“No,” the halfling answered. “The levy must be paid, or the Dragon will hunt in the forest.”
“And what about the people of Tyr?” Sadira demanded. “They’re as important as your trees!”
Grasping her cane in the crook of her wounded arm, Sadira turned the palm of the other toward the ground. With all the gnarled cacti hugging the slopes of the scarp above, the energy rushed into her body in a flood. This time, when she felt the surge begin to weaken, she did not close her fist. To counter Nok’s magic, she would need all the life-force she could summon. She spread her fingers wide and pulled harder, drawing every last bit of power she could from the plants within her reach.
“It does no good to kill these warriors,” Nok said, waving his hand at the halflings before him. “You’ll only tire yourself!”
“You don’t even care for your own people!” Sadira hissed, angered by Nok’s callousness.
Even had the sorceress been uninjured and fresh, the halfling would have been more than her match in personal combat. Yet, he chose to send his men to his deaths solely to wear her down. Could it be that he feared her, or perhaps the cane she held in her blood-soaked hand? As unlikely as it seemed, the sorceress clung to that hope.
“What about your warriors?” Sadira demanded. “Aren’t their lives worth saving?”
“No,” Nok answered flatly.
Sadira kept her hand open. One after the other, the cacti drooped, then browned and withered. Within moments, they all shriveled into empty husks and tumbled to the ground. The sorceress continued to pull, sucking the life from their roots, from the seeds lying dormant in the sand, even from the lichens clinging to the rocks. Even then, she did not stop, until the soil itself turned black and lifeless.
Nok watched with dispassionate eyes. Only the tree he had created from the Heartwood Spear survived Sadira’s desecration, though even its lobed leaves were wilted and drooping.
The tree finally reached the far rim of the canyon. Nok’s remaining warriors leaped onto the trunk and rushed forward. The sorceress reached into her satchel and withdrew a tiny glass rod, then went to the edge of the canyon and kneeled beside the great oak.
“I was mistaken to entrust you with the cane,” Nok said. “The forest would have been safer had Kalak become a dragon.”
“Call them back!” Sadira yelled, giving the chieftain one last chance to save his warriors.
When Nok did not, she laid the glass rod on the oak and stepped away, speaking her incantation. A clap of thunder roared off the walls of the abyss, and a bolt of white energy flashed down the length of the bole. The halflings disappeared in puffs of greasy smoke. The great tree split down the center, belching fire and acrid fumes, then the leaves fell away with a sad murmur. A groan echoed through the canyon as the weight of the oak’s tremendous branches twisted the two halves of the trunk away from each other. Finally, the tree wrenched free and tumbled into the abyss, its roots pulling a spray of rock and earth down after it.
Sadira sank down upon the earth she had blackened. It smelled of soot and something mordant, not decay or death, but the absence of life. For a hundred yards in each direction, the soil had turned as black as a cave, and there was not a living plant in sight. The corrupted ground wafted over her like ash, coating her with an inky stain of grit.
A lump of bile formed in the sorceress’s stomach, threatening to rise into her throat and choke her. Had her mentor Ktandeo been alive to see what she had done, the old man would have tried to kill her with his own hands. To his eyes, she had committed a vile act from which there could be no redemption. It did not matter that she had done it for the sake of Tyr, or even to save the lives of a thousand people who would be sacrificed to the Dragon. She had become a defiler, and nothing under the two moons could make her anything else.
But Sadira had not always listened to Ktandeo in life, and, just because he was dead, she felt no greater compulsion to heed his words now. All sorcerers drew their energy from some form of life, usually plants. To her, the difference between defilers and other wizards was only one of degree: most sorcerers stopped short of ruining the soil when they drew energy for spell, but defilers did not. Sadira did not believe that it was always wrong to defile the land, not when something good could be accomplished by doing so. To her, an acre or two of ground was a small loss in comparison to her life—and an insignificant price to pay for the chance to save a thousand lives.
Across the valley, Nok stepped off the side of the dune into midair. He floated toward Sadira leisurely, his only visible weapon the obsidian ball dangling from his neck. Sadira picked up her cane and rose, determined to meet Nok with the few tools she had.
