The howls erupted from every corner of shadow, from every bit of Rufo’s night. Cadderly had known there were wolves in the Snowflakes, many wolves—everyone knew that—but none of the four friends suspected there were so very many so close!
Shayleigh kept the group on the move, shifting at unexpected angles through the mountain night, knifing between high lines of stone, along the very rim of deep gorges. The elf could see in the dark, and so could the dwarves, and Cadderly had his light tube, its beam kept very narrow, half concealed under his gray traveling cloak so as not to attract too much attention.
As the wolves inevitably closed in, their howls sounding like one long, mournful keen, the young priest was forced to cap the light and put the tube away. He stumbled along as best he could in a night that had grown darker still, with Pikel supporting him on one side, Ivan on the other, and Shayleigh trying hard not to get too far ahead.
At one point, it seemed as if they had been cut off, with a group of wolves howling farther along the same path they were traveling. Shayleigh looked back to the other three, her violet eyes shining clearly, even to Cadderly’s poor night vision, and her expression revealing that she was fast running out of answers.
“Looks like we’re fighting again,” Ivan grumbled, and it was the first time Cadderly had ever seen the sturdy dwarf so obviously upset with that prospect.
Unexpectedly, the wolf pack up ahead ran on its way, across the trail and not down it at the companions. The wolves howled excitedly into the night, as if they had found some new quarry to pursue.
Shayleigh asked no questions about their good fortune. She spurred her friends ahead at full speed and came to a grove of fruit trees. Shayleigh would have preferred evergreens, where dark needles might offer some cover, but the pursuing pack was not far behind and these trees were easy to climb, even for short-limbed dwarves. Up the four went, as high as the branches would allow, Shayleigh finding a secure nook and stringing her bow immediately.
The dark shapes of the large wolves came into the clear area to the side of the grove, their fur bristling silver and black in the meager light. One came to the tree right below Cadderly and Pikel, sniffing the air, then loosing yet another terrifying howl.
It was answered by all its dozen companions at the grove, and then by a larger group, the group that had been ahead of the four companions, somewhere off to the east. The cries to the east continued, heightened, and though this group had the four treed, they could not ignore the thrill of the chase. Off the pack ran, but Shayleigh and the others did not come down, the elf explaining that this might be the best defensible spot they would find for miles.
The howling continued for many minutes, frantic, as if the wolves were indeed on a fresh trail. Cadderly’s heart fluttered at every cry—might it be Danica the beasts were chasing?
Then the howls lessened and became mixed with resonating snarls, and it seemed to the companions that whatever the wolves had been chasing was trapped.
“We must go help,” Cadderly announced, but none of the others seemed ready to leap to the ground behind him. He looked at them, particularly at sturdy Ivan, as if he had been deceived.
“Three dozen wolves,” the yellow-bearded dwarf remarked, “maybe more. All we’ll be doing is giving them more to eat!”
Cadderly didn’t flinch as he picked his way down to the next lowest branch.
Ivan huffed and shuffled in his own roost, moving close enough to slap Pikel and get him, too, moving. Agile Shayleigh was already on the ground, waiting for them.
Cadderly smiled secretly, glad to confirm once more that he was blessed by brave and righteous friends. The young priest’s grin went away, though, and all four of the companions froze (except for Pikel, who was knocked from his perch and fell hard to the ground), when a tremendous explosion rocked the very ground under their feet and a ball of fire rose into the air in the east, accompanied by the cries of many wolves.
“Dorigen?” both Cadderly and Shayleigh asked together, but neither of them moved, not knowing what they should do.
Pikel groaned and regained his footing, shaking the twigs out of his green beard. Above, high in the tree, a small form skittered along, verily flying from branch to branch.
Ivan, in the highest perch, let out a shout and turned about, lifting his axe, but Shayleigh’s call stopped him in time.
“Percival,” the elf maiden explained. “It is only Percival.”
Cadderly scrambled as high as he could go, meeting his squirrel friend. Percival chattered excitedly, hopping in circles on the branch, and Cadderly understood that the squirrel had been more than a casual observer in all of this, when, a moment later, he heard the frantic cries of a man, and the howls of the remaining wolves in pursuit.
Shayleigh and Pikel went back up into the tree, and all four, and the squirrel as well, fell silent, watching to the east. Shayleigh caught the movement first, and up came her bow, an arrow streaking off unerringly to take down a wolf that was nipping at the fleeing man’s heels.
The man, startled and not believing he had any allies in this dark place, cried out as the bolt flew past. Cadderly recognized the voice.
“Belago,” the young priest muttered.
Ivan dropped down branch by branch until he was at the lowest limb, Pikel joining him there. Both looked to the running man, figuring the angle of approach, and they shifted side by side to put themselves in line. Pikel braced Ivan’s feet as the dwarf rolled under the branch, hooking his knees, his arms hanging down.
On came Belago, blindly, more wolves nipping at his heels. Another arrow sliced past him, the elf’s aim perfect, but the frightened man seemed to not even register that fact. He seemed oblivious to everything except his belief that he was alone and helpless in a dark night and was about to be eaten by wolves.
He ran under the tree, only because that course was straightest, for he knew he had no time to climb.
Then he was caught, and he screamed as he went up suddenly, hoisted by powerful dwarven hands. Not knowing Ivan for an ally, he squirmed and lashed out, connecting on the dwarf’s face with several solid hits. Ivan just shook his head and muttered curses against “stupid people.”
Belago wasn’t beginning to break free, but his squirming was preventing Ivan from getting him high out of harm’s way. Finally the dwarf heaved Belago as high as he could and butted the man right in the face. Belago went limp in his arms, and Ivan, with Pikel’s help, tugged him up to the branch.
Shayleigh’s bow sang out several times, keeping the pack at bay as the dwarves straightened themselves out and hauled dazed Belago up a couple of branches.
“By the gods!” Vicero Belago whispered repeatedly, tears flowing freely when he at last came out of his stupor and recognized his saviors. “By the gods! And Cadderly! Dear Cadderly!” he wailed, standing on the branch to be closer to the young priest. “You have returned too late, I fear!”
Cadderly slipped over on the branch and stepped down to Belago’s level, trying to calm the man. “Was Dorigen with you?” Cadderly asked at length, thinking still of the telltale explosion.
Belago didn’t seem to recognize the name.
“Danica?” the young priest asked frantically. “What of Danica?”
“She was with you,” the wiry alchemist replied, seeming sincerely confused.
“Danica came back to the library,” Cadderly answered sharply.
“I have been out of the library for several days,” Belago replied, and he quickly told his tale. As it turned out, the four friends knew more about the place than he; all the poor alchemist knew was that he had been put out, and that very dark things, it seemed, had subsequently occurred in the library. Belago had not gone to Carradoon, as Dean Thobicus had instructed. He figured to wait for Cadderly’s return, or at least for the warmer weather. He had friends on the mountain and had taken refuge in a small shack with a hunter he knew, a man named Minshk, east of the library.
“Dark things were about,” the alchemist remarked, referring to that time in the hunter’s lodge. “Minshk and I knew that, and we were going to go to Carradoon tomorrow.” He looked to the east, his eyes sad, and mournfully repeated, “Tomorrow.”
“But the wolves came,” the alchemist continued, his voice barely a whisper. “And something else. I got away, but Minshk ...” Belago slumped on the branch and went quiet, and the four friends turned their attention back to the pack surrounding the grove. The wolves couldn’t get to them, but those continuing howls would likely bring in something, or someone, that could.
“We should be getting outta here,” Ivan offered.
For the first time, Vicero Belago’s expression brightened. He reached under his heavy cloak and produced a flask, handing it toward Cadderly.
Pikel, meanwhile, had his own idea. He snapped his stubby fingers and grabbed the heavy axe from his brother’s back.
Cadderly, concerned with Belago’s offering, paid little heed to the dwarves’ ensuing argument.
“Oil of Impact,” the alchemist said excitedly. “I was going to make you another bandolier of explosive darts, but I hadn’t the time before Thobicus ...” He paused, overwhelmed by the painful memory. Then his face brightened again and he pushed the flask out toward Cadderly.
“I had another flask,” he explained. “Maybe you saw the blast. I was hoping to do another one, right before Ivan caught me, but I hadn’t the time.”
Cadderly then understood the fireball that had risen in the east, and he gingerly—so very gingerly!—accepted the gift from the alchemist.
“Hey!” Ivan cried, drawing everyone’s attention. Pikel had won this round of their argument, shoving Ivan over so hard that he had to hang on to the branch by his fingertips to prevent himself from falling to the gathered wolf pack. Before the yellow-bearded dwarf could right himself or further protest, Pikel brought the axe down hard on the trunk of the tree, causing a small split. As soon as Ivan regained his balance, Pikel handed the axe back, and Ivan snatched it away, eyeing his brother curiously.
Not as curiously as Cadderly was watching. He, above all the others, even Ivan, understood what Pikel had become, what the dwarfs love of trees and flowers had given him, and the gravity of Pikel’s action, the fact that the would-be druid had just brought a weapon against a living tree, did not escape the young priest. Cadderly shifted past Ivan, who was more than willing to slide away from his unpredictable brother, and came to Pikel’s side, to find the green-bearded dwarf muttering—no, chanting—under his breath, a small knife in hand.
Before Cadderly could ask, for the young priest did not want to interrupt, Pikel slashed his own hand with the knife.
Cadderly grabbed the dwarf’s wrist and forced Pikel to look at him directly. Pikel smiled and nodded, pointed to Cadderly, to the wound, and to the wound he had inflicted on the tree.
Cadderly came to understand as a single drop of Pikel’s blood fell from his hand to land on the rough bark beside the small cut in the tree. The blood instantly rushed for the crack in the trunk and disappeared.
Pikel was chanting again, and so was Cadderly, trying to find, in Deneir’s song, some energy that he could add to the dwarf’s attempt.
More blood flowed from Pikel’s wound, every drop finding its way unerringly to the tree’s crack. A warmth rose up from that crack, the smell of springtime with it.
Cadderly found a stream of thought, of holy notes that fit the scene, and he followed it with all his heart, not knowing what would happen, not knowing what Pikel had begun.
He closed his eyes and sang on, ignoring the continuing snarls and howls of the wolves, ignoring the astonished gasps of his friends.
Cadderly opened his eyes again when the branch heaved under him, as though it had come to life. The tree had blossomed in full, large apples showing on every branch. Ivan had one in hand already, and had taken a huge bite.
The dwarf’s look soured, though, and not for the taste. “Ye think I might be fattening meself up to make a better wolf meal?” he asked in all seriousness, and he pelted the apple onto the nose of the nearest wolf.
Pikel squealed with delight; Cadderly could hardly believe what he and Pikel had done. What had they done? the young priest wondered, for he hardly saw the gain of prematurely flowering the tree. The apples provided missiles they could throw at the wolves, but certainly nothing that would drive the pack away.
The tree heaved again, and then again, and then, to the amazement of everyone on the branch, except, of course, Pikel, it came alive, not alive as a plant, but as a sentient, moving thing!
Branches rolled up and snapped down, loosing showers of apples with tremendous force, pummeling the wolf pack. Even worse for the wolves, the lowest branches reached down to club them, crunching their legs under them or sending them spinning away. Belago nearly tumbled, fell right over his branch and held on desperately with wrapped arms. Ivan did fall, bouncing from branch to branch all the way to the ground. He came up at once, axe ready, expecting a dozen wolves to leap at his throat.
Shayleigh was beside him in an instant, but the dwarf needed no protection. The wolves were too busy dodging and running. A moment later, Pikel and Cadderly, and finally Belago (who came down only because he fell), were at Ivan’s side. Some of the closest wolves made halfhearted attacks at the group, but the four friends were well armed and well trained, and with most of the pack scattering, they easily drove the stragglers away.
