by Troy Denning
"What do you make of it?" asked Grissi, speaking from a short distance ahead. "An ancient dwarf?"
"No. From what I've heard, ancient dwarves were rugged and hairy," Sadira said. She cupped her hands around her face and pressed them against the transparent covering, trying to get a clearer view of the little man. "He looks more like a halfling!"
"Way out here in the desert?" Grissi scoffed. "Never. Halflings are mountain-dwelling savages."
The little man's eyelids fluttered open and a pair of dark pupils turned toward Sadira's face. She jerked away from the crypt, a shudder of fear running down her spine. "It moved!" she gasped, starting down the passageway. "Let's get out of here."
They crawled past a dozen more crypts, then followed the rest of the party into an intersecting runnel. This passageway was high enough for Sadira to stand upright, but the elves could only rise if they kept their upper bodies hunched over like baazrags.
Huyar pointed down the corridor, to a sliver of rosy light spilling into the tunnel from a hole in the roof. "That's where the tracks lead," he whispered.
"What's your plan?" Sadira asked.
"If it's the Nibenese, they probably came for you," said Huyar. "If so, I'll give you to them."
"No!" hissed Grissi. "Faenaeyon named her one of the tribe. When she was the first to descend the rope in pursuit of our children, she proved it's an honor she deserves."
"Grissi's right," agreed Katza. "If you would betray her, you'd betray one of us."
Huyar bit his lips. "You couldn't think I really meant to give her over, could you?" he asked. "What I intend to do is use her as bait."
The elf outlined a simple plan that stood a good chance of success, except for a single detail that he could not have realized. Sadira pointed at the porous white stone from which the cavern had been shaped. "This rock blocks the flow of magic," she said. "I can't prepare spells until I'm outside."
"Then it will be up to us to make sure you have time enough," Huyar said, motioning at himself and the other warriors.
With that, he nocked an arrow in his bow and, moving with a sort of squatting waddle, went down the corridor. At the opening, he paused long enough to let his eyes adjust to the dusky light, then peered outside. Apparently he found no one guarding the exit, for he motioned to the others to follow him and climbed through the hole. Only Sadira stayed behind, crouching beneath the opening and holding her spell ingredient in her hand. For a long time, she heard nothing from outside. She began to fear they had guessed wrong about who had taken the children and why.
Finally, a Nibenese woman, almost certainly a templar, called out, "Have you come for your children, elf?"
"Yes," answered Huyar. "Why did you take them from us?"
"We couldn't hope to beat your tribe to this oasis with a full company of half-giants," the woman replied, "so taking hostages seemed the surest way to get what we want."
"Which is?"
"You know the answer as well as I do," the templar replied.
"Surely, you can't want our chief badly enough to follow us into the desert," said Huyar, playing dumb. "After all, when you captured him the first time, you only sold him to the Shorn slavers."
"It's not your chief we want, and you know it!" snapped the woman. "We value him no more than you do."
"What do you mean by that?" Huyar inquired, his voice less wary than a moment earlier. "Our chief is our father."
"Oh? Does your tribe make a habit of poisoning its fathers?" asked the templar. "Or was your chief's condition when we captured him an exception?"
Sadira's stomach knotted with the dread of what might happen next. For a long time, Huyar remained silent. She began to fear he would grow so angry that he would forget about the children and return to attack her.
At last, the elf replied, "Faenaeyon may have drunk some bad wine. I assume you want the woman who served it to him?"
Although this was not the way the elf had said the conversation would go, the sorceress did not turn to leave. Even Huyar was cunning enough not to trust the templars to honor any bargain they made. No matter what Sadira had done, his best chance of recovering the children still lay in executing the plan upon which they had agreed.
The templar must have signaled her reply with a gesture, for the sorceress did not hear it. Instead, Huyar said, "Then bring the children out where we can see them. Once we know they're safe, we'll go get Sadira and meet you halfway down the bill."
"Then lay aside your bows," said the templar.
