Darkvision

by Bruce R Cordell

  “You would be correct, of course—however, if any but an Imaskari attempts to answer the riddle, the walls of this room will close down upon us and squeeze us dead. Or so promise these glyphs.” The wizard pointed to the upper right corner of the wall at an inscription that remained meaningless to Warian.

  “Oh. A trap within a trap.”

  “How efficient,” said the vengeance taker.

  Warian nodded and said, “Maybe I’d better not even read it. Zel, you look away, too.”

  Zel shrugged and turned away, as did Warian. Ususi read.

  “The Thirty-Eighth Law of Veracity holds that a magical elixir can never be entirely drunk. A residue always remains behind. A miser mage who collects empty elixir vials can make a new elixir to drink from the residue of every five empty vials found. When he has collected twenty-five elixir vials, how many new elixirs will he be able to drink?”

  Warian’s uncle guffawed. “Ridiculously easy! Twenty-five vials can be arranged into five groups—so the elixir-grubbing mage could drink five more potions.”

  Warian flinched and whispered, “Only an Imaskari can answer!”

  “Don’t worry, Warian,” said Ususi. “To formally answer this riddle, the changeable script now instructs me to answer aloud in the language of Imaskar.”

  “Say five, then,” Zel said, rubbing his hands in anticipation.

  “No,” interrupted the vengeance taker. “Five is incorrect.”

  Ususi looked at Iahn. “Why so? Seems straightforward enough.”

  “That should be your first warning—too straightforward. A real riddle hides an answer in an answer. Otherwise, it’s only a child’s calculation. But a riddle has been posed, because the true answer is six, not five.”

  Zel said, “How do you figure?”

  “The mage makes five new elixirs from the twenty-five empties he has, and after he drinks them, he has five more empties left for one more elixir. Thus the answer is six.”

  “Seems a little slippery.”

  Warian nudged Zel and said in an undertone, “Reminds me of the kind of merchant deals I’ve seen you put together.”

  “Fair enough,” Zel allowed.

  Ususi stiffened and said a word in a language Warian didn’t know.

  The cool blue radiance of the glyphs heated, transforming into an angry, scathing red. The sound of stone grating on stone vibrated up through Warian’s feet.

  “It was five!” crowed Zel. He was thrown to the ground when the floor gave a great lurch.

  Doom bellowed a fell promise as stone scraped over stone. The walls began to close in.

  “No, it was six,” asserted Iahn, his voice calm as he began to trace his hands through a constellation of arcane movements.

  The wizard, looking stunned, said, “The trap triggered with my answer. The choice was correct. Am I not Imaskari enough to qualify as one of the ancients? Has the bloodline diverged so widely?”

  Warian concentrated, and his arm flared with violet potential. He strode toward one of the approaching walls and landed a terrific hammer fist. A great shower of stones exploded from the wall, but the stone was so thick that it actually absorbed little of the blow. The greater part of the force rebounded into Warian’s prosthesis. The impact was so potent, it jolted him out of his Celestial Nadir mastery. He fell to his knees. Tiny points of light prickled his vision, and nausea grasped at his stomach. The light in his arm went out.

  Iahn stepped forward, snatched Ususi around the waist with one free arm, and finished his somatic gesture with the other. When nothing happened, he noted, “Magical escape is blocked.”

  Zel tried to force his pickaxe blade into the advancing seam where an approaching wall met the floor. “The crack’s too small—I can’t get any purchase!” he yelped.

  The wizard conquered her shock and yelled, “Stand next to me. Quickly!” Without waiting for Warian or Zel to comply, she rushed through a spell, sputtering over some of the syllables. The Vaelanites stumbled toward her.

  On a rising note, Ususi finished speaking, making a warding, circular motion with her hand above her head. Marble crystallized from the air, encasing the four delvers in a dome of solid stone. The harsh, scarlet light was gone, and Ususi’s free-flying light bounced around the too-small enclosure. The sound of the approaching walls diminished, but did not cease.

  “This will protect us?” asked Zel.

