Troy Denning: The Obsidian Oracle

“Where’s the Oracle?” Mag’r demanded, drawing Agis’s attention back to his bloated face.

“It’s not down there,” the noble replied, keeping his voice, and himself, calm through an act of will. To escape the giant, he would have to keep a clear head.

“I know where the Oracle is not!” the giant bellowed, his breath a hot, rancid wind. He closed his fist around the noble’s body and squeezed. “I want to know where it is!”

Gritting his teeth against the pain in his broken arm, Agis said, “I didn’t get here much before you, and all I found was an empty satchel.” He gestured toward the cleft below. “Beort has it now.”

Mag’r scowled, then knelt on the ground. “Give me the sack, Beort.” The sachem thrust his long arm into the rift, then returned to his feet with the satchel in his hand. He opened it up and peered inside, then started to toss the satchel away. “It’s empty.”

“Empty?” Agis echoed, hoping the young giant had not let Sacha escape. The disembodied head inside the sack remained Agis’s best hope of tracking down Tithian and the lens. “Let me keep it anyway.”

The giant shrugged, then handed it to Agis. “What good is an empty sack?”

“Not much,” the noble admitted, “but I found it down in the tunnel where the Oracle should have been. There might be a connection.”

Scowling, Mag’r reached to take the satchel back. “What connection?”

Agis pulled the sack away from the giant’s fingers, tucking it under his arm. “I’ll tell you after you take me to the quartz enclosure,” he said.

“Speak now, if you want to live.”

Agis shook his head. “You’re going to kill me anyway,” he said. “But Nal has thrown a giant into the crystal pit who doesn’t deserve to die. I’ll tell you what I know after you rescue him. You might even want to make him a member of your tribe-he’s clearly an enemy of the Saram.”

Mag’r scowled and shook his head. “After what you did at the gate, I can’t trust you.”

“What happened at the gate was Nal’s doing, not mine,” Agis replied. “Besides, an empty sack and a dead body will do you no good. If you want my help in finding the Oracle, you’ll have to do as I ask.”

The sachem pondered this for a few moments, then reluctantly nodded. “I’ll help the giant out of the pit,” he said, “but I won’t take him into my tribe. I see no reason to trust him just because my enemies did not.”

Limping badly from the lance wound that the noble had inflicted on him earlier, the giant exited the mica compound, leaving Beort in the Oracle chamber. As they crossed the barren granite grounds of Castle Feral, Agis was astonished. He had expected to see lakes of Saram blood and mountains of beasthead bodies, with Joorsh warriors chasing down and slaughtering their captives.

But Mag’r’s victorious army had gathered the defeated giants at the far end of the citadel, where Nal’s body rested atop a huge funeral pyre. While the Saram knelt in a circle around their dead bawan, the gray-haired Chief Nuta walked back and forth in front of the burning body, sternly lecturing them on the folly of trying to keep the Oracle for themselves.

The chief’s efforts were hampered by a cloud of Castoffs swirling overhead. They occupied the attention of the nervous Saram far more raptly than either Nal’s body or Nuta’s lecture, despite the two Joorsh shamans dancing in the prisoners’ midst to keep the spirits at bay.

“It looks as though you intend to let the Saram live,” Agis said.

“That’s right,” Mag’r replied. “Jo’orsh would be angry if we killed all our brothers-especially after winning the war.”

“Still, it’s very generous of you to forgive them.”

Mag’r fixed a brown eye on the noble. “Don’t expect the same mercy,” he warned. “You’re no giant. Jo’orsh doesn’t care what happens to you.”

With that, the sachem stepped into the enclosure. The giant-hair rope that Kester had tied to the footings of Sa’ram’s Bridge still ran over to the edge of the pit, but the line now lay slack and loose. After Agis had been taken from the pit, the crack in the crystal cover had sealed itself, cutting the cord in the process.

As Mag’r lumbered forward, the noble’s heart sank, and he was overcome by a sick feeling of disappointment. The crystal pit’s cover had grown milky and opaque, suggesting that Tithian had already taken the Dark Lens far from Lybdos.

“I never should have listened to him!” Agis hissed, his anger with himself growing by the moment. “This is what comes of breaking promises!”

“What promises?” asked Mag’r, frowning.

Agis started to tell the giant of his suspicions, swearing that though he might not survive to hunt Tithian down himself, Mag’r and his giants would do it for him. Then, remembering another promise that he had made, he thought better of it and stopped.

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” the noble said. “First, you rescue Fylo.”

Mag’r knelt at the edge of the pit and studied the lid for several moments. Finally, he shrugged and said, “No handle.”

Before Agis could object, the king reached out and smashed his fist through the center of the cover. It shattered into dozens of fragments that fell into the pit, leaving only a few jagged bits sticking out from the sides. The noble cringed, trying not to think of what the falling pieces might do to Fylo.

Mag’r peered down into the hole, then said, “I see him.”

Agis looked over the edge. For a moment all he could see were beads of sweat dripping off his brow and plummeting into the darkness, then his eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light and he saw Fylo, still lying impaled on the crystal. The half-breed’s free arm and his legs were dangling down into the pit, while his eyes were closed and his chin lay slumped onto his chest. Although he had suffered several gashes from falling shards of crystal, none of the cuts were bleeding very badly.

“You’ll have to go down and pull him out,” said Agis.

Mag’r frowned at this idea, then shouted, “Hey, you!”

Several yellowed skulls fell from their perches and bounced off Fylo’s torso, and the half-breed opened his eyes. He looked toward the top of the pit, his gaze cloudy and unfocused. “Agis?” he called.

“The Sachem of the Joorsh is coming down to get you,” the noble replied. When Mag’r frowned at him, Agis added, “Go on-can’t you see that he needs help?”

Grumbling angrily, the Joorsh king dropped his captive. When Agis hit the ground his knees buckled, and he tumbled end over end, landing next to one of the jagged shards of crystal still protruding from the edge of the pit. Tithian’s satchel fell at his side.

In front of the satchel’s mouth, a tiny area of the broken lid began to clear, shimmering with a strange, mystic power. For a moment, the noble simply watched the limpid area expand and grow more translucent. Then he realized what was happening. The magic of the Dark Lens was flowing into the crystal shard, and it could only be coming from one place: the satchel.

As Mag’r started to climb down into the pit, Agis grabbed the sack and pulled it back. He folded the top over and crawled away from the edge of the hole. The motion attracted the sachem’s attention, and the giant promptly climbed back out.

“What’s wrong?” Agis asked, rising and moving away from the shard into which the magic of the lens had spilled.

“I’m no fool,” the giant replied, grabbing the noble. He went over to the footing of Sa’ram’s Bridge and pointed to the rope which Kester had left tied there. “Tie your feet together,” he ordered, glancing at the highest point of the bridge. “And make the knot strong, or you’ll be sorry.”