The Binding Stone: The Dragon Below Book 1

by Don Bassingthwaite

  “What is that?” Singe breathed in astonishment.

  “That’s Tetkashtai,” said Dandra. She steeled herself and spread her arms. “I’m a part of her. This is her body.” Through the kesh, she sent an image spinning out to the men, an image of the phantom presence condensed down to a solid form—the psicrystal that hung against her chest. She held that vision of the crystal before them. This, she said silently, is me.

  Geth snarled and crouched like a frightened animal as Singe stared. “Tetkashtai is the kalashtar and you’re her psicrystal?” the wizard asked finally.

  Dandra nodded.

  “Twelve moons. How?”

  Dandra swallowed. “Dah’mir,” she said. She sent an image speeding along the link between their minds: an image of a tall man, his skin pale and flawless, his hair jet black. He wore robes of fine leather as dark as his hair. In a fabulous display of wealth, three red dragonshards had been set into the leather of each sleeve and a blue shard in the center of his chest. His eyes, however, outshone the magical stones. They were green—bright, acid green.

  Even in her memories, those eyes had power. They were like an ocean rising to engulf her. Tetkashtai shuddered, her light flickering. Dandra’s heart skipped as she fell into those remarkable green eyes once more …

  “Stop it!” howled Geth.

  Dandra started, the sound of the shifter’s anguish ripping through her. Singe started as well and blinked his eyes as if emerging from a daze.

  Geth was down on his knees, clutching at his head and staring at her. “What are you trying to do?” he spat.

  “I’m sorry,” Dandra whispered. “That’s Dah’mir. There’s something irresistible about him. None of us could withstand him.”

  “Who is he?” Geth demanded. “Who is ‘us?’”

  Dandra grimaced in spite of herself. “‘Us’? I should say ‘them.’”

  She pushed more memories into the minds of the shifter and the wizard. Of Tetkashtai, hovering above the small clear space in the middle of a sparsely-furnished bedchamber, the Adaranforged crysteel head of her spear flashing as she glided through the forms of spear practice. Of another kalashtar watching Tetkashtai from the bed, a smile of pleasure on his face and a violet crystal laying against his bare chest. Of a third kalashtar, her middle-length, slightly curly hair shot through with streaks of premature gray, bending over a table littered with books and paper. A blue crystal glittered in the band she wore across her forehead.

  “Virikhad,” said Dandra, “and Medalashana.” She focused her gaze on the white-crested hill in the distance as she spoke, trying to extract herself from the memories. “We …” She winced and corrected herself. “They lived together in Sharn, researching dragonshards and looking for new ways to blend psionics with the magic of the shards.”

  Singe’s eyebrows rose. “Did they succeed?”

  “No.” Dandra showed him and Geth an image of the papers that had littered Medalashana’s table, all drawings of dragonshards, meticulously sketched and colored by Virikhad, right down to the patterns that swirled at their hearts. The rosy red of Eberron shards, broken from stones. The glowing gold of Siberys shards, fallen from the sky. The night-deep blue-black of Khyber shards, drawn up from the depths of the world. “They needed to experiment with raw shards that hadn’t been claimed by wizards or attuned to the powers of the dragonmarked houses—and raw shards are rare.”

  She hesitated, then added. “When I told Adolan I was kidnapped from Zarash’ak in the Shadow Marches, it wasn’t entirely true. Medalashana, Tetkashtai, and Virikhad were lured to Zarash’ak from Sharn. There are rich fields of Eberron shards in the Marches. Raw shards are more common there than anywhere else. Tetkashtai and the others received an invitation from a scholar who claimed to have himself moved to Zarash’ak so he could be closer to the source of the raw shards; he had heard of their research and invited them to visit him.”

  Another image flowed from her memory: that fateful letter, the three kalashtar all clustered around trying to read it at once. Dandra swung from Tetkashtai’s neck. The signature at the bottom of the letter swayed underneath her, bold and clear. Dah’mir.

  “Lies?” asked Geth.

  Dandra’s eyes hardened. She resisted the urge to glare at the shifter. “What do you think?” Her lips pressed together. In her mind, she could feel Tetkashtai tremble with dread at what followed. Dandra spoke the memories in words, afraid they might overwhelm her again.

