“I don’t suppose you’d do us the courtesy of surrendering outside Samarah?” requested Riv. “It might spare my people some trouble.”
“Why should I care about your people?” growled Tithian. “I have no intention of surrendering.” “I’m happy to hear that,” said Korla.
Smirking at her relief, Riv scoffed, “Why? If he’s not going to run or fight, what else can he do?”
“The last thing Borys expects: hide in the very place he’s trying to ambush me.” Tithian was untroubled by Riv’s obvious delight at his plight. The headman would pay for his insolence soon enough.
Tithian thought his plan stood a good chance of seeing him through until help arrived. If Borys thought his agents could stop Rikus and Sadira, the Dragon was underestimating them badly. As long as the pair believed they were coming to meet Agis, they would find a way to reach Samarah. Once they did, they would have no choice but to help him slay Borys.
The king studied Riv’s brawny form for a moment, then used the Way to visualize himself growing as large and strong as the headman. A torrent of searing energy rushed from the Lens into his body. The king’s arms burst into agony as his muscles began to swell, taking on a knotted, bulging shape. After his arms came his shoulders and neck, then his chest, back, and stomach. Each transformation brought with it a fresh surge of pain. Tithian clenched his teeth and waited for the Dark Lens to change his thoughts into reality, until at last his legs felt as thick and bandy as Riv’s.
The king slipped his arms, now as sinewy as those of a half-giant, around the heavy Lens. He lifted it easily, then moved toward the center of the plaza, shuffling to keep from banging his knees on the huge orb. The crowd of Samaran children backed away, their half-filled waterskins dribbling precious liquid onto the dusty ground.
“Where are you going?” Sacha demanded, floating at Tithian’s side.
“I told you: to hide,” the king replied.
“What good will that do?” the head whispered into Tithian’s ear. “There isn’t a villager here who’d hesitate to tell the Balicans where you are.”
“I’ve thought of that already,” Tithian replied.
As he spoke, the king concentrated on the people ahead, fixing their faces firmly in his mind. He used the Way to visualize them clasping at their throats, choking and gasping for air. He felt the energy of the Dark Lens flow through his body and into the ground. A column of brown mist whooshed from the well, spreading over the plaza with the fetid, caustic odor of charred flesh. The sound of coughing and gagging filled the air, then Samarans started to drop, their strangled voices calling for help. The instant a body hit the ground, its flesh grew ashen and began to wither.
Heavy steps sounded behind Tithian. The king turned and saw Riv charging, his muzzle twisted into a snarl of rage. “Murderer!” The headman flung himself into the air.
Tithian shifted the Dark Lens to one hand and raised his other arm. He opened himself to the Lens’s power. He felt a streak of mystic energy rush through his body, then Riv’s chest hit his hand. A dark flash erupted from beneath the king’s palm, engulfing his attacker in a pall of absolute blackness. The headman howled in pain, but the cry was strangely muted, as if the ebon fire of the Lens had swallowed it. Riv’s scorched bones clattered to the ground, trailing wisps of greasy, foul-smelling smoke.
Hardly seeming to notice her dead husband or any of the other dying villagers, Korla stumbled to Tithian’s side. “I’m choking,” she croaked. “Save me!”
Tithian shook his head. “You must die as well.”
Korla’s eyes widened in disbelief. “No!”
“If Borys finds you, he’ll tear your mind apart with the Way,” Tithian explained. “You’ll tell him where to find me.”
“I would never,” Korla said, stepping back in fear.
Tithian caught her hand and pulled it to the Lens. A flame flashed beneath her fingers, then her body erupted into a column of crimson fire. The blaze died away quickly, and all that remained where Korla had stood were her bones, a pearly heap of ash, and a handful of cracked teeth. Recalling that they had once nibbled his ear and made him feel young, the king stooped over and picked up the incisors, slipping them into his shoulder satchel for safekeeping.
As Tithian glanced around the square, he saw that most of the people near the well had already died. Their bodies were shriveling into piles of dust and white bone that even Borys would find impossible to interrogate. Farther away, the mist had just reached the edge of the plaza. The stunned fathers were thrashing about on the ground, their purple tongues hanging out. The goraks accepted their fate with more dignity, dropping to their bellies and turning their yellow eyes away from the sun.
The king did not worry that the Balicans would find it strange that an entire village had perished, for such catastrophes were far from rare on Athas. When the sailors walked among the bones, it would be coins and chadnuts they sought, not answers.
Tithian grabbed Sacha and slipped the head into the satchel, then walked over to the well and peered back toward the harbor. Above the huts of Samarah, he could see the faint outline of dozens of masts showing through the heavy silt curtain. From outside the village came muffled Balican voices demanding that the gate be opened.
The king stepped into the well, using the Way to lower himself and the Dark Lens gently into the pit. The gloomy depths swallowed them both, and Tithian settled into the tepid waters to await Rikus and Sadira.
TWO
PAUPER’S HOPE
A deep boom rumbled over the butte, and golden cascades of sand spilled down the bluff’s waferlike ledges. The sound passed over the road, rolling across a salt-crusted lakebed until it echoed off the craggy flank of a distant mountain.
Rikus looked up and frowned. The sky remained clear, the crimson sun blazing through the olive-tinged haze of dawn. To the west, Athas’s twin moons hung low over the Ringing Mountains, silhouetting the distant peaks against golden crescents. A harsh wind hissed over the top of the butte, but there was not a thunderhead in sight.
The mul passed his hand over his kank’s antennae, bringing the mount to a halt. The insect was twice the size of a man, with a chitinous body and multifaceted eyes bulging from the sides of its head. The wicked mandibles protruding from its maw made it look as though it could have destroyed a pack of lirrs, though in truth it was a timid and rather gentle creature.
Rikus sat astride the kank’s thorax, his feet dangling among its six legs and almost touching the ground. With a rugged, heavy-boned face and a hairless body that seemed nothing but knotted sinew, the warrior looked even more dangerous than his mount. In his case, however, appearances were not deceiving. He was a mul, a dwarf-human half-breed, created to live and die as a gladiator. From his father, he had inherited the incredible strength and endurance of the dwarves, while his mother had bestowed on him the size and agility of the humans. The result was an ideal fighter, combining both power and nimbleness in a single frame.
When another boom did not sound from behind the butte, Rikus lowered his hand to the Scourge of Rkard. As his fingers touched the hilt, the sword’s magic filled his ears with discordant sounds: the roaring wind, the rasp of falling sand, and the pounding of his own heart. From the shadowed cracks of the butte cliffs came the clamor of chirping crickets. Somewhere out on the lakebed, a snake’s belly scales whispered across the rough surface of a hot stone.
Rikus also heard something that disturbed him more: the drone of human voices, no doubt coming from a faro plantation that lay on the other side of the butte. The words were muffled by distance and the high bluff. Still, the mul could tell that many of the farmers were yelling, some even screaming. As he listened, a loud, sonorous laugh drowned out the human voices, and he knew that something was terribly wrong at Pauper’s Hope.