Danica bent low and kissed the understanding dwarf on the forehead, drawing a deep blush from Ivan.
“Hee hee hee,” Pikel chirped.
“Aw, what’d ye go and do that for?” the flustered dwarf asked Danica. He slapped his chuckling brother across the shoulder to set them both into motion, moving away from the inn and away from Cadderly. Ivan knew that if the young scholar saw them all, he would probably invite them in, thus ruining Danica’s desires.
Danica stood alone in the crowded street, watching Cadderly’s every step as he made his way into the Dragon’s Codpiece. Across from her, the waters of Impresk Lake sparkled in the late afternoon sunlight, and she almost followed their spellbinding allure and ran away from her fears. Truly, Danica didn’t know how Cadderly would react, didn’t know how final their parting in Shilmista Forest had been.
If Cadderly rebuked her, Danica didn’t know where she would turn.
For the young monk, who had faced many challenges, many enemies, no moment had ever been so trying. It took every measure of courage that Danica could muster, but finally, she skipped off toward the waiting inn.
Cadderly was on the stairs, heading up, when Danica entered. He held his familiar walking stick in the crook of one elbow and was looking at some wrinkled parchment, apparently oblivious to the world around him.
Quiet as a cat, the agile monk crossed the room and made the stairs. A boy of perhaps fifteen years eyed her curiously as she passed, she noted, and she half expected the lad to stop her, for she was not a paying guest. He didn’t, though, and soon Cadderly, still too busy with the parchment to notice her, loomed just two steps ahead of her.
Danica studied him a moment longer. He looked leaner than he had just a few tendays ago, but she knew it was not for lack of eating. Cadderly’s boyish form had taken on the hardness of manhood. Even his step seemed more sure and solid, less inclined to skip aside from his chosen path.
“You look good,” Danica blurted, hardly thinking before she made the comment.
Cadderly stopped abruptly, stumbling over the next step. Slowly, he lifted his gaze from the parchment. Danica heard him gulp for breath.
It seemed like many moments had passed before the young priest finally mustered the courage to turn and face her, and when he did, Danica stared into a confused face indeed. She waited for Cadderly to reply, but apparently, he either couldn’t find his voice, or had nothing to say.
“You look good,” Danica said again, and she thought herself incredibly inane. “I … we, had to come to Carradoon to …”
She stopped, her words halted by the look in Cadderly’s gray eyes. Danica had many times before stared intently into those eyes, but she saw something new there, a sadness of bitter experiences.
Again, it seemed like time slipped by.
Cadderly’s walking stick fell to the stairs with an impossibly loud thud. Danica looked at it curiously, and when she looked up again, Cadderly was with her, his arms wrapped around her, nearly crushing her.
Danica was independent and strong, arguably one of the very finest fighters in all the land, but never in her life had she felt so secure and warm. Gentle tears made their way down her smooth cheeks, but there was no sadness in her heart.
Still wearing Brennan’s body as his own, Ghost watched the pair from the bottom of the stairs as he absently pushed a broom back and forth. His devious mind continued its typical whirling, formulating new plans and making subtle adjustments to old plans. Ghost had to get things moving quickly. The complications were undeniably piling up.
But the skilled killer, the artist, was not afraid. He liked challenges, and compared to the many dead heroes he had left in his wake, Cadderly, didn’t seem so much a problem.
Danica.
Cadderly had not seen her in more than three and a half tendays, and while he’d not forgotten her appearance, he was nonetheless surprised by her beauty. She stood inside the closed door of his room, her head cocked patiently to the side, strawberry hair dancing against one shoulder, and her exotic eyes, rich and brown, tender and knowing, gazing at him.
He had initiated their breakup. He had been the one who’d left—had left Danica, the war, and Shilmista. He still wasn’t certain of Danica’s intentions in coming to see him, but whatever they might be, Cadderly knew it was surely his turn to speak, to explain.
“I didn’t expect you to come,” he said, moving beside his reading table and gently closing The Tome of Universal Harmony. A nervous chuckle escaped his dry lips. “I feared I would receive an invitation to Shilmista Forest to witness the wedding of Danica and Elbereth.”
