Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 2 - The Crimson Legion (21 page)

The shadow creature stood silhouetted against the creamy light that poured down the narrow
hall at his back. He now stood just a little larger than Rikus, his wounds still oozing
black fog and his blue eyes burning with an icy spark.

The mul turned toward a different corridor, but Umbra blocked the way before Rikus could
escape- “Did I not hear you claim you would kill me?” the shadow beast chortled.

“I will,” the mul answered with a confidence he did not feel.

Rikus half-hopped and half-limped toward the narrow stairway in the center of the chamber,
realizing Umbra would never permit him to flee from an obvious exit. The shadow creature
rushed forward, his hiss echoing off the walls like that of a viper. Rikus threw himself
at the stairs, screaming in pain even before he reached the opening.

The mul plunged into a black pit, then tucked his chin to his chest and bounced head over
heels down a long flight of rocky stairs. By the time he hit the bottom, agony had numbed
his mind and confused his thoughts. For several long moments, he could not figure out
which way was up, for he had plummeted into a pool of darkness and could not find a fight.

Just when Rikus thought he had fallen unconscious, his dwarven vision began to work. The
walls and floor radiated the subdued blue tones of cold Stone, and he could see that he
had landed in a small foyer where three dark corridors met. Here and there, green gossamer
tresses dangled from the ceiling, nearly sweeping the floor with the tips of their gauzy
strands. Red, fist-sized crustaceans scuttled down the draping webs on six pinkish legs,
their wicked claws held before their bodies and ready to seize any prey they touched.

Behind Rikus, Umbra's resonant voice cursed in his strange gurgling language. The mul
looked toward the eerie sound and saw the shadow creature's silhouette at the top of the
long stairwell, angrily glaring into the utter blackness that separated him from his
quarry.

Rikus forced himself to stand. He could not help groaning in pain, but he did not think it
would make any difference to the coming battle. Umbra knew that he was injured.

“If you want to fight, come down,” the mul called.

He used his sword scabbard to clear a wide circle of crustacean webs.

Umbra did not respond to the challenge. Instead, the shadow creature cursed again, then
stepped away from the stairwell. Rikus resisted the temptation to climb the stairs,
reasoning that if his enemy was reluctant to come after him, it was best to stay where he
was.

When the shadow giant did not return within a few moments, Rikus inspected his battered
body. His sword arm hung limp and useless at his side, the shoulder shoved a little less
than a hand's length forward of its socket. The mul thought it would be a simple thing to
push it back into place, but he also knew that it would hurt. In one of the fights that
had convinced Maetan's father to sell him, the mul had allowed a young half-giant to hit
him with a stone club. The result had been a similar injury, and he would never forget the
pain he had suffered when the healer had returned the arm to its socket.

Before running the risk that the agony would render him unconscious, as it had the last
time, Rikus turned his attention to his leg. From what he could see, it was in better
shape. His ankle was swollen to the size of his calf, but it seemed to be in line with his
shinbone. He placed a little weight on it, and a dull ached ran up as far as his thigh.
There was none of the sharp pain that he had felt on the many occasions he had suffered
broken bones in the arena, so the mul breathed a sigh of relief and went on with the
inspection of the rest of his leg. Although the entire thing was extremely tender,
especially around the knee, there were no unusual lumps or protrusions. He had probably
just bruised the bone when he landed. The last time he suffered such an injury had been
shortly before he escaped from Tithian's slave pits, when he had allowed a dwarven friend
to best him at cudgel practice.

Cursing himself for being such a softling, Rikus gradually placed more weight on the
bruised leg. It throbbed to the bone, but did not collapseÑeven when the mul stood on it
alone. He gritted his teeth against the pain and forced himself to keep his weight on the
leg until he became accustomed to the discomfort.

Finally, Rikus was ready to attend to his injured arm. He grabbed the dislocated shoulder
and shoved it toward the socket, letting out a terrible scream as it popped back into the
joint.

From the top of the stairs, Umbra called, “There's no need to screamÑyet.”

The mul looked toward the shadow creature's voice and saw that Umbra had returned. In the
palm of his good hand burned a brightly flickering flame.

