Bruce Cordell - Darkvision

Warian walked cautiously down the path, across the mined-out crystal.

The source of the rotting odor lay in the mining cart. A half-orc was stuffed into the cart, obviously dead. The half-orc wore miner's dungarees, and its hoary skin was filthy with dirt and crystal dust.

Warian was startled when he saw a crystal pendant hanging around the orc's neck. Burn marks scorched the flesh around the crystal, as if it had overheated and cooked the orc completely through. Then Warian realized that the crystal itself seemed charred, and was obviously cracked. He gazed intently at it, but could detect no glimmer of light swimming in the pendant's depths. "I can't figure what killed him,"

Zel said, his hands on his hips as he gazed into the open cart. "His amulet." "Aye, that's obvious. I mean, why?" Warian shrugged, at a loss. "Maybe the 'puppeteer,' as you put it, couldn't control the miner well enough without a prosthesis, and just killed him with some sort of magical overload." "Is that possible?" "How should I know?"

Warian kicked at the cart. "I don't know how Shaddon-or the puppeteer-is able to control people through Datharathi crystal."

Warian froze for a moment. A worrying thought struck him as his eyes skimmed the fields of mined and virgin crystal that encrusted the stone road. "Uncle, why aren't we dead?" "Because we're smart, we're quick, and…" "No, look! Crystal everywhere-the perfect vessel for controlling minds, right? We've seen that it only manifests in this damned stuff." Warian waved his hand down the stone lane, thickly encrusted with the pernicious material. Zel rubbed his chin. "Well, you have an arm made of it, and so far you seem to be immune to its influence…" "Yes. Shaddon made it before he found the portal. I just assumed that all the crystal on this side of the portal was corrupt." Zel shook his head. "Maybe only if it's brought into the real world?" "I wonder." He thought about Shaddon's claims. "Or, maybe the crystal must be prepared in a particular fashion-and my arm wasn't. Nor is this raw crystal. It hasn't been mined and worked by Shaddon, who made it susceptible to outside influence so he could serve his own purposes." "Could be. Or perhaps the puppeteer is just toying with us." Zel peered down the path where the crystal gradually thickened to form the irregular bulb of cracked stone. Warian looked back and forth between the irregular boulder and the wavering tower.

Out of nowhere, a searing flash dazzled his eyes. "… eretu dmaadar grethalsa od favara!" a loathsome voice broke upon them. Blinking, Warian looked ahead, behind-and then up. Sevaera's head, sans body, floated above them, dripping blood. It was nestled in a penumbra of writhing shadow. The puppeteer had killed Sevaera and was using her head as a malefic vehicle. "No…" pleaded Zel, his jaw dropping open. The despicable voice repeated its imperative in a language unfamiliar to Warian, then swooped. Warian lifted his crystal arm to cover his face. He tried desperately to trigger its latent power. And he failed. He was too drained-he couldn't forge the link! The disembodied head swooped and butted Warian in the chest. A sledgehammer couldn't have struck harder. Warian pitched sideways off the path, his body twisting in midair, his arms flailing for a grip.

He caught himself on the edge, the crystal digits on his right hand more hindrance than help. The flesh and blood of his left hand absorbed the cruel sharpness of the ledge. The weight of his body threatened to peel his fingers from their purchase. He looked up, but the stone path blocked his view of what was happening above him. But he could hear. Zel cursed, repeating "bastard!" over and over in a crazed voice. He heard the sound of metal on bone-had his uncle connected with his pickaxe? "Draka ni dornu dmaadar!" screamed the vile voice, just out of sight. "Bastard!" his uncle yelled again. His pinched, manic tone implied a break with sanity that wouldn't come as much of a surprise. Warian strained, trying to pull himself up. A finger slipped. It was all he could do to hold on. "Zel," he cried.

"Kill it!" And "Help, I'm slipping!" Another flash dazzled Warian.

Something else had come through the portal.

The eternal, mote-littered dark welcomed Ususi after a long absence. The Celestial Nadir once again accepted her into its twilight vastness. The wizard fell a few paces through an awkwardly defined portal focus. She nearly tripped on Eined's limp form. Iahn must have dropped her. She saw him streaking toward a small flying creature wreathed in darkness. Another man she didn't recognize stood near the flying creature, swinging wildly at it with a pickaxe. She was thankful that the misdirected focus was displaced upward, not left or right, off the path. Otherwise, instead of standing at the center of a three-way nexus, she might be flailing her way through a tour of the abyssal spaces of the Celestial Nadir. Ususi pulled out the keystone and issued a word of command. It lit with a violet radiance. For the first time in a long time, the wizard smiled. Here in the Celestial Nadir, keystone in hand, she possessed a measure of authority over the crystal denied her outside the artificial space. This was a good time to measure her control against that flying creature, which had turned its back on the man with the pickaxe to deal with the charging vengeance taker. The flying creature looked like… a severed head!

Ususi gasped. It was the missing head from the woman on the other side of the portal! The head was partly sheathed in Celestial Nadir crystal. Ususi raised the thong on which the keystone dangled, and concentrated. The keystone pulsed once, twice, thrice. A single flash burst in the crystal sheathing of the head. It screeched and shot straight upward at least fifty paces. In the Imaskaran tongue, it screamed, "Use not the keystone against what I have claimed!" Ususi called up, "Try to stop me!" It swooped down at her, leaving a meteor green streak across the dark. A corona like flowing hair, shadows given fell substance, writhed with soul-shearing hunger. She concentrated again upon the keystone, and gazed with enhanced insight upon her attacker. She blanched. Pandorym's influence was a slimy tentacle of putrid will that reached from far away to grasp and hold up the head, and empower it. It was a stain of something that should not exist, reaching from somewhere not far along one of the paths of the nearby nexus. Nausea accompanied her recognition of the psychic pseudopod, but she tried to force the tentacle to release its grip on the head. It was like trying to peel an orange made of granite. She concentrated harder. A trickle of blood dripped from Ususi's left eye.

To no avail. The grip of the tentaclelike thread of influence had its roots too deep in the crystal-sheathed head. "By the Seal Broken!" she cursed. Pandorym had greater control over the crystal than she supposed. She cried out and dived to one side, but was too slow. A slashing ribbon of darkness grazed her shoulder. Pain blazed through her arm and neck. The wizard retained her hold on the keystone, despite the pain. She concentrated through the ache, determined to prevail. A pulse of clean violet light discharged from the keystone, traced an erratic, dancing path through the air, and buried itself in the severed head. Pandorym's influence prevented her from gaining control over the crystal of the Celestial Nadir, as was her right as holder of the keystone. But she could burn out the crystal implanted in the woman's head. The head screeched and again shot straight upward. The mane of dark tendrils surrounding it wavered and flailed about. The head's trajectory wobbled and dipped, then steadied itself.

Ususi lanced her will into the keystone and hurled yet another bolt at the head. The blazing energy arc struck true. The limbs of darkness entwining the head winked out. Her attacker fell out of the air and bounced on the path, coming to rest at Ususi's feet. In an unnerving death spasm, the eyes in the head tracked around, then locked Ususi in their gaze. The mouth worked, and the voice spoke again, diminishing as it uttered its last, "Your hidden city burns. All those dear to you feed the flame…" "What?" screamed the wizard. Pandorym's presence fled. All that remained was the severed head of a woman unknown to Ususi. She kicked it. "Tell me what you mean!" In her mind's eye, she saw her blind twin, Qari, quailing before the heat of purple flames she couldn't see. Iahn's hand restrained her from booting the head off the path. He said, "We must go. We've reached the Celestial Nadir.