Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 2 - The Crimson Legion (12 page)

“Why are you giving it to me?” Rikus asked, allowing the old dwarf to fasten it about his
waist.

“Because you are the only knight worthy of it.”

“In fact, you're the only knight,” Caelum added. “There is no one else to wear it.”

Rikus was about to thank the old dwarf again when he heard an alarmed cry echo from the
other side of the closed doors. Though he could not understand the words, he recognized
the voice as that of the glass-eyed sculpture on the door where the
Book of Kings
was stored.

“
The book!” he exclaimed, turning toward the doors.

“What about it?” gasped Caelum.

“The door just screamed,” he shouted, motioning for Lyanius to follow him.

Before he could explain further, the mul heard Maetan's bitter voice cry out in surprise.
A loud boom followed the mindbender's yell.

When Rikus reached the doors to the hall, they opened of their own accord. The wrab that
had been clinging to them took flight and swooped down on the mul, but he swatted the
nasty little beast from the air before it came close to strik
in
g him.

Rikus turned down the corridor and heard the door scream again. There was another
explosion, the sound ringing in the corridor and making everyone's ears ache. The mul took
off at a sprint, trusting to his companions to follow.

After the violent explosion, the keep fell ominously silent. To the mul, it seemed to take
forever to retrace their steps. The corridor was much longer than he remembered, and his
frustration was compounded by mistakenly turning into several alcoves that looked similar
to the one where the book was safeguarded.

Finally he reached the correct alcove, and this time he had no doubt that he had found the
right one. In front of it lay the inert figure of King Rkard, the heft of his great axe
snapped in two and his black armor dented and scorched from an explosion. Rikus
reluctantly peered into the helm and saw that the green cloth swaddling the king's face
had been burned away. Now only a charred skull, half-covered by taut leathery skin, peered
out from beneath the visor.

As the mul studied Rkard's face, a yellow light began to glimmer deep within the corpse's
eye sockets. Not wishing to be the first thing that the king saw when he returned to
awareness, Rikus moved away and turned toward the chamber where the book was stored.

The bronze-gilded door hung off its hinges, twisted and mangled as though a giant had
kicked it open. The bas-relief's glass eyes had been ripped from the face and now lay
shattered on the stone floor.

Lyanius came up behind Rikus, then rushed into the room and let out an anguished scream.
“It's gone!”

“What happened?” Caelum asked. “Who could have done this?”

“Maetan,” Rikus answered, looking down the long corridor.

Neeva rushed up behind them, her torch casting a flickering circle of yellow light over
the small group. She did not need to ask what had happened.

Lyanius hurried out of the room and grabbed Rikus's hand “You must find him! That book is
the history of my people!”

As the old dwarf spoke, King Rkard's corpse rose to his feet and looked around as if
searching for something, paying no attention to Rikus or his companions.

The mul stepped away from the others. “Quiet. I'll use the sword to track Maetan.”

For several moments, the mul gripped the hilt of his new sword, listening to the sounds of
the ancient dwarven city. He could hear the nervous breathing of his companions, the
occasional squeak of metal as Rkard changed positions, even the soft hiss of the torches
they had left behind in the great hallÑbut he did not detect the faintest hint of Maetan's
presence.

“He's gone,” Rikus said at last.

Lyanius groaned and buried his face in his hands. “How?”

“The Way,” Neeva answered.

Rikus rested the sword tip-down on the sand-strewn floor, a look of grim determination on
his face. “I'll recover the book,” he said. “Even if I have to chase Lord Lubar all the
way to Urik.”

“I'll come with you,” Caelum said forcefully. “And so will many of the village's young
dwarves. There are many who would make this quest their focus.”

Rikus nodded. “Your help will be welcome.”

Lyanius's eyes lit up. As if to prove his newfound champion was not simply a cruel
illusion left by the thief of his Priceless book, the old dwarf reached out and touched
the mul's arm. “Can you do it?”

“Think before you answer, Rikus,” Neeva said. “Don't promise something you can't deliver.”

In answer, Rikus placed a hand on the Belt of Rank, then started toward the exit. “We
start for Urik in an hour.”

“You haven't earned that belt yet, my love.”