  “I hope so. Long enough for the trap to reset …”

  Either Ususi’s summoned wall would block the crushing walls, or it wouldn’t. Warian whispered, “Come on, come on,” over and over, but he wasn’t sure who he was urging to what end.

  The air splintered with the sound of the advancing walls’ contact with the marble dome.

  “It’s holding!” yelled Zel.

  A deep whine became audible, then began to ascend in pitch.

  “The walls still attempt to crush us,” Ususi said.

  A hairline crack appeared on the dome’s surface and raced a jagged path down one side. Another appeared, then another. The whine was becoming the shriek of a harpy, and a fine dust of disintegrating stone began to rain down inside the dome.

  “The dome is failing,” said Iahn.

  “Thanks for the news!” yelled Zel, his eyes darting around the tiny space, looking for some miraculous opportunity.

  But there was no escape.

  The whine, threatening to rise in pitch beyond Warian’s hearing, stuttered. The floor shook with the report of something like distant thunder. The whine regained its strength and ratcheted upward again. Another detonation rattled through the dome, closer than before. A basso succession of sounds penetrated the damaged dome. The new noises almost resembled speech in their regularity and cadence.

  “Is someone out there?” Warian asked. “That sounded like someone speaking!”

  Needing no further encouragement, Zel yelled at the top of his lungs, “Hey! We’re in here! Help!”

  With one final boom, the whine failed completely. The cracks in the protective marble dome ceased multiplying. The deep-pitched noises sounded again, and comprehension dawned on Warian. He heard, “… ruined the crushing plates. Something is caught inside.”

  Another voice, this one much harder to hear through the stone, yelled, “Blast, blood, and rot! What do you care? It’s probably another crystal puppet.”

  The first voice said, “I can travel as easily through the stone of the structure as through the passageways in between. If you feel that my choices are not perfect, perhaps you should consider …”

  Ususi pointed to the dome, and with a flash and a pop, it disappeared.

  Standing over them, amidst the rubble of shattered walls, was a massive animate sculpture. The creature was like a man made of fused boulders. It wore, or more accurately, sprouted from its head, a crown of uncut rubies and diamonds. It stood nearly three times Zell’s height, the tallest of the group.

  The silhouette of a mail-clad elf looked down at them from the lip of the pit. This one said, “Now, look! I told you to ignore it, but you had to mess with it. Just like before!”

  A tiny creature flew down into the pit to alight on the shoulder of the great earthen being. Warian realized it was another animate sculpture, this one like a tiny dragon carved of reddish glass. It opened its mouth and pealed a series of tiny, bell-like chirps. The sound was reminiscent of laughter.

  Ususi stepped toward the great earthen entity and said in Common, “Greetings. I am Ususi Manaallin. Thank you for disrupting these encroaching walls. We would have been crushed. We are in your debt. But who are you? You don’t seem to be in thrall to Pandorym …”

  Warian tensed.

  “I am Prince Monolith. I am in no one’s thrall. The question is, what are you doing in this ancient tower of malignancy?” Iahn moved as quickly as a snake to stand protectively next to Ususi, one hand on his dragonfly blade, still sheathed.

  Ususi replied, “That was my question for you. We are here because this structure was buil
t by my ancestors.”

  The figure from above yelled, “So this is all your fault!” Warian now recognized the one above to be a woman, though he’d never seen an elf, male or female, quite so broad of forearm and rough of voice and manner.

  “What blame do you place on us?” inquired Iahn, his voice ice. Warian judged the vengeance taker was only a jibe or two away from launching a physical attack against the newcomers.

  The elf pointed at Ususi. “She just said your ancestors built this place. You must be Imaskari, hiding all these centuries when everyone thought you were dead. I’ve spent the better part of two months tracking down this tower because of the fell influence it released into the earth! Did you release it? My friend Thormud lies sorely wounded, or dead, because if it!”

  Iahn bristled, but Ususi said, “Pandorym is what we call the evil you speak of. It is even now using the greater part of its strength to destroy my homeland, and may have already done so. We have not released it. We are here to destroy it.”

  His face suddenly hot, Warian interjected, “My sister died to bring these opponents of Pandorym here! Don’t suggest they’re in league with the master of this tower, or you dishonor Eined’s name!”

