Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 5 - The Cerulean Storm (32 page)

Rikus stopped and turned sideways, so he could see both into the ravine and back toward
the chasm. He was near the front of the arch, less than a dozen paces from the
sorcerer-kings.

“This isn't working,” growled the Oba. “We'll have to kill the Usurper!”

She locked her eyes on Tithian, as did King Tec and Nibenay. Andropinis stepped to the
front of the arch, positioning his black shield between Rikus and his fellow
sorcerer-kings.

Tithian groaned, then his tail slackened and began to come untwined from around the Dark
Lens. Blood trickled from his nostrils and ears, and his eyes bulged from their sockets.
His jaw began to quiver, and Rikus knew that even with the Dark Lens, the king of Tyr was
no match for the sorcerer-kings.

Shifting the Scourge away from his throwing hand, Rikus drew the dagger Sacha had given
him and hurled it at Hamanu. The blade sailed straight for the sorcerer-king's back, and
it looked like it would be a clean kill. Behind the mul, Andropinis spoke the syllable of
a mystic incantation.

Rikus spun and leaped, slashing his sword at the sorcerer-king's rising hand. Reacting
impossibly fast, Andropinis brought his shield up to intercept the blow. The Scourge hit
without so much as a thud and stopped cold.

Andropinis's spell misfired, and a silent burst of silver light flashed between the
sorcerer-king and Rikus. The mul felt a tremendous force pushing on his chest, not so much
an impact as overwhelming pressure, and his feet left the ground. He sailed a dozen paces
through the air before he crashed down, rolling head over heels and coming to a rest at
Hamanu's side.

To Rikus's amazement, the sorcerer-king still stood, even with the dagger planted deep in
his back. His teeth were clenched in pain, and sweat soaked his entire body, but the
injury had not forced him to break off the combat with the Tyrian king. In contrast,
Tithian looked ready to collapse, with tears of blood running from his bulging eyes and
his serpentine tail barely contacting with the Dark Lens.

Rikus glanced toward the front of the arch and saw that Andropinis's misfired spell had
hurled him into the Oba. They were both picking themselves off the ground. The other two
sorcerer-kings were still helping Hamanu, their gazes locked on Tithian's face.

Leaving the Scourge on the ground, Rikus leaped up and reached for the dagger in Hamanu's
back. Without looking away from Tithian, the sorcerer-king lashed out. The attack was as
fast as a viper strike, but at least this time Rikus saw it coming. He twisted sideways,
trying to slip past the blow, and felt a hard fist skip along his jaw. Normally, the mul
would hardly have noticed a glancing blow, but Hamanu's strike snapped his head around.

Rikus spun with the impact, turning around in a complete circle. He stopped directly
behind his foe and grabbed the dagger, pushing it in to the hilt. When the sorcerer-king
still did not fall, he twisted the blade and forced it upwards, driving toward the heart.
Hamanu screamed and stumbled back, as if Tithian were driving him away.

A kes'trekel came streaking out of the Dark Lens, its curled talons and hooked beak poised
to strike. The giant raptor seemed as real as any Rikus had ever seen-which surprised him.
The mul was not a complete stranger to the Way, and he knew that battles between
mindbenders were fought inside their minds.

When the bird hit, any doubts about its reality vanished. The kes'trekel's talons sank
deep into Hamanu's shoulders, bowling him over. The mul released his hold on the dagger,
then watched the great bird carry the sorcerer-king's screaming form toward the front of
the arch.

As he realized what he was seeing, Rikus did not know whether to rejoice or be sick. With
the Dark Lens, Tithian could create physical versions of his mental constructs. While that
ability was proving useful now, the mul knew that when the time came to kill the king, it
would be every bit as dangerous to him and his friends as it was to the sorcerer-kings. ,
Rikus rolled across the ground and grabbed the Scourge, then returned to his feet in time
to see the kes'trekel hurl itself into the midst of the sorcerer-kings. The mul started
forward, knowing he did not have long to attack before his enemies recovered. * “No,
Rikus, wait!” Sacha ordered. Then, to Tithian, the head said, “Give me a light!”

As the king uttered an incantation, Rikus watched the sorcerer-kings counterattack the
kes'trekel. They made short work of the raptor, reducing it to a cloud of feathers in an
instant.

