The Obsidian Oracle

by Denning, Troy

  “Please, don’t!” she said. “The grief you hear is genuine. They can’t help themselves.”

  Agis held his blow, but pointed to his unconscious friends. “Could they help themselves when they did that?” he demanded.

  “I know their behavior seems cruel to you, but you don’t know the reason for it,” she replied.

  “Tell me,” the noble said, still keeping the hammer poised to strike.

  The woman shook her head. “I’ll try, but how can you understand what you can’t possibly feel?” she asked.

  “You’d be surprised by what I understand,” Agis countered.

  “Not this. Your heart is too good.”

  Agis frowned, wondering if she were trying to flatter him. “What can you know of my heart?”

  “I know that it’s purer than those crystals,” she replied, gesturing at the spikes of quartz growing from the walls. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have resisted the magic we draw through them.”

  Agis glanced at the silvery glow inside a nearby crystal. “Magic from the Oracle?” he asked, remembering what Nal had said about needing the lens to keep the Castoffs in the pit.

  The woman nodded. “It’s what sustains us—and it supplies the magic that runs through the crystal lid that keeps us locked in this prison.”

  “That’s very interesting, but it doesn’t explain the cruelty of your friends.”

  The woman cast a sorrowful look at the faces hovering above. “That is how children become when you lock them away,” she said. “They’ll take out their anger on whatever is weaker than themselves.”

  Agis allowed his hammer to fade away. “Then if we don’t want them to be cruel, I suppose we’ll have to free them, won’t we?”

  The spirit looked doubtful. “Don’t raise their hopes,” she said. “That isn’t something you can do.”

  “I think it is,” Agis replied, craning his neck upward to study the lid. “And you can help by reviving my friends. We’ll need them.”

  As he spoke, Tithian’s gaunt form landed on the crystal cover with a dull thump. A high-pitched hum reverberated through the lid, and the king’s body began to pass through to the noble’s side of the barrier.

  The Castoffs started to rush up toward him. “We’ll have none of that!” Agis yelled. To himself, he added, “Even if the serpent deserves it.”

  The faces stopped and looked to the button-nosed woman for instructions. “I suggest you do as he says if you ever want to return to your bodies,” she said.

  As the Castoffs reluctantly dispersed, Tithian passed the rest of the way through the cover. He plummeted onto Fylo’s midriff, causing the giant’s body to tremble violently. For a moment, Agis feared the half-breed would come dislodged, sending them all plunging into the dark abyss below, but the giant sank only a few feet. If anything, the impact seemed to lodge him into place even more securely.

  Tithian groaned and tried to rise. Then, his eyes rolling back in his head, he fell motionless. Agis slipped down Fylo’s chest and touched his finger to the king’s throat. He felt a strong, regular pulse.

  “It would probably be better for Athas if I killed you right now,” Agis said, using a finger to lift one of the king’s eyelids.

  Tithian opened his eyes, then pushed Agis’s hand away. “You don’t have the nerve to murder me,” he sneered. “But it makes no difference. Athas no longer has anything to fear from me.”

  “Why’s that?” Agis asked, examining the king’s head for signs of a serious blow. “Surely you don’t expect me to believe you’ve decided not to go after the Oracle?”

  “What you believe makes no difference!” Tithian yelled, grabbing Agis by the shoulders. He pulled the noble’s face close to his and gasped, “That worm lied to me!”

  “What worm?” Agis asked. “About what?”

  “The Dragon!” Tithian cried. “Nal told me. Borys can’t make anyone a sorcerer-king—not even with the Dark Lens!”

  ELEVEN

  THE CRACKED COVER

  FYLO’S KNUCKLES LANDED ON TARGET IN A BLACKENED corner of the translucent cover. A sharp crack rang off the pit walls, and the impact reverberated through the shimmering platform upon which he stood. The lid did not break. The giant drew back his fist to try again, then suddenly cried out in alarm as the temporary floor dissolved beneath his feet. He plunged, screaming, into the abyss.

  Kester heard Agis call, “I’ve got him.”

  A black silhouette resembling the Shadow Viper’s foresail appeared just below the giant, stretched taut across the shaft and bound at each corner to a stout quartz crystal. Fylo plunged through the shadow without slowing, vanishing beneath its dark form.

