The Obsidian Oracle Read online

  Outside the giant’s mind, a horrible groan rumbled through the canyon, then Fylo’s grip loosened, and Agis nearly slipped from his captor’s grasp. The noble saved himself from a long fall only by throwing his arms over the giant’s trembling finger.

  “Release me,” Agis said, looking into a bloodshot eye. “Now that I’ve captured one memory, it’s only a matter of time before I control your whole mind. All I have to do is shape the island into your image, and—”

  “No,” Fylo hissed, his lips quivering with fatigue.

  “You can’t win,” the noble said. “Losing a harbinger isn’t so different from losing a limb—save that it’s spiritual energy instead of blood that gushes from the wound. You can’t fight me any longer.”

  “Fylo not done!” the giant roared.

  Inside Fylo’s head, the dustsink began to chum and froth. Agis slipped his eel over to the edge of the pond. Never before had he seen a foe create a new mental guardian after the first had been destroyed, but he feared Fylo was doing exactly that.

  The noble summoned the energy to meet the attack, but it flowed slowly from his spiritual nexus, for the battle so far had been a tiring one. Before he was ready to change the pool back to stone, a pair of huge claws shot from the dust and locked onto his eel. Agis tried to writhe free, but the more he struggled, the more deeply the pincers’ barbs impaled him. Finally, he stopped squirming and allowed himself to be lifted off the ground.

  As Fylo’s new construct crawled from the dustsink, Agis saw that it faintly resembled a mammoth dunecrab. Instead of four eyestalks, however, only Fylo’s head protruded from the top of its biscuit-shaped shell.

  “Agis lose,” proclaimed the crab, his pincers tightening on the noble’s eel.

  “Then we both lose!”

  Agis whipped his head around and clasped his mouth on his captor’s neck. As the barbed pincers sliced through his body, his eel’s teeth tore into the throat of Fylo’s construct. His mouth filled with the taste of blood, then his body exploded with pain. The sound of his own screaming filled his ears, and everything went white.

  It took Agis several moments to realize that he had not died. Even then, he felt disoriented and sick, unsure of whether he had returned to consciousness inside Fylo’s mind or outside it. His entire body ached with a fierce, stinging pain, and his stomach ached with a queasy emptiness, as if part of it had been removed.

  Slowly, as Agis regained his senses, he realized that he was lying in Fylo’s open palm. The nobleman rose to his knees, intending to run for his kank—until he realized that the beast was far below. The giant’s hand rested upon his mountainous knee, high above the ground. Agis turned toward Fylo’s face and found the giant’s haggard eyes watching him.

  “Fylo hurt,” the giant commented.

  “Agis too,” the noble admitted. “And we’re going to keep hurting. It’ll take days to recover from our losses.”

  Fylo groaned at the unwelcome news. “Then why Agis attack?” he asked.

  “Because I must catch your friend Tithian.”

  “Not Tith—”

  Agis raised his hand to stop the giant. “There’s no use pretending,” he said. “You know I’m Agis of Asticles, and I know who hired you to kill me.”

  The giant considered this point for a moment, then lifted Agis closer to his face. “Okay. But Tithian not say kill Agis,” he said. “Only stop.”

  “You can’t expect me to believe that,” Agis scoffed, using the giant’s thumb to steady himself as he rose unsteadily to his feet. “The king’s not the type to balk at murder.”

  “Fylo tell truth,” said the giant. “Tithian say, ‘Stop friend Agis, but don’t hurt. Protect.’ ”

  “Protect me from what?” Agis asked.

  Fylo’s demeanor suggested that he was being honest about his instructions, which only puzzled the noble. When Agis had become involved in the rebellion against Tyr’s previous ruler, Tithian had used his influence to protect his old friend. But that had been many years ago, before the noble had assumed leadership of the Council of Advisors and become the king’s most effective political enemy.

  After considering Agis’s question for a moment, the giant shrugged. “Fylo forget why Tithian want you protected.”

  “Fylo never knew, because Tithian didn’t say,” Agis said. “He’s not protecting me. He’s trying to keep me from catching him.”

  “Only ’cause Tithian go dangerous place,” Fylo insisted.

