The Verdent Passage

by Troy Denning

"Where are they?" Rikus demanded, returning to his feet.

  "I only saw one, and he disappeared," Agis reported.

  "You lost sight of him?" the mul snapped angrily.

  "You didn't even see him," Agis pointed out, his eyes still searching the trees.

  Neeva plucked the arrow from the white bark. "They're not going to do much damage with this thing."

  Rikus snatched the arrow from her hand and peered at the tip. "It was coated with something," he said. "There are still traces above the tip."

  The other three spoke at the same time. "Poison!"

  Another twang sounded from the side of the trail. This time, the arrow struck Neeva in the thigh. She let out a frightened scream and slapped it off her leg. With her other hand, she pointed her trikal at a clump of trembling conifer boughs. "There he is," she said, stepping in the direction she pointed.

  Her knees buckled on the second step, and she pitched face-first onto the ground. Sadira kneeled at her side. Screaming in anger, Rikus leaped over the two women. Ignoring Agis's and Sadira's panicked cries to be cautious, he disappeared into the shadowy forest.

  Agis started to follow, but almost immediately Rikus yelled, "Got the little varl!"

  A sharp smack sounded, then the mul stepped back into the trail with the halfling's unconscious body in one hand. "Maybe a hostage will discourage—"

  Another twang sounded from the other side of the trail. An arrow lodged in the mul's bare chest. Rikus brushed it away with a quick swipe, then hurled the unconscious halfling at his attacker. He charged toward the underbrush again, cursing and growling, but collapsed before he left the trail.

  Sadira pointed her cane over the mul's head, but Agis called, "No!"

  Without explaining further, he pointed a hand to each side of the trail and closed his eyes. Opening an energy path from his nexus to both of his arms, the noble imagined an invisible cord that ran from deep inside him to his fingers. An instant later, his hands tingled with psionic power.

  Remembering the halfling taste for giant spiders, Agis decided to use a pair of mental constructs to seek vengeance in Singer's name. He visualized each of his hands changing into a huge spider, but not the chirping kind Anezka and her fellows liked to eat. These were black and shiny, with great bulbous bodies and carapaces as hard as rock.

  The spiders had no physical existence, for they lived only in the noble's thoughts. After the halflings turned their attention on Agis, however, the spiders would seem as real to the little warriors as anything else in the forest.

  Assuming that the warriors were watching him by now, Agis visualized the illusionary spiders leaping off he ends of his arms. When they landed, each was as large as Rikus. They scurried into the forest on eight sturdy legs equipped with claws as sharp as a rock leopard's nails and as long as a dagger.

  By fixing their attention on Agis, the halflings created a faint mental contact between themselves and the noble. The enormous spiders located two of these tenuous threads and followed them like silky strands of web back to their sources. Through his spiders' eyes, the noble saw the two halflings who were watching lift their bows, They each nocked a black-tipped arrow into the bowstring.

  As the halflings took aim, Agis's hunters entered their minds. Both halflings screamed and released their bowstrings, shooting their tiny arrows into the ground. They dropped their weapons and reached for their daggers, totally convinced that the psionic creatures were real. Agis visualized the spiders' fangs dripping black poison, then the two beasts struck. The astonished halflings cried out and clutched at the enormous fangs they believed to be piercing their bodies. They struggled briefly, arms flailing wildly as they tried to free themselves. Finally the warriors grew lethargic and fell silent, convinced that they had been killed.

  That belief would not last, Agis knew, for he had not penetrated his targets' minds deeply enough to persuade them that they were truly dead. Doing so would have taken valuable time and energy. Besides, killing the small warriors hardly seemed wise, considering that the halflings were the ones who possessed the spear he and his friends needed.

  After the two halflings stopped struggling, the noble allowed his hunters to roam the forest a little longer, waiting for more ambushers to focus their thoughts on him. After a moment, he felt reasonably sure that he had eliminated the remaining ambushers.

  Agis cut off the flow of energy to his spiders, then placed his hands on his knees and gasped for breath. The attack had been one of the most powerful he knew, and it had placed a considerable strain on has body. We're safe—for now," he huffed.

