Oath of Vigilance

by James Wyatt

  Tempest stood behind him, arms crossed, a menacing cloak of shadows gathering behind her. He stood up and put his hands on his hips as Gaele’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Good, you’re awake. I’d advise you against trying that scream again, unless you want to be knocked out.”

  Gaele opened her mouth and drew a deep breath, and Roghar tensed, ready to kick the air out of her if he had to.

  “I will be free, the Chained God says.” Gaele’s words came fast and slurred, and her eyes weren’t quite focused on him.

  “The Chained God is going to free you, you think? I wouldn’t hold my breath, if I were you.”

  “I will be free, and all will perish. The Chained God says, the Chained God says.”

  “Oh, dear.” Roghar sighed. “This might be harder than I thought.”

  “So it shall be, so it shall be,” Gaele said, her head rolling back and forth.

  “Gaele, listen to me.” He bent over her and tried to make her eyes focus on his face. “A few minutes ago you demonstrated that you were capable of coherent speech. Don’t go all manic on me now.”

  “They will drown in blood. So it shall be.”

  “Gaele, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you know where you are?”

  “You! You will go before me!” Gaele’s eyes darted around the room, trying to see something past Roghar. He looked around.

  “The altar?” he asked. He peered into the cups that surrounded the skull on the purple cloth. One held a thick jelly that burned with a guttering flame. Gravel and dirt filled the next. The third held some murky water, and a chunk of ice that had partly melted was in the fourth. The last cup was empty. Air, he thought.

  “Before me to become the Living Gate, so it shall be.”

  Roghar lifted the skull and held it toward Gaele. “A friend of yours?”

  She was looking past the skull, past the altar, to the alcove, he realized, looking at the strange shaft of light. He’d figured it was open to the surface somehow, maybe using mirrors to channel sunlight down from above. Maybe there’s more to it.

  “Tempest, will you take a look at that alcove for me, please? Maybe we can get a little more of Gaele’s attention.”

  Tempest glared down at Gaele as she stepped around the altar, playing her part perfectly.

  Gaele seemed oblivious, lost in her rambling. “To open my way to freedom, the Chained God says.”

  Roghar frowned down at her. “Your way or the Chained God’s way? Whose freedom are we talking about?”

  “We will soon be free, the Chained God says. Free to consume and destroy. Free to drown the world in blood. So it shall be, the Chained God says.”

  “No,” Tempest whispered.

  “What is it?” Roghar looked up to see Tempest staring aghast at something in the alcove, drawing back from it with an expression of utter horror on her face.

  The prisoner on the floor forgotten, he rushed to Tempest’s side and took her arm. “Tempest?”

  “No no no no no!” Her voice started as a whisper but rose to a shriek of terror. She pulled away from him and fell to her knees, her back to the alcove and whatever horror it held.

  “You will go before me to become the Living Gate!” Gaele shouted. “To open my way to freedom!”

  “Silence!” Roghar bellowed, but neither Tempest nor Gaele heeded him.

  Roghar stepped around Tempest and looked in the alcove himself. The light came, he saw now, from a clear crystal dome embedded in the stone at the top of the alcove, and it shone down in a perfect column to strike an engraved circle in the bottom, at about the height of his knee. The effect almost suggested a tube of glass, but Roghar could see motes of dust dancing in and out of the column.

  He didn’t immediately see what had disturbed Tempest so greatly. The alcove was bare of any decoration aside from the magical mechanism of the light, the dome in the top and the circle engraved in the bottom. He stuck his hand into the shaft of light. A brief tingle ran over his skin, and his hand felt strangely weightless.

  Then he saw it. A glob of liquid hung suspended in the shaft of light, a little lower than his hand. It was no larger than the tip of his thumb, but it seemed to respond to the presence of his hand, stretching itself toward him. He yanked his hand out of the alcove and the liquid fell still. He bent down to examine it more closely.

  It was red, and for a moment he thought it might be blood. But it shimmered in the light, almost like a gemstone with a million tiny facets. Gold and silver ran through it in streaks and flecks, just like—

  Just like the thing that had taken Tempest.

