Pikel just shook his hairy head and continued stirring the cauldron’s contents with his huge wooden spoon as Cadderly considered Ivan’s grim news. “Can you finish the crossbow?” Cadderly asked. “I can,” Ivan replied, “but me thinkin’s that you should be more worried about yer own fate, boy. The head-mistress was not smiling much when she found her tapestry in my kitchen-not smiling a bit when she saw that Pikel had spilled gravy on one corner.”
Cadderly flinched at that remark. Headmistress Pertelope was a tolerant woman, especially of Cadderly and his inventions, but she prized her art collection above all else. The tapestry depicting the elven war was one of her favorites.
“I am sorry if I have caused you two any problems,” Cadderly said sincerely, though the honest lament did not stop him from dipping his fingers into a bowl that Ivan had recently used for cake baking. “I did not believe . . “
Ivan waved his concerns away. “Not a problem,” the dwarf grunted. “We just blamed everything on yerself.”
“Just finish the crossbow,” Cadderly instructed with a halfhearted chuckle. “I will go to Headmistress Pertelope and set things right.”
“Perhaps Headmistress Pertelope will come to you,” came a woman’s voice from the kitchen’s doorway, behind Cadderly. The young scholar turned slowly and winced even more when he saw that Headmaster Avery stood beside Pertelope.
“So you have elevated your mischief to theft,” Avery remarked. “I fear that your time in the library may be drawing to an end, Brother Cadderly, though that unfortunate conclusion was not altogether unexpected, given your heri...”
“You must be given the opportunity to explain,” Pertelope interrupted, flashing a sudden dark glare Avery’s way. “I am not pleased, whatever excuse you might offer.”
“I had ...” Cadderly stuttered. “I meant to ...”
“Enough!” Avery commanded, glowering at both Cadderly and the headmistress. “You may explain about Headmistress Pertelope’s tapestry later,” he said to Cadderly. “First, do tell me why are you here. Have you no work to do? I thought that I had given you enough to keep you busy, but if I thought wrong, I can surely correct the situation!”
“I am busy,” Cadderly insisted. “I only wanted to check on the kitchen, to make certain that I had not missed anything in my cleaning.” As soon as Cadderly glanced around, he realized how ludicrous his claim sounded. Ivan and Pikel never kept an overly neat shop. Half the floor was covered with spilled flour, the other half with assorted herbs and sauces. Fungus-lined bowls, some empty and some half full of last week’s meals-some from meals even older than that-sat on every available space, counter, or table.
Avery’s brow crinkled as he recognized the lie for what it was. “Do make certain that the task was done correctly, Brother Cadderly,” the headmaster crooned with dripping sarcasm. “Then you may join Brother Rufo in his inventory of the wine cellar. You will be informed of how Dean Thobicus will proceed concerning your greater transgression.” Avery turned and stalked away, but Pertelope did not immediately follow.
“I know that you meant to return the tapestry,” the stately older woman said. “Might I know why you saw the need to appropriate it at all? You might have asked.”
“We only needed it for a few days,” Cadderly replied. He looked to Ivan and indicated the drawer, and the dwarf reached into it and produced the nearly completed crossbow. “For this.”
Pertelope’s hazel eyes sparkled at the sight. She moved across the room and tentatively took the small weapon from the dwarf. “Exquisite,” she muttered, truly awed by the reproduction.
“My thanks,” Ivan replied proudly.
“Oo oi!” Pikel added in a triumphant tone.
“I would have shown it to you,” Cadderly explained, “but I thought the surprise would prove more pleasurable when it was completed.”
Pertelope smiled warmly at Cadderly. “Can you complete it without the tapestry?”
Cadderly nodded.
“I will want to see it then, when it is done,” said the headmistress, suddenly businesslike. “You should have asked for the tapestry,” she scolded, then she glanced around and added under her breath, “Do not fear too much for Headmaster Avery. He is excitable, but he forgets quickly. He likes you, whatever his bluster. Go, now, to your duties.”
* * * * *
Barjin crept from cask to cask, studying the angular man at work sorting wine bottles. The evil priest had suspected that his victim, the catalyst for the chaos curse, would come from the cellar, but he was no less delighted when he found this man unexpectedly at work here on his very first trip up the rickety stairway. The door to the lower dungeons was cleverly concealed-no doubt by the thirsty groundskeeper-in a thickly packed and remote corner of the huge chamber. The portal probably had been long forgotten by the priests of the library, allowing Barjin easy and secret access.
Barjin’s delight diminished considerably when he worked his way far enough around the room to cast some detection spells on the man. The same spells had been ambiguous on the groundskeeper- Barjin had not known for certain whether the old wretch would suffice until the warding glyphs had blown him back from the bottle, but the spells were not so ambiguous concerning Kierkan Rufo. This man was not possessed of innocence and would have no more luck with the magic bottle than did the groundskeeper.
“Hypocrite,” Barjin grumbled silently. He rested back in the shadows and wondered how he might still find some use for the angular man. Certainly visitors to the wine cellar were not commonplace and Barjin could not allow anyone to pass through without extracting some benefit.
