Cadderly looked up at the dwarf. “What?”
“We was saying it’s a mite chilly for sleeping,” Ivan growled at him, his claims accentuated by the puff of frosty breath accompanying each chattered word. Cadderly looked around at his shivering companions then seemed to realize his own tingling extremities for the first time.
“Deneir will protect us,” he assured them, and he let his mind’s eye slip back to the pages of The Tome of Universal Harmony, the most holy book of his god. He heard again the flowing, beautiful notes of the endless song, and pulled from them a relatively simple spell, repeating it until its enchantment had touched all of his friends.
“Oo!” Pikel exclaimed, and his teeth did not chatter. The cold was gone, and there was no better way to explain the sensation that instantly came over each of them at Cadderly’s blessed touch.
“Took ye long enough,” was Ivan’s last muttered sentiment before he dropped back against the comfortable—to a dwarf, at least—mountain rock, clasped his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes.
The dwarves were snoring in a matter of moments, and soon after, Shayleigh, her head against arms that grasped her propped longbow, was also deep in meditative Reverie. Cadderly had resumed his previous contemplative posture, and Danica, guessing that something bothered her love, fought away the temptation of sleep and kept a protective watch over him.
She would have preferred that Cadderly willingly open up to her, initiate the discussion that he obviously needed. Danica knew the man better than to really expect that, though, and knew that Cadderly could sit and mull something over for hours, even days.
“You have done something wrong,” she asked as much as stated to him. “Or is it Avery?”
Cadderly looked up at her, and his surprised expression told Danica much, though she didn’t elaborate on her suspicions right away.
“I have done nothing wrong,” Cadderly said at length, a bit too defensively, and the perceptive monk understood then which of her guesses had hit the mark.
“It seems amazing how completely Dean Thobicus changed his mind concerning our quest,” Danica said.
Cadderly shifted uncomfortably—more evidence for Danica’s perceptive eye. “The dean is a Glyphscribe,” Cadderly replied, as though that explained everything. “He seeks knowledge and harmony, and if the truth becomes known to him, he will not let pride stand in the way of changing his mind.”
Danica nodded, though her expression remained doubtful.
“Our course was the proper one,” Cadderly added.
“The dean didn’t think so.”
“He learned the truth,” Cadderly answered.
“Did he?” Danica asked. “Or was the truth forced upon him?”
Cadderly looked away and saw Vander pacing in the blasting wind at the edge of the firelight, sniffing at the mountain air as he walked his watch, though his eyes were more often turned toward the crystalline, star-dotted sky than to the rugged mountain landscape.
“What did you do to him?” Danica asked.
Cadderly’s glare fell over her in an instant, but she didn’t back away in the least, trusting in her lover, trusting that the young priest would not—could not—lie to her.
“I convinced him.” Cadderly spit out every word.
“Magically?”
“It had to be done,” he whispered.
Danica rolled up onto her knees, shaking her head, her almond-shaped brown eyes widening.
“Was I to allow Thobicus to lead us down a path of devastation?” Cadderly asked her. “He would—”
“Thobicus?”
Cadderly’s face screwed up with confusion, not understanding the significance of Danica’s interruption.
“Who has let pride temper his judgment now?” Danica accused. Still Cadderly did not understand. “Thobicus?” the monk reiterated. “Are you referring to Dean Thobicus?” Her emphasis on the title showed Cadderly the truth. Even the headmasters of the library would rarely refer to the highest ranking priest without the proper title.
Cadderly spent many moments considering his slip. Always before, he’d taken care to refer to the respected dean in the proper fashion, always the name had come to him with the title unconsciously attached, and sounded discordant if he or someone else failed to identify the man as the dean. But for some reason, the simple reference to Thobicus seemed more harmonious to him.
“You used your magic against the leader of your order,” Danica stated.
