Troy Denning: The Obsidian Oracle

Upon reaching the figure’s side, the noble halted his drone and dismounted. The entire gorge stank of unwashed flesh, and each time the giant exhaled, the fetid draught of his breath made Agis gag. The titan sat squarely on the road, with a massive elbow resting against one wall of the canyon. His feet were pressed against the other.

Cupping his hands around his mouth, Agis yelled, “You’re blocking the road!”

The giant’s only response was a gusty wheeze that made the noble’s long black hair wave.

Agis drew his sword, a magnificent cutlass as ancient as the city of Tyr, with a basket of etched brass and a long steel blade engraved with the weapon’s history. He stepped forward and gently pushed the tip into the enormous thigh blocking his way.

A sonorous growl rolled from the giant’s throat, then the behemoth lifted his hand. Agis barely had time to jump away before an enormous palm slammed into the leg he had pricked. The giant scratched his thigh, then his hand dropped back to the ground. He did not open his eyes.

Agis stepped over to the hand. The palm alone was the size of a large shield, while the fingers were almost as long as the sword in his hand. The noble took a deep breath and brought the flat of his blade down on the thumb joint, striking with all his strength.

A surprised bellow echoed off the canyon walls, then the hand shot high into the air. The giant’s eyes opened. He sniffed at his thumb with his cavernous nostrils, then licked the joint with a carpet-sized tongue.

“Pardon me for disturbing you,” Agis shouted, prepared to leap away if the giant attacked. “But you’re blocking the road. I must get past.”

The giant glared down at Agis. His enormous eyes looked like a pair of moons, white with deep craters of darkness at the center.

“Fylo sleep,” he said in a booming voice. “Go ’round.” The giant folded his hands across his stomach and closed his eyes.

“That just won’t do,” Agis called.

Fylo ignored him. Within moments, deep snores were rumbling at regular intervals from the giant’s mouth, grating over the noble’s eardrums and shaking the entire canyon. Realizing that courtesy would get him nowhere, the noble sheathed his sword and stepped to his kank’s side.

Agis closed his eyes and focused his mind on his nexus, that space where the three energies of the Way-spiritual, mental, and physical-converged inside his body. He visualized a tingling rope of fire sprouting from this nexus and running up into his throat, creating a pathway for the mystic power of his being.

When he felt his neck pulsing with energy, Agis opened his mouth and shouted, “Move!”

The word broke over Fylo’s sleeping form with the force of a thunderclap, scattering the dustgulls on the giant’s shoulder and reverberating down the canyon in a series of earsplitting barks. The titan sat bolt upright and peered into the murky canyon, his weak chin hanging slack in bewilderment and fear.

“Go ‘way!” he yelled, addressing the receding echoes of Agis’s voice. “Fylo strong as wind!”

“There’s nobody in the canyon,” called Agis, this time yelling in his normal voice. “I’m over here.”

The giant looked toward Agis and breathed a sigh of relief, blasting the noble with a gust of foul breath. “Fylo say go ’round,” he snarled. “Time for sleep.”

Agis shook his head. “Not until you let me pass. I’ll keep you awake all night if I must.”

The giant frowned. “Fylo smash you like bear.”

Agis raised his brow. “You mean like a … Never mind,” he said. “It’d be much easier to let me pass. All you need do is raise your legs so I can lead my kank underneath.”

The giant shook his head stubbornly.

Agis reached for his purse. “I’ll pay double the normal toll.”

“Toll?” Fylo echoed. He tugged at his beard, obviously puzzled by the term.

“To let me pass,” Agis said, pulling a coin from his purse. “I’m sure a silver is enough.” Holding the glimmering disk before him, he moved forward until he stood at the giant’s side. “Here. Take it.”

After Fylo lowered a massive hand, the noble tossed his coin into the center of the palm. The disk disappeared into the dark ravine of a massive lifeline, and Agis feared the giant would not see it. Fylo seemed accustomed to handling small objects, however. He licked a fingertip and pressed it onto the silver, then held the disk up to his eye.

“Fylo let you go-for this?”

Agis could not be sure of the giant’s tone, but it almost seemed the bribe had insulted him. “If I’ve offended you, please forgive me,” he said. “But in these circumstances, my assumption is only natural.”

The giant considered this for a moment, then scowled. “What us-amp-gin, er, as-shump-ten, er, ass-” Unable to pronounce the word Agis had used, Fylo rephrased his question. “What d’you mean?”

Agis ran his hand through his long hair, stalling for time. If the dull-witted giant did not already realize that this was an ideal location to coerce money from travelers, the last thing the noble wanted to do was suggest it to him. “I mean you don’t look very comfortable,” Agis said. He pointed toward the open desert behind him. “Why don’t you sleep over there and let me pass?”

“Fylo not sleep,” the giant said, an unexpected air of pride in his voice. He stuck the finger with Agis’s coin into a satchel made from the untanned hides of a half-dozen sheep, then looked down at the noble.

“Fylo guard road for friend.”

“What friend?” Agis asked.

Instead of answering, the giant lowered his head to peer more closely at the noble and began whispering to himself. “Black hair, straight nose, square jaw …” As he listed each feature of Agis’s face, he extended a finger as though he were counting. When his gaze fell on the noble’s brow, he frowned. “What color eyes?”

“What does it matter to you?” the noble replied, hoping the moonlight was still pale enough so the giant could not see that they were brown. Someone had obviously taken pains to be sure Fylo would recognize him-and Agis suspected that he knew that person’s identity. “Does your friend happen to be called Tithian?”

“No!” the giant replied, much too quickly. His eyes darted from side to side, and he pressed his jagged incisors over his lower lip. “Friend not called Tithian.”

The obvious lie made Agis smile, not because the giant’s ineptness amused him, but because it confirmed that he was on the right trail. Seven days before, Neeva and a small party of dwarves had arrived at his estate, demanding that Tithian answer for sending slavers to raid their village. The noble had been unable to grant the request, for the king had mysteriously slipped out of the city a few days before the raid had taken place.

Neeva and the dwarves had declared that they would track the king down themselves, but Agis had insisted that only a Tyrian should bring the ruler to justice. Given Tithian’s popularity in the city, any attempt by Kled to punish him could easily lead to war. After a contentious argument, they had come to a compromise. Neeva would wait at Agis’s estate while the noble and a dozen other Tyrian agents fanned out to search for their errant king. If they did not bring the king back within two months, the dwarves were free to take matters into their own hands.

Fortunately, it appeared that Agis would return the king within the allotted time-provided he could get past the giant. He retreated to his mount, wasting no time pondering how his quarry had discovered that he was being followed. Tithian was a cautious man who had no doubt left a network of spies to watch his back-trail.

To Fylo, Agis said, “It doesn’t matter who your friend is. You’ve taken my money, and now you must let me pass.”