Tower
. Now she had only her own magic and vigor to rely upon
—
and she did not know if those two things would be enough.
Sadira looked past the end of the cane to where Nok had fallen. In the chieftain's place was a jagged crater, coated with soot and deep enough that the sorceress could not see the bottom. From this hole poured a thick plume of smoke, as black as obsidian and shaped like a great oak tree. Rising with the inky fumes were long ribbons of watery color: green and purple, but also red, blue, yellow, and a dozen others. The branches of the vaporous tree were gently waving, as if stirred by an unfelt breeze, and they were hissing Sadira's name.
FIVE
A Bargain
“You over there!” called a man's voice. “Wake up!”
The words came to Sadira across the chasm, echoing through her head with agonizing clarity. The voice was deep, with a glib quality that nettled the sorceress's sensibilities and kindled an immediate distaste for the speaker.
“Are you alive?”
Sadira opened her eyes and found herself staring into the blazing orb of the sun. Terrible, sharp pangs stabbed through her eyes, and her vision disintegrated in a spray of crimson light. She squeezed her eyelids shut again, but the pain did not fade.
The sorceress's head was not all that hurt. Her arm throbbed with dull agony, and her back ached along her entire spine. Her face stung as though someone had just slapped her, and the skin felt brittle and tight. From the thighs down, her legs prickled with the torment of a thousand needles stuck an inch into her flesh. Even her throat and tongue hurt, swollen as they were from the lack of water. Sadira turned her head to the side and raised her eyelids again, this time forcing herself to keep them open. To her pained eyes, the other side of the canyon remained a blur. Nevertheless, she could tell that there was a group of people, probably a caravan of some sort, standing near the pediments of the bridge she had destroyed.
Ignoring them, the sorceress focused her attention on her own situation. She still lay where she had collapsed after the battle with Nok, in the filthy soot she had created by defiling the land. Her wounded arm had turned dark purple, and was swollen to the size of her shoulder. The cuts themselves, crusted with blood and foul black dirt, were already inflamed and oozing.
When Sadira's eyes fell below her waist, a gasp of horror rose to her parched throat. Several woody vines had sprouted from the crater where Nok had perished. They were grotesque gnarled things, coiled in a tangled mass and covered with grimy black leaves shaped like those of an oak tree. The plants had crept across the rocky ground to where she lay, entwining her legs in their tendrils and sinking their barbed thorns deep into her flesh.
Sadira shook her head, hoping this was a nightmare. She had not been chased by a tribe of halflings, the sorceress told herself. She had not killed Nok, and her cane had not been destroyed. Soon, she would awaken in
Milo
's camp and discover it had all been an hallucination brought about by the strange spice in the Nibenese broy.
“Hey, over here!” called the glib voice.
Sadira looked across the canyon again. This time, her vision was clear, and she saw a tall, lean shape with silver hair. Behind him, scattered over the hardpacked sands of the caravan trail, were a hundred more tall figures. Dozens of kanks were milling about both sides of the road, foraging on the clumps of golden salt brush strewn here and there in the red sands.
“Elves,” Sadira hissed in a disgusted voice. “This is worse than a nightmare.”
Ignoring the elf who had called to her, Sadira found the end of a vine and pulled, ripping a half-dozen barbs from her skin. She regretted her action instantly. The rest of the plants recoiled, planting their barbs more deeply and setting her legs ablaze with pain.
The vines retreated toward the crater, dragging the
Similar Books