“I did what needed to be done,” Cadderly decided. “Do not fear. Thobicus,”—he’d honestly meant to say Dean Thobicus—“doesn’t even remember the incident. It was a simple thing to modify his memory, and he actually believes he sent us out on a scouting mission. He expects that we will soon return to report on our enemy’s activities, so that his foolish plans for a sweeping strike might be implemented.”
There could be no doubt concerning the level of horror that Cadderly’s admission had instilled in Danica. She actually backed away from the young priest, shaking her head, her mouth hanging open.
“How many thousands would perish in such a war?” the young priest cried loudly, getting Vander’s attention, and causing Shayleigh, too, to open one eye. Predictably, the dwarves’ snoring went on uninterrupted.
“I couldn’t let Thobicus do it,” Cadderly continued against Danica’s silent accusations. “I couldn’t let the man’s cowardice cause the deaths of perhaps thousands of innocent men, not when I saw a better way to end the threat.”
“You act on presumption,” the incredulous Danica replied.
“On truth!” Cadderly shot back, angry, his tone leaving no doubt that he believed his claim with all his heart.
“The dean is your superior,” Danica reminded him, her tone somewhat softer.
“He is my superior in the eyes of a false hierarchy,” Cadderly added, similarly softening his tones. He looked around at Shayleigh and Vander. Both were keenly interested in what had been a private conversation. “Headmistress Pertelope was truly the highest ranking of the Deneirrath priests,” Cadderly asserted.
The statement caught Danica off guard—mainly because she’d held Pertelope in the highest regard and had no doubt that Pertelope was among the wisest of the Edificant Library’s hosts.
“It was Pertelope who guided me along this course,” Cadderly went on. He seemed vulnerable suddenly, small and uncertain, an edge of doubt finding its way through his stubborn resolve.
“I need you beside me,” he said to Danica, quietly so that Shayleigh and Vander would not hear. The elf maiden grinned, though, and respectfully closed her glistening violet eyes, and Cadderly knew that her keen ears had caught every syllable.
Danica stared into the starry sky for a long moment then moved beside Cadderly, gently taking hold of his arm and shifting in close. She looked back to the fire and closed her eyes. Nothing more needed to be said.
Cadderly knew that Danica held some doubts, though, and he did, as well. He’d taken a huge gamble in mentally attacking Thobicus, and had certainly shattered the tenets of brotherhood and the accepted hierarchy at the library. He was on the course he knew in his heart to be the proper one, but did the end justify the means?
With so many lives hanging on that decision, Cadderly had to believe that, in this instance, it did.
At a campsite far down the mountain trails from Cadderly’s company, four travelers slept soundly. They didn’t notice their campfire take on a momentary blue cast, and didn’t notice the canine face of Druzil the imp peering out at them from within the flames.
Druzil muttered curses under his raspy breath, using the crackle of flames to cover his undeniable anger. The imp detested his scouting mission, figuring he would spend many hours of sheer boredom listening to the snores of inconsequential humans. He was Aballister’s familiar, though, in service—if not always willing service—to the wizard, and when Aballister had opened a planar gate in Castle Trinity and ordered him away, Druzil had been compelled to obey
.
The fiery tunnel had warped through the dimensions to the campfire Dorigen’s scrying had targeted in the eastern foothills of the Snowflakes. Using a bag of magical blue powder, Druzil had turned the normal campfire into a gate similar to the one in Castle Trinity. The imp clutched a pouch of red powder, which could close the gate behind him.
Druzil held back the red powder for a few moments, though, wondering what pleasure he might find in allowing the planar gate to remain open. What excitement might a host of denizens from the lower planes cause?
The imp reconsidered, and poured the red powder onto the flames. If he left the gate open and the wrong creatures stepped through, Castle Trinity’s plans for conquest of Erlkazar would be lost in a swirl of chaos and destruction.
He sat in the flames for more than an hour, watching the unremarkable men. “Aballister bene tellemara,” he muttered many times, a phrase in the language of the lower planes that basically attributed the intelligence of a slug to Druzil’s wizard master.
