Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 2 - The Crimson Legion (25 page)

“What's that?” Neeva demanded.

“I'm not sure,” the mul lied. “After I killed Umbra, I passed out for several days. When I
woke up, it was in my chest.”

Though Rikus did not like lying, he intended to tell Neeva the truth later. With Caelum
present, however, the mul thought it best not to mention the wraithsÑespecially since they
wanted him to recover the same book that he was supposed to be returning to the dwarves of
Kled.

“You woke up and it was there?” Caelum asked, incredulous.

“That's what I said!” the mul snapped, pulling his robe closed.

Caelum calmly reopened the robe, then began poking and prodding at the sore. His fingers
were quickly coated with rancid-smelling yellow goo. Rikus winced in pain and pushed the
dwarf's hands away. “What're you doing?” he demanded.

“I believe it to be a sort of magic vex,” Caelum explained, cleaning his hands on Rikus's
robe. He raised a hand toward the sun. As his fingers turned red, he said, “With the power
of the sun, perhaps I can rid you of the stone.”

“You'd better know what you're doing,” Rikus growled. He did not know which appealed to
him less: remaining at the mercy of Tamar, or being indebted to Caelum for ridding him of
the wraith.

Instead of replying to the mul's threat, Caelum laid his glowing hand to the wound.

Where the dwarf touched him, Rikus felt a brief sensation of burning. An instant later,
Caelum's face went pale and he let out a terrified shriek. A gray shadow crept from the
mul's festering wound and moved over the dwarf's hand, darkening the glowing flesh. The
blotch slowly spread up the cleric's arm, slipping onto his shoulders and up over his head
until only the dwarf's red eyes shone from the shadow. Even they quickly faded from view,
rolling back in their sockets as Caelum toppled over.

Rikus screamed, feeling as though someone had shot a flaming arrow into his heart. The
inside of his chest erupted into a shattering agony, and tongues of searing pain ran down
into his legs and out into his arms. With each passing moment, the raging anguish grew
worse, until the mul feared that a fire was consuming him from the inside out. In Rikus's
mind, smoky tendrils of blackness rose to cloud his thoughts, and his ears were filled
with a loud, pulsing roar.

Tamar's voice came to him over the throbbing in his ears.
Your dwarven ally cannot save you,
she hissed.

The fire inside Rikus's body grew unbearable. He rolled away from Neeva's grasp, then lay
on the ground thrashing in pain until, at last, his thoughts turned to smoke.

The mul did not die. Instead, Rikus saw himself inside his own mind, walking blindly
through an endless bank of mordant gray fumes. As he moved onward, choking and gasping
from the caustic haze, his possessions slowly disappeared: first the robe he had been
wearing to hide Tamar's gem, then his sandals and the Belt of Rank, and finally even his
breech-cloth. He found himself completely naked and without equipment, save that the
Scourge of Rkard floated at his side as if sheathed in an invisible scabbard.

The mul continued to wander through the hazy landscape of his mind for what seemed hours,
but may have been days or merely minutes. Occasionally he shouted for Neeva, and even for
Caelum, but there was never an answer. Rikus's stomach began to churn with anxiety, for he
had seen a similar haze before.

Once, after losing a gladiatorial fight with a horrid beast his trainers had brought from
the desert wastes, Rikus had hovered near death for several days. During that time, he had
found himself standing atop a distant cliff, overlooking an endless curtain of gray
nothingness. That ashen haze had looked exactly like the dingy fog that now enclosed him.

A shiver of dread ran down the mul's back. In retaliation for letting Caelum try to
destroy her, the wraith may have killed them both.

“Tamar! What did you do to me?” Rikus yelled. With his scream, the mul's fear gave way to
anger. He set off through the gray haze at a sprint, reaching for his sword and shouting,
“Come out, wraith!”

No sooner had he grasped the Scourge's hilt than the gray haze disappeared. He saw that he
was standing in midair, upside down with an even surface of granite many feet below. In
the next instant, he crashed to the polished floor, barely tucking his chin in time to
keep from landing on his head.

A roar of raucous laughter sounded all around him. He found himself in a vast room
smelling of unwashed men and lit by dozens of open-hearthed fireplaces. Around each tire
whirled the lithe silhouette of a tall dancing girl, singing and shouting ribald
invitations to the drunken men watching her. Serving slaves wandered the crowd, making
sure that each spectator had a full cup of potent, foul-tasting broy.

