Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 5 - The Cerulean Storm (35 page)

“Realizing their own vanity had destroyed their civilization, the halflings seeded Athas
with the beginning of a new world,” said the Oba. “This is the Green Age, the age before
magic, when the Way dominated the world.”

As she spoke, villages and castles sprang up in the forest, rapidly growing into walled
towns and cities connected by an intricate series of cobblestone roads. Powerful
mindbenders wandered the wooded lanes on floating ivory platforms, traveling from their
majestic towers to the sylvan citadels of the elves and the gloomy cities of the dwarves.

Andropinis gestured, and the scene shifted to an isolated turret in one of the smaller
villages, where a single figure sat by a glass window poring over a stack of books. There
was no way to describe the man's appearance except as hideous, for he had a huge head with
a flat, grossly elongated face. His eyes were half-covered by flaps of skin, while his
long nose, lacking a bridge, ended in three flaring nostrils. He had a small, slitlike
mouth with tiny teeth and a drooping chin. His body was contorted and weak, with humped
shoulders and gangling arms.

The figure looked up from his book and held his palm over a potted lily growing in the
windowsill. The plant quickly withered and died. He tossed a pinch of dust into the air,
and a gray fog filled the room.

“Rajaat came to us early in the Green Age, one of the many hideous accidents spawned from
the Rebirth,” said the Oba. "His only blessing was a supreme intellect, which he used to
become the first sorcerer. He spent centuries trying to reconcile his brutal appearance
with his human spirit. In the end, even his powerful mind could find no answer. He came to
revile himself as nothing but a deformed accident.

“Soon, Rajaat turned his hate outward. He declared the Rebirth a mistake, and proclaimed
all the races it had spawned to be monsters. He dedicated himself to wiping the blight of
their existence from the world, so that he might return Athas to the harmony and glory of
the Blue Age.”

The gray haze faded. Rajaat stood atop the Pristine Tower, looking out through a crystal
cupola. He seemed immeasurably older, with long shocks of gray hair, a wrinkled face, and
white, burning eyes. A company of armored figures marched out of the base of the keep.
They descended the tower's spiraling staircase and went into the wilderness. Soon, great
patches of forest began to wither and die as they waged a terrible war.

“He created us-his champions-to lead the armies of the Cleansing Wars,” said the Oba.
“Rajaat told us to destroy all the new races, or they would spawn monsters like him and
overrun the world.”

The forests steadily vanished, leaving most of Athas the barren and lifeless place that
Rikus knew so well. Then, abruptly, the destruction ceased, and the champions returned to
the Pristine Tower.

“We had almost won,” said Andropinis. “Then we realized Rajaat was mad.” He sounded
regretful, perhaps even angry, that they had not finished the war. “We stopped fighting.”

“You didn't stop because Rajaat was mad. That had to be clear all along,” Sadira said.
“You stopped because you learned the truth about who would survive when he returned the
world to the Blue Age.”

“That's right,” admitted the Oba. “All during the Cleansing Wars, Rajaat told us that
humans would be the only race left when we finished. We didn't learn that he was lying
until it was almost too late.”

“And then you rebelled, imprisoning Rajaat,” finished Sadira.

Andropinis allowed his spell to fade. “I see you know the rest of the story.”

“Not all of it,” said Sadira. “How did Borys lose the Dark Lens? I'd think he would be
more careful with something so valuable.”

“The transformation into a Dragon is a difficult one,” answered the Oba. “Shortly after we
changed him, Borys lost his mental balance and went on a rampage. No one realized the lens
had been stolen until he recovered-a century later.”

“I don't believe this tale of yours,” Rikus said. “If Rajaat was trying to give the world
back to the halflings, why did he make his champions humans? Why didn't he use halflings?”

“He couldn't make them sorcerers,” answered the Oba. “Because their race harkens back to
the Blue Age, before the art of sorcery existed, they cannot become sorcerers.”

“You're lying,” Rikus said. “I've seen halflings use magic.”

“Elemental magic, yes-like Caelum's sun magic or Magnus's windsinging,” said Sadira. “They
draw their cowers directly from the inanimate forces of the world: wind, heat, water, and
rock. But normal sorcery draws its power from the life-force of plants and animals.”

