Oath of Vigilance

by James Wyatt

  Kri called after him, fury still seething in his voice. “But the demon—what about Nu Alin?”

  “He’s not here. And while we wander around here, other demons are overrunning the town I call home. I mean to stop them.”

  “Yes!” Kri hurried up the stairs behind him. “Yes! They must be stopped! But Nu Alin—we have to find the last disciple.”

  Albanon didn’t look back. “We need to get out of here and far enough away that you can speak calmly and sensibly again.”

  “Wait!”

  Albanon shook his head and continued up the stairs. Kri’s voice seemed lined with sinister echoes, harsh whispers that conveyed what the priest wasn’t saying—dire threats and fell omens. Albanon started counting stairs again so he could block out the madness.

  “Albanon, I command you to stop and look at me!”

  Before he could stop himself, Albanon had turned around and sat on a step facing Kri. He scowled at the priest, trying to make sense of what had just happened. “You used magic on me?”

  “You weren’t listening!”

  “That’s because you’re speaking nonsense or screaming at me. I’m not your apprentice, and I’m not a slave. I won’t take this from you.” He stood up again, though his feet and his head felt shaky. He put a hand on the wall to steady himself.

  The wall beneath his fingers was thrumming with power. The whispers became a chorus of voices in his mind, and he had to sit down again or risk toppling down the stairs. His vision was swimming, but he saw Kri staring up at him, one hand on the wall, a look of triumph on his face.

  Albanon put his fingers to his temples and drew a slow breath, a simple technique for focusing his mind that he’d learned in the first weeks of his apprenticeship. He blinked several times and looked again at Kri. The priest’s face was creased with concern, not gloating in triumph as he’d first thought. Not only were the voices bedeviling his mind, they’d fooled his eyes as well.

  “Kri, listen,” he said. “This place is full of madness. It’s in the air, in the walls, probably in the stairs beneath our feet. We can’t stay here, not even to look for Nu Alin. If we tried to face him here, he’d destroy us, use our own minds against us. We must leave now.”

  He stood up again, wavering slightly but steadying himself without touching the wall, turned carefully, and started up the stairs again.

  “Albanon,” Kri called behind him.

  “I’m not going to stop, Kri. Come on. We have to leave.”

  “Don’t you want to know about the Voidharrow?”

  Albanon glanced over his shoulder but kept climbing the stairs. “Why are you asking me now?” he said. “It’s not the best place—you said it yourself. And far from the best time.”

  “I want to tell you now, Albanon. I want you to understand.”

  Kri’s voice sent a chill through his spine. The priest was not himself, and there was a threat in his tone that made Albanon want to run as fast as he could up the stairs. He quickened his pace but held himself back from an outright run.

  “I don’t think I want you to tell me right now, Kri,” he said quietly.

  “Ingrate!” Kri screamed. “First you come begging for knowledge and chide me for my reluctance to give it, then you refuse it when I offer it freely! No wonder Moorin hated you—you must have driven him mad! Just as you’re driving me mad!”

  “No!” Albanon shouted back, still climbing the stairs.

  “Always whining about how he mistreated you—What did he say about you?”

  “Kri, be still!”

  “I will not! You need to hear this! You need to understand!”

  “You’re not yourself,” Albanon said, holding back a shout.

  “Oh, but I am,” Kri said, his voice deep and hollow. “Never have I been so much my true self.”

  Albanon turned to look at Kri again, his eyes wide with terror. He half expected to see a demon where the priest stood, or some visible sign of whatever being had seized control of Kri’s body. But Kri looked perfectly normal, which struck Albanon as much, much worse.

  “What is happening?” Albanon whispered.

  Kri advanced up the stairs, smiling. Albanon tried to back away, but found himself sitting on the stairs again as Kri drew closer.

  “Listen, Albanon. Listen, and learn the truth.”

  Cold despair clutched at Albanon’s mind, sapping his will and draining his strength. He thought of protesting, or getting back on his feet to continue up the stairs, but it all seemed futile. The stairs were endless and Kri was unrelenting—there was no escape.

