The Chaos Curse

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Ooooooo!” Pikel squealed and popped his fat thumb over the opening.

  “Get him outside!” frantic Ivan roared, and the dwarves ran off for the stairs, yelling, “Ooooooo!” in unison.

  Cadderly charged hard to keep up, holding his light ahead to show them the way. He spotted his lost wand, but had not the time to go for it.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE HIGHEST TEST

  He’s coming back!” Ivan yelled, and the bellows bulged weirdly as Rufo’s corporeal form began to take shape once more, as the vapors began to solidify.

  “Ooooooo!” Pikel wailed, careening down the halls, the foyer in sight.

  Cadderly skidded in first, throwing all his weight against the barricade that had been put in place to block the opening. He didn’t move the material much, but he lessened its integrity, and when Ivan and Pikel hit, everything, Cadderly included, flew away. The young priest shook his head, both at the amazing power of rambling dwarves and to take the dizziness away, then he followed closely.

  Out into the sunlight scrambled the dwarves. Pikel’s finger was no longer over the pointy opening of the bellows, but it didn’t matter, for Rufo was no longer gaseous. Leather bulged and tore as a clawing hand ripped through the side of the bellows.

  The dwarves ran on, dragging their load, getting Rufo as far from the gloomy library, his source of power, as possible. They cut under the shadows of the trees and out into an open, sun-drenched field.

  Rufo tore free and dug a firm hold on the turf. Both dwarves pitched headlong to the ground and came up sitting, each holding a broken handle.

  With some effort, the vampire stood straight, cursing the sun, shielding his eyes from the blazing light. Cadderly stood before Kierkan Rufo, holy symbol presented with all his heart. The young priest, out from under the desecrated structure, felt his god strongly again. Rufo, too, felt Deneir keenly, Cadderly’s words echoing painfully in his mind.

  Rufo started for the library, but Cadderly danced around to intercept, his blazing holy symbol blocking the way.

  “You cannot escape,” the young priest said. “You have made your choice, and you have chosen wrong!”

  “What do you know?” the vampire scoffed.

  Rufo stood tall, defying the sun, defying Cadderly and his god. He felt the tumultuous swirl of the chaos curse within him, of Tuanta Quiro Miancay, that Most Fatal Horror. It was a concoction of the Abyss, of the very lowest planes.

  Even in the sunlight, even battered as he had been in the fight, his arm hanging grotesquely at his side, Rufo stood strong. Cadderly could see that, could feel it.

  “I deny you,” the personification of Tuanta Quiro Miancay said.

  The words filtered through Cadderly’s thoughts, throwing up barriers, damming the river of his god’s song. Rufo had spoken to Deneir, Cadderly realized, not to him. Rufo had made the claim that his choice had not been wrong, that his power was real and tangible—and he had made that claim against Deneir himself, against a god!

  “They hold us back, Cadderly,” the vampire went on, his calm tones showing strength and defiance. “They keep their secrets to themselves, cover them with pretty flowers and sunshine, petty dressings to keep us satisfied and behind which they might hide the truth.”

  Looking at the vampire then, standing taller and straighter than Kierkan Rufo had ever stood in life, Cadderly almost believed the man had found some truth. It seemed, too, as if a protective shell had formed around Rufo, a dark lining to battle the burning sunlight. How strong he had become! The vampire continued, and Cadderly closed his eyes, the arm holding his holy symbol inevitably dropping low. The young priest didn’t distinguish any of the words, just felt the hum, the alluring vibrations, deep in his soul.

  “Well?” came a blunt and gruff question. Cadderly opened his eyes to see Ivan and Pikel, sitting side by side on the grass, still holding the broken handles and considering the face-off.

  Well, indeed, the young priest thought. He looked squarely into his adversary’s dark eyes.

  “I deny Deneir,” Rufo said.

  “And I do not,” Cadderly replied.

  Rufo started to hiss a response, but Cadderly froze the words in the vampire’s throat, lifting the symbol again, the opened eye above a lighted candle. The sunlight brought new sparkles to the emblem, heightened its glory and strength.