The chieftain wasted little time in making his attack. Before he was halfway across the chasm, he fixed his black eyes on the sorceress’s face. In the next instant, Sadira smelled wet, musky leaves and ripe, sweet-scented fruits. Her ears rang with the raucous cries of jungle birds and the steady drone of insects, while the air felt moist and humid against her skin. All around her, she saw towering hardwood trees with waxy red leaves slanting over her head and casting shadows so thick it seemed like dusk.
Sadira’s stomach knotted in panic. Nok had attacked with the Way, and she could not hope to fight him mind-to-mind.
A huge, batlike beast soared out of the forest shadows. Beneath its red eyes and square ears, a hideous pug-nosed muzzle gaped open to reveal a mouthful of fangs, all dripping yellow bile. At the elbows of its wings were four long fingers, each ending in a claw coated in filth.
Sadira forced herself to swallow her panic. Agis had shown her how to fight mental attacks, so she was far from defenseless. As the beast soared down upon her, Sadira pictured her good arm becoming an X-shaped blade, each edge as sharp as a razor. She thrust it upward, at the same time ducking her body out of the creature’s path. The bat-thing swerved, narrowly avoiding the wicked blades.
“No!” Sadira yelled, lashing out.
Her arm was nearly ripped from its socket as it sliced through the beast’s wing. The impact swept her from her feet, and the bat-thing crashed to the ground nearby.
The forest vanished from Sadira’s mind. She found herself lying on the blackened rocks of the canyon rim. Nok lay a few feet away, face-down, with his left arm twisted awkwardly behind his back.
The sorceress leaped to her feet immediately, activating her cane by calling Nok’s name. The pommel began to glow with its familiar purple light, and she felt the customary tingle of life-force being drawn from her body.
The chieftain rolled onto to his back. His left arm hung useless at his side, but in his right hand he held his own obsidian ball. “Do not think to kill me with my own magic,” Nok said, glaring at Sadira.
As he spoke, an emerald light glimmered deep within the globe he held. The sorceress’s life-force began to drain away more rapidly. Her stomach grew queasy and her head swam. A cold shudder ran through her body, then her knees began to tremble and she knew unconsciousness was only a moment away.
The sorceress stepped toward Nok and swung the pommel of her cane at the globe in his hand. “Dawnfire,” she whispered.
Nok raised his arm to block the attack, and the two balls of obsidian met with a sharp crack. Brilliant lights flashed all the colors of the rainbow, momentarily blinding Sadira. Peals of thunder roared through the air, striking the far side the canyon with such force that they sent tons of boulders clattering down into the chasm. At the same time, a tremendous shockwave hit the sorceress’s chest, hurling her backward through the air.
As Sadira slammed into the rocky ground, Nok’s voice rang out in a harrowing cry. The sorceress pushed herself to her elbows, lifting the cane to attack.
A horrified screamed erupted from her throat. Only a few inches from her hand, the cane ended in a scorched stump, with a single shard of its obsidian pommel still buried in the shaft. For a long time, the sorceress stared at the stub in speechless dismay, her heart filled with a terrible sense of loss.
The cane had been almost as important to her as her own life. With it, she had been strong enough to defend all of Tyr, and powerful enough to face the unknown perils of the Pristine Tower. Now she had only her own magic and vigor to rely upon—and she did not know if those two things would be enough.
Sadira looked past the end of the cane to where Nok had fallen. In the chieftain’s place was a jagged crater, coated with soot and deep enough that the sorceress could not see the bottom. From this hole poured a thick plume of smoke, as black as obsidian and shaped like a great oak tree. Rising with the inky fumes were long ribbons of watery color: green and purple, but also red, blue, yellow, and a dozen others. The branches of the vaporous tree were gently waving, as if stirred by an unfelt breeze, and they were hissing Sadira’s name.
FIVE
A BARGAIN
“YOU OVER THERE!” CALLED A MAN’S VOICE. “Wake up!”
The words came to Sadira across the chasm, echoing through her head with agonizing clarity. The voice was deep, with a glib quality that nettled the sorceress’s sensibilities and kindled an immediate distaste for the speaker.