  “Remember the mural, Albanon? In Sherinna’s tower. I told you the story of the adventurers who interrupted the ritual and destroyed the Vast Gate. What I have since learned is Albric’s story.”

  “Albric the Accursed.”

  “So he is called. Albric was a dreamer who heard the voice of the Chained God and obeyed his commands. The Chained God instructed him to find the shard of the Living Gate and take it to Pandemonium. Albric used that shard to open a tiny channel into the prison of the Chained God.”

  “Kri, how do you know this?”

  “The Chained God sent the Voidharrow through that channel. It is the distilled essence of entropy and decay, all that remains of a universe consumed by demons, and it is infused with the Chained God’s will. Albric sought to do his will, but the Voidharrow spoke lies and betrayal, and Albric’s acolytes were seduced. The Voidharrow defied the Chained God and transformed the acolytes into agents of its own will. Just as it transformed Vestapalk.”

  Albanon’s mind raced, trying to absorb the information Kri was telling him and make sense of Kri’s transformation at the same time.

  “Then Sherinna and her friends arrived and sent the disciples into chaos. Most were slain. Some passed living through the Vast Gate into other worlds, other planes. Of all the disciples, only Albric stayed faithful to the Chained God, clinging to his purpose even as the Voidharrow transformed him.”

  “But he’s Nu Alin,” Albanon whispered.

  “Yes. Nu Alin is Albric, the last true disciple of the Chained God. With the power of Tharizdun, he is the key to defeating the Voidharrow.”

  Albanon’s desperation fueled one last attempt to break through the madness that had gripped his friend. “Kri, listen. Just moments ago you were telling me of Ioun’s will, what she wishes for the Order of Vigilance. You are her priest, Kri—a priest of Ioun. She can heal your mind, restore you to right thinking—”

  Kri laughed. “I did not know what right thinking was until I glimpsed the mind of the Chained God,” he said. “The Chained God’s will is the same as ours. Albric has been steeped in Tharizdun’s thought and will. He knows what must be done.”

  “He serves Vestapalk!” Albanon cried. “He is a demon of the Voidharrow now!”

  “You lack understanding, Albanon. The Chained God’s touch has brought me a clarity of purpose and vision like I have never known.” He climbed one stair closer to Albanon. “He can do the same thing for you, my apprentice.”

  “I’m not your apprentice, Kri.” Albanon scrambled backward up two more stairs, but Kri followed. “And I think my mind is perfectly clear.”

  Kri stretched his bony fingers toward Albanon’s head. “You cannot fight until you understand. Just let him touch your mind.”

  Albanon’s vision swam as he felt a pressure on his thoughts, like the feeling of having forgotten something important that was struggling to be remembered. He drew in a surge of arcane power and used it to fortify the barriers of thoughts and discipline that protected his mind, but instantly recognized his very serious mistake.

  Madness was everywhere around Albanon, flowing like water through the stone of the dungeon beneath the tower. It was intertwined with the flow of magic in the place, and when Albanon drew on that magic he allowed in a touch of the same madness he was trying to resist. An absurd, barking laugh escaped his mouth as he tried to correct his mistake and muster his will to drive back Kri’s assa
ult.

  Kri stepped closer, and his fingers touched Albanon’s forehead, sending a lance of pain searing through his head. Albanon reacted from pure instinct, recoiling from Kri’s touch and lashing out with his magic. A clap of thunder exploded in the stairway, sending Kri stumbling backward. Kri lost his footing and rolled down the steps. He cried out as he fell, a sound so lost and helpless that Albanon was overcome with remorse; then he landed in a heap a half turn down from where Albanon stood.

  “Kri?” Albanon asked tentatively.

  The old priest groaned and stirred, starting to untangle his limbs and lift his head from where it rested against the stone wall.

  “Kri, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Kri’s eyes fluttered open and fixed on Albanon as the young wizard hurried down the stairs. Kri opened his mouth and Albanon slowed, expecting a moan or quiet words.

