The Chaos Curse (4 page)

“Oo oi!” Pikel piped in, the wordless dwarf’s way of saying, “Good point!”

“And so it shall be with my cathedral,” Cadderly explained. “If I lay but the first stone, then I will have begun something grand, for it is the vision that serves the purpose.”

Ivan looked helplessly to Pikel, who only shrugged. It was hard for either dwarf to fault Cadderly’s thinking. In fact, as Ivan digested all that the young priest had said, he found that he respected Cadderly even more, that the man had risen above the usual limitations of his heritage and was actually planning to do something quite dwarf-like.

Ivan said just that, and Cadderly was gracious enough to accept the sideways compliment without a word of argument.

Two Oghman priests approached the square stone mausoleum butted against the cliff behind the Edificant Library.

“Let them take care of their own, I say,” muttered the muscular chap nicknamed Berdole the Brutal because of his wrestling prowess and snarling demeanor. The other, Curt, nodded his agreement, for neither of them liked this detail. Kierkan Rufo had been a priest of Deneir, not Oghma, and yet, because of his brand, Dean Thobicus had determined that Oghman priests should prepare and bury the body. By custom, Rufo’s body had lain in state for three days, and now it was time for the final preparations.

Berdole fumbled with his large belt ring, finally finding the long-necked key that fit the heavy door. With some effort, he opened the lock and pulled the door wide.

A damp, musty smell, tinged with the scent of decay, rolled out at the two. Except to put Rufo’s body inside, this structure had not been opened since the death of Pertelope in the late fall.

Curt lit and hoisted his lantern, but motioned for Berdole to lead the way in. The muscular priest obliged, his hard boots stomping noisily on the bare stone floor.

The vault was large, perhaps thirty feet square, supported at ten-foot intervals both ways by thick columns. A single window, right of the door, allowed some sunlight to trickle in, but the glass was filthy and deeply set in the thick stone, and the illumination was meager. A series of stone slabs lined the center of the room, all but one empty.

On that slab, between the two columns farthest from the door, lay Kierkan Rufo’s body beneath an unremarkable shroud.

“Let us be done quickly,” said Berdole, pulling the pack from his back. His obvious nervousness did not sit well with his smaller companion, who looked to Berdole the Brutal for protection.

The two did not bother to close the door as they moved in, and neither noticed the soft rush of air as an invisible creature glided in behind them.

“Maybe he threw up enough blood so this will not take so long,” Berdole said with a halfhearted chuckle.

Curt snickered at the grim humor as well, knowing that jokes might be his only defense against his abhorrence of this task.

High in a corner of the mausoleum, on the opposite wall and to the right of the door, Druzil sat and scratched his doglike head, muttering curses under his breath. The imp had tried to get into this place since Rufo’s body had been put here, thinking that he might somehow recover at least a portion of the chaos curse from the corpse. Too many priests had been around then, including one of the leading members of the Oghman order, and so Druzil had waited, thinking he would just break in after the others had left. He found the door locked, though, and the window blessed, so that he did not dare enter.

The imp knew enough of the human rituals to understand what the two men now meant to do. They would drain the blood from the body and replace it with a smelly, preserving liquid. Druzil had overheard that Rufo could not be given a proper Deneirian or Oghman burial, and the imp had hoped that the priests wouldn’t waste their time with this pointless embalming. Druzil thought of swooping down -and stinging the men with his poison-tipped tail, or of hitting them with magical spells, burning their behinds with little bolts of energy to chase them away. It simply was too risky, so all the imp could do was sit and watch and mutter silent curses.

Every drop of blood that the priests took from Rufo’s body would be a little less of Tuanta Quiro Miancay the imp might recover.

Berdole looked at his partner and took a deep breath, holding up the large needle for Curt to see.

“I cannot watch this,” Curt admitted, and he turned away and walked past a couple of the slabs, near the other set of columns.

Berdole laughed, gaining confidence from his friend’s weakness, and moved beside the slab. He pushed the shroud away just enough so that he could pall out Rufo’s left arm, pushing back the black robes that Rufo had been dressed in and turning the arm so that the exposed wrist was up.

“You might feel a small pinch,” the muscular priest joked lightly to the corpse, drawing a disgusted groan from Curt.

From the far rafters, Druzil chewed his bottom lip in frustration as he watched the large needle go against Rufo’s exposed wrist. He would have to steal the blood, he decided, every drop of it!