  Agis raised his brow at this comment. “What dangerous place?”

  “Balic,” answered the giant. “Now you stay with Fylo til he come back?”

  “Tithian isn’t coming back,” said Agis.

  “Tithian promise,” Fylo growled. The giant closed his fingers and grasped his captive tightly. “And Fylo promise to keep Agis here.”

  “It’s right to want to keep your promise, but don’t think Tithian will do the same,” said Agis. “Whatever he offered you—”

  “Fylo not for sale!” the giant boomed, squeezing Agis so hard that the air rushed from his lungs. “Tithian friend!”

  The heated response gave the noble pause. From the cruel comments floating around in Fylo’s memory, it seemed likely that the ugly fellow had led a lonely life. Tithian, as adept at exploiting emotions as anyone Agis knew, had no doubt sensed this and cynically extended his friendship to the lonesome giant.

  “Once, I thought Tithian was my friend,” Agis said, laboring against Fylo’s tight grip to draw breath. “But it’s not true. Tithian has no friends.”

  “Me!” bellowed the giant. “Fylo Tithian’s friend.”

  Agis shook his head. “No—Fylo is Tithian’s pawn,” the noble said. “And after you’ve done his will, he’ll never trouble himself over you again.”

  “Liar!” Fylo screamed. “Tithian come back soon!”

  “Poor Fylo. Your loneliness has blinded you,” Agis said. The noble gasped as his captor’s fist tightened, then he added, “I can prove what I say.”

  Fylo relaxed his grip. “How?”

  “I’ve known Tithian since we were boys,” Agis said. “I’ll let you send your harbinger into my mind, and you can see what he’s like for yourself.”

  “No,” the giant replied. “This trap to hurt Fylo.”

  “We’re both too tired for another thought-fight,” Agis said, shaking his head. “Besides, by letting you inside my mind, I’m taking the greater risk. If you think it’s a trap, all you have to do is withdraw.”

  As he spoke, Agis pictured a vast, deserted plaza inside his mind, trying to create an open terrain where the giant would not be concerned about ambushes.

  Fylo studied Agis for a moment, then the giant’s harbinger appeared inside the noble’s mind. It had a flat, disk-shaped body that undulated like a cloth in the wind, with a long tail that ended in a sharp point. The thing’s mouth was on the underside of its body, while there were a dozen eyes spread along the rim of the top side.

  Waving its flexible body like a pair of wings, Fylo’s construct began to fly over the vast plaza inside Agis’s mind. “Where Tithian?” the harbinger demanded.

  Agis summoned his memory of the king. A foul, brown liquid seeped up from between several cobblestones. The stain formed itself into the shape of a man, then Tithian’s gaunt visage appeared on the head. The face was not so different from that of the eel Agis had created earlier, with bony cheeks, a slender hooked nose, and a small puckered mouth. The eyes were beady and brown, at once wary and probing.

  As the giant’s strange harbinger glided down toward the memory, Tithian’s image solidified into the full form of a man’s thin body, then stood. Fylo stopped his descent just out of arm’s reach and slowly circled the figure.

  “That look like Tithian,” the giant said, pointing his harbinger’s slender tail at the memory. “But maybe you make him lie to Fylo.”

  “No,” the noble said. “I’ll release him. You can take control of the memory. That way, you can examine him as care
fully as you want, and you’ll know that I’m not interfering.” When Fylo continued to circle without responding, Agis pressed, “If you’re afraid of what you’ll discover, Tithian can’t truly be your friend.”

  “Fylo not afraid. Let go.”

  Agis created a small falcon from one of the figure’s hands. After transferring his own consciousness into it, he fluttered off and landed a short distance away.

  Fylo descended on Tithian’s figure, completely engulfing it. The harbinger began to pulsate as he examined the memory, apparently confirming that Agis had truly yielded control of it. Several moments later, the giant finally seemed satisfied. He unfurled his harbinger and let it dissolve, transferring his consciousness into Tithian’s form.

  As Agis watched, Tithian became a young boy of no more than six or seven, with short-cropped auburn hair. His squarish ears stuck out from the sides of his head like half-opened hinges, and his hawkish nose seemed much too large for his small head. He had one hand raised as if an adult were holding it.