  “Oh, Tempest,” he said, crouching behind her and putting his hands on her shoulders.

  She pulled away from his touch and put her back to the wall, staring wild-eyed at the shaft of light. “I can’t escape him,” she whispered. “Not even here.”

  “How did that get here, I wonder?”

  “Get it away,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Tempest, calm—”

  “Stop her!” Tempest shrieked.

  Roghar spun around and saw Gaele on her feet, hopping around the altar. Before he could reach, she thrust her bound hands into the alcove.

  “That’s enough of that,” Roghar growled, pulling Gaele away and throwing her to the floor.

  “Now we spread!” Gaele cried. “The Voidharrow!” She lifted her hands to her face and covered it, as if cowering from him.

  Roghar scowled down at her, then realized that the red liquid substance had clung to her hand and now stretched itself down to her face. He seized the rope that bound her hands and yanked them away from her face, but the liquid had pooled beside her nose. He reached for it, but hesitated just an instant before touching it, unsure he wanted it on his skin.

  In that instant, it disappeared inside her nostril, and she screamed.

  Like the howl she’d unleashed before, her scream was girded with supernatural force that sent him staggering away from her, clutching his ears and trying to keep his mind from splitting apart. But it lasted only a moment as her body writhed in agony and started to change, then the scream died with a gurgle in her throat.

  “What in Bahamut’s name?” Roghar said, stepping away.

  “Roghar, what’s happening?” Travic appeared in the entry, trying to keep an eye on his prisoners as he peered in to see what all the screaming was about.

  “I don’t know,” Roghar said. “I think she might be possessed.”

  “Roghar, kill her,” Tempest shouted. “Kill her now!”

  “She’s tied up—”

  With a roaring howl, Gaele yanked her hands free of the rope Roghar had tied around her wrists. At the same time, shards of red crystal tore themselves free of her shoulders, forming a jagged cowl around her neck. The rope around her ankles, which had already proven useless in keeping her immobile, snapped as her legs thickened, the skin turning into a smooth, black armor.

  “Kill her!”

  Roghar fumbled for his sword, slid it from its sheath, and brought it down in a mighty arc toward her neck. A massive claw batted his sword away, and it took an instant before Roghar realized it was Gaele’s arm.

  “She’s not possessed,” he called. “She’s changing!”

  With a nervous glance down the hall, Travic ran into the room, pulling his mace free from its loop at his belt. “We’ve got to kill her before she finishes,” he said. “She’s only getting stronger.”

  Roghar drew in a breath and felt Bahamut’s power welling in him. Even in that moment, he saw Gaele grow larger—her shoulders were now as broad as she was tall, and her head was turning into something alien and horrible. He swung his sword with all his might, biting deep into one of her tree-trunk arms. One of its arms, he thought—he couldn’t possibly conceive of this monster as Gaele anymore. Divine radiance erupted around them both as his blow struck true, and the demon that had been Gaele howled in pain and rage.

  Then Travic was beside him, and his mace crashed into t
he crystal growths on Gaele’s shoulder, erupting in a similar flash of light. Travic recoiled as the crystals splintered and razor-sharp shards flew around him, but he seemed unharmed—until the demon’s claw lashed out and fastened around his neck, lifting him off the ground.

  “Gaele—” Travic gasped.

  The demon hesitated just an instant, and Roghar used that instant to cleave its skull open with one more mighty blow. Its body writhed and changed a little more before finally lying still, and Roghar stood over it with his sword ready in case the red liquid oozed out, like the thing that possessed Tempest had done.

  The room was still and silent. Though the demon bled, nothing flowing from its wounds seemed to have a life of its own.

  “The danger appears to be over,” he said at last, looking up at Travic. The priest nodded.