Berdole lined the needle’s point up with the vein in Rufo’s skinny wrist and angled the instrument for a good puncture. He took another deep breath, looked to Curl’s back for support, then started to push.

The cold, pallid hand snapped around in a circular motion, catching the needle and Berdole’s hand in a crushing grasp.

“What?” the muscular priest stammered.

Curt turned about to see Berdole hunched low at the slab, both his strong hands wrapped around Rufo’s thin forearm, with Rufo’s clawlike digits clasping tightly to his lower jaw. This was Berdole the Brutal, the strongest of the strong Oghman’s. This was Berdole the Brutal, two hundred and fifty pounds of power, a man who could wrestle a black bear to a standstill!

Yet that skinny arm of Kierkan Rufo-of dead Kierkan Rufo!-jerked Berdole down to the slab as though his muscular frame were no more than a wet towel. Then, to Curt’s disbelieving eyes, Rufo’s hand pushed up and back. The muscles in Berdole’s thick arms strained to their limits, but could not halt the push. Up and over went his chin-it sounded to Curt like the cracking of a large tree right before it tumbled to the ground-and suddenly, the surprised Berdole was staring at the world upside down and backwards.

The Oghman’s strong hands let go of the skinny, pallid arm and twitched uncontrollably in the empty air. Rufo’s fingers loosened, and Berdole fell backward to the floor, quite dead.

Curt hardly remembered to breathe. He looked from Berdole to the shrouded corpse, and his vision blurred with dizziness wrought of horror as Rufo slowly sat up.

The shroud fell away, and the gaunt, pale man turned his eyes, eyes that simmered red with inner fires, toward Curt.

Druzil clapped his clawed hands together and squealed in happiness, then flapped off for the door.

Curt screamed and fled with all speed, five long strides bringing him near the sunlight, near salvation.

Rufo waved a hand, and the heavy stone door swung shut, slamming with a bang that sounded like a drum of doom. The Oghman threw all his weight against the door, but he might as well have tried to move a mountain. He scratched at the stone until his fingers bled. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that Rufo was up, walking stiffly toward him.

Curt cried out repeatedly and went for the window, but realized that he had no time. He fell beyond it, backing and watching the corpse, crying for mercy and for Oghma to be with him.

Then the side wall was against his back; he had nowhere to run. Curt caught his breath finally, and remembered who he was. He presented his holy symbol, a scroll of silver on a chain about his neck, and called to Oghma.

“Be gone!” Curt cried at Rufo. “In the name of Oghma, evil undead thing, get you back!”

Rufo didn’t flinch. He was ten steps away. Nine steps away. He staggered suddenly as he crossed in front of the window, as though he had been burned on the side. But the light was meager, and the monster passed beyond it.

Curt began a frantic chant of a spell. He felt strangely disconnected from his god, though, as if Rufo’s mere presence had despoiled this place. Still he chanted, summoning his powers.

He felt a sting in his lower back and jerked suddenly, his spell disrupted. He turned to see the bat-winged imp, snickering wickedly as it flew away,

“What horror is this?” Curt cried. Rufo was there then, and the terrified man swung his lantern out at the monster.

Rufo caught him by the wrist and easily held the makeshift weapon at bay. Curt punched out with his other hand, connecting solidly on Rufo’s chin, knocking Rufo’s head to the side.

Rufo calmly turned back to him. Curt made to punch again, but Rufo hooked his arm under the man’s, brought his skinny fingers around Curt’s back, and grabbed the man’s hair on the opposite side of his head. With terrifying strength, Rufo pulled Curt’s head to the side, pressed Curt’s cheek against his own shoulder, laying bare the side of the man’s neck.

Curt thought that Rufo would simply snap that neck, as he had done to Berdole, but the Oghman learned better when Rufo opened his mouth, revealing a set of canine fangs, half an inch longer than the rest of his teeth.

With a look of supreme hunger, Rufo bent over and bit down on Curt’s neck, opening the jugular. Curt was screaming, but Rufo, feasting on the warm blood, heard none of it.

It was ecstacy for the monster, the satiation of a hunger more powerful than anything he had ever known in life. It was impossibly sweet. It was…

Rufo’s mouth began to burn. The sweet blood became acidic.

With a roar of outrage, Rufo spun away and heaved the man away with the arm still hooked behind Curt’s back. The poor man flew head over heels, his back striking the nearest column. He slid to the floor and lay very still. He felt nothing in his lower body, but his chest was on fire, burning with poison.

“What have you done?” Kierkan Rufo demanded, looking to the rafters and the perched imp.