It was soon over, several wolves lying dead on the ground, the others gone from sight. The tree was just a tree again.
“Your magic bought us some time and some space,” Shayleigh congratulated Cadderly. The young priest nodded, but then looked to Pikel, the green-bearded “doo-dad” smiling ear to ear. Cadderly didn’t know how much of this animation had been his doing, and how much Pikel’s, but now wasn’t the time to explore the mystery.
“If they come back, use the flask,” Belago offered, moving to Cadderly’s side.
Cadderly considered the wiry man for a moment and realized that Belago was unarmed. He handed back the flask. “You use it,” he explained, “but only if we absolutely need it. We’ve got a darker road still to travel, my friend, and I suspect we shall need every weapon we can muster.”
Belago bobbed his head in agreement, though he did not know, could not know, the depth of the darkness of which Cadderly spoke.
As it turned out, they did not need Belago’s flask that night, or anything else. Shayleigh put them on the move immediately, back to the west, to a grove of thick pines, and there they spent the rest of the dark hours, the five friends, and Percival, too, keeping a watchful eye from the highest boughs.
Cadderly could only assume they had hurt Rufo badly, for the vampire did not find them. That was a good thing, on the surface, but the young priest could not get it out of his mind that if Kierkan Rufo was not with him, the vampire might be with Danica.
Cadderly did not fall asleep until the night was almost at its end, until exhaustion overwhelmed him.
Percival’s chattering heralded the new dawn and brought poor Cadderly from a fitful sleep filled with nightmares. He remembered little of those horrid dreams when he opened his eyes to the glistening light of a bright new day, for they were surely the stuff of a dark night.
The young priest did know, however, that he had dreamt of Danica, and he was unnerved at that thought. For while he was out here, in the morning light, his dear Danica was in there, in the library, in Rufp’s evil hands. The library.
Cadderly could hardly stand to think about the place. It had been his home for most of his young life, but now that time seemed so very long ago. If all the windows and doors of the Edificant Library were thrown wide now, the structure would remain a place of shadows, a place of nightmares.
Cadderly was shaken from his private thoughts by the sound of Ivan’s rough voice, the dwarf taking command while sitting on a thick tangle of branches below the young priest.
“We got the weapons,” Ivan was saying. “Belago there’s got his bottle.”
“Boom,” Pikel remarked, throwing his hands up high. The force of the sudden movement nearly sent Ivan tumbling from the branch.
Ivan caught himself and started to nod, then stopped and slapped Pikel on the back of the head. “Me brother’s got his club,” the dwarf went on.
“Sha-lah-lah!” Pikel whooped in delight, interrupting again in an equally expressive manner. This time Ivan didn’t react fast enough, and by the time he realized what had happened, he was sitting on the ground, picking clumps of sod out of his teeth.
“Uh-oh,” Pikel moaned, figuring that last move would cost him another slap, as his brother began the steady climb back up to his branch.
He was right, and he accepted the punishment with a shrug. Ivan turned back to Shayleigh.
“Sha-lah-lah,” Pikel said again, quietly this time, and without the expressive movement.
“Yeah,” Ivan agreed, too exasperated to argue further. “And ye got yer silver arrows,” he said to Shayleigh, though he was still eyeing his impetuous brother, expecting still another remark.
“My sword will prove effective as well,” Shayleigh explained, holding up her fine, slender elver, blade, its silver inlays gleaming bright in the morning light.
Ivan continued to scrutinize Pikel, who by this point had taken to whistling a cheery spring morning tune.
“Even better,” the yellow-bearded dwarf said to Shayleigh. “And I got me axe, though it’s not for hurting them vampire things. But it’ll take a stiff-legged zombie in half!”
“Cadderly has his walking stick,” Shayleigh offered, noticing the young priest stirring, looking for an easy route down to their level. “And more weapons than that, I would assume.”
Cadderly nodded and fell heavily onto the branch tangle, sending it dipping. “I am ready for Rufo,” he said groggily when the branch stopped bouncing.
“Te should’ve slept more,” Ivan grumbled at him.
Cadderly nodded in agreement, not wanting to get into an argument now, but in his heart he was glad he had not slept much. He would be wide awake when the trouble started, pumped full of adrenaline. His only enemy now was despair, and if he had dreamt longer of his missing love ...
Cadderly shook his head, shook away the counter-productive thought.
“How far are we from the library?” he asked, looking to the west, where he thought the library should be.
Shayleigh motioned for him to look the other way. “Three miles,” she explained, “to the east.”
Cadderly didn’t argue. The run through the trails had been confusing at best, especially to one not blessed with elven night vision. Shayleigh knew where they were.
“Then let us be on our way,” the young priest offered. “Before we lose any more daylight.” He started down from the branch, but had to pause for Belago. The alchemist winked Cadderly’s way and opened his weatherworn cloak, producing the volatile flask.
“Boom!” Pikel shouted from the branch above.
Ivan growled, Pikel quickly jumped to the next lowest branch, and Ivan’s ensuing slap hit nothing but air, causing the dwarf to overbalance and tumble from his perch. He managed to grab Pikel’s green hair during his descent, taking his brother with him.
They hit the ground together, side by side, Ivan’s deer-antlered helm and Pikel’s cooking pot flying away. Up they bounced to face each other squarely.
Cadderly looked to Shayleigh, who was trying to subdue a laugh and merely shook her head in disbelief.
“At least you didn’t have to walk all the way back with them,” the young priest offered. Belago let him pass, and Cadderly hopped down to break up the fight. In a way, the young priest was glad for the distraction. With the dangerous task and the grim possibilities staring them in the face, they could all use a bit of mirth. But Cadderly did not appreciate the dwarves’ antics, and he let both the brothers know it in no uncertain terms when he finally pried them apart.
“His fault,” Ivan huffed, but Cadderly, and Cadderly’s accusing finger, was in his face, warning him to say no more.
“Oooo,” Pikel muttered. When Belago came down a moment later, the dwarf leaned over and whispered “Boom,” into his ear.
Cadderly and Ivan spun about, but Pikel was only whistling again, that cheery, innocent morning tune.
Shayleigh led them quickly, surely, and without hesitation along the myriad forks and turns in the confusing trails. The sun had barely begun its climb in the eastern sky when the Edificant Library, dark and cold, came into view, its square walls seeming to deny the warmth of the day.
They moved along the path five abreast, Ivan and Pikel on one end, Shayleigh and Cadderly anchoring the other, and poor, trembling Belago in the middle. It was only as they made the final approach, the broken doors in sight, that Cadderly took any real notice of their newest companion, the wiry man who was not a fighter. The young priest stopped the march with an upraised hand.
“You have no business going in there,” he said to Belago. “Go instead to Carradoon. Warn the townsfolk of Kierkan Rufo and his creatures of the night.”
Vicero Belago looked up at the young priest as though Cadderly had just slapped him across the face. “I’m not much for fighting,” he admitted. “And I’m not thrilled at the prospect of seeing Kierkan Rufo, vampire or not! But Lady Danica is in there—you said it yourself.”
Cadderly looked to Shayleigh, who nodded solemnly. “Determination is the only true weapon against one of Rufo’s ilk,” the elf put in.
Cadderly dropped a hand on Belago’s shoulder, and could feel that the alchemist had drawn strength from his own words. As they resumed the march and neared the doors, though, the man trembled visibly once more.
This time it was Ivan who stopped them. “We should have our path marked out afore we go in,” the dwarf reasoned.
Cadderly looked skeptical.
“We have no idea where Danica might be,” Shayleigh said, “or where we might find Rufo and his most powerful allies.”
“If we go wrong, we’ll fight everything in the place afore we ever find Danica,” Ivan argued, but then, as if he suddenly realized what he had just said, especially the part about fighting everything in the place, the fiery dwarf shrugged as if it no longer mattered and turned back to the door.
Cadderly took out his light tube and popped open its back compartment. He slid out the enchanted disk; even in the bright sunlight its glow was powerful. Then he took off his hat and set the glowing disk behind his mounted holy symbol.
The young priest looked back to the doors and sighed. At least now they would not be walking in dark places. Still, Cadderly wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of wandering through the massive structure, with so many enemies to face, and with a limited amount of time. How many rooms could they search in one day? Certainly not half the number in the Edificant Library.
“We’ll begin in the lower levels,” Cadderly said. “The kitchen, the main chapel, even the wine cellar. Rufo probably took Danica and Dorigen to a place of darkness.”
“You are assuming he has them,” Shayleigh remarked, her tone reminding Cadderly that both the monk and the wizard were resourceful and cunning. “Let us keep in our thoughts that Danica might not even be in there.”
Cadderly knew better. In his heart, he knew without doubt that Danica was in the library and in trouble. He started to answer the elf s doubts, but Percival answered for him, the squirrel doing a sudden, wild dance across the branches just above their heads.
“Hey, ye little rat!” Ivan bellowed, shielding his head with his burly arm.
Pikel seemed equally excited, but unlike his brother, the green-bearded dwarf wasn’t protesting in the least. He pointed a stubby finger at the white squirrel and hopped up and down.
“What is it?” Cadderly and Shayleigh asked together.
Percival ran along the branch and, with a great leap, caught the edge of the library’s roof, dancing along the gutter, turning a somersault and chattering excitedly.
Cadderly looked to Pikel. “Percival has found them,” he stated more than asked.
“Oo oi!” the perceptive (at least where nature was concerned) dwarf agreed.
Cadderly turned back to his rodent friend. “Danica?” he asked.
Percival leaped high in the air, turning completely about.
Ivan roared in protest. “The rat found them?” he bellowed incredulously.
Pikel slapped him on the back of the head.
“We have nothing better,” Shayleigh reminded the volatile Ivan, trying to stay yet another fight between the brothers.
Cadderly wasn’t even listening. He had been with Percival for three years and knew the squirrel was not a stupid thing. Far from it. Cadderly did not doubt Percival understood they were looking for Danica.
He followed Percival, and his friends followed him, around to the south wing of the library. Much of the wing showed damage from the fire, but the wall and windows near the back of the building did not. Percival moved gracefully along the gutters, then picked his way carefully down the rough and cracked stone. With a final leap, he landed on the sill of a small second-floor window.
Cadderly was nodding before the squirrel ever stopped.
“Danica’s in there?” Ivan asked doubtfully.
“The private room of Dean Thobicus,” Cadderly explained, and it all made sense to him. If Rufo had Danica, a woman he had long desired, he would likely show her the most comfortable and lavish room in the library, and none was better suited than the dean’s private chamber.
With Cadderly’s confidence came a moment of sheer dread. If his logic was on track, and Percival was right, then Rufo did indeed have Danica!
“What’s the quickest route through the building to that room?” Ivan asked, deciding not to continue his useless arguing.
“The quickest route is straight up,” Cadderly remarked, drawing all their eyes skyward. Ivan grumbled for a bit, trying to figure some way to get them all up there. Finally he just shook his head, and when he looked back to the young priest to denounce the plan, the dwarf jumped in surprise. In place of his regular arms and legs, Cadderly now had the limbs of a squirrel, a white-furred squirrel!
Shayleigh, not so surprised, gave Cadderly the end of a fine cord, and up he went, easily scaling the wall to sit on the narrow ledge beside Percival.
The window was only a few inches wide, barely a squared crack in the wall. Cadderly peered in, the light from the disk on his hat casting a glow into the room. He couldn’t see much of the chamber, though, for the window was more than a foot deep. He did see the bottom edge of the bed, though, and on it, under a satiny sheet, the outline of a woman’s legs.
“Danica,” he whispered harshly, straining to get a better angle.
