The Chaos Curse

by R. A. Salvatore

  But after three days of death, Rufo could match the Lorekeeper.

  Thobicus shook his head, trying to clear the mounting confusion. He pushed through one web of lies only to find another, and to find the one he had left closing fast behind him.

  Where was Deneir? Why was Cadderly so damned powerful? Where was justice, the rewards of his own long years of study? So many years …

  Thobicus came back to the present, focusing his thoughts, steadying his trembling hands, and training his eye. His shot was perfect.

  Bron Turman jerked from the impact and looked over at the desk in disbelief. The Oghmanyte’s grip soon weakened, and Rufo stepped forward and casually slapped the holy symbol from Turman’s hand then fell over him.

  A few moments later, the vampire, his face bright with fresh blood, turned back to the desk.

  “What has Deneir ever given you?” he asked the stunned Thobicus, the old dean standing like a zombie, his wrinkled face frozen with disbelief as he stared at the dead priest.

  “He deserted you,” Rufo crooned, playing on the man’s obvious doubts. “Deneir has deserted you, but I will not! There is so much I can give you.”

  Thobicus, in his stupor, realized that the vampire was next to him. Rufo continued to whisper assurances, promising power beyond belief, eternal life, and salvation before death. Thobicus couldn’t resist him. The withered dean felt a pinch as the vampire’s fangs jabbed into his neck.

  He realized only then how very far he’d fallen. He realized that Rufo had been in his mind, inciting his doubts, quietly compelling him to fire the crossbow at the powerful Lorekeeper.

  And he had complied. Doubts swirled in the air all around the dean, but no longer were they centered on the faults of Deneir. Had Deneir really deserted Thobicus when he’d tried to present the holy symbol against Rufo, or had Thobicus long ago deserted Deneir? Cadderly had dominated him, and had claimed that power to be the will of Deneir.

  Thobicus let the thought go, let the guilt go. So be it, he decided. He denied the consequences and washed in the promises of the vampire.

  So be it.

  SEVEN

  FALL FROM GRACE

  Fester Rumpol didn’t understand the change that had come over Dean Thobicus. The last time he’d spoken with the dean, the man was preoccupied—no, obsessed—with the notion that Cadderly was coming back to the library to tear the heart out of the Deneirrath order.

  But Thobicus seemed almost jovial, having secretly called together the four leading Deneirrath, three of them headmasters, for what he termed “a most vital conference.”

  They were gathered in a small dining room adjacent to the main hall and kitchen, around an oaken table, bare except for huge, empty goblets set in front of each of the five chairs.

  “Dear Banner,” Thobicus chirped, “do go to the cellars and fetch a particular vintage, a special red bottle on the third rack.”

  “A bottle of red?” Banner asked, crinkling his features. Banner favored white wines.

  “A red bottle,” Thobicus corrected. He turned to Rumpol and gave a wink. “Magically preserved, you know. The only way to keep Feywine.”

  “Feywine?” Rumpol and all the others asked together. Feywine was an elven drink, a mixture of honey and flowers and moonbeams, it was said. It was rare, even among the elves, and getting a bottle from them was nearly impossible.

  “A gift from King Galladel, when he ruled Shilmista,” Thobicus explained. “Do go and retrieve it.”

  Banner looked to Rumpol, who was boiling. He feared that Cadderly had been killed somewhere in the mountains and that Thobicus had somehow learned of the young priest’s demise. If that was the occasion he meant to celebrate, the dean was surely out of line. Banner waited a moment longer then started to leave.

  “Wait!” Rumpol blurted, and all the others turned to regard him. “Your mood has brightened, Dean Thobicus,” Rumpol said. “Dramatically. Might we learn what has so affected you?”

  “I found communion with Deneir this morning,” Thobicus replied.

  “Cadderly is dead?” Rumpol reasoned, and the other three Deneirrath turned sour looks on the dean. Even the priests who despised Cadderly and his unconventional climb through the ranks would hardly celebrate such a tragedy—at least not publicly.

  Thobicus put on an expression of horror. “He is quite alive,” the dean replied vehemently. “From all I know, the fine young priest is even now on his way back to the library.”