  Agis’s curse rang off the cavern walls, then the ineffectual net dissolved. Kester saw the giant clawing and kicking at the jagged walls, ripping deep gouges into his palms and feet. One crystal broke off, sending a glittering spray of silver and crimson light shooting across the shaft.

  Finally, Fylo passed through a narrow section of shaft and managed to bring himself to a stop. He hung motionless over the abyss, his ribs heaving and his limbs pressed against opposite sides of the pit. After regaining his composure, he looked up and fixed his gaze on Tithian. One of his eyes was still much larger than the other, but both orbs were slowly returning to normal—as were the other facial defects caused by the Castoffs.

  “Tithian liar!” Fylo snarled, beginning the long climb back up. “Promise to hold Fylo!”

  “It was a mistake,” the king replied. He sat upon a large crystal twenty-five feet below the lid, at the height of the platform upon which Fylo had been standing. All around him hung discarded Saram skulls, each covered with the translucent, masklike visage of a Castoff. “What do I have to gain by dropping you?”

  “If you can float a ship, you can give Fylo a place to stand,” Agis growled, glaring down from his perch at the top of the shaft. “You let him fall on purpose.”

  “Yer letting yer temper think for ye,” Kester snapped. She had positioned herself midway between the two, where it would be easy to intercede if their quarreling erupted into a full-blown fight. “Yer king wants out of here as much as we do. If he says it was an accident, it was.”

  “Tithian doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes,” Agis insisted. “He must have thought Fylo’s blow cracked the lid. That’s why he dropped the giant.”

  “Ye couldn’t know what Tithian was thinking—unless ye were using the Way on him instead of doing yer own job,” Kester said. She paused and pointed at the pit’s crystalline cover, which was already tinged green with predawn light. “If the two of ye don’t work together, we’ll never get out of here before dawn—and if ye let Mag’r sink my ship because we don’t have those gates open, ye won’t have to kill each other. I’ll do it for ye.”

  When the noble protested no further, Kester turned to Tithian. “Can ye give Fylo a steady place to stand or not?”

  “He’s heavier than I thought,” Tithian replied.

  Kester nodded. “I thought as much,” she said. “We’ll have to find another way out.”

  “Such as?” asked Tithian.

  The tarek furrowed her heavy brow, absent mindedly rubbing her fingers over her leathery neck. The act loosened a small shower of dusty flakes, which fluttered into the darkness below. The tarek pulled her hand away from her throat, reminded that until she fully recovered from the injuries inflicted by the Castoffs, scratching what itched was a bad idea.

  After a moment’s thought, Kester started to descend the pit wall, swinging from one crystal to the next on her gangling arms. “If we can’t go up, we’ll try down,” she said.

  “No! You mustn’t!” cried Sona, the button-nosed woman who served as the nominal leader of the Castoffs. She floated over to block Kester’s descent. “The bones of the sacrificed animals rest down there. You can’t disturb them.”

  Kester eyed Sona warily, remembering the anguish the spirits had inflicted on her after she had first fallen into the pit. “Out of my
way,” she ordered.

  “No, Kester,” said Agis. “We must respect Sona’s wishes. I’m sure Fylo can smash this lid, if Tithian gives him a sturdy place to stand.” He cast a bitter glance at the king.

  Kester raised a brow at the noble. “And how many jails have ye escaped from?”

  “I’ve never seen the inside of a prison,” the noble replied, taken aback. “Why?”

  “ ’Cause I’ve escaped from dozens. Let me do the thinking,” Kester replied. “We’ve got to take every chance we’ve got, and even then we might not find a way out.”

  “There’s nothing down there to help you,” Sona insisted. “You’ll only disturb what should be left to rest.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll look for myself,” the tarek said.

  “It’s too dangerous!” Sona protested. “The animals—”

  “Are a pile of old bones. They won’t stop me from finding a way out of here,” the tarek sneered. She reached for the next crystal.

