Agis leaned close to Sadira and whispered, “Keep your dagger ready and follow my lead.”
Though she looked confused, the sorceress slipped a hand beneath her cape and nodded.
Tithian led the two gladiators and their guards to the front of the porch. Agis and Sadira followed, taking care to stay behind Larkyn’s men.
The leader peered over Rikus’s shoulder at the slouched body of his commander. “High One?”
Tithian said, “He’s dead.”
Keeping their daggers concealed beneath their robes just in case anyone outside the shady gallery could see what was happening, Agis and Sadira stepped up behind the two templars. They pressed the tips of their weapons to the men’s backs.
Tithian said, “You two have a simple choice to make: stay quiet and live, or sound the alarm and die.”
“The king will-”
“Probably kill us all,” Tithian interrupted. “That has nothing to do with your choice. Drop your weapons or die.” When both men let their swords clatter to the floor, the high templar added, “A wise decision. Lest you change your minds, remember that I have just given Rikus and Neeva their freedom. If you so much as move, they’ll kill you in the blink of an eye. Given the chaos in the stands, I doubt anyone will notice.”
Tithian waved the two templars to the front of the gallery, where they would be easy to watch. Once the templars had done as ordered, Neeva asked, “Agis, what’s all this about Larkyn? I thought Tithian was in charge of the games.”
Agis described the complication he had run into when he asked Tithian to secure their escape, and explained how they had improvised a solution by luring Larkyn into the gallery and murdering him.
When the noble finished, Tithian said, “At the moment, Larkyn is hardly the issue. What are you going to do about Kalak? I doubt your little pinprick will stop him from proceeding with his plan.”
“We’ll have to track him down and finish him off,” Rikus said coldly.
Neeva regarded the mul with a look of surprise. “Is this the same man who said he wanted no part in getting his friends killed?”
“I finish what I start. You know that,” Rikus replied. “Besides, if we don’t destroy Kalak now, he won’t rest until he kills us. Let’s go.”
“The Golden Tower is a big place,” Tithian said. “Perhaps it would help if you knew where to find the king the before you enter it.”
“Of course it would,” Agis said. “Are you saying you can help us?”
The high templar nodded. “I’ll want something in return.”
“Isn’t living enough?” Sadira snapped. “Help us or die, it’s that simple.”
Tithian gave her a condescending smirk. “Nothing is ever that simple.”
“It is this time,” Rikus said, moving toward the high templar. “No purple caterpillar is going to stop me from killing you now.”
Agis stepped between the mul and Tithian. “Let’s hear him out.”
Rikus shook his head and started to circle around the noble, but Neeva pressed her hand against the mul’s chest. “What is it you want, Tithian?” she asked, still watching Larkyn’s men from the corner of her eye.
Smiling, the high templar said, “I’m not asking for much, but it occurs to me that after you kill Kalak, Tyr will need a new king.”
“Never!” cried Sadira.
Rikus and Neeva added their protests in the form of disgusted snorts, then Agis asked, “Why would we change one tyrant for another?”
“Because without a king, Tyr will fall into chaos,” the high templar replied, nonplussed by the objections.
“Someone will have to run the city. Otherwise, it will fall into ruins as surely as if Kalak becomes a dragon. Who better to assume that position than the templar? We’ve been running the city for a thousand years-”
“And we all know what you’ve made of it!” Agis objected.
“Then help me make it better,” Tithian urged. He almost sounded sincere.
Agis suddenly felt the familiar tingle of life-force being pulled from his body. He looked to Sadira.
“I feel it, too,” she said. “Something’s drawing power from us.”
A cacophony of panic erupted in the stadium. Agis stepped to the back of the gallery and pulled aside one of the heavy curtains shielding the porch from the grandstands.
In scattered places, aged men and women clutched at their chests and dropped gasping to the ground. Stronger spectators screamed in anger, attacking half-giants and templars with stones or seats they had pulled from the terraces. They pushed and shoved into the exit tunnels, trying in vain to force the gates open. The mob succeeded only in crushing those who had entered the passage ways first. In many places, Larkyn’s guards organized counterattacks against the crowd, the templars firing lightning bolts and the half-giants clubbing anyone within reach.
Amidst all the confusion, more than a few hands were pointing toward the summit of the great ziggurat. A small geyser of burgundy flame was shooting from the top of the structure. A moment later, a billowing cloud of yellow smoke replaced the pillar of fire.
Rikus and Neeva asked, “What’s happening?”
“Kalak has started his incubation,” Sadira answered, pointing toward the obsidian pyramid. “He’s drawing the life out of the spectators.”
Agis looked in the direction the sorceress pointed. The air around the pyramid shimmered with raw energy, and waves of flaxen light scintillated over the structure’s glassy surface. Deep within the thing’s black heart glowed a steady golden light that grew brighter even as the senator watched.
“Well,” Tithian asked. “The longer we delay, the weaker we become and the stronger Kalak grows.”
“You will have to make Tyr a better place,” Agis said. “The first thing will be to free the slaves.”
“Of course,” Tithian replied. “You have my word on it.”
The Golden Tower was every bit as large as it appeared from the outside. It had a floorplan as twisted as the tangled branches of a faro tree, with dimly lit halls arranged in spiral patterns, gloomy rooms built in warped shapes, and dark nooks that served no apparent purpose except to make a passerby wonder what lurked in them.
Nevertheless, the group had little trouble following Kalak. A trail of black, steaming fluid that Agis took to be blood led the way deeper and deeper into the palace. Every time they rounded a corner, the noble cringed, expecting to meet some hideous beast Kalak kept to guard his home. Tithian, however, moved with the speed and confidence of someone who knew what surprises the palace did and did not contain.
At last, after they had descended to the foundations of the ancient tower, they reached a cavernous, circular vault. It was lit by an alabaster ceiling panel set into a grid of copper-plated beams. In the shadowy squares between the beams hung carved reliefs of beasts and races that Agis had never before seen. At the edges of the ceiling, fluted columns of granite, capped with sculpted leaves and flowers of strange shapes, rose from the floor to support the rafters. Between these columns stood dozens of rows of shelving, empty save for a few ancient steel weapons.
Tithian held a finger to his lips, then led the four companions to the other side of the room. In the shadows near the wall, the huge bodies of Kalak’s two-half giant guards rested on the floor. The shattered remains of an obsidian ball were scattered over the areas, and two more globes, still intact, sat nearby. Between the two corpses lay the dark circle of an open trap door.
As they stopped to inspect the bodies, a voice said, “Sacha, isn’t that your worthy descendant, Tithian of Mericles?”
Agis and the others brought their weapons to ready defense postions.
“So it is, Wyan,” answered another voice. “It is. Such a handsome fellow, too. Perhaps he could find it in his heart to open a vein in those half-giants and feed us.”