The Obsidian Oracle

by Denning, Troy

  Upon reaching the figure’s side, the noble halted his drone and dismounted. The entire gorge stank of unwashed flesh, and each time the giant exhaled, the fetid draught of his breath made Agis gag. The titan sat squarely on the road, with a massive elbow resting against one wall of the canyon. His feet were pressed against the other.

  Cupping his hands around his mouth, Agis yelled, “You’re blocking the road!”

  The giant’s only response was a gusty wheeze that made the noble’s long black hair wave.

  Agis drew his sword, a magnificent cutlass as ancient as the city of Tyr, with a basket of etched brass and a long steel blade engraved with the weapon’s history. He stepped forward and gently pushed the tip into the enormous thigh blocking his way.

  A sonorous growl rolled from the giant’s throat, then the behemoth lifted his hand. Agis barely had time to jump away before an enormous palm slammed into the leg he had pricked. The giant scratched his thigh, then his hand dropped back to the ground. He did not open his eyes.

  Agis stepped over to the hand. The palm alone was the size of a large shield, while the fingers were almost as long as the sword in his hand. The noble took a deep breath and brought the flat of his blade down on the thumb joint, striking with all his strength.

  A surprised bellow echoed off the canyon walls, then the hand shot high into the air. The giant’s eyes opened. He sniffed at his thumb with his cavernous nostrils, then licked the joint with a carpet-sized tongue.

  “Pardon me for disturbing you,” Agis shouted, prepared to leap away if the giant attacked. “But you’re blocking the road. I must get past.”

  The giant glared down at Agis. His enormous eyes looked like a pair of moons, white with deep craters of darkness at the center.

  “Fylo sleep,” he said in a booming voice. “Go ’round.” The giant folded his hands across his stomach and closed his eyes.

  “That just won’t do,” Agis called.

  Fylo ignored him. Within moments, deep snores were rumbling at regular intervals from the giant’s mouth, grating over the noble’s eardrums and shaking the entire canyon. Realizing that courtesy would get him nowhere, the noble sheathed his sword and stepped to his kank’s side.

  Agis closed his eyes and focused his mind on his nexus, that space where the three energies of the Way—spiritual, mental, and physical—converged inside his body. He visualized a tingling rope of fire sprouting from this nexus and running up into his throat, creating a pathway for the mystic power of his being.

  When he felt his neck pulsing with energy, Agis opened his mouth and shouted, “Move!”

  The word broke over Fylo’s sleeping form with the force of a thunderclap, scattering the dustgulls on the giant’s shoulder and reverberating down the canyon in a series of earsplitting barks. The titan sat bolt upright and peered into the murky canyon, his weak chin hanging slack in bewilderment and fear.

  “Go ‘way!” he yelled, addressing the receding echoes of Agis’s voice. “Fylo strong as wind!”

  “There’s nobody in the canyon,” called Agis, this time yelling in his normal voice. “I’m over here.”

  The giant looked toward Agis and breathed a sigh of relief, blasting the noble with a gust of foul breath. “Fylo say go ’round,” he snarled. “Time for sleep.”

  Agis shook his head. “Not until you let me pass. I’ll keep you awake all night if I must.”

  The giant frowned. “Fylo smash you like bear.”

  Agis raised his brow. “You mean like a … Never mind,” he said. “It’d be much easier to let me pass. All you need do is raise your legs so I can lead my kank underneath.”

  The giant shook his head stubbornly.

  Agis reached for his purse. “I’ll pay double the normal toll.”

  “Toll?” Fylo echoed. He tugged at his beard, obviously puzzled by the term.

  “To let me pass,” Agis said, pulling a coin from his purse. “I’m sure a silver is enough.” Holding the glimmering disk before him, he moved forward until he stood at the giant’s side. “Here. Take it.”

  After Fylo lowered a massive hand, the noble tossed his coin into the center of the palm. The disk disappeared into the dark ravine of a massive lifeline, and Agis feared the giant would not see it. Fylo seemed accustomed to handling small objects, however. He licked a fingertip and pressed it onto the silver, then held the disk up to his eye.

