The violent blow hurled the vengeance taker back ten paces. The world spun around Iahn as he tried to regain his feet. He kept his grip on the hilt of his dragonfly blade and used it to lever himself upright.
Blood streamed from his cheek, and his left arm and shoulder were partly numb. The vengeance taker had assumed the troll was the greatest threat, but… Deamiel was on him, hiccupping horrid laughter. It picked him up in both hands, so swiftly that Iahn failed to resist, and as easily as if the vengeance taker were but a child.
Deamiel screamed. 'Pandorym's blessing sings in my blood! Its will is mine, but… It… I… Pandorym! I am not…' Deamiel's arms shook with some sort of inner struggle. Despite the creature's difficulty speaking, its grip was slowly tightening on Iahn's suspended body.
More importantly, Iahn saw the crystal on Deamiel's breast pulse in tempo with its speech, word for word. One arm still free, Iahn brought the steel hilt of his dragonfly blade down on Deamiel's amulet. The crystal exploded. The midnight blaze that blossomed from the amulet transfixed Deamiel, but Iahn was blown clear. The vengeance taker fell painfully for the second time in about as many heartbeats.
Iahn did not stir when his senses returned. Instead, he studied the scene with slitted eyes. Deamiel lay near, still burning, its chest cavity an exploded, gory ruin. Not a pleasant sight, but he'd seen worse. Farther down the slope lay the crumpled form of the gray troll. Farther still, the mist-shrouded coach. Apparently, only an instant had elapsed since the amulet's destruction. As Iahn watched, the fog bank swirled, thinned, and blew away in ragged, evaporating streamers. The remaining elf archer was revealed, showing little concern. She moved cautiously, studied her elf comrade, then hiked up the slope to the troll. The crystal on her breast did not glow or flare. When she was close enough to Iahn, he sprang to his feet, catching one of her arms and twisting it painfully behind her back.
Not all his skills brought death to his foes-some just delivered debilitating agony. Sometimes, final justice was not for a taker to dispense. Sometimes. 'Submit,' Iahn demanded. The elf said nothing, but stopped struggling in his grip. The vengeance taker jerked the elf closer. With his teeth, he grabbed the leather strand holding her amulet. He jerked his head back and stripped the amulet from the archer's neck. He didn't want to see a repeat of Deamiel's performance. As the amulet dropped to the earth, the elf convulsed violently in the vengeance taker's grip. Then, as if she'd been slipped an overpoweringly lethal dose from the damos, she slumped, her life departed. Iahn was too familiar with death's onset to wonder if it could be anything else. The vengeance taker lay the limp body on the ground and studied the scene. 'Strange.' The noonday light imparted brutal clarity, but no understanding.
CHAPTER SIX
'Give me that,' Ususi said, motioning the uskura closer.
Obediently, her expeditioner's pack settled into her outstretched hands. The wizard undid the ties and rummaged through the bag. She pushed aside silver spikes; a length of strong, lean rope; various vials whose contents ranged from acid to healing magic; and finally drew forth a tiny cylinder, just shorter than the length of her hand.
She stared down the narrow hallway, and the white light of her delver's orb flooded the ancient darkness, revealing intricately carved walls. Fanciful demons-or perhaps not so fanciful-gave obeisance to a great emperor on the wall to her left, while slender humanoids, too fey to represent the mortal elves Ususi was familiar with, stood in elegant congress around a kingly figure on the right.
The images fascinated Ususi, and she thought perhaps the image on the left represented Umyatin, the first Imaskari emperor. Umyatin had taken for himself the title 'Lord Artificer.' The demon on the lord artificer's left had a lion's head and a dragon's body. The demon to Umyatin's right was a midnight black centaur with an ebony unicorn horn emerging from its forehead. Its eyes burned with hellish glee.
The lord artificer was reaching out to this one. Below the midnight centauricorn was a name, inscribed in Low Imaskari. 'Mizar,' it read.
