Whisper of Venom: Brotherhood of the Griffon, Book II

by Richard Lee Byers

  Brendis shrugged. “Whatever. She can handle herself. And if the Sword of the Gods is with her, then maybe he can lead them right to us.”

  “So we need to find those cultists.”

  “Right,” Brendis said. “We know they’re heading for Pandemonium.”

  “So we need to find a way from here to there. Do you think such a way exists in a place they call the City of Doors?”

  “I have to imagine that’s why the cultists came here.”

  Nowhere grinned. “Follow me, Brendis. This is my specialty.”

  Albric closed his eyes, quieting his thoughts so he could hear the voice of the Elder Elemental Eye. The voice of Tharizdun, he reminded himself, and a renewed thrill of excitement coursed through him. Each time he remembered how his god had spoken through Jaeran, the one-eyed leader of Sigil’s little cult of thieves, he shuddered with a joyful terror.

  Jaeran stood at his side now, holding Albric’s arm so he didn’t fall when the vision came. “Even in the City of Doors,” Jaeran said, “finding a way to Pandemonium is no easy task.”

  “The Eye will lead us true,” Albric said without opening his eyes. He still didn’t dare to speak the name of his god aloud. He spoke it in his mind, though, imploring the Chained God to lead him.

  Tharizdun! he called in his thoughts, and fire surged through his body. Tharizdun, lead me!

  Though his eyes remained closed, a landscape suddenly appeared to his senses. It was a realm of madness, where pulsating globules of liquid flesh floated in air, wreathed in blue and purple flames. Lightning flashed among them, forming fleeting connections from one to another as eyes and mouths bobbed to the surface and submerged. Shadows of geometric shapes drifted among the blobs, as if a weak and distant sun careened behind impossible structures erected somewhere beyond vision. A translucent tube stretched out before him, undulating slowly as lightning coursed past it, and Albric realized that its mouth opened right beside him. It was a path, the way he was meant to tread. Though it wasn’t revealed to his senses, he knew that the tube—which reminded him suddenly of a gullet, constricting in pulses that added to its waving motion—opened onto a doorway to Pandemonium.

  He shook off Jaeran’s hand and walked into the mouth of the tube, which sprouted teeth like slabs of granite as he passed, ready to close down on any acolyte who proved unworthy.

  He felt Jaeran close at his heels, but the others were beyond his awareness—they might have been among the floating orbs of flesh, for all he knew or cared. They were on their own. They would follow or they wouldn’t. Tharizdun would ensure that he had acolytes enough for the rite.

  The tube carried him along without any conscious effort on his part. He had no idea what was happening to his body in the streets of Sigil, nor did he care. Perhaps he was walking along the path laid out for him by Tharizdun, or maybe he was traveling outside of space and time. Once or twice, globules of flesh drifted near the path, and lightning danced around him, but the tube seemed to insulate him, and the flesh-blobs couldn’t hinder his progress along the path. Then the tube came to an end, squeezing him out in front of a blazing ring of green flame. Albric opened his eyes.

  The wretched tenements of the Hive were nowhere to be seen. He was in a back alley somewhere, but the surrounding buildings were large, clean, and in good repair. A short stairway up the side of a building led to a door, but the ring of fire corresponded not to the door, but to a decorative arch beside it, at the edge of the landing.

  “The arch,” he said, pointing.

  “How do we open the door?” Jaeran asked.

  Albric frowned. “What?”

  “Most of the portals in the City of Doors require a gate key, an object you need that will turn a mundane door or archway into a portal. Without a key, you step through that arch and you’re just falling six feet off the end of the landing.”

  An armored woman opened the door at the top of the stairs and stepped out onto the landing. She held a halberd and took up a stance that clearly signaled her intent to block access to the arch. An instant later, another woman strode out onto a stone bridge that spanned the alley above them. This woman wore flowing robes and carried a slender staff, but her dark hair and eyes were twin to those of the first woman.

  Albric climbed one stair, and the woman with the halberd shifted her stance ever so slightly. “We mean to make use of the portal behind you,” he told her.

