The Cerulean Storm

by Denning, Troy

  Magnus came over to Rikus’s side. “Should I send for Sadira now?”

  Before answering, the mul glanced over his shoulder. Yab was stepping out from behind Rasda’s Wall, no longer carrying his shoulder satchel. Behind him came another giant, much larger than either himself or Tay. This one wore a black shawl draped over one eye.

  “Call her,” Rikus said. “But tell her not to do anything until she sees eight giants. If we let any of them escape, it could take days to track them down.”

  The windsinger nodded, then a soft, lilting strain rose from deep within his throat. So perfect was his breath control that his voice betrayed no hint of strain, even though he was still running. As Magnus repeated the message, air whirled around the windsinger’s head with a hushed, melodic hissing that sounded to the mul like whispering ghosts.

  Magnus completed the message, finishing with, “To my brother, the parching wind, I commit these words. Carry them to the ears of Sadira and no one else.”

  An eerie silence replaced the hissing of the wind. Then Rikus saw a series of dust-whirls skipping across the desert as Magnus’s spell streaked toward Tyr.

  The mul and the windsinger ran another dozen steps before boulders began to crash down on all sides of them, filling the air with flying chips of stone and the mordant smell of powdered rock. A billowing cloud of sand and dust engulfed them, and Rikus heard Magnus cry out. The windsinger slammed to the ground amid a mad clatter of rocks.

  “Magnus!” Rikus called, whirling around.

  “Here,” came the reply. Through the clearing dust, Rikus saw Magnus pushing himself to his knees. “It just glanced off me.”

  Rikus went to the windsinger’s side and took his arm. “Can you still run?” He helped his big friend to his feet.

  “Perhaps a little slower than before,” Magnus replied, looking back toward the farm. “But we’d be wiser to duck.”

  Following his friend’s gaze, Rikus saw Patch, Yab, and five more giants charging past Tay. The titans were all struggling to retain their balance, having launched another flight of boulders while on the run. The jagged shapes were already descending toward the mul and his companion.

  Rikus dropped to the ground and covered his head. A tremendous crack sounded ahead as a boulder smashed into a huge, half-buried stone and shattered it. A jagged shard of basalt scuffed Rikus’s back, then he heard the boulder clattering across the rocky ground and felt warm blood flowing down his ribs.

  “Can you stand?” asked Magnus, clasping his huge hands around the mul’s waist.

  “It’s just a scrape,” Rikus said, struggling to get his feet underneath him. He looked toward the giants and saw that they were charging. “Let’s keep—”

  The mul was interrupted by a loud whoosh, and a large sphere of black haze appeared in the air. It hovered there for a moment, then gently settled onto the ground and began forming the shadow of a slender woman.

  As it drained from the air, the dark fog left a winsome sorceress standing in its place. She had waves of amber hair spilling over her shoulders, and her skin was as dark as ebony. Her eyes had no pupils and glowed like blue embers, while wisps of black shadow slipped from between her lips whenever she exhaled.

  “Good timing, Sadira,” Rikus said, accustomed to seeing his wife arrive in this manner. Like Magnus, she also had visited the Pristine Tower. As a result, she had been transformed into something the mul did not understand—and that he was not entirely sure he liked.

  Sadira slipped past Rikus and Magnus. “I see only seven giants,” she said, kneeling on the ground. “I thought there were eight.”

  Turning back toward their attackers, Rikus saw that his wife’s conspicuous arrival had caused the giants to stop and reach for more boulders to throw. The mul was not surprised, for even the dullest warrior would recognize Sadira as a sorceress and would approach her with caution.

  Rikus pointed at Tay’s prone form. “The eighth is lying over there.”

  “Good.”

  Sadira turned one ebony palm to the sky. Rikus was surprised to see the signet ring of her other husband, Agis of Asticles, glimmering on her finger. Before the mul could ask where it had come from, a string of mystic syllables flowed from the sorceress’s blue lips, and a wave of pulsing red energy sizzled into the valley floor. The glow fanned outward from her fingers in a brilliant flash. Stone and sand began to melt into a hot, viscous mud, sending yellow wisps of acrid smoke curling into the sky.

