Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 2 - The Crimson Legion (41 page)

The wraiths sank back into the flagstones, save for a single, blue-eyed phantom that
slipped into the narrow space separating Rikus and Caelum. The mul lowered his sword and
backed away.
What now?
he asked.
You have the book.

The wraith did not respond. Instead, it slipped its nebulous hand into the festering wound
on the mul's chest. A fiery pain filled the gladiator's breast. Rikus cried out in agony,
then collapsed to his knees as Tamar's ruby was pulled from his body. The phantom closed
its fingers over the gemstone, then sank between the flagstones and disappeared. Rikus
remained on the floor, gasping for breath.

“Get up, traitor!” Caelum spat, his hand still glowing with the fury of the sun. “Let us
finish what we started!”

Rikus lifted his head and looked into the dwarf's red eyes. Letting the Scourge of Rkard
drop from his hands, he said, “You finish it. I have no reason to fight.”

“I have no compunction against killing one who surrenders to me!” Caelum warned. “At the
least, my village deserves your death.”

“Then be done with it!” Rikus yelled.

Caelum took a step backward and leveled his hand at Rikus. Before he could utter the word
that would cast the spell, the flat of Neeva's sword blade slapped his forearm and knocked
it down.

“I won't let you kill him, Caelum,” she said, keeping her weapon ready.

“He betrayed his word. My fatherÑ”

“I don't care,” she said, sheathing her sword. “I loved Rikus once, and I won'tÑ”

“Let him,” Rikus said. He did not know which hurt him more: that Neeva felt he needed
protection, or that she no longer loved him. “I've lost everythingÑmy legion, my honor,
even you,” he said. “I don't want to live.”

Neeva whirled around and grabbed the mul by the chin. “Did you survive twenty years as a
gladiator to throw your life away here?” she demanded, pulling him to his feet. “Maybe it
would have been better for you to die in the arena Ñbut don't you dare do it here, not
now.”

She reached down and picked up the Scourge of Rkard. “You may not be much of a general,
but you're still the finest gladiator I've ever seen,” she said, holding the sword's hilt
toward him. “Caelum and I could use your help getting Er'Stali back to Kled. Maybe we can
still salvage something from this disaster.”

Rikus stared at the sword, feeling almost as ashamed of his despair as he did of betraying
the dwarves and losing his legion. Finally he sighed and took the sword from Neeva's hand.
“Who's Er'Stali?”

“Er'Stali was translating the
Book of the Kemalok Kings
for Maetan,” Caelum explained, raising his glowing hand and allowing the fiery color to
drain from it. “His knowledge may help repay the loss you have caused.”

Rikus frowned. “Translate?” he asked, thinking of the decades Caelum's father had spent
trying to decipher the language of the ancient kings. “How can he do that?”

“Sorcery,” Neeva answered, looking toward the door into which the old man had disappeared.
There was no longer any sign of the sorcerer. She cursed, then started toward the
townhouse. “He must have run off. I'll go after himÑ”

Rikus caught her by the shoulder. “Don't you think it's his decision whether or not to
come with us?”

“Er'Stali has read the book. That makes him a part of dwarven history,” Caelum said,
starting toward the door. “Kled will treat him like an
uhrnomus.
He'll want for nothing.”

“Except his freedom,” Neeva sighed. “It's his choice. Taking him against his will would
make us no different than any other slave-taker.”

Caelum cursed in the guttural tongue of his people, then looked at the ground and shook
his head angrily. “I cannot deny you, Neeva,” he said. “But can I at least find him and
ask what he wishes?”

“There's no need for that,” said the old man. He stepped from the doorway, holding his
hands out to be unbound. “I choose freedomÑwith you.”

Rikus cut the old sorcerer free, then Er'Stali led the small party into the labyrinthine
streets of the noble quarter. As they made their way toward the city walls, the mul saw
that Hamanu's well-planned counterattacks had not entirely crushed the slave revolt.

The few hundred quarry slaves that had crossed into the noble quarter were taking angry
vengeance on their masters. A thick pall of smoke filled the streets, at times reducing
visibility to a dozen steps. Even domestic slaves roamed the streets in angry gangs,
killing nobles and destroying all they could. Several times the small party had to hide in
a looted mansion while a company of the Imperial Guard rushed past pursuing a mob of
rampaging slaves.