At Rikus's back, a silky voice called, “See, you're not dead.”

The mul scrambled to his feet and turned around, where he saw an unclothed woman with a
dark complexion and long black hair. She stood before a soft bed of sleeping furs. Her
dark eyes narrowed to mere slits, and a wicked smile crept across her wide, full-lipped
mouth.

“Tamar?” the mul gasped.

The woman nodded, then beckoned him forward with a single long-nailed finger. “You're
learning to use the Scourge,” she said. “Good. You can trust it when you cannot trust
anything elseÑeven your own thoughts.”

As the mul stepped toward the woman, he saw that she stood nearly as tall as he did. Her
voluptuous body was sinuous and strong, but she smelled of must and decay. She opened her
arms to the mul. “Come. I will teach you to use it against the mindbender.”

“Why?” the mul asked, stopping short of her embrace. “You must know that after I defeat
Maetan, I'll never give you the
Book of the Kemalok Kings.”

Tamar's smile turned ominous. “I think you will, when the time comes,” she said, motioning
for him to step into her arms. “Now, come hereÑif you wish to learn more about your
weapon.”

Rikus stood his ground, acutely aware of his own nakedness. “I've no wish to couple with
you, wraithÑeven in my thoughts.”

Tamar's eyes flashed fiery red, but her voice remained calm and silky when she spoke. “And
I have no wish to lie with you, half-dwarf.”

Nevertheless, she reached out as if to grasp him. Long claws sprouted from her fingertips,
and glistening fangs grew from beneath her full lips.

“Stay away!” Rikus cried, slashing his sword across her stomach.

The wraith jumped away, but the blade grazed her abdomen and opened a long gash. Tamar
cried out, but not in her own voice. Her hair changed from silky black to blond, her eyes
from ruby red to emerald green, and her body from sinuous to powerful.

The honey-scent of chiffon blossoms came to Rikus's nose. With a sinking heart, he
realized that what he saw before him was not inside his mind. He was looking at Neeva, and
they were standing under the same chiffon tree beneath which K'kriq had laid him earlier
that morning.

“Why?” asked Neeva.

She held her hands across the cut Rikus had opened in her stomach, blood seeping through
her fingers. Her face did not show pain or anger, only shock and bewilderment.

“It wasn't you!” Rikus cried. Such a feeling of remorse washed over him that he felt sick
to his stomach. He tossed his sword aside and dropped to his knees. “Forgive me!”

The scent of mildew and rot returned, and before the mul's eyes, Neeva's hair darkened to
jet black. A red spark glimmered in her eyes, then her face became Tamar's. Gray smoke
rose from the ground and once again Rikus was trapped in his own mind.

The wraith stepped toward him, her ruby eyes glowing like hot coals. As before, she was
naked, and there was a long gash across her stomach in the same place that Rikus had
wounded Neeva.

“Fool! Never let go of the Scourge!”

She slapped the mul with an open palm. The blow rocked his jaw as though she had been
holding a warhammer. Unprepared for the attack, Rikus fell over backward, his ears
ringing. He closed his eyes and shook his head in an attempt to regain control of his
thoughts. Finally, the sound in his ears faded, and he opened his eyes once more. Tamar
still stood before him. Keeping a careful eye on her, he returned to his feet.

“What about Neeva?” the mul demanded. “Is she badly hurt?”

“Forget about Neeva!” Tamar screamed.

Again she lashed out, this time with her fist. Rikus tried to block, but the wraith was
too quick. He glimpsed her hand coming toward him only an instant before he felt the blow.
A terrific thump echoed through the mul's skull and his head whipped around so hard that
it sent a bolt of pain through his neck. Rikus tried to counter by tackling the wraith.
She changed to a translucent wisp of light and his arms passed harmlessly through her form.

Tamar rematerialized in front of the mul, this time armed with the double-edge scythe and
wearing the full suit of plate armor in which she had been pictured on
her
sarcophagus. She kicked Rikus under his chin, rocking him over onto his back.

“Without the sword, you have no defense,” she snarled, raising her scythe to strike.
“You're lost.”

As the wraith swung the curved blade toward his throat, Rikus visualized a huge block of
stone lying in its path. He felt a queasy sensation in his stomach, then the scythe
clanged against the granite slab that had appeared over him.

