by Troy Denning
"That's impossible," interrupted Khidar. "No weapon can injure one of us!"
"Rikus's sword was special," Sadira said. "It was the Scourge of Rkard, the blade that—"
"Borys of Ebe used to kill Rkard, the last of the Kemalok Kings," finished the shadow. "The sword is one of only a few that can do what you claim—but it's been lost for centuries. Where did this Rikus find it?"
"It was given to him by a group of dwarves," Sadira answered, encouraged by Khidar's familiarity with the weapon. She purposely left the rest of the details vague, so as to honor her promise to Neeva and Caelum about not revealing the treasures of Kled. "Rikus was also wounded during the fight, and fell unconscious before he saw what became of his enemy. When he awoke, Umbra was gone—though the floor where he had fallen remained as dark and cold as night."
"Then Umbra truly did perish," said Khidar. From the relief in his voice, the sorceress guessed that he enjoyed his duties as the new leader of the shadow people. "But why haven't I been contacted to go to Urik in his place? For centuries, our people have traded our sachem's service for Family Lubar's obsidian."
"After Urik lost the war, King Hamanu destroyed the entire family as punishment for Maetan of Lubar's failure to bring him victory," Sadira replied. "If any Lubars survive, it's as quarry slaves, not masters."
"That explains much," said Khidar. "It appears we'll have to find another source for our obsidian."
"Perhaps we could come to an arrangement," said Rhayn, stepping forward.
Khidar turned his blue embers toward her face. "I was not aware that elves mined obsidian."
"Don't be vulgar," she said, offended by the mere suggestion of such a thing. "But as soon as I become chief of the Sun Runners, we'll be able to steal all you want."
"I doubt that will happen," Khidar said.
"Don't underestimate the skills of the Sun Runners."
"I don't—though I doubt any tribe of thieves could supply us with a hundred unblemished balls of obsidian each year," the shadow replied. "What I mean to say is that you'll never become their chief?'
"What?" Rhayn demanded.
"I promised to give you power in proportion to what you told us," Khidar said. "You said nothing. This one did all the talking." He pointed toward Sadira. "Therefore, we'll give her what she has asked for—but not you."
"Don't try to cheat me!" Rhayn warned. She thrust her hand out over the pond. "I swear, you'll regret it."
Khidar laughed. "Your spells won't harm us."
"Maybe not, but I can ruin this garden," she spat.
To give credence to her threat, she began to draw life-force from the pond. An eddy began to swirl beneath her hand, and a column of steam formed where the energy was rising. Because the rest of the Pristine Tower was made from the same porous stone as Cleft Rock, Sadira knew that the power her sister was drawing could only come from the plants in the pool. At the rate she was going, it would take only a few seconds before the elf defiled the whole thing.
"Rhayn, no!" Sadira said, moving toward her sister.
"Do you really think they'll give you what you want?" Rhayn growled. "They're playing us against each other— and you're letting them!"
"Even if that's true, what you're doing is wrong," Sadira said. Beneath Rhayn's hand, the plants began to turn brown, and the foul stench of decay rose from the frothing water.
"Stop!" yelled Khidar.
"Why should I?" demanded the elf. "We're going to die anyway."
"It doesn't matter," Sadira said, her eyes fixed on the brown stain spreading across the pool. "This is the last time I'll ask you to stop."
"Ask all you—"
Rhayn did not have a chance to finish. Sadira dropped to a knee and spun around, using the lower pan of her leg to sweep her sister's feet. With an astonished scream, the elf lost her balance and fell into the pool of brown water.
A half-dozen shadows slipped into the pond without creating so much as a ripple. They glided over to Rhayn's struggling form and clamped their hands onto her arms. As they dragged her into the pool's depths, a black shroud slowly spread over the elf's body. She turned toward Sadira and opened her mouth to scream. That was the last the sorceress saw of her sister.
For a moment, Sadira could only stare into the water, morose and somber. She did not feel guilty, however, for Rhayn had been defiling the garden. As Sadira had learned in Nibenay, not even the shadows' betrayal could justify ruining fertile soil. In exacting her petty vengeance on the shadow people today, the elf had been willing to condemn an untold number of future generations to an existence of pain and misery.
