PRISM PENTAD
THE VERDANT PASSAGE
THE CRIMSON LEGION
THE AMBER ENCHANTRESS
THE OBSIDIAN ORACLE
THE CERULEAN STORM
Prism Pentad • Book 4
The Obisidian Oracle
©1993 TSR, Inc.
©2009 Wizards of the Coast LLC
©2011 Wizards of the Coast LLC
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Cover art by: Brom
Map by Robert Lazzaretti
eISBN: 978-0-7869-6118-4
640-48910000-001-EN
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v3.1
DEDICATION
To Michael T. Griebling, never forgotten.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Prologue
Chapter One - The Giant
Chapter Two - Chamber of Patricians
Chapter Three - Nymos
Chapter Four - The Strait of Baza
Chapter Five - Old Friends
Chapter Six - Mytilene
Chapter Seven - Table of Chiefs
Chapter Eight - The Bear
Chapter Nine - Castle Feral
Chapter Ten - The Crystal Pit
Chapter Eleven - The Cracked Cover
Chapter Twelve - The First Giants
Chapter Thirteen - The Battle of Titans
Chapter Fourteen - The Obsidian Oracle
Chapter Fifteen - Fylo’s Return
Chapter Sixteen - The Shadow Viper Sails
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
PROLOGUE
OUT OF THE CORNER OF HER EYE, NEEVA GLIMPSED the crimson flash of a sun-spell. Despite the impending victory of her militia, she felt the cold hand of panic closing around her heart. The flare had come from the direction of the Sunbird Gate, which guarded all the hidden treasures of the village—most especially her young son, Rkard.
To her dismay, Neeva was in no position to rush to his aid. She stood atop the mountainous shell of a dead mekillot, using nothing more than a pair of short swords to fight three men armed with lances and daggers. In the narrow streets of Kled, her militiamen were mercilessly butchering the raiders who had come to take slaves from their village. The few invaders who escaped the dwarves’ bloody axes were fleeing toward one of the many breaches in the town wall, opened at the start of the assault by the mighty reptile upon which Neeva now stood. Considering the speed with which the slavers had struck, the battle was going extremely well, but that did little to cheer the worried mother.
“Enough of this!” Neeva growled, hurling one of her swords at the nearest attacker.
The steel blade split the man’s sternum with a muted crack and sank deep into his chest. The militia commander did not wait to see him fall. Instead, she dropped to a knee and spun, extending her other leg to its full length. As the next slaver stepped forward to attack her back, Neeva’s ankle smashed into his knee and swept him off his feet. She continued her spin, slicing the man’s throat before he hit the ground. The third slaver’s lance came darting for her breast. She batted the point aside with her free hand, then drove her sword deep into the man’s stomach.
Neeva freed her swords from the bodies of the dying slavers, hardly hearing their groans of agony. Her eyes were already searching the streets for her husband, hoping Caelum had been the one who had cast the sun-spell at the Sunbird Gate. She found him on the opposite side of the village, too far away to have caused the flash.
Confident that her militia could finish routing the slavers without her direction, Neeva slid down the mekillot shell. She scrambled over the rubble of several crushed huts, then slipped into a narrow street and ran for the Sunbird Gate. Twice she paused to kill panicked raiders who stumbled across her path, but, in her hurry to reach the gate, she allowed several more to escape.
Fifty yards from her destination, she glimpsed a trio of inixes scurrying down a parallel street, their serpentine tails whipping from side to side and smashing holes into the stone huts that lined the avenue. The lizards were about fifteen feet long, with ash-colored scales, stocky legs, and beaks of bone that could bite a woman in two. On the shoulders of each beast sat a lance-bearing driver, while cargo howdahs, huge boxes made of sun-bleached bone, were strapped to their backs.
Neeva knew instantly that the slavers had not chosen her village by chance. Whoever had planned the attack knew of Kled’s secret wealth and where to find it, for the howdahs of the first two inixes brimmed over with riches stolen from behind the Sunbird Gate: bronze armor, steel axes and swords, even the golden crowns of ancient kings. It crossed the commander’s mind that the slave-taking had been nothing more than a diversion for the inix-mounted thieves, but she quickly rejected that idea. The raiders’ losses were too severe to be a mere distraction.
When Neeva saw the contents of the third lizard’s howdah, all thoughts of the slavers’ motivations slipped from her mind. Instead of treasure, this beast carried two men. One was a burly human dressed in polished leather, holding a steel long sword that he had no doubt stolen from Kled’s armories. The other, a hateful-looking half-elf with a short black beard and sharp features, wore a billowing robe and carried no weapon. Instead, he held the struggling form of a young boy. Although the child was only five years old, he already stood as tall as most dwarves, with a thick-boned body covered in sinew and muscle. Completely bald, he had a square jaw, angry red eyes, and pointed ears that lay close to his head.
“Rkard!” Neeva gasped, sprinting down the alley after her son’s kidnappers.