  “This is Agis,” said a man’s voice, which the noble dimly recognized as that of Tithian’s father. “You and he are going to be friends.”

  Young Tithian ran his eyes up and down, as if inspecting a doll, then he scowled. “Father, if you can’t afford the best, I don’t want a friend.”

  The image aged a decade. Now, Tithian was a young man, with a somber brow that always seemed furrowed in anger, wearing his hair in a long braided tail. He was dressed in the gray robe that he and Agis had worn as novices when they had studied the Way at the same academy. His eyes were glazed with exhaustion and pain from a particularly rigorous lesson with their master.

  “I don’t know what happened, Agis,” said Tithian. “When the agony became more than I could bear, I thought of how well you were doing. Then my pain just vanished. Honestly, I didn’t know I was transferring it to you!”

  Again the image aged, this time only a couple of years. Tithian was wearing the red robe of a mid-level student. In his hand was a spiny faro branch, a symbol of passage to denote that he had succeeded at an important test of his abilities. “You’re my best friend, Agis. Of course I shifted some of my pain to you,” he said. “Besides, it’s not really cheating. After all, we didn’t get caught.”

  The image continued to age, showing a constant stream of the king’s earlier years. Tithian appeared in the black cassock of a king’s templar, denying that he had been responsible for the murder of his own brother. Later, wearing the gilded robes of a high templar, he came to Agis’s estate under the pretext of friendship—only to confiscate the noble’s strongest field slaves. Another time, Tithian admitted, without any trace of shame, that he had been using Agis’s most trusted servant to spy upon the noble.

  After this last scene, Fylo separated from the figure of Tithian, forming a new construct that resembled his own body. “No!” he bellowed, swinging a huge fist at the object of his anger. “Tithian liar!”

  The blow knocked the king’s image to the ground. Fylo began to kick and trample it, apparently determined to destroy the memory altogether.

  “Wait!” Agis cried through his construct’s beak. “I need that!”

  Still in the form of a falcon, Agis quickly returned to the king’s figure and merged with it. He allowed Tithian to melt into the cracks between the cobblestones, then raised another construct shaped like himself.

  “Do you believe me now, Fylo?”

  The giant did not answer. Instead, his harbinger turned away and began to walk across the deserted plaza. With each step, he grew more translucent, and vanished completely after a dozen paces.

  Agis barely had time to turn his attention outward before he felt himself being plunked onto his kank’s back. “Go!” boomed the giant, raising his legs to let the noble pass. “Leave Fylo alone.”

  Agis urged his mount forward. Once he was safely out of reach, he stopped and looked back. “Fylo, don’t be so glum,” he called. “Tithian’s fellowship was false, but you have a good heart. Someday you’ll find a true friend.”

  “No,” the giant replied. He gestured at his homely face. “Fylo half-breed. Too ugly for father’s tribe, too dumb for mother’s tribe.”

  “You may not be handsome, but I’d say you’re far from dumb,” said Agis. “You recognized your mistake with Tithian. That’s pretty smart.”

  This seemed to cheer the giant. A thoughtful look came over his face, then he fixed his eyes on the noble. “Maybe Fylo and Agis could be friends?”

  “Perhaps, when we have more time to spend together,” the noble allowed. “But right now, I must catch Tithian—before he hurts someone else.”

  Fylo smiled, then reached down and laid an open palm in front of the noble’s kank. “Let Fylo carry you,” he said. “Catch Tithian together.”

  TWO

  CHAMBER OF

  PATRICIANS

  TITHIAN STOOD IN THE ANTEROOM OF THE WHITE Palace, peering through a casement, counting the number of ships in Balic’s harbor. The port lay at the edge of the city, where a haze of silvery dust lingered over the bay, drifting as far inland as the inns surrounding the dock area. Still, the Tyrian king found the task an easy one, for the masts rose out of the murk like the charred boles of a burned forest.

  “What’s your interest in King Andropinis’s armada?” inquired Tithian’s escort, a young man wrapped in the cream-colored toga of a Balican templar. He had a haughty chin, an upturned nose, and short hair as white as his robe. “Surely, at Tyr’s distance from the Silt Sea, you’ve no reason to worry about our navy.”

