Darkvision

by Bruce R Cordell

  A cool wind, comfortable after the day’s heat, brushed his face as he watched Vaelan fall away. The vast, dark gulf of the Golden Water was not so golden after the sun had fallen well below the horizon. They’d reach the mine by morning—Adama’s Tooth. That was where Warian had been fitted with his prosthesis.

  Warian shifted his gaze away from the vista and back toward the deck. He’d ridden this skyship, called Stormsailer, before. Stormsailer’s architecture was like a standard sailing vessel, and her crew was similar. Three masts, square sailed, rose above him, reaching for the stars. The main difference between the skyship and a regular watercraft were the plates affixed beneath the ship, carved from the shells of Halruaan sea turtles and invested with Halruaan spells that produced extraordinary lift.

  The crew saw to the needs of the ship under the direction of Captain Darsson, a Halruaan native with experience in wizardry—enough experience to control the ship.

  The deck was quiet, and Sevaera was nowhere to be seen. She’d apparently slipped off to her cabin while Warian had engrossed himself with the ship’s launch. Good.

  He turned back to the bow and watched the receding lights along the coast of the Golden Water. The stars were bright, but washed out by a bright moon to port. Ahead, moonlight was smothered in a layer of roiling thunderheads. He’d seen the great clouds on the horizon before the sun sank. Somewhere ahead, a mighty storm raged.

  The wind picked up abruptly, slapping Warian’s face. Cool and refreshing earlier, it turned cruel and biting.

  Warian stepped away from the bow and headed for his cabin on the port.

  The cabins on Stormsailer set aside for Datharathi family members were fitted with great glass portholes that offered a spectacular exterior view—nearly as good as the view from the deck railing. The cabins had the added advantage of being heated.

  Warian’s cabin was directly across from Sevaera’s. Her door was closed, but he saw light leaking beneath it and heard the tinkling notes of her harp. His aunt loved to play, but had never been as good as she supposed. Warian was surprised at the proficiency and grace of the music he heard. His aunt had improved a lot in five years. He wondered if it was due to practice or her plangent upgrade. Probably the latter.

  Strange. His own door was closed, as he’d left it, but no light spilled beneath it. When he’d dropped off his pack, he’d lit a lantern and left it burning precisely so he wouldn’t have to return to a dark cabin. At least, he thought he had. Maybe the oil was used up?

  Warian pushed the door open and entered. Moonlight streamed in through the wide porthole, giving him more than enough light to maneuver through the tight space. Even though he had just been on deck, he walked directly to the porthole and gazed out.

  The moonlight rippled across the otherwise dark plane of water below. From this vantage, he couldn’t see the shoreline at all. In fact …

  The door creaked behind him and gently snicked shut. Warian swung around and saw someone standing inside his cabin.

  “Hey!” Warian yelled, startled.

  “Shush!” whispered the figure urgently. Warian saw a moonlit hand touch the intruder’s lips, urging quiet.

  “You’d better …”

  “I said keep quiet, Nephew,” the voice said, louder. It was a familiar voice.

  “Zel?” asked Warian, incredulity prodding him off-balance.

  “None other. I’ll thank you if you don’t say that again so loudly.”

  “Why?”

  “Has your absence made you thick?” his uncle whispered. “No one knows I’m on board. I aim to keep it that way.”

  “You outrank her—Sevaera, I mean—in the family council. I don’t understand. Surely you don’t have to hide from her.” Disdain curdled Warian’s voice as he said his aunt’s name.

  “You’ve been gone a long time, Nephew. New ways for new days—things have changed in the family council. I occupy a rung only one up from your missing sister Eined. Come to think of it, you’re probably higher than me.”

  “That’s crazy.” Warian moved forward and pulled a burning coal from an iron pot below the lamp to relight the wick. Only the finest accoutrements for House Datharathi’s private skyship, after all.

  “Is it? You have a crystal prosthesis. You’re no plangent, true enough, but in the eyes of the others, you’re more like them than not.”

