Shouts continued to follow Cadderly and Danica after they left the bridge and made their way on-to Lakeview Street. The mist was fast flying, burned away by the steamy rays of the rising sun.
Carradoon had awakened to a travesty. Lakeview Street was jammed with curious citizens and city guardsmen. Many heads turned to regard the young priest and his escort, Cadderly’s wide-brimmed hat drooping on all sides from its soaking. Pointing fingers turned the companions’ way as well, and soon a horseman, a city guard, pushed his way through the throng to stop in Cadderly’s path.
“Are you a priest of the Edificant Library?” came the guardsman’s blunt and gruff question.
“I am Cadderly, of the Order of Deneir,” the young priest replied. He turned to Danica and shrugged, embarrassed and almost apologetic, as soon as he had spoken the last few words.
“We are making our way back to the Dragon’s Codpiece, the inn of Fredegar Harriman” Danica explained, tossing Cadderly a sidelong glance, “to check on the friends we were forced to leave behind.”
“Forced?” Cadderly and Danica knew the question was a test. The guardsman’s eyes remained narrow and searching as he continued to scrutinize them.
“You know what occurred,” Cadderly replied without hesitation.
The guardsman nodded gravely, apparently satisfied with the explanation. “Come, and quickly,” he bade them, and he used his horse to nudge aside any who stood to block the couple’s progress.
Neither Cadderly nor Danica enjoyed that stroll down Lakeview Street, fearful that among those many watching eyes loomed some belonging to their assassin enemies. And even more fearful to the companions, considering the guard’s grim tone, loomed the possibility that the victory back at the inn had not been without cost.
Their fears did not diminish when they passed the inn two doors down, where Ivan and Pikel had been staying, to find that the front rail, the window above the door, and the wall beside the door all had been smashed apart. The innkeeper, sweeping glass and wood shards from his front porch, regarded the two suspiciously, not looking away and not blinking once as they passed.
Cadderly paused and sighed deeply when the Dragon’s Codpiece came into sight. He spotted the balcony of his room, the place he had used as a sanctuary from the harshness of the world for the past several weeks. The front rail lay in the street; one plank, the one that had supported Danica’s ride to safety, hung out at a weird diagonal angle. There were no bodies in the street (thank the gods!), but Cadderly saw a crimson stain on the cobblestone beneath his room, and a larger one halfway across the wide street. Danica, apparently sensing his distress at the sight, hooked her arm around his and lent him support. To her surprise, Cadderly pulled away. She looked at him, to see if she had done something wrong, but his return stare was not accusing.
He stood straight and tall, took another deep breath, and squared his shoulders.
Danica understood the significance of those simple acts, understood that, this time, Cadderty had accepted what he had been forced to do. This time, he would not run away, as he had in Shilmista; he would meet the threat head-on, strike back against those who meant to strike at him. But could he do so, Danica wondered, without ghosts like Barjin’s hovering beside him for the rest of his days?
Cadderly walked past her, then smiled and waved when “Oo oi!” sounded from the door of the Dragon’s Codpiece and Pikel Bouldershoulder stepped onto the front porch. The dwarf held Cadderly’s lost walking stick high above his head and waved excitedly with a heavily bandaged hand.
Danica waited a moment longer and let Cadderty get far ahead of her, considering the perceived shift in the young priest’s demeanor. This continuing stream of violent events was forcing Cadderty to grow up, to thicken his hide, in a hurry. Violence could be a numbing thing, Danica knew; no battle is ever harder to accept and fight than the first, no killing blow made with more reluctance than the first.
Watching her lover stride confidently to join Pikel, the young monk was afraid.
By the time Danica caught up to Cadderty, he stood silently inside the inn with both dwarves (to her relief) and with a teary-eyed Fredegar Harriman. Danica held in check her elation at Ivan and Pikel’s good heath, though, for she followed Cadderly’s gaze to a table in the hearth room, to Headmaster Avery’s sprawling corpse. The chest was torn wide and revealed a gaping hole where the heart should have been.
“My Brennan,” broken Fredegar was saying. “They killed my poor Brennan!”
Cadderly let his gaze drift about the sacked room, to the broken stairwell, the shattered chandelier atop its rubble; to the charred floor beside the long bar; to a young, unmarked body gently laid beside that bar; and to the row of six corpses, one of them still releasing wisps of smoke from under the cloth that covered it.
“Four of them, at least, got away,” Ivan informed them.
“You will find another one on the roof,” Danica remarked.
“Oo oi,” Pikel chirped, snapping his stubby fingers and motioning for one of the guards to go and check.
“Maybe only three got away,” Ivan corrected.
“Seven got away,” Cadderly said absently, remembering the three men who had assaulted him and Danica from the water, and the four others in the pursuing boat.
Ivan shook his yellow-bearded face, then grumbled, “Well, there’s a pack of trouble for ye.”
Cadderly hardly heard the dwarf. The young priest walked slowly across the cluttered floor toward the body of the man who had served him as a father for as long as he could recall. Before he got there, though, a tall man, a city soldier, intercepted him.
“We have some questions,” the man explained gruffly.
Cadderly eyed him dangerously. “They will wait.”
“No,” the man retorted. “They will be answered when I say. And fully! I’ll brook no—“
“Leave.” It was a simple word, spoken quietly and in controlled tones, but, to the city guardsman, it struck like a thunderbolt. The man stood up very straight, glanced about curiously, then headed for the front door. “Come along,” he instructed his fellow soldiers, who, after exchanging surprised glances, obeyed without complaint.
Ivan started to say something to Cadderly, but Danica put a hand on the dwarfs shoulder to stop him.
Cadderly wouldn’t have heard Ivan anyway. The young priest moved beside Avery’s torn body and wiped a tear from his gray eyes. Avery had gotten in the way of something that really did not concern him, Cadderly suspected, and the notion brought disgust to the young man, brought yet another layer of guilt to his growing burden.
But it wasn’t guilt that drove Cadderly now; it was sorrow, a grief more profound than any be had ever known. So many images of Avery’s life flowed through the young priest. He saw the portly headmaster on the lane outside the Edificant Library, trying to enjoy a sunny spring day but continually hampered by Percival, the white squirrel, who dropped twigs on him from the branches above. He saw Avery at Brother Chauntideer’s midday canticle, the headmaster’s face made content, serene, by the melodious song to Avery’s cherished god.
How different that fatherly face seemed now, its mouth open in a final scream, an unanswered plea for help that did not come.
Most of all, Cadderly remembered the many scoldings the headmaster had given him, Avery’s blotchy face turning blight red with frustration at Cadderly’s apparent indifference and irresponsibility. It took the insidious chaos curse for the headmaster to finally admit his true feelings for Cadderly, to admit that he considered Cadderly a son. In truth, though, Cadderly had known it all along. He never could have upset Avery so completely and so many times if the headmaster had not cared for him.
Only now, standing beside the dead man, did Cadderly realize how much he had loved Avery, this man who had served as father.
It occurred to Cadderly that Avery should not have been down in the hearth room at such an early hour, especially not dressed so informally, so vulnerably. Cadderly digested that information almost subconsciously, filing it away with the myriad other facts he had collected and scrutinized since his flight from the assassin band.
“My Brennan, too,” Fredegar blubbered, coming to Cadderly’s side, draping an arm over Cadderly’s shoulder to lean on the young priest.
Cadderly was more than willing to give his gentle friend the needed support, and he followed the innkeeper’s lead across the floor toward the bar.
The contrast between Brennan’s body and Avery’s was startling. The teenager’s face showed neither horror nor any signs of surprise. His body, too, seemed intact, with no obvious wounds.
It appeared that he had simply, peacefully, died. The only thing Cadderly could think of was poison.
“They could not tell me how” Fredegar wailed. “The guardsman said he wasn’t choked, and there’s no blood anywhere. Not a mark on his young form.” Fredegar panted desperately to find his breath.
“But he’s dead,” the innkeeper said, his voice rising to a wail. “My Brennan is dead!”
Cadderly shuffled to the side under the weight as Fredegar fell into him. Despite his sincere grief at the sight of Brennan, the death had raised a riddle that Cadderly could not leave unanswered. He remembered the horrible shadows he had seen dancing atop Brennan’s shoulders that night at supper. He recalled Danica’s story, her dream, and knew beyond doubt that someone, something, had possessed the young man, then discarded him.
Perhaps some lingering trace of what had happened remained to be seen. Perhaps telltale shadows remained on Brennan’s shoulders. Cadderly opened his mind, let the song of Deneir into his consciousness again, despite the continuing, painful throb in his head.
Cadderly saw a ghost.
The spirit of Brennan sat atop the bar, looking forlorn and lost, staring with pity at his distraught father and with disbelief at his own pale body. He looked up at Cadderly, and his nearly translucent features twisted with surprise.
All the material world around the spirit became blurry as Cadderly allowed himself to fall more into Brennan’s state.
Poison? his mind asked the lost soul, though he knew he had not spoken a word.
The spirit shook its head. I have nowhere to go.
The answer seemed so very obvious to Cadderly. Go back to your father.
Brennan looked at him with confusion.
The song played louder in Cadderly’s throbbing head, its volume becoming ferocious. The young priest would not let it go, though, not now. He saw Brennan’s spirit tentatively approach the corpse, seeming confused, hopeful yet terribly afraid. To Cadderly’s eyes, the room around the spirit went dark.
Everything went dark.
“By the gods,” Cadderly heard Danica whisper.
“Oooo,” Pikel moaned.
A thump on the floor beside him jolted Cadderly awake. He was kneeling on the hard floor, but, beside him, Fredegar was out cold.
In front of him, young Brennan sat up, blinking incredulously.
“Cadderly,” Danica breathed. Her shivering hands grasped the young priest’s trembling shoulders.
“How do you . . . feel?” Cadderly stammered to Brennan.
Brennan’s chuckles, as much sobs as laughter, came out on a quivering, breaking voice reflecting astonishment, as though he really didn’t know how to answer the question. How did he feel? Alive!
The young man looked to his own hands, marveled that they again moved to his command. Fists clenched suddenly, and he punched them up into the air, a primal scream erupting from his lips. The effort cost the lad his newfound physical bearings, though, and he wobbled and swooned.
Ivan and Pikel rushed to catch him.
Cadderly steadied himself suddenly, his gaze snapping back across the room, to Headmaster Avery. The determined young priest rose briskly, brushed Danica aside, and stalked to the corpse.
“They took out his heart,” Danica said to him meekly. Cadderly turned on her, not understanding.
“That is their usual method,” the young monk, familiar with the dark practices of the wretched Night Masks, replied. “It prevents an easy recalling of the spirit.”
Cadderiy growled and turned back to Avery, back to the task at which he would not fail. He called up the song, forcefully, for it would not readily come to his weary mind. Perhaps he should rest before continuing, he thought as the notes continued on a discordant path. Perhaps he had pushed the magic too far this day and should rest before delving back into the spiritual world.
“No!” Cadderly said aloud. He closed his eyes and demanded that the music play. The room blurred.
Avery’s ghost was not about.
Cadderly, though his material body did not move, looked all about the room. He saw marks of blackness, supernatural shadows, on the floor beside the bodies of the dead assassins and sensed a brooding evil there.
The spirits were gone, and Cadderly got the impression their journey had been forced, that they had been torn away.
Could they receive punishment in an afterlife?
The thought did not bring compassion to Cadderly. He stared hard at the puddles of residual blackness. He thought of recalling one of those lost spirits, to question it about Avery’s spirit, but dismissed the notion as absurd. The fate awaiting these souls had nothing to do with what awaited the goodly headmaster.
With sudden insight, Cadderly reached with his thoughts beyond the parameters of the room, sent out a general call to the heavens for his lost mentor’s departed spirit.
The answer he received did not come in the form of words, or even images. A sensation swept over Cadderly, an emotion imparted to him by Headmaster Avery—he knew it came from Avery! It was a calmness, a contentment beyond anything Cadderly had ever experienced, divine.
A bright light gave way to nothingness. . . .
Ivan and Danica helped the young priest to his feet. Cadderly, coming fully from his trance, looked at Danica with a most sincere smile.
“He is with Deneir,” Cadderly told her, and the joy in his voice prevented any reply.
Cadderly realized that his headache had flown. He, too, had found contentment.
“What do ye know?” Ivan asked him, and Cadderly understood that the dwarf was not speaking of Avery’s fate. Danica also looked at the enlightened young priest curiously.
Cadderly did not immediately answer. Pieces of this puzzle seemed to be falling from the sky. Cadderly looked over to the dead assassins, then looked to Brennan and Fredegar, in the thick of an unabashed hug.
