The Verdent Passage

by Troy Denning

  It was not where she intended to die. Sadira allowed the guards a few minutes to leave, then set about trying to escape. The gag was fairly easy to remove. The half-elf simply leaned her head to one side and rubbed her chin against her shoulder several times. The strip around her mouth rolled off her chin and down around her neck, then she spat the wad out of her mouth.

  Next, she attempted to free her hands. Had they not been bound behind her, it would have been a simple matter to gnaw at the rope until she bit through it. Before she could do that, she had to work her hands around to her front. She tried to run her bound hands down her back and around her legs, but her arms were too short. She only strained her already throbbing shoulder.

  Realizing that the tight quarters would never allow her to accomplish this first maneuver, she began to working her wrists back and forth behind her. With time, and she suspected she had plenty of that, she might be able to loosen the knot or stretch the hide enough to slip a hand free.

  The repetitive action attracted the lizards. Within moments, the slimy reptiles tickled every inch of Sadira's skin from the elbows down. They writhed over her arms with increasing agitation, their scales whispering as loudly as a strong breeze. The half-elf ignored them and continued to work her hands back and forth.

  There was a sharp twinge inside Sadira's elbow. When she felt a warm trickle running down her arm, she realized one of the creatures had bitten her. Dozens of raspy little tongues lapped at the blood, then she felt another twinge on the outside of her forearm. Both wounds bled more freely than they should have, and the lizards' excitement mounted, filling the silo with a soft, steady drone. The half-elf began to fear that her efforts to liberate herself were driving the reptiles into a feeding frenzy.

  Fighting to ignore her growing revulsion, Sadira continued to work at the hide. She considered using the lizards to her advantage by trying to get them to chew off her bindings. Unfortunately they seemed more interested in licking blood than gnawing hide.

  Soon her wrists began to sting where the thongs were cutting into them, and still more warm blood ran down over her hands. The little reptiles swarmed to the fresh food. A few even crawled into the tight crevice between her bound hands. Repulsed, she groaned and pressed her palms together, successfully crushing a pair of the gruesome things. Their bodies burst with a mushy pop, covering her palms with cool slime.

  Noting how slick this scum was, Sadira realized that would be useful in freeing her hands. Over the next few minutes, she continued to work her burning wrists back and forth. As they bled, she allowed many more lizards to crawl between her hands, and crushed them each in turn Periodically, she tried to pull a hand free and found the thongs were still too tight. The reptiles continued to nip at her arms and lick the wounds around her bindings. She squashed several against the wall with a forearm. Soon, her hands and arms were soaked with a mixture of her own warm blood and cool lizard entrails.

  Sadira tried again to free a hand. This time, her left hand slipped its loop. Her brief cry of joy echoed off the brick walls of the silo, but she doubted it could be heard outside. The half-elf immediately brought her hands around to her front and brushed the lizards off her bloody arms. Lacking anything better, she cleaned her hands as best as she could against her smock. Next she plucked the lizards from her hair. She didn't bother with the creatures swarming over her legs, for they were too numerous and none seemed to be biting.

  At last Sadira prepared to cast the first spell of her escape. Instead of pointing her palm downward to summon the force she needed, the sorceress directed it at the wall. Since she was already underground, there was no need to draw the energy from below before calling it toward her.

  After she felt the surge of power enter her body, Sadira took a small ball of web from the wall and placed it under her tongue, then uttered an incantation. When the ball of web disappeared from her mouth, she knew her spell had worked and she would be able to climb the walls as easily as the lizards. The half-elf placed the pads of her fingers on the wall and pulled upward. Her body rose off the ground as though it were as light as a strand of silk.

  The sorceress quickly climbed to the top of the silo, causing a distinct hiss each time she moved. Though her knees and shoulders ached terribly from the drop into the cell, her body seemed so light that its weight caused them no undo strain.

