The Eye of the Chained God

by Bassingthwaite, Don

  Albanon had experienced that searing, painful healing before. He flipped around in the remnants of the demolished nest and pushed himself to his feet. At the back of the ledge, just in front of a low door that opened out of the rock wall, bright eyes set in a wrinkled, dark-skinned face watched him.

  “You weren’t what I was expecting,” said Kri, “but I should have known it would be you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Albanon reeled. A spell leaped into his mind, but in his surprise the best he could manage was a strangled croak and a couple of feeble gestures. Kri’s mouth pursed impatiently.

  “Stop that. I just saved you. If I wanted you dead, I could have let the peryton rip your heart out. Come inside. We need to talk.”

  He turned away. Albanon stared at the old man. Kri still wore the same clothes he had when Albanon had last seen him in Fallcrest, but now they were dirty and stained. They hung on his frame. Kri was gaunt, his cheeks hollow, even if his eyes were bright and sharp.

  Breath finally came back to Albanon. The first words to pass his lips weren’t a spell, though maybe they should have been. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “The last time I saw you, you were—”

  “Fleeing after you defeated my attempt to free Tharizdun from his prison?” the priest said. “Yes. But Tharizdun brought me here. He has a task for me. And for you.” Kri raised an eyebrow. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You felt his gaze. What did you expect to find?”

  Aid in the fight against Vestapalk, Albanon started to say, then he stopped himself. Why reveal that to Kri? “You betrayed me,” he said through his teeth. “You betrayed the Order of Vigilance. You drove me mad before and you’re trying to do it again.”

  “Trying?” Kri snorted faintly. “I don’t have to try. The eye of the Chained God has fallen on you, Albanon. You’ll never be entirely sane again. But you already knew that, didn’t you?” He turned away, walking through the door. “Come inside. You’ll understand.”

  Defiance came over Albanon like a haze. He turned and marched to the edge of the ledge. The valley lay spread out before him—a long, long way down. He closed his eyes as a dizziness he hadn’t felt in the panic of the peryton’s flight made his head spin.

  A hand came down on his shoulder. “Jumping would be the greatest madness of all,” said Kri. “You must have come here with Shara and Uldane, at least. I’m sure they’ll try to rescue you. Aren’t you even going to try and fight?”

  “I wasn’t going to jump,” Albanon snarled.

  “No? Then come away from the edge before you fall over, you fool idiot.” Kri’s hand bunched in the talon-shredded remains of his shirt and dragged him backward several paces. Albanon was reminded that while the priest might be old, he was still strong.

  He pushed Kri’s hand off and turned to face him. “What do you want from me?”

  “It’s not what I want—it’s what Tharizdun wants,” said Kri with surprising calm. “Believe it or not, you saved him. You saw the Voidharrow that came pouring out of the Vast Gate as Tharizdun tried to pass through. You saw the binding forms that it was taking and you destroyed it. You, Albanon, prevented Tharizdun from being absorbed by the Voidharrow.”

  Albanon blinked. “I saved a god?”

  Kri waved a hand. “Well, you saved a god that all the other gods despise. And you forced him back into his eternal prison, so he’s not too happy about that. But you did draw his attention. He’s chosen you as part of his vengeance.”

  “Vengeance?” Albanon’s belly clenched.

  “His vengeance on the Voidharrow. Tharizdun has given me the key. He told me that one would come to help turn it and here you are. Now come inside.” Kri smiled, but not kindly. “You swore the oath of vigilance. You came here looking for a way to end the threat of Vestapalk and the Voidharrow. Don’t you want to know what that is?”

  Once more, Kri turned and walked for the door in the back of the ledge. Albanon hesitated, but this time he followed.

  Kri had left the purple lantern just inside the door. He retrieved it, then tripped the switch that closed the door. Albanon started and grabbed for the edge of the door, but it closed too quickly for his fingers to catch hold. Kri held the lantern high so its pale illumination fell over the eladrin. “Are you afraid I’m going to try to trick you?”

