“I already explained to you that affinity is a practice that is not without its dangers,” Pertelope went on, giving a small, ironic chuckle. “You see, I too fell prey to the chaos curse. Under its influences, I assumed my affinity with no regard for safety, no practical restraints at all.”
Cadderly winced to think that that wonderful woman, always a dear friend to him, had suffered from the curse that he had brought upon the library. But there was no malice, no blame, edging Pertelope’s voice as she continued.
“The change I enacted is permanent,” she said, rubbing a hand along her arm, the denticles drawing several lines of blood on her human palm. “It is painful, too, for my whole body is part human and part fish. The very air is poison to me, as would be the waters of the wide sea. I have no place left in this world, my friend. I am dying.”
“No!”
“Yes,” Pertelope replied. “I am not young, you know, and have labored long on this confusing path we call life. The curse killed me, do not doubt, but I have struggled to hang on for the very purpose that is before me this day. You, Cadderly, are my successor.”
“I do not accept it.”
“You cannot avoid it,” answered the headmistress. “Once begun, the song never ends. Never.”
The word sounded like the bang of a drum to Cadderly, suddenly terrified of what horrors he may have unlocked in the pages of that awful book.
“You will come to know the limitations of your powers,” Pertelope went on. “And there are indeed limitations.” She looked at her own destroyed arms as she spoke, making her point all too clear. “You are not invincible. You are not all-powerful. You are not a god.”
“I never said—”
“Humility will be your preservation,” Pertelope interrupted. “Test the powers, Cadderly, but test them with respect. They will drain you and take a bit of you with them whenever you summon them. Exhaustion is your enemy, and know that enacting magic will inevitably weary the spellcaster. But know, too, that if Deneir has chosen you, he will demand of you.”
Pertelope smiled warmly, revealing her confidence that Cadderly would be up to meeting the challenge.
No reciprocal smile found its way to Cadderly’s face.
“Do you plan on going somewhere?” Ghost whispered to Bogo Rath, seeing the young wizard in the upstairs hall of the Dragon’s Codpiece with a sack in hand. The assassin stepped out of Cadderly’s room and motioned for Bogo to follow him to his own room.
“The city guard has been called,” the wizard explained. “They will swarm all over this place.”
“And find what?” Ghost replied with a snicker, thinking it an ironic statement, given that he had just deposited Brennan’s body in Cadderly’s room. “Certainly there’s nothing here to implicate either one of us.”
“I hit the green-bearded dwarf with a lightning bolt,” Bogo admitted.
“He didn’t see you,” Ghost retorted. “If he had, you would be dead. Both he and his brother are up and about, downstairs with Fredegar. They would have come back for you long before this if the stupid dwarf suspected you had launched that magic.”
Bogo relaxed a bit. “Did Cadderly and Danica get away?”
Ghost shrugged, unable to answer. He had seen little beyond the carnage left in the wake of the attack. “Temporarily, perhaps,” he answered at length, and with as much conviction as he could muster. “But the Night Masks have been set on the trail now. They will not stop until the young priest is dead.”
“Then I am free to return to Castle Trinity,” Bogo reasoned.
“If you try to leave now, you will invite only suspicion,” Ghost replied. “And if Cadderly has managed to elude the assassins, he will likely return here. This is still the best seat at the game, for those who have the courage to play to the end.”
The last words sounded clearly like a threat.
“Aid the city guard in their investigation,” Ghost continued, a sudden ironic smile crossing his features. He was the artist, he privately reminded himself, already weaving new webs of intrigue. “Tell them you possess some knowledge of magic, and that you believe a bolt of lightning was set off in the upstairs corridor. When the dwarf confirms your story, you will be viewed in a favorable light.”
Bogo eyed the assassin doubtfully, even more so when he remembered that Kierkan Rufo was still about, carrying information that could certainly damn him.
“What is it?” Ghost asked, seeing Bogo’s mounting concern.
“Rufo.”
Ghost chuckled darkly. “He can say nothing without implicating himself. And he, by all of your descriptions, is too much a coward to do that.”
“True enough,” Bogo admitted, “but I’m still not convinced of the wisdom of remaining at the inn. We’ve underestimated Cadderly and his friends, it would seem.”
“Perhaps,” Ghost said in reluctant agreement, “but don’t complicate the error by overestimating them now. For all we know, Cadderly might lie dead in an alley even now.”
Bogo hesitated then nodded.
“Be gone,” Ghost commanded. “Go back to your room, or to aid in the investigation, but say nothing to Rufo. Better that the cowardly priest be left alone to stew in his guilt and terror.”
Again Bogo nodded and was gone.
Ghost’s confidence disappeared as soon as he was alone. It had been a complicated visit to Carradoon, and had not been a clean kill. Even if Cadderly was dead, the toll had been horrendous, with more than half of the Night Masks killed.
Ghost was no longer sure that remaining at the Dragon’s Codpiece would bode well for either himself or Bogo, but he feared the consequences of trying to slip away with the city guard, and two rambunctious dwarves, snooping around. He moved to his door and cracked it open an inch, curious to see what might be transpiring outside.
