James Ward - Pool of Twilight

Evaine tried to reach out, but her friend's presence became lost in the swirling maelstrom of magic.

Pain coursed through the core of Evaine's being. She felt her spirit being torn apart. In a moment there would be nothing left. She had to try something, but the roar in her mind made it so hard to think.

She heard one last faint cry from Shal. With every last shred of willpower, Evaine lunged for her friend, reaching out blindly with her ethereal fingers. She felt something brush her hand. She couldn't be sure it was Shal, but she had no more time. With her last spark of consciousness, she managed to gasp the word that broke the spell.

A shriek of pure malevolence rose from the very depths of the mountains. Then the enchantment shattered, and Evaine plunged down into unending darkness.

Waking was like swimming up through a cold, dark, bottomless sea. Finally, Evaine broke through the surface. She felt something warm and rough against her face. Gamaliel's tongue. She was alive!

She opened her eyes and smiled weakly. Gamaliel gazed at her with concern.

I almost lost you, he chided her. His tone was aloof, but Evaine knew he was afraid because his whiskers were twitching furiously. Do not do such a foolish thing again.

"Shal…?" she managed to gasp. Then she was racked by a painful fit of coughing.

You must lie still. Gamaliel's tone was stern. I do not know about your wizard-friend. Your mirror shattered when the spell ended. Her loved ones will have to help her. My concern is for you.

"Just put me to bed, Gam," she managed to whisper hoarsely between agonizing breaths. She felt as though she had just lost a fight with a dozen angry ogres. "I need… I need to rest. But you must do something for me in the meantime. Go to the Valley of the Falls. Ask Ren o' the Blade to come here as soon as he can. There's a pool somewhere in the Dragonspine Mountains, and no one knows that territory like Ren does. I must talk to him."

I can't simply leave you, the cat replied indignantly.

"I've lived through worse, Gam," she gasped, though she wasn't certain that was strictly true. "Now please. You've got to find Ren. I'm begging you."

Begging does not become you, Evaine, Gamaliel answered wryly. Very well, I will go. But remember, sorceress, you owe me one!

The dreamstalker approached the sleeper's chamber. The tower was surrounded by layer upon layer of magical wards and alarms, but they had caused no difficulty for the bastellus called Sigh. They were designed to keep corporeal foes at bay. They were useless against the dreamstalker.

The door to the sleeper's chamber was locked, but the darkness of his being slipped like black, oily smoke through the cracks around the door. The dreamstalker drifted silently toward the bed.

The sleeper was a young man with a broad, honest face and short red hair. Yes, he was the one. The wizard's spawn. Sigh's mistress, the sorceress Sirana, wanted him for her own. It was a simple enough task for the dreamstalker. He would slip into the young man's dreams and weave nightmares in his mind that would drive him to the brink of madness. It would be easy enough to brand the mistress's message in the sleeper's susceptible brain. Soon, the boy's only thought, his only desire, would be to become Sirana's willing slave.

Sigh hovered above the bed. The young man's brow was wrinkled. A low moan escaped his throat. He was already caught in the throes of a nightmare. Excellent, the bastellus thought. Most excellent. This would make his task easier yet. A smile of shardlike ivory teeth appeared in the haze.

Sigh reached out hands full of countless fingers, like dark, spindly twigs. He prepared to plunge into the dreamer's psyche, to revel in his victim's subconscious, and to feed upon his spirit. The twig-fingers brushed the young man's troubled brow.

The dreamstalker screamed in soundless, ethereal agony.

He had been burned! He looked down in astonishment to see that several of his dark, beautiful fingers had been transformed into a sticky mass of blue cobwebs. The bastellus writhed in pain. He had never known such a sensation before. Somehow the young man was immune to his touch.

Sigh shrank away from the hideous, vile human that had caused him pain. Blast Sirana! She could seduce the wretched creature herself. Sigh would have nothing more to do with this task.

The bastellus drifted quickly out the window and into the night, cradling his wounded hands. He would find another victim to feed upon, one with sweet, delicious dreams that would not harm his shadowy form.

Alone once more, the young man groaned in his sleep. Despite the bastellus's passing, the dreamer's nightmare-sent by the guardian of the hammer-had only just begun.

This time Kern knew he was dreaming.

Come, Hammerseeker! the dry, dusty voice spoke from the shadowed nave. Come, meet your doom!

Kern shook his head dizzily. He stood once again in the cavern of death. The skeletal spectators of the coffin walls jabbered and jeered at him in a gruesome cacophony. Bone splinters and broken teeth rained down. He gripped his battlehammer with a gauntleted hand. Somehow he knew he had to resist. To venture any closer was to die.

"Come out and face me!" he shouted to the darkened archway. Fear clutched at his heart with talons of ice. The thick, turgid shadows swirled angrily in the nave.

You show yourself for a coward, Hammerseeker, the ancient voice sneered.

The watchers in the coffin walls rattled their bones and clattered their teeth in a hideous mockery of laughter. Every instinct told Kern to run, but he planted his boots on the hard basalt floor. He was a paladin. He would stand firm.

"I will face you where I can see you!" Kern shouted.

Oh, you do not wish to look upon me, youngling. Believe these words I speak. Better for you that I cloak myself in shadow.

For a passing moment, the darkness of the nave lessened. Kern caught a glimpse of long-impossibly long- yellowed bones and, attached to these, a sinuous shape ending in a stiletto-sharp point. An eerie clicking sound issued from the nave, an insect noise that turned Kern's stomach. Then the curtain of blackness thickened. The guardian of Tyr's hammer was invisible once again.

Kern shook his head. The fetid air seemed to be weighing down upon him, pressing him toward the floor to smother him. His knees were on the verge of buckling, but he raised his hammer high.

"By Tyr in all his might, you will not have me!"

You are wrong, youngling! the voice shrieked with unholy rage. Dead wrong. An ear-shattering crack sundered the air of the cavern, a sound like a giant's bones breaking. The floor lurched wildly under Kern's feet. Suddenly a jagged rift appeared in the stone beneath him. It opened in the floor like a vast, stony maw, a void of darkness ready to swallow him alive.

You will never have the hammer! Never!

Kern's arms flailed wildly as he tried to catch his balance, but to no avail. The gap opened wider yet. With a scream, he went tumbling down into thick, suffocating blackness.

Yes, join us! the mummified spectators screeched and cackled, their voices echoing after him. Embrace the bottom of the pit, Hammerseeker, and join us in death!

Another scream ripped from Kern's lungs. Shreds of darkness rushed by him as he fell. He knew there was nothing to break his fall except for the jagged rocks waiting at the bottom. And they were only heartbeats away.

If it hadn't been for Listle, Kern would have died. Of that he had no doubt. The wounds he had received in his previous dream had been real enough. If he had struck the jagged rocks at the bottom last night…