  The spell swept out to Yab and his company. Screaming in terror and confusion, the giants sank to their waists in the mush. The boulders they had been grasping turned to liquid and drained between their fingers. Then the whole field gradually hardened into a steaming orange plain as smooth as glass. The titan wearing the patch roared in anger and began to pound at the lustrous ground, but the stuff was as hard as granite and showed no sign of cracking.

  Sadira withdrew a ball of yellow wax from her pocket and began working it between her fingers. Rikus knew from experience that she was preparing some sort of fire spell.

  Rikus laid a hand across her wrists. “How long will your first spell hold them?”

  “Until the sun goes down.”

  Rikus nodded, for it was the answer he had expected. Sadira’s powers lasted as long as the sun was in the sky, and generally so did any spell that she cast during the day. There were exceptions, however, so he had thought it wisest to check before making his next suggestion.

  “You might not want to kill the giants,” he said. “They seem to know something about Agis and Tithian. They also claimed that the Dark Lens was stolen from them, and that if we don’t give it back, something terrible will happen.”

  Sadira’s eyes flashed a deeper shade of blue. “Do you believe them?”

  Rikus shrugged. “I didn’t have time to ask many questions,” he said. “But I don’t think we’ll solve anything by killing this bunch. The giants will just send more warriors to recover the Lens. We’d be better off to convince them that we don’t have it.”

  Sadira considered this for a moment, then nodded. “We’ll talk with them later,” she said. “But I must return to Tyr now. The warder had just opened the chamber doors when I received Magnus’s message, and I should be there.”

  Rikus nodded. “We’ll stay here.”

  Sadira shook her head. “You’re needed in Tyr, to lead the legion out of the city,” she said. “Return as quickly as you can. I’d take you with me, but the spell I must use can carry only one.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Rikus said, just as glad he would not have to endure the touch of her strange magic. “But what about the giants?”

  “They can’t escape—and if they could, you couldn’t stop them.”

  The sorceress raised both hands toward the sun. Her shadow formed a circle around her feet, then rose up to swallow her body in a dark fog.

  THREE

  THE COUNCIL OF ADVISORS

  WHEN SADIRA STEPPED INTO THE VAULTED MURKINESS of the advisors’ chamber, she saw that the entire host of Tyrian councilors stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the orator’s floor, while the feather-stuffed chairs in the gallery sat empty. She knew instantly that this morning’s session would be a trying one and that her opponents on the council would use her tardiness to make it even more difficult. Although her trip to help Rikus and Magnus had delayed the meeting less than a quarter hour, many advisors made a point of shuffling around to cast impatient glares in her direction.

  Sadira started across the floor. The advisors were divided into four different groups, each gathered around a podium in a separate quarter of the floor. In the far corner, with the rays of the morning sun spilling through the windows behind them, were the guildsmen. Mostly humans and dwarves, they were dressed in sooty aprons and clay-specked tabards appropriate to their various professions. Next to them stood the free citizens, consisting of hemp-robed muls, half-elves, tareks, humans, and anyone else who had been either a slave or pauper before Tyr’s liberation. Close
r to the entrance were the nobles, dressed in exotic silks of every color and description, and the templars, who embellished their black cassocks with bronze neckchains and breastpins of precious copper.

  As Sadira passed between the noble and templar podiums, she found her way blocked by a double-chinned templar. He had a shaved head, eyes as shadowy as her own skin, and a long silver chain hanging around his corpulent neck.

  “Sadira, here you are—at last!” he said, smiling just enough to bare his gray incisors. “How kind of you to come so promptly to the meeting you called.”

  “If a short delay matters so much, then I suggest you let me pass so we can get started, Cybrian.” Sadira tried to step around the heavy templar.

  “I think we can excuse your tardiness,” said a blue-frocked noblewoman, moving forward to block the sorceress’s way. She was a handsome woman with gray eyes, silver hair, and a patrician nose. The lady eyed Sadira’s dusty robe, then clucked her tongue and added, “But your raiment is another matter. By now, you should realize that your apparel reflects your respect for the council itself.”