“I don’t deserve that,” Danica replied, keeping her melodic voice even-toned and steady.
Cadderly threw up his hands, helpless. “I would have deserved it,” he admitted.
Danica produced Ivan’s gift and tossed it to him. “From the dwarves,” she explained as Cadderly caught the heavy disks. “They began it long ago, a present for the man who saved the Edificant Library.”
Cadderly could feel the strength of the weapon, and that horrified him as much as it thrilled him. “Always weapons.…” he muttered in resignation, tossing the spindle-disks to the floor at the foot of his bed where they bounced against a small clothes chest, dented the hardwood, and rolled to a stop inches from Cadderly’s newly enchanted walking stick.
Cadderly regarded the fitting image and nearly laughed aloud, but he wouldn’t let Danica’s obvious distraction keep him from his point.
“You loved the elf prince,” he said to her.
“He is now the elf king,” Danica reminded him.
Cadderly didn’t miss the fact that she failed to respond to his accusation.
“You did … do love Elbereth,” Cadderly said again, quietly.
“As do you,” Danica replied. “He’s a dear friend, and among the most extraordinary and honorable people I’ve ever had the privilege of fighting beside. I would give my life for the elf king of Shilmista, as would you.”
Her words hardly came as a revelation to Cadderly. All along, beneath the veil of his fears, he’d known the truth of Danica’s relationship with Elbereth, had known that her love for the elf—and it was indeed love—was irrelevant to her feelings for himself. Danica and Elbereth had bonded in a common cause, as warriors with shared values. If Cadderly loved Danica, and he did with all his heart, how could he not also love Elbereth?
But there remained a nagging question, a nagging doubt, and not one about Danica.
“You would give your life for him,” Cadderly replied with all sincerity. “I wish I could claim equal courage.”
Danica’s smile wasn’t meant to mock him, but he felt it keenly anyway.
“I ran from there,” Cadderly pointedly reminded her.
“Not when you were needed,” Danica replied. “Neither I nor the elves have forgotten what you did at Syldritch Trea, or in the heat of battle. Tintagel is alive and Shilmista is back in the hands of Elbereth’s People because of you.”
“But I ran away,” Cadderly argued.
Danica’s next question, tinged with innocence and honest trepidation, caught the young priest off guard. “Why did you run?”
She dropped her traveling cloak on the small night table and moved over to sit on Cadderly’s bed, and he turned to look out his window, over the still-glittering lake in the dying light of day. Cadderly had never asked himself that question so bluntly, had never considered the cause of his distress.
“Because,” he said after a moment then he paused again, the words still not clear in his mind. He heard the bed creak and feared for a moment that Danica was coming to him. He didn’t want her to see the pain on his face at that moment. The bed creaked again and he realized she’d only shifted and hadn’t risen.
“Too much was spinning around me,” he said. “The fighting, the magic, my dilemma over Dorigen’s unconscious form, and the fear that I did wrong in not killing her, the cries of the dying that wouldn’t leave my ears …” Cadderl
y managed a soft chuckle, “and the way you looked at Elbereth.”
“All of that would seem cause to remain beside those who love you, not to run away,” Danica observed.
“This madness has been mounting for some time,” Cadderly explained, “perhaps even before the Talonite priest began his assault on the library. Perhaps I’ve been troubled my whole life. That wouldn’t surprise me, but still, I must face these troubles and get beyond them.” He stole a look at Danica over his shoulder. “I know that now.”
“But again …” Danica began, but Cadderly, facing the lake again, cut her off with an outstretched palm.
“I couldn’t face them with you, don’t you understand?” he asked, his voice pleading, hoping she would forgive him. “Back in the library, whenever the many questions threatened to overwhelm me, all I had to do was seek out my Danica, my love. Beside you, watching you, there were no troubles, no unanswerable questions.”
He turned to face her squarely, and saw the joy emanating from her beautiful face.
