Don Bassinghtwaite - The Binding Stone

"Can you feel it?" Natrac whispered. "There's been murder here."

"More than murder, I think," muttered Geth. There was another corridor. They moved down it cautiously.

Natrac heard the whispers first. Geth felt him stiffen and turned to glance at him. The half-orc touched his hunda stick to an ear. Geth cocked his head and listened. After a moment, he heard the whispers, too. They were like a gentle wind blowing through the forest, each rustling leaf creating its own quiet sound. Leaves didn't sound so frightened or desperate, though.

Most of the whispers were the grunting, snuffling sounds of Orc. Mixed in among them were hints of another, harsher language-Goblin, Geth guessed. He looked Natrac. "Can you make out what they're saying?"

"They're begging for release," the half-orc said, his voice shaking. "They're in pain. They want to die." He pressed his lips together. "I don't hear any human voices."

"There wouldn't be," Geth pointed out. "There were no humans around to witness the Daelkyr War."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something shift in the shadows. He held back the urge to leap toward it and grabbed Natrac's arm. "Keep moving," he said tightly. The half-orc obeyed without question, though Geth could see his eyes darting around as they hastened on.

The whispers stayed with them. So did the shapes in the shadows, except that soon they weren't just in the shadows anymore. Geth staggered to a sudden stop as a pale orc, all color leached out of it, seemed to flow out of the very stones of the wall-he could see the corridor ahead through the filmy substance of its body. The orc's mouth moved in a pleading whisper and it reached out to Geth. Or tried to. Its hazy arms ended in ragged stumps, hacked off at the elbow.

"Tiger's blood!" choked Geth. He grabbed for Natrac, but the half-orc seemed frozen. Geth twisted around.

There were more phantoms emerging from the walls and shadows, rising from the floor and gliding down through the ceiling. There were bulky orcs and lean hobgoblins, scrawny goblins, and even hulking bugbears. Some looked almost as old as Batul. Others were little more than children. All of them were whispering. All of them had looks of horror and desperation on their faces.

All of them held out the stumps of arms and the stubs of legs. Some were missing fingers, some feet, others whole limbs. Many had been disfigured in other ways as well, their ears or noses or lips or eyes torn away, their bodies flayed and gouged. Natrac was staring at all of them in stunned numbness.

"Jegez," he croaked, his eyes wide. He stretched out his right arm, holding up his own blunt wrist. The phantoms' whispers rose and they pressed forward as if welcoming their kin.

Geth snarled at them, trying to push back. It was like grabbing a broken egg-he could feel the phantoms' insubstantial flesh, but not hold it. He seized a sharp-toothed hobgoblin by the neck and thrust it away from him for an instant. Even as he thrust, though, his fingers sank into the phantom, then through it. The hobgoblin clutched at him with pleading in its eyes. Geth jerked backward, plunging through several other phantoms and slamming into the floor.

"Geth!" called Natrac from the middle of a growing mass of colorless, tormented figures. The half-orc was beginning to look frightened. "Geth! Help me!"

Baring his teeth, Geth rolled back to his feet and lunged into the crowd, sweeping his hands through ghostly flesh until he grabbed something solid. Natrac's arm. He hauled the half-orc toward him, batting and growling at the phantoms as they tried to follow. Natrac was pale and stumbling, but Geth dragged him on down the corridor. "Move!" he urged. "We can't hurt them, but they can't hurt us either. We can get through this!"

"I don't know if we can," gasped Natrac as a new noise, a scraping noise, began to rise against the desperate whispers. "Look!" He flung out an arm. Geth turned from the phantoms behind them to look ahead-and froze.

Creeping along the floor and across the walls of the corridor was a swarm of amputated limbs: feet and hands, legs and arms. They scuttled on fingers and writhed like snakes.

The scraping noise was the sound of the bloody razors and blades that many of the creeping limbs clutched between gnarled fingers and overlong toes, dragging the metal against the stone of the corridor as they crawled.

A growl rumbled in Geth's throat. "Tiger, Wolf, and Rat!" His fingers closed tight around his hunda. The weapon was no use against the phantoms, but if the creeping limbs were solid enough to carry blades, he prayed that they were solid enough to take a blow.

Whether it would kill them, that was something else.

"Dol Dorn's mighty fist," spat Natrac. "What I wouldn't give to have a wizard or one of those druids here right now!" He scrambled to his feet and put his back against Geth's. "Singe's or Dandra's fire would be very good, but I'd even take Vennet's wind if he could blow those things away!"

Desperation sparked an idea in Geth's head. "Grandmother Wolf guide me," he gasped-and dropped the hunda stick to tear at the pouch at his side. Natrac glanced down as he ripped frantically at the knotted drawstrings.

"Sovereign Host!" the half-orc choked, understanding flashing instantly in his eyes. "You're not going to-"

Geth looked at him as the knots parted and the pouch gaped open. "You know what to do if you have to," he said.

He glanced up and down the corridor as the phantoms and their severed limbs closed on them, then he squeezed his eyes shut, plunged his right hand into the pouch, and seized Dandra's psicrystal.

Dandra's scream brought Singe flailing out of sleep-and, all around them, the young hunters of the Bonetree clan leaping to their feet with their weapons drawn. Singe flung himself at Dandra. The kalashtar was once again stiff, her eyes open and staring to the west, but this time her body was trembling.

"Relax!" he gasped at her, "Relax!"

A shadow fell over him. He glanced up. It was Ashi, her sword drawn, but Medala was leaping forward as well, Dah'mir pacing after her.

"What is this?" Medala said. "What's wrong with her?"

"Maybe she had a bad dream," Ashi said tightly.

"Kalashtar don't dream!" spat Medala. A chime rang in Singe's head and pain lanced through him. Ashi was staggering as well, clutching at her head. The wizard clung to Dandra desperately.

Twelve moons, he thought through the dazing agony, what was Geth doing with that psicrystal?

Tetkashtai swept into Geth like a wildfire. She burned within him, her presence huge and powerful. When Dandra had first shown Tetkashtai to him and Singe, it had been like standing in a yellow-green mist. Having Tetkashtai actually within him was more akin to standing inside a raging, wailing inferno.

If this was what the orc in Fat Tusk had experienced, Geth realized, it was small wonder he had succumbed so quickly to Tetkashtai's possession! At least he knew what he was dealing with. Straining to focus all of his concentration on the presence, he threw out a single, silent shout. Tetkashtai!

You! Tetkashtai screamed back. Her voice was like thunder. A deluge of images blasted through him, eerie memories of him as seen through someone else's eyes. Geth staggered under the weight of Tetkashtai's attention. How did Dandra cope with this?

Tetkashtai ripped the thought out of him. Even if she's nothing more than a rogue psicrystal, the presence howled, Dandra's mind is more advanced than yours and she occupies a kalashtar's body-one that I will reclaim!

You can claim it later, Geth shouted at her, you have something else to worry about first! His words came out like a child's whine, overwhelmed by Tetkashtai's forceful presence. He abandoned words and flung a memory at her, his last glimpse of the phantoms and the creeping limbs that menaced him and Natrac.