Dean Thobicus was surprised to find a blanket draped over the lone window in his office the next morning. It ruffled as he approached, and he felt the chill morning breeze, which led his gaze to the floor, to the base of the blanket, where the window’s glass lay shattered.
“What foolishness is this?” the surly dean asked as he brushed some of the glass aside with his foot. He pulled out the edge of the blanket and was surprised again, for not only was the glass broken, but the grate was gone, apparently ripped from the stonework.
Thobicus fought hard to steady his breathing, fearing that Cadderly might somehow be behind this, that the young priest had returned and used his newfound and indisputably powerful magic on the grate. The iron bars had been new, bolted in place soon after Cadderly had disappeared into the mountains. The dean had explained to the others that it was necessary to ensure that no thieves—agents of Castle Trinity, probably—broke into his office in this time of turmoil and stole off with battle plans. Actually, Thobicus had put the grate on the window not to keep anyone out, but to keep anyone from falling out. When Cadderly had mentally dominated the dean, the young priest had shown his superiority by threatening to make Thobicus leap from the window, and Thobicus knew without doubt that he would have done exactly that if Cadderly had so instructed, that he would have been powerless to ignore the command.
Seeing that window now, broken open and with no blocking grate, sent shudders along the thin dean’s spine. He eased the impromptu curtain back into place and turned about slowly, as if expecting to find his nemesis standing in the middle of the office.
He found Kierkan Rufo instead.
“What are you ...” the dean began, then his words were lost in his throat as he recalled that Rufo had just died. Yet here the man was, standing at that curious and customary angle!
“Do not!” Rufo commanded as the dean’s hand went up to grasp the blanket for support. Rufo held his own bony hand out toward Thobicus, and the dean felt Rufo’s will, as tangible as a wall of stone, blocking him from grasping the blanket.
“I favor the darkness,” the vampire explained cryptically.
Dean Thobicus narrowed his dark eyes to study the man more closely, not understanding. “You cannot come in here,” he protested. “You wear the brand.”
Rufo laughed at him. “The brand?” he echoed skeptically. He reached up and ran his nails across his forehead, tearing his own skin and scraping away the distinctive Deneirian markings.
“You cannot come in here!” Thobicus said more frantically, finally catching on that something was terribly amiss, that Kierkan Rufo had become something much more dangerous than a simple outcast. Such a brand as Rufo wore was magical, and if covered or marred, it would burn inward, tormenting then killing the outcast. Rufo showed no pain now, though, just confidence.
“You cannot come in here,” Thobicus reiterated, his voice no more than a whisper.
“Indeed I can,” Rufo countered, and he smiled wide, showing bloodied fangs. “You invited me in.”
Thobicus’s mind whirled in confusion. He remembered those same words, spoken by Rufo at the moment of the man’s death.
At the moment of the man’s death!
“Get out of here!” Thobicus demanded desperately. “Be gone from this holy place!” Out came the symbol of Deneir, hanging on a chain about the dean’s neck, and he began a chant as he presented it before him.
Rufo felt a sting in his unbeating heart, and the glare of the pendant, seeming to flare with a life of its own, hurt his eyes. But after the initial shock, the vampire sensed something here, a weakness. This was Deneir’s house, and Thobicus was supposedly the leading member of the order. Thobicus above all should have been able to drive Rufo away. Yet he could not; Rufo knew with certainty that he could not.
The dean finished his spell and hurled a wave of magical energy at the vampire, but Rufo didn’t even flinch. He was staring directly at the presented holy symbol, which, to his eyes, no longer flared in the least.
“There is a blackness in your heart, Dean Thobicus,” Rufo reasoned.
“Be gone from here!” Thobicus countered.
“There is no conviction in your words.”
“Foul beast!” Thobicus growled, and he boldly approached, hand and holy symbol extended. “Foul dead thing, you have no purpose here!”
The vampire began to laugh.
“Deneir will smite you!” Thobicus promised. “I will...”
He stopped and grunted in pain as Rufo snapped a strong hand up and caught him by the forearm. “You will do what?” the vampire asked. A flick of Rufo’s wrist sent the holy symbol spinning from Thobicus’s weak hand. “There is no conviction in your words,” Rufo said again. “And there is no strength in your heart.” Rufo let go of the arm and grasped the front of the dean’s robes, easily lifting the thin man into the air.
“What have you done, fallen priest?” the confident vampire asked.
Those last two words echoed in the dean’s thoughts like a damning curse. He wanted to scream out for the headmasters; he wanted to break free and rush to the window and tear the blanket aside, for certainly the light of day would do ill to this horrid, undead thing. But Rufo’s claims, all of them, were true—Thobicus knew they were true!
Rufo carelessly tossed the man to the floor and paced to put himself between the dean and the window. Thobicus lay very still, his thoughts whirling with confusion and desperation, wallowing in self-pity. Indeed, what had he done? How had he fallen so far and so fast?
“Please,” the vampire said, “do go and sit at your desk, that we might properly discuss what has come to pass.”
All through the early morning, Rufo had sat in this office, thinking that he would lie in wait for Thobicus, then simply tear the man apart. It was no longer hunger that drove the vampire—he had feasted well the previous night. No, Rufo had come after Dean Thobicus purely for revenge, had decided to strike out against all the library for the torments the Deneirians had given him in his life.
Now, unwittingly guided by the designs of the chaos curse, the vampire was thinking differently. In that moment of confrontation, Rufo had seen into the heart of Dean Thobicus, and there he had found a malignant blackness.
“Have you eaten this day?” Rufo asked pleasantly, sliding to a sitting position on the edge of the oaken desk.
Thobicus, still a bit ruffled, straightened defiantly in his chair and answered simply, “No.”
“I have,” Rufo explained, and laughed wickedly at the irony. “In fact, I have feasted on the one who would prepare your meal.”
Thobicus looked away, his expression filled with disgust.
“You should be glad of that!” Rufo snarled at him, and slammed the desk, forcing Thobicus to jump in surprise and turn back to face the monster. “If I had not already eaten, then my hunger would have overcome me by now, and you would be dead!” Rufo said fiercely, and he bared his fangs to accentuate his point
Dean Thobicus tried to sit still, to hide the fact that his hands were working under the desktop, fingering a loaded crossbow that he had recently come to keep there. The weapon was supported by sliding brackets so that it could be swiftly and easily pulled out in times of need. The dean’s shoulders sagged a bit when he tought of the weapon, when he realized that he had put the crossbow there not for any emergency against a foe such as this, but in case Cadderly had come to him again, and had tried to dominate him.
Rufo was concerned with his own thoughts and seemed to notice neither the dean’s delicate movements nor the turmoil boiling within the withered man. The vampire slid off the desk and walked to the middle of the room, one skinny finger tapping thoughtfully on his lips, still red from the blood of his meal.
Thobicus realized that he should pull out the crossbow and shoot the monster. Well versed in theology, the dean recognized Rufo for what he was, knew that he had somehow become a vampire. The crossbow bolt probably wouldn’t kill Rufo, but it had been blessed and dipped in holy water, so it would at least wound him, and possibly allow the dean to flee the room. The library was waking up by now, allies would not be far away.
Thobicus held his shot, and held back his words, letting the vampire make the next move.
Rufo turned back to the desk suddenly, and Thobicus inadvertently gasped. “We should not be enemies,” the vampire remarked.
Thobicus eyed him incredulously.
“What would be the gain of a fight?” Rufo asked. “For either of us?”
“Ever were you a fool, Kierkan Rufo,” Thobicus dared to say.
“A fool?” Rufo mocked. “You could not begin to understand, fallen priest.” Rufo threw back his head and let his laughter flow out. He spun about so that his black burial robe trailed his form like a shadow. “I have found power!”
“You have found perversion!” Thobicus declared, and he clutched the crossbow tightly, thinking that his remark would send the angry monster hurtling toward him.
Rufo stopped his spin and faced the dean. “Call it what you will! But you cannot deny my power—power gained in mere hours. You have spent all of your life in wasted study, I say, praying to Deneir.”
Thobicus inadvertently glanced at his holy symbol, lying on the floor by the wall.
“Deneir,” Rufo said derisively. “What has your god given you? You toil for endless years, then Cadderly...”
Thobicus winced, and Rufo did not miss it.
“Then Cadderly,” the vampire went on, seeing the weakness for what it was, “reaches out and grasps at levels of power that will forever be beyond you!”
“You lie!” Thobicus roared, coming forward in his chair. His words sounded empty, even in his own ears.
The office door swung open then, and both Thobicus and Rufo turned to see Bron Turman stride in. The Oghman priest looked from the dean to Rufo, his eyes going wide as he, too, recognized the vampire for what it was.
Rufo hissed, showing bloody fangs, and waved his hand, his magic compelling the door to slam shut behind Turman.
Bron Turman had no intention of running back out, in any case. With a determined snarl, the Oghman grabbed at a pendant and tore the chain from his neck, presenting the silver scroll replica before him. It flashed and radiated a powerful light, and to the surprise of Dean Thobicus, the vampire backed away, ducking under his robes and hissing.
Turman recited words very similar to the ones Thobicus had used, and the holy symbol flared even more, filled the room with a glow that Rufo could not bear. The vampire fell back against the wall, started for the window, then realized that he could not go out there, under the light of the infernal sun.
Turman had him, Thobicus realized, and Rufo seemed very weak to him then, even pitiful. Without even realizing it, Thobicus had the crossbow atop the desk.
Rufo began to fight back, was struggling to stand straight. A blackness rolled out from his form, filling that section of the room.
Bron Turman growled and thrust his symbol forward, its flare attacking the vampire’s darkness. Rufo hissed wickedly as he clenched his bony fists in the air.
“Shoot him!” Bron Turman implored Thobicus.
The struggle between the two was a standoff that a crossbow quarrel would break.
Thobicus took up the weapon and leveled it. He meant to pull the trigger, but hesitated as a wall of doubts came up before him. Why hadn’t his presented symbol so affected the vampire? he wondered. Had Deneir deserted him, or was Cadderly somehow continuing to block his efforts to bask in the light of his god?
Mountains of doubt rolled across the dean’s thoughts, black thoughts made blacker by the continuing subtle intrusions of the vampire’s will. Rufo was still there, compelling, prompting doubts.
Where was Deneir? The thought haunted the withered dean. In his moment of greatest need, his god had not been there. In the one instant of his life when he had consciously called on Deneir, when he had absolutely needed Deneir, the god had deserted him!
And there stood Bron Turman, straight and confident, holding the vampire at bay with the power of Oghma in his strong hand.
Thobicus snarled and hoisted the crossbow. Evil Rufo was standing tall in his new power, standing against a man who would have easily defeated him when he had been just a disciple of Deneir, though Rufo had spent years of study.
Now, after three days of death, Rufo could match the Oghman.
Thobicus shook his head, trying to clear the mounting confusion. He pushed through one web of lies, only to find another, and to find the one he had left closing fast behind him.
Where was Deneir? Why was Cadderly so damned powerful? Where was justice, the rewards of his own long years of study? So many years ...
Thobicus came back to the present situation, focusing his thoughts, steadying his trembling hands, and training his eye. His shot was perfect.
Bron Turman jerked from the impact and looked over at the desk in disbelief. The Oghman’s grip soon weakened, and Rufo stepped forward and casually slapped the holy symbol from Turman’s hand, then fell over him.
A minute later, the vampire, his face bright with fresh blood, turned to the desk. “What has Deneir ever given you?” he asked the stunned Thobicus, the old dean standing zombielike, his wrinkled face frozen with disbelief as he stared at the dead Oghman.