A movement to the side, beyond the campsite, caught Druzil’s attention, and for a moment he thought—he hoped—that something exciting might happen. It proved to be just another of the men, however, walking a perimeter guard, apparently as bored as the imp. The man was gone from view in a few moments, back out into the darkness.
Another long hour slipped past, and the fire burned lower, forcing Druzil to crouch down to remain concealed by the flames. The imp shook his dog-faced head, his floppy ears waggling around the sides of his face. “Aballister bene tellemara,” he hissed defiantly over and over, a litany against boredom.
The wizard had sent him out with the promise that he would find the mission enjoyable, but Druzil, used to the mundane activities most often associated with familiars, such as standing guard or gathering spell components, had heard that lie before. Even Dorigen’s cryptic reference to “someone the imp might find akin to his own heart,” gave Druzil little hope. Cadderly was on his way to Castle Trinity—that was the place Druzil wanted to be, watching the magical explosions as Aballister finally blasted away his troublesome son.
The imp heard a noise again from the perimeter, a sort of gasping sound followed by some shuffling. Druzil lifted his canine face clear of the flames to get a better view, and saw the guard backstepping, scrambling, his sword out in front of him and his mouth opened almost impossibly wide in a silent caricature of a scream.
It was the creature stubbornly pursuing the guard that sent shivers of warped delight up the imp’s reptilian spine. It had once been human, Druzil guessed, but had become but a charred and blackened corpse, hideous and hunched, and desiccated, as though all its bodily fluids had been sizzled away. Druzil could actually smell the permeating evil that had brought the wretched thing back from some hell or another.
“Delicious,” the imp rasped, his poison-tipped tail whipping around the embers behind him.
The guard continued to retreat, and continued his futile attempt at a scream. The creature slapped the horrified man’s sword to the side and grabbed him by the wrist, and Druzil squeaked aloud with pleasure as the skin of the doomed man’s face took on a wrinkled, leathery appearance and his hair lost its youthful luster, lost all color, and began to fall out in clumps.
The ghost’s hand hit the man again, in the face, and his eyes bulged and seemed as if they would pop free of their sockets. From his open mouth came gurgling, choking sounds, and a wheeze of breath from lungs suddenly too old and hardened to properly draw breath.
The dying man tumbled backward over a log and lay very still on the ground, eyes and mouth still open impossibly wide.
A cry from the side of the camp showed that the commotion had awakened one of the others. A sturdy man, a warrior judging from his well-muscled arms and chest, charged across in front of the fire, boldly meeting the ghost. The warrior’s great sword sliced across, driving at the creature’s shoulder.
It seemed to connect, somewhat, but then passed right through the undead thing, as though the creature was no more than an insubstantial apparition. The ghost came on, reaching with its one working arm, seeking another victim for its insatiable hunger.
Druzil clapped his oversized hands a hundred times in glee, thoroughly enjoying the play. The other men leaped up from their slumbers, one running off screaming into the woods, but the other two coming to the aid of their bold companion.
The creature caught one by the hair, seemingly oblivious to the frantic man’s chopping axe as it turned the man’s head aside and bit his throat. With hideous strength, the monster hurled the bloodied corpse away, to crash into the trees twenty feet beyond the edge of the campsite.
The remaining two men had seen enough, had seen too much. They turned and fled, one throwing his weapon aside in total, incomprehensible terror.
The creature lunged for them once but missed then stood and watched their flight for just a moment before it began shuffling past the ruined campsite on its way once more, moving up into the Snowflakes as if the slaughter had been no more than a coincidental encounter. Druzil sensed that the thing was savoring the screams of the fleeing men, though, taking perverse pleasure in their terror.
Druzil liked the creature.
The imp stepped out of the flames and looked down at the aged, dying man, laboring for breath, showing pain with every movement. Druzil heard the man’s arm simply snap with age when he reached up for the air, and heard a groan mixed in with the futile gasps.
