Troy Denning - The Cerulean Storm

Tithian’s hand suddenly shot up, directing a brilliant flash into the warrior’s eyes. Neeva’s vision instantly went white. She slammed the stone down and heard it clatter harmlessly off the ground. The warrior went into a blind-fighting pattern. She pivoted away from the last place she had seen the king and circled her hands in front of her body, frequently changing directions to prevent her enemy from predicting where the gaps would appear.

A cruel chuckle sounded at Neeva’s side. Sweeping her arm around in a circular trapping motion, she stepped toward the sound-then stumbled and nearly fell when her lethargic legs did not respond as she expected. The warrior felt Tithian’s hot breath on the back of her neck and realized that he had used a spell to throw his voice.

Expecting to feel the bite of a dagger blade in her kidneys at any moment, the warrior arched her stomach forward and swung her head back. She heard a loud crack as her skull smashed the king’s nose, then she felt his arm drape across her shoulder. He had been trying to cut her throat. Neeva drove her hand up inside Tithian’s arm and forced his wrist away from her neck. She bent forward, pulling him over her back, and heard him land in a heap in front of her.

Neeva tried to raise her foot to stomp the king’s head but succeeded only in sending a fiery pang of agony shooting through her leg. Tithian clattered across the rocky ground, rolling or crawling away, and the warrior lost track of his exact location. Gray spots were beginning to appear in the white glare of her vision, but she still could not see. The king stopped moving and fell silent. Neeva felt sure that he was preparing a spell, but she had no idea of how to avoid it.

She heard something rising out of the water, then Rikus’s voice shouted, “Dive roll, quarter right!”

The command called for a maneuver they had used during their days in the arena together, and Neeva knew exactly what it meant. She threw herself forward at an angle, crashing into Tithian’s soft midsection before she hit the ground. The king cried out in surprise. She heard the hiss of mystic energy discharging into the air, then she came down on top of his body.

The air left Tithian’s lungs in a sharp grunt, but he did not stop fighting. Neeva felt him pull both arms out from beneath her body. She raised her arm to block the right one, assuming it held the dagger.

“No, left!” Rikus called. By the sound of his voice, he was almost upon them.

Neeva could not switch blocks, so she rolled toward the king’s left arm and pinned it beneath her weight. She brought her hand down and found his wrist, then gave it a sharp twist and heard the hollow pop of a bone coming out of its socket. Tithian cried out in pain, then smashed his right hand into his attacker’s back and shoved her off.

Neeva heard him scrambling away, then found the dagger on the ground where he had dropped it. Her vision was now growing clear enough that she could make it out as a gray blur lying on the black smudge of the ground.

Tithian began to run up the hill toward Rkard, as Neeva could tell by the sound of the rocks clattering beneath his feet. At the same time, she heard Rikus’s heavy steps charging up from her other side. Neeva took the dagger by the blade.

“Knife, Rikus!”

Neeva flipped the dagger into the air, angling her throw so it flew toward Rikus hilt-first. An instant later, the weapon came hissing back above her head. Tithian screamed, but she did not hear him fall.

“Damn!” Rikus snapped, stopping at her side.

Neeva felt the mul take her arm and pull her up. Terrible pains shot through her legs as her weight returned to them, but they did not collapse beneath her. She also discovered that she had recovered her vision well enough to see the mul’s face. He looked as haggard and weary as had Tithian, with beads of water running off his body and dark circles beneath his eyes.

“I’ve been trying to catch Tithian since Rajaat flooded Ur Draxa, and now he’s disappeared again,” Rikus said.

Neeva pointed toward the Dark Lens. “I doubt it,” she said. “He was trying for the Lens when I attacked him.”

The mul’s face went white, then he started up the hill at a sprint. Neeva followed more slowly. Each step was a struggle, but she was determined not to wait idly by while Tithian took the Lens.

A few steps up the slope, she confirmed her suspicions. A trail of blood led toward the Dark Lens. Neeva looked up, preparing to call a warning.

She did not have the chance. Her son had crawled over the Lens to the other side and was staring into the basin, his attention consumed by Rajaat. The ancient sorcerer’s crown of lightning showed above the top of the Lens, but that was all Neeva could see of him.

“Give me my Lens, filthy child,” growled Rajaat’s booming voice.

Rkard pressed his palm to the Dark Lens and cast his sun-spell. A ruby light flared deep inside the orb, and the entire lens flashed scarlet. Neeva caught a glimpse of Tithian’s gaunt form pressed against the bottom half of the obsidian globe, his arms spread wide and gripping the Lens. The king screamed in agony. Searing red flames burst over the Dark Lens’s glassy surface, and the orb erupted into a miniature version of the crimson sun. Tithian’s silhouette vanished into the inferno.

Rkard heard Tithian scream and glanced down in time to see the king’s silhouette disappear into the flames. The boy wondered briefly where Tithian had come from, then he cowered down behind the crater rim, waiting for Rajaat to cast the spell that would obliterate him and half the hillside.

The ancient sorcerer did not attack. Instead, he reached for the crimson fireball that was the Dark Lens. When his hands came near, the scarlet flames suddenly left the surface of the orb and shot across the basin. As the fire stream passed Rajaat, the flame evaporated half the clouds on his torso, then washed over the far wall with a tremendous roar.

Rajaat’s shadow vanished beneath the fire storm. His cloud-covered body stopped moving, and his arms froze in place over the Lens. The fire curled back toward the center of the basin and formed a roiling ball of flame a dozen yards behind Rajaat. The fiery ball did not look so different from Rkard’s normal sun-spell, except that it was a hundred times as large and a thousand times as bright. Squinting against the brilliant light, the young mul stood to get a better look over the rim.

“What are you doing?” cried a familiar voice. “Get down!”

A pair of powerful arms seized Rkard by the waist and pulled him away from the rim.

“Rikus!” The boy twisted around and threw his arms around the warrior’s neck. In the distance beyond, Rkard noticed that the storm that had carried Sadira away was breaking up. “You’re alive!”

“Of course I am. Let’s make your mother happy and keep you that way, too,” Rikus responded. “What’s going on here?”

Rikus pointed at Rajaat’s hands, which were still hanging motionless over the Dark Lens. The Lens itself was no longer burning, but its surface was glowing red. There was no sign of Tithian, save for a puddle of liquid steel that had once been his dagger.

“I’m not sure what happened,” Rkard answered. “I cast my spell at Rajaat’s shadow, just like Sadira said. But I don’t think it worked. He just stopped moving.” Rikus frowned. “We’d better have a look.”

Together, they crawled to the top of the rim and peered over. Rajaat’s cloud-covered body was beginning to boil away in the heat of Rkard’s giant sun-spell. The fireball was blazing so brightly that even the young sun-cleric could not look at it for more than a second. Nevertheless, what he saw in that time was more than enough to concern Rkard. A pair of blue diamonds stared out from inside the flaming orb, and they were staring straight at his face.