Darkvision - Bruce R. Cordell [110]
Kiril replied, "Sounds like a familiar tale. I know something of binding wickedness."
"Really? What?" asked Zel.
"Let's just say that well-meaning accomplishments rarely go unpunished."
Zel waited for more, but seemed unwilling to press. Kiril lapsed back into silence.
They curved around another bend in the corridor and faced darkness.
Ususi's hand went to her mouth. "No…"
Night blocked the passage ahead.
So complete was the blackness that the magical radiance of Ususi's orb dimmed as its farthest rays fell into the dark chasm. A cold breeze cooled her flesh, and the howl of a distant wind conjured the image of desolation. Shadows rippled, and tendrils of darkness emerged, dissolved, and reappeared, as if attempting to cross the intervening space and pull all of them into its insatiable void.
"I dreamed… I have dreamed this!" the wizard insisted.
She backed up. Iahn's sudden hands upon her shoulders turned her about so she faced away from the unnerving abyss. "What do you see?" he asked, his tone conveying worry, even if his eyes retained their usual pristine clarity. "Is it more than an enchantment of shadow?"
She croaked, cleared her throat, and tried to speak. "It… it is something I've faced in my dreams for… more years than I can name." She stole another peek at the apparition at her back and shuddered. "It's my nightmare, here now, alive in the world."
"How can that be?" demanded Kiril. The swordswoman pushed forward to stand alongside Iahn. She was as tall as the taker, and perhaps broader of shoulder.
"I don't know," Ususi responded. But she did know. It was the doom she and her sister Qari had shared since they were children. They would one day face darkness, irredeemable and absolute.
And here it was.
"Ususi, we must press forward if we are to breach the weapons cache," Iahn said, taking one of her hands in both of his own. "Dissolve this magical gloom and reveal the threat Pandorym truly poses. Are you truly so afraid of the dark?"
"It's not the dark-it's what the darkness hides!" she yelled in the vengeance taker's face. But as she spoke, she wondered if it were true. Her lifelong nightmares had conditioned her to quail in the face of utter gloom. Pandorym's mind and essence were things of darkness made manifest, and it blocked her way forward.
She took a deep breath, fighting to impose calm. She could flee, true, and let Deep Imaskar fall by allowing Pandorym to go unopposed. Or she could deal with the murk that blocked their way. It couldn't hurt to try to dissolve the gloom in greater light, could it?
Ususi reached up and tapped the jewel that hovered overhead, muttering encouraging thaunemes of amplification. Responding to her magical plea, the illumination of her orb waxed.
Ususi swiveled to face her nemesis. Radiance poured from her free-floating light, meeting the darkness like an ocean wave meets a rocky coast. The gloom splintered and fell back… then drank down the light entirely.
The distant wind suddenly screamed in Ususi's ear, and the darkness pounced.
Light guttered and failed. Ususi's voice choked up, and her limbs were swaddled in oblivion. Her lifelong nightmare was back, this time all too real. The darkness, after these long, empty years, finally got her.
When the wizard was snatched away, Iahn yelled "Ususi!" and plunged into the blackness.
Warian moved forward, but his uncle held him back. "What can you smash if you can't see?"
The elemental lord thundered at the swordswoman, "It obeys the rules of darkness, I deem, even if it is possessed of something more nefarious. Burn it away with Angul!"
Kiril's hand went for the lesser blade she carried on her belt.
Monolith cried, "It must be Angul. No time for half-measures!" The elf's hand wavered, then diverted to Angul's sheath.
Kiril pulled Angul forth and gasped. Runes on the unclothed blade burned with blinding intensity and blue flame. The advancing margin of darkness reversed itself. With a posture forged from blade-given surety, the elf stepped forward a pace, then two. The darkness roiled and flailed against the