The Chaos Curse

by R. A. Salvatore

  “But why are you talking of the mountains?” Shayleigh asked Cadderly. “Except for Vander, we’ll not have to go into the mountains until we pass Carradoon, and that will entail no less than a tenday of walking.”

  “We’re going in sooner,” Danica answered for Cadderly, clearly thinking she had the man’s mind read. She was half right.

  “Not all of us,” Cadderly stated. “There would be no need.”

  “The dragon’s treasure!” Ivan roared, referring to the cave they’d left behind, where old Fyrentennimar had lived. The friends had dispatched the old red in the mountains, leaving his treasure unguarded. “Ye’re thinking of the dragon’s treasure!” The dwarf slapped his round-shouldered brother on the back.

  “An unguarded hoard,” Shayleigh agreed. “But it would take all seven of us, and many more than that, to bring that great treasure out.”

  “We don’t even know if the treasure can be found,” Cadderly reminded them. “The storm that Aballister threw at Nightglow Mountain likely sealed many of its caves.”

  “So you wish to go back to see if the treasure might be recovered,” Danica reasoned.

  “Recovered when the weather is more agreeable,” said Cadderly. “And so we need not all make the journey to the mountain.”

  “What do you propose?” Danica asked, and she already knew the lines that Cadderly would draw.

  “I will return to the mountain,” the young priest answered, “along with Ivan and Pikel, if they’re agreeable. I had hoped you would come along as well,” he said to Vander.

  “Part of the way,” the red-bearded giant promised. “But I am anxious …”

  Cadderly cut him short with an upraised hand. He understood the firbolg’s feelings and would not ask Vander, who had been so long from his home, so long tormented by the assassin, Ghost, to delay any longer.

  “Any step you take beside us will be welcomed,” Cadderly said, and Vander nodded.

  Cadderly turned back to the three women. “I know you must get back to Shilmista,” he said to Shayleigh. “King Elbereth will need a full report on the happenings at Castle Trinity, so that he might stand down the elven guard. The fastest route for you would be south past Carradoon then along the more traveled trails west from the library.” Shayleigh nodded.

  “And I am to accompany Dorigen back,” Danica reasoned.

  Cadderly nodded. “You’re not of either host order,” he explained, “thus, Dorigen will be your prisoner and not under the jurisdiction of the headmasters.”

  “Whom you do not trust,” Dorigen added slyly.

  Cadderly didn’t bother to respond. “If all goes well at Nightglow, the dwarves and I should come to the library no more than a few days after you.”

  “But since I came in alone, Dorigen will remain my prisoner,” Danica replied, and she smiled despite the obvious fact that she had no wish to miss the adventure at Nightglow, didn’t want to be apart from Cadderly at all.

  “Your judgment will be more fair, I’m sure,” Cadderly said with a wink. “And it shall be easier for me to convince the headmasters to accept that judgment than to get them to pass a fair punishment of their own.”

  It was a plan that would likely spare Dorigen from a hangman’s noose.

  Dorigen’s smile showed that she understood the plan’s merits as well. “Again you have my gratitude,” she offered. “I only wish that I believed myself worthy of it.”

  Cadderly and Danica exchanged a knowing look, and neither was the least bit worried about splitting the party with a prisoner in tow. Dorigen was a powerful wizard, and if she had wanted to escape, she certainly could have done so by then. Over the tendays, she had not been bound in any way, and only in the first few days had she even been guarded. Never was there a more willing prisoner, and Cadderly was confident that Dorigen would not try to escape. Even more than that, Cadderly was convinced that Dorigen would use her powers to aid Danica and Shayleigh if they got into trouble on the way to the library.

  It was settled then, with no disagreements. Ivan and Pikel rubbed their hands together often and slapped each other on the back so many times they sounded like a gallery at a fine performance. Nothing could set a dwarf to hopping like the promise of an unguarded dragon’s hoard.

  Danica found Cadderly alone later that morning, while the others busied themselves for the journey. The young priest hardly noticed her approach, just stood on a clear patch of stone outside the cave, staring into the towering Snowflake Mountains.