Though Neeva whispered the words beneath her breath, to Rikus they boomed as loudly as the
magical explosions Maetan had used to defeat Rkard and capture the
Book of the Kemalok Kings.

Wrog's Ring

“Keep a watch, and I will search out someone to be my spy,” said Maetan, tucking his frail
body between a pair of wind-scoured boulders.

"I do not relish being invoked for such mundane tasks, objected Umbra. In the flaxen light
of Athas's twin moons, the shadow giant was hardly distinguishable from the more natural
darkness surrounding him.

“Until I avenge my honor against Rikus and his Tyrians, no task is mundane!” snapped
Maetan. “Do as I commandÑor does the Black no longer value my family's obsidian?” A wisp
of ebon-colored gas rose from Umbra's down-turned mouth. “Your stone has value, but
someday you will overestimate its worth,” he snarled, peering up at the pale moons. “A
shadow needs light to give it shape and substance. It pains me to serve you in such
conditions.”

“If I do not present these slaves to King Hamanu in shackles, my family name will be
shamed,” Maetan said. “Do you think I care about your pain?”

“No more than I care about your honor,” Umbra replied, creeping away to do as Maetan
ordered. His dark form fused with the other shadows mottling the hillside.

Maetan turned his attention to the sandy gulch below. There, surrounded by a tight picket
of drowsy sentries, the Tyrian legion was camped.

The gladiators rested at the mouth of the gully, scattered in a disarrayed jumble wherever
they could find a soft place. A short distance up the draw, the retainers of some noble
lay clustered in cordial groups of ten or twelve warriors, many of which were still
conversing in polite tones. Close to them, the dwarves of Kled slept in regimented
circles, each dwarf lying flat on his back within an arm's reach of the next one.

Farthest up the gulch slumbered the templars, their cassocks tightly fastened against the
frigid desert night. They had arranged themselves in a pyramid, those most favored lying
closest to the leader, and those least favored spread along the bottom edge. Maetan did
not understand why the Tyrians had sent along the bureaucrats. With Kalak dead, the
templars had no sorcerer-king to grant them spells, and they would be no more useful in
battle than average tradesmen.

“It matters little,” the mindbender told himself. “When the time comes, they will die with
the rest.”

With that, he gathered a fistful of sand, then held it over the outstretched palm of the
other hand. Slowly, Maetan let the grains slip from between his fingers. At the same time,
he used the Way to summon a stream of mystic energy from deep within himself, and he
gently breathed this life force into the sand as it dropped from one hand to the other.

When he finished, a naked, finger-length figure stood in the palm of his hand. She whipped
her barbed tail back and forth, blinking her soft green eyes and giving her tiny wings a
languid stretch.

Maetan lifted his hand toward the Tyrian camp. “Go, my darling, and look into their
nightmares. Find one who will betray his fellows, one who yearns for wealth beyond his
grasp, perhaps, or one who fears his master.”

The homunculus smiled, showing a pair of needlelike fangs, then Happed her wings and rose
into the air.

“When you have succeeded,” Maetan said, “return to me and I will make him ours.”

*****

Etched into the cliffside, far above Rikus's head, was the image of a kes'trekel. The
giant raptor's barbed tongue coiled from its hooked beak, and it held its claws splayed
open. The creature's ragged wings were spread wide to catch the wind, and at the elbows of
these wings were small, three-fingered hands. In one hand it held a bone scythe, and in
the other it carried a furled whip of bone and cord.

“How'd they get up there to carve that?” Rikus asked, his eyes searching the cliffside.

“Why would they bother?” returned Neeva, looking away from the rock-etching. “Kes'trekels
are hardly a subject for art. They're nothing but overgrown carrion-eaters.”

“Kes'trekels may be death-followers, but they're also as vicious as halflings, as cunning
as elves, and some are as large as half-giants,” Caelum said, still craning his neck to
study me depiction. “I'd take this engraving as a warning.”

Along with Styan, who remained stolidly silent, the three stood in a barren canyon flanked
by towering cliffs of hard, yellow quartzite. The gorge was so deep and narrow that just a
sliver of the olive-tinged sky showed overhead. Only the sweltering heat and a blush of
crimson light on the canyon's rim indicated that the morning sun already hung high in the
sky.