“He deserted you,” Rufo crooned, playing on the man’s obvious doubts. “Deneir has deserted you, but I will not! There is so much I can give you.”
Thobicus, in his stupor, realized that the vampire was next to him. Rufo continued to whisper assurances, promising power beyond belief and eternal life, promising salvation before death. Thobicus could not resist him. The withered dean felt a pinch as the vampire’s fangs jabbed into his neck.
He realized only then how very far he had fallen. He realized that Rufo had been in his mind, inciting the doubts, quietly compelling him to fire the crossbow at the powerful Oghman.
And he had complied. Doubts swirled in the air all about the dean, but no longer were they centered on the faults of Deneir. Had Deneir really deserted Thobicus when he had tried to present the holy symbol against Rufo, or had Thobicus long ago deserted Deneir? Cadderly had dominated him, and had claimed that power to be the will of Deneir.
And now Rufo ...
Thobicus let the thought go, let the guilt go. So be it, he decided. He denied the consequences and washed in the promises of the vampire.
So be it.
Fester Rumpol watched suspiciously. He didn’t understand the change that had come over Dean Thobicus. The last time he had spoken with the dean, the man was preoccupied—no, obsessed—with the notion that Cadderly was coming back to the library to tear the heart out of the Deneirian order.
Now Thobicus seemed almost jovial. He had secretly called together the four leading Deneirians, three of them headmasters, for what he termed “a most vital conference.”
They were gathered in a small dining room adjacent to the main hall and kitchen, around an oaken table, bare except for huge, empty goblets set in front of the five chairs.
“Dear Banner,” Thobicus chirped lightly, “do go to the cellars and fetch a particular vintage, a special red bottle on the third rack.”
“A bottle of red?” Banner asked, crinkling his features. Banner favored white wines.
“A red bottle,” Thobicus corrected. He turned to Rumpol and gave a wink. “Magically preserved, you know. The only way to keep Feywine.”
“Feywine?” Rumpol and all the others asked together. Feywine was an elven drink, a mixture of honey and flowers and moonbeams, it was said. It was rare, even among the elves, and getting a bottle from them was nearly impossible.
“A gift from King Galladel when he ruled Shilmista,” Thobicus explained. “Do go and retrieve it.”
Banner looked to Rumpol, worried that the man was near an explosion. Indeed Rumpol was boiling. He feared that Thobicus had somehow learned of Cadderly’s demise, and if that was the occasion of this celebration, the dean was surely out of line!
Banner waited a moment longer, then tentatively started to leave.
“Wait!” Rumpol blurted, and all the others turned to regard him.
“Your mood has brightened, Dean Thobicus,” Rumpol said. “Dramatically. Might we learn what has so affected you?”
“I found communion with Deneir this morning,” Thobicus lied.
“Cadderly is dead,” Rumpol reasoned, and the other three Deneirians immediately turned sour looks on the dean. Even the priests who despised Cadderly and his unconventional climb through the ranks would not celebrate such a tragedy—at least not publicly.
Thobicus put on an expression of horror. “He is not,” he replied vehemently. “From all that I know, the fine young priest is even now on his way back to the library.”
Fine young priest? Coming from Dean Thobicus, those words rang hollow indeed to Fester Rumpol.
“Then why are we celebrating?” Banner asked bluntly.
Thobicus gave a great sigh, “I had hoped we might toast the occasion with the Feywine,” he groaned. “But very well, I sympathize with your impatience. Simply put, there will be no second Time of Troubles.”
That brought sighs of relief and private murmurs from the group.
“And I have learned much of Cadderly as well,” Thobicus went on. “The order will survive—indeed, it will be strengthened when he returns, when he and I work together to improve the ways of the library.”
“You hate each other,” Rumpol remarked, and looked around somewhat nervously. He hadn’t meant to openly voice that opinion.
Thobicus, however, merely chuckled and seemed to take no offense. “With Deneir as moderator, our differences seem petty indeed,” the dean replied.
He looked around, his bright smile infectious. “And so we have much to celebrate!” he proclaimed, and nodded to Banner, who rushed off with sincere enthusiasm for the doorway to the wine cellar.
The conversation continued, lighthearted and hopeful, with Thobicus paying particular attention to Rumpol, the man he deemed to be potentially the most troublesome. Twenty minutes later, Banner still had not returned.
“He cannot find the bottle,” Thobicus remarked to quiet any trepidation. “Dear Banner. He probably dropped his torch and is stumbling around in the dark.”
“Banner has the power to summon light,” Rumpol said, an edge of suspicion still in his voice.
“Then where is he?” Thobicus asked. The bottle is colorful, and should be easy enough to find on the fifth rack.”
“You said the third rack,” one of the others quickly put in.
Thobicus stared at him, then scratched his head. “Did I?” he whispered, then he dramatically dropped his face into his hand. “Of course,” he mused. “The Feywine was in the third rack until the .. . incident.” All the others knew that the dean was referring to the dark time of the chaos curse, the time when the evil priest Barjin had invaded the library and sought to destroy the place from within.
“There was quite a bit of trouble down in that cellar,” Thobicus went on. “If I remember correctly, several of the affected priests even went down there and drank to ... shall we say, excess.”
Rumpol turned away, for he had been one of those hearty drinkers.
“Fortunately, the Feywine survived, but I do recall that it was moved to the fifth rack, that being the most stable,” Thobicus finished. He motioned to one of the others. “Do go and help out dear Banner,” he bade, “before the man comes back here raising Cyric himself against me!”
The priest ran off for the door, and the conversation resumed, again without much concern. Fifteen minutes later, it was Rumpol who remarked that the two wine hunters were long overdue.
“If one of the lesser priests stole that bottle, my good mood will vanish,” Thobicus warned.
“There was an inventory of the wine cellar,” Rumpol said.
“A list I saw, though I do not recall any record of Feywine,” added the other, and he gave a jovial laugh. “And I would have noted the presence of such a treasure well, I assure you!”
“Of course the bottle was mislabeled,” Thobicus explained, then he nodded, as if something that should have been obvious had just come to him. “If dear Banner decided to test the wine before he returned, then likely we will find our two missing brothers sitting in a stupor in the cellar!” the dean roared. “Feywine, in its own subtie way, bites harder than dwarven ale!”
He rose to leave, and the other two were quick to join him. Their mood was light, any fears or suspicions quenched by the logical assumption offered by the dean. They got to the wine cellar door, and Thobicus took up and lit one of the small lamps set in a cabinet to one side, then led the way down the wooden staircase, into the darkness.
They heard no chatter, no drunken conversation, and grew a bit concerned when they saw that their lantern was apparently the only source of light in the damp, shadowy cellar.
“Banner?” Rumpol called softly. Thobicus stood by silently; the remaining priest began a quiet chant, thinking to bring a great magical light into the area.
That priest jerked suddenly, drawing the attention of his two companions.
“I fear a spider has bitten me,” he remarked to Rumpol’s questioning expression, and he began to jerk spasmodically, his eyes twitching, then rolling back into his head.
He fell facedown to the floor before Rumpol could get to him.
“What is this?” Rumpol cried, cradling the fallen priest’s head. He began a frantic chant, beginning a spell that could counter any poison.
“Rumpol,” Thobicus called, and though the priest did not interrupt his frantic spellcasting, he did look back to regard the dean.
His words fell away as he looked upon Kierkan Rufo, the vampire’s face bright with fresh blood.
The vampire extended one pale hand toward Rumpol. “Come to me,” he bade.
Rumpol felt the wave of compelling willpower roll over him. He rested the fallen priest’s head back against the floor and rose without even being conscious of the movements,
“Come to me,” the vampire said tan tali zingly. “Join me, as has your dean. Come to me and see the truth.”
Rumpol was inadvertently sliding his feet along the smooth floor, drifting toward the darkness that was Kierkan Rufo. Somewhere in the back of his mind he caught the image of an open eye above a lit candle, the symbol of Deneirian light, and it shook him from his trance.
“No!” he declared and pulled out his holy symbol, presenting it with all his heart against the undead monster. Rufo hissed and lifted his arm to shield himself from the spectacle. Dean Thobicus turned away in shame. The light from his lantern went with him as he walked around the next rack, but the light in the area near Rumpol did not diminish, bolstered by the power of his presented symbol, by the light that was in the sincere priest’s heart.
“Fool!” the vampire proclaimed. “Do you think you can stand against me?”
Fester Rumpol wasn’t shaken. He basked in the light of his god, used his sincere faith to blast away any horror-inspired doubts. “I deny you!” he proclaimed. “And by the power of Deneir...”
He stopped suddenly and nearly swooned. He glanced around to his back to see the dog-faced imp staring at him, waving its barbed, poison-tipped tail—the same tail that had dropped the other priest, and that Druzil had just poked into Rumpol’s kidney.
Rumpol staggered for the stairway, stumbled to his knees as Druzil struck him a second time. Then he was up again, but the world was slipping away into blackness. The last image he saw was that of Kierkan Rufo, of Kierkan Rufo’s fangs rushing for his throat.
When he was finished, the vampire found Thobicus standing by the fifth rack. There lay the priest Thobicus had sent after Banner, his chest torn apart, his heart on the floor beside him. Banner, though, surprisingly, was sitting against the rack, his head down, but very much alive.
“He heeded my call,” Rufo casually explained to the confused dean. “And so I thought to keep him, for he is weak.” Rufo presented a perfectly awful bloody smile to the dean. “Like you.”
Dean Thobicus had not the strength to argue. He looked to the torn priest, and to living Banner, and he pitied Banner the most.
A few hours later, Druzil hopped and skipped into short flights about the library’s hot attic, clapping his hands happily at every turn. The air was warm, he was at work in desecrating a holy place, and beneath him, Rufo, with the help of Dean Thobicus, continued dividing the priests into small groups and was summarily destroying them.
Life was suddenly very good for the malicious imp. Druzil flapped his wings and lifted himself up to one of the short peaks in the roof, so that he could survey his latest design. The imp knew all the runes of desecration and had just completed his favorite in the area directly over the library’s main chapel (though that chapel was two floors down). Thobicus had provided a virtually unlimited supply of ink—reds, blues, blacks, and even a vial of a strange greenish-yellow (which Druzil favored) —and the imp knew that every stroke he ran across the floorboards put the foolish priests in the rooms below a bit farther from their respective gods.
At one point, Druzil paused, then moved away from the spot with an angry hiss. Someone was singing in a room below him—that wretched Chaunticleer, Druzil realized. Chaunticleer was singing to Deneir and to Oghma, lifting his voice against the encroaching blackness in notes pure and sweet.
It wounded Druzil’s ears. He moved away from the spot, and the vibrations of Chaunticleer’s voice were no more. With all that was happening in his favor, Druzil quickly forgot about the singing priest.
Happy again, Druzil clapped his hands rapidly, his toothy smile nearly swallowing his ears. When Rufo had come for him in the mausoleum the previous night, he hadn’t known what to expect, had even considered using all of his magical abilities and knowledge to try to open a gate, that he might retreat to the lower planes, abandoning Rufo and Tuanta Quiro Miancay altogether.
Now, just half a day later, Druzil was thrilled that he had not chosen that course. Barjin had failed, but Rufo would not, the imp knew.
The Edificant Library would fall.
His tentative steps down into the wine cellar revealed Thobicus’s continued fear of Kierkan Rufo, and his continued uneasiness with his own decisions. He still could not believe that he had killed Bron Turman, long a friend and ally. He still could not believe that he had flown so far from the teachings of Deneir, that he had thrown away the work of his entire life.
