The Cerulean Storm

by Denning, Troy

  After a few moments of peering into the dust haze, the king let his elbow slip over the tiller and slumped back down. He was careful to keep his bare foot pressed against the Dark Lens, which lay in the open bilge in front of him. He was drawing the Lens’s energy through his body, using it to feed the dome and keep the ship afloat.

  Tithian looked toward the top of the mast, where Sacha had positioned himself to serve as a lookout. “I’ve lost sight of the banshee,” he called. “Can you see him?” “Through this haze?” the head scoffed.

  As Sacha replied, Neeva ducked under the low-hanging boom of the lateen sail and stepped back toward him. Since her days in the gladiator pits, her skin had grown darker and less sensitive to the sun, as demonstrated by the fact that she wore nothing but a leather breechcloth and halter to protect her from its blistering rays. To Tithian’s eye, she also seemed more beautiful. Motherhood had given her a fuller figure, while her muscles were more sinuous and less manlike. Her emerald eyes, however, remained as fiery and angry as they had been when the king had owned her—especially when they were looking at him.

  Tithian met her glare. “What are you staring at?”

  Without answering, Neeva picked her way toward the stern. It was not an easy task. They had just entered the open sea, and the dhow was pitching badly as it rode across the dust swells. To complicate matters, the small boat was crowded to overflowing. In the open bilge lay Caelum, crammed in next to a dozen kegs filled with chadnuts and water. His head had been bandaged, but he had not yet regained consciousness. To Tithian’s way of thinking, he was just taking up limited cargo space. Sadira stood along the port side, braced between a barrel and the gunnel, holding the line that controlled the set of the sail. On the opposite side of the boat sat Rikus, his bald head and pointed ears barely visible over the cask tops.

  As Neeva came abreast of the mast, she stopped to grab her battle-axe from between two water barrels.

  Tithian raised a brow. “I’d advise you to remember that without me, this boat will sink,” the king said. “And with it, all hope of rescuing your child.”

  “I don’t care if we sink,” countered Neeva. “We’ve hardly left the harbor and already we’ve lost sight of Jo’orsh. We’ll never catch up to him—or my son.”

  “The dhow is a sensitive craft,” Tithian replied. “We’d be traveling faster if Sadira had left Caelum in Samarah with the other dwarves—as I suggested.”

  “I doubt Caelum’s weight is slowing us down that much.” Neeva raised her axe. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. We may have lost Rkard, but I want you to die before he does.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Neeva.” Sadira laid a restraining hand on the warrior’s arm.

  The action caused a subtle shift in the sail’s trim and the dhow slowed. The sorceress let a little line slip through her ebony fingers, returning the boom to its original position.

  Once the dhow had returned to speed, Sadira looked back to Neeva. “Jo’orsh is showing himself because he wants to help us track Rkard,” she said. “When he sees us falling behind, he’ll wait.”

  “And let Borys escape with my son!” Neeva spat back.

  “That won’t happen,” Tithian said. “Borys wants the banshee to follow. That’s why he took the boy.”

  “Explain yourself,” Rikus ordered. He rose and peered at the king over a water barrel. “If you had something to do with the Dragon seizing him—”

  “I wasn’t even conscious,” Tithian spat. “But I do know Borys wants the banshees alive. In Ur Draxa—his home—he has a way to make them dispel the magic that hides the Dark Lens from him and the sorcerer-kings. The Dragon needs Rkard alive because Jo’orsh was sent to protect the boy.”

  Neeva frowned. “Sent?” she asked. “By whom?”

  Tithian swallowed hard and found himself gripping the tiller so hard his gnarled joints turned white. Nevertheless, the blunder did not cause the king to panic. He simply looked Neeva in the eye and lied: “Agis sent them.”

  “You don’t expect us to believe that!” Sadira snapped.

  “Not really, but it’s the truth,” Tithian said, silently cursing the sorceress. Did she have some way to tell that he was lying? “Jo’orsh and Sa’ram were guarding the Dark Lens when we found it. They were going to kill both of us, until Agis told them about Kemalok being uncovered. Then they left, saying something about the return of the king.”

