The Chaos Curse (22 page)

Druzil retorted with the discordant names of every denizen of the lower planes he could think of, forming a ball of blackness that floated out to engulf the light of Cadderly’s god.

The two wills battled halfway between the combatants. First Druzil’s blackness dominated, but sparks of light gradually began to flash through.

Suddenly the black cloud shattered and the sparking ball rolled over the imp.

Druzil shrieked in agony; his mind was nearly torn asunder, and he fled, half-crazed, looking for a corner, a place of shadows, a place far from the terrible, bared power of Cadderly.

Cadderly thought to pursue, to be rid of troublesome Druzil once and for all, but then the lid of the coffin flew away and a deeper darkness wafted out. Kierkan Rufo sat up and stared at Cadderly.

This was the way it had to be, they both knew.

Behind Cadderly, Ivan and Pikel continued to rain carnage on the unthinking minions, but neither the young priest nor Rufo noticed. Cadderly’s focus was straight ahead, straight on the monster who had destroyed the library, who had taken Danica from him.

“You killed her,” Cadderly said evenly, fighting hard to keep the tremor out of his voice.

“She killed herself,” Rufo countered, needing no explanation as to whom Cadderly was speaking of.

“You killed her!”

“No!” Rufo countered. “You killed her! You, Cadderly, fool priest, and your ideas of love!”

Cadderly fell back on his heels, trying to sort through Rufo’s cryptic words. Danica had died of her own accord? She had given up her life to escape Rufo, because she could not love Rufo, and could not accept his offers?

A tear gathered in Cadderly’s gray eye. Bittersweet, it was, a mixture of pain at the loss and pride in Danica’s strength.

Rufo came easily out of the coffin. He seemed to glide toward Cadderly, making not a sound.

But the room was far from quiet. Even Ivan was disgusted at the crunching sounds the zombies made when he hacked them, or when Pikel swatted them across the room. Fewer and fewer targets presented themselves.

Cadderly didn’t hear it; Rufo didn’t hear it. Cadderly presented his holy symbol, and the vampire promptly clamped his hand atop it. Their struggle found its apex in that small emblem, Rufo’s darkness against Cadderly’s light, the focus of the young priest’s faith, the focus of the perversion’s outrage. Acrid smoke sifted out between Rufo’s bony fingers, but whether it was the vampire’s flesh or Cadderly’s symbol that was melting, neither could tell.

They held fast for seconds that became minutes, both trembling, neither having the strength to lift his other arm. It would end here, Cadderly believed, with these two conduits, himself for Deneir and Rufo for the chaos curse.

As the moments continued to slip by, as Cadderly forced himself to higher levels of power, remembering Danica and all that had been stolen from him, and as Rufo matched him every time, Cadderly began to understand the truth.

This was Rufo’s place. For all his rage and all his power, the young priest could not hold out against the vampire, not here.

Cadderly grimaced, refusing to accept what he knew was reality. He pressed on, and Rufo matched him. His head ached to the point where he thought it would explode, but he would not let go of the song of Deneir.

Despair, black discord, found its way into the notes of that melody. Chaos. Cadderly saw red fumes in the crystalline, flowing river. The notes began to break apart.

Ivan hit Rufo hard from the side, with both his axe and his thrashing helmet. Neither weapon truly injured the vampire, but the distraction cost Rufo his moment of conquest, gave Cadderly the opportunity to break the clinch he could not win.

With a feral snarl, Rufo slapped the dwarf away, sent Ivan spinning head over heels into the nearest rack, to crash amid broken glass and splintered wood.

Cadderly’s walking stick flashed across, tearing the vampire’s upper arm.

Pikel came in next, pressing hard on his waterskin, forcing the last drops to spray forth.

Rufo cared nothing for the puny attack, and Pikel learned the hard way, to his dismay, that his enchantment had expired on the club. He hit the vampire full force, but Rufo didn’t flinch.

“Ooooooo,” Pikel wailed, following his brother’s aerial course into the jumble.

Ivan’s eyes were wide as he held one unbroken bottle, staring at it nervously.

Cadderly hit the vampire again, solidly in the chest, and Rufo grimaced in pain.

“I have you,” the vampire promised, not backing down, and Cadderly could not disagree. The young priest went into a fury then, slapping wildly with his enchanted weapon.

Rufo matched him, and the vampire’s strong fists soon gained him the advantage. In this desecrated place, in this chamber of darkness, Rufo was simply too strong.

Cadderly somehow managed to break the battle and retreat a step, but confident Rufo waded in right behind.

