Cryptic

The tunnel was fiery and swirling, but not so long for the imp. These were summoning flames and did not burn a creature of Druzil’s otherworldly constitution. Barjin had opened his interplanar gate, exactly as Dorigen had predicted, and Druzil was quick to rush to the cleric’s call.

A puff of red smoke-Druzil dropping the powder to effectively shut the gate behind him-signaled Barjin that his first summoned ally had arrived. He stared deeply into the brazier’s orange flames at the grotesque face taking definite form. A batlike wing extended from the side of the brazier, then another, and a moment later Druzil hopped through. “Who has dared to call me?” the imp snorted, playing the part of an unwitting lower-planar creature caught by Barjin’s magical call.

“An imp?” the priest retorted derisively. “I have extended all my efforts for the sake of summoning a mere imp?” Druzil folded his wings around him and snarled, not appreciating Barjin’s tone.

 If Barjin exhibited sarcastic disdain, Druzil knew that that, too, was part of the summoning game. As with the summoned creature, if the summoner accepted the situation without grumbles, he would be giving a definite advantage to his counterpart. Sorcery, the magic of conjuring creatures from other planes, was a contest of wills, where perceived strength was often more important than actual strength.

Druzil knew that the priest was thrilled that his first call had been answered at all, and an imp, resourceful and clever, was no small catch. But Barjin had to seem disappointed, had to make Druzil believe he was capable of calling and controlling much larger and stronger denizens.

Druzil didn’t appear impressed. “I may go?” he replied as he turned back to the brazier.

“Hold!” Barjin shouted at him. “Do not assume anything, I warn you. I have not dismissed you, nor shall I for many days to come. What is your name?”

“Cueltar qui tellemar gwi,” Druzil replied.

“Lackey of the stupid one?” Barjin translated, laughing, though he did not fully understand the connotations of Druzil’s words. “Surely you can concoct a better title than that for yourself!”

Druzil rocked back on his clawed feet, hardly believing that Barjin could understand the common language of the lower planes. This priest was full of surprises.

“Druzil,” the imp replied suddenly, though he didn’t quite understand why he had revealed his true name. Barjin’s quiet chuckle told him that the priest might have mentally compelled such a truthful response.

Yes, Druzil thought again, this priest was full of surprises.

“Druzil,” Barjin muttered, as though he had heard the name before, a fact that did not please the imp. “Welcome, Druzil,” Barjin said sincerely, “and be glad that I have called you to my side. You are a creature of chaos, and you will not be disappointed by what you witness in your short stay here.”

“I have seen the Abyss,” Druzil reminded him. “You cannot imagine the wonders there.”

Barjin conceded the point with a nod. No matter how completely the Most Fatal Horror engulfed the priests of the Edificant Library, it could not, of course, rival the unending hellish chaos of the Abyss.

“We are in the dungeons of a bastion dedicated to order and goodness,” Barjin explained.

Druzil crinkled his bulbous nose sourly, acting as though Barjin had revealed something he did not already know.

“That is about to change,” Barjin assured him. “A curse has befallen this place, one that will bring the goodly priests to their knees. Even an imp who has witnessed the Abyss should enjoy that spectacle.”

The glimmer in Druzil’s black eyes was genuine. This was the whole purpose in giving Aballister the recipe for the chaos curse. Aballister had expressed concerns, even distress over Barjin’s choice of target and Barjin’s apparent successes, but Druzil was not Aballister’s stooge. If Barjin could indeed take down the Edificant Library, then Druzil would be much closer to realizing his hopes of throwing an entire region of the Realms into absolute disarray.

He looked around at the altar room, impressed by Barjin’s work, particularly by the setup around the precious bottle. His gaze then went to the door, and he was truly amazed.

There stood Barjin’s newest bodyguard, wrapped head to toe in graying linen. Some of the doth had slipped, revealing part of the mummy’s face, dried and hollowed skin on bone with several lesions where the skilled preservation techniques had not held up to the test of centuries.

“Do you like him?” Barjin asked.

Druzil did not know how to respond. A mummy! Mummies were among the most powerful of the undead, strong and disease ridden, hateful of all living things and nearly invulnerable to most attacks. Few could animate such a monster; fewer still would dare to, fearing that they could not begin to keep the monster under control.

 “The priests and scholars above soon will be helpless, lost in their own confusion,” Barjin explained, “then they will meet my army. Look at him, my new friend, Druzil,” the priest said triumphantly, moving over to Khalif. He started to drape an arm over the scabrous thing, then apparently reconsidered the act and prudently pulled back. “Is he not beautiful? He does love me so.” To illustrate his power, Barjin turned to the mummy and commanded, “Khalif, kneel!”

The monster stiffly dropped to its knees.

“There are other preserved corpses that offer similar promise,” Barjin bluffed. He had no other ashes, and any attempts to animate a mummified corpse without such aid would prove futile or produce nothing more powerful than a simple zombie.

Druzil’s growing admiration for Barjin did not diminish when the priest led him out on a tour of the catacombs. Cunning, explosive glyphs, both fiery and electrical, had been placed at strategic positions, and a virtual army of animated skeletons sat patiently in their open tombs, awaiting Barjin’s commands or the predetermined conditions for action the priest had set upon them.

Druzil did not need to be reminded that all of these precautions could well be unnecessary. If the chaos curse continued to work effectively in the library above, no enemies would be likely to find their way down to bother Barjin.

“Caution,” Barjin muttered as though he had read Druzil’s thoughts when the two had returned to the altar room. “I always assume the worst, thus am I pleasantly surprised if anything better occurs.”

Druzil could not hide his agreement or his excitement. Barjin’s thinking had been complete; the priest had taken no chances.

“This library soon will be mine,” Barjin assured the imp, and Druzil did not doubt his boasts. “With the Edificant Library, the very cornerstone of the Impresk region, defeated, all the area from Shilmista Forest to Impresk Lake will fall before me.”

Druzil liked what he heard, but Barjin’s reference to “me” and not to the triumvirate was a bit unnerving. Druzil did not want any open warfare among the ruling factions of Castle Trinity, but if it did come, the imp had to make certain that he chose the winning side. He was even more glad now that Aballister had chosen to send him to Barjin, glad that he could view both sides of the coming storm.

“It is almost done,” Barjin reiterated. “The curse grabs at the sensibilities of the priests above and the library soon will fall.”

“How can you know what happens above?” Druzil asked him, for the tour had not included any windows or passages up into the library. The one stairway Barjin had shown him had been smashed into pieces, and the door it once had led to had been recently bricked off. The only apparent weakness in Barjin’s setup was isolation, not knowing the exact sequence of events in the library above.

“I have only indications,” Barjin admitted. “Behind the new wall I showed you lies the library’s wine cellar. I have heard many priests passing through there for more than a day now, grabbing bottles at random-some of which are extraordinarily expensive-and apparently guzzling them down. Their talk and actions speak loudly of the growing chaos, for tins certainly is not within the rules of behavior in the disciplined library. Yet you are correct in your observations, friend imp. I do indeed require more details to the events above.”

“So you have summoned me,” said Druzil.

“So I have opened the gate,” Barjin corrected, flashing a sly look Druzil’s way. “I had hoped for a more powerful ally.”

More of the summoner’s facade, Druzil thought, but he did not question Barjin’s claims. Anxious to see for himself what effects the curse was having, Druzil was more than willing to serve Barjin in a scouting capacity. “Please, my master,” the imp whined. “Let me go and see for you. Please, oh, please!”

“Yes, yes,” Barjin chuckled condescendingly. “You may go above while I bring more allies through the gate.”

“Does a path remain through the wine cellar?” the imp asked.

“No,” Barjin explained, grabbing Mullivy by the arm. “My good groundskeeper has sealed that door well.

“Take my imp out the western tunnel,” Barjin instructed the zombie. “Then return to me!” Mullivy’s stinking, bloated corpse shuffled, stiff-legged, out of its guard position and through the altar room door. Not revolted in the least by the disgusting thing, Druzil flapped over and found a perch on Mullivy’s shoulder.

“Take care, for it is daylight above,” Barjin called after him. As response, Druzil chuckled, whispered an arcane phrase, and became invisible.

Barjin moved excitedly back to the gate, hoping for continued good fortune in his summoning. An imp was a prized catch for so small a gate, though if Barjin had known the identity of this particular imp and his wizard master, or that Druzil had sealed the gate behind his entry, he would not have been so thrilled.

He tried for more than an hour, calling out general spells of summoning and the names of every minor denizen he knew. Flames leaped and danced, but no forms appeared within their orange glow. Barjin wasn’t too concerned. The brazier would burn for many days, and the necromancer’s stone, though it had not yet produced results, continued to send out its call for undead. The priest would find many opportunities to add to his force.

* * * * *

Cadderly wandered the hallways of the building, stunned by the emptiness, the brooding quiet. Many priests, both visitors and those of the host sects, such as Brother Chaunticleer, had left the library without explanation, and many of those who had remained apparently preferred the solitude of their rooms.

 Cadderly did find Ivan and Pikel, in the kitchen, busily cooking a variety of dishes.

“Your fights have ended?” Cadderly asked, grabbing a biscuit as he entered. He realized then that he hadn’t eaten much in nearly a day, and that Danica and Newander no doubt would be hungry also.

“Fights?” Ivan balked. “No time for fighting, boy! Been cooking since the eve. Not a many for supper, but them that’s there won’t go away.”

A terrible, sick feeling washed over Cadderly. He moved through the kitchen to peek out the other door, which led to the library’s large dining hall. A score of people were in there, Headmaster Avery among them, stuffing themselves hand over hand. Several had fallen to the floor, so full that they could hardly move, but still trying to shove more food into their eager mouths.

“You are killing them, you know,” Cadderly remarked to the dwarves, his tone resigned. The young scholar was beginning to get an idea of what was going on. He thought of Histra and her unending passion, of Danica’s sudden obsession with lessons that were beyond her level of achievement, and of the druids, Arcite and Cleo, so fanatic to their tenets that they had lost their very identities.

“They will eat as long as you put food before them,” Cadderly explained. “They will gorge themselves until they die.”

Both Ivan and Pikel stopped their stirring and stared long and hard at the young priest.

“Slow the meals down,” Cadderly instructed them.

For the first time in a while, Cadderly noted some measure of comprehension. Both dwarves seemed almost repulsed by their own participation in the food orgy. Together they backed away from their respective pots.

“Slow the meals down,” Cadderly asked again.

Ivan nodded gravely.

“Oo,” added Pikel.

Cadderly studied the brothers for a long moment, sensing that they had regained their sanity, that he could trust them as he had trusted Newander.

“I will be back as soon as I can,” he promised, then he took a couple of plates, packed a meal, and took his leave.

Anyone watching would have noticed a profound difference in the strides of the young scholar as he left the kitchen. Cadderly had come down tentatively, afraid of something he could not understand. He still had not figured out the curse or its cause, nor could he remember his trials in the lower catacombs, but, more and more, it was becoming evident to Cadderly that fate had placed a great burden upon him, and the price of his success or failure was terrifying indeed.

To his relief, Newander had the situation in Danica’s room under control. Danica was still in her bed, conscious but unable to move, for the druid had compelled long vines of ivy to come in through the window and wrap the woman where she lay. Newander, too, seemed in better spirits, and his face brightened even more when Cadderly handed him the supper plate.

“You have done well,” Cadderly remarked.

“Minor magic,” the druid answered. “Her wounds were not so bad. What have you learned?”

Cadderly shrugged. “Little,” he answered. “Whatever is wrong in this place grows worse by the moment. I have an idea, though, a way that I might learn what is happening.”

Newander perked up, expecting some revelation.

“I am going to go to sleep.”

The druid’s fair face crinkled in confusion, but Cadderly’s confident smile deflected any forthcoming questions. Newander took the plate and began eating, mumbling to himself with every bite.

Cadderly knelt beside Danica. She seemed barely coherent, but she managed to whisper, “Iron Skull.”

“Forget Iron Skull,” Cadderly replied quietly. “You must rest and heal. Something is wrong here, Danica, wrong with you and with all the library. I do not know why, but I seem to have not been affected.” He paused, searching for the words.

“I think I did something,” he said. Newander shuffled uneasily behind him. “I cannot explain.... I do not understand, but I have this feeling, this vagrant thought, that I somehow caused all of this.”

“Surely you cannot blame yourself,” Newander said.

Cadderly turned on him. “I am not looking to place any blame at all,” he replied evenly, “but I believe I played a part in this growing catastrophe, whatever it might be. If I did, then I must accept that fact and search, not for blame, but for a solution.”

“How do you mean to search?” the druid asked. His tone turned sarcastic. “By going to sleep?”

“It is hard to explain,” Cadderly replied to the druid’s stare. “I have been dreaming-vivid dreams. I feel there is a connection. I cannot explain  ...”

Newander’s visage softened. “You need not explain,” he said, no longer doubting. “Dreams sometimes do have the power of prophecy, and we have no clearer trail to follow. Take your rest, then. I will watch over you.”

Cadderly kissed Danica’s pale cheek.

“Iron Skull,” the woman whispered.

More determined than ever, Cadderly pulled a blanket to the corner of the room and lay down, placing an inkwell, quill, and parchments beside him. He threw an arm across his eyes and filled his thoughts with skeletons and ghouls, beckoning the nightmare.

* * * * *

The skeletons were waiting for him. Cadderly could smell the rot and the thick dust, and hear the scuffle of fleshless feet on the hard stone. He ran in a red fog, his legs heavy, too heavy. He saw a door down a long hallway, and there was light peeking through its cracks. His legs were too heavy; he could not get there.        ‘

Cold beads of sweat caked Cadderly’s clothing and streaked his face. His eyes popped open and there, hovering over him, stood the druid.

“What have you seen, boy?” Newander asked. The druid quickly handed him the writing materials.

Cadderly tried to articulate the gruesome scene, but it was fast fading from his thoughts. He snatched up the quill and began writing and sketching, capturing as many of the images as he could, forcing his thoughts back into the dimming recesses of his nightmare.

Then it was daytime again, midafternoon, and the dream was no more. Cadderly remembered the skeletons and the smell of dust, but the details were foggy and indistinct. He looked down to the parchment and was surprised by what he saw, as if someone else had done the writing. At the top of the scroll were the words, “slow  ... red fog.. . reaching for me ... too close!” and below these was a sketch of a long hallway, its sides lined by sarcophagi-filled alcoves and with a cracked door at its end.