The wizard didn't recognize the name. The image on the right was more interesting yet. Each of the elegant, elfin humanoids who stood with the central figure carried a magnificent tome, seven in all. She wondered if the likeness represented Emperor Omanond. According to legend, Omanond was ultimately responsible for the creation of the seven items of Imaskaran arcane lore, the Imaskarcana. These were commonly described as tomes, though Ususi had read accounts indicating that the Imaskarcana took many forms. According to The Lore of Omanond, a history Ususi had perused within the exclusive stacks of the Purple Library, the creation of the Imaskarcana had been made possible through connivance with a devious extraplanar race. A more-than-mortal race. She had always assumed this referred to demons, but the creatures in the art before her possessed no demonic traits.
The name inscribed below the creatures was 'leShay.' Again, Ususi couldn't place the name. Bother that. The identity and accuracy of the designs were secondary to the magical trap she sensed lurking in the flooring. Behind and above her stretched the winding, stair-strewn path she'd traveled throughout the Imaskaran ruin. The complex beneath the earth was in surprisingly good condition, which was both good and bad. Finding a well- preserved outpost of the Imaskari was good because it meant surviving enchantments might still power a functional gate into the Celestial Nadir. Finding a well-preserved ruin was bad because it meant a higher number of guardian enchantments and traps remained lethal. So progress was slow. For safety, Ususi checked each new section of flooring, walls, and ceiling with a sluggish, low-grade magical charm. Was it a waste of time when going swiftly might spell sudden death? The uskura certainly didn't complain. Ususi nearly smiled at the idea. She unscrewed the tiny cap of the cylinder she'd retrieved from her pack, and let a tiny dollop of red liquid fall onto the hallway floor. It was the last of the dye, and the drop was hardly visible. Ususi eyed the diminutive red dot. Perhaps she'd been too liberal with the dye on the first several traps she'd encountered. By comparison, wide stripes of warning dye painted all the previous traps she'd found in the complex. Sometimes, avoiding a mechanical or magical ambush merely required knowing where not to step. Once a trap's trigger was identified, remembering its precise location was as important as its discovery. She'd developed her warning dye as the perfect visual signal. Ususi had the ingredients to make more dye back in her coach, but she preferred to press forward as long as possible before returning topside. The wizard studied the tiny droplet and judged it a large enough reminder. Its location, coupled with the frieze of Emperors Umyatin and Omanond, would give her warning enough on her way back. On the other hand, if she came upon just one more trap, she'd have to decide whether to return to the coach to make another batch of red dye, or try her hand at deactivating it. Ususi had some experience in the deactivation of nefarious devices, but it was a dangerous business-far better to simply steer clear of the trigger. But some devices couldn't be avoided. For these, deactivation was the only sure method of getting past them. Because of her wizardly talents, ensnaring spells and blasting enchantments were far easier to eliminate than unthinking springs, levers, weights, and winches.
Unfortunately, many traps dispensed with arcana and relied on simple mechanical principles. Confident the hallway before her held no further surprises, Ususi put the empty cylinder back in her pack. She remanded the pack to the invisible uskura and walked down the passage, deftly avoiding the trigger point. The radius of her magical light preceded her, bringing illumination where dark centuries brooded.
Ususi held out her right hand, concentrating on her trap-finding charm. She supposed far more powerful spells might lay bare all the dangers in a large radius, but she didn't know them. She hadn't gone out of her way to find such spells-she preferred to save her greatest strength for potent spells of blasting. If she roused some guardian demon, she was ready, she hoped, to send it back to whatever netherworld had spawned it. A few more paces, and the carvings on either side opened up to reveal a great, rounded chamber. Like the hallway, its periphery was heavily inscribed with images, words, and symbols. Even the ceiling was carved with thick clusters of sigils.
Ususi's breath caught when she spied the central feature of the chamber-a great stone annulus hovering unsupported in the air, measuring some ten paces in diameter. The ring slowly rotated, flipping end over end about once every two or three heartbeats. But the ring was not intact. A section of the hoop lay cracked and shattered on the floor. Two parallel creases appeared on the wizard's brow as she studied the debris. This could be a portal, perhaps leading into the Celestial Nadir, but it was damaged. First things first. Ususi renewed her concentration and scanned the room for traps.
She hadn't come this far so cautiously only to rush into the arms of a slicing blade or to be crushed beneath a