“Cadderly!” Ivan yelled, and both Cadderly and Rufo glanced to the side to see a curious missile heading for the vampire.

Rufo instinctively threw his arm up to block, but seemed unconcerned. Cadderly, recognizing the missile for what it was, timed his strike perfectly, hitting the flask at the same instant it bounced against Rufo’s arm.

The Oil of Impact exploded with tremendous force, hurling Rufo against the far wall, throwing Cadderly backward to the floor.

The young priest sat up at once and considered the splintered handle of his ruined walking stick. Then he considered Kierkan Rufo.

The vampire leaned heavily against the back wall, his arm hanging loose by a single strip of skin, his eyes wide with shock and pain.

Cadderly came up with a growl, turned the remaining piece of his weapon in his hand to hold it like a stake.

“I will find you!” Rufo promised. “I will heal and I will find you!” A ghostly green light limned the vampire’s form.

Cadderly cried out and charged, but slammed hard into the wall as Rufo dissolved into a cloud of vapors.

“No, ye don’t!” Ivan bellowed, rising from the pile and pulling the boxlike item from his back.

“Oo oi!” Pikel agreed, rushing beside his brother, taking one of the offered handles. They skidded into the green vapor and pulled fiercely on the handles of the bellows they had stripped from their forge.

In his gaseous state, Rufo could not resist that suction, and the mist disappeared into the bellows.

“Ooooooo!” Pikel squealed and popped his fat thumb over the opening.

“Get him outside!” frantic Ivan roared, and the dwarves ran off for the stairs, yelling “Ooooooo!” in unison.

Cadderly charged hard to keep up, holding his light ahead to show them the way. He spotted his lost wand, but had not the time to go for it.

Cadderly skidded in first, throwing all his weight against the barricade that had been put in place to block the opening. He didn’t move the material much, but he lessened its integrity, and when Ivan and Pikel hit, everything, Cadderly included, flew away. The young priest shook his head, both at the amazing power of rambling dwarves and to take the dizziness away, then he took up his wand, and followed closely. Out into the sunlight scrambled the dwarves. Pikel’s finger was no longer over the pointy opening of the bellows, but it didn’t matter, for Rufo was no longer gaseous, leather bulged and tore as a clawing hand ripped through the side of the bellows.

The dwarves ran on, dragging their load, getting Rufo as far from the gloomy library, his source of power, as possible. They cut under the shadows of the trees, out into an open, sunny field,

Rufo tore free and dug a firm hold on the turf. Both dwarves pitched headlong to the ground and came up sitting, each holding a broken handle.

With some effort, the vampire stood straight, cursing the sun, shielding his eyes from the blazing light. Cadderly stood before Kierkan Rufo, holy symbol presented with all his heart. The young priest, out from under the desecrated structure, felt his god strongly again. Rufo, too, felt Deneir keenly, Cadderly’s words echoing painfully in his mind.

Rufo started for the library, but Cadderly danced around to intercept, his blazing holy symbol blocking the way.

“You cannot escape,” the young priest said firmly. “You have made your choice, and you have chosen wrong!”

“What do you know?” the vampire scoffed. Rufo stood tall, defying the sun, defying Cadderly and his god. He felt the tumultuous swirl of the chaos curse within him, of Tuanta Quiro Miancay, that Most Fatal Horror. It was a concoction of the Abyss, of the very lowest planes.

Even in the sunlight, even battered as he had been in the fight, his arm hanging grotesquely at his side, Rufo stood strong. Cadderly could see that, could feel it.

“I deny you,” the personification of Tuanta Quiro Miancay said evenly. The words filtered through Cadderly’s thoughts, throwing up barriers, damming the river of his god’s song. Rufo had spoken to Deneir, Cadderly realized, not to him. Rufo had made the claim that his choice had not been wrong, that his power was real and tangible-and he had made that claim against Deneir, against a god!

“They hold us back, Cadderly,” the vampire went on, his calm tones showing strength and defiance. “They keep their secrets to themselves, cover them with pretty flowers and sunshine, petty dressings to keep us satisfied and behind which they might hide the truth.”

Looking at the vampire now, standing tall and straighter than Kierkan Rufo had ever stood in life, Cadderly almost believed that Rufo had found truth. It seemed, too, as if a protective shell had formed about Rufo, a dark lining to battle the burning sunlight. How strong this one had become! The vampire continued, and Cadderly closed his eyes, the arm holding his holy symbol inevitably dropping low. The young priest didn’t distinguish any of the words, just felt the hum, the alluring vibrations, deep in his soul.