  “Fylo let you go—for this?”

  Agis could not be sure of the giant’s tone, but it almost seemed the bribe had insulted him. “If I’ve offended you, please forgive me,” he said. “But in these circumstances, my assumption is only natural.”

  The giant considered this for a moment, then scowled. “What us-amp-gin, er, as-shump-ten, er, ass—” Unable to pronounce the word Agis had used, Fylo rephrased his question. “What d’you mean?”

  Agis ran his hand through his long hair, stalling for time. If the dull-witted giant did not already realize that this was an ideal location to coerce money from travelers, the last thing the noble wanted to do was suggest it to him. “I mean you don’t look very comfortable,” Agis said. He pointed toward the open desert behind him. “Why don’t you sleep over there and let me pass?”

  “Fylo not sleep,” the giant said, an unexpected air of pride in his voice. He stuck the finger with Agis’s coin into a satchel made from the untanned hides of a half-dozen sheep, then looked down at the noble.

  “Fylo guard road for friend.”

  “What friend?” Agis asked.

  Instead of answering, the giant lowered his head to peer more closely at the noble and began whispering to himself. “Black hair, straight nose, square jaw …” As he listed each feature of Agis’s face, he extended a finger as though he were counting. When his gaze fell on the noble’s brow, he frowned. “What color eyes?”

  “What does it matter to you?” the noble replied, hoping the moonlight was still pale enough so the giant could not see that they were brown. Someone had obviously taken pains to be sure Fylo would recognize him—and Agis suspected that he knew that person’s identity. “Does your friend happen to be called Tithian?”

  “No!” the giant replied, much too quickly. His eyes darted from side to side, and he pressed his jagged incisors over his lower lip. “Friend not called Tithian.”

  The obvious lie made Agis smile, not because the giant’s ineptness amused him, but because it confirmed that he was on the right trail. Seven days before, Neeva and a small party of dwarves had arrived at his estate, demanding that Tithian answer for sending slavers to raid their village. The noble had been unable to grant the request, for the king had mysteriously slipped out of the city a few days before the raid had taken place.

  Neeva and the dwarves had declared that they would track the king down themselves, but Agis had insisted that only a Tyrian should bring the ruler to justice. Given Tithian’s popularity in the city, any attempt by Kled to punish him could easily lead to war. After a contentious argument, they had come to a compromise. Neeva would wait at Agis’s estate while the noble and a dozen other Tyrian agents fanned out to search for their errant king. If they did not bring the king back within two months, the dwarves were free to take matters into their own hands.

  Fortunately, it appeared that Agis would return the king within the allotted time—provided he could get past the giant. He retreated to his mount, wasting no time pondering how his quarry had discovered that he was being followed. Tithian was a cautious man who had no doubt left a network of spies to watch his back-trail.

  To Fylo, Agis said, “It doesn’t matter who your friend is. You’ve taken my money, and now you must let me pass.”

  Fylo made no move to obey. “No,” he said. “You Agis.”

  “What makes you say that?” the noble asked.

  A cunning sneer crept across the giant’s face. “You look like him.”

  “There must be a hundred men who look like Agis,” the noble replied, tapping his kank’s antenna. As the nervous beast
shuffled forward, he added, “Now kindly lift your legs—or return my silver.”

  Fylo touched the satchel into which he had slipped Agis’s coin, then frowned and scratched his head in indecision. Finally, he shrugged and raised his legs, bracing his feet against the canyon wall.

  Agis guided his mount forward. His heart was pounding like a stonecutter’s hammer, and a dusty taste had suddenly filled his mouth. Keeping his hand away from his waterskin only through a conscious exertion of will, the noble looked straight ahead and ducked under Fylo’s knee.

  No sooner had he passed beneath it than the giant’s second leg dropped to the ground, blocking the way. “Let Fylo see eyes,” the giant said, reaching for the noble.

  Agis’s hand strayed toward his sword hilt, but he quickly realized that his meager blade could do no more than slice the tip off an enormous finger. Instead, he allowed the giant’s hand to clasp his body. With surprising gentleness, Fylo lifted him into the air, leaving the noble’s trembling kank corralled between legs as thick as tree boles.

