The Amber Enchantress

by Denning, Troy

  “And we have even less chance of stopping the Dragon with what we know now,” Sadira answered, climbing onto her mount’s back. “Do you two have a better idea?”

  Rikus looked to Agis, and the nobleman said, “Yes. There are many sorcerers and mindbenders in Tyr. Perhaps together we can find the strength to defy the Dragon.”

  “And if not, we can oversee the filling of the levy,” added Rikus.

  “You mean give up,” Sadira said bitterly.

  “I mean deal with the reality,” said Rikus. “Thousands of people perished when I attacked Urik, and their deaths accomplished nothing except to annoy King Hamanu. If an entire army is only a minor irritant to a sorcerer-king, I don’t see how we can stop the Dragon.”

  “What you suggesting?” Agis demanded.

  “That we limit ourselves to what is possible,” Rikus answered. “Unless we stop him, Tithian will send only the poor to the Dragon. If we return to Tyr, at least we can be sure he fills the levy fairly.”

  “Fairly?” Sadira shrieked, forgetting herself. The kank began to shudder more violently. “How can you be fair about sending someone to his death?”

  “You can’t,” Agis admitted, biting his thin lips. “Let us hope it won’t come to that. A single person using magic or the Way can often succeed where a hundred strong men have failed. Perhaps a hundred sorcerers or mindbenders can succeed where Rikus’s army could not.”

  “And if you fail, you’ll destroy the entire city,” the mul countered. “It would be better to go to the Pristine Tower than to fight the Dragon. If we don’t fight, only a thousand will die, instead of all.”

  Agis considered the mul’s words, then offered a compromise. “I’ll organize a council of the most powerful sorcerers and mindbenders in the city,” he said. “If they cannot develop a plan for defying the Dragon, we’ll do as you suggest.”

  “A committee isn’t going to defeat the Dragon,” Sadira growled. “For that, you need power and knowledge.”

  “Perhaps there is more of both in Tyr than we realize,” the noble countered. He turned to Rikus. “What do you say?”

  “How will we choose those who are to die?” the mul asked.

  “You’re assuming that my plan will fail, and it won’t,” Agis said. “But if it comes to that, we’ll do our best to ease the burden. We’ll exclude the last bearers of a household name and the parents of young children—”

  “So people like Rikus and me are dispensable, but people like you aren’t?” Sadira demanded.

  Agis frowned. “That’s not what I said.”

  “But it’s what you meant,” Sadira spat. “How often have you said you need a child so the Asticles name won’t die?”

  Rikus glowered at Agis. “You asked Sadira to bear a child?”

  “That’s between Sadira and me,” Agis replied.

  “Hardly!” Rikus roared. “I love her, too!”

  “Not that it has anything to do with the present situation, but the time has come for her to chose between us,” the noble countered, not flinching in the face of Rikus’s anger. “We should all be getting on with our lives.”

  “What makes you think Sadira will choose you?” the mul demanded.

  Sadira awaited Agis’s answer with a growing sense of outrage, angered by his assumption that only Rikus stood between Agis and his wish that she bear him a child.

  “Why should she choose you?” Rikus demanded again, this time in a menacing voice.

  “Because you’re a mul,” the noble answered, anger and pity clashing on the patrician features of his face. “You can’t give her children.”

  “Sadira’s life is full without children. She has Tyr to think of,” Rikus said, looking toward the half-elf. “Isn’t that right?”

  Sadira did not answer. Instead, she tapped the inside of her kank’s antennae. As the beast rose to its feet, Rikus and Agis moved to her flanks.

  “What are doing?” demanded Rikus.

  “I’m not chattel, to be taken by the winner of some childish contest,” Sadira said.

  “Of course not,” said Agis. “We didn’t mean to imply that you were. But the time is coming when we must settle our lives. It was well enough to put off painful decisions when we didn’t know if we would live to see tomorrow, but—”

  “That has not changed,” Sadira interrupted angrily. “Or have you forgotten the Dragon?”

  “The Dragon is something we’ll always have to live with,” said Rikus. “After wandering Athas for thousands of years, he’s not going to disappear just because Tyr has been liberated.”