  Sadira suppressed the urge to make a sharp reply, suspecting that the noblewoman’s purpose was to disrupt the meeting by starting a senseless argument.

  “To the contrary, Lady Laaj,” the sorceress said. “I came as I am because I have no wish to keep the council waiting.”

  Sadira stepped between the noblewoman and Cybrian. When her adversaries tried to stand their ground, the sorceress chuckled at their foolishness. While her ebony body was steeped in the power of the sun, even a half-giant could not have blocked her way. She brushed the pair aside easily, sending them stumbling into the midst of their respective groups, and walked over to the free citizens. Here, the sorceress found her three guests waiting.

  “Who were those two?” asked Neeva. A former gladiator with blonde hair, deep emerald eyes, and a figure as powerful as it was voluptuous, she wore only a breechcloth and halter, with a cape of green silk thrown over her shoulders to show respect for the council.

  Sadira cast a contemptuous eye upon the two advisors she had just shoved aside. “The lady fancies herself the leader of the noble faction in Agis’s absence, and the templar is one of several who claim to speak in Tithian’s name,” the sorceress explained. “Because I asked the legion to stand ready this morning, they must think we’re going to find Agis and Tithian. Neither one would like that; they enjoy playing leader too much.”

  “Never mind them,” interrupted Rkard, Neeva’s mul son. “What about Rikus?”

  Though only six years old, the boy already stood as tall as most dwarves, with long graceful limbs, a sturdy frame, and cords of muscle running across his chest and arms. Like Rikus, he had sharply pointed ears and a hairless body, but he also had the distinguishing marks of a young sun-cleric: red eyes and a crimson sun emblazoned on his forehead.

  “Both Rikus and Magnus are fine,” Sadira said. “They’ll be coming along later.”

  “What happened?” Rkard pressed. “If Rikus needed help, it must have been bad trouble.”

  “We can talk about that later, son,” said Caelum. He had the blocky features, pointed ears, and hairless body typical of a dwarf, with the same red eyes and crimson mark his son, Rkard, bore. In his hands, the dwarf grasped a closed ironwood box that Sadira had asked him to hold during the council meeting. “Right now, we have business to conduct.”

  Caelum offered the box in his hands to Sadira. “Do you need this?”

  “Not yet.”

  Sadira climbed onto the podium and peered over the heads of her fellow advisors. The nobles and templars quickly grew silent, for Lady Laaj and Cybrian already stood on the respective pulpits for their two factions. But the guildsmen did not stifle their contentious discussions for several moments, until a bony, slender-faced man climbed onto the last platform. With the sooty apron of a blacksmith strapped over his chest, he looked as though he had come to the meeting straight from his shop.

  “Charl Birkett to speak for the guilds,” he declared. “Gar won’t be coming today.”

  “Then we can begin,” said Cybrian.

  The templar raised his arm toward the murkiness of the vaulted ceiling, as did Lady Laaj. Their hands were closed, save that they held their index fingers open enough to form a small circle with their thumbs.

  “What are you doing?” Sadira demanded.

  “You may have convened the meeting, but any orator has the right to call for the wrab,” replied Lady Laaj.

  “Surely you haven’t forgotten,” added Cybrian. “The tradition’s as ancient as Tyr itself.”

  “I remember council practice better than you remember common courtesy,” Sadira replied, thrusting her own hand into the air. “Since Kalak’s death, it’s always been the one who called the meeting who controls the floor first.”

  A shrill screech echoed off the stone arches. A tiny winged serpent dropped out of the ceiling’s shadowy coves. The creature glided around the room, barely distinguishable from the gloom above it. Everything about the flying snake was black: the leathery wings, the huge eyes, even the scaly body and barbed tail.

  The wrab passed low over Sadira’s hand and circled back once. She thought it would perch on her finger, but its tongue suddenly flickered in Cybrian’s direction. It flapped its wings and sailed over to the templar. After coiling up on his hand, it thrust its tiny head down inside his curled fingers and remained motionless.

