The Cerulean Storm

by Denning, Troy

  When Hamanu finally lowered his hand, Sadira saw that the spell had not even scorched the wall.

  “Borys sealed it against even them,” Sadira whispered. “He must not have trusted his sorcerer-kings entirely.”

  “Or never thought that they would need to get inside without his help,” Rikus suggested.

  “Perhaps. But if five sorcerer-kings can’t get past the wall, how could Tithian?”

  “The same way he and I crossed the lava sea—with Khidar’s help,” Rikus answered. “Do you think you can get us to the other side?”

  “Perhaps, when the sun—”

  The crack of a distant explosion interrupted Sadira. It came from somewhere far beyond the arch, and the sorceress could tell from its sharp report that the blast was a powerful one. A patchwork of cracks raced through the granite wall, then the entire rampart blew apart with a deafening boom. The sorcerer-kings vanished beneath a maelstrom of billowing dust and flying boulders.

  Sadira grabbed Rikus. Before she could turn to run, a tremendous shock wave slammed them to the ground. The vault blew off its foundations. The walls clattered down at their sides, and the arch crashed onto the street behind them. Sadira covered her head and curled into a tight ball, protecting herself from the dozens of fist-sized stones that rained down on her body. When the bruising shower ended, she found herself choking on a thick cloud of rock dust.

  Rikus’s strong hand grasped her arm. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” Sadira said, allowing the mul to pull her up.

  The sorceress saw that they were surrounded by an arc-shaped pile of debris. They had escaped serious injury only because they had been standing at the front of the arch when the explosion blew it over backward.

  At the end of the street, it did not look as though the sorcerer-kings had been so lucky. The wall they had been trying to cross was now a mountain of rubble. Sadira saw no sign that any of their enemies had escaped the devastation.

  “By Ral!” Rikus cursed. “What’s that?”

  The mul pointed over the top of the boulder heap. In the distance beyond, a blue spout of water was rising into view. For a moment, the sparkling pillar held steady, its frothing white cap just visible above the rubble ahead. Then, seeming to gather strength, the shimmering column shot toward the boiling ash storm above. It struck the red clouds with an almighty crash, then swept the billowing ash from the sky on the tide of a cerulean storm.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE CERULEAN

  STORM

  TITHIAN OPENED HIS EYES TO A TURQUOISE DAWN. HE blinked several times, trying to clear his vision, but the firmament did not change color. He saw that it was streaked with blazing rays of azure light, while a bank of puffy blue clouds slowly formed overhead.

  The king sat up and looked eastward. He did not recognize the luminous sphere he found hanging just above the horizon. The orb resembled a huge sapphire, with shining blue facets and an azure fire burning deep in its heart. It was the sun, but not the sun he knew.

  Tithian stared at the blue sphere in amazement, until his eyes began to ache and he realized the glow would blind him if he stared too long. He forced himself to look away and saw that the forest around him had been utterly destroyed. The trees all lay on the ground, their tips pointing away from the grove’s center and their boles ripped clean of limbs. In the far distance, there was no sign of the huge wall that had once surrounded the sanctum or of the great edifices that had stood outside it.

  As he surveyed the devastation, the king saw that he still sat in the plaza where he had found Rajaat’s prison. The Dark Lens lay on the cracked cobblestones at his feet, murky and cold. Tithian remembered using his serpent’s tail to cling to it when the Black exploded, anchoring himself to the ground and calling upon its energy to keep himself from being torn apart by the blast. The effort had finally proven too much for his body, and he had fallen unconscious as the storm began to subside.

  On the other side of the Dark Lens lay the marble basin that had held Rajaat’s prison. The bowl was now filled with a bubbling, foul-smelling ichor as black as obsidian. In the center, the yellowed bones of a hand protruded above the pool. Its crooked digits looked more like talons than fingers, slightly curled and ending in barbed tips.

  “What are you waiting for?” snarled a familiar voice.

  Tithian looked over his shoulder and saw Sacha floating toward him. The head was badly battered, with deep lacerations on his scalp, a smashed nose, and yellow bruises covering his face.

  “Pull him out!” Sacha demanded.

