Singe knew that it could only be a sign of growing desperation that his mind fixed on the least appropriate fragment of Ashi’s words. “Treasure?” he repeated.
“Dragonshards,” said Ashi. “For all the generations that he’s guided the Bonetree, he’s gathered dragonshards, like those he wears the and the ones he gave Vennet. The elders say that he’s building a great shrine to the Dragon Below and when it’s complete, the clan will be allowed to worship there.”
She didn’t sound like she believed it, but Singe had a vision of a shrine as large as one of the great halls of Wynarn lined with ten generations’ accumulation of dragonshards.
“Twelve moons,” he choked, feeling like a greed-maddened dwarf.
It was a feeling that lasted only until Dah’mir’s procession reached the tunnel that gaped in the side of the mound. Standing inside the shadows of the stone-lined tunnel was a dolgaunt. His face and chest were terribly scarred, patches of the writhing buds that covered his skin replaced by tissue that was smooth, shiny, and raw. Clumps of his thick hair-tendrils were limp and dead, and the tentacle that sprouted from his left shoulder moved sluggishly compared to the right. Singe’s belly felt hollow and cold. It was Hruucan.
The dolgaunt stood stiff as the crowd of hunters split apart. When Dah’mir and Medala stepped forward, he bent to them-stiffly-in respect. Dah’mir’s eyebrows rose. “Hruucan, when Medala said you had been injured …”
“I recover,” Hruucan answered in the same harsh, grating voice that Singe remembered from Bull Hollow. “The scars are … inconvenient.” His shoulder tentacles lashed the air with an agitation that betrayed his words. “Dah’mir, you have the one who did this to me with you!”
Dah’mir looked over his shoulder and his eye fixed on Singe. “I have plans for Singe, Hruucan,” he said. “He will be brought into the Bonetree. His blood will make the clan stronger.”
“Scars don’t pass through the blood,” Hruucan rasped. “If you command, any woman of the Bonetree will mate with him no matter how ugly he is. I’ll leave him a man. That will be enough.” The dolgaunt’s empty eye sockets turned to Singe. “A rematch, wizard,” he said. “A duel to finish what we started.”
The smile that spread across Dah’mir’s face was at once both horrible and entrancing. “He’ll do it,” he said.
Singe’s hollow belly shrank even further. He felt Ashi’s hand, still on his arm tighten sharply.
Dah’mir swept his arms wide, his voice full of a terrible joy. “A spectacle!” he declared. “Here before the mound. To celebrate my return!”
“Varda!” shouted Breff, translating for the Bonetree. “Varda su teith e harano!”
Those were words Singe knew. The younger hunters had used them as easily as they drew weapons. A fight! A fight for blood and honor! He watched matching smiles break across the faces of the Bonetree hunters. Their arms punched the air and their voices rose enthusiastically.
Dah’mir looked back to Hruucan. “Will tonight be soon enough for you, Hruucan?” he asked,
The dolgaunt bent again. “I welcome the sunset!” His tentacles quivered as if in anticipation.
“Excellent!” Dah’mir looked to Ashi. “You’ve taken care of these two admirably, Ashi,” he said, “but you can relax now. They aren’t going anywhere.” His charming smile broadened but it didn’t seem to Singe that Ashi relaxed at all. He turned to look at her, but she wouldn’t return his gaze. When she did force her hand to drop, it almost felt like she had to wrench it away. The instant she let go, though, she stepped back and looked away from him.
Dah’mir’s voice seemed like it was coming from a distance. “Breff, put Singe in an empty hut and see that he rests and has food. I’m sure Hruucan wants a challenge tonight. Guard him carefully-he is a wizard, after all.”
“Yes, Dah’mir.” A new hand replaced Ashi’s on Singe’s arm and pulled him back toward the camp.
Singe pulled away and spun to Dah’mir, a desperate plan trying to put itself together in his head. Maybe there was something he and Dandra could do together … “Please,” he pleaded to Dah’mir. “Wake Tetkashtai. Let me say good-bye to her, at least!”
The green-eyed man’s smile didn’t falter at all. “I don’t think so!” he said. “Breff?”
The hunter wrenched at him hard. Ashi, Singe realized, had been gentle with him. Breff dragged him off his feet. Singe twisted his head around as he stumbled after the hunter and managed to catch one last look at Dandra.
Dah’mir and Medala were leading her away into the mound with Hruucan walking behind them.
The journey, like the one before, had passed in a blur, as if Dandra stood still while everyone and everything sped by around her. There had been only two constants in that crazy rush. She was one. The other was Dah’mir, the bridge between her and the madness around her, the center of her world.
Was the blur worse, some small part of her had thought, because she was on her own this time? She didn’t have Tetkashtai to guide her-one of her last lucid memories was the struggle with Ashi, the shock as Tetkashtai was torn from her, a glimpse of Geth catching the crystal. Her powers had vanished with Tetkashtai.
Then Dah’mir’s presence had washed over her. Dandra was dimly aware that Geth was no longer part of the rush around her, though she couldn’t recall why. Singe was there, however. Medalashana, too, though the gray-haired kalashtar called herself something else now. She was simply Medala, as if she had rejected her kalashtar heritage.
There were two moments on the journey that Dandra remembered, two moments when the world around her slowed down and she rose like a swimmer to the surface of Dah’mir’s encompassing presence. The first came like a shock, abrupt and unexpected. There had been a spark on the horizon of her mind, familiar yet distant. “Tetkashtai!” she’d gasped. There had been a sense of confusion and a shook, the feel of an unfamiliar mind, a glimpse of savage orcs around a blazing fire, of Geth seizing her … but the moment had ended before she knew anything more.
If the first moment came as a shock, the second moment came like a knife in the back. Without warning, it felt as if a piece of her was being ripped out and the spark of Tetkashtai’s presence seemed, if not closer, than at least stronger and more intense.
This time she knew what has happening: Tetkashtai was trying to take a new host. They’d guessed from the very beginning that it was possible, but Tetkashtai had never made good on her threats before-and it was the one thing that Dandra had never confessed to Singe or Geth.
But surely neither she nor Tetkashtai had guessed how painful it would be. Dandra hadn’t been able to hold back a scream. She’d felt Singe holding her, trying to soothe her. Strangely, she had felt Geth, too, though in a different way. Then Tetkashtai’s host had rejected her and Dandra had tumbled back down into the embrace of Dah’mir’s strange power, grateful for peace …
She woke again with words echoing in her ears. “Wake up, Tetkashtai.”
The world rushed back into sudden focus.
Dah’mir stood in front of her with Medalashana-no, Medala-at his side. Over them towered the device that had torn her from Tetkashtai, wires and tubes, brass and crystal, the big blue-black Khyber dragonshard still pulsing at its heart. There was one psicrystal remaining in the device, flickering like a violet ember.
She was back in the Bonetree mound, back in Dah’mir’s horrible laboratory. Her mind reeled, disoriented. “Singe …” she gasped, then blinked and saw what lay behind Dah’mir and Medala. Three horribly familiar tables, two empty. On the third lay a corpse that had once been a kalashtar man. Now it was shriveled, slowly mummifying in the atmosphere of the mound. Its head had been ripped apart. Virikhad.