  Sadira lowered her hand, not entirely discouraged. Cybrian would control the meeting’s agenda for now, but the wrab was notoriously restless. A natural user of the Way, it was trained to sense whether or not the assembly approved of the speaker’s topic. When the crowd’s interest began to ebb, it would seek a new roost from the upraised fingers, and control of the session would pass to the person it chose.

  “Sadira, will you explain why you were late to your own meeting?” Cybrian asked, smirking.

  “Perhaps later,” said the sorceress.

  Her refusal to answer the question was in disregard for council rules, but it was also a common tactic used to gain control of the wrab. If she could interest the other advisors in her topic quickly enough, the creature would leave Cybrian’s hand and roost on her finger before he could call for a vote of censure and ask her to leave the chamber.

  The sorceress motioned for Rkard to come up and stand with her, then continued, “I think my fellow councilors will be more interested in hearing how this boy is going to kill the Dragon.”

  The advisors greeted her statement with snorts of derision and even a few guffaws, but her tactic worked. As skeptical as they were, the councilors were also curious. The wrab quickly left Cybrian’s hand and came to Sadira’s. The creature weighed almost nothing, and if not for its damp scales tickling her flesh, the sorceress would hardly have noticed its presence.

  Cybrian glared at Sadira but did not object. He had used the same technique too many times to cry foul. “By all means, tell us,” he sneered. “I’m certain my fellow advisors will appreciate a good jest.”

  The templar’s tactic was an effective one, playing on the crowd’s skepticism to such an extent that the wrab raised its black wings as if to leave Sadira’s hand.

  “Perhaps you would waste the council’s time on a jest, Cybrian. You’ve certainly wasted it on many things just as trivial,” Sadira said sharply. “But I assure you, I would never do such a thing.”

  The wrab folded its wings and pushed its tiny head down into her fist. Seeing that she had won the assembly’s support, at least for a time, Sadira laid her free hand on Rkard’s shoulder. The boy stood straight and tall, looking out over the volatile throng with an unflinching gaze.

  “This mul boy is the son of Neeva, whom many of you will remember from her days as a gladiator, and of Caelum, son to the late uhrnomus of Kled,” Sadira said.

  “Ten days ago, Rkard was visited by a pair of dwarven banshees, Jo’orsh and Sa’ram,” the sorceress continued. “Those of you who are fami
liar with the Book of the Kemalok Kings will recognize the names as those of the last two dwarven knights, who died before they could avenge the Dragon’s destruction of their city.”

  “And they told the child to do what they could not—kill Borys?” asked Charl, incredulous.

  “Not exactly,” replied Sadira. “They said that he would kill the Dragon.”

  “And who heard them say this?” asked Lady Laaj.

  “I did,” Rkard replied.

  This prompted the noblewoman to give Sadira a patronizing smile. “My dear, since you have no children, you may not realize that young boys create make-believe friends,” she said. “Why, when my own sons were his age—”

  “He did not make up Jo’orsh and Sa’ram,” Neeva reported. “I also saw the banshees.”

  “And we have another harbinger as well,” Sadira said. She raised her hand, displaying the ring on her finger. “Last night, a messenger arrived bearing my husband’s signet.”

  “Which husband? Agis, Rikus, or someone we haven’t heard about yet?” mocked Cybrian. “Maybe that dwarf?”

  The comment drew a few crude laughs from the same pedants who always thought ill of Sadira for loving two men, but it failed to shake the crowd’s interest enough to dislodge the wrab.

  “The signet is Agis’s,” Sadira said patiently. “With it came the message that he had found the Dark Lens.”

  For the first time that day, the room fell completely quiet. Despite the efforts of Sadira and her husbands to keep the nature of the Dark Lens secret, they had spent five years searching for it, and word of what they were seeking had eventually leaked out. By now, most of the advisors knew not only what the Lens was, but why Sadira was seeking it. She intended to kill Borys, thus ending his practice of collecting a thousand slaves a year from each city of Athas. If the sorceress and her friends succeeded, not only would they save untold numbers of lives, they would also eliminate the greatest danger to Tyr itself: that the Dragon would attack the city for refusing to pay his gruesome levy.