“I know this place,” Cadderly began tentatively, then he stopped abruptly, his elation and train of thought disrupted by Barjin’s insidious and incessant memory-blocking spell.

Before Cadderly could fight back against the sudden lapse, a scream from the hallway froze him where he sat. He looked at Newander, who was equally disturbed.

“That was not the priestess of Sune,” the druid remarked. They rushed through the door and into the hallway.

There stood a gray-capped priest, holding his entrails in his hands, an eerie, almost ecstatic expression on his face. His tunic, too, was gray, though most of it now was blood-stained, and still more blood poured out of the man’s opened belly with each passing second.

Cadderly and Newander could not immediately find the strength to go to him, knew the futility of it anyway. They watched in blank horror as the priest fell face down, a pool of blood widening around him.

Disturbing Answers

Mullivy was not a swift walker, and Druzil used this time away from Barjin to reestablish contact with his master. He sent his thoughts out across the miles to Castle Trinity and found an eager recipient awaiting them. Greetings, my master, the imp communicated. You have found Barjin?

In the catacombs, as you believed, Druzil replied. The fool.

Druzil wasn’t certain that he shared Aballister’s appraisal, but the wizard didn’t need to know that. He has other allies, the imp imparted. Undead allies, including a mummy.

Druzil smiled widely as he sensed Aballister’s reaction to that bit of news. The wizard didn’t mean to communicate his next thoughts, but Druzil was deeply enough into his mind to hear them anyway.

I never would have believed that Barjin could achieve that. Many emotions accompanied those words, Druzil knew, and fear was not the least among them.

The mighty Edificant Library is in peril, Druzil added, just to prod the wizard. If Barjin succeeds, then the Most Fatal Horror will have put us on the path toward a great victory. All the region will fall without the guidance of the library’s clerics.

Aballister was wondering if the price was too high, Druzil realized, and the imp derided that he had told the wizard enough for this day. Besides, he could see the daylight up ahead as his zombie chauffeur neared the tunnel exit. He broke off direct communication, though he let the wizard remain in his mind and view through the imp’s eyes. Druzil wanted Aballister to get a good look at the glory of the chaos curse.

* * * * *

The white squirrel kept high in the branches, unsure of what its keen senses were telling it. Mullivy came to the edge of the earthen tunnel, then immediately turned around and disappeared back into it. Another scent, an unfamiliar scent, lingered. Percival saw nothing, but like other foraging animals, low on the food chain, the squirrel had learned quickly to trust more than just its eyes.

Percival followed the scent-it was moving-to the tree-lined lane. The road was quiet, as it had been for the last two days, though the sun shone bright and warm in a clear blue sky.

The squirrel’s ears perked up and twitched nervously as the library’s door opened, seemingly of its own accord, and the strange scent moved inside.

The unusualness of it all kept the squirrel sitting nervously still for many moments, but the sun was warm and the nuts and berries in the trees and shrubs were abundant, just waiting to be plucked. Percival rarely kept any thought for any length of time, and when he spotted a pile of acorns lying unattended on the ground, he was too relieved that the groundskeeper had stayed in the tunnel to worry about anything else.

* * * * *

Druzil’s perceptions of the state of the Edificant Library were far different from Cadderly’s. Unlike the young scholar, the imp thought the rising, paralyzing chaos a marvelous thing. He found just a few priests in the study halls, sitting unmoving in front of open books, so riveted by their studies that they barely remembered to draw breath. Druzil understood the hold of the chaos curse better than any; if Barjin entered the hall with a host of skeletons at his back, these priests would offer no resistance, would probably not even notice.

Druzil enjoyed the spectacle in the dining hall most of all, where gluttonous priests sat on chairs set back from the table to accommodate their swelling bellies, and other priests lay semiconscious on the floor. At one end of the table, three priests were engaged in mortal combat over a single remaining turkey leg.

Arguments, particularly between priests of differing faiths, were general throughout the building, often becoming more serious encounters. The least faithful or studious simply wandered away from the library altogether, and few had a care to stop them. Those most faithful were so absorbed in their rituals that they seemed to notice nothing else. In another of the second-floor study chambers, Druzil found a pile of Oghman priests heaped together in a great ball, having wrestled until they were too exhausted even to move.

When Druzil left an hour later to report to Barjin, he was quite satisfied that the chaos curse had done its work to unpredictable perfection.

He felt the first insistent demands of his master when he rounded the northern side of the building, approaching the tunnel.

You have seen? his thoughts asked Aballister. He knew that if Aballister had been paying attention, the wizard would know the state of the library as well as Druzil did.

The Most Fatal Horror, Aballister remarked somewhat sourly.

Barjin has brought us a great victory, Druzil promptly reminded the ever-skeptical wizard.

Aballister was quick to reply. The library is not yet won. Do not count our victory until Barjin is actually in control of the structure.

Druzil replied by shutting toe wizard completely out of his thoughts in midconversation. “Tellemara,” the imp muttered to himself. The curse was working. Already the few score priests remaining at the library probably would not be able to fend off Barjin’s undead forces, and their potential for resistance lessened with each passing moment. Soon, many of them likely would kill each other and many others simply would wander away. How much more control did the wizard require before claiming victory?

Druzil paid no heed to Aballister’s final warning. Barjin would win here, the imp decided, and he was thinking, too, that maybe he could find extra gains in his mission from Aballister, in spying on the powerful priest. Ever since the magical elixir had been dubbed an agent of Talona, the priests of Castle Trinity had enjoyed a more prominent role in the evil triumvirate. With the Edificant Library in Barjin’s hands, and with Barjin controlling a strong undead army, that domination would only increase.

Aballister was an acceptable “master,” as masters went, but Druzil was an imp from the domain of chaos, and imps owed no loyalty to anyone except themselves.

It was too early to make a definitive judgment, of course, but already Druzil was beginning to suspect that he would find more pleasure and more chaos at Barjin’s side than at Aballister’s.

* * * * *

“Do something for him!” Cadderly pleaded, but Newander only shook his head helplessly. “Ilmater!” gasped the dying priest. “The  ... pain,” he stammered. “It is so won-“ He shuddered one final time and fell dead in Cadderly’s arms.

“Who could have done this?” Cadderly asked, though he feared he knew the answer.

“Is not Ilmater the Crying God, a deity dedicated to suffering?” the druid asked, leading Cadderly to a clear conclusion.

Cadderly nodded gravely. “Priests of Ilmater often engage in selfflagellation, but it is usually a minor ritual of no serious consequence.”

“Until now,” Newander remarked dryly.

“Come on,” Cadderly said, laying the dead priest onto the floor. The blood trail was easily followed, and both Cadderly and Newander could have guessed where it led anyway.

Cadderly didn’t even bother knocking on the partly opened door. He pushed it in, then turned away, too horrified to enter. In the middle of the floor lay the remaining five priests of the Ilmater delegation, torn and bloodied.

Newander rushed in to check on them but returned in only a few moments, shaking ins head grimly.

“Priests of Ilmater never carry it this far,” Cadderly said, as much to himself as to the druid, “and druids never go so far as to become, heart and body, their favored animals.” He looked up at the druid, his gray eyes revealing that he thought his words important. “Danica was never so obsessed as to slam her face into a stone block repeatedly.”

Newander was beginning to catch on.

“Why were we not affected?” Cadderly asked.

“I fear that I have been,” replied the sullen druid.

When Cadderly looked more closely at Newander, he understood. The druid continued to fear not for his animal-transformed friends, but for himself.

“I have not the true heart for my chosen calling,” explained the druid.

“You make too many judgments,” Cadderly scolded. “We know that something is wrong-“ he waved toward the room of carnage “-terribly wrong. You have heard the priestess of Sune. You have seen these priests, and your own druid brothers. For some reason, we two have been spared-and perhaps I know of two others who have not been so badly affected-and that is not cause to lament. Whatever has happened threatens the whole library.”

“You are wise for one so young,” admitted Newander, “but what are we to do? Surely my druid brothers and the girl will be of no help.”

“We will go to Dean Thobicus,” Cadderly said hopefully. “He has overseen the library for many years. Perhaps he will know what to do.” Cadderly didn’t have to speak his hopes that Dean Thobicus, aged and wise, had not fallen under the curse also.

The journey down to the second floor only increased the companions’ apprehension. The halls were quiet and empty, until a group of drunken rowdies appeared down at the other end of a long hallway. As soon as the mob spotted Cadderly and Newander, they set out after them. Cadderly and the druid did not know if the men meant to attack them or coerce them into joining the party, but neither of them had any intentions of finding out.

Newander turned back after rounding one comer and cast a simple spell. The group came in fast pursuit, but the druid had laid a magical trip-wire and the intoxicated mob had no defense against such a subtle attack. They tumbled in a twisting and squirming heap and came up too busily wrestling with each other to remember that they had been chasing somebody.

Cadderly considered the headmasters’ area his best hope- until he and Newander crossed through the large double doors at the southern end of the second level. The area was eerily quiet, with no one to be seen. Dean Thobicus’s office door was among the few that were not open. Cadderly moved up slowly and knocked.

He knew in his heart that he would get no response.

Dean Thobicus was never an excitable man. His love was introspection, spending hours on end staring at the night sky, or at nothing at all. Thobicus’s loves were in his own mind, and when Cadderly and Newander entered his office, that was exactly where they found him. He sat very still behind his large oaken desk and apparently hadn’t moved for quite a while. He had soiled himself, and his lips were dry and parched, though a beaker full of water sat only inches away on his desk.

Cadderly called to him several times and shook him roughly, but the dean showed no sign of having heard him. Cadderly gave him one last shake, and Thobicus fell right over and remained where he dropped, as if he hadn’t noticed.

Newander bent to examine the man. “We’ll get no answers from this one,” he announced.

“We are running out of places to look,” Cadderly replied.

“Let us get back to the girl,” said the druid. “No good in staying here, and I am afraid for Danica with the drunken mob roaming the halls.”

They were relieved to find no sign of the drunken men as they exited the headmasters’ area, and their return trip through the quiet and empty hallways was uneventful.

Their sighs of relief upon entering Danica’s room would have been lessened considerably if either of them had noticed the dark figure lurking in the shadows, eyeing Cadderly with utter hatred.

* * * * *

Danica was awake but unblinking when the two men returned to her. Newander started toward her, concerned and thinking that she had fallen into the same catatonic state as the dean, but Cadderly recognized the difference.

“She is meditating,” Cadderly explained, and even as he spoke the words, he realized what Danica had in mind. “She is fighting whatever it is that compels her.”

“You cannot know that,” reasoned Newander.

Cadderly refused to yield his assumptions. “Look at her closely,” he observed, “at her concentration. She is fighting, I say.”

The claim was beyond Newander’s experience, either to agree or refute, so he accepted Cadderly’s logic without further argument.

“You said you know of others who might have escaped?” he said, wanting to get back to the business at hand.

“The dwarven cooks,” replied Cadderly, “Ivan and Pikel Bouldershoulder. They have been acting strangely, I admit, but each time I have been able to bring them to reason.”

Newander thought for a few minutes, chuckling quietly when he remembered Pikel, the green-bearded dwarf that so badly wanted to join the druidical order. The notion was absurd, of course, but Pikel was an appealing chap-for a dwarf. Newander snapped his fingers and allowed himself a smile of hope as he found a clue in Cadderly’s report. “Magical,” he said, looking back to Cadderly. “It is said by all who know that dwarves are a tough lot against magical enchantments. Might it be that the cooks can resist where men cannot?”

Cadderly nodded and looked to the vine-covered bed. “And Danica will resist in time, I know,” he said and turned back to Newander immediately. “But what about us? Why have we been spared?”

“As I told you,” replied Newander, “it might well be that I have not been spared. I was gone all of yesterday, out walking in the sunshine and feeling the mountain breezes. I found Arcite and Cleo, bear and tortoise, upon my return, but since I came back, I must admit that I, too, have felt compulsions.”

“But you have resisted them,” said Cadderly.

“Perhaps,” Newander corrected. “I cannot be sure. My heart of late has not been for the animals, as seemingly were the hearts of my druid kin.”

“And so you doubt your calling,” Cadderly remarked.

Newander nodded. “It is a difficult thing. I so badly wish to join Arcite and Cleo, to join the search they have begun for the natural order, but I want, too  ...”

“Go on,” Cadderly prompted as though he believed the revelations were vital.

“I want to learn of Deneir and the other gods,” Newander admitted. “I want to watch the progress of the world, the rise of cities. I want to ... I want,” Newander shook his head suddenly. “I do not know what I want!”

Cadderly’s gray eyes lit up. “Even in your own heart you do not know what is in your own heart,” he said. “That is a rare thing, and it has saved you, unless I miss my guess. That, and the fact that you have not been here for very long since this all began.”

“What do you know?” Newander asked, a sharp edge on his voice. He softened quickly, though, wondering how much truth was in the young scholar’s words.

Cadderly only shrugged in response. “It is only a theory.”

“What of you?” Newander asked. “Why are you not affected?”

Cadderly nearly laughed for lack of a suitable answer. “I cannot say,” he honestly admitted. He looked to Danica again. “But I know now how I might find out.”

Newander followed the young scholar’s gaze to the meditating woman. “Are you going back to sleep?”

Cadderly gave him a sly wink. “Sort of.”

Newander did not argue. He wanted the time alone anyway to consider his own predicament. He could not accept Cadderly’s reasoning concerning his exclusion from whatever was cursing the library, though he hoped it was as simple as that. Newander suspected that something else was going on, something he could not begin to understand, something wonderful or terrible-he could not be sure. For all of his thinking, though, the druid could not rid himself of the image of Arcite and Cleo, contented and natural, and could not dismiss his fears that his ambivalence had caused him to fail Silvanus in a time of dire need.

* * * * *

Cadderly sat crosslegged with his eyes closed for a long time, relaxing each part of his body in turn, causing his mind to sink within his physical self. He had learned these techniques from Danica-one of the few things she had revealed about her religion-and had found them quite useful, restful, and enjoyable. Now, though, the meditation had taken on a more important rote.

