The Chaos Curse

by R. A. Salvatore

  Cadderly heard Ivan calling him, distantly, and he opened his eyes just long enough to take hold of Pikel’s hand and grab hold of Ivan’s beard when the confused and suspicious Ivan refused Cadderly’s offered grasp.

  Ivan’s protests intensified into desperation as the three began to melt away, becoming insubstantial, mere shadows. The wind caught them, and carried them unerringly up the mountainside.

  Pikel cheered loudly when Cadderly came out of his trance. Ivan stood still for a long while then began a self-inspection, as though testing to see if all of his important parts had been restored.

  Cadderly slumped in the snow beside the small opening in the hill, collected his wits, and rubbed the sides of his head to try to alleviate the throbbing. It wasn’t as bad as the last time he’d tried a major spell. Back in the cave he’d tried, and failed, to make mental contact with Dean Thobicus to ensure that no invasion force marched north toward Castle Trinity. It wasn’t so bad this time, and Cadderly was glad of that. If they could get their business done quickly, and if the weather held, the three would be back at the Edificant Library within a tenday and a half. Cadderly suspected that there waited his greatest challenge yet, one that he would need the song of Deneir to combat.

  “At least there’s no stupid dragon waiting in there this time,” Ivan huffed as he moved up to the entrance.

  The last time Cadderly and the others had come to that spot, a fog enshrouded the area and the snow near the hole had been melted away. The air was still warm inside the hole, but not nearly as oppressive, or ominous, as when Fyrentennimar had been alive.

  Pikel tried to push Ivan aside, but the stubborn, yellow-bearded dwarf held his ground, more intrigued by the prospects of a dragon’s hoard than he let on.

  “I’m going in first,” Ivan insisted. “Ye’ll follow by twenty paces,” he explained to Pikel. “So that I can call to yerself, and ye can call to Cadderly.”

  Pikel’s head bobbed in agreement, and Ivan started for the hole. He considered it for just a moment then removed his helmet and tossed it to Cadderly.

  “Ivan,” Cadderly called, and when Ivan turned back, the young priest tossed him a short metallic tube.

  Ivan knew how to use it. He popped off the snug cap on its end, allowing a beam of light to stream forth. There was a disk inside the tube, enchanted with a powerful light-giving dweomer, and the tube was really two pieces of metal. The outer tube, near the end cap, could be turned along a corkscrew course, lengthening or shortening the tube, thus tightening or widening the beam of light.

  Ivan kept the focus narrow, since the tunnel was so constricted that the broad-shouldered dwarf had to often turn sideways to squeeze through, so narrow that Pikel reluctantly gave Cadderly back his wide-brimmed hat before entering.

  Cadderly waited patiently for many moments, his thoughts lost in the anticipated confrontation with Dean Thobicus. He was glad when Pikel reappeared in search of rope, knowing then that Ivan had made it through the tightest of the tunnels and had come to the vertical shaft that would take him to the same level as the dragon treasure.

  A little while later, both dwarves came bobbing out of the hole, Ivan shaking his head.

  “It’s blocked,” he announced. “I can get down to the big room under the shaft, but there’s nowhere to go from there. I’m thinking we might be better in trying to cut through that front door.”

  Cadderly blew a deep sigh.

  “I’ll call for me kin,” Ivan went on. “Of course, it’ll take ‘em the bulk of the next two seasons to get down from Vaasa, then we’ll have to wait for the next winter to blow over, and …”

  Cadderly’s mind wandered as the dwarf rambled on. By conventional means, it might take years to extract the dragon treasure, and the delay would bring about some unexpected obstacles. Word of Fyrentennimar’s demise would spread fast throughout the land, and most of the denizens of Erlkazar and the Southern Heartlands, of all races, both good and evil, knew that the dragon resided in Nightglow Mountain. The fall of a dragon, especially one that had sat for centuries on a legendary treasure hoard, always brought scavengers.

  Like me, Cadderly thought, and he chuckled aloud at his own self-deprecating humor. He realized then that Ivan had stopped talking, and when he looked up, he found both dwarves staring at him intently.

  “Fear not, Ivan,” Cadderly said, “you’ll not need to summon your kin.”

