The Fallen Fortress

by R. A. Salvatore

  Dorigen ran a finger along the length of her crooked nose, shook her long hair back from her face, and eyed the cloth covering the crystal ball. She felt strangely removed from the cascading events around her, like some distant spectator. Cadderly could have killed her in Shilmista Forest. He had her unconscious at his feet. He’d broken her hands and taken her magical items, putting her out of the fight, but he’d spared her life.

  Perhaps it was honor that guided Dorigen then, an unspoken agreement between her and the young priest. A sense of obligation told her to let it all play out, to stand aside while they learned who was the stronger, the father or the son.

  Back in his private chambers, Aballister held a smoking beaker aloft in trembling hands. He targeted his thoughts on Nightglow, and focused his magical energies on the contents of the beaker, an elixir of great strength.

  He spoke enchanting words, uttering the arcane syllables from a nearly meditative state, losing himself in the swirling, growing energies. He continued for quite a while, until the vibrating power within the beaker threatened to blow apart and take Castle Trinity down with it.

  The wizard hurled the beaker across the room, where it shattered at the base of the wall. A gray puff of smoke arose above it, growling, rumbling.

  “Mykos, mykos makom deignin,” Aballister whispered. “Go out, go out, my pet.”

  As though it had heard the wizard’s request, the gray cloud filtered through a crack in the stone wall, worked its way through many more walls, and out of Castle Trinity. It rose up high on the winds, sometimes drifting, sometimes moving of its own accord, and all the while the wizard’s magical storm cloud began to grow and darken.

  Bursts of contained lightning rumbled as it soared across the mountains. Still the ominous thing thickened and darkened, and seemed as if it would explode with building energy.

  It raced across the high peaks of the Snowflakes, unerringly aimed for the mountain called Nightglow.

  Cadderly and his friends noticed the strange cloud, so much darker than the general overcast of the snowy day. Cadderly noticed, too, that while the more common clouds seemed to be drifting west to east, as was usual for the area’s weather patterns, the strange cloud was raced almost due south.

  They heard the first rumble of thunder soon after, a tremendous though distant blast that shook the ground under their feet.

  “Thunder?” Ivan balked. “Who ever heared o’ thunder in the middle o’ the damned winter?”

  Cadderly bade Vander to lead them up higher, where they might see what was happening behind them. When they reached a higher plateau, affording them a view between several other peaks all the way back to Nightglow, the young priest wasn’t so sure he wanted to watch.

  Bolt after searing bolt of lightning, crystalline clear across the miles as the already dim daylight began to wane, slammed the mountainside, splintering rocks, splitting trees, and sizzling into the snow. Huge winds bent the pines on the mountain’s lower slopes nearly horizontal, and pelting ice quickly accumulated in the thick branches, bending the trees lower.

  “We were wise in riding the dragon,” Shayleigh remarked, quite overwhelmed, as were her companions, by the ferocity of the storm.

  Vander grunted, as though he’d told them all, but in truth, even the firbolg, who had grown to adulthood in the harsh climate of the northern mountains men called the Spine of the World, was at a loss to explain the sheer power of that distant storm.

  Another tremendous bolt slammed the mountainside, brightening the deepening gloom, its rumbling wake dislodging tons of snow into a cascading avalanche down Nightglow’s northern face.

  “Who ever heared of it?” Ivan asked.

  The worst had not yet come. More lightning, and more pelting ice assaulted the area around the mountain. Other avalanches soon began, tons and tons of snow plummeting down the mountainside to resettle far below. Then came the tornado, blacker than the impending night, a twister as wide, it seemed, as the foundation of the Edificant Library. It circled Nightglow, tearing up trees, and burrowing huge chasms in the high-piled snow.

  “We must move on,” the firbolg reminded them all. He—and his friends—had seen more than enough.

  Shayleigh mentioned again that they were fortunate to have ridden out on the dragon, and Vander put in a word that winter storms so high up were unpredictable and deadly. Everyone readily agreed with the firbolg, but they all knew that what had happened back at Nightglow was more than a winter storm.

