The Eye of the Chained God tap-3

by Don Bassingthwaite

  Kri took the lantern and went back the way he had come.

  The purple glow of the lantern revealed much he hadn’t seen before. In the chamber of ancient spices, jars had been swept from the shelves, spilling their aromatic contents. A stone embalming table showed deep scores in its stone surface, as if some of those laid upon it had been crudely hacked at with an axe or cleaver. The state of disarray matched what Kri had noted in the sepulcher: the entombments farthest from the altar, and presumably relatively more recent, were less sophisticated than those that were older. Some were shrouded, but had not been embalmed. Some were not shrouded at all, merely placed or dumped into the coffins.

  Some coffins contained only ancient stains, scraps of clothing, and bits of broken bone, as if the bodies had been taken elsewhere.

  When he reached the room that smelled of ashes, he found the ovens, big fireplaces, worktables, and scattered cooking vessels of a large communal kitchen. Peering up the wide chimneys showed no hint of light or open air at their tops. He stirred the ashes with his feet and uncovered charred bones among them. In one fireplace, a large covered cauldron remained where it had been placed untold decades or more likely centuries before. Kri lifted the lid and found exactly what he suspected he would.

  A wide hall nearby might have been a common dining area, judging by the moldered remains of wooden tables and benches. A corridor of many doors was lined with small rooms, each containing the jumbled remains of what might have been a bed and perhaps a small table. The mix of large common spaces and tiny individual quarters told Kri what kind of place this had been. He’d dwelled in a few and visited many cloistered communities in his long life-though never one seemingly inhabited only by dwarves. Or one so completely cut off from the outer world.

  Or one devoted to the Chained God.

  The pinch of his empty stomach reminded him of how long it had been since his own contact with the outer world. He’d find nothing to sustain him in the ancient ruin. A hiss of bitter laughter escaped him. He knew a magical ritual that could conjure food to sustain him, but in the flight from Fallcrest that had saved his life, he had left all of his possessions and gear behind.

  You have the key, Tharizdun had told him. One comes who will help you turn it.

  But what if that one didn’t come quickly enough?

  Kri pressed his lips together, stifling his doubt. Tharizdun had not succumbed to hopelessness in his place of imprisonment. Neither would he. The dwarves must have had some way to get their food, whether they traded for it or harvested it themselves. The cloister had been no short-lived community to judge by the number of dead in the sepulcher. There had to be some exit. And the logical place to find an exit from a dwarf community was up, toward the surface. Toward the vast statue chamber where he had first found himself. He retraced his mental map back to the stairs he had descended and began to climb them once more.

  Where the stairs turned, he found the first runes. Unlike most dwarven inscriptions, they weren’t incised, but rather painted. His fingers, brushing the wall on the way down, had completely missed the subtle changes in texture on the stone surface.

  Kri studied the runes, raising the lantern high so its dim light illuminated as much as possible. The runes ran the length of the stairs in long blocks, as if a long text had been copied onto the wall. In addition to being painted rather than carved, the runes weren’t in the common style of Davek, the dwarves’ script. Although angular at their heart, there was an unusual sinuousness to them, each character curving back on itself. In fact, entire passages seemed to follow the same twisted pattern. Kri had spent most of his life puzzling out writings that would have confounded a lesser mind, so the curious inscription proved little challenge. He had it figured out within two more turns of the stairs.

  It was a prayer to the Chained God, mostly in his incarnation as the Elder Elemental Eye, but invoking all of his epithets: the Patient One, the Black Sun, Undoer, Ender, Anathema, Eater of Worlds. The prayer repeated itself over and over, twisting and regressing as did the characters that spelled it out. It was a meditation on Tharizdun’s message of freedom through the casting down of order-or more precisely, on the freedom brought by change. True change, not merely the superficial alterations enjoined by Avandra, the wanderer’s god installed in Tharizdun’s rightful place. The overthrow of order was only a way to bring the Chained God’s word to the overworked peasant or harassed apprentice who might dream of turning on his master. The truth was more universal: there could be no growth without change and the enemy of change was order. Order, whatever form it took, must be challenged to permit change.