  The woman frowned. “I don’t know how you learned of it, but our sacred duty is to ward that portal.”

  “Who appointed you to that duty?”

  “I am sworn to Pelor’s service, my sister to Ioun’s.”

  Albric couldn’t explain the rage that welled in his gut, nor was the howl that tore from his throat entirely his. Jaeran joined him an instant later, and Albric saw both women cover their ears, their faces wrenched in agony. Wailing cries that came from no mortal voice echoed in the alley around them, unearthly and haunting. For a moment, Albric saw the two women and his acolytes as more floating globules, and he saw lightning and fire sundering their minds.

  Tharizdun’s howl of fury burned in his throat, sucking every last breath of air from his lungs until darkness began to swallow his vision. He fell to his knees, but the two women were already sprawled on the ground, utterly broken. The cry died in his throat and he drew a shuddering breath as Jaeran’s voice trailed off.

  Slowly Albric got to his feet and climbed the rest of the stairs to the landing. The woman lay insensible, her wide eyes staring at nothing. He bent over her and spoke, his voice raw from screaming.

  “Who is your god?”

  A trail of spittle dribbled from the woman’s mouth as she answered. “The only god, the Chained God, the unknowable and invincible.”

  “Rise and follow me,” Albric said. He turned to his acolytes and pointed up to the bridge. “Gharik, get the other one down from there. She will complete our circle.”

  The woman on the landing managed to find her feet, and she stared at the golden symbol of the Elemental Eye that hung around Albric’s neck.

  “What is the gate key that will open this portal?” he asked her.

  “You wear it already,” she said. “The talisman of the Chained God is the key to his former home.”

  Albric smiled. “The Eye has led us true.” He stepped closer to the arch, and darkness began to swirl in the opening.

  He waited until Gharik had returned with the second sister, and then he stepped through the arch, off the edge of the landing, and into blackness.

  Miri wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and cursed herself as she started walking down the bustling street. People washed around her like a river flowing both directions at once, sometimes bumping into her but mostly just passing too close.

  How did I get so dependent on him? she wondered.

  She knew the answer, though. She’d depended on Demascus since he first appeared at the dairy where she earned her living churning cream into butter, lifted her to her feet, and took her away. And before that, she had depended on the dairy’s owner, dear, harsh Carina, who cared for her after her mother was killed. It was no wonder Demas, as she’d grown to call him, thought of her as a child—she had never really grown up.

  She let the flow of people carry her along the street, searching the crowd in the desperate hope of finding a familiar face. Each time she saw a tiefling—how was it possible that so many tieflings lived in this city?—she started, thinking it might be the man she had just met in the ruins of Bael Turath, the one who called himself Nowhere.

  Miri chuckled to herself. Where has Nowhere gone? she thought. It’s an odd name. Where do you go when you’re looking for Nowhere?

  Suddenly it struck her as less an amusing play on words than a hint of something profound. Searching for Nowhere seemed like a metaphor for a worthwhile spiritual pursuit. She wondered what Demas would say about it.

  Another person in the crowd jostled her, and she realized she had stopped paying attention to her surr
oundings. The crowd had thinned a little. On her right was a shop displaying bolts of cloth in vibrant colors and exotic patterns, beautifully and carefully woven. Just past that was a tailor’s shop, its window sporting gowns and robes made from the same fabrics. She glanced across the street, to her left, and stopped in her tracks.

  A small temple stood there, set back from the street and partially hidden by tables and awnings that extended from the sides of the shops that flanked it. Seven wide stairs led up to a narrow doorway between two graceful columns, and the entablature above the columns featured the stylized eye of Ioun.

  It almost seemed impossible, but after all the time she had spent following Demas wherever his god led him, she had to believe that Ioun had guided her footsteps to the threshold of this temple. She hurried across the street, up the stairs, and between the columns into the chamber within.

  The noise of the street faded when she entered, and she felt herself start to relax. A statue of Ioun dominated the small chamber, depicting her with one hand up in blessing, the other holding an open book. Garlands of wilting flowers were draped over the statue’s neck and arms, and Miri wondered if she should go find a fresh sacrifice to offer. She hesitated, realizing she had no idea what she was supposed to do, and turned to leave.