  “They would take a bit o’ the treasure for their own,” Ivan admitted. “By the gods, they’d probably set up a keep right inside the mountain, then we’d be hard pressed to get a single copper outta them!”

  Pikel started to laugh, but caught himself and turned a stern look on Ivan, realizing that his brother was serious, and probably correct.

  “I’ll get us into the mountain, and we’ll have plenty of help from Carradoon when the time comes to take out the treasure,” Cadderly assured them both. “But not now.”

  The young priest let it go at that The dwarves need know no more. His next task, he knew, was to get to the library, to put things spiritually aright. Then he could concentrate on the treasure, could come back rested and ready to clear the path, magically, for the foragers.

  “This place is important to ye,” Ivan remarked.

  Cadderly looked at the dwarf curiously, more for the tone Ivan had used than the specific words.

  “More important than it should be,” Ivan went on. “Ye always had coin, particularly since ye penned that spellbook for the frantic wizard, but ye never seemed to care so much for gold.”

  “That has not changed,” Cadderly replied.

  “Eh?” Pikel squeaked, echoing Ivan’s sentiments exactly. If Cadderly had no care for coin, then why were they up there in the middle of the dangerous mountains, freezing their stubby feet off?

  “I care about what this treasure might bring for us all,” Cadderly went on.

  “Wealth,” Ivan interrupted, eagerly rubbing his strong hands together.

  Cadderly looked at him with a sour expression. “Do you remember that model I kept in my room?” the young priest asked, more to Pikel than Ivan, for Pikel had been particularly enchanted with the thing. “The one of the high, windowed wall with the supporting buttress?”

  “Oo oi!” Pikel roared happily in reply.

  “Ye’re thinking to rebuild the library,” Ivan reasoned, and the dwarf blew a huff of spittle into the frosty air when Cadderly nodded. “If the durned thing ain’t broke, then why’re ye meaning to fix it?” Ivan demanded.

  “I intend to improve it,” Cadderly corrected him. “You yourself have witnessed the strength of the model’s design, and that with soaring windows—soaring windows, Ivan, making the library a place of light, where books might truly be penned and read.”

  “Bah! Ye’ve never done any building,” Ivan protested. “That much I know. Ye’ve no idea of the scope of the structure ye’re planning. Humans don’t live long enough for ye to see yer new … What was it ye once called that thing?”

  “Cathedral,” Cadderly answered.

  “Humans won’t live long enough to see yer new ‘cathedral’ even half finished,” Ivan went on. “It’ll take a full clan of dwarves a hunnerd years—”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Cadderly answered simply, stealing Ivan’s bluster. “It doesn’t matter if I see the completion, only that I begin the construction. That is the cost, and the joy, of faith, Ivan. You should understand that.”

  Ivan was back on his heels. Cadderly knew he hadn’t heard such talk from a human before, and Ivan had known many humans in his day. The dwarves and the elves were the ones who thought of the future, who had the foresight and the good sense to blaze a trail for their ancestors to walk. Humans, as far as most of the longer-living races were concerned, were an impatient folk, a group that had to see material gain almost immediately to maintain any momentum or desire for a chore.

  “You have heard recently of Bruenor Battlehammer,” Cadderly went on, “who has reclaimed Mithral Hall in t
he name of his father. Already, by all reports, the work has begun in earnest to expand on the halls, and in this generation, those halls are many times larger than the founders of that dwarven stronghold could ever have imagined when they first began cutting the great steps that would become the famed Undercity. Isn’t that the way with all dwarven strongholds? They start as a hole in the ground, and end up among the greatest excavations in all the Realms, though many generations—dwarf generations, at that—might pass.”

  “Oo oi!” Pikel piped in, the wordless dwarf’s way of saying, “Good point!”

  “And so it shall be with my cathedral,” Cadderly explained. “If I lay but the first stone, then I will have begun something grand, for it is the vision that serves the purpose.”

  Ivan looked helplessly to Pikel, who only shrugged. It was hard for either dwarf to fault Cadderly’s thinking. In fact, as Ivan digested all that the young priest had said, it appeared he respected Cadderly even more, thought that the man had risen above the usual limitations of his heritage and was actually planning to do something quite … dwarflike.