  Danica moved up and hooked her arm under Cadderly’s, offering him the support she thought he needed. To her thinking, Cadderly wasn’t ready to return to the library. No doubt, he was still in turmoil over the last incident with Dean Thobicus, when he had forcefully bent the dean’s mind to his bidding. Beyond that, with all that had happened—the deaths of Avery and Pertelope and the revelation that the malign wizard Aballister was, in truth, Cadderly’s own father—the young priest’s world had been turned upside down. Cadderly had questioned his faith and his home for some time, and though he had finally come to terms with his loyalty to Deneir, Danica wondered if he still had a hard time thinking of the Edificant Library as his home.

  They remained silent for several moments, Cadderly staring up into the mountains and Danica staring at Cadderly.

  “Do you fear a charge of heresy?” the monk asked at length.

  Cadderly turned to her, his expression curious.

  “For your actions against Dean Thobicus,” Danica clarified. “If he’s remembered the incident and realizes what you did to him, he’ll not likely welcome you back.”

  “Thobicus will not openly oppose me,” Cadderly said.

  Danica didn’t miss the fact that he had named the man without the title, no small matter by the rules of the order and of the library.

  “Though he most likely will have recalled much of what happened when last we talked,” the young priest went on, “I expect he will solidify his alliances … and demote or dismiss those he suspects are loyal to me.”

  Despite the grim reasoning, there was little trepidation in Cadderly’s tone, Danica noted, and her expression revealed her surprise.

  “What allies can he make?” Cadderly asked, as though that explained everything.

  “He is the head of the order,” Danica replied, “and has many friends in the Oghmanyte order as well.”

  Cadderly chuckled softly and scoffed at the thought. “I told you before that Thobicus is the head of a false hierarchy.”

  “And you will simply walk in and make that claim?”

  “Yes,” Cadderly answered. “I have an ally that Dean Thobicus cannot resist, one who will turn the priests of my order to me.”

  Danica didn’t have to ask who that ally might be. Cadderly believed that Deneir himself was with him, that the deity had assigned him a task. Given the man’s powers, Danica didn’t doubt the notion. Still, it bothered her that Cadderly had become so bold, even arrogant.

  “The Oghmanyte priests will not get involved,” Cadderly went on, “for this does not concern them. The only contention I will see from them, and rightly so, will manifest itself after I unseat Thobicus as head of the Deneirrath order. Bron Turman will contest me for the title of dean.”

  “Turman has been a leader in the library for many years,” Danica said.

  Cadderly nodded and seemed not at all bothered.

  “His will be a powerful challenge,” Danica went on.

  “It’s not important which of us ascends to the position of dean,” Cadderly replied. “My first duty is to the order of Deneir. Once that is set aright, I will worry about the future of the Edificant Library.”

  Danica accepted that, and again the two lapsed into long moments of silence, Cadderly staring once more at the majestic Snowflakes. Danica believed in him, but she had trouble reconciling his apparent calm with the fact that he was out there, in a cold cave, instead of at the library. Cadderly’s delay revealed the true turmoil behind his cool facade.

&
nbsp; “What are you thinking about?” she asked, and pressed her hand gently against the young priest’s cheek, drawing his gaze from the mountains.

  Cadderly smiled warmly, touched by her concern.

  “Up there is an unguarded hoard of treasure greater than anything in all the region,” Cadderly said.

  “I’ve never known you to care much for material wealth,” Danica remarked.

  Again Cadderly smiled. “I was thinking of Nameless,” he said, referring to a poor leper he had once met on the road outside Carradoon. “I was thinking of all the other Namelesses in Carradoon and all around Impresk Lake. The wealth of the dragon’s hoard might bring great good to the barony.” He looked at Danica squarely. “The treasure might give all of those people names.”

  “It will be more complicated than that,” Danica reasoned, for both of them knew well the equation of wealth and power. If Cadderly meant to share the riches with the impoverished people, he would find resistance among those “gentlefolk” of Carradoon who equated wealth with nobility and rank, and used their riches to feel superior.

  “Deneir is with me,” Cadderly said calmly, and Danica understood at that moment that her love was indeed ready for the fight ahead, ready for Thobicus and all the others.