There was only one antidote to the guilt that threatened to destroy Dean Thobicus. Anger. And the focus of that anger was a young priest who would likely soon return to the library.
Cadderly had done this, Thobicus decided. Through his lust for undeserved power, Cadderly had brought all of this about.
Thobicus carried no lantern or torch as he stepped off the bottom step of the dark stairway. With each passing hour, the man grew more comfortable with the darkness. Now he could see the wine racks, even the individual bottles, though a week before he would not have been able to see his hand flapping an inch from his face in this lightless place. Rufo called it another benefit; the frightened dean wondered if it might be more a symptom.
He found Rufo in the far corner, behind the last of the racks, asleep in a wooden casket the vampire had recovered from the work shed behind the mausoleum. Thobicus moved toward Rufo, then stopped abruptly, eyes wide with fear and confusion.
Bron Turman walked toward him.
As he turned to flee, the confused dean found several others, including Fester Rumpol, blocking the way. They had come back to life! Somehow, these priests had been resurrected and had come back to destroy Thobicus!
The dean squealed and leaped for the wine rack. He climbed it like a spider, with agility the aged and withered man had not known for several decades. He neared the top and could have easily slipped over, but a command rang out within his head, an order compelling him to stop.
Slowly, Thobicus turned his head about to see Kierkan Rufo sitting up in his casket, his grotesque smile wide.
“You do not like my new playthings?” the vampire asked.
Thobicus did not understand. He looked closer at the nearest man, Fester Rumpol, and realized that Rumpol’s throat was still ragged from Rufo’s raking and tearing. The man could not possibly be breathing, Thobicus realized; the man was still dead.
Thobicus sprang from his perch, flying the ten feet to land with catlike grace on the stone floor. Bron Turman, near where he landed, reached out with a stiff arm and grasped him tightly.
“Tell him to let you go,” Rufo said casually, but his patient facade went away immediately, replaced by a judgmental, even dangerous expression. “Take control of him!”
Without saying a word, Thobicus steeled his gaze and mentally ordered Turman to let go—and the dean was relieved indeed when the man released him and stepped back, standing quietly to the side.
“Zombies,” Thobicus breathed, understanding that Rufo had animated the torn corpses into undead, unthinking servants, among the lowest forms in the hierarchy of the netherworld.
“Those who submit will know an intelligent existence, as you have come to know,” Rufo declared in an imposing voice. “Those who choose to die in the favor of their god shall become unwitting servants, unthinking zombies, to their ultimate torment!”
As if on cue, Banner appeared from around the corner, smiling at Thobicus. Banner had submitted, had denied his god in the face of Kierkan Rufo.
“Greetings, Thobicus,” the man said, and when Banner opened his mouth, Thobicus realized that he, like Rufo, sported a pair of fangs.
“You are a vampire,” the dean whispered, stating the obvious.
“As are you,” Banner replied.
Thobicus looked to Rufo skeptically, then, following another mental command, reached up to feel inside his own mouth, to feel his own set of fangs.
“We are both vampires,” Banner continued, “and with Kierkan Rufo, we are three.”
“Not quite,” Rufo interjected. Both men regarded him curiously, Banner’s eyes full of suspicion, Dean Thobicus too wrapped up in confusion.
“You are not yet fully in the realm of vampires,” Rufo explained, and he knew that he was speaking the truth, though where he had gained such an understanding of this undead state, he did not know. It was the knowledge imparted by the chaos curse, he figured.
“You promised me that I would be a vampire,” Banner said. “That was our deal.”
Rufo held up a hand to calm him. “And so you shall be,” he assured the man, “in time.”
“You rose into full power soon after your death,” Banner complained.
Rufo smiled and considered the chaos curse, swirling inside of him, the potion that had imparted such strength and understanding. But I had an advantage, fool Banner, Rufo thought. To Banner he only repeated his promise of, “In time.”
Rufo turned to the confused Thobicus. “This very night you will suffer the blood thirst,” he explained into the dean’s wide-eyed stare. “And you will seek out one of the lesser priests and feed. I grant you this, but be warned. If ever you hold a thought against me, I will deny you your victims. There is no greater torment than denial of the blood thirst—this you will believe when the hunger comes to you.”
Dean Thobicus’s mind whirled at the unexpected news. He had become a vampire!
“This very night,” Rufo said again, as if in answer to the dean’s silent exclamation. “And be warned that the sun tomorrow and forever after will be your enemy. Seek a dark spot to sleep after you have fed, Thobicus.”
The dean’s breath came in short gasps, and when he realized that fact, he seriously wondered if this would be the last day he would ever draw breath.
“Have you done as I instructed?” Rufo asked him.
He looked up at the vampire, startled by the unexpected change in subject. He collected his wits quickly.
“The five Oghmans are on the road to Carradoon,” Thobicus answered. “They wanted to wait until morning and complained that they would have only a short hour or two of light before they had to stop and set up camp.”
“But you convinced them,” Rufo reasoned.
“I sent them,” Thobicus corrected, as defiant a tone as he had ever used against the vampire. “But I do not understand the value in allowing them out of the library. If Druzil is at work...”
A sharp pain in Thobicus’s head cut the statement short, nearly knocking the dean from his feet.
“You question me?” Rufo asked.
Thobicus found he was on his knees, clutching his temples. He thought his head would explode, but then, as abruptly as it had started, the pain ceased. It took him a long moment to muster the courage to look up at Kierkan Rufo again, and when he did, he found the vampire at ease, Banner comfortably at his side.
Danica eyed Dorigen curiously, wondering what the woman hoped to gain by reminding Shayleigh of the carnage in Shilmista, and of her fears that an army—an army led by Dorigen—might soon return to the wood.
“So it might,” Shayleigh was quick to reply, fixing the wizard with a cool stare. “We do not know if the ore-kin we sent scrambling into the mountains will return to Shilmista once the trails are clear!’
No gain, Danica decided. Dorigen was merely continuing her acceptance of guilt.
Dorigen did not back away from the accusing look. “If they do,” she said, her chin held high, “I will demand that part of my penance be that I fight on the side of the elves in that conflict.”
Well said, Danica thought. “If the elves would have her,” the monk quickly put in, drawing Shayleigh’s attention to her disarming smile before the suspicious elf could reply.
“We would be foolish to refuse,” Shayleigh answered. She looked back to the quiet night and the distant flickers. “It is likely the ore-kin will enlist the aid of trolls.” In her own way, the elf had, for the first time, agreed with the decision to return Dorigen to the library and argue for a positive judgment, rather than one of punishment. Shayleigh had made no moves against Dorigen since the wizard’s surrender in Castle Trinity, but neither had she befriended her. Shilmista was the elf’s home, after all, and Dorigen had been instrumental in bringing ruin to the forest’s northern reaches.
Behind Shayleigh’s back, Danica and Dorigen exchanged hopeful nods. If King Elbereth and the elves could forgive Dorigen’s crimes, then the library’s claims against her would seem almost trivial.
“If it was earlier, I would suggest we go down to that light,” Danica remarked. “I could do with a bit of good food, and maybe a taste of wine.”
“I’d settle for ale,” Dorigen said, to which Shayleigh promptly spun about and gave the wizard a sour look.
“Wine,” the elf agreed, and it seemed to Dorigen and Danica as if the whole atmosphere of the encampment had suddenly changed, lightened, as if Shayleigh had come to terms with Dorigen’s past and was now a true ally. The two women went to their bedrolls then, taking comfort in the knowledge that the alert elf was guarding over them.
Shayleigh remained where she was, standing quietly and watching the flicker of the distant campfire. Her second guess as to its origin had been correct; a group of priests was making its way down to Carradoon—a group of Oghman priests, sent out by Dean Thobicus.
Like Danica, Shayleigh wished the night was earlier, that they might have hiked the couple of miles down to the group.
Kierkan Rufo, approaching the flickering fire from another trail, would have been pleasantly surprised if they had.
He dreamed of towering spires stretching three hundred feet into the air. He dreamed of all the folk of Carradoon, and all the elves of Shilmista, congregating before the cathedral, come to worship and to find inspiration in its massive windows and walls that were, in truth, works of art.
The nave dwarfed the individual. The arching ceiling soared a hundred feet from the stone floor. Graceful walls were lined by corridors housing statues of the worthy priests of both Deneir and Oghma who had gone before. Avery Schell was there, as was Pertelope, there for all time, and at the end of the high walkway was an empty pedestal, awaiting the statue that would be most fitting in this tribute to Deneir.
The statue of Cadderly.
He dreamed of conducting a service in that cathedral, of Brother Chaunticleer’s a cappella gift to the brother gods, Oghma and Deneir, the talented tenor’s voice echoing about the graceful walls like the songs of the heavens themselves.
Then Cadderly saw himself, wearing the sash of the library’s dean, leading the service, with Danica sitting proudly by his side.
He was a hundred years old, withered and worn and near death.
The shocking image shook Cadderly from his slumber, and his eyes opened wide to take in the starry sky. He closed his eyes quickly and tried to recapture that last fleeting glimpse, to learn why it might be so startling. Cadderly could only hope that the new library would be constructed before he reached his hundredth year, even if construction began in full this very summer and Ivan and Pikel delivered a thousand dwarves to help with the work.
Cadderly, so filled with divine faith, certainly did not fear his death. Then why had he awakened, and why was his forehead cold with sweat?
He looked back into the dream, forced the image to linger. Even though it was clear, it took Cadderly time to discern what might be out of place.
It was he, the old dean of the library. He looked as if he had lived a century or more, but Danica, sitting beside him, seemed no older than she was now, barely in her twenties.
Cadderly let go the surreal scene and looked up at the stars, reminding himself that it had been just a dream. The Bouldershoulders’ wild snoring—Ivan snorting and Pikel whistling in response—calmed him somewhat, told him that all was as it should be.
Still, many hours passed before Cadderly found his slumber again, and that image of an old, dying priest leading a service in the cathedral went into his dreams with him.
Two of the five Oghmans sat awake, chatting quietly and keeping a halfhearted watch on the dark trees surrounding their encampment as the darkest hours of the night passed. None in the group was really afraid of trouble this far south in the mountains. The trails between Carradoon and the Edificant Library were well traveled, and these were powerful clerics—behind Bron Turman, the most powerful of the Oghman order at the library. They had lined the perimeter of their camp with wards that would not only alert them of the presence of monsters, but would send jolts of lightning into the creatures, probably destroying them before they ever crossed into the opening.
So these two Oghmans were awake more to enjoy the night than to guard the camp, and their eyes were more often on each other, or on the fire, than on the dark and ominous trees.
Kierkan Rufo was in those trees, along with Druzil, watching the priests’ movements and listening to the rhythmic snoring of the other three, fast asleep.
Rufo nodded and began his steady approach, but Druzil, still in many ways the wiser of the two, scanned the camp’s perimeter, his knowing eyes looking for the revealing emanations of magic.
He kicked off the ground and flapped his wings to land hard against Rufo’s shoulder. “It is guarded,” he whispered into the vampire’s ear. “All the way around.”
Rufo nodded again, as though he had suspected that all along. He jerked suddenly, throwing Druzil from his shoulder and lifting his black robes high into the air about him. As the material descended, Rufo’s corporeal form seemed to melt away. As a bat, Rufo zipped up into the treetops, Druzil following closely.
“Did they think to guard from above?” the vampire bat asked the imp in a voice so high-pitched that it hurt Druzil’s ears, and though Rufo had spoken loudly, the men on the ground could not even hear the sound.