  Albanon made a visible effort to regain his composure, lifting his head and straightening his tattered robe. “You’ve done it before,” he said bluntly. “You had a sample of the Voidharrow the whole time we were fighting Vestapalk. You always intended to betray the Order of Vigilance and recreate the Vast Gate.”

  The words actually stung a little bit. “Not always,” said Kri. “But Tharizdun is a patient god.” He turned and led the way out onto the great spiraling staircase. He heard Albanon’s gasp as his silent recriminations gave way to sudden awe.

  “Where are we?”

  “A dwarven cloister built to honor the Chained God. His memory has not been as forgotten by the world as the other gods would like us to believe.” Kri turned, letting the light fall up and down the stairs. Albanon’s eladrin sight would make the most of its meager glow. “When I first woke here, I believed Tharizdun had buried me deep in the ground. Then he revealed the truth. We are underground, yet high above the world, isolated in every way. What more perfect place for the servants of an imprisoned god?”

  “I’m no servant of Tharizdun!”

  Kri laughed, the first time he could remember doing so in many days. “Hold to that belief,” he said. “But I meant the dwarves. The original inhabitants of this place.”

  “What did you do to them?”

  Kri turned to face him. “Use your senses. Smell the air. Do you think I massacred them? Sacrificed them in some insane ritual? They’re long gone, dead by their own hands. We are the only ones here now.”

  “They … died here?”

  “I suspect some were born, lived, and died here. I’ll show you their tombs. They’re very well preserved.” He started down the stairs again, but Albanon grabbed him.

  “How did they get in and out?” the eladrin asked.

  “I don’t think they did,” said Kri with a smile. “The ledges are the only way to the outside world that I’ve found. I suspect the cloister was largely self-sufficient and self-contained. The dwarves were devoted to Tharizdun.”

  “How do we get out?” Albanon’s voice actually cracked in panic. Kri smiled wider and patted Albanon’s cheek.

  “Tharizdun will show us the way when it’s time.” He paused and considered another option. “Unless it’s possible for us to bring about his vengeance against the Voidharrow from in here.”

  “No,” Albanon said tightly. “No, it can’t be. We know already where Vestapalk is. After we’d come here, we were going to take whatever we found to fight him.”

  “Then maybe the Chained God has already sent us a message. You have found me. It can only be a matter of time before he sends us on our way.” He thrust the lantern into Albanon’s hands. “Carry that. Hold it up so I can see.”

  Albanon looked down at the lantern—and almost dropped it as he stared at the blasphemous carvings on the crystal globe. Kri grabbed his hands and wrapped them tight around the lantern. “Study them later. You might learn something,” he told the wizard. “Do you read Davek?”

  “Only a little.”

  “Moorin neglected your training shamefully. If we’re here long, I’ll teach you. There are fascinating inscriptions on the walls here.” He set off down the stairs.

  “Kri,” said Albanon, “how long have you been here?”

  “How long has it been since you sent me through the Vast Gate?”

  “About two weeks.”

  “Is that all?”

  Albanon paused, then added, “What have you been … eating all that time?”

  Kri froze, then swung around and glared at him. With the purple light of the lantern shining up under his face, Albanon looked even paler than normal. His eyes
were wide and frightened. Kri could guess immediately what the wizard had thought. He grimaced in disgust. “You think because I mentioned the dwarven tombs that I’ve turned into some kind of bone-gnawing ghoul? I may serve the Chained God, but I’m not a monster.” He jerked his head back toward the hidden door. “Tharizdun showed me the way to the ledges. Perytons lay eggs like birds. I haven’t eaten well, but I’ve eaten enough.”

  Albanon swallowed. “The perytons are dead. We ambushed them in the valley. The one you just killed was the last of them.”

  Kri gave him a cold smile. “Then maybe you should reconsider praying to Tharizdun.”

  The forgotten cloister of Tharizdun stank of madness. Albanon wouldn’t have considered such a thing possible, but it was true. There was something in the air, oozing from the stone and the shadows, that assaulted his nostrils. It couldn’t have been real. Try as he might, he couldn’t identify the odor. Whenever he tried to, it changed. It smelled like dung or ashes or wet stone or roses. It had to have been his imagination.

