by James Wyatt
“Which way?” Albanon said, glancing back at Kri.
The old priest started and snapped his head around to look at Albanon. “What?”
“I said, which way do we go? Is something wrong?”
“No … no. I don’t think so.”
“Kri? What is it?”
“There’s something … do you hear something?”
Albanon listened, but all he could hear was Kri’s breathing, uneven, a little heavy, nervous. He closed his eyes and extended his other senses to feel the flow of magic in the tower. In contrast to the sense of a fabric or weave he’d noted in the Feywild, or the flow he felt in the river, the tower itself seemed to his senses like a storm, furious but contained, magic churning within the confined space and flashing like lightning in places it was hard for him to pinpoint. Much of the energy seemed angry, perhaps malign or even demonic, but it was much harder to identify any specific source to it, a particular demon or anything else, than it had been in the Feywild.
“Whispers in the dark,” Kri said, his own voice a harsh whisper.
Albanon opened his eyes. Kri was half crouched, clutching his morningstar, looking around wildly.
“I don’t hear anything,” Albanon said. “Kri, what’s wrong?”
“I … I don’t know. Something’s wrong. Something’s definitely wrong.”
Albanon’s heart was pounding. He’d never seen Kri like this-his new mentor was usually so calm, in command of himself and of all around him. Even in the grip of the urgency that had propelled them from the Whitethorn Spire to the Tower of Waiting, Kri had been in charge, barking commands and making plans. Now he appeared unable to complete a sentence.
So I need to take charge, Albanon thought. And why not? I am no longer an apprentice.
“It’s all right, Kri,” he said. “Just follow me, and we’ll get to the heart of this. We’ll find out what’s wrong.”
To his surprise, Kri listened to him. The old priest took a deep breath and seemed to steady himself, then nodded his readiness. Albanon tried to look confident and reassuring. He swept his gaze over the three doorways and chose the one directly ahead, stepping decisively to the empty arch and ducking his head to pass through.
The room beyond had evidently been a guard post-it was equipped with a broken wooden chair, a rack that still held rusting spears, and a large, solid-looking table. No other door led out, so Albanon sighed and shepherded Kri back out the door and through a different one.
This door led to a spiral staircase stretching both up and down, which Albanon reprimanded himself for not seeing earlier.
“Up or down?” he asked, looking at Kri but not expecting an answer.
“Down down down,” Kri whispered.
Cold fear ran along Albanon’s spine. The priest’s voice was so different, and his demeanor so completely altered, that Albanon started to wonder whether he might have been possessed. “Kri?” he said.
Kri’s eyes flicked to his and then looked away, back at the staircase. “Down,” he mouthed.
“Very well,” Albanon said. “Down we go.”
The stairs twisted down over a hundred steps before Albanon forced himself to stop counting. Without the steady count of numbers in his mind, Albanon started hearing the same sinister whispers that Kri had been hearing upstairs. He started counting again, reaching forty-seven before arriving at the bottom.
A small stone chamber was lit only by the light of Albanon’s staff. A hallway stretched off into the darkness opposite the stairs, and Albanon saw archways blocked by heavy iron bars. Cells, he thought. A low table in the chamber held an unlit candle and a length of thick chain with an open cuff at one end.
“An altar,” Kri said.
Albanon looked at the table again. It bore no symbol he recognized, unless the chain related to the god of imprisonment. “To what god?” he said. “Torog?”
“Not the King that Crawls,” Kri said. “Not with an open cuff. The Chained God.”
The Chained God. Albanon had read stories of the god who turned against the other gods, who created the Abyss in his attempt to destroy the planes and all that dwelled in them, and who the gods had bound and imprisoned someplace beyond the planes, outside of reality. The events described in these legends were so ancient that the details were forgotten-perhaps intentionally, long ago. He’d often wondered if they were some kind of allegory, describing not a real god but an impulse toward evil and destruction contained within all the gods, sort of a mythic etiology of evil. Clearly, though, to the mad cults that sprang up in devotion to the Chained God, some element of truth rang out in the myths, something that spoke to their crazed and twisted minds.