“What do ye see?” Ivan called from below.
It was Danica. Cadderly knew it was Danica. He shifted back, willed his arms and legs to return to normal, and fell into the song of Deneir. He was too close now; he would not be stopped by simple stone.
“What do ye see?” Ivan demanded again, but Cadderly, lost in the song, the magic of his god, did not register the call.
He focused on the stone surrounding the window, saw it for what it was, saw its very essence. Calling to his god, he pulled his waterskin around from his back and squirted it in strategic locations, then placed his hands on the suddenly malleable stone and began to shape the material.
The window’s thick glass fell out, past entranced Cadderly’s working hands, and nearly clobbered Ivan as he stood, hands on hips, on the ground below.
“Hey!” the dwarf yelled, and Cadderly, even in the throes of the song, heard him. He considered his handiwork and remembered his friends, and worked a spur in the stone, that he could loop Shayleigh’s cord securely about it.
Then it was done, and the window was wide, and Cadderly crawled into the room. Deneir went away from him when he entered the unholy place; he would have recognized that fact clearly if he had concentrated. Even the glow of the lighted disk, fixed on the front of his wide-brimmed hat, seemed to dim.
This, too, Cadderly did not notice. His eyes, and his thoughts, were squarely on the bed, on the figure of Danica, lying too still and too serene.
Shayleigh practically ran up the rope, rushing into the room beside Cadderly. Ivan, and then Pikel, powerful dwarven arms pumping, came up fast behind, with Pikel pausing long enough at the sill to haul poor Belago up the fifteen feet to the window.
Cadderly stood beside the bed, staring down, not finding the strength to reach out and touch Danica.
She would be cold to his touch. He knew that. He knew she was dead.
Shayleigh couldn’t bear the suspense anymore; she could not bear to see Cadderly in such awful torment. She bent low over the bed and put her sensitive ear to
Danica’s pursed lips. A moment later, she rose, staring straight at Cadderly and slowly shaking her head. Her hand moved as well, shifting Danica’s tunic to reveal the puckered wounds on the monk’s neck, the twin punctures of a vampire’s bite.
“Oooo,” Ivan and Pikel moaned together. Vicero Belago sniffled and fought back tears.
That tangible confirmation that Danica was gone, that Rufo had taken her, sent a ball of grief spiraling through Cadderly, a spiked ball that pained the young priest in every corner of his soul, that tore at his heart and all his sensibilities. Danica dead! His love taken from him!
This Cadderly could not tolerate. By all the power of Deneir, by all the edicts of callous fate, Cadderly could not allow this to be.
He commanded the song of Deneir into his thoughts, forced its flow past the dullness of the evil veil that permeated this place. His head throbbed for the effort, but he did not relent. Not with Danica, his love, lying so pale before him.
Cadderly’s thoughts careened into the flow, pushed open closed doors and rushed to the highest levels of power. He was gone from his friends, then, not physically, for his body stood very still beside the bed, but spiritually, his soul rushing free of its mortal coil into the realm of spirits, the realm of the dead.
So it was that Cadderly did not hear Shayleigh’s shriek, and did not react as the strong hand shot out from under the bed to clasp the elf’s ankle.
Cadderly could see the events in the room, but they were distant from him, somehow disconnected. Through a thick veil of smoky gray he saw his own body standing very still, saw that Shayleigh, for some reason, had apparently gone down to the floor and was being pulled under the bed.
Cadderly sensed the danger back in the room, sensed that his elven companion was in trouble. He should go to her, he knew, go to the aid of his friends. He hesitated, though, and stayed clear of his corporeal form. Shayleigh was among powerful allies—Ivan and Pikel were moving, he could see, probably rushing to her side. Cadderly had to trust in them now, for he knew that if he left this realm, he would not soon find the strength to return, not in the desecrated library. He was looking for a spirit, and spirits were fleeting things. If he hoped to get Danica back, he had to find her quickly, before she took her place in the netherworld.
But where was she? Cadderly had gone into the spirit world on several occasions, had gone after Avery Schell when he had found the headmaster lying dead, his chest torn wide, on a table in the Dragon’s Codpiece tavern in Carradoon. Cadderly had gone into the spirit world after the souls of men he had killed, assassins who had been pulled down by shadowy things before the young priest could call out to them. He had gone into the spirit world after Vander, and had held back the malignant assassin Ghost while Vander found his way back to life through the enchantment of his regenerative ring.
The ring!
Cadderly saw it glowing clearly on Ivan’s gnarled finger, the only distinctive thing in the room. He could use it, he believed, as a gate to get Danica back to the realm of the living. If he could somehow get Ivan to put the ring on Danica’s finger, he might be able to find an easier way to usher her spirit back to her corporeal form.
But where was she? Where was his love? He called out to Danica, let the images in the room fade from his thoughts and sent his mind out in every direction. Danica’s spirit should be here; she could not have been dead for long. She should be here, or at least there should be some trail of her passing that Cadderly could follow. He would pull her from the arms of a god if need be!
There was no trail. There was no spirit. No Danica.
Cadderly weakened with the realization that she was lost to him. Suddenly there seemed no purpose in his life, no reason to even bother returning to his body. Let Deneir take him now, he thought, and be done with his torment.
He saw a flicker of clarity in the dull plane he had left behind, a movement within the room. Then he saw the vampire, as clearly as he had seen Ivan’s ring, coming out from under the bed.
Baccio ripped at a dull form—Shayleigh, Cadderly knew—and leaped up to his feet. He was undead, existing on both planes, as tangible to Cadderly in the spirit world as he obviously was to Ivan and the others in the material room. Yet the vampire took no note of Cadderly. Baccio’s thoughts were squarely on the battle at hand, on the battle against Cadderly’s friends!
Cadderly’s focus became pure anger. His spirit shifted behind Baccio, his will narrowing like a spike.
Shayleigh was out of the fight before it ever really began. She hit the floor hard beside the bed and slid under, the vampire’s strong hands slamming her shoulder as she tried to reach for her short sword.
»The silver-tipped arrows had bounced free of Shayleigh’s quiver with the impact, and that alone saved the wounded elf. Sheer luck brought her free hand atop one of those bolts and, without hesitation, Shayleigh whipped the thing around, sticking its silvery point deep into Baccio’s eye.
The vampire went into a frenzy, battering Shayleigh, bouncing the bed up and down on its supports. Pikel lay flat on the floor by then, using his club like a billiard stick, poking it straight into Baccio’s face to keep the vampire busy while Ivan yanked Shayleigh out into the clear.
Baccio came out, too, wailing and thrashing, most of his strikes landing squarely on poor Shayleigh. Pikel hit him good a couple of times, but the vampire was strong, and he accepted the blows and returned them tenfold.
Belago shrieked and cowered; Ivan rushed in with a vicious swipe, but his axe was useless against the vampire. Baccio had them on the defensive, had them dead.
The vampire lurched suddenly as if something had hit him from behind, and indeed, he had been struck, by Cadderly’s spirit. He staggered forward, his trembling arms reaching behind him for some unseen wound.
What a beautiful target that presented eager Pikel. The green-bearded dwarf spat in his hands and rubbed them for a tighter grip on his shillelagh, then spun two complete circuits, building momentum, before bringing the tree-trunk club to bear against Baccio’s face.
The broken monster flew away, crashing into the far wall. Still, Baccio reached around to his back, reached for the spike, the manifestation of Cadderly’s will, which the young priest had driven into his back.
Cadderly’s corporeal form shuddered then as the priest came back to the Material Plane. He moved deliberately, mercilessly. He reached for his hat, then changed
his mind and went instead for a fold in his traveling cloak, a pocket he had sewn into the cloak during his weeks in the cave on the northern side of the Snowflakes, producing a thin, dark wand. Cadderly shook his head as he considered the instrument—over the weeks of idleness and during the excitement of the last day, he had nearly forgotten about this wand. Advancing on Baccio, the wand’s tip leading the way, the young priest said calmly, “Mas illu.”
A myriad of bright colors exploded from the wand, every color of the spectrum.
“Ouch!” Pikel wailed, blinded by the explosion, as were all of Cadderly’s friends. Cadderly, too, saw spots behind his eyelids, but he did not relent. “Mas illu,” he said again, and the wand complied, spewing forth another colorful burst of light.
To the friends, the bursts were optically painful but otherwise benign, but to the vampire, they were pure agony. Baccio tried to recoil from the explosions, tried to curl into a little ball and hide, to no avail. The shower of lights clung to him, attacked his undead form with the fury of hot sparks. To a living creature, the spark shower could only blind; to an undead monster, the shower could burn.
“Mas illu” Cadderly said a third time, and by the time the last burst ended, Baccio sat limply against the wall, staring at Cadderly with pure hatred and pure impotence. Cadderly put away the wand and pulled the holy symbol down from his head. He walked up to stand before the wounded vampire and calmly, methodically, placed the glowing symbol on Baccio’s broken face.
The vampire’s trembling hand came up and clasped Cadderly’s wrist, but the young priest didn’t waver. He held firm his symbol and intoned a prayer to Deneir as
he struck repeatedly with his ram’s-headed walking stick, thoroughly destroying the monster.
Cadderly turned about to see his four friends staring at him incredulously, amazed by the sheer, unbridled fury of the display.
Pikel moaned, and the end of his club dropped limply to the floor.
Shayleigh grimaced against the pain as she regarded Cadderly. Her right shoulder was badly torn, and the wheezing in her voice told Cadderly that Baccio’s beating had probably broken a few ribs and collapsed one of her lungs. He went to her immediately, without saying a word, and sought the distant song of Deneir.
The melody’s flow was not strong this time; Cadderly could not seek the higher levels of clerical power. The day was young, but he was already tired, he realized, so he accepted the weakness and found his way instead to minor spells of healing, pressing his hands gently but firmly against Shayleigh’s ribs and then her shoulder.
Cadderly came back to full consciousness to find the elf resting more easily, the magic already knitting the wounds.
“You did not find Danica,” Shayleigh reasoned, her voice determined but trembling from her pain and weakness. It was obvious to them all that she needed rest and could not go on.
Cadderly shook his head, confirming the elf’s fears. He looked plaintively to the bed, to the serene form of his lost love. “She is not undead, though,” he offered, more to bolster himself than the others.
“She escaped,” Shayleigh agreed.
“Danica should not be in this place,” Cadderly said. He looked determinedly to each of his friends. “We must take her from here.”
“The mausoleum is clear,” Shayleigh offered.
Cadderly shook his head. “Farther,” he said. “We will take her to Carradoon. There, away from the darkness of Kierkan Rufo, I can better tend your wounds, and can put Danica to rest.”His voice broke as he finished the thought.”
“No!” Ivan said unexpectedly, drawing Cadderly’s attention.
“We’re not for leaving!” the dwarf argued. “Not now, not while the sun’s in the sky. Rufo got her, and he’ll get another if we walk away. Yerself can go if ye need to, but me and me brother are staying.”
“Oo oi!”
“We’ll pay that one back for Danica, don’t ye doubt!” Ivan finished.
Pay that one back. The sentiment bounced about Cadderly’s thoughts for a while, gaining momentum and imparting strength. Pay that one back! Indeed, Cadderly would pay Rufo back. He found his heart in the thought of revenge.
“Take Danica to the mausoleum,” he said to Belago and Shayleigh. “If the dwarves and I do not come to you by the time the sun has begun its descent, set out far from this place, to Shilmista or Carradoon, and do not return.”
Shayleigh, as angered by the loss of Danica as any of them, wanted to argue, but as she started to reply, sharp pain racked her side. Cadderly had done all he could for her wounds; she needed rest.
