Troy Denning - The Cerulean Storm

Soon, they came upon three strange beings leading a dozen slaves after a portly templar. The creatures resembled the ancient halflings of the Blue Age, save that they were part shadow and part person. The leader had a material head and a shadowy body, while another had solid limbs but nothing else. The third was split down the center, half silhouette and half physical.

When the leader of the half-shadows saw Rikus and Sadira, he called out in the strange language of the city. Though she did not understand the words, the sorceress recognized the voice speaking them.

“Khidar!”

The halfling led his two fellows and the slaves toward her. “You would have been wiser to have left after you killed Borys,” he said. “Rajaat is not fond of half-breeds like you and your husband.”

The slaves spread out, preparing to come at Rikus and Sadira from all sides. Most were armed with wooden sticks, but three had obsidian axes, and one carried a steel sword.

“Get out of here!” Rikus motioned the slaves back with his axe. “I’d hate to have to hurt you.”

The slaves began jabbering at each other, no more capable of understanding the mul than he was of understanding them.

“Call them off, Khidar,” Sadira ordered, slipping one hand into her pocket and using the other to summon the energy for a spell. “They’ll only get killed.”

Khidar hissed something at the slaves in their own language, and they launched themselves forward. Eight went for the mul, while the other four, all armed with sticks, circled around to come at Sadira. The sorceress saw Rikus swing his borrowed axe, smashing the flat of the blade into the swordsman’s skull. As the unconscious slave dropped to the ground, the mul continued his swing, severing the heads of two obsidian axes with his steel blade. At the same time, he sent the third axe-man tumbling away with a stomp-kick to the chest, then the club wielders were on him.

Having slipped past Rikus, the other four slaves charged Sadira. She pulled a handful of sand from her pocket and flung it in a wide arc before three of them, uttering her incantation. A mesmerizing golden light glimmered over the grains, capturing the gazes of the three men. Their heads slowly tilted forward as they watched the sand drop. When it hit the ground, their eyes closed, and they fell on their faces, fast asleep.

Screaming some Draxan curse that Sadira did not understand, the fourth halfling brought his club down in a vicious overhand strike. The sorceress twisted her body to the side and slipped inside the attack, blocking at the wrist, just as Rikus had made her practice a thousand times. She looped her hand over the warrior’s arm, guiding the elbow down toward her own knee, which she was bringing up beneath the joint.

The elbow snapped with a sharp crack, and the slave’s hand opened. Sadira caught his club as it fell, then drove the point of her elbow into the screaming halfling’s throat. He stumbled away, gasping for breath, and the sorceress stepped toward her husband.

Sadira could hardly see Rikus beneath the flailing clubs, yet the mul still seemed intent on defeating his attackers without killing them. Three of the eight lay on the ground, unconscious but showing no sign of an axe wound. She saw one of the warriors double over and stumble away, then the hilt of her husband’s axe flashed up beneath his chin, knocking him off his feet. The slave shook his head and started to rise again.

“You don’t have to be so careful!” Sadira yelled.

She smashed the butt end of her club into the man’s temple. His eyes rolled back in his head, then the sorceress waded into the fray with her husband. Though she did not deliberately try to kill anyone, neither did she take pains to safeguard them. She knocked one slave unconscious by smashing her stick across the back of his head, snapping the club off at the midpoint, then drove the jagged end deep into the small of another man’s back. He dropped to his knees instantly, in too much pain to scream.

A wave of bone-numbing cold shot through the sorceress’s wrist. She looked down and saw a black shadow creeping up the arm, then heard Khidar’s voice.

“I can still take you to the Black,” he said. “Come along.”

Sadira spun toward the half-shadow and raked her fingers across his eyes. Her nails bit deep, and Khidar screamed, but he remained attached to her. The dark stain of his cold touch slipped up over her elbow, and it was no longer possible to tell where his hand ended and her arm began.

The sorceress drew back to strike again and felt another icy hand grip her shoulder. She looked back to see another halfling, the one who was split down the center, grasping her by the collar. A terrible numbness began to creep through her torso.

“Rikus!” she yelled.

Her husband had problems of his own. Although he had knocked the last two slaves unconscious, the third half-shadow had thrown himself on the mul’s back. Rikus was whirling around madly, trying to hurl his attacker off. The halfling’s arms and legs were flailing wildly, but he and the mul remained joined at the torso.

Then she remembered Rikus’s description of his fight with Umbra. Even with the Scourge, the mul had been unable to defeat the shadow giant until he had dropped his torch. The weakness of Khidar’s people, she realized, was that without light there could not be shadow.

Sadira turned her palm toward the ground, preparing to cast a darkness spell. She felt the energy flowing up her arm-then the familiar tingle abruptly vanished when it reached the black stain on her shoulder. The half-shadow gripping her by the collar screamed in pain, then suddenly released his grip and fell away. He looked as though a bolt of lightning had blasted away part of his body, with wisps of black smoke streaming off the empty place where there had once been the silhouette of a shoulder.

At first, Sadira did not understand, but then she realized what had happened. Shadow people had no life force of their own; they existed only as silhouettes marking the absence of energy-usually in the form of light. So direct contact with a mystic power-one of the most potent forms of energy-annihilated them.

Sadira turned her palm toward the ground again. Already Rikus’s entire back had turned black, with the stain rapidly spreading around his ribs and down over his hips.

“Let go, Khidar!” the sorceress hissed, pulling more magical energy into her body.

“Why? So you can save Rikus?” he sneered. “You might escape, but your husband comes with us.”

“No!” Sadira threw herself forward.

She thrust her hand into the stain on Rikus’s back. The half-shadow did not even scream. His body simply exploded into black vapor, casting his arms and legs, still material, in all directions. The blast hurled Sadira through the air, then she heard a loud crack as the back of her skull slammed into the cobblestone street. Her vision started to dim, and a terrible ringing filled her ears. The sorceress pushed herself upright, fighting back the curtain of oblivion that threatened to descend over her.

“Fine,” said Khidar. He reached across Sadira’s body and grabbed her free hand. “We’ll take you instead of Rikus.”

Sadira turned her palm toward the ground. Already her hand was swaddled in shadow up to her wrist. She began to pull, trying to summon more magic. Sadira succeeded in drawing nothing but a bone-numbing chill into her body.

“Don’t be afraid,” Khidar hissed, his blue eyes locking onto hers. “You’ll grow accustomed to the cold.”

“Not likely,” said Rikus, stepping up behind the halfling.

The mul brought his hands down on either side of Khidar’s head, driving his palm-heels into the ears. The halfling’s eyes bulged out, then his skull collapsed with a loud crack. The Black ceased to spread from beneath his shadowy hands.