Don Bassingthwaite - The Binding Stone

She had been and always would be.

Light shone on the walls of the laboratory. Orange light, the glow of a proper flame, not the blue-green light of Dah’mir’s strange torches. Dandra heard the whisper of quiet footsteps, heard someone murmur her name. The light came closer. It moved around the table and Ashi stepped into Dandra’s field of vision. The big hunter carried a naked blade and a stick of wood that had burned through nearly half of its length. Dandra saw her spear strapped across her back. Ashi’s face was pale, but strangely resolved. She moved back and Dandra felt the straps that bound her body being released. The hunter returned to her vision, bending down to look into her eyes.

“Dandra?” she asked again. Ashi’s eyes flicked to the spindly device that the illithids had slid down over her head. She set down her sword and reached up to tug the device away.

Thought returned to fill Dandra’s head with a rush of demands and concerns, but pure determination cut through all of them. She reached for her powers with an ease like nothing she’d known before and spun out a rippling web of vayhatana .

Ashi slammed back hard against the ground. She struggled desperately as Dandra sat up and glared down at her. “Let me go!” she spat. “I’m here to-”

Dandra squatted down and slapped her. “You’re here to what?” she snapped. “Hunt me? I’m already here. Torment me? Let’s wait for the mind flayers to come back. Murder my friends? I think Dah’mir’s already done that!”

“No, you stupid outclanner!” snarled Ashi. “I’m here to rescue you!”

“Really? Why would you do that?” Dandra narrowed her eyes in concentration and Ashi’s body rose from the floor, flying through the air to slam against the wall of the laboratory. The big woman grunted in pain. She blinked and focused her eyes on Dandra.

“I’d do it because Singe asked me to!” Ashi said. “While you were under Dah’mir’s power, Singe helped me understand things about myself. I’m leaving the Bonetree clan. It was too late for me to save him, but-”

“Save him?”

Dandra’s concentration faltered. The invisible bonds that held Ashi faded. Dandra reached to summon up the vayhatana again-until she realized that Ashi, although standing free, hadn’t moved. The hunter looked at her, waiting.

“I hid that I knew you weren’t Tetkashtai all the way from Zarash’ak,” she said after a moment. “I’m sorry for what I did to you, Dandra. Singe has shown me that Dah’mir isn’t what I thought he was. I want a new life and if you’ll let me, I’ll start it by making things right with you.”

Dandra stared at her. “I …”

“Dandra,” Ashi pleaded, “why else would I betray Dah’mir?”

The kalashtar clenched her teeth. “Start with this, then,” she said. “You said it’s too late to save Singe. Save him from what?”

“He’s fighting Hruucan,” Ashi answered. “Hruucan demanded it in revenge for the scars Singe inflicted on him.” She grimaced. “He won’t kill Singe-Dah’mir won’t let him-but he’ll cripple him. The Bonetree and all the children of Khyber are watching the fight. That’s why I was able to get in here. The mound’s empty!”

“It’s empty because Dah’mir’s preparing an ambush,” Dandra told her. “Geth survived Dah’mir’s attack in Zarash’ak and now he’s bringing an orc raid here to rescue Singe and I. They’re already in Bonetree territory but they’re walking into a trap.”

Ashi drew a sharp breath and her fists tightened. “There was no sign of a raid or an ambush laid when I entered the mound-but I heard fighting as I followed the tunnels. I thought it was some echo or ghost.”

Dandra’s throat tightened. “Light of il-Yannah.” It had started. “How quickly can you get me back to the surface?”

“I marked the way.” Ashi reached behind her back and pulled Dandra’s spear free of a harness. “I kept it,” she said. “A trophy at first, but now …” She held out the weapon.

Dandra took it. “Thank you,” she said. Holding the spear brought some of her determination back to her. She looked around Dah’mir’s laboratory, at the strange device with the blue-black shard in its heart, at Virikhad’s violet crystal. Dandra walked over to the crystal and held her hand above it. She could feel the faint spark of Tetkashtai’s old lover inside and for a moment a part of her itched to take up the crystal and make a connection with him. At the same time, though, she knew what even a short imprisonment had done to Tetkashtai and Medala. Virikhad had been locked inside his crystal without access to a body for far longer than either of them ever had. There was no telling how far he had fallen in his desperation.

“Dandra?” asked Ashi. She stood at the door of the laboratory.

“One moment.” Dandra lifted her hand. No matter what his mental state might be, she couldn’t leave Virikhad here. Steeling herself, she went over to the kalashtar’s withered body and tugged a pouch from his belt, then used the head of her spear to tap the violet crystal into it. She looked up at the Dah’mir’s strange device again.

She had tricked Tetkashtai into agreeing to return to Zarash’ak by hinting that perhaps there was a way to undo what Dah’mir had done to them. Now she was almost certain that there wasn’t. She and Tetkashtai were trapped as surely as Virikhad. Why had Dah’mir created such a terrible device? She might still be able to find a way to force the truth from the green-eyed man, but there was one thing she was certain of-the device should never have existed.

She didn’t have the strength or the time to destroy it, but maybe there was something she could do. Focusing her concentration on the dragonshard at the device’s center, she spun vayhatana around it and wrenched the shard free of the brass and crystal that surrounded it. The laboratory had a high ceiling. Dandra lifted the shard all the way up-then brought it crashing down as hard as she could.

It hit the floor of the laboratory with a shattering impact that echoed through the chamber. Dandra stepped forward and examined the deep crack that now ran through its heart with a fierce satisfaction. Ashi stepped up beside her to stare down in amazement.

“Now,” said Dandra, turning away from the ruined shard. “We can go.”

Singe hurt. When Hruucan’s tendrils had burrowed into him in Bull Hollow, it had seemed like the greatest agony of his life. When Medala’s powers had wracked him, he had thought that was a threshold of suffering. But Hruucan’s tendrils had only dug into his skin and Medala’s powers, for all that they felt real enough, had only acted upon his mind. Now Singe really hurt.

He hit the ground again. As he struggled for breath, Hruucan’s tentacles wrapped around his right calf and ripped through the fabric of his trousers to expose the soft flesh underneath. They dug in, making him scream-then they pulled, wrenching on his entire leg so hard that his scream broke. The crowd cheered. Singe kicked feebly at the tentacles with his free leg and Hruucan released him. For the moment.

The magical armor he had conjured was tough, but not impenetrable. Not all of the dolgaunt’s blows pierced its protection, but more than enough had. His arms and legs were blistered from Hruucan’s touch. His ribcage was sore and whenever he breathed deep a sharp pain burst inside him. His sides hurt where Hruucan’s blows had driven deep to bruise tender organs. All of his joints ached. His left shoulder had been dislocated-then cruelly popped back into place. One eye was swollen badly, he could taste dust mingling with blood on his lips, and all he could hear out of one ear was a loud ringing.