Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 3 - The Amber Enchantress (32 page)

They were almost finished when Sadira noticed more than a dozen shadows surrounding her and Rhayn. They had vaguely human shapes, with ropey limbs, serpentine torsos, and blue embers where their eyes should have been. The sorceress looked around, searching for the beings who were casting the shadows, but found no one
—
even when she looked into the sky.

One of the shadows reached for the stomach Rhayn had just sewn shut. When its finger touched the waterskin, the vessel turned black and became pan of the shadow itself.

“What are they?” Rhayn demanded, also staring at the dark figures surrounding them.

“Shadow people,” Sadira answered, recalling Rikus's description of Umbra. She also remembered Er'Stali's account of the two dwarves who had gone to the
Pristine
Tower
, then used obsidian to bribe the shadow people. “I think they're from the tower.”

Rhayn stood, apparently less interested in where they were from than what they were doing. “Tell them to give us the waterskin back!” she said, motioning at the creatures with the lance she had been making.

“How?”
Sadira asked.

When several shadows began to close around Rhayn, the elf cast a simple spell and a beam of light sprang from her hand. She aimed it at the ground before her, trying to fend off the dark figures at her feet. If anything, her efforts only made the silhouettes grow blacker and more substantial.

One shadow stopped harassing Rhayn. Its body began to thicken and assume a solid form, then it moved into a kneeling position. When it had assumed a full, three-dimensional form, it rose to its feet. The thing stood as tall as a half-giant, towering over the elf as she towered over Sadira.

“By what right do you hunt on our lands?” it demanded, black fumes rising from the blue gash that had opened to serve as its mouth.

Instead of answering, Rhayn backed away and looked toward Magnus. When she saw that he and the floater were still singing to each other, she called, “Magnus, leave that thing alone and come here!”

When he did not seem to hear her, the shadow looked down at its fellows on the ground, then waved its hand toward the windsinger. Several of the silhouettes rushed toward Magnus, swimming through the grass like a person would swim through an oasis pond. Upon reaching the windsinger, they began circling him in a mad dance. After a few moments, they stopped and, assuming solid form, rose to a standing position.

The floater's shrill warble ceased, and it shot its ribbonlike arms down to grasp Magnus. The windsinger's song came to a strangled halt, and he cried out in pain. The beast's limbs began to retract, though instead of lifting the heavy windsinger into the air, it descended toward him. The shadow people surrounding Magnus melted back into the ground, shooting away from him as quickly as they had approached.

Rhayn screamed in alarm, then sprinted toward the windsinger. Sadira started to follow, but found her way blocked by the shadow that had been talking to her sister “The game on this land belongs to us,” the silhouette hissed, taking Sadira's wrist. A black stain slowly spread up her arm, accompanied by a cold, numbing pain that seemed to draw the very heat from her body. “How are you going to pay for it?”

“Forgive us. We didn't know the birds belonged to anyone.” Sadira pulled her arm away, but the shadow blocked her path and would not allow her to go forward. She waved a hand at the pile of erdlu flesh. “Does it look like we-”

She was interrupted as Magnus's thunderous voice rumbled across the heath, intoning a single bass note. So deep and full was the tone that Sadira could hear nothing else. She even felt the sound in her bones, a resonate vibration that made her joints rasp and her abdomen tremble.

Across the meadow, Sadira saw her sister reach Magnus's side and begin slashing at the ribbons holding him prisoner. Rhayn accomplished little, except to cover herself with slime. The windsinger shoved her away, raising his voice still louder. A searing whirlwind, full of burning sand and flying stones, roared in from the desert and entwined the windsinger and his attacker. Wild undulations rolled through the floater's body, then its blue entrails began to writhe madly about.

In the next instant, the whirlwind ripped the beast apart, flinging slimy tendrils and masses of viscid flesh in all directions. The largest part of the floater's body sailed far over the heath, where it was snatched from the air by the flick of some unseen creature's barb-covered tongue. Magnus closed his mouth and collapsed to the ground, allowing the whirlwind to dissipate as quickly as it had appeared.

Sadira sidestepped the shadow in front of her and rushed to the windsinger's side, arriving a few moments after her sister. Where the floater had gripped him, Magnus's face and arms were red and inflamed. On one of his legs was a long welt that had burst open and was slowly oozing blood.