The two picked their way down the branches. Rufo noticed that Druzil had turned invisible, as was the imp’s way, but the vampire was surprised—pleasantly so—to learn that he could still see the imp’s vague outline. Another benefit of this undead state, Rufo decided. One of many, many benefits. A few moments later, the vampire was hanging upside down from the lowest branch over the encampment, barely fifteen feet above the heads of the two seated guards. Rufo had thought to swoop right down on them, but paused, wondering if something valuable might be gained from their conversation.
“Bron Turman’s going to be surprised when we walk unannounced into Carradoon,” one of them was saying.
“His own fault,” answered the other. “His rank does not give him the privilege of rewriting the Oghman orders without consulting the other leaders.”
Rufo was impressed at how resourceful a liar Dean Thobicus could be. With all the strange goings-on, the Oghmans had been on the alert back at the library. Only the dean’s hint that something was indeed amiss, instead of simply telling them that everything was all right, had brought them out here.
“If that is what Bron Turman is doing in Carradoon,” the first priest remarked, his tone full of doubt.
The other nodded in agreement.
“I am not convinced of Dean Thobicus’s words,” the first went on. “Not even his motives. He is frightened of Cadderly’s return—in that, I agree with Bron Turman’s assessment.”
“Do you believe Dean Thobicus wanted all the Oghmans out of the library so we would not interfere with his plans for his own order?” the other asked, to which the first only shrugged.
Rufo nearly squealed aloud at the irony of that question. If only these two knew the truth of the “order” to which they were unintentionally referring!
The ruse had worked, of that much the vampire was now certain. Almost all of the leading Deneirians were dead or undead and under his control, and now the Oghmans were divided and off their guard.
One of the priests gave a great yawn, though a moment before he had seemed perfectly alert. The other followed suit, overcome by a sudden compulsion to lie down and sleep.
“The night grows long,” the first remarked, and, without even moving toward his bedroll, he slipped down to the ground and closed his eyes.
The other Oghman thought the movement somewhat silly, until it struck him as suspiciously odd that his friend should fall so quickly into slumber. He fought
against that compulsion, that little suggestion in the back of his mind that sleep would be a good thing. He opened his eyes wide and vigorously shook his head. He even reached down, hoisted a waterskin, and poured the fluid over his face.
When the man tossed his head back to wet his face a second time, he was stopped by the image of a black-robed man standing on a branch fifteen feet above him.
Rufo fell down atop him with catlike grace. The vampire grabbed the man’s chin and the hair on the back of his head as he opened his mouth to scream, tugging so fiercely that the man’s head turned around on his shoulders with a sickening crack of bone.
The vampire stood straight, eyeing the other four, all sleeping. He would wake them one by one and give them a chance to forsake their god, a chance to kneel before him, the personification of Tuanta Quiro Miancay.
“Fare well,” Shayleigh offered when the three women came to a fork in the trail early the next morning. One bend went south, for the library. The other continued on generally west. “King Elbereth will be pleased to hear all that I have to tell him.”
“All?” Dorigen asked, and the perceptive elf maiden knew that the wizard was referring to herself, to the fact that she was still alive and well and ready to face judgment for her crimes.
Shayleigh’s smile was enough of an answer for Dorigen.
“Elbereth is not a vengeful sort,” Danica added hopefully. “King Elbereth,” Dorigen quickly corrected. “I will remain at the library,” she said to Shayleigh, “whatever the decision of the priests, to await word from your king.”
“A fair judgment I will be pleased to deliver,” Shayleigh replied, and with a nod, she was gone, slipping down the western trail so gracefully and noiselessly that she seemed to the two women almost an illusion, an artist’s tapestry, a perfect embodiment of nature. She was out of sight in mere seconds, her gray-green cloak shielding her form in the sylvan shadows, though Danica and Dorigen did not doubt that she could still see them.
“I am ever amazed by their movements,” Dorigen remarked. “So supple and graceful, yet in battle, I have never known a race to match the elves’ ferocity.”
Danica did not disagree. During the war in Shilmista, the monk had found her first real experiences with elves, and it seemed to her that all her years of training in harmony and movement had made her somewhat akin to what came naturally to Shayleigh’s people. Danica wished she had been born an elf, or had been raised among them. Then she would have been closer to the spirit of Grandmaster Penpahg D’Ahn’s writings, she knew.
Still staring down the empty trail, she imagined she might return to Shilmista and work with Elbereth’s people, bringing them the vision of Penpahg D’Ahn. She pictured an open meadow full of elves, practicing the graceful dance of the grandmaster’s fighting style, and the sight made her heart skip excitedly.
Then Danica let go the image, shook it away as she recalled the demeanor of elvenkind, recalled what it meant emotionally to be an elf. They were a calm and casual people, easily distracted, and though fierce in battle, their way was playful. The grace of movement was their nature, not their practice, and that was very different from Danica’s life. Following her mentor, the young monk was rarely casual, always focused. Even Shayleigh, whom Danica would wish at her side whenever danger was near, could not hold any course for very long. Through the weeks in the caves, waiting for winter’s break, the elf had spent long hours, even days, just sitting and watching the snow, occasionally rising to dance, as though no one else had been in the room, as though nothing else in all the world mattered except the falling snowflakes and the movements that Shayleigh hardly seemed conscious she was making.
The elves could not follow the rigorous discipline of Penpahg D’Ahn. Danica didn’t pretend to understand them, any of them, even Shayleigh, who had become so dear to her. The elf was fiercely loyal, she knew, but she could not begin to understand all of Shayleigh’s motivations. Shayleigh saw the world from a perspective that Danica could not comprehend, a perspective that put friendship in a different light. While Danica did not doubt the love Shayleigh felt for her, she knew that the elf maiden would likely witness the dawn of several centuries after she, Danica, had died of old age. How many new human friends would Shayleigh come to know and love in those centuries? Would the memory of Danica withstand the test of such a long time, or would she become just a fleeting moment of Shayleigh’s future reveries?
Simply put, there was no way that Danica could ever be as important in Shayleigh’s eyes as Shayleigh had become in hers. She would remember the elf maiden vividly until the moment of her death.
She considered that difference between them for a moment and decided that hers was the better way, the more passionate existence. Still, Danica found that she envied Shayleigh and all of her kind. The golden-haired elven maiden innately possessed what Danica sought: the peace and grace of true harmony.
“We will be there today?” Dorigen asked, and for the first time, Danica noted a slight tremor in the determined woman’s voice.
“Today,” Danica answered as she walked off down the southern trail.
Dorigen paused a moment, mustering her courage. She knew she was doing right, that she owed this, at least, to the library and the elves. Still, the wizard’s first step along the final trail came hard, as did the second, the third, and all the rest.
Back a short distance down the western trail, Shayleigh watched Dorigen’s every move. She didn’t doubt Dorigen’s sincerity, knew that the wizard honestly meant to follow through, but she knew the journey would be more difficult than Dorigen implied. It was quite possible that Dorigen might be walking to her death. Somewhere along the way, Shayleigh understood, Dorigen would have to battle her survival instinct, the most basic and powerful force in any human.
Shayleigh waited a moment longer, then slipped quietly into the underbrush alongside the southern trail. If Dorigen lost that battle, she would be ready.
For the time being, Shayleigh called Dorigen a friend, but the elf maiden could not forget the scars on Shilmista. If Dorigen could not bring herself to face the rightful judgment of the victors, then Shayleigh would enact the judgment of Shilmista ... in the form of a single, well-placed arrow.
“Where is Bron Turman?” one of the younger priests asked nervously. He leaned against a low railing surrounding the altar in one of the library’s first-floor chapels.
“Or Dean Thobicus?” added another.
Romus Scaladi, a short, dark-complexioned Oghman whose shoulders seemed nearly as wide as the man was tall, tried to calm his five brother priests of both orders, patting his hands in the empty air and saying, “Shh,” as though the men were young children.
“And surely Cadderly will return,” a third priest, kneeling before the altar, said hopefully. “Cadderly will set things right.”
Two of the other young priests, the only Deneirians in the group, who had listened to Thobicus’s warning concerning Cadderly, looked to each other and shrugged, sharing a common fear that Cadderly might actually be the one behind all of the strange things that were going on about them. None of the leaders — of either order — had been seen all day, and both Thobicus and Bron Turman had been missing for two full days.
It was rumored, though none of this group could confirm it, that half a dozen lesser priests had been found dead in their rooms this morning, lying peacefully — under their beds! The priest who had told the group this startling news was not the best of sources, though. He was the newest member of the Oghman order, a small, weak man who had snapped his collarbone in his very first wrestling match. It was common knowledge that this man did not wish to remain in the order, and his appeals to join the Deneirian order had not been received warmly. So when they had encountered him early in the day, his belongings in a sack slung over one shoulder and his eyes squarely on the front door, the six did not panic.
Still, there was no denying that the library was strangely quiet this day—except in one corner of the second floor, where Brother Chaunticleer was holed up in his room, singing to his gods. Not a soul stirred in the headmasters’ area. It was strangely quiet and strangely dark, even for the perpetually gloomy place; barriers had been constructed over nearly every window. Normally the library housed nearly eighty priests—before the disaster of the chaos curse, well over a hundred—and at any given time, five to thirty visitors. The guest list was small now, with winter just giving way, but so was the list of priests who had gone to Carradoon, or Shilmista.
So where was everybody?
Another troubling sensation that the six priests could not ignore was the subtle but definite feeling that the Edificant Library had changed somehow, as though the gloom about them was more than a physical feature. It was as if Deneir and Oghma had moved away from this place. Even the midday ritual, in which Brother Chaunticleer sang to both the gods in the presence of all the priests, had not been performed in two days. Romus himself had gone to the singing priest’s room, fearing that Chaunticleer had taken ill. He found the door locked, and only after several minutes of pounding had Chaunticleer called out, telling him to go away.
“I feel as if someone has built a ceiling above me,” one of the Deneirians remarked, following the suspicions of Cadderly that Dean Thobicus had implanted. “A ceiling that separates me from Deneir.”
The other Deneirian nodded his agreement, while the Oghmans looked to each other, then to Romus, who was the strongest cleric among them.
“I am certain there is a simple answer,” Romus said as calmly as he could, but the other five knew that he agreed with the Deneirian priest’s assessment of the gods. This library had always been among the holiest of places, where priests of any goodly faith could feel the presence of their god or goddess. Even the druids who had visited had been surprised to find an aura of Sylvanus within the walls of a man-made structure.
And for the priests of Oghma and Deneir, there was, perhaps, no holier place in all of Faerun. This was their tribute to the gods, a place of learning and art, a place of study and recital. The place of Chaunticleer’s song.
“We will wrestle!” Romus Scaladi announced surprisingly. After a moment of shock, the Oghmans began to bob their heads in agreement, while the Deneirians continued to stare dumbfoundedly at the stocky Scaladi.
“Wrestle?” one of them asked.
“Tribute to our god!” Scaladi answered, pulling off his black-and-gold vest and fine white shirt, revealing a eldest bulging with muscles and thick with dark hair. “We will wrestle!”
“Oooo,” came a woman’s purr from the back of the chapel. “I do so love to wrestle!”
The six priests swung about hopefully, every one of them thinking that Danica, the woman who not only loved to wrestle, but who could defeat any priest in the library, had at last returned.
