Darkvision

by Bruce R Cordell

  Here and there, the sphere of brilliance surrounding Kiril dimmed, and lightless tendrils slid inward along invisible fractures. Another step forward and the sphere shrank to half its size. Undaunted, Kiril advanced.

  The roused dusk swallowed her.

  As if energized by enclosing Angul’s brilliance, the face of the black wall swelled. Zel, Warian, and even Prince Monolith fell back, but too slowly. All were engulfed.

  When the perimeter receded to its original position, the hall was empty. No evidence of intruders remained to mar the ancient stone floor of the Purple Palace.

  Ususi rolled over and over, impelled by a force with no substance. She spun through a screaming void of spiritual emptiness. How had she escaped the darkness during her last dream, when wakefulness had been denied her?

  Qari! Her sister had come into her dream, saving her. Would a memory of her sister offer aid now? She fastened upon the idea of Qari and tried to shout her name, though the use of her voice was denied her.

  A glimmer of cool, blue radiance broke upon her mind. It wasn’t true light—it seemed more like a species of understanding. Spiritual illumination, perhaps. In its glow, she grasped the vague, ill-defined connection that she and her twin sister shared since childhood, and retained still.

  Following the connection down its ill-defined, looping path, she found at its end a silhouette. It was Qari.

  Qari spoke. “Years have piled on years since last we talked, Ususi. I’m glad, even as this focal event of your life, and mine, overtakes us, that we have this brief moment to talk once more.” Her sister smiled and held out her hands.

  “What … are you here with me, in the darkness of Pandorym’s veil?” Ususi strode forward, her arms and legs suddenly resolved in Qari’s aura. Qari grasped Ususi’s hands. Warm and vital, her flesh seemed real.

  “In a way. My mind is with you—my percipience. My physical form, despite its faded claim on reality, remains in besieged Deep Imaskar, where the fires of Pandorym’s vengeance have breached the Great Seal. Slaughter walks the streets. Our chat must be short.”

  Too much information, too many implications—even the nature of their connection. Nausea threatened to overcome the wizard, the result of understanding her sister’s words. She had so many questions for Qari. “Your ‘faded claim’ on reality—what are you talking about? And the ‘focal point’ of our lives—you mean Pandorym?”

  Qari laughed, but sadly. “All these are connected. The dreams that plagued us since we were children were more than a presentiment of what you would one day face, and fail to overcome. You see, my very existence is a direct consequence of Pandorym’s meddling in its future, our past.”

  Ususi feared her sister had slipped into insanity. Or she had herself and merely dreamed all this. But she said, “Time is sacrosanct. No one may alter its flow, everyone knows this. The mage-researchers of the Arcanum spent enough time proving it …”

  “Mortal rules do not apply to beings that exist outside of the world, and so outside of time. Pandorym is such a creature. Even as it was caged, it saw ahead to the moment of its release. In that chance for freedom, it recognized a possibility that, along a minor timeline, one would be born who might find herself in the right place at the right time to stem its reemergence. That person was you.”

  Qari forestalled Ususi’s next question, speaking over her. “Hush, let me finish. Time is not so elastic for you and I.”

  Ususi reluctantly nodded.

  “Pandorym took steps to prevent you from overcoming it. It reached forward, imparting what influence it could, hoping to create deterrence enough to prevent she who would one day threaten its bid for freedom. But the mere act of its temporal reach forged two competing possibilities. In one case, it succeeded, and Ususi was born to dread the darkness. But every coin has two sides. Pandorym’s meddling also caused Qari to be born, whose congenital blindness limited her world, but gave her an ability to pierce any darkness and to see even where no light may ever shine.”

  “Two timelines? But we exist together—you are my sister!”

  “I am your twin to a greater degree than you have ever imagined. I am an alternate you.”

  “This is a dream! Or you are crazy. Or I am. Has darkness driven me insane with fear? How can you be an alternate version of me, yet have grown up with me in Deep Imaskar?”

  Qari cocked her head and said, “How could I not? But moments are precious right now. We’ve come to that crossroads—you must accept my gift. You must accept my percipience. With it, no darkness will ever blind you again.”

