by James Wyatt
Only Kri seemed unchanged from his new perspective. He remained a thing of madness and nightmare, an intrusion into this reality from somewhere else. He reached a slimy tendril out past an eladrin globule and dipped it into one of the circles of Albanon’s power and siphoned off some of his magic, turning it into a blast of fire that leaped at him and washed over hounds and eladrin in its path.
Albanon had no hand to raise in warding, no mouth to give voice to a spell that might counter Kri’s attack, no mind to channel his magic at all—but he had will, somehow, some ability to desire and to effect that desire. And the slightest exertion of that will caused a whirling circle of magic to flare into life as the fire crossed it. The fire dissolved back into the magic that made it, reabsorbed it into Albanon’s own power.
“That’s not possible,” Kri said. “Your mind should be broken by now, your power shattered.”
Shaping his will into pure defiance, Albanon reined in his mad perceptions and reshaped his sense of reality, forcing his mind to see stone and eladrin and hound and Albanon again in place of the abstractions he had created. One more figure emerged from the Vast Gate, a tiny dragon—Splendid! The dragonet swooped in and perched atop the gate, surveying the scene.
With a jolt like an arrested fall, Albanon began to think again, and suddenly he realized what Kri’s weaving tentacles were accomplishing—more than fending off attacks and tangling footsteps, they were feeding, sipping from each glowing orb of life and magic, the soul and power of each eladrin and hound arrayed against him. The more opponents he faced, the stronger Kri became.
So Kri had been right. Albanon had summoned Immeral and his hunt to their doom, because their presence only made Kri stronger. Unless …
Albanon loosed his grip on his thoughts just slightly, let them wander where they had begun to stray earlier, and let his mind fill with seemingly random patterns—the branching and weaving of Kri’s shadowy tendrils. He sank back against the wall as dizziness overcame him, but he saw the patterns, like looking down onto a network of streams and rivulets flowing into a river and feeding the sea. Seeing, he understood, and his understanding gave him power.
An eldritch word, an effort of will, and the focus to keep the patterns and equations fixed in his mind cut off the flow of energy. A second word reversed it, and the backlash was so enormous that every other creature in the room—eladrin and hound and dragonet alike—was hurled away from Kri and sent sprawling to the floor. Albanon screamed a third word to moderate the flow, but it was too late. His allies were reeling from the sudden influx of energy, energy that carried some taint of Kri’s madness with it.
Albanon’s own mind was nearly overwhelmed by the power flowing into him from Kri, and his perceptions fluctuated back and forth between normal vision and the mad abstractions of crystal, flesh, and magic. His thoughts were a flow of formulas and patterns that sometimes seemed like a stream circling the quivering orb of his flesh. In a way, the mad view of things was helpful, because he could separate himself from that flow of thoughts—it became a resource he could draw upon, instead of a torrent that overwhelmed him.
What his eyes showed him only served to create a current of fear that churned the stream of his thoughts. Kri had erupted in fury at the loss of so much power, and he retained enough might to wreak havoc among the hounds and hunters surrounding him. Three hounds and a huntsman lay dead or dying on the floor, blood pooling around them. Kri was pulling the slimy tentacles back to himself, trying to contain the leakage of his power, and lashing out all around him with bolts and blasts of dark energy and thundering booms.
Power spun around Albanon in ever-widening circles of blinding light, fueled by the energy he’d stolen from Kri, the touch of his dark god. He drew a deep breath and watched the eddies of air and magic around him as he stilled his thoughts, he dipped his mind into the current of patterns and numbers, and he spoke a string of arcane syllables. All the fury of a summer thunderstorm erupted around Kri—lightning crackled over his skin, thunder buffeted him from every side, and wind whipped around him with a furious howl.
To Albanon’s mad-sight, Kri seemed to diminish, to get smaller without changing in any other regard. His eyes saw flesh scorched and torn, inky tendrils dissolved into smears of residue on the stone.