  “Not if we refuse to challenge him,” said Sadira. “I’m going to the Pristine Tower to learn how that can best be done.”

  Rikus and Agis gave each other resigned looks.

  “I’ll go with her,” Rikus said. “She’ll need a strong arm.”

  “My arm is strong enough,” countered Agis, glaring at the mul. “And my skill with the Way will prove more useful than your fighting talents.”

  “I’m going alone,” ’ Sadira declared, trying hard to speak in reasonable tone. Though she was upset at being argued over like contested property, the sorceress also realized that their best chance of helping Tyr lay in splitting up.

  “It’s too dangerous!” Rikus objected.

  “If you’re determined to do this thing, one of us should go with you—”

  “No,” Sadira said, shaking her head. “In our own ways, we’re all right.” She looked from Rikus to Agis. “As Rikus says, Tyr should prepare for the worst—and only he is popular enough to ask the citizens for the sacrifices that may be necessary. At the same time, Agis, someone should take an inventory of what Tyr can do to defend itself. Only you are smart enough to make people say honestly what they can or can’t do.”

  “And you?” asked Rikus.

  “I’m the only expendable one,” Sadira said. “And our situation is desperate. We can’t afford to ignore the possibility that the Pristine Tower holds some secret that may be of use to us.”

  With that, Sadira passed her hand over the kank’s antennae, urging the beast toward the approaching caravan. “I’ll return as soon as I can,” she called over her shoulder. “Let us hope my journey won’t be in vain.”

  Clutching the handle of her steel dagger, Rhayn slipped around the corner and stopped to examine the path ahead. She had entered a crooked alleyway that ran between two rows of mud-brick tenements, weather-worn and on the brink of collapse. In any other city, the lane would have been packed with starving paupers and thirsty beggars, hiding from the scorching sun in the shadows of the tall buildings. In Tyr, however, no person need suffer such indignities unless he is too lazy to work, for there is plenty of food and water on the relief farms outside the city. Still, a handful of derelicts, most lingering at various points along the path from drunkenness to death, lay in the stifling closeness of the lane.

  Rhayn started down the alley, which stank of stale wine, unwashed bodies, urine, and a dozen things even more vile. She kept her new dagger in plain sight, lest any of the derelicts be foolish enough to accost her. It was not common for an elf, even a woman, to be frightened in the worst quarters of a city. But it was one of the contradictions of Tyr that, as the fortunes of the poor improved, those who remained behind grew more desperate. Already, returning from lucrative forays into Shadow Square, two members of Rhayn’s tribe had been set upon by cutthroats. They had escaped with their lives only by dropping their booty and fleeing as fast as their long legs would carry them.

  As Rhayn passed a bloated half-giant wearing a tunic emblazoned with the star of the last king, a man’s voice cried out behind her; “That’s the trollop!”

  Rhayn looked back and cursed. Standing at the end of the lane was a thick-waisted wine vendor with a bandaged head and an empty dagger scabbard on his belt. Next to him were a pair of black-robed templars, each carrying one of the obsidian-bladed partizans that served as the emblem of the New King’s Guard.

  “You have no d
oubt that she’s the one?” asked one of templars, a powerful-looking man with a tail of red hair.

  Rhayn had no need to hear the wine merchant’s answer to know he would be sure. Even across the distance separating them, he would have no trouble identifying her as the woman with whom he had just shared two flasks of good port. Although short for an elf, she stood a head and half taller than most men of full human blood, with close-cropped hair and keenly pointed ears. Her build was typical of her race, lean and willowy, save that her figure was rounder and more inviting than that of most elven women. Beneath her arched brows, she had almond-shaped eyes as brilliant and deeply colored as sapphires, a regal nose, and a pouting mouth with thick, savory lips. The same striking beauty that had originally attracted the vendor to her would leave no doubt in his mind about her identity now.

  Employing the favorite defense of her people, she turned and ran.

  “You there, stop!” cried the second templar, a blonde-haired half-elf.

  Rhayn paid him no attention, confident that her long legs would carry her safely away from the guardsmen. Normally, she wouldn’t have dared flee, for most templars could have called upon their king’s sorcery to stop her. It was common knowledge, however, that King Tithian of Tyr was a weak ruler with no magic to bestow upon his servants. That was one of the reasons her tribe had come to the city.