  “They went, of course. A servant met them at the docks, and escorted them to a grand house with blue doors. Dah’mir was waiting for them.” The vision of acid green eyes swam in her head again. She forced them away and said instead, “He looked just the way I showed you and the moment he spoke, we drowned in the force of his personality. He fascinated us—kalashtar and psicrystals alike. It was like falling in love. We couldn’t help ourselves.” She drew a breath. “He led us into the marshes and we followed like children, carrying nothing but what we wore on our backs or held in our hands. After that …”

  She struggled to find words, then abandoned the effort, letting the nightmare of her memories flow out.

  The journey into the depth of the Shadow Marches was a blur of days, of half-remembered images. An escort of savage pierced and tattooed warriors—Bonetree hunters—meeting them. Tetkashtai and the other kalashtar, crouched impassively in the center of crude, flat-bottom boat as the hunters paddled up a shallow, reed-lined river in silence. Black herons flying overhead like gangly vultures, always circling. A new landscape of drier ground and long grasses, where strings of bones seemed to grow out of trees and clack in the shifting wind. An encampment of rough shelters where slack-jawed men and women and drooling children stared at them in awe. The river had been left behind and the kalashtar, surrounded by the hunters, stumbled after Dah’mir. As they passed the encampment, all the folk of the Bonetree fell in behind them, chanting the praises of Dah’mir and the Dragon Below.

  A hill rose up out of the flat landscape, unnatural, a mound built by ancient hands. There was a tunnel in its side. Dah’mir led the kalashtar into it, leaving their Bonetree escort outside, still chanting. Inside, however, a new kind of escort took their place—an escort of which each member had four bandy arms and two gibbering mouths. They carried torches that gave off a blue-green flame, like burning copper. By the light of those torches, Dandra glimpsed other figures in the shadows, stalking the darkness with a lethal grace, their faces eyeless, long tentacles twitching from their shoulders.

  Dolgrims. Dolgaunts. Terror sharpened and brought Dandra back to awareness, though Tetkashtai stumbled on, unheeding.

  In a chamber deep within—or perhaps beneath—the mound, Dah’mir finally released the kalashtar. Medalashana, Virikhad, and Tetkashtai were free for only a moment, barely long enough to gasp at the horrors and the weird devices that surrounded them, before Dah’mir’s warm embrace was replaced by a cold domination.

  Among the devices of the chamber stood a half dozen nightmare figures with spindly bodies and limbs shrouded in dark, clinging robes. Their hands had only four spidery digits, their flesh was purple-green and rubbery, their heads …

  Their heads were broad and round, with veins that pulsed beneath their skin of their hairless scalps. Dead white eyes peered from deep, bony cavities. And in place of a nose and a jaw—in place of any lower face at all—they had four thick, writhing tentacles.

  Illithids, whispered Dandra to Geth and Singe. Mind flayers.

  The creatures lived up to their name. Dandra’s last moment of coherent contact with Tetkashtai dissolved in tearing mental anguish.

  She could feel Singe’s growing horror and Geth’s growing rage. She held onto the memories though, wrenching them up into her mind and watching numbly as Tetkashtai—along with Medalashana and Virikhad—was subjected to the most gruesome of psychic tortures and probed by psionic powers to rival their own. Their bodies were bound to tables, their minds pinned back by bizarre devices of jointed metal and dark
crystal clamped over their skulls. There was no way to know how much time passed. The light in the terrible underground laboratory never varied. The mind flayers came and went, but never in any pattern that made sense. Sometimes dolgaunts would come, torturing the kalashtar’s bodies. Hruucan was the worst of them. He made certain the captives knew his name so they would fear him even more.

  Always there were Dah’mir’s eyes. Acid-green eyes. Watching.

  Then spidery fingers closed on Dandra, ripping her away from Tetkashtai and placing her atop a tripod of long, crooked needles, suspended on their points. Virikhad’s violet crystal and Medalashana’s blue crystal were placed on similar tripods to either side of her. Dandra caught a glimpse of some strange device, an array of brass and crystal, wires and tubes—all of them writhing around a dragonshard, a huge blue–black Khyber shard as large as an anvil.