“Are you alive?”
Sadira opened her eyes and found herself staring into the blazing orb of the sun. Terrible, sharp pangs stabbed through her eyes, and her vision disintegrated in a spray of crimson light. She squeezed her eyelids shut again, but the pain did not fade.
The sorceress’s head was not all that hurt. Her arm throbbed with dull agony, and her back ached along her entire spine. Her face stung as though someone had just slapped her, and the skin felt brittle and tight. From the thighs down, her legs prickled with the torment of a thousand needles stuck an inch into her flesh. Even her throat and tongue hurt, swollen as they were from the lack of water.
Sadira turned her head to the side and raised her eyelids again, this time forcing herself to keep them open. To her pained eyes, the other side of the canyon remained a blur. Nevertheless, she could tell that there was a group of people, probably a caravan of some sort, standing near the bridge she had destroyed.
Ignoring them, the sorceress focused her attention on her own situation. She still lay where she had collapsed after the battle with Nok, in the filthy soot she had created by defiling the land. Her wounded arm had turned dark purple, and was swollen to the size of her shoulder. The cuts themselves, crusted with blood and foul black dirt, were already inflamed and oozing.
When Sadira’s eyes fell below her waist, a gasp of horror rose to her parched throat. Several woody vines had sprouted from the crater where Nok had perished. They were grotesque gnarled things, coiled in a tangled mass and covered with grimy black leaves shaped like those of an oak tree. The plants had crept across the rocky ground to where she lay, entwining her legs in their tendrils and sinking their barbed thorns deep into her flesh.
Sadira shook her head, hoping this was a nightmare. She had not been chased by a tribe of halflings, the sorceress told herself. She had not killed Nok, and her cane had not been destroyed. Soon, she would awaken in Milo’s camp and discover it had all been an hallucination brought about by the strange spice in the Nibenese broy.
“Hey, over here!” called the glib voice.
Sadira looked across the canyon again. This time, her vision was clear, and she saw a tall, lean shape with silver hair. Behind him, scattered over the hard packed sands of the caravan trail, were a hundred more tall figures. Dozens of kanks were milling about on both sides of the road, foraging on the clumps of golden salt brush strewn here and there in the red sands.
“Elves,” Sadira hissed in a disgusted voice. “This is worse than a nightmare.”
Ignoring the elf who had called to her, Sadira found the end of the vine and pulled, ripping a half-dozen barbs from her skin. She regretted her action instantly. The rest of the plants recoiled, planting their barbs more deeply and setting her legs ablaze with pain.
The vines retreated toward the crater, dragging the sorceress along with them. Screaming, Sadira tried to kick free, but her struggles only set the barbs more deeply. She clutched at a soot-covered rock and managed to hold herself motionless. The vines continued to retract, ripping long gouges in her flesh, and finally she let go.
Black fume hissed from the crater, carrying the sorceress’s name on its breath: “Sadira.”
“Nok?” she screeched.
The sorceress reached back and grabbed her satchel, barely managing to catch it before passing out of reach. Pinning the cloth sack beneath her swollen arm, she reached inside and fumbled around until she found a gummy yellow ball. She tossed the bag aside and turned her palm toward the ground.
It took precious moments to collect the energy she needed, for all the plants within her normal range were dead. She had to reach out beyond the blackened area, to the cacti that had barely felt her touch earlier. Even when the sorceress found what she needed, the life-force did not flow smoothly through the corrupted ground. She had to concentrate hard to keep it from dissipating into the starved soil.
By the time Sadira had collected the power she needed, the vines had pulled her within a few yards of the hole. In the hissing black breath that came from the crater, she smelled the musty decay of the forest. Sadira threw the yellow ball into the hole and spoke the words of her spell, hoping she would survive what happened next.
For a moment, the sorceress continued to slide toward the crater, scratching and clawing at the filthy rocks in a vain attempt to stop the movement. Then a tremendous roar sounded from the hole and a cone of fire shot into the sky. Tongues of flame arced over Sadira’s head, lapping at the ground near her satchel and casting an orange glare over the rocks at her side. Searing heat scorched her back and the smell of singed hair filled her nostrils. the sorceress did not complain, for the grip of the vines relaxed, and she no longer felt herself being pulled toward the crater.