Cadderly knew where he would find more of those tumbling puzzle pieces.
The passing hours came as reassurance to Ghost, who sat quietly in his room, going about his day as routinely as he could. Massacres were certainly not a common thing in Carradoon, but these were troubled times and Ghost was confident that the news would grow stale soon enough. Then young Cadderly would become vulnerable to him once more.
Thoughts of abandoning the mission had crossed the assassin’s mind soon after he had learned that Cadderly had escaped —and that many of his Night Masks had not. He dismissed those thoughts, though, choosing instead to personalize this kill even more. He would get Cadderly, get him through one of his friends, and the young priest’s death would be all the sweeter.
Ghost was a bit dismayed when he saw Bogo depart, more because he wanted Bogo to serve as a scapegoat if Cadderly and his friends closed in on the truth than for any practical services the wizard might provide.
The wicked man looked out his window at the afternoon sun’s reflection on quiet Impresk Lake. He saw the bridge to the island clearly, saw the masons huddled out there, in boats and on the structure itself, studying the wide break.
Ghost shook his head and chuckled. He had already contacted Vander telepathically, back at the farm, and knew that Cadderly had precipitated that break. Four men had returned to the farm—four out of fourteen.
Ghost continued to stare at the gaping break in the great bridge. Cadderly had beaten them; Ghost was impressed.
But he was not worried.
Every detail of the battle scene—Avery’s presence in the hearth room, where he should not have been; the curious, continued absence of Kierkan Rufo, who had come down from his room only long enough to identify Avery’s body and answer the city guards’ few questions; even the peculiar scorch mark on Pikel’s tunic—registered clearly in Cadderly’s mind, came together in the overall picture he was forming.
He spoke with Brennan, though the young man’s recollections were foggy at best, dreamlike. That fact alone confirmed Cadderly’s suspicions of what had happened to Danica. The young priest made a point of telling Brennan to keep out of sight, and bade Fredegar to not tell anyone that his son was alive again.
“We must press on quickly,” Cadderly explained to his three companions, gathered around him in an out-of-the-way room. “Our enemies are confused for now, but they are stubborn and will regroup.”
Danica leaned back in her seat and placed her feet on the table in front of her. “You are likely the most weary among us,” she replied. “If you are ready to continue, then so are we.”
“Oo oi!” Ivan piped, before Pikel got the chance. The yellow-bearded dwarf offered his surprised brother an exaggerated wink, and Pikel promptly tugged hard at Ivan’s beard.
Although it took him and Danica several moments to quiet the boisterous brothers, Cadderly was glad for the distraction, for the break in the exhausting tension.
“You have spoken with the guard?” Cadderly asked Danica when order was finally restored.
“Just as you suspected,” the young woman replied.
Cadderly nodded; another piece fell squarely into place. “The wizard will not be there for long.”
“But are ye ready to battle the likes of that one?” Ivan had to ask.
Cadderly chuckled and stood, straightening his trousers, still moist from his dip in the lake. “You make it sound as if I am going alone,” he quipped.
Ivan was up in an instant, bouncing his huge axe atop one shoulder. “Can’t trust that type,” the dwarf explained, wanting to clarify his atypical hesitance. “Dangerous sort.”
“Can’t trust an angry priest, either,” Cadderly retorted, taking up his walking stick and sending his spindle-disks into a few short up-and-down snaps.
“Dangerous sort,” Danica finished for him, and after the sights the young woman had experienced that day, the tremendous magical powers Cadderly had revealed, the words were spoken without any hint of sarcasm.
Bogo Rath paced anxiously in his small room. He kicked a basket aside and watched a cockroach skitter across the floor, seeking the shadows under the bed.
“Flee, little bug,” the young wizard remarked.
Bogo flipped his stringy brown hair to one side and ran his fingers through it repeatedly. He was the little bug.
He looked out the window, which was too small to get any real view, but enough to tell him that the afternoon light finally was beginning to wane. Bogo meant to leave the city at twilight, disguised among the host of beggars that departed Carradoon every evening.
Outside the gates, he could conjure a magical mount, and his ride to Castle Trinity would be swift and unhindered. The thought of getting far from Carradoon, from the young priest and his cohorts, appealed to Bogo, but the thought of facing Aballister did not. Even worse, if Ghost succeeded in finishing the task, the assassin’s return to Castle Trinity would cast an unfavorable, cowardly light on Bogo.
“Boygo,” he muttered. He figured he had better get used to hearing the name. Aballister and Dorigen would not soon let him forget his cowardice. The lone consolation for the young man was the fact that he had arranged the library headmaster’s death.
The cockroach skittered back out for an instant, zipped across the floor and under the folds of the oversized curtain.
“That will silence them!” Bogo said to the roach. Especially Dorigen, who had been so humiliated in Shilmista Forest.
A smile found its way through the tension on Bogo’s boyish face. He had killed a headmaster!
A glance at the window told him it was time to start for the western gate. He selected the components for a spell that would alter his appearance and placed them in a convenient pocket, then took up his pack.
He put it right back down when he heard chanting in the hall.
“Fire and water,” Cadderly said in an intense, monotone voice. “Fire and water, the elements of protection.
“Fire and water.”
Danica and Pikel stood in front of the young priest, between Cadderly and the door. Danica flipped her hair out of her face and looked to the stairway, to the top of the crouching, nervous innkeeper’s balding head. Every so often, the man peeked over the top stair, fearful for his property.
Still, Cadderly had easily convinced the man to let the three up the stairs to Bogo’s room. Danica looked to Cadderly again, who chanted more forcefully now with his eyes closed and his hands waving up and down in front of him, creating a magical tapestry. The young priest had shaved his beard before they had left the Dragon’s Codpiece, and now he appeared much like his old self.
And yet, he did not. Danica couldn’t explain it, but somehow Cadderly appeared more confident with every move. His encounter—whatever had happened—with Avery’s spirit had put a sense of calm on top of that growing confidence as well.
Danica hadn’t questioned him about it, but she sensed that Cadderly now walked with the knowledge that his god was with him.
“Fire and water,” Cadderly chanted, “the elements of protection.” As one of his hands came up, he loosed a few drops of conjured water against the door. As the other came up right behind, Cadderly sent from it a gout of flame.
The fire hit the wet door with a hiss, the signal for Pikel.
“Oo oi,” the dwarf chirped and slammed his club like a battering ram against the door. The weapon popped cleanly through the thin wood, creating a fair-sized hole but not forcing the door open. As the dwarf retracted his club, Danica realized Pikel’s mistake. She reached over the dwarf, turned the handle, and easily opened the door—out.
“Oh,” the deflated Pikel remarked.
Bogo’s chanting from inside the room joined Cadderly’s continuing prayer when the door came open. The wizard held a small metal rod in front of him, a conductive component that Danica had seen before.
Pikel had, too, and both he and the woman dove to the side, expecting a burst of lightning.
Cadderly didn’t move, didn’t flinch. An almost transparent, slightly shimmering field of energy appeared in the open portal.
Bogo’s blast struck it with fury, the lightning driving hard against the barrier, sizzling and throwing multicolored sparks, sending a spider web of green and orange energy across the breadth of Cadderly’s field to burn at the door-jamb. When it had ended, a tiny pool of water lay at the base of the intact defensive field.
Wide-eyed, the frightened wizard began another spell, as did Cadderly.
Bogo pulled another component and began a fast-paced chant.
“Sneeze,” Cadderly commanded.
Bogo complied, and his spell was disrupted.
The stubborn wizard growled and began again.
“Sneeze.”
“Damn you!” Bogo cried, wiping the wetness from his face.
“You could not be farther from the truth,” Cadderly replied calmly. “Shall we continue to play the game?
“Dispel!” Cadderly cried suddenly, his face twisting to an angry glare. The shimmering field in the doorway disappeared, and Danica and Pikel burst into the room.
Bogo realized his mistake; he should have continued to “play” as the young priest had called it, continued to force Cadderly into a defensive posture in the hopes that his spell repertoire would outlast the priest’s.
Danica came straight ahead, dove, came up in a leap, and jolted forward with her landing, too fast for the surprised Bogo to react. He threw his arms out defensively, and the monk promptly wrapped them, bringing her arms up through the wizard’s, then down and around, locking Bogo fast.
He did twist one wrist, though, cutting a line of blood on Danica’s sleeve.
An invisible dagger!
Danica’s foot shot up between her and the close wizard, crunching Bogo’s nose. Dazed, Bogo offered no resistance as Danica released his other arm, cupped her free hand over the back of his clenched fingers and yanked his hand back toward his forearm, pulling his arm in the other direction at the same time.
The wizard’s face contorted in agony. He tried to hold his only weapon, but Danica’s foot came up again; her hand continued to pull.
Pikel joined her a moment later. “Oo,” he said glumly, disappointed that the fun was already over. He heard the clang as the unseen dagger hit the floor, and he looked down for it, scratching his green-dyed hair curiously.
Cadderly walked to the bed and motioned for Danica to lead her prisoner to it. “You can let him go,” the young priest offered.
Danica gave a quick, painful jerk as she released Bogo’s arms, and she pushed the wizard, knocking him to a sitting position.
“We must talk, you and I,” Cadderly demanded quietly.
Bogo glared up at him from the bed, an impotent threat, but Danica cuffed him anyway, on the ear.
She scowled and showed Cadderly her cut arm in answer to his surprised expression, and that seemed to satisfy the young priest’s nagging conscience.
“Dorigen sent you,” Cadderly said to the man.
“No.”
Cadderly looked at him curiously. “I have ways of telling when you lie,” he warned.
“Then you detect nothing,” Bogo replied.
“You were with the Night Masks, but you are not a part of their guild,” Cadderiy remarked.
“You will die,” Bogo promised, drawing another cuff from Danica.
“Why have they come for me?” Cadderiy asked. With no answer forthcoming, he added, “I could speak with your corpse, if that would please you.”
For the first time, Bogo seemed afraid. The sincere calmness of Cadderly’s tone gave weight to the threat, the promise, Bogo knew and, because he wanted to grow to be an old wizard, he replied. “You got in the way,” the young wizard stammered, “at the library and in the forest. You forced Abal—“ Bogo stopped abruptly.
“Who?” Danica demanded, putting her face right up to Bogo’s.
“Aballister,” Bogo admitted, “Dorigen’s mentor, my mentor.”
Cadderly looked to Danica, concerned. Dorigen had been a powerful adversary. How strong might her mentor be?
“I came only to observe,” Bogo went on, “as I was told.”
“Oh?” Pikel cut him short, stepping past Danica, pushing her aside, and displaying the scorched hole in his leather tunic, the hole Bogo’s lightning had made back at the Dragon’s Codpiece.
The blood drained from Bogo’s face, and his growing desperation forced him to a desperate act. He shoved his hand into a pocket, grabbed a handful of pebbles, and flung them to the floor.
A burst of minor explosions went off, blowing in rapid succession and shooting variously colored puffs of smoke into the air. The pops did nothing to the companions, other than distract them. With a quick chant, Bogo diminished to the size of a cat and slipped between Cadderly and Pikel.
Cadderly tried to call out but could not decide fast enough whether he should shout for his friends to stop Bogo or cry out a warning to the wizard. Danica finally pushed past him and Pikel, following the wizard’s expected path to the door.
They heard the door close—the smoke began to clear— and Bogo, outside the room and man-sized again, began a new chant.
Danica stopped, wisely not going through the portal.
From behind the door they heard Bogo cry out in terror. The friends heard a shuffle of feet, a sickening thud, then something heavy slammed against the door.
Cadderly shook his head and looked away. The tip of Ivan’s double-headed axe protruded through the door, dripping crimson. As if that weren’t macabre enough, Bogo’s fingers, grasping helplessly and twitching, reached through the circular hole Pikel’s club had made in the door. Pulled by the unbalancing weight, the door slowly creaked open.
Pikel walked past Danica and opened the door the rest of the way, peeking around it and saying, “Oo” as he regarded the hanging wizard.
“I telled ye ye couldn’t trust a wizard,” Ivan, standing a dozen feet down the hall with his hands on his hips, asserted. He strode up to the door and motioned for the group to come out of the room.
The young priest couldn’t help but look over at the dead young wizard, a man probably not even as old as Cadderly. “We never asked his name,” Cadderly remarked.
Ivan kicked the door closed, spat in his hands, and put one boot up beside Bogo for leverage. “Wondering what to put on his stone?” he asked gruffly.