“I will go with Belago to the mausoleum,” she reluctantly agreed, accepting that she would only hinder her friends in her weakened state. She grabbed Cadderly’s arm as he started to move away from her and locked his gray eyes with her violet orbs, “Find Rufo and destroy him,” she said. “I’ll not leave the mausoleum unless it is to come back into the library to your side.”
Cadderly knew there was no way he would convince the valiant elf otherwise. Danica had been like a sister to Shayleigh, and the elf would never walk away from the one who had killed her sister. Understanding that sentiment, that he, too, would never walk away from this place unless Rufo was destroyed, Cadderly accepted her pledge with a knowing nod.
Ivan and Pikel quickly rigged the rope so that Danica’s body could be lowered gently. Both the tough dwarves had tears in their eyes as they worked; Ivan reverently removed his deer-antler helm, and Pikel did likewise with his cooking pot. When the rope was ready, Cadderly could hardly bring himself to move Danica into position. His anger could not hold against that wave of grief, the feeling of finality as he tenderly looped the elven cord under Danica’s stiffened arms. He thought of going again into the spirit world to search for her, and would have gone, except that Shayleigh, as if reading his thoughts, was beside him, her hand on his shoulder.
When the young priest looked at the battered elf, her whole body quaking as she tried to hold her balance, he understood he could not expend the energy to go off again into the spirit world after Danica, that the consequences might be too high. He looked to Shayleigh and nodded, and she backed away, seeming satisfied.
It was decided that Belago should go down first, to cushion Danica’s descent. The alchemist, seeming more determined than any of them had ever witnessed, took up the rope in both hands and hopped up onto the windowsill. He paused, though, then motioned for Ivan to come near.
“Ye got to do it,” the dwarf said, coming close. “We need ye ...” Ivan stopped in midsentence, realizing Belago’s intentions, as the alchemist extended his arm.
“Take it!’ Belago offered, pushing the flask of explosive oil to Ivan. “You will need every weapon.”
As soon as the dwarf had the flask in hand, Belago, without hesitation, slipped over the sill and descended quickly to the ground. Danica’s body went next, and then Shayleigh, the injured elf needing nearly as much support as had Danica.
Cadderly watched forlornly from the window as the group slipped away toward the back of the library and the mausoleum. Belago had Danica’s form over one shoulder, and though the load was extreme for the alchemist, he still had to pace himself so that the wounded Shayleigh could keep up.
When Cadderly turned away from the window, back to the room, he found Ivan and Pikel, helms tucked under their arms, heads bowed and cheeks streaked with tears. Ivan looked up first, his sorrow transformed into rage. “I gotta fix me axe,” the dwarf said through gritted teeth.
Cadderly looked at the weapon skeptically—it seemed fine to him.
“Gotta put some silver in the damned thing!” Ivan roared.
“We haven’t the time.” Cadderly replied.
“I got a forge near the kitchen,” Ivan retorted, and Cadderly nodded, for he had often seen the setup, which doubled as a stove.
Cadderly looked out the window. The morning light was full, sending long shadows to the west. “We have just one day,” Cadderly explained. “We must finish our business before nightfall. If Rufo recognizes that we have been inside the library, as he surely will when he realizes that Baccio is destroyed, he will come after us with all his forces. I would rather face the vampire now, though only my walking stick and Pikel’s club—“
“Sha-Iah-lah!” the dwarf said determinedly, popping the cooking pot on top of his green hair.
Cadderly nodded, even managed a slight smile. “We must be done with Rufo this day,” he said again.
“But ye’ll have to kill him quick,” Ivan protested, presenting his axe once more. “Kill him to death. Quick, or he’ll just go into that green mist and melt away from us. I got a forge ...” Ivan stopped in midramble and turned a wicked look toward Pikel. “A forge,” he said again, slyly.
“Huh?” came Pikel’s predictable reply.
“Makes the fire hot,” Ivan explained.
“You will need a fire very hot to singe Rufo,” Cadderly interjected, thinking he was following the dwarf’s reasoning. “Magical flames that no forge could match.”
“Yeah, and if we hurt him, he’ll just go into a cloud,” Ivan said, aiming the remark at Pikel.
Pikel considered the information, tried to connect the forge to Rufo. His face brightened suddenly, his grin ear to ear as he returned his brother’s hopeful stare.
“Hee hee hee,” both dwarves said together.
Cadderly didn’t understand, and wasn’t sure he wanted to understand. The Bouldershoulder brothers seemed secure in their secret plans, so the young priest let it go at that. He led them along the corridors of the second floor, the library quiet and brooding about them. They tore the covers from every window they crossed, but even with that, the squat stone structure was a gloomy place.
Cadderly took out his wand once more. Every time he noticed a particularly gloomy area, he pointed the wand at it and uttered the command “Domin illu” and, with a flash, the area became as bright as an open field under a midday sun.
“If we cannot find Rufo this day,” the young priest explained, “let him come out to find his darkness stolen!”
Ivan and Pikel exchanged knowing looks. Rufo could likely counter the young priest’s spells of light—Rufo had been a cleric, after all, and clerics understood such magic. Cadderly wasn’t brightening the library for any practical reasons, then, but merely to challenge the vampire. The young priest was throwing down a gauntlet, doing everything he could to slap Rufo across the face. Neither Ivan nor Pikel was thrilled at facing the powerful vampire again, but as they followed their companion through the library, his anger unrelenting, the image of beaten Baccio still clear in their thoughts, they came to the conclusion that they would rather have Rufo as an enemy than Cadderly.
The three came down to the first floor, having met no resistance. Not a single zombie, vampire, or any other monster, undead or otherwise, had risen against them. Not a single answer had been offered to Cadderly’s open challenge. If he had stopped to think about it, Cadderly would have realized that was a good thing, a sign that perhaps Rufo was not yet aware that they had come into his domain. But the young man was consumed with thoughts of Danica, his lost love, and he wanted something, some ally of Rufo’s, or especially Rufo himself, to block his path. He wanted to strike with all his might against the darkness that had taken his love.
They came into the hallway that led to the foyer. Cadderly promptly started that way, for the main doors and the southern wing beyond them, where the fire had been. There lay the Edificant Library’s main chapel, the place Rufo would have to work the hardest to desecrate. Perhaps the young priest might find sanctuary there, a base from which he and the dwarves could strike in different directions. Perhaps in that area Cadderly would find clues that would lead him to the one who had taken Danica from him.
His steps were bold and swift, but Ivan and Pikel caught him by the arms, and no amount of determination would have propelled the young priest against that strong hold.
“We got to go to the kitchen,” Ivan explained.
“You have no time for silver-edging your axe,” Cadderly replied sharply.
“Forget me axe,” Ivan agreed. “Me and me brother still got to go to the kitchen.”
Cadderly winced, not thrilled with anything that would slow the hunt. He knew he would not change Ivan’s mind, though, so he nodded. “Be quick,” he said to them. “I will meet you in the foyer, or in the faurned-out chapel near it.”
Ivan and Pikel leaned to the side to exchange concerned looks behind Cadderiy’s back. Neither were excited about the prospect of splitting the already small group, but Ivan was determined to go to his forge, and he knew that Cadderly would not be held back.
“Just the foyer,” the dwarf said sternly. “Ye go sticking yer nose about, and ye’re likely to put it somewhere it shouldn’t be!”
Cadderly nodded and pulled free of the dwarves, immediately resuming his swift pace.
“Just the foyer!” Ivan shouted after him, and Cadderly didn’t respond.
“Let’s be quick,” Ivan said to his brother as they both looked at the young priest’s back. “He won’t be stopping in the foyer.”
“Uh-huh,” Pikel agreed, and the two skittered off for the kitchen and the forge.
Cadderly was not afraid in the least. Anger consumed him, and the only other emotion nipping at its edges, fraying the wall of outrage, was grief. He cared not that Ivan and Pikel were separated from him, that he was alone. He hoped Kierkan Rufo and all his dark minions would rise to stand before him, that he might deal with them once and for all, that he might damn their undead corpses to dust, to blow on the wind.
He got to the foyer without incident and didn’t even think of pausing there to wait for his companions. On he pressed, to the burned-out chapel, the room where the fire had apparently started, to search for clues. He tore down the tapestry blocking the way and kicked the charred door open.
The smoke hung heavy in the place, as did the stench of burned flesh, with nowhere to go in the library’s stagnant, dead air. Cadderly knew immediately, just from that smell, that at least one person had perished here. Horribly. Thick soot lined the walls, part of the ceiling had collapsed, and only one of the many beautiful tapestries remained even partially intact on the wall, though
it was so blackened as to be unidentifiable. Cadderly stared at the black cloth long and hard, trying to remember the image that had once been there, trying to remember the library when it had basked in the light of Deneir.
So deep was he in concentration that he did not see the charred corpse rise behind him and steadily approach.
He heard a crackle of dried skin, felt a touch on his shoulder, and leaped into the air, spinning so forcefully that he overbalanced and nearly fell to the floor. His eyes were wide, anger stolen by horror as he looked at the shrunken, blackened remains of a human being, a small figure of cracked skin, charred bone, and white teeth— those teeth were the worst of the terrible image!
Cadderly fumbled his walking stick and wand, finally presenting the wand before him. This creature was not a vampire, he realized, probably not nearly as strong as a vampire. He remembered his ring, its enchantment expired, and understood that the same could happen with the wand. Suddenly Cadderly felt foolish for his tirade in the upper level, for his waste of the wand’s energy in stealing shadows. He tucked the wand under his arm and grabbed his hat instead. His free hand reached alternately for his walking stick and his spindle-disks, not sure of which would be the most effective, not sure if only enchanted weapons would bite into the flesh of this animated monster, whatever it might be.
Finally, Cadderly calmed and presented his hat, and his holy symbol, more forcefully. “I am the agent of Deneir!” he said loudly, with full conviction. “Come to purge the home of my god. You have no place here!”
The blackened thing continued its approach, reaching for Cadderly.
“Be gone!” Cadderly commanded.
The monster didn’t hesitate, didn’t slow in the least. Cadderly lifted his walking stick to strike, and reached back with his other hand, dropping the hat, to grab the wand. He growled at his failure to turn the thing away, wondering if the library was too far from Deneir now for him to invoke the god’s name.
The answer was something altogether different, something Cadderly could not anticipate.
“Cadderly,” the blackened corpse rasped, and though the voice was barely audible, the movement of air a strained thing from lungs that would not draw breath, Cadderly recognized the way his name had been spoken.
Dorigen!
“Cadderly,” the dead wizard said again, and the young priest, too stunned, did not resist as she moved closer and brought her charred hand up to stroke his face.
The stench nearly overwhelmed him, but he stubbornly held his ground. His instincts told him to lash out with the walking stick, but he held firm his resolve, kept his nerve, and lowered the weapon to his side. If Dorigen was still a thinking creature, and apparently she was, then she must not have given in to Rufo, must not have gone over to the other side against Cadderly.
“I knew you would come,” dead Dorigen said. “Now you must battle Kierkan Rufo and destroy him. I fought him here,”
“You destroyed yourself with a fireball,” Cadderly reasoned.
“It was the only way I could allow Danica to escape,” Dorigen replied, and Cadderly did not doubt the claim.
The look that came over the young priest’s face at the mention of Danica told Dorigen much.
“Danica did not escape,” she whispered.
“Lie down, Dorigen,” the young priest replied softly, as tenderly as he could. “You are dead. You have earned your rest.”
The corpse’s face crackled as Dorigen bent her tortured features into a grotesque smile. “Rufo would not permit me such rest,” she explained. “He has held me here, as a present to you, no doubt.”
“Do you know where he is?”
Dorigen shrugged, the movement causing flecks of skin to fall from her withered shoulders.
