The Obsidian Oracle

by Denning, Troy

  As Fylo approached with his burden, the sentry watching him raised a puzzled brow. The half-breed ignored him, keeping his eyes on the ground and attempting to trudge out the gate without having to give an explanation.

  The sentry, a thick-waisted giant with the tattoo of a goat on his forehead, held out a hand to stop Fylo. “What’s going on up in the castle?” he asked.

  “Beastheads,” Fylo answered.

  The second guard, who was almost gaunt by comparison to the first, looked away from the Bay of Woe. “We know they’re beastheads,” he said in a sarcastic voice. “What are they doing?”

  Fylo met his gaze, as if to answer, and swung the hand holding the boulder. The blow caught the guard completely by surprise, connecting beneath the ear, exactly where Agis had instructed Fylo to aim. The giant’s eyes rolled back in his head, and his knees buckled.

  As the unconscious sentry collapsed, his partner reached for his club with one hand and clamped his other on Fylo’s shoulder, spinning him around. “What are you—”

  The half-breed hurled his boulder at the sentry’s foot, and the question erupted into a pained howl. Fylo ran for the causeway, following the path the granite ball had cleared earlier as it blasted across the debris-covered apron. Although he was not a fast runner, his clumsy gait was more than adequate to escape the sentry hopping after him.

  As Fylo lumbered across the narrow isthmus, Agis poked his head from behind the giant’s beard. “Well done!”

  That was when the noble saw what the gaunt sentry had been watching in the Bay of Woe. The battered Shadow Viper lay a short distance from the causeway. Without a shipfloater, it rested up to its gunnels in silt. Otherwise, the ship sat on an even keel and looked reasonably dustworthy, despite its pock-marked decks and snapped masts. Dozens of slaves stood along the rail, watching Fylo’s escape with envious eyes. Now that there was no longer a sentry watching them from the gate, a few were probing along the side of the ship with their plunging poles, looking for a place shallow enough that they could wade ashore.

  “Take me to the ship, Fylo,” Agis ordered.

  The giant stopped and turned to face the derelict, but made no move to go out to it. “You say run to other side of Lybdos!” he objected.

  “I know, but I can’t abandon those slaves,” Agis said.

  “Can’t carry them,” Fylo said. “Too many!”

  “You’re not going to carry them,” the noble replied. He glanced toward the gate and saw that they were in no danger of being caught by the thick-waisted sentry. The giant was still trying to hop across the wreckage, using his club as a cane. Agis returned his attention to the ship. “The Shadow Viper can escape by itself. All it needs is a shipfloater.”

  “You?” scoffed Wyan. “From what I’ve heard of your talents, the ship won’t make it out of the bay before you collapse.”

  “I’ll get us started,” Agis replied. “After that, Tithian will have to take over.”

  “Tithian!” Fylo blurted. “Him not here!”

  “He’s in my satchel,” Agis replied. As an afterthought, he added, “At least I hope he is.”

  “He is,” Wyan reported. “I saw him while you and I were scuffling over the bag. He’ll be thrilled to help, I’m sure.” He smiled, a strange twinkle in his eye. “I’ll go tell the slaves to ready their plunging poles.”

  With that, Wyan floated ahead to prepare the crew. Fylo stepped into the silt, shaking his head as he waded after the disembodied head. “This too dangerous,” he said. “Head-thing only help slaves so you let Tithian out of sack.”

  “Yes, I know,” Agis replied. “But it makes no difference.”

  “Does too!” Fylo countered. “Can’t trust Tithian.”

  “I know that better than anyone,” Agis replied, clutching the satchel. “But I can’t abandon those slaves just because I’m nervous about letting Tithian out. It’s the same as murdering them.”

  “No. Joorsh kill them, not Agis,” the giant insisted.

  Agis shook his head. “Those slaves wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t hired Kester to carry me to Lybdos. That makes me responsible for their safety.”

  Fylo considered this, then said, “Maybe. But Tithian not care about slaves. Maybe him not want to help.”

  “He won’t want to, but he’ll have no other choice,” said Agis. “Once he’s on that ship, he’ll keep it afloat—or sink and suffocate with the rest of us.”

