Darkvision by Bruce R. Cordell Page B

were like—yet unlike—the constellations from her childhood. And as a young adult, when she took the Cerulean Oath and met her soul mate in the citadel called Stardeep, her home was situated in an enchanted forest above which yet another wholly different set of constellations wheeled.
    Not even the positions of the stars were a constant in her life, she mused.
    She picked up another stone and paused. She hadn’t heard the dwarf speak for a suspiciously long time.
    Xet cawed out in alarm, an amazingly lifelike yowl.
    Kiril whirled and looked for Thormud. He lay in his circle, thrashing. Moonlight revealed blood oozing from the dwarf’s wide but unseeing eyes. Kiril’s stream of invectives propelled her toward her prone employer. Xet fluttered ineffectually from its perch on a boulder, squeaking and chiming.
    Thormud routinely impressed upon her the importance of not interrupting him while he remained in earthen communion within one of his circles. He’d noted that breaking the periphery could be dangerous.
    Stuff that.
    The elf, running hard, dived into the circle, hands stretched wide. Luminescence, violet and violent, stabbed at her eyes, and a scream of fury—not her own nor the dwarf’s— broke upon her ears. Undeterred, she tucked and tumbled, grabbed Thormud’s limp form in mid-roll, and allowed her momentum to carry them both out of the circle.
    The moment she passed the boundary, the escalating scream ceased. The quiet of the night was like a balm, and a cool breeze caressed Kiril’s face. She rolled Thormud over. The dwarf still breathed, and his eyes were coming back into focus. He groaned.
    The elf yelled into his face, “What in the name of the nine were you doing?”
    The dwarf shook his head and mumbled something inaudible.
    “What was that scream?” Kiril demanded.
    “Something… followed me,” the dwarf croaked. He raised a trembling hand and pointed.
    The swordswoman snapped her gaze back to the circle, or where the circle had been. Darkness cloaked the bluff top, too deep even for her elf eyes to pierce.
    Kiril scrambled to her feet. “Great. Things keep coming up roses,” she murmured, palming her dagger.
    Two fiery violet eyes blinked open from within the unnatural night. The darkness coalesced, and a presence was revealed—a shrouded, half-real visage roughly human in outline. Kiril couldn’t tell whether it was dressed in white robes or if its flesh was just naturally loose and flowing. Free-floating sigils pulsed a pale, dangerous light, slowly orbiting the creature. The glyphs seemed to promise death and severance, but severance of what, Kiril didn’t want to pursue.
    She flung her dagger. It flew with deadly accuracy, transfixing the creature between the eyes.
    Or it would have, if the creature’s flesh hadn’t parted like mist and completely ignored the blade of elven steel. The dagger clattered on the rocks somewhere on the other side of the bluff.
    “Blood!” spat Kiril.
    The dwarf staggered to his feet, one white, bloodless hand still tightly gripping his selenite rod. Thormud pointed the rod at the earth where the creature stood. The ground trembled, but one of the free-floating glyphs surrounding the creature flashed like a shooting star. Thormud screamed, dropped his rod, and clutched his head. The temblor faded.
    “My earth sense!” wailed the dwarf. “I can’t hear the earth! Where is it?”
    The half-material newcomer advanced down the slope in streaming folds of translucent flesh and unfixed symbols. The dwarf fell upon the ground he’d just vacated. Thormud’s crystal familiar turned wing and flapped straight away across the plain, pealing a random series of plaintive notes.
    It was up to Kiril Duskmourn to quell the threat.
    The elf squared her shoulders and pulled Angul free of his sheath.
    Clarity flashed over Kiril like a sunrise, its brilliance rolling in all directions, chasing away every shadow, every shade of gray, every doubt, and every worry. Warmth,