Cadderly opened his eyes slowly and viewed the room, seeing it in surreal tones. He focused first on the block of stone, stained with his dear Danica’s blood. It sat between the downed sawhorses, and then it was gone, removed to blackness. Behind it was Danica’s cabinet and wardrobe, and then they, too, were gone.

He glanced left, to the door and Newander keeping a watchful guard. The druid watched him curiously, but Cadderly hardly noticed. A moment later, both druid and door were holes of blackness.

His visual sweep eliminated the rest of the room: Danica’s desk and her weapons, two crystalline daggers, in their boot sheaths against the wall; the window, bright with late morning light; and, lastly, Danica herself, still deep in her own meditation on the vine-wrapped bed.

“Dear Danica,” Cadderly muttered, though even he didn’t hear the words. Then Danica, too, and everything else, was out of his thoughts.

Again he returned to relaxation-toes, then feet, then legs, fingers, then hands, then arms-until he had achieved a sedated state. His breathing came slowly and easily. His eyes were open, but they saw nothing.

There was only quiet blackness, calm.

Cadderly could not summon thoughts in this state. He had to hope that answers would flow to him, that his subconscious would give him images and dues. He had no concept of time passing, but it seemed a long while of emptiness, of simple, uncluttered existence.

The walking dead were alongside him then in the blackness. Unlike his dreams, he saw the skeletal figures as no threat now, as though he were an unattached observer instead of an active participant. They scuffled along on his mental journey, falling behind him, leaving him in a hallway. There was the familiar door, cracked and showing lines of light, always the ending image of his nightmare.

The picture faded, as if some unseen force were trying to stop him from proceeding, a mental barrier that he now, for some reason unknown to him, believed to be a magical spell.

The images became a gray blur for just a moment, then focused again, and he was at the door, then through the door.

The altar room!

Cadderly watched, hopeful and afraid, as the room darkened, leaving only a single, red-glowing object, a bottle, visible before him. He saw the bottle up close then, and he saw hands, his own hands, twisting off the stopper.

Red smoke exploded all about him, stole every other image.

Cadderly looked again on Danica’s room, the image identical to the one he had blocked out-even Newander remained at his position near the door-except that now there hung in the air an almost imperceptible pink haze.

Cadderly felt his heart quicken as the purpose of that haze became all too clear. His gaze fell over Danica, still deep in her own meditation. Cadderly’s thoughts reached out to Danica and were answered. She was battling, as he had suspected, fighting back against that permeating pink haze, trying to recover her sensibilities against its debilitating effects.

“Fight, Danica!” he heard himself say, and the words broke his trance. He looked over to Newander, his expression desperate.

“I was the cause,” he said, holding up his hands as though they were covered in blood. “I opened it!”

Newander rushed over and knelt beside Cadderly, trying to calm him. “Opened?”

“The bottle,” Cadderly stammered. “The bottle! The red-glowing bottle. The mist-do you see the mist?”

Newander glanced around, then shook his head.

“It is there  ... here,” Cadderly said, grabbing the druid’s arm and using it to help him to his feet. “We have to close that bottle!”

“Where?” the druid asked.

Cadderly stopped suddenly, considering the question. He remembered the skeletons, the dusty smell, the corridors lined with alcoves. “There really was a door in the wine cellar,” he said at length, “a door to the lowest catacombs, those dungeons no longer used in the library.”

“We must go there?” asked Newander, rising beside Cadderly.

“No,” Cadderly cautioned, “not yet. The catacombs are not empty. We have to prepare.” He looked to Danica again, seeing her in a new light now that he understood her mental struggles.

“Will she be fighting beside us?” Newander asked, noticing Cadderly’s focus.

“Danica is fighting now,” Cadderly assured him, “but the mist hangs all about us, and it is insistent.” He gave Newander a confused look. “I still do not know why I have been spared its effects.”

“If you were indeed the cause, as you believe,” replied the druid, who had lengthy experience with magical practices, “then that fact alone might have spared you.”

Cadderly considered the words for a moment, but they hardly seemed to matter. “Whatever the reason,” he said determinedly, “we-I-have to close that bottle.” He spent a few minutes trying to recall the obstacles before him and imagining even more frightening monsters that might be lurking just outside his nightmarish visions. Cadderly knew that he would need allies in this fight, powerful allies to help him get back to the altar room.

“Ivan and Pikel,” he said to Newander. “The dwarves are more resistant, as you said. They will help us.”

“Go to them,” Newander bade him.

“You stay with Danica,” Cadderly replied. “Let no one, except for me and the dwarven brothers, into the room.”

“I have ways of keeping the world out,” Newander assured him.

As soon as he entered the hallway, Cadderly heard the druid chanting softly. Danica’s wooden door, suddenly brought to life by Newander’s spell, warped and expanded, wedging tightly, immovably, into its frame.

* * * * *

Ivan and Pikel were not fighting when Cadderly entered the kitchen this time, but neither were they cooking. They sat quietly, somberly, at the room’s main table opposite each other.

As soon as he noticed Cadderly, Ivan absently handed him the one-handed crossbow, finished to perfection. “Had an urge,” the dwarf explained, not giving the magnificent item a second look.

Cadderly was not surprised. It seemed that many people in the Edificant Library were having “urges” these days.

“What’s it about?” Ivan asked suddenly.

Cadderly did not understand. Pikel, a grim expression on his normally carefree features, pointed to the door leading into the dining room. Cadderly crossed the kitchen tentatively and when he looked into the adjoining room, he came to realize the reason for the dwarves’ somber mood. Half the gluttonous priests, Avery included, remained at the table, hardly able to move. The other half were worse yet, lying on the floor in their own vomit. Cadderly knew without going to them that several were dead, and his face, too, was ashen when he turned back into the kitchen.

“So what’s it about?” Ivan asked again.

Cadderly looked at him long and hard, unsure of how he could begin to explain the bottle and his own, still unclear actions. Finally, he said only, “I am not certain what has happened, but I believe I know now how to stop it.”

He thought his proclamation would excite the dwarves, but they hardly stirred at the news.

“Will you help me?” Cadderly asked. “I cannot do it alone.”

“What do ye need?” Ivan asked offhandedly.

“You,” Cadderly replied, “and your brother. The curse- and it is a curse-comes from below the cellars. I have to go down there to end it, but I fear that the place is guarded.”

“Guarded?” Ivan balked. “How can ye guess that?”

“Just trust me, I beg,” replied Cadderly. “I am not so skilled with weapons, but I have witnessed you two at your fighting and could use your strong arms. Will you come with me?”

The dwarves exchanged bored looks and shrugs. “I’d rather be cooking,” Ivan remarked. “Gave up me adventuring pack long ago. Pikel’d rather be ...” He stopped and eyed his brother intently.

Pikel fixed a smug look on his face, reached up, and waggled one side of his green beard.

“A druid!” Ivan yelled, hopping to his feet and grabbing a nearby pan. “Ye stupid bird-loving, oak-kissing  ... !”

“Oo oi!” Pikel exclaimed, arming himself with a rolling pin.

Cadderly was between them in an instant. “It is all part of the curse!” he cried. “Can you not see that? It makes you argue and fight!”

Both dwarves jumped back a step and lowered their utensil weapons.

“Oo,” muttered Pikel curiously.

“If you want to fight a true enemy,” Cadderly began, “then come to my room and help me prepare. There is something below the cellars, something horrible and evil. If we do not stop it, then all the library is doomed.”

Ivan leaned to the side and looked around the young scholar to his similarly leaning brother. They shared a shrug and simultaneously heaved their cookware weapons across to the other side of the room.

“Let us go to the gluttons first,” Cadderly instructed. “We should leave them as comfortable as we may.”

The dwarves nodded. “Then I’ll get me axe,” Ivan declared, “and me brother’ll get his tree!”

“Tree?” Cadderly echoed quietly at the departing dwarves’ backs. One look at Pikel’s green-dyed braid bouncing halfway down the dwarfs back and his huge, gnarly, and smelly feet flopping out every which way from his delicate sandals told Cadderly not even to bother pressing the question.

Blood On His Hands

Cadderly sorted through the many leather straps hanging in his wardrobe, finally puffing out a belt with a strangely shaped, wide and shallow leather sheath on one side. The fit of the small crossbow was perfect-there was even a place for the loading pin. As usual, Ivan and Pikel had crafted the metal to exact specifications.

Cadderly drew the crossbow out again as soon as he had put it in. He tested the pin next, cranking the bow and firing several times. The action was smooth and easy; Cadderly even managed, without too much difficulty, to manipulate the weapon enough to crank it with one hand.

Next Cadderly took out the bandolier and slung it over his shoulder, carefully lining up the sixteen loaded darts in front of him, within easy reach. He winced when he wondered what damage a blow to his chest might cause, but he held faith that the darts and the bandolier had been properly constructed. He felt better when he saw himself in the mirror, as if wearing his latest inventions had returned to him some control over his surroundings. Any smile he felt welling was quickly sublimated, though, when he remembered the dangerous task ahead. This was no game, he reminded himself. Already, and because of his own actions, several men had died and all the library was threatened.

Cadderly moved across the room, behind the door, to a closed and sealed iron box. He fitted a key into the lock, then paused for a long moment, considering carefully the precise steps he had to follow once the box was opened. He had practiced this maneuver many times, but never before had he believed he would need it.

As soon as the box lid was opened, all the area around Cadderly fell into a globe of absolute darkness. It was not a surprise to the young scholar; Cadderly had paid Histra handsomely for placing this reversed form of her light spell within the box. It was inconvenient-and Cadderly did not enjoy dealing with Histra-but necessary to protect one of Cadderly’s most prized possessions. In an ancient tome, Cadderly had stumbled upon the formula for the very potent sleep poison used by the drow elves. The exotic ingredients had not been found easily-one fungus in particular could only be gained in deep tunnels far below Toril’s surface-and the arrangements to mix them-which the alchemist, Belago, had done deep underground also-had been even more difficult to secure, but Cadderly had persevered. With the blessings and backing of Dean Thobicus, his efforts had produced five tiny vials of the poison.

At least, Cadderly hoped it was the poison-one does not often find the opportunity to test such things.

Even with the apparent success of the brewing, though, there remained one severe limitation. The potion was a drow mix, brewed in the strange magical emanations found only in the Underdark, the lightless world beneath Toril’s surface. It was a well-known fact that if drow poison was exposed to the sun, even for a moment, it would become useless in a very short while. The open air alone could destroy the expensive mixture, so Cadderly had taken great steps, like the spell of darkness, to protect his investment.

He closed his eyes and worked from memory. First he unscrewed the tiny compartment of his feathered ring and laid the top in a predetermined place to the side, then he removed one of the vials from the box, carefully popping its cork. He poured the gooey contents into his opened ring, then found and replaced the feathered top.

Cadderly breathed easier. If he had slipped at all, he would have wasted perhaps a thousand gold pieces worth of ingredients and many weeks of labor. Also, if he had spilled even a drop of the poison onto his hand, and if it had found its way into a tiny scratch or nick, he no doubt would be snoozing soundly right beside the box.

None of that had happened. Cadderly was precise and disciplined when he needed to be, and his many practice sessions with vials of water had paid off.

The darkness disappeared within the confines of the sealed box when Cadderly closed the lid. Ivan and Pikel were already in the room, surrounding the young scholar, weapons ready and faces grim at the sight of the unexpected darkness.

“Just yourself, then,” Ivan grumbled relaxing his grip on his heavy, two-headed axe.

Cadderly could not immediately find his breath to reply. He just sat and stared at the dwarven brothers. Both wore armor of interlocking rings, dusty from decades of idleness and rusted in several spots. Ivan wore a helm fashioned with deer antlers-an eight-pointer-while Pikel wore a cooking pot! For all his precautionary armor, Pikel still wore his open-toed sandals.

Most amazing of all, though, was Pikel’s weapon. Looking upon it, Cadderly understood Ivan’s earlier reference. It was indeed a “tree,” the polished trunk of some black and smooth-barked variety that Cadderly did not recognize. The club was fully four feet long, nearly as tall as Pikel, a foot in diameter on the wide end, and less than half that on the narrow, gripping end. Looped leather hand-grips were spiked on at various intervals to aid the wielder, but still it seemed an awkward and cumbersome thing.

As if he sensed Cadderly’s private doubts, Pikel whipped the club about through several attack and defense routines with obvious ease.

Cadderly nodded his appreciation, sincerely relieved that he had not been on the receiving end of any of Pikel’s mock strikes.

“Are ye set to go?” Ivan asked, adjusting his armor.

“Almost,” Cadderly answered. “I have just a few more minor preparations, and I want to look in on Danica before we go”

“How can we help ye?” offered Ivan.

Cadderly could see that the dwarves were both anxious to get on with it. He knew that it had been many years since the Bouldershoulder brothers had walked into adventure, many years spent cooking meals in the haven that was the Edificant Library. It wasn’t a bad life by anyone’s measure, but the thought of imminent danger and adventure obviously had worked an enchantment over the dwarves. There was an unmistakable luster to their dark eyes and their movements were agitated and nervous.

“Go to Belago’s alchemy shop,” Cadderly replied, thinking it best to keep the dwarves busy. He described the distillation equipment and the potion that Belago was brewing for him. “If he has any more for me, bring it back,” Cadderly instructed, thinking the task simple enough.

The dwarves already had hopped off down the hallway when Cadderly realized that he hadn’t seen Belago about lately, not since before the curse had taken hold of the library. What had happened to the alchemist? Cadderly wondered. Was the shop still operational? Were the proper mixtures for blending his 0il of Impact still slipping in the precise amounts through the hoppers? Cadderly shrugged away his worries, trusting in Ivan and Pikel to use their best judgment.

Percival was at the window again, chattering with his customary excitement. Cadderly went over and leaned on the sill, bending to put his face close to his little friend’s and listen intently. Cadderly could not understand the squirrel’s talk, of course, no more than a child could understand a pet dog’s, but he and Percival had developed quite an emotive rapport, and he knew well enough that Percival comprehended some simple words or phrases, mostly those pertaining to food.

“I will be gone for a while,” Cadderly said. The squirrel probably wouldn’t understand so complex a message, he realized, but talking to Percival often helped Cadderly sort through his own confusion. Percival never really provided any answers, but Cadderly often found them hidden within his own words.

Percival sat up on his hind legs, licking his forepaws and running them quickly over his face.