  In the face of that revealing glare, Rufo’s dark shell melted away, and the vampire seemed not so powerful, rather a pitiful thing, a fallen man, a man who had chosen the wrong course and had spiraled down to the depths of degradation.

  Rufo hissed and clawed at the air. He reached for the holy symbol, meaning to engulf it as he had done inside, but the flesh on his skinny hand erupted into flames and curled away, leaving only whitened bone. Rufo howled in agony. He turned for the library, but Cadderly paced him, keeping his flaring symbol right in the vampire’s face. And Cadderly began to sing the melodies of his god, a tune Kierkan Rufo could not withstand. Inside the library Rufo had gained the advantage, but out in the daylight, Deneir’s song played strong in Cadderly’s spirit, and the young priest opened himself up as a pure conduit for the truth of his god.

  Rufo could not withstand the light of that truth.

  “Oo,” Pikel and Ivan muttered together as Rufo fell back to the ground.

  Cadderly pressed low, singing with all his heart. Rufo rolled over and clawed at the grass to get away, like a desperate animal, but Cadderly was there in front of him, corralling him, forcing him to see the truth.

  Horrible, wailing sounds escaped the vampire’s throat. Somehow, Rufo managed to struggle back to his feet, to stare at the shining holy symbol in one last desperate act of defiance.

  His eyes whitened and fell back into his skull, and through the black openings wafted the red mist of the chaos curse. Rufo opened his mouth to scream, and from there, too, came the red mist, forced from his body into the open air, where it would disperse on the breeze to cause no more pain.

  When Rufo collapsed to the ground, he was no more than a hollow, smoking husk, an empty coil, and a lost soul.

  Cadderly, too, nearly collapsed, from the effort and from the weight of the grim reality that descended on him. He looked over his shoulder at the squat library and considered all the losses he had witnessed, the losses to the order, the loss of his friends, of Dorigen. The loss of Danica.

  Ivan and Pikel were beside him, knowing he would need their support.

  “She did right in choosing death,” Ivan remarked, understanding that the tears rimming Cadderly’s gray eyes were for Danica most of all. “Better that than fallin’ in with this one,” the square-shouldered dwarf added, motioning to the empty husk of Kierkan Rufo.

  “… in choosing death,” Cadderly echoed, those words striking a strange chord within him. She had killed herself, Rufo had said. Danica had willingly chosen death.

  But why hadn’t Rufo animated her? Cadderly wondered. As the vampire had animated so many of the others? And why, when he had gone to the Fugue Plane, had Cadderly not been able to find Danica’s spirit, or any trace of its passing?

  “Oh, my dear Deneir,” the young priest whispered, and without a word of explanation, Cadderly ran off toward the northwestern corner of the library. The dwarves looked at each other and shrugged, then chased off after him.

  Cadderly scrambled wildly, crashed through roots and bushes, clawing his way around to the back of the building. The dwarves, better at trailblazing than the taller man, nearly caught up to him, but when Cadderly got into the open field between the library and the mausoleum, he left the brothers in his dust.

  He hit the mausoleum door at full speed, never considering that Shayleigh and Belago might have found a way to lock or brace it. In it swung, and in spilled Cadderly, skidding hard to the floor, scraping his elbows.

  He hardly cared about the minor wounds, for when he looked to the left, to the stone slab where the two had placed Danica, he saw the “corpse” under the shroud rising to a sittin
g position. He saw also that Shayleigh, with a terrified Belago beside her, was perched on the bottom of the slab, her short sword poised to plunge into Danica’s heart.

  “No!” Cadderly cried. “No …”

  Shayleigh glanced at him, and it seemed she wondered in that instant if Cadderly, too, had been taken by the darkness, if he had come to save his lover in undeath.

  “She’s alive!” the young priest cried, clawing to propel himself toward the slab. Ivan and Pikel rambled in then, wide-eyed and still not understanding.

  “She’s alive!” Cadderly repeated, and Shayleigh relaxed a bit as he arrived at the slab and pulled the shroud from fair Danica and wrapped his love in the tightest embrace they had ever shared.

  Danica, back with the living again, returned it tenfold, and the day was brighter indeed!

  “What of Rufo?” the elf asked the dwarves.

