Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 5 - The Cerulean Storm (34 page)

“If the sorcerer-kings find me, I won't live long enough to walk,” Neeva said, her voice
growing stern. She looked up at Rikus. 'Take me down."

“Don't drop her this time,” Rkard ordered. He went down the slope first, kicking loose
stones out of the mul's path.

“He doesn't mean to hurt your feelings, Rikus,” Neeva said. “After what happened to
Caelum, he's scared to death that he'll lose me too.”

“I won't let that happen,” the mul said.

“Sshhh.” Neeva touched her fingers to his lips. “During the war with Urik, I thought you
learned not to make promises you can't keep.”

The mul shrugged. “Some things never change, I guess.”

Rikus shifted his gaze down the hill. A dozen paces below, the black sludge from his sword
had filled the bottom of the crater. Dark wisps of shadow rose from its surface, while
yellow eyes blinked in the center of slow-spinning eddies. In places, warped spouts of
slime oozed up to form disfigured silhouettes of four-footed birds, two-headed men, and
mekillots with long writhing tails at both ends. Sometimes, the weird beasts even seemed
to take on lives of their own, making their way to the shore and crawling a short distance
up the slope before they dissolved into sticky messes and drained into the ground.

Rikus thought it a mark of his company's desperation that they had picked this place to
hide Neeva, but he had been unable to think of another plan to protect the injured warrior
from the sorcerer-kings. As Neeva had told her son, with the Scourge gone, he and Sadira
would not be killing any more sorcerer-kings-at least not until the sorceress's powers
returned in the morning.

Rikus followed Rkard to a jagged tumble of boulders that offered shelter both from
searching eyes and splashing ooze. He kneeled down and deposited Neeva in the center of
the cluster, bracing her back against a large stone. She glanced through a gap toward the
black pond, just a few steps below.

“This should do,” she said, nodding. “The sorcerer-kings won't be anxious to come down
here. You two go on.”

Rkard's eyes widened. “Go? Where?”

“Now that your mother's safe, we must find Tithian,” Sadira said.

“No!” The boy grabbed Rikus's arm. “The Dragon's dead. You have to stay here.”

Rikus's heart grew as heavy as stone. “There's nothing I'd like more,” he said. “But I
can't. If we let Tithian go, he'll release an evil even more powerful than the Dragon.”

“I know-Rajaat,” the boy answered. “But without the Dragon to keep him locked away, isn't
Rajaat going to escape sooner or later anyway?”

“Not if we capture the Dark Lens,” Sadira explained. “When I touched Rikus's sword to it,
I felt magic as powerful as the sun's. I think we can use the lens to keep Rajaat
imprisoned.”

“And that means you have to leave my mother in danger?” Rkard asked.

“I'm
afraid so,” Rikus answered.

The boy turned away. “My father wouldn't leave her.”

“Rkard, don't...”

Neeva let her command trail off and raised her hands to wipe away the tears suddenly
brimming in her eyes.

“Look at this,” she said, staring at her wet fingers in amazement. “I haven't cried since
I was a child, when Tithian bought me for his gladiator pits.”

“Water for Caelum,” Sadira said. “Don't hold it back.”

“I couldn't if I tried.” Neeva watched her tears tumble to the ground, shaking her head
with unspoken regrets.

Sadira laid a hand on the warrior's arm, but seemed unable to find the words to comfort
her friend. Rikus realized that the sorceress knew the same thing he did: it was too late
to apologize now. The spirits of the dead did not hear the voices of their loved ones, or
even remember their names.

Sadira touched Rikus's arm. “We'd better go.”

The mul pulled his dagger and held it out toward Rkard's back. “I don't know if this blade
will do you any good, but it might.”

When the boy did not turn around, Neeva said, “Rikus is leaving now, Rkard. Do you want
this to be the way he remembers you?”

“No,” the boy said. He turned around and, without meeting Rikus's glance, accepted the
dagger. “Good luck.”

The mul patted the boy's shoulder. 'Take care of your mother,“ he said. ”And if we're not
back by the time she's walking, leave without us."

Rkard looked up, his eyes wide with fear. “You've got to come back! If you don't...” He
paused, collecting his composure, then said, “I don't even know the way.”

“If we must, we can find it together.” Neeva took her son's hand and pulled him to her
side, then fixed her green eyes on Sadira. “Don't make the mistake I did. Say everything.”

The sorceress gazed at Rkard and did not answer for several moments, then finally said,
“I
will.”

