The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [196]
Dallandra opened the last fold and found the black obsidian pyramid lying among the stains and frayed embroideries. It caught the dweomer light and glittered with sparks of what seemed to be black fire, edged with gold. Calonderiel leaned back as if he feared they would burn.
‘It won’t hurt you,’ Dallandra said. ‘That’s just a manifestation of the spirit trapped in the pyramid. It’s furious, I should think.’
‘I would be, if someone trapped me somewhere.’
‘I’m sure you would, but hush for a moment. Let me see if I can release it.’
Dallandra let herself relax to the edge of trance and opened her etheric sight. She saw a cage of blue light woven around the pyramid, the visible traces of the binding ceremony. Its builder, however, must have been an extremely powerful dweomerworker, because the lines of blue light ran through the obsidian as well, as if the cage had grown tendrils into the crystal. Deep in the black heart of the gem she could just make out a whorl of silver light, spinning around and around in a tiny cell—the trapped spirit.
Dallandra visualized a pentagram, then pushed the image out of her mind onto the etheric cage. Nothing happened. She returned her sight to the physical world with a toss of her head.
‘May whoever did this rot!’ she said.
‘I take it you couldn’t just let it go.’
‘No, nothing so simple. Cal, would you go find Ebañy? I may need his help for this.’
‘You’re still so tired. Can’t it wait?’
‘And how would you feel, if the person who could let you out of prison decided to take a nap first?’
With a sigh Calonderiel got to his feet. ‘I’ll go look for him. No doubt someone knows where he is.’
Calonderiel ducked out of the tent, to return shortly with Salamander. Purple bruises under his eyes marked the gerthddyn’s dead-pale face.
‘Our most esteemed banadar told me you wanted my help,’ Salamander said. ‘Aha, behold the black stone!’
‘Just that,’ Dallandra said. ‘I’m going to go up to the astral to try to free that spirit. I wanted you here in case something went wrong.’
‘If naught else, I can channel vital force to you.’
‘If you have any to spare. Ebañy, you look utterly drained.’
‘Oh, it’s only grief. No dweomer, nothing out of the ordinary.’
‘Don’t! I can’t bear to listen to you try to joke it away.’
‘No doubt. No more can I bear to listen to myself.’ Salamander nearly wept, choked it back, then knelt on the floor near her. ‘Are you going into full trance?’
Had it not been for the trapped spirit, Dallandra would have prodded him into the relief of tears. As it was, she said, ‘Yes. The simple working I just tried failed miserably.’
Dallandra lay down on her back and set her hands on her chest. Salamander placed the black pyramid in her fingers, then knelt at her head while Calonderiel left to stand guard outside the door. Dallandra built up the image of her body of light, a glowing silver flame, then transferred her consciousness into it. Once she was free of her body, she looked down and saw the obsidian, shot through with lines of blue light, clasped between her pale hands. Unlike ordinary stone, so dead when seen on the etheric plane, the black crystal pulsed gold.
In this state she could work from above, as it were, upon the spirit trap. After an invocation to the Light that shines beyond all the gods, she focused her concentration upon the crystal. She could see the spirit as a golden line beating against the bars of its prison. Now and then it twisted into an agony of struggle.
‘Hold still!’ she thought to it. ‘I come in the name of the Light!’
The golden line swelled in greeting, then shrank down to a point. Inside her flame-shape, Dallandra raised her etheric hands and began to gather force from the blue light billowing around her. She shaped it