The Cerulean Storm

by Denning, Troy

  The Dragon bellowed in horrid pain. He sprayed a fiery red cloud high into the sky, and his hands dropped limply to his sides, his beady eyes glazing over in agony. A series of convulsions ran through his slender face. With each spasm, the snout grew shorter and thicker, until the thing looked more like a nose and drooping chin than a beast’s muzzle. The spiked crest on top of his head broadened into a sloping forehead. Borys gave one last roar, then fell silent and dropped behind the ridge.

  Feeling fairly confident that the Dragon would not return to attack him, Rikus looked across the slope. He found the king bound tightly to the Dark Lens by a sturdy mesh of silver filaments. As the mul watched, a huge red spider emerged from the depths of the Lens. The creature lowered its head to the web and drew the glistening strands into its mouth. Once Tithian was free, the creature sprang at Sadira. It sailed across the intervening distance in a flash, then landed square on the sorceress’s face and began savaging her with its maw.

  Rikus started forward to help her. As he stumbled across the slope, he watched helplessly as four lacy wings sprouted from Tithian’s back. Still holding the Dark Lens in his tail, the king rose into the air and flew toward the cliff on the far side of the plain. His size dwindled rapidly, and the mul knew that he would quickly pass out of sight.

  Tithian flew away, and Sadira rolled down the slope and pinned the spider beneath her. She pulled her head away from its maw. Her face was covered with red welts that looked like burn marks, but there were no punctures to suggest that the thing had been injecting poison into her body. The sorceress grasped her attacker in both hands and picked it up high over her head. She brought it down on a sharp rock. The thing vanished in a fiery flash.

  Sadira screamed in shock and covered her face.

  Rikus reached her side. “Let me see,” he said.

  “I’m not seriously hurt—which is more than Tithian will be able to say when I catch up to him,” Sadira said. She lowered her arms, revealing a face with singed eyelashes and reddened skin. Rikus was relieved to see that there were no critical burns.

  “What about the Dragon?” Sadira asked.

  The mul pointed toward the top of the rim. “I snapped the sword,” he said. “What’s left of Borys fell inside.”

  “We’d better have a look,” Sadira said.

  They climbed the slope and peered cautiously over the top. In the bottom of the crater, a huge skeleton of black-stained bones lay curled into a fetal ball. Its shoulder blades were fused into a single large hump, and its gangling arms were wrapped around its knees. The thing’s face was the remotely human visage that Rikus had seen replace Borys’s, with the Scourge’s shard still lodged in the nose and spewing dark slime into the air.

  As they watched, sparks of blue energy began to dance in its empty eye sockets. From its fleshless mouth came a sibilant voice.

  “Borys of Ebe, Butcher of Dwarves, Leader of the Revolt,” the voice hissed. “Your master has claimed his punishment.”

  Inky fluid began to bubble up between the skeleton’s teeth. The ribs broke open and began to gush ebony syrup from the jagged ends. The arms and legs separated at the joints, then the pelvis split down the center, and finally the spine collapsed into a line of disconnected vertebrae. With each separation, more dark slime poured into the basin, until the skeleton itself disappeared beneath a pool of bubbling, frothing, black sludge.

  SIXTEEN

  THE BLUE AGE

  A STONE SHIFTED BENEATH RIKUS’S FOOT AND WENT tumbling down to the boiling black pond below. The mul’s legs buckled, and he dropped to his seat, landing hard on the crest of the crater’s rim. He managed to keep Neeva cradled tight against his chest, but she groaned anyway.

  Rkard was at their side in an instant. “Careful!” The boy scowled at Rikus. “We’re not even supposed to move her.”

  “I’m sorry. We have no choice,” said Rikus.

  Sadira came over the rim and joined them. “The sorcerer-kings might come through the arch at any moment,” she said, bracing herself on Neeva’s axe to rest. Rkard had sealed the punctures in her stomach and had dressed the burns she had suffered when Tithian had used the Lens against her, but the sorceress still looked pained and fatigued. “You don’t want our enemies to find her, do you?”

  “I want you to kill the sorcerer-kings,” said the boy. Neeva took her son’s arm. “Haven’t we talked about this?”

  “But they killed Borys,” the boy retorted.