“Magnus, heal yourself!” Sadira said, pulling a piece of slimy tentacle off his shoulder.

The windsinger nodded and began his song.

The welt did not close. Instead, the tip of a brown root sprouted from the wound. Sadira snatched Rhayn's weapon and used the erdlu claw to cut the thing off.

Magnus howled in pain, then took the lance from her hand and flung it away. “No!” he cried. “It's part of me now. I can feel it growing out of my bones.”

Another root appeared from the wound. The three companions watched in horror as it grew larger and longer, until it was as big around as Sadira's wrist. Suddenly, the tip turned downward and plunged into the soil. Rhayn and Sadira grabbed the stalk and, ignoring Magnus's scream, tried to pull it free. The women were nearly jerked off their feet as the thing burrowed into the ground. Finally, when the stem had grown so large that they could no longer grasp it, the sisters gave up.

“We've got to try something else,” Sadira said. “Maybe blasting it away?”

“That would be like taking off a leg, maybe worse,” Magnus said, his teeth clenched in pain.

“Then what do you want us to do?” demanded Rhayn, her voice betraying her frustration.

“We could reverse the metamorphosis for you,” said a deep voice.

Sadira turned around and saw that all of the shadow people had manifested themselves in solid form. They were standing several yards away, their cold blue eyes fixed on the root attaching Magnus to the ground.

“You can do that?” the sorceress asked.

“Of course,” answered the shadow. “This is our land, is it not?”

Sadira and Rhayn stepped aside and waved the shadows forward. “Please do.”

The group's leader shook his head. “First, there is the matter of payment,” he said. “It has been more than a year since our last shipment. We had hoped you were the couriers.”

“We're not, so stop wasting time and fix him,” Rhayn snorted, pointing at Magnus.

The shadow shook his head. “Not without payment.”

“I'll pay you!” the elf yelled, spreading her fingers to draw the energy for a spell.

Sadira laid a restraining hand on her sister's arm. To the shadows, she said, “I'm sorry, but we have no obsidian
—
”

“Then your friend shall remain as he is until you bring it to us,” hissed the speaker.

With that, he walked over and seized the weapon that Magnus had thrown to the ground earlier. As his darkness engulfed the makeshift lance, the other shadows went over to where Sadira and Rhayn had been butchering the erdlu. They collected all of the claws, scales, and bones that the two sisters had labored so hard to harvest, then melted into the ground and swam off toward the distant tower.

“Now what?”
Rhayn demanded.

“We follow them,” Sadira said. “If they can reverse what happened to Magnus, I'll wager they can control the tower's magic. All we have to do is figure out a way to convince them to give us what we want.”

“Leave that to me,” said Rhayn. “The shadow has not been cast that can out-bargain an elf?”

“And what about me?”
Magnus asked.

Sadira gave him a sad look. “I don't see that we can help you by staying here,” she said. “If we're successful at the tower, we'll be back with the shadow people to free you.”

The windsinger nodded. “I guess that makes sense, but what about food
—
and water?”

Rhayn kissed Magnus on the cheek, at the same time patting the brown stalk that anchored him to the ground. “Isn't that what roots are for?”

The Pristine Tower

Sadira slipped past the gnarled form of another bogo tree, taking care to stay well away from the dagger-sized thorns covering its trunk. As she moved, the sorceress kept a watchful eye on the burled limbs overhead. Although she and Rhayn had been in the forest less than three hours, they had already been attacked a half-dozen times by snakelike beasts lurking in the trees. The creatures liked to swing down as their prey passed beneath a branch, trying to impale their chosen victims on the barbed spines that covered their bodies.

Once Sadira was safely past the bogo tree, she turned her attention forward, expecting to see nothing but more twisted, stark boles. Instead, she was surprised to find herself at the edge of a small glade covered with clumps of ash-colored brush. Thousands of fleecy white blossoms, held aloft on long yellow stems, swayed back and forth in the hot wind.

Sadira hardly noticed the meadow. During the last day and a half, she and Rhayn had seen a dozen different fields. All had been equally beautiful, and all had concealed hazards that had to be negotiated at the peril of their lives. The sorceress was more interested in what lay at the bean of the glade.

