There was another odor below deck as well, though. It was rank and foul, and Singe had once smelled the same odor on boarding a ship that had been used by slavers. Sweat. Excrement. The stench of people left shackled and unable to fend for themselves.
The everbright lantern that Vennet had opened in the hold of Mayret’s Envy remained unshuttered. Singe saw all of the kalashtar turn their heads as he and Dah’mir entered. They still sat or stood or lay where Singe had last seen them. The only shackles that they bore were shackles of the mind.
Dah’mir spread his wings and flapped up to settle on top of a familiar metal box. Kalashtar eyes followed him. He ignored them. “You know what’s in here,” he said to Singe. “You’re going to use them.”
The bracers. The binding stones. Singe’s throat constricted. “No,” he croaked.
His defiance seemed to amuse Dah’mir. The heron let out a hissing little laugh. “You don’t have a choice,” he said. His acid-green eyes focused on Singe. “Put the bracers on my master’s servants.”
Singe tried to resist the command, but it was like trying to hold back waves with a castle of sand. Dah’mir’s will washed over his. He stepped forward and, as Dah’mir shifted aside, opened the metal box. The nestled bracers within shone up at him, gold plates and wires, pale crystals-and the dark blue-black beauty of the Khyber shards that Taruuzh of Dhakaan had fashioned into prisons for psionic minds so many millennia ago.
“Pick one up,” urged Dah’mir and he did. Dah’mir nodded his head toward one of the kalashtar. “Her first,” he said.
The kalashtar he indicated was an old woman with a face that might have been stern if it hadn’t been slack from Dah’mir’s control. Singe thought he recognized her from Dandra’s description of the kalashtar elders-Shelsatori. His hands trembling, he approached her.
“Find her psicrystal first,” said Dah’mir. “I believe she wears it around her neck.”
He found the crystal. It was blue and beautiful and it seemed to glow with a softness that Shelsatori lacked. It was set in a fine cage of silver, much as Dandra’s psicrystal had been set in a cage of bronze. He wondered if Shelsatori’s crystal had a name.
It didn’t matter. His fingers pried open the cage and extracted the crystal at Dah’mir’s direction, then inserted it into the empty setting above the binding stone on the bracer.
“Now,” Dah’mir said, “place the bracer on her arm.”
Singe clenched his teeth and fought Dah’mir’s control, but it did him no more good than it had the first time. He watched his hands lift Shelsatori’s arm and slide the twisted gold of the bracer onto it.
He felt her body stiffen and, for an instant, saw her eyes focus on him. There was such a depth of loss and agony in them that he couldn’t help crying out. Then that moment of alertness was gone and she sank back into an unresisting trance. Singe let her arm drop and waited for her to rise as a mad servant of the Master of Silence.
Nothing happened. He looked at Dah’mir. “It didn’t work,” he said. “You’ve failed.”
Dah’mir reared back suddenly, spreading his wings for balance, and one of his feet raked across Singe’s cheek. The wizard fell with a cry, but Dah’mir just settled back to his perch. “I didn’t fail,” he hissed. “In the presence of my master, she will wake.” He folded his wings and glared at Singe with hard eyes. “Now-finish what you have begun. A bracer for every kalashtar here, and when we reach the mound you will see the results of what you have done.”
Singe touched the bloody lines on his cheek. “Not what I’ve done,” he said stubbornly. “What you’ve made me do.”
“A difference,” Dah’mir said, “that means nothing to me.”
His will fell over Singe again.
For all his defiance and for all that he knew it was not his own will that moved his hands, Singe was still the one who felt the kalashtar stiffen as the binding stone caught their mind and exchanged it with the mind of their psicrystal. He was the one who fastened Dah’mir’s bracers around their arms. He was the one, he knew, who condemned them to madness.
By the sixth bracer, Singe’s eye was wet with barely suppressed tears. By the tenth, his hands were shaking in spite of Dah’mir’s control. By the thirteenth, he was numb. He wasn’t even certain that Dah’mir still controlled him. Finding a psicrystal, placing it in the bracer, placing the bracer on an arm had become a routine. The passing of a kalashtar under his fingers became just another rip in his soul.
He’d killed people. He was a mercenary. But doing this, he felt like a murderer.
He picked up the final bracer in the metal box and turned to the last kalashtar at the very back of the hold.
Moon.
“Ah, yes,” said Dah’mir. “I remember him. You left him for us at the arena, unconscious and half-mad already. Very convenient. What happened to him?”
Singe glared at him over his shoulder. “Keeper take you, Dah’mir.” He bent over Moon. “I hope you’re still in there, Virikhad,” he said under his breath. “And I hope this hurts even more the second time.”
Moon wore his psicrystal in a leather bracer wrapped around his left arm. Singe reached for it-and as he did, a voice trickled into his head through kesh.
Take out the binding stone.
Singe froze for an instant and looked at Moon’s face. His eyes were as vacant as those of all the kalashtar had been, yet there was no denying the presence of the voice in his head-though he could certainly deny its request. Virikhad! So you are still there. His fingers closed on Moon’s psicrystal and ripped it from its setting. What’s wrong? Are you trapped in there? Don’t ask me to help you! He stopped. Maybe I should tell Dah’mir about you.
You wouldn’t gain anything. Virikhad’s voice was cold but calm. He would only see an ally.
And how do you know that?
Because he doesn’t know what he has created, Virikhad said. A part of his power is in us. He can’t shut us out. We can exert some influence on him, pushing his ideas in the direction we want. A sneer entered his voice. Did you think he changed his plan of when to use the bracers on a whim?
You did that? Singe’s eyes narrowed. Wait-Who’s we?
Virikhad didn’t answer. The time is coming, Singe. Dah’mir had to succeed in Sharn, but he’ll fail here. Take the binding stone out of my bracer. I promise you, Dah’mir won’t notice. Only do it quickly!
Why? Singe asked, but he didn’t get an answer to that question either.
“Master!” Vennet’s frantic voice echoed down from above. “The Bonetree mound is in sight, but we’re not going to be alone when we get there.”
“What?” Singe glanced back in time to see Dah’mir’s feathered form stiffen. “Vennet, what’s happening? Vennet?” There was no response from Vennet, just the sound of boots racing back to the helm. Dah’mir glared at Singe. “Hurry! Finish with that one!”
Singe looked down at Moon again. Take the binding stone out of the bracer, Virikhad said. Dah’mir will fail-and I’ll even give you Munchaned back.
The sensation of kesh fell away. Singe ground his teeth together-and made his decision. If you’re lying, Virikhad, he thought, I swear I’ll come back from the dead to hunt you down.
It was the work of a moment to pull the binding stone from its delicate setting and slip it into a pouch on his belt at the same time as he placed Moon’s psicrystal into the bracer. Then he put the bracer onto the young kalashtar.
Moon stiffened just as all the others had. Virikhad’s influence? Singe turned to face Dah’mir. “It’s done,” he said. He didn’t need to feign the bitter rage he felt. He might have saved Moon, but who could tell what would happen to the other sixteen kalashtar?