  “And maybe they’ll kill the sorcerer-kings later,” Neeva said. She winced with pain, then added, “But they can’t do it now, not with the Scourge broken and Sadira’s powers gone until morning.”

  “This is dangerous, Mother,” Rkard protested. “I’m supposed to heal you at least one more time before moving you. Otherwise, you might not walk again.”

  “If the sorcerer-kings find me, I won’t live long enough to walk,” Neeva said, her voice growing stern. She looked up at Rikus. “Take me down.”

  “Don’t drop her this time,” Rkard ordered. He went down the slope first, kicking loose stones out of the mul’s path.

  “He doesn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Rikus,” Neeva said. “After what happened to Caelum, he’s scared to death that he’ll lose me, too.”

  “I won’t let that happen,” the mul said.

  “Sshhh.” Neeva touched her fingers to his lips. “During the war with Urik, I thought you learned not to make promises you can’t keep.”

  The mul shrugged. “Some things never change, I guess.”

  Rikus shifted his gaze down the hill. A dozen paces below, the black sludge from his sword had filled the bottom of the crater. Dark wisps of shadow rose from its surface, while yellow eyes blinked in the center of slow-spinning eddies. In places, warped spouts of slime oozed up to form disfigured silhouettes of four-footed birds, two-headed men, and mekillots with long, writhing tails at both ends. Sometimes, the weird beasts even seemed to take on lives of their own, making their way to the shore and crawling a short distance up the slope before they dissolved into sticky messes and drained into the ground.

  Rikus thought it a mark of his company’s desperation that they had picked this place to hide Neeva, but he had been unable to think of another plan to protect the injured warrior from the sorcerer-kings. As Neeva had told her son, with the Scourge gone, he and Sadira would not be killing any more sorcerer-kings—at least not until the sorceress’s powers returned in the morning.

  Rikus followed Rkard to a jagged tumble of boulders that offered shelter both from searching eyes and splashing ooze. He kneeled down and deposited Neeva in the center of the cluster, bracing her back against a large stone. She glanced through a gap toward the black pond, just a few steps below.

  “This should do,” she said, nodding. “The sorcerer-kings won’t be anxious to come down here. You two go on.”

  Rkard’s eyes widened. “Go? Where?”

  “Now that your mother’s safe, we must find Tithian,” Sadira said.

  “No!” The boy grabbed Rikus’s arm. “The Dragon’s dead. You have to stay here.”

  Rikus’s heart grew as heavy as stone. “There’s nothing I’d like more,” he said. “But I can’t. If we let Tithian go, he’ll release an evil even more powerful than the Dragon.”

  “I know—Rajaat,” the boy answered. “But without the Dragon to keep him locked away, isn’t Rajaat going to escape sooner or later anyway?”

  “Not if we capture the Dark Lens,” Sadira explained. “When I touched Rikus’s sword to it, I felt magic as powerful as the sun’s. I think we can use the Lens to keep Rajaat imprisoned.”

  “And that means you have to leave my mother in danger?” Rkard asked.

  “I’m afraid so,” Rikus answered.

  The boy turned away. “My father wouldn’t leave her.”

  “Rkard, don’t …”

  Neeva let her command trail off and raised her hands to wipe away the tears suddenly brimming in her eyes.

  “Look at thi
s,” she said, staring at her wet fingers in amazement. “I haven’t cried since I was a child, when Tithian bought me for his gladiator pits.”

  “Water for Caelum,” Sadira said. “Don’t hold it back.”

  “I couldn’t if I tried.” Neeva watched her tears tumble to the ground, shaking her head with unspoken regrets. Sadira laid a hand on the warrior’s arm but seemed unable to find the words to comfort her friend. Rikus realized that the sorceress knew the same thing he did: it was too late to apologize now. The spirits of the dead did not hear the voices of their loved ones or even remember their names.

  Sadira touched Rikus’s arm. “We’d better go.”

  The mul pulled his dagger and held it out toward Rkard’s back. “I don’t know if this blade will do you any good, but it might.”

  When the boy did not turn around, Neeva said, “Rikus is leaving now, Rkard. Do you want this to be the way he remembers you?”

  “No,” the boy said. He turned around and, without meeting Rikus’s glance, accepted the dagger. “Good luck.”

