Troy Denning - The Obsidian Oracle

Bevus merely laughed. “It wasn’t the axe, dear brother,” he said, flopping his half-severed neck around. “Your friends didn’t do this to me until after I was dead.”

Tithian closed his eyes, trying again to remember what had happened that night. He and the two templars had dragged the liveryman out of bed, claiming they were on official business so they would not have to pay for his kanks. They had galloped the beasts through the dark streets, trampling a half-dozen derelicts too drunk to leap out of the way. At the night gate, they had merrily bragged to the guards that when they returned they would be wealthy men, and they had ridden into the desert. After that …

It was no use. Tithian could remember no more.

The king looked toward the last spirit. “Were you there that night?” he asked. “Perhaps you were one of my brother’s guards?”

“Weak fool!”

Tithian’s jaw dropped as he realized the identity of the last eddy. “King Kalak!” he gasped. “I didn’t kill you!”

“Of course not. The honor belongs to that jackal, Agis, and his friends,” hissed Kalak, coalescing into solid form. Although he had been well on his way to becoming a dragon when Tithian had last seen him, he now assumed the shape of a skinny old man with a bald, scaly pate and a face buried beneath wrinkles. “You merely betrayed me to them.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Tithian asked.

“I came to see if I should help you,” said Kalak. “I thought you might avenge my death-but I see that’s unlikely. You’re as big a coward as ever. If you can’t face your brother’s murder, you’ll never murder Agis.”

“I didn’t kill Bevus!” Tithian protested, his pained voice a mere croak. “Everyone else-but not him.”

“I know what happened,” snorted Kalak. “You called on my magic-”

“King Kalak, no!” protested Bevus, reaching out to quiet the old man.

Kalak slapped the hand away, then continued to address Tithian. “When I saw how you killed your brother, Tithian, I ranked you a true murderer-as fine as any since Rajaat,” Kalak said. He paused a moment, then shook his ancient head in disgust and reached up to take the battered circlet from Tithian’s welt-covered head. “But I was wrong. You don’t deserve this.”

Kalak flung the crown into the grayness, then looked back to Bevus. “If you really want to torture your brother, I suggest you let him go.”

“Why should I help him?” demanded the spirit.

“You wouldn’t be helping, fool. Tithian can’t remember murdering you, and he balks every time he has the chance to kill Agis,” the sorcerer-king sneered. “If a coward like him uses the Dark Lens against Borys, nothing you can think of will compare to what the Dragon does to him.”

As Kalak faded away, Bevus turned to consider his brother’s tormented form. “I think Kalak is underestimating me,” he said, reaching for Tithian’s eyes. “Don’t you?”

The king turned his head away, fighting through his pain to keep his mind clear. Bevus began to harass him, tracing agonizing circles around the king’s eye sockets, moving just slowly enough so that Tithian could always look away in time to save his eyes.

As he was tormented, the king focused his thoughts on saving himself. He did not try to remember what had happened the night of Bevus’s death, but concentrated only on accepting that the first person he had ever murdered had been his younger brother.

A sickening pall of self-loathing settled over Tithian, and for a moment he was more conscious of it than of the physical pain tormenting his body. He felt a foul darkness welling up inside himself, coming from a recess so deep and hidden that he had not even known it existed. As the guilty secret rose into the light, he recognized it for the hideous beast it was-but instead of recoiling from the terrible knowledge, he embraced it as a part of himself.

All at once, a placid sense of relief descended over Tithian. He understood what had happened on that brutal night, and why everything since had come so easily for him: his rise through the templar ranks, his consolidation of the family fortune, even the fortuitous alliance that had made a king of him. And he also understood why, when all else had failed and no amount of treachery or bribery would win him what he wanted, he had always relished the final option-insisting, whenever practical, that he perform the deed with his own hands.

Now that he thought about it, Bevus’s death had been his starting point, the moment when he had discovered what he really enjoyed in life, and when his destiny had become clear to him.

The king raised his arms to embrace his brother, saying, “Come to me.” As he spoke, he used the Way to change his body into the ghostly semblance of a matronly woman. She had graying hair and sparkling brown eyes, with a slender nose, high cheekbones, and a stern, yet pleasant smile. “Yes, my son,” Tithian said, speaking in the soothing voice of his mother. “Give me one last embrace before we say good-bye.”

As Tithian’s arms closed around his brother’s shoulders, Bevus looked up with horror-stricken eyes. “No!” he screamed.

“Yes,” Tithian replied, pressing his lips to the young man’s cheek. At the same time, the king raised his hand and summoned his bone stiletto. When the weapon appeared in his hand, he brought the blade down between his brother’s shoulder blades. “Good-bye, Bevus.”

Agis threw the satchel down, then reached out and grabbed Sacha by the topknot, plucking him from midair. “Where are Tithian and the lens?” demanded the noble.

“He never left this tunnel,” answered the head. “The spineless wretch betrayed us all.”

Agis smashed his prisoner into a gleaming wall of black mica. “Liar!”

“Would I be down here if I knew where Tithian was-or the lens?” countered the head. “I came to search for them, the same as you.”

Gripping Sacha’s hair with one hand, the noble slowly surveyed the mica-sheathed room, searching every corner and nook for some sign of what had happened to the king. He did not bother to light the shattered harpoon he had brought as a makeshift torch. The crimson sunlight that spilled through the fissure in the roof illuminated the chamber in bright scarlet colors.

“You’re wasting our time,” said Sacha. “Tithian’s not here. I looked.”

“I’ll look myself,” Agis said, systematically moving along every wall and peering into every dark corner. When he did not find the king, he returned his attention to Sacha. “If you’re telling me the truth, then explain how Tithian disappeared from this room with the lens.”

Sacha rolled his eyes toward the crevice in the roof. The crimson orb of the sun hung about a quarter of the way from the eastern end. “Maybe he climbed,” suggested the head.

Squinting against the glare, Agis studied the crack more carefully. Tilted at a steep, almost vertical angle and covered on both sides with slick sheets of mica, the rift would be a difficult, though not impossible, climb. It was just wide enough for a man to scale by pressing his back against one side and his feet against the other-or, in Tithian’s case, to ascend through levitation.

“You’ll have to think of a better lie than that, Sacha,” Agis said. “From what Sadira has told me, the lens would never fit through that crack.”

“It would if it was in the satchel,” suggested the head.

Agis eyed the satchel. He was tempted to say that the Dark Lens would never fit inside, but he had seen Tithian draw enough objects out of the bag to know that there was something magical about it. “If the Dark Lens was in there, Tithian wouldn’t be gone,” said Agis, casting an eye at the crumpled sack. “He’d never leave it behind.”