  It was there, though. Every time he convinced himself that it wasn’t real, it returned with some new and visceral stench so powerful he could feel it sinking into his skin. If he escaped the cloister, he would burn his robes and scrub his skin with sand until it stung.

  When he’d ventured into the lonely Tower of Waiting in Fallcrest with Kri in search of the demon Nu Alin, it had seemed like he was descending into an abyss of madness, where insanity lurked just out of sight. In the dwarven cloister it was on full display everywhere he looked. The farther he followed Kri down the long, ever-circling stairs, the more it seemed to emerge.

  He might not have been able to read the characters of the inscriptions written on the walls, but sometimes there were drawings with them. He tried to avoid looking at them. He tried to avoid looking at the carvings high in the shadows along the sloping ceiling: every kind of creeping, crawling, and writhing beast he could imagine. All carved in flawless detail. All represented mouth to tail as if consuming the one in front and birthing—or excreting—the one behind. He was fairly certain that Kri, with his weak human sight, wasn’t even able to see them beyond the lantern’s purple light.

  The lantern was the worst. Albanon had never considered himself particularly religious, but the scenes of feasting gods carved into the crystal were vile. Even if he didn’t look at the lantern itself, it seemed to him that the carvings caught the light and reproduced themselves in its glimmers. No matter where he looked, ghostly images projected by the lantern floated in the air. Avandra, the wanderer’s god, gnawed on the feet and legs of screaming travelers. Erathis, god of civilization and the cities, ground men and women in a great mortar and pestle. Noble Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon, buried his snout in his worshipers’ entrails. Melora, god of the wilderness and the sea, boiled them in a soup.

  And the whispering voice in his head had returned. Look, it urged him. Look and learn. This is how the gods truly are, devouring the lives of mortals while their worshipers offer themselves up. This is the world, everything prey for everything else. Why do you try to deny it? Embrace it. Embrace the power you have and use it to put yourself at the top of the dung heap.

  “No!” he spat out loud.

  The word echoed along the stairs, crashing back and forth. Kri looked back at him. “Tharizdun’s gaze lies upon this place. You feel it.”

  Albanon ground his teeth and said nothing. He lowered the lantern and conjured his own magical light in the palm of his hand.

  It flashed and dimmed like a dying ember.

  The whisper in his head laughed. You could make it as bright as the sun, you know. Numbers flickered in his mind, equations for volume and brilliance.

  He pushed them away and cupped his fingers around the ember-dim light. “It’s enough for me to see by,” he said to Kri.

  The old priest shrugged and took the purple lantern from him. If he saw the ghostly images, he gave no indication of it. “As you wish. We’re stopping here anyway.”

  Albanon looked up and stared around at a broad chamber full of broken statuary. Dim golden daylight filtered in from high crevices that seemed filled with crystal—dwarven light pipes. In that light, the madness seemed to ebb. Albanon took a slow breath and allowed the light to wink out between his fingers. Kri went over and sat down beneath a statue of a cowled man that looked as if something had broken out of a hollow space within it. Tharizdun’s symbol of a jagged spiral was marked on the palms of the statue’s outstretched hands. Albanon kept his distance. Kri just shrugged and settled himself more comfortably.

  “So, my apprentice,” he said. “Tell me the news of the Nentir Vale. Has the Abyssal Plague overrun it yet?”

  “I’m not your apprentice,” Albanon said harshly.

  “No? It seems to me you’ve grown more in skill and power under my mentorship than with Moorin as your master. I was impressed with your manipulation of the flow of magical energy during our battle.”

  A part of Albanon took pride in the praise. He braced himself against it. “That’s not skill, it’s madness. That kind of power is uncontrollable.”

  “By which you mean you can’t control it. That’s just weakness. Embrace the madness and you’ll find that the power answers to you.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you want me to do?” Albanon asked angrily. “It seems to me that when I did, I was able to swat you around like a moth. And right now, old man, you don’t have the dark power the Chained God’s presence gave you!”