  “Only plangents can wield power in the family business?”

  Zeltaebar nodded.

  “Then why don’t you take the implant?”

  “Because something’s wrong. I wouldn’t take that crystal into my body if you paid me my life trust in one payment.”

  Warian was surprised. For Zel to walk away from money and power, the reason would have to be spectacular. Warian had left behind his own trust for ideological reasons, but in his experience, Zel was less principled. In fact, he had always felt that his uncle was motivated primarily by money. Personal danger was only one more calculation in Zel’s balance sheet of life.

  “Wait. If you think something’s wrong with the plangents, why were you hunting Eined to force her into the procedure?” Warian demanded.

  Zel’s hands went up in a placatory gesture. “Hold on, hold on. I wasn’t going to turn her in, you numbskull!”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes! When I found her, I planned on fleeing the city with her. I wouldn’t force the crystal on my own blood kin, for doom’s sake!”

  “But she’s going to the site, right? That’s what you told me at the meeting today,” Warian accused.

  Zel smirked and nodded, but held up a hand again. “You’re a smart kid, Warian. I know you have more going on up there than the rest of the family gives you credit for. Plus, you seem to be half plangent. You have their strength and speed, maybe even more than they do, from what my boys said …”

  “Only when it’s triggered, and then it drains me near to death,” Warian interrupted.

  “Sure, sure—but you get to access the good stuff, without the downsides I’ve noticed.” Zel cast his eyes to the floor.

  Warian waited a moment, then said, “Please, go on. I know you love center stage, Uncle.”

  Zel smiled his agreement and continued. “It’s nothing definite—just circumstantial events, and weird feelings I sometimes get when I talk to my brother or sister. We all were pretty close growing up. Of course, we grew apart as adults—we each fell into the role that best suited us in Datharathi Minerals. But I’ve known Xaemar and Sevaera since we all toddled to nursery school together. And ever since they’ve taken the crystal, they’ve been different.”

  “Better, you mean?”

  “Yes, but also …” he cleared his throat. “Every so often, I’ll be talking to one of them, and out of the blue I feel like I’m talking to someone else. The same someone else—every time, and with both of them. And I tell you what. Whoever that someone is, he seems a right bastard.”

  “Have you ever called this ‘other’ out on its supposed presence—told it you knew it was there?” wondered Warian.

  “Almost. Right after the family meeting today. I found Xaemar to get his signature on a requisition. As we spoke, he changed. I looked up and saw a darkness—a hunger behind his eyes that made my skin crawl. It seemed unholy. I said, ‘Brother, what’s got you so excited?’ He just laughed. I pretty much ran out of there. His laughter chased me.

  “When I got that report about Eined’s escape, I sneaked up to the roof and stowed aboard. I never want to see what lives inside my brother again.”

  “Sounds sort of crazy, Uncle. But now that you mention it, I did notice everyone acted a little strange at the meeting—more thoughtful than their usual charge-ahead style. Maybe it’s just another malfunction, like my arm, but psychological.”

  “Maybe,” said Zel, doubtfully.

  “Well, we’ll talk to Shaddon about this tomorrow. He’s the lead on the plangent project. He’ll help me repair my arm, and maybe he can calm your fears about your siblings.”

&n
bsp; “Or confirm them.”

  “Maybe Shaddon needs to tweak his crystal implantation technique,” Warian conceded.

  “There’s another possibility,” said Zel. “He could be contaminated, too. After all, he’s subjected himself to the same plangent treatment. Actually, he’s taken more crystal than any other plangent. He could be as mad as a Veldorn monkey all alone in his sanctum under Adama’s Tooth.”

  Warian looked away, worry suddenly creasing his brow. Then he said, “I’m not contaminated, or at least I don’t feel any different. If I’m free of this hypothetical taint, perhaps Shaddon is, too. I doubt he’d allow himself to come to any harm. He’s the most accomplished mage this family has ever produced, if you can believe his claims.”