He was still contemplating things when a second priest unexpectedly came skipping down the stairwell. Barjin watched curiously as this smiling young man, hair bouncing about his shoulders under a wide-brimmed hat, moved to confer with the angular worker. Barjin’s detection spells had not yet expired and when he focused on this newest arrival, his curiosity turned to delight.
Here was his catalyst.
He watched a bit longer-long enough to discern that there was some tension between the two-then sneaked back to the concealed door. He knew that his next critical moves must be planned carefully.
* * * * *
“Should we work together?” Cadderly offered in an exaggerated, bubbly voice.
Kierkan Rufo glared at him. “Have you any tricks planned for me now?” he asked. “Any new baubles to show off at my expense?”
“Are you saying that you did not deserve it?” Cadderly asked. “You started the battle when you brought Avery to my room.”
“Pity the mighty scribe,” came the sarcastic reply.
Cadderly started to respond, but held his tongue. He sympathized with Rufo, truly an attentive priest. Cadderly knew that the headmasters had pushed Rufo aside after Cadderly’s success with the wizard’s spellbook. The wound was too fresh to mend it here, Cadderly knew, and neither he nor Rufo had any desire to work together.
Rufo explained his logging system for the inventory so that their lists might be compatible. Cadderly saw several possibilities for improvement but again said nothing. “Do you understand?” Rufo asked, handing Cadderly a counting chart.
Cadderly nodded. “A good system,” he offered.
Rufo briskly waved him away, then continued his inventory, working his way slowly around the long and shadowy racks.
A flash of light in a distant comer caught the angular man’s attention, but it was gone as fast as it had appeared. Rufo cocked his head, took up his torch, and inched his way over. A wall of casks confronted him, but he noticed an opening around to the side.
“Is anyone there?” Rufo asked, a bit nervously. Torch leading the way, he peeked into the opening and saw the ancient portal.
“What is it?” came a voice behind him. Rufo jumped in surprise, dropped his torch at his feet, and upset a cask as he danced away from the flames. He was not comforted when the crashing had ended and he looked back into Cadderly’s grinning face.
“It is a door,” Rufo replied through gritted teeth.
Cadderly picked up the torch and peered in. “Now where might that lead?” he asked rhetorically.
“It is none of our concern,” Rufo said firmly.
“Of course it is,” Cadderly retorted. “It is part of the library and the library is our concern.”
“We must tell a headmaster and let him decide the proper way to investigate it,” Rufo offered. “Now give me the torch.”
Cadderly ignored him and advanced to the small wooden portal. It opened easily, revealing a descending stairway, and Cadderly was surprised and delighted once more.
“You surely will get us into even more trouble!” Rufo complained at his back. “Do you wish to count and clean until your hundredth birthday?”
“To the lowest levels?” Cadderly said excitedly, ignoring the warning. He looked back at Rufo, his face glowing brightly in the near torchlight.
The nervous Rufo backed away from the weirdly shadowed specter. He seemed not to understand his companion’s excitement.
“The lowest levels,” Cadderly repeated as though those words should hold some significance. “When the library was originally built, most of it was below ground. The Snowflakes were wilder back then, and the founders thought an underground complex more easily defended. The lowest catacombs were abandoned as the mountains were tamed and the building expanded, and eventually it was believed that all the exits had been sealed.” He looked back to the enticing stair. “Apparently that was not the case.”
“Then we must tell a headmaster,” Rufo declared nervously. “It is not our place to investigate hidden doorways.”
Cadderly shot him an incredulous stare, hardly believing the man to be so childish. “We will tell them,” the young scholar agreed, poking his head through the dusty opening. “In time.”
* * * * *
A short distance away, Barjin watched the two men with nervous anticipation, one hand holding tight to the security of his cruel mace. The evil priest knew that he had taken quite a chance in calling up the magical light signaling the portal’s location. If the two men decided to go and tell their masters, Barjin would have to intercept them-forcefully. But Barjin had never been patient, which was why he had come directly to the Edificant Library in the first place. There was a degree of danger in his gamble, both in coming here and in revealing the door, but the potential gains of both actions could not be ignored. If these two decided to explore, then Barjin would be one giant step closer to realizing his desires.
They disappeared from sight around the barricading casks, so Barjin crept closer.
“The stairs are fairly solid, though they are ancient,” he heard Cadderly call back, “and they go down a long, long way.”
Appearing skeptical, even afraid, the angular priest slowly backed out of the concealed area. “The headmaster,” he muttered softly and turned abruptly for the stairs.
Barjin stepped out before him.
Before Rufo could even cry out, the evil priest’s spell fell over him. Rufo’s gaze locked fast to the evil priest’s dark eyes, held in place by Barjin’s hypnotic stare. In his studies of wizardry, charms had always been the charismatic Barjin’s strength. His adoption of Talona had not diminished that touch, though the Lady of Poison’s clerics were not normally adept at such magic, and Kierkan Rufo was not a difficult opponent.
Nor were Barjin’s magically enhanced suggestions to the enthralled Rufo contrary to the angular man’s deepest desires.
* * * * *
Cadderly creeped slowly toward the open door, never taking his gaze from the enticing blackness beyond the meager limits of his torchlight. What wonders remained down there in the oldest rooms of the Edificant Library? he wondered. What secrets long forgotten about the founders and initial scholars?