“He was here,” Kri whispered.
Metal squealed from a cell door down the hallway, making Albanon’s heart leap into his throat. “Who’s there?” a gruff voice called. “Who dares intrude upon the Patient One’s sanctuary?”
Kri stepped toward the hallway’s mouth. “We seek the last true disciple of the Chained God,” he said.
A bear of a man stepped into the circle of Albanon’s light. He wore a flowing robe of royal purple, open in the front to reveal a coat of chainmail. His face was hidden behind a full helmet bearing a monstrous visage and topped with sharp horns. He stood a few inches taller than Albanon, and easily weighed twice as much as the slender eladrin. A jagged spiral formed of adamantine hung from a thick iron chain around his neck.
“I serve the Chained God,” the man growled, “but I am not the last.”
“Kri,” Albanon whispered, “if that’s the demon we could be in trouble.” In a halfling’s tiny body, the demon had been unbelievably strong. Albanon didn’t want to imagine how that hideous strength might be amplified in this man’s body.
Kri shook his head. “We seek the demon, Nu Alin, who was once Albric.”
The man stepped a little closer. “And what business do you have with the demon?”
“We come to destroy him!” Albanon blurted.
Kri held up a hand to quiet him. “If necessary,” he added.
“Then I will kill you for him,” the big man said, spreading his arms.
Kri muttered something that sounded like “miserable failure,” but Albanon wasn’t sure who he meant-himself, the cultist, or Albanon. Albanon threw up an arcane shield around them just as a blast of black fire washed out from the cultist, spreading around the shield and dissipating harmlessly.
In answer, Albanon sent a bolt of lightning down the hallway. It sent out tendrils of blazing light to the iron bars in the cell doorways, then exploded around the cultist, knocking him off his feet. Kri followed that with a pillar of fire that roared down over the man as he struggled to regain his feet.
Kri cackled as the man roared in pain, smoke billowing from his robe and even snaking out through the eye holes in his helmet. Albanon gave him a sidelong glance, increasingly concerned that the priest was not himself. He shook the thought from his head as the cultist roared again, seeming to draw strength from the sound of his own fury, and stood up.
“You will pay for that,” the cultist said.
As he strode forward, he pulled a metal-studded club from a loop on his back and rested it on his shoulder. As Kri hefted his morningstar, Albanon stepped back and sent bolts of force down the hall to slam into the big man’s chest, slowing his advance. Kri could handle himself in a hand-to-hand fight if he had to, but Albanon figured that the longer he kept that huge club away from Kri, the better.
The cultist answered his arcane missiles with another roar-a monstrous bellow that shook the walls around them and the ground beneath their feet. The sound thundered into Kri and knocked him backward like a physical blow. Albanon didn’t feel the force of it so much as a pressure on his mind, as if the man’s howl were tearing at the edges of his sanity. He tried to call another spell to mind, but while the sound continued he couldn’t focus.
The man’s barrel chest seemed to have a limitless reserve of breath-his roar went on and on, and A
lbanon’s head started to spin. He staggered back, hoping that with a little more distance he might escape the range of whatever mystic force empowered the scream, but darkness started clouding the edges of his vision and he fell to his knees.
“Enough,” Kri whispered. Somehow, for all the noise buffeting his ears, Albanon heard the priest’s sharp whisper clearly-and after the whisper was sheer silence.
Light and fire burst out from Kri, still utterly silent. The merest instant of the most savage heat Albanon had ever known sent him sprawling to the ground in unspeakable agony. He felt his skin char and heard it sizzle, smelled his hair burning, but saw nothing except the incomparable brightness of divine power ravaging him.
Then the moment passed. He saw the shadow-draped ceiling of the small chamber above him, heard his own ragged breathing and Kri’s panting breath, felt every nerve of his body screaming its pain. He tried to lift his head, but the pain was too great.
“Albanon?” Kri said, as if noticing his presence for the first time.