Danica watched the young priest closely, looking for any signs of weakness. This time, though, Cadderly appeared to control his emotions and accept the guilt.
“Just wondering,” he answered Ivan, giving a resigned shrug as though he had pushed the incident from his mind. “Get the body back in the room,” Cadderly instructed the dwarves. He shook his head at the irony of one of his earlier statements, which he had made merely to scare his prisoner.
He could indeed speak with Bogo’s corpse.
There was only the lake and the empty street. Carradoon quieted considerably as twilight neared, and the interest in the outrageous events at the Dragon’s Codpiece had dissipated quickly. Only a few guests had remained at the battered inn, and with Cadderly and his companions out of the building, the place was quiet—too quiet for Kierkan Rufo.
The angular man stood in front of his room’s small window, the tilt of his stance making him appear almost like a diagonal crosspiece to the glass. Many minutes passed; Rufo did not move.
He had gone too far this time, he realized, had crossed the line to the dark side of his nature. He doubted he could ever step back. He stood in reflection now, trying to follow the course that had led to this horrible position. It had begun in the library, when he had met evil Barjin and, on the priest’s command, had sent Cadderly tumbling down the stairs to the hidden catacombs.
Rufo could excuse himself of that indiscretion, and all of the other members of his order, including Cadderly, had excused him as well. In the elven forest, Rufo had betrayed his companions once more, but he had redeemed himself, had come through in the end to provide his companions with the information they needed to ultimately win out. As in the library, the efforts of Cadderly and the others had averted disaster, had helped to cover Rufo’s weaknesses.
Now Avery lay dead downstairs. Rufo had put the headmaster in the path of an assassin band. Rufo had stepped over, had crossed the line.
He tried to justify his actions, told himself repeatedly that he had been given no choice, that the assassins would have killed them all if he had not cooperated.
The facts did not support his excuse. Cadderly, Danica, and the dwarves (where had those two come from, anyway?) had won, had chased off the band. If Rufo had gone to them soon after his initial meeting with the young wizard, their victory would have been more swift.
Avery would be alive.
The angular man whimpered and turned from the window, suddenly feeling very vulnerable. “He deserved his fate,” Rufo muttered grimly, reminding himself of the way Avery had treated him since the trouble in Shilmista. Avery would have held him back in his ascension through the Order of Deneir; the headmaster had even threatened to have him removed from the library! That was not justice, Rufo’s sensibilities argued, not when the headmaster held all the power and Rufo could only stand and let Avery’s whims determine his fate.
By the time Rufo had crossed the small room and collected his pack, anger had replaced his guilt. He had struck back at Avery in the only way he could, and now it was done. No one suspected him; the conspiring wizard had already fled, and Rufo had easily deflected the city guards’ questions. Even more comforting, Cadderly apparently had taken the guards’ conclusions for truth, for the priest hadn’t asked Rufo a single question concerning the tragic events.
Rufo had to hide his smile as he paid Fredegar (from Avery’s purse) for the time spent in the inn. He explained to the hospitable innkeeper that he had to return at once to the Edificant Library and report the tragic loss.
It was getting dark outside when he exited the Dragon’s Codpiece, dark like the path Kierkan Rufo had stumbled down.
The four friends left the other inn a short while later, Cadderly tossing the fearful innkeeper a bag of coins to cover the damages and the cost of disposing of Bogo’s body.
“Where do we go?” Ivan asked, impatient, now that he knew where other enemies might be, to get on with the fighting.
“Back to the Dragon’s Codpiece,” Cadderly replied evenly.
“What do we do when we get there?” Ivan said, not sounding happy about the choice.
“We wait,” Cadderly answered, trying to calm the volatile dwarf. “We have struck hard this day and this night. All of us need some rest.” Cadderly believed the words; his extensive use of magic had drained him, and he wanted nothing more than to spend the next hours in peace. After what he had learned from Bogo’s spirit, though, the young priest wasn’t confident he would get his wish.
The air was chill outside as the night grew dark and the first stars made their appearance.
Cadderly knew it would be a long night.
Cadderly paid his friends’ banter little heed. He sat by his small table, beside the Tome of Universal Harmony, pushing the pieces of this mental puzzle closer together, seeking information from every memory he could summon. His contemplations were not purely for reasons of information gathering, though.
Cadderly lingered on the image, the sensation, of Avery’s spirit, on the divine joy he knew the dead headmaster had found. The young priest’s doubts, which had followed him through all of his spiritually bereft life, could not penetrate the holy barrier of that sensation. Cadderly’s logic, founded in information he could see and test with his own senses, seemed ridiculous when compared with the perceived smile of Avery’s ghost.
The foundation of Cadderly’s existence had been violently shaken, and yet, the young priest felt no remorse and no sense of loss. Quite the opposite, the mystery of it all gave Cadderly a sense of hope beyond anything he had known. Rather than deny what he had felt, the young priest would simply have to expand his foundation to include these wonderful new revelations.
Cadderly’s unconscious chuckle turned Danica and Ivan, who sat on the bed, toward him, and their stares, in turn, awakened the young priest from his musing. Cadderly shrugged, not knowing how to begin to explain.
“Peoples,” Ivan grumbled, but Danica nodded to the young priest, as though she understood the resolutions Cadderly was finding.
Dear Danica, Cadderly thought, and he did not doubt she knew, or that she approved.
Pikel crept along the first floor of the Dragon’s Codpiece, slipping in and out of the shadows in search of the cupboards. It was late, and the dwarf was hungry, having missed three out of four meals during the course of the exhausting day.
“Hee hee hee,” the dwarf tittered when he found biscuits and sweet dough. He dropped the amulet Cadderly had given him into a pocket and rubbed his plump hands together briskly, his cherubic dimples revealing his glee.
The dwarf sported an armload of food as he ascended the makeshift stairway to the second level, each step on the stairs that he and Ivan had put back together helping him to justify his filching.
His smile disappeared before he got back to Cadderly’s room, though, and, as a puny human approached him a moment later, half a biscuit fell out of his mouth.
Danica and Ivan struggled on the bed, the young woman proving, to Ivan’s disbelief, that her concentration could prevent Ivan from taking her hand down in wrist wrestling. The mighty dwarf, his bright red face framed by his yellow
beard, pushed and yanked vigorously to the side, but the woman’s arm, tiny compared to Ivan’s gnarly and corded muscles, did not budge an inch.
“You have met your better,” Cadderly remarked to Ivan, which only set the dwarf into a deeper frenzy. He hopped up on his toes and pushed with all his strength, moving the bed several inches, but Danica’s position remained unchanged.
The sudden and somewhat loud scrape of the bed set off silent alarms within Cadderly. The young priest had made no secret of the fact that he and his friends were back at the inn, but he didn’t want to give his potential enemies too much information.
“Quiet!” he whispered harshly, and, remembering Pikel, he closed his eyes and sent his thoughts to the missing dwarf. He expected to find the same sensations—hunger mostly—waiting for him, but when Cadderly made contact, through the power of the telepathy-enhancing amulet, his eyes popped wide open. The sensations were vague, as expected, but instead of distant thoughts of muffins and ale, Cadderly visualized hunched black shadows.
It was not Pikel on the other end! Images of dead Brennan, and of poor Nameless, filtered through Cadderly’s rising sense of panic. The young priest abruptly broke contact and jumped from his seat.
“I’ll get ye yet!” Ivan snarled at Danica, oblivious to Cadderly’s alarm. Danica, though, facing Cadderly’s way, did not miss his actions. Ivan tugged her arm to the bed as she came from her meditative state, the dwarf growling victoriously until he noticed that Danica was paying him no heed.
Danica scrambled over the bed, past Ivan. The dwarf turned about to see her and Cadderly exit the room, and realized then that the trouble likely involved his absent brother. Not pausing even long enough to locate his axe, Ivan half-crawled, half-ran out the door in pursuit.
Poor Pikel had never felt so weak! He stared dumb-foundedly at himself, or at his body at least, or at whatever this monster was that had stolen him.
Holding the weakling body by the throat in one hand, Ghost heard the rumble down the hall and realized that Pikel’s friends would soon be on him. The thought brought an evil chuckle to his dwarven lips. He slapped aside Pikel’s skinny arm and reached into one of his pockets, producing a small packet.
“Oooo,” Pikel wailed, and he nearly swooned, thinking the item to be some horrible magical thing and suspecting that his life was at its end, as Ghost brought the packet up between them. But Ghost broke the packet over himself, over the dwarvish trappings, instead.
“Eh?” Pikel queried, for the imposter dwarfs face was covered in blood, blood from the packet.
With one arm Ghost lifted the puny form from the ground and hurled Pikel across the room, where he slammed into a wall and slumped to the floor.
Ghost, too, fell back, leaning heavily on the wall perpendicular to the door, and groaned.
Enraged Ivan grabbed both Cadderly and Danica by the backs of their tunics and hurled himself past them as soon as he discerned where Cadderly was leading them. The dwarf, without his deer-antlered helmet, hit the door headfirst, bursting into the room.
Staggering, Pikel lifted a shaking finger and pointed accusingly across the room, to the slender human form crawling about the base of the wall.
“Me brother!” Ivan roared, and he charged across, hands leading to throttle the weakling killer.
Danica, too, followed the imposter dwarfs trembling finger, but Cadderly came into the room more slowly, warily, paying full attention to the apparently wounded dwarf.
He had brought the song of Deneir into his thoughts. He saw the shadows crouched on Pikel’s—on the imposter’s!—shoulders.
“Ivan!” he cried, and, trusting in the song, he whipped his adamantite spindle-disks straight into the dwarfs face.
The dwarf flew back against the wall; real blood mingled with the fake on the green-dyed beard. “Oooo,” he moaned. Across the room, Ivan let go of the weakling and came rushing back to throttle the new target.
Cadderly hadn’t released the dwarf from his knowing gaze. He watched the shadows break apart, then melt down into Pikel’s shoulders.
Ivan caught his brother in both hands and hoisted him off the floor, slamming him against the wall.
“Oooo,” Pikel moaned again.
“Hold, Ivan,” Cadderly said calmly. “Pikel is back where he belongs.”
Cadderly nodded to Danica, and she turned about to face the assassin again, ready to spring at him in an instant.
“You have nowhere to run,” Cadderly said to Ghost. He walked up to join Danica. “I know you.”
“Shouldn’t have made the damn disks so fine,” Cadderly heard Ivan say behind him, to Pikel’s continuing groans. The young priest looked back briefly to see Ivan tending Pikel’s bloodied face.
When he turned back, the shadows were gone from the puny assassin’s shoulders. Cadderly’s gaze darted all about the room, fearing that the man had stolen one of his friends’ identities once again. His three companions appeared the same to him, though, looking to him for direction and with confusion now, apparently recognizing the young priest’s sudden distress.
“Who are you?” Cadderly muttered under his breath when he turned back to the weakling man. He let the song of Deneir sound louder in his mind, studied the aurora of this new identity.
He felt a cold wind, pictured a rocky, forlorn shore backed by towering mountains. Huge ice floes dotted the bay, waves breaking against their invulnerable sides, and a giant ship sat quiet in the calmer waters near the shore, awaiting the mighty arms that could pull its monstrous oars.
Cadderly looked into the weakling man’s face and saw true fear and unexpected resignation.
Danica sensed that the puny man was about to dart for the door, and she tensed for a spring to intercept him. A whisper came into her ear, though, a magical message from Cadderly. She looked at her companion curiously.
The little man broke for the door. Danica went for him, as did Cadderly, the two getting conveniently tangled, enough for the man to get by.
Ivan dropped Pikel hard to the floor, wincing at his brother’s ensuing groan.
“Halt!” Cadderly cried, looking to the fleeing man. That command was not aimed for the weakling, though, and it carried the weight of considerable magical energy.
Ivan stopped in spite of himself and the man rushed out the open door. Danica halfheartedly took up the chase, as Cadderly had instructed. She came out the front door of the Dragon’s Codpiece a few moments later, saw the man turning a corner one way, and purposely went the other, to return empty-handed after an appropriate amount of time had passed.
Back in the room, Ivan stood staring in disbelief at Cadderly, tapping one heavy boot impatiently on the wooden floor.
“More waiting?” the yellow-bearded dwarf asked gruffly.
Cadderly smiled and nodded. “Not too long,” he promised, and the young priest believed the claim. The puzzle was nearly complete.
“Well, I’ll be a smart goblin,” Ivan whispered, peering over the back edge of the roof of the building adjacent to the Dragon’s Codpiece. Market Square was bustling, usual for this time of the day, but the dwarf had picked out one figure clearly, a tilting, angular man making his way through the crowd.
