Nal stepped between the half-breed and his bear, hefting the axe and hooting an eerie war cry. The bear flung itself into the air, trying to leap over the blade and seize the bawan’s head in its maw.
Nal ducked. At the same time, the bawan brought his blade around in a horizontal slice that severed the bear’s remaining foreleg and ripped the bony armor off its chest. The animal’s long snout plowed into the rocky ground and stopped, while the momentum of its charge carried it head over heels. Its immense rump crashed into the enclosure wall, and it came to rest flat on its back.
“Agis!” Fylo yelled, worried about his friend.
The bawan’s axe flashed three more times, severing the bear’s two remaining limbs and its head. Once the beast could cause no more harm, Nal positioned himself above its chest and swung his blade one more time. When it cleaved the bear’s sternum, Fylo heard a trio of muffled screams sound from inside the beast’s body.
Nal’s ears pricked up. He pulled his axe free with a loud rasp, then reached into the wound with both hands to pull the sternum apart. The heavy bones separated with a sharp crack, and he opened it up like a walnut.
“What have we here?” the bawan asked. He glanced back at Fylo with an angry glimmer in his eye, then thrust a huge hand inside the bear’s chest. “Lungworms?”
TEN
THE CRYSTAL PIT
An immense sheet of rock crystal covered the pit, its edges melting into the surrounding granite with no visible seam. So thin and pellucid was this lid that whenever one of the amorphous forms beneath slipped up to press against the veneer, Agis saw the ghostly features of a face. Usually the visage belonged to a child with a soft chin, fleshy cheeks, and hurt, questioning eyes.
“Why did you come to Lybdos?” demanded Nal.
The bawan stood on Sa’ram’s Bridge, a stone trestle that arced over the pit. With one hand, he held Agis’s ankles, dangling the noble far above the translucent slab. In his other hand, Nal clutched Tithian and Kester, his fingers wrapped so tightly around their chests that their faces had turned purple.
Tithian was the one who answered. “We’ve already told you!” the king declared. “Our ship wrecked on Mytilene. Sachem Mag’r promised to let us live if we helped him.”
“The Joorsh are attacking at dawn,” added Kester. “That’s when we’re supposed to open yer gates.”
“And what was Fylo’s part in this plan?”
With the hand clutching Tithian and Kester, the bawan gestured across the pit, where four Saram warriors held the unconscious half-breed by his arms and legs. The rest of the enclosure was empty, for most Saram were busy preparing for the next day’s battle.
“Fylo has no part in this,” said Agis. “We tricked him into helping us.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Nal hissed. “I’m wise enough to know that you are thieves, and that Fylo is a traitor to all giants.” The bawan nodded to the tribesmen holding the giant. “Show our guests what awaits them.”
The four warriors pitched Fylo’s battered body onto the pit. The slab did not shatter or even crack, but merely sagged under the giant’s great weight. The half-breed lay on his back, covering the silvery sheet almost completely, with his hands and feet hanging over the edges. Beneath him, the ghostly faces pressed their lips and noses against the sheet, their muffled voices crying out in the high-pitched tones of excited children. Many of the Saram backed away from the hole, covering whatever passed for ears on their beastly heads and turning away with fearful expressions on their faces.
After a moment, Fylo began to sink, slowly passing through the rock crystal. The faces began to swirl around him in blurry, saffron streaks. Then, as his shoulders and knees melted through the slab, the half-breed fell free and plunged into the hole. The ghostly countenances streaked into the darkness after him.
“The giant you just killed never intended you anything but good!” Agis yelled, glaring up at Nal.
“That is for me to decide,” the bawan replied. “Besides, I doubt Fylo is dead-though he’ll soon wish he were.”
“What do you mean?” Agis demanded.
“This is where we keep our deformed heads after we become true Saram. We must give them playthings so they can amuse themselves, or they will fade away-and us with them,” he said, his ears cocked at a cruel angle. “Be assured, the Castoffs will make Fylo pay for his treachery a thousand times over.”
“I suggest you think carefully before sending us to join him,” said Tithian. “If you release us, we can help you defeat the Joorsh. But if you try to punish us, nothing will stop us from helping them defeat your tribe.”
Nal’s eyes flashed angrily. “Your threats are as empty as your promises,” he said. “What difference can three puny humans make in a battle between giants?”
“We may be small, but my magic is not,” said Tithian. “It’s for you to decide whether I use it to aid you, or to oppose you.”
Nal’s hooked beak clattered in the bawan’s equivalent of a chuckle. “I think you’re overestimating the value of your magic,” he said. The bawan leaned over and thrust the hand holding Tithian and Kester toward the pit, then opened his fingers and allowed the tarek to fall free. A short scream sounded from her lips before she slammed into the slab and lay motionless, the Castoffs swarming up to press their faces to the crystal beneath her body.
“If you are so powerful, save her,” said Nal.
Tithian tried to pull his arms free. Nal continued to hold him tight, preventing the king from reaching for his spell components or making any mystical gestures.
“Loosen your grip,” Tithian ordered. “I need my hands to use my magic.”
“How unfortunate for your tarek friend,” sneered the bawan, watching Kester’s stunned form slowly rise to her knees. “I don’t think I should trust you with free hands.”
On the crystal lid, Kester rose to her knees and crawled toward the edge. She had traveled only a short distance before her arms and legs melted into the rock crystal. The tarek snarled in frustration and looked up at Agis. “I never should’ve taken your silver,” she said, slipping the rest of the way through the lid.
After she vanished into the abyss, Nal turned Agis right-side up, then lifted him and Tithian to the level of his golden eyes. “Now, tell me what you thieves want with the Oracle, or you will join her.”
“We have no interest in the Oracle,” Agis said. “It’s the Joorsh-”
“Don’t deny it!” snapped the bawan. “Sa’ram has told me that humans seek it.”
“Sa’ram said that?” Tithian asked. “Why would he think we want your Oracle?”
Agis realized the answer to the question almost before the king had finished asking it: the Oracle had to be the same thing as the Dark Lens. It was the lens that the ancient dwarf and his partner had stolen from the Pristine Tower so many centuries ago, and only it would be so important to them that they were still keeping a watch over it a thousand years later. Probably, the noble reasoned, they had brought it here for safekeeping, and the artifact had eventually become a central focus of giant culture.
“Sa’ram does not explain his reasons to any giant-even me,” Nal said, answering Tithian’s question. “But to doubt him would be foolish.”
“Of course, as it would be to doubt Jo’orsh,” Tithian replied, nodding with exaggerated sincerity. “We know that even in Tyr. We also know that they’re the dwarves who stole the Dark Lens-what you call the Oracle-from the Pristine Tower.”
“How dare you say such a thing!” Nal roared, indignant. “Sa’ram and Jo’orsh were the first giants, not dwarves!”
Agis raised his brow, suspecting that both Tithian and Nal were correct. From the Book of the Kemalok Kings, he knew that Sa’ram and Jo’orsh had been the last dwarven knights. But, as the birthplace of the Dragon, the Pristine Tower had become a dangerous and magical place, where living beings were transformed from one kind of creature into something as different as it was hideous. Given that the two dwarves had penetrated to its very core, it seemed likely that they had come out as something else-in this case, giants.