  The mul patted the boy’s shoulder. “Take care of your mother,” he said. “And if we’re not back by the time she’s walking, leave without us.”

  Rkard looked up, his eyes wide with fear. “You’ve got to come back! If you don’t …” He paused, collecting his composure, then said, “I don’t even know the way.”

  “If we must, we can find it together.” Neeva took her son’s hand and pulled him to her side, then fixed her green eyes on Sadira. “Don’t make the mistake I did. Say everything.”

  The sorceress gazed at Rkard and did not answer for several moments, then finally said, “I will.”

  Sadira handed the axe to Rikus, and together they climbed the hill. As they started over the top, the mul paused and ran his eyes over the crest of the rim. “I dropped the top part of the Scourge up here somewhere,” he said. “When the sorcerer-kings come, it might be useful to have the hilt in my scabbard. Maybe we can bluff them into leaving us alone.”

  “It can’t hurt to try,” Sadira said. She pointed to a location several dozen paces away, near the top of the small hill. A small circle of ground was covered with an ugly black stain. “Look over there.”

  The mul walked to the area. He found the Scourge behind a boulder, with the hilt lying uphill above what was left of the blade. Black slime continued to ooze from the jagged break, creating a bubbling pool of sludge tipped at the angle of the slope. As with the larger pond inside the crater, wisps of shadow rose from its surface, and yellow eyes peered out from the center of slowly swirling eddies.

  Rikus considered the amount of sludge still oozing from the blade, then decided it might be better to leave the shard alone. He started to return to Sadira.

  The mul stopped a step later, when he glimpsed an orange light flash beneath the great arch. When the glow faded, the four sorcerer-kings and the remaining sorcerer-queen stood between the pillars of the great edifice, their eyes roving over the broken plain. The distance from the crater to the arch was just small enough for the mul to see his enemies clearly. The runt of a limb had sprouted from the stump of Nibenay’s severed arm, and Hamanu showed no sign of discomfort from the dagger that had been plunged into his back.

  Rikus dropped behind a boulder and signaled for Sadira to come over. She slipped behind the crest of the crater rim, trying to stay out of sight as she ran over to join the mul. Her precautions were of little use. The sorcerer-kings stepped from beneath the arch and walked across the plain toward the crater.

  By the time Sadira reached Rikus’s side behind the boulder, the sorcerer-kings stood at the rim’s base, directly in front of the pair’s hiding place. The five figures were less than twenty paces away and perhaps half that distance lower.

  Hamanu stepped forward and looked up the slope. “You fools,” he growled, angrily shaking his mane. “What you have unleashed may destroy us all.”

  “In your case, the loss will be a welcome one,” called Sadira. She rose to peer over the boulder.

  Rikus joined her. If the sorcerer-kings attacked, a few feet of stone was not going to save them.

  “Give us the Dark Lens, and your deaths will be mercifully quick,” said the Oba.

  “I’m in no hurry to die.” The mul looked at Sadira. “How about you?”

  “I’ll take my time,” the sorceress replied. She glanced down at their enemies, then said, “If you want the Lens, you’ll have to find it and take it.”

  Hamanu started forward, but the Oba caught him by the shoulder. “Wait. They’re too anxious.”

  “They’re blustering,” the sorcerer-king snarled.

  “Perhaps, but they did kill Borys,” she countered. The Oba pointed at the dark stain on the slope below the mul. “Do you really want to take the chance that they haven’t set a trap?”

  Hamanu’s huge nostrils flared, but he stepped back. “You have something else in mind?”

  The Oba nodded, then called up the slope, “How much do you know of Rajaat?”

  “Enough to know that you betrayed him, which, at the moment, makes him our friend,” Rikus replied.

  The Oba chuckled, though she sounded more nervous than amused. “Rajaat would slay you two as soon as he finished with us.”

  “His shadow people have proven helpful so far,” Sadira replied.

  “Of course. They wanted you to kill Borys,” said Andropinis, shaking his fringe of white hair. “But if you knew the truth about Rajaat, you would know better than to rely on his gratitude.”

  “Why don’t you enlighten us?” requested Sadira. Andropinis glanced at his fellows.

