Troy Denning: The Obsidian Oracle

A curtain of pearly dust rose where Fylo had fallen. For a long time, Agis could do nothing but stare into it, amazed at the giant’s actions. By attacking so fiercely, he had forced the Joorsh to use their boulders against him, buying precious time for the Shadow Viper to escape. In his death, the lonely half-breed, who had struggled all his life to find a single friend, had committed the ultimate act of fellowship. Now, though he might never know it, he would have a whole shipload of comrades.

“Good-bye,” Agis whispered sadly. “In all the cities of Athas, the bards shall sing of your great friendship.”

The surviving Joorsh warriors began to emerge from the dust curtain. With their hands now empty, they were free to use their arms for balance. They were wading through the silt with a strange, twisting gait that seemed half running and half dancing, plowing great plumes of silt into the air. Although they no longer had anything to throw at the Shadow Viper , they appeared confident that they would catch the caravel, for it continued to ride low and make sluggish progress.

Returning his attention to the ship, Agis found Tithian-at least he thought it was Tithian-crawling from the satchel. The king’s auburn hair had become coarse and gray, and the ever-present diadem no longer sat upon his head. His skin had paled with age, growing flaky and wrinkled, while dark, angry-looking circles sagged beneath his eyes. Only the darting brown eyes and sharply hooked nose remained the same as the noble remembered.

“Tithian?” the noble gasped. “What happened to you?”

“Do you really want me to explain now?” the king replied sharply.

As Tithian continued to pull himself out, a huge pair of leathery, batlike wings slipped free of the satchel. For a moment, Agis didn’t know what to make of them. Then, as they slowly stretched across the deck, he realized they were attached to the king’s back.

“In the name of Ral!” the noble gasped.

“More like Rajaat,” Tithian replied, glancing at the appendages with pride. He gave them a tentative flap, then looked down at Wyan, who was hovering at his side. “Shall we go?”

“That’s not why I brought you out of the satchel,” Agis snapped. “Look behind us.”

“I saw what became of Fylo,” the king replied. “I always knew your principles would be the end of you. Now it seems they’re also getting your friends killed. I have no intention of being one of those friends.”

“If you take over here, the whole ship can escape!” Agis said. Even as he spoke the words, he was visualizing the image of a griffin, a huge eagle with the body and claws of a lion.

“I see no reason to take that chance,” Tithian replied, lifting himself into the air with a single beat of his mighty wings. “I can escape with the Dark Lens alone.”

“That remains to be seen,” Agis replied, locking eyes with the king. Keeping just enough of his mind focused on his duties as a floater to keep the Shadow Viper from sinking, the noble launched his griffin into Tithian’s mind.

The noble found himself flying through a cavern of inviolable gloom. Nowhere in the blackness could he find even the hint of a light, much less anything that might be called illumination. The place seemed the very embodiment of darkness, more so than any of the times in the past when Agis had contacted the king’s mind.

Through his griffin’s mouth, Agis yelled, “You can’t escape by hiding. I’ll find you, and when I do, you’ll save this ship!” His words vanished into the murk without echo.

“I’ve no intention of hiding,” replied the king.

A crimson wyvern flashed into existence above Agis’s griffin. The winged lizard had appeared in mid-dive, its talons extended and its venom-dripping tail barb arcing toward the griffin’s heart. Flapping his construct’s powerful wings, the noble rose to meet the attack. As the two beasts came together, he used one of his massive claws to slap aside the poisonous tail, then opened his sharp beak in anticipation of closing it around the wyvern’s serpentine neck.

The beasts hit with a thunderous boom. As Agis tried to close his beak on the wyvern’s neck, he sensed a searing heat coming from the lizard’s body, and the smell of singed feathers filled his nostrils. Then, to the noble’s astonishment, the lizard began to flap its wings, driving the griffin back with such awesome strength that Agis could not resist.

The wyvern carried them out of Tithian’s mind. In the next instant, they emerged over the vast blue sea in the mind of the amazed noble. As Agis was still trying to comprehend the raw force behind the counterattack, the king’s construct suddenly separated from the combat and dived away. At first the noble was confused, but then he saw the object of the wyvern’s assault: a caravel, pitching and reeling in the stormy waters below. The wyvern was descending on it with tucked wings and extended claws.

Outside the noble’s mind, the Shadow Viper suddenly lurched to a standstill, and Agis heard the ship slaves screaming in panic. He looked up from the floater’s dome to see the crew standing frozen along the gunnels, bracing their plunging poles against the deck to defend against a huge crimson wyvern diving out of the olive-tinged sky.

“This can’t be!” Agis gasped.

“It is,” replied Tithian, also looking skyward. “That’s the power of the Dark Lens.”

“All the more reason to take it from you!” Agis said, turning his attention inward once more.

Agis sent his griffin after the wyvern, at the same time attacking from below. The rattle of a dozen ballistae sounded from the caravel, then a flight of spar-sized harpoons streaked up from the decks to pierce the wyvern’s breast. The lizard’s wings went slack, and it crashed onto the Shadow Viper’s bow, shaking the entire ship both inside and outside the noble’s mind.

Agis descended on the injured beast and pinned it to the deck. The wyvern arced its tail up to impale him, but the griffin dodged aside, then used his rear claws to rip the appendage off at the root. The lizard tried to beat him off with its wings, and the noble’s harbinger tore them to ribbons. It rolled onto its back and raked its filthy talons across its attacker’s breast. The griffin retaliated by catching the wyvern’s serpentine neck in its beak and biting down hard. The fanged head came off, and the wyvern fell motionless to the deck.

Agis had his griffin step back. During the battle, the wyvern’s heat had scorched the feathers from the beast’s head and blackened its leathery body in a dozen places. Nevertheless, the griffin was the one that remained standing, and that was the important thing.

To the noble’s surprise, the wyvern did not fade away, as a construct normally did after being destroyed. Instead, it simply lay on the deck, wisps of gray smoke rising from beneath its body.

Without allowing his griffin to vanish, Agis stopped attacking and turned his attention outward. The noble found himself slumped over the floater’s dome, so drained of energy that he could hardly breathe. He could feel the obsidian drawing the last of his strength from his body, leaving him with a sick, hollow feeling in place of his spiritual nexus.

As he pushed himself to a sitting position, Agis smelled smoke coming from the bow. There, he saw that several crewmen had abandoned their posts along the gunnel to rush forward and pour bucketfuls of silt over the fires started by the wyvern’s searing remains. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the mountainous forms of the Joorsh warriors had closed much of the distance between themselves and the fleeing ship.

Agis turned to Tithian. Although the king’s aged face showed the strain of having his wyvern destroyed, he did not look nearly as tired as the noble.