Cadderly stared long and hard at the gruesome thing Dorigen had become. And yet, despite her appearance, she was not gruesome, he realized, not in her heart. Dorigen had made her choices, and, to Cadderly’s thinking, she had redeemed herself. He could have held her there, questioned her intensely about Kierkan Rufo and perhaps even garnered some valuable information. But that would not have been fair, he realized, not to Dorigen, who had earned her rest.
The young priest bent and retrieved his hat, then lifted his holy symbol and placed it atop the corpse’s forehead. Dorigen neither retreated from it, nor was pained by it. It seemed to Cadderly as if the lighted emblem brought her peace and that, too, confirmed his hopes that she had found salvation. Cadderly lifted his voice in prayer. Dorigen relaxed; she would have closed her eyes, but she had no eyelids. She stared at the young priest, at the man who had shown her mercy, had given her a chance to redeem herself. She stared at the man who would free her from the torments of Kierkan Rufo.
“I love you,” Dorigen said quietly, so as not to interrupt the prayer. “I had hoped to participate in the wedding, your wedding with Danica, as it should have been.”
Cadderly choked up, but forced himself to finish. The light seemed to spread out from his holy symbol limning the corpse, pulling at Dorigen’s spirit.
As it should have been! Cadderly could not help but think. And Dorigen would indeed have been at the wedding, probably standing with Shayleigh behind Danica, while Ivan and Pikel, and King Elbereth of Shilmista stood behind Cadderly.
As it should have been! And Avery Schell and Pertelope should not be dead, should be there with Cadderly to witness his joining.
Cadderly kept his rage sublimated. He did not want that to be the last image poor Dorigen saw of him. “Farewell,” he said softly to the corpse. “Go to your deserved rest.”
Dorigen nodded, ever so slightly, and the blackened form crumpled at Cadderly’s feet.
Cadderly considered it for a moment, was glad that Dorigen was free of Rufo. A moment later, he screamed, as loudly as he had ever screamed, the primal roar torn from his heart by the agony of the realization. “As it should have been!” he yelled. “Damn you, Kierkan Rufo! Damn you, Druzil, and your chaos curse!”
The young priest started for the chapel exit, nearly fell over in his haste. “And damn you, Aballister,” he whispered, cursing his own father, the man who had abandoned him, and who had betrayed everything that was good in life, everything that gave life joy and meaning.
Ivan and Pikel thundered into the chapel, weapons held high. They skidded to a bumbling stop, falling over each other, when they saw that Cadderly was not in danger.
“What in the Nine Hells are ye yelling about?” Ivan demanded.
“Dorigen,” Cadderly explained, looking to the charred corpse.
“Oo,” Pikel moaned.
Cadderly continued to push for the exit, but then he noticed the large, boxlike item strapped to Ivan’s back and paused, his face screwed up with curiosity.
Ivan noticed the look and beamed happily. “Don’t ye worry!” the dwarf assured Cadderly. “We’ll get him this time!”
Despite all the pain, all the despair, the memories of Danica, and the thoughts of what should have been, Cadderly could not prevent a small, incredulous chuckle from escaping his tips.
Pikel hopped over and put his arm across his brother’s shoulders, and together they nodded confidently.
It was impossible, Cadderly realized, but these were the Bouldershoulders, after all. Impossible, but Cadderly could not deny that it just might work.
“Me brother and me been thinking,” Ivan began. “Them vampires don’t much like the sunlight, and there’s places here that never get any, windows or no windows.”
Cadderly followed the reasoning perfectly—it scared him a little to think he could follow Ivan and Pikel’s logic so easily!—and the notion led him to exactly the same conclusion as the dwarves had already reached.
“The wine cellar,” Cadderly and Ivan said together.
“Hee hee hee,” added a hopeful Pikel.
Cadderly led the charge through the kitchen and to the wooden door. It was closed and locked, barred from the inside, and that confirmed the companions’ suspicions.
Ivan started to lift his heavy axe, but Cadderly beat him to it, bringing up his spindle-disks in a short, tight spin, then heaving them with all his strength at the barrier. The solid adamantite smashed through the door’s wood and slammed the metal bar on the other side so forcefully that it bent and dislodged.
The door creaked open, showing the dark descent.
Cadderly did not hesitate. “I am coming for you, Rufo!” he cried, taking his first step down.
“Why don’t ye just warn him!” Ivan grumbled, but Cadderly did not care.
“It does not matter,” he said, and down he went.
The three had barely stepped off the rickety stairs when Rufo’s zombies closed in on them. Dozens of dead priests—men who had held to their faith, Cadderly knew, and had not given in to Rufo’s tempting calling—filtered around the wine racks, bothered not at all by the light shining from the young priest’s wide-brimmed hat.
“Where we going?” Ivan asked, hopping out in front of the others, obviously intent on leading. A zombie reached for him, and his great axe promptly removed the thing’s arm from its torso. That hardly stopped the mindless zombie, but Ivan’s next chop, a downward strike on the collar bone, angled to go across the monster’s chest, surely did.
Pikel immediately dropped his club to the floor and began that curious dance again.
“Where we going?” Ivan asked again, more urgently, the battle rage welling inside him.
Cadderly continued to ponder the question. Where indeed? The wine cellar was large, filled with dozens of tall racks and numerous nooks. Great shadows splayed across the floor, angled away from Cadderly and the lone source of light, making the room even more mysterious and foreboding.
Both Ivan and Pikel were into it by then, hacking and banging, Ivan ducking his head to thrash his antlers into one zombie’s midsection, Pikel occasionally giving a squirt of his waterskin to keep the monstrous horde at bay.
“Close your eyes!” Cadderly cried, and the dwarves did not have to ask why. A moment later, a spark shower cut through the zombie ranks, dropping several of the monsters in their tracks. Cadderly could have wiped them all out, but he realized the dwarves were in control here and that he should use the valuable wand with restraint.
The dwarves could cut through the throng, but where should they go? Cadderly considered the cellar’s layout. Using one of the lesser functions of the wand, he put a minor globe of light between the racks to his right, for he knew that at the end of those racks loomed a deep alcove. The light illuminated the cubby fully, and it was empty.
“To the back!” Cadderly called to his companions. “Straight across the cellar to the back wall.” It was only a guess, for though Cadderly was confident that Rufo would have sought the underground chambers (and the appearance of so many zombies added credence to this), where exactly he might find the vampire in this odd-shaped and uneven chamber was beyond him. He took up the rear as the dwarves plowed through the throng, cutting a wake so that Cadderly wasn’t too engaged in fending off the zombies. The young priest’s eyes darted back and forth, looking side to side as they crossed the racks, hoping to catch a glimpse of Rufo. Cadderly scolded himself for not keeping his light tube intact then, for the light on his hat was dispersed and could not seek the deepest crannies.
He pulled down both the lighted disk and the holy symbol, that he might better direct the illumination. Something fluttered across the shadows at the other end of the long racks, moving too quickly to be a zombie. His attention fixed on that spot, the young priest didn’t notice the monster reaching for his back.
The blow nearly knocked Cadderly from his feet. He stumbled forward several steps and swung about, sensing the pursuit, his walking stick flailing across. It came up short of the mark, though, and the zombie waded in behind. Purely on instinct, Cadderly thrust out his holy symbol and cursed the thing.
The zombie stopped, held fast by the priest’s magical strength. Yellow light limned its form, began to consume the edges of the zombie’s material being.
Cadderly felt a wave of satisfaction in the knowledge that Deneir was with him. He pressed his attack, clenching his hand tight about the emblem of his station. The eye-above-candle flared to greater intensity; the glowing flames licking the zombie leaped and danced.
But the zombie remained, tapping the dark power of its master—its nearby master, Cadderly realized—for battle. Dark lines creased the fiery glow, breaking it apart.
Cadderly growled and stepped closer, invoking the name of Deneir, singing the melodies of the god’s song. Finally, his holy symbol made contact with the zombie, and the thing burst apart, falling into a mess of macabre chunks and puffing dust.
Cadderly fell back, drained. How powerful had Rufo become that the vampire’s lesser minions could resist his holy powers so strenuously? And how far had the library gone from Deneir when Cadderly’s call to the god could barely destroy such a minor creature?
“Get the burned thing off! Get the durned thing off!” Ivan yelled, drawing Cadderly’s attention. The dwarf’s goring horns had done their work too well, it seemed, for Ivan had a zombie stuck atop his head. It lay flat out and flailing away with its arms and legs. Pikel hopped frantically beside his brother, trying to line up a hit that would dislodge the zombie without taking Ivan’s head off.
Ivan chopped the legs from another zombie that waded too near, then took a hit in the face from the one above. The dwarf tried a halfhearted swing high with his axe, but the striking angle was wrong. He went into a spin instead, the momentum forcing the zombie flat out.
Pikel braced himself and took up his heavy club. Around came the zombie’s head, whipping past. Pikel was ready the next time, and he timed his strike perfectly.
The zombie was still impaled—Ivan had to carry it around for a while—but it was no longer fighting.
“Took ye long enough,” was all the thanks Ivan offered his brother. A short burst launched them side by side into the next rank of zombies, which broke apart into bits in the face of dwarven fury.
Cadderly rushed to keep pace. A zombie intercepted, and it pained the young priest greatly to view his newest foe, for the dead young man had, in life, been a friend. A clubbing arm came across, and Cadderly parried. He dodged a second strike, fighting defensively, then consciously reminded himself that this was not his friend, that this animation was merely an unthinking toy of Kierkan Rufo. Still, it was not easy for Cadderly to strike out, and he winced as his walking stick obliterated his former friend’s face.
The young priest pressed on to catch the dwarves. He recalled that he had seen something, something dark and quick, in the shadows.
Out it came from the side, from the wine racks. Pikel squealed and turned to meet the charge, but got bowled over and tumbled away with the monster. They rolled past Ivan, who was quick enough to chop the newest adversary’s leg.
When the axe didn’t bite in, both Ivan and Cadderly knew the nature of this foe.
“Mas illu!” the young priest cried, and the vampire howled as sparks fell over it.
“That one’s yer own!” Ivan cried to his brother, and he rubbed the temporary blindness out of his eyes and went back to his zombie chopping. He paused and dipped his head, grabbing at the dead weight entangled there, and a host of monsters closed in, arms clubbing.
Cadderly started for Pikel, but saw that Ivan, with his encumbering load, was in more trouble. He rushed to join Ivan, smacked away those zombies he could reach, then took hold of the corpse and finally pulled it free of the dwarfs antlers.
Cadderly overbalanced as it fell loose, then found he was sailing backward even faster as a zombie punched him in the chest. He hit the stone floor hard, felt the breath blasted from his lungs, and his precious wand flew free of his grasp. By the time he regained his sensibilities, a zombie had its strong hands clasped firmly about his throat.
The vampire was agile, but none could roll better than a round-shouldered dwarf. Pikel enjoyed the ride, throwing his weight into every turn with enthusiastic abandon. Finally the living ball slammed a wine rack, and the old structure buckled, showering Pikel and the vampire with splintered wood and shards of breaking bottles.
Pikel took the worst of that, the breaking rack doing no more damage to the vampire that Ivan’s axe had done. Pikel, cut in a dozen places, one eye closed by a sliver, found himself in tight quarters suddenly, the vampire against him, holding him tight in its impossibly strong arms, its sharp fangs digging at his throat.
“Oooo!” the dwarf growled, and he tried to pull free, tried to wriggle one arm out, that he might hit his adversary.
It was no use; the vampire was too strong.
Cadderly thought to invoke Deneir’s name, thought to present his holy symbol, thought to grab his walking stick and slam the zombie on the side of the head. He thought all of it and more at once, his mind whirling as the monster, its bloated face devoid of emotion, held the needed breath from his lungs.