  “How’d they come by the Belt of Rank and Rkard’s crown?” demanded Neeva.

  “Why don’t you tell me?” Tithian returned, dodging the question.

  This was the moment the king had been dreading since Rikus had pulled him from the well. In the hurry to pack the dhow and start after Jo’orsh, there had not been time for his temporary allies to interrogate him. But now, he sensed the questions would begin. As weak as he was, Tithian feared it would be difficult to keep himself free of his own tangle of lies.

  Neeva picked up her axe again. “Your raiders stole those treasures from Kemalok.” She stopped a pace in front of him, holding her weapon level with his neck. “I know that much, and it’s enough to warrant your death.”

  Tithian did not flinch. “Do you really expect to frighten me? I know you won’t strike—not while you need me to rescue your son.”

  Neeva’s gaze burned with a profound hatred such as the king had never seen before, and he had seen many, many kinds of hate. The warrior’s arms began to tremble, and tears of frustration welled in her eyes. For a moment, the king feared she would actually lose control of herself and strike. Then she gave a tremendous scream and spun away. Sighing in relief, Tithian committed her expression to memory as a reminder of what would happen if he allowed her to live a moment too long.

  As Neeva returned to the front of the dhow, the king noticed Sadira staring at him. Instead of blue-glowing embers, her eyes now resembled a pair of sapphire-colored suns, each blazing with a radiance that nearly blinded him. The sorceress did not move or speak but merely continued to watch him. In that moment, Tithian understood why she had not asked about Agis: She knew that her husband had been murdered by him.

  “You won’t kill me, either,” Tithian said, not as sure of his words as he would have liked. “We want the same thing.”

  “No. I want to kill the Dragon. You want to free a monster.” As Sadira spoke, a cloud of black fumes shot from her mouth and coated Tithian’s body, bringing with it a fearsome cold that chilled his bones to the marrow. “Tell me what you’ll gain by helping Rajaat escape,” she ordered.

  “Wh-what makes you think I want to?” Tithian gasped, his teeth clenched. The contrast between the Dark Lens’s heat and Sadira’s cold made his bones feel as if they were melting. He expected to burst into flame or shatter like a block of ice at any moment. “I thought the champions killed Rajaat.”

  “Don’t lie to me!” Sadira hissed.

  Again, the black fumes. “Stop it, wench!” Tithian’s teeth chattered so badly, he could hardly force the words from his mouth. He wanted to use the Lens and counterattack, but to use the Way now, he would have to let the dhow sink. He could not allow that. The king needed both Sadira and Rikus alive, at least until Borys no longer stood between him and freeing Rajaat. “I c-c-command it!”

  “You don’t have to answer,” the sorceress said. “I’m enjoying this.”

  “I’m too exhausted,” Tithian warned, fighting back the waves of darkness descending over him. “The dhow will sink.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Sadira.

  Tithian heard the sorceress whisper an incantation. The dhow suddenly rose out of the dust, lifting its weight off the king’s spirit. The boat’s speed increased by half, and it began to slice through the air as smoothly as an arrow.

  “You still need me!” Tithian said. Hoping to use the Way to defend himself, he tried to lock gazes with Sadira—but could not bear to look into the blazing blue suns of her eyes. “What will you do if we don’t catch Rkard before dark?”

  “I won’t kill yo
u yet,” the sorceress replied. “You haven’t suffered enough.”

  An inky cloud boiled from between Sadira’s blue lips, engulfing the king in cold vapor. He opened his mouth to scream, but his frozen voice did not rise to acknowledge the pain. He felt his feet slip from the Dark Lens, then he sank into a bitter slumber more icy and black than his own heart.

  Later, after what seemed an eternity of bone-deep aching, Tithian returned to awareness, not so much waking as crawling from beneath a terrible, crushing blackness. His body hurt worse than it had before, as if that were possible, and he wondered—not idly—if Neeva had beaten him while he slept. Slowly, the king came to realize that he was lying on the floor of the dhow, stuffed between the side and the water casks. He heard voices, and the speakers did not seem to realize he had returned to consciousness. Always one to spy, Tithian kept his eyes closed and listened.