A creature of the horrid lower planes, Druzil was not usually afraid of anything this world could present to him. The imp was afraid now, justifiably afraid of this thing that Kierkan Rufo had become. “I wanted to help you,” Druzil explained. “He could not be allowed to escape.”

“You tainted his blood!” Rufo roared. “His blood,” the monster said more quietly, longingly. “I need… I need.”

Rufo looked back to Curt, but the light of life had gone from the man’s eyes.

Rufo roared again, a horrible, unearthly sound.

“There are more,” Druzil promised. “There are many more, not far away!”

A strange look came over Rufo then. He looked to his bare arms, held them up in front of his face, as though he had realized for the first time that something very unusual had happened to him.

“Blood?” he asked more than stated, and he put a plaintive look Druzil’s way.

Druzil’s bulbous eyes seemed to come farther out of their sockets as the imp recognized the sincere confusion on the dead Rufo’s face. “Do you not understand what has happened to you?” Druzil cried excitedly.

Rufo went to take a steadying breath, but then realized that he wasn’t breathing at all. Again that plaintive, questioning look fell over Druzil, who seemed to have the answers.

“You drank of Tuanta Quiro Miancay,” the imp squealed. “The Most Fatal Horror, the ultimate chaos, and thus you have become the ultimate perversion of humanity!”

Still Rufo did not seem to understand.

“The ultimate perversion!” Druzil said again, as though that should explain everything. “The antithesis of life itself!”

“What are you talking about?” asked a horrified Rufo, Curt’s blood spewing from his lips.

Druzil laughed wickedly. “You are immortal,” he said, and Rufo, stunned and confused, finally began to catch on. “You are a vampire.”

“Bene tellemara” Druzil muttered many times as the minutes passed uneventfully. “Would you have them come out and find you?” Rufo did not look up.

“The priests are dead,” the imp rasped. “Torn. Will those who come in search of them be caught so unaware?” Rufo moved his arm from in front of his face and looked over at the imp, but did not seem to care.

“You think you can beat them,” Druzil reasoned, misunderstanding Rufo’s calmness. “Fool! You think you can beat them all!”

Rufo’s response caught the imp oft guard, made Druzil understand that despair, not confidence, was the source of the undead man’s lethargy. “I do not care to try,” Rufo said sincerely.

“You can beat them,” the imp quickly improvised, changing his emphasis so that the statement suddenly did not seem so ridiculous. “You can beat them all!”

“I am already dead,” Rufo said dryly. “I am already defeated.”

“Of course, of course!” Druzil rasped happily, clapping his hands and flapping his wings to perch on the end of Rufo’s slab. “Dead, yes, but that is your strength, not your weakness. You can beat them all, I say. And the library will be yours.”

The last words seemed to pique Rufo’s interest. He cocked his head at an angle so that he could better view the untrustworthy imp.

“You are immortal,” Druzil said solemnly.

Rufo continued to stare for a long, uneasy moment. “At what price?” he asked.

“Price?” Druzil echoed.

“I am not alive!” Rufo roared at him, and Druzil spread his wings, ready to launch away if the vampire made a sudden move.

“You are more alive than you have ever been!” Druzil snapped back. “Now you have power. Now your will shall be done!”

“To what end?” Rufo wanted, needed, to know. “I am dead. My flesh is dead. What pleasures might I know? What dreams worth fancying?”

“Pleasures?” the imp asked. “Did not the priest’s blood taste sweet? And did you not feel power as you approached the pitiful man? You could taste his fear, vampire, and the taste was as sweet as the blood that was to come.”

Rufo continued to stare, but had no more complaints to offer. Druzil spoke the truth, it seemed. Rufo had tasted the man’s fear, and that sensation of power, of inspiring such terror, felt wonderfully sweet to the man who had been so impotent in life.

Druzil waited a little while, until he was certain that Rufo was convinced to at least explore this vampiric existence. “You must be gone from this place,” the imp explained, looking to the corpses.

Rufo glanced at the closed door, then nodded and swung about, dangling his legs over the side of the slab. “The catacombs,” he remarked.

“You cannot cross,” Druzil said as the vampire began stiffly walking toward the door. Rufo turned on him suspiciously, as if he thought the imp’s words a threat.

“The sun is bright,” Druzil explained. “It will burn you like fire.”

Rufo’s expression turned from curious to dour to sheer horror.

“You are a creature of the night now,” Druzil went on firmly. “The light of day is not your ally.”