  Vander soon found them an uninhabited cave not too far from the valley of carnage, and truly, they were all glad to be sheltered from the suddenly frightening elements. The place was three-chambered, but snug, with a low ceiling and a lower doorway that blocked most of the wintry wind.

  Vander and the dwarves set up their bedrolls in the entry cavern, the largest of the chambers. Cadderly took the smallest chamber—to the left—as his own, with Danica and Shayleigh going to the right, the monk glancing back at Cadderly with concern every step of the way.

  Dusk came soon after, then a quiet and star-filled night, so different from the storm. Soon the usual grumble-and-whistle snoring of Ivan and Pikel echoed throughout the chambers.

  Danica crept back into the entry cavern, and saw Vander’s huge form propped in the doorway. Though he’d volunteered once more to take the watch, the firbolg was asleep, and Danica didn’t blame him. The night seemed safe enough to her. In fact, it seemed as if all the world had taken a break from chaos, and so she slipped through to Cadderly’s chamber without disturbing the others.

  The young priest sat in the middle of the floor, hunched over a tiny candle. Deep in meditation, he didn’t hear Danica’s approach.

  “You should sleep,” the monk offered, putting a hand gently on her lover’s shoulder.

  Cadderly opened his sleepy eyes and nodded. He reached over his shoulder to grab Danica’s hand, and pulled her around to sit next to him, close to him.

  “I have rested,” he assured her. Danica had taught Cadderly several rejuvenating meditation techniques, and she didn’t dispute the claim.

  “The road has been more difficult than you expected,” Danica whispered, a trace of trepidation evident in her normally solid voice. “And with perhaps the most difficult obstacle yet ahead of us.”

  The young priest understood her reasoning. He, too, believed that the fury they had witnessed battering the slopes of Nightglow had been a calling card from Aballister. And he, too, was afraid. They had survived many brutal ordeals in the last year and over the last few days on the trail, but if that storm was any indication, their greatest trials were yet ahead of them, waiting for them in Castle Trinity. Since the manticore and chimera attack, Cadderly had known that Aballister was on to them, but he hadn’t imagined the great strength of the wizard.

  An image of the landslide and the tornado assaulted his thoughts. Cadderly had enacted great magic of his own recently, but such a display was far beyond his powers, he believed, far beyond his imagination.

  The young priest, trying to hold fast to his resolve, closed his eyes and sighed. “I didn’t expect this much trouble,” he admitted.

  “Even a dragon,” Danica remarked. “I still can’t believe …” Her voice trailed off into an incredulous sigh.

  “I knew that dealing with Old Fyren would not be an easy task,” Cadderly agreed.

  “Did we have to go there?” There remained no trace of anger in Danica’s soft tones.

  Cadderly nodded. “The world is a better place with the Ghearufu destroyed—and with Fyrentennimar destroyed, though I didn’t foresee that as a probability, even as a possibility. Of all that I have accomplished in my life, the destruction of the Ghearufu might be the most important.”

  A wistful smile crossed Danica’s face as she caught the glimmer in Cadderly’s barely open, but surely smiling, gray eyes.

  “But not the most important of all you mean to do,” the monk said coyly.

  Cadderly’s eyes widened, and he regarded D
anica with sincere admiration. How well she knew him! He’d just been thinking of the many deeds that were sorting themselves out before him, of the many demands his special relationship with his god Deneir would make on him. Danica had seen it, had looked into his eyes, and had known exactly the tone of his thoughts, if not the specifics.

  “I see a course before me,” he admitted to her, his voice subdued, but firm with resolve. “A dangerous and difficult course, I do not doubt.” Cadderly chuckled at the irony, and Danica looked at him quizzically, not understanding.

  “Even after what we witnessed before setting our camp, I fear that the most difficult of my future obstacles will be the ones brought on by friends,” he explained.

  Danica stiffened and shifted away.

