Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 3 - The Amber Enchantress (23 page)

“We're on your side,” Sadira said.

The sorceress reached down and pulled the old man to his feet, then looked around to see if Dhojakt's followers had shown themselves. Here and there, a few women were calmly watching the revolt from the safety of an empty slave pen, but they had not yet done anything to reveal themselves as templars. Sadira thrust the dagger into the slave's hand, then pushed him toward the exit. “You don't have much time. Make good use of it.”

The slave's toothless mouth fell open. He gave Sadira quick bow, then turned to lash out at a woman wearing a silk sarami and a copper bracelet. A long arc of blood shot from the wound, spattering Magnus's knobby face.

Wiping the sticky fluid away from his eye, Magnus asked, “Did you have to return the knife?”

“If you'd ever been a slave, you wouldn't ask that question,” Sadira said.

Without waiting for a reply, she took the windsinger by the arm and led him down the aisle. Behind them, the sounds of battle grew louder and more tumultuous.

When they neared the pillar at the end, a pair of Nibenese templars rushed around the corner, throwing off their saramis and calling upon their sorcerer-king for magic. They stopped two paces into the corridor, and one dropped something on the floor. There was a small pop and the smell of sulfur came to Sadira's nose.

A tiny sphere of fire appeared on the ground, quickly growing to the size of a kank. The woman threw her palms out before her as though pushing the flaming ball. It rolled down the aisle, picking up speed and size with each revolution. As the fiery globe passed, it left nothing behind save blackened vines, charred bodies, and scorched flagstones.

Sadira reached into the satchel containing her spell components, but Magnus caught her hand. “No,” he whispered. “We're here to get Faenaeyon
—
not to kill templars.”

The sorceress withdrew her hand, then watched as the two women walked past, following their ball down the corridor. Though her every instinct cried out for her to jump into the battle, she knew the windsinger was right.

About halfway down the corridor, the ball exploded into a fiery spray, then vanished in a puff of black smoke. Blocking the aisle stood a transparent wall of force, and through its shimmering surface Sadira could see Raka turning to flee.

“I think the time's come to get Faenaeyon,” Sadira said.

As she spoke, the second templar flung her hand at the arch above Raka's head. A blue stone streaked from the woman's hand and struck the span squarely in the center. The stones vanished in a cascade of sparks, then the ceiling collapsed, showering the aisle below with stone debris.

Magnus shook his head and looked away. “What a waste,” he commented sadly. “Now how will we find our way out of the city?”

“Perhaps the
Alliance
will send someone else,” Sadira said, watching as a pair of slaves fell to their knees and began clawing at the rubble. “Besides, Raka might still be alive.”

The windsinger shook his head. “How can you think that?”

The sorceress pointed at the digging slaves. “Perhaps they see something we can't.”

Sadira considered taking the time to defend the slaves, but noticed that the young sorcerer's quivering force barrier still stood. It would prevent the templars from advancing any farther, at least for a short time.

“Let's get what we came for,” Magnus said, pulling the sorceress around the corner.

Here, the situation was even more confused than where they had just come from. Dozens of men and women dressed in silken saramis cowered in the center of the aisle, just out of the reach of the poor wretches still bound to the wall. Scattered among the stalls were the bodies of those who had not been so careful, buyers and merchants with puffy, purple-tinged faces, swollen blue lips, and glazed eyes rolled back in their sockets. Often, the greasy cords that had strangled them were still looped tight around their necks, with the dazed, expressionless faces of their executioners hovering above their shoulders.

Halfway down the aisle, a magical rampart of golden light blocked the corridor. A dozen men carrying shields with House Shom's insignia stood before the barrier, waiting for three bare-breasted templars to dispel the wall. Through the shimmering barricade, Sadira could see the form of an elderly sorcerer staggering toward the exit.

Magnus went to Faenaeyon's stall and grabbed the slave's line. The windsinger gave the cord a mighty jerk, but neither the black line nor the stone ring holding it gave way. He pulled the rope taut, then opened his mouth and struck a deep, rumbling note that made the floor quiver. Where the stone ring was attached, the wall shuddered visibly, and the sorceress expected the bricks to shatter at any moment.