“We should investigate-we’ll be working down here for many days,” Cadderly said, leaning forward and peering over the stairs. “No one would have to know until we decided to tell them.”
Despite his consuming curiosity for the mysteries before him, Cadderly kept enough wits about him to realize that he had been betrayed as soon as he felt a boot against His lower back. He grabbed the flimsy railing, but the wood broke away in his hand. He managed to look back for just an instant and saw Rufo crouched in the low doorway, a weird, emotionless expression on his dark and hollowed face.
Cadderly’s torch flew away, and he tumbled into the blackness, bouncing down the stairs and coming to rest heavily on the stone floor below. All the world fell into blackness; he did not hear the door close above him.
* * * * *
Kierkan Rufo went right from the wine cellar to his room that night, wanting to confront no one and respond to no questions. The recent events were but a blur to the charmed man. He vaguely remembered what he had done to Cadderly, though he couldn’t be certain if it had been real or a dream. He remembered, too, closing and blocking off the hidden door. There was something else, or someone else, though, in the picture, hovering off to the side in the shadows just out of reach of Rufo’s consciousness.
Try as he may, poor Rufo could not remember anything about Barjin, as a result of the enchanting priest’s devious instructions. In the back of his mind, Rufo retained the strange sensation that he had made a friend this night, one who understood his frustrations and who agreed that Cadderly was an unworthy man.
Cadderly awoke in utter darkness; he could not see his hand if he waved his fingers just an inch in front of his face. His other senses told him much, though. He could smell the thick dust and feel the sticky lines of cobwebs hanging all about.
“Rufo!” he called, but his voice carried nowhere in the dead air, just reminded him that he was alone in the dark. He crawled to his knees and found that he was sore in a dozen places, particularly on the side of his head, and that his tunic was crusted as if with dried blood. His torch lay beside him, but in pawing about it, Cadderly realized that it had expired many hours before.
Cadderly snapped his fingers, then reached down to his belt. A moment later, he popped the cap from a cylindrical tube and a ray of light cut through the darkness. Even to Cadderly, the light seemed an intruder in these corridors, which had known only darkness for centuries uncounted. A dozen small creatures scuttled away on the edges of Cadderly’s vision, just out of the light. Better to have them scurry away, Cadderly thought, than to have them lay in wait in the darkness for him to pass.
Cadderly examined his immediate surroundings with the light tube’s aperture wide open, mostly focusing on the shattered stairway beside him. Several stairs remained attached at the top, near the closed door, but most of the boards lay scattered about, apparently shattered by Cadderly’s heavy descent. No easy path back that way, he told himself, and he narrowed the beam to see down the greater distances. He was in a corridor, one of many crisscrossing and weaving together to form a honeycomb-type maze, judging from the many passages lining both walls. The supporting arches were similar to those of the library above, but, being an earlier architectural design, they were even thicker and lower, and seemed lower still covered with layers of dust, hanging webs, and promises of crawly things.
When Cadderly took the time to examine himself, he saw that his tunic was, as he expected, crusted with his own blood. He noticed a broken board lying next to him, sharply splintered and darkly stained. Tentatively, the young priest unbuttoned his tunic and pulled it aside, expecting a garish wound.
What he found instead was a scab and a bruise. Although the more dutiful priests of Deneir, even those Cadderly’s age, were accomplished healers, Cadderly was hardly practiced in the medicinal arts. He could tell, though, by the stains on the splintered board that his wound had been deep and it was obvious from his soaked shirt alone that he had lost quite a bit of blood. The wound was undeniably on the mend, though, and if it once had been serious, it was not now.
“Rufo?” Cadderly called again, wondering if his companion had come down behind him and healed him. There was no answer, not a sound in the dusty corridor. “If not Rufo, then who?” Cadderly asked himself softly. He shrugged his shoulders a moment later; the riddle was quite beyond him.
“Young and strong,” Cadderly congratulated himself having no other answer. He stretched the rest of his aches out and finished his survey of the area, wondering if there might be some way to reconstruct enough of the stairway to get back near the door. He set his light tube on the floor and pieced together some boards. The wood was terribly deteriorated and smashed beyond repair-too much so, Cadderly thought, to have been caused just by his fall. Several pieces were no more than splinters, as though they had been battered repeatedly.
After a short while, Cadderly gave up the idea of going back through the wine cellar. The old, rotted wood would never support his weight even if he could find some way to piece it back together. “It could be worse,” he whispered aloud, picking up his light tube and taking his spindle-disks from a pouch. He took a deep breath to steady himself and started off-any way seemed as good as another.
Crawling things darted to dark holes on the perimeter of the light beam and a shudder coursed along Cadderly’s spine as he imagined again what this journey might be like in darkness.
The walls were of brickwork in most of the passages, crushed under uncountable tonnage and cracked in many places. Bas-reliefs had worn away, the lines of an artist’s chisel filled in by the dust of centuries, the fine detail of sculptures replaced by the artwork of spiderwebs. Somewhere in the dark distance, Cadderly heard the drip of water, a dull and dead thump-thump. “The heartbeat of the catacombs,” Cadderly muttered grimly, and the thought did not comfort him.