They saw not Danica, but Histra, the alluring priestess of Sune, dressed in her customary crimson gown that was cut so low in the front that it seemed as if her navel should show, and slitted high on the thigh to show off the woman’s shapely legs. Her long, lush hair, dyed so blond this week as to appear almost white, flew wildly, as usual, and her makeup was thickly applied—never had the priests seen any lips so bright red! Her perfume, also poured generously, wafted across the chapel.
Something was out of place. All six of the priests recognized that fact, though none had figured it out. Behind Histra’s generous paint, her skin was deathly pale, as was the leg sticking out from under her gown. And the perfume aroma was sickly sweet, something less than alluring.
Romus Scaladi studied the woman intently. He had never much liked Histra, or her goddess, Sune, whose, only tenet seemed to be the physical pleasures of love. Always, ever-hungry Histra had set the hairs on the back of Scaladi’s neck to tingling, as they were now, but more than usual.
It was uncommon to see Histra on the first floor, Scaladi knew; it was uncommon for the woman to be out of her room, or out of her bed.
“Why are you here?” the wary priest started to ask, but Histra seemed not to notice.
“I do so love to wrestle,” she purred again, openly lewd, and she opened her mouth and laughed wildly.
All six priests understood; all six nervous priests recognized the vampire’s fangs for what they were.
Five of the six, including Scaladi and both Deneirians, went immediately for their holy symbols.
Histra continued to laugh. “Wrestle with these!” she cried, and several torn, rotting, stiff-walking men came into the room—men the priests knew.
“My dear Deneir,” one of the priests muttered hopelessly.
Romus leaped forward and presented the symbol of Oghma boldly. “Be gone from this holy place foul undead things!” he cried, and the zombies stopped their
shuffling, a couple of them even turning about.
Histra hissed viciously at the monstrous group, compelling them to continue.
“I deny you!” Romus roared at Histra, and it seemed as if she nearly fell over backward. A zombie reached awkwardly for the Oghmau, and he growled and punched out with his holy symbol, slamming the monster on the side of the face. Acrid smoke rose from the wound, but the monster kept on, its companions filtering around Romus to get to the others.
“I cannot turn them away!” one of the priests behind Romus cried. “Where is Deneir?”
“Where is Oghma?” cried another.
A stiff arm clubbed Romus on the shoulder. He grunted away the blow and cupped his hand under the zombie’s chin, bending the head back, then slashed at the monster’s throat with the edge of his holy symbol. Again came a puff of smoke from the wound, and the zombie’s rotting flesh opened up easily to the strong man’s blow.
But zombies needed no air, so the wound was not serious.
“Fight them!” Romus Scaladi screamed. “Beat them down!” To accentuate his point, the powerful Oghman launched a barrage of punishment on the zombie, finally lifting the corpse over his head and hurling it into a statue against the wall. The Oghman spun about to see to his friends, and found that they were not fighting, but backing away, their faces horror-stricken.
Of course, Scaladi realized. These undead monsters they now face, these men, had been their friends! “Do not look at their faces!” he ordered. “They are not of our order. They are mere tools, weapons!
“Weapons of Histra,” Romus Scaladi finished, spinning about to face the vampiress. “Now you die,” the outraged man promised, lifting his flaring holy symbol toward the monster. “By my hands.”
Histra wanted nothing to do with Scaladi. Like Banner and Thobicus, she had not come into her full power yet. Even if she had, she might have thought twice about facing Scaladi, for she recognized that the man had was fully in his faith, that his heart could be hers, but not his soul, for he would deny any fear—and fear was perhaps the greatest of a vampire’s weapons.
Histra defiantly spat at Scaladi’s presented symbol, but he saw the bluff for what it was. If he could get to her, cram his god’s symbol down her wretched throat, then the zombies would be leaderless and could be more easily driven away.
Unexpectedly, Histra darted up the side toward the altar, deeper into the chapel, and Scaladi suddenly found two zombies between him and the vampiress.
The other priests were fighting now. The two Deneirians had carried weapons with them into the chapel, blessed maces, and two others had rushed to the altar table, wisely breaking off legs to use as clubs.
The remaining Oghman, the one priest who had not pulled out his holy symbol when Histra revealed herself, was off to the side of the room, trapped against the wall, shaking his head in sheer terror. And how that terror heightened when Histra pushed aside the zombies near the man and let him see her toothy smile!
Scaladi was hard pressed immediately by the zombies. He knew then, in his heart, that the library was no longer a house of Oghma, or of Deneir, that this desecration was nearly complete. The day outside was overcast, but the sun peeked through enough to be their ally.
“Fight out of the room!” Scaladi ordered. “Out of the room and out of the library!” He shifted forward, puhing the two zombies’ backs to the wall, trying to give his friends an avenue of escape.
On came the Deneirians, their heavy maces pounding zombies aside. Suddenly the path seemed clear for them all, and the Deneirians, and then Scaladi, bolted for the door. The club-wielding Oghmans chased after them, but one, when he tried to leap the altar rail, hooked his foot and sprawled facedown on the stone floor.
Zombies swarmed over him; his companion turned back and rushed to his aid.
Scaladi was already at the chapel door when he looked back to see the disaster. His first instinct was to charge back in and die beside his comrades, and he took a step that way. But the two priests of Deneir caught him by the shoulders, and though they could not have held the powerful man back if he wanted to continue, the pause gave Scaladi a moment to see things more clearly.
“You cannot help them!” one of the Deneirians cried.
“We must survive to warn the town!” the other added.
Scaladi staggered out of the chapel.
The zombie horde tore apart the two Oghmans.
Worse still was the fate of the priest against the wall, a man who had spent many secret evenings with Histra. He was filled with too much guilt to resist the vampiress now. He shook his head in weak denial, whispered, begged, for her to go away.
She smiled and came on, and the man, despite his horror, offered her his neck.
The three fleeing priests scrambled along the corridors, meeting no resistance. The front doors were in sight, one of them open, a weak line of sun streaming into the library’s foyer.
One of the Deneirians cried out and grasped at his neck, then pitched forward to the stone.
“The door!” Scaladi cried, pulling the other along. The Deneirian looked back to his brother and saw the man flailing wildly at a bat-winged imp as it hopped about his shoulder, biting at his ear and stabbing repeatedly with a poison-tipped tail.
Scaladi dived for the door—it moved away from him, seemingly of its own accord, and slammed shut with a resounding bang, and he fell headlong at its base.
“My dear Deneir,” he heard his lone companion whisper. Scaladi turned himself over, to see Dean Thobicus standing in the shadows, to see Kierkan Rufo—Kierkan Rufo!—moving quietly behind the withered man.
“Deneir is gone from this place,” Thobicus said calmly and unthreateningly, approaching the man with his arms open and to the side. “Come with me now, that I might show you the new way.”
The young Deneirian wavered, and for a moment, Scaladi thought he would give himself over to Thobicus, who was now no more than two paces away.
The young priest exploded into action, cracking his mace across the dean’s wrinkled face. Thobicus’s head jerked violently to the side and he was pushed back. But only a single step—and he turned straight again, eyeing the disbelieving young Deneirian. There ensued a long pause, a long and horrible moment, the hush of a crouched predator.
Thobicus threw his arms up, fingers bent like claws, gave an unearthly roar, and sprang over the young priest, burying the man under his flailing limbs.
Scaladi scrambled about and grabbed at the door, tugging with all his considerable strength.
“It will not open,” Kierkan Rufo assured him.
Scaladi tugged furiously. He heard Rufo stepping near him, right behind.
“It will not open,” the confident vampire said again.
Scaladi spun about, his holy symbol thrust toward Rufo. The vampire leaned back, away from the sudden glare.
But Rufo was not Histra, was full of the swirling chaos curse and was many times more powerful. The moment of surprise passed quickly.
“Now you die!” Scaladi promised, but by the time he finished the simple statement, all conviction had flown from his voice. He felt Rufo’s will inside his head, compelling him to surrender, imparting a sense of hopelessness.
Romus Scaladi had always been a fighter. He had grown up an orphan on the tough streets of Sundabar, every day a challenge. And so he fought now, with all his own will, against Rufo’s intrusions.
Green bolts of searing energy burned into his hand, and his holy symbol was knocked away. Both Scaladi and Rufo looked to the side, to the smiling Druzil, still perched on the body of the Deneirian.
Scaladi looked back helplessly as Rufo grabbed his wrist and yanked him forward, the vampire’s face only inches from his own.
“You are strong,” Rufo said. “That is good.”
Scaladi spat in his face, but Rufo did not explode with anger, as had Thobicus. The chaos curse guided this vampire, kept him focused on what was best.
“I offer you power,” Rufo whispered. “I offer you immortality. You will know pleasures beyond ...”
“You offer damnation!” Scaladi growled.
Across the foyer, the Deneirian screamed, then went silent, and Thobicus feasted.
“What do you know?” Rufo demanded. “I am alive, Romus Scaladi! I have chased Deneir and Oghma from this place!”
Scaladi held his jaw firm.
“The library is mine!” Rufo went on. He grabbed Scaladi’s thick hair in one hand and with strength that horrified the Oghman, easily tugged the man’s head back. “Carradoon shall be mine!”
“They are just places,” Scaladi insisted, with the simple and undeniable logic that had guided the man all his life. He knew that Rufo wanted more than the conquest of places. He knew what the vampire desired.
“You can join me, Romus Scaladi,” Rufo said, predictably. “You can share my strength. You like strength.”
“You have no strength,” Scaladi said, and his sincere calm seemed to rattle Rufo. “You have only lies and false promises.”
“I can tear your heart out!” Rufo roared at him. “And hold it up, beating before your dying eyes.” Histra came into the foyer then, along with a couple of her zombies.
“Would you be like them?” Rufo asked, indicating the zombies. “Either way, you will serve me!”
Scaladi looked at the wretched zombies, and to Rufo’s dismay, the priest smiled. They were corporeal animations and nothing more, Scaladi knew, had to believe with all his heart. Secure in that faith, the man looked Rufo straight in the vampire’s blood-red eyes, straight in the vampire’s drooling, animal-like face.
“I am more than my body,” Romus Scaladi proclaimed.
Rufo snapped the Oghman’s head back, shattering neck bones. With one hand, the outraged vampire heaved Scaladi across the foyer, where he crashed into a wail and crumpled at its base.
Histra hissed wickedly, and Thobicus chimed in, a horrid applause as the two circled their master. Caught up in the frenzy, Rufo dismissed Scaladi’s damning words and hissed and snarled with all his wicked heart.
“... more than my body,” came a whisper from the side. The three vampires stopped their macabre dance and song and turned as one to the broken priest, propped on his elbows, his head flopping weirdly.
“You are dead!” Rufo declared, a futile denial of the priest’s words.
Scaladi promptly corrected him. “I have found Oghma.”
And the man died, secure in his faith.
Outside the library, Percival hopped excitedly from one branch to another, hearing the torment of those still alive inside. The squirrel was down to the ground, just outside the door, when Rufo slammed it shut before Scaladi.
Now Percival was high in the trees, as high as he could go, chattering frenetically and leaping from branch to branch, turning wide circles about the grove. He heard the screams, and from one window on the second floor, he heard, too, the song of Deneir, the prayer of Brother Chaunticleer.
The screams were louder.
The trail meandered around a wide expanse of rock, but Danica was growing impatient. She went to the stone abutment instead, looked up its thirty-foot height, and carefully began picking her way up along a crack in the stone.
