Those were called nodules. Gazing into the crack, Iahn thought this great boulder was completely filled with Celestial Nadir crystal, making it a nodule. But something glimmered at the nodule's center. A palely glowing blot like a luminiferous fungus, or subterranean sea shape… Then… Darkness. Blowing, howling, damp gloom. Shadows reaching like fingers… grasping. Stretching closer. Screaming…

Iahn's eyes snapped open. He lay on the path, at the nexus of the three ways. Ususi bent over him, patting his cheek and looking concerned. The two Vaelanites stood nearby, looking useless. He demanded, "Tell me what happened. I recall… a nodule?" Darkness clawed at his brain and was gone again in a flash. He clutched his head. Ususi said, "You tell us. One moment you were describing how the cavity was filled with agate. Then you screamed and fell fifteen paces without trying to catch yourself. I thought you'd been struck dead, or petrified. Then I heard you mumble about fingers. We dragged you back here. What did you see?" "Something we need to destroy." The vengeance taker tottered to his feet. Pain lanced his left shin, and his right shoulder and arm-souvenirs from the fall he couldn't remember, he supposed. He told them, "Something terrible is caught in that nodule … Pandorym, you called it? If we destroy it, we destroy the threat reaching into the world, and into Deep Imaskar." Now who was the loose-lipped one? Didn't matter. His conviction made him reckless. The one with the crystal arm stepped forward. His eyes were red, and his face tear-streaked. "Yes, let's destroy it!" "Iahn, Warian, wait.

You're only partly right. That husk of stone may-may-imprison Pandorym's body, whatever shape it truly possesses. Or it could be some other entity completely unrelated to Pandorym. The Celestial Nadir is filled with such dangerous detritus. Either way, it's important to remember that the body and mind of Pandorym were never kept in the same place-too dangerous." "Explain," he ordered. "I described before how Pandorym was a doomsday weapon the Imaskari didn't dare release. They only wanted to threaten Pandorym's release, and thus the entity's psyche was extracted from its physical shell and stored in the Imperial Weapons Cache of the Purple Palace." Ususi turned to point at the wavering facade of the palace. "Now the psyche has partly freed itself, with Shaddon's help. The mind is the only vulnerable portion of Pandorym. The body, even if that is it, is beyond my ability to affect, even if I use the keystone to scrape away the Celestial Nadir crystal that has scabbed over it. We must go to the palace, find the vessel that once contained Pandorym's psyche, and close it again." Warian asked, his face flushed, "Since Pandorym has all these servitors, why doesn't it just coerce one into fully releasing it?" Ususi said, "I'm sure Pandorym's tried that many times.

The longer we fail to contain its growing influence, the sooner it will be successful in freeing its mind from the arcane constraints that yet tether it." Iahn asked, "My duty is to return you to Deep Imaskar so you can stem the incursion. Yet you say our best hope is to enter the Weapons Cache of the Purple Palace instead of returning first to our imperiled city. Will you stake the safety of Deep Imaskar on this course of action?" "I don't see any other option. If we go to Deep Imaskar to fight whatever else Pandorym has corrupted and freed from the Weapons Cache, we'll be attacking only the symptoms. We must get to the root of the problem and restopper Pandorym's mentality before it does find a way to free its mind and reunite with its physical shell." The vengeance taker considered Ususi's words. Her assessment was probably correct. He glanced at the irregular nodule.

Darkness flashed again through his thoughts and skittered away. He'd seen something that he'd not soon forget. "Very well, Ususi," agreed Iahn. "Let's go."

The dragonet's glimmer preceded Kiril and Prince Monolith through the narrow stone corridor. They circled up, up, and up in a gyre whose eventual termination seemed unlikely. The slope was shallow at first, but progressively steepened. Every hundred paces brought them past a sealed arch. Kiril supposed these opened to the tower's core, but each was bricked over with purplish stone. Like the corridor, the sealing stones were scarred and stained by some great drowning years ago. The monotony was eventually broken by a scattering of cracked bricks that spilled into the corridor. The stones sealed an arch that had partially collapsed-centuries ago, by the look of it. Xet fluttered past the gap in the corridor without slowing. Kiril paused a moment to peer through the broken masonry. "Hey, I see light!" Monolith, bringing up the rear, said, "This tower is too large for us to explore every room, or even every floor. Nor need we, because Thormud provided Xet with a route to our objective." "What if we stumble on something useful?" "Leave it be-we have a long way to go." Kiril sniffed and lingered in the breach to see what she could. The space past the arch was a great foyer, high-beamed and supported by massive columns.

Twelve or thirteen pits, each as wide as a human was tall, marred the otherwise smooth floor. Rusted, egglike metallic objects, partly crumpled, dented, or otherwise damaged, plugged all but one of the pits. The open pit was covered with a metallic oval, but it hovered just above the pit, slowly rotating. A pale lavender light shone up from the hole, bathing the rotating egg and glinting off silvery highlights. "Xet, come here a moment," Kiril instructed. Thormud's familiar chided her with a series of high-pitched bell tones, but flew to her and perched on her shoulder. Thormud must have also commanded the familiar to listen to her orders. Xet wasn't happy about it. Too bad. With the additional light provided by the dragonet, she could make out the ceiling of the chamber, some forty or fifty paces above the pitted floor. Cavities in the ceiling exactly mirrored those in the floor. A thin streamer of smoke or moisture rose from the top of the single rotating egg, swirling and spiraling toward the ceiling, where it was sucked into an opening. Was each ceiling cavity a chimney? "What do you suppose…?" began Kiril. "Come." Monolith put a huge hand on her back, but refrained from pulling her back. "All right, you damn rock," she consented. She knew he was right: Thormud depended on their swiftness. Onward. Walking up the spiraling slope in the darting, flickering light given off by Xet took its toll on Kiril before long. The wavering shadows, unexpected flashes of illumination, and stretches of unrelieved blackness were enough to give Kiril a splitting headache. With her head pounding, she called a rest. "Hold on," the swordswoman said. "My eyes are throbbing. I need a moment."

Xet bleated, circled in the air twice, and settled to the floor of the passage. Behind her, Monolith said, "Very well." Kiril sat, leaning her back against the cool wall of the corridor. She held her forehead, then rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her palms, stopping only after she had induced phantom stars. She rested for a while in soothing darkness. As a torch, the swerving, erratic Xet was a failure. The choice was either to stop for a rest from its frenzied illumination, or smash the little dragonet into so many pretty shards.

A few moments of darkness and a sip from the verdigris god took the edge off. She sensed Prince Monolith's disapproval even without opening her eyes. The big rock was too much of a purist. She barked, eyes still closed, "Leave off. Trust me, you'd like me far less without my flask." The elemental lord's silence felt like further condemnation. She swore, "Blood and fire!" She opened her eyes. Prince Monolith was gone. She'd constructed the entire exchange. Was it guilt? Disgusted, she threw the enchanted flask as hard as she could.