Deciding the time had come to show himself, Tithian pictured himself rising from the sands. The creature remained motionless, watching with no sign of fear or curiosity as the king emerged. First came his golden diadem, then his long tail of auburn hair, his hawk-nosed face, and finally his gaunt torso.
“Who are you?” asked the creature, his nostrils flaring in suspicion.
“The King of Tyr,” Tithian answered, straining to keep his body from being drawn back beneath the sands. “And you are the King of Nibenay?”
The king-beast did not answer. Instead, he demanded, “You wish to speak with me, Usurper?”
Tithian’s face hardened at the other’s derogatory tone. “We must discuss a matter that concerns both our cities.
“I’ll judge what concerns Nibenay,” the sorcerer-king spat.
“Of course,” Tithian allowed, “but I’m sure this matter will interest you. Have you heard of the Pristine Tower?”
The sorcerer-king’s eyes darkened to fiery scarlet. He scuttled forward, his corpulent arms half-raised. “What do you know of the Tower?”
Tithian sank a few inches into the sands. “Enough to realize the Dragon would not want someone to visit it.”
“Anyone foolish enough to go there would never survive.”
“This one might,” Tithian corrected. “She’s a powerful sorceress and is one of the people who killed Kalak.”
“Sadira of Tyr,” the creature hissed.
“You know her?” Tithian asked, surprised.
“I know of her,” he answered. “Even if my spies did not inform me of what happens in Tyr, the caravan minstrels have made her name familiar to my slaves.” The sorcerer-king frowned thoughtfully. “You must kill the sorceress at once.”
Noting that the Nibenese ruler had not even asked why Sadira was going to the tower, Tithian asked, “What will she discover at the Pristine Tower?”
“In all likelihood, death-or something much worse,” the king-beast, answered. “But if she survives, she might find what she wants.” He gave Tithian a distrustful look, then asked, “She is searching for a way to deny the Dragon his levy, and he’ll call upon the rest of us to make up the difference.”
“She is,” Tithian answered.
“Then you must be certain she does not succeed,” the other said. “If she challenges him, the Dragon will take his wrath out on all of Tyr. That will leave one less city to supply him with his levy, and he’ll call upon the rest of us to make up the difference.”
“Why does the Dragon need so many slaves?” Tithian pressed, determined to learn as much as he could from this conversation.
“That is not for me to say, or you to ask. Unless you wish your reign to be a short one, do not concern yourself with such questions,” the Nibenese king warned. He pointed to a corpulent arm at Tithian. “Just kill the sorceress at once.”
Realizing he had learned all he would from his counterpart, Tithian said, “If Sadira were in Tyr, I would have done it already-but she is in Nibenay.”
The eyes of the sorcerer-king narrowed. “My son will see that she never leaves the city,” he said, his form shimmering as he brought the audience to an end. “But I will demand a dear price for this favor.”
Sadira had never before seen anything like the man-beast clattering into the square. He seemed to be a part human and part cilops. From the knees down, he resembled a giant centipede, with a flat body divided into twelve segments. Each section was supported by a pair of slender legs ending in hooked claws. From the knees up, he was remotely human, with his torso swaddled in a silk sarami and a black skullcap covering his shaved head. He had tiny ears located at the base of his jaw, bulbous eyes resembling those of the cilops, and a muzzle with cavernous nostrils that flared every time he drew a breath.
Sadira ducked into the sweltering darkness of the nearest alley and hoped the cilops-man would pass. She had no particular reason to hide from him, but she thought it wisest to avoid officials of the sorcerer-king-which this person obviously was. In front of him walked two half-giants, their loins swaddled in silken breechcloths and their arms cradling great clubs of blue agafari wood. Behind him came a pair of bare-breasted Nibenese templars, each wearing necklaces of colored beads and a yellow skirt decorated with a wide bejeweled belt.
As the official passed in front of Sadira’s hiding place, his black eyes turned in her direction and seemed to linger on the place where she stood. The sorceress held her breath and did not move. Not even an elf’s eyes could penetrate the alley’s dark shadows while standing in the light of day, but Sadira was less sure about the man-beast’s other senses. Judging from his large muzzle and flaring nostrils, it certainly seemed possible that he could smell her-though her scent would only be one among a hundred odors from the squalid alley.
After what seemed an interminable length of time, the official continued on. Sadira breathed a sigh of relief and waited, not wanting to step from her hiding place until the procession was out of sight.
The sorceress had spent the night shivering in the city’s crowded alleys with other vagrants, then had gone to the Elven Market at dawn. She had to assume that her best chance of contacting the Veiled Alliance lay in that disreputable quarter, for it was there that sorcerers came to purchase snake tongues, glow worms, powered wychwood, and other ingredients vital to their magic. In Nibenay, as in most Athasian cities, the sorcerer-king jealously guarded the right to use magic, reserving the precious plant energy in his fields for himself and his agents. Therefore, magic components had to be smuggled into city and sold secretly-just the sort of sneaky work at which elves excelled. Unfortunately, Sadira had not managed to spy out any sorcerers. Therefore, she had decided to try her luck in Sage’s Square, where she had heard sorcerers sometimes came to hear wise men speak.
Once the man-beast and his escorts were out of sight, Sadira slipped from the alley and entered the refreshing coolness of Sage’s square. It was surrounded on all sides by the city’s largest merchant emporiums, though the stately buildings were hardly visible through the grove of blue-barked agafari trees that dominated the plaza. More than fifty of the mighty hardwoods were scattered throughout the park, their gnarled roots sunken into circles of unpaved ground. Their trunks did not rise so much as flow into the air, marked as they were by deep creases and ribbonlike pleats that gave Sadira an impression of immeasurable age. A hundred feet above the ground, they spread their boughs out in great, sweeping fans, shading the entire square with a canopy of enormous turquoise leaves shaped like hearts.
Marveling at the beauty of the trees, Sadira worked her way through the grove until she came to a small crowd. The mob was gathered around two old men seated on the gnarled roots of one of the trees, neither wearing anything more than a breechcloth of plain hemp. Both were impossibly thin, with haggard faces and limbs that seemed nothing but leathery skin draped over bones as thin as canes.
“Only with an empty mind can you find your true self,” said the first sage. Despite his great age, he appeared to be as limber as an elf, for he had folded his ankles beneath his buttocks at an angle that most humans would have found impossible. “Looking into a head filled with thoughts is like looking at your reflection in the waves of an oasis pond. You may see a face, but mistake it for one of the moons.”
There was a short silence while the second sage formulated his reply. Finally, he said, “The heart is more important than the mind. If it is unstained, the mind will be pure; there is no need to empty it.”
Sadira ran her hand across her lips and chin as if pondering the sage’s words. If there were any members of Nibenay’s Veiled Alliance in the audience, they would recognize the gesture as a request to meet. Sooner or later, someone would approach her to determine what she wanted.