  Zel looked at Warian, calculation narrowing his eyes. “Yes, but if you were contaminated, would you know it? Would he?”

  “Come on, you’re just trying to spook me! Of course we’d know it. This could all be a minor glitch in the plangent program that you’ve blown up into your own personal conspiracy theory. It could be nothing.”

  “Or we could be going to face the man from whom all the contamination flows.”

  Shaddon gazed into a massive crystalline boulder suspended on an iron chain.

  It was the largest uncut stone his miners had ever discovered. His first thought was to use it as another crystal for his prosthesis project. But this particular globe of purple mineral proved far more significant than every earlier specimen he’d prized from the great dark.

  Shaddon grinned so fiercely his face nearly split.

  In this piece of mute stone, he had found untapped energy—energy eager to jump into all the previous mineral he’d cut to such exacting standards. The arrival of this massive sphere marked the transition where his prosthetics research graduated from sub-par replacements to superhuman relics. With this orb, he was able to fashion plangents.

  The limbs, organs, senses, and even reasoning faculties he installed in plangents were superior to anything mortals were born with. He could truthfully claim the ability to make people better!

  True, he had a few bad nights when the energy source fueling his plangents proved itself sentient. What had he unleashed?

  Those fears had passed. This entity showed him advantages he’d never dreamed possible. With the great orb, he could seize absolute control over everyone who accepted a plangent implant.

  In the two years since this great discovery, Shaddon’s attitude had slowly migrated from vague unease to glorious satisfaction with his newfound power, despite a single downside. He pushed his mind away from that topic. His was the power of absolute mastery over a growing number of better-than-normal wealthy merchants, nobles, and other people of note.

  Shaddon Datharathi reached out his artificial hand to change the focus of the colossal globe. Each rough facet glowed with an image, as if from a different viewpoint. Each image was, in truth, from the perspective of someone who had submitted to Body Shop improvements.

  The plangents, who came to the Body Shop as rich, powerful elites, thought they were gaining membership in an exclusive club. It was true—in submitting to the implant, they gained the powers of a super-normal human, as promised. What they didn’t know was that wearing a Datharathi prosthesis of recent manufacture put the wearer’s soul in thrall.

  Shaddon grinned even wider. He was the thrall master.

  The project had exceeded his wildest hopes. His subjects of control continued to proliferate. Each offered him a new window on the world—and a new vessel that would accede to his utter bidding. Why not smile?

  He giggled, the tone high and tittering. He watched from the eyes of a nobleman of the Kant family as he sneaked away to a tryst with a secret lover. Shaddon shifted his focus, and with only a twinge of pain, mentally propelled his senses into his thrall.

  The next instant, he was the noble. He could feel the man’s breath, feel his crystalline heart, move his hands, twirl his body, whatever he desired. He let out a hoot in the man’s deep voice, then retreated back into his own body, leaving the nobleman turned around and confused about the moment of lost time.

  Shaddon would have time enough for idle fun later. At the moment, he needed to ponder a recent development—his grandson Warian had returned to Vaelan. And with such an interesting story. His prosthesis was acting up, surging with a strength it had never before possessed.

  How could that be? None of the pre-plangent prostheses were linked to the orb. Had some sort of spontaneous linkage occurred? Possibly, except no matter how he tried, he couldn’t find his grandson on the great orb. Did he have a plangent’s strength without the bondage? He needed to get a look at that arm.

  It had been simplicity itself to puppet his son, Xaemar, into sending Warian directly to Adama’s Tooth. He seized control of Xaemar so often these days it was like putting on an old glove. Shaddon wondered how much of Xaemar’s original mind remained. He had pushed it aside so often—there could be permanent damage. He resolved to look into it. Later.

  If Warian’s original prosthesis had gained some of the power generated by the entity, or from a source other than the entity, then Shaddon needed to know. Shaddon couldn’t slide his senses into his nephew, which galled him. But if Warian’s particular investiture of crystal represented a way to avoid control, this was knowledge Shaddon needed!