  Sona darted forward and closed her mouth around Kester’s wrist. A sizzling pain shot up the tarek’s thick arm, then her fingers closed against her will. Her fist banged into the crystal for which she had reached, and she narrowly saved herself from falling by grabbing another with her free hand. A foul smell rose to Kester’s nostrils, and she looked down to see a putrid green stain spreading from beneath the spirit’s lips.

  “Get this thing off me!” she yelled, lifting her stinging arm toward Agis.

  “You’ve made your point, Sona,” said the noble. “I’m sure Kester has changed her plans.”

  “In a varl’s eye!” the tarek hissed, clenching her teeth against the pain. “I’m not going to let anything keep me from lookin’. If we don’t find a way out, we’ll die anyway.”

  The noble shrugged. “Then I can’t help you,” he said. “This is Sona’s home, and we must do as she asks.”

  “Ye faithless snake!” Kester yelled, climbing toward Agis. “By me ship’s name, I’ll rip yer arms off and beat ye dead with’em!”

  “You can’t reason with him, Kester,” said Tithian. “When it comes to questions of honor, he really is a stubborn boor.” The king reached into his satchel. “However, I might be able to suggest a compromise.”

  Tithian pulled forth a pair of iron cages connected by a heavy chain. Inside the little prisons sat the disembodied heads of two men, their hair pulled into long topknots. One had sallow skin and sunken features, while the other was grotesquely bloated, with puffy eyes swollen to dark, narrow slits.

  “Sacha! Wyan!” Agis gasped. He looked to Tithian, then demanded, “Where have you been hiding those two wretches?”

  “That’s none of your concern,” Tithian replied. “But perhaps we should have them levitate down to the pit bottom. They could look for an escape route without disturbing any bones, then report back to us. That way, we’d know whether or not there’s any point to this argument.”

  “We’d rather see you die here,” said the bloated head, licking his chin with a long gray tongue. “At least we could make a decent meal of you.”

  “Sacha’s right,” agreed the other. “What makes you think we’d help you?”

  Tithian fished a key from his satchel. Both heads fell instantly silent, fixing their eyes on the tiny piece of carved bone.

  “I’m willing to set you free,” said Tithian. “After all, we no longer have reason to remain enemies.”

  “Your personality is reason enough,” sneered Sacha.

  “His character can be overlooked, if he lets us out of here,” objected Wyan. “But what about Borys? As I recall, he told you never to let us out of these cages.”

  “I think you know about Borys,” replied Tithian. “As do I, now. You could have saved me a lot of trouble by telling me he was lying.”

  A cruel smile creased Sacha’s lips. “And ruin our fun?” he asked. “Watching you play at being a sorcerer-king was too amusing.”

  “Besides, would you have believed us?” asked Wyan. “You had to discover the truth for yourself.”

  “Then you’ll help us?” demanded Kester, growing impatient with the searing pain in her arm.

  “They will,” answered Tithian, unlocking their cages. “If Sona agrees to my suggestion.”

  The spirit released Kester’s arm and drifted away, leaving an ugly band of rotting flesh on the tarek where Sona’s mouth had been. “As long as they’re careful to touch none of the bones,” she said. “Otherwise, everyone in this pit will have reason to regret our compromise.”

  The doors to their cages were barely open before the two heads floated out. They dropped into the depths of the abyss instantly, as if they feared Tithian would change his mind and return them to their cages.

  “Are ye sure ye can trust those two?” Kester asked, scowling at the pair’s quick escape.

  “I don’t trust them at all,” Tithian replied, hanging the empty cages over a small crystal. “But if they don’t come back, we’ll know they found a way out.”

  This drew a frown from Sona. “If they don’t come back, it’ll be because they disturbed the bones,” she said, returning to her perch. The spirit narrowed her eyes at Agis, then added, “Until then, I suggest you work on keeping your promise. You know how limited the patience of children is.”

  Agis looked down at Tithian. “If you fail again—”

  “I won’t,” the king interrupted. He returned the noble’s gaze with a hint of pain in his eyes. “Your treatment of me really is unwarranted,” he said. “Especially considering what I intended to offer you, had my hopes of becoming a sorcerer-king not been dashed.”

  “I wouldn’t have wanted it,” the noble said.

  “Really?” the king asked. “You wouldn’t have been interested in an offer of life?”

