Dah’mir’s voice seemed like it was coming from a distance. “Breff, put Singe in an empty hut and see that he rests and has food. I’m sure Hruucan wants a challenge tonight. Guard him carefully—he is a wizard, after all.”
“Yes, Dah’mir.” A new hand replaced Ashi’s on Singe’s arm and pulled him back toward the camp.
Singe pulled away and spun to Dah’mir, a desperate plan trying to put itself together in his head. Maybe there was something he and Dandra could do together … “Please,” he pleaded to Dah’mir. “Wake Tetkashtai. Let me say good-bye to her, at least!”
The green-eyed man’s smile didn’t falter at all. “I don’t think so!” he said. “Breff?”
The hunter wrenched at him hard. Ashi, Singe realized, had been gentle with him. Breff dragged him off his feet. Singe twisted his head around as he stumbled after the hunter and managed to catch one last look at Dandra.
Dah’mir and Medala were leading her away into the mound with Hruucan walking behind them.
The journey, like the one before, had passed in a blur, as if Dandra stood still while everyone and everything sped by around her. There had been only two constants in that crazy rush. She was one. The other was Dah’mir, the bridge between her and the madness around her, the center of her world.
Was the blur worse, some small part of her had thought, because she was on her own this time? She didn’t have Tetkashtai to guide her—one of her last lucid memories was the struggle with Ashi, the shock as Tetkashtai was torn from her, a glimpse of Geth catching the crystal. Her powers had vanished with Tetkashtai.
Then Dah’mir’s presence had washed over her. Dandra was dimly aware that Geth was no longer part of the rush around her, though she couldn’t recall why. Singe was there, however. Medalashana, too, though the gray-haired kalashtar called herself something else now. She was simply Medala, as if she had rejected her kalashtar heritage.
There were two moments on the journey that Dandra remembered, two moments when the world around her slowed down and she rose like a swimmer to the surface of Dah’mir’s encompassing presence. The first came like a shock, abrupt and unexpected. There had been a spark on the horizon of her mind, familiar yet distant. “Tetkashtai!” she’d gasped. There had been a sense of confusion and a shook, the feel of an unfamiliar mind, a glimpse of savage orcs around a blazing fire, of Geth seizing her … but the moment had ended before she knew anything more.
If the first moment came as a shock, the second moment came like a knife in the back. Without warning, it felt as if a piece of her was being ripped out and the spark of Tetkashtai’s presence seemed, if not closer, than at least stronger and more intense.
This time she knew what has happening: Tetkashtai was trying to take a new host. They’d guessed from the very beginning that it was possible, but Tetkashtai had never made good on her threats before—and it was the one thing that Dandra had never confessed to Singe or Geth.
But surely neither she nor Tetkashtai had guessed how painful it would be. Dandra hadn’t been able to hold back a scream. She’d felt Singe holding her, trying to soothe her. Strangely, she had felt Geth, too, though in a different way. Then Tetkashtai’s host had rejected her and Dandra had tumbled back down into the embrace of Dah’mir’s strange power, grateful for peace …
She woke again with words echoing in her ears. “Wake up, Tetkashtai.”
The world rushed back into sudden focus.
Dah’mir stood in front of her with Medalashana—no, Medala—at his side. Over them towered the device that had torn her from Tetkashtai, wires and tubes, brass and crystal, the big blue-black Khyber dragonshard still pulsing at its heart. There was one psicrystal remaining in the device, flickering like a violet ember.
She was back in the Bonetree mound, back in Dah’mir’s horrible laboratory. Her mind reeled, disoriented. “Singe …” she gasped, then blinked and saw what lay behind Dah’mir and Medala. Three horribly familiar tables, two empty. On the third lay a corpse that had once been a kalashtar man. Now it was shriveled, slowly mummifying in the atmosphere of the mound. Its head had been ripped apart. Virikhad.
Dah’mir turned his head, following her gaze, and clicked his tongue in disapproval. “Confronted with your old love and the first name you call is the wizard’s?” he said. “Fickle!”
“What happened to him?” choked Dandra.
“Isn’t it obvious?” asked Dah’mir. “He couldn’t—or wouldn’t—return to his body the way you and Medala did. At least it wasn’t a complete waste.” He glanced into the shadows. “Although you did say his brain was … how did you put it?”
