The Amber Enchantress

by Denning, Troy

  The cilops turned as black as Dhojakt’s eyes and faded to an insubstantial silhouette. Sadira slipped from between its pincers and dropped to the floor. The shadowy beast tried to attack again, but its mandibles passed through the sorceress without effect. Ignoring the impotent attacker, Sadira ripped a strip or cloth from her sarami and made a tourniquet around her savaged thigh. The bandage would prevent the poison from traveling to the rest of her body, at least for a few minutes.

  “Your king didn’t say you’d be so difficult to kill,” Dhojakt observed, his segmented body slinking over the wall.

  “You’re doing this for Tithian?” Sadira gasped. She tied off her bandage and placed her hands on the flagstones as if to push herself to her feet. Instead of trying to rise, however, she drew the energy for another spell. With her palm touching the floor directly, there would be not be even the faintest shimmer of energy to betray what she was doing.

  “I do not serve that fool,” Dhojakt hissed. “I have cause of my own to end your life.”

  “Which is?” Sadira asked.

  Instead of answering, Dhojakt began to descend, his cilops body slinking slowly over the wall.

  Sadira had begun to tingle with magical energy, but not nearly enough to stop the prince. If she hoped overcome whatever had protected him from her spells yesterday, she would need much more power. The sorceress kept her hand open and turned toward the floor. Vines began to drop from their pillars, withered and brown. She did not stop, even after they had crumbled to ash, leaving the soil beneath the emporium as lifeless as its flagstone floor.

  The stream died away. Sadira feared no more energy would come, then she felt another source yielding its life. It came from outside the emporium, flowing into her body more slowly, as if the plants were reluctant to yield it. The sorceress realized that the force had to be coming from Sage’s Square, where the magnificent agafari trees grew.

  “No!” Dhojakt yelled, starting across the aisle. “You must not defile my father’s grove!”

  Sadira clenched her teeth and pulled as hard as she could. At the same time, she reached for her spell ingredients with her free hand. For an instant, it seemed the agafari grove would not yield its life to her summons—then she felt as if a thundercloud had opened. Magical energy flooded into her in such a rush that the sorceress’s muscles began to burn and quiver from head to foot. She closed her hand, but the flow continued against her will, streaming into her body and making it impossible to control her own limbs.

  As Dhojakt came nearer, the prince’s nostrils flared angrily, and Sadira heard the hiss of his breath rushing in and out of the cavernous openings. The skin around his nose was cracked and inflamed, probably from the trap Raka had laid for him yesterday.

  The prince extended the bony mandibles from beneath his lips, then grabbed Sadira by the shoulders and drew her close. The sorceress felt energy streaming from her body into his, and control of her muscles returned to her.

  “I had intended to kill you mercifully,” the prince spat. “But now it is necessary to punish you.”

  Sadira pinched a nugget of crystallized acid between her fingers. The oils of her skin triggered an instantaneous reaction, causing her to grimace as the vitriolic stuff ate at her flesh.

  “Don’t waste your effort,” Dhojakt snarled, turning his head so that his mandibles could pierce her throat. “Your spells won’t hurt me.”

  “This one will!”

  Sadira pulled the crystal from her satchel and thrust it deep into one of Dhojakt’s nostrils. As she spoke her incantation, a cloud of brown vapor billowed from his nose. The prince screamed in agony, then flung the sorceress away.

  Sadira slammed into the back wall of the slave pen so hard that it felt as though she would knock it over. Pain raged over her body, and she barely kept her head from slamming into the bricks. Still, she felt as if she were going to fall unconscious. Her vision narrowed to a dark tunnel, and Dhojakt’s agonized howls began to grow distant.

  The sorceress shook her head and fought to keep her eyes open. If she allowed herself to fall unconscious, she would awake in the custody of Nibenese templars—if she awoke at all. Sadira focused all her thoughts on the throbbing agony in her skull, clinging to the pain like a falling man to a rope.

  Finally, Dhojakt’s cries began to grow more distinct. Farther away, the sorceress could hear the sporadic explosions and hisses of magical combat. She clung to these sounds, using them to guide her back to reality.