Tamar raised an eyebrow. “Do you think that will save you from a mindbender?”

The wraith threw herself at Rikus. In midair, she changed from an armored knight into a
strange, man-sized horror that resembled nothing the mul had ever seen. Its underside was
protected by a black carapace, save for a snapping, red-rimmed maw that stank of carrion
and offal. This mouth was surrounded by six tentacles, each ending in a gnarled hand with
three sharp claws. The thing had no head that the mul could see, merely a dozen eyes
located at various places along the lip of the black shell guarding its body.

Desperate to escape, Rikus imagined himself turning to air. A surge of energy rose from
deep within his body, and he suddenly felt very weak and tired. The beast landed over him,
its tentacles holding its mouth mere inches from his body. It lowered itself until Rikus
began to choke on its stinking breath, then it opened its maw for the bite of death.

Rikus felt an eerie tingle as he changed to air, then the monster's jaws snapped shut.
They passed right through the mul's intangible body and clacked closed without causing him
any pain or injury.

The figure over him became Tamar again, her ruby-red eyes glowing from behind her helm's
visor. Rikus felt completely exhausted, and despite the terrible danger, it was all he
could do to keep his eyes open.

“If you fight like this, you die,” Tamar hissed, a gray fog billowing from behind her
mask. “Now sleep.”

“What about Neeva?” Rikus demanded. His words hissed like the wind, and even he could
barely understand them.

“Forget about Neeva,” the wraith growled, spewing gray mist into his eyes.

Rikus sank into oblivion. Thoughts of Neeva, the Scourge of Rkard, even Tamar, fled before
the waves of exhaustion that overtook the mul.

Later, someone called his name, and Rikus felt the warm glow of the morning sun on his
face. The air was rich with the honey-scent of the chiffon tree, and a cool breeze danced
across his leathery skin.

“Rikus, stop waiting. Get up.”

It was K'kriq's voice.

The mul opened his eyes and found himself staring up at the olive-tinged sky of early
morning. The mul sat up and immediately looked about. He found nothing but his belt and
sword, a dozen full waterskins, and a pile of diamond-shaped scales that K'kriq had
discarded after eating the lirrs.

“Where's Neeva?” the mul demanded, rising. “Is she hurt?”

“Neeva with Caelum,” the thri-kreen reported, clacking his mandibles impatiently. “Caelum
with pack. Both healthy to hunt.”

“And where is my pack?” Rikus asked, his eyes searching the oasis for signs of his legion.
Save for himself, K'kriq, and a few winged lizards, the pond was deserted.

“Styan take pack yesterday,” K'kriq explained. “Say to tell you message: 'legion cannot
wait. Maetan call reinforcements to village.' Styan say you catch legion today. Fight
soon.”

“Styan'.” Rikus yelled, snatching his belt and sword off the red moss. He hardly noticed
that, save for the festering sore over his heart, all of his injuries and wounds had been
healed. “Who is he to say when my legion marches?”

K'kriq slung the waterskins over his four arms. “Styan become pack leader when you die at
citadel,” he explained “I didn't die,” Rikus snapped, starting northward. “The first thing
I'll do when I catch up to the legion is show Styan Ñand everyone elseÑthat I'm still very
much alive!”

Makla

“Stop where you are!” ordered the sentry.

The dwarf stood behind a low rock wall, moving his long spear back and forth between Rikus
and K'kriq. Beside the stocky guard, a half-elf gladiator groaned as she heaved a small
boulder atop the barrier. She gave the mul and the thri-kreen a casual glance, then turned
to pick up another heavy stone.

“You know who I am,” Rikus snarled, scowling at the scene before him.

In both directions, gladiators were laboring to encircle the camp with a wall of stones.
Caelum's dwarves were spaced every twenty or thirty feet, their eyes dutifully peering
into the lengthening shadows of dusk. In the center of camp, the templars stood in a tight
circle, their attention turned inward toward the glowing light of a roaring campfire.

After waiting another moment for the dwarven sentry to move his spear away, the mul
angrily slapped the shaft aside and leaped over the rock wall. He grabbed the dwarf by the
throat and lifted him off the ground. “What's going on here?” he demanded.

“I have my orders,” the dwarf gasped, reaching for the hand-axe on his belt. “No one is
permitted to enter camp without Styan's permission.”