Danica, following the dwarfs pointing finger to spot Rufo, was over the side in an instant, picking her way down into the alley and quickly falling into step some distance behind the man.
“I’d have thought that one’d be long gone from here by now,” Ivan remarked to Cadderly, who sat farther from the edge, the Tome of Universal Harmony open in front of him and his eyes closed. The young priest shook his head, not at all surprised.
“Rufo would not dare the trails alone,” Cadderly explained, the same argument he had used when Fredegar had told the friends Rufo intended to go back to the library.
“It is likely that he has found refuge within the city, in the temple of Ilmater perhaps.”
Ivan and Pikel shrugged at each other, neither willing to dispute Cadderly’s logic. Their young friend had been leading them through the continuing mysteries as if he knew all the answers, or knew where to find them. Pikel shrugged again and crossed the roof to watch over Lakeview Street, while Ivan continued his scan of Market Square. They had been on the roof for more than a day, waiting with all the patience that could be expected of dwarves.
Danica returned a few minutes later, easily scaling the back of the building.
“He is with the priests of Ilmater,” she reported. Cadderly nodded silently, not opening his eyes, not breaking the trance he had spent hours attaining.
“He knew that,” Ivan remarked dryly, the dwarf starting to feel like a pawn in somebody else’s chess game. Under his breath Ivan muttered, “Damned cocky priest knows everything.”
“Not yet,” Cadderly replied, drawing another disbelieving shake of the head from Ivan. There was no way that Cadderly, twenty feet away, could have heard his remark.
Defeated, Ivan went back to watch for the escaped assassin, for Kierkan Rufo, or for anyone or anything else that might give the friends a clue.
Not that he believed Cadderly needed any.
As soon as he regained control of his giant form, Vander began to pace the barn nervously, stretching his huge arms out wide. He had nearly been caught, and, honestly, the firbolg didn’t know how he had moved that weakling body fast enough to get out of the room and out of the inn.
He had spent a miserable night on the streets of Carradoon, fearing that Ghost would never give back his true form and continually looking over his shoulder, expecting to find Cadderly, the woman, or the two fierce dwarves, bearing down on him.
But now he was back, at the farm and in his familiar body. He peeked out the door at the quiet house and empty yard, not sure whether the four remaining assassins were still around.
Four remaining assassins! At least eleven of the killers were dead, with five others missing. Ghost alone walked the streets of Carradoon, except, perhaps, for the wizard, Bogo Rath. And Cadderly, now surrounded by powerful allies, remained alive and alert.
In their last spiritual passing, though, Vander had sensed clearly that Ghost remained confident, had sensed that the little man was actually enjoying the challenge of this difficult chase.
Ghost had been in trouble before, had lost entire bands of killers only to turn the tables and bring the intended victim down. He was confident, cocksure, the quality of a true warrior.
Of course, the firbolg’s admiration of the little man was tempered by the knowledge that Ghost’s confidence was rooted in the fact that the weakling had a quick way out of any situation. With Vander a safe distance from the fight, Ghost always had a quick and easy escape route.
How convenient.
“What is it?” Danica posed the question just a moment after Cadderly opened his eyes for the first time in several hours. The young priest had searched the city, had reached out with detection spells to locate the particular magical emanations of the strange item the evil little assassin carried.
“A shift in the power,” Cadderly explained absently, his thoughts still firmly locked on the Ghearufu.
Ivan, a few feet away but overhearing the conversation, waggled his bearded face in disbelief. “If ye know where the damn thing is—“ he began.
“I do not,” Cadderly interrupted, “not exactly. Our enemy is in the city, somewhere south of here—or, I should say, our enemy has just returned to the city.”
Danica cocked her head curiously, pushed the stubborn lock of hair from her face.
“He departed the city while we had him cornered back in the room,” Cadderly tried to explain, “magically. The man who physically ran away, or at least the spirit of the man occupying the killer’s body, was not the same conniving person that captured Pikel.”
Ivan waggled his face again, too confused to offer any remarks.
“Now he has returned to Carradoon,” Cadderly went on.
“And we are to find him?” Danica stated as much as asked, and she was surprised when Cadderly shook his head.
“What would we gain?” the young priest asked. “Our enemy would only flee once more.”
“What’re ye thinking, then?” Ivan huffed, tired of Cadderly’s cryptic clues. “Are we to sit here and wait for them killers to find us?”
Again Cadderly shook his head, and this time the action was accompanied by a wide and wicked smile. “We’re going to catch our tricky friend from behind,” he explained, thinking of the farmhouse that Bogo Rath’s spirit had described to him. “Are you ready for a fight?”
Ivan’s dark eyes popped wide at the unexpected invitation, and his response pleased his brother. “Hee hee hee.”
“There!” Cadderly whispered harshly, pointing to a window under the spreading limbs of a wide elm tree. “Someone walked by that window, inside the house.” Cadderly scanned the farmyard, wondering where Danica’s stealthy progress had put her. The young monk was nowhere in sight, had disappeared into the shadows.
“Time for going,” Ivan said to Pikel as he hoisted his great axe.
Pikel grabbed his brother’s shoulder and cooed, pointing plaintively to the tree.
“I’m not for going up another tree,” Ivan growled, but his anger couldn’t hold out against Pikel’s pitiful expression. “All right,” the gruff dwarf conceded. “Yerself can get up the tree.”
Pikel hopped at the news, and his wide smile disappeared under his helmet as the cooking pot dropped over his face. Ivan roughly adjusted it, realigned his own deerantlered helm, and pushed his brother off.
“Ivan,” Cadderly said gravely before they had gone two steps. The dwarf turned a sour expression back to the young priest.
“Do not kill anyone if it can be avoided,” Cadderly said firmly, “as we agreed.”
“As yerself agreed,” Ivan corrected.
“Ivan.” The weight of Cadderfy’s tone brought a frown to the dwarf.
“Damn boy’s taking all the fun out of it,” Ivan remarked to Pikel as the two turned and headed off once more, skittering, hopping, crawling, falling over one another, and, somehow, finally getting to the base of the wide elm.
Cadderly shook his head in disbelief that the dwarven racket hadn’t alerted the whole countryside of their presence. He continued to shake his head as Pikel clambered up onto Ivan’s shoulders, reaching futilely for the lowest branch. The green-bearded dwarf hopped up, dropping his club on Ivan’s head, but managed to grasp the branch. Hanging by his fingers, his feet wiggling wildly, Pikel would never have gotten up, except that Ivan promptly returned the dub, slamming it against Pikel’s rump and nearly launching him over the thick branch.
“Oooo,” Pikel moaned softly, rubbing his seat and taking the club from Ivan.
Cadderly sighed deeply; the dwarven brothers were better at defense than at stealthy attack.
The one guard for the four remaining Night Masks shook his head in disbelief, too, watching the dwarven escapades. He crouched in the tight and smelly chicken coop, one leg up on the wall-to-wall perching bench, and peered through a crack in the old boards, a crack wide enough for him to level his crossbow and take aim. He figured Ivan for the tougher foe, and thought that if he could take out the dwarf on the ground, the one in the tree would be in serious trouble.
Squawk!
The startled Night Mask spun about frantically and fired, seeing a flurry of movement. The air was full of chickens-one less when the crossbow quarrel cut through—but in the dim light and close quarters, the birds seemed like one ominous, feathered foe to the man.
He got hit twice, on the face and neck, and felt the liquid oozing under his tunic. He grabbed for the wounds, hoping to stop the flow of blood.
The relieved man nearly laughed aloud when he found the blood was really eggs. . . until he realized that someone, behind the barricade of flapping chickens, must have thrown them at him. The man snarled, dropped his crossbow, and drew out a slender dagger.
The chickens quieted quickly. He saw no enemy in the small coop.
The bench, the man thought; his enemy had to be under the bench. His smile disappeared and his mouth dropped open as he started to bend.
Under the bench and, maybe, behind him.
A hand slapped across the man’s mouth; another grabbed his weapon hand. His eyes opened wide, then closed tight at the searing pain as his own knife pierced his throat, under the chin, and slid unerringly to his brain.
Danica dropped the man aside and turned to regard the dwarven brothers. Ivan was under the farmhouse window by this time, with Pikel carefully picking steps in the tree right above him. It was a recipe for disaster, Danica knew, and she figured she had better get back outside and into a new position, just in case.
She paused before stepping over the dead assassin and considered the kill. Cadderly had prompted an agreement that no man would be slain if it could be avoided, and Danica, though she, like Ivan, had thought the agreement absurd, felt some pangs of guilt for not honoring the spirit of her lover’s wishes. Perhaps she could have taken this guard out without killing him.
Danica felt no sympathy for the man she had killed, though. She, above all the others in her party, understood the motives and methods of the assassin band, and she reserved no mercy for anyone who would don the silver-and-black mask of the amoral guild.
Ivan, directly under the window, looked up in frustration as Pikel sought a secure perch in the tree branch’s shaky outer reaches. Finally, when Pikel seemed on solid enough footing, Ivan placed the edge of his axe against the house and ran it slowly down the wall, scraping and bumping over each shingle.
A moment later, a curious face peered out beside the curtain. The man, sword in hand, straightened, seeing nothing there, and gradually peeked over the sill,
“Ha!” he cried, spotting Ivan. Above, a branch cracked.
“Me brother,” Ivan explained, pointing up.
“Oh,” the confused assassin replied.
“Ooooooo!” Pikel roared, swinging down like a pendulum, his club thick end out, like a fat lance, and securely braced. The man tried to get his sword in front of him, but got slammed in the chest and went flying away as if he had been sitting in the basket of a giant-cranked catapult.
“Come on!” Ivan cried, hopping up to the windowsill and pulling himself in beside his upside-down brother.
Pikel shrugged helplessly; things had not gone exactly as planned. The branch had snapped and Pikel’s thick ankle was firmly stuck in a fork, leaving him hanging helplessly.
“Come on,” Ivan, now inside the room, said again. He grabbed Pikel’s free hand and tugged, dragging the dwarf halfway into the room.
“Uh-uh,” Pikel tried to explain.
Thinking his brother was just being stubborn, Ivan dropped his axe, grabbed with both hands, and yanked with all his strength. Pikel came into the room, the bending, grasping branch being pulled in right behind him.
Vander held the barn door firmly, supporting it tightly against its hinges so that it would not creak so loudly as he gingerly cracked it open. He couldn’t see the fight at the window from his angle, but he did see the trembling branches of the elm above the corner of the farmhouse roof. That, and the previous squawking of the chickens, told the giant beyond doubt that intruders were about.
Vander stopped, staring incredulously at a ball of fire hovering in the air a few feet above him, just outside the barn door. The firbolg tensed, sensing the danger, sensing that if he moved, the pausing magic would go off.
Why was the spellcaster waiting?
Slowly, Vander leaned back into the barn.
A line of flames roared down from the fireball, scorching the ground at the firbolg’s feet, Vander dove to the barn floor, pulling the door closed behind him, fearing that the magic would follow him in.
Black smoke rose from the bottom of the door.
Everything went pitch black.
The stubborn firbolg rose to his feet, knowing that he had to get out the door, out of the trap.
Everything went absolutely silent.
Vander growled and eased one foot in front of the other, toward the door. He had no way of knowing if the flames remained, but he had to find out.
He heard no sound, but it seemed as if the ground rushed up in front of him, twirling dust nipping at his eyes and forcing him to fall back. He tripped over unseen crates and crashed silently to the dirt.
The disoriented firbolg’s vision returned in the blink of an eye, the magical darkness dispelled. Vander heard the snap of wood as a plank broke under his hand, and he heard, too, a whirling sound above him that alerted him a moment before he tried to rise.
The firbolg stared helplessly at the air only inches above his head, at the air that had suddenly filled with magical manifestations of whirling blades.
Vander heard the door creak open and looked across his body to see a young man in a wide-brimmed blue hat.
“The blades will cut,” the young man said evenly.
The trapped Vander didn’t doubt it for a minute.
“Ooooooo!”
Danica, making her way toward the far side of the farmhouse, heard Pikel’s cry as the branch holding Pikel flew out of the window.
When the pliable branch reached its end and reversed direction, Pikel’s ankle slipped free and the dwarf went sailing, turning a perfect two-and-a-half back somersault to land headfirst into a pile of dust.
“I telled ye not to let go!” a frustrated Ivan, holding Pikel’s club, shouted from the window.
Pikel shrugged, adjusted his cooking pot, and rushed back to join his brother.