  Sadira’s vision slowly returned to normal, then the sorceress struggled to her feet. The leg that the cilops had savaged had exploded into numb, fiery pain. A wave of nausea rolled through Sadira’s stomach, her joints began to ache, and she broke into a cold sweat. The cilops poison, she knew, was taking effect.

  Across the aisle, Dhojakt lay crumpled on the floor, his many legs twitching in agony and his torso writhing about madly. He held his hands over his face and howled for help in a pained, inhuman voice.

  Sadira could hardly believe he was still alive. The spell she had used had been the most powerful she knew, capable of killing an entire company of soldiers in a single instant. That the prince had survived seemed totally inconceivable, for instead of spreading the acid fog over several acres, she had concentrated it inside his breathing passages. By now, there should have been nothing left of his head except a puddle of brown ooze.

  Sadira briefly considered trying to kill him again, but could not think how to do it. Even if she had possessed a weapon, Dhojakt was as invulnerable to blades as he was to magic. As for another spell, if the death fog had not destroyed him, she did not know what could. The sorceress decided that her wisest course of action was to leave before someone came to help the prince.

  As Sadira turned toward the back of the aisle, she saw a stocky figure standing there, surveying the scene. Since his face was concealed by a white scarf, the sorceress felt safe in assuming that he was a member of the Veiled Alliance.

  “You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you,” she said, limping toward him. Instead of moving to help her, the man fled around the corner.

  “Come back!” Sadira yelled, following the veiled figure.

  By the time she stepped around the end pillar, the man was nowhere in sight. However, Magnus stood only a short distance up the debris-covered aisle. The windsinger was picking his way through a pile of guards that he had, apparently, finished killing just a few moments earlier. Across his shoulders lay Faenaeyon, staring blankly at the floor.

  “Magnus, wait!” Sadira yelled, almost stumbling as a wave of dizziness overcame her. “I need your art!”

  The windsinger paused long enough to twist around and glance at her. “Hurry.” He turned forward again and stumbled down the rubble-strewn aisle at his best pace. “I’ll meet you by the door.”

  The sorceress took a small length of twine and formed a miniature leash, then raised it in Magnus’s direction and cast another spell. The windsinger stopped in midstride, one three-toed foot hovering several inches off the floor.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Sadira growled. “I said wait!”

  THIRTEEN

  THE DEAD GROVE

  SADIRA LIMPED PAST A PYRE OF BLAZING TREE TRUNKS and entered the shade of the covered alley, coughing violently from the fumes of burning agafari wood. It was a hot, windless morning, and the smoke of the fires hugged the ground like a cloud of dust sinking to earth. The haze in the plaza hung so thick it was impossible to breathe without choking on mordant-tasting ash, and anyone standing more than a few feet away seemed no more than a ghostly silhouette.

  In spite of the flames, Nibenese slaves labored throughout Sage’s Square, felling withered trees and throwing the blackened trunks onto mountainous fires. Somewhere in the smoke, an ensemble of the city’s finest ryl pipers filled the air with sorrowful notes, accompanying a morose singer lamenting the loss of the ancient grove.

  “Did you find our guide?” asked Magnus.

  “No,” Sadira answered.
Already, it was well past dawn and they had seen no sign of Raka, or anyone else sent by the Veiled Alliance. “You’re certain you saw the boy escape the emporium?”

  “Yes,” the windsinger answered. “A pair of slaves freed him from the rubble as I carried Faenaeyon down the aisle. He went with them, staggering, but under his own power. After that, I don’t know what happened. I was attacked by the Shom guards, and I lost sight of him.”

  Through the smoke filling the alley, Sadira could just make out the cape the windsinger had used to bandage his wounds. Behind him loomed Faenaeyon, stooped over to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling. The elven chief still seemed groggy and unsteady, but had emerged from his stupor enough to walk on his own. After escaping the emporium, one of the first things the sorceress had done was pour half the antidote down her father’s throat. Then Sadira had asked Magnus to use his magic to heal her. Fortunately, the windsinger had been able to neutralize the venom of the cilops and stop the bleeding, but the sorceress’s leg remained sore enough that she found walking both difficult and painful.

