Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 4 - Obsidian Oracle (27 page)

Regardless of whether or not they had skulls, a pair of orange embers burned where their
eyes should have been. Where the chins had once been, coarse masses of gray beard dangled
in the air, unattached to any form of flesh or bone.

Tithian took an involuntary step backward. His research had revealed to him how to find
Jo'orsh and Sa'ram, what he needed to make them listen to him, even how to force them to
forsake the lens-but it had not prepared the king for the horrors he saw before him.

Nevertheless, he gulped down his fear, then demanded, “Are you Jo'orsh and Sa'ram, the
last knights of Kemalok?”

Tithian asked not because he doubted their names, but because he wanted to remind the
spirits of who they had once been. The king had learned that after dying, a dwarf who
violated his life's focus slowly forgot his identity, over the centuries becoming an
unthinking monster. Such oblivion, it seemed, was the only way for him to escape the
terrible pain of betraying the very essence of his own being. For Tithian's plan to work,
Jo'orsh and Sa'ram could not be allowed that small comfort. They had to be reminded of who
they were.

The spirits showed no sign of recognizing their names. Instead, they continued to shuffle
forward, stopping less than two paces away. They remained motionless for a moment, then
voiced two deafening wails that sent pangs of fire shooting through Tithian's head. A
scorching gale blasted over his face, searing away the top layer of his skin and leaving
what had been underneath cracked and wrinkled. He opened his mouth to scream, and a fiery
draught filled his lungs. The inferno of pain quickly spread through the rest of his body,
charring his bones and searing his flesh, until even his joints erupted into unbearable
anguish, burning away the few vestiges of youth that remained to the king. He focused his
thoughts on the vial inside his mind, trying to enlarge it so that he could pass more of
this new pain on to Agis.

The vial shattered, spilling its contents back into Tithian's body. His mind was filled
with a churning torrent of misery. Agis's face disappeared in the flood, leaving the king
feeling feverish, weak, and scorched.

Tithian dropped to his knees and brought his satchel around in front of him. The hand he
thrust into the pouch was that of an old man, gaunt and flecked with liver spots, flesh
hanging off the wrist in pallid folds and the joints swollen with infirmity. The king
gasped, and though he could not hear it above the keening of the spirits, the voice that
rattled in his throat felt coarse and feeble.

Still, the gruesome pair did not end their wails, and Tithian sensed that he was growing
older by the instant. He pulled an owl's feather from his satchel, then turned his palm
toward the ground. Again, the energy that rushed into his body caused him great pain. He
could feel it literally broiling his flesh from the inside out, but that hardly seemed
noticeable compared to the agony being inflicted on him by the two spirits.

Tithian tossed the feather into the air and croaked his incantation, using his tongue to
feel his way through the syllables. Again, the spell did not work quite as he had
expected. Instead of imposing an absolute silence over the area, it muffled the keening,
so that the terrible sound seemed to echo from the far end of a long canyon.

The searing agony slowly faded, leaving a thousand minor pains in its place. Every joint
throbbed with a feverish ache, his stomach churned as though he had eaten a meal of
brimstone, and his ears rang with a terrible chime that would not die away. Nevertheless,
Tithian knew that he had, for now, survived the ill effects of the keening.

The king pushed himself to his feet and stood before the two spirits, his head swimming
from the effort. Doing his best not to tremble and not to cower when he met their fiery
gazes, he demanded, “Again, are you the last dwarven knights, Jo'orsh and Sa'ram?”

To the king's surprise, this time the spirits answered-and they seemed anything but
unthinking. “We are not dwarves, human!” thundered the figure with the head. “We are
Jo'orsh and Sa'ram, the first giants! We have felt your magic searching for our Oracle,
and you shall not have it, thief!”

Tiny red flames sprouted from the stumps of the spirits' arms. They began to crawl
forward, slowly bringing their twisted limbs around to point at his face. Tithian backed
away, stumbling and nearly falling when his old man's legs did not respond as he had
expected. He started to reach into his satchel for the components to another spell, then,
remembering how the last two spells had seared his flesh, he elected to try something
different.