  Sadira looked doubtful. "What do you mean?"

  "The Way," Agis explained simply. "What of Neeva and Rikus?"

  "They're still breathing," Sadira replied. "They seem to be in no danger of dying."

  "Can you wake them?

  Sadira tried shaking, slapping, and yelling at them. Nothing worked. "We'll just have to wait until they're conscious."

  "We can't," Agis said, shaking his head. "The halflings will recover within an hour or so."

  Sadira looked at the two gladiators. "Why couldn't this have happened to us instead of them?" she complained. "We'll never move them."

  "Can't you do something?" Agis asked, finally bringing his breath under control.

  Sadira shook her head. "I don't know any spells for carrying people."

  "What good is magic?" Agis sighed, stepping toward Rikus's inert form. "See if you can find Anezka."

  "There's no use trying," Sadira answered. "I saw her running down the trail after Rikus fell."

  Agis closed his eyes and let out a long breath of disappointment. "Now what are we going to do?"

  Sadira shrugged and gestured toward the pathway. "This must lead somewhere. There's as good a chance that we'll find Nok there as anyplace."

  With Sadira's help, Agis rolled the unconscious gladiators onto their backs and laid them side by side, securing their weapons beneath their belts. He grasped them each by the wrist and closed his eyes, then opened a pathway from his power core into their bodies. He pictured them becoming clouds and rising off the ground of their own accord.

  Once the two gladiators began to float, Agis stood. Being careful not to lose contact with their bodies, he looked down the trail and said, "Let's go, and fast. I don't think I'm going to last more than a few hours. Besides, we should be as far away from here as possible when the halflings wake."

  With Sadira in the lead, they walked until midafternoon without incident. At last, the valley broadened into a wide basin and the trail left the edge of the roaring river.

  The half-elf suddenly stopped and stared at her feet.

  "It's about time we rest," Agis gasped thankfully. "I'm so tired I can hardly tell the trail from the forest any more."

  "I didn't stop to rest," Sadira said, pointing at a small strand of brown string stretched across the trail. "Our friends have set up a surprise."

  She started to step over the string, but Agis called, "Wait!" He nodded to Neera's trikal. "Probe the ground J on the other side," he said. "That tripwire is too obvious."

  The half-elf raised an eyebrow. "My, aren't you the cautious one?"

  Nevertheless, she took the trikal and did as Agis suggested. A mat of woven fronds, covered by a thin layer of dirt, collapsed and dropped into a deep pit with a muffled crash.

  Sadira swallowed, then faced Agis. "It doesn't look safe to walk the path any longer."

  Agis was about to answer when a halfling stepped onto the trail behind Sadira. "Look out!" he cried.

  The noble dropped the two gladiators' wrists and crabbed Sadira. As he pulled her aside, he heard the wane of a bowstring. Something sharp bit into his neck.

  In the same instant, the astonished sorceress stumbled over the tripwire. A loud crack sounded overhead, then a log crashed down out of the trees and swooped toward them.

  The noble stepped forward, intending to shove Sadira to safety. Instead, his knees buckled. As he fell, he spun around in tim
e to see the log strike the young slave girl in the head. He reached out, but found himself falling slowly backward, almost as if the air itself had grown thick. Agis realized that the poison had taken hold of his mind and that he was dropping into the pit they'd uncovered. The last thing he saw before he disappeared into the earth was Sadira's limp body collapsing into the underbrush.

  FIFTEEN

  The Living Bridge

  Sadira's head pounded as though it contained a dozen drummers, all beating the same primitive rhythm. Her ears ached, her temples throbbed, even her teeth hurt. Her eyes were too sore to open, and she felt sick to her stomach. She was so dizzy that she didn't think she should be standing, yet, to her surprise, that was exactly what it felt like she was doing.

  The sorceress tried to lift a hand to her aching head and found it an impossible task. For some reason she did not understand, she could not move her right arm. She tried with her left and discovered that it, too, was immobilized. There was a terrible, sharp pain in both wrists.