Above the kes'trekel, someone had chiseled a huge hollow into the cliffside. A warren of
mudbrick compartments had been constructed inside this alcove. From the outside, Rikus
could see little of the burrow except a wall several stories high, plastered with
lime-paste and speckled with square windows. At the base of this wall, a part of the
warren overhung the valley. In the center of this section was a large circular opening.

“I'd say that's where our warriors disappeared to,” Rikus said, motioning at the overhang.

Neeva looked around the canyon. “I don't see anywhere else they might have gone,” she
agreed. “You think both K'kriq and the scouts you sent after him are up there?”

“That's my guess,” the mul said.

At dusk the night before, the legion had made camp in a sandy gulch at the mouth of a
narrow canyon. Since thri-kreen have no need of sleep, Rikus had sent K'kriq ahead to
scout the next day's route. The mantis-warrior had not returned by first light, so the mul
had sent five gladiators to look for him. When that group had not come back either, Rikus
had entered the canyon to investigate for himself. He had brought Neeva and Caelum along
in case he ran into trouble. Surprisingly, Styan had asked to accompany them.

After two miles of slow travel, the cliff-huts were the only unusual thing the group had
seen in the valley.

“How will we reach the doorway?” Caelum asked, eyeing the sheer cliff beneath the opening.

“Why would we want to?” Styan demanded, speaking for the first time. He glared openly at
Rikus. “It's enough that you ignore Caelum's advice and cross these badlands, but to risk
our
lives for a thri-kreen and a few warriorsÑ”

“They'd do it for us,” the mul answered gruffly. “As for crossing the hills, it's the only
way to reach the oasis ahead of Maetan.”

K'kriq had seen Maetan traveling with a large group of Urikite soldiers. They were moving
around a tongue of rocky badlands that jutted several miles into the sand wastes. From
what the thri-kreen had reported, the mind-bender's company was traveling toward a
brackish pool of water where a handful of Urik's infamous halfling rangers had stopped to
rest. Determined to reach the oasis ahead of his enemy, Rikus had led his legion into the
winding canyons and contorted ridges of the badland foothills.

Before the legion could continue its journey, however, Rikus had to find out what had
happened to K'kriq and the other scouts. He dropped a hand to the sword hanging from his
new belt. As the mul's fingers closed around the Scourge's hilt, a dozen discordant sounds
crashed over his mind in a deafening tumult. His ears were filled with the thunder of
beating hearts and the roar of the morning breeze. From distant caves came the rumble of
chirping crickets, and the piercing drone of his warriors' impatient conversations echoed
up from the canyon mouth.

Rikus felt sick and dizzy at the torrent of noise. He wanted nothing quite so much as to
shut it away, but he forced himself to hang onto the sword and search out the sounds
coming from the warren. Finally, he managed to distinguish a stream of wispy voices
gushing from the hole above. Concentrating on those sounds, the mul asked quietly, “Who
are you? What have you done with my scouts?”

Of course, the voices did not answer, but the other sounds faded to the point that he
could concentrate on what was being said inside the warren. Rikus quickly discerned that
there were well over a dozen men and women watching him from above, most asking concerned
questions of someone named Wrog. In the background, he could hear a faint clacking noise
that sounded like K'kriq gnashing his mandibles.

Taking his hand from his sword hilt, Rikus called, “Wrog! Return my scouts and I'll leave
in peace.”

They waited a few moments for a response. When none came Neeva asked, “Who's Wrog?”

Rikus shrugged. “A name. I thoughtÑ”

A terrified scream interrupted him. He looked up and saw a man, arms flailing wildly, drop
from the opening overhead. In anger, Rikus reached for the Scourge of Rkard. Instantly, he
heard many voices roaring in laughter.

The falling man plummeted toward the mul for what seemed like an hour. A half-giant's
height from the rocky ground, his terrified scream ended with a pained shout as his
descent stopped. For several moments, the man hung motionless and silent in midair. To the
amazement of the mul and his companions, there was no sign of a rope, or any other line,
between the faller and the hole from which he had come. The unfortunate fellow simply
dangled a few yards off the ground with no visible means of support.