  At the top of the cramped cell, Sadira paused to pick a few lizards off her legs, then brushed the rest away. Dangling from the wall as easily as if she were standing on a ladder, she summoned the energy for another spell, then took a deep breath and began to jostle the stone slab covering the silo. She was not trying to move it aside. Rather the sorceress merely hoped to attract the guards' attention and lure them into investigating the sound.

  She did not have long to wait. Within a few moments, the slab began to slide open and a sliver of scarlet light appeared over her head. She retreated down the wall a short way, then waited for the door to open completely.

  The first thing to appear in the widening crescent of light was the tip of an obsidian spear. Though the light hurt her eyes, she forced herself not to look away. When the dim silhouette of a guard took form at the other end of the spear, Sadira raised the lizards she had plucked off her legs toward him, then uttered her incantation.

  She finished with a comment directed at her victim. "Think about this the next time you drop a nice girl down here."

  As she released the spell, the squirming lizards in her hand were transformed into writhing tentacles, each ten feet long and as black as the silo from which they came. They shot from Sadira's hand like bolts of ebon-colored lightning straight for the guard's face. He dropped his spear and yelled in surprise, but the black ribbons cut his scream short as they wrapped themselves around his face and neck. He stumbled away, gasping for air and madly tearing at the stalks constricting his neck.

  If her Alliance mentor, a cantankerous old man named Ktandeo, had seen her use the spell, he would certainly have disapproved. He had forbidden her to learn or use magic of such potency. That kind of spell required the drawing of energy from a wide radius; if the radius was too small, the foliage tapped by the spell would die. Ktandeo thought the half-elf had not yet mastered her art enough to attempt such feats. Sadira thought differently, so she had secretly copied the spell and several others from his spellbook during her last clandestine visit. At the moment, she was glad she had.

  The sorceress scrambled to the top of the wall. A second guard looked over the edge of the silo, a drawn dagger clutched in his hand. There was no time to cast another spell, so Sadira reached up and grabbed him by the collar.

  "Come here," she said, jerking as hard as she could on his shirt. "There's something down here you should see."

  The surprised guard pitched forward, raising his knife to slash at Sadira's arm. The half-elf quickly released him and pulled her arm out of harm's way, but the man's counterstrike did not save him. He was already leaning so far forward that he could not recover his balance. He cried out in alarm, and his dagger clattered to the floor. The guard himself followed a moment later, slipping headfirst into the darkness, his hands seizing wildly at the bricks in a futile effort to catch himself. An instant later, he hit bottom. The sharp pop and series of quick snaps that sounded from the base of the silo told Sadira that she need not worry about that particular jailer again.

  She climbed out of the silo and picked up the first guard's spear. He was still struggling with the magical tentacles that were wrapped around his face. Though he was hardly in a position to stop her from leaving she stepped to his side and touched the spear to his ribs.

  "This is for all the slaves who didn't climb out," she said, pressing harder on the point.

  The guard stopped struggling and turned his tentacle-covered head in her direction. "No. Please!" he gasped barely making himself understood through his constricted throat. "I... have . . . children—"

  "So did my mother," Sadira answered.

  She pressed
all her weight against the shaft and drove the point deep into the man's heart. A short cry of pain escaped his lips and his body trembled. An instant later he fell motionless. Blood began to ooze from the wound.

  After removing the guard's dagger and belt, Sadira dragged his body to the silo. She dumped him on top of his partner without bothering to remove the spear from his heart or the tentacles from his head. As she pushed the stone slab over the pit, her thoughts were already turning to the next phase of her escape.

  Sadira strapped the guard's belt and dagger onto her narrow waist, then pulled a few stray strands of lizard web from her smock. She formed these strands into a small wad, then plucked a lash from her eyelid and sealed it in the silky ball. Pointing her palm at the ground, she summoned the energy for another enchantment. As she spoke the words of her incantation, the sorceress slowly rolled the wad between her fingers.

  The web and the eyelash disappeared. The half-elf lifted her hand and waved it in front of her eyes. Like tie rest of her body, it had become invisible.