Tall, thin figures with dead white eyes and writhing tentacles in place of a lower face moved forward. Dandra felt a brush against her mind, then a sudden rush of alien sensations. Dry. Hollow. Weak.
It took a moment for her to realize the illithids were describing the taste of Virikhad’s brain.
The horror was too much. Dandra screamed and flung herself backward. She hit stone. There was no running. As the mind flayers closed around her, she dredged for her powers. Without Tetkashtai, there was so little she could do, but she wasn’t going to let the mind flayers take her without a fight. She stretched her thoughts, trying to reach for whitefire, for the invisible web of vayhatana, for the long step to carry her away from this place.
They all fell through her grasp like water. The cold minds of the illithids touched hers. She tried to empty her thoughts, to dive deep into herself for protection, but the mind flayers only grabbed her and dragged her back. They skated through her, grappling with her psyche—then froze, their collective will drawing away as if in alarm.
Dandra looked up to see their tentacles twitching in time to the gestures of their long fingers. One of their number turned to Dah’mir and Medala, and an icy voice spoke in Dandra’s mind. This is not Tetkashtai.
“What?” roared Dah’mir.
Another presence pierced Dandra’s mind, a savage attack that scattered the illithids’ powers, tore at her thoughts, and left her gasping and swaying. She knew this presence—or at least had known it. Medalashana’s touch had been gentle, organized, and disciplined. Medala’s was raw and violent. As Dandra fell forward, sprawling onto the floor of the laboratory, she saw the gray-haired kalashtar’s eyes go wide.
“How—?” Medala cursed in disbelief. She looked at Dah’mir. “It’s her psicrystal! Tetkashtai’s psicrystal walked off in her body!”
Dah’mir’s eyes narrowed. “Find out everything you can, Medala,” he said. “I want to know how this is possible.”
Medala crouched down in front of Dandra. “Look at me,” she snarled. Dandra forced her gaze down, trying to build some kind of mental defense against what she knew had to be coming. Medala’s hand shot out, though, closing on Dandra’s jaw with cruel strength and wrenching her head up.
A chime rang in Dandra’s ears, a pure sound that drove all the way through her. Medala’s eyes seemed to shimmer with silver light. Dandra tried to force her back and out of her thoughts, but it was no good. As the chime rang on and on, Medala slid deep into her mind. Dandra watched helplessly as the other kalashtar raked through her memories. The moment she had first struggled to her feet in Dah’mir’s laboratory. Her flight from the Bonetree hunters. The desperate fight in Bull Hollow. Yrlag. Lightning on Water. Zarash’ak.
Dandra strained and thrust, trying to find some way to fight back. Medala held her with an easy contempt. Stop that, the gray-haired woman said with disgust as she flickered through the memories of Dandra’s struggle with Ashi and Vennet beneath the house of blue doors.
You know I won’t, Dandra spat back at her.
Medala swatted her like she was a fly. You’re a psicrystal, Dandra. That you walk in a kalashtar’s body doesn’t make you a kalashtar. How Tetkashtai bore the shame of having you carry her—
How do you bear the shame of what you’ve become? demanded Dandra. She forced a vision on Medala, an image of her pinched and feral face held again
st a memory of how she had looked only months before in Sharn. What happened to you?
What happened? Medala shredded the vision with a thought. What happened? I refused to die! For a brief moment, the flow of memories from Dandra’s mind to Medala’s reversed.
Dandra saw Dah’mir’s laboratory again, but this time from another point of view and washed with blue instead of yellow-green. She saw the tortured bodies of the three kalashtar laid out on the tables, inhabited by the feeble minds of their psicrystals. She felt Medalashana’s fear and distress at her sudden imprisonment, felt powerlessness stretch her mind toward near-madness just as it had Tetkashtai’s.
But Medalashana did something that Tetkashtai hadn’t. At the moment when madness and eternal imprisonment had seemed closest, Medalashana had found the strength to reach back through the connection that bound her to her psicrystal.
Her crystal had been called Pok, a gentle spirit formed out of Medalashana’s thirst for knowledge. It had taken no effort at all for Medala to murder him, snuffing out his light and reclaiming her body.