  Fine young priest? Coming from Dean Thobicus, those words rang hollow indeed to Fester Rumpol.

  “Then why are we celebrating?” Banner asked.

  Thobicus gave a great sigh. “I had hoped to reveal that over a toast,” he groaned. “But very well, I sympathize with your impatience. Simply put, there will be no second Time of Troubles.”

  That brought sighs of relief and private murmurs from the group.

  “And I have learned much of Cadderly as well,” Thobicus went on. “The order will survive—indeed, it will be strengthened when he returns, when he and I work together to improve the ways of the library.”

  “You hate each other,” Rumpol remarked, and looked around somewhat nervously. He hadn’t meant to openly voice that opinion.

  Thobicus, however, merely chuckled and seemed to take no offense. “With Deneir as moderator, our differences seem petty indeed,” the dean replied. He looked around, his bright smile infectious. “And so we have much to celebrate!” he proclaimed, and nodded to Banner, who rushed off with unashamed enthusiasm for the doorway to the wine cellar.

  The conversation continued, lighthearted and hopeful, with Thobicus paying particular attention to Rumpol, the man he apparently deemed to be the most troublesome. Some time later, Banner still had not returned.

  “He cannot find the bottle,” Thobicus remarked to quiet any trepidation. “Dear Banner. He probably dropped his torch and is stumbling around in the dark.”

  “Banner has the power to summon light,” Rumpol said, an edge of suspicion still in his voice.

  “Then where is he?” Thobicus asked. “The bottle is colorful, and should be easy enough to find on the fifth rack.”

  “You said the third rack,” one of the others quickly put in.

  Thobicus stared at him then scratched his head. “Did I?” he whispered then he dramatically dropped his face into his hand. “Of course,” he mused. “The Feywine was in the third rack until the … incident.” All the others knew that the dean was referring to the dark time of the chaos curse, the time when the Talonite priest Barjin had invaded the library and sought to destroy the place from within.

  “There was quite a bit of trouble down in that cellar,” Thobicus went on. “If I remember correctly, several of the affected priests even went down there and drank to … shall we say, excess.”

  Rumpol turned away, for he had been one of those hearty drinkers.

  “Fortunately, the Feywine survived, but I do recall that it was moved to the fifth rack, that being the most stable,” Thobicus finished. He motioned to one of the others. “Do go and help out dear Banner,” he bade, “before the man comes back here raising Cyric himself against me!”

  The priest ran off for the door, and the conversation resumed, again without much concern. Later, it was Rumpol who remarked that the two wine hunters were long overdue.

  “If one of the lesser priests stole that bottle, my good mood will vanish,” Thobicus warned.

  “There was an inventory of the wine cellar,” Rumpol said.

  “A list I saw, though I do not recall any record of Feywine,” added the other, and he gave a jovial laugh. “And I would have noted the presence of such a treasure well, I assure you.”

  “Of course the bottle was mislabeled,” Thobicus explained. He nodded as though something that should have been obvious had just come to him. “If dear Banner decided to test the wine before he returned then likely we’ll find our two missing brothers sitting in a stupor in the cellar!” the dean roared. “Feywine,
in its own subtle way, bites harder than dwarven ale.”

  He rose to leave, and the other two were quick to join him. Their mood was light, any fears or suspicions quenched by the logical assumption offered by the dean. They got to the wine cellar door, and Thobicus took up and lit one of the small lamps set in a cabinet to one side then led the way down the wooden staircase, into the darkness.

  They heard no chatter, no drunken conversation, and grew a bit concerned when they saw that their lantern was apparently the only source of light in the damp, shadowy cellar.

  “Banner?” Rumpol called.

  Thobicus stood by silently, and the remaining priest began a quiet chant, thinking to bring a magical light into the area.

  That priest jerked suddenly, drawing the attention of his two companions.

  “I fear a spider has bitten me,” he remarked to Rumpol’s questioning expression, and he began to jerk spasmodically, his eyes twitching then rolling back into his head. He fell facedown to the floor before Rumpol could get to him.