  “I’ve no particular interest in the fleet,” lied Tithian, continuing with his silent count. “But I had not imagined your port would be so crowded. How many craft does your king have?”

  “That’s not something we discuss with strangers,” replied the templar, taking Tithian by the arm. “Nor do we allow them to count our sails.”

  Tithian jerked his arm free of the young man’s grasp. “In my city, you’d be flogged for such impudence!”

  The templar showed no sign of concern. “We are not in your city, and you are not a king in Balic,” he replied. “Now, step away from the window.”

  “I will—when King Andropinis is ready to receive me,” said Tithian, struggling to keep his temper under control. “If you touch me again, I’ll kill you—and I assure you, Andropinis will do nothing about it.” He slipped his hand into the satchel hanging from his shoulder.

  The templar’s guards, a pair of flabby half-giants standing almost as high as the ceiling, leveled their wooden spears at the Tyrian’s chest. Dressed in leather corselets with white capes pinned over their stooped shoulders, the hairy brutes had slack-jawed expressions that did little to belie their slow wits. Tithian gave them a contemptuous sneer, then returned his attention to his escort.

  “Give this to your master,” said Tithian. He withdrew a small medallion of copper that had been molded into an eight-pointed star. It was the crest of Kalak, the sorcerer-king from whom Tithian had usurped the throne of Tyr. “Tell him I have grown tired of waiting.”

  The templar remained unimpressed. “I’ll relay your message—and you shall wish I hadn’t.”

  With that, the man spun on his heel and left, leaving his charge in the custody of the half-giants.

  “You made a big mistake, Tyr king,” said one of the brutes. “That was Maurus, Chamberlain to His Majesty.”

  Tithian gave the guard a wry smile. “I think Maurus is the one who made the mistake.”

  The king returned his attention to the masts. From what he could tell through the haze, the harbor seemed unusually full, with no empty dock space available and dozens of craft moored offshore. To fulfill his needs, he would require only a small portion of the armada gathered in the bay.

  Now that he felt certain he’d be able to procure enough troops and ships, Tithian allowed his gaze to wander over the rest of Balic. The city shimmered with a pearly light, for its blocky buildings were faced in blond marble
and its avenues paved with pale limestone. Encircling the White Palace’s fortified bluff were the pillared emporiums of the Merchants’ Quarter, as striking in their size as in the clean lines of their architecture. Beyond this district lay the dingy warrens of the Elven Market, the stadium, the workshops of the artisans, and the chamberhouses where most of the city’s population lived. All in all, Balic seemed a prosperous and pleasant metropolis, one which Tithian would have been glad to call his own.

  One day, he chuckled silently, I might.

  When Maurus did not return for several more minutes, the king allowed his thoughts to wander to the man who had been stalking him in the desert. Tithian had first learned of his pursuer when his spy, an elven desert runner hired to watch his back-trail, reported that a Tyrian noble of Agis’s description had been asking about him at an oasis. Despite the reasonable fee the elf had quoted for murdering the noble, the king’s heart sunk. Of all the men who might have come after him, Agis was the only one he could not bring himself to kill.

  It was a flaw in his character Tithian did not understand. He made many excuses for his weakness, telling himself it would be foolish to assassinate such a valuable statesman. When that did not seem enough, the king reminded himself of Agis’s superior knowledge of agriculture, which made Tyr’s farms more productive than those of any other Athasian city. Other times, he thought of the riots that would be caused by the noble’s death, or of any of a dozen other equally valid reasons for leaving Agis alone.

  Still, Tithian knew he was lying to himself. Agis had incited the Council of Advisors to defy the king in a hundred matters, from letting paupers drink free at city wells to converting royal lands into charity farms. Such insolence would have cost anyone else his life, but Tithian had always stopped short of murdering his old friend.

  Even now, when Agis’s meddling endangered the most important endeavor Tithian had ever undertaken, the king could not bring himself to kill the noble. Instead of telling Fylo, whom Tithian had found seeking employment as a caravan cargo bearer, to kill Agis, the king had merely asked the oaf to detain the noble.