Dorigen came to the spot beneath her. The wizard was talking, but Danica, concentrating on hooking her strong fingers in cracks and picking rough spots where she could set her feet, wasn’t listening. Soon after, the agile monk lifted her hand over the lip and felt about, finally grasping the thick base of a small bush. She tested her weight, then, convinced the bush was secure, used it to pull herself over. From that vantage point, Danica got her first look at
the Edificant Library. It lay nestled atop a flat juncture in a climbing trail, a cliff to its northern side and a steep drop south of the place. It seemed just a squat block of unremarkable stone, not a particularly attractive piece of architecture, and from this distance Danica did not notice that the small windows (there were so few) had been covered by boards ajid tapestries.
All seemed quiet and calm, the way things usually were at the ancient library, and Danica, anxious to get this messy business about Dorigen’s punishment over with, was relieved to see it again. She turned about on the stone, meaning to tell Dorigen that the library was very close, but was surprised to find the woman scaling the cliff, slower than Danica, of course, but making progress.
Danica fell to her belly and called out directions. She was proud of Dorigen at that moment, proud of the wizard’s willingness to fight obstacles. The cliff was small and no real challenge to one of Danica’s training, but she could appreciate how imposing it must seem to Dorigen, who had spent years with her face buried in books. Yet here was Dorigen, reaching for Danica’s offered hand, climbing without complaint.
A hundred yards away, concealed in a copse of evergreens, Shayleigh was equally impressed. When Danica had been so obviously exposed on the cliff face, Dorigen could have taken any number of actions to ensure her freedom. But again the wizard had proven her heart, and Shayleigh, like Danica when Dorigen had aided in the troll fight, found that she was not surprised.
Suddenly the elf maiden felt foolish for her suspicions. She reached down, unstrung her long bow, and mumbled quietly that she should have gone straight to Shilmista, as she had claimed, instead of following the two nearly all the way to the library.
They would be at the building within the hour, Shayleigh knew, and she could have been well on her way to her forest home. She waited in the trees until Danica and Dorigen had moved off again, then she, too, went to the stony rise. With a natural agility that at least matched Danica’s practiced skill, the elf scampered to the top. She went down to one knee and scanned the dark line of the trail ahead as it wove in and out of hollows thick with trees and around tumbles of great boulders. Finally she spotted Danica and Dorigen, walking easily some distance ahead, and, with the patience of a being that would live for centuries, Shayleigh marked their movements along the trails, all the way to the library’s front doors. She was no longer looking for trouble from Dorigen, but rather, was saying farewell to her friends.
Percival greeted the two as they came onto the library’s grounds, the white squirrel dancing wildly about the trees and squawking as if he had gone insane.
“I have never seen such a reaction,” Dorigen remarked, for there was no missing the squirrel’s frantic movements.
“That is Percival,” Danica explained, “a friend of Cadderly’s.”
They watched curiously as the squirrel leaped down a dozen feet, ran to the end of the branch closest to them, and screamed at Danica so crazily that the woman wondered if he had contracted some disease.
“What is the matter?” Danica asked the rodent, and Percival kept hopping in circles and screeching as if he had been dropped into a kettle of boiling water.
“I have heard of a disease of the mind that affects such animals,” Dorigen offered. “And once saw the result in a wolf. Look closely,” she bade the monk. “If you discern foam at the creature’s mouth, then you must kill the beast at once.”
Danica turned a wary and knowing eye on Dorigen, and when the wizard noticed the look, she straightened and wondered what she might have said to evoke so strong a reaction.
“Percival is Cadderly’s friend,” Danica said again. “Perhaps Cadderly’s closest friend. If you think the squirrel is mad, you would be overwhelmed by Cadderly’s madness if ever he learned that we killed the animal.”
That settled Dorigen. Danica eyed Percival squarely and told him to go back into the trees.
The two women turned for the door then, and Danica knocked loudly. Percival raced along the branches, higher into the boughs, following a course that allowed him to leap to the library’s gutter system atop the lowest edge of the front roof. The white squirrel hopped along to a point just above the doors, meaning to leap down onto Danica and stop her progress, but by the time Percival got to the spot, Danica and Dorigen had grown tired of waiting for an answer to their knock and Danica had pushed open the unlocked doors and entered the foyer.
It was dark and quiet. Danica looked behind her and saw a heavy blanket stretched across the small windows above the doors.
“What is this?” Dorigen asked. She had never been in the library, but she surmised that this atmosphere was not normal for the place. Where were all the priests? she wondered. And why were the hairs standing up on the back of her neck?
“I have never seen the library like this before,” Danica answered. The monk wasn’t as suspicious or nervous as Dorigen, though. She had spent the last few years in the Edificant Library; the place had become home to her.
“Perhaps there is some ceremony going on,” Danica reasoned, “one I do not understand.”
Unsuspecting Danica could not begin to appreciate the truth of her statement.
“Phooey!”
Pikel scrunched up his little nose and waggled his head at the terrible stench. He turned suddenly and let fly a tremendous sneeze, showering his dour brother with spittle.
Not surprised (not after so many decades beside Pikel), Ivan didn’t say a word.
“Troll stench,” Cadderly remarked.
“Burned troll,” Ivan replied, wiping his face.
Cadderly nodded and moved cautiously down the path. They were only three days from the library, moving easily along the same trail Danica and the others had used. The path went up a short rise, then around a bend and some gnarly bushes, and into a clearing that had been used as a campsite.
Cadderly’s heart beat wildly as he came near that camp. He felt certain that Danica had been here, and, it would seem, had encountered some wretched trolls.
The smell nearly overwhelmed the young priest as he clambered around the bushes, skidding to a stop in front of the gruesome remains of the battle.
Three large forms, three lumps of blackened fleshe, lay about the small clearing.
“Looks like they got ‘em,” Ivan remarked, coming in more confidently behind Cadderly.
Pikel started to chant “Oo oi!” but sneezed again instead, just as Ivan turned back to face him. Ivan answered by punching Pikel in the nose, to which Pikel responded by poking the end of his club between Ivan’s knees, then diving to the side, tripping his brother. In a moment, the two were rolling about the ground.
Cadderly, on his hands and knees, searched around to determine exactly what had transpired, paying the two bouncing dwarves no heed. They had fought a dozen times over the last few weeks, and neither of them ever seemed to get hurt.
The young priest inspected the closest troll, quickly surmising that Shayleigh had hit this one with a barrage of arrows before flames had consumed it. The next troll he went to, lying across the way, far from where the campfire had been, showed no signs that it had been downed or even wounded before flames engulfed it. Cadderly searched carefully, even shifting the charred corpse to the side. He found no brand, though, no trace that any torch had been brought out to combat the troll.
He rose and turned back toward the stone circle that had held the campfire, hoping to discern how much of a fire had been burning when the trolls attacked.
Ivan and Pikel rolled right across the ashes and scattered the rocks, too absorbed in their wrestling to notice the young priest’s movements. They crashed into the body of the third troll, and the blistered skin popped open, pouring forth the creature’s melted fat.
“Tuck!” Pikel squealed, hopping to his feet.
Ivan hopped up, too. He grabbed his brother by the front of the tunic and heaved Pikel headlong into a bush, then coiled his muscled legs and sprang in after him, burying Pikel as he tried to stand once more.
Cadderly, worried for his absent friends and trying to confirm something important, fast grew impatient with the two, but still said nothing. He simply stormed over to the broken firepit and began his inspection.
He suspected that the fire could not have been high at the time of the attack, or the trolls, fearful of flame, would have lain in wait. He also knew that his friends would not have remained in this area after the fight—the stench would have been too great. And Danica, and particularly Shayleigh, who so revered nature, would not have left the camp with the fire burning.
As Cadderly expected, he found no charred logs of any significant size. The fire had been low. The young priest looked back to the consumed troll and nodded, his suspicions confirmed.
“Get yer fingers outta me neck!” Ivan bellowed, drawing Cadderly’s attention to the side.
Pikel stood at the clearing’s edge with his back to the young priest, facing Ivan as the yellow-bearded dwarf pulled himself free of the tangling bushes.
“Get yer fingers outta me neck!” Ivan bellowed again, though he was looking straight at Pikel, who stood with his hands out wide, one empty, the other holding nothing but the dwarf’s tree-trunk club.
Ivan, finally realizing the truth of it, paused and scratched at his beard. “Well, if it ain’t yerself...” he muttered suspiciously.
Ivan leaped and spun, expecting to find an enemy standing in the bush behind him. There was indeed an enemy grabbing at Ivan’s neck, but the whole of it came around with his turn.
Cadderly swallowed hard and put a hand up to shield his eyes.
“Ick,” Pikel said, and gagged.
A troll arm, severed at the elbow but still alive, held on tight to Ivan, its claws clamped tightly on the back of the dwarf’s neck.
“What?” Ivan asked and started to turn back. He blanched when he saw Pikel’s heavy club arcing fast for him. All he could do was close his eyes and wait to be clobbered, but Pikel’s aim was perfect. The green-bearded dwarf swatted the disembodied arm free of his brother and sent it flying across the way.
It collided against a tree and fell to the ground, then scrabbled away like some five-legged spider-thing, dragging the forearm behind it.
It was Ivan’s turn to gag, and he grabbed desperately at his neck.
The troll arm scrambled under a bush, and Pikel started for it. The dwarf stopped abruptly when he noticed Cadderly, though, the young priest standing grim, one arm extended, his hand clenched in a fist.
“Fete!” the young priest cried, and from an onyx ring, which he had taken from Dorigen, there came a line of fire. It engulfed both the bush and the troll arm immediately. In mere seconds, the bush was no more than a blackened skeleton and the charred arm beneath moved no more.
To Cadderly’s surprise, though, the line of fire dissipated sooner than he expected.
“Ick,” Pikel said again, considering the remains.
Ivan, too, stared at the pile, his face scrunched up with disgust Cadderly used the distraction to turn his arm to the side, and again he commanded the ring to spew forth its fire.
Nothing happened. Cadderly understood then that the enchantment in the ring was a finite thing, and now had expired. Likely, the item would still serve as a conduit, so he could probably reempower it, or at least get Dorigen or some other wizard to do it. He wasn’t too concerned, though, for he believed that his future battles would be ones of will and not physical force.
By the time he came from his contemplations and looked up to the dwarves, they were arguing again, pushing and shoving. “Can I persuade the two of you to stop your fighting and help me search?” Cadderly asked angrily.
Both dwarves stopped abruptly and bobbed their heads stupidly.
“Our friends had this camp,” Cadderly explained, “and defeated the trolls.”
“Got ‘em good,” Ivan remarked, turning to Pikel. “Smart girls to use the campfire.”
“They did not,” Cadderly corrected, drawing a confused look from both brothers. “The fire was low when the trolls attacked.”
“Trolls look burned to me,” Ivan said.
“It was Dorigen and her magic that won the day,” Cadderly replied.
“Oo,” Ivan and Pikel said together, and they looked at each other as they spoke.
“So ye was right,” Ivan said.
Cadderly nodded. “So it would seem,” he replied. “The wizard has found her heart, and it is more generous than I had dared hope.” Cadderly looked to the southwest then, in the general direction of the Edificant Library. Ivan and Pikel read his thoughts in his serious expression; he was considering the nature and value of punishment.
“The ore is hid,” Ivan remarked.
Cadderly, curious, looked at him.
“Dwarven saying,” Ivan explained. “Ye find a lump o’ stone that looks worthless, but ye can’t be knowing that until ye’ve cracked it open. It’s what’s inside that counts. And it is so with Dorigen.”
Cadderly smiled and nodded. “Let us be on our way,” he offered, suddenly anxious to get back to the library.
To their relief, they fqund three sets of prints leading away from the encampment, close together.
The way friends would walk.