  Kri smiled to himself and murmured the words as he continued to climb the stairs. The words echoed in the stairwell and whispers came back to him, a ghostly chorus reciting the prayer.

  That such a doctrine, generally seen as a path to madness, served as the guiding tenet of a highly disciplined monastic community would have seemed impossible to many. They would have looked at the evidence Kri had found and concluded that the dwarves had courted disaster from the beginning-that they had delved too deeply within themselves and woken something dark.

  Kri would have knocked such fools across the head and forced them to consider the possibility that the inhabitants of the cloister had found exactly what they were looking for. There were many paths to the enlightenment Tharizdun offered. Some followed those paths slowly. Others raced along them.

  Some did not know they followed them at all.

  “You know as well as I do,” said Moorin, “that divinations are useless where the Voidharrow is concerned. Arcane rituals reveal nothing. Prayers to the gods and their servants go unanswered.” The wizard spread empty hands. “Maybe we know all that can be known about it.”

  Kri slammed his palm down on the tabletop, making the dishes and goblets around him rattle. “When did any member of the Order of Vigilance last try to make a serious investigation of the Voidharrow?”

  Moorin’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a question we know the answer to, Kri,” he said soberly. “Tavit Nance opened one of the vials containing the Voidharrow and he died a demon along with three dozen innocents. The Order barely contained the plague he unleashed.”

  The spirit of argument rose in Kri. “That was four generations ago,” he countered. “And before that the Order didn’t even know the name or true danger of what it guarded.”

  The answer to his words came in the hiss of sharply drawn breaths. Around the sides of the table, the other members of the Order of Vigilance-a scant handful of aging men and women of varying races-glared at him. Kri knew immediately that he’d gone too far. He bent his head in acknowledgment. “What happened was a tragedy, but see what came of it. If we do not dare, we will not learn. We’ll sit upon the Voidharrow and tap our fingers until the end of time.”

  “If it pleases Pelor,” said the deva Hania, “that is exactly what we will do and consider ourselves successful by it. You swore the same oath all of us did.”

  “I’m not Tavit Nance. I have no intention of releasing the Voidharrow. I only want to study it.” Kri looked back to Moorin. “You keep the last vial. Let me visit you. Let me examine it.”

  Moorin just shook his head. Kri ground his teeth and touched the symbol of the eye that hung around his neck. “I am a priest of Ioun, god of knowledge. It’s my calling to seek answers.”

  Raven Shirai leaned forward and the shadows seemed to shift with her. “And what does the god of knowledge tell you concerning the Voidharrow?”

  Kri opened his mouth… then closed it as if he could trap the truth. Except that he was a priest of Ioun and he couldn’t.

  “Nothing,” he said at last. “She says nothing.”

  The shock of the impact that broke him out of his reverie was as much mental as it was physical. Kri returned to his senses to find himself stretched on the stone stairs of Tharizdun’s cloister, gasping for the breath that a stumble had knocked from his chest. The shame and frustration of that moment many years
ago when he’d first begun to doubt Ioun’s power was so fresh that he felt as if he’d stepped directly out of the past.

  He pushed himself upright, feeling anew the ache of aging the nearly two decades that had passed. The dim light of the lantern made judging distance difficult, but he thought he had perhaps walked a turn and a half of the stairs during his vision.

  Even without his active participation, the whispers of his murmured prayer continued to ripple up and down the curving staircase. The script on the wall seemed to writhe of its own accord. Kri considered the painted characters with new appreciation. “So,” he said, “you draw out the moments of change in my life. Is this a trick of the monks to guard their secrets, or is it Tharizdun’s power, testing the devotion of those who come before him?”

  There was no reply, although Kri half expected the text on the wall to twist into some answer, or for the slowly fading echoes to whisper a response. Still, he smiled. “Very well, I will play this game. Words have not yet conquered Kri Redshal, and my devotion is strong.”