  “But you need it …”

  “Everyone in Deep Imaskar will be dead soon, and me with them, if you do not press forward now. If I give up my vision through the darkness, I may perish, true. But listen. Everything—hopes, worries, fears—all these pale in the face of death. Only that which is important remains.”

  Qari released Ususi’s hands and held hers up before Ususi’s face. She put her palms over the wizard’s eyes and said, “See, as I have seen.”

  At long last, Ususi saw again the high, hard celestial lights that haunted her days and nights since she nearly perished on the ship. Beneath their elysian clarity, Ususi’s perception would never again be impeded.

  Immersed in nothingness, Iahn’s consciousness slowly leached away. He had no limbs to flail, no voice to protest, and no magic to dispense. He was an insect in pitch, and soon he’d be extinguished.

  A touch jolted the vengeance taker. The single sensation was sufficient for him to find a focus. The sensation grew more pronounced. Something touched his open eyes. He blinked, or he thought he did. Yes … he was on his feet, moving in a daze over some hard surface, but he couldn’t see what.

  Despite his stubborn nature, he allowed himself to be guided forward, into a sudden, blinding light.

  Before him, in a broad hallway lit with Kiril’s blazing sword, stood the swordswoman, the elemental with a tiny dragonet perched on one shoulder, and Warian and his uncle. Ususi pushed him forward.

  Of the darkness, he saw no sign.

  Ahead, a bronze-colored iris stood partially dialed open, and additional light streamed through the crack.

  He turned to look at Ususi and blinked. Her eyes were like twin stars, blue-white and twinkling as if at some great distance.

  Warian said, “Thank you for saving us from that … that awful blot.” The young man’s voice was strained and his features pale, as were Zel’s, and probably the vengeance taker’s as well.

  The wizard responded as if to some different statement. “My uskura is lost.”

  “You pushed us clear of the darkness,” Warian insisted, waving behind him. No evidence of the veil of life-sucking night remained, except in memory.

  “I didn’t push us clear. I saw through the darkness and helped you all do the same. But at what cost, I wonder? My sister may have given up her special sight …” Ususi’s eyes, glittering cold and hard, drifted out of focus.

  “Your sister?” asked Iahn. “You have news of Deep Imaskar?”

  “Slaughter walks the streets, she said …”

  The bronze iris at the end of the hallway spun open. Beyond was a spacious, moon-bright hall, but a human figure just inside the opening partially blocked the view.

  An icy breeze flowed from the figure, and a black vapor streamed away from its body, tinged with violet light. Iahn recognized the aura of a Pandorym agent.

  The figure spoke in the vengeance taker’s native tongue. “Imaskari scions, if the dark won’t have you, I shall.”

  It was Shaddon. Before the figure could unleash its lashing ribbons of murderous darkness, the earth lord’s long arm delivered a terrific punch, smashing Shaddon back into the glaring white chamber beyond.

  Iahn rushed in.

  Monolith’s blow was mighty, and Shaddon’s form smashed against the far side of a great chamber. Many creatures moved about the edges of the room.

  He understood then why the chamber was called the weapons cache
. The vengeance taker’s eyes widened. He ran, aiming neither for Shaddon nor the clot of creatures milling through the chamber. He saw something that his training called out for him to seize for himself.

  Zel watched the naturally pale, dangerous vengeance taker charge ahead. Zel tightened his grip on the pickaxe and whispered, “So much for common sense.” Then Zel ran into the Imperial Weapons Cache.

  Others barreled ahead of him. The pallid foreigner had gone first, and the wizard woman dashed after her compatriot. The foul-mouthed elf with the burning sword was only a step behind her.

  Even his own nephew beat him through the door. Zel’s checks flushed, and he asserted, “I’m not afraid!”

  He yelped when a great stone hand grabbed him.

  The elemental lord pulled him back and turned him around, looking Zel in the eye. “Stay back, and remember what happens here today. And please guard my little friend.” The crystal dragonet on Prince Monolith’s shoulder hopped from the elemental to Zel. Zel was surprised to find that the creature weighed practically nothing.

