“I will not talk of these things beneath the sky,” the shifter said.
They were approaching a small tent. A Tigerclaw squatting outside its door looked up sleepily, then jumped to his feet, fully alert at the sight of his chief. Turbull dismissed him with a curt gesture. When the guard had gone, he looked at Albanon. “You enter first. If the halfling has untied your friends, I will not be the victim of an ambush.”
Albanon nodded. The door flap had been tied down with leather thongs. He started to undo them, but Turbull growled and swiped a hand across them. The thongs fell away, sliced clean by his claws. He stepped back again. Albanon pulled back the edge of the flap just a bit.
“Shara? Quarhaun?” he called. “It’s Albanon. I’m coming in.”
He pushed the door aside and went inside.
Seated on the ground, her back against a thick post driven into the ground with her arms still tied behind it, Shara looked up at him. “How’s the food at the feast?”
He couldn’t help smiling. Even bound as a prisoner, Shara held onto her brazen appearance. Thick red hair curled over her shoulders and fell down her back. The Tigerclaws had taken the greatsword that was usually strapped across the warrior woman’s back, but she still wore the light armor she preferred. Albanon turned to Quarhaun. The drow warlock was bound as Shara was with the addition of a hood to cover his head, a common arrangement intended to prevent the effective casting of spells. His head was up now, but he hadn’t spoken. “Quarhaun,” Albanon asked, “are you gagged under—Ow!”
His question was cut off violently as Cariss and Hurn burst through the door, shoving him to the ground. Shara cursed and jumped up—her bonds had been a ruse after all. Quarhaun followed suit, dragging the hood from his head and snatching a handful of dark, crackling energy out of the air. For a moment, human and drow faced the two shifters over Albanon where he lay.
Then Turbull growled a command from outside the door. “Peace! We’re here to talk. Your friends have demanded it.”
“You’ll let us go?” asked Shara.
“We’ll talk,” said Turbull. “Hurn, Cariss, step back.”
The two Tigerclaws relaxed—slowly. After a moment, so did Shara. Quarhaun, however, kept the dark energy playing around his hand. Albanon rolled to his feet. “Easy, Quarhaun,” he said. “They’ve treated us fairly so far.”
“They haven’t been so kind to us.” The drow’s Common carried an accent.
“You came into our camp as thieves,” said Turbull, entering the tent. He stepped to one side of the door. Tempest and the others followed him in. The tiefling, Roghar, and Belen moved to the other side of the door. Uldane, of course, went to stand with Shara and Quarhaun. It occurred to Albanon that he’d seldom seen the halfling look more certain or serious. The argument that had driven him and Shara apart and that had tormented Uldane in Winterhaven had clearly been mended. Albanon could see how finding and saving even the most estranged friends in a camp surrounded by potential enemies might have that effect. They could discuss it later, but for now he was glad they had reconciled.
He rose to his feet, then paused. Three groups had formed inside the tent: the Tigerclaws to one side of the door; Shara, Quarhaun, and Uldane in the middle; and Tempest, Roghar, and Belen on the door’s other side. Which group he joined would send a message to Turbull and might affect how discussions within the tent proceeded. Quarhaun still held onto the dark energy, Roghar had his hand on his sword hilt, and Hurn and Cariss looked ready to fight the first person to make a move. Albanon bit his lip—then went to stand before Turbull.
“I’ve been told,” he said, “that Tigerclaws deal harshly with those who cross them, yet you’ve kept our friends alive. I’ve been told that Tigerclaws honor their guests, but you’re trying to manipulate us. Tradition is important to you, but you’re willing to go against it for the sake of your clan.” He gestured at his friends. All of them. “We’d like to continue on our way, but there’s something you know about this valley. Everything ties back to it. What is it? What’s there?”
Turbull studied him in silence. Cariss’s face tightened and she seemed about to say something, but Turbull shook his head and she held her tongue.
Hurn didn’t. “I don’t like this,” he growled. “I don’t like dealing with outsiders. Especially thieves.”
“You were keeping us alive for something,” said Shara. “I know Tigerclaws. I know what they do.”