  Several priests worked furiously over Kierkan Rufo on the cold, wet ground outside the Edificant Library’s front door. They wrapped him in their own cloaks, disregarding the chill wind of early spring, but they didn’t miss the brand on his forehead, the unlit candle above the closed eye, and even the Oghmanyte priests understood its significance, that they could not bring the man into the library.

  Rufo continued to gag and vomit. His chest heaved and his stomach convulsed, tightening into agonizing knots. Blue-black bruises erupted under the man’s sweating skin.

  The Oghmanyte priests, some of them powerful clerics, enacted spells of healing, though the Deneirrath didn’t dare evoke the powers of their god in that man’s name.

  None of it seemed to work.

  Dean Thobicus and Bron Turman arrived together at the door, pushing through the growing crowd of onlookers. The withered dean’s eyes widened considerably when he saw that it was Rufo lying outside.

  “We must bring him into the warmth!” one of the attending priests shouted to the dean.

  “He cannot enter the library,” Bron Turman insisted, “not with such a brand. By his own actions was Kierkan Rufo banished, and the judgment holds!”

  “Bring him in,” Dean Thobicus said unexpectedly, and Turman nearly fell over as he registered the words. He didn’t openly protest, though. Rufo was of Thobicus’s order, not his own, and Thobicus, as dean, was well within his powers in allowing the man entry.

  A few moments later, after Rufo was ushered through the crowd and Thobicus had gone off with the attending priests, Bron Turman came to a disturbing conclusion, an explanation of the dean’s words that didn’t sit well with the Oghmanyte. Kierkan Rufo was no friend of Cadderly’s. In fact, Cadderly had been the one to brand the man. Had that precipitated the dean’s decision to let Rufo in?

  Bron Turman hoped that was not the case.

  In a side room, an empty chamber normally reserved for private prayers, the priests pulled in a bench to use as a cot and continued their heroic efforts to comfort Rufo. Nothing they did seemed to help. Even Thobicus tried to summon his greatest healing powers, chanting over Rufo while the others held him steady. But whether the spell had not been granted or Rufo’s ailment had simply rejected it, the dean’s words fell empty.

  Blood and bile poured freely from Rufo’s mouth and nose, and his chest heaved desperately, trying to pull in air through the obstruction in his throat. One strong Loremaster grabbed Rufo and yanked him over onto his belly, pounding at his back to force everything out.

  Without warning, Rufo jerked, and turned so violently that the Oghmanyte went flying across the room. Then Rufo settled on the bench and calmed, staring up unblinking at Dean Thobicus. With a weak hand, he motioned for the dean to come closer. Thobicus, after looking around nervously, bent low, putting his ear near the man’s mouth.

  “You … you invi … vited me,” Rufo stammered, blood and bile accompanying every word.

  Thobicus stood up straight, staring at the man, not understanding.

  “You invited me in,” Rufo said clearly with his last bit of strength. He began to laugh then, weirdly, out of control, and the laughter became a great convulsion then a final scream.

  None in attendance remembered ever seeing a man die more horribly.

  THREE

  THE ULTIMATE PERVERSION

  There ain’t no durned cave!” Ivan roared, and a rumble from above, from the unsteady, piled snow, reminded the dwarf that a bit more care might be prudent.

  If Ivan didn’t get the point then, he got it a heartbeat later, when frantic Pikel ran up and slapped him on the back of the head, knocking his helm down over his eyes. The yellow-bearded dwarf grabbed a deer antler and adjusted the thing then turned a scowl on his brother. But Pikel didn’t relent, just stood there waggling a finger in Ivan’s face.

  “Quiet down, both of you!” Cadderly scolded. “Oo,” replied Pikel, who seemed honestly wounded.

  Cadderly, thoroughly flustered, didn’t notice the look. He continued his scan of the ruined mountain, amazed that the cave entrance—an opening large enough to admit a dragon with its wings spread wide—was no more.

  “You’re sure it’s not just snow?” Cadderly asked.