  Sadira wasted no time leaving the Break. She had only a brief time before her spell expired. In that time, the half-elf had to sneak back to her mud-brick cell and collect her spellbook from beneath the loose stone where she kept it hidden. Afterward, she would leave the estate by walking out the gate, passing beneath the noses of the guards charged with keeping her and her fellow slaves in the compound. By the time her magic lapsed, she hoped to be far away from the walls of Lord Tithian's gladiator pits.

  Though she wanted to check on Rikus's condition, she knew that such an act held too many dangers, for guards and healers would surely surround him. She would simply have to trust in the mul's natural hardiness and hope that he survived long enough for her to send help from the Veiled Alliance.

  THREE

  Old Friends

  In a remote corner of his estate, Agis of Asticles sat at the edge of the muddy reservoir that provided water for all his parched lands. On the far side of the copper-colored pool, a dozen slaves marched in an endless circle, pushing four wooden crossbars that turned a creaking waterscrew and filled the small pond with bitter well-water. Every fifty turns, two slaves were replaced by a pair who had been resting and drinking in the shade of a nearby pavilion.

  Turning the screw was not particularly strenuous for twelve healthy slaves, but the scarlet rays of the sun cut through the afternoon haze like a shaft of flame. This part of the day was an insufferable inferno, a time when men collapsed simply from walking and when heavy exertion killed others. Nevertheless, the water had to keep flowing, so the slaves had to keep turning the screw.

  Unlike the slaves, Agis did not have to pass the hottest part of the day beneath the sun's crimson fury. Yet this was where the robust noble spent most afternoons, sitting crosslegged on the barren ground, his long black hair billowing on an occasional puff of wind. Usually his brown eyes were fixed on the murky waters of his irrigation pond, staring out from beneath his dark brows with an eerie vacancy. Often the only sign that he was alive was the steady flaring of nostrils at the end of his patrician nose. His firm jaw never flinched, his strong and sinuous arms never twitched, and his solid torso did not fidget.

  Like all serious students of the Way, Agis found that extremes of physical sensation, such as suffering the agony of full exposure to the midday sun, aided his meditations. It was only when he hovered on the edge of unbearable torment or unimaginable pleasure that his body, his mind, and his spirit became one, that he felt the immense power of a physical form and intellect so flawlessly joined that he could not tell where one ended and the other began. It was then he fully appreciated the great truth of being: that the energy and vitality of the body could not exist without the mind to give it form and reality and the spirit to give it all a higher meaning.

  It was this simple principle that lay at the heart of all psionic power. The individual who truly understood it could tap the mystical energies that infused his own being and shape them however he wished; giving him abilities that were as incredible as they were mysterious.

  Unfortunately the Way did not yield its gifts easily. It demanded a high price of those who used it, both in devotion and knowledge. For a student of the Way, enlightenment came most often in times of physical extremes, such as during periods of complete exhaustion or terrible distress. Therefore, like most practitioners of the psionic arts, Agis spent several hours a day in considerable discomfort while he contemplated the unity of body, spirit and mind. Usually, he chose to perform his meditation on the remote shore of his irrigation pond.

  On this particular day, his mind's eye was focused hundreds of miles and more than a decade away, on an oft-remembered place — an oasis that he had visited as a young man. In contrast to the muddy reservoir of his estate the waters of the oasis pond sparkled blue and clear. It was surrounded by the billowing forms of damson-crowned chiffon trees and creaking canes of black-jointed whip grass. Hanging over the forest were the two golden moons of Athas, Ral and Guthay, secluded from the bloody splendor of the rising sun by a clear expanse of olive sky.

  Though he was about to set off across two hundred miles of open desert, Agis was traveling light. Across his back was slung a single waterskin, in his hand he carried a wooden walking staff, and at his waist hung a steel sword with a leather-wrapped hilt. He had just learned from a passing caravan driver that his older sister, the heir to the Asticles family name, had been murdered in Tyr.

  Let the spirits of the land guide thee, my love.