Tithian closed his eyes and visualized himself as a statue, carved from a solid block of
granite. As he summoned the spiritual energy to use the Way, the statue's features changed
with no input from him. The gaunt features became haggard and almost skeletal, deep
circles appeared beneath his eyes, and his hawkish nose protruded so far that his
thin-lipped mouth seemed little more than a shadow. His shoulders hunched over, and his
long hair stuck out at all angles.

Although repulsed by the image, Tithian did not bother to change it. The flesh had become
stony and resistant to fire, which was what mattered most at the moment. He forced himself
to stop retreating, then stood up straight as his two attackers approached.

The bony creatures stopped less than a pace away, pointing their arms straight at
Tithian's chest. The flames at the end of their stumps shot out, washing over the king's
body as had their scorching breaths earlier. The fire had little effect, swirling
harmlessly over his breast.

“You may have fathered giants, but you were born dwarves,” Tithian said. He focused his
eyes on the embers floating above the necks of the headless spirits, then quoted the first
line from the dwarves' sacred text, the
Book of the Kemlok Kings:
“'Born of liquid fire and seasoned in bleak darkness, we dwarves are the sturdy people,
the people of the rock-'”

While he spoke, the king formed the ludicrous image of a bearded, hairy dwarf, as he
understood that the ancient dwarves were portrayed in their portraits. He used the Way to
project this construct toward the burning embers of the headless bone creature. He was not
making a mental attack so much as simply hoping to contact whatever passed for the thing's
mind.

He continued to recite: “'It is into our bones that the mountains sink their roots. It is
from our hearts that the clear waters pour. It is out of our mouths that the cool winds
blow. We were made to buttress the world, to support the cities of the green races, to
carry the weight of the verdant fields upon our shoulders.'”

Tithian's dwarf construct passed into what remained of the spirit's intellect, and the
king was suddenly blinded by a brilliant crimson glow. The ground vanished from beneath
his feet, sending him tumbling head over heels into the red radiance.

The king visualized a pair of wings sprouting from the dwarf's back, trying to bring the
descent under control. He had a queasy feeling in his stomach
as
a surge of energy rose from deep within his aged body, and the appendages appeared on the
back of his mental construct. Wisps of smoke began to rise from the wings almost
instantly, then they burst into flame.

Hoping to reach the spirit's memory before his construct went the way of his wings,
Tithian had it repeat the opening lines from the
Book of the Kemlok Kings:
“'Born of liquid fire and seasoned in bleak darkness, we dwarves are the sturdy people,
the people of the rock. It is into our bones that the mountains sink their roots. It is
from our hearts that the clear waters pour...”

The dark circle of a cave's mouth appeared in the crimson glow, directly in front of
Tithian's construct. As the imaginary dwarf continued to fall, the black disk grew larger
and larger. Soon, it replaced the crimson fire altogether, and the king's construct was
lost in the darkness. Somewhere in the blackness, a stream of water trickled into a still
pond, and Tithian smelled a sweet odor of dampness. On his skin he felt a cool breeze,
carrying on its breath the promise of shelter and safety.

It was then that Tithian noticed that the spirits had stopped attacking his physical body.
They now stood to each side of him, their mangled arms lowered and no longer spouting
flame. The orange embers had been replaced by the glowing effigy of true eyes, with bushy
eyebrows, long gray lashes, and a calm serenity that bespoke of ancient wisdom and
integrity of character.

Inside the mind of the headless spirit, a pair of flickering brands appeared in front of
Tithian's construct, lighting the darkness for him. To the king's surprise, he discovered
that his dwarf was not standing in a simple cave passage, but in a vast subterranean
courtyard. Directly ahead lay the arched entrance to a magnificent tower, flanked on each
side by a sconce holding one of the torches that lit the area. The keep rose high
overhead, its roof joining directly into the ceiling of the cavernous chamber in which it
had been built.

Tithian took his construct past the bronze-gilded doors and entered the keep. He found
himself standing in a dimly lit foyer. To one side of the entrance sat a low stone bench,
sized for the short legs of dwarves. On the other side was a higher bench, appropriate to
the longer legs of humans. Another door opened on the opposite side, and above this arch
hung a pair of crossed battle-axes, ready to fall on the neck of anyone who passed through
that portal without permission.

