Of course, the blade was somewhere in the bottom of the chasm, still buried in the throat of the halfling she killed. Without the dagger, it would be difficult to survive in this wasteland for more than a few days.
Sadira chuckled at her own muddled thoughts. The loss of the knife was the least of her problems. If she didn’t bandage her wounds soon, she would die in a matter of minutes, not days. Even if she stopped the bleeding, she would be too weak to walk more than a few miles. And if she was going to walk, she would need plenty of water-water that she had used to destroy the bridge.
Still, things had not turned out so badly. She had the cane, and that was what really mattered. If she could stop the bleeding, she might live a half-day longer and travel perhaps five miles. A half-day was not much time to find an oasis in strange ground, but it was possible.
Determined to make the most of the time she had left, Sadira took off her belt and wrapped it around her savaged arm. The sorceress tightened it until the flow of blood stopped, then fastened it in place. She took her cane and stood, peering up the steep slope ahead of her. Both sides of road were flecked with all manner of gnarled cacti, some as tall as trees and others creeping over small circles of rocky ground like thorn-rugs.
It was then that she remembered Nok.
In the halfling forest, she had seen him step off a high pyramid and drift to the ground like a leaf. If he could do that, he could float over the chasm. Sadira looked across its gaping depths.
The dust had dispersed and she could see to the other side. To her relief, no one hovered above the canyon, but standing on the opposite rim were two dozen halfling warriors. Behind them, on a slope of rust-colored sand, stood Nok. From his shoulders fluttered a cape of colored feathers, and around each ear hung a band of hammered silver, glimmering scarlet in the crimson sunlight. In one hand he gripped a double tipped lance that Sadira recognized as the Heartwood Spear. He held the other hand before him, supporting a small globe of obsidian. From inside the orb glowed a ghostly green light.
“Why flee, Sadira?” asked the chieftain. Though they were separated by the width of the chasm, his voice came to the sorceress as though he stood at her side. In it, there was no hint of kindness or forgiveness. “You know you cannot escape me.”
Nok hefted the Heartwood Spear and threw it in Sadira’s direction. The shaft sailed across the chasm as though it were a bird. The sorceress screamed and backed away, but the lance did not come near her. Instead, it struck a few feet below the canyon rim, sinking deep into the stone.
“Leave me alone,” Sadira called. “I have killed too many halflings already. I’ll kill more if you force me.”
Nok laughed, the sound pitiless and cold. “Their lives belong to the forest,” he said, “As does yours. Or have you forgotten your pledge?”
Sadira had not forgotten. After journeying deep into the halfling forest, she and her friends had fallen prey to a party or warriors they had never even seen. The group had awakened on Nok’s Feast Stones, only to discover that the chieftain and his advisors were preparing to eat them alive. The sorceress and her companions had survived only by swearing their lives to the forest-which was the same as pledging them to Nok himself.
“It was pledge or die,” Sadira objected.
“Still, you pledged,” Nok said.
With the hand holding the obsidian ball, the chieftain gestured at the Heartwood Spear. A tendril of emerald light left the globe and drifted across the canyon. When it touched the lance, a layer of scaly bark grew over the entire length of the weapon. Before Sadira’s eyes, the spear grew into an oak tree, stretching more than a quarter of the way across the chasm in a matter of moments.
“I beg you, let me keep the cane a while longer,” the sorceress said. “The Dragon has threatened Tyr. I’m going to his birthplace, hoping to discover some way to kill him.”
“No! If you kill the Dragon, who will protect Athas from you?” demanded the halfling. “You’ll return the staff, as you promised … Now!”
“I can’t do that,” Sadira answered quietly. Her gaze was fixed on the oak tree. It had grown impossibly large, with thick branches sprouting in every direction.
“You have no choice,” Nok answered.
The oak tree had almost grown across the chasm now, and Nok’s warriors were standing at the far rim waiting to come across. Sadira fixed her eyes on the chieftain. At this distance, he seemed no more than a child’s doll.
“If I return the cane, will you protect Tyr from the Dragon?” Sadira asked.
“No,” the halfling answered. “The levy must be paid, or the Dragon will hunt in the forest.”
“And what about the people of Tyr?” Sadira demanded. “They’re as important as your trees!”
Grasping her cane in the crook of her wounded arm, Sadira turned the palm of the other toward the ground. With all the gnarled cacti hugging the slopes of the scarp above, the energy rushed into her body in a flood. This time, when she felt the surge begin to weaken, she did not close her fist. To counter Nok’s magic, she would need all the life-force she could summon. She spread her fingers wide and pulled harder, drawing every last bit of power she could from the plants within her reach.
“It does no good to kill these warriors,” Nok said, waving his hand at the halflings before him. “You’ll only tire yourself!”
“You don’t even care for your own people!” Sadira hissed, angered by Nok’s callousness.
Even had the sorceress been uninjured and fresh, the halfling would have been more than her match in personal combat. Yet, he chose to send his men to his deaths solely to wear her down. Could it be that he feared her, or perhaps the cane she held in her blood-soaked hand? As unlikely as it seemed, the sorceress clung to that hope.
“What about your warriors?” Sadira demanded. “Aren’t their lives worth saving?”
“No,” Nok answered flatly.
Sadira kept her hand open. One after the other, the cacti drooped, then browned and withered. Within moments, they all shriveled into empty husks and tumbled to the ground. The sorceress continued to pull, sucking the life from their roots, from the seeds lying dormant in the sand, even from the lichens clinging to the rocks. Even then, she did not stop, until the soil itself turned black and lifeless.
Nok watched with dispassionate eyes. Only the tree he had created from the Heartwood Spear survived Sadira’s desecration, though even its lobed leaves were wilted and drooping.
The tree finally reached the far rim of the canyon. Nok’s remaining warriors leaped onto the trunk and rushed forward. The sorceress reached into her satchel and withdrew a tiny glass rod, then went to the edge of the canyon and kneeled beside the great oak.
“I was mistaken to entrust you with the cane,” Nok said. “The forest would have been safer had Kalak become a dragon.”
“Call them back!” Sadira yelled, giving the chieftain one last chance to save his warriors.
When Nok did not, she laid the glass rod on the oak and stepped away, speaking her incantation. A clap of thunder roared off the walls of the abyss, and a bolt of white energy flashed down the length of the bole. The halflings disappeared in puffs of greasy smoke. The great tree split down the center, belching fire and acrid fumes, then the leaves fell away with a sad murmur. A groan echoed through the canyon as the weight of the oak’s tremendous branches twisted the two halves of the trunk away from each other. Finally, the tree wrenched free and tumbled into the abyss, its roots pulling a spray of rock and earth down after it.
Sadira sank down upon the earth she had blackened. It smelled of soot and something mordant, not decay or death, but the absence of life. For a hundred yards in each direction, the soil had turned as black as a cave, and there was not a living plant in sight. The corrupted ground wafted over her like ash, coating her with an inky stain of grit.