Don Bassinghtwaite - The Binding Stone

The green-eyed man's smile didn't falter at all. "I don't think so!" he said. "Breff?"

The hunter wrenched at him hard. Ashi, Singe realized, had been gentle with him. Breff dragged him off his feet. Singe twisted his head around as he stumbled after the hunter and managed to catch one last look at Dandra.

Dah'mir and Medala were leading her away into the mound with Hruucan walking behind them.

The journey, like the one before, had passed in a blur, as if Dandra stood still while everyone and everything sped by around her. There had been only two constants in that crazy rush. She was one. The other was Dah'mir, the bridge between her and the madness around her, the center of her world.

Was the blur worse, some small part of her had thought, because she was on her own this time? She didn't have Tetkashtai to guide her-one of her last lucid memories was the struggle with Ashi, the shock as Tetkashtai was torn from her, a glimpse of Geth catching the crystal. Her powers had vanished with Tetkashtai.

Then Dah'mir's presence had washed over her. Dandra was dimly aware that Geth was no longer part of the rush around her, though she couldn't recall why. Singe was there, however. Medalashana, too, though the gray-haired kalashtar called herself something else now. She was simply Medala, as if she had rejected her kalashtar heritage.

There were two moments on the journey that Dandra remembered, two moments when the world around her slowed down and she rose like a swimmer to the surface of Dah'mir's encompassing presence. The first came like a shock, abrupt and unexpected. There had been a spark on the horizon of her mind, familiar yet distant. "Tetkashtai!" she'd gasped. There had been a sense of confusion and a shook, the feel of an unfamiliar mind, a glimpse of savage orcs around a blazing fire, of Geth seizing her… but the moment had ended before she knew anything more.

If the first moment came as a shock, the second moment came like a knife in the back. Without warning, it felt as if a piece of her was being ripped out and the spark of Tetkashtai's presence seemed, if not closer, than at least stronger and more intense.

This time she knew what has happening: Tetkashtai was trying to take a new host. They'd guessed from the very beginning that it was possible, but Tetkashtai had never made good on her threats before-and it was the one thing that Dandra had never confessed to Singe or Geth.

But surely neither she nor Tetkashtai had guessed how painful it would be. Dandra hadn't been able to hold back a scream. She'd felt Singe holding her, trying to soothe her. Strangely, she had felt Geth, too, though in a different way. Then Tetkashtai's host had rejected her and Dandra had tumbled back down into the embrace of Dah'mir's strange power, grateful for peace…

She woke again with words echoing in her ears. "Wake up, Tetkashtai."

The world rushed back into sudden focus.

Dah'mir stood in front of her with Medalashana-no, Medala-at his side. Over them towered the device that had torn her from Tetkashtai, wires and tubes, brass and crystal, the big blue-black Khyber dragonshard still pulsing at its heart. There was one psicrystal remaining in the device, flickering like a violet ember.

She was back in the Bonetree mound, back in Dah'mir's horrible laboratory. Her mind reeled, disoriented. "Singe…" she gasped, then blinked and saw what lay behind Dah'mir and Medala. Three horribly familiar tables, two empty. On the third lay a corpse that had once been a kalashtar man. Now it was shriveled, slowly mummifying in the atmosphere of the mound. Its head had been ripped apart. Virikhad.

Dah'mir turned his head, following her gaze, and clicked his tongue in disapproval. "Confronted with your old love and the first name you call is the wizard's?" he said. "Fickle!"

"What happened to him?" choked Dandra.

"Isn't it obvious?" asked Dah'mir. "He couldn't-or wouldn't-return to his body the way you and Medala did. At least it wasn't a complete waste." He glanced into the shadows. "Although you did say his brain was… how did you put it?"

Tall, thin figures with dead white eyes and writhing tentacles in place of a lower face moved forward. Dandra felt a brush against her mind, then a sudden rush of alien sensations. Dry. Hollow. Weak.

It took a moment for her to realize the illithids were describing the taste of Virikhad's brain.

The horror was too much. Dandra screamed and flung herself backward. She hit stone. There was no running. As the mind flayers closed around her, she dredged for her powers. Without Tetkashtai, there was so little she could do, but she wasn't going to let the mind flayers take her without a fight. She stretched her thoughts, trying to reach for whitefire, for the invisible web of vayhatana, for the long step to carry her away from this place.

They all fell through her grasp like water. The cold minds of the illithids touched hers. She tried to empty her thoughts, to dive deep into herself for protection, but the mind flayers only grabbed her and dragged her back. They skated through her, grappling with her psyche-then froze, their collective will drawing away as if in alarm.

Dandra looked up to see their tentacles twitching in time to the gestures of their long fingers. One of their number turned to Dah'mir and Medala, and an icy voice spoke in Dandra's mind. This is not Tetkashtai.

"What?" roared Dah'mir.

Another presence pierced Dandra's mind, a savage attack that scattered the illithids' powers, tore at her thoughts, and left her gasping and swaying. She knew this presence-or at least had known it. Medalashana's touch had been gentle, organized, and disciplined. Medala's was raw and violent. As Dandra fell forward, sprawling onto the floor of the laboratory, she saw the gray-haired kalashtar's eyes go wide.

"How-?" Medala cursed in disbelief. She looked at Dah'mir. "It's her psicrystal! Tetkashtai's psicrystal walked off in her body!"

Dah'mir's eyes narrowed. "Find out everything you can, Medala," he said. "I want to know how this is possible."

Medala crouched down in front of Dandra. "Look at me," she snarled. Dandra forced her gaze down, trying to build some kind of mental defense against what she knew had to be coming. Medala's hand shot out, though, closing on Dandra's jaw with cruel strength and wrenching her head up.

A chime rang in Dandra's ears, a pure sound that drove all the way through her. Medala's eyes seemed to shimmer with silver light. Dandra tried to force her back and out of her thoughts, but it was no good. As the chime rang on and on, Medala slid deep into her mind. Dandra watched helplessly as the other kalashtar raked through her memories. The moment she had first struggled to her feet in Dah'mir's laboratory. Her flight from the Bonetree hunters. The desperate fight in Bull Hollow. Yrlag. Lightning on Water. Zarash'ak.

Dandra strained and thrust, trying to find some way to fight back. Medala held her with an easy contempt. Stop that, the gray-haired woman said with disgust as she flickered through the memories of Dandra's struggle with Ashi and Vennet beneath the house of blue doors.

You know I won't, Dandra spat back at her.

Medala swatted her like she was a fly. You're a psicrystal, Dandra. That you walk in a kalashtar's body doesn't make you a kalashtar. How Tetkashtai bore the shame of having you carry her-

How do you bear the shame of what you've become? demanded Dandra. She forced a vision on Medala, an image of her pinched and feral face held against a memory of how she had looked only months before in Sharn. What happened to you?

What happened? Medala shredded the vision with a thought. What happened? I refused to die! For a brief moment, the flow of memories from Dandra's mind to Medala's reversed.

Dandra saw Dah'mir's laboratory again, but this time from another point of view and washed with blue instead of yellow-green. She saw the tortured bodies of the three kalashtar laid out on the tables, inhabited by the feeble minds of their psicrystals. She felt Medalashana's fear and distress at her sudden imprisonment, felt powerlessness stretch her mind toward near-madness just as it had Tetkashtai's.