Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 5 - The Cerulean Storm (7 page)

As Neeva took the child, she asked, “Are you going to allow this, Sadira?”

“It's not for me to allow or disallow,” the sorceress replied. “The shadow people are the
ones who bestowed my powers on me, and my magic won't work against them.”

“But you've got to do something!” Caelum said. “We need Tyr's legion.”

“I have no way to interfere,” Sadira snapped. “When I can do something, I will!”

The shadow rose to its feet, taking on a full three-dimensional body as tall as that of a
half-giant. It stepped toward Cybrian and Lady Laaj, who defiantly remained standing on
their podiums.

“Your tricks won't fool us.” Cybrian looked past the shadow to Sadira. “You won't win your
way with a simple illusion.”

“The Black is no illusion!” hissed the shadow giant, stretching a hand out to each of the
pair.

Recognizing the voice as that of the chief of the shadow people, Sadira stepped after the
dark being. “Khidar, leave them alone.”

“You are not the one who asked me to take them,” the shadow replied.

Khidar wrapped his sinuous fingers over the pair's skulls. As their faces disappeared into
darkness, the wrab took wing and disappeared into its shadowy lair. Cybrian screamed, then
Lady Laaj, their voices harmonizing into a single pained, fearful howl.

Sadira grabbed the arm holding the noblewoman. The shadow giant's flesh felt misty and
cold, and holding it was like trying to grasp water. Still, the sorceress came closer to
touching it than most beings, and when she pulled, tendrils of the arm came away in her
hand. The black filaments evaporated into the air, vanishing like a dawn mist in the
morning sun.

Khidar's murky substance continued to swallow the templar and noblewoman, slipping over
their shoulders, then down their wildly thrashing arms. Finally, the shadow consumed even
their hips and legs, and they were gone.

For all of her magical powers, Sadira was helpless to stop the shadow giant. Casting a
spell against him would have been useless, like trying to pierce the sun with a ray of
light, and she knew better than to try. If she accomplished anything, it would only be to
enrage Khidar to the point where he attacked more councilors.

Instead, the sorceress looked toward the ceiling. Though she could not see Wyan, she had
no doubt that he was still up there in the murk. “This accomplishes nothing, Wyan. An army
coerced into fighting is an army of slaves,” she said. “You know that neither Rikus,
Neeva, nor I will have anything to do with that.”

“Then let the council vote,” Wyan countered. “They can do it here, or in the Black.”

“Why bother?” demanded Charl Birkett. He stepped onto the floor and crossed to Sadira.
“You and your friends have the power to take the legion, whether we like it or not-but I
won't lend my name to a sham.” The guildsman spat on the sorceress's sandaled feet and
turned toward the exit.

Khidar blocked his path. “The council has not voted,” said the shadow giant.

Charl glanced over his shoulder and glared at Sadira. 'Tell this thing to stand aside."

“I had no respect for Lady Laaj or Cybrian, true, but this is not my doing,” Sadira said.
“You saw me try to stop him.”

“I saw you pretend to try,” the guildsman retorted. “Do not take me for a fool.”

Charl tried to step past Khidar. The shadow giant raised a hand to stop him. Sadira lashed
out, closing her powerful fingers around the guildsman's shoulder, and pulled him back.
She shoved him roughly toward the gallery seats, drawing a murmur of angry comments from
the other advisors.

“I suggest you vote.” The sorceress looked at Khidar, knowing that by now Lady Laaj and
Cybrian would be half-frozen with the cold of the Black. “And do it now.”

Without taking his narrowed eyes off her face, Charl growled, “All those who think we
should give our legion to Sadira?”

“Aye,” came the response.

Though the chorus was far from deafening, Charl said, “The motion carries. Now can we
leave?”

Sadira glanced up at the ceiling. “Are you happy?”

Wyan came down out of the shadowy alcoves just far enough to be seen. “Your duties are
finished, Khidar.”

“What of the noblewoman and the templar?” the shadow giant asked.

“Keep them,” Wyan sneered. “They'll serve as an example to those who cross me.”

“As you wish.”