A pair of dwarves stepped through the inner door. Both were dressed in gleaming suits of
steel plate, embossed with simple geometric patterns and trimmed in gold. One of the
figures carried his helmet beneath his arm. Still, all that could be seen of his visage
were a pair of steady brown eyes and his proud hooked nose, for his long hair and bushy
beard formed a mane that hid everything else from view. The second dwarf wore his helmet
with the visor down, leaving nothing but a pair of green eyes and the tufts of his long
beard exposed to view.

“Why have you called us back to the caves of our ancestors?” demanded the helmeted figure.
“Why have you come to us speaking of the roots of mountains, of clear waters and cool
winds-of the people of fire and darkness?”

“The time has come for you to rejoin your king, Sa'ram,” Tithian replied, reasoning that
the dwarf who refused to show his head would be the ancestor of the beasthead giants.

The dwarf showed no reaction to the mention of his name, but said, “That is not possible.
We have a duty to perform to our descendants.”

“You have a duty to perform to your king!” Tithian said sharply. “Rkard has summoned you,
and you must obey.”

“Rkard is dead,” replied Sa'ram, angry orange embers beginning to glow behind his visor.
“He has been dead these many centuries.”

“Rkard has been reborn, and I have come to summon you back to his service,” the king said.
If the spirits discovered his lie, Tithian had no doubt that he would suffer a terrible
and lingering death. But he had no intention of letting them find him out. He had come
prepared to corroborate his story, or he would never have made such an outrageous claim.
“My body holds in its hands the symbols to prove that I speak the truth.”

Tithian found his construct ejected from the spirit's mind. Once again, he was standing in
the sweltering mica tunnel, flanked on either side by a giant-sized lump of fused bone
that had once been a dwarf.

These symbols-show them to us,
ordered Sa'ram. Lacking a mouth, or even a head to put it in, he used the Way to send his
message.

Tithian held out the Belt of Rank, draping it over Sa'ram's fleshless arm.

“That is the Goblin's Head.” objected Jo'orsh. His eyes also began to glow orange. “It is
the crest of the dwarven general, not the king.”

“Were they not one and the same when Kemalok fell?” Tithian countered. Judging by the
orange color returning to their eyes, his plan was not working quite as well as he had
hoped. He plunged his hand into his shoulder satchel, then said, “Nevertheless, I feared
that one symbol would not be enough. That's why I brought this as well.”

Tithian pulled a jewel-studded crown of white metal from his satchel, then slipped it over
the stump of Jo'orsh's arm.

“Rkard's crown,” confirmed the spirit. He sounded strangely disappointed, and the orange
glow faded from both his eyes and those of Sa'ram. “What does he wish of us?”

“Return to Kemalok,” Tithian replied, breathing a secret sigh of relief. “There, you'll
find a young dwarf-human crossbreed with crimson eyes. He is the vessel in which Rkard has
chosen to reincarnate himself. You must guard this child from harm, for it is his destiny
to unite the armies of men and dwarves under the Tower of Buryn's banner.”

Despite what he said, Tithian had no knowledge that Rkard had been reincarnated in any
child. Instead, the king had fashioned the lie after several painstaking months
researching archaic dwarven legends and interrogating his disembodied tutors. He had based
his final story on the ancient dwarven belief that the kings of Kemalok would always rise
to answer their city's call for protection. Since he knew that Rkard had, in fact,
recently risen to protect the city, Tithian felt confident that Sa'ram and Jo'orsh would
not have too much trouble accepting his fabrication.

For several moments, the two spirits stared silently at each other. Finally, Jo'orsh shook
his head. “We cannot answer our king's call,” he said. “Our duty to guard the Oracle-”

“Is not as great as your duty to your king,” Tithian said, watching the pair carefully.
After judging that the spirits had accepted him as a true messenger of Rkard, he added,
“Nor is it as great as your duty to uphold the oath you swore to kill Borys.”

Sa'ram's eyes flashed. We
cannot keep that oath.

“Not directly, but the time will soon be at hand- when Rkard is old enough to assemble the
armies of men and dwarves,” Tithian said. “The weapons he needs are within his grasp: the.
Scourge of Rkard, a sorceress with the magic of the Pristine Tower, and, here on Lybdos,
the Dark Lens. All you must do is guard the child until he's old enough to slay the
Dragon. I'll stay with the lens until you return for it.”