Darkvision by Bruce R. Cordell

consciously activate the extraordinary new strength his prosthesis harbored. If he could consciously trigger it once, he was confident he could do it again. But should he? The way nausea struggled against his exhaustion, twice as bad as the first time…. If he called on the arm’s strength a third time, would the aftermath multiply again? The wall was no longer enough to support him. He slid down to a squat, still leaning on the wall, and studied his feet. They seemed strangely far away.
    A man appeared from down the inner passage—not one of the toughs who’d failed to overcome Warian. The newcomer wore the tailored black and gray robe of a businessman. His assertive posture, wiry frame, and dark but thinning hair were all too familiar to Warian.
    It was Uncle Zel.
    Zeltaebar Datharathi, who sat with his uncles on the family council, was a schemer, a dealmaker, a master of disguise, and a self-proclaimed scoundrel. Warian and Zel never had much to do with each other.
    “Nephew, is that you?” asked Zel, squinting in disbelief. “What in the name of the Ten Dark Gods are you doing back in town? And why are you killing my men?”

CHAPTER EIGHT
    The destrier flitted across moonlit hills, its stone feet pounding out a tempo that mimicked the world’s heartbeat.
    Kiril roused from her dozing trance when Thormud called a halt. Blinking, she gazed around at the monotonous plain, at low hills and rocky ridges silhouetted in the silvery distance. Nothing seemed amiss.
    “Why are we stopping?”
    “I am uneasy,” Thormud responded. “Another prognostication is in order.”
    “Really? In the middle of the night? I thought we traveled by night to avoid the heat of the day and unfortunate observation.”
    “The same principle holds for conducting arduous prognostications, Kiril. I prefer to undertake such exertions during night’s cool and shrouding darkness.”
    Kiril looked around again. The destrier had stopped atop a low, smooth bluff.
    “I’ll tell you where to put your ‘shrouding darkness,’ ” she murmured as she slipped off the stone destrier’s back. The wait while Thormud performed his ritual promised to be excruciatingly boring.
    Thormud let the elemental mount bend low before he dismounted. As soon as the dwarf’s feet touched down, he moved to the center of the bluff and began scrawling in the earth with his rod. Kiril recognized the preliminary chicken scratches as standard geomancer preparations for “magical surveillance and interrogation of the mineral bones of the world,” as the dwarf had once described it. Bah.
    Kiril sighed and paced out a perimeter. She always hated waking from trance—her thoughts were too clear and connected. At those times, the temptation to draw Angul was worst—she wanted to drown her questions and uncertainties in the blade’s overwhelming certitude. It was nearly a compulsion.
    Nothing the verdigris god couldn’t fix. She gulped down a burning shot and gasped. As the fire settled into her stomach, Angul’s lure faded into low background noise, as always. The trick was to desensitize her mind. His call couldn’t penetrate her alcohol haze.
    She finished her circuit around the periphery of the bluff. A gauzy film of cloud partially obscured the moon, but her eyes were sharp in the dark. She spied nothing to threaten the dwarf’s impromptu magical rite. Kiril found a likely rock and sat, gazing at Thormud.
    The geomancer pulled a chest from the destrier’s back. From it he produced various vials filled with mineral salts and viscous oils. These ingredients, along with his selenite rod, were familiar implements of high geomancy. Kiril barely paid attention—if a branch of magic existed that was slower and less exciting than geomancy, she hadn’t seen it or heard of its disrepute.
    Thormud created a circle on the bluff top by pouring out measured quantities of multicolored dusts. He quartered the circle with his moon-white rod. When he finished, an invisible spark of