Together, the dwarves crept across the small room. It had two doors, both fortunately closed, one along the wall to their right, and the other directly across from the window, leading to one of the front rooms.
“Makes a nice rug, that one,” Ivan remarked, heading for the front room and stepping over the back of the clobbered Night Mask, who was lying spread-eagle and face down on the floor, his arms flung out wide.
Instinctively, Pikel, wearing open sandals, wiggled his gnarly toes as he crossed the man’s back behind Ivan, and the green-bearded dwarf nodded, surprised at just how good a rug a clobbered human might make.
“Ye know they know we’re here?” Ivan asked when he reached the door.
Pikel quickly shrugged, as though that fact hardly mattered.
Ivan nodded his agreement and looked to the wooden door, his smile widening under his yellow-haired face. “Ye remember the charge at the inn?” he asked slyly.
The door burst from its hinges, crossbows clicked, and Ivan and Pikel, behind the impromptu shield, smiled wickedly to see the two darts protruding through the wood.
“These men is so predictable!” Ivan declared, and he flung the broken door aside, showing the dwarven brothers that they had entered a kitchen.
Pikel swerved left, toward a man caught between the charge and the wall who was trying to squeeze through the room’s tight window. Ivan bolted right, in chase after the other assassin, heading for the growing daylight beyond the open door.
Pikel considered the struggling man’s predicament for just a moment, then slammed his heavy club at the window’s top frame, collapsing it to further ensnare the man.
“Hee hee hee.” Thoroughly enjoying himself, the dwarf pulled the kitchen table over, unlaced the man’s boots, and retied them around one of the table legs.
The remaining man stopped abruptly and swung about, thinking to catch his dwarven pursuer off guard by the sudden change in tactics.
Ivan was too crafty for that simple trick. He skidded to a halt, lifting his huge axe to easily deflect the slicing sword blade.
The assassin twirled the weapon up above his head and came in again with it, furiously, angling it left then right to poke holes through the dwarfs defenses. He scored a hit on Ivan’s side, but Ivan turned with the thrust, pressing the top of his axe against the thin blade and slamming it against the wall.
The assassin fell back, holding only the hilt and first two inches of his snapped sword.
Ivan looked to the severed strap on the side of his armored suit. A single metal plate hung out an inch, but the assassin’s hit had not come close to penetrating the dwarf-forged armor.
“Was it worth it?” Ivan asked in all seriousness.
The assassin snarled and flung his broken sword at the impertinent dwarf, then turned and darted out the door.
Ivan batted the missile away and broke into a charge. He dove for the man’s ankles but came up short and bumped down off the front of the porch.
The Night Mask never looked back as he rushed for the stable. He leaped atop an unsaddled horse, set the beast into a dead run, and flew over the fence rail.
Ivan groaned, angered that one had escaped, and rolled to his back—and saw Danica kneeling on the farmhouse roof, crossbow loaded and level.
“Ye ever use one of them things?” the surprised dwarf asked.
Danica fired. The fleeing assassin’s head snapped forward, the quarrel entering at the base of his skull. He held his seat for a few moments longer, then drifted off the horse’s side, dropping to the dust as the steed ran on.
“Yup,” answered Pikel, coming to the door behind Ivan.
“Where’s the big one?” Ivan asked when he, Danica and Pikel found Cadderly standing in the farmyard, leaning against a young tree.
Cadderly pointed to the barn. “He is occupied,” the young priest explained wryly, his gray eyes turning up at their corners with his satisfied grin. “Not hurt, but not in any mood to fight back.”
Danica nodded. “Then your guess was right,” she remarked, her voice unmistakably revealing her distaste. “The band was led by a giant.”
Cadderly recalled the images he had seen on the little assassin’s shoulder back in the Dragon’s Codpiece. The aurora change had revealed much to the observant young man, had told him the identity and, more importantly, the demeanor of the assassin band’s gigantic leader.
“Dead giant.” Ivan snickered hopefully.
“No,” Cadderly answered him.
“Soon?” Ivan asked.
“I do not think so,” Cadderly replied. The young priest looked around the yard, to the chicken coop, to the window by the tree, and to the corpse lying in the dust by the road. “I did not want these men killed,” he remarked sharply.
Ivan looked to Danica. “Better to let that one get away,” the dwarf whispered with obvious sarcasm.
Cadderly heard the comment and locked a deep frown on the yellow-bearded dwarf.
“It was a fight, ye . . .” Ivan began to protest, but he threw his thick hands up in disgust, snorted, “Bah!” and stomped away. A few strides off, beyond the nearest corner of the house, he caught sight of the lone living Night Mask, wedged tightly in the kitchen window and no longer struggling against the pressing weight.
“There ye go, lad,” the dwarf bellowed. “Me brother held out some mercy for yer foolhardy wishes.” The other three moved over to join Ivan, to see what the dwarf had discovered.
“What’ll ye do with him?” Ivan asked Cadderly when the young priest saw the trapped man. “Do ye have some questions ye need to ask this one? Or are ye going to give him to the city guard, ye merciful fool?”
Cadderly regarded the dwarf curiously, not understanding Ivan’s anger. His ensuing question sounded clearly as an accusation. “Are you so eager to kill?”
“What do ye think the city guard’ll do with him?” Ivan balked. “Ye forgetting yer fat friend, sprawled across a table with his heart cut out? And what of them that lived in this place? Do ye think the farmer and his family’ll be coming back anytime soon?”
Cadderly averted his gaze, stung by the honest words. He preferred mercy, hated killing, but he could not deny Ivan’s observations.
“Ye bring us out here and ask us to fight with half our hearts “ Ivan blustered, spittle glistening the bottom edges of his thick mustache. “If ye’re thinking that I’m one to risk me own neck to give a few more days of life to that scum, then ye’re thinking wrong!”
Confusion dictated Cadderly’s next move. He brought the song up in the recesses of his mind, heard the flow of Deneirian magic, and found a point where he could join in that sweet river. He had stepped fully into the spirit world several times—in Shilmista Forest, to bid farewell to Elbereth’s gallant horse; in the Dragon’s Codpiece, to find Brennan’s wandering spirit and learn the truth of Avery’s heavenly bliss—and now he found the journey short and not so difficult.
As soon as he arrived, as soon as the material world faded into indistinct grayness behind him, he heard the desperate screams of lost souls.
Leaving his corporeal body standing with his unknowing friends, Cadderly willed his spirit toward the corpse lying in the road, the man Danica had shot from the horse. The young priest ended his trek abruptly, though, terrified by the images. Huddled, shadowy things, shapes akin to those growling pools of darkness he had seen on the shoulders of evil men, encircled the doomed assassin’s spirit. The dead man noticed Cadderly then and looked to him desperately.
Help me, came his silent plea.
Cadderly did not know what to do. The growling, shadowy things tightened their ring, dark claws reaching out for their victim.
Help me!
Cadderly willed his spirit toward the man, but something, his fears, perhaps, or his knowledge that it was not his place to interfere, held the young priest’s spirit firmly in place.
Shadows grabbed the doomed assassin. He twisted and jerked about frantically, but the dark grip did not relent, did not release him.
Help me! The cry tore at Cadderly’s heart, horrified him and filled him with sorrow all at once.
The shadows melted into the ground, taking the man’s spirit with them. Only the spirit’s legs remained visible, kicking futilely.
Then they, too, were gone, pulled down to eternal hell.
Cadderly found himself back in his corporeal form, his eyes open wide, sweat beaded on his forehead.
“What’re ye thinking?” Ivan demanded.
“Maybe I was wrong,” Cadderly admitted, looking at Danica as he spoke the words, looking for judgment in her knowing gaze.
Danica grabbed him by the arm and put her head on his shoulder. She understood the trial Cadderly had just undergone, the realization once again that war precipitated cruel actions, that their survival against this unmerciful foe demanded a resolve equally vicious.
“But he goes back to the town,” Cadderly went on firmly, pointing to the man trapped in the window. “The city guard will decide his fate. He cannot harm us now, and we have no cause to kill him.”
Ivan, deadly in battle but certainly no merciless killer, readily agreed. He and Pikel immediately started for the man.
“Not now,” Cadderly called to them, turning them about. “Will the window hold him?”
The dwarves turned to study the broken structure.
“For a hunnerd years,” Ivan decided.
“Hee hee hee,” Pikel chuckled and patted his trusty club, the compliments to his mighty clubbing bringing a blush to his cherubic, fuzzy cheeks.
“Then let it hold him,” Cadderly said to them. “We have other business.” The young priest turned and nodded to the barn door, realizing that his spell of whirling blades would not last. If they did not get to the giant soon, they would likely wind up in yet another fight.
On Cadderly’s command, Ivan and Pikel each took hold of one of the barn doors and pulled it wide. The dwarves remained behind the doors, out of sight, for Cadderly knew that most giants were not particularly fond of the bearded folk and that the sight of the brothers might send this one into a rage that would be quieted only by the monster’s death.
Vander wasn’t up for any fight, though. Vander wasn’t up at all. He lay on his back, helpless below the magically conjured blades. The firbolg lifted his head at the sound of the opening doors and looked across his prone form to see Cadderly and Danica regarding him.
Cadderly studied the giant intently, studied the forms on Vander’s shoulders. He saw again the wide mountains, the great boat in the iceberg-dotted bay, and he knew that this was the same being (the same spirit at least) the assassin had switched bodies with when Cadderly and the others had cornered the evil little man.
“I will release you,” the young priest promised, “on your word that you will attack neither me nor my companions.”
Vander growled at him.
“By my estimation, we have no quarrel with you, mighty giant” Cadderly went on, “and we want none. It may be that I can aid you in your struggle.”
The growling stopped, replaced by an honestly perplexed expression.
“Aid it?” Ivan bellowed from behind the shielding door. “Ye didn’t say nothing about aiding any stupid giant!” Before Cadderly could react, the dwarf stormed around the barn door, axe in hand, Pikel rushing in from the other side to join him.
“Ivan!” Cadderly started, but Pikel’s sincere, “Oo oi!” and the look of amazement on Ivan’s face stopped the young priest completely.
“Let him up,” Ivan snapped at Cadderly, giving the man a push. “Ye got no cause to keep one o’ his kind in the dirt!”
“Well met, good dwarves.” the giant said unexpectedly. Danica and Cadderly exchanged stunned stares and helpless shrugs, Danica blowing away a lock of her hair and blinking.
“Let him up, I say!” Ivan demanded, pushing Cadderly once more. “Can’t ye see the flames of his beard?”
Cadderly mouthed the words silently as he regarded the prone giant, wondering what the red color of this one’s beard had to do with Ivan’s apparent approval of the monster. Cadderly had seen Ivan and Pikel go after giants with wild abandon in Shilmista Forest. What made this one so different?
“He ain’t no giant,” Ivan explained.
“He looks pretty big to me,” the disbelieving Danica remarked.
“He’s a firbolg,” Ivan answered impatiently, “a friend o’ the land—and a friend of the elves. We’Il forgive him that, since firbolgs and dwarves get on well, too.”
Ivan seemed to be winding up for a long dissertation on the subject of firbolgs, and would have continued, but Cadderly motioned for him to stop, needing nothing further. The images, the aurora of this strange giant, made perfect sense to Cadderly now, and he understood, too, beyond any doubts, why one of this being’s honorable weal would be in league with an evil wretch.
The giant was a prisoner.
A wave of Cadderly’s hand removed the magical blades. Vander growled at the indignity of it all, took up his huge sword, and got to his feet. For a moment, it seemed to Cadderly and Danica that the monster would attack, but Ivan and Pikel, nodding and smiling, walked right into the barn and struck up a conversation—in a voluminous, grumbling language that sounded like the roll of boulders down a rocky mountainside.
The giant, talking with the dwarves, kept his sword up in front of him and seemed even more nervous when Cadderly and Danica joined their companions.
“He’s not to trusting us,” Ivan whispered to Cadderly. Then, louder, he announced, “His name’s Vander.”
“If we had wanted you dead, I would have lowered the blades,” Cadderly reasoned.
Vander’s thick lips curled back, his giant teeth showing white through the red tresses of his beard.
“Don’t ye insult the thing!” Ivan warned harshly. “Don’t ye ever tell a firbolg that ye could’ve beaten it unless ye’ve already beaten it!”
“Where are my associates?” Vander demanded, his huge sword hovering in the air only a few short strides from the companions. Cadderly realized then that the firbolg could probably take one great step forward and cut him in half before he even began to form a defense—and what defense could Cadderly put up against so monstrous a beast, anyway?