He wandered for many minutes, trying to formulate some logical scheme for conquering the tunnel layout. While the builders of the original library had been an orderly group and had carefully thought out the catacomb design, the initial purposes, and courses, of the various tunnels had been adapted over the decades to fit the changing needs of the structure above.
Every time Cadderly thought he had some sense of where he might be, the next comer showed him differently. He moved along one low and wide corridor, taking care to keep away from the rotting crates lining the walls. If this was the storage area, he reasoned, there might be an outside exit nearby, a tunnel large enough for wagons, perhaps.
The corridor ended at a wide arch that fanned out diagonally under two smaller arches to the left and the right. These were congested by webs so thick that Cadderly had to retrieve a plank from the crates just to poke his way through.
The passages beyond the arched intersection were identical, layered stonework and only half as wide as the corridor he had just traveled. His instinct told him to go left, but it was just a guess, for in the winding ways Cadderly really had little idea of where he was in relation to the buildings above him.
He kept his pace swift, following the narrow beam faithfully and trying to ignore the rat squeaks and imagined perils to the sides and behind him. His fears were persistent, though, and each step came with more effort. He shifted the beam from side to side and saw that this passage’s walls were lined with dark holes, alcoves. Hiding places, Cadderly imagined, for crouched monsters.
Cadderly turned slowly, bringing his light to bear, and realized that in his narrow focus on the path ahead, he had crossed the first few sets of these alcoves. A shudder ran through his spine, for he figured out the purpose of the alcoves before his light ever angled properly for him to see inside one.
Cadderly jumped back. The distant thump-thump of the catacomb heartbeat remained steady, but the young scholar’s own heart missed a few beats, for the beam of light fell upon a seated skeleton just a few feet to Cadderly’s side. If this passage had been intended for storage, its goods were macabre indeed! Where once may have been stored crates of food, now there was only food for the carrion eaters. Cadderly had entered the crypts, he knew, the burial vaults for the earliest scholars of the Edificant Library.
The skeleton sat impassive and oblivious in its tattered shroud, hand bones crossed over its lap. Webs extended from a dozen angles in the small alcove, seeming to support the skeleton in its upright posture.
Cadderly sublimated his mounting terror, reminded himself that these were simply natural remains, the remains of great men, good-hearted and thinking men, and that he, too, one day would resemble the skeleton seated before him. He looked back and counted four alcoves on either side of the corridor behind him and considered whether he should turn back.
Stubbornly, Cadderly dismissed all his fears as irrational and focused again on the path before him. He kept his light in the middle of the passage, not wanting to look into any more of the alcoves, not wanting to test his determination any further.
But his eyes inevitably glanced to the side, to the hushed darkness. He imagined skeletal heads turning slowly to watch him pass.
Some fears were not so easily conquered.
A scuffle behind and to his left spun Cadderly about, his spindle-disks at the ready. His defensive reflexes launched the weapon before his mind could register the source of the noise: a small rat crawling across a wobbling skull.
The rodent flew away into webs and darkness when the disks struck full on the skull’s forehead. The wobbly skull flew, too, rebounding off the alcove’s back wall, rolling down the front of its former possessor, and coming to a rattling stop between the seated skeleton’s legs.
A chuckle burst from Cadderly’s mouth, relieved laughter at his own cowardice. The sound died away quickly as the dusty stillness reclaimed the ancient passage, and Cadderly relaxed ... until the skeleton reached down between its legs and retrieved its fallen head.
Cadderly stumbled backward against the opposite wall-and promptly felt a bony grip on his elbow. He tore away, snapped his spindle-disks in at this newest foe, and turned to flee, not pausing to note the damage his weapon had exacted. As his light swung about, though, Cadderly saw that the skeletons he had passed had risen and congregated in the corridor, and were now advancing, their faces locked in lipless grins, their arms outstretched as though they desired to pull Cadderly fully into their dark realm.
He had only one path open and he went with all speed, trying to keep his eyes ahead, trying to ignore the rattling of still more skeletons rising from every alcove he passed. He could only hope that no monstrous spiders were nearby as he charged right through another heavily webbed archway, tasting webs and spitting them out in disgust. He stumbled and fell more than once but always scrambled back to his feet, running blindly, knowing not where he should run, only what he must keep behind him.
More passages. More crypts. The rattling mounted behind him and he heard again, startlingly clear, the thump-thump water-drop heartbeat of the catacombs. He burst through another webbed archway, and then another, then came to a three-way intersection. He turned to the left but saw that the skeletons down that passage had already risen to block his way.
To the right he ran, too afraid to sort out any patterns, too distracted to realize that he was being herded.
He came to another low archway, noted that this one had no webs, but hadn’t the time to pause and consider the implications. He was in a wider, higher passage, a grander hall, and saw that the alcoves here were filled not by raggedly shrouded skeletons, but by standing sarcophagi, exquisitely detailed and gilded in precious metals and gemstones.
Cadderly only noticed them for a moment, for down at the end of the long hallway he saw light-not daylight, which he would have welcomed with open arms, but light nonetheless-peeking out at him from the cracks and loosened seals of an ancient door.
