Darkvision

Failure was obvious, if unsightly. Honor was accorded to those who lived. Apprentices who spoke a true prophecy graduated as vengeance takers and took up their badge of office after swearing fealty to the Lord Apprehender of Deep Imaskar. Nausea stirred, and Iahn's muscles loosened as the cacophony intensified. Then the Voice broke through dissonance into clarity. "More than vengeance tracks the fugitive. An entity foretold…" The message dissolved into inchoate syllables that poured into a river of relief from the damos's venom-induced pain.

Iahn's body was throwing off the lethal effects of the dose. With the return of his senses, the Voice fled. Until next time. Still on one knee, he considered the insight bequeathed him. No doubt Iahn himself was vengeance. It was the title of his rank and profession. Simple. So the fugitive was sought by someone other than himself. Which probably meant the strange marks along the wheel ruts were not the fugitive's doing, but instead were traces left by this "other." Iahn sighed. The damos's messages were always brief and usually truncated. A longer message required a greater dose, and to hear all that might be foretold would be the listener's first sermon of the afterlife, even for a vengeance taker. Iahn straightened. It wouldn't do to lose the fugitive at the last moment. He was accustomed to achieving his goals, no matter the difficulty. He would find Ususi Manaallin and kill any force or creature that stood in his way.

CHAPTER TWO

Spring, 1374 DR Darkness. Blowing, howling, damp gloom. Shadows reaching like fingers… grasping. Stretching closer. Screaming… Ususi woke, sitting upright, a cry on her lips. Where, what…? The dream. The same damned dream that pursued her up the years. She focused and slowed her too-rapid breathing. Just three days had passed since the dream last visited, but it had lost none of its immediacy, none of its mystery, and none of its enveloping terror. Calm down, she thought.

It's over-it's done, it can't hurt you. Nothing has changed. It was just a dream. Wasn't it? The excuses were familiar. She and her sister Qari made the same excuses to reassure each other when they were children. When they'd shared the same nightmare. But Qari had never known light-for her, darkness was natural. Her poor sister, already cursed to a sightless existence, had lost all remaining shreds of her reason when their parents died in the accident. After that tragedy, Qari was hidden away from even the enclosed world of Deep Imaskar, sightless and speechless. For all Ususi knew, the same terrible dream replayed through her sister's mind day after day after day, its terror unrelenting. Ususi slammed her fist down on the nightstand. "What are you?" she screamed. "What do you want from me? Leave me alone!" She pushed all thoughts of Qari from her mind. Thinking about her sister was something she did only by accident. The echoes of her yell died to nothing, and the darkness, the natural darkness of the night, pressed close. And yet something about that darkness was u

Dreamstalker. Something that craved darkness couldn't be good. She never managed to free herself from the curse of her personal nightmare, or flee far enough from its reach, despite all her abilities and the miles she'd put between herself and the hidden place of her birth. Ususi rose. She was done with sleep for the night. Time for some tea. She set the wick of the doused lantern freshly alight with a word of kindling. The interior of her traveling wagon was small but tidy. Everything was stowed just so. The cu

Sipping, Ususi thought back to the day she had commissioned the master carpenter of Two Stars to build the traveling wagon. It had been, what… a year ago? A year since she'd decided to give up her decade-long residence in Two Stars. A year since she had parted ways with Marrec and the others. Marrec had his own quest, and she had hers. She'd lived in Two Stars almost since she defied the lord apprehender and slipped past the Great Seal… But that was long ago.

What mattered now was her self-imposed mission of discovery. She would locate and map every site of power of her godlike ancestors, the Imaskari. Years of study had led her to the very first site of her obsession, the Mucklestones. That ancient ring of standing stones was one of the few known portals that co