The Obsidian Oracle

by Denning, Troy

  Kester felt a cool breeze descending over her body and looked up. She saw a star-shaped fracture centered in the black circle above the noble’s head, easily wide enough for a man—or a female tarek—to slip through. Ragged shafts of predawn light streamed into the pit, illuminating Agis’s weary face in a sickly green glow. To her distress, Kester could also see a few yellow tendrils of morning sunlight streaming across the sky.

  Castoffs began to leave their perches on the yellowed skulls. They streamed out of the crack in a wild flock, chortling and screaming loudly in mad delight as they escaped into the open air. Even through the crystalline lid, the morbid and spiteful tone of their muffled voices made Kester’s hide prickle.

  “Once more, Fylo!” she urged, climbing toward the exit. “That’s wide enough for us, but not for you.”

  The giant glanced down at Tithian, who now had a steady trickle of sweat dripping from the tail of his long auburn hair. The king gave the half-breed a reassuring nod and returned his eyes, bulging with strain, to the platform. Fylo drew his hand back for another blow.

  A pair of familiar voices spoke from the area beneath his feet. “You’re not leaving without us!” declared Wyan.

  “You should know better than to play games with us, Tithian,” added Sacha. “We taught you everything!”

  The sallow faces of Sacha and Wyan rose from beneath the platform. They drifted up past Fylo’s fist and hovered near his head, causing him to hold his blow.

  “Get out of the way,” Tithian said. “We weren’t going to leave without you.”

  “Don’t lie to us!” Sacha hissed.

  The head clamped his teeth down on one of Fylo’s dangling earlobes and began to pull, drawing a pained howl from the giant. Wyan bit the other one, also tugging on it. To avoid having his ears ripped away, the half-breed was forced to turn in a circle.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Tithian demanded.

  “Stop at once!” Agis commanded.

  The only answer the heads offered was to pull harder. Blood began to stream down the sides of Fylo’s head, and he had to spin on his heels to keep up with his attackers. The giant slapped at the pair madly, but succeeded only in battering his own head more than theirs.

  Although Kester did not understand the reason for their vicious attack, she did not let that deter her from responding. She pulled a dagger from her chest harness and flung it at the bloated head. The blade hit its target in the temple, sinking clear to the hilt. Sacha cursed through his clenched teeth, but did not fall dead, nor did he release the giant.

  Kester looked to Tithian, stunned that her dagger had not dropped the head. “They’re your heads. Do something!”

  “Like what?” the king replied. “Let the platform fail?”

  She lifted her eyes to Agis and found the noble balanced precariously on the end of a crystal. He was trying to reach out to snatch one of the heads away from Fylo’s ears, which were at about the same level as he was. Above him, the black circle that he had created earlier was slowly turning gray. Worse, the magic of the crystal lid was flowing across the cracks that Fylo had opened, and the star-shaped breach was slowly beginning to seal itself.

  “Agis, no!” Kester cried, pointing at the black circle overhead.

  The noble glanced at the graying circle. Then, without a second’s hesitation, he returned his attention to the giant. He barely missed as he snatched at Wyan’s topknot.

  The two heads whipped their chins harshly to one side, giving Fylo’s ears a terrific yank. The half-breed spun around quickly, and one foot slipped off the platform. For several moments, he tottered precariously on the edge of falling. Kester reached for another dagger.

  Sacha and Wyan gave their chins another sharp jerk, and Fylo stepped off the narrow platform completely. He fell with his back down, his confused cry echoing through the pit. The two heads finally released his ears and darted for the exit.

  Kester threw her dagger, and it sliced through Wyan’s cheek. Other than knocking him temporarily off course, it had no effect. Agis nearly fell from his perch trying to grab them, but they dodged his perilous lunges and slipped through the exit, along with a small stream of Castoff stragglers.

  “Don’t let it close, Agis!” Kester yelled, pointing at the crack.

  The noble stared after Fylo for an instant, then pulled himself upright and reached up to touch the graying circle. When it began to darken and the crack stopped filling, Kester breathed a sigh of relief. Only then did she look toward the bottom of the abyss to see what had become of the giant.

