Stop that, the gray-haired woman said with disgust as she flickered through the memories of Dandra's struggle with Ashi and Vennet beneath the house of blue doors.
You know I won't, Dandra spat back at her.
Medala swatted her like she was a fly. You're a psicrystal, Dandra. That you walk in a kalashtar's body doesn't make you a kalashtar. How Tetkashtai bore the shame of having you carry her-
How do you bear the shame of what you've become? demanded Dandra. She forced a vision on Medala, an image of her pinched and feral face held against a memory of how she had looked only months before in Sharn. What happened to you?
What happened? Medala shredded the vision with a thought. What happened? I refused to die! For a brief moment, the flow of memories from Dandra's mind to Medala's reversed.
Dandra saw Dah'mir's laboratory again, but this time from another point of view and washed with blue instead of yellow-green. She saw the tortured bodies of the three kalashtar laid out on the tables, inhabited by the feeble minds of their psicrystals. She felt Medalashana's fear and distress at her sudden imprisonment, felt powerlessness stretch her mind toward near-madness just as it had Tetkashtai's.
But Medalashana did something that Tetkashtai hadn't. At the moment when madness and eternal imprisonment had seemed closest, Medalashana had found the strength to reach back through the connection that bound her to her psicrystal.
Her crystal had been called Pok, a gentle spirit formed out of Medalashana's thirst for knowledge. It had taken no effort at all for Medala to murder him, snuffing out his light and reclaiming her body.
Dah'mir had come to her then, had taken a soul broken and mad, and made her his own.
Dandra cried out and wrenched herself away from Medala's memories. Il-Yannah! she gasped. She recalled her own memory of the moment she had taken up Tetkashtai's crystal: Medalashana's blue crystal had been dark. You sacrificed your psicrystal to free yourself!
It's the only way, Medala seethed. Take back your body or be locked in the crystal. Virikhad couldn't do it. She gave Dandra another memory, of standing at Dah'mir's side and watching Virikhad's body starving and growing weaker as the spirit of his psicrystal faded-until there was nothing left and Dah'mir allowed the mind flayers their feast. And Tetkashtai… She laughed madly. We thought it was some hidden strength in her, but she was as weak as Virikhad!
Dandra shuddered with loathing. Medala gave a final thrust into her mind-and found Dandra's fragile memories of the second journey from Zarash'ak to the Bonetree camp, the fragments of her distant sense of Tetkashtai's efforts to take a new host. Dandra felt her excitement. 'Dah'mir!' Medala said out loud-and slipped away from Dandra's mind.
The chime faded from Dandra's ears. Somewhere Medala was telling Dah'mir everything she had discovered, babbling about Dandra's nature, about Tetkashtai's ability to force herself on anyone who held the crystal, about Geth and orcs. Dandra didn't listen. She just dragged herself up into a crouch and huddled back against the wall, trembling with rage at the violation of her mind.
Someone asked her a question, She didn't answer. A foot prodded her. She didn't move. The foot prodded harder. 'Dandra,' said Dah'mir, 'if you don't want to talk to me, I can let Medala pry the answers I want from you again.'
Dandra turned her head and looked up. Acid-green eyes looked down at her. She glanced away sharply before she could lose herself in them. 'What is it about you that we can't resist?' she snarled angrily. 'I've never felt anything like it. Neither had Tetkashtai. It's not psionic. It's not magic. What is it?'
'Why should I give away my secrets?' asked Dah'mir jovially. 'Would you give away yours?'
'I don't have any left!' Dandra hissed at him.
Dah'mir's pale face stretched out as his eyebrows rose. 'True enough.' He squatted down. Dandra felt as if he was staring right through her, as though there was something that his eerie eyes alone could see. 'I didn't expect something like you,' he said after a long moment.
'Really? What did you expect?' Dandra asked. 'Something like Medala, sacrificing a part of herself in her desperation to survive? Or something like Virikhad, clinging to his principles until he died?'
'Oh, Virikhad's not dead. Only his body has died so far-well, and the spirit of his psicrystal, of course.' Dah'mir nodded at the violet ember of Virikhad's crystal. 'He's still there. I think he'll let go soon. They-' He gestured toward the mind flayers, hovering on the fringes of the conversation like vultures around carrion. '-say it's not possible for him to let go, that he really is trapped in the crystal forever. None of us have touched the crystal, so we don't know if he's still capable of forming a new connection as you've shown us that Tetkashtai can.'
His attention came back to her. 'What I didn't anticipate was that a psicrystal might actually take control and attempt to rescue the psion.' Dah'mir reached out and rested his fingers on her forehead. His touch was cool. 'I should thank you.'
Dandra twitched her head away angrily. 'Is the only reason you lured Tetkashtai, Virikhad, and Medalashana to Zarash'ak because they were psions with psicrystals?' she snapped. She could feel a formless rage building inside her, an anger at whatever chance fate had attracted Dah'mir's attention to them-and her.
The green-eyed man smiled. 'Only partly. They were convenient. Believe it or not, what I told them in my letter was partly true. I shared their interest in the interactions between magic, dragonshards, and psionics. I lured them to Zarash'ak because I hate having rivals.' He stood and walked toward his towering device, staring up at the big blue-black stone at its heart. 'In magical practice, Khyber shards have binding properties. I found a way to apply that to psionic practice as well. You've seen the results of my work for yourself. It needs refining, of course…'
Dandra stared at his grinning, handsome face, then choked out the only word she could manage. 'Why?'
'Why?' Dah'mir turned and darted back to her, leaning in so close Dandra could feel the cool on her ear as he drew breath to whisper his answer-
— then stepped back, winking at her and waving his finger. 'Not yet, Dandra. Maybe when Tetkashtai is here with you.'
Dandra drew a sharp breath in spite of herself. 'What are you talking about?'
Dah'mir laughed. Behind him, Medala gave a sharp grin. 'Ah, Dandra,' Dah'mir said, 'you've found yourself some very loyal friends. Maybe too loyal.' He stood up. 'I made a mistake in Zarash'ak when I killed Geth.'
A sharp pain thrust through Dandra at the news and she gasped. Dah'mir waved her alarm away. 'Hush. He survived, didn't he? Apparently, I didn't do as good a job as I thought. Given that he has Tetkashtai, that's a good thing.' His lips tightened. 'But his survival and the glimpses you've given Medala of his presence in an orc village go a long way toward explaining why there's a large raiding party of orcs trying to sneak through Bonetree territory right now.'
Dandra stared at him. 'The Dragon Below has many eyes,' said Dah'mir with a shrug. He looked over his shoulder at the illithids. 'Restrain her,' he said. 'I don't want them to have any warning.'
He stepped back as one of the mind flayers moved forward. In its spindly fingers it bore a strange device with long, delicately jointed arms of bone and copper. Dandra tensed and started to rise but two more mind flayers narrowed their white eyes and the air seemed to ripple. A force like vayhatana seized her, holding her immobile. The first illithid reached out and slid the device onto her head.
A numbness seemed to fall over her. She saw and she heard, but it was if she couldn't actually think at all. Horror built within her but it had nowhere to go.
The mind flayers turned to the table that had held her captive once before and began preparing straps of thick leather. Dandra watched as Dah'mir took Medala's arm and paced out of the laboratory.
'It's a shame that Vennet isn't here,' Dandra heard him tell the gray-haired kalashtar. 'I think he'd have liked to see how a real trap is laid.'
CHAPTER 15
Geth stared up at the black heron that soared overhead-the fourth that afternoon, the second since the sun had begun to settle below the clouds that choked the horizon and were spreading across the sky. He glanced at Orshok. 'You're certain they can't see us?' he asked.