“Something bad has happened,” Cadderly tried to explain, “something that I caused. Now I am going to fix it.”

His somber tone, if not his words, had a calming effect on the rodent. Percival stopped licking and sat very still.

“So I will be gone,” Cadderly continued, “down below the library, in the deep tunnels that are no longer used.”

Something he had said apparently struck the squirrel profoundly. Percival ran in tight circles, chattering and clicking, and it was a very long while before Cadderly could calm the beast down. He knew that Percival had something important-by Percival’s standards-to tell him, but he had no time for the squirrel’s distractions.

“Do not worry,” Cadderly said, as much to himself as to Percival. “I will return soon, and then all will be as it was.” The words sounded hollow to him. Things would not be as they had been. Even if he managed to close the smoking bottle, and even if that simple act removed the curse, it wouldn’t bring back the priests of Ilmater or the dead gluttons in the dining room.

Cadderly shook those dark thoughts away. He could not hope to succeed if he began his quest in despair.

“Do not worry!” he said again, firmly.

Again the squirrel went crazy, and this time, Cadderly realized, from the direction of Percival’s gaze, the source of the excitement. Cadderly looked back over his shoulder, expecting to see that Ivan and Pikel had returned.

He saw instead Kierkan Rufo, and more pointedly, the dagger in Rufo’s hand.

“What is it?” Cadderly asked weakly, but he needed no verbal answer to decipher the man’s intent. Rufo’s left eye was still bruised and closed, and his nose pointed as much toward his cheek as straight ahead. His ugly wounds only accentuated the look of sheer hatred in his cold, dark eyes.

“Where is your light now?” the tall man sneered. “But then, it would not do you much good, would it?” He limped noticeably, but his approach was steady.

“What are you doing?” Cadderly asked him.

“Is not the mighty Cadderly smart enough to figure that out?” Rufo mocked him.

“You do not want to do this,” Cadderly said as calmly as he could. “There are consequences  ...”

“Wait?” Rufo cried wildly. “Oh, but I do indeed want to do this. I want to hold your heart in my hands. I want to bring it to your dear Danica and show her who was the stronger.”

Cadderly looked for some retort. He thought of mentioning the obvious weakness in Rufo’s plan-if he did bring Cadderly’s heart to Danica, she would kill him-but even that, Cadderly guessed, would not stop Kierkan Rufo. Rufo was under the curse fully, following its devious call with no regard for consequences. Reluctantly, but with no apparent options, Cadderly slipped one finger inside the loop of his spindle-disk cord and moved right up against the side of his bed.

Rufo came straight in, dagger leading, and Cadderly rolled sideways across the bed, just getting out of the angular man’s long reach.

Rufo jumped back quickly, faster than Cadderly expected he could move, to cut off Cadderly’s angle for the door. He rushed around the bottom of the bed, launching a wide, arcing swing at Cadderly’s belly.

Cadderly easily kept back beyond the dagger, then he retaliated, snapping his spindle-disks above Rufo’s swinging arm. Rufo’s already broken nose crackled under the impact and a new stream of blood flowed thickly over the dried stains on his lip. Rufo, obsessed with utter hatred, shook away the minor hit and came on.

Though the blow had not been very solid, it still had almost broken the rhythm of Cadderly’s working wrist. He managed to coax the disks back to his hand, but the cord was now loosely wound and he couldn’t immediately strike again effectively. Rufo seemed to sense his weakness. He grinned wickedly and came in again.

Percival saved Cadderly’s life, leaping from the window to land squarely on Rufo’s face. With a single swipe, Rufo sent the squirrel flying across the room, and Percival had done no real damage, but Cadderly had not wasted the time.

With Rufo distracted, he had snapped the spindle-disks straight down and back up several times to realign and tighten the cord.

Rufo seemed not to even notice the twin lines of blood running down his face from his newest wound, a small bite on his cheek from Percival. “I will hold your heart in my hands!” he promised again, laughing insanely.

Cadderly jerked his arm once, and then again, feigning a throw to keep Rufo off guard. Between dodges, Rufo managed a few weak thrusts that did not come near to hitting the mark. Cadderly launched the disks finally, in a long and wide throw that brought them to the very end of their reach. He flicked his wrist, bringing the disks back to his grasp, but not with the usual suddenness.

Rufo measured the pace of the throws and bided his time. The disks came on again, and Rufo leaned back, then rushed toward Cadderly right behind them as they retracted.

Cadderly’s bait had worked. On this throw, he had shortened up on the cord, bringing the spindle-disks smacking back into his palm much more quickly than Rufo had anticipated. Rufo had barely taken his first step when the young scholar’s weapon shot out again, deliberately low.

Rufo squealed in shock and pain and grasped at his smashed kneecap, his leg nearly buckling. He was under the influences of the chaos curse, though, and nearly impervious to pain. His squeal became a growl and he plowed ahead, slashing wildly.

Again Cadderly had to dive across the bed to avoid the blade, but when he came up this time, Kierkan Rufo had already circled the bottom of the bed and stood facing him. Cadderly knew that he was in trouble. He could not trade hits, dagger against spindle-disks. Normally, the disks might have proven effective, but in Rufo’s state of mind, nothing short of a perfect and powerful strike would slow him. That type of attack would be risky indeed for Cadderly, and he doubted that he could even get one through his wild opponent’s defenses.

They traded feints and teasing lunges for a few moments, Rufo grinning and Cadderly wondering if he had a better chance by diving out the window.

Then the whole building shook suddenly as if it had been hit by lightning. The explosion rolled on for several seconds and Cadderly understood its source when he heard a single word from the corridor.

“Oo!”

Rufo hesitated and glanced over his shoulder, toward the open door. Cadderly realized that his sudden advantage wasn’t really fair, but decided immediately to worry about that later. He cocked his arm and let go with all his strength. Rufo turned back just in time to catch the soaring disks right between the eyes.

Rufo’s head snapped straight back, and when he righted himself again, he was no longer grinning. A startled, stupefied look came over him and his eyes crossed, as if they were both straining to see the newest bruise.

Cadderly, too transfixed to take his gaze from Rufo’s contorted features, heard the dagger hit the floor. A moment later, Rufo followed it down with a crash. Still Cadderly did not react. He just stood there, his spindle-disks hanging by his side at the end of their cord, spinning end-around-end.

When Cadderly finally reached down to wind his weapon, his stomach turned over. The spindle-disks were covered in blood and one had a piece of Rufo’s eyebrow glued onto it by the thick, drying red fluid. Cadderly slipped down to the bed and let the disks fall to the floor. He felt betrayed, by himself and by his toy.

All priests of the library were required to train with some weapon, usually a more conventional instrument of destruction, such as the quarterstaff, mace, or club. Cadderly had begun with the staff, and could use his ram-headed walking stick fairly well if the occasion arose, but he was never really comfortable with carrying any weapon. He lived in a dangerous world, so he was told, but he had spent the majority of his life in the secure confines of the Edificant Library. He had never even seen a goblin, except for a dead one once, that being one of the library’s most wretched servants, who was said to be a half-breed. The headmasters had not allowed him to bend the rule of preparedness, though; every priest was required to train.

Cadderly had come across the spindle-disks in an archaic halfling treatise, and had quickly constructed his own. Some of the headmasters balked at his new choice, calling it more a toy than a weapon, but it fit all of the requirements set out in the ethical codes of Deneir. The vocal opposition, particularly Headmaster Avery’s, only strengthened Cadderly’s resolve to use the ancient weapon.

For Cadderly, the spindle-disks had replaced hours of savage fighting with hours of enjoyable playing. He learned a dozen tricks, tests of skill that didn’t hurt anybody, with his new toy, for a toy he, too, secretly considered it. Now, though, covered in Rufo’s blood, the spindle-disks did not seem so amusing.

Rufo groaned and shifted slightly, and Cadderly was glad that he was still alive. He took a deep breath and reached down for the disks, determinedly reminding himself of the gravity of the task ahead, and that he would have to be brave and thick-skinned to see it through.

Percival was on the bed at his side, lending further support. Cadderly rubbed a finger down the white squirrel’s smooth coat, then nodded gravely and rewound his weapon.

“He dead?” asked Ivan, entering the room with a smoldering Pikel at his heels. Percival darted out the open window, and Cadderly, when he looked upon the brothers, nearly joined him. Ivan’s antlers, face, and beard, which stuck out wildly in several directions, were blackened with soot, and one of his heavy boots was now as open-toed as his brother’s sandals.

Pikel wasn’t much better off. Flecks of ceramics dotted Percival sooty face, his smile showed a missing tooth, and a shard of glass had actually embedded itself right into his iron pot helmet.

“Belago was not in?” Cadderly asked evenly.

Ivan shrugged, “Not a sight of that one,” he replied, “but me brother found yer potion-what little there was of it” He held up the small catch basin. “We figured ye’d be wanting more, so we ...”

“Turned up the spigot,” Cadderly finished for him.

“Boom! “added Pikel.

“He dead?” Ivan asked again, and the casual tone of the question sent a shudder through Cadderly.

Both dwarves noted the young scholar’s discomfort. They glanced at each other and shook their heads. “Ye’d best get the belly for it,” Ivan said. “If ye mean to go adventuring, ye’d best get the belly for things that are likely to be falling yer way.” He led Cadderly’s gaze back to Kierkan Rufo. “Or at yer feet!”

“I never meant to go adventuring,” Cadderly replied, somewhat sourly.

“And I never meant to be a cook,” retorted Ivan, “but that’s what I got, ain’t it? Ye said we got a job to do, and so we do. Let’s get doing what needs doing, and if some try to get in our way, well ...”

“He is not dead,” Cadderly interjected. “Put him on the bed and tie him there.”

Again Ivan and Pikel exchanged glances, but this time, they nodded in favor of Cadderly’s determined tone.

“Oo,” remarked Pikel, obviously impressed.

Cadderly wiped his spindle-disks clean, picked up hims ram-headed walking stick and a water skin, and headed down the hall. He was relieved to see Danica’s door still warped and tightly wedged, and even more relieved to hear Newander’s calm voice answering his knock.

“How is she?” Cadderly asked immediately.

“She is still deep within her meditation,” Newander replied, “but she appears comfortable enough.”

Cadderly conjured his meditative image of Danica, fighting back the insidious red haze.

“I can reverse the spell and let you in,” the druid offered.

“No,” Cadderly replied, though he truly wanted to see Danica again. His last image of Danica was a comforting one; he could not take the chance that something she did now would worry him and steal his heart from his coming trials. On a more practical level, Cadderly thought it best to let Newander preserve his magical energies. “When I return, perhaps your spell will no longer be needed,” he said.

“Then you want me to stay with Danica?”

“I have the dwarves with me,” Cadderly explained. “They are better suited to the underground tunnels than a druid would be. Stay with her and keep her safe.”

Ivan and Pikel came up then, and by the eager gleam in their eyes, Cadderly knew that the time had come to set off. Cadderly glanced back at Danica’s door several times as they walked away, emotionally torn. A large part of him argued against his journey, reasoned that his best course would be to go with his armed friends, sit by Danica’s side, and ride this whole nightmare to its conclusion.

Cadderly did not find it difficult to argue against that irrational notion. Men were dying all around him. How many more Kierkan Rufos lurked in the shadows, murder in their hearts?

“Dear Cadderly,” came a purring voice that only reinforced the young scholar’s determination. Histra stood behind her chamber’s door, opened just a crack, but that was enough to show Cadderly and the dwarves that she wore no more than a filmy, transparent negligee. “Do come in and sit with me.”

“Oo!” said Pikel.

“She’s wanting more than sitting, boy,” chuckled Ivan.

Cadderly ignored them all and ran right by the door. He felt Histra grab at him as he passed and heard her door creak open wider.

“Come back here!” the priestess of Sune screamed, jumping into the middle of the hall.

“Oo!” an admiring Pikel remarked again.

Histra concentrated deeply, meaning to utter a magical command for her would-be lover to “Return!” But Pikel, for all his obvious enchantment, kept a pragmatic attitude about the situation. As Histra began her spell, he clamped a sooty hand onto her rump and casually tossed her back into her room.

“Oo,” Pikel uttered a third time when he moved into the room to close the door, and Ivan, standing right behind his brother, whole-heartedly agreed. A dozen young men lay sprawled about the room, exhausted by their exploits.

“Are you so certain that you want to leave?” Histra purred at the dirty brothers.

By the time the blushing dwarves caught up to Cadderly, he was down to the first floor, dipping his water skin into a font in the great hall.

“Wretched stuff,” Ivan whispered to Pikel. “Oils and water. Tried drinking it once.” He hung his floppy tongue out in disgust.

Cadderly smiled at the dwarfs remarks. He had better uses than drinking in mind for the holy water. When the skin was full, he took out a narrow tube, fitted on one end with a rubbery ball of some gooey substance. He popped tins onto the open tip of his water skin and capped it with a smaller ball of the same goo.

“You will understand in time,” was all the explanation he offered to the curious dwarves.

The Bouldershoulder brothers grew alarmed when the group entered the kitchen and found the place full of priests. Headmaster Avery led the impromptu chefs, though their progress was limited since each of them spent more time stuffing food into his mouth than actually cooking anything.

More alarming to Cadderly than the eating frenzy was his companions’ reactions. Both seemed on the verge of abandoning the quest, as though some greater compulsions now pulled at them.

“Fight it,” Cadderly said to them, recognizing their growing desires as curse-induced. Ivan and Pikel were protective of their kitchen, and both took extreme satisfaction in keeping the hungriest priests of the library fed to contentment. They looked around at the messy kitchen and the gluttonous priests, and for a moment, Cadderly feared that he would be traveling down to the lower catacombs alone. But Newander’s claims of dwarven resistance to magical enchantment held true this time, for the Bouldershoulders shrugged unhappily at the disaster that had befallen their space, then pushed Cadderly on, prodding him toward the door to the wine cellar.

The musty stairs were dark and quiet; the torches lining the wall had not been tended. Cadderly opened his light tube and moved down a few steps, waiting there for the brothers to strike torches. Ivan came in last and closed and bolted the iron-bound door, even taking the trouble to slide an iron locking bar into place.

“We’ve as much trouble behind as ahead,” the dwarf explained to Cadderly’s questioning look. “If that group gets as thirsty as they are hungry, they’ll only bring trouble along with them!”

