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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
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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 dearly 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."
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Mag'r knelt at the edge of the pit and studied the lid for several moments.
Finally, he shrugged and said, "No handle."
Before Agis could object, the king reached out and smashed his fist through
the center of the cover. It shattered into dozens of fragments that fell into
the pit, leaving only a few jagged bits sticking out from the sides. The noble
cringed, trying not to think of what the falling pieces might do to Fylo.
Mag'r peered down into the hole, then said, "I see him."
Agis looked over the edge. For a moment all he could see were beads of sweat
dripping off his brow and plummeting into the darkness, then his eyes grew
accustomed to the lack of light and he saw Fylo, still lying impaled
on the crystal. The half-breed's free arm and his legs were dangling down into
the pit, while his eyes were closed and his chin lay slumped onto his chest.
Although he had suffered several gashes from falling shards of crystal, none
of the cuts were bleeding very badly.
"You'll have to go down and pull him out," said Agis.
Mag'r frowned at this idea, then shouted, "Hey, you!" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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