Down the aisle, the templars and guards turned at the sound of Magnus's voice. Seeing what was about to happen, they abandoned their pursuit of the sorcerer and charged toward Faenaeyon.

Sadira quickly summoned the energy for a spell. “Magnus, hurry!”

The windsinger glanced down the aisle, then twisted his lumpy lips into a scowl and stopped singing. Still holding the slave line with one hand, he formed the other into a massive fist and smashed it into the wall.

The bricks disintegrated into a spray of jagged shards, and the ring popped free. Magnus threw Faenaeyon over his shoulder, then groaned in pain and shook the fist he had used to smash the wall. Sadira waved him toward the next aisle and followed after him, moving backwards so she could keep a watch on the approaching Nibenese.

The guards were swinging their curved blades to and fro, frantically trying to clear a path through the men and women cowering before them. They succeeded only in filling the aisle with mutilated pedestrians too stunned and frightened to crawl out of the way.

One of the templars stopped and called upon her king's magic. A glowing red stone streaked from her hand, striking Magnus square in the back. The rock glanced off his hide, taking with it a swath of skin and filling the air with the stench of scorched leather. The windsinger crashed to the floor in a bellowing heap, sending Faenaeyon rolling toward the emporium's back wall.

“Magnus!”
Sadira screamed. “Get up!”

He did not answer, but the sorceress did not dare take her eyes off her enemies long enough to look in his direction. Instead, as a second templar pointed a long-nailed finger at her, Sadira flung a tiny shard of crystal high into the air and whispered her incantation.

After reaching the top of its arc, the shard did not fall Instead, it hovered in the air for an instant, then exploded into a glittering disk of solid crystal. Though Sadira knew the wafer to be no thicker than a finger, that was impossible to tell by looking at it. The circle seemed infinitely deep, and filled with sheets of gemlike color: emerald, amethyst, even flashes of diamond.

When the templar's spell struck the other side, it flared white, then divided into dazzling waves of yellow, red, and blue. Each blast of color shot off in a different direction, then quickly slowed to a stop and hung trapped within the radiant depths of the disk.

The sorceress traced a circle in the air. Spinning in a crazy maelstrom of color, the crystal flew down the corridor, absorbing everything it touched. Within moments, it was filled with the distorted, inert figures of those who had been standing in the aisle: slave buyers, house agents, guards, and the three Nibenese templars.

Sadira turned toward Magnus and saw the windsinger struggling to his knees, but, as she moved to help him something came scraping over the wall to which Faenaeyon had been attached. She spun around and saw Dhojakt's figure appearing at the top, his eyes burning with a hateful gleam.

Sadira began summoning the energy for another spell. At the same time, Dhojakt motioned at the floor upon which she stood, closing his fist and raising it upward as if drawing something from the earth. With a series of sharp bangs, the flagstones beneath her feet cracked apart and a gaping hole opened. The sorceress cried out in alarm and stepped away, still holding her palm downward.

A cilops crawled from the fissure, swinging its oval bead from side to side and flailing its antennae about wildly. Its compound eye quickly fell on Sadira and the beast opened its three sets of pincers. Blasting her with its musty breath, it shot forward.

The sorceress leaped into an empty slave pen, but was no match for the beast's speed. Catching her around the thigh, the thing lifted her into the air. A stream of hot blood spilled down her leg, and she felt the numbing sting of venom entering her veins.

“Magnus!” she yelled, panicked by the thought of being poisoned. “Help me!”

“Don't look to your big companion,” scoffed Dhojakt. “He has what he came for, and now he's gone.”

The Sorceress glanced at the rear wall of the emporium. As the prince claimed, neither Magnus nor Faenaeyon were anywhere to be seen. Cursing the windsinger for being so fast to leave, Sadira plunged a hand into her satchel and withdrew the first thing she touched, a wad of soot-covered hemp. She almost put it back, for it was an ingredient to a spell that she could cast only on herself. Then an idea occurred to her, and the sorceress thrust her fingers down to the cilops's pincers. She slapped the hemp onto the thing's head, then grabbed an antenna and spoke her incantation.

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 of cloth from her sarami and made a tourniquet around her savaged thigh. The bandage would prevent the poison from traveling into 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's 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 to 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. Pair raged through 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 runnel, 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 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.