Troy Denning - The Obsidian Oracle

Along with Sacha and Wyan, Tithian watched the fighting from the relative safety of the citadel floor, where they were moving across a small stretch of open ground in the company of a dozen terrified goats. Although far from giant-sized, the beasts were huge for their species, and the king needed to stoop just a little so that his head would not protrude above their shoulders. Hundreds of such creatures-sheep, goats, even erdlus and kanks-had broken free of their pens with the thunder of the first Joorsh volley. For the last quarter hour, they had been charging around the castle floor in panicked herds, turning the whole granite plane into a maelstrom of hoofed mayhem.

The domestic animals were not the only source of confusion. The Castoffs had spread throughout the castle and were flitting from one beasthead to another, searching for the bodies to which their heads had once been attached. Whenever they paused for more than a moment near a Saram, the warrior turned away and fled, crying for Bawan Nal, who was nowhere in sight, to save them.

A few spirits had apparently located the correct bodies. Their ethereal visages adhered to the Sarams’ beastly faces like masks, causing the victims unbearable pain. In one place, a stone-hurler had forsaken his duties to bang his reptilian head against the wall. Another warrior stood over a cart of spilled boulders, screaming in agony as she plucked the feathers from her ternlike face.

As the bird-headed woman tore at her avian features, a small boulder came soaring high overhead. It did not drop until it was well inside the citadel walls, falling just a short distance ahead of Tithian’s herd. The projectile shattered instantly, filling the air with mordant-smelling rock dust and blasting the herd with pieces of rock. Bleating madly, the goats reversed direction and fled, nearly bowling Tithian over in their terror. When they were gone, the king and his disembodied companions found themselves alone, a hundred yards of open granite between them and the silvery enclosure they had been trying to reach.

Two dozen burly, vicious-looking Saram came rushing from the compound’s gate. All had the heads of fanged and venomous beasts: vipers, spiders, and centipedes of all kinds. One of the giants even had the bony skull of a death’s head bat, while the distinctive fangs of a needle-toothed shrew protruded from the narrow snout of another. In their hands, the warriors carried steel-tipped lances as tall as trees, while their bodies were covered by plates of mekillot-shell armor.

The king turned and sprinted after the goats.

“Are you ready, Fylo?” Agis asked, peering down the sparkling shaft.

The giant still lay with the crystal jutting up through his shoulder, blood oozing from the wound and dripping steadily into the abyss. Although his eyes were only half-open, they were attentive and turned in the noble’s direction. In his good hand, he held the end of a rope stretched taut between himself and Kester.

Agis had used a dagger from the tarek’s chest harness to cut the length of cord off the rope Kester had draped through the crack before dying. Given the effort it had required to saw through the sturdy giant-hair fibers, he felt certain that the giant could pull as hard as he wanted without breaking the line.

“Fylo ready,” the giant reported, his voice a strained croak.

“Then pull!”

The giant gave the line a hard tug. Kester’s body remained stuck for a moment, then abruptly popped out of the crack and dropped limply into the abyss. After a long fall, it landed in the half-breed’s lap, causing his body to jerk from the impact. Even at the top of the shaft, Agis heard the eerie sound of shoulder bone grinding against quartz crystal, and a deep groan of agony rumbled from between the giant’s clenched teeth.

The sound had not even died away before Fylo pointed at the pit cover. “Go. Catch traitor Tithian.”

Agis nodded, knowing that without help, he could not pull the heavy giant free of the crystal. “I’ll be back when I find some way to get you out,” Agis said, climbing into the star-shaped crack. “I won’t leave you here.”

The giant nodded. “Fylo know.”

“You’re a brave friend,” Agis said. He pulled himself up into the yellow light of dawn.

The noble’s chest had barely risen out of the cracked lid before he felt himself being pinched between an immense thumb and forefinger. He was plucked out of the hole, then lifted high into the air.

“How fortunate we were to arrive just as you were leaving,” hissed a sibilant voice.

Agis’s captor turned him around, and the noble found himself staring at the face of a Saram giant. The warrior had enormous fur-covered ears, wrinkled nostrils, and huge scarlet eyes set into the gnarled, fleshless skull of a death’s head bat.

“Take me to Bawan Nal,” Agis said, noticing that another two dozen beastheads stood behind his captor. Most seemed to have the heads of serpents, spiders, and insects. “It’s important that I speak to him at once!”

This drew a malevolent chuckle from the entire company.

“Bawan Nal also thinks it important to speak with you,” the warrior replied. “It’s not often that he calls the Poison Pack away from its duties in the Mica Yard.”

The tip of the forked wand glowed yellow and bowed downward ever so slightly, pointing toward the center of the enclosure, where a single Saram giant guarded the entrance to a subterranean passage. Armed with a bone battle-axe as tall as a faro tree, the sentry had a hairless head more or less conical in shape, with beady eyes and small, peaked ears. His pointed muzzle ended in a pair of flaring nostrils, with a pair of venom-dripping tusks hanging from beneath his upper lips. He hardly seemed able to contain himself as he bustled to and fro, swinging his axe in great, exuberant arcs and testing the cool breeze for the scent of intruders.

Tithian allowed himself to peer at the giant for only an instant, then backed away from the corner, fearing the guard would be alerted to his presence by the awful stench of goat offal clinging to his clothes. The king moved a short distance down the enclosure wall, a huge sheet of silvery mica that sprang directly out of the bedrock, then returned his divining wand to his shoulder satchel.

“The lens is in there-and they left only one sentry to guard it,” he announced, pulling a tiny crossbow and a quiver of a dozen dartlike quarrels from his pouch. “This is going to be too easy. I had expected ten times that number.”

“You’re overconfident,” said Sacha, hovering close to his ear. “So far, you’ve inspired me with nothing but doubt.”

“Only a fool could have believed that pack of giants was chasing us,” agreed Wyan. “You jumped into a dung-filled pothole for nothing.”

“If I’m such a fool, how come you two were hiding there when I arrived?” Tithian countered, fitting a tiny quarrel into its slot on the crossbow.

That done, the king turned his free palm toward the ground, preparing to cast a magical spell. The energy came to him slowly, and all from the direction of the citadel’s gate, for he had to draw it all from the isle of Lybdos itself. If any plants had ever grown on the peninsula’s barren granite, they had long since been devoured by the domestic flocks of the Saram. Finally, Tithian had enough energy to use his magic. He started toward the enclosure entrance, hunched over and moving slowly.

He had taken no more than three steps when the muffled clatter of a ballista echoed over the walls on the far side of the castle. A pained roar followed, and

Tithian looked toward the gate. He saw a lion-headed giant fall from the wall, clutching at a long harpoon piercing his chest. The king smiled, for the sight suggested Mag’r had not yet sunk the Shadow Viper , and that could simplify matters greatly when the time came to escape.