Danica and Dorigen found the first body in the small chapel to the side of the foyer. Romus Scaladi was mutilated.
“Get out,” Dorigen whispered, and Danica nodded as she turned for the door, turned back toward the foyer.
The two women skidded abruptly.
Histra of Sune stood in the doorway, smiling, showing her fangs. “I am so glad you have returned,” she said calmly. “There were but three women in all the library, and so many, many men. Even I could not attend to them all.”
The words, and Histra’s appearance—the woman was obviously dead!—brought a hundred questions to Danica’s mind. She had one definite answer, though, one that concerned Histra’s obvious intentions, and Danica, never one to be paralyzed by fear, was quickly in a crouch, ready to lash out She peeked out of the corner of her eye at Dorigen, and took comfort in the mage’s subtly moving lips.
Histra saw the movement, too, and opened her mouth wide in a protesting hiss, then turned as if to flee. Danica didn’t want to get in the way of Dorigen’s forthcoming spell, but her reactions were instinctive.
She sprang ahead, quick as a hunting cat, and landed in a spin, one foot swinging wide to connect solidly against Histra’s ribs.
The vampiress flew away several feet, but did not seem hurt, and came right back at Danica, arms flailing.
Danica brought a foot straight up in front of her, between Histra’s arms, to smack the monster in the face. Histra’s head snapped back violently, but again, if the blow had hurt the vampiress, she did not show it.
Danica smelled the stench of Histra’s breath and responded by jabbing a straightened and stiffened finger deep into one of the woman’s blood-red eyes.
That made Histra back off, but at the same moment, she snapped up her own hand and caught Danica by the forearm.
Danica could not believe the strength in that grasp; it was stronger than any grip she had felt from the huge, muscled Oghman wrestlers, stronger than any human grip could ever be. She tried to twist away, hit Histra with a rapid series of kicks and punches—all in vital areas—but the vampiress held on stubbornly.
Danica felt her adversary’s hot breath again, too close.
Dorigen watched the fight intently. She had been forced to dismiss her first spell, a bolt of lightning, for it would have caught Danica in its path. Now the wizard was chanting again, concentrating on a more controllable and accurate attack.
She didn’t hear the slight flutter of wings behind and to the side, and her surprise was complete when the bat shifted form in midair and Kierkan Rufo caught her suddenly by the throat, jerking her head back so forcefully that Dorigen nearly lost consciousness.
Histra’s lusting expression revealed her supreme confidence that this mortal woman could not really hurt her.
She twisted harder on Danica’s arm, taking obvious pleasure in the woman’s pained face.
“You are mine,” she purred, but her expression changed when a dagger, its hilt sculpted into the shape of a silver dragon, ripped deep into her elbow! Histra fell back and howled. Danica quickly retrieved her other enchanted dagger and stood facing the vampiress, not backing down an inch.
The monk’s confidence slipped away considerably, though, when she peeked back over her shoulder and saw Kierkan Rufo holding Dorigen, the woman’s head angled so that the man could easily snap her neck.
Danica felt a wave of nausea roll over her as she considered the implications of Rufo in the library, Rufo and Histra both vampires! She understood the coverings over the windows then, and realized, to her horror, that the place had apparently fallen fully.
“Danica,” Rufo said lewdly. “My dear, dear Danica. I cannot tell you how I have longed for your return!”
Danica’s knuckles whitened as she gripped her daggers tightly. She was looking for a shot, looking to put one of the enchanted knives over Dorigen’s shoulder into Rufo’s ugly face.
As if he read her thoughts, Rufo tightened his grip on Dorigen and jerked the mage’s head back a bit more, forcing her to grimace at the pain.
“It would be a little thing to tear her head from her shoulders,” Rufo taunted. “Would you like to see that?”
Danica’s muscles relaxed slightly.
“Good,” the perceptive vampire said. “There is no need for us to be enemies in this. Dear Danica, I will make you a queen.”
“Your queen will cut your heart out,” Danica replied. She knew she shouldn’t have said those words with Dorigen so obviously in peril, but the thought of what Rufo was offering filled her throat with bile. She couldn’t bear to talk to the man in life. Now ...
“I expected as much from you, stubborn Danica,” Rufo retorted sharply. “But as for you, Dorigen,” he purred, turning the mage’s head so that she could readily view his pallid face. “We were allies once, and so we shall be allies again! Come to me, and be a queen, and know more power than Aballister could ever give you!”
For just an instant, Danica feared that Dorigen might give in. The price of refusal was obvious. Danica reconsidered her fear immediately, though, remembering all she had learned of Dorigen during their journey to the library.
“Cadderly will destroy you,” Danica warned Rufo. The tall vampire relaxed his grip and turned angry eyes toward her. Nothing could get Rufo’s attention more than the mention of Cadderly.
Danica locked stares with the vampire, but not before she noticed Dorigen’s lips moving again.
“He should be at the library’s doors by now,” Danica went on, feigning confidence. “He is strong, Rufo. He crushed Aballister and all of Castle Trinity.”
“I would know if he had arrived!” the vampire roared, and his tone alone told Danica that she had rattled him. “If he had, I would be eagerly ...”
Rufo’s words turned into a jumble, all his body jerking suddenly as arcs of blue lightning shot out of Dorigen’s hands and pulsed about the vampire’s body. Dorigen twisted, growled, and pulled away, and the final shock of the spell sent the two flying apart, wafts of smoke from Rufo’s burning flesh rising in the air between them.
Dorigen was casting again, immediately, as Rufo tried to recover his senses.
“I will torture you for eternity!” the vampire promised, and Dorigen knew she was doomed, knew that she could not complete her spell before Rufo fell over her.
A spinning metallic sliver caught Rufo’s attention. He threw his arm in front of his face and shrieked as the tip of Danica’s dagger bored through his forearm.
Danica smelled sulphur mixed with the scent of burned flesh. She looked to Dorigen, then back to Rufo as he yanked out her dagger and tossed it to the floor.
“Run,” Danica heard Dorigen say, and when she looked back to the wizard, her heart fell. Dorigen stood calmly, too calmly, a small ball of flame dancing in the air above her uplifted palm. Danica knew enough about wizardry to understand.
“No!” Rufo roared. He threw his robes tightly about him and fell within himself, seeking the source of his newfound powers.
“Run,” Dorigen said again, her voice serene.
Danica had taken two steps through the doorway before she looked ahead and realized that Histra was coming for her again. She lashed out with her remaining dagger, more to throw the vampiress off balance than to score a hit, then spun to the side and down, coming around with a circling kick that caught the dodging Histra on the back of the leg. She heard Rufo command Dorigen to stop and heard the confident wizard laugh in response.
Danica kicked off, launching Histra back toward the chapel’s open door and using the momentum to propel herself farther from harm’s way. She stumbled for the effort, and threw herself with the flow, falling and rolling, as Rufo’s form melted, as Dorigen dropped a ball of flame on the floor between herself and where the vampire had stood.
It all seemed surreal to Danica, as if all the world had gone into slow motion. Flames rolled out the chapel door, she saw Histra’s hair and arms reach forward from the force of the blast. Then there was just the fireball, reaching lazily toward Danica.
She curled up, tucked her head, and became, through years of training, like stone. The flames licked at her, swirled around her, but Danica felt only the slightest heat. When it was ended, an instant later, she was unharmed, and only the fringes of her cloak had been so much as singed.
The slow-motion effect of that horrible instant was gone, reversed, it seemed, when Danica looked upon Histra, the vampiress hurling herself about the room, slamming walls and flailing against the back of her shoulders as her flesh bubbled under the hungry flames. The oaken support beams about the room smoldered; tapestries a thousand years old were fast consumed; and acrid black smoke poured from the destroyed chapel— where Dorigen had given her life.
Danica fought back tears as she scrambled for the door. She had to link up with Cadderly and the dwarves, maybe find Shayleigh. She had to ...
The door would not open.
Danica tugged with all her might, and the handle broke off, sending her sprawling to the floor.
A green fog rolled out of a crack in the wall beside the door, swirling into a funnel cloud, then blowing away suddenly and dissipating, leaving an angry and hardly wounded Kierkan Rufo standing before the monk.
Danica’s right hook caught Rufo on the side of the jaw and snapped his head to the side. Slowly and ominously, the vampire turned back to face the monk. Danica hit him again with another vicious hook, then a third time, in the same place, with the same punch.
Rufo laughed as his head turned slowly back to center, not a welt or mark on his white cheek.
“You cannot hurt me,” the vampire said in quiet, even tones.
In response, Danica drove her knee straight up between Rufo’s legs, the force of the blow lifting the vampire up on his toes. Rufo merely smiled.
“I should have guessed you’d have nothing there to hurt,” Danica said, stinging the monster with words where her fists had failed.
Rufo’s face contorted, rage bubbling through his cool demeanor. A feral snarl escaped his lips, and his arm shot forward for Danica’s throat.
Danica’s golden-hilted dagger, sculpted like a tiger, drove deep into Rufo’s forearm. Faster than Rufo could react, the skilled monk ripped the blade along his arm, then tore it out and slashed Rufo across the face, marring the same cheek she had punched.
She went into a frenzy then, and so did Rufo, Danica slashing this way and that, Rufo’s grasping hands trying futilely to catch the nasty blade. Danica scored hit after minor hit, then plunged the enchanted dagger deep into Rufo’s chest, seeking his heart.
By the way Rufo suddenly froze, his hands going wide to the side and his expression shocked, she could tell she had hit the mark. Unblinking, eyeing the vampire squarely and showing not a trace of fear, Danica gave a sharp, short twist.
The side of Rufo’s mouth began to twitch; Danica expected he would fall.
They held that macabre pose for a long while, small growls escaping Rufo’s mouth. Why didn’t he fall? Danica wondered. Why didn’t he just die?
Her confidence began to waver as Rufo’s hand eased toward her wrist. She gave another sharp tug, and the vampire grimaced. She turned the blade again, and though Rufo’s pain was obvious on his pallid face, his hand kept its steady approach.
Suddenly, his strong fingers grabbed tight to Danica’s wrist. The monk’s left hand went into a flurry, slamming the vampire’s throat and face.
Rufo never blinked, just watched as he gradually forced Danica to retract the blade, her muscles corded with strain, no match for the physical strength of the vampire. As soon as the dagger’s tip came clear of his chest, Rufo yanked Danica’s arm up high.
“Fool!” he said, his smelly breath in her face.
Danica slammed her forehead into his nose.
Rufo yanked her back, and his other hand came snapping across, smacking the dagger from her hand, sending it spinning about the foyer.
“You cannot hurt me,” Rufo declared again, despite his obviously painful wounds.
This time, though, both of her enchanted weapons lost to her, Danica found she believed him. And she believed Rufo would tear her apart.
“Look at me!” came a shriek from across the foyer. Both Rufo and Danica turned to see Histra kneeling by the chapel door, looking down at her hands, held out in front of her. The flesh had bubbled from fingers and arms and hung down in grotesque flaps. Histra looked plaintively at her master, and even Rufo could not disguise his disgust at the sight, for Histra, who had spent her living years primping and powdering, seemed a caricature of her former self, a cruel joke on the order of Sune, Goddess of Love. Jowls of burned flesh hung low below her chin and, though they remained intact, there was no flesh around her eyeballs, so they seemed as if they would roll from her face. Her upper lip was gone, as was the flesh on one side of her nose. Her hair, that beautiful, silky, alluring mane, was no more than short, scraggly clumps of gray.