“They are dead, except for one.” Cadderly answered as firmly as he could, determined to show no signs of weakness, though he was less than confident of how the giant would take the news.
Vander nodded, seeming none too upset.
It was a good sign, Cadderly noted, a piece of the puzzle that fit exactly. “I came here to find you,” the young priest explained, “to speak with you about our common enemy.”
There, he had put things out in the open. His three friends stared at him, still not in the know about Cadderly’s revelations.
“Ghost,” Vander replied. “His name is Ghost.” Danica and the dwarves looked to each other and shrugged.
“Together we can beat him,” Cadderly promised.
Vander snickered, a curious sound indeed, coming from the giant. “You know little of him, Cadderly,” he replied.
“I am still alive,” Cadderly argued, not surprised at all that the giant had figured out his identity. “Can the same be said for most of Ghost’s associates?”
“You know little of him,” Vander said again.
“Then tell me.”
Cadderly bade his friends to clean up the yard and set a watch from the house. The companions, particularly Danica, didn’t seem anxious to leave their friend beside a dangerous giant, but Vander said something to the dwarves in that mountain language, and Ivan immediately took hold of Danica’s arm.
“He gave me his word,” Ivan explained. “A firbolg never breaks his word.” Cadderly’s nod further assured his concerned lover, and she left with the dwarves, looking back over her shoulder every step of the way.
“You should be wary,” Vander said as soon as the others had left.
Cadderly looked at him curiously, wondering if the giant had just threatened him.
“I will not go against what I have promised,” Vander assured him, “but Ghost can take my body when he chooses, and you would be an easy kill if your guard was down.”
“Then we must act quickly,” Cadderly replied, no tremble in his voice. “I know Ghost took your body and left you in his boots when we had cornered him in the inn. And I know, too, that the possession can be blocked.”
Vander shook his head doubtfully.
“Danica, the woman you just met, blocked him,” Cadderly replied. “Together, you and I can do the same. I have spells, and this.” He held up the amulet he had taken from Rufo in Shilmista Forest, the imp’s amulet that Cadderly had claimed as his own, that allowed the young priest to easily contact the mind of another. “The amulet will allow me to join with you in your struggle.”
Vander eyed him suspiciously, but Cadderly could see he had at least intrigued the beleaguered giant.
They talked for a short while longer, then went to the farmhouse to coordinate the defenses with the others. They found the dwarves hard at work freeing the captured Night Mask from the broken window.
The man at last slipped back to the kitchen floor, shakily finding his feet. He would have offered no resistance, so obviously outnumbered, except that he spotted Vander out of the corner of his eye, standing beside the outside door. With a jerk, the man pulled free of Ivan’s halfhearted hold, punched the surprised dwarf in the eye, and rushed for the door.
“Master!” he cried hopefully.
“That one’s going to be trouble,” Ivan muttered.
There came a great swoosh as Vander’s sword cut the air and cut the man’s torso cleanly in half.
“Nope,” Pikel said to Ivan, both of the tough dwarves wincing at the gruesome sight.
Vander shrugged against the stunned stares that lingered on him from every direction. “If you knew him as well as I,” the firbolg explained, his tone casual, “you would have killed him long before now.”
“Not like that,” Ivan protested, “not when me and me brother got to clean the mess up!”
Cadderly closed his eyes and fell back out of the room, back to the relative clean of the wider yard. He wondered if he would ever get as accustomed to such violence as his sturdy, battle-hardened companions.
He hoped he would not.
Vander took the companions to the graves of the murdered farm family, explaining grimly that he had, at least, forced the assassins to properly bury the victims.
Danica looked quizzically at Cadderly, and the young priest knew she was wondering if he meant to go straight after the spirits of the departed, to resurrect the family.
Cadderly shook his head, more a gesture for himself than to Danica. Such actions were not so simple, he knew, and he did not have time to make an attempt. Also, Cadderly, still bone-weary from his exhausting use of magic over the previous two days, was determined to save what little power remained in him. Confident that he would soon be tested again, the young priest decided to open himself to the song only when absolutely necessary.
Besides, the horrible memories of the shadowy things pulling the assassins’ doomed souls to eternal torment were too fresh in Cadderly’s mind for him to want a return trip to the realm of the dead.
That afternoon, the farm was quiet once more, showing no signs that any trouble had occurred.
Watching the fast-westering sun, Cadderly led the firbolg back to the barn. If Ghost was coming for Vander, telepathically or physically, it might well happen soon.
Cadderly set his spindle-disks spinning, let their crystalline center catch the lamplight and disperse it into a myriad of dancing shapes and flickers. The willing giant slipped into the hold of the mesmerizing crystal and let Cadderly into his thoughts. Vander put a hand into his pocket and clutched at the amulet Cadderly had given him, as though the closer contact would improve the joining of their minds. A short while later, Cadderly sat quiet, out of sight, in one of the small stalls within the barn, enjoying the majestic images playing in his mind at the firbolg’s mental recounting of his frosty, rugged homeland.
The call drifted on the silent winds of the dimension where dwelled only the mind. It drifted inexorably toward the farm on the outskirts of Carradoon and the firbolg that had served for so long as this caller’s waiting vessel.
Cadderly sensed the fear in the unseen giant, knew that Ghost had come a-calling.
Stand easy, the young priest imparted telepathically to Vander. Do not let your fear or your anger block me from our joining.
Cadderly knew that the profound fear, far beyond what he would have expected from a mighty and proud giant, had not diminished, but Vander mentally reached back to him, strengthening their bond.
Ghost’s call meandered in; Cadderly drove it away.
Vander? the distant assassin questioned.
Like a mirror, Cadderly offered no response other than to turn the telepathic question back on the winds.
Anger. Cadderly felt that above all else. The young priest smiled in spite of the importance of his task, pleased by the confirmation that he had somewhat unnerved the little assassin.
Then the call was no more, but Cadderly, suspecting the killer who had been so dogged in pursuing him would not give up this important link so easily, did not let his guard down.
Vander hissed; Cadderly heard it distinctly.
“Fight!” the young priest cried, aloud and mentally. Ivan and Pikel moved to the stall door, weapons ready, as Caddeity had instructed. If the assassin found his way into Vader’s identity, the dwarves would set upon him before he could sort out his surroundings.
But Cadderly had no intention of letting Ghost in, not while the trickster had his body as an open escape route, safely away in Carradoon. The young priest conjured an image of the spinning spindle-disks, shared it with Vander, and together they studied the hypnotic dance, remembered the specific defensive chants Cadderly had taught the giant.
Other, more evil sensations assaulted them, cluttered their space with the anger of another will. Cadderly prayed that Ghost would not understand the joining, would not realize that Vander had an ally beside him.
Cadderly watched and chanted, and the firbolg, though his anger rose dangerously, managed to keep Cadderly in his mind.
Together, they drove the would-be possessor away.
“You defy me?” Ghost asked in the dark alleyway. Above anything else, the assassin, vulnerable without Vander, knew this type of defiance could not be tolerated. Vander was his out, his desperate escape from any situation. He could not allow the firbolg to somehow, somewhere, find the strength to turn his distant intrusions away.
Somehow? Somewhere?
The little assassin breathed a deep sigh. What was going on at the farm? he wondered. He feared that Cadderly might be involved, but how could that be? Certainly Vander, if an attack had come, would have called out to Ghost? Might Cadderly and his friends have taken the farm so quickly that the firbolg never got the chance?
Ghost dismissed the thought. Vander was still alive; Ghost had recognized the receptacle at the other end of his telepathic call. He told himself he was being paranoid, a dangerous state of mind for a killer living on the edge of artistry and disaster, Vander had denied him before, after all, from a distance, where the Ghearufu’s power was not quite the same.
In a few hours, Ghost could call upon the firbolg again and get back in. Vander would not be able to keep up his mental defenses for very long. An evil grin spread across the wicked man’s face as he considered the boundless possibilities for punishment.
The smile did not last long. His mind was clouded by doubts. Things were too unusual this time, and there was simply too much at stake for Ghost to readily accept that Vander had found a moment of strength to keep him out. The assassin had not located Cadderly and the young priest’s friends in many hours.
“To the farm,” the assassin decided quietly. He would go to the farm, punish Vander, and regroup his forces.
He slipped out of the alleyway and approached an armed man sitting comfortably on a fine horse.
“Pardon, gentle sir,” Ghost said meekly to the city guardsman. The assassin was wearing his mismatched gloves. No need to take chances.
Up on the farmhouse roof, wearing the black-and-silver domino mask and nondescript clothes of a Night Mask, with the cowl of a black cloak pulled low, Danica watched the riders—two men on one horse—moving steadily down the road. The monk leveled her crossbow when the two entered the farmyard. She recognized the man on the back as the same assassin they had found at the Dragon’s Codpiece. Danica’s first instincts, her initial anger, prompted her to shoot the man from the horse, but Cadderly had warned her against such actions, warned her that the man might not be what he seemed.
Another factor urged Danica to hold her shot: the man in control of the horse wore the uniform of a Carradoon guardsman.
“He is a friend,” the assassin on the back of the horse called out, seeing Danica atop the roof.
Danica smiled under the cowl, glad that her disguise had apparently fooled the pair.
“Friend,” the guardsman said. He brought the horse into the yard, said something Danica could not hear to the other man, and dismounted, heading straight for the barn.
Danica was confused and worried. Cadderly had expected the weakling assassin to come in and confront Vander, not bring a city guardsman. She still held tight to her crossbow, still wanted to put a quarrel into the evil little man’s androgenous face.
To her further surprise, the guardsman did not go into the barn; rather, he moved to the gutter along one corner and began to scale it. He was halfway up the tall structure before the man on the horse took serious note of him, and Danica thought his reaction—wide-eyed and pale—a curious thing.
“What in the Nine Hells is going on?” the young woman whispered quietly. She looked about the yard to see if Ivan or Pikel had slipped out of the barn, to try to discern if anyone inside had any idea about the strange events in the yard.
The guardsman made the edge of the roof. Danica looked up to see him, and she pulled her cowl tighter, fearing that the man had climbed only to give him a better view of her position, a better view of her.
He paid her little heed, though. He wore mismatched gloves and stood on the edge, looking down at his companion, who, by this time, was off the horse.
“You have outlived your usefulness,” the guardsman explained. He laughed wildly, clapped his hands, and dove headlong off the roof.
His laughter turned to a shriek, then a groan as he hit, then silence.
Danica breathed hard, not beginning to understand what had just occurred. She looked down to the man standing beside the dead guard, saw that it was he who now wore the strange gloves. He looked up to her, shrugged his shoulders, and bolted for the barn door. By the time he got there, the gloves were gone.
“You resisted my call,” Ghost said to Vander. “We have discussed this matter before.”
“This loll is . . . ugly,” Vander stammered in reply, obviously nervous in facing the man who had been his tormentor for so long. The firbolg gnawed his thick lips under his bushy red beard, wishing that his newfound allies would rush out and end this taunting nightmare.
“I am not speaking of young Cadderly!” Ghost retorted. “He will be dealt with in time, do not doubt. I have come here to speak only with you, the one who dared to resist my call!”
“I did not. . .”
“Silence!” Ghost commanded. “You know that to resist is to be punished. I cannot complete my task with an unwilling associate out here, safely from the town.”
Unwilling vessel, Vander corrected, but he wisely held the thought to himself.
Ghost took a few steps across the barn floor, peering out through a crack in the side boards. “Do you remember your brother?” he teased, referring to the firbolg he had killed when Vander had run away from him, had run all the way back to the distant Spine of the World Mountains.
The wicked little assassin turned about, smiling even more widely when he noticed Vender’s great hands clenched in helpless rage at the giant’s side.
Ivan peeked through a crack in the stall’s wall, then looked back, concerned, to Cadderly and Pikel.
The young priest, intent on his telepathic connection with the firbolg, did not notice the dwarf at all. He felt Vander’s mounting rage, a blocking emotion that diminished their bond. Things had gone pretty much as Cadderly had expected, but he was no longer certain of how he should react. Even across the miles from Carradoon, Ghost’s intrusion had been difficult to fend off. How would he and Vander fare now, with the sneaky assassin standing just a few feet in front of the firbolg?
Calm, he imparted to the firbolg. You must remain calm.
“Punishment,” Ghost purred, putting one finger to his pursed lips. He fingered something in his other hand, something round and gold, though Vander could not discern exactly what it might be.
“I never told you this before,” the assassin went on, smoothly, “but I did more to your son, poor boy, than take his arm.”
Vander’s eyes widened. His great hands twitched, trembled, and his roar shook the walls of the wooden barn.