  Fylo lay in the narrow place where he had gotten lodged before, the bloody tip of a sharp crystal poking through his shoulder. His eyes were glassy and vacant, though it was obvious that he had survived by the rise and fall of his rib cage as he breathed.

  Kester had a sinking feeling in her twin stomachs. If she knew Agis, the giant’s condition was sure to interfere with what little chance they had of opening the gates in time to save the Shadow Viper.

  Tithian’s voice broke the uneasy silence. “I should have had Borys throw them into the fire pits of Urik!” he shouted, climbing past the crystal where Sona’s glowing visage still clung to a yellowed skull. “I should have had Fylo stand on their faces until their bones crumbled into dust!”

  As the king reached her level, Kester asked, “Why did your heads do this? It makes no sense.”

  “They’re treacherous ingrates!” Tithian snarled, hardly pausing as he continued his climb.

  From the top of the pit, Sacha sneered, “Flattery won’t help you now.”

  He was peering down through the crack. Kester could see that her dagger was gone from his temple, leaving a bloodless, gray-edged wound in its place.

  “True,” added Wyan, who still had a knife lodged in his cheek. “We’ve already decided who we’re going to let out—and who we’re not.”

  The tarek was up and climbing instantly, her powerful arms pulling her from one crystal to another with ease. When she reached Agis’s side, she did not pause even long enough to lean out and grab the edges of the hole. Instead, she simply leaped from the highest crystal, thrusting her gangling arms up through the breach and slapping her hands down on the freezing stone outside.

  The tarek drew herself into the breach, barely able to force her broad shoulders into the small opening. The sharp edges scratched and scraped at her hide, but she was more aware of the crushing pain in her chest as she tried to squeeze through. Nevertheless, through a determined combination of squirming and pulling, her massive torso soon emerged on the top side of the cover.

  Sacha and Wyan had already retreated out of sight. Kester found it much easier to pull her hips through, and soon found herself standing atop the crystalline cover. There was no magic running through the lid inside the area protected by Agis’s black circle, so the footing there was as solid as granite. The edge of the pit lay just a short leap away, and a few feet beyond that lay the dagger that had pierced Sacha’s temple.

  Kester slowly turned around, searching for the heads. The sky now glowed with the full radiance of early dawn, casting a harsh yellow light over the ground. The tarek found Sacha and Wyan hovering beneath Sa’ram’s Bridge, where even her long arms could not reach them unless she first crossed a wide expanse of shimmering crystal. The rest of the enclosure was deserted. Even the Castoffs had already gone, though their maniacal chortles were drifting back over the crystal walls. There were no sounds to suggest that the Joorsh attack had begun, and the tarek dared to hope that Mag’r would not sink her ship before they could get the gates open.

  “I’m sending Tithian up next,” called Agis, his voice rising through the narrow crack beneath her feet. “Keep a close watch on him, and kill him if he tries anything.”

  The king’s gaunt hands reached through the narrow opening and began searching for a hold on the cold stone. Kester grabbed his wrists and pulled. As he rose out of the narrow crevice, the sharp edges of the pit marked him with a trail of red
abrasions.

  “I don’t have the hide of a baazrag!” Tithian hissed, clutching his satchel to his chest so it wouldn’t be scraped free. “Be careful.”

  “No time to be careful.” Kester deposited the king roughly at her side and motioned toward Sacha and Wyan. “Keep an eye on yer two heads. After what they did to Fylo, I don’t trust ’em much.”

  Taking Agis’s advice and keeping one eye on Tithian, she knelt beside the crack and reached through for the noble. Although her action appeared to put her in a vulnerable position, the tarek was not worried. Between herself and the king, there was not much space left on the black circle of solid ground. If Tithian made any sudden moves, it would be an easy thing to knock him onto the shimmering crystal with a shoulder or leg. Besides, she did not really expect him to attack her. Not only would he need her to command the Shadow Viper’s crew if he wished to leave the island, but he had seemed more willing to cooperate with others since his dream of becoming a sorcerer-king had been shattered.

  When she did not feel Agis take her hand, Kester demanded, “What’re ye waiting for down there?”