Rikus started to object that Sadira drew her power from the sun, then thought-better of
it. Her sorcery could no longer be considered normal.

“I think the sorcerer-kings have told us the truth,” Sadira said.

“Then give us the lens,” said Hamanu, moving forward. “It's the only way we can keep
Rajaat imprisoned.”

“The Dark Lens isn't here,” replied Sadira. “Tithian took it.”

“Sacha and Wyan told Tithian that Rajaat would make him a sorcerer-king,” the mul added.
“We think he's on his way to free Rajaat.”

“How unfortunate for you,” sneered Nibenay. The sorcerer-king stepped toward the slope,
emboldened now that he was sure they did not have the Dark Lens. Then there's nothing to
stop me from repaying the mul for my injury."

The Oba grabbed him by the stub that had sprouted from his severed arm. “Leave them for
later,” she ordered, looking toward the cliff rising above the edge of the plain. “If the
Usurper frees Rajaat, we'll need your help. It would be a shame if we didn't have it
because they were lucky enough to kill you.”

Nibenay jerked away, leaving his freshly grown stub in the Oba's hand. “It wasn't your arm
he cut off!” “Then attack if you wish, but you'll do it alone.” The sorcerer-queen pointed
at the distant cuff, where a dark spout of energy was rising into the sky. It had punched
a hole in the stormy red clouds of the ash storm. Through this breach poured the golden
light of the Athasian moons, casting eerie shadows over the edge of the plains. “The rest
of us have other concerns.”

Andropinis cursed. “The fool Usurper has taken the lens into the city.”

Andropinis started toward the city at a run, simultaneously preparing to cast
a
spell. The other sorcerer-kings turned and followed. Only Nibenay lingered behind, his
palm turned toward the ground.

“This won't take a moment,” he hissed.

Rikus grabbed the Scourge's hilt and hurled the broken sword at the sorcerer-king. The
weapon tumbled end-over-end, beads of black resin flying off the blade and creating a line
of dark spatters down the slope. Nibenay lunged away, rolling over his shoulder across the
coarse scoria. The shard clanged to the ground two paces behind him.

The sorcerer-king jumped to his feet and looked toward Rikus. He started to speak an
incantation, but suddenly stopped and stared at the hillside in horror. The black bubbles
from the Scourge had connected with each other and stretched into a long thin line. The
two sides pulled apart like lips, revealing a mouthful of huge fangs.

“Soon, Gallard,” the mouth said. It was using the name by which Nibenay had gone when he
was a champion. “Very soon.”

A long green tongue shot from the dark fissure, lashing out for the sorcerer-king. Nibenay
cried out in alarm and pointed his finger at the thing, screaming his incantation. A red
bolt streaked from his finger, blasting the appendage into a hundred pieces. The mouth
laughed, and another tongue snaked out from between its lips.

Nibenay backed away, then turned and ran after the other sorcerer-kings.

His serpent's body coiled tightly about the Dark Lens, Tithian lay beneath a looming wall
of granite, just outside the tunnel he had bored through an enormous foundation block.
Before him stood a silent thicket of trees, with supple trunks that quietly swayed in the
moonlit night, like slave dancers welcoming him to the city. Each had only a single blue
leaf, as large as a sail and stretched tight over a dome-shaped network of branches.
Neatly groomed paths curved through the shadows beneath their boughs, suggesting he had
entered in some sort of park.

Tithian hardly noticed the beauty of the place; his attention remained fixed entirely on
the Dark Lens. When he had emerged from his tunnel, a surge of energy had risen from the
ground, through him, and into the lens. Dozens of smoky tendrils had begun to dance over
the top of the orb. They had twined themselves together in a crackling spout of force and
risen into the sky, parting the red storm raging overhead.

“Get moving,” said Sacha, floating through the tunnel. As the head's words carried into
the thicket ahead, they faded without an echo. “The sorcerer-kings are flying across the
plain.”

Tithian gestured at the black spout. “Something's wrong,” he said. “I didn't do this.”

Sacha rolled his sunken eyes. “Try not to be such a cretin,” he said. “Rajaat's watching.”

Tithian began to uncoil himself, keeping the lens gripped in his tail. “What's happening?”

“The lens is overloaded, so its discharging its excess energy.”

