Corvan woke up shivering and pulled the blanket tight around his shoulders. The last he could recall; Kael's counterpart had given him some medicine and had told him to rest for the night. It was still quiet around him, but she had been right about the dreams her medicine might bring on. He had an intense strange one where Kate was talking inside his head while another girl led him away through a land of stone igloos toward a ruined tower.

A rhythmic tapping touched his ears, as if someone was playing a small tin drum nearby. Opening his eyes, he gazed up curved stone wall that rose to a round circle far overhead. It hadn't been a dream. He was in a tower and the person throwing shadows on the wall was tapping out the rhythm behind him. As he turned over to find the source of the sound, he discovered that both his tunic and his pack of supplies were missing.

Across the floor from him, the girl with the all-dark eyes was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to his backpack. The acetylene lamp was hissing out its light from between her knees and she had a stick of dynamite in each hand. She was tapping the sticks on the reflector of the lamp, the long fuses dangling around the open flame.

"Don't do that!" Corvan gasped as he sat up and gestured frantically to her. "Keep those away from the fire!"

The girl quickly thrust the sticks out to each side. "Why, what do they do?"

"If that white cord catches fire, it burns up to the stick and explodes like a broken firestick but with much more power - enough to blow this whole tower, and us to smithereens."

The girl gently set the sticks of dynamite on the ground, far away from the lamp. "I don't know this place called 'smithereens' but I do know that making a loud noise is the best way to confuse the Rakash and throw them off your trail." She stood and pulled a loaded crossbow from her back. "That's why I invented an exploding firestick crossbow bolt." She gestured out the open door. "This has saved me a few times out there."

In that pose, dressed in her black long-sleeved shirt and narrow-legged blank pants, the wide-eyed girl looked much like the martial arts superhero from one of his comic books.

"Where are we?"

"The broken tower on the edge of the Rakash burrows. I thought for sure we would get here in time, but they never showed up."

"Who?"

"Gavyn and your Watcher."

"They were coming here?"

She pointed the lamp toward a wide hole in the floor. A thick central pillar rose from the pit and disappeared into the gloom overhead. "Gavyn and your guide were going to meet you down there, at the entry into the passage that leads to Kadir." She turned the lamp back to the door. "They must still be on their way here from Katay Set."

"Where is that?"

"Are you still drugged? You were just there. Katay Set is what my father calls our colony. He was the one that showed you the location of the Kael's library and the Rakash pool on his map. Then you and your lizard guide went out through the old sewers, but you got caught by Kael's men."

Corvan shook his head. As far as his fuzzy mind could recall, Kael was supposed to bring him out to this tower so he could go home and get the scepter. "How did I get out here?"

"I helped you. You were really out of it but at least you didn't make any noise when we went through the Rakash dwellings. As soon as we got here, you fell asleep on the tower guard's bed."

Corvan looked toward the door. "Won't they see the lamp light?"

"The Rakash? Most of them are blind, if you hadn't noticed."

"Not the Rakash, the people in the library. Won't they be looking for me?"

"Not yet, but maybe soon. I can put out the light if that makes you feel better." The girl twisted the knob on the lamp, the flame died, and darkness settled over them.

The girl came close but until his eyes adjusted, Corvan could barely make out her outline. His grandfather's tunic dropped into his lap, and she sat beside him on the bed. "I wore your tunic while you slept and made you more comfortable by removing your pack. That's quite the invention. It looks like something made in Niva. I was told they used to invent a lot of amazing things like that from the special plants they grew there."

"Where did you learn to use a miner's lamp?"

"I'm good with making and fixing mechanical things. Many of the inventions in the colony are mine, even though my mother always takes the credit. She says she doesn't want our people to think I'm a freak or they will banish me." She leaned toward Corvan. "It's a little too late, mother," she said, her voice thick with sarcasm, "they would have to be blind to not see my eyes."

She touched his shoulder. "You can see in the darkness too, but your eyes are not all dark like mine. Did your eyes change when you eat the lumien seeds?" she asked.