  Rhayn reached the end of the alley before the merchant and his escorts had taken more than a dozen steps. She turned down a bustling avenue lined by two and three-story buildings. The first story of each building contained a small shop with a broad door and a pass-through counter opening onto the street. Out of each shop peered a sly elven merchant, peddling goods his tribe had no doubt stolen earlier from an honest caravan in the desert wastes.

  “Stand aside or die!” Rhayn yelled, brandishing her new dagger at the mob of pedestrians.

  As she pushed her way into the throng, a chorus of startled cries and angry shouts rang out as men and women of all races hurriedly stepped aside. Despite her threat, Rhayn stopped short of stabbing those who didn’t move quickly enough. While she doubted that the templars would conduct a thorough search of the quarter over the relatively minor matter of a stolen dagger, the elf suspected they would view a string of knife attacks in quite another light.

  Instead of using the dagger to clear the pedestrians out of her way, Rhayn sent them sprawling with a hardy shove or well-placed kick. Soon, a long trail of cursing people lay in the street behind her. When the elf peered over her shoulder, there was still no sign of the templars or the wine merchant.

  The avenue turned sharply to the left, obscuring the alley from which she had just run. Confident that her pursuers could not follow her through the swarming crowd in the street, Rhayn slowed to a walk. She pulled the tail of her low-cut tunic from its snakeskin belt, then slipped her dagger beneath the strap and dropped her smock over it. The metal blade felt hot and dangerous against her taut stomach, stirring a tingle of excitement deep within her body. The dagger was the first steel weapon she had ever owned, and the feel of its smooth surface against her bare skin gave her a heady sense of power that sent an exultant smile creeping across her sultry lips.

  Rhayn came to a small shop where a black-haired elf was leaning over the counter, talking to a pair of human boys. In his hand, the elf held a half-dozen pebbles, each glowing in a different color of the rainbow.

  “The scarlet one is for love,” he was saying. “If you leave it under your tongue for three full days—”

  “You’ll choke on it when you fall asleep,” said the oldest human, a square-jawed youth with doubtful eyes.

  “Not so,” countered the elf, whom Rhayn recognized as Huyar, a long-brother of hers. “You’ll never swallow one of these magical stones. But if you do as I say, you will steal the heart of any woman you desire.”

  As Rhayn stepped into the shop, Huyar’s pale brown eyes darted in her direction, lingering over her curves with a salacious glint. Once the two boys followed his gaze, the elf continued his pitch. “As a matter of fact, I used the scarlet rock to win the heart of this beauty here,” he said, reaching out to embrace Rhayn. “Isn’t that true?”

  Rhayn allowed Huyar’s arms to encircle her, looking into his eyes dreamily. “It is, my dear.”

  Rhayn was lying, of course. Whatever Huyar was to her, he was not her lover. They shared the same father, but that meant little to either one of them—save that tribal tradition forbade them from bearing children together. Among the Sun Runners, as among most elves, only children of the same mother considered themselves to be true siblings. Those who had only a father in common looked upon each other as rivals, competing vigorously for affection and inheritance. Between Rhayn and Huyar, the strife was more fervent than normal, for their father happened to be the chief, Faenaeyon.

  Nevertheless, they were members of the same tribe and, as such, would always stand together against any outsider. If, in this instance, that meant letting Huyar grope her in order to sell some worthless stones to a pair of young culls, she would do it.

  As Huyar pulled Rhayn close, the tip of her new dagger pricked her in the lower abdomen. She did not cry out, but Huyar looked down with a raised brow. “What’s that I feel?” he whispered.

  “Nothing to concern you,” Rhayn answered, pretending to kiss his ear.

  “But perhaps it would be of interest to our father?”

  Rhayn had to resist the impulse to bite off the lobe of her long-brother’s ear. She had hoped to sneak the dagger into her bed-satchel without anyone noticing. If Faenaeyon learned that she had returned with a prize, he would demand it as a gift. Despite what it might mean to her inheritance, Rhayn had no intention of giving it to him.