  “Go ahead,” suggested the Oba. “After hearing the truth, they’ll yield the Dark Lens without a fight.”

  Andropinis turned his palm toward the ground.

  “No magic!” Rikus yelled.

  The sorcerer-king fixed an icy glare on the mul and drew the energy for his spell. “Watch and learn,” he said, waving his hand across the sky.

  An image of the Ringing Mountains appeared above the horizon, but they were not the barren crags Rikus knew from his life in Tyr. A howling wind tore great plumes of snow off the highest peaks, while large sheets of ice ran off their lofty shoulders. Lower down, the slopes resembled the wild forests of the halflings, with thick, verdant timberlands clinging to the steep slopes. Pearly clouds of mist hung low over valleys filled with gurgling streams and thundering rivers.

  As majestic as the mountains were, they interested Rikus little compared to what he saw at their base. Between two ranges of foothills lay a hollow about the size and shape of the Tyr Valley. There the semblance ended. Instead of the barren waste of rocks and thorns the mul knew, the vale was filled with a vast swamp of vine-draped trees and floating islands of moss.

  At the edge of the valley a strange, beautiful city of graceful sweeps and brilliant colors rose directly out of the swamp. The buildings seemed not so much constructed as grown, for they were marked by an architecture of gentle curves and elegant spires, with no straight edges, sharp points, or abrupt corners. The material was a uniformly porous stone that radiated blazing crimson, emerald green, royal blue, deep purple, or any of a dozen other hues. Where there should have been streets were canals filled with long slender boats guided by child-sized figures with adult faces. If not for their elegant tabards, their short-cropped hair, and their handsome features, the mul would have sworn they were halflings.

  At the city’s edge, the swamp gave way to the sparkling waves of an immense blue sea. It appeared to stretch clear to the horizon and beyond, covering ground that Rikus knew to be nothing but sandy wastes and rocky barrens.

  “Tyr, during the Blue Age,” said Andropinis.

  “Blue Age?” Sadira was studying the scene intently.

  “Before your time or ours, when only halflings lived on Athas,” explained the Oba. Making no effort to conceal her admiration for the halflings, she continued, “They were the masters of the world, growing homes from a rocklike plant
that lived beneath the waves, harvesting the sea for everything they needed to maintain a vast, splendorous society, able to create anything they needed by manipulating the principles of nature itself.”

  As the sorcerer-queen spoke, a fetid brown tide spread over the blue sea. It crept into the swamp surrounding Tyr, causing the floating moss islands to shrivel and sink. The vines went next, withering into the brown sludge like the sloughed skin of a serpent. The trees themselves died last, dropping their leaves and losing their bark. Before long, the grove stood naked in the swamp, an army of gray boles mired in a valley of putrid slime.

  “Despite their vast knowledge, or perhaps because of it, one day the halflings made a terrible mistake that destroyed the life-giving sea,” the Oba continued.

  “A good story, but don’t assume I believe it just because Andropinis spreads it across the sky,” Rikus said.

  “Believe it,” said Sadira. “On my way to the Pristine Tower, I saw halflings and stone just like that. So far, they’re telling the truth.”

  “We’ve no reason to lie,” snapped Andropinis. “We care nothing for your opinion.”

  The sorcerer-king waved his hand. The Ringing Mountains receded into the distance, until they looked like no more than blue clouds hanging low on the horizon. In their place stretched a vast, featureless plain of mud, as brown as dung and as thick as clay. In the center of the flat rose a single spire of porous white stone, capped by a beautiful citadel with alabaster walls and a keep of white onyx.

  “The Pristine Tower!” Sadira gasped.

  A long file of halflings left the citadel, descending the narrow staircase that spiraled down the outside of the spire. Their tabards hung off their bodies in dingy strips, while their hair cascaded over their shoulders in tangled snarls. Their features had grown haggard and wild, and they gestured with the quick, darting movements typical of the feral race Rikus had known during his own time.

  The halflings started across the brown plain toward the Ringing Mountains. The mud cleaved to their feet like torch pitch, and soon they could not take a step without also raising a huge clump of brown earth. In their wake sprouted tall grasses, leafy bushes, and magnificent trees that loomed above the tableland like towers. Soon, the plain became a verdant paradise, teeming with foliage of every sort.