  Next to Faenaeyon stood Huyar, dutifully lending an arm of support to his father and chief. Rhayn was the only one absent from the group. She had gone to fetch Sadira’s kank, so that the sorceress could keep up once the company left the city.

  After a moment, Huyar said to Sadira, “Perhaps your friend betrayed you. It would be the wise thing, after all.”

  “Don’t make the mistake of judging the Veiled Alliance by your own standards,” Sadira replied, upset by the elf’s gloating tone.

  “Whether the guide betrayed you or not makes no difference,” said Faenaeyon. His words came slowly and with a thick slur, for it was the first time he had spoken since emerging from his stupor. “It seems we must find our way out of the city.”

  “That won’t be easy,” Sadira said. “I almost killed the sorcerer-king’s son yesterday. I doubt the gate guards will just let us leave.

  “Even the walls of Nibenay have their cracks.” Faenaeyon said, giving her a reassuring smile. “Sneaking you out of the city shall be my repayment for rescuing me.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve already negotiated my fee for that,” she said, casting a meaningful glance at Huyar.

  “She has?” the chief asked, looking to his son. “What?”

  Huyar gulped. “I’d said we’d take her to the Pristine Tower.”

  Faenaeyon glared at him. “Then perhaps you shall be the one who takes her there.”

  “But I don’t know where—”

  “Go to Cleft Rock and follow the sunrise until you see the tower!” the chief growled. He grabbed Huyar by the neck and pulled him close. “How could you endanger the tribe by offering such a thing?”

  “It was only way she’d ask her friends to find you,” Huyar said. “Besides, we don’t have to keep the promise—”

  “Is Faenaeyon’s life worth so little to you?” demanded Sadira.

  “My chief’s life is as dear to me as my own,” replied the elf. “But so was Gaefal’s—and I won’t let his death go unpunished.”

  “Then find out who killed your brother and avenge yourself,” Sadira snapped. “But if you value Faenaeyon’s life, you’ll keep your promise to me.”

  The chief scowled and stepped toward the sorceress. “Are you threatening me?”

  Sadira shook her head. “No. But I would expect that repayment for saving the chief’s life is the one debt his tribe would honor.”

  Faenaeyon studied Sadira for several moments, then said, “First, we must escape the city. Then we’ll decide what to do about the Pristine Tower and Gaefal’s death.” He chuckled at the sorceress, then laid a hand on her shoulder. “Whatever I decide, don’t think that I will forget what you did. I admire your bravery and cunning.”

  Sadira shrugged off the chief’s hand. Before she could tell Faenaeyon she cared more about reaching the tower than what he thought of her, Magnus interrupted.

  “She inherited her courage and quick wit form her father,” said the windsinger. “Isn’t that so, Sadira?”

  Faenaeyon narrowed one pearl-colored eye and looked Sadira over from head-to-toe. “I thought your name was Lorelei?”

  The sorceress shook her head. “No. It’s Sadira—Sadira of Tyr.”

  “Barakah’s daughter?” The words were as much an exclamation as they were a question.

  “I’m surprised you remember her name,” the sorceress answered.

  Faenaeyon’s thin lips twisted into a wistful smile. “My famous daughter,” he said, reaching out to stroke her henna-dyed locks. “I should have known it from the start. You have your mother’s beauty.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Sadira spat, slapping his hand away. “My memories are of a haggard, broken-hearted crone abandoned to slavery by the only man she ever loved.”

  Faenaeyon’s mouth fell open and he seemed genuinely perplexed. “What else should I have done?” he asked. “Take her from Tyr and her own people?”

  “Of course!” Sadira answered.

  Now the elf looked thoroughly confused. “And then what? Keep her as a daeg?”

  He spoke the last word in a derogatory tone. A daeg was a spouse—either a male or female—stolen from another tribe. Daegs lived in a state of serfdom until the chief decided they had forgotten their loyalties to their old tribe. It could be many years before a daeg was accepted as a full member of the new tribe, and sometimes they never were.

  “That would have been better than what happened,” Sadira spat.