“Overloaded?”

“You're near Rajaat's prison. The lens is drawing energy from the spell that keeps it
intact,” Sacha explained, his tone deliberately patronizing. “Did you think the lens took
its power from the sun alone?”

As a matter of fact, that was exactly what Tithian had thought, but he did not give Sacha
the pleasure of hearing him confess his mistake.

“Which way now?” he asked, looking deeper into the silent park.

“How would I know?” demanded Sacha. “How many times do you think I've been to Ur Draxa?”

A man slipped from behind one of the trees ahead. He wore a peculiar suit of armor
fashioned from brightly painted human ribs, with a massive helmet carved from the squarish
skull of some fanged race of half-man. The stranger carried a steel halberd with an
ornately shaped blade that looked more suitable for displaying on a palace wall than
fighting. Though the man moved with no particular care, his footsteps fell as softly as
those of an elven hunter-leading the king to suspect the wood's eerie silence had more to
do with magic than tranquility.

The newcomer pointed his weapon at Tithian and motioned for him to lie on the ground. When
the king did not obey, the man raised his halberd, and a hundred more warriors stepped
from behind the trees. Their leather armor was not so fine as that of their leader, but
the spears they carried looked much more practical than the man's halberd.

“We don't have time for this,” Sacha snarled. “Kill him.”

Deciding to take a lesson from the Dragon, Tithian visualized a great storm of fire
erupting from his mouth. An incredible surge of energy gushed from the Dark Lens, blazing
through the king's body with such ferocity he feared he would explode. A blinding white
cone of flame erupted from his mouth, engulfing the officer and the warriors behind him.
Tithian did not even see the thicket burn. The huge leaves and the branches vanished in a
flash, then the ground was littered with scorched boles and blackened skulls. Only the
edges of the small wood had escaped the instant devastation, and even they were starting
to burn.

“Well done,” said a voice at Tithian's side.

The king whipped his head around. At first, he did not see the speaker, then he glimpsed a
pair of flickering blue eyes. They were looking up at him from the faint shadow his
moonlit body cast on the ground. As Tithian watched, the silhouette slowly peeled itself
off the dirt and changed into a more manlike form-though it was only about the size and
shape of a halfling.

“Who are you?” Tithian watched a nose and a pair of lips form on the thing's face.

“How quickly you forget,” the silhouette responded. “I led you through the Black less than
an hour ago.”

“Khidar?” Tithian gasped. “I thought you were a giant!”

“Of course not, you imbecile,” Sacha chided. “The shadow people are descended from the
last of Rajaat's halfling servants.”

“Shadows play strange tricks with size, do they not?” Khidar added, grinning. He now had a
fully featured face, with short-cropped hair, blue eyes, an upturned nose, and bright
white teeth. “Your ignorance is understandable. There weren't many of our people. Most
halflings of the Green Age wanted nothing to do with the Cleansing Wars.”

Tithian ran his eyes over the devastated park, not at all interested in the history of the
shadow people. “I don't suppose you can tell me where to find Rajaat.”

Khidar pointed a black finger toward the edge of the burning thicket. Although the
halfling's head was now completely solid, the rest of his body remained a mere shadow.
“Rajaat has told me you must look for him in the heart of Ur Draxa,” Khidar said. “When
those trees are gone, you'll see a great boulevard running toward the center of the city.
My scouts tell me that it ends beneath
a
great arch embedded in the inner wall.”

“What then?” Tithian asked.

“By the time you reach it, we will know for certain whether Rajaat lies beyond,” he said.
“If so, one of us will take you to the other side.”

Tithian shook his head. “If I slither down a major street with the lens in my tail, I'm
going to attract a lot of attention.”

The king illustrated the problem by sending a series of squirms down his serpentine body.

“So disguise yourself,” snapped Sacha.

“As what?” Tithian countered. “Anything large enough to carry the lens will draw
attention. I can probably destroy whatever they send at me, but it'll take time we don't
have.”

“Don't worry about a disguise,” said Khidar. “I'll make certain the Draxans are too busy
to concern themselves with you. Besides, until you destroy Rajaat's prison completely, my
people can emerge from the Black only partially. With us wandering through the city,
you'll be only one of many strange things loose in the streets.”