'Run!' Anusha shouted. She still had Yeva's hand from helping her stand. She sprinted toward the opposite wall of the great chamber, pulling Yeva along.
The five-eyed aboleth continued to descend, but its angle of descent changed to follow their path across the chamber's floor. The others fell in behind the lead creature, creating an undulating line in the air like a yellow- headed snake.
Yeva yanked her fingers free of Anusha's grip.
Anusha yelled, 'What are you doing?'
Yeva extended both hands, fingers flared, and leaned toward the approaching aboleth phalanx. Her eyes pulsed with energy-one with fire, the other with leaping sparks. She said, 'I think only the yellow one can sense us. If I can hurt it.. ' Lightning discharged from Yeva's hands and unerringly speared the lead aboleth. Even as the creature's path through the air faltered, Yeva cupped her palms, reared back, and threw. An orb of translucent gray arced upward. It struck the yellow aboleth. White light pulsed from it, briefly enveloping the creature's body.
The five-eyed aboleth made rasping, clicking shrieks as it dropped out of the air and slammed into the floor.
The aboleths still flying lost their formation and began to dart erratically like mosquitoes searching for prey.
The yellow aboleth smoked, but continued to scrabble for its bearings. The watcher was hurt, but still alive. Not for long, Anusha vowed.
She charged the floundering yellow thing. Her greatsword rematerialized in one hand, shining with the golden light of her desire. One of the creature's wildly searching eyes noticed her at the last moment. The bulk shifted, and Anusha's attack only grazed the creature instead of swiping directly through its blunt head.
The contact was enough to send it into a screaming fit of flailing tentacles, none of which could grasp Anusha.
As her fear drained away, she grinned, waded forward, and plunged the blade carefully down, this time directly into the beast's brain.
It is a threat to the Sovereignty, came the insidious voice, now strained and trailing away, but just as emotionless. But its mind is vulnerable. Watchers can see it, and overseers can catch it It must not interfere with the rousing…
The yellow thing's mental voice ceased. It shuddered once and stopped moving.
Anusha looked up. All of the creatures flitting around above ignored her.
Anusha swung around and raised her sword to salute Yeva.
Yeva was kneeling on the ground, one hand reaching toward Anusha. She was steaming. Dissolving!
Anusha dashed back to her companion, allowing her sword to fade so she could throw both hands around Yeva.
The moment they touched, Yeva sighed, and her image returned to solidity.
Yeva said, 'I summoned the storm's lance with psionic will. Apparently to my detriment.'
Anusha nodded. It made her stomach convulse to realize Yeva's existence was so tenuous. But she said, 'You were incredible! They would have got us if you hadn't knocked the watcher out of the air with your magic.'
Yeva allowed herself a social smile at Anusha's words.
She said, 'Psionics, not magic. Just like the mental powers you harness, I believe.'
'Right,' said Anusha, not certain she agreed, but unwilling to gainsay the woman who obviously knew something of the mind's functions. And really, did it matter what the source of their abilities was, so long as they worked?
'We need to find the exit,' said Anusha. 'Something terrible is going on here. Some sort of rousing. The yellow one was afraid we might interfere. All I want to do is leave. I don't think we want to be here when whatever the Elder is wakes up.'
Yeva climbed to her feet, accepting Anusha's help again. Then she pointed, concern widening her eyes.
The swarm of flitting aboleths over the yellow corpse had moved toward the two women while they talked. One aboleth, a gray-green specimen with more tentacles than the others, hovered only twenty feet away, its three crimson eyes scanning.
Anusha clapped a hand over her mouth, then leaned to Yeva's ear. She whispered, 'Even if they can't see us, they can hear us. We need to move!'
The women retreated toward a massive opening in the chamber's far wall. They walked rapidly, but quietly. The swarm didn't follow, though the gray-green one surged forward to land only a few feet from where they'd last stood, slapping its damp tentacles around as if hoping to flush out invisible prey.
The opening in the wall wasn't so much a tunnel mouth as an elongation of the chamber, one that began a shallow turn up and to the left like the bottom end of a tightly wound, but thick, hollow coil.
They left behind the aboleth ritual chamber poised over the alien orrery.
A mucous light suffused everything. The rocky floor, walls, and even ceiling were thick with eroded protuberances like granite obelisks worn down to nubs only two or three feet tall, though others reached five or six times that height. Here and there, icy stretches of condensed memory clung to the corridor in ragged patches. Anusha and Yeva gave those a wide berth as they ascended the sloping, gradual curve. Shallow pockets were common in the massive passage, creating hollows some ten feet on a side. Some were empty and dry. Others contained residual slime stinking of rotten fish. Most, however, were filled with a syrupy mass of fluid in which the shape of an unmoving aboleth lay ensheathed.
'Many monsters sleep here, but they are waking,' said Yeva. She pointed to an empty but slime-slicked hollow.
Anusha nodded, distracted. Her eyes constantly scanned for an exit. Would she know it if she saw one?
Also, she was conscious of a new sensation.
She turned to Yeva. 'Do you feel that? A kind of… I can't quite describe it. A current? As if we're walking in a shallow stream in the direction it's flowing?'
Yeva cocked her head. 'Now that you say it… Yes. It is a psychic undertow.'
'What's that?'
Yeva shrugged. 'It is a force akin to what allows lodestones to draw iron filaments, I suppose. But what we're feeling draws minds.'
'Wouldn't the psychic attraction be in the opposite direction, from where we escaped the expanse of frozen dreams?' asked Anusha. 'I thought that was where my mind had refocused. If this 'undertow' leads away from the ice, maybe we should allow it to sweep us up? Maybe it'll tumble us out of this nightmare!'
Yeva gave her a doubtful, sidelong glance and said, 'I would advise against trying that. Of course, you're right, up to a point. For centuries, stray dreams were swept up and apparently lodged within the expanse we escaped.
However, if the Eldest is waking, then its mind is reintegrating. Which means stray dreams and lost spirits may be falling directly to it now. Whereupon they will be consumed-gone forever.'
Anusha's skin prickled, even though she knew full well she had no physical form.
She swallowed and said, 'Then let's resist it.'
'Agreed.'
'Yeva, I just remembered something… When the yellow aboleth tried to snare me with its mind, it triggered some kind of vision. I saw a friend of mine traveling downward. I heard his voice. He said… he said he was coming to rescue me.'
Yeva cocked a brow. 'Are you sure it was a true vision?' 'No. I can't be sure, but it seemed real.' The woman shrugged. 'Is there any reason to believe your friend-What is his name?' 'Japheth.'
'Japheth! All right, does Japheth have the means to come to our aid?'
'Actually, yes. He knows spells and swore a pact to an archfey who grants him many odd abilities.'
Yeva said, 'Hmm. Perhaps your vision is a true one. He swore a pact, you say? I've heard tell of such things.'
Anusha nodded. 'And he has a cloak that's bigger on the inside than out. I don't really understand how it works.'
For the first time, Yeva actually seemed encouraged. 'Perhaps he could devise a new body for me… if he's