A bright white light flared behind the mul, causing him to cast a dark shadow. A pair of
burning blue eyes and a gashlike mouth appeared in the silhouette's head. The limbs began
to thicken, and the figure peeled itself off the ground.

Sacha had summoned a shadow giant.

At the other end of the arch, Andropinis cursed. He and the other sorcerer-kings started
forward, yelling incantations and gesturing madly. The shadow giant turned and spewed a
black mist in their direction. The passage filled with a thick, impenetrable fog. The
vapor quickly rolled back to engulf the mul and his companions in its bone-chilling murk.

“How am I supposed to f-fight in this?” Rikus demanded. His teeth were already chattering,
and his flesh was growing numb from the cold.

“You won't have to,” Sacha answered. “The sorcerer-kings know better than to enter the
Black.”

Rikus saw a pair of blue eyes drifting toward him, then he felt an icy hand close over his
wrist.

* * * * *

The Dragon turned his remaining hand toward the ground. Sadira saw the telltale shimmer of
magic rising into the palm. With both hands injured, she could not imagine he intended to
cast a spell, any more than she could imagine where the energy was coming from. The
obsidian globes in his stomach were shattered, so the sorceress knew he could not be
drawing the power from any animals that might be lurking in this wasteland. That meant
Borys was drawing the energy from foliage.

Sadira did not see so much as a blade of grass anywhere on the desolate plain, but she
knew there had to be plants somewhere. She turned her own palm toward the ground and began
to draw. Even when the sun was down she was a powerful sorceress and could rely on the
normal energy sources to cast her spells.

It took a moment, then she felt the familiar tingle of magic rising through her arm. The
energy seemed to be coming from the cliffs at the edge of the plain. She would have to be
careful not to draw too much power too rapidly, for fear of robbing all the life-force
from the unseen plants and destroying them.

Before the sorceress's eyes, the gash on Borys's forearm slowly began to seal itself.

“We'll never kill Borys if he can heal himself!” Rkard exclaimed. The boy stood at her
side, staring in horror at the Dragon's closing wounds.

“We'll find a way,” Sadira replied, infusing her voice with more confidence than she felt.

The sorceress closed her hand to the flow of energy and pulled a small piece of brown
tuber from her pocket. Keeping one eye on the Dragon, the sorceress uttered an incantation
over the root, then held it out to Rkard.

“Eat this. It'll make you so fast Borys won't catch you.” As Sadira spoke, she saw the
fingers on Borys's useless hand begin to wiggle.

The boy refused to take the root. “You should eat it,” he said. “I tried to tell you
before-I'm not supposed to kill the Dragon.”

Sadira frowned. “What are you saying? Of course you are.”

Rkard shook his head. “Jo'orsh told Borys that Z decided to kill the Dragon,” the boy
explained. “But that's wrong. When he and Sa'ram came to Agis's house, I asked them why
they were giving me the Belt of Rank and King Rkard's crown. They said it was because I
was going to kill the Dragon-so I thought-”

“They were telling you it's your destiny.” Sadira interrupted.

Rkard did not answer right away, and the sorceress watched the fingers of Borys's hand
close into a fist. She thought he might come after them then, but the Dragon summoned more
energy and did not move. Apparently, he intended to leave them no weaknesses to exploit
when he attacked.

After a moment, Rkard said quietly, “Borys told Jo'orsh there's no such thing as destiny.
I didn't believe him at first, but then Jo'orsh said people choose their destinies.” He
paused, then added, “Only, I never chose mine.”

“Then how come he and Sa'ram gave you the belt and crown?”

Rkard shook his head. “I don't know,” the boy replied. “And I'm not sure how they got them
in the first place. The belt and the crown were stolen from our treasuries when the
slavers raided Kled.”

“Tithian!” the sorceress hissed. For some reason, the king had made up the whole story
about Rkard being destined to kill the Dragon-and used the belt and crown to convince the
banshees that it was true. “I'll kill him!”

“Only if you kill Borys first,” Rkard answered. “So eat the root yourself.”

“No, I want you safe.”

“You can't make me safe,” answered the boy. “Besides, Borys isn't as worried about me.
He'll come after you first.”

The Dragon was still drawing energy from the ground. The wound on his leg had already
healed, and the nub of a hand had appeared on the stump of his severed wrist.