  Then Ivan said just that, and Cadderly was gracious enough to accept the sideways compliment without a word of argument.

  Two Oghmanyte priests approached the square stone mausoleum butted against the cliff behind the Edificant Library.

  “Let them take care of their own, I say,” muttered the muscular chap nicknamed Berdole the Brutal because of his wrestling prowess and snarling demeanor.

  The other, Curt, nodded his agreement, for neither of them liked the detail to which they’d been assigned. Kierkan Rufo had been a Glyphscribe, a priest of Deneir, not Oghma, and yet, because of his brand, Dean Thobicus had determined that Oghmanyte priests should prepare and bury the body. By custom, Rufo’s body had lain in state for three days, and the time for the final preparations had come.

  Berdole fumbled with his large belt ring, finally finding the long-necked key that fit the heavy door. With some effort, he opened the lock and pulled the door wide. A damp, musty smell, tinged with the scent of decay, rolled out at the pair. Except to put Rufo’s body inside, the structure had not been opened since the death of Pertelope in the late fall.

  Curt lit and hoisted his lantern, but motioned for Berdole to lead the way in. The muscular priest obliged, his hard boots stomping noisily on the bare stone floor.

  The vault was large, perhaps thirty feet square, supported at ten-foot intervals both ways by thick columns. A single window, right of the door, allowed some sunlight to trickle in, but the glass was filthy and deeply set in the thick stone, and the illumination was meager. A series of stone slabs lined the center of the room, all but one empty.

  On that slab, between the two columns farthest from the door and beneath an unremarkable shroud, lay Kierkan Rufo’s body.

  “Let us be done quickly,” said Berdole, pulling the pack from his back. His obvious nervousness didn’t sit well with his smaller companion, who looked to Berdole the Brutal for protection.

  “Maybe he threw up enough blood so this won’t take as long,” Berdole said with a halfhearted chuckle.

  Curt snickered at the grim humor as well, knowing that jokes might be his only defense against his abhorrence of their task.

  The pair didn’t bother to close the door as they moved in, and neither noticed the soft rush of air as an invisible creature glided in behind them.

  High in a corner of the mausoleum, on the opposite wall and to the right of the door, Druzil sat and scratched his canine head, muttering curses under his breath. The imp had been trying to think of a way to get into the crypt since Rufo’s corpse had first been put there, thinking he might somehow recover at least a portion of the chaos curse from the body. Too many priests had been around then, including one of the leading members of the Oghmanyte order, so Druzil had waited, thinking he would just break in after the others left. He found the door locked, though, and the window blessed, so he didn’t dare enter.

  The imp knew enough of human burial rituals to understand what the two men meant to do. They would drain the blood from the body and replace it with a smelly, preserving liquid. Druzil had overheard that Rufo could not be given a proper Deneirrath or Oghmanyte burial, and the imp had hoped that the priests wouldn’t waste their time with pointless embalming. Druzil thought of swooping down and stinging the men with his poison-tipped tail, or of hitting them with magical spells, burning their behinds with little bolts of energy to chase them away. But it was too risky, so all the imp could do was sit and watch, mouthing silent curses.

  Every drop of blood that the priests took from Rufo’s body would be a little less of Tuanta Quiro Miancay the imp might recover.

  From the far rafters, Druzil chewed his bottom lip in frustration as he watched them. He would have to steal the blood, he decided, every drop of it!

  Berdole looked at his partner and took a deep breath, holding up the large needle for Curt to see.

  “I cannot watch this,” Curt admitted, and he turned away and walked past a couple of the slabs, near the other set of columns.

  Berdole laughed, gaining confidence from his friend’s weakness, and moved beside the slab. He pushed the shroud away just enough so that he could pull out Rufo’s left arm, pushing back the black robes that Rufo had been dressed in and turning the arm so that the exposed wrist was up.

  “You might feel a small pinch,” the muscular priest joked lightly to the corpse, drawing a disgusted groan from Curt.

  Berdole lined the needle’s point up with the vein in Rufo’s skinny wrist and angled the instrument for a good puncture. He took another deep breath, looked to Curt’s back for support, then started to push.