As Sadira pondered her sister's fate, an icy hand touched her shoulder. "Come, we must hurry," said Khidar's voice.
"Why? So you can betray me, too?" demanded Sadira.
"We did not betray the elf," answered Khidar. "We merely honored the word of our promise—"
"Instead of the spirit," Sadira said. She rose and looked up into the blue cinders that served as the shadow's eyes. "Would it have been so difficult to give her what she asked?"
"No, but then we couldn't have given you what you want," Khidar answered. "Would you have preferred that?"
"At least I would have reason to trust you" Sadira answered, dodging an answer to this difficult question.
"Whether you trust us or not does not matter," the shadow said. "Now come. We must hurry, or you will change into a mindless beast and run off before we can aid you."
He pointed at the stones where sorceress's knee had dropped when she swept Rhayn off her feet. There was a faint smear of blood on the limestone. Sadira looked down and saw that she had scraped her kneecap. Already, a yellow carapace was forming around the edges of the abrasion.
As Khidar guided her toward the tower at the center of the pond, Sadira asked, "Why are you helping me—if that's really what you're doing? It would have been an easy matter to find a pretense and betray me, as you did Rhayn."
"I told you, we are honoring our agreements to the word," the shadow insisted, though his tone suggested that he was not telling her the whole truth.
Sadira stopped. "There's more to it than that." She clenched her teeth as a painful muscle spasm ran up her leg. "You have some reason for wanting me to defy the Dragon."
"What do you care?" Khidar asked. "We're willing to help you. That's all that matters."
"If I'm to stand a chance of defying the Dragon, I must learn everything I can about him and this place," Sadira answered. "Otherwise, you might as well let me die here."
"I suppose it will do no harm to tell you, and perhaps it may even help," Khidar said, starting toward the tower. "You were powerful and resourceful enough to reach the tower on your own—and that is a good portent for the struggle you've taken upon yourself?'
"This is all very interesting, but it still doesn't answered my question," Sadira answered, not allowing the shadow to sidetrack her with flattery.
Khidar sighed. "How much do you already know of the Pristine Tower?"
"Enough to guess that you're taking me into the Steeple of Crystals," the sorceress began. She quickly repeated what Er'Stali had told her: that the Champions had rebelled against Rajaat, and that they had forced him to make Borys into the Dragon. Sadira and Khidar reached the Steeple of Crystals just as she came to the story of how Jo'orsh and Sa'ram had tracked Borys to the Pristine Tower.
As soon as she mentioned the dwarves' names, Khidar burst out, "May the ghosts of the little thieves never find rest!"
Sadira frowned. "What did they steal?"
"You shall sec soon enough," the shadow said, holding out his hand. "You must take my arm for a moment."
The sorceress grasped his frigid hand. She had to stifle a pained cry as his touch began to draw the heat from her body, leaving her shivering with a cold agony such as she had never before experienced. Khidar stepped forward, melting into the onyx wall. He pulled Sadira after him, and a shudder of nausea ran through her body as she also passed through the barrier. A moment
later, the shadow released her hand.
"Welcome to the Steeple of Crystals," he said. "It was here that Rajaat imbued his champions with the power to carry out his will, and here that the traitors forced him to make Borys into the Dragon."
At first, the sorceress could see nothing but a fierce crimson glow whirling around her like a windblown fog. When she grew accustomed to the strange light, Sadira saw that the tower housed only a single gloomy room. A dome-shaped mirror served as the floor, while sheer white walls soared high overhead to support the crystal cupola that she had seen from the walkway outside.
A shaft of pink light descended from the cupola to the center of the mirror, where a dozen obsidian spheres of various sizes had been gathered. At first, it seemed to Sadira that the balls should have rolled away, but then she noticed that they were held in place by tiny wedges of marble. Inside each globe, a wisp of blue light slowly whirled about, as if some living thing were swimming through the black glass.
"What are those?" Sadira asked. Her leg began to itch madly. When she reached down to scratch, she discovered that an articulated yellow shell had entirely encased it.