“Time to go?” Ivan dared to ask aloud under the cover of that prolonged growl.
Cadderly’s mind was filled with a wall of red, the manifestation of Vander’s uncontrollable rage. The young priest was out of contact with the firbolg, he knew, and he knew, too, that by the time he managed to contact his ally once more, the disaster might well be complete. He uncoiled his legs beneath him and accepted Pikel’s arm to hoist him to his feet. Neither his spindle-disks nor his enchanted walking stick offered him much hope in defeating a giant, so he clenched his hand, the hand with the enchanted ring, and reached inside his cloak for the wand.
“No!” he cried out, leading the dwarves into the main area of the barn. Cadderly calmed immediately, though, as did Ivan and Pikel behind him, when he regarded the scene, a scene that Vander apparently had well in control.
The firbolg, panting and growling, held the puny assassin in the air by the throat, shaking him hard, though the man was obviously already dead.
“Vander,” Cadderly said quietly to calm the giant’s rage.
The firbolg paid him no heed. With another roar of outrage, he folded the assassin in half, backward, and hurled him against the barn wall.
“He will return!” the giant wailed. “Always, he comes back for me! There can be no escape!”
“Like a damned troll,” Ivan remarked from beside the firbolg, his voice reflecting sympathy for the beleaguered giant.
“Troll?” Cadderly whispered, the word inspiring an idea. The young priest held his clenched fist out before him, barked the word, “Fete!” and sent a line of fire at the corpse.
He kept his concentration firm, determined to burn whatever regenerative powers he could from the wretch, determined that Vander would at last be free. He glanced sidelong at the firbolg, took note of Vander’s satisfied expression, then noticed, curiously, that Vander was wearing a golden ring.
Curious indeed, Cadderly thought as he turned back to the charred body, for he was just thinking of looking for such an item on Ghost’s blackened form.
Cadderly searched his memory in an instant; Vander had worn no rings.
Aurora.
“Ivan!” Cadderly cried, ending his flames and spinning about. The giant moved as well, whipping out his huge sword, with Ivan standing unsuspecting right beside it.
Cadderly proved the quicker. “Mas fllul” he screamed as he drew the wand. A burst of colors exploded in the firbolg’s face. Blinded, the giant continued his swing, aiming for where Ivan had been.
The dwarf, warned and then blinded by the blast, fell back. He heard the tremendous rush of air as the sword passed, taking off his helmet and clipping him enough to send him into a roll.
“I knew I’d get me chance!” the stubborn dwarf growled when he at last righted himself. Never shying from a fight, Ivan took up his axe and charged back in.
Danica slipped into the barn, discerned immediately what was going on, and fired a quarrel into the firbolg’s belly.
The giant howled in pain but was not deterred from parrying Pikel’s powerful charge, deflecting the overbalanced dwarf to the side, where he collided with a beam.
The giant feigned a sword thrust, then kicked out instead, sweeping Ivan aside once more.
Another quarrel caught him, this time in the shoulder, but again he seemed to hardly take note of it.
Danica was back at the door, Ivan and Pikel off to the sides, leaving Cadderly as the closest target. The young priest’s first instincts told him to use his ring, to drive the beast back with a line of flame until his friends could regroup.
He realized the grim consequences for Vander, though, for the poor, proud firbolg who had been trapped in the weakling body and tossed aside like so much garbage. The magical ring had no power to restore burned flesh, and if this body was charred, like the assassin’s corpse across the room, the firbolg would never reclaim it.
The giant lurched, popped in the back of the knee by Pikel’s rebounding charge. With a grunt, the beast reached around and grabbed the green-bearded dwarf, hoisting him up into the air.
Pikel stared into the outraged giant’s bloodshot eyes, then promptly stuffed his foot up the beast’s flaring nostril and waggled his gnarly and smelly dwarf toes.
Half-sneezing, half-coughing, the disgusted giant hurled Pikel into the far wall and wiped his arm across his face. When he looked back at Cadderly, he found himself staring down the end of that slender wand. Thinking another attack forthcoming, Ghost snapped his eyes shut.
“fflu,” Cadderly said calmly, and the whole barn lit up with the brightness of a midday sun in an open field. Cadderly’s aim had been perfect, though, and soon the glow of his wand’s magic restricted itself to the firbolg’s face, particularly to the giant’s eyes.
Whiteness? When Ghost opened his eyes, he saw only whiteness, glaring and blinding. The whole damned world had gone white! Or perhaps, Ghost wondered, more curious than afraid, he had been transported to some other place.
Another stinging crossbow bolt dove into his belly, driving that notion away.
The roar shook the walls once more, and the light-blind giant charged ahead, toward the unseen bowman, flailing his sword wildly. He slammed into the edge of the open barn door, dislodged the thing, and continued out.
Danica danced quickly away, determining her role in this fight. Another quarrel sliced into the giant, hired him ahead.
Ghost felt a club slam the back of his knee again, this tune slipping through his great legs and tripping him as he tried to spin and react. Down the giant sprawled, shattering a water trough with his face and arms.
Something heavy and sharp, an axe, perhaps, sliced into his ankle; a crossbow quarrel entered his shoulder, clicking off his huge collarbone.
Somehow the stubborn wretch managed to stand and stagger forward. His already wounded ankle took a hit from the heavy club.
He turned about, sword leading, but the dwarf was already out of reach and the mighty weapon smacked hard against a small tree, uprooting it. Growling with rage, Ghost heard scuffling feet as the enemy continued to flank him, to encircle him.
He tried to call for the Ghearufu, even though he knew his own body was inaccessible, and knew that, even if he managed to hold enough concentration to summon the thing, Cadderly would somehow follow his spirit’s movements. He couldn’t get to it anyway; the hits were coming too fast, from every direction.
He jerked about, one way and then another, leading with his low-cutting sword each time. Fury became his only defense, and he was confident that he was swift enough to keep his enemies at bay. Only weariness would slow him, and he hoped he could continue the blind assault until the infernal whiteness left his eyes.
Another quarrel whistled in, taking the giant in the lung this time, and Ghost heard the wheeze of his life’s-breath spurting out through a bloody hole.
He swung again, and again, frantic and dizzy. He overbalanced, roaring and wheezing. He tried to step forward, but his badly gashed ankle would no longer support him, and he lurched ahead, bending low.
Right in line for the waiting Ivan.
The axe chopped into the firbolg’s backbone; Ghost felt the burning flash, then felt nothing at all below his waist. His momentum carried him one more long step forward, an awkward gait on stiff, unsupporting legs, and he tumbled and turned, crashing hard into the base of the huge elm at the side of the house.
There was only whiteness, pain, numbness.
Ghost heard the three friends shuffle near him but had not the strength to lift his sword in defense. Above all else, he heard the bloody wheeze at his side.
“Got him,” Ivan remarked as Cadderly rushed up to join his friends. “Ye wanting us to tie him down afore ye talk with him?”
The young priest, stone-faced, did not reply, understanding that the Loss of a physical body did not end the threat of Ghost’s evil. He walked to the side of the helpless giant, took his spindle-disks in hand, and hurled them with all his strength right into the firbolg’s temple.
The battered monster jerked once, weirdly, then slipped to the ground at the side of the tree.
Danica, holding her crossbow low, gaped open-mouthed at her lover’s uncharacteristic lack of mercy.
“Take out your bolts,” Cadderly instructed her, “but do not remove his ring!”
The last image the young priest saw was that of his friends exchanging confused glances, but he had no time to explain.
Spirits were waiting for him.
Cadderly followed the flow of Deneir’s song into the nether world without hesitation. The material world blurred to him; his friends appeared as indistinct gray blobs. As he had expected, the young priest saw the spirit of Ghost sitting near the fallen giant’s body—on one of the lower limbs of the elm, actually—the spirit’s head resting in its translucent palm, waiting patiently for the magical ring to open the receptacle for its return.
Cadderiy knew then that he had two choices: go back and remove the giant’s ring, or go and find the rightful owner of the soon-to-be-restored body. He willed himself to the barn, leaving his corporeal body standing impassively beside his friends.
Vander’s spirit crouched inside the barn, terribly afraid and uncertain.
You also? came his thoughts to Cadderly.
I am not dead, Cadderly explained, and he beckoned for the firbolg to follow him, showed his lost friend what he must do.
Together, the two spirits set upon Ghost with a vengeance. They could do no real damage to the assassin’s ghost, but they mentally pushed him away, combined their wills to create a spirit wind that increased the distance between the evil spirit and the recovering body.
You’ll not stop me, the wretch’s spirit told them, its thoughts burning into their minds.
Cadderly looked back, saw a glowing ring form beside the firbolg’s massive form. Go, he bade Vander.
The giant’s spirit rushed away; Ghost’s spirit followed quickly.
Cadderly held up a hand. No, he commanded, and Ghost slowed almost to a stop as he passed the young priest’s mental barrier. Cadderly’s spirit arms wrapped about him, further delaying him, and the young priest, both his corporeal and spirit forms, smiled as Vander’s spirit narrowed like a flying arrow and slipped through the glowing ring, entering the waiting giant form.
You are lost, Cadderly told the assassin, releasing his mental hold.
Ghost didn’t hesitate; he rushed for the only other waiting, spiritless receptacle.
“Shave me if this one ain’t alive again!” Ivan growled, lifting his axe dangerously above the firbolg’s head. “He lifts one o’ them big arms, and I’m gonna give him a headache . . .”
Danica grabbed the dwarfs arm to quiet him, explaining that the firbolg, alive or not, was in no position to threaten anyone. The reassurance sent Pikel skittering up beside the giant head, the curious dwarf bending low to watch the reawakening.
A strange mewing sound from Cadderly turned them all about. The young priest’s body trembled, one eye twitched wildly, and his mouth contorted as if he were trying to say something but could not control his actions.
Ghost had gotten there first, had slipped into Cadderly’s waiting shell. Cadderly rushed in right behind, felt the burning pain of rematerializing, and felt, too, that he was not alone.
“Get out!” he finally managed to shout, aloud and telepathically. Ghost did not respond, other than to push at Cadderly’s spirit. The young priest felt the burn begin again and knew it signified that he was slipping back out of his form.
But to be pushed out then was to lose himself forever. Cadderly called on his recollections of mental battle, of his experience with the imp, Druzil, back in the forest, and called, too, upon the song of Deneir, hoping to find in its notes some clue that would give him an edge.
But Ghost, too, had experiences to call upon—three lifetimes of exchanging spirits with unwilling victims.
What it came down to was a test of willpower, a test of mental strength.
Ghost didn’t have a chance.
“Out!” Cadderly screamed. He saw his friends, clearly for a moment, then slipped back to the spirit world and saw Ghost’s stunned form, floating helplessly away.
You have not won, came the defiant assassin’s promise.
Your connections are gone now, Cadderly argued. You have no magical ring upon a corpse to give you a hold in the material world.
I have the Ghearufu, the sinister spirit retorted. You cannot know its strength! There will be other victims about, foolish priest, weaklings who will lose out to me. And then I will come again for you! Know that I will come again for you!
The threat weighed heavily on Cadderly, but he didn’t believe Ghost’s promises were likely. A black spot appeared on the ground, accompanied by a growl, confirming Cadderly’s suspicions.
Your connections to the material world are gone now, Cadderly reiterated, seeing the other spirit’s confusion.
What is it? Ghost cried to Cadderly, his panic showing clearly.
A black hand shot up from the ground, grabbed the evil spirit’s ankle, and held it fast. Frantic, Ghost struggled to pull away, the effort tripping him to a sitting position.
Black hands grabbed his wrists; growling shadows rose all about him.
Cadderly blinked his eyes open to see his concerned friends, Danica and Ivan, holding him by the arms, and Pikel studying his face. He felt unsteady, thoroughly drained, and was glad for the support.
“Eh?” the green-bearded dwarf piped curiously.
“I am all right,” Cadderly assured them, though his shaky voice weakened his claim considerably. He looked to Danica, and she smiled, knowing beyond doubt that it was indeed Cadderly standing before her.
“The giant’s alive again,” Ivan said with wonder.
“It is truly Vander,” Cadderly assured them. “He returned through the power of the ring.” He drew a deep breath to stop the world from swimming in front of his eyes. His head throbbed more painfully than he ever remembered.
“To the barn,” he instructed, and he stepped out of Danica and Ivan’s grasp and took a step forward.
He pitched sidelong to the dirt, overcome.
It took the young priest many minutes to orient himself when he again found consciousness. He was in the barn— the stench of burned flesh told him that more than the blurry images dancing before his half-opened eyes.