  All at once, voices in the hallway started shouting. Roghar heard pieces of the same phrases Gaele had been repeating. “All will perish,” “so it shall be,” “open my way,” and “the Chained God says” rang out over and over. Travic ran to the hall, but a moment before he reached the doorway the shouting stopped, as abruptly as it had begun. Travic stepped into the hall, peered intently at the prisoners, and cast a fearful glance back at Roghar.

  “What is it?” Roghar said.

  Travic didn’t answer, but started down the hall. Roghar hurried to the door and watched him crouch beside one of the cultists—Marcan. He shook the man’s shoulder, called his name, and felt in his neck for a pulse.

  “He’s dead.” He repeated his efforts for each of the other three prisoners and stood, shaking his head. “They’re all dead.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Roghar said. A sudden fear struck him, and he spun around to check on Tempest. To his relief, she was still on her feet, slumped against the wall and curled in on herself. He hurried to her side and clasped her shoulder.

  Her eyes shifted to look at him, but she didn’t otherwise move.

  “Let’s get you out of here, my friend,” he said softly. “Our work here is finished.”

  She closed her eyes. “They’re all dead?” she whispered.

  “Yes. I don’t know what killed them.”

  Tempest sighed, and her long tail unfurled from around her legs. “Let’s go, then.”

  Roghar helped her stand upright and guided her to the doorway. She didn’t open her eyes until they were past the cultists’ bodies in the hall, past the headless stone knight frozen in its death throes, and most of the way back to the start of the hall. After she did open her eyes, she never once looked back.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Eight slender windows at the top of Sherinna’s tower, just below the gallery, let in moonlight that spilled down the grand entrance hall. Kri closed the door to his bedchamber as quietly as he could manage, not wanting to disturb Albanon’s rest. The young wizard had spent precious little time in his trance since they’d arrived at the tower. Eladrin didn’t sleep, but without at least a few hours spent in a peaceful reverie, they started to show the same signs of fatigue, irritable moods, and even hallucinations that plagued sleep-deprived humans.

  Kri could understand the young man’s excitement. He even shared it, to some extent. Here he was, after all, creeping to the library in the middle of the night to follow up a lead he’d encountered earlier in the evening. The thrill of discovery, of learning what had long been forgotten, was almost an experience of the divine for him. Sometimes he even imagined that he was waging war against Vecna, the god of secrets and Ioun’s most hated foe, by unlocking the mysteries of things and expanding his own knowledge.

  He made his way up the steps toward the library, but found himself diverted along the way. Between the library and the living quarters, the fourth-floor archway led to Sherinna’s workshop. It was sparsely furnished and not half as interesting as the library for his purposes, but one item in there had caught his eye earlier, and he had resolved to investigate it further.

  No better time than now, he said to himself.

  He stepped through the slender arch and into the workshop. To his left, an identical arch, carved with the same gracefully curving lines, decorated a section of the wall. Had it been an actual archway, it would have opened into the empty air outside the tower, forty feet above the ground. But between the white marble columns was blank stone wall.

  At the peak of the arch was the thing that had caught his eye before—a jagged piece of red crystal set into the stone.

  “What is your story, crystal shard?” Kri whispered, peering up at the gleaming mineral. He closed his eyes and reached out with his other senses, the way he had taught Albanon. He saw it immediately—the stone was charged with magic, far more intense and wild than the focused energy that flowed through the columns of the arch. A glance at the overall flow of energies confirmed what he had suspected. The arch was a teleportation portal, serving basically the same function as the more common circle engraved on the floor and inlaid with silver. Properly attuned to a destination, it would allow instant transportation.

  But how would one attune the portal? With an engraved circle, attuning the portal was a relatively simple matter of drawing a sequence of sigils into the circle’s edge, sigils that matched those at the destination. With this portal, there was no obvious place to write those sigils, and he suspected the crystal was instead the key.

  If the crystal is what I think it is, he thought, it’s the key to a lot more than this portal.

  He slid a dagger out of its sheath at his belt and stretched up to reach the blade to the stone. He pried it free from its setting with the merest effort, and fumbled to catch it before it clattered to the ground.

  Peering into the crimson heart of the fragment, he left the workshop and climbed the next ring of stairs to the library.