The rattling intensified, booming all about him. An eerie red mist appeared at Cadderly’s feet, following his progress, adding a surreal and dreamlike quality. Reality and nightmare bat-tied in Percival rushing thoughts, reason fighting fear.
The resolution to that battle lay in the light, Cadderly knew.
The young scholar staggered forward, his feet dragging as though the mist itself weighed heavily upon them. He lowered his shoulder, meaning to push right through the door, to charge right into the light.
The door squeaked open just before he collided, and he stumbled in, sinking down to his knees on the clean floor within. Then the door swung closed of its own accord, leaving the red mist and the macabre rattle out in the darkness. Cadderly remained very still for a long moment, confused and trying to slow his racing heart.
After a moment, Cadderly rose shakily to survey the room, hardly even registering that the door had closed behind him. He was struck by the cleanliness of this room, so out of place in the rest of the dungeons. He recognized the place as a former study hall; it was similar in design and contained similar furniture to those studies still in use in the library proper. Several small cabinets, worktables, and free-standing two-sided bookcases sat at regular intervals about the room, and a brazier rested on a tripod along the right-hand wall. Torches burned in two sconces, and the walls were lined with bookshelves, empty except for a few scattered parchments, yellow with age, and an occasional small sculpture, once a book end, perhaps. Cadderly’s gaze went to the brazier first, thinking it oddly out of place, but it was the display in the center that ultimately commanded his attention.
A long and narrow table had been placed there, with a purple and crimson blanket spread over it and hanging down the front and sides. Atop the table was a podium, and on this sat a clear bottle sealed with a large cork and filled with some red-glowing substance. In front of the bottle was a silvery bowl, platinum perhaps, intricately designed and covered with strange runes.
Cadderly was hardly surprised, or alarmed, at the blue mist he noted covering the floors and swirling about his legs. This entire adventure had taken on a blurry feeling of unreality to him. Rationally, he could tell himself that he was wide awake, but the dull ache on the side of his skull made him wonder just how badly he had banged his head. Whatever this was, though, Cadderly was now more intrigued than afraid, so, with great effort, he forced himself to this feet and took a cautious step toward the central table.
There were designs, tridents capped by three bottles, woven into the blanket. He noticed that the bottles of the designs were similar to the real one atop the table. Cadderly thought he knew most of the major holy symbols and alliance crests of the central Realms, but this was totally foreign. He wished he had prepared some spells that might reveal more of the strange altar, if it was an altar. Cadderly smiled at his own ineptitude. He rarely prepared any spells at all, and even when he took the time, his accomplishments with clerical magic were far from highly regarded. Cadderly was more scholar than priest, and he viewed his vows to Deneir more as an agreement of attitude and priorities than a pledge of devotion.
As he approached the table, he saw that the silvery bowl was filled with a clear liquid-probably water, though Cadderly did not dare dip his fingers into it. More intrigued by the glowing bottle behind it, Cadderly meant to pay it little heed at all, but the reflection of the flask in that strange rune-covered bowl captured his attention suddenly and for some reason would not let go.
Cadderly felt himself drawn toward that reflected image. He moved right up to the bowl and bent low, his face nearly touching the liquid. Then, as if a tiny pebble had fallen into the bowl, little circular ripples rolled out from the exact center. Far from breaking Cadderly’s concentration on the reflection, the watery dance only enhanced it. The light bounced and rolled around the tiny waves and the image of the bottle elongated and bent, side to side.
Cadderly knew somehow that the water was pleasantly warm. He wanted to immerse himself in the bowl, to silence all the noises of the world around him in watery stillness and feel nothing but the warmth.
Still there was the image, swaying enticingly, capturing Cadderly’s thoughts.
Cadderly looked up from the bowl to the bottle. Somewhere deep inside him he knew that something was amiss and that he should resist the strangely comforting sensations. Inanimate objects were not supposed to offer suggestions.
Open the bottle, came a call within his head. He did not recognize the soothing voice, but it promised only pleasure. Open the bottle.
Before he realized what he was doing, Cadderly had the bottle in his hands. He had no idea what the bottle truly was, or how and why this unknown altar had been set up. There was a danger here-Cadderly sensed it-but he could not sort it out clearly; the ripples in the silvery bowl had been so enthralling.
Open the bottle, came the quiet suggestion a third time. Cadderly simply could not determine whether or not he should resist and that indecision weakened his resolve. The cork stopper was stubborn, but not overly so, and it came out with a loud romp.
That pop cut through the smoky confusion in the young scholar’s brain, rang out like a clarion call of reality, warning him of the risk he had taken, but it was too late.
Red smoke poured out of the flask, engulfing Cadderly and spreading to fill the room. Cadderly realized his error at once and he moved to replace the cork, but watching from behind the cabinet, an unseen enemy was already at work.
“Hold!” came an undeniable command from the side of the room.
Cadderly had the cork almost back to the bottle when his hands stopped moving. Still the smoke poured out. Cadderly could not react, could not move at all, could not even make his eyes look away. His whole body grew weirdly numb, tingled in the grasp of a magical grip. A moment later, Cadderly saw a hand reach around him but did not even feel the bottle being pried from his grasp. He then was forcefully turned about to face a man he did not know.