  The earth lord turned and dashed after the others. The dragonet belled loud and long, but the sounds emerging from the chamber were earsplitting. Zel moved forward tentatively to watch, relieved and ashamed that he had an excuse to remain out of the conflict.

  The fabled Imaskaran Imperial Weapons Cache was essentially a fat, egg-shaped cavity seemingly wider than the tower’s dimension could contain. Ususi’s first impression was a cloud-swaddled sky, but the lines of the floor and curving walls and ceiling quickly resolved. Thousands of circles of every size were set into the floor. All were at least three or four feet in diameter, though many were much larger.

  The circles capped thousands of inset storage cylinders sunk below floor level. The capacity of the chamber’s thousands of hidden silos took away Ususi’s breath.

  The caps along the periphery of the great chamber were plain metallic bands, unadorned but for a simple symbol—sword blade, spear, bow, quiver, and so on. The wizard was no tactician, but she supposed there were enough of these mundanely-stamped silos to equip a small army with arms and ammunition, presuming each sunken locker contained what its stamp promised.

  Toward the middle, intricate mechanical locks adorned the caps. At the hub of the great chamber, elaborate warding glyphs of inlaid Celestial Nadir crystal inscribed the sunken storage cylinders. Hundreds of protective warding circles were inscribed across the tops of all the innermost silos, some layered over one another, forming a diagram of staggering complexity, not dissimilar to the designs inscribed on the Great Seal back in Deep Imaskar.

  But a great swath of the interlocking wards and circles was tangled and uneven. Here and there, cylinders stood raised from their compartments, their contents revealed. The wizard saw glittering black swords, slender steel wands, smooth-stocked crossbows, glassy darts filled with phosphorescent pink liquid, scarlet goggles, beetle-black gauntlets, dragonfly blades like the one Iahn carried, and other equipment that reminded Ususi of scuttling insect limbs and carapaces. But most disturbing were the raised cylinders that resembled sarcophagi more than equipment chests.

  The sarcophagi were faced with glass. Creatures hung within, in a pale green briny solution, preserved against the long, slow grind of time. Ususi saw trolls behind the glass windows, demonic hoof-footed humanoids, human-sized eggs the color of flesh, bony shadow efts, mantis-headed insectoids, human-dragon hybrids, and at least one tentacle-faced humanoid with soulless white eyes frozen open in its captivity: a mind flayer of ancient vintage.

  Several dozen unjacketed canisters yawned, open and drained. The creatures once contained therein, clustered near the room’s center, were decanted and active. Thankfully, the wizard saw no mind flayer lords.

  Those freed were bad enough. Some were monstrosities she had faced in the caverns below the world. A few she knew through her studies. She recognized trolls, a dozen or more mantis-men. One figure towered over all the others, human in shape, but at least twenty paces tall! This giant’s skin was light green, as were its eyes and glittering hair, though it bore a purple crystal on its chest. A storm lord? Here was Shaddon, too, staggering back to his feet, though he seemed damaged from Monolith’s bold strike. Her arcane studies were unable to identify all of the monsters.

  She spotted a free shadow eft! She shuddered, remembering again the sea passage across the Golden Water.

  Each of the loosed creatures bore a violet-flaring Celestial Nadir crystal, some on cords, others pierced directly into loathsome flesh.

  The cluster of Pandorym-controlled monsters stood poised and dangerous, guarding that which lay at the cache’s center.

  The top edge of a canister ten paces in diameter peeked just above the floor’s surface, like a dais. The canister was only partially unjacketed from its silo. Ususi saw that the mechanical locks that once kept the container secured were only partly engaged. Worse, several lines of protection inlaid with Celestial Nadir crystal across the canister’s lid were chipped and broken. The canister wasn’t entirely free of its storage silo, and the bulk of it still languished in its cavity.

  But for the thing sealed within, the slender gap in its cage was enough.

  A whirling scab of lightlessness, as perfectly black as Ususi’s most terrifying childhood dream of the dark, streamed from the narrow gap in the floor. The darkness hovered, straining and pulling, but didn’t move more than a few feet from the canister from which it emerged, as if tethered.

