Troy Denning - The Amber Enchantress

Finally, Sadira lowered the hand that she had been holding up to the sun. “You should have listened to me,” she said. “I said you were too weak to hurt me.”

The sorceress slammed the heels of both palms into Dhojakt’s ribs. She heard a series of muffled cracks, then the prince’s mandibles released her neck and the breath shot from his lungs in an agonized bellow. The human part of his torso snapped back against the part that was cilops, smashing the back of his skull into his own carapace.

Dhojakt shook his head, then spun around to flee. Magnus came rushing out of the brush and grabbed the prince’s rear segments. Bracing his massive feet against the ground, the windsinger locked his arms around Dhojakt’s squirming body and did not let it go.

“Hurry, Sadira!” Magnus gasped. “The sun’s almost down!”

Sadira glanced over her shoulder and saw that the windsinger was right. Only a thin crescent remained above the horizon.

With his rear legs, Dhojakt scratched madly at the arms holding him. When his claws could not tear the windsinger’s thick hide, he spun around and lunged toward Magnus with his pincers. Sadira slipped between the two and slapped the mandibles aside.

“Let go, Magnus,” she said. “I don’t want you getting hurt this close to dark.”

“Don’t worry about me,” the windsinger objected. “If he gets away-”

“He won’t!” Sadira said, holding her palm toward the narrowing crescent of the sun. “Let go!”

Magnus did as she ordered. As the sorceress expected, Dhojakt immediately tried to bolt, but she caught him by the arm and held fast. With her free hand, Sadira extended a single glowing finger toward the prince’s head.

“Wait!” he cried.

“What do you take her for, a fool?” Magnus scoffed.

“No, of course not,” said Dhojakt. “But there’s something she should know before she attacks the Dragon. After I tell you, kill me if you like-but hear me out first.”

Sadira glanced at the sun. It was no more than a sliver, its red light wavering uncertainly in the hazy sky.

“He’s stalling,” Magnus warned.

“No,” the prince said, looking at Sadira. “Even as powerful as you’ve become, you’ll never kill the Dragon-but by fighting him, you might be endangering Athas itself.”

Sadira stopped short of touching the prince with her finger. “Explain yourself-and speak quickly!”

“The Dragon is powerful, but not as powerful as seven sorcerer-kings,” Dhojakt said. “Ask yourself why they have paid his levy for so many millennia.”

The sorceress touched her finger to his face. He prince howled in pain and the air was instantly filled with the stench of charred flesh. “I don’t have time for riddles,” she hissed.

“They do it because the Dragon is Athas’s protector,” the prince said. “He needs the levy so that he remains strong enough to keep a great evil locked away.”

“What evil?” Sadira demanded.

Dhojakt shook his head. “I cannot say-even to save my own life.”

“Now, Sadira!” Magnus yelled.

“Who?” the sorceress demanded, pressing her finger to Dhojakt’s face again. “The shadow people?”

The prince screamed in pain and flung himself to the ground. An instant later, clumps of broompipe and stems of milkweed began to wither all around him.

The glow in Sadira’s finger began to fade, and the last rosy light of the evening spread across the darkening sky like a sheet of fire. Dhojakt spun around, his pincers extended and his fingers already working to cast a spell.

“Die, defiler!” Sadira screamed.

As she spoke, she spewed a cloud of dark fumes from her mouth. The vapors spread out above the prince’s prone form, then coalesced into a fine mist and settled over him in a black pall. From inside came the sizzle of a misfired spell. As the murky shroud absorbed all the warmth from Dhojakt’s body, there followed a series of blood-chilling screams. By the time the last glimmer of dusk had faded from the sky, all that remained of the Nibenese prince was a shadow upon the grass.

Magnus stepped to Sadira’s side. “Why didn’t you wait any longer to kill that thing?” he demanded, gesturing at the ground where Dhojakt had fallen. “You had at least another half-second.”

“I’m sorry I pushed things so close,” the sorceress answered. As the evening grew darker, her skin was losing its ebony luster and fading back to its usual coppery tone. “But it was worth the risk.”

“How so?” Magnus demanded, his ears twitching uncomfortably at the changs occurring in Sadira’s appearance.

“Dhojakt was right, I’m not ready to kill the Dragon,” the sorceress answered. “But I am ready to stop him from sacking Tyr. Now I know his weakness.”

The argosy lay toppled on its side, cracked in two pieces and half-buried in rust-colored sand. The mekillots that had once pulled the huge fortress wagon remained in their harnesses, as motionless as hills and just as lifeless. Scattered for hundreds of yards around were the bodies of the outriders and their kanks, while the guards and merchants had been pulled from inside the argosy and heaped into a great pile on its shady side.

Despite the blazing heat of the day, only a faint stench of decay hung in the air. The corpses were too shriveled and desiccated to rot, for their bodily fluids had evaporated when the life-force was drawn out of them.

As she passed the scene, Sadira slowed her pace and allowed Magnus to catch her. So the windsinger could keep up, the sorceress had taken three kanks from the Silver Hand elves. Still, even though he rode his mounts in shifts, it was such a struggle for the beasts to match Sadira’s pace that they often lagged behind.

When Magnus finally caught up, he asked, “The Dragon again?” Since rejoining the caravan trail at Silver Spring, they had encountered a string of similar sights.

Sadira nodded. “We’re getting close to Tyr, and I’d like to know how far behind we are,” she asked. “Is there any way I can tell?”

Magnus shook his head. “Normally, I could hazard a guess based on how much the corpses had decomposed, but with the bodies like this …” The windsinger let the sentence trail off and turned her ears toward the argosy. “There’s something behind those bodies,” he whispered, pointing toward the corpse pile. “I think it’s just an animal.”

“Let’s look anyway,” Sadira replied.

Without waiting for Magnus to dismount, the sorceress crept over to the body heap. As she approached, she heard the sound of gnawing and slurping coming from the far side. Trying to imagine what kind of carrion eater would make such noises, she paused long enough to point a hand toward the sun and draw the energy for a spell.

Before she could step around the pile, the gnawing stopped. “Aren’t you supposed to be keeping watch?” demanded a grouchy voice. “I smell something!”

“You’re the one who’s supposed to be watching,” snarled a second speaker. “What if she comes by?”

Sadira stepped around the corpse pile to peek at the speakers. A first, she could not find them in the tangle of limbs and torsos. After a moment of searching, however, she saw a pair of disembodied heads resting on the withered flesh of a mul’s leg. Both had coarse hair tied in long topknots, and the bottoms of their necks had been sewn shut with black thread. From the condition of the nearby bodies, it appeared they had been treating themselves to a gruesome feast. Although Sadira did not know the pair well, she had seen them often enough to know they were the advisors King Tithian had inherited from the sorcerer-king Kalak.

“Who are you waiting for?” she asked.