The shadow giant began to shrink. He quickly lost his human shape and melted onto the
floor like a puddle of black water. Sadira waited until his blue eyes and mouth
disappeared, then dropped to her knees and pressed her palms into the center of the dark
stain that had been Khidar. The cold she felt was not that of the stone. It was more
bitter and biting, numbing her flesh to the bone and stiffening her joints so that she
could hardly bend her ringers.

“Caelum, keep Wyan out of the light!” she yelled, not looking up.

“I'll burn him to cinders if I see him poke so much as his nose out!” the dwarf promised.

Sadira uttered a string of mystic syllables and her hands sank into the Black up to her
elbows.

“Lady Laaj, Cybrian, take my hands!” Sadira directed her words at the floor, and began to
shiver as the circle of shadow slowly contracted around her arms. “I'm here to help you!”

Whispers of astonishment echoed down from the galleries as the advisors started to return
to the floor, but Sadira hardly noticed. Her whole body ached with cold, and her teeth
chattered uncontrollably. She began to fear that the noblewoman and templar had been gone
too long, that the Black had turned their bodies into frozen lumps of flesh.

Then, as the stain on the floor contracted to no more than a pair of small circles around
her arms, Sadira felt a weight at the end of each hand. Her frozen flesh no longer had any
sensation of touch, so the sorceress had no way of knowing whether or not the missing
advisors had finally found her. Nevertheless, she willed her fingers to close, not sure
whether the digits were obeying her wishes, and rose.

As Sadira pulled her arms from the floor, each of the dark circles around them expanded to
the size of a human body. Out of the shadowy stains came the shivering forms of the two
advisors. Their flesh was as pale and shiny as alabaster, and their muscles were so stiff
that their own legs would not support them. With each breath, plumes of white steam rose
from between their quivering lips, and hundreds of gleaming ice crystals clung to their
clothes.

Murmuring reticent words of gratitude, several allies of the two advisors stepped forward
to take their shivering friends from Sadira's arms. Charl studied the sorceress
thoughtfully, then asked, “Why'd you do that? You already got the vote you wanted.”

Sadira shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not the one I wanted-only the one I needed. If
Khidar had taken any more of you, I wouldn't have been able to pull you all back.”

“Then you really meant what you said about not taking the legion if it was coerced from
us?”

Sadira nodded. “And what I said about leaving Tyr before I would be part of betraying
Agis.”

The sorceress started to turn toward the exit, but Charl caught her by the arm. “Wait a
minute. Tyr can't afford to lose a citizen like you,” he said. “If we let you take the
legion to fulfill the boy's destiny, can you really keep the giants away from the city?”

“Yes,” Sadira replied. “And if we can't, not only will we send the legion back, Rikus and
I will return to fight with it.”

Charl raised his finger to summon the wrab. “Then before you leave, there's one more vote
we should take.”

Neeva crawled forward on the Cloud Road, a long ribbon of black slate hanging across the
face of an enormous cliff. She reached the jagged brink where a section of the bridge had
fallen away, and peered down into an arid valley. Far below lay the missing section of
road, a jumble of broken rockwork strewn across a drift of red sand. The warrior saw no
indication of what had caused the collapse, only a handful of limestone buttresses
half-buried beneath shattered slabs of paving stone.

“This road's as old as Tyr,” she growled, more to herself than the companions waiting
behind her. “Why'd it have to collapse today?”

Coming as it did at the start of their journey, the breakdown did not bode well for their
mission against Borys-nor for the legion's chances of reaching the giants before
nightfall. Already the sun hung low over the western mountains, its rays striking the
granite cliff at a direct angle, while the Tynan warriors waited impatiently at the
beginning of the Cloud Road. There were a thousand of them, all human, armed with huge
obsidian axes, bone tridents with serrated tines, saw-toothed scimitars, spiked balls
hanging at the ends of long coils of rope, and a variety of other weapons as deadly as
man's infinite desire to murder.

Neeva looked across the missing stretch of road. A brightly cloaked merchant stood on the
other side, his image dancing in the heat waves pouring off the cliff face. The man was
staring into the breach and scratching his ear, his face hidden beneath the broad brim of
his great round hat. Shaking his head in despair, he looked over his shoulder at a pair of
inixes, wagon-sized lizards with horny beaks, pincerlike jaws, and serpentine tails. The
reptiles were harnessed to a cargo dray, so large that one side was pressed tight against
the cliff, while the other hung over the outside edge of the Cloud Road.