"So you can kill us?" Huyar scoffed. "As long as our children are safe, you have nothing to fear. We would not risk their lives by attacking."
"Very well, but we won't hesitate to kill them if you break your word."
There was a moment of silence, then Katza's voice demanded, "Cyne, how could you let yourself be surprised by a bunch of city-dwellers?"
The demand was Sadira's signal. She placed her spell ingredient, a small block of granite, between her teeth and scrambled through the opening. Even before the sorceress had climbed completely out of the hole, she began summoning the energy for a spell.
The exit opened into a small glade surrounded by a thicket of chiffon trees. Though dusk had completely fallen, both Ral and Guthay already hung high in the sky. The area was lit with a burnished amber radiance more than bright enough by which to see.
At the edge of the small meadow were the six templars who had brought the hostages forward. Each woman held a child in front of her body, with a dagger pressed to the young elf's throat. Though the children were clearly frightened, they did not seem too panicked to follow their elders' instructions. In fact, none of them were even crying.
"Now!" Sadira hissed, still clenching the granite block between her lips.
Without the slightest hesitation, the elves lifted their bows and fired over the heads of their children. As the astonished templars cried out, Katza yelled, "Run, children! Over here!"
By the time Sadira had pushed herself free of the hole five templars lay dead with arrows in their skulls. The elves had missed only the woman holding Cyne. As the other children bolted to freedom, the templar drew her blade across the boy's throat. He did not die without a fight, managing to smash an elbow into her ribs as his lifeblood gushed out of the wound.
Screaming in rage, Katza rushed the woman with her dagger. Before she had taken three steps, six bowstrings hummed and a flight of arrows shot past. This time, they did not miss their target.
Sadira took the granite block from her mouth and threw it over the children's heads, uttering her incantation. In the same instant, a hidden Nibenese sorcerer cast a spell, and a spray of rainbow-colored lights shot from the thicket. The sorceress and her companions were momentarily blinded.
Sadira heard a series of loud crackles as her own spell took effect. Though she could not see it, she knew that a high wall of granite was sprouting from the ground where her stone had landed. The barrier had been intended to serve as a temporary shield while the elves took their children and fled into the runnel below, but she suspected the enemy's spell would interfere with their plans. Hearing the patter of small feet coming toward her, Sadira yelled, "Into the tunnel and back to the well chamber. Tie yourselves to the rope and tell Magnus to pull you up."
A moment of silence followed, and Sadira feared that the children would not obey. Then Huyar snapped, "Do as she says!"
As the children clambered into the hole, Sadira summoned the energy for another spell. It seemed to take forever for her vision to clear, but at last she could make out the silhouettes of the Sun Runners around her.
Only Huyar and Grissi seemed to be recovering from the spell. The others were staring into the air with blank expressions on their faces, mumbling in awe and making no effort to shake the effects of the spray of color.
Huyar grabbed the nearest warrior and began slapping him. "Wake up!" His efforts had no apparent effect on the elf.
Sadira heard the hiss of arrows flying through the air, then a h
alf-dozen dazed elves dropped to the ground without so much as a gasp. The sorceress looked toward the wall she had created. Three Nibenese soldiers, their tabards bearing the insignia of the royal cilops, were rushing around each end of the granite barrier.
The sorceress reached for another spell component, then heard the clatter of clawed feet scrambling across a patch of rocky ground. The Nibenese unleashed another flight of arrows, and this time Grissi was among those who fell. Huyar gave up trying to wake his dazed companions and reached for his sword.
"It'll do no good!" Sadira said. "Dhojakt's coming."
"Then I hope he tears your eyes out," the elf said, jumping into the hole.
Although Huyar did not know it, it occurred to Sadira that he had done exactly the right thing. She lowered herself into the opening until only her head and shoulders were protruding from it. While keeping a watchful eye on the Nibenese, she continued to draw the energy for a spell, but did not reach for any components.