  “Hee hee hee,” Pikel replied, and both he and Ivan ran their fingers across their throats.

  The four left Cadderly and Danica then, waited outside in the light that seemed brighter and warmer and more alive than any spring before. Cadderly and Danica came out a few moments later, the young priest supporting the injured woman. Already Cadderly had called for spells of healing to help the monk, particularly her ruined ankle, but the wound was sore and infected, and even with Cadderly’s aid, it would take some time before it could support her weight.

  “I don’t get it,” Ivan stated for all of them.

  “Physical suspension,” Cadderly answered for Danica. “A state of death that is not death. It is the highest mark in the teachings of Grandmaster Penpahg D’Ahn.”

  “You can kill yerself and come back?” Ivan balked.

  Danica shook her head, smiling like she thought she would never smile again. “In suspension, one does not die,” she explained. “I slowed my heart and my breathing, slowed the flow of blood through my veins, to where all who regarded my body thought I was dead.”

  “Thus you escaped the hunger of Kierkan Rufo,” Shayleigh reasoned.

  “And escaped my attention as well,” Cadderly added. “That is why I couldn’t find her when I searched the Fugue Plane.” He looked at Danica and gave a wistful smile. “I was looking in the wrong place.”

  “I nearly killed you,” Shayleigh said, stunned by the proclamation, her hand going to the hilt of her belted sword.

  “Bah!” Ivan snorted. “It wouldn’t be the first time!”

  They all laughed, forgetting for a moment the loss of the library, the loss of Dorigen, and the loss of their own innocence.

  And loudest among them was Pikel’s, “Hee hee hee.”

  Cadderly led them back into the library the next day, seeking any lesser vampires left in dark holes, and putting to rest any zombies they encountered. When they came outside late that afternoon, the friends were certain the first two floors were clean of enemies. The next morning, Cadderly started his friends to work removing the most precious artifacts from the library, the irreplaceable artwork and ancient manuscripts. Danica was thrilled to find that all of Penpahg D’Ahn’s notes had survived.

  Even more thrilled was the monk, and all the others, when they found a single sanctuary within the darkness, a single spot of light that had somehow held out against the encroachment of Kierkan Rufo. Brother Chanticleer had used his melodies as a ward against the evil, and his room had not been desecrated. Half-starved, his hair whitened from the terror he had endured, he fell into Cadderly’s arms with sobs of joy and knelt upon the ground in prayer for the better part of the afternoon when the friends escorted him out.

  Later that same day, a host of four-score soldiers arrived from Carradoon, having received word of the attack on the merchant caravan. Cadderly quickly put the group to work, except for a band of emissaries he sent back to the town with news of what had occurred and warnings to beware any strange happenings, and soon the library was emptied of its valuables.

  Their encampment was on the lawn to the east of the library, at the back end of the field, closer to the wild trails than the gaping doors. They were too close, Cadderly informed them, so they broke down their tents, gathered up supplies, and moved down onto the trails.

  “What’s this all about?” Danica asked the young priest as the soldiers set up the new camp. A tenday had passed since the fall of Kierkan Rufo, a tenday in which the young priest had gathered his strength, and had listened to the words of Deneir.

  “The building is spoiled,” Cadderly replied. “Never again will Deneir or Oghma enter it.”

  “You mean to abandon it?” Danica asked.

  “I mean to destroy it,” Cadderly replied.

  Danica started to ask what Cadderly was talking about, but he walked past her, back toward the field, before she could figure out where to begin. The monk paused a while before following. She remembered the scene outside Castle Trinity, Aballister’s bastion of wickedness, after the wizard’s fall. Cadderly had meant to destroy that dark fortress as well, but had changed his mind, or had learned that he had not the strength for such a task. What, then, was he thinking?

  Gathering black clouds atop the cliff to the north of the Edificant Library alerted all in the camp that something dramatic was going on. The soldiers wanted to secure their tents, pack their supplies tightly, fearing the storm, but Ivan, Pikel, Shayleigh, and Belago understood that the fury was well guided, and Brother Chanticleer understood it perhaps best of all.