Dah’mir had come to her then, had taken a soul broken and mad, and made her his own.
Dandra cried out and wrenched herself away from Medala’s memories. Il-Yannah! she gasped. She recalled her own memory of the moment she had taken up Tetkashtai’s crystal: Medalashana’s blue crystal had been dark. You sacrificed your psicrystal to free yourself!
It’s the only way, Medala seethed. Take back your body or be locked in the crystal. Virikhad couldn’t do it. She gave Dandra another memory, of standing at Dah’mir’s side and watching Virikhad’s body starving and growing weaker as the spirit of his psicrystal faded—until there was nothing left and Dah’mir allowed the mind flayers their feast. And Tetkashtai … She laughed madly. We thought it was some hidden strength in her, but she was as weak as Virikhad!
Dandra shuddered with loathing. Medala gave a final thrust into her mind—and found Dandra’s fragile memories of the second journey from Zarash’ak to the Bonetree camp, the fragments of her distant sense of Tetkashtai’s efforts to take a new host. Dandra felt her excitement. “Dah’mir!” Medala said out loud—and slipped away from Dandra’s mind.
The chime faded from Dandra’s ears. Somewhere Medala was telling Dah’mir everything she had discovered, babbling about Dandra’s nature, about Tetkashtai’s ability to force herself on anyone who held the crystal, about Geth and orcs. Dandra didn’t listen. She just dragged herself up into a crouch and huddled back against the wall, trembling with rage at the violation of her mind.
Someone asked her a question, She didn’t answer. A foot prodded her. She didn’t move. The foot prodded harder. “Dandra,” said Dah’mir, “if you don’t want to talk to me, I can let Medala pry the answers I want from you again.”
Dandra turned her head and looked up. Acid-green eyes looked down at her. She glanced away sharply before she could lose herself in them. “What is it about you that we can’t resist?” she snarled angrily. “I’ve never felt anything like it. Neither had Tetkashtai. It’s not psionic. It’s not magic. What is it?”
“Why should I give away my secrets?” asked Dah’mir jovially. “Would you give away yours?”
“I don’t have any left!” Dandra hissed at him.
Dah’mir’s pale face stretched out as his eyebrows rose. “True enough.” He squatted down. Dandra felt as if he was staring right through her, as though there was something that his eerie eyes alone could see. “I didn’t expect something like you,” he said after a long moment.
“Really? What did you expect?” Dandra asked. “Something like Medala, sacrificing a part of herself in her desperation to survive? Or something like Virikhad, clinging to his principles until he died?”
“Oh, Virikhad’s not dead. Only his body has died so far—well, and the spirit of his psicrystal, of course.” Dah’mir nodded at the violet ember of Virikhad’s crystal. “He’s still there. I think he’ll let go soon. They—” He gestured toward the mind flayers, hovering on the fringes of the conversation like vultures around carrion. “—say it’s not possible for him to let go, that he really is trapped in the crystal forever. None of us have touched the crystal, so we don’t know if he’s still capable of forming a new connection as you’ve shown us that Tetkashtai can.”
His attention came back to her. “What I didn’t anticipate was that a psicrystal might actually take control and attempt to rescue the psion.” Dah’mir reached out and rested his fingers on her forehead. His touch was cool. “I should thank you.”
Dandra twitched her head away angrily. “Is the only reason you lured Tetkashtai, Virikhad, and Medalashana to Zarash’ak because they were psions with psicrystals?” she snapped. She could feel a formless rage building inside her, an anger at whatever chance fate had attracted Dah’mir’s attention to them—and her.
The green-eyed man smiled. “Only partly. They were convenient. Believe it or not, what I told them in my letter was partly true. I shared their interest in the interactions between magic, dragonshards, and psionics. I lured them to Zarash’ak because I hate having rivals.” He stood and walked toward his towering device, staring up at the big blue-black stone at its heart. “In magical practice, Khyber shards have binding properties. I found a way to apply that to psionic practice as well. You’ve seen the results of my work for yourself. It needs refining, of course …”
Dandra stared at his grinning, handsome face, then choked out the only word she could manage. “Why?”