  “I must get out of sight,” Rhayn whispered, disengaging herself from Huyar’s arms.

  She gave the two boys a lingering smile, then stepped away from the counter. Immediately, the younger one asked, “What do you want for the stones?”

  Huyar, never very artful, was quick to move in for the kill. “How many coins are there in your purse?”

  At the back of the shop, Rhayn slipped through the curtain of snake scales that separated the bartering floor from the storage area. Her father sat in his usual place, upon an undersized leather chair with his feet propped on a keg of fermented kank nectar. Even for an elf, Faenaeyon was a big man, with heavily muscled limbs and a huge barrel of a chest. He wore his silver hair drawn back in an unruly tail that left his sharp-tipped, dirt-crusted ears exposed to full view.

  At one time, he had probably been strikingly handsome, for his long, thin features were well-defined and of even proportion. Now, he appeared every bit as cruel and dangerous as he was. He kept his slender jaw tightly clenched at all times, and his narrow lips were forever twisted into a mistrustful sneer. His nostrils flared constantly, as if testing the air for the scent of enemies, and the flesh of his cheeks was pallid and dead-looking. Even his inert gray eyes, framed above by daggerlike brows and below by black circles of exhaustion, burned with a demented light that never failed to give Rhayn an uneasy feeling.

  “How did you fare?” Faenaeyon asked, not bothering to focus his vacant gaze on his daughter.

  Rhayn went to her father’s side and kissed his cheek. He smelled of stale belches and sour broy. “Not as well as I would have liked,” she answered, slipping a silver coin into his hand. “But here.”

  For the first time since Rhayn had entered the dark room, her father’s eyes moved, focusing on the glittering coin. He tossed it into the air to test its weight, then complained, “A daughter of mine should be able to do better than this.”

  “Next time, Tada,” she answered, using the elven term for any male whose blood ran in one’s veins.

  The dagger blade beneath Rhayn’s smock seemed to grow warmer, and she felt a trickle of blood running down her abdomen. Huyar’s embrace had cut her with the tip of the weapon.

  Faenaeyon studied his daughter for a moment, then grunted and slipp
ed the coin into the one of the purses hanging from his belt. Rhayn breathed a silent sigh of relief and moved toward the bone ladder at the back of the room. In a moment, she would be safely away from her father, in the large common room where the tribe was camped.

  As Rhayn stepped onto the first rung, Huyar cried out from the other side of the curtain. “What do you want here, templars?”

  Instantly, Faenaeyon was on his feet, in one hand clenching a bone sword and in the other an obsidian dagger.

  “In the name of Tithian the First, stand aside,” ordered a man.

  “Wait here,” countered Huyar. “You can discuss your business with our chief.”

  “I said stand aside!” repeated the templar.

  There was the sound of a scuffle, and Faenaeyon stepped toward the bartering floor. Rhayn motioned for her father to stay where he was, then dropped off the ladder.

  “What is it?” demanded the chief.

  “They want me,” Rhayn said.

  He shoved her toward the bartering floor. “Don’t let them come back here!” he said, motioning at the mounds of stolen goods filling the storeroom. “If they see this, it’ll cost a fortune to bribe them off!”

  “Don’t worry,” Rhayn said.

  Her voice was tinged with shock and anger, but not at her father. After fleeing the alley, she had left the fat merchant and the templars so far behind that they could not have seen her enter the shop with their own eyes. Instead, one of the pedestrians outside had to have told them where she had gone. In any other city, such a thing would never have happened. The throngs would have feigned ignorance, as determined not to help a templar as they were anxious to keep their presence in the Elven Market secret. But, as Rhayn was still learning, Tyr was not like any other city. King Tithian was a popular ruler, and unfortunately the people here were eager to aid his officials.

  As Rhayn stepped from behind the curtain, the templars shoved Huyar with the shafts of their partizans and sent him reeling toward the storeroom.

  “Is there a problem?” Rhayn asked, catching her long-brother. As she steadied him, she saw that a small crowd had gathered in the street outside. The men and women were watching the confrontation with amusement, occasionally voicing encouragement to the wine merchant and his escorts.