At first Rikus was puzzled, though less by how Umbra could hold a burning flame in the
palm of his hand than why the shadow giant would want to. The mul could not imagine that
such a phantom was incapable of seeing in the dark, but that seemed the only
explanationÑuntil Rikus recalled how Maetan had summoned the creature.

A thin smile creased the mul's lips. “What's a shadow with no light?” he whispered,
drawing the Scourge of Rkard.

Rikus pressed himself against the wall. The pain of resetting his shoulder had made him
nauseous and dizzy. He felt like he would topple to the ground and fall unconscious at any
moment. The mul clenched his teeth and fought to stay awake.

The flame in Umbra's hand cast its flickering light over the floor of the small foyer, but
it seemed to take the shadow giant forever to descend the dark stairwell. At last, Rikus
saw a tongue of flame glimmer from around the corner.

The mul attacked, launching himself into the stairwell and swinging his sword at Umbra's
good arm. As Rikus's torso met the shadow creature's, a terrible chill rushed through him,
compounding the agony already wracking his battered body. The shadow giant cursed, spewing
black fog from his mouth that filled Rikus's lungs with an icy, foul stench.

The mul continued his swing, slicing through the wrist of the dark beast's good hand. As
his hand and the fire it held dropped to the floor, Umbra cried out in surprise and pain.
The flames continued to burn.

“I see the scorpion retains his sting,” Umbra hissed. He reached for Rikus with the stumps
of both arms, spraying the mul with noxious black vapors that chilled him as badly as the
shadow's grasp had.

Rikus dropped to floor, throwing his body onto the fire in a desperate attempt to
extinguish the light.

The mul landed on the flame squarely, screaming in pain as it seared the skin of his bare
chest. An instant later, Umbra's cold form settled over his back and a terrible chill sank
deep into his flesh. The stairwell went dark and everything fell silent.

The Thirteenth Champion

Rikus lay in a stone box that recked of decay. Though it was barely large enough to hold
his body, the mul's captor had thoughtfully placed a jug of water on one side of the
gladiator's head and a loaf of moldy bread on the other. The Belt of Rank still girded his
waist, and he had even been allowed to keep the Scourge of Rkard. The long sword lay atop
his burned chest, his hands neatly folded over the hilt.

Rikus had no idea where he was or how he had come to be there, but he knew he wanted to
leave. The damp chill pierced him to the bone, and his joints felt as though they were
lined with frost. His shoulder throbbed with a deep cold ache, and his sore leg felt like
a slab of ice.

As miserable as he was, he did not think Umbra had taken him to the Black. The prison
didn't seem quite horrible enough to be the shadow giant's home. The cold should have been
biting, the kind that turned skin white and froze toes and fingers solid. The darkness
didn't seem right, either. While it would have been difficult for the blackness to be more
absolute, the mul's dwarven vision allowed him to see the cold blue tones of his stone
box, the yellow-hued bread, and his own reddish skin with perfect clarity. Whatever
Umbra's “Black” was like, the mul did not think he would be able to see in it with any
form of vision.

“It makes no sense,” Rikus grumbled, more to hear the sound of his own voice than because
he thought it necessary to proclaim that fact.

Speaking the words made him conscious of his dry tongue and throat. He had no idea how
long he had been trapped inside the box, but it had been long enough to make him thirsty.

The lid of the mul's prison was only a few inches above his face, so there was no hope of
sitting upright to drink from the water jug. He reached up and turned the vessel so that
its small spout pointed toward his mouth, then tipped it slightly.

The fluid surged from the jug in a yellow-hued glob, filling the mul's mouth with the sour
taste of vinegar. Rikus reflexively sat up to spit out the gummy fluid, banging his
forehead into cold stone. The lid budged open enough for him to glimpse a pale flicker of
yellow light, then the foul liquid in his mouth slipped down the mul's throat. He dropped
back into the box and smashed his head against the bottom of his stone prison. The lid
returned to its place with a sharp bang.

Where he had banged it into the stone, the mul's skull ached terribly, and the foul water
he had swallowed was already making him nauseous. Nevertheless, Rikus had to restrain
himself from crying out in joy. He placed a hand on the lid and shoved with all his might.
The stone slab slipped off the box and crashed to the floor with a loud boom that echoed
off walls not too far distant.