Kri’s hand fell on the archway of the Vast Gate, and Albanon’s heart pounded a warning. The image within the archway flickered and changed—the texture of the hole changed in his mad-sight, in a way that defied description—and then Kri slid through the portal.
No no no, Albanon thought, a beat of denial in the river of his consciousness. He stretched out a hand and extended his will, trying to pull Kri back through the gate, but his magic couldn’t reach through to whatever world Kri had entered.
But Kri was not all the way through. Tentacles coiled around the crystalline archway as his body hung suspended on the other side of the gate. His face was contorted with hideous effort, as if his physical exertion was keeping him from passing fully through the portal. A loud crack signaled the fracture of the arch, and the Vast Gate went blank.
Kri was gone, carried off to some other place, and the Vast Gate was just a dead archway, a door to nowhere standing in the midst of Moorin’s tower. Albanon stood before the arch, staring through it to the blank stone floor and walls beyond.
“Where did he go?” Immeral said, appearing at Albanon’s side, the Elven words flowing like a clear stream from his tongue.
Albanon shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.
“To the Feywild?”
“I don’t think so. He changed the focus of the gate before he passed through it, and it was still changing as he hung there.”
Albanon turned around and surveyed the wreckage of the room. It seemed strangely normal, after the madness of the past hours—quiet and stable and sane, just a room in a tower in a perfectly normal town.
The other eladrin were tending to the dead, and even the hounds stood solemnly in a vigil for their lost pack mates.
“It appears another journey to Moonstair is in my future,” Immeral said. “And with a rather larger entourage this time.”
“Not as large as the one you brought with you, I’m afraid. I’m sorry.”
“The riders of the hunt know the danger they face. Eshravar died bravely.”
“I’m grateful for your aid, Immeral.”
The huntmaster bowed. “I am at your service, my prince.”
Albanon smiled. “In that case,” he said, “I have one more request before you ride for Moonstair.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Roghar’s army reached the bottom of the bluffs without further incident. Once they were off the narrow trail, they could spread out more, sweeping like a wave through the streets of Lowtown. Almost immediately, a group of three fiery demons appeared, and just as quickly scattered before the combined fury of Roghar and his soldiers. One demon was badly wounded, perhaps mortally, but mostly it seemed they lacked the will to make a stand and hold their territory.
“They’re pulling back,” he said to Tempest and Uldane. “Or circling around to attack where we’re weaker.”
“They’ll pick off stragglers,” Tempest said. “You should tell them to stay close together.”
A rumble of thunder drew Roghar’s attention to the sky, but the dawn was driving the clouds back. The noise, he realized, came from Hightown. A flash of fire or lightning caught his eye, and he found himself staring at a familiar tower perched near the edge of the bluff. Moorin’s tower.
“Roghar?” Tempest said, putting her hand on his arm.
“Sorry. What?”
“The soldiers. They should stick together.”
“Right. I was thinking about Albanon.”
“Albanon?” she asked.
Roghar nodded toward the bluffs. “That was his master’s tower. Something’s going on there.”
“There’s no time to worry about that now.”
“No.” He gave orders to the soldie
rs nearby who had become his lieutenants more or less by default, trusting them to get the word around. “Stick together, don’t let demons lure you away from your fellows, and don’t hesitate to run from a fight you can’t handle—as long as you run toward help, not away from it.”
He led them slowly through the streets of Lowtown. The Market Green was deserted, but resistance seemed to grow stronger as they drew closer and closer to the Lower Quays, along the river west of the market. He formed his troops into a wide wedge, with him in the center, and drove onward to the river.
“Nu Alin is near,” Tempest said suddenly, clutching Roghar’s arm.
A figure stepped out of the shadows near a warehouse, not ten yards away. “You can still taste me,” he said in a deep voice, his words stilted and strangely slurred. “As I can still taste your fear—your delicious fear.”