  “He won’t leave,” Tithian answered. He reached into his satchel and withdrew a coil of giant-hair rope, surprisingly large for the sack from which it had come. “He wants to save the giant.”

  Kester sighed in frustration, then peered down the hole. “We’ll be lucky enough to save ourselves, let alone your giant,” she said, addressing Agis’s shadowy form.

  “We can’t leave him like that.” The noble gestured toward the bottom of the pit. Although Kester could not see the giant from her position, the image of the bloody crystal protruding through his shoulder remained vivid in her mind. “Now pass me the end of the rope. I’ll go down and see if I can get that spike out of his shoulder, then tie him off.”

  “What then?” she asked. “We’ll never get him out through this little hole.”

  “At least he might not die while we’re looking for a way to remove the cover,” Agis replied.

  “It’s already past dawn!” objected Kester. “How long do ye think Mag’r’ll wait for the gates to open before he sinks the Shadow Viper?”

  “He’ll wait,” Agis replied. “If he sinks your ship, we have no reason to open the gates—and he’s smart enough to know that.”

  “Ye can’t know for sure!”

  “I agree with you,” Tithian whispered. He knelt at Kester’s side, holding one end of the rope out to her. “Perhaps we should open the gate for Mag’r—now.”

  Kester bit her lip, neither meeting the king’s gaze nor taking the rope from his hand. “What about Agis?” she asked.

  “He can look after Fylo,” the king suggested, being careful not to look into the pit. “We can come back for him later.”

  Kester fell silent and motionless. Like Tithian, she avoided the noble’s eyes, though it seemed to her that she could feel them watching her from the shadows, like the black gaze of an owl.

  “I can imagine what Tithian’s whispering to you,” said Agis, his voice rising through the crevice clear and steady. “Don’t listen to him. We have many things to do this morning: make sure that we all escape the pit, find the Dark Lens, save your ship. But if we panic and start jumping from one unfinished step to another, we’re doomed.”

  Kester remained silent, wondering how the noble could think that everything on his list was still possible at this late hour.

  “Weren’t you the one who said we had to work together to escape?” Agis pressed. “Did you mean it—or were you voicing the lies of a pirate?”

  “Damn ye, and damn yer giant,” Kester growled.

  “A wise decision,” Tithian said, starting to rise.

  Kester grabbed his arm and pulled him back to her side. “Ye stay here,” she said, taking the rope from his hands and pushing one end down to the noble.

  “Thanks for staying,” Agis said. “You won’t regret it.”

  “No—but you might,” Kester growled. “If Mag’r sinks my ship, ye’ll buy me another—and a good crew to man it!”

  “I’ll give you two ships,” the noble replied, smiling. “But you’ll have to man them yourself—with hired crews.”

  Kester stood and looked at Tithian. “Ye stay here to keep the hole open—and don’t think about leaving. If I see ye step one foot off this circle, I’ll kill ye,” she said, fingering the two throwing knives left in her chest harness. “I’ll go tie off our end of the rope.”

  With that, she leaped over to solid ground and walked toward the bridge footings, uncoiling the rope as she went.

  Tithian watched the tarek leave, silently cursing her for a fool. Nevertheless, he did as she asked, summoning the spiritual energy to take over Agis’s duties. “Go ahead,” he said, glaring down through the crack. “But remember, you’re wasting precious minutes.”

  “Minutes that are not as precious as my life,” the noble’s muffled voice replied. “I’ll wait until Kester returns.”

  “As you wish,” Tithian said.

  As the king spoke, the last of the Castoffs, Sona, drifted into view. She stopped at the noble’s side, casting a faint glow over his weary face, and began to thank him for freeing her and the others. Tithian, even less interested in her gratitude than in saving Fylo, stepped away to prepare his escape.

  The king found Sacha and Wyan waiting for him, hovering at the edge of the black circle. He snatched them by their topknots and slammed their faces into the crystal lid.

  “Why’d you do that?” demanded Sacha.

  “Because I wanted to!” Tithian replied. He plucked the throwing dagger from Wyan’s cheek, then shook it at the two heads. “Just be thankful I’m not using this to pluck your eyes out!”