Returning his good hand to the hilt of his sword, the mul sat up. He found himself in a
small chamber with a low ceiling. It was dimly lit in a dozen different colors, each cast
by a magnificent glowing gem set into the lid of a stone sarcophagus. Carved into the top
of the twelve coffins was the bas-relief figure of a sleeping warrior. On the box next to
Rikus's, a huge citrine cast an eerie yellow glow over the figure of a broad-shouldered
woman with close-cropped hair.

“A tomb!” Rikus gasped, a cold knot of fear forming in his chest. He did not voice the
question that consumed all his thoughts: who had brought him here, and why?

The mul struggled out of his sarcophagus, his injured shoulder and leg aching terribly as
he stepped over the coffin's cracked cover. The carving on it represented a bald human
with features so rugged and blocky that he might have been a dwarf, if not for his round
ears and long bushy beard. His eyes were sunken and wild, with a heavy brow covered by a
thick line of hair. Though the dark orbs were made of stone, they seemed almost alive with
ire and hatred.

In his hands, the man held a long bastard sword identical to the Scourge of Rkard. His
body was covered by a full suit of plate armor, save that the visored helmet hung a little
above the warrior's shaven head. In the forehead of this basinet was set an orange opal.
Unlike the gems of the other sarcophagi, this one remained dark.

Though the opal was clearly worth a hundred silver coins, Rikus did not even consider
prying it from its setting. With Neeva and the rest of the thirsty legion waiting outside,
he had no time for grave-robbing. Besides, the tomb filled his heart with such gloom and
apprehension that he had no wish to tarry in it a moment longer than necessary.

When he scanned the murky room for an exit, he found none. The walls were lined with
panels of bas-relief sculpture, but there was no visible opening in any of them. The mul
stepped over to the closest and inspected it more carefully, hoping to find the seam of a
concealed door.

The stone carvings depicted the same bearded warrior shown on the lid of the mul's
sarcophagus. The man was leading an assault on a warren of bearded dwarves resembling
those pictured in the murals of the Tower of Buryn.

The visor of the warrior's helm was raised to reveal a broad, demented grin, and behind
him lay the mutilated bodies of dozens of dwarves. Ahead of the armored figure fled many
more, all looking over their shoulders at the gore-dripping sword that would soon cut them
down.

Other sections of the panel depicted acts even more horrid. In one, the warrior had
skewered the bodies of three dwarven children on his sword. In another he was drawing the
blade across the abdomens of six women, leaving a trail of entrails and blood spilling
from the wounds he had opened. Always, the warrior's victims were dwarves, and, always,
they were depicted as frightened and dying.

Sickened by the scene and unsuccessful in finding any cracks or seams that could have been
a door, Rikus moved along to inspect the rest of the panels. Like the first, the others
portrayed hateful warriors leading attacks on defenseless dwarves. In one, the
broad-shouldered woman depicted on the coffin with the citrine was filling a large cavern
with dwarven bodies. Another showed a tall gaunt warrior attacking a group of sleeping
dwarven women.

When he came to the last panel, still without finding an exit, the mul closed his eyes for
a moment. He took several deep breaths, trying to fight back the despair welling in his
breast. In his mind flashed images of his dry and desiccated corpse sitting in the corner
of the gloomy chamber, the jug of foul liquid from his sarcophagus sitting half full at
his side.

“I won't die like that,” Rikus said. “If someone carried me in here, there must be a way
out.”

His spirits somewhat restored by the sound of his own voice, the mul opened his eyes and
inspected the last panel. It portrayed a fully armored warrior leading a legion through a
forest. They were slaughtering a tribe of dwarves fleeing with all their possessions on
their backs.

No matter how closely he looked, Rikus found no seams anywhere in the carving.

“Let me out!” the mul yelled.

He whirled around and pushed the closest sarcophagus to the floor. The glowing amethyst
embedded in its lid went skittering across the cold stones, and the coffin itself
shattered into a dozen shards. A withered corpse, held intact only by the suit of steel
armor it wore, tumbled out of the shattered box.