He watched carefully for Rufo, thinking that if the treacherous priest made any dangerous moves, he might have to kill him.
No, it hadn’t been without complications, but that was part of the fun of it all, wasn’t it? It was a new challenge for the artist, an intricate landscape for the filling canvas.
Ghost smiled wickedly, taking comfort in the fact that he wasn’t in any personal danger—not while he had the Ghearufu, and had Vander as a waiting and helpless host on the outskirts of town.
Cadderly was relieved to see Danica still up and conscious when he rejoined his corporeal form on the rooftop beside the Dragon’s Codpiece. The young woman’s face remained contorted in pain. A crossbow quarrel protruded from her right side, hanging from skin and tunic and surrounded by a widening crimson stain.
Cadderly didn’t immediately go to her. He closed his eyes and forced the song back into his thoughts. The notes drifted past until Cadderly recalled that part of the song, that page in the tome, he had been hearing back on the balcony when he’d enacted the change to squirrel form.
Danica whispered to him softly, sounding more concerned for his own safety than for her own. With some effort, Cadderly pushed her words away and concentrated on the music. His mouth moved in silent prayer, and when he at last opened his eyes, Danica was straining to smile and his arms and legs were back to normal.
“You found your answers,” the young woman remarked.
“Along with more questions,” Cadderly replied.
He pulled his spindle-disks from their tight hold on his finger and tucked them away then moved beside his love.
“You were speaking,” Danica said to him, “but not to me. It sounded like half of a conversation, the other half …”
“Was with Pertelope,” Cadderly explained. “I, or at least my consciousness, was back in the library.” He hardly noticed Danica’s stare, more interested in her sorely wounded side.
When he recalled the song once more, it sounded more distant to him, required more effort to get near it. Pertelope’s warnings of exhaustion welled up in him, but he pushed his mounting fears away. Danica’s health was more important.
Cadderly focused on
the dangling quarrel as much as on the wound it had caused. His thoughts were as much on destruction as on healing, and his chant was uttered through gritted teeth.
Danica grunted and winced. Black smoke wafted from her wound. Soon a small cloud of the stuff covered her side.
The quarrel was his enemy, was Danica’s enemy, Cadderly determined. Poor Danica, dear Danica.
When the smoke dissipated, gone too were the crossbow quarrel and the wound.
Danica straightened and shrugged, not knowing how she could possibly thank Cadderly for what he had done.
“Are you injured?” she asked, concerned.
Cadderly shook his head and took her arm. “We must be gone,” he said, his tone absent, as though he was talking more to himself than to Danica. “We must go and sit together in private, and try to sort through the turns fate has shown us.”
He cocked his head, turned his attention to the growing tumult in the awakening lanes around the Dragon’s Codpiece, particularly to the clip-clap of many hooves echoing from every direction.
“The city guard is about,” Danica replied. “They will require information.”
Cadderly continued to pull her along.
“We have nowhere to go,” Danica argued as they neared the building’s back edge, many soldiers coming into sight along Market Square.
Cadderly wasn’t listening. His eyes were closed again and he was deep in song.
Danica’s eyes widened one more time as she felt herself become something less than substantial. Somehow Cadderly kept his grip on her arm and together they simply blew away, off the rooftop, riding the currents of the wind.
Bogo Rath slipped out of the Dragon’s Codpiece a short while later, rushing briskly past the dwarves and the bereaved innkeeper in the hearth room. After brief consideration, the frightened young wizard decided that Ghost’s presumptions were not worth risking his life over, and he decided, too, that departing the inn after such tragedy wouldn’t necessarily raise suspicions.
The only thing the city guardsman asked of him as he passed through the hole where the front door had been was that he remain in town.
Bogo nodded and pointed to an inn a few doors farther up Lakeview Street, though the wizard had no intention of staying around for very long. He would go to the inn and get a room, but would remain in Carradoon only until he had studied the spells that would allow him to leave quickly and without the possibility of being stopped.
EIGHTEEN
REFLECTIONS ON THE WATER
The morning light was still new, and the mist had not yet cleared from the waters of Impresk Lake. The great three-arched bridge connecting the mainland to Carradoon’s island district loomed a ghostly gray above Cadderly and Danica as they drifted in a small rowboat. The pair was quiet with their thoughts and the lap of the gentle waves against the prow.
The weather fit Cadderly’s grim mood. He had killed a man, burned him to a blackened coal, and had knocked another from the balcony, leaving him for dead as well. Cadderly knew he’d had no choice, but he couldn’t easily dismiss the guilt. Whatever the reasons, he had killed a human being—again.
He tried hard not to think of the man’s family, children perhaps, waiting for a father that would never return.
Cadderly took up the oars and gave a single stroke, reversing the drift and pushing the boat farther out from the imposing bridge. He let the oars hang in the water and turned to face Danica.
“Night Masks,” Danica muttered grimly.
Cadderly looked at her. The words meant little to him.
“A guild of assassins from the city of Westgate,” Danica explained. “They’re among the deadliest killers in all of Faerûn. We were fortunate to escape them, and I now believe I’ve escaped them twice.”
Cadderly’s expression showed that he still didn’t understand.