  The elemental called Monolith raised both of its giant hands, palms outward, and said, “You are not of this tower, I sense, but are newly come to it, like us. I have saved your lives, I think, from these crushing walls. That should prove our good intentions. For now, my friend and I will have to trust yours. Perhaps we should join our strength to overcome this Pandorym?”

  “You believe them?” snorted the elf woman. “I want to know who released Pandorym if these relics of the empire didn’t do it.” She glared at Ususi.

  “It was my grandfather,” said Warian. “Shaddon Datharathi. He found his way into a forbidden plane where this tower, until recently, slept through the centuries. Greed drove him. We’re here to help put right his mistake.”

  “Sounds good enough for a trial partnership,” interjected Monolith. “What do you say, descendents of Imaskar?”

  Ususi considered, nodded, and said, “Help us out of this pit, and we’ll compare strategies.”

  Another set of circling stairs. It wasn’t far now. The Imperial Weapons Cache was ahead. And, presumably, Pandorym.

  The stained corridors, translucent stairs, sealed chambers, and dozens of fascinating but ultimately unimportant features of the Purple Palace were behind them. As were the most vicious protests of the elf woman who called herself Kiril. She’d finally accepted Prince Monolith’s opinion, but distrust still lay openly across her face whenever Ususi looked back.

  Of course, Iahn wasn’t much better. Because Ususi was of his lineage and knew something of his ways, the wizard saw the vengeance taker’s behavior for what it was. She could see Iahn’s distrust in the way he carried himself, how he kept his hand always ready on the hilt of his weapon, and how he consistently checked the behavior of the elf and elemental as they traversed the dark corridors of the tower. He was on knife-edge alert, ready to assassinate the rough-speaking elf and at least damage the elemental lord at the first hint of betrayal. To everyone else, he probably seemed stiff and unfriendly.

  The two Vaelanites were likewise quiet, or perhaps merely tired, and at the very least, emotionally drained. The one with the prosthesis was running on willpower alone. Ususi hoped the slow walk would help renew the young man’s energy. Iahn had offered him some morsels from his pack to keep his strength up. Warian’s facility with his arm could prove pivotal in dealing with Pandorym. His sister’s death colored all Warian’s utterances, or lack thereof. Ususi knew she would suffer the same way if Qari were to come to harm. Perhaps Ususi’s sister was in danger even now, back in Deep Imaskar. If only she could see what was happening there!

  But dealing with Pandorym in the palace was the quickest, surest method of stopping the entity’s forces … she fervently hoped. No. No, she knew her course was the right one, but would they be quick enough? Would they even be successful? It was all she could do to force herself ahead instead of back to the gate into the Celestial Nadir, and from there directly back to the foot of the Great Seal, using her keystone to forge a way.

  “Explain again what this Pandorym is, and what your great-to-the-gills grandparents did to anger it,” insisted the hard voice of the elf swordswoman, continuing a conversation Ususi thought was complete.

  Ususi took a deep breath and said, “It is an entity too powerful to be controlled or even destroyed. The ancient Imaskari were under siege from their slaves’ avenging deities. They were desperate. A powerful Imaskaran imperial faction lured Pandorym from a distant dimension beyond the local cosmology. In a fashion I do not understand, they caged Pandorym and threatened its release in this world as a way to dissuade the gods from destroying the Imaskari Empire. Apparently, the threat wasn’t taken seriously, or the Imaskari were destroyed before their threat was issued. Either way, Pandorym remained forgotten and confined for millennia. Until miners from Vaelan found a gate into the Celestial Nadir, found the palace, and partially released Pandorym. Pandorym, once released, dropped the palace back into the world, onto its original foundation.”

  “These miners …” began Kiril, but the wizard snapped up a hand to deflect the elf’s question. Ususi wasn’t about to reveal the relationship between Warian, Zel, and Datharathi Minerals to this revenge-obsessed elf warrior, especially one who carried a blade of considerable potency. Ususi’s magicsensitive eyes watered whenever she looked directly at it.