  Kri threw back his head and laughed. “Yes! Yes! There you go, that’s exactly what you need to do. Get angry. Let go of your control. Burn something. Melt something.”

  A weird flickering light danced across the cleric’s face, as if Kri sat before a fire. It took Albanon a moment to realize that the fire came from him. Flames he didn’t remember summoning licked around his clenched fists. He held his hands up in front of him and the flames flared like torches.

  Melting something, thought the voice in his head. That’s new. Focused fire, not increased in volume but in density—

  He choked off the voice and concentrated on his hands. The flames flickered and went out. Albanon glared at Kri. “I’m not going to do that.”

  “Disappointing. I would have thought you were capable of more. Tell me how your friends are then. Shara, Uldane, Quarhaun—I think we saw Tempest and Roghar back in Fallcrest briefly, too, or have they gone off again? How’s Splendid?”

  The question tore open a wound. “Splendid’s dead. Vestapalk killed her with some kind of new plague demon that was smarter and faster than the others, almost like Vestapalk had merged himself with a plague demon.”

  “Vestapalk is the Abyssal Plague. The Abyssal Plague is the Voidharrow. The Voidharrow is Vestapalk. When the Voidharrow has consumed enough of the world, there will be very little that Vestapalk isn’t capable of.” Kri leaned back. “I’m sorry to hear about Splendid. I liked her.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t even say her name.” New anger flashed in Albanon. He swallowed it as best he could. “Trying to get here killed her as certainly as Vestapalk did. I know that it was Tharizdun who put the urge to come here into me, but I would have thought even a banished god could come up with someone better suited to killing Vestapalk than you.”

  Kri sat up sharply, eyes flashing. “Killing Vestapalk is only incidental to what Tharizdun wants. I told you, our mission is vengeance on the Voidharrow, and I hold the key to its destruction.”

  “What’s that?”

  Kri stalked up to him and leaned into his face. “I know what it is.” He stepped back. “I spent my life—yes, and the lives of others—in pursuit of true knowledge about the Voidharrow. That’s what drove me from the Order of Vigilance and Ioun to the worship of Tharizdun. He knows the value of change. He doesn’t keep secrets. After I passed through the Vast Gate and since I’ve been here, he’s shown me everything I need to know.”

  He turned to gaze up at the cowled statue. “We are told tha
t Tharizdun created the Abyss by planting a crystal of evil in the heart of the Primordial Chaos. That crystal wasn’t a seed of evil—it was a seed of change, drawn from another world where one force, one being, had consumed everything until it was the only thing in its world. It called itself the Progenitor. When the other gods discovered that Tharizdun had introduced change into their perfect world, they imprisoned him with the Progenitor in its world. But over the eons, Tharizdun and the Progenitor worked together. They merged part of their essences and found a way to send that merged essence back to our world.”

  “The Voidharrow,” said Albanon.

  “Yes,” said Kri, looking back at him. “And no. The Voidharrow was meant to be used with a fragment of the Living Gate—the same fragment we found in Sherinna’s tower in the Feywild—to forge a new gate, the Vast Gate, and set both Tharizdun and the Progenitor free. But the Voidharrow had been twisted by the Progenitor. It took on a life of its own and began to consume our world just as the Progenitor had consumed his. It only needed a suitable host and when it escaped after centuries as the prisoner of the Order of Vigilance, it found one in Vestapalk. The Abyssal Plague is only the beginning. Together Vestapalk and the Voidharrow will consume everything. Everything. That’s why it laid a trap so that it might consume Tharizdun when he tried to re-enter the world. Imagine Vestapalk enhanced with the power of a god.”

  A chill had worked itself into Albanon. “So how do we stop it?”

  Kri smiled. “The Voidharrow was created by merging the Progenitor’s hunger and Tharizdun’s mighty will. The Progenitor is alien to our world. It can’t exist here—the only reason it does is because Tharizdun’s will holds it together. Extract Tharizdun’s will from the Voidharrow, and it will be destroyed.”