“By Ral!” Rikus cursed. “What’s that?”
The mul pointed over the top of the boulder heap. In the distance beyond, a blue spout of water was rising into view. For a moment, the sparkling pillar held steady, its frothing white cap just visible above the rubble ahead. Then, seeming to gather strength, the shimmering column shot toward the boiling ash storm above. It struck the red clouds with an almighty crash, then swept the billowing ash from the sky on the tide of a cerulean storm.
EIGHTEEN
THE CERULEAN STORM
Tithian opened his eyes to a turquoise dawn.He blinked several times, trying to clear his vision, but the firmament did not change color. He saw that it was streaked with blazing rays of azure light, while a bank of puffy blue clouds slowly formed overhead.
The king sat up and looked eastward. He did not recognize the luminous sphere he found hanging just above the horizon. The orb resembled a huge sapphire, with shining blue facets and an azure fire burning deep in its heart. It was the sun, but not the sun he knew.
Tithian stared at the blue sphere in amazement, until his eyes began to ache and he realized the glow would blind him if he stared too long. He forced himself to look away and saw that the forest around him had been utterly destroyed. The trees all lay on the ground, their tips pointing away from the grove’s center and their boles ripped clean of limbs. In the far distance, there was no sign of the huge wall that had once surrounded the sanctum or of the great edifices that had stood outside it.
As he surveyed the devastation, the king saw that he still sat in the plaza where he had found Rajaat’s prison. The Dark Lens lay on the cracked cobblestones at his feet, murky and cold. Tithian remembered using his serpent’s tail to cling to it when the Black exploded, anchoring himself to the ground and calling upon its energy to keep himself from being torn apart by the blast. The effort had finally proven too much for his body, and he had fallen unconscious as the storm began to subside.
On the other side of the Dark Lens lay the marble basin that had held Rajaat’s prison. The bowl was now filled with a bubbling, foul-smelling ichor as black as obsidian. In the center, the yellowed bones of a hand protruded above the pool. Its crooked digits looked more like talons than fingers, slightly curled and ending in barbed tips.
“What are you waiting for?” snarled a familiar voice.
Tithian looked over his shoulder and saw Sacha floating toward him. The head was badly battered, with deep lacerations on his scalp, a smashed nose, and yellow bruises covering his face.
“Pull him out!” Sacha demanded.
Tithian lay down at the edge of the basin and stretched an arm across the bubbling soup. He closed his fingers around the hand’s naked bones and tried to draw the thing out but only succeeded in pulling himself toward the ichor. The king opened his grip-then hissed in pain as the hand dug its barbed talons into his palm. It dragged him forward, until his shoulder and head both hung over the dark sludge.
Tithian saved himself by thrusting the fingertips of his free hand into a cracked paving stone. He stopped his slide and slowly drew himself back onto the plaza. Once he had anchored himself securely in place, he began pulling the hand toward him. First the arm, then the shoulder, and finally the head rose from the ichor.
The skeleton had a flat, grossly elongated skull with a sharp ridge crest and a sloped forehead. Beneath its heavy brow, crooked forks of blue light glimmered deep in each eye socket. Wisps of white mist puffed from its nasal cavity. Its jaws were lined with curved yellow needles, while a huge mass of knobby bone formed a long, drooping chin.
“Rajaat?” Tithian gasped.
“Who else?” answered Sacha.
Rajaat sank the talons of his free hand into the stone. He ripped his other claw free and drove it down on the other side of the king, pulling himself to the basin’s rim. Tithian scrambled back on all fours, barely saving himself from being stepped on as Rajaat pulled himself from the dark pool. The ancient sorcerer’s frame was about as tall as an elf and completely skeletal, with hunched shoulders, gangling arms, and ivory-colored thighbones as twisted as they were thick.
The creature’s eyes lingered on Tithian’s face for an instant, then flickered over the barren trees lying around the plaza’s edge, and finally returned to the Dark Lens. Rajaat stared at the black orb for several seconds before finally looking skyward. The fleshless jaws parted in a crude imitation of a smile, then Rajaat opened his mouth wide.
“Free!” he bellowed, his voice rumbling over the sanctum like thunder. Streamers of blue fog gushed from his mouth, condensing into tiny droplets and falling to the ground like rain. “Let the traitors tremble and wail! I have returned, and my retribution shall be bloody and painful!”
As Rajaat spoke, a strange ripple ran through his warped thighs, then through his ribs, arms, and the rest of his bones. Before Tithian’s eyes, his yellowed skeleton grew to the size of a half-giant.
The king gathered himself up, then took a deep breath and walked forward. He stopped before Rajaat and bowed. “I am Tithian,” he said, not looking up. “I opened your prison.”
Rajaat stepped over the king’s head without answering. The black ichor trailed after his heels, rising out of the basin and spreading itself over the ground like a shadow. Tithian leaped back, not wanting to have any contact with the foul-smelling stuff, then spun around to request his reward.
“Wait,” advised Sacha, staring at Rajaat with an astonished expression.
The ancient sorcerer now stood at least two full heads taller than any half-giant. Although he had only a skeleton for a body, the ichor serving as his shadow had arranged itself into the silhouette of a manlike figure, fully fleshed and with an immensely powerful build.
As Tithian watched, Rajaat raised an arm into the sky as though reaching for something. Far above, a turquoise cloud vanished from sight, then reappeared in his grasp. The ancient sorcerer began to work it with both hands, flattening it out like bread dough, then stretching it into a thin sheet. Once he seemed satisfied with its consistency, he stooped down and pressed it over his foot. The misty fabric stretched over his bones like flesh.
Sacha’s jaw fell open. “He’s changed.” A knowing smile crept across the head’s lips, and he said, “This time, he won’t fail. Athas shall return to the Blue Age.”
Another wave of ripples rolled through Rajaat’s yellow bones, and he grew to the height of a ship mast. The ancient sorcerer took a few more steps, positioning himself beneath another cloud, then he reached up and plucked it from the sky. He began to work it like the first, fashioning another piece of skin.
Behind Rajaat, the ground became porous and white wherever his shadow passed. A moment later, circles of brilliant color-scarlet, sapphire, saffron, emerald, and a dozen others-burst across the surface, rising from somewhere deep inside the stone. In the center of these vibrant circles sprouted round nubs, like the seedlings of some strange plant.
Rajaat continued to walk around the sanctum, plucking cloud after cloud from the sky and using them to cover his skeleton. Soon, he stood half-again the height of a giant, with no indication that he would quit growing any time soon. Tithian waited until the ancient sorcerer wandered back near him, then moved boldly forward to present himself. He turned a palm toward the ground to prepare a spell that would amplify his voice.
Before the king could begin to draw energy, Rajaat looked down at him and boomed, “No! Not here.” The ancient sorcerer waved an enormous hand at the strange rock plants that had sprouted from his shadow. “Never in the Blue Lands.”