  A boulder sailed over Fylo’s shoulder, bringing the conversation to an end. The stone hit a short distance ahead, sending a silvery plume of dust high into the sky. The giant twisted around to look back toward shore. Agis saw the thick-waisted sentry grabbing another boulder off the bank of the isthmus, apparently thinking it wiser not to wade into the silt with only one good foot. The guard hurled the rock at them, nearly falling over as he tried to brace himself on his injured foot, and the stone fell wide.

  “Let’s go,” Agis said. “I don’t think he has much of a chance to hit us.”

  As Fylo complied, an angry roar erupted from the entrance to Castle Feral, and Nuta led his warriors out the citadel gate. They began picking their way across the rubble-strewn apron, the chief shouting, “Stop, sachem-killers! Oracle stealers!”

  Fylo ignored the orders and started toward the Shadow Viper with renewed vigor. As they approached, Agis saw that the battle had taken a heavier toll on the ship than had at first been apparent. A massive crack ran the length of the ship’s keel, which had been raised so the ship could rest on the bottom of the bay without tipping. Half of the catapults sat in splintered ruins, as did both of the stern ballistae. The ripped sails lay draped over the capstans and hold covers, with tangled mounds of useless rigging heaped on top of them. Even the hull, more or less protected by its immersion in the silt, had not escaped the fighting completely undamaged. Through the craters in the deck, Agis could see at least two places where the slaves had fastened makeshift patches to the interior wall.

  Despite the ship’s condition, no bodies lay in sight. At first, Agis took this to mean that the slaves had escaped relatively unharmed, but when he saw barely twenty crewmen standing at the gunnels, he realized that was not the case. They had probably thrown the dead overboard, for in the heat of the crimson sun corpses would quickly begin to stink.

  They reached the ship, and Fylo set Agis on the rear deck. As the noble climbed over a crumpled sail to slip into the floater’s pit, he found Wyan waiting at the helm, along with a yellow-haired half-elf crewman. The slave’s ankle was swollen and purple, and he managed to stand only by supporting himself on the ship’s wheel.

  “You’re a brave man for coming to our aid, sir,” said the half-elf. “Most others wouldn’t have done the same, and the crew is thankful—whether we make it or not.”

  “We’ll make it,” Agis assured him, slipping into the floater’s seat. “But we’d better move fast.”

  “Aye, captain,” replied the half-elf. He looked forward, then commanded, “Ready your plunging poles!”

  Agis used his good hand to lay his broken arm across the dome, gasping at the pain it caused. He focused his thoughts on the obsidian beneath his hands. A moment later, he smelled the briny aroma of saltwater and felt himself rocking back and forth to the gentle sway of lapping waves. He visualized the battered Shadow Viper floating on the surface of the sparkling sea, then groaned as a heavy weight settled upon his spirit. The caravel rose out of the dust. The crew raised a haggard cheer and plunged their poles into the silt.

  As the slaves pushed off, a series of sonorous grunts sounded from the isthmus shore. An instant later, the bay erupted into a gray haze, boulders dropping all around the Shadow Viper. A loud crash sounded behind Agis, then the helmsman’s broken body flew past the noble amidst a torrent of shattered planks and beams.

  A shard of broken wheel struck Agis squarely between the shoulder blades. The fragment did not pierce his flesh, but the impact drove him face first into the floater’s dome. His broken arm exploded in
pain, and his concentration lapsed, allowing the Shadow Viper to settle back into the bay.

  “Agis!” screamed Fylo’s deep voice. The giant’s fingers closed around the noble’s shoulders, pulling him upright. “You hurt?”

  “I’ll be fine,” Agis gasped.

  Keeping his broken arm on the floater’s dome, he looked over his shoulder. In place of the helm, a broken-edged hole opened below deck, a gray boulder resting in a pile of rubble that had once been Kester’s stateroom. Farther away, Nuta and his party of warriors were wading out from the isthmus, each giant holding another boulder to hurl at the Shadow Viper.

  Fylo pointed toward the mouth of the bay, where the cove opened up into a broad expanse of featureless dust. “Take ship to deep silt. Joorsh can’t follow,” he said, taking a huge harpoon off the rear deck’s rack. “Fylo slow them down.”

  “No!” Agis yelled. “We have catapults. You run.”