  Two smaller statues stood in the corners near the doorway—twin angels, majestic beings of fire and lightning, lifting their hands in adoration of Ioun, ready to receive the blessing of knowledge she dispensed. Was she supposed to adopt the same pose? She stepped closer to examine one of the angels more closely.

  Its face was blank, just eyes and the suggestion of a nose. But the shape of it—the structure of the cheekbones, the chin, even the ill-defined nose—made her think of Demas. She fell to her knees beside the storm of fire that formed the angel’s lower body, her gaze fixed on the angel’s blank face.

  “Demas,” she said. Tears welled in her eyes. “Demas, please hear me. I don’t know how to do what you do. Ioun won’t lead me the way she leads you. I don’t know how to find you in this city, and I don’t know what else to do.”

  Sobbing, she leaned forward to rest her head on the statue’s cool stone. “Demas, please, just come find me. Let Ioun lead you—surely she can lead you to this, her house. I’ll be right here. Just come find me.”

  Unsure of what else to say, Miri curled up on the floor before the angelic statue. With one last look up at the face she imagined to be Demas’s, she drifted to sleep.

  A hand on her shoulder brought her gently awake. She opened her eyes to see the angel—a living angel, not the statue, wreathed in divine light—crouched beside her, his hand on her shoulder and compassion in his pale blue eyes.

  “Miri, get up.”

  As she stood, Miri saw the face of Ioun herself behind the angel, serene and severe. An excitement coursed through her like nothing she had ever known, a thrill that ran down her spine and brought tears to her sleepy eyes. Is this how Demas feels when he speaks with Ioun?

  “Come, child, we need to hurry,” the angel said. “We still have to find Brendis and the tiefling.”

  The divine light dimmed as Miri blinked and rubbed her eyes. The angel was smiling, though Ioun’s face remained impassive. Miri frowned.

  Angels can’t smile, she thought.

  “Demas?”

  The glow faded completely, and she saw Demas as he was. It was Sherinna who stood behind him, not Ioun. Miri threw her arms around him, her joy and relief at seeing him tempered by a vague disappointment.

  “Of course, child,” Demas said. He slowly, hesitantly, put his hands on her back. “Who did you think had found you?”

  I thought you were an angel. “I thought …”

  She clutched him tighter and closed her eyes so she couldn’t see Sherinna’s frown.

  I thought Ioun might speak to me too.

  The wind that howled around Albric was so fierce that for a moment he thought he was falling. He braced himself for impact, then one of the acolytes bumped into him in the darkness, he stumbled forward, and realized that his feet were planted on solid rock. He willed a shred of power into his holy symbol and made it glow with a sickly purplish light.

  The light glittered on flecks of mica scattered over the walls, ceiling, and floor of a tunnel. As he turned in a full circle, the rest of the acolytes appeared in the tunnel, with Jaeran bringing up the rear. Each one seemed to step through the solid rock wall, and once Jaeran was through there was no sign of the portal behind him.

  “How will we get back?” Niala, the elf woman from Jaeran’s band of thieves, asked. She had to shout to make herself heard over the wind.

  “I would kill you where you stand,” Albric growled, “but the ritual requires eight. When the Chained God walks free, will you ask him to carry you back to the slum you left behind? Remember why we are here, worm, and what sacred task lies before us.”

  Niala fell to her knees at Albric’s feet. “Forgive me,” she said. “I spoke without thinking.”

  The twin sisters cackled with a single voice, the sound mingling with the howl of the wind in the tunnel until Albric thought he heard a cacophony of voices. The maddening chorus reminded him of the unearthly voice he’d heard issuing from Jaeran’s mouth, as well as the howl of fury both men had unleashed to break the sisters’ minds. Tharizdun was calling him onward. He put his face to the wind and started down the tunnel.

  The tunnel coiled to the left, descended steeply, and then opened into a huge circular vault that could not have been natural in origin. The wind howled less insistently, and eight pedestals stood arrayed in a circle at the center of the room. Atop each pedestal sat a crystal orb the size of Albric’s clenched fist, glowing with purple light.