“On our journey down from the library,” Danica continued, “the dwarves and I were attacked by a band of men we thought were bandits.”
“Many bandits have been reported on the roads during these troubled times,” Cadderly remarked.
Danica shook her head, obviously certain there was a connection between the attack on the road and the one in Cadderly’s room.
“Why would an assassins guild from Westgate come after us?” asked Cadderly.
“Us?” echoed Danica. “No, they are after me, I fear. It was the Night Masks who killed my parents, years ago. Now they have come to finish the job.”
Cadderly didn’t believe her. He sensed that—if Danica’s theory about the identity of the killers was correct—there was more at work than the completion of some decade-old vendetta. Cadderly contemplated his own experiences of the last few days, thought of his meeting with Rufo in the hearth room and the presence of the invisible wizard. And what had happened, he wondered, back in his own room that night?
He said to Danica, “I found you on the floor, terrified. Tell me about your dream.”
“I don’t remember much,” Danica admitted, and by her tone she didn’t see the point of his question. Cadderly was determined, though. He thought for a moment then took out his crystal-centered spindle-disks.
He held them up in front of Danica’s eyes and set them spinning. Even in the dim light, the crystals flickered. “Concentrate,” Cadderly said. “Let the crystal into your mind. Please, do not use your meditative talents to block me now.”
“What will this tell us?” Danica argued. “It was just a dream.”
“Was it?”
Danica shrugged—it was a dream that contained references to the Night Masks, after all—and relaxed, focusing her gaze on the spindle-disks. Cadderly watched her intently then closed his eyes and thought of the sacred tome, heard the song playing the words to a simple spell of hypnosis.
Danica sank deeper, her shoulders visibly slumping, as Cadderly quietly chanted. His words became prying questions that Danica heard only subconsciously.
Cadderly, too, allowed the hypnosis to fall over him, used it to achieve complete empathy with Danica.
The questions rolled out of his mouth, though he was barely aware of them. And Danica answered, as much with her posture and her facial expressions as with mere words.
Danica blinked her eyes open, and Cadderly followed her lead. Neither of them knew how much time had passed, but Cadderly understood then, beyond any doubt, that Danica’s nighttime experience had indeed been an important clue.
“It was not a dream,” he announced.
Cadderly recalled what Danica had imparted to him under the hypnosis: the sense of departure from a black sphere that the young priest knew represented her identity. The image reminded the young priest vividly of his own telepathic experiences with the imp Druzil and the wizard Dorigen.
Cadderly dropped a hand into his pocket to feel the amulet he had taken from Rufo in Shilmista Forest, an amulet that Druzil had given Rufo to improve telepathic contact between the two. With the amulet, Cadderly had been able to sense the imp’s proximity, and he took comfort that it had not signaled Druzil’s presence in many tendays, not since the battle in the forest.
But who then? he wondered.
Dorigen remained a distinct possibility.
“Possession?” he muttered, using the word as a catalyst for his thoughts.
Another image struck Cadderly then, an image of Nameless, the beggar on the road, and the horrible, shadowy shapes writhing atop his shoulders. He remembered, too, that night when Brennan had come to his room, projecting the same vile aura. Perhaps the song of Deneir had not lied to him. Perhaps the attempt on Danica was not his enemy’s first try at possession.
Cadderly winced, remembering Fredegar’s worries that young Brennan had not been seen since that night. He tried to recall clues as he took up the oars for another single stroke against the drift.
“What is it?” Danica asked. Her tone revealed her understanding that Cadderly’s mind had unlocked some of the secrets.
“They have not come for you,” the young prie
st answered with certainty, looking over his shoulder. “They were here before you, around me, close to me.” Cadderly exhaled deeply, fearing for Brennan and Nameless, and let his gaze drift across the water to the gray outline of the great bridge. “Too close.”
Danica started to reply—something comforting, Cadderly knew—then she stopped and cocked her head.
Cadderly began to turn his whole body around, to fully face Danica, understanding that something was wrong and fearing that the young woman had come under some mental assault.
Danica spun, rocking the boat so suddenly that Cadderly, though he was seated near the center, almost went over the side.
“Stubborn!” Danica cried.
Her hand snapped in front of her just in time to grab the wrist of the man who had tried to drive a dagger into her back. Holding tight, Danica leaped to her feet, stretched her attacker’s arm to the limit, and pulled him farther over the bow.
She gave her attacker’s arm a quick, violent twist and brought her free hand over the back of his fingers, jerking the man’s hand back toward his wrist.
Cadderly tried to get around in the rocking boat to go to Danica’s aid, but all he wound up doing was stumbling over the boat’s center seat and slamming himself on the side of the head with one of the oar handles.
He realized that the stumble was a good thing, though, as a knife soared up over the side of the boat and whipped across above his head. Reacting instinctively to the threat, Cadderly forearmed the oar, freeing it from its lock to tumble into the water near the unseen attacker.
The young scholar got his spindle-disks looped onto his finger. The boat rocked, and he looked back the other way, across the boat, to see still another assassin coming up over the side.
Danica held her balance easily in the rocking craft. She continued her vicious press on the captured man’s hand, finally forcing him to release his dagger.