  Two dustgulls swooped down to see what the giant had plucked off the ground. They were hideous birds, with scaly red heads, hooked beaks filled with teeth as sharp as needles, and talons dripping filth and ichor. As the pair sailed past on their tattered wings, they watched Agis with red, rapacious eyes, clattering their beaks in gluttonous delight. “Go away,” the noble whispered. “There’ll be no scraps for you tonight.”

  After lifting Agis to the height of his own head, Fylo raised his captive into the pale light of Athas’s two moons. The giant bent his head forward, squeezing a platter-sized eye into a squint, and tried to peer beneath the noble’s shadowed brow. Agis closed his eyes and began to summon spiritual energy from his nexus.

  The hand tightened, making it difficult for the noble to draw breath. “If Fylo squeeze, head pop off like lion’s,” the giant warned. “Open eyes.”

  Agis did not obey. Instead, he visualized his own face, though with blue eyes instead of brown, and with dun-colored hair instead of black.

  “Let Fylo see!” the giant insisted.

  “If that’s what you want.”

  When Agis complied, he found himself looking into a huge pupil. Immediately, he tried to lock gazes with the giant, but the distance between Fylo’s eyes was so large that he could not look into both of the great orbs at once. Instead, the noble focused on the closest one. At the same time, he concentrated upon the image inside his mind, using the Way to make the giant see the effigy instead of his true face.

  Scowling in confusion, Fylo crossed his eyes, and Agis knew that his ruse was not working well. He had not penetrated the giant’s intellect deeply, for that required more time, and by then Fylo would know the color of the noble’s eyes. Instead, Agis was using his talents to contact only the part of the giant’s mind that controlled his vision. Apparently, since he could look into only one eye at a time, the titan was seeing a different image in each one.

  Fylo turned his face to the side, trying to look at his captive with just one orb. A moment later, he snapped his head around to study the noble with the other. When Agis smoothly shifted his attention from the first eye to the second, the giant whipped his head back and forth in an ineffectual attempt to glimpse his prisoner’s face without locking gazes. At last, it became apparent that this would not work, and Fylo gave up, once again fixing both crossed eyes on his captive.

  To Agis’s surprise, a broad smile crossed Fylo’s lips. “Fylo like seeing games,” he said, tightening his grip on the noble. “Fylo guess little man have brown eyes.”

  With a sinking feeling, Agis turned his attention inward, replacing the mental effigy of himself with the image of a rapacious dustgull. A surge of energy rose from the core of his being to give the creature life, then the bird took on an existence of its own. It became his harbinger, a construct of his thoughts, yet it was detached and able to function outside his own head.

  “Are you certain?” Agis asked, staring into the black depths of the giant’s pupil. “You’d better look closer and be sure.”

  With that, the noble sent his harbinger to attack Fylo’s mind. The bird streaked from Agis’s eyes into the giant’s, disappearing into what lay beyond.

  “What that?” Fylo demanded.

  Agis did not answer, concentrating instead on the terrain he had discovered inside the giant’s mind. The region was gray and hazy, with half-formed thoughts whirling past like the wild winds of a silt storm. Once, the noble glimpsed a giant’s fist floating past, blood spurting from between the fingers. Another time he saw a pair of human legs protruding from a huge mouth, kicking madly as the victim was swallowed whole. As a master of the Way, Agis had no trouble understanding the significance of the images: the giant was considering ways to kill him. The noble had to take control quickly, before Fylo turned one of the ideas into a plan of action.

  A craggy island drifted into view, with the crisp detail and solid aspect of a memory. Standing atop its sheer cliffs were six giants, all with humanlike faces. They were hurling boulders off the precipice, shouting, “Go live with dwarf, ugly!” and “Stay ‘way. Fylo scare sheep!”

  Agis turned his dustgull after the passing island. If he could seize command of the memory, he could use it for his own ends and quickly force the giant to release him.

  Outside, a blast of hot, fetid air rushed over the noble’s face. “Take bird back!” boomed the giant, squeezing so hard that Agis feared his ribs would snap.