  The speaker was Durwadala, the druid of the grove. She was not speaking, for she had sworn never to interrupt the music of the wind, but rather waving her four arms through an intricate pattern of gestures that served as a language between her and Agis. She stood nearly seven feet tall, with a tough dun-colored carapace that covered her entire body. Her face was narrow and chitinous, with black, multi-faceted eyes. A pair of small mandibles served as her jaws.

  You have taught me well, my lady, Agis answered, moving his arms in a graceless imitation of Durwadala's speech. Always, your words will be in my heart.

  That is a strange place to keep words, Agis, she observed. Better to hold them in thy head, where they will do thee some good.

  Agis stifled a laugh, for he knew the sound would upset Durwadala. I will keep them in both my heart and my head, he promised.

  The druid studied Agis for several moments then touched his face with one of her antennae. Walk with the wind, she said, stepping into the forest. Her carapace instantly changed color and pattern to match the black and gold stalks of cane grass. The trees will remember thee.

  As Durwadala faded into the underbrush, Agis withdrew from his meditation. There was a serene but hollow feeling in the nexus of his being, that point where the mystic energies of the mind, body, and spirit all converged. The noble blinked his stinging eyes, slowly growing aware of his swollen tongue and the dry, bitter taste of thirst. As always, he felt dizzy and weak from the early effects of heat stroke.

  "Caro?" Agis called, bringing the murky waters of his small reservoir back into focus. "I'm ready for my water."

  He turned to look over his shoulder, expecting to see his dwarven manservant standing nearby. Instead of the old servant's wrinkled face, Agis found a lanky man dressed in the black cassock of a templar. His feature were sharp and bony, and his long auburn hair was pulled into a braided tail. There were deep-etched lines in his furrowed brow, and he had thick, puffy lips that made him look as though he were in a constant sulk.

  The templar stepped forward, offering Agis the water he had requested. "So, how goes it along the Way, old friend?"

  "Tithian?" Agis exclaimed. He blinked twice and shook his head, fearing he had lost himself in meditation and was imagining things. When the high templar's image remained solid, the noble stood and faced him.

  "How did you find me here?" Agis demanded. He glanced over Tithian's shoulder, expecting to see a handful of embarrassed guards or at least Caro's flustered face.
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  Tithian grinned at Agis's surprise. "Don't blame your slaves," he said. "I used my office to find you.

  Agis frowned. Not even Tithian should have been able to sneak up on him unannounced. He would speak to Caro about the lapse at the first chance. "How long have I kept you waiting?"

  "Too long," Tithian replied, squaring at the pale green haze in the sky. "You must be quite adept at traveling the Way. Your concentration is impressive."

  Agis took the water from Tithian's hand. "One can't master the mind without first mastering the body."

  The high templar rolled his eyes. "So I remember hearing, over and over again," he said. "For me, the psionic arts are too much work." He reached beneath his robe and withdrew a ceramic carafe of wine. "I took the liberty of having your servants supply me with refreshment," Tithian said. "I hope you don't mind."

  "Not at all," Agis answered, studying his guest's face for some hint as to his mission. Though he and Tithian had known each other since their youth, he was not accustomed to receiving the high templar without notice, especially not during his meditations. "Isn't it rather hot to be wandering around the countryside, Tithian?"

  Ignoring the question, Tithian drank directly from the carafe, then smacked his lips with satisfaction. "I saw the most impressive display of psionics this morning. The king discovered that Those Who Wear the Veil hid a number of amulets in his ziggurat."

  "The Veiled Alliance?" Agis asked. "Were the amulets magical?"

  The high templar said crossly, "Yes, magical. I suppose they're intended to slow down work on the ziggurat, though I didn't see them that closely."

  "Or at least you wouldn't tell me if you had."

  Tithian continued his story without confirming or denying Agis's reply. "King Kalak was most angry with Dorjan over the matter." The templar paused. "He incinerated her from the inside out."

  "That's not how the Way should be used," Agis protested.