"Eggs," Khidar replied, motioning the sorceress toward the murky orbs.
As she stepped away from the wall, limping slightly, Sadira saw that there were dozens of shadow people standing along the edge of the floor-mirror. Each time they exhaled, streams of dark vapor rose from their blue mouths and drifted toward the ceiling, joining the murk that already filled the room. The sorceress did not know whether the shadows had been there all along or had only recently come into the chamber, for with their mouths and eyes closed, they would have been indistinguishable from the gloomy walls.
"We must incubate our young in isolation, transferring them from smaller balls to larger as they grow," Khidar explained, waving his shadowy hand at the obsidian globes. "Before Jo'orsh and Sa'ram came, this was not necessary. We grew them all together, inside the dark lens."
"The dark lens?" Sadira asked.
"Rajaat used the dark lens to perform his magic," he said. "Without it, we cannot make you as powerful as you would like. But if you can steal the Scourge of Rkard from this Rikus, you will have two of the three things you need to kill the Dragon."
"Could you explain this a little more clearly?" Sadira asked. "Why do I need the Scourge of Rkard?"
"Because it was forged by Rajaat," Khidar answered. "Not only is it one of the few blades that will injure the Dragon, it will protect you from his blows. No champion—even traitors—can strike someone bearing a weapon forged by Rajaat."
"I can get the sword," Sadira answered confidently. "Now, what is it that you're doing for me?"
"You will understand better after we have finished," Khidar said. "But basically, we'll open a new source of magical energy to you—one that has not been used since the days of Rajaat."
"And the third thing?" Sadira asked.
Khidar pointed halfway up the tower. "The dark lens," he said. "You'll never kill the Dragon without it."
Sadira followed the shadow's finger and saw that there was an enormous steel ring attached to the walls. In it were set seven different gems, each as large as a half-giant's head. Six bars protruded from the inner wall of this ring, supporting another steel collar centered directly above the middle of the floor. From the size of this empty band, Sadira guessed the crystal it had held to be the size of a kank. Now the setting was empty, save for the crimson shaft of light descending through it to bathe the eggs below.
"Where do I find this dark lens?" she asked, wondering how she would move it once she had located it.
That's something you'll have to discover for yourself. We have no idea where Jo'orsh and Sa'ram went after they left the tower," he said. "Now, you'll have to endure my touch one more time." Khidar reached for the sorceress's hand. "I must take you up there where we can focus the magic of the sun on you."
"Not yet," Sadira said, pulling away. Although she was frightened by the change occurring in her leg the sorceress was determined to learn everything she could about the Pristine Tower and the Dragon. Besides, she assumed Khidar would be able to return her leg to normal at least if the shadow people had been telling the truth when they offered to heal Magnus. "What do you get by helping me?"
A black cloud left Khidar's mouth. "Our reward is simple," he said. "Our race was born of the magic which made Borys into the Dragon. We're the descendants of the loyal servants of Rajaat—of the men and women whom the champions sacrificed in order to complete the betrayal of their master. When Borys dies, our race will be released from its fate."
"Thank you," Sadira said, nodding to the shadow. "Now I'm ready."
Khidar took Sadira in his arms. A terrible chill ran through her body, stinging her skin and freezing her flesh to the bone. A black stain spread outward from where the dark arms enclosed her, bringing with it an icy, deathlike numbness. The sorceress felt her knees buckle, then she collapsed into the shadow's grasp.
Khidar rose into the air, carrying Sadira's shivering body with him. Below them, the rest of the shadow people moved toward the center of the room, flitting about in a wild, rhythmic dance. Scintillating flashes of light began to shoot off the mirror, passing through the gems set into the steel ring that had once supported the dark lens.
Khidar took Sadira almost to the crystal cupola before he stopped. The sorceress saw that her body now resembled his: a black silhouette, with no hint of her wiry frame or womanly figure. Below her, a varicolored spray of light danced off the walls of the tower, rising from the gems of the lens ring to lap at her feet like flames with no heat.