“You’re not my answer,” Cadderly admitted, and he winced as Danica’s light went out, a great pain washing through her almond eyes. “You’re not my cure,” Cadderly quickly tried to explain, lamenting his choice of words. “You’re a salve, a temporary relief.”
“A plaything?”
“Never!” The word was torn from Cadderly’s heart, bursting forth with the sureness that Danica surely needed to hear.
“When I’m with you, all the world and all of my life is beautiful,” Cadderly went on. “In truth, it isn’t, of course. Shilmista proved that beyond doubt. When I’m with you, I can hide behind my love. You, my Danica, have been my mask. Wearing it, I could even hide from the horrors of that continuing battle, I’m sure.”
“But you couldn’t hide from yourself,” Danica put in, beginning to catch on.
Cadderly nodded. “There are troubles in here,” he explained, pointing to his heart and to his head, “that will remain beside me until I can resolve them. Or until they destroy me.”
“And you couldn’t face them while your mask was there to hide behind,” Danica reasoned. There was no malice in her quiet tone. Honestly sympathetic for Cadderly, she asked, “Have you found your answers?”
Cadderly nearly laughed out loud. “I have found more questions,” he admitted. “The world has only become more confusing since I delved into myself.” He pointed to The Tome of Universal Harmony. “You would hardly believe the sights that book has shown to me, though whether they’re true sights or clever deceptions, I cannot tell.”
By the way Danica’s posture seemed to shrink back from him, Cadderly realized that he had said something revealing. He waited long moments for Danica to respond, to share her revelation with him.
“You question your faith?” she asked.
Cadderly spun away, his gaze again searching for the dying light on the lake. She had hit the mark squarely, he only then realized. How could he, as a priest of Deneir, doubt the vision and magic shown to him by the most holy book of his god?
“I do not doubt the principles espoused by the Deneirrath,” Cadderly asserted with conviction.
“Then it’s the god himself you question?” Danica reasoned. “Or do you question the existence of any such beings?” her voice nearly broke apart with the words. “How can one who was raised among priests, and who has witnessed so much clerical magic, claim to be agnostic?”
“I claim nothing,” Cadderly protested. “I’m just not certain of anything!”
“You have seen the magic bestowed by the gods,” Danica argued. “You felt the magic in healing Tintagel.”
“I believe in magic,” Cadderly reasoned. “It’s an undeniable fact on the soil of Faerûn. And yes, I have felt the power, but where it comes from I cannot say.”
“The curse of intelligence,” Danica muttered, and Cadderly regarded her over his shoulder once more. “You can’t believe anything you can’t prove beyond doubt. But must everything be tangible? Is there no room for faith in a mind that can unravel any of the lesser mysteries?”
A wind had kicked up across the lake. Ripples rolled to the shore, carrying the last daylight on their crests.
“I just don’t know,” Cadderly said, regarding the rolling water, trying to find some fitting symbolism in its transport of the dying light.
“Why did you run?” Danica asked him again, and he knew by her determined tone that she meant to force him through it, whatever the cost to them both.
“I was afraid,” he admitted. “Afraid to kill any more. Afraid that you would be killed. That I could not bear.” Cadderly paused and swallowed hard, forced to come to terms with a difficult realization. His silence went on, Danica not daring to interrupt his train of thought.
“I was afraid to die.” There it was. Cadderly had just admitted his own cowardice. He tightened his arms against his sides, fearing Danica’s stinging rebuttal.
“Of course you were,” she replied instead, and there was no sarcasm in her remark. “You question your faith, question that there is anything beyond this existence. If you believe there’s nothing more, then of what worth is honor? Bravery rides the crest of a cause, Cadderly. You would die for Elbereth. You have already proven that. And if a spear were aimed for my heart, you would willingly take it in my stead. Of that I have no doubt.”
Cadderly continued to stare out the window. He heard Danica shifting on the bed again, but was too lost in contemplations of her wisdom. He watched the last gasps of light riding the waves, riding the crest, and knew that there was truth in Danica’s description. He had been afraid to die in Shilmista, but only because the justification for continuing that fight was founded in a cause of principles, and those principles were, in turn, founded in faith. And he had been so angry at Danica and Elbereth, and all the others, because he’d feared for them and could not appreciate their dedication to those higher principles, their willingness to continue on a course that might easily lead to their deaths.