It was a bitter pill for Rufo to swallow, but in light of all that had happened, the man accepted the news stoically and forced himself to straighten once more. “How am I to get out of here?” he asked, his tone filled with anger and sarcasm.

Druzil led Rufo’s gaze to rows of marked stones lining the mausoleum’s far wall. These were the crypts of the library’s former headmasters, including those of Avery Schell and Pertelope, and not all of the stones were marked.

At first the thought of crawling into a crypt revolted Rufo, but as he let go of those prejudices remaining from when he had been a living, breathing man, as he allowed himself to view the world as an undead thing, a creature of the night, he found the notion of cool, dark stone strangely appealing.

Rufo met Druzil by the wall, in front of an unmarked slab set waist-high. Not knowing what the imp expected, the vampire reached out with his stiff arms and clasped at the edge of the stone.

“Not like that!” Druzil scolded, and Rufo stood straight, eyeing the imp dangerously, obviously growing tired of Druzil’s superior attitude.

“If you tear it away, the priests will find you,” the imp explained, and under his breath he added the expected, “Bene tellemara.”

Rufo did not reply, but stood staring from the imp to the wall. How was he to get inside the crypt if he did not remove the stone? These were not doors that could be opened and closed; they were sealed marker blocks, removed for burials, then mortared back into place.

“There is a crack along the bottom,” Druzil remarked, and when Rufo bent low, he did see a line running along the mortar at the bottom of the slab.

The vampire shrugged his shoulders, but before he could ask Druzil how that crack might help, a strange sensation, a lightness, came over him, as though he was something less than substantial. Rufo looked to Druzil, who was smiling widely, then back to the crack, which suddenly loomed much larger. The vampire, black robes and all, melted away into a cloud of green vapor and swirled through the crack in the slab.

He came back to his corporeal form inside the tight confines of the stone crypt, hemmed in by unbroken walls. For an instant, a wave of panic, a feeling of being trapped, swept over the man. How long would his air last? he wondered. He shut his mouth, fearful that he was gulping in too much of the precious commodity.

A moment later, his mouth opened once more and from it issued a howl of laughter. “Air?” Rufo asked aloud. Rufo needed no air, and he was certainly not trapped. He would slip out through that crack as easily as he had come in, or else he could simply slide down and kick the slab free of its perch. He was strong enough to do that he knew he was.

Suddenly the limitations of a weak and living body seemed clear to the vampire. He thought of all the times when he had been persecuted-unfairly, by his reckoning-and he thought of the two Oghman priests he had so easily dispatched.

Oghman priests! Wrestlers, warriors, yet he had tossed them about without effort!

Rufo felt as though he had been freed of those living limitations, free to fly and grab at the power that was rightfully his. He would teach his persecutors. He would…

The vampire stopped fantasizing and reached up to feel the brand on his forehead. An image of Cadderly, of his greatest oppressor, came clear to him.

Yes, Rufo would teach them all.

But now, here in the cool, dark confines of his chosen bed, the vampire would rest. The sun, an ally of the living-an ally of the weak-was bright outside.

Rufo would wait for the dark.

The highest-ranking priests of the Deneirian order gathered that afternoon at Dean Thobicus’s bidding.

They met in a little-used room on the library’s fourth and highest floor, an obscure setting that would guarantee them their privacy.

Seclusion seemed important to the withered dean, the others realized, a point made quite clear when Thobicus shut tight the room’s single door and closed the shutters over the two tiny windows.

Thobicus solemnly turned about and surveyed this most important gathering. The room was not formally set up for an audience. Some of the priests sat in chairs of various sizes; others simply stood leaning against a bare wall, or sat on the weathered carpet covering the floor. Thobicus moved near the middle of the group, near the center of the floor, and turned slowly, eyeing each of the thirty gathered priests to let them fully appreciate the gravity of this meeting. The various conversations dissipated under that scrutiny, replaced by intrigue and trepidation.

“Castle Trinity is eradicated,” Thobicus said to them after more than a minute of silence.

The priests looked around at each other, stunned by the suddenness of the announcement. Then a cheer went up, quietly at first, but gaining momentum until all the gathered priests, except the dean himself, were clapping each other on the back and shaking their fists in victory.

More than one called out Cadderly’s name, and Thobicus winced each time he heard it, and knew that he must proceed with caution.

As the cheering lost its momentum, Thobicus held up his hand, calling for quiet. Again the dean’s intense stare fell over the priests, silencing them, filling them with curiosity.

