The Chaos Curse

by R. A. Salvatore

  Cadderly considered the cellar’s layout. Using one of the lesser functions of the wand, he put a minor globe of light between the racks to his right, for he knew that at the end of those racks loomed a deep alcove. The light illuminated the cubby, and it was empty.

  “To the back!” Cadderly called to his companions. “Straight across the cellar to the back wall.”

  It was only a guess, for though Cadderly was confident that Rufo would have sought the underground chambers—and the appearance of so many zombies added credence to the theory—where exactly he might find the vampire in the odd-shaped and uneven chamber was beyond him. He took up the rear as the dwarves plowed through the throng, cutting a wake so that Cadderly wasn’t too engaged in fending off the zombies. The young priest’s eyes darted back and forth, looking side to side as they crossed the racks, hoping to catch a glimpse of Rufo. Cadderly scolded himself for not keeping his light tube intact. The light on his hat was dispersed and didn’t always penetrate the deepest crannies.

  He pulled down both the lighted disk and the holy symbol, that he might better direct the illumination. Something fluttered across the shadows at the other end of the long racks, moving too quickly to be a zombie. His attention fixed on that spot, the young priest didn’t notice the monster reaching for his back.

  The blow nearly knocked Cadderly from his feet. He stumbled forward several steps and swung around, sensing the pursuit, his walking stick flailing across. It came up short of the mark, though, and the zombie waded in behind. Purely on instinct, Cadderly thrust out his holy symbol and cursed the thing.

  The zombie stopped, held fast by the priest’s magical strength. Yellow light limned its form, and began to consume the edges of the zombie’s material being.

  Cadderly felt a wave of satisfaction in the knowledge that Deneir was with him. He pressed his attack, clenching his hand tightly around the emblem of his station. The eye-above-candle flared to greater intensity, the glowing flames licking at the zombie leaped and danced.

  But the zombie remained, tapping the dark power of its master—who must have been nearby, Cadderly realized. Dark lines creased the fiery glow, breaking it apart.

  Cadderly growled and stepped closer, invoking the name of Deneir, singing the melodies of his god’s song.

  Finally, his holy symbol made contact with the zombie and the thing burst apart, falling into a mess of macabre chunks and puffing dust.

  Cadderly fell back, drained. How powerful had Rufo become that the vampire’s lesser minions could resist his holy powers so strenuously? And how far had the library gone from Deneir when Cadderly’s call to the god could barely destroy such a minor creature?

  “Get the durned thing off! Get the durned thing off!” Ivan yelled, drawing Cadderly’s attention.

  The dwarf’s goring horns had done their work too well, it seemed, for Ivan had a zombie stuck atop his head. It lay flat out and flailing away with its arms and legs. Pikel hopped frantically beside his brother, trying to line up a hit that would dislodge the zombie without taking Ivan’s head off.

  Ivan chopped the legs from another zombie that waded too near, then took a hit in the face from the one above. The dwarf tried a halfhearted swing high with his axe, but the striking angle was wrong. He went into a spin instead, the momentum forcing the zombie flat out.

  Pikel braced himself and took up his heavy club. Around came the zombie’s head, whipping past. Pikel was ready the next time, and he timed his strike perfectly.

  The zombie was still impaled—Ivan had to carry it around for a while—but it was no longer fighting.

  “Took ye long enough,” was all the thanks Ivan offered his brother. A short burst launched them side by side into the next rank of zombies, which broke apart into bits in the face of the dwarves’ fury.

  Cadderly rushed to keep pace. A zombie intercepted him, and it pained the young priest greatly to view his newest foe, for the dead young man had, in life, been a friend. A clubbing arm came across, and Cadderly parried. He dodged a second strike, fighting defensively, then consciously reminded himself that it was not his friend, that the animation was merely an unthinking toy of Kierkan Rufo. Still, it wasn’t easy for Cadderly to strike out, and he winced as his walking stick obliterated his former friend’s face.

  The young priest pressed on to catch the dwarves. He recalled that he had seen something, something dark and quick, in the shadows.

  Out it came, from the wine racks to the side. Pikel squealed and turned to meet the charge, but got bowled over and tumbled away with the monster. They rolled past Ivan, who was quick enough to chop the newest adversary’s leg.

  When the axe didn’t bite in, both Ivan and Cadderly knew the nature of their foe.

  “Mas illu!” the young priest cried, and the vampire howled as sparks fell over it.

  “That one’s yer own!” Ivan cried to his brother, and he rubbed the temporary blindness out of his eyes and went back to his zombie chopping. He paused and dipped his head, grabbing at the dead weight entangled there, and a host of monsters closed in, arms clubbing.

  Cadderly started for Pikel, but saw that Ivan, with his encumbering load, was in more trouble. He rushed to join Ivan, smacked away those zombies he could reach, then took hold of the corpse and finally pulled it free of the dwarf’s antlers.

  Cadderly overbalanced as it fell loose then found he was sailing backward even faster as a zombie punched him in the chest. He hit the stone floor hard, felt the breath blasted from his lungs, and his precious wand flew free of his grasp. By the time he regained his sensibilities, a zombie had its strong hands clasped firmly around his throat.

  The vampire was agile, but none could roll better than a round-shouldered dwarf. Pikel enjoyed the ride, throwing his weight into every turn with enthusiastic abandon. Finally the living ball slammed a wine rack, and the old structure buckled, showering Pikel and the vampire with splintered wood and shards of breaking bottles.

  Pikel took the worst of that, the breaking rack doing no more damage to the vampire that Ivan’s axe had done. The dwarf, cut in a dozen places, one eye closed by a sliver, found himself in tight quarters, the vampire against him, holding him tight in its impossibly strong arms, its sharp fangs digging at his throat.