  “This is not the way to treat your saviors,” objected Wyan, spitting out the broken nub of a gray tooth.

  “Saviors!” Tithian roared. “By attacking Fylo, you almost got me stuck down there.”

  “A small risk to take,” said Sacha, speaking in a voice quiet enough that no one beyond Tithian’s earshot could hear it. “You can’t have Agis or anyone else around when you recover the Dark Lens.”

  Tithian held the heads up and frowned suspiciously. “Why not?” he asked. “After the way the Dragon lied to me, I’d just as soon let Agis kill Borys.”

  “That would be acceptable,” replied Sacha. “Except that I’m sure Agis would want to keep the lens afterward—and you don’t want that.”

  “Why not?”

  “The lens is a tool,” explained Wyan, also speaking in a soft voice. “Like any tool, it’s only as powerful as the person using it. In Borys’s hands, it could never make you a sorcerer-king. But in the hands of someone else, someone even more powerful, it could.”

  “No one’s more powerful than the Dragon,” Tithian scoffed.

  “Wrong,” said Sacha. “There is one who could give you what you want: Rajaat.”

  “Stop wasting my time with your stories,” the king hissed. “Rajaat’s dead.”

  “Gone, but not dead,” Wyan replied. “What do you think Borys does with his slave levy?”

  “He uses their life energy to keep the Shadow People imprisoned in the Black—at least that’s what Agis and Sadira think, according to my spies in the Asticles household,” replied the king. He cast a nervous glance down at the crack where Agis waited, but saw no sign that the noble could hear or see any of what was happening on top of the lid.

  “What makes you think a fool noble and his slaves know what they’re talking about?” asked Sacha.

  In a fawning voice, Wyan added, “Rajaat is not dead; he’s locked away—and Borys uses his levy to maintain the spells that keep him imprisoned.”

  Tithian accepted the news with little emotion, for he had not yet confirmed its significance to him. “If I take the Dark Lens to him, Rajaat will make me a sorcerer-king?”

  “It’s not our place to promise that,” Wyan said. “We’re only his spies in the city of Tyr.”

  “But, through the
Shadow People, we’ve told Rajaat of your ambitions,” said Sacha. “And we’ve received word back that if you aid him, you’ll be pleased with your reward.”

  Tithian smiled and released his grip on the pair’s topknots. “What do I have to do?”

  Before the heads could answer, Kester came rushing back from the bridge. She stopped at the edge of the pit, about two yards from the blade that had pierced Sacha’s temple. In her hands, the tarek held the last pair of throwing knives from her harness. Her eyes were fixed on the dagger in Tithian’s hand.

  Inside his mind, Tithian heard Wyan’s voice. Get rid of her. She’s sided with Agis.

  “What’s going on here?” Kester demanded.

  “Not what you think, apparently,” Tithian replied, slowly extending the handle of his dagger to Kester. “I thought you might want this back.” When the tarek made no move to accept the weapon, the king shrugged and laid it on the ground. “I see Agis’s paranoia is catching.”

  Kester seemed to relax, but did not sheath her own weapons. “What about them?”

  “We came to apologize,” said Wyan.

  “Sometimes our jokes get carried away,” added Sacha.

  “That was no joke,” the tarek said, fangs half-bared.

  “It certainly wasn’t. Fylo was hurt badly,” agreed Tithian. With a scornful look, he waved the heads back from the circle, then returned his attention to Kester. “You should come back over here. Agis doesn’t trust me to keep the crack open, and he won’t take the rope down to Fylo until he sees you.”

  “What?” the tarek shrieked, sheathing her daggers. “He’s wasting time waiting for me?”

  “He hasn’t moved,” Tithian said with a smirk. He leaned down and plucked the slack rope. “See? No weight.”

  Kester leaped onto the black circle. She collected the dagger that Tithian had laid down a few moments before and knelt beside the crack. She started to put her face down to speak to Agis, then abruptly drew back as Sona’s glowing visage rose from the hole. Once the Castoff had drifted away, she leaned down and said, “I’ve had enough waiting, Agis!”