  Albric walked to the circle and stood behind one of the pedestals, facing the center. He watched with satisfaction as Jaeran and the others filed in, taking their positions without a word or a questioning glance. They knew what they were to do. Tharizdun was speaking to them all now.

  His head swam with the realization. They were in the heart of Tharizdun’s long-abandoned dominion, the home he had constructed for himself before the Dawn War, before he planted the shard of utter evil in the depths of the Elemental Chaos that gave birth to the Abyss. Had this vault with its eight pedestals been standing prepared for this moment since that most ancient time? Had Tharizdun foreseen his imprisonment and the need for eight acolytes to set him free?

  They stood like the points of a compass, with Jaeran facing him across the circle. Gharik and Haver stood on either side of Albric, while Jaeran’s thieves, Niala and Braghad, flanked their leader. That left the two sisters, the former guardians of the portal, facing each other. They all stood still and silent as the wind whipped around them.

  Albric drew the shard of the Living Gate out of the folds of his robe and stepped to the middle of the circle. He set it carefully in a slight depression that marked the circle’s center, then returned to his position. He raised his hands, and the others mirrored the gesture in perfect unison. Their will was gone, replaced by the will of the Chained God.

  He opened his mouth, and eight voices chanted as one: “Tharizdun! God of Eternal Night, the Black Sun, behold us gathered in your darkness.” The wind seized their voices and scattered them throughout the vaulted cavern, turning eight voices into eight thousand.

  “Tharizdun! Ender and Anathema, Eater of Worlds and Undoer, come and wreak destruction.”

  The shard of the Living Gate rose slowly from the floor as if lifted by the wind, and it began to spin, first slowly, then wildly, wobbling and shaking as it whirled.

  “Tharizdun! Patient One, He Who Waits, Chained God, your waiting is over and your freedom is at hand!”

  The shard’s wobbling spin widened until it circled a point in space, about ten feet above the indentation in the floor. Its orbit grew slowly wider, and as it did, something took shape at the center, a pinprick of utter blackness in the dark chamber. The shard circled still wider and the pinprick grew to
a marble’s size, then a child’s ball, and soon a king’s orb of perfect nothingness. The larger the blackness grew, the darker the room became, as if it were a void that drew all light into its emptiness.

  The void doubled in size once more, and the shard of the Living Gate clattered to the chamber floor, skittering a few feet toward Gharik. Albric fell to his knees as a sensation of power, of presence, of malign majesty and terrible, terrible fury broke over him.

  The rite worked! Albric was certain the void he had created led directly to the prison of the Chained God. He was in the presence of the divine.

  Some of the acolytes cowered on the floor, covering their faces, not daring to lift their eyes to the face of their god. But Albric knew their work was not yet finished. The void was too small a passage for Tharizdun to use. But as Albric stared in awe, something came through.

  At first, Albric thought it was the blood of his god. It seemed to form on the surface of the black sphere before dripping down in viscous blobs, then pooling together in and around the depression in the floor. It was not blood, Albric realized, but rather some kind of liquid crystal, bending and reflecting the feeble light of the orbs. Streaks of silver writhed among flecks of gold inside the substance, and it pulsed and surged as it gathered together in a thick pool on the floor.

  Albric’s eyes found the shard of the Living Gate as the Chained God made his will known. Infused with the substance Tharizdun called the Progenitor, the shard would form a new Living Gate, a portal large and strong enough to shatter the walls of his prison and break his chains forever. Albric began to crawl toward the shard.

  But there was another voice in the chamber. “Touch the Voidharrow,” it whispered, and its voice was the voice of the howling wind, the voice that echoed from every surface of the vaulted hall. “Take it into you and let it transform you. It will grant you power beyond your imagining.”

  Albric hesitated. Was the whisper another expression of Tharizdun’s will?

  While he paused, he saw Haver, Niala, and both sisters scramble to the edge of the viscous pool, reaching hesitant fingers toward the liquid.