  The mind flayers gathered around the device and their white eyes lifted to the shard. Their bodies grew still, but Dandra could sense the psionic energy building among them, growing increasingly more intense and more powerful—until it burst like a silent thunderclap.

  Dandra’s presence stretched horribly, her being expanding, then contracting. Her connection to Tetkashtai seemed to twist, to turn inside out. The kalashtar was wailing, screaming as she had never screamed before. When the power of the mind flayers’ energy faded, though, Dandra realized that she was the one screaming. That she was breathing and physically struggling against her bonds. That Tetkashtai rested across the laboratory, her presence locked away in the yellow-green psicrystal.

  The mind flayers retreated. The dolgaunts returned, and for the first time, Dandra felt pain directly.

  On the hillside overlooking the Eldeen Reaches, she opened her eyes to sunlight. Singe and Geth were staring at her. Both men’s faces were pale. Within her, Tetkashtai hung silent and still, a ghost. No one said anything for a long, long time, until finally Singe ran a tongue across his lips and croaked. “You escaped?”

  The thought-link was growing tenuous, worn away by the horrors that had flowed across it and stretched thin as Dandra’s powers flagged. She managed to send one last memory across it, a memory of waking in near-darkness, her spirit pared down to a lean core trapped in aching flesh. She shifted, writhing in agony—and realized that the dolgaunts hadn’t bound her, perhaps thinking her too weak to escape. In Dandra’s spirit, the core of her being steadied and grew strong. Although it sent new pain tearing through her, she sat up.

  “When a psion creates a psicrystal,” Dandra told Geth and Singe as she watched the memory play out, “she splits off some part of her own psyche to give personality to the intelligence that she creates. The psicrystal grows out of that simple personality.”

  In her mind’s eye, she felt herself climb to her feet and, with single-minded focus, shuffle across the laboratory toward a seemingly distant yellow-green glow. At the time she had been conscious of nothing but reaching the source of that glow—her crystal—but as she focused on the memory, she became aware of other things. Of how slow and painful her progress had been. Of the two crystals that rested on either side of her own, one a violet ember, the other a dead blue shell. She could have taken them. She could have turned her head, sought out Virikhad’s and Medalashana’s bodies. She hadn’t. She had one goal and no other.

  “The core of my personality,” she said, her voice thick, “was determination. That’s what saved me.”

  The hand of her memory-self closed on the yellow-green crystal—and Tetkashtai exploded into her head. Maddened kalashtar and determined psicrystal combined with a single, wild instinct—escape. Their powers—once Tetkashtai’s alone, now Dandra’s as well—flared. A thought spun out a line of vayhatana and Tetkashtai’s spear, carelessly thrown aside by Dah’mir’s servants, soared through the air to Dandra’s hand. Her feet floated free of the ground and she glided out of the laboratory. Dolgrims moved to confront her. She summoned whitefire out of the air and flung it against them. Her heart thundering, she raced on through half remembered tunnels as roars of outrage at her flight shook the mound behind her …

  The thought-link finally collapsed, fading away and leaving her breathless at her own memories. She staggered, but caught herself. One hand, she realized was clutching her crystal so tight that the bronze wire that bound it pressed painfully into her skin. Dandra forced her fingers open and looked up at Singe and Geth.

  “The rest,” she said, “you know. I’ve told you the truth about that. The Bonetree hunters were after us before that first night was over. I was lucky that I could skim over obstacles that they had to wade through.” She touched her belly. “And I can sustain myself with psionic energy, where they had to find food. But even with my powers, I could barely stay ahead of them. I just ran. I knew Yrlag was on the north edge of the Shadow Marches and I would have gone there, but clearly I went too far. If I’d gone a different way, I probably would have ended up in Droaam or lost in the mountains somewhere. When you and Adolan found me, Geth, I was exhausted. If I’d kept going, I probably would have killed myself—if those displacer beasts didn’t kill me first.”

  She pressed her palms together and bent her body toward the shifter. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

  Geth stared at her, his eyes wide, but Singe drew a deep breath. “Virikhad?” he asked. “Medalashana?”

  “Dead if they’re lucky.”

  “Why did Dah’mir do this to you? Why does he want you back so badly?”

