Troy Denning - The Obsidian Oracle

As the company passed deeper into the gloom, the calcium stain began to cover the cavern sides as well as the ceiling, until the whole passage was coated in milky white. At regular intervals, the skiff passed limestone curtains flowing out of wall fissures, or shelf formations covered with knobby constellations of dripstone. Like the stalactites, many of these were scraped and broken, as if something just barely small enough to fit occasionally passed through the tunnel.

“The odor’s getting stronger,” Nymos warned. “Can’t you smell it?”

Agis sniffed the breeze, but smelled only stale air and the acrid stench of burning torch oil.

“It’s just a rotting animal,” Kester said, her nostrils flaring. “Nothing to worry about.”

In spite of the tarek’s reassurances, the noble drew his sword. The passage meandered back and forth, growing larger and less cramped with each turn, until the noble could not have touched his blade to either wall. At the same time, the milky ceiling sloped gradually upward, and the stalactites were broken nearer and nearer to their tips. The skiff’s hull scraped over several buried obstacles, and the caps of broken stalagmites started to jut from the dust bed.

Agis was beginning to fear that the skiff would go no farther when the cave intersected another passage, this one so large that his torch did not illuminate the ceiling or far wall. The floor, which sloped upward from their tunnel, was littered with broken stalagmites, weathered ship timbers, and graying skeletons-both beast and human.

“We’d better take a closer look at this,” Agis said. He raised his hand, and Kester stopped the skiff just a couple of yards shy of the larger cavern’s entrance. “Is the channel too deep for me to wade?”

The tarek eyed the length of plunging pole still showing above the silt. “It’s possible,” she said. “But I wouldn’t fancy stepping into a hole.”

Agis sat down on the bow, preparing to slip into the silt channel, and suddenly found himself gagging for breath. A thick, rancid odor filled the passage, so insufferable that it made his knees tremble with nausea.

The noble felt an eerie shiver at the base of his skull, and his entire body began to tingle with spiritual energy. The torch flame flared brilliant white, then abruptly turned black, plunging the companions into darkness. Had it not been for the soft hiss of burning oil, Agis would have assumed the fire had died away. But he could feel its heat against his skin, and, instead of tossing the stick back into the boat, he had to hold the useless thing in his hand.

“Light, Nymos!” said Kester, her alarmed voice echoing off the cavern walls. “Everything’s gone dark.”

Nymos’s claws ticked nervously, and he uttered the incantation of a spell.

“What’re ye waiting for?” growled Kester.

“Agis’s sword isn’t glowing?” the jozhal asked.

“No,” reported Agis. “We’re fighting the Way, not sorcery.”

“I feel it, too,” said Tithian. “And the skiff dome is crackling with energy.”

A deafening growl rumbled out of the larger passage, so sonorous and low that it made the skiff tremble beneath the noble’s feet. A wicked presence, as black as the torch flame and just as scorching, tore into Agis’s mind. The invader rampaged through his thoughts, attacking from behind its mask of darkness. In its wake, it left nothing except searing anguish and unnatural fear, a fear such as he could not remember feeling before.

Agis tried to form an image of the crimson sun, determined to expose his attacker. The red disk had barely formed when a huge black claw rose from the murk and swatted it away, plunging the noble’s mind back into darkness.

Nymos shrieked in terror, as did Kester, and even Tithian let a groan escape his lips. Their reactions did not concern Agis so much as amaze him. He had never faced a mental onslaught of such raw power and could not imagine an attacker strong enough to press four such assaults at once.

A loud scrape sounded ahead as something huge forced its way into their small cavern. From the grating rasps that shuddered down both walls, it seemed to Agis the thing filled the passage from one side to the other. The noble tried to lift his sword and found that his arm would not obey his wishes.

“Push us back,” Agis said. “I could use a little distance.”

The skiff lurched into motion. It moved a few yards to the rear, then suddenly stopped.

“Kester?” Agis asked.

No answer came.

“I think the tarek is paralyzed with fear,” Tithian said. “This thing must be powerful.”

A loud snort whooshed through the cavern, sending a rancid wind washing over Agis’s face. The scraping ahead grew louder and deeper, while the muffled clatter of claws on stone rose from beneath the dust.

Agis called, “Everyone, imagine my sword glowing inside your minds. We all have to fight, or this thing will beat us.”

As the creature clawed its way toward him, the noble followed his own instructions. For a moment, the blackness in his mind seemed to grow thicker in response, and he could do no better than to visualize the faint gray outline of his blade. Then, as the others joined in, the beast was not strong enough to keep them all plunged into darkness. The noble’s sword, both inside his mind and outside it, illuminated the grotto in glorious white light.

Still, Agis could not concentrate on the cavern around him. Now that the neatly ordered halls of his mind were illuminated, he saw the reason for his paralysis. On the bloody floor of a corridor lay his body-or at least he thought it was his body. The corpse had been terribly mauled, so that the noble could recognize it only by his long black hair and the Asticles sword clutched in one bloody fist, now glowing with Nymos’s light spell.

From the gasps of his companions, the noble could tell that each had found a similar image inside his own mind.

“See yourselves standing,” Agis said, still fighting to keep the sword lit in his mind. “We’ve tired the beast, and now we can defeat it-but we must work together!”

A throaty growl rumbled through the cavern. A heavy paw slapped at the skiff’s bow, filling the passage with silt as it fell just a few feet short of its target. The foot sank into the dust with an ominous silence, then a loud scraping sound once again filled the passage as the beast dragged itself forward.

Agis focused his thoughts inside his mind, bracing his mutilated corpse to rise. The clawed foot of a beast materialized out of the ceiling and stamped down on his chest, pressing him back to the floor. He hacked at the leg with his glowing sword, showering himself with hot blood as he cut through ropy tendons and arteries.

Still, the foot did not move.

The noble stopped attacking and spread his arms out to his sides. He visualized his body changing into a spring-loaded leg trap, such as those used by slave trackers, lirr hunters, and others who preferred to catch their quarry without fighting it face to face. A surge of spiritual energy rose from within himself, then his arms became the jaws of the trap. They sprang up and clamped their sharp teeth into the massive leg that had pinned him to the ground.

The claw jerked back, but Agis’s trap held fast. The paw twisted and pulled in every possible direction, tearing the flesh away until raw bone lay exposed on all sides. The thing continued to struggle for a few moments, until it became apparent the foot could not be freed.

The leg fell abruptly motionless, and the wounds on Agis’s corpse began to heal. The terrible weight on his chest slowly eased, and the paw faded from his mind.

“I’m free!” Tithian reported.

“Me too,” Agis replied.

As the noble spoke, the torch in his hand returned to its normal color, lighting the cavern in flickering yellow. Agis’s sword, too, was glowing with the white light of the spell Nymos had cast on it earlier.