Troy Denning - The Obsidian Oracle

Fylo nodded. “Yes. Him say bear must come by itself.”

“And then what happens?” inquired the king.

“Magic. They cut bear’s head off, then they cut my head off, and we change,” said the giant. He lifted his chin proudly, then he added, “After that, Fylo beasthead.”

“I see,” said Tithian. “And you’ve seen this ceremony performed? You’ve actually seen a Saram let Nal chop his head off?”

Fylo frowned. “No.”

“So you haven’t seen him replace it with a beast’s head, either?” the king asked.

The giant shook his head. “No, not yet.”

“But of course you’re going to,” Tithian said. “I mean, before you let him chop your own head off.”

Fylo looked concerned. “Why you ask?”

“Don’t pay any attention to him, Fylo,” said Agis, disgusted by Tithian’s efficiency in planting such cruel doubts in the giant’s head. “All you have to do is find another bear, and I’m sure everything will be all right with the Saram.”

“Yes, I’m sure it will,” said Tithian, nodding a bit too eagerly. He looked at Agis, then said, “You know me. Always ready to think the worst-but if I were going to change my head for that of a beast, I’d want to see the ceremony performed on someone else first.”

“You think Bawan Nal tricking Fylo?” the giant roared.

“Don’t listen to him, Fylo,” Agis said, grabbing the king by the collar. “He’s trying to take advantage of you-”

“Not at all,” objected Tithian, patiently disengaging himself from the noble’s grasp. “I’m just trying to protect our friend. If I were Nal, I’d want to convince everyone that Fylo, as big and brave as he is, isn’t smart enough to be king. I’d make sure they knew it by playing a cruel joke-”

The word joke had hardly even left the king’s mouth before Fylo rolled onto his knees and, bellowing in rage, gave the bear an angry shove. Agis and Tithian threw themselves flat, clutching at its bony armor to keep from being scraped off its back.

“Fylo!” yelled Agis. “Stop!”

“No!” thundered the giant. He rolled away from the carcass and started to crawl into the larger cavern. “Fylo mad! Been tricked enough. Go kill Nal!”

“You can’t do that!” called Tithian. “He’s inside his castle-and he has too many warriors!”

“Not stop Fylo!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Fylo too strong and brave. Him chase Nal out of castle.”

As the giant disappeared into the darkness, the clatter of shifting rocks echoed through the huge cavern, punctuated by the occasional snap of one of the bones or timbers littering the floor of the chamber.

“See what you’ve done?” Agis growled, crawling toward the bear’s rear quarters. “You should have let me handle this my way-without lying or playing off his fears.”

“How was I to know he’d go mad?” countered the king. “Besides, can you be sure I’m wrong about Nal?”

The noble did not answer. Instead, he slid down the bear’s backside and onto the floor of the larger cavern. The silt here was no more than waist deep, though the sloping floor beneath seemed much more broken than had the one in the smaller passage.

“Fylo, wait!” Agis yelled, his voice echoing through the huge chamber. “How do you know Nal is tricking you?”

“Everybody always tease Fylo,” came the reply, well ahead and to the noble’s left.

“Not me,” Agis called, wading after the giant. He stumbled on a submerged rock, but caught himself before he fell. “I’ve always been honest with you, haven’t I?”

The echo of clattering stones fell silent, suggesting the giant had stopped crawling. “That true,” said Fylo. “You never play joke on Fylo.”

“Then maybe Nal isn’t, either,” said the noble. “If you attack him, you might be hurting someone who really is your friend. You won’t know until you test him.”

A timber cracked as the giant turned around. “Test?” he called. “How?”

“Perhaps Tithian and I can make the bear look like it’s still alive,” Agis said. “We can take it into the castle.”

“What for?” the giant asked.

“We’ll see how Nal reacts to seeing you and the bear,” Agis explained. “If he isn’t surprised at your return and prepares the ceremony, we’ll know he was telling the truth about changing heads.”

“Nal get mad when him see bear is dead,” Fylo objected.

“No,” Agis replied. “I’ll be very close to you. When I know Nal wasn’t tricking you, I’ll tell you a secret about the Joorsh that will make him happy with you-just like I did when I told you about the Balican fleet.”

If he had to keep this promise, the noble would harbor no guilty feelings about betraying Mag’r’s plan. Because he and his companions had agreed to go along with the sachem’s plan only under the threat of the direst consequences, Agis did not feel honor-bound to do as the giant demanded.

“That good,” said Fylo. “But even if you make him happy, Bawan Nal still kill you and your friends. Him not like little people on Lybdos.”

“Thanks for worrying about our safety,” Agis replied. “But after you tell Bawan Nal the secret, you aren’t responsible for what he does. That’s between him and us.”

“If Agis want,” Fylo agreed. “But what if Nal playing trick on Fylo-like Tithian say?”

“That will be even better,” Agis said. “Then the joke will be on him.”

“Stop there,” ordered a woman’s hissing voice .

Fylo obeyed, halting at the edge of the rocky isthmus. It was not an easy task for him, since each of his feet was almost as wide as the narrow neck of land. He had to stand with one in front of the other, making it hard to retain his balance. “Who that?” he asked. There was no answer. Fylo frowned and squinted ahead. The moons had risen high enough to cast a pale light over the broken ground before him, revealing a gravel apron strewn with boulders and drifts of silt. Farther ahead, at the mouth of a gulch coming down from the peninsula’s summit, a pair of square towers flanked the castle gates. The woman who had spoken was not visible in the tower windows, or anywhere outside the gates.

“Where you at?”

As the giant peered into the dim light, his foot slipped off the isthmus. He nearly fell, saving himself only by hopping forward onto the apron. The bear quickly moved forward to stand at his side, and he laid a restraining hand on its shoulder.

Fylo found it difficult to think of the beast as dead. To him, it looked the same as it had a few hours earlier, before his friend Agis had killed it by mistake. It moved with the same powerful sway to its shoulders, voiced the same deep-throated rumble when he walked too fast, and even reeked with the same rank odor of half-digested flesh.

If the giant had not been the one who pulled the vital organs out of its torso, he might have forgotten that Agis and the others were inside. The noble was using the Way to make the bear walk, roar, and even twitch its ears. Tithian was using his magic to hide the death wound beneath the beast’s leg, as well as the slit they had opened in its belly so Fylo could clean it.

“Fylo come back with bear,” the giant announced. “Ready to change heads.”

An indistinct shape stirred in front of the gate, then stepped forward. The giant quickly recognized the form as that of a female Saram. Save for an ocher breechcloth, she was entirely naked, with a willowy build and pebbled skin that had changed color to camouflage her against the gate’s veneer of yellowed bone. The sight of her lithe beauty stirred a primal desire in Fylo-though the sensation filled him with melancholy loneliness rather than excitement or hope. He knew better than to think such a woman might share her heart with an ugly half-breed like him.