“It’s not much help,” said Rikus.
“What happened to Rajaat and the other champions after Borys became the Dragon?” asked Agis.
“The book did not say,” Er’Stali answered, wearily. “Jo’orsh and Sa’ram left the tower and sent their squires home. They were never seen again, but, obviously, they did not slay Borys.”
“That’s all?” asked Agis, incredulous. “The champions helped Borys become the Dragon, then disappeared without resuming their attacks on the other races?”
Er’Stali shrugged. “Who can say? You already know that after Rajaat’s fall, Borys returned as the Dragon to attack Kemalok. It also seems that Gallard destroyed the gnomes-I have never seen one, have you?” When Agis shook his head, the old man continued. “Perhaps the other champions fell against Rajaat, or perhaps they were too weak to fight any longer. All I can say is that the book ends with the disappearance of Jo’orsh and Sa’ram.”
The old man returned the tablet to its place.
Rikus turned to Sadira and Agis. “I’m sorry,” said the mul. “It was a wasted trip.”
Sadira frowned. “How can you say that?” she demanded. “We don’t have the answers we need, but we know where to look.”
“The Pristine Tower?” queried Rikus.
Sadira nodded. “If we are to learn more of Borys, we will learn it there.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Agis. “Even if we knew where to find it, we can’t be sure the place still stands.”
“The Pristine Tower still stands, far beyond Nibenay,” said Er’Stali. “The elves know where.”
“What makes you so certain?” asked Rikus.
“Because the shadow giant you mentioned came from there,” Er’Stali explained. “In exchange for Umbra’s services, Maetan hired a tribe of elves each year to lead a caravan loaded with obsidian balls to the Pristine Tower. The caravan drivers never returned, but Umbra always appeared when Maetan summoned him. I assume the obsidian reached the tower.”
Sadira gave Agis a haughty smile. “You see?” she asked. “We’ll go to Nibenay and hire a guide in the Elven Market.”
“The journey could take a month, even longer!” Rikus objected.
“Which is why we must hurry,” Sadira countered. “We don’t know how soon the Dragon will come to Tyr, and it would be best if we returned to the city as quickly as possible.”
“And what do you hope to accomplish at the tower?” Agis demanded.
“What we failed to accomplish here,” Sadira answered. “To learn enough about the Dragon to defy him. Besides, if we’re lucky, we might even find some relics in the Steeple of Crystals that can help us.”
“Forgive me for saying so,” said Agis, “but I suspect that’s the real reason you want to go to the Pristine Tower.”
Sadira frowned. “What do you mean?”
“He means that when you smell magic, nothing else matters,” Rikus said. “Not even Tyr.”
“That’s not true!” Sadira retorted. “I love Tyr more than my own life!”
The mul shook his head. “It’s magic you love,” he said, pointing at the cane in Sadira’s hand. “Otherwise, you’d have returned Nok’s staff by now.”
“We’ll need it to deal with the Dragon,” the sorceress countered angrily. “And if you had kept the Heartwood Spear-”
“I promised to return it to Nok,” Rikus interrupted, his tone sullen and final. “Just as you promised to return the staff.”
“And I will keep that promise-when Tyr is safe from the Dragon,” Sadira said. She moved to the door and flung the curtain open. “Now, when do we leave for the Pristine Tower?”
TWO
SEPARATE WAYS
Upon cresting the scarlet dune, the kank lurched to a halt. The beast twisted its blocky head from side to side, searching for a route down that Sadira saw it would not find. The wind had scoured the crest into a sheer face that dropped more than a dozen yards to the steep slip face below.
In the valley between Sadira’s dune and the next one, the hard-packed sand of a caravan road snaked its way toward the mountains of the Tyr Valley. In the distance, just coming around an outcropping of yellow sandstone, were the dark specks of a caravan’s outriders.
Sadira looked over her shoulder, to where the kanks of Rikus and Agis were continuing to struggle up the slope. “The way’s blocked by a scarp here,” she called, waving her hand toward the west. “The descent looks easier over there.”
After the two men signaled their acknowledgement, Sadira returned her attention to her own mount. When she tapped its antenna to make it turn left, the kank merely fixed one globular eye on her face and did not move. The sorceress frowned at the strange look, wondering if the beast could sense the disquiet in her heart.
It had been two days since she and her companions had left Kled, and the sorceress had spent most of that time asking herself why Neeva’s pregnancy disturbed her so. Her friend’s condition made Sadira feel as though the world had become a prison, as if someone were forcing her into a subtle bondage more inescapable than any she had known in Tithian’s slave pits.
The sorceress knew such feelings had no basis, for she was not the one who would soon be bound by the chains of parenthood. She suspected her uneasiness had more to do with her own family history than with Neeva’s child.
In the days before Tyr’s liberation, Sadira’s mother, an amber-haired woman named Barakah, had supported herself through one of the city’s few illegal occupations. King Kalak declared it unlawful to buy or sell magical components in Tyr. Naturally, a thriving trade in snake scales, gum arabic, iron dust, lizard’s tongue, and other hard-to-acquire items had sprung up in the notorious Elven Market. Barakah had made a living as runner between the secretive sorcerers of the Veiled Alliance and elven smugglers. She had almost made the mistake of falling in love with an elf, a notorious rogue named Faenaeyon.
Shortly after Sadira had been conceived, Kalak’s templars had raided the dingy shop where Faenaeyon traded. The elf had escaped into the desert, leaving the pregnant Barakah behind to be caught and sold into slavery. A few months later, Sadira had been born in Tithian’s pits, and that was where she had been raised.
Given this history, it was no wonder that Sadira did not trust the bonds of family love. Neeva might be happy living the rest of her life with Caelum and their child, but such domestic bliss was unthinkable for the half-elf. Deep inside, she would always be expecting the man to abandon her, as Faenaeyon had abandoned her mother. For Sadira, it was better to love two men at once. That way, she would never need either one so much that his departure would destroy her.
Sadira’s thoughts came to an end when the kank began clacking its mandibles, then tried to back away from the edge of the bluff. When the sorceress tried to make it turn left instead, the beast froze in its tracks.
From the sands beneath the beast’s feet rose a sigh, so deep and quiet that Sadira did not hear it so much as feel it in her stomach. The ground shuddered, then the kank squealed in alarm. The sorceress felt herself falling.
Sadira screamed and leaped from her bone saddle. She landed at the kank’s side in a choking cascade of sand. She and the beast tumbled down the steep slope head over heels, a blood-colored cloud of grit billowing around them. In the whorl of sand, legs, and antennae, the sorceress lost all sense of direction. It was all she could do to hold onto her cane.
The half-elf glimpsed the kank’s gray body crashing down upon her, sticklike legs flailing madly in the air. She cried out in alarm and kicked at its carapace with both feet. A painful jolt shot through her body and she rolled away from the massive beast, descending the rest of the slope in a wild series of backward somersaults.
Sadira came to a rest in a tangle of hair and limbs, buried to the waist and spitting bitter grit. The kank slid to a stop within a mandible’s reach of her head, and the roar of avalanching sand continued to sound from above. Fearing she would be buried alive, the sorceress pointed her cane at the descending wall of sand.