  “Where to?” the giant asked, puzzled. “Agis only friend. Not let Joorsh hurt him.” With that, the half-breed turned and waded back to meet the pursuing warriors.

  Wyan floated up from Kester’s stateroom. “What are you waiting for? It was your idea to save this worthless bunch of slaves.”

  Grimacing with the pain of his broken arm, Agis pulled the satchel off his shoulder. “Can you get Tithian out of there?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  The noble laid the satchel on the edge of the floater’s pit. “Then do it,” he said. “I don’t know how long I’ll last. Besides, when the next boulder hits, it would be better to have an extra shipfloater.”

  As the disembodied head drifted over to the satchel’s mouth, Agis returned his attention to the floater’s dome and raised the Shadow Viper. The effort added to his agony, and he began to feel sick. The slaves leaned against their plunging poles. The caravel’s response was sluggish, for it rode dangerously low in the silt.

  Agis focused on the smell and the sound of the sea inside his mind, trying to raise the ship higher. The pain of his broken arm intruded on his thoughts, making the waves choppy and unpredictable. In addition to moving slowly, the ship began to lurch and roll. The noble stopped trying to concentrate so hard, and the sea calmed again. If Tithian did not take over soon, Agis knew they would sink.

  A pair of thunderous battle cries sounded behind the ship. Now that the Shadow Viper was under way, Agis allowed himself to look back. He saw Fylo charging straight at Nuta, who was raising his boulder to throw. Behind the chief, the other Joorsh warriors were rushing forward to support their leader.

  Nuta hurled his boulder, and Fylo ducked. The stone glanced off the half-breed’s injured shoulder. He screamed in pain and dropped to one knee, burying himself up to his chest in silt. For a moment, Agis thought the giant would pitch forward and vanish beneath the surface of the bay. Then, as the chief started to pass him by, the half-breed seemed to gather his strength. With an angry bellow, he rose and thrust his harpoon deep into Nuta’s ribs.

  The chief screamed and fell. As the grizzled giant disappeared into the silt, Fylo jerked the bloody harpoon free and, screaming a war cry, turned to charge the rest of the company. His astonished enemies stopped and launched their boulders at him. The half-breed countered by flinging his harpoon at the next warrior in line, then disappeared beneath a hail of gray stones.

  A curtain of pearly dust rose where Fylo had fallen. For a long time, Agis could do nothing but stare into it, amazed at the giant’s actions. By attacking so fiercely, he had forced the Joorsh to use their boulders against him, buying precious time for the Shadow Viper to escape. In his death, the lonely half-breed, who had struggled all his life to find a single friend, had committed the ultimate act of fellowship. Now, though he might never know it, he would have a whole shipload of comrades.

  “Good-bye,” Agis whispered sadly. “In all the cities of Athas, the bards shall sing of your great friendship.”

  The surviving Joorsh warriors began to emerge from the dust curtain. With their hands now empty, they were free to use their arms for balance. They were wading through the silt with a strange, twisting gait that seemed half running and half dancing, plowing great plumes of silt into the air. Although they no longer had anything to throw at the Shadow Viper, they appeared confident that they would catch the caravel, for it continued to ride low and make sluggish progress.

  Returning his attention to the ship, Agis found Tithian—at least he thought it was Tithian—crawling from the satchel. The king’s auburn hair had become coarse and gray, and the ever-present diadem no longer sat upon his head. His skin had paled with age, growing flaky and wrinkled, while dark, angry-looking circles sagged beneath his eyes. Only the darting brown eyes and sharply hooked nose remained the same as the noble remembered.

  “Tithian?” the noble gasped. “What happened to you?”

  “Do you really want me to explain now?” the king replied sharply.

  As Tithian continued to pull himself out, a huge pair of leathery, batlike wings slipped free of the satchel. For a moment, Agis didn’t know what to make of them. Then, as they slowly stretched across the deck, he realized they were attached to the king’s back.

  “In the name of Ral!” the noble gasped.

  “More like Rajaat,” Tithian replied, glancing at the appendages with pride. He gave them a tentative flap, then looked down at Wyan, who was hovering at his side. “Shall we go?”

  “That’s not why I brought you out of the satchel,” Agis snapped. “Look behind us.”

  “I saw what became of Fylo,” the king replied. “I always knew your principles would be the end of you. Now it seems they’re also getting your friends killed. I have no intention of being one of those friends.”