  Fearing that she was paralyzed, Sadira opened her eyes. As her vision began to clear, she saw that the sound of the drums came from outside her head, not inside. Ahead of her lay a small meadow covered by soft moss, tinted pink by the light of the afternoon sun. At the edges of the clearing stood a dozen halfling men dressed in breechcloths, their eyes round and glazed as they beat a feral cadence on tall drums.

  In the center of the meadow, a mound rose high into the air. Sadira squinted at the structure and, despite her blurred vision, saw that it had been built entirely from large blocks of gray rock. A steep stairway ran up the center, but otherwise the structure was perfectly smooth, with only tiny seams where the blocks met.

  Atop the mound sat a small house of white marble, with a smoking copper brazier outside the door, Next to the brazier lay the weapons and satchels that Sadira and her friends had brought into the forest. In front of the pile stood Anezka and a wild-looking halfling male. He was covered with green paint, and a crown of woven fronds ringed his tangled mass of hair. In his small hands, the man held Ktandeo's cane.

  Sadira's heart sank. After using the cane at Agis's estate, she had realized that it was far more dangerous than she had suspected. Still, the sorceress did not like seeing it in the hands of a forest-dwelling savage. She and her companions would need it to battle Kalak.

  Looking to the bottom of the mound, she saw that a single oak tree grew there. The majestic oak looked oddly misplaced in a meadow surrounded by dancing conifers and frond trees, but its isolation had not prevented it from growing up straight and strong.

  Scattered around the oak's trunk were dozens of halfling men and women, all holding wooden bowls. Some had adorned their arms or legs with brightly colored feathers, but otherwise none of them wore anything except loincloths. They all watched the top of the mound with an air of anticipation.

  "You're awake." The voice came from Sadira's left.

  "I feel like I'm dead," Sadira answered shakily, turning her aching head toward Agis.

  A few feet away, the noble hung on a stone slab that had been planted upright in the ground. His hands and feet were lashed into place with leather ropes running through a set of special holes. At the bottom of the slab was a large, semicircular catch basin, stained brown with old blood.

  "What happened?" Sadira asked. Her head had finally cleared, and she realized that she hung on a similar stone. The pain in her wrists was caused by her bindings.

  Agis told her about their capture. When he explained how she had stumbled into the tripwire as he tried to save her from the poisoned arrow, he added, "I'm sorry about your head."

  "She's alive and conscious," said a woman's voice. "There's nothing to be sorry about in that."

  Sadira turned her throbbing head to the right and saw that Rikus and Neeva were also hanging from stone slabs.

  "It was Anezka who led us into the ambush, not Agis," agreed Rikus. "Maybe she did it because of that business with the spider—"

  "And maybe not," interrupted Neeva. "I doubt we'll ever know, but now isn't the time to worry about it." She tilted her chin toward the granite mound. "I think we're finally about to meet our captor."

  Sadira looked in the direction Neeva indicated. The green-painted halfling stepped off the mound into midair. Instead of falling, he slowly drifted down toward the sorceress and her friends. He carried Ktandeo's cane in both hands, like a full-sized man would carry a fighting cudgel.

  Behind him, Anezka climbed down the steep stairs. When she reached the bottom, a half-dozen halflings with feathered armbands joined her. One of them handed her a wooden bowl, then they walked toward Sadira and the others.

  As the floating halfling settled to the ground in from of Sadira, the slave girl saw that a large ring of gold hung in his hawkish nose. Bands of hammered silver ringed his ears, and a large ball of obsidian dangled from a chain around his neck.

  The halfling looked at Sadira with an air of indignation. "Where did you get this staff?" he asked.

  "Who wants to know?" Sadira responded.

  The halfling stared at her menacingly, obviously shocked at her challenge to his authority. When Sadira met his gaze evenly, he said, "I am World Tree, whose roots bring forth fruit so that my people may eat. I am Rain Bird, whose wings shower the land with water so that my people may drink. I am Time Serpent, whose tail is the past and whose head is the future, so that my people will live forever. I am Nok, the forest."

  Nok raised the cane. "Now, tell me how you came by this staff."

  "A man named Ktandeo gave it to me."

  Nok narrowed his eyes. "I made this for Ktandeo. He would not have given it to an impudent young woman."