“Well?” came a blunt and gruff question. Cadderly opened his eyes to see Ivan and Pikel, sitting side by side in the grass, still holding the broken handles and considering the face-off.

Well, indeed, the young priest thought. He looked squarely into his adversary’s dark eyes.

“I deny Deneir,” Rufo said calmly.

“You choose wrongly,” Cadderly replied.

Rufo starting to hiss a response, but Cadderly froze the words in the vampire’s throat, lifting again the symbol, the opened eye above a lighted candle. The sunlight brought new sparkles to the emblem, heightened its glory and strength.

In the face of that revealing glare, Rufo’s dark shell melted away, and suddenly the vampire seemed not so powerful, rather a pitiful thing, a fallen man, a man who had chosen the wrong course and had spiraled down to the depths of despair.

Rufo hissed and clawed at the air. He reached for the holy symbol, meaning to engulf it as he had done inside, but this time the flesh on his skinny hand erupted into flames and curled away, leaving only whitened bone. Rufo howled in agony. He turned for the library, but Cadderly paced him, keeping that flaring symbol right in his face. And Cadderly began to sing the melodies of his god, a tune Kierkan Rufo could not withstand. Inside the library Rufo had gained the advantage, but out here, in the daylight, Deneir’s song played strong in Cadderly, and the young priest opened himself up as a pure conduit for the truth of his god.

Rufo could not withstand the light of that truth.

“Oo,” Pikel and Ivan muttered together, as Rufo fell back to the earth. Cadderly pressed low, singing with all his heart. Rufo rolled over and clawed at the ground to get away, like a desperate animal, but Cadderly was there in front of him, corralling him, forcing him to see the truth.

Horrible, wailing sounds escaped the vampire’s throat. Somehow, Rufo managed to struggle back to his feet, to stare at the shining holy symbol in one last desperate act of defiance.

His eyes whitened, then fell back into his skull, and through the black openings wafted the red mist of the chaos curse. Rufo opened his mouth to scream, and from there, too, came the red mist, forced from his body into the open air, where it would diminish and cause no more pain.

When Rufo collapsed to the ground, he was no more than a hollow, smoking husk, an empty coil, and a lost soul.

Cadderly, too, nearly collapsed, from the effort and from the weight of the grim reality that now descended on him. He looked over his shoulder at the squat library. He considered all the losses he had witnessed, the losses to the order, the loss of his friends, of Dorigen. The loss of Danica.

Ivan and Pikel were beside him immediately, knowing he would need their support.

“She did right in choosing death,” Ivan remarked, understanding that the tears rimming Cadderly’s gray eyes were for Danica most of all. “Better that than fallin’ in with this one,” the square-shouldered dwarf added, motioning to the empty husk.

“… in choosing death,” Cadderly echoed, those words striking a strange chord within him. She had killed herself, Rufo had said. Danica had willingly chosen death.

But why hadn’t Rufo animated her? Cadderly wondered. As the vampire had animated so many of the others? And why, when he had gone into the netherworld, had Cadderly not been able to find Danica’s spirit, or any trace of its passing?

“Oh, my dear Deneir,” the young priest whispered, and, without a word of explanation, Cadderly ran off toward the northwestern corner of the library.

The dwarves looked to each other and shrugged, then chased off after him.

Cadderly scrambled wildly, crashed through roots and bushes, clawing his way around to the back of the building. The dwarves, better at trailblazing than the taller man, nearly caught up to him, but when Cadderly got into the open field between the library and the mausoleum, he left the brothers in his dust.

He hit the mausoleum door at full speed, never considering that Shayleigh and Belago might have found a way to lock or brace it. In it swung, and in spilled Cadderly, skidding hard to the floor, scraping his elbows.

He hardly cared about the minor wounds, for when he looked to the left, to the stone slab where the two had placed Danica, he saw the “corpse” under the shroud rising to a sitting position. He saw also that Shayleigh, with a terrified Belago beside her, was perched on the bottom of the slab, her short sword poised to plunge into Danica’s heart.

“No!” Cadderly cried. “No!”

Shayleigh glanced at him, and she wondered in that instant if Cadderly, too, had been taken by the darkness, if he had come to save his lover in undeath.

“She’s alive!” the young priest cried, clawing to propel himself toward the slab. Ivan and Pikel rambled in then, wide-eyed and still not understanding.

“She’s alive!” Cadderly repeated, and Shayleigh relaxed a bit as he arrived at the slab and pulled the shroud from fair Danica and wrapped his love in the tightest embrace they had ever shared.