  The cold, pallid hand snapped around in a circular motion, catching the needle and Berdole’s hand in a crushing grasp.

  “Wh-what?” the muscular priest stammered.

  Curt turned around to see Berdole hunched low at the slab, both his strong hands wrapped around Rufo’s thin forearm, with Rufo’s clawlike digits clasping tightly to his lower jaw. That was Berdole the Brutal, the strongest of the strong Oghmanytes, two hundred and fifty pounds of power, a man who could wrestle a black bear to a standstill.

  Yet the skinny arm of Kierkan Rufo jerked Berdole down to the slab as though his muscular frame were no more than a wet towel. Then, to Curt’s disbelieving eyes, Rufo’s hand pushed up and back. The muscles in Berdole’s thick arms strained to their limits, but couldn’t stop it. Up and over went his chin—it sounded to Curt like the cracking of a large tree right before it tumbled to the ground—and suddenly, the surprised Berdole was staring at the world upside down and backward.

  The Oghmanyte’s strong hands let go of the skinny, pallid arm and twitched in the empty air. Rufo’s fingers loosened, and Berdole fell to the floor, quite dead.

  Curt hardly remembered to breathe. He looked from Berdole to the shrouded corpse, and his vision blurred with dizziness wrought of horror as Rufo slowly sat up.

  The shroud fell away, and the gaunt, pale man turned his eyes—eyes that simmered red with inner fires—toward Curt.

  Druzil clapped his clawed hands together and squealed in happiness, then flapped off for the door.

  Curt screamed and fled with all speed, five long strides bringing him near the sunlight, near salvation.

  Rufo waved a hand, and the heavy stone door swung shut, slamming with a bang that sounded like thunder.

  The Oghmanyte threw all his weight against the door, but he might as well have tried to move a mountain. He scratched at the stone until his fingers bled. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that Rufo was up, walking stiffly toward him.

  Curt cried out repeatedly and went for the window, but realized that he had no time. He fell beyond it, backing and watching the corpse, crying for mercy and for Oghma to be with him.

  Then the side wall was against his back, and he had nowhere to run. Curt caught his breath finally, and remembered who he was. He presented his holy symbol, a scroll of silver
on a chain around his neck, and called to Oghma.

  “Be gone!” Curt cried at Rufo. “In the name of Oghma, vile undead thing, get you back!”

  Rufo didn’t flinch. He was ten steps away. Nine steps away. He staggered suddenly as he crossed in front of the window, as though he’d been burned on the side. But the light was meager, and the monster passed beyond it.

  Curt began the frantic chant of a spell. He felt strangely disconnected from his god, though, as if Rufo’s mere presence had despoiled the once-consecrated place. Still he chanted, summoning his powers.

  He felt a sting in his lower back and jerked suddenly, his spell disrupted. He turned to see a bat-winged imp, snickering wickedly as it flew away.

  “What horror is this?” Curt cried.

  Rufo was there then, and the terrified man swung his lantern out at the monster.

  Rufo caught him by the wrist and easily held the makeshift weapon at bay. Curt punched out with his other hand, connecting solidly on Rufo’s chin, knocking Rufo’s head to the side.

  Rufo calmly turned back to him. Curt made to punch again, but Rufo hooked his arm under the man’s, brought his skinny fingers around Curt’s back, and grabbed the man’s hair on the opposite side of his head. With terrifying strength, Rufo pulled Curt’s head to the side and pressed the cleric’s cheek against his own shoulder, laying bare the side of the man’s neck.

  Curt thought Rufo would simply snap his neck, as he had done to Berdole, but the Oghmanyte learned better when Rufo opened his mouth, revealing a set of canine fangs, half an inch longer than the rest of his teeth.

  With a look of supreme hunger, Rufo bent over and bit down on Curt’s neck, opening the jugular.

  The man was screaming, but Rufo, feasting on the warm blood, heard none of it.

  It was ecstasy for the monster, the satiation of a hunger more powerful than anything he had ever known in life. It was impossibly sweet. But then Rufo’s mouth began to burn. The sweet blood had become like acid.