  The wizard said, “What’s important now is to bind Pandorym anew into whatever cage it slipped from. The fact that we still walk freely in these halls should be assurance enough that it has reclaimed only a fraction of its potential power.”

  Kiril replied, “Sounds like a familiar tale. I know something of binding wickedness.”

  “Really? What?” asked Zel.

  “Let’s just say that well-meaning accomplishments rarely go unpunished.”

  Zel waited for more, but seemed unwilling to press. Kiril lapsed back into silence.

  They curved around another bend in the corridor and faced darkness.

  Ususi’s hand went to her mouth. “No …”

  Night blocked the passage ahead.

  So complete was the blackness that the magical radiance of Ususi’s orb dimmed as its farthest rays fell into the dark chasm. A cold breeze cooled her flesh, and the howl of a distant wind conjured the image of desolation. Shadows rippled, and tendrils of darkness emerged, dissolved, and reappeared, as if attempting to cross the intervening space and pull all of them into its insatiable void.

  “I dreamed … I have dreamed this!” the wizard insisted.

  She backed up. Iahn’s sudden hands upon her shoulders turned her about so she faced away from the unnerving abyss. “What do you see?” he asked, his tone conveying worry, even if his eyes retained their usual pristine clarity. “Is it more than an enchantment of shadow?”

  She croaked, cleared her throat, and tried to speak. “It … it is something I’ve faced in my dreams for … more years than I can name.” She stole another peek at the apparition at her back and shuddered. “It’s my nightmare, here now, alive in the world.”

  “How can that be?” demanded Kiril. The swordswoman pushed forward to stand alongside Iahn. She was as tall as the taker, and perhaps broader of shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” Ususi responded. But she did know. It was the doom she and her sister Qari had shared since they were children. They would one day face darkness, irredeemable and absolute.

  And here it was.

  “Ususi, we must press forward if we are to breach the weapons cache,” Iahn said, taking one of her hands in both of his own. “Dissolve this magical gloom and reveal the threat Pandorym truly poses. Are you truly so afraid of the dark?”

  “It’s not the dark—it’s what the darkness hides!” she yelled in the vengeance taker’s face. But as she spoke, she wondered if it were true. Her lifelong nightmar
es had conditioned her to quail in the face of utter gloom. Pandorym’s mind and essence were things of darkness made manifest, and it blocked her way forward.

  She took a deep breath, fighting to impose calm. She could flee, true, and let Deep Imaskar fall by allowing Pandorym to go unopposed. Or she could deal with the murk that blocked their way. It couldn’t hurt to try to dissolve the gloom in greater light, could it?

  Ususi reached up and tapped the jewel that hovered overhead, muttering encouraging thaunemes of amplification. Responding to her magical plea, the illumination of her orb waxed.

  Ususi swiveled to face her nemesis. Radiance poured from her free-floating light, meeting the darkness like an ocean wave meets a rocky coast. The gloom splintered and fell back … then drank down the light entirely.

  The distant wind suddenly screamed in Ususi’s ear, and the darkness pounced.

  Light guttered and failed. Ususi’s voice choked up, and her limbs were swaddled in oblivion. Her lifelong nightmare was back, this time all too real. The darkness, after these long, empty years, finally got her.

  When the wizard was snatched away, Iahn yelled “Ususi!” and plunged into the blackness.

  Warian moved forward, but his uncle held him back. “What can you smash if you can’t see?”

  The elemental lord thundered at the swordswoman, “It obeys the rules of darkness, I deem, even if it is possessed of something more nefarious. Burn it away with Angul!”

  Kiril’s hand went for the lesser blade she carried on her belt.

  Monolith cried, “It must be Angul. No time for half-measures!” The elf’s hand wavered, then diverted to Angul’s sheath.

  Kiril pulled Angul forth and gasped. Runes on the unclothed blade burned with blinding intensity and blue flame. The advancing margin of darkness reversed itself. With a posture forged from blade-given surety, the elf stepped forward a pace, then two. The darkness roiled and flailed against the perimeter of Angul’s glow, and Kiril moved forward another step.