Suddenly that bloated face rushed at Cadderly, slammed him hard, drawing blood from his lips. At first he thought the zombie had launched a new attack, then,
as the thing steadily lifted from him, its grasp on his neck relaxed, the young priest understood.
“Burned things keep getting stuck,” Ivan grumbled, hoisting his axe higher and bringing the impaled zombie with it. He brought the blade close and tried to pry the zombie loose.
“Behind you!” Cadderly called.
Too late. Another of the monsters pounded Ivan hard on the shoulder.
Ivan looked at Cadderly and shook his head. “Will ye wait a minute?” he screamed into the zombie’s face, and the monster promptly punched him again, raising a welt on his cheek.
Ivan’s heavy boot stomped on the zombie’s foot. The dwarf launched himself forward with all his weight, the sudden movement dislodging the last zombie from his axe. The two foes staggered backward, but the zombie somehow held its footing.
Ivan’s hand whipped around, bringing the handle of the axe behind the zombie’s shoulder, then back in front of its face. The dwarfs other hand went in a similar movement, grabbing the other end of the handle, just below the axe’s huge head. With his hands behind the zombie’s back and the handle crossing in front of it, tight across its shoulders and throat, Ivan had the thing off balance. It continued to club at the dwarfs back, but it was in too tight to be effective.
“I telled ye to wait,” Ivan explained casually, and the muscles on his powerful arms corded and bulged as he pressed backward and down, folding the monster in half the wrong way.
Cadderly didn’t see the powerful move. He was up and moving again. He searched for his wand, but saw no sign of it in the tangle and the darkness. He starred for Pikel, but ran into a wall of zombies. Taking a circular route that moved him deeper into the cellar, Cadderly’s attention was grabbed by something off to the side: three coffins, two open and one closed.
The young priest saw something else there, a blackness, a manifestation of evil. Huddled, shadowy images danced atop that closed coffin. Cadderly recognized the aura sight for what it was. As he had come to decipher the song of Deneir, the general weal of people he encountered was often revealed to him by shadowy images emanating from them. Normally Cadderly had to concentrate to see such things, had to call upon his god, but here the source of evil was too great for the shadows to be concealed.
Cadderly knew Pikel needed him, but he knew, too, that he had found Kierkan Rufo.
Pikel didn’t like the feeling at all. The dwarf was a creature of natural order, who prized nature above all, and this foul, perverted thing was violating him, sinking its filthy fangs into the personal temple that was nature’s gift to the dwarf.
He screamed and thrashed, to no avail. He felt his blood being drawn out, but could do nothing to stop it.
Pikel tried another tactic. Instead of pressing out with his arms, he tightened them to his sides, hoping the vampire would loosen its grip.
The monster’s eyes widened in shock, and it began to tremble violently. Pikel understood when he felt the water, the “doo-dad” water being forced from his water-skin, soaking the front of his baldric and breeches.
The vampire broke the hold and leaped back, crashing into the part of the wine rack that had not collapsed, sending bottles flying. Smoke wafted from its chest, and Pikel saw that his squirting waterskin had drilled a neat hole there, right into the vampire’s heart.
On came the raging dwarf, pounding with his club, crushing the perversion into the floor. He turned, sensing that zombies were converging from behind, but the undead wall parted as Ivan burrowed through to his brother’s side once more.
Cadderly’s remaining light source dimmed as he approached the coffins, his eyes set firmly on the dancing shadows, on the box that held Kierkan Rufo. He felt a warmth in his pocket then, which confused him for just a moment.
Cadderly stopped suddenly and lashed out to the side with his walking stick, smashing several bottles. A shriek and a flap of wings told him he had guessed right.
“I see you, Druzil,” the young priest muttered. “Never will I lose sight of you!”
The imp became visible, crouched on the lip of one of the opened boxes.
“You desecrated the library!” Cadderly accused.
Druzil hissed at him. “There is no place here for you, foolish priest. Your god has left!”
In answer, Cadderly thrust forth his holy symbol and, for a moment, the light flared, stinging Druzil’s sensitive eyes. These two had battled before, on several occasions, and each time Cadderly had proven stronger.
So it would be again, the young priest determined, but this time, Druzil, that most malicious imp, would not escape his wrath. Cadderly pulled forth the amulet, the link between him and the imp, and sent a telepathic wave at Druzil, calling loudly the name of Deneir. The image manifested itself in both combatants’ thoughts as a sparking ball of light, floating toward Druzil from Cadderly.
Druzil retorted with the discordant names of every denizen of the lower planes he could think of, forming a ball of blackness that floated out to engulf the light of Cadderly’s god.
The two wills battled halfway between the combatants. First Druzil’s blackness dominated, but sparks of light gradually began to flash through.
Suddenly the black cloud shattered and the sparking ball rolled over the imp.
Druzil shrieked in agony; his mind was nearly torn asunder, and he fled, half-crazed, looking for a corner, a place of shadows, a place far from the terrible, bared power of Cadderly.
Cadderly thought to pursue, to be rid of troublesome Druzil once and for all, but then the lid of the coffin flew away and a deeper darkness wafted out. Kierkan Rufo sat up and stared at Cadderly.
This was the way it had to be, they both knew.
Behind Cadderly, Ivan and Pikel continued to rain carnage on the unthinking minions, but neither the young priest nor Rufo noticed. Cadderly’s focus was straight ahead, straight on the monster who had destroyed the library, who had taken Danica from him.
“You killed her,” Cadderly said evenly, fighting hard to keep the tremor out of his voice.
“She killed herself,” Rufo countered, needing no explanation as to whom Cadderly was speaking of.
“You killed her!”
“No!” Rufo countered. “You killed her! You, Cadderly, fool priest, and your ideas of love!”
Cadderly fell back on his heels, trying to sort through Rufo’s cryptic words. Danica had died of her own accord? She had given up her life to escape Rufo, because she could not love Rufo, and could not accept his offers?
A tear gathered in Cadderly’s gray eye. Bittersweet, it was, a mixture of pain at the loss and pride in Danica’s strength.
Rufo came easily out of the coffin. He seemed to glide toward Cadderly, making not a sound.
But the room was far from quiet. Even Ivan was disgusted at the crunching sounds the zombies made when he hacked them, or when Pikel swatted them across the room. Fewer and fewer targets presented themselves.
Cadderly didn’t hear it; Rufo didn’t hear it. Cadderly presented his holy symbol, and the vampire promptly clamped his hand atop it. Their struggle found its apex in that small emblem, Rufo’s darkness against Cadderly’s light, the focus of the young priest’s faith, the focus of the perversion’s outrage. Acrid smoke sifted out between Rufo’s bony fingers, but whether it was the vampire’s flesh or Cadderly’s symbol that was melting, neither could tell.
They held fast for seconds that became minutes, both trembling, neither having the strength to lift his other arm. It would end here, Cadderly believed, with these two conduits, himself for Deneir and Rufo for the chaos curse.
As the moments continued to slip by, as Cadderly forced himself to higher levels of power, remembering Danica and all that had been stolen from him, and as Rufo matched him every time, Cadderly began to understand the truth.
This was Rufo’s place. For all his rage and all his power, the young priest could not hold out against the vampire, not here.
Cadderly grimaced, refusing to accept what he knew was reality. He pressed on, and Rufo matched him. His head ached to the point where he thought it would explode, but he would not let go of the song of Deneir.
Despair, black discord, found its way into the notes of that melody. Chaos. Cadderly saw red fumes in the crystalline, flowing river. The notes began to break apart.
Ivan hit Rufo hard from the side, with both his axe and his thrashing helmet. Neither weapon truly injured the vampire, but the distraction cost Rufo his moment of conquest, gave Cadderly the opportunity to break the clinch he could not win.
With a feral snarl, Rufo slapped the dwarf away, sent Ivan spinning head over heels into the nearest rack, to crash amid broken glass and splintered wood.
Cadderly’s walking stick flashed across, tearing the vampire’s upper arm.
Pikel came in next, pressing hard on his waterskin, forcing the last drops to spray forth.
Rufo cared nothing for the puny attack, and Pikel learned the hard way, to his dismay, that his enchantment had expired on the club. He hit the vampire full force, but Rufo didn’t flinch.
“Ooooooo,” Pikel wailed, following his brother’s aerial course into the jumble.
Ivan’s eyes were wide as he held one unbroken bottle, staring at it nervously.
Cadderly hit the vampire again, solidly in the chest, and Rufo grimaced in pain.
“I have you,” the vampire promised, not backing down, and Cadderly could not disagree. The young priest went into a fury then, slapping wildly with his enchanted weapon.
Rufo matched him, and the vampire’s strong fists soon gained him the advantage. In this desecrated place, in this chamber of darkness, Rufo was simply too strong.
Cadderly somehow managed to break the battle and retreat a step, but confident Rufo waded in right behind.
“Cadderly!” Ivan yelled, and both Cadderly and Rufo glanced to the side to see a curious missile heading for the vampire.
Rufo instinctively threw his arm up to block, but seemed unconcerned. Cadderly, recognizing the missile for what it was, timed his strike perfectly, hitting the flask at the same instant it bounced against Rufo’s arm.
The Oil of Impact exploded with tremendous force, hurling Rufo against the far wall, throwing Cadderly backward to the floor.
The young priest sat up at once and considered the splintered handle of his ruined walking stick. Then he considered Kierkan Rufo.
The vampire leaned heavily against the back wall, his arm hanging loose by a single strip of skin, his eyes wide with shock and pain.
Cadderly came up with a growl, turned the remaining piece of his weapon in his hand to hold it like a stake.
“I will find you!” Rufo promised. “I will heal and I will find you!” A ghostly green light limned the vampire’s form.
Cadderly cried out and charged, but slammed hard into the wall as Rufo dissolved into a cloud of vapors.
“No, ye don’t!” Ivan bellowed, rising from the pile and pulling the boxlike item from his back.
“Oo oi!” Pikel agreed, rushing beside his brother, taking one of the offered handles. They skidded into the green vapor and pulled fiercely on the handles of the bellows they had stripped from their forge.
In his gaseous state, Rufo could not resist that suction, and the mist disappeared into the bellows.
“Ooooooo!” Pikel squealed and popped his fat thumb over the opening.
“Get him outside!” frantic Ivan roared, and the dwarves ran off for the stairs, yelling “Ooooooo!” in unison.
Cadderly charged hard to keep up, holding his light ahead to show them the way. He spotted his lost wand, but had not the time to go for it.
“He’s coming back!” Ivan yelled, and the bellows bulged weirdly as Rufo’s corporeal form began to take shape once more, as the vapors began to solidify. “Ooooooo!” Pikel wailed, careening down the halls, the foyer in sight.
Cadderly skidded in first, throwing all his weight against the barricade that had been put in place to block the opening. He didn’t move the material much, but he lessened its integrity, and when Ivan and Pikel hit, everything, Cadderly included, flew away. The young priest shook his head, both at the amazing power of rambling dwarves and to take the dizziness away, then he took up his wand, and followed closely. Out into the sunlight scrambled the dwarves. Pikel’s
finger was no longer over the pointy opening of the bellows, but it didn’t matter, for Rufo was no longer gaseous, leather bulged and tore as a clawing hand ripped through the side of the bellows.
The dwarves ran on, dragging their load, getting Rufo as far from the gloomy library, his source of power, as possible. They cut under the shadows of the trees, out into an open, sunny field,
Rufo tore free and dug a firm hold on the turf. Both dwarves pitched headlong to the ground and came up sitting, each holding a broken handle.