  Tithian lay down at the edge of the basin and stretched an arm across the bubbling soup. He closed his fingers around the hand’s naked bones and tried to draw the thing out but only succeeded in pulling himself toward the ichor. The king opened his grip—then hissed in pain as the hand dug its barbed talons into his palm. It dragged him forward, until his shoulder and head both hung over the dark sludge.

  Tithian saved himself by thrusting the fingertips of his free hand into a cracked paving stone. He stopped his slide and slowly drew himself back onto the plaza. Once he had anchored himself securely in place, he began pulling the hand toward him. First the arm, then the shoulder, and finally the head rose from the ichor.

  The skeleton had a flat, grossly elongated skull with a sharp ridge crest and a sloped forehead. Beneath its heavy brow, crooked forks of blue light glimmered deep in each eye socket. Wisps of white mist puffed from its nasal cavity. Its jaws were lined with curved yellow needles, while a huge mass of knobby bone formed a long, drooping chin.

  “Rajaat?” Tithian gasped.

  “Who else?” answered Sacha.

  Rajaat sank the talons of his free hand into the stone. He ripped his other claw free and drove it down on the other side of the king, pulling himself to the basin’s rim. Tithian scrambled back on all fours, barely saving himself from being stepped on as Rajaat pulled himself from the dark pool. The ancient sorcerer’s frame was about as tall as an elf and completely skeletal, with hunched shoulders, gangling arms, and ivory-colored thighbones as twisted as they were thick.

  The creature’s eyes lingered on Tithian’s face for an instant, then flickered over the barren trees lying around the plaza’s edge, and finally returned to the Dark Lens. Rajaat stared at the black orb for several seconds before finally looking skyward. The fleshless jaws parted in a crude imitation of a smile, then Rajaat opened his mouth wide.

  “Free!” he bellowed, his voice rumbling over the sanctum like thunder. Streamers of blue fog gushed from his mouth, condensing into tiny droplets and falling to the ground like rain. “Let the traitors tremble and wail! I have returned, and my retribution shall be bloody and painful!”

  As Rajaat spoke, a strange ripple ran through his warped thighs, then through his ribs, arms, and the rest of his bones. Before Tithian’s eyes, his yellowed skeleton grew to the size of a half-giant.

  The king gathered himself up, then took a deep breath and walked forward. He stopped before Rajaat and bowed. “I am Tithian,” he said, not looking up. “I opened your prison.”

  Rajaat stepped over the king’s head without answering. The black ichor trailed after his heels, rising out of the basin and spreading itself over the ground like a shadow. Tithian leaped back, not wanting to have any contact with the foul-smelling stuff, then spun around to request his reward.

  “Wait,” advised Sacha, staring at Rajaat with an astonished expression.

  The ancient sorcerer now stood at least two full heads taller than any half-giant. Although he had only a skeleton for a body, the ichor serving as his shadow had arranged itself into the silhouette of a manlike figure, fully fleshed and with an immensely powerful build.

  As Tithian watched, Rajaat raised an arm into the sky as though reaching for something. Far above, a turquoise cloud vanished from sight, then reappeared in his grasp. The ancient sorcerer began to work it with both hands, flattening it out like bread dough, then stretching it into a thin sheet. Once he
seemed satisfied with its consistency, he stooped down and pressed it over his foot. The misty fabric stretched over his bones like flesh.

  Sacha’s jaw fell open. “He’s changed.” A knowing smile crept across the head’s lips, and he said, “This time, he won’t fail. Athas shall return to the Blue Age.”

  Another wave of ripples rolled through Rajaat’s yellow bones, and he grew to the height of a ship mast. The ancient sorcerer took a few more steps, positioning himself beneath another cloud, then he reached up and plucked it from the sky. He began to work it like the first, fashioning another piece of skin.

  Behind Rajaat, the ground became porous and white wherever his shadow passed. A moment later, circles of brilliant color—scarlet, sapphire, saffron, emerald, and a dozen others—burst across the surface, rising from somewhere deep inside the stone. In the center of these vibrant circles sprouted round nubs, like the seedlings of some strange plant.