  “Not from you,” Cadderly quickly assured her. “I foresee changes at the Edificant Library, drastic changes that will not be met with approval from those who have the most to lose.”

  “Dean Thobicus?”

  Cadderly nodded, his expression grim. “And the headmasters,” he added. “The hierarchy has evolved away from the spirit of Deneir, has become something perpetuated by false traditions and piles of worthless paper.” He chuckled again, but there was something sad in his voice. “Do you understand what I did to Thobicus for him to allow us to come out here?” he asked.

  “You tricked him,” Danica replied.

  “I dominated him,” Cadderly corrected. “I entered his mind and bent his will. I might well have killed him in the attempt, and the effects of the assault could remain with him for the rest of his years.”

  An expression of confusion came over Danica, confusion fast turning to horror. “Hypnosis?”

  “Far beyond hypnosis,” Cadderly replied. “In hypnosis, I might have convinced Thobicus to change his mind.” Cadderly looked away, seeming ashamed. “But I didn’t ‘convince’ Thobicus. I evoked the change against his will then I entered his mind once more and modified his memory so that there would be no repercussions when … if we return to the library.”

  Danica’s almond eyes were wide with shock. She’d known that Cadderly was uncomfortable with what he’d done to Thobicus, but she’d assumed he’d cast some charm spell over the dean. What Cadderly was talking about, though the results had been similar to a charm, seemed somehow more sinister.

  “I grabbed his will in my hand, and I crushed it,” Cadderly admitted. “I stole from him the very essence of his spirit. If Thobicus recalls the incident, his pride will never, ever recover from the shock.”

  “Then why did you do it?” Danica demanded.

  “Because my course was determined by powers greater than me,” Cadderly said. “And greater than Thobicus.”

  “How many tyrants have made such a claim?” Danica asked, trying hard not to sound sarcastic.

  Cadderly smiled helplessly and nodded. “That is my fear. Yet I knew what I must do,” he continued. “The Ghearufu had to be destroyed—to study such a sentient, evil artifact would bring only disaster—and the war with Castle Trinity, if it comes to pass, will prove a travesty that cannot be tolerated, whatever side is victorious.

  “I went after Thobicus in a way that left a foul taste in my mouth,” Cadderly admitted. “But I would do it again, and I may have to if my fears prove true.”

  He quieted for a moment and seemed to consider the many wrongs he’d witnessed, the many things within the Edificant Library that had long ago veered from the path of Deneir, searching for some solid example he might offer to Danica.

  “If a young cleric in the library has an inspiration,” he said at last, “divine though he believes it to be, he cannot act upon it without first receiving the approval of the dean and the permission to take time away from meaningless duties.”

  Danica began to argue, “Thobicus must oversee—”

  “That process often takes as long as a year,” Cadderly interrupted, no longer interested in hearing logical arguments for a course he knew in his heart to be wrong. Cadderly had heard those arguments from Headmaster Avery for all of his life, and they had fostered in him an indifference that swelled to so great a level that he’d nearly deserted the order of Deneir. “You have seen how Thobicus works,” he said. “A wasted year will pass, and though the thoughts of the story the young cleric wished to pen, or the painting he wished to frame, might remain, the sense, the … aura, that something divine might be guiding his hand will have long since flown.”

  “You speak from personal experience,” Danica reasoned.

  “Many times,” Cadderly replied without hesitation. “And I know that many of the things I have become comfortable with in my life, many of the things I now know I must change, I do not want to change, for I am afraid.”

  He brought his finger up to Danica’s lips to stem her forthcoming response. “You are not among those things,” he assured her, then he grew very quiet, and all the world, even the dwarves’ snoring, seemed to hush in anticipation.

  “I do believe that our relationship must change, though,” Cadderly went on. “What began in Carradoon must grow, or it must die.”

  Danica grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand away from her face, eyeing him without blinking, not sure of what would come next from that surprising young man.

  “Marry me,” Cadderly said. “Formally.”