  Dandra’s stomach clenched. “I’ve asked myself that a thousand times.” She felt her cheeks burn. “I don’t know!”

  “Maybe,” growled Geth, “we should go and ask him.”

  He said it so bluntly that for a moment all Dandra could do was blink and stare at him. “Revenge?” she asked finally. Geth nodded. Dandra felt numb—even Tetkashtai flinched at the idea. “Geth, you can’t do that. Dah’mir is … powerful.” She touched her chest. “He held three kalashtar in his grasp!”

  “I’m not a kalashtar. I’ll put my steel against whatever power he has. And I can’t think of a better memorial to Adolan and the other Hollowers than snuffing out a cult of the Dragon Below!” The shifter closed his gauntleted fist with a clash of metal.

  Dandra flung up her arm to point behind them. “But the hunters and the dolgrims are still after us!”

  “I haven’t seen a sign of them since dawn and even that was a long way back.” Geth’s lips curled back from his teeth. “We hurt them last night and they don’t have horses. They’ll need to rest and regroup. We’ll ride through the day and be well ahead of them.”

  “I don’t know where the Bonetree camp and the mound are!” she blurted. “Dah’mir had us all in a daze on the way there and I was lost on the way out.”

  “Then we’ll start where you met Dah’mir—Zarash’ak.” Singe stepped forward. “I’m with Geth.”

  Geth shot a dark look at him. “No,” he growled.

  “You’re going to do this yourself?” the Aundairian asked. “You’re not that good, Geth. I owe this to Toller.” His eyes narrowed. “Not to mention that I’ve been looking for you since Narath. Do you think I’m going to let you out of my sight now?”

  Dandra heard the growl that rose in Geth’s throat, but she also caught the flash of white as his eyes opened—just for a moment—wide in fear. Singe leaned a little closer to him. “You need me for this, Geth. And I need you. Neither of us has any choice.”

  They’re both mad, thought Tetkashtai. The presence was trembling, her emotions raw from the flood of memories. Dandra, when they have you well away from the Bonetree hunters, leave these fools to get themselves killed.

  No, said Dandra. They’re not mad. There was a new fire growing inside her. She had been running for so long that there hadn’t seemed to be any other choice. But she had stood against the Bonetree at the circle of the Bull Hole and faced down Hruucan at Bull Hollow.

  She looked up at both Singe and Geth. “I’m coming, too.”

&nb
sp; Tetkashtai’s presence radiated shock. Dandra, you can’t do that!

  After what Dah’mir has done? How can I not?

  I’m not going back to that mound!

  Dandra’s jaw tightened. Tetkashtai, running didn’t get us away from the Bonetree hunters or the dolgrims. This isn’t just revenge for us. Dah’mir isn’t going to give up unless we make him. He’ll keep hunting us. You know he will. I’m not running any more.

  Tetkashtai wavered, fear tearing at her.

  What if, Dandra suggested, there was something at the mound that could show us how to reverse what Dah’mir’s mind flayers did to us?

  The question left the presence speechless. With a grim sense of triumph, Dandra looked back to Geth. “What are we waiting for?” she asked. “An escort from the Bonetree hunters?”

  The shifter gave her a thin smile and turned to his horse, swinging up into the saddle. “We’ll head to Yrlag,” he said, nodding to the southwest. “It’s a little more than week’s ride and we should be able to find a ship there that will take us to Zarash’ak.”

  The grass of the hillside had been crushed down in a wide patch. The round dung balls of three horses were clustered in neat piles nearby and the summer grass cropped in patches. Ashi rose and walked back to where Ner, Breff, and Hruucan were waiting for her. Ner had squatting down and was tapping the hilt of his sword against his chin in thought. Breff was inspecting the bloody bandage that covered the wolf bite sunk deep into his right calf. Hruucan, once again shrouded in his cloak and cowl, simply stood still. The dolgaunt moved awkwardly and the stench of charred flesh clung to him. The wizard had burned him more badly than he would admit. Ashi looked away from him as she made her report. “They stopped for a time. They rested, but they’re staying on the move.” She pointed. “Their trail turns on the slope of the hill. I think they’re heading toward Yrlag.” “When were they here?” asked Ner.