  Rajaat continued to walk around the sanctum, plucking cloud after cloud from the sky and using them to cover his skeleton. Soon, he stood half-again the height of a giant, with no indication that he would quit growing any time soon. Tithian waited until the ancient sorcerer wandered back near him, then moved boldly forward to present himself. He turned a palm toward the ground to prepare a spell that would amplify his voice.

  Before the king could begin to draw energy, Rajaat looked down at him and boomed, “No! Not here.” The ancient sorcerer waved an enormous hand at the strange rock plants that had sprouted from his shadow. “Never in the Blue Lands.”

  Tithian closed his hand, satisfied that he had finally won Rajaat’s attention. “I am King Tithian of Tyr.”

  “I know who you are,” the ancient sorcerer replied. He looked away from Tithian and plucked another cloud from the sky, then began to work it without paying the king any more attention.

  “And do you also know of the promises that were made to me?” Tithian asked in a polite voice.

  Rajaat fixed his diamond-shaped eyes on the king and said nothing. Another series of ripples rolled through his body, and he grew even larger.

  “Can I expect you to honor those promises?” Tithian called.

  “If you wish to serve me, you must learn patience,” Rajaat said, stepping away.

  “Serve him!” Tithian hissed quietly. He turned to Sacha. “That wasn’t part of our bargain.”

  Rajaat surprised the king by turning around. “You do not wish to serve me?” he asked, a malicious light glimmering in his eyes.

  “I wish what I was promised,” Tithian said, swallowing nervously. “The powers of an immortal sorcerer-king.”

  The gleam in Rajaat’s eyes grew warmer. “In time,” he promised.

  The sorcerer held a closed fist far above Tithian’s head. The king looked up and saw the hand open high above. A cascade of salty water poured down from the enormous palm, hitting with such force that it swept him off his feet. The deluge did not stop for many moments, until Tithian felt a frothing tide of water rising beneath him.

  Sadira peered over the tangle of floating logs, studying the looming figure she took to be Rajaat. He stood twice as tall as any giant, with a crown of lightning crackling around his head. A constant crash of thunder belched forth from his fang-toothed mouth, and whenever he exhaled, billowing blue fog shot from his gaping nostrils and dissolved in a torrent of rain. His entire body was swaddled in roiling clouds the color of turquoise, and great torrents of salty water poured from the claws at the ends of his gangling arms. Even his shadow was part of the tempest, causing the water to churn and froth wherever it fell.

  “How’re we going to kill that?” asked Rikus, crouching at Sadira’s side. “He’s a walking storm.”

  The sorceress shook her head. “I don’t know, but we’d better think of something fast,” she said. “This water isn’t getting any shallower.”

  Using the log tangle as camouflage, Sadira and the mul were wading through a shallow lake that, not long before, had been a vast grove of trees. It was filled with fish and strange, scuttling creatures that vaguely resembled scorpions. The sorceress pushed the heavy load of timber before them, since her ebony skin and magical powers had returned with the peculiar blue dawn. The mul devoted most of his efforts to his axe, trying to keep it out of the water without letting it show above the logs. Glowing eddies of red and green light swirled over the blade, the result of a magical spell Sadira hoped would prove effective against Rajaat’s vapor-covered form.

  “There’s Tithian,” Rikus said.

  The mul pointed at a jumble of logs about fifty yards away and sticking out of the lake at all angles. In the center of the heap sat the king, resting cross-legged atop the Dark Lens. The black orb seemed strangely dark and murky, with only a single flicker of blue light showing deep within it. At Tithian’s side hovered Sacha. Both the king and the disembodied head were watching Rajaat, and so far they seemed oblivious to the presence of Sadira and Rikus.

  Sadira pushed the log tangle in Tithian’s direction, sending a school of fish with squarish heads and writhing tentacles scurrying away. “We’ll take the Lens first.”

  “Good thinking. That’ll keep Tithian out of the fight,” agreed Rikus. “Then what?”

  “I’ll try fire,” Sadira said.

  “It makes sense, given what Rajaat’s made of,” Rikus agreed. “Still, I’m beginning to wish the sorcerer-kings were doing this, instead of us.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” Sadira said. “A little thing like being trapped under a collapsed wall isn’t going to kill the sorcerer-kings.”