  “Oooo!” the dwarf growled, and he tried to pull free, tried to wriggle one arm out, so that he might hit his adversary.

  But it was no use. The vampire was too strong.

  Cadderly thought to invoke Deneir’s name, thought to present his holy symbol, thought to grab his walking stick and slam the zombie on the side of the head—thought all of that and more at once, his mind whirling as the monster, its bloated face devoid of emotion, held the needed breath from his lungs.

  Suddenly that bloated face rushed at Cadderly, slammed him hard, drawing blood from his lips. At first he thought the zombie had launched a new attack, but as the thing steadily lifted from him, its grasp on his neck relaxed, and the young priest understood.

  “Durned things keep getting stuck,” Ivan grumbled, hoisting his axe higher and bringing the impaled zombie with it. He brought the blade close and tried to pry the zombie loose.

  “Behind you!” Cadderly called.

  Too late. Another of the monsters pounded Ivan hard on the shoulder.

  Ivan looked at Cadderly and shook his head. “Will ye wait a spell?” he screamed into the zombie’s face, and the monster promptly punched him again, raising a welt on his cheek.

  Ivan’s heavy boot stomped on the zombie’s foot. The dwarf launched himself forward with all his weight, the sudden movement dislodging the last zombie from his axe. The two foes staggered backward, but the zombie somehow held its footing.

  Ivan’s hand whipped around, bringing the handle of the axe behind the zombie’s shoulder then back in front of its face. The dwarf’s other hand went in a similar movement, grabbing the other end of the handle, just below the axe’s huge head. With his hands behind the zombie’s back and the handle crossing in front of it,
tight across its shoulders and throat, Ivan had the thing off balance. It continued to club at the dwarf’s back, but it was in too tight to be effective.

  “I telled ye to wait,” Ivan explained, and the muscles of his powerful arms corded and bulged as he pressed backward and down, folding the monster in half the wrong way.

  Cadderly didn’t see the powerful move. He was up and moving again. He searched for his wand, but saw no sign of it in the tangle and the darkness. He started for Pikel, but ran into a wall of zombies. Taking a circular route that moved him deeper into the cellar, Cadderly’s attention was grabbed by something off to the side: three coffins, two open and one closed.

  The young priest saw something else there, a blackness, a manifestation of evil. Huddled, shadowy images danced atop that closed coffin. Cadderly recognized the aura sight for what it was. As he had come to decipher the song of Deneir, the general weal of people he encountered was often revealed to him by shadowy images emanating from them. Normally Cadderly had to concentrate to see such things, had to call upon his god, but here the source of evil was too great for the shadows to be concealed.

  Cadderly knew Pikel needed him, but he knew, too, that he had found Kierkan Rufo.

  Pikel didn’t like the feeling at all. The dwarf was a creature of natural order, who prized nature above all, and that foul, perverted thing was violating him, sinking its filthy fangs into the personal temple that was nature’s gift to the dwarf.

  He screamed and thrashed, but to no avail. He felt his blood being drawn out, but could do nothing to stop it.

  Pikel tried another tactic. Instead of pressing out with his arms, he tightened them to his sides, hoping the vampire would loosen its grip.

  The monster’s eyes widened in shock, and it began to tremble violently. Pikel understood when he felt the “doo-dad” water being forced from his waterskin, soaking the front of his baldric and breeches.

  The vampire broke the hold and leaped back, crashing into the part of the wine rack that had not collapsed, sending bottles flying. Smoke wafted from its chest, and Pikel saw that his squirting waterskin had drilled a neat hole there, right into the vampire’s heart.

  On came the raging dwarf, pounding with his club, crushing the perversion into the floor. He turned, sensing that zombies were converging from behind, but the undead wall parted as Ivan burrowed through to his brother’s side once more.

  Cadderly’s remaining light source dimmed as he approached the coffins, his eyes set firmly on the dancing shadows, on the box that held Kierkan Rufo. He felt a warmth in his pocket then, which confused him for just a moment.

  Cadderly stopped and lashed out to the side with his walking stick, smashing several bottles. A shriek and a flap of wings told him he had guessed right.

  “I see you, Druzil,” the young priest muttered. “And never will I lose sight of you again.”

  The imp became visible, crouched on the lip of one of the opened boxes.

  “You desecrated the library!” Cadderly accused.

  Druzil hissed at him. “There’s no place here for you, foolish priest. Your god has left!”

  In answer, Cadderly thrust forth his holy symbol and for a moment, the light flared, stinging Druzil’s sensitive eyes. They had fought before, on several occasions, and each time Cadderly had proven stronger.

  So it would be again, the young priest determined, but Druzil, that most malicious imp, would not escape his wrath again. Cadderly pulled forth the amulet, the link between he and the imp, and sent a telepathic wave at Druzil, calling loudly the name of Deneir. The image manifested itself in both combatants’ thoughts as a sparking ball of light, floating toward Druzil from Cadderly.

  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.

  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 spoke.

  “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 couldn’t love Rufo, and couldn’t accept his blasphemous offer?

  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, the ruckus, though, and neither did Rufo. The young priest 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 a long time, both trembling, neither having the strength to lift his other arm. It would end there, Cadderly believed, with those 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.

  For all his rage and all his power, the young priest could not hold out against the vampire, not in that cursed place.

  Cadderly grimaced, refusing to accept what he knew was true. 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, and gave Cadderly an opportunity to break the stalemate.

  With a feral snarl, Rufo slapped the dwarf away, sending 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 couldn’t 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 that desecrated place, in that 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 enchanted oil exploded with tremendous force, hurling Rufo against the far wall and 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 looked at 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 and 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.