“The word is good,” remarked Fester Rumpol, the second-ranking priest of the Deneirian order. “Yet I read no cheer in your features, my dean.”

“Do you know how I learned of our enemy’s fall?” Thobicus asked him.

“Cadderty?” answered one voice.

“You have spoken with a higher power, an agent of Deneir?” offered another.

Dean Thobicus shook his head to both assumptions, his gaze never leaving Rumpol’s. “I could not collect the information,” he explained to them all. “My attempts at communion with Deneir have been blocked. I had to go to Bron Turman of Oghma to find my answers. At my bidding, he inquired of agents of his god and learned of our enemy’s defeat.”

That information was easily as astonishing as the report of Castle Trinity’s fall. Thobicus was the dean of the Edificant Library, the father of this sect. How could he be blocked from communion with Deneir’s agents? All of these priests had survived the Time of Troubles, that most awful period for persons of faith, and all of them feared that the dean was speaking of a second advent of that terrible time.

Fester Rumpol’s expression shifted from fear to suspicion. “I prayed this morning,” he said, commanding the attention of all. “I asked for guidance in my search for an old parchment-and my call was answered.”

Whispers began all about the room.

“That is because…” Thobicus said loudly, sharply, stealing back the audience. He paused to make sure they were all listening. ‘That is because Cadderly has not yet targeted you!”

“Cadderly?” Rumpol, and several others, said together. Throughout the Edificant Library, particularly in the Deneirian order, feelings for the young priest were strong, many positive and many negative. More than a few of the older priests thought Cadderly impetuous and irreverent, lackadaisical in the routine, necessary duties of his station. And many of the younger priests viewed Cadderly as a rival that they could not compete against. Of the thirty in this room, every man was at least five years older than Cadderly, yet Cadderly had already come to outrank more than half by the library’s stated hierarchy. And the persistent rumors hinted that Cadderly was already among the very strongest of the order, in Deneir’s eyes.

Dean Thobicus had apparently confirmed this theory. If Cadderly could block the dean’s communion with agents of Deneir, and from all the way across the Snow-flake Mountains…!

Conversations erupted from every corner, the priests confused as to what all of this might mean. Fester Rumpol and Dean Thobicus continued to stare at each other, with Rumpol having no answers to the dean’s incredible claim.

“Cadderly has overstepped his rank,” Thobicus explained. “He deems the hierarchy of the Edificant Library unfit, and thus, he desires to change it.”

“Preposterous!” one priest called out.

“So thought I,” Dean Thobicus replied calmly. He had prepared himself well for this meeting, with answers to every question or claim. “But now I have come to know the truth. With Avery Schell and Pertelope dead, our young Cadderly has, it would seem, run a bit out of control. He deceived me in order to go to Castle Trinity.” That claim was not exactly true, but Thobicus did not want to admit that Cadderly had dominated him, had bent his mind like a willow in a strong wind. “And now he blocks my attempts at communion with our god.”

As far as Thobicus knew, that second statement was correct. For him to believe otherwise would indicate that he had fallen far from Deneir’s favor, and that the old dean was not ready to believe.

“What would you have us do?” Fester Rumpol asked, his tone showing more suspicion than loyalty.

“Nothing,” Thobicus replied quickly, recognizing the man’s doubts. “I only wish to warn you all, that we will not be taken by surprise when our young friend returns.”

That answer seemed to satisfy Rumpol and many others. Thobicus abruptly adjourned the meeting then and retired to his private quarters. He had planted the seeds of doubt. His honesty would be viewed favorably when Cadderly returned and the dean and the upstart young priest faced off against each other.

And they would indeed, Thobicus knew. He had neither forgotten nor forgiven the young priest for his actions. He was the dean of the library, the head of his order, and he would not be treated like a puppet by any man.

That was Dean Thobicus’s greatest shortcoming. He still could not accept that Cadderly’s domination had been granted by Deneir, by the true tenets of their faith. Thobicus had been tied up in the bureaucracy of the library for so long that he had forgotten the higher purpose of the library and the order. Too many procedures had dulled the goals. The dean viewed his upcoming battle with Cadderly as a political struggle, a fight that would be decided by back room alliances and gratuitous promises.

Deep in his heart, of course, Thobicus knew the truth, knew that his struggle with Cadderly would be decided by the tenets of Deneir. But that truth, like the truth of the order itself, was so buried by false information that Thobicus dared to believe otherwise, and fooled himself into thinking that others would follow his lead.