Sadira handed the axe to Rikus, and together they climbed the hill. As they started over
the top, the mul paused and ran his eyes over the crest of the rim. “I dropped the top
part of the Scourge up here somewhere,” he said. “When the sorcerer-kings come, it might
be useful to have the hilt in my scabbard. Maybe we can bluff them into leaving us alone.”

“It can't hurt to try,” Sadira said. She pointed to a location several dozen paces away,
near the top of the small hill. A small circle of ground was covered with an ugly black
stain. “Look over there.”

The mul walked to the area. He found the Scourge behind a boulder, with the hilt lying
uphill above what was left of the blade. Black slime continued to ooze from the jagged
break, creating a bubbling pool of sludge tipped at the angle of the slope. As with the
larger pond inside the crater, wisps of shadow rose from its surface, and yellow eyes
peered out from the center of slowly swirling eddies.

Rikus considered the amount of sludge still oozing from the blade, then decided it might
be better to leave the shard alone. He started to return to Sadira.

The mul stopped a step later, when he glimpsed an orange light flash beneath the great
arch. When the glow faded, the four sorcerer-kings and the remaining sorcerer-queen stood
between the pillars of the great edifice, their eyes roving over the broken plain. The
distance from the crater to the arch was just small enough for the mul to see his enemies
clearly. The runt of a limb had sprouted from the stump of Nibenay's severed arm, and
Hamanu showed no sign of discomfort from the dagger that had been plunged into his back.

Rikus dropped behind a boulder and signaled for Sadira to come over. She slipped behind
the crest of the crater rim, trying to stay out of sight as she ran over to join the mul.
Her precautions were of little use. The sorcerer-kings stepped from beneath the arch and
walked across the plain toward the crater.

By the time Sadira reached Rikus's side behind the boulder, the sorcerer-kings stood at
the rim's base, directly in front of the pair's hiding place. The five figures were less
than twenty paces away, and perhaps half that distance lower.

Hamanu stepped forward and looked up the slope. “You fools,” he growled, angrily shaking
his mane. “What you have unleashed may destroy us all.”

“In your case, the loss will be a welcome one,” called Sadira. She rose to peer over the
boulder.

Rikus joined her. If the sorcerer-kings attacked, a few feet of stone was not going to
save them.

“Give us the Dark Lens, and your deaths will be mercifully quick,” said the Oba.

“I'm in no hurry to die.” The mul looked at Sadira. “How about you?”

“I'll take my time,” the sorceress replied. She glanced down at their enemies, then said,
“If you want the lens, you'll have to find it and take it.”

Hamanu started forward, but the Oba caught him by the shoulder. “Wait. They're too
anxious.”

“They're blustering,” the sorcerer-king snarled.

“Perhaps, but they did kill Borys,” she countered. The Oba pointed at the dark stain on
the slope below the mul. “Do you really want to take the chance that they haven't set a
trap?”

Hamanu's huge nostrils flared, but he stepped back. “You have something else in mind?”

The Oba nodded, then called up the slope, “How much do you know of Rajaat?”

“Enough to know that you betrayed him, which, at the moment, makes him our friend,” Rikus
replied.

The Oba chuckled, though she sounded more nervous than amused. “Rajaat would slay you two
as soon as he finished with us.”

“His shadow people have proven helpful so far,” Sadira replied.

“Of course. They wanted you to kill Borys,” said Andropinis, shaking his fringe of white
hair. “But if you knew the truth about Rajaat, you would know better than to rely on his
gratitude.”

“Why don't you enlighten us?” requested Sadira.

Andropinis glanced at his fellows.

“Go ahead,” suggested the Oba. “After hearing the truth, they'll yield the Dark Lens
without a fight.”

Andropinis turned his palm toward the ground.

“No magic!” Rikus yelled.

The sorcerer-king fixed an icy glare on the mul and drew the energy for his spell. “Watch
and learn,” he said, waving his hand across the sky.

An image of the Ringing Mountains appeared above the horizon, but they were not the barren
crags Rikus knew from his life in Tyr. A howling wind tore great plumes of snow off the
highest peaks, while large sheets of ice ran off their lofty shoulders. Lower down, the
slopes resembled the wild forests of the halflings, with thick, verdant timberlands
clinging to the steep slopes. Pearly clouds of mist hung low over valleys filled with
gurgling streams and thundering rivers.