  Rikus frowned. “I suppose that’s true,” he said. “Maybe we should wait and let them attack first.”

  “So they can send Rajaat back to his prison and make another Dragon to keep him there?” Sadira scoffed. “I’d rather take our chances attacking him ourselves.”

  Rikus gave a reluctant nod, and they continued toward Tithian in silence. As the pair approached, they saw that the logs around the king were covered with a lumpy brown crust of minerals and shells. Sadira cursed silently. They had seen several areas where the tree trunks were covered by similar crusts. Such places were usually surrounded by hedges of submerged rockstem, brightly colored plants that grew in fingerlike formations as hard as rock and as sharp as obsidian.

  Sadira heard a muffled clack as one of her logs hit a finger of the rockstem. She and Rikus ducked down, watching through the tangle as Tithian and Sacha spun around. The king and the head peered in their direction for several moments.

  Finally, Tithian’s voice drifted across the water to Sadira’s ears. “It’s nothing, just floating logs,” the king said, facing Rajaat again.

  Sadira motioned for Rikus to ready himself, then pulled a splinter off of a log and held it in her open palm. As she whispered her mystic syllables, the sliver floated out of her hand, growing to the size of a war lance. Red smoke poured from all along its shaft, and scarlet sparks shot from its end. The sorceress leveled her finger at the king’s head and the spear sizzled away.

  The lance had hardly passed out of the log tangle when Rajaat’s head snapped around. A blue spark flashed in his eyes as his gaze fell on the sputtering shaft, then he flicked a finger toward it. An enormous bug-eyed fish leaped out the lake and snatched the weapon from midair. The spear exploded in the creature’s mouth, blowing its head into a thousand small bits.

  “Tithian is my servant,” boomed the ancient sorcerer. “Only I may destroy him.”

  Rajaat stepped toward Sadira and Rikus, crossing two dozen yards of water with a single stride.

  “Go, Rikus!” As she spoke, Sadira slipped a hand into the pocket of her wet cloak.

  Rikus stepped forward, swinging his axe at the rockstem. The blade’s enchantment sent great geysers of water spiraling into the sky, and the mul smashed a large notch into the top of the hedge.

  Tithian leaped off the Dark Lens and disappeared into the tangle of crusted trees.

  Sadira pulled a ball of wax
and sulfur from her pocket and threw it toward Rajaat, crying out her spell. The yellow ball erupted into a huge sphere of flame. It streaked up to Rajaat’s face and engulfed his head—then began to sputter as soon as it contacted the clouds serving as the ancient sorcerer’s skin. The fireball died away without raising so much as a puff of steam.

  Rajaat reached for Sadira with his claw-fingered hand.

  Rikus stepped away from the submerged hedge and swung his axe at the ancient sorcerer’s wispy wrist. The steel passed through harmlessly, with no geysers of vapor or swirling fountains of cloud to suggest that Sadira’s magic was working. In fact, it came out the other side clean and shiny, the enchantments on its blade dispelled.

  Sadira tried to dive away, but Rajaat’s fingers closed around her waist before she could submerge herself. The enormous hand felt wet and soft yet as unyielding as her own dark flesh. The ancient sorcerer lifted her up before his blue eyes and studied her.

  From the high vantage point, Sadira could see much of Ur Draxa. It was a huge city of forests and magnificent buildings, with a wide band of destruction encircling the clear waters of Rajaat’s spreading lake.

  “Stupid half-breed,” hissed the ancient sorcerer, pelting her with a gale of cold rain. “Did you really think to use my own magic against me?”

  He squeezed, filling Sadira with pain. She pushed against his crushing grip with both arms. It was all she could do to keep her ribs from collapsing. As strong as her sun-enhanced muscles were, Rajaat was far more powerful.

  Sadira looked down and saw Rikus far below, thrashing about madly in the crystalline waters as he vainly chopped at her captor’s ankle. It was like trying to cut smoke, save that the blade did not even cause an eddy as it passed through. She tried to yell at him to run, but she could not expand her chest far enough to draw air into her lungs.