"No, it was the ha..." He stopped. He probably shouldn't talk about the hammer.

"Was what?" she asked sharply.

"Just a thing that healed my eyes, then afterwards I could see better in the dark."

"Are you denying that you ate the seeds? That's so typical of guys. Why can't you just tell the truth so we can deal with it together?"

"I am telling the truth. Yes, I've eaten some small seeds but that wasn't what affected my eyes. Besides, my night vision isn't that great. I can barely see in here with the lamp off. It's too dark here for me."

A yellow glow crossed over Corvan's legs. The girl was fastening a lighted curved tube to the side of her head.

"I need a bit of light to see so I use the headlamp I created to use when I go out into the main cavern. It mimics the light of the yellow slime and doesn't draw attention as long as you keep it turned down. Right now I need to keep it on low as I haven't set it next to a lumien for a while and the light is getting weak."

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Sitting back on the bed, she rubbed her forearms briskly.

"Are you cold?" Corvan asked.

"A bit. My cape was lost when I was carrying you. It snagged on something out there, but I couldn't pick it up with you dragging along on my back." She looked at him and frowned. "You aren't the lightest person around."

Corvan handed her the blanket. "This one is thin, but it's warm."

"Thanks." She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. "So, what's your name?"

Corvan hesitated. He probably shouldn't us his real name around her. "My mother calls me Kalian, but people here make fun of that name."

"Yeah, that's not a name people here use anymore. It's considered bad luck. But then make fun of my name too. My full name is Petateekatil but don't bother trying to say it. You can just call me Teek."

"Is 'Teek' what your friends call you?"

"Friends?" she scoffed. "Haven't you heard the proverb, 'Dark eyes, dark heart? It's hard to find anyone who wants a friend with a 'dark heart'."

The letter Corvan's grandfather's letter had hidden in the oak chest warned him not to trust anyone with dark eyes but this time he was certain his grandfather was wrong. This girl was the first person he met that he could relate to. He liked her already. "I think being able to see in the dark is a good thing," he said. "Besides, it's not possible to have a dark heart if your eyes let in more light than anyone else's."

A flicker of a smile crossed her face.

"And I think Teeka is a nice name," Corvan added.

The smile fell away. "It's Teek. Teeka is what my mother calls me, and I hate it."

"Sorry - Teek."

She gestured to her eyes. "This was her fault. She left me alone in the lab when I was a child. She was so focused on her experiments she forgot I was even there and I drank one of her potions. I almost died and it changed my eyes so I can see better in the dark, but now I get bad headaches if there's too much light." Teek shook her head firmly. "Then she decided, without even talking to me, to tell everyone in Katay Set that because I could see in the dark, it was my destiny to take her new poison to the Rakash and save our colony."

Someone groaned behind them. Corvan tensed to check out the source of the sound, but the girl patted his leg. "It's just the tower guard. I've had to learn how to make a few special potions of my own and always have a few with me, just in case. He will be sleeping for a while yet, so you don't need to worry about him." She patted the cot they were sitting on and a puff of dust rose into the yellow light. "This is his bed we're sitting on."

Corvan relaxed. "I thought it might be one of the Rakash. They're crazy."

Her body stiffened. "Not all the Rakash are the same."

Corvan pointed out the door. "That one that attacked you by the river was. He ..."

"Did my mother poison him?" Teek asked.

"I'm not sure she wanted it to happen like that, but it was a horrible way to die."

"I hate them!" Teek spit the words out, then her shoulders shook as she leaned in closer and began to quietly sob. Corvan put his arm around her. Being captured by the Rakash had scared her badly.

Teek looked up with tears streaming down her face. "It was my fault. He was only helping me."

"Your father?"