She had no need to ask herself why the raiders had taken her son instead of filling the third howdah with more treasure. The boy was a mul, a human-dwarf crossbreed who would bring a small fortune in any city with a slave market. Blessed with the powerful frame of his dwarven father and Neeva’s human agility, he would be sent to the gladiatorial pits and cultivated into an arena champion. Having spent her own childhood in the pits, Rkard’s mother knew firsthand the horrors that would await him there.
Neeva reached the end of the alley and leaped the inix’s whipping tail. She plunged a short sword through the scales on the beast’s flank and used it to pull herself atop its rear quarters. The lizard roared in pain and tried to whip its head around to snap at her, but the driver thrust the tip of his lance toward the thing’s lidless eye.
“Forward, Slas!” he cried, and the creature continued to scurry down the avenue.
The boy stopped struggling and raised one small hand toward the sky. At the same time, the armored raider leaned out of the howdah, slashing at Neeva’s head with his steel sword. She blocked with her free sword, then circled the blade over the top of her attacker’s weapon to disarm him. Unfortunately, the slaver was no stranger to a fight. He pulled his sword away before she could whip it from his hand.
“What’s wrong with you, Frayne?” demanded the half-elf holding Rkard. “Kill the wench!”
“I’m no wench,” Neeva growled, gaining her feet. “And that boy will be no one’s slave!”
The angry mother pulled her first sword from the inix’s flank and launched herself at the howdah. She attacked with a double chasing pattern, slashing at Frayne’s longer weapon with first one blade, then moving forward to slice at his vulnerable face or throat with the one trailing. The astonished slaver had no choice but to give way, and Neeva leaped over the howdah’s wall with her third series of thrusts.
Frayne stepped forward to take advantage of the temporary lapse in Neeva’s attack, thrusting at her abdomen. She twisted her body in midair and snapped her front foot around to kick the slaver in the head. His blade slipped harmlessly past her midriff, and he fell against the far side of the howdah, barely raising his weapon in time to block a downstroke that would have split his skull.
With the grace of an elven rope-dancer, Neeva landed between Frayne and the half-elf holding Rkard. Her son’s captor, she noted, had slipped one hand into the pocket of his robe, no doubt to retrieve the components of a magical spell. He was so concerned with Neeva that he did not notice her son’s small hand glowing red with the power of the crimson sun.
Neeva pointed a sword at each of the men’s throats. “Let my son go,” she said. “He’s of no value to dead men—and rest assured, you won’t leave Kled alive.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t your choice,” said the half-elf, withdrawing his hand from his pocket.
Rkard thrust his glowing hand toward his captor’s face. Neeva looked away long enough to beat Frayne’s guard down. A red light flashed behind her, then the half-elf screamed in surprise. She glanced back and saw the sorcerer’s hands over his blinded eyes. Then she separated his head from his shoulders with a vicious slash.
By the time Neeva returned her attention to Frayne, the raider’s sword was already slicing at her unprotected knees. She jumped the slash, bringing one of her blades around low and the other high to block the expected backstroke. To her surprise, the slaver did not follow up his first attack. Instead, he reached up and grabbed the side of the howdah wall, trying to pull himself to his feet again.
Neeva started to move forward, but the inix suddenly lurched to a halt. “Mother!” cried Rkard.
Neeva glanced over her shoulder and saw her son standing over the sorcerer’s headless corpse. The boy was pointing at the driver, who had left his place on the beast’s shoulders to climb toward the howdah. In the street beyond him, the other two inixes, whose drivers were paying no attention to the fight, were slipping out of Kled with their heavy cargoes of dwarven treasure.
Neeva tossed her second weapon to her son. “You know what to do, Rkard.”
Not even waiting to see if the boy caught the weapon, Neeva stepped toward Frayne. The slaver had returned to his feet, a confident sneer on his lips. “A child against a lancer?” he scoffed. “That’s as foolish as facing me with a single short blade.”
“Perhaps,” Neeva replied.
Although she did not allow it to show on her face, she felt more confident than ever. Frayne was an adept swordsman, but his comment suggested that, like so many who learned to fight outside the arena, his attention was focused more on his foe’s blade than on his foe. When fighting a gladiator, a person could make no greater mistake.
Neeva flipped her sword about in a block-and-attack pattern, moving forward behind the flashing blade as she knew Frayne expected her to. Determined to keep the advantage of his longer blade, the raider shuffled to the side, only to have his move blocked when she lunged forward and made a clumsy chop at his ribs. Taking the bait, Frayne whipped his sword at her head in a brutal backslash.
Neeva threw her legs from beneath herself and wrapped them around the slaver’s waist, at the same time falling to her side. Frayne’s blade sailed harmlessly over her head, then she hit the howdah floor and rolled. The sudden twist swept the raider off his feet. He landed flat on his back with her legs still wrapped around his waist. Neeva sat up, pinning his sword arm to the floor with one hand and driving the tip of her own blade deep into his gullet.