A moment later, Dhojakt came around the corner of her rock wall. In the moonlight, she could see him clearly enough to tell that his nose was swollen and purple, with a single huge lesion where there had once been two flaring nostrils.
Dhojakt's black eyes went immediately to where Sadira was hiding. The sorceress saw a hateful light flicker in the pupils, then he said, "I thought this would be the easiest way to lure you away from your protectors."
The prince pointed a finger in her direction, and Sadira allowed herself to drop into the tunnel below. Her body still tingling with the magical energy she had summoned, she turned and sprinted after the sound of Huyar's fleeing feet. A loud sputter echoed behind her, and she glanced back to see black dust billowing through the hole. Thankfully, the cloud settled to the floor and did not spread down the passageway. Within moments, flaxen rays of moonlight were once again streaming through the opening.
Sadira looked away from the hole and waited until her elven vision began to function, then ducked into the cramped aisle where she had seen the halfling. There, she stopped and listened. Huyar's footfalls had grown silent, and the only sound was the waterfall whispering in the abyss at the far end of the corridor.
A moment later, she heard the Nibenese archers enter the grotto, with the rattle of Dhojakt's many legs close behind. Intentionally dragging a foot along the floor so they would hear her moving, Sadira crawled through the passageway—being careful not to look into any of the strange crypts, lest she witness another moving halfling.
Upon reaching the end, she ducked around the corner to wait. In one hand, she held her dagger. With the other, she withdrew a small piece of hardened tree sap from her satchel. The milky nugget had been shaped to look like a lump of crystallized acid.
Soon, she heard the Nibenese soldiers crawling through the passage. As she had hoped, they were groping their way blindly. There had been no time to light torches, and, since he could not draw energy through the grotto's white stone, Dhojakt had been unable to use his magic to help them see. At the end of the line, his claws ticking impatiently as he forced his men forward, came the prince.
Sadira watched as the first three men crawled from the small tunnel, their nervous faces glowing bright red. She held perfectly still until they realized they had left the cramped corridor behind and began to rise. At that moment, she attacked, slashing her dagger across the first man's face and kicking him off the ledge in the same swift motion.
Sadira barely had to attack the second guard. He lashed out blindly with an obsidian short sword, the momentum of his swing carrying his blade toward the abyss. She stepped behind the swipe and used her shoulder to nudge him over the edge. He had not yet started to scream when she drove her dirk under the third guard's chin. The man died with an astonished gurgle, then, as she stepped away, collapsed onto the ledge.
"What's happening there?" demanded Dhojakt's angry voice. "Go!"
The fourth guard obeyed, scrambling forward over his dead comrade's body. Her body tingling with the thrill of combat and the magical energy she had summoned earlier, Sadira stepped forward again. This time the sorceress drove her blade into the hollow at the base of the man's skull.
The fifth guard froze at the exit and would not move.
"I said go!" Dhojakt screamed.
The fifth and sixth soldiers were catapulted into the abyss as the angry prince rushed forward. Dhojakt poked his head out of the passageway and looked toward Sadira.
"You've caused me enough trouble!" he spat. His bony mouthparts were fully extended, dripping venom and clacking in fury.
Sadira backed away, keeping her dagger in front of her and the hardened tree sap hidden in her other hand. Dhojakt did not even try to summon the energy for a spell, no doubt having already discovered it would not work. Instead, he seemed only too happy to leave the safety of the tunnel and follow the sorceress onto the precarious ledge.
As the prince crawled over the bodies of his two dead guards, Sadira stopped. To her right opened a dark passage. Though it offered the sorceress some small reassurance as a possible escape route, she suspected that if she needed to flee, she would not survive long enough to use it.
Dhojakt wasted no time attacking. Once he was past the dead men, he rushed forward—but not along the ledge where Sadira had expected him to approach. Instead, his centipede's body slipped up the wall, and he approached while hanging from the side of the cavern. When he reached the doorway at the sorceress's side, he stopped and reached down to grasp her.
"You should have let me kill you in Nibenay," he said. "It would have saved us both a lot of trouble and pain."