Neeva backed away from the gap.

Magnus took her arm and helped her to her feet. “What did you find?” he asked. The
windsinger and Rikus had joined Neeva and the others in Tyr, shortly after the council had
voted to send the city legion to help Rkard slay the Dragon.

“I didn't see much,” Neeva reported. “There was nothing in the rubble to suggest something
heavy made it collapse.”

“I
thought as much,” Caelum said. He pointed at the square cavities where the buttresses had
been mounted into the cliff face. “Those joining holes are in perfect condition. There
aren't any broken posts sticking in them, or any chips around the edges.”

“Which means?” asked Magnus.

“That the supports didn't snap because of a load or sudden impact,” Caelum answered. “They
came straight out The buttresses were pulled-intentionally.”

“Could be more giants,” Rikus suggested. The mul was just returning from the beginning of
the road, where he had gone to fetch a rope from the legion's supply kanks.

Neeva shook her head. “We're twice as high as a giant stands,” she said. “Besides, why
would they bother? If giants didn't want us to get across, they'd just smash the road, not
pull it apart.”

“Well, whoever did it, they aren't going to stop us.” Rikus glanced at Rkard, who stood
near his father's side, and asked, “You're not afraid to cross that gap on a rope, are
you?”

“No.” The boy answered sharply, frowning as though insulted.

Rikus chuckled, then said, “Good. If we don't reach the giants before dusk, our plan won't
work.”

They had decided the best way to make the giants leave the valley was to lure them away.
While the legion surrounded the titans, Rikus and Sadira would interrogate the invaders
about Agis, Tithian, and what they knew of the Dark Lens. During the questioning, the mul
would let it slip that the lens was not in Tyr and that they were on their way to recover
it. Then they would allow one of the titans to escape. Sadira would use her magic to spy
on him and be sure that he returned to his fellows with the news that their Oracle was not
in the city. Once Sadira was certain their ruse had worked, the legion would leave an
obvious trail for the giants, so that any further war parties would go after the legion
instead of attacking the city.

Rikus sat down on the road's jagged brink and wrapped the rope around his waist. Magnus
watched him for a moment, then scowled.

“Have you thought this out?” the windsinger asked.

“Of course,” Rikus answered. “Clavis said it would take a day to fix the road, and we
don't have a day. So, we'll have to rope across.”

“And then what?” asked Magnus. “You can't expect the whole legion to crawl across that
rope. It would take too long-and with so many warriors, dozens are sure to lose their grip
and fall.”

“The legion can take its time, if it needs to,” said Neeva. “We can fetch my militia from
Agis's estate. Our numbers aren't as great, but there should be enough to support Sadira
while she attacks with her magic.”

“Speaking of Sadira, I'm sure she could solve our problem easily enough,” Caelum
suggested. “Maybe Magnus should send a message to her?”

Sadira had stayed behind in Tyr, making provisions with the Veiled Alliance to help defend
the city in the legion's absence. She had promised to catch the legion long before it
reached the giants, and Neeva was surprised that the sorceress had not joined them already.

“That's the wisest thing anyone has suggested yet,” Magnus said. He went a few steps up
the road and began to work his magic.

“I'll take a line across anyway,” Rikus said, finishing his knot. “We don't have any time
to waste if Sadira can't come yet.”

After handing the other end of the rope to Caelum, Rikus reached out and thrust his hand
into the square hole where the first missing buttress had been lodged. The mul swung out
onto the cliff and reached for the next hole, grimacing as his face rubbed over the hot
stone. His fingertips barely caught the bottom edge of the dark square. He worked them
deeper into the cavity, then released his first hand and slipped it into the next hole.

Rikus shrieked in fear and surprise. He jerked his hand out of the far hole and began to
fling it around madly. A silvery creature about as long as a stiletto had attached itself
to his middle finger.

Neeva pulled her dagger and kneeled at the edge of the road. “Hold still, Rikus!” she
ordered. “I can't see what you've got.”