The reasoning seemed sound enough, so Cadderly turned and started down. Pikel grabbed him, though, and took up the lead, tapping his heavy club to his pot helmet.

“Keep yerself between us,” Ivan explained. “We’ve been on this road before!”

His confidence comforted Cadderly, but the clamor as the bulky dwarves thumped and rattled down the stairs did not.

Their lights intruded into absolute darkness as they came down, but all three sensed that they were not alone. Beside the first wine rack, they found their first clues that someone else had come this way. Broken glass covered the floor and many bottles-bottles that Cadderly had inventoried only a few days before-were missing. The trail led to yet another dead priest. His stomach grossly distended, he lay curled on the floor, surrounded by emptied bottles.

They heard a shuffle to the side and Cadderly put a narrow beam of light down between the wine racks. Another priest was in there, trying futilely to stand. He was too drunk to even notice the light, and his stomach, too, bulged and sloshed. Despite his stupor, he still held a bottle to his lips, stubbornly forcing more liquid down his throat.

Cadderly started toward the drunk, but Ivan held him back. “Show me yer door,” Ivan said to him, then the dwarf nodded to Pikel. As Cadderly and Ivan headed deeper into the cellar, Pikel moved the other way, between the racks. Cadderly soon heard a thump, a groan, and a bottle breaking on the stone floor.

“For his own good,” Ivan explained.

They came to the casks where Cadderly had been found and, once again, the young scholar grew confused and frustrated that there was no door to be found. Ivan and Pikel shoved all the casks far away, and the three of them searched every inch of the wall.

Cadderly stuttered an apology; perhaps his entire theory was misguided. Ivan and Pikel stubbornly continued their search, though, keeping faith in their friend. They found their answers not on the unremarkable wall, but on a series of scratches in the floor.

“The casks were dragged,” Ivan asserted. He bent low to study the dust, the absence of dust, in the marks. “Not too long ago.”

Cadderly’s focused beam made the tracking easy and as they moved across the room, he began to get more excited. “How could I have missed this?” he said. He turned the light back to the wine racks. “We-Rufo and I-came from over there, so the door could not have been back where we found the piled casks. It was a purposeful deception. I should have known.”

“Ye took a bit on the head,” Ivan reminded him. “And it’s a clever trick.”

The trail led to yet another cask, tight up against the wall. The companions knew before Ivan even kicked it aside that the mysterious door would indeed be found behind it. Ivan nodding and smiling, moved right up to the door and pulled it, but it did not budge.

“Locked,” the dwarf grunted, examining a keyhole above the pull ring. He looked to his brother, who nodded eagerly.

“Pikel’s one for unlocking doors,” Ivan explained to Cadderly, and Cadderly got the point when Pikel leveled his tree trunk like a battering ram and lined himself up with the door.

“Hold!” Cadderly said. “I have a better way.”

“Ye’re a lockpick, too?” Ivan asked.

“Oh,” groaned a disappointed Pikel.

“You could say that,” Cadderly replied smugly, but instead of instruments for picking locks, he produced the hand-held crossbow. Cadderly had been hoping that he would get to try out his newest invention, and he was hardly able to keep from shaking as he cranked the bow and loaded a dart.

“Stand back,” he warned, taking aim at the keyhole. The crossbow clicked and the dart plunked in. A split second later, the momentum of the dart collapsed its weak middle section, crushing the vial of 0il of Impact, and the ensuing explosion left a blackened and blasted hole where the lock had been. The door creaked open only an inch but hung there loosely.

“Oh, I’m wanting one of those!” Ivan cried happily.

“Oo oi!” agreed Pikel.

Their glee was short-lived, for behind the open door they found, not the top of the broken stairway, as Cadderly had predicted, but a brick wall.

“New work,” Ivan muttered after a quick inspection. He cast a sly glance Cadderly’s way. “Ye got a dart for this one, boy?”

Ivan didn’t wait to hear an answer. He ran his hands over the wall, pushing at certain points as though he was testing its strength. “Pikel’s got the key,” he declared and he moved out of the way.

Cadderly started to protest, but Pikel paid him no heed. The dwarf began a curious whining sound and his stubby legs churned up and down, running in place, as though he were winding himself up like a spring. Then, with a grunt, Pikel charged, his battering ram tight against his side.

Bricks and mortar flew wildly. Several fiery explosions indicated that warding glyphs had been placed on the other side of the wall, but Pikel’s furious charge was not slowed, by either the flimsy wall or the magical wards. Neither was Pikel able to halt his momentum. As Cadderly had told them before, and as he had tried to warn them again, the stairway beyond the short landing was down.

“Ooooooooo!” came Pikel’s diminishing wail, followed by a dull thump.

“Me brother!” Ivan cried, and before Cadderly could stop him, he, too, charged through the opening. His torch flared in the dust cloud for just a moment, then both the light and the dwarf dropped from sight.

Cadderly winced and shuddered at Ivan’s final words: “I can see the grou...!”

The Walking Dead

Cadderly came down the rope slowly and in control, using a technique he had seen illustrated in a manuscript. He held the rope both in front of and behind him, looping it under one thigh and using his legs to control his descent. He had heard the dwarven brothers grumbling while he was tying off the rope, so he knew that they had survived the fall. That fact offered some comfort, at least. As he neared the stone floor, within the area of torchlight, he saw Pikel running about in circles, with Ivan close on his heels, smacking out the last wisps of smoke from his brother’s smoldering behind.

“Oo, oo, oo, oo!” Pikel cried, slapping at his own rump whenever he got the chance.

“Hold still, ye stinking oak kisser!” Ivan bellowed, whacking wildly.

“Quiet,” Cadderly cautioned them as he dropped down to the tunnel.

“Oo,” Pikel replied, giving one last brisk rub. The dwarf then noticed the stonework in the walls and forgot all about the sting. He wandered off happily to investigate.

“Somebody wanted to keep us outa here,” Ivan reasoned. “His fire-wards got me brother good, right on the backside!”

Cadderly agreed with the dwarfs conclusion and sensed that he should know who had set out the glyphs, that he had seen someone in the same room as the bottle ... .

He couldn’t remember, though, and he had no time now to meditate and explore his suspicions. More importantly, neither dwarf had suffered any real damage; Ivan’s antler-topped helmet had even been cleaned a bit by the jolt.

“How far to yer cursed flask?” Ivan asked. “Do ye think we’ll be seeing more of the magical barriers?” Ivan’s face lit up at the notion. “You gotta let a dwarf walk first if you think so, ye know.” He pounded a fist onto his breastplate. “A dwarf can take it. A dwarf can eat it up and spit it back at the one who set it! Do ye think we’ll be meeting that one? The one who put the fire-ward up there? I’ve a word to speak with that one. He burned me brother! No, I’m not for letting one go and burn me brother!”

The look in Ivan’s eyes grew ever more distant as he spoke, and Cadderly realized that the dwarf was walking a tentative line of control. Off to the side, Pikel, too, had become overly consumed. He was down on his hands and knees, sniffing at the cracks in the wall and uttering an excited “Oo!” every so often. A dozen frantic spiders scurried to get free of their own webs, hopelessly entangled in Pikel’s tough beard.

Cadderly set his rock crystal spindle-disks spinning end-around-end in front of Ivan’s face and used his light tube to focus a narrow beam on them. The dwarf’s talking faded away as he fell more and more into the mesmerizing dance of the light on the disks’ many facets.

“Remember why we are here,” Cadderly prompted the dwarf. “Concentrate, Ivan Bouldershoulder. If we do not remove the curse, then all the library, the Edificant Library, will be lost.” Cadderly couldn’t be certain whether his words or the dancing light on the disks had reminded Ivan to resist the stubborn curse, but whatever the cause, the dwarfs eyes popped wide, as if he had just come from a deep slumber, and he shook his head so wildly that he had to lean on his double-bladed axe to keep from falling over.

“Which way, lad?” the now lucid dwarf asked.

“That’s more to the point,” Cadderly remarked under his breath. He glanced over at Pikel and wondered if the same technique would be needed on him. It didn’t matter, Cadderly decided at once. Pikel wasn’t really wide awake even when he was wide awake.

Cadderly looked down at the floor, searching for some sign of his previous passing, but found nothing. He sent his light down to either side of the bricked corridor, but both ways seemed identical and jogged no memories for him.

“This way,” he decided simply to get them moving, and he stepped past Ivan. “Do bring your brother.” Cadderly heard a clang over his shoulder-axe on cooking pot, he supposed- and Ivan and Pikel came hustling up to his side a moment later.

After many dead ends and many circular treks that brought them right back to where they had started, they came to an ancient storage area of wide corridors lined with rotted crates. “I was here,” Cadderly insisted, speaking the words aloud in an attempt to jog his memory.

Ivan dropped to the floor, seeking to confirm Cadderly’s declaration. As with all the corridors, though, no dear tracks were disenable. Clearly the dust had been recently disturbed, but either someone had deliberately brushed away any sure signs or simply too many had passed by this point for the dwarf to track.

Cadderly dosed his eyes and tried to envision his previous passage. Many images of his wanderings in the tunnels flooded through him, scenes of skeletons and corridors lined with sinister-looking alcoves, but they wouldn’t connect in any logical pattern. They had no focal point, no starting ground where Cadderly could begin to sort them out.

Then he heard the heartbeat.

Somewhere in the unseen distance, water was dripping, steadily, rhythmically. That sound had been here with him, Cadderly knew. It came from no particular direction, and he had not used it as any sort of a guiding beacon his first time through, but now, he realized, it could guide his memory. For, though its interval was constant, its volume became louder and more insistent at some bends in the passages, softer and more distant at others. Too engaged with other pressing problems his first time through, Cadderly had only noticed it on a subconscious level, but that had left an imprint on his memory. Now Cadderly trusted his instincts. Instead of cluttering his consciousness with futile worries, he moved along and let his subconscious memories guide his steps.

Ivan and Pikel didn’t question him; they had nothing better to suggest. It wasn’t until they came to a three-way arch, and Cadderly’s face brightened noticeably, that even Cadderly really believed he knew where he was going.

“To the left,” Cadderly insisted, and indeed, the left archway was less thick with cobwebs than the right, as if someone had passed through there. Cadderly turned back to the dwarves just as he started under the archway, a look of trepidation, even outright dread, on his face.

“What’ve ye seen?” Ivan demanded, and he pushed his way past Cadderly, under the arches.

“The skeletons,” Cadderly started to explain.

Pikel hopped to his guard, and Ivan held his torch far out in front, peering into the dusty gloom. “I see no skeletons!” Ivan remarked after a short pause.

The encounter with the walking dead remained a nightmarish blur for Cadderly. He couldn’t quite remember where he had encountered the skeletons, and he didn’t know why the thought had suddenly come to him now. “They might be in this area,” he offered in a whisper. “Something makes me believe they are nearby.”

Ivan and Pikel relaxed visibly and leaned to the side in unison to glance at each other around the young scholar. “Come on, then,” Ivan huffed, following his torch’s clearing fire into the left passage.

“The skeletons,” Cadderly announced again as soon as he came through the archway. He knew this place, a crate-lined corridor wide enough for ten to walk abreast. A bit farther, alcoves lined the corridor’s walls on both sides.

“We going to start that again?” asked Ivan.

Cadderly waved his tight beam in the direction of the alcoves. “In there,” he explained.

His warning seemed ominous, at least to him, but the dwarves reacted to it as though it was an invitation. Rather than dim the lights and creep along, they both leaped out in front and strode defiantly down the center of the corridor, stopping in front of the first alcove.

“Oo oi” remarked Pikel.

“Ye’re right, lad,” agreed Ivan. “It’s a skeleton.” He propped his axe up on one shoulder, put his other hand on his hip, and walked right up to the alcove.

“Well?” he cried at the bones. “Are ye going to just sit there and rot, or are you going to come out and block me way?”

Cadderly came up tentatively, despite the dwarves’ bravado.

“Just as ye said,” Ivan said to him when he arrived, “but not moving about much, as I see it.”

“They were moving,” Cadderly insisted, “chasing me.”

The brothers leaned to the side-they were getting used to this maneuver-and glanced at each other around Cadderly.

“I did not dream it!” Cadderly snarled at them, taking a step to the side to block their exchanged stares. “Look!” He started for the skeleton, then had second thoughts about that course and put his tight beam into the alcove instead. “See the cobwebs hanging freely in there? And the bits of web on the bones? They were attached, but now the webs hang free. Either this skeleton has been out of the alcove recently, or someone came down here and cut the strands from it, to make it look as though it has been out of the alcove.”

“Yerself was the only one down here,” Ivan blurted before he even realized the accusatory connotations of his statement.

“Do you believe I cut the strands?” Cadderly cried. “I would not want to go near the thing. Why would I waste the time and effort to do that?”

Again came the dwarven lean-and-look maneuver, but when Ivan came up straight this time, his expression was less doubting. “Then why are they sitting tight?” he asked. “If they want a fight, why  ... ?”

“Because we did not attack them!” Cadderly interrupted suddenly. “Of course,” he continued, the revelation coming clearer. “The skeletons did not rise against me until I attacked one of them.”

“Why’d ye bit a pile of bones?” Ivan had to ask.

“I did not,” Cadderly stuttered. “I mean... I thought I saw it move.”

“Aha!” cried Pikel.

Ivan elaborated on his excited brother’s conclusion. “Then the skeleton moved before ye hit it, and ye’re wrong now in yer thinking.”

“No, it did not move!” Cadderly shot back. “I thought it had, but it was only a rat or a mouse, or something like that.”

“Mouses don’t look like bones,” Ivan said dryly. Cadderly expected the remark.

Pikel squeaked and crinkled his nose, putting on his best rodent face.

“If we just leave them alone, they might let us pass,” Cadderly reasoned. “Whoever animated them probably gave them instructions to defend themselves.”

Ivan thought about it for a moment, then nodded. The reasoning seemed sound enough. He motioned to his brother, and Pikel understood the silent request. The green-bearded dwarf pushed Cadderly out of the way, lowered his club like a battering ram, and, before the startled young scholar could move to stop him, charged full speed into the alcove. The terrific impact reduced the skull to a pile of flecks and dust and Pikel’s continuing momentum scattered the rest of the bones in every direction.

“That one won’t be getting up to fight us,” remarked a satisfied Ivan, brushing a rib off his brother’s shoulder as Pikel came back out.