The man was waving and chanting, though Cadderly could not hear the words. He recognized the movements as some sort of spellcasting and knew that he was in dire peril. His mind struggled against the paralysis that had overcome him.
It was a futile effort.
Cadderly felt his eyes drooping. The sensations suddenly came rushing back to his limbs, but all the world grew dark around him and he felt himself falling, forever falling.
* * * * *
“Come, groundskeeper,” Barjin called. From out of the same cabinet in which Barjin had hidden came Mullivy’s pallid corpse.
Barjin spent a moment inspecting his latest victim. Cadderly’s light tube and spindle-disks, along with a dozen other curiosities, intrigued the priest, but Barjin quickly dismissed the idea of taking anything. He had used the same spell of forgetfulness on this man as he had on the tall, angular man back in the wine cellar. Barjin knew that this man, unlike the other, was strong of mind and will, and would unconsciously battle such a spell. Missing items might aid his fight to regain the blocked parts of his memory, and for the priest, alone and beneath a virtual army of enemies, that could prove disastrous.
Barjin dropped a hand to his hungry mace. Perhaps he should kill this one now, add this young priest to his undead army so that he would bring Barjin no trouble in the future. The evil priest dismissed the idea as quickly as it had come to him; his goddess, a deity of chaos, would not approve of eliminating the excruciating irony. This man had served as catalyst for the curse; let him see the destruction wrought of his own hands!
“Bring him,” Barjin instructed, dropping Cadderly to his zombie. With one stiff arm and little effort, Mullivy lifted Cadderly from the floor.
“And bring the old ladder,” Barjin added. “We must get back up to the wine cellar. We have much work to do before the dawn.”
Barjin wrung his hands with mounting excitement. The primary component of the ritual had been executed easily; all that remained to complete the curse, to fully loose the Most Fatal Horror upon the Edificant Library, were a few minor ceremonies.
Danica knew by the approaching headmaster’s expression, and by the fact that Kierkan Rufo shuffled along at Avery’s heels, that Cadderly had done something wrong again. She pushed away the book she was reading and folded her arms on the table in front of her.
Avery, normally polite to guests of the library, came quickly and bluntly to his point. “Where is he?” the headmaster demanded.
“He?” Danica replied. She knew perfectly well that Avery was referring to Cadderly, but she didn’t appreciate the headmaster’s tone.
“You know ...” Avery began loudly, but then he realized Danica’s objections and caught himself, looked around, and blushed with embarrassment.
“I am sorry. Lady Danica,” he apologized sincerely. “I had only thought... I mean, you and ...” He stomped hard with one foot to steady himself and proclaimed, “That Cadderly frustrates me so!”
Danica accepted the apology with a grin and a nod, understanding, even sympathizing, with Avery’s feelings. Cadderly was an easily distracted free spirit, and, like most formal religious organizations, the Order of Deneir was firmly based on discipline. It was not a difficult task for Danica to remember just a few of the many times she had waited for Cadderly at an appointed place and time, only to eventually give up and go back to her chambers alone, cursing the day she ever saw his boyish smile and inquisitive eyes.
For all her frustrations, though, the young woman could not deny the pangs in her heart whenever she looked upon Cadderly. Her smile only widened as she thought of him now, flying in the face of Avery’s bubbling anger. As soon as Danica turned her attention back to the present and looked over Avery’s shoulder, though, her grin disappeared. There stood Kierkan Rufo, leaning slightly to one side, as always, but wearing a mask of concern rather than the normally smug expression he displayed whenever he had one-upped his rival.
Danica locked stares with the man, her unconscious grimace revealing her true feelings toward him. She knew that he was Cadderly’s friend-sort of-and she never spoke out against him to Cadderly, but in her heart she didn’t trust the man, not at all.
Rufo had made many advances on Danica, beginning on her very first day at the Edificant Library, the first time the two had ever met. Danica was young and pretty and not unused to such advances, but Rufo had unnerved her on that occasion. When she had politely turned Rufo down, he just stood towering over her, tilting his head and staring, for many minutes with that same frozen, unblinking stare on his face. Danica didn’t know exactly what it was that had caused her to rebuff Rufo way back then, but she suspected it was his dark, deep-set eyes. They showed the same inner light of intelligence as Cadderly’s, but if Cadderly’s were inquisitive, then Rufo’s were conniving. Cadderly’s eyes sparkled joyfully as if in search of answers to the uncounted mysteries of the world.
Rufo’s, too, collected information, but his, Danica believed, searched for advantage.
Rufo had never given up on Danica, even after her budding relationship with Cadderly had become common talk in the library. Rufo still approached her often, and still she sent him away, but sometimes she saw him, out of the comer of her eye, sitting across the room and staring at her, studying her as though she were some amusing book.
“Do you know where he is?” Avery asked her, his tone more controlled.
“Who?” Danica answered, hardly hearing the question.
“Cadderly!” cried the flustered headmaster.
Danica looked at him, surprised by the sudden outburst.
“Cadderly,” Avery said again, regaining his composure. “Do you know where Cadderly might be found?”
Danica paused and considered the question and the look on Rufo’s face, wondering if she should be worried. As far as she knew, Avery was the one directing Cadderly’s movements.