  Danica blinked, and she closed her eyes, hearing the echoes from those words a thousand times in the next heartbeat. She’d waited so long for that moment, had longed for it and feared it all at the same time.

  “You agree with the changes,” Cadderly said. “You agree with the course my life will take. I cannot do it alone, my love.” He paused and nearly faltered. “I don’t want to do it alone! When I have completed what Deneir has asked, when I look upon the work, there will be no satisfaction unless you are there beside me.”

  “When I have completed?” Danica echoed, trying to get some sense of what role Cadderly meant for her to play.

  Cadderly thought about her response then nodded. “I am a Deneirrath, a Glyphscribe, a disciple of the Scribe of Oghma,” he explained. “Many of the battles he guides me to, I must fight alone. I think of it as you think of your studies. I know that, as each goal is attained, richer by far will be my satisfaction if—”

  “What of my studies?” Danica interrupted.

  Cadderly was ready for the question and understood Danica’s concern. “When you broke the stone and achieved Gigel Nugel,” he began, referring to an ancient test of achievement that Danica had recently completed, “what were your thoughts?”

  Danica remembered the incident, and a smile spread wide across her face. “I felt your arm around me,” she replied.

  Cadderly nodded and pulled her close, kissing her gently on the cheek. “We have so much to show each other,” he said.

  “My studies might take me away,” Danica said, pulling back.

  Cadderly laughed aloud. “If they do then you shall go,” he said. “But you will come back to me, or I will go to you. I have faith, Danica, that our chosen paths will not take us apart. I have faith in you, and in myself.”

  The somber cloud seemed to fly from Danica’s fair features. Her grin widened to a dimpled smile, and her brown eyes sparkled with the moisture of joyful tears. She pulled Cadderly back to her, kissing him hard and long.

  “Cadderly,” she said coyly, as her wistful, mischievous smile sent a stream of thoughts careening through him. A shiver rippled up his spine then back down again as Danica added, “We are alone.”

  Much later that night, with the sleeping Danica cradled in his arms and the dwarves’ snoring continuing its relentless pace, Cadderly rested back against the wall and replayed the conversation.

  “How many tyrants have made such a claim?” he whispered to the empty darkness.

  His considered his course once more, thought of the profound impact his intended actions would have on all of Erlkazar and the surrounding realms. He believed in his heart that the changes would better everyone, that the library wou
ld once again take on the true course of Deneir. He believed that he was right, that his course was inspired by a trusted god. But how many tyrants had made such a claim?

  “All of them,” Cadderly answered grimly after a long pause, and he hugged Danica close.

  FOURTEEN

  THE FORTRESS

  Aballister rested back in his chair, exhausted from his magical assault. He’d thrown his full weight against Cadderly, had pounded the mountain without mercy. The wizard’s smile held firm for a long while as he pondered what Cadderly, in the unlikely event that the boy was still alive, might be thinking.

  Aballister felt a tug within his mind, a gentle prodding. It was Druzil. The wizard’s smile became a laugh—what might the imp, who had been so close to Nightglow, think of his storm? Anxious to know, he let the imp into his mind.

  Greetings, dear Druzil, Aballister said.

  Bene tellemara!

  Aballister cackled with glee. My dear, dear Druzil, he thought after a moment, what could be the trouble?

  The imp ripped off a series of cries, curses, and sputtering half-sentences against Aballister, and against wizards in general. Druzil had been caught in the edges of Aballister’s storm, had been pelted by hail and nearly sizzled by a lightning blast. And the imp, cold and miserable, only wanted to get back to Castle Trinity.

  You could come out for me, Druzil asked.

  I have not the energy, Aballister replied. Since you allowed Cadderly to get away, I was forced to take matters into my own hands. And still I have preparations before me, for the unlikely event that Cadderly or any of his foolish friends survived.

  Better that I am with you if Cadderly arrives, Druzil replied, and it was easy enough for Aballister to discern the imp’s frustrated anger. With your powerful magic, you could teleport to my side, scoop me up, and put us both safely back in Castle Trinity in a matter of moments.