Troy Denning - The Obsidian Oracle

“I don’t have the hide of a baazrag!” Tithian hissed, clutching his satchel to his chest so it wouldn’t be scraped free. “Be careful.”

“No time to be careful.” Kester deposited the king roughly at her side and motioned toward Sacha and Wyan. “Keep an eye on yer two heads. After what they did to Fylo, I don’t trust ’em much.”

Taking Agis’s advice and keeping one eye on Tithian, she knelt beside the crack and reached through for the noble. Although her action appeared to put her in a vulnerable position, the tarek was not worried. Between herself and the king, there was not much space left on the black circle of solid ground. If Tithian made any sudden moves, it would be an easy thing to knock him onto the shimmering crystal with a shoulder or leg. Besides, she did not really expect him to attack her. Not only would he need her to command the Shadow Viper’s crew if he wished to leave the island, but he had seemed more willing to cooperate with others since his dream of becoming a sorcerer-king had been shattered.

When she did not feel Agis take her hand, Kester demanded, “What’re ye waiting for down there?”

“He won’t leave,” Tithian answered. He reached into his satchel and withdrew a coil of giant-hair rope, surprisingly large for the sack from which it had come. “He wants to save the giant.”

Kester sighed in frustration, then peered down the hole. “We’ll be lucky enough to save ourselves, let alone your giant,” she said, addressing Agis’s shadowy form.

“We can’t leave him like that.” The noble gestured toward the bottom of the pit. Although Kester could not see the giant from her position, the image of the bloody crystal protruding through his shoulder remained vivid in her mind. “Now pass me the end of the rope. I’ll go down and see if I can get that spike out of his shoulder, then tie him off.”

“What then?” she asked. “We’ll never get him out through this little hole.”

“At least he might not die while we’re looking for a way to remove the cover,” Agis replied.

“It’s already past dawn!” objected Kester. “How long do ye think Mag’r’ll wait for the gates to open before he sinks the Shadow Viper ?”

“He’ll wait,” Agis replied. “If he sinks your ship, we have no reason to open the gates-and he’s smart enough to know that.”

“Ye can’t know for sure!”

“I agree with you,” Tithian whispered. He knelt at Kester’s side, holding one end of the rope out to her. “Perhaps we should open the gate for Mag’r-now.”

Kester bit her lip, neither meeting the king’s gaze nor taking the rope from his hand. “What about Agis?” she asked.

“He can look after Fylo,” the king suggested, being careful not to look into the pit. “We can come back for him later.”

Kester fell silent and motionless. Like Tithian, she avoided the noble’s eyes, though it seemed to her that she could feel them watching her from the shadows, like the black gaze of an owl.

“I can imagine what Tithian’s whispering to you,” said Agis, his voice rising through the crevice clear and steady. “Don’t listen to him. We have many things to do this morning: make sure that we all escape the pit, find the Dark Lens, save your ship. But if we panic and start jumping from one unfinished step to another, we’re doomed.”

Kester remained silent, wondering how the noble could think that everything on his list was still possible at this late hour.

“Weren’t you the one who said we had to work together to escape?” Agis pressed. “Did you mean it-or were you voicing the lies of a pirate?”

“Damn ye, and damn yer giant,” Kester growled.

“A wise decision,” Tithian said, starting to rise.

Kester grabbed his arm and pulled him back to her side. “Ye stay here,” she said, taking the rope from his hands and pushing one end down to the noble.

“Thanks for staying,” Agis said. “You won’t regret it.”

“No-but you might,” Kester growled. “If Mag’r sinks my ship, ye’ll buy me another-and a good crew to man it!”

“I’ll give you two ships,” the noble replied, smiling. “But you’ll have to man them yourself-with hired crews.”

Kester stood and looked at Tithian. “Ye stay here to keep the hole open-and don’t think about leaving. If I see ye step one foot off this circle, I’ll kill ye,” she said, fingering the two throwing knives left in her chest harness. “I’ll go tie off our end of the rope.”

With that, she leaped over to solid ground and walked toward the bridge footings, uncoiling the rope as she went.

Tithian watched the tarek leave, silently cursing her for a fool. Nevertheless, he did as she asked, summoning the spiritual energy to take over Agis’s duties. “Go ahead,” he said, glaring down through the crack. “But remember, you’re wasting precious minutes.”

“Minutes that are not as precious as my life,” the noble’s muffled voice replied. “I’ll wait until Kester returns.”

“As you wish,” Tithian said.

As the king spoke, the last of the Castoffs, Sona, drifted into view. She stopped at the noble’s side, casting a faint glow over his weary face, and began to thank him for freeing her and the others. Tithian, even less interested in her gratitude than in saving Fylo, stepped away to prepare his escape.

The king found Sacha and Wyan waiting for him, hovering at the edge of the black circle. He snatched them by their topknots and slammed their faces into the crystal lid.

“Why’d you do that?” demanded Sacha.

“Because I wanted to!” Tithian replied. He plucked the throwing dagger from Wyan’s cheek, then shook it at the two heads. “Just be thankful I’m not using this to pluck your eyes out!”

“This is not the way to treat your saviors,” objected Wyan, spitting out the broken nub of a gray tooth.

“Saviors!” Tithian roared. “By attacking Fylo, you almost got me stuck down there.”

“A small risk to take,” said Sacha, speaking in a voice quiet enough that no one beyond Tithian’s earshot could hear it. “You can’t have Agis or anyone else around when you recover the Dark Lens.”

Tithian held the heads up and frowned suspiciously. “Why not?” he asked. “After the way the Dragon lied to me, I’d just as soon let Agis kill Borys.”

“That would be acceptable,” replied Sacha. “Except that I’m sure Agis would want to keep the lens afterward-and you don’t want that.”

“Why not?”

“The lens is a tool,” explained Wyan, also speaking in a soft voice. “Like any tool, it’s only as powerful as the person using it. In Borys’s hands, it could never make you a sorcerer-king. But in the hands of someone else, someone even more powerful, it could.”

“No one’s more powerful than the Dragon,” Tithian scoffed.

“Wrong,” said Sacha. “There is one who could give you what you want: Rajaat.”

“Stop wasting my time with your stories,” the king hissed. “Rajaat’s dead.”

“Gone, but not dead,” Wyan replied. “What do you think Borys does with his slave levy?”

“He uses their life energy to keep the Shadow People imprisoned in the Black-at least that’s what Agis and Sadira think, according to my spies in the Asticles household,” replied the king. He cast a nervous glance down at the crack where Agis waited, but saw no sign that the noble could hear or see any of what was happening on top of the lid.

“What makes you think a fool noble and his slaves know what they’re talking about?” asked Sacha.

In a fawning voice, Wyan added, “Rajaat is not dead; he’s locked away-and Borys uses his levy to maintain the spells that keep him imprisoned.”