“I have not seen him this morning,” she answered honestly. “I thought that you had put him to work-in the wine cellar, by the words of the dwarven brothers.”
Avery nodded. “So, too, did I believe, but it seems as if our dear Cadderly has had enough of his labors. He did not report to me this morning, as he had been instructed, nor was he in his room when I went to find him.”
“Had he been in his room at all this morning?” Danica asked. She found her gaze again drawn to Kierkan Rufo, fearing for Cadderly and somehow guessing that if trouble had befallen him, Rufo was involved.
Rufo’s reaction did not diminish her suspicions. He blinked-one of the few times Danica had ever seen him blink-and tried hard to appear unconcerned as he looked away.
“I cannot say,” Avery replied and he, too, turned to Rufo for some answers.
The angular man only shrugged. “I left him in the wine cellar,” he said. “I was down there working long before he arrived. I thought it fitting that I retire earlier than he.”
Before Avery could even suggest that they go search the wine cellar, Danica had pushed past him and started on her way.
* * * * *
The darkness and the weight. Those were the two facts of Cadderly’s predicament: the darkness and the weight. And the pain. There was pain, too. He didn’t know where he was or how he had gotten to tins dark place or why he could not move. He was lying face down on the stone floor, buried by something. He tried calling out several times but found little breath.
Images of walking skeletons and thick spiderwebs flitted about his consciousness as he lay there, but they had no real definition, nor any solid place in his memory. Somewhere-in a dream?-he had seen them, but whether that place had anything to do with this place, he could not guess.
Then he saw the flicker of torchlight, far away but coming down toward him, and as the shadows revealed tall and open racks, he at last recognized his surroundings.
“The wine cellar,” Cadderly grunted, though the effort sorely hurt. “Rufo?” It was all a blur. He remembered coming down from the kitchen to join Rufo in his inventory, and remembered beginning his work, away from the angular man, but that was all. Something obviously had happened subsequent to that, but Cadderly had no recollection of it, or of how he might possibly have gotten in his current predicament.
“Cadderly?” came a call, Danica’s voice. Not one, but three torches had entered the large wine cellar.
“Here!” Cadderly gasped with all his breath, though the wheeze was not nearly loud enough to be heard. The torches fanned out in different directions, sometimes disappearing from Cadderly’s sight, other times flickering at regular intervals as they moved behind the open, bottle-filled racks. All three bearers-Avery, Rufo, and Danica, Cadderly realized- called out now.
“Here!” he gasped as often as he could. Still, the cellar was wide and sectioned by dozens of tall wine racks, and it was many minutes before Cadderly’s call was heard.
Kierkan Rufo found him. The tall man seemed more ghastly than ever to Cadderly as he looked up at the shadows splayed across Rufo’s angular features. Rufo appeared surprised to find Cadderly, then he glanced all about, as if undecided as to how to react.
“Could you ...” Cadderly began, and he paused to catch his breath. “Please get... me ... get this off me.”
Still Rufo hesitated, confusion and concern crossing his face. “Over here,” he called out finally. “I have found him.”
Cadderly didn’t note much relief in Rufo’s tone.
Rufo laid his torch down and began removing the pile of casks that were pinning Cadderly. Over his shoulder, Cadderly noticed Rufo tipping one heavy cask over him, and the thought came to him for just an instant that the angular man had tilted it purposely and meant to drop it on his head. Then Danica came running up, and she helped Rufo push it away.
All the casks were cleared before Headmaster Avery ever got there, and Cadderly started to rise.
Danica held him down. “Do not move!” she instructed firmly. Her expression was grave, her brown almond eyes intense and uncompromising. “Not until I have inspected your wounds.”
“I am all right,” Cadderly tried to insist, but he knew his words fell on deaf ears. Danica had been scared, and the stubborn woman rarely bothered to argue when she was scared. Cadderly tried halfheartedly to rise again, but this time Danica’s strong hand stopped him, pressing on a particularly vulnerable area on the back of his neck.
“I have ways of stopping you from struggling,” Danica promised, and Cadderly didn’t doubt her. He put his cheek down on folded arms and let Danica have her way.
“How did this happen?” demanded the chubby, red-faced Avery, huffing up to join them.
“He was counting bottles when I left,” Rufo offered nervously.
Cadderly’s face crinkled in confusion as he tried again to sort through the blur of his memories. He got the uncomfortable feeling that Rufo expected his explanation to sound like an accusation, and Cadderly himself wondered what part Rufo might have had in his troubles. A feeling of something hard-a boot?-against his back slipped past him too quickly to make any sense.
“I know not,” Cadderly answered honestly. “I just cannot remember. I was counting ...” He stopped there and shook his head in frustration. Cadderly’s existence depended on knowledge; he didn’t like illogical puzzles.
“And you wandered away,” Avery finished for him. “You went exploring when you should have been working.”
“The wounds are not too severe,” Danica cut in suddenly.
Cadderly knew that she had purposely deflected the headmaster’s rising agitation, and he smiled his thanks as Danica helped him to his feet. It felt good to be standing again, though Cadderly had to lean on Danica for support for several minutes.
