Free Pool of Twilight by James M. Ward, Anne K. Brown

Tyr.
    She gazed at the vial in her hand. Faint sparkles of light seemed to drift through the thick, metallic-looking fluid within. She briefly considered summoning Hoag. The guardian of the pool could have given her the vial as a trick; it might be poisonous. To find out, she could command the hamatula to taste it. But she didn’t want to take the risk of giving the fiend greater power. “Let’s be done with it,” she said finally.
    She lifted the vial to her lips and drank down the oddly warm, steely tasting liquid.
    Fire coursed through her veins.
    Choking in pain, Sirana fell from the lounge. Her perfect alabaster flesh darkened in hue, becoming a rich bronze color. Two flecks of silvery light ignited in her dark eyes. Writhing on the floor, she swore. What a dolt! She should have suspected a trick. She should have readied a spell of transference so that she could escape this now-doomed body to possess another.
    “I cannot die like this!” she croaked, her face twisted in agony. “Not yet!”
    Suddenly, the pain vanished.
    It was as if she had been plunged into a vat of cool, dark water. Slowly, Sirana pulled herself to her feet, gasping. The darkened chamber seemed to have been transformed. Where before there had been mere shadows, now there was layer upon layer of scintillating darkness. She spun about. Everywhere she looked she saw shades of jet, onyx, and ebony. It was breathtakingly beautiful.
    A realization struck her. It was not the room that had changed, but her eyes! Darkness was no longer a barrier to her vision. Now she could see and touch the very fabric of night. This was a gift indeed. She reached out and stroked the silken darkness, gathering it about her like a cloak.
    “What is this?” she murmured.
    She touched a strange, glistening thread of darkness hovering before her. It was a thread of summoning, she realized. She had used such magical tendrils to call fiends to her many times before, but those threads had always been silvery, shimmering with life energy. This thread was wonderfully black. What type of creature could it possibly belong to? She tugged at the thread, willing whatever existed on the other end to hasten to her side.
    “Who dares?” a thin, dusty voice whispered.
    “I command you to appear,” Sirana ordered. She stepped into the protective center of her summoning symbol and pulled harder on the black thread.
    “You do not sleep,” the dusty voice rasped with strange surprise. “You do not dream.”
    “No, I command.” Gathering her will, Sirana gave one final tug on the thread. Suddenly, it evaporated in her fingers, and the creature arrived.
    It floated before her, a thing of shadow the size of a man. It seemed featureless except for its long, twiglike fingers and a mouth full of moon-white teeth.
    For a moment a feeling of alarm surged in Sirana’s chest. She had never seen a being quite like this before. Would she be able to control its terrible evil? With her mental powers, she gently probed its aura. Immediately she relaxed. She could sense that this shadow creature was bound to her by her summoning. It must obey.
    “What are you?” she demanded.
    “I am Sigh,” the creature breathed in its indistinct voice.
    “I am a bastellus. The world in which my kind dwells is far from this one. But there are some of your race there. They know us as dreamstalkers.” Tendrils of shadow floated about the bastellus like ethereal tentacles. “How is it that you summoned me?”
    “I ask the questions here,” Sirana proclaimed imperiously. Dutifully, the creature fell silent.
    Sirana was well pleased. It seemed the guardian of the pool of twilight had kept its part of the bargain. She had never seen a creature of such perfect blackness. It was beautiful. And it was all hers.
    “Shall I enter the dreams of your foes and feed upon them, mistress?” the bastellus hissed.
    “That is within your powers?”
    The bastellus nodded.
    Sirana smiled in cruel satisfaction, tapping a