With some effort, the vampire stood straight, cursing the sun, shielding his eyes from the blazing light. Cadderly stood before Kierkan Rufo, holy symbol presented with all his heart. The young priest, out from under the desecrated structure, felt his god strongly again. Rufo, too, felt Deneir keenly, Cadderly’s words echoing painfully in his mind.
Rufo started for the library, but Cadderly danced around to intercept, his blazing holy symbol blocking the way.
“You cannot escape,” the young priest said firmly. “You have made your choice, and you have chosen wrong!”
“What do you know?” the vampire scoffed. Rufo stood tall, defying the sun, defying Cadderly and his god. He felt the tumultuous swirl of the chaos curse within him, of Tuanta Quiro Miancay, that Most Fatal Horror. It was a concoction of the Abyss, of the very lowest planes.
Even in the sunlight, even battered as he had been in the fight, his arm hanging grotesquely at his side, Rufo stood strong. Cadderly could see that, could feel it.
“I deny you,” the personification of Tuanta Quiro Miancay said evenly. The words filtered through Cadderly’s thoughts, throwing up barriers, damming the river of his god’s song. Rufo had spoken to Deneir, Cadderly realized, not to him. Rufo had made the claim that his choice had not been wrong, that his power was real and tangible—and he had made that claim against Deneir, against a god!
“They hold us back, Cadderly,” the vampire went on, his calm tones showing strength and defiance. “They keep their secrets to themselves, cover them with pretty flowers and sunshine, petty dressings to keep us satisfied and behind which they might hide the truth.”
Looking at the vampire now, standing tall and straighter than Kierkan Rufo had ever stood in life, Cadderly almost believed that Rufo had found truth. It seemed, too, as if a protective shell had formed about Rufo, a dark lining to battle the burning sunlight. How strong this one had become! The vampire continued, and Cadderly closed his eyes, the arm holding his holy symbol inevitably dropping low. The young priest didn’t distinguish any of the words, just felt the hum, the alluring vibrations, deep in his soul.
“Well?” came a blunt and gruff question. Cadderly opened his eyes to see Ivan and Pikel, sitting side by side in the grass, still holding the broken handles and considering the face-off.
Well, indeed, the young priest thought. He looked squarely into his adversary’s dark eyes.
“I deny Deneir,” Rufo said calmly.
“You choose wrongly,” Cadderly replied.
Rufo starting to hiss a response, but Cadderly froze the words in the vampire’s throat, lifting again the symbol, the opened eye above a lighted candle. The sunlight brought new sparkles to the emblem, heightened its glory and strength.
In the face of that revealing glare, Rufo’s dark shell melted away, and suddenly the vampire seemed not so powerful, rather a pitiful thing, a fallen man, a man who had chosen the wrong course and had spiraled down to the depths of despair.
Rufo hissed and clawed at the air. He reached for the holy symbol, meaning to engulf it as he had done inside, but this time the flesh on his skinny hand erupted into flames and curled away, leaving only whitened bone. Rufo howled in agony. He turned for the library, but Cadderly paced him, keeping that flaring symbol right in his face. And Cadderly began to sing the melodies of his god, a tune Kierkan Rufo could not withstand. Inside the library Rufo had gained the advantage, but out here, in the daylight, Deneir’s song played strong in Cadderly, and the young priest opened himself up as a pure conduit for the truth of his god.
Rufo could not withstand the light of that truth.
“Oo,” Pikel and Ivan muttered together, as Rufo fell back to the earth. Cadderly pressed low, singing with all his heart. Rufo rolled over and clawed at the ground to get away, like a desperate animal, but Cadderly was there in front of him, corralling him, forcing him to see the truth.
Horrible, wailing sounds escaped the vampire’s throat. Somehow, Rufo managed to struggle back to his feet, to stare at the shining holy symbol in one last desperate act of defiance.
His eyes whitened, then fell back into his skull, and through the black openings wafted the red mist of the chaos curse. Rufo opened his mouth to scream, and from there, too, came the red mist, forced from his body into the open air, where it would diminish and cause no more pain.
When Rufo collapsed to the ground, he was no more than a hollow, smoking husk, an empty coil, and a lost soul.
Cadderly, too, nearly collapsed, from the effort and from the weight of the grim reality that now descended on him. He looked over his shoulder at the squat library. He considered all the losses he had witnessed, the losses to the order, the loss of his friends, of Dorigen. The loss of Danica.
Ivan and Pikel were beside him immediately, knowing he would need their support.
“She did right in choosing death,” Ivan remarked, understanding that the tears rimming Cadderly’s gray eyes were for Danica most of all. “Better that than fallin’ in with this one,” the square-shouldered dwarf added, motioning to the empty husk.
“... in choosing death,” Cadderly echoed, those words striking a strange chord within him. She had killed herself, Rufo had said. Danica had willingly chosen death.
But why hadn’t Rufo animated her? Cadderly wondered. As the vampire had animated so many of the others? And why, when he had gone into the netherworld, had Cadderly not been able to find Danica’s spirit, or any trace of its passing?
“Oh, my dear Deneir,” the young priest whispered, and, without a word of explanation, Cadderly ran off toward the northwestern corner of the library.
The dwarves looked to each other and shrugged, then chased off after him.
Cadderly scrambled wildly, crashed through roots and bushes, clawing his way around to the back of the building. The dwarves, better at trailblazing than the taller man, nearly caught up to him, but when Cadderly got into the open field between the library and the mausoleum, he left the brothers in his dust.
He hit the mausoleum door at full speed, never considering that Shayleigh and Belago might have found a way to lock or brace it. In it swung, and in spilled Cadderly, skidding hard to the floor, scraping his elbows.
He hardly cared about the minor wounds, for when he looked to the left, to the stone slab where the two had placed Danica, he saw the “corpse” under the shroud rising to a sitting position. He saw also that Shayleigh, with a terrified Belago beside her, was perched on the bottom of the slab, her short sword poised to plunge into Danica’s heart.
“No!” Cadderly cried. “No!”
Shayleigh glanced at him, and she wondered in that instant if Cadderly, too, had been taken by the darkness, if he had come to save his lover in undeath.
“She’s alive!” the young priest cried, clawing to propel himself toward the slab. Ivan and Pikel rambled in then, wide-eyed and still not understanding.
“She’s alive!” Cadderly repeated, and Shayleigh relaxed a bit as he arrived at the slab and pulled the shroud from fair Danica and wrapped his love in the tightest embrace they had ever shared.
Danica, back with the living again, returned it tenfold, and the day was brighter indeed!
“What of Rufo?” the elf asked the dwarves.
“Hee hee hee,” Pikel replied, and both he and Ivan ran their fingers across their throats.
The four left Cadderly and Danica then, waited outside in the light that seemed brighter and warmer and more alive than any spring previous. Cadderly and Danica came out a few minutes later, the young priest supporting the injured woman. Already Cadderly had called for spells of healing to help the monk, particularly her ruined ankle, but the wound was sore and infected, and even with Cadderly’s aid, it would take some time before it could support Danica’s weight.
“I don’t get it,” Ivan stated, for all of them.
“Physical suspension,” Cadderly answered for Danica. “A state of death that is not death. It is the highest mark in the teachings of Grandmaster Penpahg D’Ahn.”
“You can kill yerself and come back?” Ivan balked.
Danica shook her head, smiling like she thought she would never smile again. “In suspension, one does not die,” she explained. “I slowed my heart and my breathing, slowed the flow of blood through my veins, to where all who regarded my body thought I was dead.”
“Thus you escaped the hunger of Kierkan Rufo,” Shayleigh reasoned.
“And escaped my attention as well,” Cadderly added. “That is why I could not find her when I entered the spirit realm.” He looked at Danica and gave a wistful smile. “I was looking in the wrong place.”
“I nearly killed you,” Shayleigh said, stunned by the proclamation, her hand going to the hilt of her belted sword.
“Bah!” Ivan snorted. “It wouldn’t be the first time!”
They all laughed then, these friends who had survived, forgetting for a moment the loss of the library, the loss of Dorigen, and the loss of their own innocence. And loudest among them was Pikel’s “Hee hee hee.”
Cadderly led them back into the library the next day, seeking any lesser vampires left in dark holes, and putting to rest any zombies they encountered. When,they came outside late that afternoon, the friends were certain the first two floors were clean of enemies. The next morning, Cadderly started his friends to work removing the most precious artifacts of the library, the irreplaceable artwork and ancient manuscripts. Danica was thrilled to find that all of Penpahg D’Ahn’s notes had survived.
Even more thrilled was the monk, and all the others, when they found a single sanctuary within the darkness, a single spot of light that had somehow held out against the encroachment of Kierkan Rufo. Brother Chaunticleer had used his melodies as a ward against the evil, and his room had not been desecrated. Half-starved, his hair whitened from the terror he had endured, he fell into Cadderly’s arms with sobs of joy and knelt upon the ground in prayer for more than an hour when the friends escorted him out.
Later that same day, a host of four score soldiers arrived from Carradoon, having received word of the attack on the merchant caravan. Cadderly quickly put this group to work (except for a band of emissaries he sent back to the town with news of what had occurred and warnings to beware any strange happenings), and soon the library was emptied of its valuables.
Their encampment was on the lawn to the east of the library, at the back end of the field, closer to the wild trails than the gaping doors. This was too close. Cadderly informed them, so they broke down their tents, gathered up supplies, and moved down onto the trails.
“What is this all about?” Danica asked the young-priest as the soldiers set up the new camp. A week had passed since the fall of Kierkan Rufo. A week in which the young priest had gathered his strength, had listened to the words of Deneir.
“The building is spoiled!’ Cadderly replied. “Never again will Deneir or Oghma enter it.”
“You mean to abandon it?” Danica asked.
“I mean to destroy it,” Cadderly replied grimly.
Danica started to ask what Cadderly was talking about, but he walked past her, back toward the field, before she could figure out where to begin. The monk paused a while before following. She remembered the scene outside Castle Trinity, Aballister’s bastion of wickedness, after the wizard’s fall. Cadderty had meant to destroy that dark fortress as well, but had changed his mind, or had learned that he had not the strength for such a task. What, then, was he thinking now?
Gathering black clouds atop the cliff to the north of the Edificant Library alerted all in the camp that something dramatic was going on. The soldiers wanted to secure their tents, pack their supplies tightly, fearing the storm, but Ivan, Pikel, Shayleigh, and Belago understood that this fury was well guided, and Brother Chaunticleer understood it perhaps best of all.
The group found Danica standing several feet behind Cadderly on the lawn before the squat stone structure. Silently, not wanting to disturb these obviously important happenings, they gathered about her. None but Chaunticleer dared approach the young priest. He regarded Cadderly and offered a knowing, confident smile to the others. And, though he was not a part of what was happening with Cadderly, he began to sing.
Cadderly stood tall, arms upraised to the heavens. He, too, was singing, at the top of his lungs, but his voice could hardly be heard above the roar of the wind and thunder from the black clouds, now swarming over the top of the cliff, edging their way toward the desecrated building.
A searing blast of lightning hit the library’s roof. A second followed, then the wind tore in, launching shingles, then joists, to the south, across the mountainside.
More lightning started several small fires. The clouds came low, seemed to hover and gather strength, then a tremendous gust of wind lifted the edge of the roof and ripped it away.
Cadderly cried out with all his strength. He was a direct conduit for the power of Deneir. Through the young priest the god sent his fury, more lightning, more wind. Hie roof was gone.
A solitary figure—it seemed as if one of the gargoyles lining the gutters had come to life—perched on the edge of that roof, shouting curses at Cadderly, invoking its own gods, denizens of the evil lower planes.
But here Cadderly was the stronger, Deneir the strongest by far.