  “I’m not saying we should let the Dragon keep Rkard,” said Sadira. “But I’m not so sure we should kill him. I’m certain that Tithian’s helping us destroy Borys only because it’ll make it easier to free Rajaat—and we know how much worse than Borys he would be.”

  “So we should let the Dragon keep collecting his levies?” Rikus asked. “Never!”

  “Rikus, that’s not what I said—and you know it,” Sadira shot back.

  The voices of both Sadira and Rikus seemed harsher than necessary, leading Tithian to suspect that they were angry with each other—and to wonder if he could use that fact to his own advantage.

  “We have the Dark Lens now,” Sadira continued. “Borys knows better than anyone how powerful it is. We can force him to return Rkard and forsake his levies.”

  “But what about the prophecy?” Neeva demanded. “The banshees said Rkard would slay the Dragon. We can’t just ignore them.”

  “Why not?” Sadira challenged. “They also said he’d do it at the head of an army of dwarves and humans. Where is that army now? It took Borys and his sorcerer-kings about as much effort to destroy all our warriors as it takes a mekillot to smash a jackal.”

  “We must have misunderstood what they said about the army,” said Neeva. “If Jo’orsh and Sa’ram said that Rkard will slay the Dragon, I have faith he will.”

  Tithian had to bite his cheek to keep from laughing. The so-called prophecy was nothing more than an elaborate ruse he had invented. Faced with the difficult task of overcoming Jo’orsh and Sa’ram before he could steal the Dark Lens, the king had instead lured the banshees away from their duties by convincing them their thousand-year-old ruler had been reincarnated as a mul child.

  It had never occurred to Tithian that his deception would dupe anyone other than the two spirits, but it appeared his former slaves were bigger fools than he imagined. He could hardly wait to see what happened when a six-year-old boy tried to kill the Dragon. The entertainment might even be enough to repay him for the indignities he was suffering at the hands of the child’s mother and her friends.

  After a moment’s silence, Sadira continued the debate. “Neeva, did it ever occur to you that the prophecy might be a warning? That it might be something we don’t want to come true?” she asked. “Perhaps the fate of our two armies is a portent of what’ll happen if we go through with this plan.”

  “What the prophecy says doesn’t matter,” declared Rikus. “We’ve got to kill the Dragon, even if doing so frees Rajaat.”

  “Think of what you’re saying!” Sadira objected. “As powerful as the sorcerer-kings are, it took all of them together to imprison Rajaat—and he could be even more powerful now.”

  “I don’t care,” said the mul, stubborn as ever.

  “Borys and the sorcerer-kings are greedy and power hungry, but their evil is nothing compared to that of Rajaat,” Sadira pressed. “At least they won’t wipe out every Athasian race except the humans—and wouldn’t have the power to succeed if they tried.”

  “True,” agreed the mul. “And I’m as worried as you. But we’ve got to kill the Dragon. We’d be fools to think we can control him forever. So, if we free Rajaat, we’ll just have to destroy him, too. We can’t trade one evil for another.”

  There was a short silence, then Sadira asked, “Neeva, what do you think? It’s your son we must risk if we decide to kill the Dragon.”

  “And it’s my son who’ll have to live—or die—with the scruples of our choice,” she said. “Given that, there’s only one thing to do. Rkard must kill the Dragon.”

  Tithian heard Sadira suck in a deep breath. “Victory or death, then,” she said. The declaration was one that Tyrian gladiators had once recited before entering the arena.

  “No, just victory,” said Rikus. “Death means that we have lost, and we can’t allow that—not when we are risking so much.”

  Tithian heard the soft slap of three hands coming together, then Rikus said, “That leaves us only one problem: Tithian.”

  “As much as I’d like to kill him, we can’t,” said Sadira. “He’s the only mindbender among us, and we know from the battles we’ve already fought that we can’t get along without one. Abalach-Re used the Way in the Ivory Plain and nearly defeated me, and I suspect that Borys will prove even more powerful.

  “We can’t trust Tithian,” objected Rikus.

  “Of course not,” replied Sadira. “But we can keep him under control until we’ve killed Borys.”