Rufo’s disgust came out as a long, low growl, and without even thinking of the movement, he clenched his hand tighter and lowered his arm, forcing Danica to her knees. The monk thought to use Rufo’s distraction for her own benefit and break away, but, though she had her free hand working on only one of Rufo’s grasping fingers, she could not budge the digit. She tried to twist and squirm, but without even thinking, Rufo held her steady. Soon Danica came to accept that all her efforts would get her only a dislocated elbow.
“You are a vampire,” Rufo said, to comfort Histra. “Your wounds will heal.” Danica didn’t hear much conviction in Rufo’s voice, and she understood why. Vampires healed as did trolls, knitting tears in their skin and regenerating lost blood. Histra’s garish wounds, though, had been caused by fire, and they would not repair.
A smidgeon of hope crossed Histra’s destroyed features.
“Find a mirror!” Danica shouted suddenly. “See what your choice has done to you!”
Rufo turned and glared down at her, she could feel his grip tightening, and that reminded her that she was taking a dangerous chance here.
“Immortality?” Danica asked boldly. She groaned as Rufo subtly shifted her arm, bent it to the side, above the elbow. “Is that what he promised you?” the monk stubbornly went on. “Then you shall be ugly for all eternity!”
Danica knew that last statement would pain Histra more than anything else in the world. Rufo knew it, too, and the look he put over Danica promised her nothing short of an agonizing death. Rufo’s free hand whipped across, slapping Danica so hard on the side of her head that she nearly passed out.
She shook off the blow and could feel warm blood rolling down from her ear when Rufo hit her again.
“Your wounds will not heal!” Danica cried through clenched teeth, trying to fend off the continuing attack with her free hand.
Rufo opened his mouth wide, fangs moving near Danica’s neck.
“They are of fire!” Danica yelled, then she cried out, thinking she was about to die.
Outraged beyond rational thought, Histra barreled into Rufo, slamming him back against the wall.
Danica shifted her legs and threw all her weight to one side. She heard her elbow pop out of its joint, but had to ignore the agony, had to break free.
She did so just as Rufo hurled Histra back across the foyer, where the disfigured priestess slumped to the floor, her shoulders bobbing with sobs.
Danica was up, but Rufo was ready. “Where will you run?” the vampire casually asked. Danica looked to the library’s outer doors again, but Rufo laughed at that notion.
“You are mine.” The vampire took a step forward, and Danica’s foot came up hard, slamming his chest and knocking him back. Danica went into a spin then, her trailing foot flying wide, and Rufo, not understanding, merely laughed and stayed back, apparently out of range.
As soon as the foot whipped past, the vampire came in hard, but Danica had hit her mark perfectly, had never been aiming at Kierkan Rufo. Her foot went up high and drove through the library’s outer door, splintering the wood. Rufo stepped right into a shaft of sunlight that streamed through.
The vampire recoiled, raised his arms to block the searing beam. Danica started for the door, thinking to break it wider and make her escape into daylight, but Rufo’s fist shot out and clipped her shoulder, and, though Danica was quick enough to partially brace for the blow, she found herself spinning through the air.
She caught her balance and touched down in a shock-absorbing roll, then came back to her feet many yards from the door. By then Rufo had crossed the beam of sunlight and now stood blocking her way.
“Damn,” Danica muttered, a fitting curse if ever there was one, and she turned and fled for the stairway.
Banner spent this day in sleep, a deep sleep filled with dreams of power, basking in the pleasures Kierkan Rufo had promised him. He had forsaken his god, thrown aside all that he had learned about morality in life, in exchange for that personal gain.
There was no remorse, no guilt, interrupting his slumber. Truly Banner was a damned thing.
His dream took him to Carradoon, to a brothel he had once visited, on the eve of his acceptance into the Edificant Library. How pretty the women were! How wonderful their scent!
Banner pictured them now as his queens, faces pallid, sharing his life, washing in the warmth of blood.
The warmth.
Waves of heat rolled over the sleeping vampire, and he exalted in them, picturing them as blood, a sea of warm blood.
The warmth took on a vicious edge, began to lick painfully at Banner’s sides. His eyes popped open and, to his horror, he found himself immersed in a thick gray cloud. Wafts of smoke rose from the smoldering lining of his casket, tucked under a bed on the library’s second floor, right above the chapel Dorigen had fireballed.
Banner’s hair burst into flame.
The vampire shrieked and punched straight up, his powerful fists breaking through the wood of the casket—and those splintered, burning boards fell back in atop him.
Banner scrambled wildly, kicking and thrashing apart his flaming prison. His robes flared in biting orange fires. The skin on one awn bubbled and blistered. He thought to turn gaseous, as he had seen Rufo do on occasion, but he was not enough into the realm of undeath, had not mastered vampirism to that degree.
Banner heaved the engulfed bed aside and staggered to his feet, away from the burning box. His room was ablaze; he couldn’t see the door for the fiery light. Several zombies, including Fester Rumpol, stood calmly inside the conflagration, feeling no pain from the flames, though they were being consumed. They were unthinking things, and could not even comprehend that they must flee the fire, could feel neither the terror nor the pain.
Looking at Rumpol, Banner found that he envied the zombie.
Hot cinders swept into the vampire’s eyes, stinging and blinding him, and he ran desperately, hoping for the door, but slamming hard into the unyielding stone wall instead.
He was down again, thrashing in agony, the hungry flames attacking from every angle as though they were a coordinated army. There was nowhere to run, nowhere...
Banner’s eyes were gone by then, burned out, but for the first time since he had succumbed to Kierkan Rufo’s temptations, the fallen priest could see the truth.
Where were Rufo’s promises now? Where was the power, the warmth of blood?
In the last seconds of his existence, Banner understood his folly. He wanted to call out to Deneir, to beg forgiveness, but, like everything else in the man’s existence, that intent was based on personal need. There was no charity in Banner’s heart and so he died without hope.
Across the room, the flames consumed the zombies, including the body of Fester Rumpol. The spirit, the essence, of Fester Rumpol felt none of it, for he had held true in the face of adversity, had followed his faith past mortality.
She came off the landing on the second floor and ran straight into Dean Thobicus. His hands clasped her upper arms, holding her steady, and, for an instant, Danica thought she had found an ally, a priest who could turn back awful Rufo.
“Fire,” she stammered. “And Rufo...”
Danica stopped suddenly, calmed herself, and looked carefully into Thobicus’s eyes. She silently mouthed, “No,” over and over, slowly shaking her head.
She could not deny the truth, though, and if Dean Thobicus, too, had fallen to the darkness, then the library was doomed.
Danica took a deep, steadying breath, making no immediate move to resist, and the vampire smiled wickedly, revealing its fangs, only inches from Danica’s face.
Danica’s foot flashed up in front of her face, slammed Thobicus under the nose, and jerked his head back violently. The monk’s arms worked in a fast circle, fists crossing in front of her chest, then going out and down over the dean’s elbows. As strong as the vampire’s grasp was, Danica’s leverage pulled her free. Up came her foot a second time, again slamming the monster under the nose, doing no real damage, but buying Danica the moment she needed to break free.
She was back on the staircase and thought for a moment to go down, but Rufo was laughing, ascending the stairs behind her.
Up went Danica, to the third floor. A zombie stood silently in the stairway, but offered no resistance as Danica drove her fist into its bloated face, then heaved it down behind her to impede her pursuers.
She was free in the hallway of the third floor then, but where to go? She looked right, to the south, and then left, and found herself running north, toward Cadderly’s room.
Rufo’s feet made not a sound as he glided along the floor, but Danica heard his mocking laughter right behind her as she skidded into Cadderly’s room and slammed the door in the vampire’s face and dropped the locking bar into place. She found yet another zombie in the room, standing passively, and she hit it with a brutal barrage of kicks and punches that destroyed it in seconds. Its chest popped open as it fell to the floor, and Danica felt waves of nausea wash over her.
Those waves were stolen by fear when Rufo’s heavy fist slammed the door.
“Where will you run, sweet Danica?” the vampire chided. A second slam rattled the bar, threatened to knock the door off its hinges. Purely on instinct, Danica threw her weight against the door, bracing with all her considerable strength.
The pounding stopped, but Danica did not relax.
She saw the green vapor then, Rufo’s fog, wafting in under the door, and there was no way she could stop it. She staggered across the room, mesmerized by the vampire’s transformation, thinking she was doomed.
The excited chatter of a squirrel cleared her thoughts. Cadderly’s room was one of the few in the library that sported a fairly large window, which the young priest often climbed through to sit on the roof and feed cacasa-nuts to Percival.
Danica leaped over the bed.
“Where will you run?” the vampire asked again, resuming his corporeal form. Rufo got his answer in the form of stinging sunlight as Danica cracked and tore apart the boards blocking the window.
“Impudence!” Rufo roared. Danica growled in reply and tore another board free of its mounting. She saw Percival then, through the glass, hopping about in circles on the roof—dear Percival, who had saved her life.
The light felling on Rufo was indirect, for the window faced east, to the Shining Plains, and the sun was on its way toward the western horizon. Still, the vampire would not approach, would not dare chase Danica out into the daylight
“I’ll be back for you, Rufo,” Danica, remembering Dorigen, promised grimly. “I’ll be back with Cadderly.” She took a board and smashed out the glass.
Rufo snarled and took a step toward her, but was driven back by the light. He ripped the door’s locking bar from its supports and tore open the portal, and Danica thought he meant to flee.
Dean Thobicus stood in the hall. He brought his hand up defensively as soon as the door went wide and the weak daylight reached him.
“Catch her!” Rufo screamed at him.
Thobicus took a step forward, despite his mind’s protests. He was a creature of the dark now and could not go into the light! He looked plaintively to Rufo, but there was no compromise in the master vampire’s expression.
“Catch her!” Rufo growled again.
Thobicus felt himself moving forward against the pain, against his mind’s protests. Rufo compelled him, as Cadderly had once compelled him. He had given himself to the dark and could not deny Rufo’s will!
Thobicus knew he was a pitiful thing then. He had been dominated in life by Cadderly, and now in death by Rufo. They were one and the same, he decided. One and the same.
Only as he approached the window did Dean Thobicus realize the truth. Cadderly had been guided by morals; Cadderly would not make him jump out the window. Cadderly, Deneir, was the light.
But Thobicus had chosen the dark, and Rufo, his master, was guided by no moral code, was compelled by nothing except his own desires.
“Catch her!” the vampire’s voice, the vampire’s will, demanded.
Danica had not broken enough glass to go safely through, and so she spun about and smashed the board over the approaching vampire’s head.
Thobicus growled at her, and there was no joy in his apparent victory, for he knew then that he was a victim, not the victor.
Danica shoved the splintered remnants of the board at Thobicus’s chest, thinking to drive the makeshift stake through his heart. He got a hand up to deflect the blow, though, and the jagged wood sank deep into his stomach.
Thobicus looked at the monk, seeming almost surprised. For a long moment, they studied each other, and Danica thought the dean seemed somehow sad and remorseful.
Rufo’s will shot through Thobicus’s mind again, and his thoughts were not his own.
Danica and Thobicus moved together, both breaking for the window. They went through in a clinch, glass tearing at Danica’s exposed arms.
Onto the roof they rolled, Thobicus clutching tightly and Danica not daring to break the momentum, knowing that if they stopped moving, she was caught and would be dragged back in to face Rufo. Over and over they went; Thobicus tried to bite Danica, and she wedged her arm in his face, holding him at bay.
For both of them the world had become a spinning blur.
Percival’s chattering became a scream of protest as Danica and Thobicus plunged from the roof.