A lump of bile formed in the sorceress’s stomach, threatening to rise into her throat and choke her. Had her mentor Ktandeo been alive to see what she had done, the old man would have tried to kill her with his own hands. To his eyes, she had committed a vile act from which there could be no redemption. It did not matter that she had done it for the sake of Tyr, or even to save the lives of a thousand people who would be sacrificed to the Dragon. She had become a defiler, and nothing under the two moons could make her anything else.
But Sadira had not always listened to Ktandeo in life, and, just because he was dead, she felt no greater compulsion to heed his words now. All sorcerers drew their energy from some form of life, usually plants. To her, the difference between defilers and other wizards was only one of degree: most sorcerers stopped short of ruining the soil when they drew energy for spell, but defilers did not. Sadira did not believe that it was always wrong to defile the land, not when something good could be accomplished by doing so. To her, an acre or two of ground was a small loss in comparison to her life-and an insignificant price to pay for the chance to save a thousand lives.
Across the valley, Nok stepped off the side of the dune into midair. He floated toward Sadira leisurely, his only visible weapon the obsidian ball dangling from his neck. Sadira picked up her cane and rose, determined to meet Nok with the few tools she had.
The chieftain wasted little time in making his attack. Before he was halfway across the chasm, he fixed his black eyes on the sorceress’s face. In the next instant, Sadira smelled wet, musky leaves and ripe, sweet-scented fruits. Her ears rang with the raucous cries of jungle birds and the steady drone of insects, while the air felt moist and humid against her skin. All around her, she saw towering hardwood trees with waxy red leaves slanting over her head and casting shadows so thick it seemed like dusk.
Sadira’s stomach knotted in panic. Nok had attacked with the Way, and she could not hope to fight him mind-to-mind.
A huge, batlike beast soared out of the forest shadows. Beneath its red eyes and square ears, a hideous pug-nosed muzzle gaped open to reveal a mouthful of fangs, all dripping yellow bile. At the elbows of its wings were four long fingers, each ending in a claw coated in filth.
Sadira forced herself to swallow her panic. Agis had shown her how to fight mental attacks, so she was far from defenseless. As the beast soared down upon her, Sadira pictured her good arm becoming an X-shaped blade, each edge as sharp as a razor. She thrust it upward, at the same time ducking her body out of the creature’s path. The bat-thing swerved, narrowly avoiding the wicked blades.
“No!” Sadira yelled, lashing out.
Her arm was nearly ripped from its socket as it sliced through the beast’s wing. The impact swept her from her feet, and the bat-thing crashed to the ground nearby.
The forest vanished from Sadira’s mind. She found herself lying on the blackened rocks of the canyon rim. Nok lay a few feet away, face-down, with his left arm twisted awkwardly behind his back.
The sorceress leaped to her feet immediately, activating her cane by calling Nok’s name. The pommel began to glow with its familiar purple light, and she felt the customary tingle of life-force being drawn from her body.
The chieftain rolled onto to his back. His left arm hung useless at his side, but in his right hand he held his own obsidian ball. “Do not think to kill me with my own magic,” Nok said, glaring at Sadira.
As he spoke, an emerald light glimmered deep within the globe he held. The sorceress’s life-force began to drain away more rapidly. Her stomach grew queasy and her head swam. A cold shudder ran through her body, then her knees began to tremble and she knew unconsciousness was only a moment away.
The sorceress stepped toward Nok and swung the pommel of her cane at the globe in his hand. “Dawnfire,” she whispered.
Nok raised his arm to block the attack, and the two balls of obsidian met with a sharp crack. Brilliant lights flashed all the colors of the rainbow, momentarily blinding Sadira. Peals of thunder roared through the air, striking the far side the canyon with such force that they sent tons of boulders clattering down into the chasm. At the same time, a tremendous shockwave hit the sorceress’s chest, hurling her backward through the air.
As Sadira slammed into the rocky ground, Nok’s voice rang out in a harrowing cry. The sorceress pushed herself to her elbows, lifting the cane to attack.
A horrified screamed erupted from her throat. Only a few inches from her hand, the cane ended in a scorched stump, with a single shard of its obsidian pommel still buried in the shaft. For a long time, the sorceress stared at the stub in speechless dismay, her heart filled with a terrible sense of loss.
The cane had been almost as important to her as her own life. With it, she had been strong enough to defend all of Tyr, and powerful enough to face the unknown perils of the Pristine Tower. Now she had only her own magic and vigor to rely upon-and she did not know if those two things would be enough.
Sadira looked past the end of the cane to where Nok had fallen. In the chieftain’s place was a jagged crater, coated with soot and deep enough that the sorceress could not see the bottom. From this hole poured a thick plume of smoke, as black as obsidian and shaped like a great oak tree. Rising with the inky fumes were long ribbons of watery color: green and purple, but also red, blue, yellow, and a dozen others. The branches of the vaporous tree were gently waving, as if stirred by an unfelt breeze, and they were hissing Sadira’s name.
FIVE
A BARGAIN
“You over there!” called a man’s voice. “Wake up!”
The words came to Sadira across the chasm, echoing through her head with agonizing clarity. The voice was deep, with a glib quality that nettled the sorceress’s sensibilities and kindled an immediate distaste for the speaker.
“Are you alive?”
Sadira opened her eyes and found herself staring into the blazing orb of the sun. Terrible, sharp pangs stabbed through her eyes, and her vision disintegrated in a spray of crimson light. She squeezed her eyelids shut again, but the pain did not fade.
The sorceress’s head was not all that hurt. Her arm throbbed with dull agony, and her back ached along her entire spine. Her face stung as though someone had just slapped her, and the skin felt brittle and tight. From the thighs down, her legs prickled with the torment of a thousand needles stuck an inch into her flesh. Even her throat and tongue hurt, swollen as they were from the lack of water.
Sadira turned her head to the side and raised her eyelids again, this time forcing herself to keep them open. To her pained eyes, the other side of the canyon remained a blur. Nevertheless, she could tell that there was a group of people, probably a caravan of some sort, standing near the bridge she had destroyed.
Ignoring them, the sorceress focused her attention on her own situation. She still lay where she had collapsed after the battle with Nok, in the filthy soot she had created by defiling the land. Her wounded arm had turned dark purple, and was swollen to the size of her shoulder. The cuts themselves, crusted with blood and foul black dirt, were already inflamed and oozing.
When Sadira’s eyes fell below her waist, a gasp of horror rose to her parched throat. Several woody vines had sprouted from the crater where Nok had perished. They were grotesque gnarled things, coiled in a tangled mass and covered with grimy black leaves shaped like those of an oak tree. The plants had crept across the rocky ground to where she lay, entwining her legs in their tendrils and sinking their barbed thorns deep into her flesh.
Sadira shook her head, hoping this was a nightmare. She had not been chased by a tribe of halflings, the sorceress told herself. She had not killed Nok, and her cane had not been destroyed. Soon, she would awaken in Milo’s camp and discover it had all been an hallucination brought about by the strange spice in the Nibenese broy.