"You, perhaps, but not me," Sadira said. She thrust the tree sap toward the prince's face.
As he saw the crystal-shaped lump coming at him, Dhojakt turned away to protect his vulnerable nose. "That won't work this time, stupid girl!" he said.
Sadira spoke her incantation, but the stream that shot from her hand was not one of poisonous acid. Instead, it was a thick, gummy resin that quickly covered the prince's head and torso in a single globule. Realizing he had been tricked, Dhojakt laboriously twisted his head around to face the sorceress. As he tried to reach out for her, Sadira backed away and spoke a single command word.
The resin hardened into a milky bead, as solid as stone and just as inflexible. Beneath the amorphous globule, Sadira could barely make out the shape of the prince's outstretched arms and the mandibles protruding from his mouth. The spell had not been large enough to cover his many legs, however. He resembled a giant centipede that had suffered the misfortune of being half-encased in a giant bead of frankincense. Sadira sheathed her dagger, then grabbed the heavy globule and pulled. Dhojakt tried to cling to the porous wall with his clawed feet, but the weight of the milky bubble encasing his body was too much for him. With the sorceress's help, the heavy globule slowly peeled away from the stone, until at last Sadira managed to push it off the ledge.
Then, all at once, the prince's claws tore free. Dhojakt slipped over the edge and, his legs slashing at the sorceress in a desperate effort to drag her along, he disappeared into the darkness. Sadira slumped down on the ledge and listened to the prince's feet scrape along the wall of the chasm.
There was no splash or final clatter. The rasp of the prince's claws simply faded away long before it should have, with no suggestion that he had hit the canyon bottom.
The sorceress peered over the edge. She half-expected to see Dhojakt scrambling back up the cliff, but she found nothing except darkness below.
"Well done," said Huyar's voice, "Especially the dagger work against the guards."
A startled cry escaped Sadira's lips and she almost slipped over the ledge, but Huyar grasped her shoulder with a firm hand. As he pulled her to her feet, he slipped her dagger from its sheath, then pressed the blade against the small of her back.
"Let's see what you have in your satchel, shall we?"
He used his free hand to remove the bag from her shoulder, then opened it and dumped the contents on the g
round. Being careful never to let the dirk leave the sorceress's back, he reached down and picked up the intricately carved vial that Magnus and Rhayn had procured in the Bard's Quarter of Nibenay.
"What's this?" the elf asked. Holding the flask next to Sadira's face, he ran his fingers over the notes carved into its side. "The poison you used on our chief?"
"No," Sadira answered. For the moment, the truth seemed her best option—she certainly could not hope to outrun or outfight the elf. "It's the antidote."
SIXTEEN
The Wild Lands
"My own daughter!" roared Faenaeyon. "How could you?"
Sadira stood atop Cleft Rock, staring across an olive-tinged haze into the crimson disk of the rising sun. Her hands were bound behind her back, with her father pacing in front of her and Huyar standing at her side with a drawn sword. All of the other Sun Runners were gathered around the monolith, watching the proceedings in grim silence.
"I must reach the Pristine Tower," Sadira said, calmly answering her father's question.
"The tower, of course!" spat the chief. "Where the New Races are spawned—who's to say you wouldn't find the power to defy the Dragon there?" He shook his head in contempt, then waved a hand at Magnus. "Even if you were that lucky, could you bear to live with what you'll become?"
"That isn't your worry," Sadira replied. "What is your concern—or rather, should have been—is that I rescued you from the slave pens in return for a promise to guide me to the Pristine Tower."
"And when Faenaeyon wouldn't honor it, you struck a bargain with Rhayn to make her chief," concluded Huyar.
When Sadira did not answer, Faenaeyon stopped in front of her. "Is that how it happened?"
"I have no reason to tell you anything," Sadira said, looking away.
Faenaeyon grabbed her jaw and turned her head back toward him. "Tell me truly, and you shall live to see the Pristine Tower," he said. "Rhayn helped you, did she not?"