Cadderly stood perfectly still, his mouth hanging open in absolute disbelief.

“We had to check it,” Ivan insisted. “Ye want to be leaving walking skeletons behind us?”

“Uh oh,” groaned Pikel. Cadderly and Ivan turned at the call, Cadderly’s light beam showing the source of Pikel’s dismay. This skeleton would not rise to fight them, as Ivan had said, but dozens of others were already up and moving.

Ivan clapped Cadderly hard on the back. “Good thinking, lad!” the dwarf congratulated him. “Ye were right! It took a hit to rouse them!”

“That is a good thing?” Cadderly asked. Images of his last trip through here came rushing back to him, particularly when he had backed away from the first skeleton he had struck, into the waiting grasp of another. Cadderly spun to the side. The skeleton from across the corridor was nearly upon him.

Pikel had seen it, too. Undaunted, the dwarf grasped his club with both hands down low on the handle and stepped in with a mighty roundhouse swing, catching the monster on the side of the head and sending the skull soaring down the corridor behind them. The remaining bones just stood shakily for the moment it took Pikel to smash them down.

Cadderly watched the batted skull until it disappeared into the darkness, then he shouted, “Run!”

“Run!” Ivan echoed, dropping his torch, and he and Pikel charged down the corridor, straight at the advancing host.

That wasn’t exactly what Cadderly had in mind, but when he realized that there was no way he was going to turn the wild brothers around, he shrugged his shoulders, took out his spindle-disks, and followed, seriously pondering the value of friendship when weighed against the burdens.

The closest skeletons did not react quickly enough to the dwarven charge. Ivan sliced one cleanly in half with a great cut of his axe, but then, on his back swing, snagged the weapon’s other head in the rib cage of his next intended victim. Never one to quibble over finesse, the dwarf heaved mightily, pulling his weapon and the entangled skeleton into the air around him and then slamming the whole jumble into the next nearest monster. The two skeletons were hopelessly hooked together, but so was Ivan’s axe.

“I need ye, me brother!” Ivan cried as yet another skeleton moved in on him, reaching for his face with dirty, sharp finger bones.

Pikel had fared better initially, plowing into the first ranks like a boulder bouncing down a mountainside, breaking three skeletons apart and pushing the rest back several feet. The rush had not been without consequences, though, for Pikel stumbled down to one knee before he could halt his momentum. The fearless undead came in all around the dwarf, advancing from every angle. Pikel grasped his club down low, held it out to arm’s length, and began turning fast circles.

The skeletons were mindless creatures, not thinking fighters. Their outstretched arms leading, they came right in fearlessly, stupidly, and Pikel’s whirling club whittled them down, fingers, hands, and arms. The dwarf laughed wildly as each bone went humming away, thinking he could keep this up forever.

Then Pikel heard his brother’s call. He stopped his spin and tried to discern the right direction, then sent his stubby legs pumping in place, building momentum.

“Oooo!” the dwarf roared, and off he sprang, bursting out the side of the skeletal ring. Unfortunately, his dizziness had deceived him, and as soon as he broke clear of the ring, he slammed headfirst into the corridor’s brick wall.

“Oo,” came a hollow echo from under the pot helmet of the now seated Pikel.

Only a single skeleton had slipped between the dwarves to face Cadderly, odds that the young scholar thought he could handle. He danced about, up on the balls of his feet as Danica once had shown him, flicking out a few warning shots with his spindle-disks.

The skeleton paid no heed to his dancing feints, or the harmless throws, and continued straight in for Cadderly’s mass.

The spindle-disks smacked into its cheekbone and spun its head right around so that is was looking behind itself. Still the skeleton came on, and Cadderly fired again, this time trying to break the thing’s body. As soon as he threw, he realized his error.

The disks slipped through the skeleton’s rib cage, but got tangled when Cadderly tried to retract them. To make matters worse, the sudden tug of the snag tightened the loop on Cadderly’s finger, binding him to the skeleton.

Blindly, the monster swiped out at him. Cadderly dove straight for the floor, took up his walking stick, and shoved it through the rib cage, hoping to dislodge his spindle-disks. As soon as the tip of the stick wedged into the skeleton’s backbone, the crafty young scholar changed his tactics. An image of a fulcrum and lever popped into his mind and he let go of his walking stick, then slammed its head with all his might.

The rib fulcrum held firm and the shock of Cadderly’s downward blow shot up along the skeleton’s backbone and sent its head straight into the air, where it ricocheted off the corridor ceiling. The shattering jolt broke apart the rest of the undead thing.

Cadderly congratulated himself many times as he worked both his weapons free, but his relief lasted only until he looked farther down the corridor, into the flickering light of Ivan’s dropped torch. Both dwarves were down, Ivan unarmed and trying to keep out of one skeleton’s reach, and Pikel, sitting near the other wall, his pot down to his shoulders, with a whole host of skeletons advancing on him.

* * * * *

Druzil peered suspiciously from between his folded bat wings at the dark and quiet altar room. The brazier fire was down to embers now-Barjin would not leave an interplanar gate burning while he slept-and there was no other light source. That hardly hindered the imp, who had spent eons wandering about the swirling gray mists of the lower planes.

All seemed as it should. To the side of the room, Barjin slept peacefully, confident that his victory was at hand. Mullivy and Khalif flanked the doorway, as still as death and instructed not to move unless one of the conditions set by Barjin had been met.

To Druzil’s uneasy relief, none of those conditions apparently had. No intruders had entered the room, the door remained shut fast, and Druzil sensed no probing wizard eyes nor any distant call from Aballister.

The altar room’s serenity did not diminish the imp’s sense that something was amiss, though. Something had disturbed Druzil’s slumber; he had thought it another call from that persistent Aballister. Druzil tightened his wings and sank within himself, turning from his physical senses to the more subtle inner feelings, empathic sensations, that served an imp as well as eyes might serve a human. He pictured the area beyond the closed door, mentally probing the maze of twisting corridors.

The imp’s bat wings popped open suddenly. The skeletons were up!

Druzil reached into his magical energies and faded to invisibility. A single flap of his wings carried him between Mullivy and the mummy, and he quickly uttered the key word to prevent Barjin’s series of warding glyphs from exploding as he slipped out of the room. Then he was off, flying sometimes, creeping on clawed toes at others, picking his way carefully toward the outermost burial chambers. Already his physical hearing had confirmed what he had sensed, for a battle was in full swing.

The imp paused and considered the options before him. The skeletons were fighting, there could be no doubt, and that could only mean that intruders had come down to this level. Perhaps they had simply wandered down here in their curse-induced stupor, vagabond priests soon to be dispatched by the undead force, but Druzil could not dismiss the possibility that whoever it was had come with a more definite purpose in mind.

Druzil glanced over his shoulder, down the corridors that would take him back to Barjin. He was torn. If he sent his thoughts to Barjin, established that personal familiar-master telepathic link, he would be bringing his relationship with the priest to a level of which Aballister certainly would not approve. If the wizard back at Castle Trinity ever found out, he might well banish Druzil back to his home plane-a fate that the imp, with the chaos curse finally unleashed on the world, certainly did not desire.

Yet it was Barjin, the imp reminded himself, not Aballister, who had taken the forefront in this battle. Resourceful Barjin, the powerful priest, was the one who had struck boldly and effectively against the heart of law in the Snowflake region.

Druzil sent his thoughts careening down the corridors, into the altar room, and into the sleeping priest’s mind. Barjin was awake in a second, and a moment later, he understood that danger had come to his domain.

I will divert them if they get past the skeletons, Druzil assured the priest, but prepare your defenses!

* * * * *

Ivan knew he was running out of room. One hand raked at his shoulder, and all that he got for his retaliatory punch was a torn fingernail. The experienced dwarf decided to use his head. He tucked his powerful little legs under him, and the next time the pursuing skeleton lunged for him, he sprang forward.

Ivan’s helmet was fitted with the antlers of an eight-point deer, a trophy Ivan had bagged with a “dwarven bow”-that being a hammer balanced for long-range throwing-in a challenge hunt against a visiting elf from Shilmista Forest. In mounting the horns on his helmet, clever Ivan had used an old lacquering trick involving several different metals, and he only prayed that they would prove strong enough now.

He drove into the skeleton’s chest, knowing that his horns would likely be entangled, then he stood up and straightened his neck, hoisting the skeleton overhead. Ivan wasn’t certain how much his maneuver had gained him, though, for the skeleton, suspended perpendicularly across the dwarfs shoulders, continued its raking attacks.

Ivan whipped his head back and forth, but the skeleton’s sharp fingers found a hold on the side of his neck and dug a deep cut. Others were advancing.

Ivan found his answer along the side of the corridor, in an alcove. He could slip in there easily enough, but could the skeleton fit through, laid out sideways? Ivan lowered his head and charged, nearly bursting with laughter. The impact as the skeleton’s head and legs connected with the arch surrounding the alcove slowed the dwarf only a step. Bones, dust, and webs flew, and Ivan’s helmet nearly tore free of his head as the dwarf tumbled in headlong. He came back out into the corridor a moment later with half a rib cage and several web strands hanging loosely from his horns. He had defeated the immediate threat, but a whole corridor of enemies still remained.

Cadderly saved Pikel. The dazed dwarf sat near the wall, with a ringing in his ears that would last for a long time, and with a host of skeletons swiftly dosing.

“Druid, Pikel!” Cadderly yelled, trying to find something that would shake the dwarf back to reality. “Think like a druid. Envision the animals! Become an animal!”

Pikel lifted the front of his pot helmet and glanced absently toward Cadderly. “Eh?”

“Animals!” Cadderly screamed. “Druids and animals. An animal could get up and away! Spring .. . snake, Pikel. Spring like a coiled snake!”

The pot helmet went back down over the dwarfs eyes, but Cadderly was not dismayed, for he heard a hissing sound coming from under it and he noticed the slight movement as Pikel tensed the muscles in his arms and legs.

A dozen skeletons reached for him.

And the coiled snake snapped.

Pikel came up in a wild rush, batting with both arms, kicking with both legs, even gnawing on one skeleton’s forearm. As soon as he regained his footing, the dwarf scooped up his club and began the most vicious and frantic assault Cadderly had ever witnessed. He took a dozen hits but didn’t care. Only one thought, the memory that his brother had called for him, rang clear in the would-be druid’s mind.

He saw Ivan coming out of the alcove and spotted Ivan’s axe, caught fast in the tangle of two skeletons making their unsteady way toward Ivan. Pikel caught up to them long before they reached his brother.

The tree trunk club smashed again and again, beating the skeletons, punishing them for stealing Ivan’s weapon.

“That’ll be enough, brother,” Ivan cried happily, scooping his axe from the bone pile. “There are walking foes still to smash!”

Cadderly outmaneuvered the slow-moving skeletons to rejoin the dwarves. “Which way?” he gasped.

“Forward,” Ivan replied without hesitation.

“Oooi!” Pikel agreed.

“Just get between us,” growled Ivan, blasting the skull from a skeleton who had ventured too near.

As they worked their way down the corridor, Cadderly’s tactics improved. He kept his spindle-disks flying for skulls only-less chance of getting them hooked that way-and used his walking stick to ward off the reaching monsters.

Much more devastating to the skeletons were the two fighters flanking the young scholar. Pikel growled like a bear, barked like a dog, hooted like an owl, and hissed like a snake, but whatever sound came from his mouth did not alter his crushing attack routines with his tree trunk club.

Ivan was no less furious. The dwarf accepted a hit for every tat he gave out, but while the skeletons managed to inflict sometimes painful scratches, each of Ivan’s strikes shattered another of their ranks into scattered and useless bones.

The trio worked its way through one archway, around several sharp corners, and through yet another archway. Soon more of the skeletal host was behind them than in front, and the gap only widened as less and less resistance stood to hinder their way. The dwarves seemed to enjoy the now lopsided fight and Cadderly had to continually remind them of their more important mission in order to prevent them from turning back to find more skeletons to whack.

Finally they came clear of the threat and Cadderly had a moment to pause and try to get his bearings. He knew that the door, the critical door with the light shining through, could not be too far from here, but the crisscrossing corridors offered few landmarks to jog his memory.

* * * * *

Druzil concluded from the sheer quantity of smashed skeletons that these invaders were not stupefied victims of the chaos curse. He quickly closed in behind the fleeing intruders, taking care, even though he was invisible, to keep to the safety of sheltered shadows. Never allowing Cadderly and the dwarves to get out of his sight, the imp used his telepathy to contact Barjin again, and this time he asked the cleric for direct help.

Give me the commands for the skeletons, Druzil demanded.

Barjin hesitated, his own evil methods forcing him to consider if the imp might be attempting to wrest control.

Give the words to me or prepare to face a formidable band, Druzil warned. I can serve you well now, my master, but only if you choose wisely.

Barjin had come out of his sleep to find danger suddenly close, and he meant to take no chances of losing what he had so painstakingly achieved. He still didn’t trust the imp-no wise master ever would-but he figured that he could handle Druzil if it came down to that. Besides, if the imp tried to turn the skeletons against him, he could merely exert his own will and wrest back control of them.

Destroy the intruders! came Barjin’s telepathic command, and he followed it with a careful recounting of all the command words and phrases recognizable by his skeletal force.

Druzil needed no prodding from Barjin; protecting the flask of his precious chaos curse was more important to him than it ever could be to the priest. He memorized all the proper phrases and inflections for handling the skeletons, then, seeing that Cadderly and the dwarves had stopped to rest in an out-of-the-way and empty passage, went back to retrieve the remaining undead forces.

The next time the intruders met them, the skeletons would not be a disorganized and directionless band. “We will surround and strike in unison,” Druzil vowed to the skeletons, though the words meant nothing to the unthinking monsters. Druzil had to hear them, though. “We will tear apart the dwarves and the human,” the imp went on, growing more excited. The chaotic imp couldn’t immediately contain his hopes there, pondering the possibilities of taking the skeletal host against Barjin. Druzil dismissed the absurd notion as soon as he had thought of it. Barjin served him well for now, as Aballister had done.

But who could guess what the future might hold?