“I would take the spear,” Cadderly decided.
“I never doubted you,” Danica replied. There was something in the ring of her voice, something softer and mysterious, that made Cadderly turn back to her.
She lay on her side on his bed, her clothes in a pile at the bedside. If Cadderly lived a thousand years, he would never forget the sight of Danica at that moment. She rested her head against her hand, propped at the elbow, her thick strawberry-blond locks cascading down her arm to dance on the single pillow. The minimal light accentuated the curves of Danica’s soft skin, the shine of her sculpted legs.
“Through all the tendays, I never doubted you,” she said.
Cadderly sensed the slight tremor in her voice, but still couldn’t believe how brave she had been. Without blinking, he unbuttoned his shirt and started to her.
A moment later, they were together. The song played again in Cadderly’s mind. No, rather, he felt it, thrumming with urgency through every facet of his body, guiding him through every subtle motion, and convincing him that nothing had ever been so right.
Cadderly’s mind whirled through a dizzying jumble of thoughts and emotions. He thought of Danica bearing his child, and considered the implications of mortality.
Most of all, Cadderly focused his thoughts on Danica, his soul mate, and he loved her all the more. Perhaps once she had been his shelter, but only because he had made that her role. But Cadderly had revealed his vulnerability, his deepest fears, and Danica had accepted them, and him, with all her heart, and with the sincere desire to help him resolve them.
Later, as Danica slept, Cadderly rose from the bed and lit a single candle on his table, beside The Tome of Universal Harmony. Not bothering to dress, he looked back at Danica on the bed, and felt a surge of love course through his veins. Strengthened by that security, Cadderly sat down and opened the book, hopeful that, in light of the night’s revelations, he would hear the song a different way.
Many hours before Cadderly lit that candle, Ghost h
ad slipped away from the young priest’s door, confident from his eavesdropping that the arrival of Danica Maupoissant would do little to defy his solidifying plans. Actually, Ghost had come to the conclusion that he might be able to use Danica—her body, at least—to substantially increase the pleasure offered by the kill.
If he could possess the body of Cadderly’s lover, he might catch the young priest with his guard about as far down as it could possibly go.
But for all the eagerness reflected when Ghost rubbed his hands together, every step of the way back to his own room, he was wise enough to realize that things had become dangerously complicated.
Still bound in the cubby between bed and wall, poor beaten Brennan looked up pleadingly.
“I will release you this night,” Ghost promised. “I have decided that I cannot afford to keep your body—and a pity that is, for the body is fine!”
Brennan, desperate to hope, almost managed to smile right up until the point when Ghost’s hands—Brennan’s own hands—closed around his borrowed throat. There was no pain time for the beleaguered innkeeper’s son. There was only blackness.
That task completed, Ghost sat down on the bed, untying the weakling form and waiting impatiently for when he could take back his own body. He lamented that he had lost his chance at a fine young form, but reminded himself of the pressing business and equally pressing danger. He assured himself that he would find another suitable body soon enough, when Cadderly lay dead.
THIRTEEN
THE STOOGE’S STOOGE
Kierkan Rufo eyed the stocked shelves with open contempt. Shopping! For more than a dozen years, he had labored in the Edificant Library, had meticulously attended to his duties, and Headmaster Avery had sent him shopping!
The entire trip to Carradoon had been one humiliation after another for poor Rufo. He knew his actions in Shilmista had angered Avery—though Rufo had convinced himself that none of it had really been his fault—but he never would have believed that the headmaster would degrade him so. Through all the many meetings, with the priests of Ilmater, with several of the other religious sects in Carradoon, and with the city officials, Rufo had been ordered to stand behind Avery and remain silent. Those meetings were vital to the defense of the Southern Heartlands, vital to the survival of the Edificant Library, yet Rufo was, for all intents and purposes, left out of them. Not only was his input not sought by Avery, the headmaster had outright forbidden it!