  “If you take over here, the whole ship can escape!” Agis said. Even as he spoke the words, he was visualizing the image of a griffin, a huge eagle with the body and claws of a lion.

  “I see no reason to take that chance,” Tithian replied, lifting himself into the air with a single beat of his mighty wings. “I can escape with the Dark Lens alone.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Agis replied, locking eyes with the king. Keeping just enough of his mind focused on his duties as a floater to keep the Shadow Viper from sinking, the noble launched his griffin into Tithian’s mind.

  The noble found himself flying through a cavern of inviolable gloom. Nowhere in the blackness could he find even the hint of a light, much less anything that might be called illumination. The place seemed the very embodiment of darkness, more so than any of the times in the past when Agis had contacted the king’s mind.

  Through his griffin’s mouth, Agis yelled, “You can’t escape by hiding. I’ll find you, and when I do, you’ll save this ship!” His words vanished into the murk without echo.

  “I’ve no intention of hiding,” replied the king.

  A crimson wyvern flashed into existence above Agis’s griffin. The winged lizard had appeared in mid-dive, its talons extended and its venom-dripping tail barb arcing toward the griffin’s heart. Flapping his construct’s powerful wings, the noble rose to meet the attack. As the two beasts came together, he used one of his massive claws to slap aside the poisonous tail, then opened his sharp beak in anticipation of closing it around the wyvern’s serpentine neck.

  The beasts hit with a thunderous boom. As Agis tried to close his beak on the wyvern’s neck, he sensed a searing heat coming from the lizard’s body, and the smell of singed feathers filled his nostrils. Then, to the noble’s astonishment, the lizard began to flap its wings, driving the griffin back with such awesome strength that Agis could not resist.

  The wyvern carried them out of Tithian’s mind. In the next instant, they emerged over the vast blue sea in the mind of the amazed noble. As Agis was still trying to comprehend the raw force behind the counterattack, the king’s construct suddenly separated from the combat and dived away. At first the noble was confused, but then he saw the object of the wyvern’s assault: a caravel, pitching
and reeling in the stormy waters below. The wyvern was descending on it with tucked wings and extended claws.

  Outside the noble’s mind, the Shadow Viper suddenly lurched to a standstill, and Agis heard the ship slaves screaming in panic. He looked up from the floater’s dome to see the crew standing frozen along the gunnels, bracing their plunging poles against the deck to defend against a huge crimson wyvern diving out of the olive-tinged sky.

  “This can’t be!” Agis gasped.

  “It is,” replied Tithian, also looking skyward. “That’s the power of the Dark Lens.”

  “All the more reason to take it from you!” Agis said, turning his attention inward once more.

  Agis sent his griffin after the wyvern, at the same time attacking from below. The rattle of a dozen ballistae sounded from the caravel, then a flight of spar-sized harpoons streaked up from the decks to pierce the wyvern’s breast. The lizard’s wings went slack, and it crashed onto the Shadow Viper’s bow, shaking the entire ship both inside and outside the noble’s mind.

  Agis descended on the injured beast and pinned it to the deck. The wyvern arced its tail up to impale him, but the griffin dodged aside, then used his rear claws to rip the appendage off at the root. The lizard tried to beat him off with its wings, and the noble’s harbinger tore them to ribbons. It rolled onto its back and raked its filthy talons across its attacker’s breast. The griffin retaliated by catching the wyvern’s serpentine neck in its beak and biting down hard. The fanged head came off, and the wyvern fell motionless to the deck.

  Agis had his griffin step back. During the battle, the wyvern’s heat had scorched the feathers from the beast’s head and blackened its leathery body in a dozen places. Nevertheless, the griffin was the one that remained standing, and that was the important thing.

  To the noble’s surprise, the wyvern did not fade away, as a construct normally did after being destroyed. Instead, it simply lay on the deck, wisps of gray smoke rising from beneath its body.

  Without allowing his griffin to vanish, Agis stopped attacking and turned his attention outward. The noble found himself slumped over the floater’s dome, so drained of energy that he could hardly breathe. He could feel the obsidian drawing the last of his strength from his body, leaving him with a sick, hollow feeling in place of his spiritual nexus.