Danica’s Battle

She found herself in the throes of repeated urges, building to overwhelming crescendos and then dying away to be replaced by other insistent impulses. Surely this was Danica’s definition of Hell, the discipline and strict codes of her beloved religion swept away by waves of sheer chaos. She tried to staunch those waves, to beat back the images of Iron Skull, the urges she had felt when Cadderly had touched her, and the many others, but she found no secure footholds in her violently shifting thoughts.

Danica touched upon something that even the chaos could not disrupt. To fight the battle of the present, the young woman sent her thoughts into the simpler past.

She saw her father, Pavel, again, his small but powerful frame and blond hair turning to white on the temples. Mostly, Danica saw his gray eyes, always tender when they looked upon his little girl. There, too, was her mother and namesake, solid, immovable, and wildly in love with her father. Danica was the exact image of that woman, except that her mother’s hair was raven black, not blond, showing closer resemblance to the woman’s partially eastern background. She was petite and fair like her daughter, with the same clear brown, almond eyes, not dark but almost tan, that could sparkle with innocence or turn fast to unbreakable determination.

Danica’s images of her parents faded and were replaced by the wrinkled, wizened image of mysterious Master Turkel. His skin was thick, leathery, from uncounted hours spent sitting in the sun and meditating atop a mountain, high above the lines of shading trees. Truly he was a man of extremes, of explosive fighting abilities buried under seemingly limitless serenity. His ferocity during sparring matches often scared Danica, made her think the man was out of control.

But Danica had learned better than to believe that; Master Turkel was never out of control. Discipline was at the core of his, their, religion, the same discipline that Danica needed now.

She had labored beside her dear master for six years, until that day when Turkel honestly admitted that he could give no more to her. Despite her anticipation at studying the actual works of Penpahg D’Ahn, it had been a sad day for Danica when she left Westgate and started down the long road to the Edificant Library.

Then she had found Cadderly.

Cadderly! She had loved him from the first moment she had ever seen him, chasing a white squirrel along the groves lining the winding road to the library’s front door. Cadderly hadn’t noticed Danica right away, not until he tumbled headlong into a bush of clinging burrs. That first look struck Danica profoundly both then and now, as she battled to reclaim her identity. Cadderly had been embarrassed, to be sure, but the sudden flash of light in his eyes, eyes even purer gray than Danica’s father’s, and the way his mouth dropped open just a hint, then widened in a sheepish, boyish smile, had sent a curious warm sensation through Danica’s whole body.

The courtship had been equally thrilling and unpredictable; Danica never knew what ingenious event Cadderly would spring on her next. But entrenched beside Cadderly’s unpredictability was a rock-solid foundation that Danica could depend upon. Cadderly gave her friendship, an ear for her problems and excitement alike, and, most of all, respect for her and her studies, never competing against Grandmaster Penpahg D’Ahn for her time.

Cadderly?

Danica heard an echo deep in her mind, a soothing but determined call from Cadderly, urging her to “fight.”

Fight?

Danica looked inward, to those overwhelming urges and deeper, to their source, then she saw the manifestation, as had Cadderly. It was within her and not in the open room around her. She envisioned a red mist permeating her thoughts, an ungraspable force compelling her to its will and not her own. It was a fleeting vision, gone an instant after she glimpsed it, but Danica had always been a stubborn one. She summoned back the vision with all her will and this time she held onto it. Now she had an identified enemy, something tangible to battle.

“Fight, Danica,” Cadderly had said. She knew that; she heard the echoes. Danica formulated her thoughts in direct opposition to the mist’s urging. She denied whatever her impulses told her to do and to think. If her heart told her that something was correct, she called her heart a liar.

“Iron Skull,” compelled a voice inside her.

Danica countered with a memory of pain and warm blood running down her face, a memory that revealed to her how stupid she had been in attempting to smash the stone.

* * * * *

It was not a call heard by physical ears; it needed neither the wind nor open air to carry it. The energy emanating from Barjin’s necromancer’s stone called to a specific group only, to monsters of the negative plane, the land of the dead.

A few short miles from the Edificant Library, where once there had been a small mining town, the call was heard.

A ghoulish hand, withered and filthy, tore up through the sod, reaching into the world of the living. Another followed, and another, just a short distance away. Soon the gruesome pack of ghouls was up out of their holes, drooling tongues hanging between yellow fangs.

Running low, knuckles to the ground, the ghoul pack made for the stone’s call, for the Edificant Library.

* * * * *

Newander could only guess what inner turmoil racked the young woman. Sweat soaked Danica’s clothes and she squirmed and groaned under the tightly binding vines. At first, the druid had thought her in pain, and he quickly prepared a sedating spell to calm her. Fortunately, it occurred to Newander that Danica’s nightmare might be self-inflicted, that she might have found, as Cadderly had promised, some way to fight back the curse.

Newander sat beside the bed and placed his hands gently but firmly on Danica’s arms. While he did not call to her, or do anything else that might hinder her concentration, he watched her closely, fearful lest his guess be wrong.

Danica opened her eyes. “Cadderly?” she asked. Then she saw that the man over her was not Cadderly, and she realized, too, that she was tightly strapped down. She flexed her muscles and twisted as much as the vines would allow, testing their play.

“Calm, dear lass,” Newander said softly, sensing her growing distress. “Your Cadderly was here, but he could not stay. He set me to watch over you.”

Danica stopped her struggling, recognizing the man’s accent. She didn’t know his name, but his dialect, and the presence of the vines, told her his profession. “You are one of the druids?” she asked.

“I am Newander,” the druid replied, bowing low, “friend of your Cadderly.”

Danica accepted his words without question and spent a moment reorienting herself to her surroundings. She was in her own room, she knew, the room she had lived in for a year, but something seemed terribly out of place. It wasn’t Newander, or even the vines. Something in this room, in Danica’s most secure of places, burned on the edges of the young woman’s consciousness, tortured her soul. Danica’s gaze settled on the fallen block of stone, stained darkly on one side. The ache in her forehead told her that her dreams had been correct, that her own lifeblood had made that stain.

“How could I have been so foolish?” Danica groaned.

“You were not foolish,” Newander assured her. “There has been a curse about this place, a curse that your Cadderly has set out to remove.”

Again Danica knew instinctively that the druid spoke truthfully. She envisioned her mental struggle against the insinuating red mist, a battle that had been won temporarily but was far from over. Even as she lay there, Danica knew that the red mist continued its assault on her mind.

“Where is he?” Danica asked, near panic.

“He went below,” Newander replied, seeing no need to hide the facts from the bound woman. “He spoke of a smoking bottle, deep in the cellars.”

“The smoke,” Danica echoed mysteriously. “Red mist. It is all about us, Newander.”

The druid nodded. “That is what Cadderly claimed. It was he who opened the bottle, and he that means to close it.”

“Alone?”

“No, no,” Newander assured her. “The two dwarves went with him. They have not been as affected by the curse as the rest.”

“The rest?” Danica gasped. Danica knew that her own resistance to such mind-affecting spells was greater than the average person’s and she suddenly feared for the other priests.  She had been driven to slam her head into a block of stone, then what tragedies might have befallen less disciplined priests?

“Aye, the rest,” Newander replied grimly. “The curse is general on the library. Few, if any, have escaped it, your Cadderly excepted. Dwarves are tougher than most against magic, and the brother cooks seemed in good sorts.”

Danica could hardly digest what she was hearing. The last thing she could remember was finding Cadderly unconscious under the casks in the wine cellar. Everything after that seemed just a strange dream to her, fleeting images of irrational moments. Now, in concentrating with all her willpower, she remembered Kierkan Rufo’s advances and her punishing him severely for them. Danica remembered even more vividly the block of stone, the exploding flashes of pain, and her own refusal to admit the futility of her attempt.

Danica did not dare to let her imagination conjure images of the state of the library if the druid’s words were true, if this same curse was general throughout the place. She focused her thoughts instead on a more personal level, on Cadderly and his quest down in the dusty, dangerous cellars.

“We must go and help him,” she declared, renewing her struggles against the stubborn vines.

“No,” said Newander. “We are to stay here, by Cadderly’s own bidding.”

“No,” Danica stated flatly, shaking her head. “Of course Cadderly would say that, trying to protect me-and it seems I needed protecting, until a few moments ago. Cadderly and the dwarves might need us, and I’ll not lie here under your vines while he walks into danger.”

Newander was about to question her on why she thought there might be danger in the cellars, when he recalled Cadderly’s own morbid descriptions of the haunted place.

“Have your plants let me go, Newander, I beg” Danica appealed to the druid. “You can remain here if you choose, but I must go to Cadderly’s side quickly, before this cursing mist regains its hold on me!”

Her last statement, that the curse might fall back over her, only reinforced Newander’s logical conclusion that she should be kept under tight control, that her reprieve from the curse, if that was what this was, might be a temporary thing. But the druid could not ignore the determination in the young woman’s voice. He had heard stories of the remarkable Danica from many sources since his arrival at the library and he did not doubt that she would be a powerful ally to Cadderly if she could remain clear-headed. Still, the druid could not underestimate the curse’s power-the evidence was too clear all about him- and the choice to release her seemed a great risk.

“What have you to gain by keeping me here?” Danica asked, as though she had read the druid’s thoughts. “If Cadderly is not in danger, then he will find and defeat the curse before I... we, can get to him. But if he and the dwarves have found danger, then they could surely use our help.”

Newander waved his hands and whistled shrilly to the vines. They jumped to his call, releasing their hold on Danica and the bed, rolling back out the open window.

Danica stretched her arms and legs for many moments before she could bring herself to stand, and even then she got up quite unsteadily, needing Newander’s support.

“Are you so certain that you are fit for walking?” the druid asked. “You suffered some serious wounds to the head.”

Danica pulled roughly from his grasp and staggered to the middle of the room. There she began an exercise routine, falling more and more easily into the familiar movements. Her arms waved and darted in perfect harmony, each guiding the other to its next maneuver. Every now and again, one of her feet came whistling up in front of her, arcing high over her head.

Newander watched her tentatively at first, then smiled and nodded his agreement that the young woman had fully regained control of her movements, movements that seemed ever so graceful and appealing, almost animal-like, to the druid.

“We should be going, then,” Newander offered, taking up his oaken staff and moving to the door.

Renewed sounds from Histra’s room greeted them as they entered the hall. Danica glanced anxiously at Newander, then started for the priestess’s door. Newander’s hand clasped her shoulder and stopped her.

“The curse,” the druid explained.

“But we must go to help,” Danica started to retort, but she stopped suddenly as she recognized the connotations of those cries.

Danica’s blush became a deep red, and she giggled in spite of the seriousness of the situation. Newander tried to hurry her down the corridor and she did not resist. Indeed, it was Danica pulling the druid by the time they passed Histra’s closed door.

Their first stop was Cadderly’s room, and they entered just as Kierkan Rufo was pulling himself free from the last of Ivan’s stubborn bindings.

Danica’s eyes lit up at the sight. Vivid memories of Rufo prodding her and grabbing at her assaulted her thoughts, and a wave of sheer hatred, augmented by the red mist, nearly overwhelmed her.

“Where is Cadderly?” Danica demanded through clenched teeth.

Newander knew nothing of Rufo, of course, but the druid recognized immediately that Danica’s feelings for the angular man were not positive.

Rufo twisted his wrist free and tore away from the bed. He averted his gaze, obviously not wanting to face Danica, or anyone else at that moment. Thoroughly wretched, the beaten man wanted only to crawl under his own bed in his own dark room. He had the misfortune, though, or the poor judgment, to walk near Danica on his way out of the room.

“Where is Cadderly?” Danica insisted again, stepping in Rufo’s way.

Rufo sneered at her and swung a backhand that never got close. Before Newander could begin to intervene, Danica had caught Rufo’s wrist and used its own momentum, with a slight twist, to send the angular man lurching to the side. Newander heard the dull thud, though Danica’s next movement had been too subtle to follow. The druid wasn’t sure where Danica had hit the man, but from the curious way Rufo squealed and hopped up onto his toes, Newander could make a guess.

“Danica!” the druid cried, wrapping himself around Danica’s arms and pulling her back from the tiptoeing man. “Danica,” he whispered in Danica’s ear. “It is the curse. Remember the curse? You must fight it, girl!”

Danica relaxed immediately and let Rufo slip by. The stubborn man couldn’t resist the temptation to turn back as he passed and put one more sneer in Danica’s face.

Danica’s foot caught him on the side of the head and sent him tumbling out into the hall.

“I meant to do that,” Danica assured Newander, making no struggles against his continuing hold, “curse or no curse!”

The druid nodded resignedly; Rufo had asked for that one. He let Danica go as soon as he heard Rufo scramble away down the corridor.

“He is stubborn, that one,” Newander remarked.

“Too true,” said Danica. “He must have come in on Cadderly and the dwarves.”

“Did you notice the bruises on his face?” said the druid. “It would seem that he did not fare too well in that fight.”

Danica agreed quietly, thinking it best not to tell Newander that she was the one who had put most of those bruises on Rufo’s face. “So Rufo did not slow them,” Danica reasoned. “They have made their way to the cellars, and we must be quick to follow.”

The druid hesitated.

“What is it?”

“I am afraid for you,” Newander admitted, “and of you. How free are you of the mist? Less than I was believing, by the look on your face when we came upon that one.”

“I admit that, for all my efforts, the mist remains,” replied Danica, “but your words brought me back under control, I assure you, even against Kierkan Rufo. My argument with him goes beyond this curse. I’ll not forget the way he has stared at me, or what he tried to do to me.” A suspicious look came into Danica’s brown eyes, and she cautiously backed away from Newander. “Why is Newander, the druid, not affected by this thing? And what does Cadderly possess that frees him from the influences of the red mist?”

“As for myself, I know not,” Newander replied immediately. “Your Cadderly believes I am free because there are no ridden desires in my heart, and because I came into the library after the curse had started. I knew that something was amiss here as soon as I went to my friends-perhaps that warning has allowed me to fend off the cursing effects.”

Danica didn’t seem convinced. “I am a disciplined warrior,” she replied, “but the curse found its way into my thoughts easily enough, even just now, though I understand the dangers of it.”

Newander shrugged, having no explanation. “That was your Cadderly’s theory, not my own,” he reminded her.

“What does Newander believe?”

Again the druid merely shrugged.

“For Cadderly,” he said a moment later, “it was he who opened the bottle, and that alone might have saved him. Often in magical curses, the bringer of the curse does not feel its sting.”