“These are unusual times. Desperate times.” Turbull looked back at Albanon. “Answer me this: Were you deliberately trying to deceive us about your destination? Did you really lie about the valley?”
“When Cariss found us, we knew the direction we had to go, but not where we were going. I didn’t think you would appreciate outsiders wandering at random through your territory, so I picked a destination that I thought would be common in the mountains.” Albanon spread his hands. “I didn’t realize that the valley I described would be unique—or that it would have any significance. For either of us.”
“Then there was more than coincidence behind your choice of words.” Turbull gestured. “Sit with me. The others can stand if they wish, but we will speak as men of wisdom.”
He lowered himself to the ground. Albanon gathered his robes and did the same. There was something about sitting that eased the tension between them. Even the others seemed to sense it. Hurn, Cariss, and Roghar relaxed somewhat. Shara nudged Quarhaun and the drow finally released the magic that had been crackling in his hand. Tempest gestured for Belen and the two women came to sit behind Albanon. Turbull nodded slightly in approval, but his eyes remained on Albanon.
“You were right to guess that we are interested in claiming the valley as our territory,” he said. “There is a spring and game in the hills. If the plague spreads, the mouth of the valley can be defended easily. The Thornpad clan will survive.”
“But …” said Albanon.
Turbull nodded and added, “But the valley isn’t empty. Perytons lair on the ledges of the mountain face.”
Shara muttered an oath of disgust. Albanon felt his stomach knot. The others shifted uneasily. Only Quarhaun seemed uncertain. “Perytons? Some kind of monstrous bird?”
“Monstrous, yes,” said Shara. “Birds, no. They’re at least as big as a human and often bigger, with the body of a bird of prey and the head and antlers of a stag.”
The drow snorted. “They sound ridiculous.”
“They eat people,” said Albanon. “Especially their hearts. Over time a nest of perytons can strip a village.” He turned back to Turbull. “You said the valley is less than a day’s journey from here. Don’t they attack your camp?”
“They’ve tried. The first time, we fought them off with spears and arrows. But they’re wily. Every few days, a hunter will spot one circling high overhead or sometimes just perched in a tree, watching us.”
“And why haven’t you gone to the valley and wiped them out?” asked Quarhaun.
Turbull frowned and tipped his head toward Hurn and Cariss. “I said they’re wily. When we came here I had three strong warriors that I trusted. Then I decided to try attacking the perytons. Now I have two.” He bent forward and scratched a crude map in the hard dirt of the tent floor with his claw. “We can’t reach their nests and when they see us, they attack with stealth. They dive with the sun behind them, strike fast, and fly away again. They’re larger than most perytons I’ve seen and there are more of them than usual. I think it’s an older nest, well-established and successful. There are orcs and goblins on the other side of the mountains—plentiful prey, but I can’t imagine they’ll continue to fly so far when a new source of food is closer. It may even get worse. Over the last two days, my scouts say they seem more active and angry, as if something has disturbed them.”
“So they keep you out of the valley, but if you stay here, they’ll eventually start preying on you,” said Albanon. “Why not keep moving? Find another place to take refuge from the Abyssal Plague?”
Hurn snarled at the suggestion. Cariss grunted and said, “The Thornpads will run no further.”
“As you say, eladrin, my position is not so safe,” said Turbull with a shrug. “I have bent tradition as far as it can be bent. More and there will be warriors who will challenge my leadership.”
“So what about us?” asked Tempest. “Why were you being evasive about the valley when we asked?”
Roghar snorted. “Isn’t it obvious? He hoped that by letting us go into the valley we would kill or weaken the perytons so that his people didn’t have to face them.”
A look of shame crept over Turbull’s face. “It is not the way to treat guests, but at first I hoped that if you were seeking the valley, you might already have some plan or magic for dealing with them. But then yes, I hoped you would deal with the perytons for us.” He swept a hand around to all of them. “There are only a handful of you, but you’re fighting the dragon who spreads the plague. You’re either mighty or mad.”