  “What is this?” Rumpol cried, cradling the fallen priest’s head. He began a frantic chant, beginning a spell that could counter any poison.

  “Rumpol!” Thobicus called, and though the priest did not interrupt his frantic spellcasting, he did look back to regard the dean.

  His words fell away as he looked upon Kierkan Rufo, the vampire’s face bright with fresh blood.

  The vampire extended one pale hand toward Rumpol. “Come to me,” he bade.

  Rumpol felt the wave of compelling willpower roll over him. He rested the fallen priest’s head back against the floor and rose without even being conscious of the movements.

  “Come to me,” the vampire said. “Join me, as has your dean. Come to me and see the truth.”

  Rumpol inadvertently slid his feet along the smooth floor, drifting toward the darkness that was Kierkan Rufo. Somewhere in the back of his mind he caught the image of an open eye above a lit candle, the symbol of Deneirrath light, and it shook him from his trance.

  “No!” he declared and pulled out his holy symbol, presenting it with all his heart against the undead monster.

  Rufo hissed and lifted his arm to shield himself from the spectacle. Dean Thobicus turned away in shame. The light from his lantern went with him as he walked around the next rack, but the light in the area near Rumpol did not diminish, bolstered by the power of his presented symbol, by the light that was in the sincere priest’s heart.

  “Fool!” the vampire proclaimed. “Do you think you can stand against me?”

  Fester Rumpol wasn’t shaken. He basked in the light of his god, and used his faith to blast away any horror-inspired doubts. “I deny you!” he proclaimed. “And by the power of Deneir …”

  He stopped suddenly and nearly swooned. He glanced around to his back to see a dog-faced imp staring at him, waving its barbed, poison-tipped tail.

  Rumpol staggered for the stairway, stumbled to his knees as the imp struck him a second time. Then he was up again, but the world was slipping away into blackness. The last image he saw was that of Kierkan Rufo’s fangs rushing for his throat.

  When he was finished, the vampire found Thobicus standing by the fifth rack. There lay the priest Thobicus had sent after Banner, his chest torn apart, his heart on the floor beside him. Banner, though, surprisingly, was sitting against the rack, his head down, but very much alive.

  “He heeded my call,” Rufo casually explained to the confused dean. “And so I thought to keep him, for he is weak.” Rufo presented a perfectly awful bloody smile to the dean. “Like you.”

  Dean Thobicus had not the strength to argue. He looked at the torn priest, and to living Banner, and he pitied Banner the most.

  A few hours later, Druzil hopped and skipped into short flights around the library’s hot attic, clapping his hands happily at every turn. The air was warm, he was at work in desecrating a holy place, and beneath him, Rufo, with the help of Dean Thobicus, continued dividing the priests into small groups and summarily destroying them.

  Life was very good for the malicious imp. Druzil flapped his wings and lifted himself up to one of the short peaks in the roof, so that he could survey his latest design. The imp knew all the runes of desecration and had just completed his favorite in the area directly over the library’s main chapel, two floors down. Thobicus had provided a virtually unlimited supply of ink—reds, blues, blacks, and even a vial of a strange greenish-yellow, which Druzil favored—and the imp knew that every stroke he ran across the floorboards put the foolish priests in the rooms below a bit farther from their respective gods.

  At one point Druzil paused then moved away from the spot with an angry hiss. Someone was singing in a room below him—that wretched Chanticleer, Druzil realized. Chanticleer was singing to both Deneir and Oghma, lifting his voice against the encroaching blackness in notes pure and sweet.

  It wounded Druzil’s ears. He moved away from the spot, and the vibrations of Chaunticleer’s voice were no more. With all that was happening in his favor, Druzil quickly forgot about the singing priest.

  Happy again, Druzil clapped his hands rapidly, his toothy smile nearly swallowing his ears. When Rufo had come for him in the mausoleum the previous night, he hadn’t known what to expect, had even considered using all of his magical abilities and knowledge to try to open a gate, that he might retreat to the lower planes, abandoning Rufo and Tuanta Quiro Miancay.