“Why?” Dah’mir turned and darted back to her, leaning in so close Dandra could feel the cool on her ear as he drew breath to whisper his answer—
—then stepped back, winking at her and waving his finger. “Not yet, Dandra. Maybe when Tetkashtai is here with you.”
Dandra drew a sharp breath in spite of herself. “What are you talking about?”
Dah’mir laughed. Behind him, Medala gave a sharp grin. “Ah, Dandra,” Dah’mir said, “you’ve found yourself some very loyal friends. Maybe too loyal.” He stood up. “I made a mistake in Zarash’ak when I killed Geth.”
A sharp pain thrust through Dandra at the news and she gasped. Dah’mir waved her alarm away. “Hush. He survived, didn’t he? Apparently, I didn’t do as good a job as I thought. Given that he has Tetkashtai, that’s a good thing.” His lips tightened. “But his survival and the glimpses you’ve given Medala of his presence in an orc village go a long way toward explaining why there’s a large raiding party of orcs trying to sneak through Bonetree territory right now.”
Dandra stared at him. “The Dragon Below has many eyes,” said Dah’mir with a shrug. He looked over his shoulder at the illithids. “Restrain her,” he said. “I don’t want them to have any warning.”
He stepped back as one of the mind flayers moved forward. In its spindly fingers it bore a strange device with long, delicately jointed arms of bone and copper. Dandra tensed and started to rise but two more mind flayers narrowed their white eyes and the air seemed to ripple. A force like vayhatana seized her, holding her immobile. The first illithid reached out and slid the device onto her head.
A numbness seemed to fall over her. She saw and she heard, but it was if she couldn’t actually think at all. Horror built within her but it had nowhere to go.
The mind flayers turned to the table that had held her captive once before and began preparing straps of thick leather. Dandra watched as Dah’mir took Medala’s arm and paced out of the laboratory.
“It’s a shame that Vennet isn’t here,” Dandra heard him tell the gray-haired kalashtar. “I think he’d have liked to see how a real trap is laid.”
CHAPTER
15
Geth stared up at the black heron that soared overhead—the fourth that afternoon, the second since the sun had begun to settle below the clouds that choked the horizon and were spreading across the sky. He glanced at Orshok. “You’re certain they can’t see us?” he asked.
“Batul’s prayers hide us from the senses of all a
nimals,” the young druid said confidently. “You could walk up to a rabbit right now and it would just sit there. The Bonetree’s herons can’t see us.”
“Adolan examined one of the herons in Bull Hollow. He said it was tainted by the Dragon Below. Are you sure they’re still just animals?”
“Dagga,” growled Krepis from his other side. “Many things tainted here. Trust Gatekeepers and walk.”
He prodded Geth with the butt of the spear that he carried. The shifter bared his teeth at him but trotted on. Krepis still grated on his nerves, but the big orc’s attitude toward him—and toward Natrac—had improved significantly since they’d emerged from Jhegesh Dol. The three druids weren’t the only ones who’d been astounded by their retrieval of the dragon scale amulet from the ghostly fortress.
He looked ahead across the dry grassy folds of the Bonetree clan’s territory. A dozen orcs prowled through the twilight. Twice that number strode behind him. Not all of them were Fat Tusk orcs, either. Word of the raid on the Bonetree had spread. Orcs had emerged from the marshes to join them as they traveled, all of them eager to strike against the clan.
In the center of the raiding party, Batul—the dragon scale amulet around his neck—moved with the speed and grace of an orc half or maybe even a third his age. Krepis and Orshok had both tried to persuade him to stay at Fat Tusk, but Batul had insisted. “The return of the amulet is a sign,” he’d told them. “Great things will happen on this raid. You’ll need me with you.”
Geth had already been glad of the old druid’s presence. His prayers had done more than hide them all from the Bonetree’s herons: speaking with crocodiles from the riverbanks and birds from the air, he’d located Dah’mir’s party with an ease that left even the other orcs amazed. The animals remembered Dah’mir. His passage disturbed them like something unnatural. Small animals remembered him with fear. Larger animals—crocodiles and marsh eagles—remembered him as a threat, like a stronger predator intruding on their territory.
The Binding Stone: The Dragon Below Book 1 Page 26
