When the boy did not turn around, Neeva said, “Rikus is leaving now, Rkard. Do you want this to be the way he remembers you?”
“No,” the boy said. He turned around and, without meeting Rikus’s glance, accepted the dagger. “Good luck.”
The mul patted the boy’s shoulder. “Take care of your mother,” he said. “And if we’re not back by the time she’s walking, leave without us.”
Rkard looked up, his eyes wide with fear. “You’ve got to come back! If you don’t …” He paused, collecting his composure, then said, “I don’t even know the way.”
“If we must, we can find it together.” Neeva took her son’s hand and pulled him to her side, then fixed her green eyes on Sadira. “Don’t make the mistake I did. Say everything.”
The sorceress gazed at Rkard and did not answer for several moments, then finally said, “I will.”
Sadira handed the axe to Rikus, and together they climbed the hill. As they started over the top, the mul paused and ran his eyes over the crest of the rim. “I dropped the top part of the Scourge up here somewhere,” he said. “When the sorcerer-kings come, it might be useful to have the hilt in my scabbard. Maybe we can bluff them into leaving us alone.”
“It can’t hurt to try,” Sadira said. She pointed to a location several dozen paces away, near the top of the small hill. A small circle of ground was covered with an ugly black stain. “Look over there.”
The mul walked to the area. He found the Scourge behind a boulder, with the hilt lying uphill above what was left of the blade. Black slime continued to ooze from the jagged break, creating a bubbling pool of sludge tipped at the angle of the slope. As with the larger pond inside the crater, wisps of shadow rose from its surface, and yellow eyes peered out from the center of slowly swirling eddies.
Rikus considered the amount of sludge still oozing from the blade, then decided it might be better to leave the shard alone. He started to return to Sadira.
The mul stopped a step later, when he glimpsed an orange light flash beneath the great arch. When the glow faded, the four sorcerer-kings and the remaining sorcerer-queen stood between the pillars of the great edifice, their eyes roving over the broken plain. The distance from the crater to the arch was just small enough for the mul to see his enemies clearly. The runt of a limb had sprouted from the stump of Nibenay’s severed arm, and Hamanu showed no sign of discomfort from the dagger that had been plunged into his back.
Rikus dropped behind a boulder and signaled for Sadira to come over. She slipped behind the crest of the crater rim, trying to stay out of sight as she ran over to join the mul. Her precautions were of little use. The sorcerer-kings stepped from beneath the arch and walked across the plain toward the crater.
By the time Sadira reached Rikus’s side behind the boulder, the sorcerer-kings stood at the rim’s base, directly in front of the pair’s hiding place. The five figures were less than twenty paces away and perhaps half that distance lower.
Hamanu stepped forward and looked up the slope. “You fools,” he growled, angrily shaking his mane. “What you have unleashed may destroy us all.”
“In your case, the loss will be a welcome one,” called Sadira. She rose to peer over the boulder.
Rikus joined her. If the sorcerer-kings attacked, a few feet of stone was not going to save them.
“Give us the Dark Lens, and your deaths will be mercifully quick,” said the Oba.
“I’m in no hurry to die.” The mul looked at Sadira. “How about you?”
“I’ll take my time,” the sorceress replied. She glanced down at their enemies, then said, “If you want the Lens, you’ll have to find it and take it.”
Hamanu started forward, but the Oba caught him by the shoulder. “Wait. They’re too anxious.”
“They’re blustering,” the sorcerer-king snarled.
“Perhaps, but they did kill Borys,” she countered. The Oba pointed at the dark stain on the slope below the mul. “Do you really want to take the chance that they haven’t set a trap?”
Hamanu’s huge nostrils flared, but he stepped back. “You have something else in mind?”
The Oba nodded, then called up the slope, “How much do you know of Rajaat?”
“Enough to know that you betrayed him, which, at the moment, makes him our friend,” Rikus replied.
The Oba chuckled, though she sounded more nervous than amused. “Rajaat would slay you two as soon as he finished with us.”
“His shadow people have proven helpful so far,” Sadira replied.
“Of course. They wanted you to kill Borys,” said Andropinis, shaking his fringe of white hair. “But if you knew the truth about Rajaat, you would know better than to rely on his gratitude.”
“Why don’t you enlighten us?” requested Sadira. Andropinis glanced at his fellows.
“Go ahead,” suggested the Oba. “After hearing the truth, they’ll yield the Dark Lens without a fight.”
Andropinis turned his palm toward the ground.
“No magic!” Rikus yelled.
The sorcerer-king fixed an icy glare on the mul and drew the energy for his spell. “Watch and learn,” he said, waving his hand across the sky.
An image of the Ringing Mountains appeared above the horizon, but they were not the barren crags Rikus knew from his life in Tyr. A howling wind tore great plumes of snow off the highest peaks, while large sheets of ice ran off their lofty shoulders. Lower down, the slopes resembled the wild forests of the halflings, with thick, verdant timberlands clinging to the steep slopes. Pearly clouds of mist hung low over valleys filled with gurgling streams and thundering rivers.
As majestic as the mountains were, they interested Rikus little compared to what he saw at their base. Between two ranges of foothills lay a hollow about the size and shape of the Tyr Valley. There the semblance ended. Instead of the barren waste of rocks and thorns the mul knew, the vale was filled with a vast swamp of vine-draped trees and floating islands of moss.
At the edge of the valley a strange, beautiful city of graceful sweeps and brilliant colors rose directly out of the swamp. The buildings seemed not so much constructed as grown, for they were marked by an architecture of gentle curves and elegant spires, with no straight edges, sharp points, or abrupt corners. The material was a uniformly porous stone that radiated blazing crimson, emerald green, royal blue, deep purple, or any of a dozen other hues. Where there should have been streets were canals filled with long slender boats guided by child-sized figures with adult faces. If not for their elegant tabards, their short-cropped hair, and their handsome features, the mul would have sworn they were halflings.
At the city’s edge, the swamp gave way to the sparkling waves of an immense blue sea. It appeared to stretch clear to the horizon and beyond, covering ground that Rikus knew to be nothing but sandy wastes and rocky barrens.
“Tyr, during the Blue Age,” said Andropinis.
“Blue Age?” Sadira was studying the scene intently.
“Before your time or ours, when only halflings lived on Athas,” explained the Oba. Making no effort to conceal her admiration for the halflings, she continued, “They were the masters of the world, growing homes from a rocklike plant that lived beneath the waves, harvesting the sea for everything they needed to maintain a vast, splendorous society, able to create anything they needed by manipulating the principles of nature itself.”
As the sorcerer-queen spoke, a fetid brown tide spread over the blue sea. It crept into the swamp surrounding Tyr, causing the floating moss islands to shrivel and sink. The vines went next, withering into the brown sludge like the sloughed skin of a serpent. The trees themselves died last, dropping their leaves and losing their bark. Before long, the grove stood naked in the swamp, an army of gray boles mired in a valley of putrid slime.
“Despite their vast knowledge, or perhaps because of it, one day the halflings made a terrible mistake that destroyed the life-giving sea,” the Oba continued.