Neeva turned toward the front of the inix. She saw the tip of a lance coming straight at her head as the driver leaped into the howdah. Her son picked that moment to rise from his hiding place behind the wall, holding his sword in front of the slaver’s belly. The raider’s momentum carried him onto the blade. He screamed in agony and dropped his lance, burying Rkard beneath his bleeding torso.
Neeva reached out and finished him with a quick chop to the back of the neck, then rose to her knees and rolled the corpse off her son. The boy lay atop the sorcerer’s headless body, covered in blood from head to foot.
“Rkard, are you hurt?” Neeva asked, going to his side.
The boy did not answer. His attention seemed fixed on the floor next to the sorcerer’s body.
“Answer me!” Neeva said, pulling the mul into her arms.
“I’m fine, mother,” he said, holding his hand up to her face. “Look what I found.” Rkard held a square crystal of blood-smeared olivine.
Neeva took the gem from his hand and wiped it clean. “Where did you get this?”
She had to work hard to keep from sounding angry. Twice before, when she had still been a citizen of Tyr, she had seen such crystals.
“It fell out of the sorcerer’s pocket,” Rkard explained. “Can I keep it?”
“I don’t think so,” she replied.
Neeva held the crystal out at arm’s length, and the tiny image of a sharp-featured man appeared inside. He had a hawkish nose, beady brown eyes, and long auburn hair bound in place by a golden diadem. It was Tithian, the man who had once owned her.
“Neeva!” he gasped. “How did you come by my gem?”
“I killed your sorcerer,” she growled. “You’re next.”
Tithian frowned doubtfully. “Come now,” he replied in a smug voice. “I’m the king of Tyr. That would mean war.”
“I doubt it,” Neeva scoffed. “After Agis and his council hear you’ve been taking slaves, they’ll want to cut your heart out themselves.”
With that, she closed her fist around the gem, cutting off her magical contact with the figure inside.
ONE
THE GIANT
AGIS OF ASTICLES STOPPED HIS MOUNT AND WIPED the grit from his stinging eyes, certain his vision had betrayed him. A steady wind rasped across the Balican Peninsula, its hot breath bearing long ribbons of loess from the Sea of Silt’s southern estuary. To make matters worse, dusk had settled over the rocky barrens an hour before, leaving the road ahead swaddled in purple shadows and half buried in drifts of plum-colored dust.
A short distance ahead, a craggy ridge formed a wall of black rock. It stretched for miles in both directions, rising so high that Agis had to crane his neck to see the stars glimmering above the summit. To his relief, the caravan trail did not climb the steep hillside, but entered a narrow canyon slicing directly through the heart of the bluff.
An immense boulder sat in the middle of the trail, blocking the entire gorge. Its shape resembled that of a seated man, save that it was larger than the gatehouse guarding the entrance to Agis’s estate. Bats wheeled high over the monolith’s crown, silhouetting themselves against the haze-shrouded moons, and a flock of golden dustgulls roosted on one shoulder, their forms softened by distance and blowing silt. The nobleman could just make out two huge males pecking at each other with rapierlike beaks.
As Agis watched, the pecking contest erupted into a true battle. The angry birds rose into the air, slashing at each other with beaks and talons. The larger gull used his bulk to good advantage, relentlessly driving his foe back until the bird was trapped against the crag above their roost.
For the second time since Agis had spied it, the boulder shifted, and the noble knew that his eyes had not deceived him earlier. A massive hand rose from the dark silhouette to slap at the gulls. It caught both birds in its palm, smashing them against the shadowy crag. The blow landed with a resounding crack that made the ground tremble and sent runnels of sand cascading off the canyon walls. With a mad chorus of screeching and squawking, the rest of the flock launched itself into the air and fluttered about in anger, only to return to their roost as soon as the enormous hand crashed back to the ground.
The noble remained where he was, his kank’s carapace quivering beneath him. The insect was twice the size of a man, with six canelike legs, a jacket of chitinous black armor, and a pair of bristly antennae on its blocky head, although its bulbous eyes were so weak it could hardly focus on the ground beneath its mandibles. Agis was not surprised by its alarm. The beast’s drumlike ear membranes would be rumbling painfully from the thunderous slap that had killed the two gulls.
Agis urged the mount forward by tapping its antennae. “I don’t care if that is a giant,” he said, keeping his brown eyes fixed on the bulky form ahead. “We must get past him.”
As the kank scurried forward, the details of the hulking silhouette became clearer. The giant’s body was lumpy and stout, covered with gravelly skin and gnarled muscles that resembled nothing quite so much as the crags of a cliff. Long braids of greasy hair hung from his head, while scattered tufts of coarse bristle sprouted on his chest and back. The enormous face seemed a peculiar mix of human and rodent, with a sloped forehead, drooping ears, and a pointed nose ending in two cavernous nostrils. His eyes were set deep beneath his brow. Even under their closed lids, they bulged out of their sockets. A dozen jagged incisors protruded from beneath his upper lip, while a mosslike beard dangled from his recessed chin. All in all, Agis found the giant the ugliest individual he had ever set eyes upon.
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