Somehow Avery’s supposition didn’t fit into Cadderly’s memories-whatever they might be. He did not believe that he had just “wandered away” to fall into trouble. “No,” he declared. “Not like that. There was something here.” He looked at Danica, then to Rufo. “A light?”
Hearing the word triggered another memory for Cadderly. “The door!” he cried suddenly.
If the torchlight had been stronger, they all would have noticed the blood drain from Kierkan Rufo’s face.
“The door,” Cadderly said again. “Behind the wall of casks.”
“What door?” Avery demanded.
Cadderly paused and thought for a moment but had no answers. His considerable willpower subconsciously battled Barjin’s memory blocking spell, but all he could remember was the door, some door, somewhere. And wherever that portal might have led, Cadderly could only guess. He resolved to find out again, as soon as he rounded the casks and opened it.
It was gone.
Cadderly stood for a long while, staring at the dusty bricks of the solid wall.
“What door?” the impatient headmaster asked again.
“It was here,” Cadderly insisted with as much conviction as he could muster. He moved closer to the wall and felt it. That, too, proved futile. “I remember. ..” Cadderly started to protest. He felt an arm reach under his shoulder.
“You have been hurt in the head,” Danica said quietly. “Confusion is not unexpected after such a blow, nor usually lasting,” she added quickly to comfort him.
“No, no,” Cadderly protested, but he let Danica lead him out.
“What door?” the flustered Avery asked a third time.
“He has hurt his head,” Danica interjected.
“I thought ...” Cadderly began. “It must have been a dream-“ he looked at Avery directly “-but what a strange dream.”
Rufo’s sigh was audible. “He is not hurt too badly?” the tall man asked embarrassedly when curious expressions turned toward him.
“Not too badly,” replied Danica, the tone of her voice indicating her suspicions.
Cadderly hardly noticed, too engrossed was he with trying to remember. “What would be below here?” he asked on impulse.
“Nothing to concern you,” Avery replied sharply.
Skeletons walked intangibly through Cadderly’s subconscious again. “Crypts?” he asked.
“Nothing to concern you!” Avery answered sternly. “I grow tired of your curiosity, brother.”
Cadderly, too, was annoyed, not enjoying the puzzles within his own mind. Avery’s glare was uncompromising, but Cadderly was too upset to be scared off. “Sssh!” he hissed sarcastically, putting a finger to his pursed lips. “You would not want Deneir, whose edict is the seeking of knowledge, to hear you say that.”
Avery’s face turned so red that Cadderly almost expected it to burst. “Go and see the healers” the headmaster growled at Cadderly, “then come back to see me. I have a thousand tasks prepared for you.” He spun about and stormed away, Rufo dose on his heels, though all the way to the stairs, Rufo kept glancing back over his shoulder.
Danica gave Cadderly a forceful nudge-and a painful one against his sorely bruised ribs. “You never know when to hold your tongue,” she scolded. “If you keep talking so to Headmaster Avery, we will never find the opportunity to see each other!” With her torch in one hand and her other wrapped about Cadderly’s back, she pulled him roughly toward the distant stairs.
Cadderly looked down at her, thinking that he owed her an apology, but he saw that Danica was biting back laughter and he realized that she hadn’t truly disapproved of his sarcasm.
* * * * *
Barjin watched the steady stream of reddish smoke rise from the opened flask and slip into cracks in the ceiling, making its way up into the library above. The evil priest still had several ceremonies to perform to complete the formal ritual, as agreed upon back in Castle Trinity, but these were merely a formality. The Most Fatal Horror had been released, and the chaos curse was under way.
It would take longer to exact a toll here, Barjin knew, than it had with Haverly back at Castle Trinity. According to Aballister, Haverly had taken a concentrated dose right in the face. Producing the elixir was far too expensive to duplicate those effects on enemy after enemy, thus the mixture in the ever-smoking bottle had been greatly diluted. The priests here would absorb the elixir gradually, each hour bringing them closer to the edge of doom. Barjin held no reservations, though. He believed in the powers of the elixir, in the powers of his goddess-particularly with himself serving as her agent.
“Let us see how these pious fools behave when their truest emotions are revealed,” he snickered to Mullivy. The zombie did not respond, of course. He just stood very still, unblinking and unmoving. Barjin gave him a sour look and turned his gaze back to the ever-smoking bottle.
“The next days will be the most dangerous,” he whispered to himself. “Beyond that, the priests will have no power to stand against me.” He looked back to Mullivy and grinned wickedly.
“’We will be ready,” Barjin promised. He already had animated dozens of skeletons and had enacted further spells upon Mullivy’s corpse to strengthen it. And, of course, there was Khalif, Barjin’s prized soldier, awaiting the priest’s command from the sarcophagus just outside the altar room door.
Barjin meant to add new and more horrible monsters to his growing army. First, he would uncover the necromancer’s stone and see what undead allies it might bring in. Then, taking Aballister’s advice, he would open a gate to the least of the lower planes, summoning minor monsters to serve as advisers and scouts for his expanding evil network.
“Let the foolish priests come after us,” Barjin said, taking an ancient and evil tome, a book of sorcery and necromancy, out of the folds of his robes. “Let them see the horror that has befallen them!”