  Instead, Kri shrieked, a long, tortured note too high and loud to be his natural voice, and laden with the undertones of madness Albanon had been hearing in whispers and echoes. The barrage of sound slammed him backward and tore at his mind, snatching away his senses until the scream was all that remained.

  In the face of that howling storm, Albanon was a worm writhing on the stone. The whispering voices in the walls surrounding him became leering faces staring down at him, then emerged as hungry birds jabbing their beaks at him. Agony shot through him as their beaks struck him and pulled away, trailing wispy tendrils of shining silver smoke. He looked up in his torment and saw the sun burning down on him, black but ringed in angry scarlet, pulsing with life and malevolence. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  One of the birds lifted him from the ground and impaled him on a thorn, but he kept staring up at the angry red corona, noticing the flecks of gold and veins of silver pulsing within its brilliance. He was only vaguely aware of more silver smoke pouring forth from him where the thorn pierced his body, streaming up toward the sun.

  Then Albanon was no longer a worm, no longer a creature with a merely physical body. He was wisps of silver smoke and coiling tendrils of thought, a throbbing heartbeat that came from no fleshly organ, a hunger that knew nothing of food or digestion. He saw without eyes, and all he saw was the burning black sun, the Elder Elemental Eye, the unblinking gaze of the Chained God. He had no ears, but the howling scream remained, blowing over him like a gale.

  Some scrap of his mind was aware of a fleeting thought. “I’ve gone mad.”

  And then he was nothing at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Shara heard the handle of the door rattle, stopped by the lock. She sat up, pulling a blanket around her shoulders.

  “Shara?” Uldane’s voice called through the door. “Are you in there?”

  She jumped to her feet, trailing the blanket, and padded to the door, feeling her face flush. She glanced over her shoulder to where Quarhaun lay in the bed, smiling at her, his white teeth gleaming against his black lips.

  “What is it?” she said at the door.

  “Shara! Open up!”

  The urgency in his voice overrode her embarrassment, and she flipped the lock and let the door swing open. Uldane’s face was lit with excitement tinged with a hint of fear, but his smile fell as his eyes took in the scene.

  “What is it?” she asked again.

  “Um … oh! Nu Alin! Tempest thinks he was here. She and Roghar have gone to look for him.” Uldane looked like he was going to say something else, but his eyes went back and forth between Shara and Quarhaun one more time and he turned away. “That’s all,” he added.

  He started stomping back down the hall, and Shara went after him. “Uldane, what’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you so angry.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Why are you angry at me?”

  Uldane wheeled on her then. “Look at you!” he said. “And him! Both of you! Back in the Blue Moon you lectured me about choosing my allies more carefully. And yeah, I’ve made some mistakes and I paid for them. But now you’re with him?”

  The fury of his outburst came as such a surprise that she took a step back from him. “Watch it, Uldane,” she said, feeling her own anger rise. “Quarhaun saved your life in the Witchlight Fens.”

  “And I’m grateful, but that doesn’t mean he’s good for you. He’s a drow. He comes from one of the most evil and scheming societies in the world. He has no respect for the gods, or for the lizardfolk who actually saved our lives. Do you really think he’s what Jarren would want for you?”

  “Jarren would want me to be happy.”

  Uldane folded his arms. “And are you?”

  “I’m trying to be.” She spun around, adjusting the blanket, and hurried back to Quarhaun’s room to get her sword and armor.

  By the time Shara and Quarhaun came downstairs, Roghar and Tempest had already returned from their hunt, despairing of finding the demon. Uldane sat at a large table in uncharacteristic silence, avoiding Shara’s eyes as the rest of the group settled into chairs.

  “We need a plan,” Roghar said. “We’ve got to drive the demons out of Fallcrest. And destroy Nu Alin, if we can.” He gave Tempest a lingering glance.

  “A couple times in the last few weeks,” Shara said, “we found demons in larger groups like this. And there was always one demon in charge, a pack leader or commander or whatever. And when we killed that leader, the rest of the demons scattered. Driving the demons out should be as straightforward as finding their leader and killing it.”