Once, the group barely escaped death when they rounded a corner and ran headlong into a
noble company. Rikus killed the officer with a quick thrust, then Er'Stali surprised the
combatants of both sides by blocking the alley with a magical wall of ice that allowed the
companions to make a hasty retreat.

At last, the four reached the outer wall. Here, Rikus was relieved to see that some of
Urik's slaves were fleeing the city. Hundreds were gathered in cheering throngs, waiting
their turn to climb the black slave ropes that had been strung over the wall as makeshift
ladders. A company of doomed noble retainers battled at the edges of the crowd, having
made the mistake of trying to stop the escape. In one spot, several of Hamanu's
half-giants had even fallen, though not without taking dozens of slaves with them. “At
least some slaves will see freedom,” Neeva observed. “Yes, but at a terrible price,” Rikus
said. He started toward one of the throngs waiting to climb out of the city.

“We have no time to wait in line,” Er'Stali said, leading them away from the crowd. “Come
with me.”

The sorcerer guided them to a space along the wall where there were no ropes, then took a
piece of twine from his pocket. He pointed one palm downward. The air beneath his hand
began to shimmer, then a barely perceptible surge of energy rose from the ground and into
his body.

Once the sorcerer had collected the energy for his spell, he muttered a quiet incantation.
The twine in his hand rose skyward, growing thicker the higher it went. By the time it
reached the top of the wall, it was the size of a sturdy rope. Er'Stali grabbed the line
and scrambled to the top of the wall as spryly as a man a quarter his age.

Neeva sent Caelum up next, then followed herself. Unlike the old man and the dwarf, she
moved slowly and with great effortÑa sure sign that her wound was troubling her. By the
time she had reached the top, a crowd was gathering at the bottom of Er'Stali's rope,
anxious to put this new escape route to good use.

When Rikus's turn came, he moved even more slowly, for his left arm still hurt too much to
use. He had to pull himself up a short distance with his good arm, then wrap his legs
around the rope and hold himself in place while he reached higher. Nevertheless, his
progress was steady and he soon found himself atop the wall.

Once the mul had joined the others, Er'Stali took another strand of twine from his pocket
and started toward the other side of the wall. Rikus did not follow. Much of Urik was
visible from this vantage point, and the mul could see greasy columns of smoke rising from
all parts of the city. With the Scourge of Rkard's aid, he could even hear the shouts of
rioting slaves as they destroyed what they had so reluctantly created and the dying
screams of the indolent masters for whom it had been built.

That much he had expected, but what sickened the mul was the sight in the main boulevard.
Near the slave gate, the bodies were heaped in piles taller than a half-giant. As Rikus's
gaze followed the street toward the king's gate, the corpse piles gradually grew smaller.
A few yards shy of Hamanu's slave pens, Rikus could even see the bloodstained cobblestones
through the tangle of dead flesh. Already the kes'trekels had descended on the feast and
were ripping at the bodies with their hooked beaks and three-fingered hands.

When Rikus looked toward the templar quarter, he saw the reason the Urikites were not
putting more effort into stopping the outflow of slaves from the noble quarter. Gathered
along the top of the city wall, a half-mile or more from where the mul stood, were several
thousand quarry slaves. From what Rikus could see at that great distance, they were
attempting to flee the city by sliding down ropes, climbing the rough mudbrick surface, or
even jumping.

Pressing them from both sides were large companies of Urikite regulars. Hamanu himself
wandered behind the wall, plucking slaves off and passing them down to guardsmen waiting
below.

Rikus looked back to the carnage on the slave boulevard. “I did this,” he said. “I
promised them they would die free, and all they did was die.”

“Don't be too hard on yourself,” Er'Stali said, stepping to the mul's side and trying to
guide him to the far side of the wall. Neeva and Caelum had already descended without
Rikus noticing. “Perhaps it's not so unreasonable to have believed you could destroy
Hamanu. After all, I am told that you destroyed Kalak.”

“No,” Rikus said. “I was one of a handful who destroyed Kalak. All I did was throw the
first spear. Without Agis, Sadira, and Neeva, I would have failed at that, too.”

“One cannot accomplish great things without risking great failures,” the old man said.

“This wasn't even a great failure,” Rikus answered. He pointed toward the sorcerer-king,
who was still plucking slaves off the wall on the other side of the slave gate. “Hamanu
must know that I've escaped, but he's more concerned about losing quarry slaves than he is
about recapturing me.”

