"Kill it!" And "Help, I'm slipping!" Another flash dazzled Warian.
Something else had come through the portal.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
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.
Take us to Deep Imaskar, so we may save our city." "Indeed. But who's that with the pickaxe? What's he doing?" A tall, white-haired man who had been brandishing a pickaxe when Iahn and Ususi burst through the portal was now lying on his stomach, his head and arms hanging off the path, straining to reach something Ususi couldn't see. The man hauled himself backward, and the wizard gasped. A younger man slid upward from where he must have been dangling below the path. She gasped because the newcomer's left arm was pure Celestial Nadir crystal.
"Iahn!" she warned. She raised the keystone again. She could burn the arm out, too, before Pandorym jumped into another vessel. The vengeance taker was already in motion, moving with a speed no mortal limb could match. The older man turned, saw the charging vengeance taker, and scrambled for his pickaxe, yelling something Ususi couldn't decipher. Ususi gazed at the young man with the crystal arm through the lens of the keystone, looking for any clues. The wizard yelled,
"Iahn! Stop!" She sensed no evidence that the young man's crystal arm had ever been influenced the way the animated head had been. In fact, the prosthetic arm was intangibly linked to the Celestial Nadir in a fashion similar to what she enjoyed through the keystone. But his linkage was more… organic. She saw the possibility that the young man might be able to draw strength from the Celestial Nadir, like the plangents could. "I said stop, Iahn!" Scowling, the vengeance taker slid to a halt before the two strangers, dragonfly blade in hand. He didn't sink the blade into either of the men's heads, so Ususi considered her command a success. The younger man yelled, "Are you more servitors of the crystal?" He squinted guardedly at Ususi's keystone and pumped his fist, as if readying himself for some great effort. "No," Iahn responded. "No?" "We are not agents of evil," confirmed Ususi, walking near to them, though she didn't put down the keystone. "We are here to oppose that which has awakened here. I must ask-who are you? Why are you trespassing in the Celestial Nadir?"
"Trespassing?" asked the older man. "This site is under the control of Datharathi Minerals. We've established a mine claim here, no matter the outre landscape. Up until a moment ago, Madam, we were running for our lives." He paused. "I'm Zel. Zel Datharathi. Thank you for dealing with our pursuer." "You are welcome. But as to your claim-it is invalid. This location isn't open to mineral exploration. This entire realm"- Ususi gestured around at the mote-littered darkness-"is a relic of the ancient Imaskari. As such, it is the property of Imaskar's inheritors. Besides, it's terribly dangerous." "Yes, we've come to understand that," said the young man, "to our sorrow." "Did you get your prosthesis at the Body Shop?" asked Ususi, pointing to the crystal arm. "No. It predates the Body Shop by four or five years.