  “Cut off the head and the body dies,” Quarhaun said, nodding.

  “Yes,” Roghar said, “but we don’t know much about this leader. It might be Nu Alin, and that presents special difficulties.”

  “What difficulties?” Quarhaun asked.

  “We don’t really know how to kill him.”

  “He possesses mortal bodies,” Shara explained, glancing at Tempest. The tiefling’s face was a mask of indifference. “If you kill the body he’s in, he just tries to take another body.”

  “It seems possible to destroy him while he’s not in a body,” Roghar said, “but his natural form is like a liquid serpent, made of the Voidharrow. The last time we encountered him, that form proved very elusive.”

  Quarhaun leaned forward on the table, evidently interested in the topic. “So when his host body is slain, this liquid serpent, as you call it, comes out of the corpse?”

  “Exactly,” Roghar said, glancing sidelong at Tempest.

  “Why does everyone keep looking at Tempest?” the drow asked.

  “The demon possessed me,” Tempest said. “And they’re all worried that I’m going to fly into a hysterical rage or crying fit as we discuss how to kill the damned thing.”

  Quarhaun laughed out loud. Shara kicked his leg under the table, but then she saw that Tempest was smiling. Then Roghar laughed as well, and Shara allowed herself a smile. Only Uldane was still scowling.

  “One of our companions at the time stabbed me,” Tempest explained. “As I lay dying, the demon snaked out. I’m afraid I don’t remember much after that point. But I am glad that Erak had just enough heartless bastard in him to actually do the deed, and I’m counting on you all to do the same if the demon manages to take me again.”

  Roghar nodded slowly, staring into his ale.

  “We will,” Shara said.

  “I’m nothing but heartless bastard,” Quarhaun added. “I’ll stab you now, if you like.”

  “Thank you, no,” Tempest said.

  Roghar gave Quarhaun a nervous glance and tried to restart the conversation. “After it left Tempest, it tried to go into Falon, our cleric friend. It climbed up his body toward his face.”

  “But it didn’t get there?” Quarhaun asked.

  “It started flowing into his mouth and nose,” Roghar said, making Tempest shudder slightly. “But I had noticed that it seemed particularly averse to divine radiance, so I blasted it and it wi
thdrew long enough for Falon to hit it harder. That’s when it fled.”

  The drow stroked his chin. “Divine radiance, you say? Well, we have you. I can muster some radiance, though it’s not exactly divine. Tempest, have you mastered the third invocation of Hadar?”

  Tempest blinked at him. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said slowly.

  “Perhaps you learned different terminology. Do you know the invocations of Hadar? The spells that draw on the light of the dying star?”

  Tempest’s face showed no sign of recognition, and Roghar shifted uncomfortably.

  “Gibbeth’s shadow, woman, did your teacher tell you nothing of the baleful stars?”

  “I had no teacher,” Tempest said.

  Quarhaun arched an eyebrow. “You made an infernal pact with no one to guide you?”

  “Not everyone has the luxury of a life of study,” Roghar said, the hint of a growl in his voice warning the drow to back off.

  “Certainly, but those without learning shouldn’t dabble with powers beyond their understanding.”

  Tempest’s eyes smoldered with anger, and Roghar drew himself up in his seat. “She is no mere dabbler,” Roghar said. “I’ve fought alongside her for years, and I dare say her power surpasses yours.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Quarhaun said. “If I recklessly seized all the power I could without regard for the consequences, out of ignorance or desperation, I suspect I’d be more powerful than you can even imagine. But I choose a more moderate path. I’d like to survive long enough to enjoy my power.”

  Shara looked between Quarhaun and Tempest, realizing for the first time how her experience of Tempest had colored her impressions of the drow warlock. They were different in many ways, starting with the eldritch blade Quarhaun wielded to channel his power. Tempest preferred standing back from her enemies, sending her spells coursing through her rod to blast them from afar. But some part of her, Shara realized, had figured that Quarhaun’s power was more or less accidental, the way Tempest’s was. To think that he had sought out the infernal power he wielded was a bit disturbing.