Danica didn’t really appreciate the value of anything the druid had said, but the sincerity in Newander’s voice was undeniable. She lowered her guard and walked out beside the man.

The kitchen still belonged to the gluttons. Several more had fallen in an overstuffed stupor, but others continued to wander about, pillaging the dwarves’ well-organized cupboards.

Newander and Danica tried to keep their distance as they made their way toward the cellar door, but one fat priest took more than a passing interest in the beautiful young woman.

“Here’s a tasty bit still to be tried” he slobbered between several thunderous belches. Rubbing his greasy fingers on his greasier robes, he started straight for Danica.

He had nearly reached her-and Danica thought she would have to clobber the man-when a pudgy hand grabbed him on the shoulder and roughly spun him about.

“Hold!” shouted Headmaster Avery. “What do you think you are about?”

The priest eyed Avery with sincere confusion, as did Danica, standing behind him.

“Danica,” Avery explained to the man. “Danica and Cadderly! You keep away from her.” Before the man could make any apologies, before Danica could try to calm Avery, the pudgy headmaster swung across with his other arm, holding a hefty leg of mutton, and cracked the offending priest on the side of the head. The man dropped in a heap and did not move.

“But, Headmaster  ...” Danica began.

Avery cut her off. “No need to thank me,” he said. “I watch out for my dear friend, Cadderly. And for his friends, too, of course. No need to thank me!” He wandered off without waiting for any reply, gorging on his mutton and searching for new stores to raid.

Danica and Newander started for the fallen man, but the priest awoke with a start and shook his head briskly. He wiped a hand across the mutton-wetted side of his head, smelled his fingers curiously for a moment when he realized the wetness was not his own blood, then began licking them wildly.

The two companions’ relief when they reached the heavy, iron-bound cellar door dissipated as soon as they found the portal barred. Danica worked at the jam for a few moments, trying to discover the source of the lock, while the druid prepared a spell.

Newander spoke a few words-they sounded elvish to Danica-and the door groaned, as if in answer. Wood planks warped and loosened and the whole door rattled to Danica’s slightest touch.

When the druid’s spell was completed, Danica went at the door more forcefully. It no longer fit neatly on any side, though the locking bar remained firmly in place behind it.

Danica spent a long moment in deep concentration, then lashed out with her open palm. Her blow would have dropped any man, but the door was very old, of ancient oak, and very thick, and the punch had little effect. This portal had been constructed for defense in the earliest days of the library. If a goblin raid ever overpowered the outside defenses, the priests could retreat to the cellars. It had only happened twice in the history of the library, and both times, the oaken door had stopped the intruders. Neither the flames of goblin torches, nor the weight of their crude battering rams had broken through, and now, Danica, for all her power and training, was simply overmatched.

“It appears that Cadderly and the dwarves will have to get the task finished without our help,” Newander remarked grimly, though there was a hint of relief in his voice.

Danica was not so willing to surrender. “Outside,” she ordered, starting back across the kitchen. “There may be a window, or some other way down.”

Newander did not think her hopes likely, but Danica hadn’t asked for, or even waited to hear, his opinion. Reluctantly, the druid shrugged and ran to catch up with her.

They split up just outside the double doors, Danica searching along the base of the wall to the south, Newander going north. Danica had gone only a few steps when she was joined by a welcomed friend.

“Percival,” the woman said happily, glad for the distraction as the white squirrel peered over the edge of the roof right above her, chattering excitedly. Danica knew immediately that something was bothering the squirrel, but while she could sometimes figure out the connotations of a few of Percival’s basic cries, she could not begin to follow his wild stream of chatter.

“Oh, Percival!” she scolded loudly, interrupting the squirrel’s banter. “I do not understand.”

“Surely I do,” said Newander, coming up quickly behind Danica. To the squirrel, he said, “Do continue,” and he uttered a series of squeaks and clicks.

Percival began again at once, at such a pace that Newander was hard pressed to keep up.

“We may have found our way in,” the druid announced to Danica when Percival had finished. “That is, if we can trust the beast.”

Danica studied the squirrel for a brief moment, then vouched for him.

The first place Percival led them was the old work shed to the side of the library. As soon as they entered, they understood the squirrel’s noisy introduction to the place, for the chains still hung from the ceiling near to the back wall and droplets of blood had spattered the floor beneath them.

“Mullivy?” Danica asked to no one in particular. Her question set Percival off on a new stream of gossip. Danica waited patiently for the squirrel to finish, then turned to Newander for a translation.

“This Mullivy,” the druid asked, looking about with even more concern, “might he be the caretaker?”

Danica nodded. “He has been groundskeeper of the library for decades.”

“Percival claims he was brought here by another man,” the druid explained, “then they both went off to the hole.”

“The hole?”

“Tunnel, he means, as best as I can figure,” explained Newander. “All this happened several days ago, perhaps. Percival’s grasp of time is weak. Still, it is remarkable that the squirrel can recall the incident at all. They are not known for long memories, you know.”

Percival hopped down from the shelf and raced out the door as though he had taken exception to the druid’s last remark. Danica and Newander rushed to follow, Danica pausing to collect a couple of torches that Mullivy had conveniently stocked in the work shed.

It seemed as if Percival was almost playing a deliberate game with them as they tried to follow his darting movements along the broken ground and rough underbrush south of the library. At last, after many wrong turns, they caught up to the squirrel along a ridge. Below them, under an overhang thick with brush, they saw the ancient tunnel, heading into the mountain in the general direction of the library.

“This might not get us anywhere near the cellars we are seeking,” Newander offered.

“How long will it take us to get through the door in the kitchen?” Danica asked, mostly to remind the druid of their lack of options. To accentuate her point, she led Newander’s gaze to the west, where the sun was already disappearing behind the high peaks of the Snowflakes.

Newander took a torch from her, uttered a few words, and produced a flame in his open palm. The fire did not burn the druid, but it lit the torch, and then lit Danica’s torch, easily enough before Newander extinguished it.

They walked in side by side, taking note that there were indeed prints in the dust on the tunnel floor-boot prints, possibly, though most were scraped away in a manner that neither of them could explain.

Neither of them realized that zombies dragged their feet when they walked.

General Druzil

Ivan wiped a line of blood from his brother’s neck. “Druid?” Ivan asked, and there now remained little sarcasm in his tone. Pikel’s wild fighting obviously had impressed Ivan, and the dwarf had no way of knowing how much more there was to being a druid than barking animal noises during a fight. “Maybe that’d not be so bad.” Pikel nodded gratefully, his smile wide under his low-hanging helmet.

“Where do we go from here?” Ivan asked Cadderly, who was leaning quietly against the wall. Cadderly opened his eyes. This passage was new to him and the fight had agitated him. Even concentrating on the dripping water did little to help him get his bearings. “We went mostly west,” he offered tentatively. “We have to come back a-round ...”

“North,” Ivan corrected, then he whispered to Pikel, “Never met a human who could tell his way underground,” which brought a chuckle from both dwarves. “Whatever the direction,” Cadderly went on, “we have to get back to the original area. We were close to our goal before the attack. I am certain of that.”

“The best way back is the way we ran,” reasoned Ivan.

“Uh oh,” muttered Pikel, peeking around the comer to the passage behind them.

Cadderly and Ivan didn’t miss the dwarfs point, and they understood even more clearly a second later, when the now familiar scraping-scuffing sound of approaching bony feet came from beyond the bend.

Ivan and Pikel clasped their weapons and nodded eagerly- too eagerly, by the young scholar’s estimation. Cadderly moved quickly to quench the battle-fires burning in their eyes. “We go the other way,” he ordered. “This passage must have another exit, just like all the others, and no doubt it connects to tunnels that will allow us to get behind our pursuers.”

“Ye fearing a fight?” balked Ivan, narrowing his eyes with contempt.

The dwarfs suddenly gruff tone alarmed Cadderly. “The bottle,” he reminded Ivan. “That is our first and most important target. Once we close it, you can go back after all the skeletons you desire.” The answer seemed to appease Ivan, but Cadderly was hoping that once they had closed the bottle and defeated whoever or whatever was behind this whole curse, no further fighting would be necessary.

The corridor went on for a long way with no side passages, and no alcoves, though some areas were lined by rotted crates.

When they at last did see a turn up ahead, a bend that went back the same way as the one they had left behind, they were greeted once again by the scraping-scuffling sound. All three glanced at each other with concern; Ivan’s glare at Cadderly was not complimentary.

“We left the others far behind,” the dwarf reasoned. “This must be a new group. Now they’re on both sides! I told ye we should’ve fought them when we could!”

“Turn back,” Cadderly said, thinking that perhaps the dwarfs reasoning was not correct.

Ivan didn’t seem to like the idea. “There are more behind us,” he huffed. “Ye want to be fighting both groups at once?”

Cadderly wanted to argue that perhaps there were not skeletons behind them, that perhaps this unseen group in front of them was the same as those they had left behind. He saw clearly that he wouldn’t convince the grumbling dwarves, so he didn’t waste the time in trying. “We have wood,” he said. “Let us at least build some defenses.”

The brothers had no problem with that suggestion, and they quickly followed Cadderly a short way back down the passage, to the last grouping of rotted crates. Ivan and Pikel conferred in a private huddle for a moment, then swept into action. Several of the boxes, weakened by the decades, fell apart at the touch, but soon the dwarves had two shoulder-high-to-a-man and fairiy solid lines running out from one wall, forming a corridor too narrow for more than one or two skeletons to come through at a time.

“Just get yerself behind me and me brother,” Ivan instructed Cadderly. “We’re better for smashing walking bones than that toy ye carry!”

By then, the scuffling was quite loud in front of them and Cadderly could detect some movement just at the end of his narrow light beam. The skeletons did not advance any farther, though.

“Have they lost the trail?” Cadderly whispered.

Ivan shook his head. “They know we’re here,” he insisted.

“Why do they hold back?”

“Uh oh,” moaned Pikel.

“Ye’re right,” Ivan said to his brother. He looked up at Cadderly. “Ye should’ve left the fighting to us,” he said. “Be keeping that thought in yer head in the future. Now they’re waiting for the other group, the one we shouldn’t have left behind us, to catch up.”

Cadderly rocked back on his heels. Skeletons were not thinking creatures. If Ivan’s appraisal was correct, then some one, or something, else was in the area, directing the attack.

Shuffling noises proved the dwarves’ guess right only a few moments later and Cadderly nodded grimly. Perhaps he should have left the fighting decisions to his more seasoned companions. He took up his appointed position behind the dwarven brothers, not sounding his concerns that the undead seemed to have some organization.

The skeletons came at them in a rush, a score from one side and at least that many from the other, and when they found the single opening to get at their living enemies, they banged against each other trying to get in.

A single chop from Ivan’s axe dispatched the first one that made its way down. Several more followed in a tight group, and Ivan backed away and nodded to his brother. Pikel lowered his dub like a battering ram and started pumping his legs frantically, building momentum. Cadderly grabbed the dwarf’s shoulder, hoping to keep their defensive posture intact, and it was Ivan, not Pikel, who knocked his hand away.

“Tactics, boy, tactics,” Ivan grumbled, shaking his head incredulously. “I told ye to leave the fighting to us.”

Cadderly nodded again and pulled back.

Pikel sprang away, battering into the advancing skeletons like some animated ballista missile. With the general jumble of bones, it was hard to determine how many skeletons the dwarf actually had destroyed. The important factor was that many more still remained. Pikel wheeled about quickly and came rushing back, one skeleton right behind him.

“Down!” Ivan yelled and Pikel dove to the ground just as Ivan’s great axe swiped about, bashing Pikel’s pursuer into little pieces.

Cadderly vowed then to let the dwarves handle any future battle arrangements, humbling himself to the fact that the dwarves understood tactics far better than he ever could.

Another small group of skeletons came on, and Ivan and Pikel used alternating attack routines, each playing off his brother’s feints and charges, to easily defeat them. Cadderly rested back against the wall in sincere admiration, believing that the brothers could keep this up for a long, long time.

Then, suddenly, the skeletons stopped advancing. They milled about by the entrance to the crate run for a moment, then systematically began dismantling the piles.

“When did those things learn to think?” asked a disbelieving Ivan.

“Something is guiding them,” Cadderly replied, shifting his light beam all about the passage in search of the undead leader.

* * * * *

No light could reveal Druzil’s invisibility. The imp watched impatiently and with growing concern. Counting the skeletons back in the earlier passages, these three adventurers had destroyed more than half the undead force.

Druzil was not normally a gambling creature, not when his own safety was concerned, but this was not a normal situation. If these three were not stopped, they eventually would get into the altar room. Who could guess what kind of damage the two wild dwarves might cause in there?

Yet, it was something about the human that bothered Druzil most of all. His eyes, the imp thought, and the careful and calculating way he swept his light beam, reminded Druzil pointedly of another powerful and dangerous human. Druzil had heard of dwarven resistance to all magic, even potent ones such as the chaos curse, so he could understand how the two had found their way down, but this human seemed even more clear-headed, more focused, than his companions.

There could be only one answer: this one had been Barjin’s catalyst in opening the bottle. Barjin had assured Druzil that he had put spells on the catalyst that would keep the man from remembering anything and from posing any threat. Had Barjin, perhaps, underestimated his foe? That possibility only increased Druzil’s respect for Cadderly.

Yes, the imp decided, this human was the true threat. Druzil rubbed his hands together eagerly and stretched his wings. It was time to end that threat.

* * * * *

“We’ve got to charge them before they rip it all down!” Ivan declared, but before he and Pikel could move, there came a sudden rush of wind.

“Oo!” Pikel yelled, instinctively recognizing the sound as an attack. He grabbed the front of Cadderly’s tunic and pulled him to the ground. A split second later, Pikel yelped out in pain and grabbed at his neck.

The attacker became visible as it struck, and Cadderly, though he didn’t recognize the creature precisely, knew it was a denizen of the lower planes, some sort of imp. The bat-winged thing flew off, its barbed tail trailing behind, dripping Pikel’s blood.

“Me brother!” shouted Ivan, but, though Pikel seemed a bit dazed, he warded off Ivan’s attempts to see to his wound.

“That was an imp,” Cadderly explained, keeping the light beam in the direction the creature had flown. “Its sting is-“ he stopped when he looked at the concerned brothers “-poisoned,” Cadderly said softly.