  “And after that?” asked Neeva.

  “As soon as the Dragon falls, he’ll try to kill us,” said Rikus, lowering his voice to a whisper. “If we want to survive, we’ll have to kill him first.”

  Tithian smiled to himself. They could try to murder him, but snow would blanket the Athasian deserts before they outperformed him at his own art.

  In his stomach, the king felt the dhow descending. “It’s almost dark,” said Sadira. “We’d better rouse His Majesty.”

  A small foot smashed into Tithian’s ribs, forcing him to groan in pain.

  “Time to go to work,” Sadira said. With one hand, she grasped his hair and pulled him off the bilge floor. She sat him on the floater’s dome. “I trust you slept well.”

  Tithian opened his eyes, feigning grogginess. The Dark Lens had been moved to the bow of the craft, and the king could see little more than its red-tinged base showing beneath the boom of the lateen sail. Neeva and Rikus stood directly in front him, their weapons in their hands as they glared at him with open hostility. Caelum still lay in the bilge, his bandage crusted with dried blood.

  The king reached up and pulled his coarse hair from Sadira’s grip. “You shouldn’t separate me from the Dark Lens,” he said. “Borys has been looking for me, hoping to find the Lens nearby.”

  “Then I hope he finds you,” said Sadira. “It would save us a journey.”

  “How far have we gone?” Tithian asked, looking around. He saw nothing but dust swells swaddled in the purple shadows of dusk, with no sign of land in any direction. “Where’s Jo’orsh?”

  Sadira pointed to a spot off the port bow. “Every now and then we see a furrow of dust over there,” she said. “Sometimes he sticks his head up to be sure we’re still following.”

  “That won’t do me much good.” The king laid his hand on the tiller. “I’ll never see him in the dark.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Rikus. The mul sat on the starboard gunnel and laid his sword across his knees. “I’ll be sitting up to help you look.”

  “So will I,” added Neeva. She took a similar position on the port side. “And if one of us even thinks you’re using the Way against the other or hears anything that sounds remotely like a mystic word, we’ll assume the worst.”

  “That means we’ll cut you up into little pieces.” Rikus reached out with the tip of his sword and cut the strap of Tithian’s shoulder satchel. The bag slipped off the king’s shoulder and fell out of the dhow. “Just in case you didn’t understand.”

  Tithian lunged for the sack, trying to grab it before it sank into the Sea of Silt. He instantly felt Sadira’s fingers di
gging into his shoulder, jerking him away.

  “You fools!” The king hissed, watching the satchel sink beneath the dust. “That was magic!”

  “Which is why I thought it best to be rid of the thing,” said Sadira. “Who knows what surprises you had stored in there for us?”

  “Now that we’ve made our point,” said Rikus, “is there anything else we should know about—so we don’t accidentally throw it overboard?”

  The king shook his head. “You’ve no need to fear me or anything I have left.” He grasped the tiller. “If we’re going to kill Borys, we have to work together. I understand that—probably better than you.”

  “Good,” said Sadira. She moved toward the bow. “Then you take over until dawn.”

  Tithian opened himself to the floater’s dome, allowing his life energy to flow into it. Icy tendrils of pain began to spread up through his hips and into his abdomen. He closed his eyes and visualized the ship’s hull in his mind, then pictured the gray dust swells changing to blue waves of salt water—the Sea of Silt as it was, long before the sorcerer-kings ruled Athas. The dhow’s weight settled on his spirit, filling him with a terrible ache, and again the craft began to pitch as it rode across the endless swells of dust.

  That was how it went, day after day. From dawn to dusk, Sadira’s magic carried the dhow above the gray waves. Then, as dark fell, Rikus roused the king to float the craft over the silt. The mul and Neeva spent the nights sitting to either side of Tithian, watching his every move. At least once a night, one of them smashed him with a fist, just to make certain that he knew they would kill him at the slightest provocation. The king accepted his persecution with a grace that Rikus found vaguely unsettling, never complaining or begging forbearance. Tithian did not even try to win them over with cajolery or false promises, perhaps because he knew such efforts would only bring more abuse.