  The group found Danica standing several feet behind Cadderly on the lawn in front of the squat stone structure. Silently, not wanting to disturb the obviously important happenings, they gathered around her. None but Chanticleer dared approach the young priest. He regarded Cadderly and offered a knowing, confident smile to the others. Though he was not a part of what was happening with Cadderly, he began to sing.

  Cadderly stood tall, arms upraised to the heavens. He, too, was singing, at the top of his lungs, but his voice could hardly be heard above the roar of the wind and thunder from the black clouds that swarmed over the top of the cliff, edging their way toward the desecrated building.

  A searing blast of lightning hit the library’s roof. A second followed, then the wind tore in, launching shingles, then joists, to the south, across the mountainside. More lightning started several small fires. The clouds came low, seemed to hover and gather strength, then a tremendous gust of wind lifted the edge of the roof and ripped it away.

  Cadderly cried out with all his strength. He was a direct conduit for the power of Deneir. Through the young priest the god sent his fury, more lightning, more wind. The roof was gone.

  A solitary figure—it seemed as if one of the gargoyles lining the gutters had come to life—perched on the edge of that roof, shouting curses at Cadderly, invoking its own gods, denizens of the lower planes.

  But Cadderly was stronger, and Deneir the strongest by far.

  A searing bolt of lightning hit the roof right beside Druzil, igniting a tremendous fire and throwing the imp far away.

  “Bene tellemara,” Druzil rasped, clawing his way toward the flames, realizing then that his time on the Prime Material Plane was at its end. He would leave or be destroyed. He made it to the flames, blasts striking all around him, and uttered an incantation. Then he threw a bag of powder, which he had concocted in the library’s deserted alchemy shop, into the fire.

  The flames lifted and danced, blue then white-hot, and Druzil, after shouting one more curse Cadderly’s way, stepped in and was gone.

  The storm’s fury intensified, bolt after bolt slamming the stone walls, diminishing their integrity. A darkness, funnel-shaped, reached down from the clouds. The finger of a god, it seemed, reaching down for the desecrated building.

  Cadderly cried out, as if in pain, but Danica and the others resisted the urge to run to him, feared the consequences of disturbing what he had begun.

  The storm crashed down in full, and the earth itself rolled to life, great waves of ground heaving at the library’s foundation. The no
rthern wall buckled first, fell inward, and with it gone, both the front and back collapsed. Still the lightning blasted away. The tornado grabbed at pieces of rubble and lifted them into the air, heaving them far across the mountainside.

  It went on unabated for many moments, and the soldiers feared the very mountains would fall. Cadderly’s friends knew better, though. They saw in their comrade a resolve and a glory beyond anything they had ever witnessed. They knew Cadderly was with Deneir, and that Cadderly’s god would not harm him, or them.

  Then it was over. The clouds broke apart so that shafts of sunlight shone down. One fell over Cadderly, outlining his form in silvery hues so that he seemed much more than a man, much more than a priest.

  Danica approached him cautiously, Shayleigh and the dwarves right behind her.

  “Cadderly?” she whispered.

  If he heard her, he didn’t show it.

  “Cadderly?” she asked more loudly.

  She gave him a shake, but still there was no response. Danica thought she understood. She could appreciate the emotions that must have been running through her lover. He’d just destroyed the only home he’d ever known.

  “Oo,” Pikel and Ivan, and even Shayleigh, muttered in unison.

  But their sympathy was misplaced, for Cadderly felt no remorse. He remained with his god and saw a new vision, the vision that had haunted his dreams for many years. Without a word of explanation, he moved toward the scarred, rubble-strewn area, his friends in tow. Danica continued to call to him, to shake him, but he couldn’t hear her.

  The vision was all-encompassing. The young priest remembered the extra-dimensional mansion that Aballister had created in Castle Trinity, remembered how he had marveled at how similar were the properties of magically created material.

  A specific spot on the ground, a place flat and smooth and devoid of rubble, beckoned to him. That single spot on the ground became the only clear thing Cadderly could see outside of his mind’s eye. He went to it, feeling the power of Deneir keenly, knowing what he must do. He began to sing again, and the notes were much different than those he had used to bring down the Edificant Library. They were sweet and cumulative, a building song with a crescendo that seemed very far away.