A searing bolt of lightning hit the roof right beside Druzil, igniting a tremendous fire and throwing the imp far away.
“Bene tellemara,” Druzil rasped, clawing his way toward the flames, realizing then that his time on this plane was at its end. He would leave now or be destroyed. He made it to the flames, blasts striking all about him, and uttered an incantation. Then he threw a bag of powder, which he had concocted in the library’s deserted alchemy shop, into the fire.
The flames lifted and danced, blue then white-hot, and Druzil, after shouting one more curse Cadderly’s way, stepped in and was gone.
The storm’s fury intensified, bolt after bolt slamming the stone walls, diminishing their integrity. A darkness, funnel-shaped, reached down from the clouds. The finger of a god, it seemed, reaching down for the desecrated building.
Cadderly cried out, as if in pain, but Danica and the others resisted the urge to run to him, feared the consequences of disturbing what he had begun.
The storm crashed down in full, and the earth itself rolled to life, great waves of ground heaving at the library’s foundation. The northern wall buckled first, fell inward, and, with it gone, both the front and back collapsed. Still the lightning blasted away; still the tornado grabbed at pieces of rubble and lifted them into the air, heaving them, like so much waste, far across the mountainside.
It went on unabated for many minutes, and the soldiers feared the very mountains would fall. Cadderly’s friends knew better, though. They saw in their comrade a resolve and a glory beyond anything they had ever witnessed; they knew Cadderly was with Deneir fully, and that Cadderly’s god would not harm him or them.
Then it was over, suddenly. The clouds broke apart so that shafts of sunlight shone down. One fell over Cadderly, outlining his form in silvery hues so that he seemed much more than a man, much more than a priest.
Danica approached him cautiously, Shayleigh and the dwarves right behind her. “Cadderry?” she whispered.
If he heard her, he did not show it.
“Cadderly?” she asked more loudly. She gave him a shake. Still there was no response. Danica thought she understood. She could appreciate the emotions that must be running through her lover, for he had just destroyed the only home he had ever known.
“Go,” Pikel and Ivan, and even Shayleigh, muttered in unison.
But their sympathy was misplaced, for Cadderly felt no remorse. He remained with his god and was seeing now a new vision, the vision that had haunted his dreams
for many years. Without a word of explanation, he moved toward the scarred, rubble-strewn area, his friends in tow. Danica continued to call to him, to shake him, but he could not hear.
The vision was all-encompassing. The young priest remembered the extradimensionai mansion that Aballister had created in Castle Trinity, remembered how he had marveled at how similar were the properties of magically created material.
A specific spot on the ground, a place flat and smooth and devoid of rubble, beckoned to him. That single spot on the ground became the only clear thing Cadderly could see outside of his mind’s eye. He went to it, feeling the power of Deneir keenly, knowing what he must do. He began to sing again, and the notes were much different than those he had used to bring down the Edificant Library. These were sweet and cumulative, a building song with a crescendo that seemed very far away. He sang for minutes that became a half hour, then an hour. The soldiers thought him insane, and Brother Chaunticleer merely shook his head, having no insight as to what his fellow Deneirian might be doing. Danica didn’t know how to react, didn’t know whether to try to stop Cadderly or just to stand back. In the end, she decided to trust her love, and she waited as the hour became two.
Long shadows filtered from the west, and Cadderly continued. Even Ivan and Pikel began to wonder if the storm and the earthquake had broken the man, had reduced him to a babbling idiot.
Danica held her faith, though. She would wait for Cadderly to finish—whatever he was doing—through all the next day if need be, even beyond that. She, all of them, owed the young priest at least that.
As it turned out, Danica did not have to wait through the night. With the western horizon pink with the last moments of the setting sun, Cadderly’s voice lifted suddenly.
Brother Chaunticleer and many of the others ran near him, thinking that something grand was in store.
They were not disappointed. There came a sharp hissing sound, a crackle as if the sky itself were being torn asunder.
Then it appeared, on the ground before Cadderly, rising like a tree growing out of control. It was a tower, a decorated pillar of stone, an aerial buttress. It continued to grow, its tip rising into the air before Cadderly and the astonished onlookers.
Cadderly stopped his singing and fell back, exhausted, to be caught by his friends. The crowd murmured dozens of questions, most prominent among them, “What have you done?”
Danica asked that very question of Cadderly when she looked closely at his face, at the flecks of silver suddenly showing in his tousled brown hair, at the crow’s-feet, the wrinkles that had not been there before, running out about his eyes.
She looked back to the buttress, a tiny portion of the cathedral of which Cadderly had oft spoken, and then back to her love, who had obviously aged with the effort. Danica grew worried, and still more with the serene look that had come over the tired and suddenly not-so-young priest.
Shayleigh had gone to Shilmista, and had come back in high summer to view the progress on Cadderly’s new cathedral. She had expected a virtual army would be hard at work on the place, and was amazed at how few people were actually about, just Cadderly and Danica, Vicero Belago and Brother Chaunticleer, the Bouldershoulders, and a handful of sturdy men from Carradoon.
Progress had been made, though, and Shayleigh realized she should have expected no less. This was a construction of magic, not of physical toil, and it seemed as if Cadderly needed little help. Many areas were clear now of rubble, a tribute to the dwarves and the men from Carradoon, and three of the aerial buttresses were set in a line along the northern edge of what would be the new library. Twenty feet from them, to the south, Cadderly had begun construction on the wall, a delicate-looking structure.
Shayleigh gasped when she saw what the priest was now working on, a huge, arching window of multicolored glass and black iron that would fit into the wall in clear sight of the spaced buttresses. Cadderly paid attention to every detail as he worked over the rough design, flaring the lips of iron symmetrically, forming patterns with varying colors of the pieces of glass.
The elf was a creature of the forests, of the myriad beauties that nature offered and that men could not replicate, but Shayleigh found her heart lifted now, felt her spirit soaring as her imagination pictured this finished cathedral. There were too many fine details, too many intricate designs, for her to even appreciate them. It was like a wide-spreading elm, she thought, and Cadderly was painstakingly placing every individual leaf and twig.
Shayleigh found Danica along the eastern edge of the library’s grounds, intently looking over a pile of parchments. Brother Chaunticleer was close by, singing to his god, calling up spells of preservation and protection as he watched over the piles of artwork and priceless manuscripts that had been brought out of the old library. Belago was close by him, inspecting the piles and singing, too. Apparently the wiry alchemist had at last found his way to a specific religion. And who could blame him? Shayleigh thought, and she smiled as she considered the man. Given the wondrous sights Belago had witnessed, most marvelous among them the construction continuing every day right in front of him, how could he not find his way to Deneir?
Danica’s face brightened when she saw that her friend had returned. They exchanged warm greetings and hugs, and perceptive Shayleigh knew at once that Danica’s smile hid much that was not so bright.
“He does that all day,” the monk offered, pointedly looking to Brother Chaunticleer, though Shayleigh understood she was referring to Cadderly.
Shayleigh, trying to subtly change the subject, looked to the parchments on the ground before Danica.
“Lists,” she explained. “Lists of men and women who will accompany me to Nightglow and the dragon’s treasure. I have already sent emissaries to Shilmisla.”
“I passed them on the trails,” Shayleigh remarked. “They probably have met with King Elbereth already, though I suspect they will tell my king nothing he does not already know.”
“They will invite Shilmista to join the expedition,” Danica said.
“That was expected,” Shayleigh replied with a calm smile. “We understand and appreciate the friendship you and Cadderly have begun.”
Danica nodded and, despite her resolve, could not help but look at her lover at the mention of his name. Cadderly was still full of energy—brimming with energy —as he worked on his vision, but he no longer appeared as a man in his early twenties. Despite the toil, his body had thickened somewhat; his muscles were broader and still strong, but not quite as sharp and hardened as they had once been.
“The construction takes a toll,” Shayleigh remarked.
“The creation,” Danica corrected. She sighed deeply, commanding the elf’s full attention. “It was a choice,” Dantca began, “a choice between Deneir, this course, this purpose that Cadderly has found in his life, and ...”
“And Danica,” Shayleigh interjected softly, placing a sympathetic hand on the sitting monk’s shoulder.
“And Danica,” the monk admitted. “A choice between Deneir’s calling and the life that Cadderly, as a man, truly desired.”
Shayleigh looked hard at the monk and knew that Danica truly believed her words. The generous young woman understood that Cadderly had chosen a higher love, a love that no mortal could ever match. There was no jealousy in Danica’s tone, but there was indeed a sadness, a profound pain.
The two sat in silence, watching Cadderly and the dwarves. Ivan and Pikel had marked off another area, and were apparently discussing the next logical step to support the structure’s already-standing towers.
“He will complete the cathedral,” Danica said.
“A new Edificant Library.”
“No,” the monk replied, shaking her head and lifting her almond-shaped eyes to regard Shayleigh. “Cadderly never liked that name, never thought it fitting for a house of the god of literature and art and the god of knowledge. The Spirit Soaring will be the name he gives this cathedral.”
“How long?” Shayleigh asked.
“Cadderly and the dwarves have drawn up the plans,” Danica answered, her voice trailing to a whisper. “Five years.”
“Five years,” Shayleigh echoed quietly, and yet, Danica had pointedly mentioned that Cadderly would live to see the completion. Only five years! “The creation takes from him,” Shayleigh remarked. “It is as if he gives his own being for the cathedral’s materials.”
Exactly, Danica thought, but she had not the strength to answer. Cadderly had discussed it all with her, had told her this was his purpose in life. This cathedral, the Spirit Soaring, would stand for millennia, a tribute to the god he served. He had told her what the price would be, and together they had cried for the life they would not share. Soon after, Danica had bitten hard on her bottom lip and bravely added to Cadderly’s point, telling him that the Spirit Soaring would be a tribute, too, to Cadderly, to the priest who had sacrificed so much.
Cadderly would hear nothing of it. The cathedral was for only the gods, and the fact that he was allowed to construct it was a gift, not a sacrifice.
“He hopes to live long enough to offer one service in the new cathedral,” Danica whispered.
Shayleigh rubbed her hand over Danica’s shoulder, then, stricken mute, she walked away, to speak with Brother Chaunticleer and Vicero Belago. She could hardly believe the young priest’s sacrifice. Humans lived a short enough time, but for one to give back perhaps three-fourths of that span was inconceivable to the long-living elf.
Danica watched Shayleigh for just a few steps, then her eyes inevitably turned back to Cadderly, back to the man she loved, and loved all the more for his determination in following the course his god had shown him. And yet, she found she hated Cadderly, too, hated that she had ever met the man and had given him her heart. When he was gone, and she was still young, how could she love another?
No, she decided, shaking her head against the pervasive pain. Better to have met and known Cadderly. Better to have loved him. That thought sent Danica’s hand gently rubbing over her abdomen. She was hoping to conceive, hoping to give Cadderly another legacy, a living, breathing legacy.
Danica’s smile, as she continued to watch the man, was bittersweet. She wondered if her eyes would ever again be free of tears.
Bob Salvatore was born in Massachusetts in 1959. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in communications from Fitchburg State College in 1981, then returned for the degree he always wanted, the Bachelor of Arts in English. He began writing seriously in 1982, penning the manuscript that later became Echoes of the Fourth Magic (by Roc Brooks). His first published novel was The Crystal Shard from TSR, Inc. in 1988. Bob has since published more than a dozen novels, including the New York Times best-selling The Halfling’s Gem, Sojourn, Starless Night, and The Legacy. He wrote the Icewind Dale Trilogy, the Dark Elf Trilogy, and the Cleric Quintet for TSR, Inc.
Bob held many jobs during his first years as a writer, finally settling to write full time in 1990. He makes his home in Massachusetts with his wife, Diane, and their three children.