As majestic as the mountains were, they interested Rikus little compared to what he saw at
their base. Between two ranges of foothills lay a hollow about the size and shape of the
Tyr Valley. There the semblance ended. Instead of the barren waste of rocks and thorns the
mul knew, the vale was filled with a vast swamp of vine-draped trees and floating islands
of moss.

At the edge of the valley a strange, beautiful city of graceful sweeps and brilliant
colors rose directly out of the swamp. The buildings seemed not so much constructed as
grown, for they were marked by an architecture of gentle curves and elegant spires, with
no straight edges, sharp points, or abrupt comers. The material was a uniformly porous
stone that radiated blazing crimson, emerald green, royal blue, deep purple, or any of a
dozen other hues. Where there should have been streets were canals, filled with long
slender boats guided by child-sized figures with adult faces. If not for their elegant
tabards, their short-cropped hair, and their handsome features, the mul would have sworn
they were halflings.

At the city's edge, the swamp gave way to the sparkling waves of an immense blue sea. It
appeared to stretch clear to the horizon and beyond, covering ground that Rikus knew to be
nothing but sandy wastes and rocky barrens.

“Tyr, during the Blue Age,” said Andropinis.

“Blue Age?” Sadira was studying the scene intently.

“Before your time or ours, when only halflings lived on Athas,” explained the Oba. Making
no effort to conceal her admiration for the halflings, she continued, “They were the
masters of the world, growing homes from a rocklike plant that lived beneath the waves,
harvesting the sea for everything they needed to maintain a vast splendorous society, able
to create anything they needed by manipulating the principles of nature itself.”

As the sorcerer-queen spoke, a fetid brown tide spread over the blue sea. It crept into
the swamp surrounding Tyr, causing the floating moss islands to shrivel and sink. The
vines went next, withering into the brown sludge like the sloughed skin of a serpent. The
trees themselves died last, dropping their leaves and losing their bark. Before long, the
grove stood naked in the swamp, an army of gray boles mired in a valley of putrid slime.

“Despite their vast knowledge, or perhaps because of it, one day the halflings made a
terrible mistake that destroyed the life-giving sea,” the Oba continued.

“A good story, but don't assume I believe it just because Andropinis spreads it across the
sky,” Rikus said.

“Believe it,” said Sadira. “On my way to the Pristine Tower, I saw halflings and stone
just like that. So far, they're telling the truth.”

“We've no reason to lie,” snapped Andropinis. “We care nothing for your opinion.”

The sorcerer-king waved his hand. The Ringing Mountains receded into the distance, until
they looked like no more than blue clouds hanging low on the horizon. In their place
stretched a vast, featureless plain of mud, brown as dung and as thick as clay. In the
center of the flat rose a single spire of porous white stone, capped by a beautiful
citadel with alabaster walls and a keep of white onyx. , “The Pristine Tower!” Sadira
gasped.

A long file of halflings left the citadel, descending the narrow staircase that spiraled
down the outside of the spire. Their tabards hung off their, bodies in dingy strips, while
their hair cascaded over their shoulders in tangled snarls. Their features had grown
haggard and wild, and they gestured with the quick, darting movements typical of the feral
race Rikus had known during his own time.

The halflings started across the brown plain toward the Ringing Mountains. The mud cleaved
to their feet like torch pitch, and soon they could not take a step without also raising a
huge clump of brown earth. In their wake sprouted tall grasses, leafy bushes, and
magnificent trees that loomed above the tableland like towers. Soon, the plain became a
verdant paradise, teeming with foliage of every sort.

Creatures began to appear in this forest: horn-covered lizards, bright-feathered birds,
and graceful herd-beasts Such as Rikus had never seen, with racks of white horns and long
thin limbs. Some of the animals perished almost immediately, falling prey to the great
hunting tats that prowled the newborn wilderness, while others lived long enough to create
others of their kind.

The flowering of this new paradise did not come without pain. As the halflings traveled
across plain, the weak collapsed and were abandoned where they lay. Their bodies began to
transform into strange shapes. One grew stocky and hair-covered, while another tripled his
height without gaining much bulk. Still others became both thicker of limb and taller, and
some developed scales, sprouted feathers, or even grew carapaces. By the time the
surviving halflings reached the distant mountains, they had left more races behind than
Rikus could count. He recognized many of them, such as the dwarves, elves, and humans.
Others, he had never seen, or only knew about from legends. There were frail, winged
characters even smaller than halflings, and ugly swine-faced beings that could scarcely be
called people. Like the animals, many of these individuals perished quickly, while others
went on to populate the world with whole races of their own kind.