A rousing cheer drifted from the far side of the chasm, as though she had put on a show for the enjoyment of the elves. Sadira looked across the canyon and saw them waving their lances in the air.
“Filthy thieves,” the sorceress whispered.
She turned around and faced the crater. The smoke of her fireball still rose from the hole in black wisps, carrying with it a few charred oak leaves. Most of the vines had been reduced to lines of ash, although a twisted mass of blackened fibers was still draped over Sadira’s legs.
Hissing in pain, the sorceress began pulling the thorns of these vines from her flesh. When she was at last free, Sadira struggled to her feet and grabbed her satchel. She turned and staggered away as fast as she could.
“Hey, woman! Where are you going?” called the elf. “Isn’t this your kank over here?”
Sadira ignored him and continued onward. The last time she had listened to an elf had been before Tyr’s liberation, when a slick-tongued rogue named Radurak had offered to help her escape a pair of the king’s guards. In the end, he had stolen her spellbook and sold her into slavery. She did not see any reason to think this occasion would be any different.
“Stop!” the elf cried, his voice echoing down the length of the canyon. “We just want to help.” He did not sound like he wanted to help. To Sadira, he sounded angry.
When Sadira did not obey, the elf made his final plea. “It won’t cost anything!”
The sorceress paid him no attention, for although they often claimed otherwise, elves never helped anyone for free. She continued up the road a few more steps, then stumbled and fell to her knees.
“Woman!” the elf yelled, no longer trying to conceal his irritation. “We can see what happened. Halfling tracks all over, a carrier drone with a spear in her thorax, your legs torn to shreds, your arm the color of a hatchling queen. You need help—and soon.”
Sadira looked toward the elf and squinted, amazed at his eyesight. She could barely tell the color of his hair, yet he could see her clearly enough to detail her wounds. She had heard that the vision of full-blooded elves was keen, but she had not guessed it was this go
od.
When the sorceress made no move to rise or to answer, the elf continued, “I’ll save you if you bring me across!”
Sadira frowned, wondering how the elf knew she could. When she looked around, however, the answer was clear. From the swath of land she had blackened, it was obvious that, in her efforts to escape the halflings, she had used at least one powerful spell to destroy the bridge. It would not be unreasonable for the elves to assume that a sorceress of such power could levitate one of their number across the canyon.
After a few moments of thought, Sadira decided to accept the offer. It was certainly possible that the elf would betray his word and try to take advantage of her, but that hardly mattered at the moment. Whatever his intentions, he was right about one thing: without help, she would soon die. The sorceress rose and started to leave the blackened area.
“What’s the matter with you?” screamed the angry elf. “Don’t you speak the trade language?”
Sadira did not even try to shout an explanation, for she knew the words would not escape her swollen throat. Instead she waved an arm in the direction she was going, pointing to an area where plenty of cacti still rose from between the stones.
The elf and his tribe finally understood. As she stumbled forward, they mirrored her progress, moving along the dunes rimming the opposite side of the canyon. It took Sadira several minutes to travel the short distance to undefiled ground, but eventually she reached a place where the plant life showed no sign of the destruction she caused.
Sadira put her satchel on the ground, then withdrew a small parchment and rolled it up. Holding the tube to her lips she cast one of her simplest spells.
“Tie a line to an arrow and shoot it across the canyon,” she whispered, her parched throat aching even from that small exertion.
The elf looked from Sadira to where the voice had sounded at his side, then spoke to his companions. One of them quickly returned with an arrow attached to a coil of twine and fired it across the chasm. The shaft clattered to the ground a few yards away. Sadira quickly retrieved it before the string, which was settling into the canyon, dragged it away. The sorceress looped the line of braided plant fibers around a rock. That done, she lifted he parchment tube to her lips again. “Hold your end of the line,” she whispered. “And bring water.”
The Amber Enchantress Page 8