  This time, something did answer him, though it could as easily have come from within as from without. Once you said that of another.

  Kri ignored it. With the purple lantern held high, he began to climb once more. This time he chanted the prayer of the Chained God out loud, letting the echoes of it build and wash over him.

  The trees of the valley stretched high. Seen from the valley’s rim, they made an impenetrable, leafy canopy. Seen from below they were pillars rising in a vast green hall. Fortunately, the undergrowth, choked off by the shade above, was sparse. Riding was easy.

  “You wouldn’t guess anything had ever happened here, would you?” said Tabisha.

  “Most of the trees outside the valley are larger and at least a century older than any inside it,” said Kri. “Most of the trees inside the valley are also of a suspiciously similar age, suggesting they all took root at almost the same time. Furthermore, those scraggly vines climbing that tree toward sunlight”-he pointed-“are twining beans, typically a domesticated species. Their presence indicates that the valley was inhabited at one point.”

  “Doesn’t that mean that the Order of Vigilance didn’t scour the valley as thoroughly as the records say? ‘With fire and frost and lightning the area was cleansed, until nothing that walked, crawled, flew, or grew from the soil remained.’ ”

  “Twining beans are notoriously hardy,” Kri told her. “Ancient beans in desert ruins have sprouted when soaked in water. Northern tribes depend on them when winter frosts reach into early summer. Your knowledge of botany is lacking. We’ll address that on the journey home across the Midnight Sea.”

  Tabisha rolled her eyes. “Thieves don’t need to know about plants.”

  “No? Where do you imagine your most common poisons come from? It’s far easier to drain sap from a dominion vine than it is to milk venom from an adder.” He rode a short distance in silence before adding, “You also have to stop thinking of yourself as just a thief. There are so many things you need to know. You’re a member of the Order of Vigilance now.”

  “Why Kri, that almost sounded like concern for me.”

  He glared at her. “It would shame the Order if I left them a half-trained apprentice.”

  Tabisha laughed, a sound like gold coins clinking together. “Then let your wisdom fall upon me as a dotard’s spittle, O my master!”

  Kri screwed up his face and turned around in his saddle. “Check the map,” he said sourly. Tabisha was still laughing as she pulled out a scroll. The laughter faded as she checked it and looked around for landmarks that time and searing magic could not obliterate.

  “We should be close to the village,” she said.

  “Look for foundation stones,” said Kri. “Rectangular formations will show where houses once stood. We’ll use those to orient ourselves.”

  They found the first stones quickly-and after that, the patterns of vanished streets even more quickly. Kri couldn’t help wondering if Tabisha was right. Perhaps the Order’s record of their actions in the valley was somewhat exaggerated. Maybe the destruction of the village hadn’t been quite so complete as the histories suggested. He struggled to keep excitement from his face, but his heart beat a little faster at the possibility. By Ioun’s Book of Insight, he prayed silently, let it be so!

  Before the bright glow of the sun had travelled more than three finger widths across the canopy of leaves, they stood before the broken stump of the tower from which Tavit Nance had unleashed the Voidharrow and the Abyssal Plague upon the village.

  Kri ran his tongue around a mouth gone dry with anticipation. “We name him traitor,” he said quietly, “but so much we know only because of him. Before the Order destroyed the village, they made certain to loot Tavit’s home and workshop of all they contained.”

  Then he turned and put his back to the broken tower. “Which one is the temple of Pelor?”

  Tabisha consulted the map, a remnant of the Order’s battle against the plague drawn with an archivist’s attention to detail. She turned and pointed to a ruin that rose a sword’s length higher than those around it. She looked a little shaken. “The Order razed Pelor’s temple?”

  “It had been desecrated by then,” said Kri, “and the gods were as silent on the actions of the Order of Vigilance that day as they are on the subject of the Voidharrow.” He crossed what had been the village square and mounted the crumbling stone steps of the temple. It had probably been the only building in the village constructed entirely of stone.

  Exactly as he had suspected.

