall as the others. It seemed a miniature version of
the Dragon, with a gaunt build neither male nor female. A glistening hide of leather and
chitin covered its willowy limbs and rogenous body, while huge claws with knobby-jointed
fingers hung from the ends of its skeletal arms. At the end of its serpentine neck was its
head, little more than a slender snout with a glassy, bulbous eye on each side and a bony
horn at the end.

“Who are they?” asked Korla, coming to stand at Tithian's side. She held her hands out to
shield her face from the blistering heat of the lens.

“The six sorcerer-kings and queens of Athas,” supplied Sacha.

The head had hardly spoken before Korla glanced toward her husband. “Riv!”

Sacha faced Tithian and growled, “You should have killed the half-breed when you decided
to bed his wife.”

“It wasn't
me,”
Riv objected, joining them. Over at the well, the children had formed a neat line and were
working efficiently to fill their waterskins. “The last thing I want in Samarah are
sorcerer-kings. Most of my villagers are slaves who came here after escaping the cities.”

“I've seen jealous fools risk more,” pressed Sacha.

“Riv didn't summon this fleet,” Tithian said. Inside the Dark Lens, he could see
Andropinis's ship passing between the two spits of land that formed the mouth of the
harbor. “Even if Riv has a way to contact the sorcerer-kings, he has no reason to think
they'd be interested in me-unless you told him, Sacha?”

“Don't be absurd,” snapped the head.

“They must have found a way to track the lens,” the king surmised.

“Impossible,” Sacha said. “As long as Jo'orsh and Sa'ram still walk Athas, their magic
prevents any sorcerer-king from finding the lens-by any method.”

“Then what are all six doing here?”

When the head didn't answer, the king shifted his attention from Andropinis's flagship
back to the whole fleet. He felt a surge of energy course through his body, then his field
of view expanded to take in the entire armada. The ship in the lead was furling its sails
and slowing to a stop under the shouted guidance of the first mate. The end of Samarah's
single quay lay just a short distance ahead of the bowsprit.

Fearing that a Balkan watchman would soon be able to see him, Tithian searched the sky
over the harbor for the silhouette of a mast or crow's nest. To his relief, he found
nothing but a pearly sky full of blowing dust.

Samaran mothers began to pour into the plaza with heavy satchels of household belongings
slung over their shoulders. The fathers waited at the edge of the square, clubbing their
goraks with bone spears in a futile effort to keep the flocks from drifting.

“Where are your villagers going, Riv?” Tithian asked.

“If we stay here, the Balkans will seize everything we have-even our children,” the
headman reported. “We'll scatter into the desert until the fleet leaves.”

“We'd better do the same,” urged Sacha.

“And forgo a chance to spy on my enemies?” The king shook his head. “We're staying.”

“We can't eavesdrop on sorcerer-kings!”

“Of course we can,” Tithian replied. “You said yourself they can't find us as long as we
have the Dark Lens.”

The king returned his gaze to the black orb, then gasped. Several schooners had come to a
dead halt in the middle of the harbor, but that was not what had alarmed him. Borys had
appeared next to the flagship, his willowy frame so gaunt it would have made an elf seem
stout. Though the Dragon stood waist-deep in silt, his slender head loomed as far above
the ship's deck as the highest mast, with a spiked crest of leathery skin running up the
back of his serpentine spine. A menacing light glowed in his tiny eyes, and wisps of red
fume rose from the nostrils at the end of his slender snout.

Andropinis stood at the gunnel, conversing with Borys. “How can you be certain Tithian is
here, Great One?” the sorcerer-king asked.

“I'm not,” the Dragon replied. “But my spies in Tyr inform me that Rikus and Sadira are
preparing to leave for Samarah. Why would they come so far, if not to meet the Usurper and
retrieve the Dark Lens?”

“And you summoned us to help you ambush them?”

“Perhaps, if my agents in Tyr fail to stop them,” Borys said. “But first, I want you and
the other sorcerer-kings to find Jo'orsh and Sa'ram.”

“The dwarven knights?” asked Andropinis.

“The dwarven banshees,” Borys corrected. “Now that the Usurper has stolen the lens from
them, they should not be so difficult to find. Bring them to me, and my spirit lords will
force them to undo the magic hiding the Dark Lens.”

“Perhaps it would be easier to destroy the banshees where we find them,” suggested
Andropinis.

“These banshees cannot be destroyed by you-or even me,” said Borys. “Only my spirit lords
can do that-which is why you must bring them to me.”

“You'll be here?”

The Dragon nodded. “Waiting for Tithian.”

With that, Borys stepped away from the ship. The crew began to lower the skiffs, and the
sorcerer-kings prepared to disembark.

“Now will you leave?” asked Sacha. He was hovering near Tithian's shoulder, watching the
scene inside the lens.

“No. It wouldn't do any good,” Tithian's heart was pounding, pumping fear and panic
through his body, and it was all he could do to keep control of his thoughts. “Running
into the desert won't save me, not from Borys and his sorcerer-kings.”

“So you'll fight them?” Korla asked in an anxious voice.

Tithian looked up from the lens and glared at her. “Don't be absurd,” he spat. “One or two
sorcerer-kings, I could kill easily. But not all of them, and not with Borys here. Even I
can't kill the Dragon alone.”

“I don't suppose you'd do us the courtesy of surrendering outside Samarah?” requested Riv.
“It might spare my people some trouble.”

“Why should I care about your people?” growled Tithian. “I have no intention of
surrendering.”

“I'm
happy to hear that,” said Korla.

Smirking at her relief, Riv scoffed, “Why? If he's not going to run or fight, what else
can he do?”

“The last thing Borys expects: hide in the very place he's trying to ambush me,” Tithian
was untroubled by Riv's obvious delight at his plight. The headman would pay for his
insolence soon enough.

Tithian thought his plan stood a good chance of seeing him through until help arrived. If
Borys thought his agents could stop Rikus and Sadira, the Dragon was underestimating them
badly. As long as the pair believed they were coming to meet Agis, they would find a way
to reach Samarah. Once they did, they would have no choice but to help him slay Borys.

The king studied Riv's brawny form for a moment, then used the Way to visualize himself
growing as large and strong as the headman. A torrent of searing energy rushed from the
lens into his body. The king's arms burst into agony as his muscles began to swell, taking
on a knotted, bulging shape. After his arms came his shoulders and neck, then his chest,
back, and stomach. Each transformation brought with it a fresh surge of pain. Tithian
clenched his teeth and waited for the Dark Lens to change his thoughts into reality, until
at last his legs felt as thick and bandy as Riv's.