As Sadira watched, the dancing rays came together in a prismatic blast of light. The eruption that followed formed itself into a simmering cloud of color, which came boiling up beneath her feet. A peal of deep, sonorous thunder rumbled from the heart of the storm. Golden rays of brilliance and black streaks of darkness flashed out to strike her, sending searing waves of pain and icy bolts of torment shooting through her body. Sadira felt herself slipping from Khidar's icy grip. As she sank into the storm of colors, she heard herself scream in agony.
When her voice echoed back to her, it was filled with jubilation and triumph.
EIGHTEEN
Song of the Lirrs
As the sun touched its crimson disk to the western horizon, Magnus raised his weary voice to join the lirrs in yet another of their morbid beast-songs. The saurian creatures were all around him, standing on their hind legs and stretching out their thorny tails to balance the weight of their scale-covered bodies. When they sang, they flared their magnificent neck fans, opening their mouths so wide that they seemed nothing but pink gullet and fangs.
Magnus had been singing with the lirr pack since shortly after midday, when they had come trotting through the field. At first, the windsinger had hoped that they would mistake him for a tree and continue on. Unfortunately, the branches that had sprouted on his upper body had begun to quiver in fear, giving him away. One of the lirrs had come over and began clawing at his trunk.
At that moment, Magnus had realized the pack would eventually devour him, but, determined not to die easily, he had cracked the creature's skull with a huge fist. The rest of the pack had immediately returned and begun circling, bellowing the eerie notes of their hunting song. It was then that he had hit upon the idea of joining them.
The tactic had worked well, for his voice was more than versatile enough to duplicate the notes of their keening. The saurians had been circling him since, confused as to whether he was prey, a tree, or some kind of strange lirr There was a limit to how long Magnus could keep sailing the predators, however, and the windsinger knew that he was fast approaching it. Already, he could hear his voice cracking with hoarseness, and before the night was finished he knew it would fail entirely.
To Magnus's relief, the lirrs suddenly stopped singing. In unison, they dropped to all fours and turned eastward, their amber eyes gleaming hungrily. An instant later, they bounded away to
gether. Following them with his eyes, the windsinger saw that they had gone to attack a solitary figure returning from the Pristine Tower. At this distance, and in the obscure light of dusk, Magnus could not tell whether he was looking at Sadira or Rhayn.
"Watch yourself!" he yelled. "Lirrs!"
The warning came too late, for the beasts were already upon their prey. They launched themselves at her, snapping at her throat with sharp fangs and raking her abdomen with long claws. Magnus's leafy boughs shuddered with horror and he tried to avert his lidless eyes, but constrained as he was by his trunk, he could not turn far enough away to avoid seeing what followed.
To his amazement, the charging beasts did not bowl the woman over. Instead, she simply stopped walking and they slipped, clawing and snapping, off her body. Once the lirrs reached the ground, they changed tactics, savaging her legs in an attempt to topple their quarry.
The distant figure stopped and pointed a hand toward the setting sun. By the time she pulled it away, her whole body glowed with a crimson light. She kicked at the voracious lirrs with her feet, trying to drive them away before she unleashed her magic. This act suggested to Magnus that he was looking at Sadira, for no elf would have treated one of the saurians with such kindness.
When the lirrs did not avail themselves of her mercy, the sorceress waved her hand at them. A brilliant flash of red flared from beneath her palm. Once the spots had faded from Magnus's eyes, he saw that the beasts had vanished. As powerful as she had been before entering the tower, the windsinger realized that Sadira had returned with her abilities much enhanced.
The sorceress strolled toward Magnus as though nothing had happened, and soon he could see the highlights of her amber hair glistening in the evening light. Her face, however, remained swathed in shadows until she was almost upon him.
When she finally came close enough to see, the windsinger could not stop himself from gasping. Where the lirrs had raked her, there was not even the faintest sign of a wound. But it was not the sorceress's immunity to injury that shocked the windsinger the most. Although she was as beautiful as ever, her skin had turned jet black. Her eyes now had no pupils and glowed like burning embers. Whenever she exhaled, a wisp of black steam rose from between her lips, which had changed color to match her blue eyes.