  “Ioun, guide me,” Kri whispered, stretching out his hands as he stood before the shelves in the library. He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes as he held it, listening for Ioun’s presence.

  “Seek the Chained God,” a voice said.

  Kri opened his eyes, and his gaze fell on an unlabeled scroll on the shelf. He lifted the heavy scroll and carried it to a table, unrolling it enough to read the writing at the top.

  “A research into the Living Gate,” he read aloud. “By Sherinna, naturally.” He closed his eyes and whispered, “Thank you,” confident that Ioun had led him to the knowledge he sought.

  “Three gods approached the Living Gate,” he read aloud, “desiring to know what lay behind its gleaming scarlet surface. Pelor, whose light shines into all darkness, first discovered the Living Gate, though he later wished he had not. Ioun, whose mind ever hungers to learn all things, awoke the sleeping gate. And a third, nameless god, who feared no danger and doubted all authority, distracted the guardian of the Living Gate so all three gods could glimpse the madness beyond.”

  “The Chained God,” a voice repeated. Kri looked around, but the library was deserted. A chill went down his spine. Did the voice belong to Ioun, rewarding his decades of faithful service by deigning to speak to him? Or one of her angels? Or perhaps Sherinna’s shade, speaking from beyond the realm of death? He felt the weight of the moment as time seemed to stretch out, each passing second laden with significance.

  “The gods were changed by what they had seen,” Kri continued reading, “and they departed, swearing a solemn oath never to seek the gate again or speak of what they had seen beyond it. And for many long ages they kept their oath, even as the Dawn War raged throughout the cosmos, reshaping the world, the Astral Sea, and its dominions. But as the war raged on, one of the three gods returned to the gate, killed its guardian, and awakened the Living Gate from its eons of slumber. Madness burst forth through the gate and threatened to consume all that the gods were fighting for. Eventually, Ioun and Pelor cooperated to seal the gate once more, stemming the tide of madness.”

  “Something is not right here,” a voice said. Kri jumped, startled, and looked around again.

  �
�Something is not right,” he echoed. He went back and reread the paragraph.

  “Seek the Chained God,” the voice repeated. Kri started reading again from the beginning, moving his lips with the words but no longer giving them voice.

  “Everyone believes the Chained God was the one who returned and opened the Living Gate,” Kri said at last. “But the Chained God was already in his prison, before the Dawn War even began.”

  “Who opened the Living Gate?” a new voice said. Kri didn’t look up from the scroll.

  “Either the legend is wrong in reporting that the Dawn War had already begun,” Kri said, “or it was not the Chained God who opened the gate. Or else the Chained God was not imprisoned until later—I don’t know. And I don’t understand why it matters. What does the Living Gate have to do with Vestapalk and the demons?”

  “Why don’t you ask it?”

  “Ask it?” He looked around helplessly, and his eyes fell on the crystal shard he’d brought up from the workshop. “Yes, of course. Ask it.” He seized the fragment, bundled up the scroll, and carried both back downstairs.

  “What did the three gods see behind the Living Gate?” a voice asked on the stairs.

  “Was it the same thing that burst forth when the gate was opened?” another voice asked.

  “What did Ioun see?” Still a different voice, and this one made him stop.

  “Who are you?” Kri asked, his voice wavering. “I sought guidance from Ioun.”

  No voice came in answer. Suddenly filled with fear, Kri hurried down the stairs until he reached the workshop and looked around for something he could use to seal the archway. He tried to drag a tall bookcase in front of the arch, but loaded with books it was too heavy for him to move alone. He threw books and scrolls onto the floor until one landed open on the floor beside him and he looked down to see a jagged spiral symbol on the scroll like an eye staring up at him.

  He dropped to his knees beside the book and started reading about the Chained God. Sherinna had penned this scroll as well, and recorded her search, along with Brendis and Nowhere, for the cultists whose trail they had discovered in Nera—cultists of Tharizdun, the Elder Elemental Eye … the Dark God.