Albanon couldn’t argue with that, although he might have decided on “mad” over “mighty.”
“What about us?” Shara said, nodding to Quarhaun. “You had no idea we were Vestapalk’s enemies. What did you want with us?”
“Ah,” said Turbull. He sat back. “We had been considering trying to lure the perytons into the open so we could attack them on the ground. Obviously, I didn’t want to risk the lives of my people as bait in the trap.”
He spoke with such casual bluntness that for a moment it took Albanon’s breath away.
Shara’s eyes went wide. Her entire body tensed. “Bait? We were going to be bait?”
Before she could say anything more, Quarhaun put a hand on her arm. Shara turned to look at him and, somewhat to his surprise, Albanon saw the tension in her body ease as she calmed down. It didn’t go away entirely but it no longer seemed as if she might attack Turbull with her bare hands. Quarhaun looked to Turbull. “It is the practical choice. Why sacrifice a friend when an enemy is at hand?”
The Tigerclaw chief seemed startled, but he nodded. “You are not soft, drow, but you don’t speak with the cruelty of your people, either. I may have misjudged you.”
“A lot of people do that,” Quarhaun said. Albanon thought his gaze slipped to Uldane for a moment—certainly the halfling shifted uncomfortably—but then Quarhaun glanced directly at him. “It seems you’re speaking for us, Albanon. Everyone’s motivations are out. What do we do now?”
Albanon pressed his lips together. How had people started looking to him for leadership? He was getting used to it, but it would have been better if he had more experience—or more confidence that what he decided was the proper course of action. It might not have been directly his fault that Splendid and Immeral lay dead in Winterhaven, but sometimes it felt like it.
He took a deep breath and turned his attention inward to the kernel of the urge that had brought them here. If there was something else it could show him, some hint of what they faced … but there was nothing more than the pull that had been with him for so many days, coupled with the new certainty that the valley was their destination. That was where they would find the means to defeat Vestapalk.
Albanon sighed and looked up. “We both need to get into the valley,” he said to Turbull. “Instead of trying to trick each other, why don’t we work together to defeat the perytons? Then we’ll take whatever waits for us, you can have the valley, and we may all survive the plague.”
Turbull turned to Cariss and Hurn. “You know the mood among the warriors. Do you think they’ll go along with this?”
The two shifters looked at each other. Cariss made a face. “They may fight alongside Albanon and the others, but the drow and the human are known as thieves and Uldane challenged you at the feast. They won’t like it.”
Turbull drew himself up. “But if I command it?”
“They’ll fight,” said Hurn, “but if we fail, they’ll blame you.”
“Then we won’t fail.”
Albanon twisted around to look at his friends. Their answers were already on their faces in twisted, uncertain mouths and furrowed brows, but all of them—from Roghar to Uldane to Shara—nodded. He turned back to Turbull. “We’re in. We shouldn’t wait. Do we attack tomorrow?”
Turbull gave him a sly smile. “The perytons hunt by day,” he said. “You’re rested. My warriors are fed. I was thinking of making the journey tonight.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Vestapalk flew through the minds of plague demons. He saw towns devastated and cities under siege. Villages scattered. Tribes absorbed into the swelling, all-encompassing union of the Voidharrow. Plague demons stalked the face of the world. Each one lived within him. He lived within each one.
And yet he couldn’t find what he wanted. “Where are they?” he roared. “Where are they?”
His voice echoed within the Plaguedeep, silencing the chitter of the demons around him. Fury broke within him. They couldn’t help. All that he saw through their eyes was himself and the pool of Voidharrow that roiled in agitation around him. Useless! He lashed out at those closest to him—not with talon or tail, but with waves of the Voidharrow. The demons shrieked and scrambled to escape. Many weren’t fast enough. A dozen were caught by the crystalline crimson liquid and dragged back into the pool.
They sank into it, their flesh and bones dissolving, and the pool grew a little larger. The Voidharrow lived within each demon. Each demon lived within the Voidharrow. One day, the Voidharrow might fill not just a pool, but oceans.
