Darkvision - Bruce R. Cordell [22]
Whatever it was, it kept low, beneath the warning red stripe she'd placed on the wall. The figure used Ususi's system to its own benefit! She realized she'd marked a trail leading directly to her location.
The wizard tensed but concentrated all her faculties on sharpening the clairvoyant image. A human? A man, definitely, but his skin was pale and marbled, not unlike her own. His outfit was familiar.
Ususi let out an involuntary hiss and abandoned the vision.
A vengeance taker.
After all this time, Deep Imaskar had finally tracked her down.
Ususi brushed her orb and light flooded the chamber. The vengeance taker was too close-he would see it! But her wizard vision was too slow and unreliable in an emergency. She had to see in order to escape.
"Get up those stairs," she whispered to the uskura. Ususi pointed to the other exit in the chamber. She dashed after her retreating pack. How had they tracked her into this ruin? They must have been looking for her for a long, long time.
Ususi reached the archway and had one foot on the lowest step.
"Hold, fugitive!" The voice was strong and authoritative. It was the voice of a vengeance taker. It was a voice accustomed to its commands being followed, and for good reason.
Ususi darted up the narrow stairwell. The steps were high, shallow, and dusty. She gasped for breath, but the air seemed to have fled the stairway. She slipped and fell on the steps, catching herself with one hand but taking half her weight on the other shoulder. A cry of pain escaped her lips, like a sob. Her mind twirled, images of vengeance takers she had known and stories she had heard of their retribution causing tumult in her mind. She was panicking!
This was not her. Ususi Manaallin did not panic.
Ususi grasped the edges of her fear, wrenched it into halves, and cast its husks aside.
She was a wizard, trained by the Cabal of Purple. A single taker would not bring her down, she vowed. She scrambled to her feet and turned to face down the staircase. Better to confront your enemies than to suffer their attacks at your back, she knew. She counted herself lucky his attack hadn't already sprung.
Then she heard a strange, reverberating pulse. It was a sound like-yet unlike-the noise of some of her own spells when she cast them-a hum like a rushing torrent heard in the rainy season, mixed with the high-pitched harmony of forlorn, tolling bells. The noise halted as instantly as it had begun, leaving behind silence, the smell of ozone, and a glow of glittering, white reflections that patted at the bottom of the stairs.
The vengeance taker must be casting preparatory spells, readying his advance, she thought. Takers were moderate-ability sorcerers, after all-magic was part of the deadly training they received.
Yet it was no spell she recognized.
"Fugitive… Manaallin!" It was the voice of her pursuer. Yet his tone had shifted slightly. Ususi maintained her silence, waiting for the attack. Her hands were poised to release a torrent of destructive curses.
"Ususi Manaallin-if you can hear me, I pray you pause. I haven't come so far to lose you now." The voice sounded strained, and its authoritative blare was dulled-by what? Ususi couldn't tell.
He was crafty enough not to poke his head through the arch and look up the stairs-he must have sensed Ususi's spells ready to strip his flesh and worse. So instead, he seemed to be trying to draw her into the arms of his attack.
Ususi yelled down the corridor. "It's a standoff, Vengeance Taker! I will not walk into your trap, and if you follow me up these stairs, it'll be the last act you ever take!"
A chuckle answered her threat. The voice said, "Will you pretend you did not leave this painful blaze to catch me?" Another chuckle, somehow self-deprecating.
Ususi didn't have the first clue what the taker was talking about.
"Explain," she said.
"Your ploy succeeded-you were clever in identifying every dormant trap in this molding ruin with your red dye-but even cleverer in failing to mark the very last one."
Ususi recalled running