  “The tower was Tavit’s base,” he said, “but when the Order brought him down as a plague demon, he was in the temple. The more pious members of the Order at the time suggested he was seeking the forgiveness of the gods for what he had done. The more cynical thought it a final act of sacrilege. I remain amazed that it took four generations of the Order for someone practical to wonder if he were actually just hiding something.” He glanced at Tabisha and found her smiling again. “Most temples like this have crypts beneath them. Look for an entrance.”

  They found it quickly: a trapdoor tiled in the same stone as the rest of the temple floor and covered by weathered debris that was swiftly cleared away. If Kri didn’t know better, he’d almost have suspected Ioun was guiding them.

  Tabisha produced torches and lit them but hesitated. “What if there’s a plague demon down there?”

  “Unlikely. A demon would have tried to escape before now.”

  “Then what about the plague?”

  He touched the symbol of Ioun around his neck and murmured a prayer. White light shimmered around the symbol, spreading to envelop him and then Tabisha before fading. “The light of the gods will protect us.” Kri reached down and pulled open the door. Stale, cold air trapped for a hundred years puffed up to meet them. Kri took a torch and led the way down short, very steep stairs.

  The crypt had been constructed as a series of small chambers connected by archways. There were only four or five crypt chambers, hardly the labyrinth that existed beneath older, larger temples, but it was enough. Small caskets, large caskets, niches filled with bones-there were many places where something could have been hidden. Nor had the crypt entirely escaped the violence of the battle that had raged above. The keystone of one arch, along with the stones to either side of it, was deeply cracked. The stone ceiling of the chamber beyond sagged dangerously.

  “What should we look for?” asked Tabisha quietly.

  “I don’t know,” Kri said. “Something hidden in haste. Be careful-leave that sagging chamber for last. May Ioun’s eye guide us.”

  “Or Avandra’s luck.”

  They separated, each picking a bone-filled chamber to investigate. Kri poked cautiously through the old remains. He tried to work methodically, to embrace the patience that Ioun taught. Knowledge didn’t come swiftly. The bones were like pages, Kri told himself, each niche a book that would yield its secrets only with careful study.

  It di
dn’t work. After six niches, the books of bones had become slow reading. He could hear Tabisha in another chamber, cursing in frustration as she searched. Maybe those earlier members of the Order had been right. Maybe Tavit Nance had entered the temple just to seek salvation or commit sacrilege. Maybe it had just been a convenient place to make his last stand. What could he have been hiding anyway? Kri had made the long journey, dragging Tabisha along, in hopes of finding some undiscovered insight into the Voidharrow. Something-anything-that might give him more answers about the mysterious liquid crystal substance. But maybe there was nothing more to find.

  His jaw tightened. No. He would not give up looking, just because of a moment of doubt. He needed answers and a moment of frustration was not going to stop him. He would empty the crypt before admitting defeat.

  But maybe that wasn’t necessary. The histories of the Order said that when he was defeated, the Abyssal Plague had turned Tavit Nance into a demon, but that he had retained a vicious cunning. Kri sat back and tried to put himself in Nance’s place. He had something to hide from the Order-most likely notes, papers, or a book. The crypt would provide a hiding place that was strong and might survive anything the Order did to the village above. But paper or parchment couldn’t be left out in the open in a crypt. It had to be protected from the damp and vermin. It would have to be inside some kind of wrapping or case, but among the bones, a wrapped bundle or a case would stand out.

  So why not put it in one of the cases already present in the crypt?

  Kri grabbed the nearest casket and wrenched it open. A yellowed skull surrounded by neatly stacked bones grinned up at him. He threw the casket aside, knocking over a pile of bones and sending them rattling to the ground. “Kri?” called Tabisha.

  “It’s nothing,” he shouted back to her. “I’m fine.” He whirled around. There were fewer caskets than there were loose bones, but it would still take time to search them all. A lust for discovery was in him. Whatever Tavit Nance had hidden in the crypt, he needed to find it now. He opened another casket. More bones, economically packed to the casket’s top. There wouldn’t have been room to hide anything inside.