“We can thank the moons for small favors, can we not?” Er'Stali said. Again, he tried to
guide Rikus toward the far side of the wall.

As the mul started to turn away, a great uproar of panicked cries and pained shouts
erupted from the crowds inside the city wall. Rikus ran over to the magical rope Er'Stali
had raised earlier. There he saw that more than a dozen companies of Imperial Guards were
pouring out of the smoke-filled streets of the noble quarter. While the mul looked
helplessly on, the half-giants rushed toward the escape ropes, using their lances like
clubs to knock slaves out of their paths.

Below Rikus, a gaunt, gray-haired man wearing the hemp robe of a domestic slave clutched
the rope. He began to climb, casting frantic glances over his shoulder as the half-giants
drew closer. The mul grabbed the line from the top and tried to pull the old man up, but
he was of little help. With his left arm still weakened by the wound in his chest, he
could not grip the rope with both hands.

The first guardsman reached the wall when the man was about half-way up. “Come down, boy,”
the guard ordered, brandishing his lance.

The old man stopped climbing and looked up at Rikus, his rid-rimmed eyes silently pleading
for help. The mul tried again to pull the rope, but he barely succeeded in raising it a
foot.

The half-giant touched the tip of his lance to the slave's back. “Come down or die,” the
guard growled.

The old man stared at the brute for a moment, then repeated a saying that Rikus had often
heard in his days in the Lubar pits: “My death will free me.”

With that, the slave looked toward the sky and started climbing, though he knew he would
never reach the top of the wall.

*****

"Thus the book begins:

“Born of liquid fire and seasoned in bleak darkness, we dwarves are the sturdy people,
the people of the rock. It is into our bones that the mountains sink their roots, it is
from our hearts that the clear waters pour, it is out of our mouths that the cool winds
blow. We were made to buttress the world, to supportÑ”

Er'Stali pinched his eyes closed, trying to remember what word came next.

Along with Caelum, Neeva, and all the dwarves of Kled, Rikus held his breath, not daring
to exhale for fear of disturbing the sorcerer's concentration.

For the first time in a thousand years, dwarves had gathered in the Tower of Buryn to hear
the history of their race. One hundred magical torches, each kindled by Er'Stali and set
into Us sconce by Lyanius himself, lit the great hall's ancient murals in all their
vibrant glory. On every pillar hung a gleaming axe or sword, especially polished and
shined to remind the audience of the incredible wealth of its heritage. Even the dwarves
themselves were adorned for the occasion, wearing beautiful cassocks of linen, dyed red in
honor of the crimson sun. It was a gathering of which Rikus felt sure the old kings would
approve.

At last Er'Stali opened his eyes and shook his head. “I am sorry, I cannot remember the
story from there. Perhaps I will do better with the story of how King Rkard drove Borys of
Ebe from the gates of Kemalok.”

An approving murmur rustled through the hall. Lyanius lifted his hand for quiet, and the
room once again fell as silent as it had been for the last thousand years.

"It was in the fifty-second year of Rkard's reign that Borys returned. Of our knights,
only the king and Sa'ram and Fo'orsh remained, with five hundred dwarves to each. Borys of
Ebe brought with him a host of ten thousand, with mighty siege engines and his own foul
magic.

"Kemalok was the last dwarven city, and with it would die the last of the dwarves.
That, Rkard swore, would not happen. The great king ordered Sa'ram and Fo'orsh to flee
through the ancient tunnels, taking half the citizens of Kemalok with them. The others
stayed behind to conceal the passages when the city fell, to die so that Borys would not
guess that others had escaped to carry on our stalwart race.

"Not long after the knights left, Borys used his magic
to
drive twelve great holes into the city walls. It was at the last of these breaches that
Rkard and Borys clashed in fierce combat. Before many strokes passed, Rkard felt the bite
of his foe's terrible sword, but our king's sparkling axe also cleaved a mighty gash in
Borys's armor. The two commanders fell, each on their own side of the wall. Borys's host
carried their wicked leader back to his tent and summoned their healers. We loyal
followers of Rkard returned with our king, the enemy's blade still buried in his chest, to
the Tower of Buryn. Then we sealed the gates and prepared for the final battle.