Albanon flinched away as brightness washed over him again, but this time the divine light brought soothing coolness that washed away his pain.
“Did I …” Kri began, crouching over him. “Did I do that?”
“You honestly don’t know?” Albanon said.
“I–I’m not sure. I … it shouldn’t have harmed you. You should have been safe.”
“I wasn’t.” His body still ached from the memory of the pain, and even the slightest movement sent sharp tingles through him.
“I’m sorry, Albanon. I’m so sorry.”
Kri looked so stricken that Albanon couldn’t sustain his anger. He sat up, wincing at the pain, and saw the smoldering remains of the cultist behind Kri. “At least I didn’t end up like him,” he said, trying to smile.
Kri turned and looked down at the cultist’s corpse as well. He muttered something Albanon couldn’t understand as he stomped over to the body, then crouched down beside it. He reached down and lifted the spiral symbol off the dead man’s chest, pulling the chain over the bulky helmet and hefting the heavy amulet.
“What is it?” Albanon asked. “The symbol of the Chained God?”
Kri started, hiding the symbol behind his body. Then he drew it back out and looked back down at it-a little guiltily, Albanon thought. “This? It’s the symbol of the Elder Elemental Eye. Which is the Chained God. Except most of the cultists of the Eye don’t realize it.”
“They think they’re serving the Eye, but it’s actually the Chained God giving the orders?”
“Exactly.”
Albanon got slowly to his feet, his brow furrowed in thought. “Does Ioun give you orders?” he asked.
“Sometimes.” Kri stared at the symbol. “Mostly I do what I think she would want me to do.”
“How do you know what that is?”
“Her teachings are preserved from the Dawn War. ‘Seek the perfection of your mind by bringing reason, perception, and emotion into balance with one another. Accumulate, preserve, and distribute knowledge in all forms. Pursue education, build libraries, and seek out lost and-’ Lost and something. Lore-‘seek out lore.’ ”
“You’ve forgotten?”
“I’m distracted,” Kri snapped, looking down at the spiral symbol in his hands again.
“So what do Ioun’s teachings have to do with our mission now?”
“Ioun gives her blessing to the Order of Vigilance because its mission is the preservation and accumulation of knowledge.”
“What about distributing it?”
“What do you mean?”
“It seems to me that Ioun would want you to teach the world about the threat of the Voidharrow, or whatever it is. Not hoard that knowledge. Not keep it locked up in wizard’s towers.”
Kri bristled. “There is some knowledge the world is not ready for.”
“So you treat the whole world like your stupid apprentice, not ready for the terrible secrets that only you are qualified to learn?”
“Wait a moment,” Kri said, holding up his hands. “Are we talking about the Order of Vigilance or Moorin now?”
“Moorin was a member of the order, same as you. But I’m not talking just about me. You said Ioun wants you to distribute knowledge, build libraries, educate people. Why have you and the order treated Sherinna’s knowledge like a secret?”
“You’re a fool, Albanon. What purpose would it have served a hundred years ago to declare the threat of the Voidharrow? To spread fear and suspicion?”
“To promote vigilance, to let all the people of the world share in the responsibility of watching for the threat, instead of appointing yourselves the guardians of the world.”
“The world needs heroes. The mass of people are-yes, they’re stupid apprentices. They might learn, but they’ll never understand. The few who have a glimmer of understanding will try to use their knowledge to gain riches or power. And should the threat actually arise, they’ll cower in fear until a hero steps forward to protect them. It might not be kind to say it, but it’s the truth.”
“But your order almost failed. Moorin died, leaving you the last of the order. What if you had died, too, before you could pass on Sherinna’s precious knowledge? The world would have been left without knowledge of the threat it faced.”
“But I didn’t die,” Kri said. “The gods ensured that the knowledge would be preserved.”
“I thought that was your job, not the gods’.”
“We are but helpers to the greater purposes of the gods.”
“Just like that poor fool,” Albanon said, nodding toward the corpse on the floor.