  “For that offer to have any value, you would have had to threaten me in the first place,” the noble replied. “You could hardly expect me to be grateful for that.”

  Tithian smiled patiently. “Of course not,” he replied. “But you misunderstand me. I had meant to offer you life in a different sense—in the sense of living forever.”

  Agis narrowed his eyes. “Now is no time for games,” he said. “And you should know me better than to think you could buy me with such tactics.”

  A crooked smile creased Tithian’s thin lips, and he clucked his tongue at Agis. “So suspicious,” he said. “It’s no wonder our friendship has always been strained.”

  “Our relationship has been strained because you’re a liar and a thief,” the noble countered.

  “And a murderer, as well,” Tithian added. “But I’ve never betrayed you.”

  “How about when you abandoned your duties to the citizens of Tyr?” Agis replied.

  Tithian rolled his eyes. “You’ve always placed too much value in the banal tools of appearance,” the king sneered. “I speak of life without end, and you are more concerned with a few promises we made to a bunch of ex-slaves and paupers.”

  “That’s right,” Agis said, without hesitation. “And with bringing you to justice.”

  “That’ll be enough arguing,” said Kester. She looked up at the green hues glimmering through the crystal ceiling. “Think about the job at hand. If we’re going to open those gates before Mag’r sinks my ship, we’d better make this try a good one—or hope Sacha and Wyan find a tunnel down below.” She glanced at Sona and pulled her muzzle back in a defiant snarl.

  The trio waited in silence as Fylo completed his climb, then Kester directed the giant to wait near Tithian. Agis pressed a fingertip to the pit’s translucent cover and closed his eyes, tracing a wide circle. A black line appeared on the shimmering quartz, outlining the pattern he had traced.

  Kester nodded to Tithian, who closed his eyes and swept his hand across the pit. A plank of psychic energy appeared where he had gestured, anchored directly into the base of two massive crystals. The platform was about as broad as the king was tall, constantly changing from one translucent color to another.

&nbs
p; Fylo eyed the platform cautiously, then advanced one foot onto its surface. The plank sagged beneath his weight, crackling and hissing blue sparks beneath his heel. The giant retreated to the crystals to which he had been cleaving.

  “More solid!” he ordered.

  Tithian opened one eye and glared at the giant. “I will—but you must be fast. I can’t support your bloated carcass for long.” The king returned his concentration to the platform, which settled on an opaque, granite red color and ceased to shimmer.

  At the same time, the circle Agis had traced above his head began to fill in, darkening to jet black. Wisps of cold fog trailed beneath it, writhing about like street dancers in the Elven Market.

  “Now, Fylo!” Agis gasped, already growing pale from the effort of holding his circle’s form against the tides of mystic force flowing through the crystal cover.

  Casting a wary eye at Tithian’s face, the giant stepped onto the platform and squatted down with his hand next to his hip. There was a great rush of air as he filled his lungs, then he fixed his eye on the black circle Agis had created. Inside that circle, there would be none of the magic that flowed through the rest of the crystal lid and made it impossible to break.

  Fylo gave a mighty shout and drove his knuckles straight to the heart of the circle. A terrific boom echoed through the pit, and the half-breed’s hand bounced away from the cover. The platform beneath his feet did not waver even slightly, nor did the lid break.

  “You coward!” Tithian yelled, opening his eyes. “Is that as hard as you can hit it?”

  Fylo scowled and started to say something, but Kester cut him off. “Pay him no attention,” she said, noting that Agis’s body was starting to tremble from the effort of keeping his circle open. “Try again, Fylo. This time ye know the plank won’t sink, so ye can hit even harder.”

  The giant looked away from Tithian, then closed his other fist. “Fylo break lid!” he promised.

  The half-breed’s knuckles crashed into the crystal. Sharp pops and cracks echoed off the shaft walls, followed by a victorious bellow from the giant. Shards of crystal rained down on Fylo’s head and shoulders, then tumbled toward Kester and Tithian. The tarek covered her head and felt several fragments bounce off her forearms, opening a series of sharp cuts in her leathery hide. A moment later, the pit was filled with a lyrical chime as the jagged pieces bounced into the darkness below.