  Fylo’s demand surprised the noble. As a seasoned practitioner of the Way, he was well-versed at slipping into the thoughts of others. That the giant even understood that his mind had been invaded suggested he had an innate talent, for there could be no doubt that he was too dimwitted to have mastered the art through the normal avenues of rigorous study and discipline.

  “Don’t kill me, or the bird will stay in your head,” Agis bluffed, barely able to gasp out the words.

  Fylo’s grip did not grow any tighter, but neither did it slacken. “Stop, and Fylo not hurt you.” The giant’s voice seemed at once determined and a little anxious.

  “Not until you let me go,” Agis countered.

  Even as he spoke, the noble continued to guide his harbinger toward the island inside the giant’s mind. As soon as the dustgull’s talons touched the rocky summit, the six giants who had been hurling boulders over the cliff turned around. They launched a barrage of rocks at the bird’s featherless head, crying, “Go ‘way, ugly bird!”

  Agis summoned more spiritual energy and visualized his dustgull changing into a mekillot. As the boulders began their descent, the bird grew a hundred times larger, its feathered wings changing to a bony carapace and its hooked beak into a blunt-nosed snout full of sharp teeth. The rocks struck the hulking lizard with a tremendous clatter, bouncing harmlessly off its shell and disappearing over the cliff.

  At first, the noble feared that his foe had taken control of the memories, but he soon realized that they were acting on their own. Behind the six giants, a hairless rodent crawled over the rocky edge of the cliff. The beast had squat legs ending in curled claws, with loose folds of scaly hide and a ridge of bony plates protecting its back. Only the head did not seem particularly vicious, for beneath its squarish ears were Fylo’s bulging eyes and wispy beard.

  The rodent construct rushed Agis’s mekillot, but two giants seized its tail as it passed, bringing the beast to an instant halt. It struggled to continue forward, its curled claws clattering on the stony ground.

  “Fylo not make good tembo,” scoffed one of the giants, dragging the rodent backward. “His face too ugly!”

  Taking advantage of the distraction, Agis moved forward, away from the cliff edge. The four giants who were not busy with Fylo charged. The noble stopped his harbinger, then waited until they reached him before lashing out. He snagged one in his bill-shaped mouth and, with a flick of the lizard’s head, snapped the victim’s back.

  His attack did not even slow the other giants. The
remaining three slammed into the mekillot’s flank and shoved it toward the cliff edge, angrily shouting, “Go ‘way, stupid lizard!”

  The noble tried to counter, dropping the crippled giant in his construct’s mouth and planting the beast’s huge legs firmly on the rocky ground. He pushed back with all his unimaginable strength, but the effort was to no avail. Slowly, inexorably, the giants drove the behemoth toward the precipice.

  On the other side of the rocky summit, Fylo was faring no better. The two giants that had grasped his tail were dragging him away, laughing cruelly and saying, “Fylo too stupid to be tembo—too weak!”

  As his foes pushed him to within a few yards of the cliff edge, Agis visualized the top of the crag turning to a dustsink, leaving only a narrow rim of rock around the outer edge. A terrific swell of energy coursed through his body, then the stony ground of the summit dissolved into a powdery muck. The memory giants cried out in surprise, as did Fylo, and they all tried to leap for the solid ground ringing the pit. The agitation only caused the surface to become even less firm, and they sank to their waists almost immediately.

  Although the mekillot’s stubby legs disappeared into the muck as quickly as those of the giants, Agis was prepared for the surprise and began to change form instantly. His construct’s shell, already half submerged, was replaced by oily black scales. The bulk faded from his torso, until his body became slender and ribbonlike, with a wedge-shaped head at one end and a ridge of spiked fins running along the serpentine spine.

  As Fylo and the giants continued to sink, Agis’s eel slithered across the dust to the rocky rim, coiling up on the solid ground just in time to see the heads of his foes vanishing into the mire. The noble allowed himself a deep sigh, confident that he had won the battle. His efforts had tired him terribly, but he still had enough strength to take control of the island.