There, a glaring needle of white stone rose into the sky, as high as a cloud and as sheer as a sculpted column. At the bottom stood an ancient gatehouse, guarding a narrow case of stairs that circled up the spire until it could no longer be distinguished as a separate feature. The pillar seemed to have no summit, at least not that Sadira could see. It simply grew smaller and smaller, until it disappeared into the sky.

“I'd say we've reached the
Pristine
Tower
,” said Rhayn, coming up behind the sorceress.

“Not yet,” said Sadira, cautiously stepping into the meadow. “There's still a hundred yards to go
—
and that's no small distance in this place.”

The two women advanced slowly, avoiding contact with the brush and its blossoms. When they could not, they carefully inspected the stems for thorns or stickers that might draw even a drop of blood. It was a slow and tedious way to travel, but with what had happened to Magnus still fresh in their memories, the women knew it was necessary.

They were about halfway across when a chorus of snorts and squeals erupted from a short distance away. Yellow canes and fleecy blossoms danced wildly as the growling creatures charged toward the sisters.

“I've got it,” Rhayn said, pulling a pinch of sand from her pocket.

An instant later, several squat rodents with the bodies of weasels and the tusks of boars charged from the undergrowth. They came directly at the two women, their clawed feet spraying dirt high into the air. Rhayn tossed the sand in their direction and spoke her incantation. The grains began to sparkle and formed a small cloud close to the ground. The beasts rushed straight into the scintillating fog and promptly collapsed on top of each other, sound asleep.

“That's the last of my spells,” Rhayn said, turning back toward the tower.

“I'm no better off,” said Sadira. “We'll just have to hope for the best.”

During the trek to the tower, the two women had relied on their magic to defend themselves from a myriad of creatures. Unfortunately, whenever they cast a spell, the incantation vanished from their minds. Usually, the mystic words and gestures were renewed through study, but because Faenaeyon had not let them keep their spellbooks, they could not replenish their spells.

Sadira resumed her careful approach to the tower, listening even more intently for any hint of trouble. As they neared the white spire, the sorceress saw that it was made of the same porous stone as the grotto at Cleft Rock. Although she found this puzzling, she was not particularly concerned by it. Since both she and Rhayn had exhausted their spells, there would be no need to draw magical energy through the stone.

A few tense minutes later, they reached the gatehouse. It was an ancient structure, solidly built from granite blocks and lined with the dark slits of arrow loops. Stone hinges still hung from the gate posts, and beneath the archway, the spikes of a shattered portcullis were lodged in the foyer's cracked flagstones.

When the two women stepped beneath the arch, a pair of sparkling blue eyes appeared in the darkness of an arrow slit. “Stand where you are!” ordered a voice that seemed neither male nor female. When the sisters obeyed, a black silhouette slipped from the arrow loop and took on the ropey form of a shadow person. It stepped forward to block their way then asked, “Do you bring obsidian?”

“No, that will come later,” answered Rhayn, taking charge of the negotiations. “For now, we have only a small gift to establish our good will, and in return we seek a favor to establish yours.”

“What is your gift?” asked the shadow.

“News regarding Umbra and the obsidian mines of Family Lubar,” answered Rhayn.

In preparation for the negotiations, Sadira had repeated to her sister all that Rikus and Er'Stali had told her about Maetan of Lubar's relationship to Umbra, the shadow people, and the
Pristine
Tower
. After hearing about the obsidian caravans that Family Lubar had sent in payment for Umbra's services, Rhayn had declared she would have no trouble getting what they wanted from the shadow people.

When the silhouette expressed no interest in what she had tendered so far, Rhayn said, “We thought you might be interested in reviving the flow of obsidian caravans.”

This offer met with more success. “We will hear what you have to say,” the shadow replied. It drifted aside and faded back into the arrow slit.

“After you,” Rhayn said, motioning Sadira forward.

The sorceress stepped past the remains of the shattered portcullis, then led the way onto the narrow stairway beyond. She found that they would need to be even more careful climbing the tower than they had been in approaching it. Although each step was only a few inches high, it was also just half as wide as Sadira's foot was long. To make matters worse, in places the staircase was so worn that it had become more of ramp, covered with a thousand years of dust and sand. The footing was so treacherous that a dune's slip face would have been easier to ascend.