“No!” Kri screamed. “Not like that miserable, pathetic imbecile of a priest!”
Albanon backed away from Kri’s furious outburst, holding up his hands in a futile attempt to placate the old priest.
“I am nothing like him!” Kri said, tears welling in his eyes. “I serve with knowledge and understanding. With purpose!” He slumped to the floor and buried his face in his hands.
Albanon looked down at the old man sobbing on the floor, his thoughts in tumult. This is the man I hoped would be a new mentor, he thought, guiding me as I step into a new phase of life?
“Kri,” he said gently.
The priest only sobbed harder, shaking his head.
“I’m worried about you, Kri.”
Kri nodded, rocking his whole body slightly as his head bobbed. “You must understand your enemies if you wish to defeat them,” he murmured. “Albanon, I … might be going mad,” he said slowly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Uldane threw himself into the task of disguising Quarhaun with all the enthusiasm of a child engaged in a game of dress-up, making Shara smile even as Roghar harrumphed. The halfling wrapped long strips of cloth around Quarhaun’s head, covering his hair and most of his face until he looked like a beggar concealing some ailment or deformity. With the drow’s hooded cloak in place, his face was invisible, and the cloak covered the sword hung on his back as well. An assortment of worn cloths wrapped and tied in key locations on Quarhaun’s body completed the illusion, concealing his finely tooled leather armor.
“Fine, he looks like a beggar,” Roghar said. “Now, what’s a beggar doing in this group? Or do you plan to make us all look like beggars? Perhaps give my armor a few more dents?”
“Oh, I didn’t think of that,” Uldane said.
“Of course not,” Roghar said.
“I could go in ahead of you,” Quarhaun said. “Just a wandering hermit, nothing to be alarmed about.”
“That … could work,” Roghar admitted.
“Or you could tell the truth, Roghar,” Tempest said. “As you were traveling the King’s Road into town, you found this poor man under attack by demons. You hurried to his defense and agreed to escort him into the safety of the town’s walls.”
“The truth?” Quarhaun said. “It’ll never work.”
Roghar laughed and clapped Tempest on the shoulder. “It’s a great p
lan-devious in its sheer honesty.”
“I need a staff,” Quarhaun said.
“Of course!” Uldane said. “That will nicely complete the disguise.”
“Yes,” said the drow, “and it will allow me to walk across the bridge without leaning on Shara.”
“I’ll cut you a branch,” Shara said, starting back toward the orchard.
As she walked, she thought about the argument that had erupted between Quarhaun and Roghar and hoped they weren’t starting it up again in her absence. It was interesting-a bit disturbing, actually-to introduce Quarhaun to other friends for the first time. Albanon had met the drow first, introduced him to the others. Uldane had been there when she met Quarhaun, and they’d all warmed to him quickly as he fought Raid at their sides.
Now she was seeing Quarhaun through Roghar’s eyes, and it was a bit like seeing him for the first time-and not necessarily in the most positive light. The drow was certainly the product of his background, shaped by his harsh life in the Underdark and the sheer brutality of drow society. That background was so different from her own that she doubted she could ever fully understand him.
So why am I so drawn to him? she wondered.
She found a branch long and strong enough to serve as a staff and cut it from its tree, briefly considering the ruby-red fire apples she came across in the process before she decided to leave them to rot on the ground.
Fire still danced in the wreckage of the Nentir Inn, and she watched it for a moment. The flames moved almost as if they were alive, occasionally leaping where there was no fuel for them to burn.
“Elementals?” she wondered aloud. She shrugged and turned back toward the bridge.
He likes me, she thought. Despite everything, despite my grief and my failure. Uldane tells me to change-Uldane! — but Quarhaun likes who I am.
The way Quarhaun’s body shifted when he saw her return affirmed that. She couldn’t see his face, but she could imagine his smile from the alertness of his posture, the way she so obviously drew his attention. It made a warmth spread through her belly. And when she handed him the staff, he brushed her hand with his own. A leather glove covered his fingers, but the touch still sent a thrill through her skin.