  Ivan stamped his boot, dislodging a chunk of snow from above that fell over both himself and his brother. Pikel popped up first, snow sliding off the edges of the flopping, wide-brimmed hat he’d borrowed from Cadderly, and was ready with another slap when Ivan reappeared.

  “If ye don’t believe me, go in there yerself!” Ivan bellowed, pointing to the snow mass. “There’s stone in there. Solid stone, I tell ye! That wizard sealed it good with his storm.”

  Cadderly put his hands on his hips and took a deep breath. He recalled the storm Aballister had sent to Nightglow, the wizard thinking that Cadderly and his friends were still there. Aballister had no way of knowing that Cadderly had enlisted the aid of a charmed dragon and was many miles closer to Castle Trinity.

  Looking at the destruction, at the side of a mountain torn asunder by hurled magic, Cadderly was glad Aballister’s aim had been so far off, though that wasn’t enough to comfort the young priest just then. Inside the mountain waited an unguarded dragon hoard, a treasure Cadderly would need to see his plans for the Edificant Library, and for all Erlkazar, realized. That cave had been the only opening big enough that they could push carts through it to extract the treasure before the next winter’s snows.

  “The whole opening?” an increasingly desperate Cadderly asked Ivan.

  The yellow-bearded dwarf started to respond in his typically loud voice, but stopped and looked at his brother—who was readying yet another slap—and just growled instead. Ivan had bored through the wall of snow for some time, pushing in blindly at several locations until the rock wall behind the curtain of snow inevitably turned him away.

  “We’ll go around,” Cadderly said, “to the hole on the mountain’s south face that first got us in.”

  “It was a long walk between that hole and the dragon hoard,” Ivan reminded him. “A long walk through tight tunnels, and even a long drop. I’m not for knowing how ye’re planning to bring a treasure out that way!”

  “Neither am I,” Cadderly admitted. “All I know is that I need the treasure, and I’m going to find some way to get it.”

  With that, the young priest walked off along the trail, in search of a path that would lead him around Nightglow’s wide base.

  “He sounds like a dwarf,” Ivan whispered to Pikel.

  After Pikel’s ensuing. “Hee hee hee” brought down the next mini-avalanche, it was Ivan’s turn to do the head-slapping.

  The trio arrived on the south face early the next morning. Climbing proved difficult in the slip
pery, melting snow. Ivan got almost all the way to the hole, and was able to confirm that it was still there, before he slipped and tumbled, turning into a dwarven snowball and bowling Cadderly and Pikel down the hill with him.

  “Stupid priest!” the dwarf roared at Cadderly when the three sorted themselves out far down the mountainside. “Ain’t ye got some magic to get us up this stupid hill?”

  Cadderly nodded reluctantly. He’d been trying to conserve his energies since their departure from Castle Trinity. Every day he had to cast spells on himself and his companions to ward off the cold, but he’d hoped that would be the extent of his exertion until he returned to the library. Cadderly was more tired than he’d ever been. His trials, especially against Aballister and Fyrentennimar, had thoroughly drained him, had forced him to delve into magical spheres that he didn’t understand, and by sheer willpower, bring forth dweomers that should have been far beyond his capabilities. And young Cadderly paid a price for those efforts. Even the tendays of relative calm, holed up in a cave, had not fully rejuvenated him. He could still hear Deneir’s song in his head, but whenever he tried to access the greater magic, his temples throbbed, and he felt as though his head would explode.

  Pertelope, who alone had understood the obstacles facing Cadderly as Chosen of the Scribe of Oghma, had warned him about that potential downside. But even Pertelope knew Cadderly had little choice, that the young priest faced enemies beyond anything even she had ever seen.

  Cadderly closed his eyes and listened for the notes of his deity’s song, music taught him from The Tome of Universal Harmony, Deneir’s most holy book. At first he felt a deep serenity, as though he were returning home after a long, difficult journey. The harmonies of Deneir’s song played sweetly in his thoughts, leading him down corridors of truth and understanding. Then he purposely opened a door, turned a mental page from his recollections of the most holy book and sought a spell that would get him and his friends up the mountain.

  Then his temples began to hurt.