  “You know nothing,” Faenaeyon scoffed. “Barakah was not an elf. The Sun Runners would never have accepted her as anything but a daeg, and our chief would have given you to the lirrs the instant you were born.”

  Overcome by anger, Sadira shoved her father as hard as she could. The big elf barely budged. Scowling angrily, he grabbed her by the arm.

  “Let me go!” Sadira hissed, reaching for her satchel.

  “Quiet,” Faenaeyon replied, pushing her toward Magnus. With his free hand, he pulled the dagger from the sheath on Huyar’s hip.

  Sadira heard the clack of two weapons striking each other, then turned and saw her father parry the slash of the obsidian barong. No one wielded the heavy chopping knife; it simply danced through the air on its own. Faenaeyon made a grab for the handle, then narrowly saved his hand by dodging away as the blade flashed at his wrist.

  Suddenly ignoring his weapon, the chief rushed down the alley. At the end of the dark lane stood a boyish silhouette, his fingers pointed at the floating barong. The youth waved his hand in Sadira’s direction, and the heavy knife streaked toward her head.

  The sorceress dropped to the street. As she rolled over the grimy stones, her injured leg erupted into fiery agony. She cried out, then came to rest against a pair of massive feet with ivory toe-claws. The barong descended toward her neck, but Magnus’s arm flashed out and smashed the black blade against the stone wall.

  Sighing in relief, Sadira looked down the alley and saw Faenaeyon raising his dagger to strike at Raka. “Don’t kill him!” she screamed.

  The elf’s blade stopped in midair, and he grabbed the boy. “But he tried to murder you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sadira answered, rising to her feet. “That’s our guide. Bring him here.”

  Faenaeyon raised his peaked eyebrows as if she were mad, but did as asked. He used one band to keep Raka’s arms pinned, and held the other ready to cut the boy’s throat. When they reached Sadira, the young sorcerer glared at her with undisguised loathing. His face was covered with scrapes and lumps from being trapped under the falling arch, but otherwise he seemed to have emerged unscathed.

  “You promised to help us escape the city,” Sadira said, returning Raka’s angry stare with a look of forbearance. “Why did you try to kill me instead?”

  “You betrayed me,” the youth snapped. “My master has barred me from the Alliance.”

  “What for?” Sadira asked, shocked.

  “I cannot believe you
must ask,” Raka replied, shaking his head angrily. “I vouched for you, and you’re a defiler. We saw you casting spells yesterday.”

  Sadira’s stomach felt as though the youth had punched her. She bit her lip and looked away. “I don’t expect you to approve of my methods,” she said. “But it was the only way I could stop Dhojakt. I had no choice.”

  “You could have died honorably,” Raka sneered.

  “To what end?” Sadira demanded, now growing as angry as the boy. “So the Dragon can keep terrorizing Athas?”

  “That would be better than helping him to destroy it,” Raka replied.

  He jerked free of Faenaeyon’s grasp, then grabbed Sadira by the arm and pulled her to the end of the alley. “That grove was as old as Nibenay itself,” he said, pointing at the shriveled trunks of the agafari trees. “The sorcerer-king himself proclaimed it a refuge, and no defiler every dared to touch it—until Sadira of Tyr came.”

  “I’m sorry your trees died,” Sadira said bitterly. “But stopping the Dragon is more important—or doesn’t the murder of thousands of people mean anything to you?”

  “Of course,” Raka answered, his attitude softening. “But so do those lives.”

  Sadira shook her head. “Call me a defiler if you like, but if I must choose between people and plants, I’ll take the people every time.”

  “I’m not talking about the trees,” Raka said. He gestured at a dozen slaves struggling to throw a heavy bole on the nearest fire. “The king kept a hundred slaves to tend this grove,” he said. “Once they finish clearing it, the guards will make them join their charges on the pyres.”

  The sorceress felt a terrible weight on her chest. “You can’t blame me for that,” she said. “I couldn’t have known.”

  “You should have,” Raka countered. “Someone dies whenever you defile the land. Maybe not right away, but when they’re hungry for the faro that used to grow there, or when they need meat and leather from lizards that once grazed there.”