  "It was his dying act," Sadira said, regarding the halfling in a new light. Anyone who could make such an item was no ordinary savage. "He gave me the cane so you would know we came in his name."

  The halfling's posture grew less menacing, and he closed his eyes. "Now I know why the moons have been weeping. Ktandeo was a worthy friend of the forest," he said, touching one hand to the gold ring in his nose and the other to a silver ear-band. "He brought many fine offerings."

  Anezka arrived with the six halflings wearing feathered armbands. They stood behind Nok, patiently holding their bowls in both hands. Rikus and Neeva fixed angry glares on Anezka, but said nothing. Agis also remained silent, studying Nok with a thoughtful expression.

  "Ktandeo sent us for his magical spear," Sadira said.

  "I have been growing a spear," replied the halfling, meeting Sadira's gaze with warmer eyes. "I cannot give it to you."

  "Why not?" the sorceress asked. "Isn't it ready?"

  Nok glanced over his shoulder at the oak tree "It's ready . . . but you are not worthy of it."

  Assuming he meant she was not strong enough to throw it, Sadira pointed her chin at Rikus. "He's the one who will use the spear. Not me."

  Nok regarded the mul with an appraising eye, but shook his head. "There is more than strength to throwing a spear," he said. "The aim must be accurate, the heart true. Without Ktandeo to guide his hand, the hairless one will fail."

  "What do you mean?" Rikus bristled. "The spear hasn't been made that I can't handle."

  "You cannot wield this one!" Nok snapped.

  "You haven't seen him fight. How is it that you know this?" Sadira asked.

  "Because you hang on the Feast Stones" the halfling replied, tapping the cane against the basin at Sadira's feet. "If you were worthy of the Heartwood Spear, you would not be there. Your blood would never yearn to fill these basins."

  "Feast Stones!" Rikus exclaimed, rugging at his bindings. "We came as friends!" Agis objected. "You'll become pan of the forest. What could be a greater gift for one's friends?" Nok asked, smiling sincerely. "Anezka didn't bring us here to be eaten!" Neeva "Of course she did," Nok said. "You are her offering."

  "Offering!" Rikus cried, looking to Anezka. "That's not why you brought us here, is it?"

  Anezka nodded, giving the mu
l a reassuring smile.

  "Nok, my friends and I would be honored to join your forest," the sorceress lied. "Unfortunately, Ktandeo sent us for the spear because the need in Tyr is great."

  "What need?" the halfling asked.

  "Kalak has a small pyramid made of obsidian," Agis explained, his eyes fixed on the halfling's pendant. "He also has many obsidian balls, and a tunnel lined with obsidian bricks. Do you know what this means?"

  Nok's eyes opened wide. "It is too soon," he said, shaking his head sadly.

  Agis went on to tell the halfling about the memory he had seen inside Tithian's mind and about the king's plans to seal the stadium during the gladiatorial games.

  When the noble finished, Sadira asked, "Now will you give us the spear?"

  Nok shook his head. "You couldn't even reach me without being captured," he said. "How can you hope to stop a dragon?"

  "Dragon?" Sadira uttered. Her companions echoed her astonishment. "We're talking about Kalak, not the—" Sadira stopped herself, the implication of Nok question striking her with the force of a half-giant's club. "Kalak is the Dragon?" she gasped.

  "No. There are many dragons throughout the world," the halfling said. "Kalak is not yet one of them."

  "But he's about to become one," Sadira said, her mind racing as she began to understand the wicked nature of Kalak's plan. "That's what the ziggurat is for."

  "Yes," Nok agreed. "He needs it for his changing."

  "The time to strike is before he changes?" Neeva exclaimed. "Give us the spear before it's too late."

  Nok regarded the woman thoughtfully, then shook his head. "I cannot entrust the Heartwood Spear to someone who is not worthy."

  "We're worthy!" Rikus growled. "I've won more than a hundred matches."

  Nok seemed unmoved. In vain Sadira searched her aching head for another approach that would make the half-ling listen. The more she learned about Kalak, the more he terrified her and the more determined she became to stop him.

  "If you were willing to help Ktandeo against the sorcerer-king of Tyr," Agis said, "it must have been because you feared for your forest"