Cadderly blinked and rubbed his bleary orbs. His three friends were with him; he realized he had not been unconscious for very long.
“They just appeared” Danica explained to him, leading his gaze to the items—a small, gold-edged mirror and mismatched gloves—adorning the charred and broken corpse by the wall.
“Ghearufu,” Cadderly said, remembering the name Ghost had given the thing. The young priest stared closely at the item, felt a sensation of brooding, hungry evil. He looked around to his friends, concerned. “Have any of you handled it?”
Danica shook her head. “Not as yet,” she replied. “We have decided that the best course of action would be to bring the item to the Edificant Library for further study.”
Cadderly thought differently, but he nodded, deciding it best not to argue.
“Has the firbolg awakened?” he asked.
“That one’ll be out for days,” Ivan answered.
Again, Cadderly thought differently. He understood the regenerative powers of the magical ring and was not surprised, a moment later, when Vander, hearing the discussion, walked into the barn.
“Shave me,” Ivan whispered under his breath.
“Oo oi,” Pikel agreed.
“Welcome back,” Cadderly greeted the giant. “You are free from Ghost—you know that—and you are free, too, to go your way. We shall escort you as far as the Snow-flakes—“
“You should not make such an offer so easily” the firbolg’s resonant voice interrupted, and Cadderly wondered if he had misjudged the giant, if perhaps Vander was not so innocent after all. The others were apparently thinking the same thing, for Ivan and Pikel put their hands to their weapons, preparing for another fight.
Vander smiled at them all and made no move toward his great sword, belted at his side. “I know where lies Castle Trinity, your true enemy,” the firbolg explained, “and I pay my debts.”
The temple priests regarded Cadderly and his three companions curiously as they made their bouncing way to the guest rooms. Rufo heard the racket and opened his door to see what was going on.
“Hello to yerself, too,” Ivan growled at him, putting a hand on the angular man’s chest and shoving him back into his small room. The other three came in right after the dwarf, Danica closing the door behind her.
“Are you surprised to see me ... alive?” Cadderly asked, sweeping his blue cape dramatically from his broad shoulders.
Rufo stammered the beginnings of several words, not realty knowing where to begin this unexpected conversation. Dozens of questions and fears assaulted him, stealing his voice. How much did Cadderly know or suspect? he wondered. Where was the young wizard, or the rest of the killers?
“The assassins are no more,” Cadderly told him confidently, as if reading Rufo’s thoughts. “And the young wizard, too, is dead.”
“Got that one good,” Ivan whispered to his brother, and Pikel gave the great axe, strapped to Ivan’s back, a respectful pat.
“Dead,” Cadderty reiterated, letting the word hang in the air ominously, “like Avery.”
Rufo’s chalky, sharp-featured face paled even more. Again he started to reply, to construct some lie about the headmaster’s fate, some tale that would allow him an alibi for his crimes.
“We know,” Danica assured him before he got the first words past his thin, dry lips.
“I did not expect this of you,” Cadderly said, hooking his walking stick into the crook of his elbow. “Even after the events at the library and in Shilmista, I trusted that you would find a better path to tread.”
Rufo ran his bony fingers through his matted black hair. His beady, dark eyes darted all about.
“I do not know what you are referring to,” he managed to say. “When Avery was found dead, I decided that I, too, would not be safe at the inn. I searched for you, but you were not to be found, so I came here, to be among my friends of Ilmater”
“You were afraid?” Danica asked sarcastically. “Did you fear your cohorts would cheat you?”
“I do not understand.” Rufo stuttered.
Danica slapped him across the face, knocking him to a sitting position on his bed. The monk started forward, her expression an angry grimace, but Cadderly quickly intercepted her.
“Why else would you be afraid?” Cadderly asked Rufo, to clarify Danica’s last statement. “If not for your cohorts, then who would threaten you?”
“He knew we’d catch him,” Ivan put in, grabbing Rufo’s arm with an ironlike grasp.
“You err!” Rufo stammered desperately. All the world seemed to be closing in on him. Ivan’s clenching hand felt like the jaws of a wolf trap. “I did—“
“Silence!” The command from Cadderly quieted the blustering man immediately and turned his friends’ incredulous stares to him. Rufo slumped in his seat and lowered his eyes, thoroughly defeated.
“You led Avery to his death,” Cadderly accused him bluntly. “You betrayed me in the library, your friends in the forest, and now Avery. Do not expect forgiveness this time, Kierkan Rufo! The headmaster is dead—his blood is on your hands—and you have crossed into an area from which there is no return.” Images of those awful, growling shadows assaulted Cadderly. He dosed his eyes and took a few deep breaths to steady himself but found himself imagining Rufo’s impending fate, of the hungry, evil things that would drag the fallen priest down to eternal torment.
Cadderly shuddered and opened his eyes.
“Hold him,” he instructed the dwarves.
“What are you doing?” Rufo demanded as Pikel grabbed the arm opposite the one Ivan held and the two locked him steady on the bed. “My friends will hear! They will not allow this!”
“Ilmater?” Ivan queried. “Ain’t them the ones dedicated to suffering?”
“Yup,” his brother answered.
“Well, with the hollering ye’re about to do,” Ivan snickered to Rufo, thoroughly enjoying the angular man’s distress, “they’re likely to build a statue to ye.”
Rufo bit Pikel on the arm, but the tough dwarf just grimaced and did not let go. Danica was around the bed in an instant. She grabbed Rufo’s hair and jerked his head back viciously. Between that strong hold, and the dwarves at either side of him, Rufo could only watch and listen.
Cadderly was chanting quietly, his hands moving through specific motions. He extended one finger to point toward Rufo, its end glowing white with heat.
“No!” Rufo cried. “You must let me explain!”
“No more lies,” Danica hissed from behind.
Rufo screamed and twisted helplessly as Cadderly’s enchanted digit branded his forehead, burned the curse of Deneir—the likeness of a single, broken candle above a dosed eye—into the man’s skin.
It was over in mere seconds, and Danica and the dwarves let Rufo go. He slumped forward, whimpering, not so much for the continuing pain (there was little), but for the knowledge of what Cadderly had just done to him.
Branded. He smelled the foul odor and knew it would follow him, would magically ward people away from him, for the rest of his days.
“You must never hide your mark of shame,” Cadderly said to him. “You are aware of the consequences.”
Indeed, Kierkan Rufo was. To hide the lawful brand of Deneir caused the lingering magic to burn deeper into one’s forehead, to burn to the brain, resulting in a horrible, agonizing death.
Rufo turned an angry gaze up at Cadderly. “How dare you?” he growled with every ounce of defiance he could muster. “You are no headmaster. You have no power—“
“I could have given you over to the city guard,” Cadderly interrupted, the simple logic cutting Rufo short. “Even now I could tell them of your crimes and let them hang you in the street. Would that be preferable?”
Rufo looked away.
“If you doubt my ranking in the order,” Cadderly continued, “doubt that I have the power to cast such judgment over you, then simply cover the brand. We will learn soon enough if you are correct.” Cadderly removed his wide-brimmed hat and held it out to Rufo. “Let us see,” he prompted confidently.
Rufo shoved the hat aside and staggered to his feet.
“Highest Priest,” he said hopefully when his door opened and a thick-jowled, bald-headed priest, wearing the red skullcap denoting high rank in the Ilmater order, peered in. Behind the man stood a dozen or more disciples of the temple, aroused by Rufo’s agonized screams.
“They heared his yells and thinked he joined their order,” Ivan whispered to Danica and Pikel, and the three, despite the gravity of the situation, could not hide their chuckles.
The Ilmater priest sniffed the air, his face twisting against the foul smell. He looked hard at Rufo, at the brand, then turned to Cadderly and asked, no anger in his tone, “What has transpired?”
“They have betrayed me!” Rufo cried desperately. “They—he”—he pointed to Cadderly—“led Headmaster Avery Schell to his death! And now he tries to blame me, to divert attention from himself!”
Cadderly did not grow excited at the ridiculous claim. “Would Deneir have granted me the magical brand if the tale rang at all of truth?” he asked the Ilmater priest.
“Is it authentic?” the lean priest asked, motioning to the wicked mark.
“Do you care to test it?” Cadderly asked Rufo, again extending his hat. Rufo stared at it for a very long time, at the Deneirian holy symbol set in its front center, knowing this to be the critical point in his life. He could not accept the hat and put it on—to do so would bring about his death. But refusing strengthened Cadderfy’s claims, showed Rufo to be an honestly branded outcast. He paused for a long moment, trying to concoct yet another excuse.
His hesitation cost him,any chance of explaining.
“Kierkan Rufo, you must be gone from here,” the Ilmater priest demanded. “Never again shall you be welcomed in any hall of Ilmater. Never again shall any priest of our order show you any kindness or respect.”
The finality of the words sounded like a peg in Rufo’s coffin. He knew there would be no point in arguing, that the decision was final. He turned, as if to move for his chest of belongings, but the Ilmater priest would brook no delays.
“Now!” the man shouted. “Your possessions will be dumped into the alley. Be gone!”
Ivan and Pikel, always ready to lend a hand, grabbed Rufo by the arms and roughly heaved him forward. Of the many witnesses, not a single one offered a word of protest.
Branded priests had no allies.
Cadderly had only one more task to complete before he would consider his business in Carradoon at its end, and he found assistance from a local cleric residing outside the lakeside city’s tall walls. The aged priest led Cadderly and his four companions—with Vander traveling in his magically reduced state, as a red-haired and red-bearded barbarian warrior—to a small grave in the churchyard.
Cadderly fell to his knees before the grave, not at all surprised, but filled with pity and grief.
“Poor dear,” the gentle old priest explained. “She went out in search of her lost husband and found him, dead, on the side of the road. Alas for Jhanine and her children.” The priest waited a few moments, then nodded to the companions and took his leave.
“You knew this man?” a perplexed Danica asked, crouching beside Cadderly
Cadderly nodded slowly, hardly hearing her.
Danica took Cadderly’s arm. “Will you go for him?” she asked, a bit sourly, but with all sympathy.
Cadderiy turned to her, but his eyes were looking to the past, to his exchange on the road with the unfortunate leper. Could you cure them all? Nameless had asked him. Are all the world’s ills to fall before this young priest of Deneir?
“This makes no sense, and borders on irreverence,” Danica remarked, misconstruing Cadderly’s silence. “Where next after here? To the graves of the unfortunate farmers and the city guardsman?”
Cadderiy closed his eyes and withdrew from Danica’s stinging logic. He had already tried to resurrect the farmers, and the unfortunate guardsman, privately, before they had left the farm. The spirits of the farmers were not to be found, and the guardsman would not come to Cadderly’s call. The effort had cost Cadderiy dearly, exhausted him and taken, he knew, a little bit of his life energy forever.
“How many thousands will Cadderly recall to populate the world?” he heard Danica ask. He knew her sarcasm was not intended to be mean, only practical.
He knew Danica could not understand. This act of resurrection was not as simple as it had seemed when Cadderly had brought Brennan back from the dead. Cadderly had come to learn, painfully, that resurrection was a god-given blessing, not a magical spell. Whatever powers the young priest possessed, he could not defeat ultimate fate. Many conditions had to be met before resurrection could be granted, and many more before the spirits of the dead would heed the call and return to the world they had departed. So many conditions, and Cadderty couldn’t even begin to sort through them, couldn’t begin to question the divine decisions beyond his mortal understanding.
Wisely, he did not ask Deneir to grant him this act.
“My powers are for the living,” he whispered, and Danica quieted, confident that he had come to understand what must be. He said a prayer for Nameless, a plea to whatever gods might be listening to judge the lost man fairly, to grant him the peace in death that had been so unfairly stolen from him in life.
Cadderly never did learn the beggar man’s real name— and he preferred it that way. He and his friends went back to the priest who had shown them the grave, bearing a fair amount of gold they could spare for the deserving Jhanine, but it was Vander who threw in the largest gift: Aballister’s purse of gold, the advance sum given the Night Masks for Cadderly’s execution.
“Do you mean to cure the ills of the world?” Danica asked Cadderly again, after the companions had left the priest’s small house beside the graveyard. She looked to him pleadingly, fearful for her love, fearful that this new weight of responsibility would break him.
“I will do what I can,” Cadderly replied stubbornly. “It is the most that can be asked of us, and the least that any of us should be willing to give.”
A chill breeze blew in from the west, a reminder that winter was not far away. Cadderly looked into it, sought the lines of trails on the distant Snowflake Mountains, the paths that led to the Edificant Library.
Maybe it was time to go home.