Demons began emerging from inside or behind the warehouses—dozens of them, both the fiery kind and the nightmare fiends. Here and there stood four-legged beasts and four-armed brutes, and beyond them a cluster of what looked like hundreds of swarming spiders made from the Voidharrow crystal. The demons ranged the length of the quays, stretching as long as Roghar’s line of soldiers, if not as deep.
Nu Alin stepped into the sunlight that spilled over the bluff and brought dawn to Lowtown at last. He yanked the cowl off his head and Roghar felt a sudden jolt of horror and fear. The face had once been human, but now it was bone and blood and liquid crystal, the flesh mostly dissolved away by the demon inside.
“I need a new body, Tempest,” Nu Alin said. “This one is starting to fall apart.”
Tempest shuddered and leveled her rod at Nu Alin. Flames streaked out from the rod to burst around the demon, setting his clothes and even his flesh on fire. He didn’t seem to notice, but strode toward her undeterred by the flames and smoke billowing around him.
As if Tempest’s attack had been a signal, the demons arrayed around Nu Alin and the soldiers lined up behind Roghar surged forward to meet in the middle. Roghar shook his head as he realized that this was exactly the kind of fight he had told his soldiers not to expect—an orderly line of demons facing their assault head-on.
Perhaps I’ll stick to adventuring after all, he thought.
Several of the fiery demons surged ahead in front of Nu Alin, so Roghar moved to intercept them and keep them from hindering Tempest as she kept hurling spells at their leader. He saw Uldane circling around them, so he made sure the demons’ attention was firmly fixed on him, roaring a challenge and whirling his blade in a glowing arc that bit deep into two of the creatures. A chill touch of fear at the base of his skull told him that a nightmare demon was closing in behind him, so he turned his head and exhaled a cloud of dragonfire without even looking.
Then he saw what he’d done—Tempest was engulfed in a cloud of fire, reeling back as the flames consumed her.
The fiery demons clutched at him as he pulled away to help her, searing his scaly skin, but he ignored them, shut out Uldane’s shouts, focused on nothing but helping Tempest. “Platinum Dragon,” he muttered in prayer, “please undo the harm I’ve done.” He willed divine power into his hands, ready to send healing through Tempest’s body.
“You’ve killed us all,” Tempest spat as he reached her side. She swung her flaming arms at him, trying to batter him back.
“Let me help you!” he cried, filled with the terror that he might be too late.
A bolt of coruscating black energy, exactly like one of Tempest’s eldritch blasts, hurtled through the air and struck Tempest in the spine. Her eyes opened wide and her mouth stretched into a scream.
“Tempest!” Roghar shouted.
As she writhed in agony, her face peeled away to reveal the monstrous visage of a nightmare demon, and Roghar felt all his terror ebb away, replaced with the profound realization of what an idiot he’d been.
He followed the path of the eldritch blast back to Tempest—the real Tempest—and gave her a sheepish grin. She just laughed, shaking her head, and sent another blast of fire into the fray.
Somewhere, not too far off, Roghar thought he heard a trumpet. He glanced to the skies, wondering if Bahamut had sent a flight of angels, but then he heard the baying of hounds, and he’d never heard of angels traveling in the company of hounds.
“Roghar!”
He spun around and searched the chaos for Uldane, finding the halfling more or less where he’d left him. However, the three fire demons, rather than chase Roghar, had moved to surround Uldane, who was clearly having trouble dodging the flaming fists of all three creatures.
“Sorry,” Roghar called as he hurried to rejoin that fight. His sword quickly drew the attention of one of the fiery demons. It roared as it wheeled on him, lashing out with long tendrils of flame that licked at his armor but didn’t get through to his flesh.
The demon’s angry roar was cut short suddenly as Uldane’s dagger sank into what must have served as its spine. The flames of its body blew outward and extinguished, and the liquid red substance in its center spilled to the ground, first hardening and then crumbling to dust.
“Where is he?” Tempest shouted behind him, a note of panic in her voice. “Where’s Nu Alin?”
