In the same moment, a rush of hot breath filled the room, and Beort crawled inside. Agis opened his eyes again and found himself looking down on a mass of greasy braids, as large as a kes’trekel’s nest and just as tangled. The Joorsh boy’s shoulders were so broad that he had to turn them sideways to fit through the chamber entrance, and his arms were as long as a normal man was tall.
“There’s nothing here!” Beort yelled. His gaze fell on the satchel, and he reached across the room to grasp it. “What’s this?”
The noble began to climb, leaving the sack to the young giant. Although he tried to move as quietly as possible, he was more concerned with speed. Even if the Joorsh heard him, Beort would have to turn over on his back before he could thrust one of his long arms up into the rift. The noble ascended quickly and quietly, pushing his back up the fissure a short distance, then bringing his feet up. By the time the young giant had pulled Agis’s binding off the satchel and peered inside, the noble was already halfway up the crevice.
Stuffing Tithian’s satchel into his belt, Beort craned his neck and peered up into the crevice. Although safely out of the youth’s reach, Agis climbed even faster. The youth squinted in the noble’s direction, trying to shield his eyes against the sunlight with a massive hand. “What’s that?” he asked, rolling onto his back. “Come down, you!”
His heart pounding from the hard climb and the exhilaration of escape, Agis returned his attention to his ascent. He had neared the top of the shaft, where the silvery mica reflected the sun’s crimson rays with such intensity that even the air seemed to glow blood-red. Just a few more moments, he told himself, and I’ll be safe.
The ruddy light was suddenly replaced by a shadow. Agis looked up and saw one of Mag’r’s brown, puffy eyes peering down into the rift.
“What’s wrong, Beort?” he demanded. “Where’s the Oracle?”
“Ask the man,” came the reply.
The youth pointed toward the corner of the rift, where Agis had halted his climb, his legs trembling as much from fear as from the strain of keeping his back pressed against the wall of the crevice. His broken arm, no longer needed for the climb up the narrow fissure, hung limply at his side.
The sachem’s eye shifted to the noble, then his fleshy lips curled into a fiendish smile. The giant thrust his pudgy hand into the crack. He pinched Agis between his thumb and forefinger, plucking the noble from the crevice. Mag’r was a mess, with dried blood caked around the wound where Nal had gored him. The gash across his huge stomach had been sewn shut with what looked like sail rope.
When he looked past the giant, Agis saw that they were in the southern end of the compound, where the mica walls formed a cul-de-sac around the rift from which he had just been plucked. Although the rift ran east-west, directly beneath the sun’s path, the silvery sheets of mica surrounding it were all angled so that they would reflect any stray rays down into the cleft.
“Where’s the Oracle?” Mag’r demanded, drawing Agis’s attention back to his bloated face.
“It’s not down there,” the noble replied, keeping his voice, and himself, calm through an act of will. To escape the giant, he would have to keep a clear head.
“I know where the Oracle is not!” the giant bellowed, his breath a hot, rancid wind. He closed his fist around the noble’s body and squeezed. “I want to know where it is!”
Gritting his teeth against the pain in his broken arm, Agis said, “I didn’t get here much before you, and all I found was an empty satchel.” He gestured toward the cleft below. “Beort has it now.”
Mag’r scowled, then knelt on the ground. “Give me the sack, Beort.” The sachem thrust his long arm into the rift, then returned to his feet with the satchel in his hand. He opened it up and peered inside, then started to toss the satchel away. “It’s empty.”
“Empty?” Agis echoed, hoping the young giant had not let Sacha escape. The disembodied head inside the sack remained Agis’s best hope of tracking down Tithian and the lens. “Let me keep it anyway.”
The giant shrugged, then handed it to Agis. “What good is an empty sack?”
“Not much,” the noble admitted, “but I found it down in the tunnel where the Oracle should have been. There might be a connection.”
Scowling, Mag’r reached to take the satchel back. “What connection?”
Agis pulled the sack away from the giant’s fingers, tucking it under his arm. “I’ll tell you after you take me to the quartz enclosure,” he said.
“Speak now, if you want to live.”
Agis shook his head. “You’re going to kill me anyway,” he said. “But Nal has thrown a giant into the crystal pit who doesn’t deserve to die. I’ll tell you what I know after you rescue him. You might even want to make him a member of your tribe-he’s clearly an enemy of the Saram.”
Mag’r scowled and shook his head. “After what you did at the gate, I can’t trust you.”
“What happened at the gate was Nal’s doing, not mine,” Agis replied. “Besides, an empty sack and a dead body will do you no good. If you want my help in finding the Oracle, you’ll have to do as I ask.”
The sachem pondered this for a few moments, then reluctantly nodded. “I’ll help the giant out of the pit,” he said, “but I won’t take him into my tribe. I see no reason to trust him just because my enemies did not.”
Limping badly from the lance wound that the noble had inflicted on him earlier, the giant exited the mica compound, leaving Beort in the Oracle chamber. As they crossed the barren granite grounds of Castle Feral, Agis was astonished. He had expected to see lakes of Saram blood and mountains of beasthead bodies, with Joorsh warriors chasing down and slaughtering their captives.
But Mag’r’s victorious army had gathered the defeated giants at the far end of the citadel, where Nal’s body rested atop a huge funeral pyre. While the Saram knelt in a circle around their dead bawan, the gray-haired Chief Nuta walked back and forth in front of the burning body, sternly lecturing them on the folly of trying to keep the Oracle for themselves.
The chief’s efforts were hampered by a cloud of Castoffs swirling overhead. They occupied the attention of the nervous Saram far more raptly than either Nal’s body or Nuta’s lecture, despite the two Joorsh shamans dancing in the prisoners’ midst to keep the spirits at bay.
“It looks as though you intend to let the Saram live,” Agis said.
“That’s right,” Mag’r replied. “Jo’orsh would be angry if we killed all our brothers-especially after winning the war.”
“Still, it’s very generous of you to forgive them.”
Mag’r fixed a brown eye on the noble. “Don’t expect the same mercy,” he warned. “You’re no giant. Jo’orsh doesn’t care what happens to you.”
With that, the sachem stepped into the enclosure. The giant-hair rope that Kester had tied to the footings of Sa’ram’s Bridge still ran over to the edge of the pit, but the line now lay slack and loose. After Agis had been taken from the pit, the crack in the crystal cover had sealed itself, cutting the cord in the process.
As Mag’r lumbered forward, the noble’s heart sank, and he was overcome by a sick feeling of disappointment. The crystal pit’s cover had grown milky and opaque, suggesting that Tithian had already taken the Dark Lens far from Lybdos.
“I never should have listened to him!” Agis hissed, his anger with himself growing by the moment. “This is what comes of breaking promises!”
“What promises?” asked Mag’r, frowning.
Agis started to tell the giant of his suspicions, swearing that though he might not survive to hunt Tithian down himself, Mag’r and his giants would do it for him. Then, remembering another promise that he had made, he thought better of it and stopped.
“I’ll tell you in a minute,” the noble said. “First, you rescue Fylo.”
Mag’r knelt at the edge of the pit and studied the lid for several moments. Finally, he shrugged and said, “No handle.”