“Go see what you can do for your mother,” Sadira said.

The sorceress put the root in her mouth and fixed her eye on the crimson globe encasing
Borys's head. Given that Rkard's spell had prevented the Dragon from using the Way, she
suspected that he would dispel it when he recovered the full use of his hands. Sadira
turned her palm toward the ground, wondering if the beast would find it any easier to use
his mental powers from inside a sphere of darkness.

*****

It seemed to Rikus they had been floating in the Black forever, the shadow giant's
icy
fingers entwined around their wrists and icy strands of gossamer filament brushing across
their faces. The mul ached to the bones with cold, and only the vibrations of his constant
shivering kept the ice crystals from completely encasing his body. Save for the red
shimmer of the Dark Lens, glimmering a short distance to his side, Rikus could see nothing.

“It's t-taking t-too long,” Rikus said hardly able to speak because his teeth were
chattering so badly.

“In the Black, time has little meaning,” the shadow giant replied. Earlier, he had
introduced himself as Khidar. “But I will deliver you to the other side in a matter of
instants in your time-provided Sacha was not mistaken about the light. Normally, we cannot
approach Ur Draxa because there are no shadows in this land.”

“A few instants is still too long,” the mul worried. “If the sorcerer-kings know the
arch's password-”

“That knowledge will do them no good,” replied Khidar. “My people will keep the arch
filled with the Black until you have killed Borys. If the sorcerer-kings step into it,
they will never leave.”

Rikus still wasn't convinced. “They have powerful magic,” he said.

“Which they will eventually use to dispel the fog in the arch's passage,” Khidar replied.
“But even for them, the shadow people are not easy to battle, and they were not prepared
to meet us. You may believe me when I say that by the time they follow, your battle with
the Dragon will be won-or lost.”

A crimson globe appeared in the darkness ahead, partially obscured by a thick wisp of
blackness that reminded Rikus of a sand streamer blowing across the face of a moon.

“Now you must be quiet,” Khidar urged. “That's our destination.”

As they drifted closer, the wisp of blackness grew thicker and more substantial, until it
resembled a pair of gnarled tree boles rising up to meet high above ground. Only after
studying the image for another moment did Rikus identify the dark band as a pair of huge
legs. Khidar was bringing them up directly beneath Borys.

In the next instant, Rikus emerged from the Dragon's shadow and found his head protruding
above a vast plain of broken scoria. As his eyes adjusted to the red light of Rkard's
sun-spell, he reached up with sword in hand and braced his arms on the ground. He started
to pull himself up, leading the way out of the Black.

The mul made it as far as his waist before Borys's voice cried an incantation. The red
light of Rkard's sun-spell abruptly vanished, and a terrible, crushing agony gripped
Rikus's hips as he found himself clamped in solid stone.

Biting back the urge to scream, Rikus looked around and saw no shadows anywhere. Below the
ground,
he
could feel Tithian tugging at his cold-numbed legs.

The mul raised his sword and stretched toward Borys's foot, but held his blow when he
heard Sadira's voice behind him. Rikus looked over his shoulder. He saw a black sphere
leave her hand and shoot up toward Borys's head.

The mul cursed silently, then stretched out to slash at the back of the Dragon's ankle.
The blade struck with a mighty clang, spraying blue sparks in all directions, then red
smoke and yellow blood poured from the wound.

Borys howled and stumbled away, his head engulfed in a sphere of darkness. He turned a
palm downward, then Rikus felt an eerie tingle as magical energy sizzled through the
ground around him.

Sadira made her second attack, firing a storm of flaming blue ice at the Dragon. The
pellets scoured long, smoking scars into his thick hide, but did not penetrate. Borys
growled in frustration and dodged, apparently expecting another attack and fearing that it
would have more effect.

“Over here, Sadira!” Rikus called, waving his sword in the air.

“Rikus!”

The sorceress rushed toward him. She moved with incredible swiftness and was at his side
in an instant, reaching into her robe for a spell component.

“Where have you been?” The words came so fast Rikus could hardly understand her.

“That's not as important as where I am now-trapped halfway in the Black!” the mul growled.
“We need a light.” Fifty paces away, Borys uttered an incantation and touched his hand to
his head. The sphere of darkness evaporated instantly.