The imp only laughed and looked away. Druzil had overheard part of Aballister’s conversation with the spirit of Bogo Rath, and though that conversation had been cryptic, the imp suspected that the horrid creature might hold a particular grudge against Cadderly. Certainly the monster seemed to be moving with purpose. It hadn’t even taken the time or effort to pursue the fleeing men.
Druzil willed himself into a state of invisibility and flapped his leathery, batlike wings, rising up in pursuit of the ghost, thinking that perhaps he’d been wrong to doubt Aballister’s promises that it would be an enjoyable mission.
FOUR
A TASTE OF WHAT’S TO COME
Aballister walked through a large room filled with cages, admiring his private menagerie of exotic monsters.
“Dorigen has spotted the young priest and his friends,” the wizard said, coming to a stop between two of the largest cages, each occupied by strange-looking beasts that seemed a mixture of two or more normal animals.
“Are you hungry?” Aballister asked one winged, leonine monstrosity, its tail covered with a multitude of iron-hard spikes. The creature roared in reply and butted its massive, powerful chest against the bars of its cage.
“Then fly,” the wizard cooed, opening the cage door and running his skinny hands through the monster’s thick mane as it ambled past. “Dorigen will guide you to my wicked son. Do teach him a lesson.”
The old wizard cackled heartily. He’d spent many private hours in that extradimensional space. He’d created the menagerie while studying in the Edificant Library. Aballister’s biggest concern at that time were the hovering priests always looking over his shoulder, making sure that his work was in accord with their strict rules. Little did they know that Aballister had circumvented their watchful gazes and had created his own extra pocket of real space so that he could continue his most precious, if most dangerous, experiments.
That had been more than two decades before when Cadderly was an infant, and when, the wizard mused, the leonine monster and the three-headed beast behind it were also babes.
Aballister laughed aloud at the thought: he was sending two of his children out to kill the third.
The two powerful beasts followed Aballister out of the menagerie and through another door in the extradimensional mansion that led to the rocky ridge above Castle Trinity, where Dorigen, her crystal ball in hand, waited.
“We’re too high up,” Vander protested as the party trudged along a narrow mountain trail more than halfway up a twelve-thousand-foot peak. A few scrag
gly branches, bare of leaves, dotted the trail, but mostly the place was wind-carved rock, ridged in some places, polished smooth in others. Winter had already come in full here, and the snow lay deep. The wind’s bite, despite Cadderly’s magical protection spells, forced the companions to continually rub their hands to keep their fingers from growing numb. The narrow trail was mostly bare to the stone, at least, perpetually windblown so that little snow had found a hold there.
“We must stay far from the lower trails,” Cadderly replied, having to yell to be heard through the growling wind. “Many goblins and giantkin are about, fleeing Shilmista in search of their mountain holes.”
“Better to face them than what we might find up here,” Vander argued. The booming voice of the twelve-foot-tall giant, thick red beard crusted by blowing ice, had no trouble cutting through the din of the wind. “You do not know the creatures of the lands where the snow doesn’t melt, young priest.” The rugged firbolg was talking from some experience, it seemed, and the dwarves, Shayleigh, and Danica looked to Cadderly, hopeful that Vander’s warning might carry some influence.
“Yeah, like that big bird I spotted, floatin’ on the winds a mile away,” Ivan put in.
“It was an eagle,” Cadderly insisted, though only Ivan had actually seen the soaring creature. “Some of the eagles in the Snowflakes are quite large, and I doubt—”
“A mile away?” Ivan balked.
“I doubt it was a mile,” Cadderly finished, to which Ivan only shook his yellow-haired head, adjusted his helmet—which sported a pair of deer antlers—and cast a less-than-friendly glare the priest’s way. By that time, Cadderly had found a new person to argue with, as Danica came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. He looked at her grim expression and recognized at once that she was in agreement with the others.