"No, not my parents. They only care about helping the colony. The Rakash boy. He had recently come from Anamir, the city of light beyond the wall at the river. He ate one small bite of a seed on a dare, but the gatehouse still gave him their horrible elixir. I promised him I would use my medicines to help him to quit taking more of it, but it didn't work. I tried everything I could think of but then he'd become angry because his head hurt, and he'd go back to the Rakash nest for more." She looked away and spoke softly. "I wish I could have saved him."

"But he threw you over his shoulder and was hurting you. I heard you crying for help."

She shook her head and tears flicked off her eyelashes. "That was all pretend. We wanted the colony boys that followed me to believe I had been killed by the Rakash so that my father wouldn't look for me. I wasn't going back to the colony. I told that boy we would leave through the new tunnel to Kadir so I could keep him far away from the elixir in Kael's library pool. We were gonna look for a healer named Saray in the Molakar settlement to see if she could help him."

"You were going to Saray with a Rakash? The one who killed those boys? He might have killed her too!"

Teek pushed his arm off her shoulder and stood to her feet. The glow of her lamp thrust into his face.

"You're just like everyone else. He didn't mean for the boys to get hurt but I'm not sorry they did. They weren't my friends. They were mean to me." Teek buried her face in her hands.

Corvan stood and reached out to touch her shoulder, but she pulled away from him. He was leaning away, uncertain of what he should do, when Teek fell against him, her body limp, her light stick clattering to the floor. He quickly laid her on the bed and her eyes slowly opened.

"Are you okay?" Corvan asked.

"I haven't eaten or slept since I ran away from the colony." A few more tears squeezed out and ran down her cheeks. "And now I'm completely alone."

Corvan knelt beside her. "No, you aren't. I'm here."

Teek took a deep breath. A shiver ran through her body and Corvan picked the blanket off the floor and tucked it up around her shoulders. Retrieving his pack, he put it on the floor between his feet and pulled out the chocolate bar in its red cellophane wrapper. "Do you like chocolate and peanuts, Teek?"

"I don't know what those are, but I like the red color."

Corvan peeled back the wrapper. "The inside is a treat from my home. Would you like to try it?"

Teek nodded and Corvan held the corner to her mouth. She bit off a small piece, crunched on the peanuts and smiled. "It's very good." She reached out, took it from him and bit off a larger piece. "I'll save the rest for later." She took one more bite, wrapped the bar up, tucked it away her tunic and closed her eyes.

"You should rest, Teek."

Teek shook her head slightly, but her eyes didn't open. "I'm okay. We need to get moving. They'll be looking for you."

"You sleep for a bit, and I'll keep watch."

"Kalian?" she whispered.

He put his face closer to hers. "Yes?"

"When we were in the library you asked if you could kiss me. Did you mean it?"

Corvan looked into Teek's eyes, then turned his gaze to the ground. "I don't remember what I said after they gave me the sleepy medicine. I'm sorry Teek."

"Is it because of the girl who owns the white scarf and jeweled headband? I put them back in your pack."

Corvan's thoughts tumbled about as he searched for a response. Now that Teek was asking him about Tyreth he realized he wasn't sure what he felt her anymore. The deeper he went in the Cor the more he wondered if she could ever care about someone from the surface anyway. To complicate things, he had kissed Atiya when the lumien power messed with his feelings. He did care about Atiya but not in a girlfriend sort of way. Right now, what he really wanted was to be close to Kate again but lately she was only mad at him all the time. It didn't really matter for all three of them despised anyone who ate lumien seeds. The only person he had met that understood what it meant to be affected by the lumiens and had proven her love and loyalty to someone who had eaten the seeds, was Teek and that felt great.

"Does that girl have nice eyes?" Teek's lower lip trembled.

Corvan touched her cheek. "It's not that, Teek, and besides, I think your eyes are beautiful."

"You're just saying that," Teek murmured.

"No, I'm not. You and I can both see in the dark and that's something special that we share. You also care about people that everyone else turns away. That's pretty rare, especially down here. You're a beautiful person, Teek and I'm glad we met."

Teek's face relaxed into a faint smile as she closed her eyes.

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