  But just half a day later, Druzil was thrilled that he had not chosen that course. Barjin had failed, but Rufo would not.

  The Edificant Library would fall.

  Thobicus’s tentative steps down the stairs into the wine cellar revealed his continued fear of Kierkan Rufo, and his unease with his decision to ally himself with the vampire. He still couldn’t believe he’d killed Bron Turman, long a friend and ally, or that he’d fallen so far from the teachings of Deneir, thrown away his life’s work.

  There was only one antidote to the guilt that threatened to destroy Dean Thobicus: anger. And the focus of that anger was a young priest who would soon return to the library.

  It was all Cadderly’s fault, Thobicus decided, the result of the young priest’s insatiable lust for undeserved power.

  Thobicus carried no lantern or torch as he stepped off the bottom step of the dark stairway. With each passing hour, the man grew more comfortable with darkness. He could see the wine racks, even individual bottles, though a tenday before he wouldn’t have been able to see his hand flapping an inch from his nose in that lightless cellar. Rufo called it another benefit of his transformation, but the frightened dean wondered if it might be more a symptom of an insidious disease.

  He found Rufo in the far corner, behind the last of the racks, asleep in a wooden casket the vampire had recovered from the work shed behind the mausoleum. Thobicus moved toward Rufo then stopped, eyes wide with fear and confusion.

  Bron Turman walked toward him.

  As he turned to flee, the confused dean found several others, including Fester Rumpol, blocking the way. They had come back to life! Somehow, the priests had been resurrected and had come back to destroy him!

  The dean squealed and leaped for the wine rack. He climbed it like a spider, with agility the aged and withered man had not known for decades. He neared the top and could have easily slipped over, but a command rang out within his head, an order compelling him to stop.

  Slowly, Thobicus turned his head to see Kierkan Rufo sitting up in his casket, his grotesque smile wide.

  “You don’t like my new playthings?” the vampire asked.

  Thobicus didn’t understand. He looked closer at the nearest man, Fester Rumpol, and realized that Rumpol’s throat was still ragged from Rufo’s raking and tearing. The man couldn’t possibly be breathing, Thobicus realized. The man was still dead.

  Thobicus sprang from his perch, flying the ten feet to land with feline grace on the stone floor. Bron Turman reached out with a stiff arm and grasped him tightly.

  “Te
ll him to let you go,” Rufo said, but his patient facade went away immediately, replaced by a judgmental, even dangerous expression. “Take control of him!”

  Without saying a word, Thobicus steeled his gaze and mentally ordered Turman to let go—and the dean was relieved indeed when the man released him and stepped back, standing quietly to the side.

  “Zombies,” Thobicus breathed. Rufo had animated the torn corpses into undead creatures, unthinking servants, among the lowest forms in the hierarchy of the netherworld.

  “Those who submit will enjoy a degree of intellectual freedom, as you have come to know,” Rufo declared in an imposing voice. “Those who choose to die in the favor of their god shall become unwitting servants, unthinking zombies, to their ultimate torment!”

  As if on cue, Banner appeared from around the corner, smiling at Thobicus. Banner had submitted, had denied his god in the face of Kierkan Rufo.

  “Greetings, Thobicus,” the man said, and when Banner opened his mouth, Thobicus realized that he, like Rufo, sported a pair of fangs.

  “You are a vampire,” the dean whispered, stating the obvious.

  “As are you,” Banner replied.

  Thobicus looked to Rufo then, following another mental command, reached up to feel inside his own mouth, to encounter his own set of fangs.

  “We are both vampires,” Banner continued, “and with Kierkan Rufo, we are three.”

  “Not quite,” Rufo interjected. Both men regarded him with curiosity, Banner’s eyes full of suspicion, Dean Thobicus too confused to do more than hope for an explanation.

  “You are not yet fully in the realm of the vampire,” Rufo said.

  “You promised me that I would be a vampire,” Banner replied. “That was our deal.”

  Rufo held up a hand to calm him. “And so you shall be,” he assured the man, “in time.”

  “But you rose into full power soon after your death,” Banner complained.