Roghar scanned the area as the two remaining fire demons circled cautiously around him and Uldane. He caught a demon’s fiery fist on his shield, batted it aside, and spotted a corpse on the ground near where a clump of soldiers were fighting one of the nightmare demons. The cloak draped over the body matched what Nu Alin had been wearing.
“There!” he shouted, pointing at the body. “He’s down!”
“I see the corpse,” Tempest called back, “but where’s the demon?”
Oh, no, he thought. He could be anywhere—sliding like a serpent unseen in the chaos, or inhabiting any of these bodies, friend or foe.
He was sure the same thought was haunting Tempest, as her wide eyes darted around to every soldier and demon nearby. She tried to keep a wide circle around her free of any potential threat, even pushing a soldier who stumbled too close, sending him dangerously close to a demon’s fiery claws.
Roghar roared and launched a fierce assault on the fire demons that kept him pinned down. His sword erupted in light and sliced into the crystal heart of one demon as his shield forced the other one back, knocking it off balance. Uldane took advantage of the demon’s moment of imbalance and drove his dagger into its skull, and both demons died at once, their flames extinguished.
“He’s going to come after Tempest,” Roghar said. “We have to keep him away from her.”
“He might try taking one of us,” Uldane said. “Even if it’s just to get closer to her.”
Roghar fixed Uldane with a steady stare. “He hasn’t taken you already, has he?” He searched the halfling’s face and eyes for any sign of the red crystal, but Uldane’s face broke into a broad grin that was unmistakably his.
“It’s creepy, isn’t it?” the halfling said. “He could be anywhere, anyone.”
“Yes. Now keep her safe.” Roghar started toward Tempest. “We’re coming to help you,” he called to her, keeping his sword low.
“Stay back!” she shouted.
“Tempest, it’s us. We’re safe.”
“I don’t know that. You can’t prove it.”
A soldier, a woman who had fallen into the role of one of Roghar’s lieutenants, approached Tempest from behind, her eyes fixed warily on Roghar. Roghar tried to remember her name—Beven? Beren?
Belen, he decided.
“The demon has him,” Belen said to Tempest. “Strike him down, quickly!”
Tempest spun to face her, backing away without getting too close to Roghar. “Stay back, all of you!”
Belen’s eyes widened and she pointed at Roghar. “Behind you!” she screamed.
Tempest wasn’t fooled. She glanced at Roghar without turning away from Belen, but even that momentary distraction was all the opening Nu Alin needed. In Belen’s body, he leaped into the air and c
ame down on top of Tempest, smashing her to the ground. Belen’s fingers scrabbled at Tempest’s neck.
Together, Roghar and Uldane rushed to Tempest’s side. Roghar planted a kick in Belen’s gut that sent her sprawling, though her fingers left a long gash in Tempest’s neck. Blood spurted from the wound as Tempest cried out in pain and fear.
Nu Alin was unfazed by the blow, making a rasping sound that might have been laughter as he lifted Belen’s body to its feet. “It’s fascinating,” he said in an approximation of Belen’s voice. “She’s so furious with you, Roghar. She followed you, trusted you, believed that you would keep her safe. You failed, and now you’re ready to kill her in order to get to me. She feels so betrayed.”
Uldane stood near Nu Alin, a dagger in each hand, looking for an opening. Keeping his eyes on the demon, Roghar fell to one knee beside Tempest and muttered a prayer, closing the wound in her neck.
“Does it matter to you what body I wear?” Nu Alin said. “It appears that it does. None of you knew the farmer whose body I just abandoned, and you thought nothing of lighting it aflame to drive me out. But when I took Tempest”—he looked at her with something that might have been hunger in his eyes—”you couldn’t bring yourself to attack. Are you torn, now? Was this Belen someone you cared enough about that you’ll hesitate again? She certainly hopes so.”
“She would rather die than live as a prisoner in her own body,” Tempest said, getting to her feet.
“True,” Nu Alin said, “but she’s desperately clinging to the hope that you can free her without killing her. She has such faith in you, Roghar. But she’s so afraid that her faith has been misplaced.”