  Could he free himself from the influence of the entity, without giving up his own control? Could he cut Pandorym out of …

  Darkness doused a quarter of the facets on the great crystal orb. Shaddon’s grin collapsed.

  “No,” he whimpered. Guilt blazed like a bonfire through his consciousness. “I didn’t mean it! I was just wondering—I did not plan on taking any action. You don’t have to come forward. I promise, I promise! Please …”

  The darkness multiplied until every facet was as black as a vein of coal—and then grew darker. The void crept over the faces of the crystal orb, until all the chamber was dark.

  The only remaining light glowed from a point in Shaddon’s frenzied mind. A purplish radiance lived there, but even that light was shot through with darkness, black worms infesting the core.

  “Pandorym, no …” pleaded Shaddon, his desperation a deluge of sick terror.

  His supplications were worthless. Just as Shaddon could look out from the eyes of those who wore Datharathi crystal, the entity could look out from Shaddon. He, alone of all plangents, was able to retain the memory of being pushed aside while the other looked out; such was the price he paid for his ability to control others.

  The pain couldn’t have been worse if his innards had pushed out through his skin to make room for the cold intrusion.

  Through his retching, Shaddon began to scream as the darkness took him.

  Ususi discovered a few tins of dried fish in Yonald’s cabin after she and Eined had made a casual investigation of every compartment and closet.

  She couldn’t sleep after her nightmare. She was haunted by the darkness and Qari’s pronouncement that she should “embrace darkness.” Ususi shuddered as she imagined again the hollow orbits of her sister’s vacant face.

  The wizard consumed the contents of a tin of snapper as eagerly as if it were a fabled mithridate concocted by healing alchemists. Of course, she knew it wasn’t really an antidote for nightmares, and it could not insulate her against future recurrences. A little oily, but salty, as she liked it. Perhaps the simple act of eating it gave her comfort.

  The Datharathi woman quickly ate a similar portion of fish then fell asleep. Night ruled outside the cabin, but sleep eluded Ususi. They’d reach Huorm in the morning, maybe before first light. If she was to be worth anything at all the next day, she needed her sleep. The anxiety of not sleeping drove slumber further away.

  “To the dooms with it.”

  Ususi slipped on her shoes and went up on deck. Her uskura followed after, carrying a lantern. She hadn’t unpacked her delver’s orb—she didn’t want to take the time to look for it in her pack.<
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  Light rain fell, but it wasn’t cold, and it wasn’t falling hard enough to drench her hair or clothing—it was more of a mist, and it was bracing. The sea was black in all directions, but lanterns shimmering around the perimeter of the craft illuminated small areas of dark water. She saw only a single crewman high above, mucking with ropes. The impenetrable blackness all around reminded her uneasily of her dream.

  A spot of warmth on her left hip caught her attention—her pouch. She had many pouches, but this one held the three pieces of Celestial Nadir crystal Iahn had retrieved from the creatures in front of the ancient Imaskaran complex.

  She reached her hand into the pouch—the stones, in their leather wrapping, were hot to the touch! She drew the wrapping forth and emptied one of the stones into her hand to get a better look at it. The moment it was free of the leather, the crystal flashed a brilliant ray of purple light. The flash speared into the dark waters around the ship. Then the stone went dark and cooled down.

  “Oh, dooms and damnation!” Ususi spat. The crewman in the rigging rewarded her with a startled look. She ignored him.

  Unless it was her imagination, a faint violet radiance lingered in the sea where the light from the crystal had touched the water’s surface. But the radiance fell behind as the ship plowed forward.

  She threw the dark stone into the sea. She paused, grabbed the pouch that contained the remaining two Celestial Nadir amulets, and threw the whole thing in. She turned and rushed toward the prow, looking for Iahn.

  The vengeance taker was wrapped in a light blanket, lying under a stanchion. When she was still ten paces from him, Iahn slipped free of his roll and bounded up on his feet, so quickly that Ususi almost didn’t see him move.