On the foredeck, four ballistae sat ready to fire, massive harpoons nocked in their skein cords, with a pair of lumbering half-giants standing nearby. Two sorcerers stood in the prow, inspecting the dust-swells ahead of the ship for signs of buried obstacles. To aid in the search, each man held the base of a large glass cone to his eyes. The glass cones, Tithian knew, were king’s eyes, unique lenses especially enchanted so the viewer could peer through the dust hazes so common to the Sea of Silt.
To the king’s surprise, there did not appear to be any slaves on the main deck. Half-giants stood next to every catapult, while the crew struggling to turn the capstan wore the plain togas of low-ranking Balican templars. Even the men and women crawling over the yardarms showed no whip scars on their bare backs.
When Tithian’s gaze fell on the quarterdeck, his stomach coiled into a tight knot. “In the name of Rajaat!” he cursed. “It can’t be!”
Behind the helmsman stood Andropinis, sorcerer-king of Balic. He was muscular and huge, with a fringe of chalk-colored hair hanging from beneath his jagged crown. He had a slender face, a nose so long it could almost be called a snout, and dark nostrils shaped like eggs. His cracked lips were pulled back to reveal a mouthful of teeth filed as sharp as those of a gladiator. Beneath his sleeveless tunic, a line of sharp bulges ran down his spine. Small pointed scales covered his shoulders and the backs of his arms.
What disturbed Tithian more than the sight of Andropinis were the five people standing silently at the sorcerer-king’s side. Two were male, two female, and one of uncertain gender. All stood close to Andropinis’s height and appeared just as menacing. One man, with slit pupils and the heavy nose of a lion, had a thick mane around his neck. The other seemed remotely avian, with a scaly, beak-shaped muzzle and recessed earslits on the sides of his head.
The taller woman appeared as cold as she was beautiful, with long, silky hair, dark skin, and narrow eyeslits extending from the bridge of her nose around to her temples. She had a small, oval-shaped mouth, with dainty fangs pressed against the flesh of her lips. The other woman was of lighter complexion. Her huge eyes constantly roamed about and never seemed to focus on anything. Save for the curled claws at the ends of her fingertips, she looked more completely human than anyone else with Andropinis.
The last figure stood half-again as tall as the others. It seemed a miniature version of the Dragon, with a gaunt build neither male nor female. A glistening hide of leather and chitin covered its willowy limbs and androgynous body, while huge claws with knobby-jointed fingers hung from the ends of its skeletal arms. At the end of its serpentine neck was its head, little more than a slender snout with a glassy, bulbous eye on each side and a bony horn at the end.
“Who are they?” asked Korla, coming to stand at Tithian’s side. She held her hands out to shield her face from the blistering heat of the Lens.
“The six sorcerer-kings and -queens of Athas,” supplied Sacha.
The head had hardly spoken before Korla glanced toward her husband. “Riv!”
Sacha faced Tithian and growled, “You should have killed the half-breed when you decided to bed his wife.”
“It wasn’t me,” Riv objected, joining them. Over at the well, the children had formed a neat line and were working efficiently to fill their waterskins. “The last things I want in Samarah are sorcerer-kings. Most of my villagers are slaves who came here after escaping the cities.”
“I’ve seen jealous fools risk more,” pressed Sacha.
“Riv didn’t summon this fleet,” Tithian said. Inside the Dark Lens, he could see Andropinis’s ship passing between the two spits of land that formed the mouth of the harbor. “Even if Riv has a way to contact the sorcerer-kings, he has no reason to think they’d be interested in me-unless you told him, Sacha.”
“Don’t be absurd,” snapped the head.
“They must have found a way to track the Lens,” the king surmised.
“Impossible,” Sacha said. “As long as Jo’orsh and Sa’ram still walk Athas, their magic prevents any sorcerer-king from finding the Lens-by any method.”
“Then what are all six doing here?”
When the head didn’t answer, the king shifted his attention from Andropinis’s flagship back to the whole fleet. He felt a surge of energy course through his body, then his field of view expanded to take in the entire armada. The ship in the lead was furling its sails and slowing to a stop under the shouted guidance of the first mate. The end of Samarah’s single quay lay just a short distance ahead of the bowsprit.
Fearing that a Balican watchman would soon be able to see him, Tithian searched the sky over the harbor for the silhouette of a mast or crow’s nest. To his relief, he found nothing but a pearly sky full of blowing dust.
Samaran mothers began to pour into the plaza with heavy satchels of household belongings slung over their shoulders. The fathers waited at the edge of the square, clubbing their goraks with bone spears in a futile effort to keep the flocks from drifting.
“Where are your villagers going, Riv?” Tithian asked.
“If we stay here, the Balicans will seize everything we have-even our children,” the headman reported. “We’ll scatter into the desert until the fleet leaves.”
“We’d better do the same,” urged Sacha.
“And forgo a chance to spy on my enemies?” The king shook his head. “We’re staying.”
“We can’t eavesdrop on sorcerer-kings!”
“Of course we can,” Tithian replied. “You said yourself they can’t find us as long as we have the Dark Lens.”
The king returned his gaze to the black orb, then gasped. Several schooners had come to a dead halt in the middle of the harbor, but that was not what had alarmed him. Borys had appeared next to the flagship, his willowy frame so gaunt, it would have made an elf seem stout. Though the Dragon stood waist-deep in silt, his slender head loomed as far above the ship’s deck as the highest mast, with a spiked crest of leathery skin running up the back of his serpentine spine. A menacing light glowed in his tiny eyes, and wisps of red fume rose from the nostrils at the end of his slender snout.
Andropinis stood at the gunnel, conversing with Borys. “How can you be certain Tithian is here, Great One?” the sorcerer-king asked.
“I’m not,” the Dragon replied. “But my spies in Tyr inform me that Rikus and Sadira are preparing to leave for Samarah. Why would they come so far, if not to meet the Usurper and retrieve the Dark Lens?”
“And you summoned us to help you ambush them?”
“Perhaps, if my agents in Tyr fail to stop them,” Borys said. “But first, I want you and the other sorcerer-kings to find Jo’orsh and Sa’ram.”
“The dwarven knights?” asked Andropinis.
“The dwarven banshees,” Borys corrected. “Now that the Usurper has stolen the Lens from them, they should not be so difficult to find. Bring them to me, and my spirit lords will force them to undo the magic hiding the Dark Lens.”
“Perhaps it would be easier to destroy the banshees where we find them,” suggested Andropinis.
“These banshees cannot be destroyed by you-or even me,” said Borys. “Only my spirit lords can do that-which is why you must bring them to me.”
“You’ll be here?”
The Dragon nodded. “Waiting for Tithian.”
With that, Borys stepped away from the ship. The crew began to lower the skiffs, and the sorcerer-kings prepared to disembark.
“Now will you leave?” asked Sacha. He was hovering near Tithian’s shoulder, watching the scene inside the Lens.
“No. It wouldn’t do any good,” Tithian’s heart was pounding, pumping fear and panic through his body, and it was all he could do to keep control of his thoughts. “Running into the desert won’t save me, not from Borys and his sorcerer-kings.”
“So you’ll fight them?” Korla asked in an anxious voice.
Tithian looked up from the Lens and glared at her. “Don’t be absurd,” he spat. “One or two sorcerer-kings, I could kill easily. But not all of them, and not with Borys here. Even I can’t kill the Dragon alone.”