Might. If Vestapalk could find Albanon and the others who stood against him. The power of Tharizdun had entered the world. The god himself might still be chained, but he had found a new channel for a portion of his power—and his anger. The Voidharrow trembled with fear, a trembling that spread through its connections with every plague demon. Vestapalk plunged back into those trembling connections. Albanon and his band couldn’t have simply vanished from the world. The Voidharrow had eyes everywhere. He would find them.
In his mind, he returned to the area where he had last glimpsed his enemies, in the smoking ruins of Winterhaven, and sought out the nearest demon mind. It was a small, frail thing and when it revealed nothing to him, he crushed it with the force of his will, then moved on to the next. And the next. And the next, passing from mind to mind in sweeping arcs. Where could Albanon have gone? South, back to Fallcrest and the heart of the Nentir Vale? There was nothing for him there but the heaviest concentrations of plague demons. East from Winterhaven toward the Winterbole Forest, Lake Nen, and the village of Nenlast? There were demons there as well. He and his band would have been spotted. North and west there were only league upon league of mountains.
Mountains, Vestapalk realized, and few if any plague demons. Back in the Plaguedeep, his body roared again in frustrated fury, but in the phantom space of the Voidharrow, he simply reached out and called, Vestausan! Vestausir!
A heartbeat later, two voices answered him simultaneously. This one hears.
A twist of his thoughts and he was peering through two sets of eyes at wilderness flashing by beneath. He recognized the marshes of the southern Vale. Turn north, he commanded. Search the Cairngorm Peaks and the Stonemarch.
This one obeys, answered Vestausan. This one flies, said Vestausir. The double view of marshes whirled as the pair banked. Vestapalk turned his mind back north, searching for any plague demon presence in the mountain wilderness. There was nothing except a great blank space in his vision of the world. He cursed the empty places. Beyond the mountains, orc and goblin tribes had succumbed to the plague, but they hadn’t ventured into the mountains. He could order them in, but their progress would be slow—the servants he had created after Vestagix’s destruction would arrive far more quickly, though they still had a wide territory with many hiding places to search. Vestapalk swept the mountains again.
Something caught at the edge of his mind like a broken scale on smooth hide. He paused.
The creature was no demon, but
it carried the Voidharrow. A demon had wounded it and now the plague worked on its body. Its flesh was being transformed—but slowly. Vestapalk recognized the touch of the gods at work. The carrier of the plague had faith and it knew enough of the Voidharrow to attempt to use the power of that faith to fight it. Vestapalk’s excitement flared. He focused his will and pushed through the creature’s nascent connection to the Voidharrow.
His host gasped with pain and stumbled, but vision opened up around Vestapalk. If he’d been able to take true control of his host’s body, he would have laughed. He withdrew and reached out to Vestausan and Vestausir. Here, he told them, sharing what he’d seen. The pair snarled acknowledgment and beat their wings hard.
Vestapalk opened his eyes. The pool of the Voidharrow had calmed somewhat, though ripples still shook its surface and made little waves that lapped at the three broken skulls—once golden vessels of power—that lay drained at its edge. Vestapalk sank down into the pool, letting it surround him. “Soon,” he hissed in reassurance.
In the darkness of the forest, Roghar gasped abruptly, tripped, and went thrashing into a bush. Walking just ahead of the dragonborn, Shara looked back but couldn’t see anything except a dim shape. The growling chuckles of shifters rose from all around them.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to lead you?” came Albanon’s voice.
“Yes!” Roghar snapped. “It … was a root. Are you going to tell me when to lift my feet?”
“Easy,” said Albanon defensively. “I was only offering. Stumble along on your own.”
“Trust him to find the only root on the path,” Quarhaun murmured in her ear. Shara shushed him, but smiled and squeezed the drow’s hand. He squeezed back. Over the last few weeks since they’d left Fallcrest, she’d gotten used to having him lead her when they chose to travel at night. It wasn’t the fastest but it could be surprisingly thrilling. It was also one of the unexpectedly charming things she’d discovered about Quarhaun.
The Eye of the Chained God Page 17