Danica, back with the living again, returned it tenfold, and the day was brighter indeed!

“What of Rufo?” the elf asked the dwarves.

“Hee hee hee,” Pikel replied, and both he and Ivan ran their fingers across their throats.

The four left Cadderly and Danica then, waited outside in the light that seemed brighter and warmer and more alive than any spring previous. Cadderly and Danica came out a few minutes later, the young priest supporting the injured woman. Already Cadderly had called for spells of healing to help the monk, particularly her ruined ankle, but the wound was sore and infected, and even with Cadderly’s aid, it would take some time before it could support Danica’s weight.

“I don’t get it,” Ivan stated, for all of them.

“Physical suspension,” Cadderly answered for Danica. “A state of death that is not death. It is the highest mark in the teachings of Grandmaster Penpahg D’Ahn.”

“You can kill yerself and come back?” Ivan balked.

Danica shook her head, smiling like she thought she would never smile again. “In suspension, one does not die,” she explained. “I slowed my heart and my breathing, slowed the flow of blood through my veins, to where all who regarded my body thought I was dead.”

“Thus you escaped the hunger of Kierkan Rufo,” Shayleigh reasoned.

“And escaped my attention as well,” Cadderly added. “That is why I could not find her when I entered the spirit realm.” He looked at Danica and gave a wistful smile. “I was looking in the wrong place.”

“I nearly killed you,” Shayleigh said, stunned by the proclamation, her hand going to the hilt of her belted sword.

“Bah!” Ivan snorted. “It wouldn’t be the first time!”

They all laughed then, these friends who had survived, forgetting for a moment the loss of the library, the loss of Dorigen, and the loss of their own innocence. And loudest among them was Pikel’s “Hee hee hee.”

Cadderly led them back into the library the next day, seeking any lesser vampires left in dark holes, and putting to rest any zombies they encountered. When,they came outside late that afternoon, the friends were certain the first two floors were clean of enemies. The next morning, Cadderly started his friends to work removing the most precious artifacts of the library, the irreplaceable artwork and ancient manuscripts. Danica was thrilled to find that all of Penpahg D’Ahn’s notes had survived.

Even more thrilled was the monk, and all the others, when they found a single sanctuary within the darkness, a single spot of light that had somehow held out against the encroachment of Kierkan Rufo. Brother Chaunticleer had used his melodies as a ward against the evil, and his room had not been desecrated. Half-starved, his hair whitened from the terror he had endured, he fell into Cadderly’s arms with sobs of joy and knelt upon the ground in prayer for more than an hour when the friends escorted him out.

Later that same day, a host of four score soldiers arrived from Carradoon, having received word of the attack on the merchant caravan. Cadderly quickly put this group to work (except for a band of emissaries he sent back to the town with news of what had occurred and warnings to beware any strange happenings), and soon the library was emptied of its valuables.

Their encampment was on the lawn to the east of the library, at the back end of the field, closer to the wild trails than the gaping doors. This was too close. Cadderly informed them, so they broke down their tents, gathered up supplies, and moved down onto the trails.

“What is this all about?” Danica asked the young-priest as the soldiers set up the new camp. A week had passed since the fall of Kierkan Rufo. A week in which the young priest had gathered his strength, had listened to the words of Deneir.

“The building is spoiled!’ Cadderly replied. “Never again will Deneir or Oghma enter it.”

“You mean to abandon it?” Danica asked.

“I mean to destroy it,” Cadderly replied grimly.

Danica started to ask what Cadderly was talking about, but he walked past her, back toward the field, before she could figure out where to begin. The monk paused a while before following. She remembered the scene outside Castle Trinity, Aballister’s bastion of wickedness, after the wizard’s fall. Cadderty had meant to destroy that dark fortress as well, but had changed his mind, or had learned that he had not the strength for such a task. What, then, was he thinking now?

Gathering black clouds atop the cliff to the north of the Edificant Library alerted all in the camp that something dramatic was going on. The soldiers wanted to secure their tents, pack their supplies tightly, fearing the storm, but Ivan, Pikel, Shayleigh, and Belago understood that this fury was well guided, and Brother Chaunticleer understood it perhaps best of all.

The group found Danica standing several feet behind Cadderly on the lawn before the squat stone structure. Silently, not wanting to disturb these obviously important happenings, they gathered about her. None but Chaunticleer dared approach the young priest. He regarded Cadderly and offered a knowing, confident smile to the others. And, though he was not a part of what was happening with Cadderly, he began to sing.