  Ususi called upon her borrowed percipience and gazed into the dark.

  Pandorym was there.

  If not in body, at least in purpose. It saw her and saw that its dark hid no secrets from her. In unison, every servitor intoned, “I require the keystone. Relinquish it, and I may spare your home.”

  Ususi’s percipience pierced even to the center of Pandorym’s darkness. There, a circular gateway yawned, suspended several feet in the air. Ususi gasped when she recognized the streets of Deep Imaskar visible through the opening. The wide avenues, the tenement pillars, library spires … burning. Silhouetted in the flames, dark creatures moved to and fro, limned with violet malevolence.

  The wizard of Deep Imaskar began uttering her most potent spells, suspecting they wouldn’t be enough.

  Kiril advanced into the milk white chamber. Angul burned in her grip. A gruesome multitude opposed her, each suffused with a trickle of power from the demi-entity Pandorym. To her left, the young man with the crystal arm matched her stride, his arm shining with its own light.

  The blade spoke in her mind. These creatures, and their master, are kin to the horrors we are pledged to destroy.

  The swordswoman ground her teeth and took a practice swipe with the Cerulean Blade. Angul scattered radiant fire in his arc.

  The blade instructed her. Whether they are abolethic horrors or evil unaligned, here lie abominations, and thus their existence is forfeit.

  The sword’s anger burned brighter, and the certitude of his purpose steeled Kiril’s posture. More powerful than any drunken dream or induced high, Angul engulfed her in absolute conviction. She didn’t understand Pandorym’s origin, but with Angul’s influence pounding through her, she knew beyond certainty that it and its servitors deserved no mercy, nor quarter, nor even promise of redemption.

  Kiril smiled, advancing.

  Running into the chamber, Warian quickly evaluated what opposed them. Each bore the element of the Datharathis’ claim to fame—the damned crystal. Here was where Shaddon’s quest for wealth had taken him, and despite every warning, here he’d allowed his desire for power to subvert his reason. This damned chamber was where Warian’s grandfather had given up his soul.

  The Imaskari wizard, chanting and gesticulating, stood to Warian’s left. Farther in and ahead of her, the vengeance taker jerked an ancient weapon from a container. Nearing Warian on his right, the elf with the burning blade advanced. A glance back showed him the earth elemental at the rear. He saw Zel peeking from around the bronze iris.
Good. He didn’t want to see any more of his family … fall. His eyes welled with moisture.

  Time to make Eined’s death mean something!

  He summoned the full power of his arm and walked stride for stride with Kiril and her Cerulean Blade toward the room’s center.

  Iahn reached an open canister. He crouched behind the stumplike protrusion, hiding from his adversaries, as he studied several pearl-stocked crossbows that hung within. He yanked the nearest from its mount and marveled. As finely fashioned as his other crossbow had been, before he’d lost it during the sea passage, this one was superior. Even more thrilling, the lower section of the unjacketed container held hundreds of bolt clips, each bolt lightly runed with magical vigor. He snatched a clip and worked the crank to load the crossbow. Smooth as silk. If he …

  A four-armed, human-sized insectoid with a mantis head hopped into view from around the canister. With its amulet shining malevolently on its chest, it directed a ribbon of darkness at Iahn.

  The vengeance taker screamed a syllable of warding, too late, and the ribbon found him. Pain seared his right leg. Iahn sighted along the crossbow at the creature’s amulet and pulled the trigger.

  When the bolt struck the crystal, bolt and amulet were vaporized. The insectoid squealed and dropped, its legs and too many arms flailing madly before losing animation forever.

  The vengeance taker allowed himself a nod of self-congratulation as he loaded another bolt.

  Prince Monolith charged into the fray. His great strides propelled him past his slowly advancing smaller allies, through the forestlike maze of storage cylinders. Two mantis-men launched themselves at his legs, but he bowled through them without stopping, despite their speed and crystal-given strength.

  The earth lord ran at the emerald-skinned giant. It was the creature most likely to match its strength against his own elemental power. The prince had always wanted to test his strength against a storm …