The Fallen Fortress

by R. A. Salvatore

  “If the monster shakes free of them….” Shayleigh began ominously.

  “Danica will not fall,” Cadderly assured her. “Not with the enchantment I have put upon her. Nor will she allow Ivan to fall.”

  There was honest conviction in the priest’s tone, but he sighed with some relief anyway when the chimera finally came back into view, speeding on a course that would take it directly above the ledge. Shayleigh lifted her bow, but her injured wrist would no longer allow her to pull the string back fast enough. Cadderly got a shot with his crossbow, but the chimera banked and the explosive quarrel flew harmlessly wide.

  The monster roared in protest as it passed without any attacks, and the friends on the ledge could see that both its dragon and goat heads flopped lifelessly in the wind. Ivan, clutching the leonine mane, howled with enjoyment as he attempted to steer the beast by tugging one way or the other.

  “Jump free!” Danica cried to the dwarf as the mountain loomed before them.

  The young woman stepped off the creature as it passed the ledge, and she skipped down across the empty air—to Pikel’s amazed cry of, “Oo oi!” and Vander’s incredulous stare—to join Cadderly and Shayleigh.

  “Jump free!” Danica yelled again, but with Shayleigh and Cadderly joining in.

  The yellow-bearded dwarf didn’t seem to hear them, and Danica prudently rushed back out from the ledge in case the beast headed out into the empty air once more. The chimera did bank against Ivan’s stubborn pull and start back out, but both Cadderly and Shayleigh were presented with perfect shots. Shayleigh’s arrow dug deep into the chimera’s torso, and Cadderly’s quarrel got the beast on the wing, its explosive force shattering bone and sending the monster into a barrel roll.

  Ivan tugged and yanked, frantic, looking for some place to safely land as the creature flopped around, finally turning back toward the towering mountain.

  “Jump!” the companions pleaded with the dwarf.

  “Snow bank!” Ivan yelled in high hopes, twisting the monster’s head in line with a white pile jutting above the smooth slope of the mountain, just a dozen or so feet above the ledge. “Snow bank!”

  Not quite—the inch of snow covering the jutting boulder did not, by any definition, constitute a snow bank

  “Boom,” remarked a grimacing Pikel as the chimera and Ivan crashed heavily, the dwarf bouncing back, skidding and slipping until he came to a stop, amazingly on his feet on the ledge.

  The crushed chimera thrashed around near the rock until Shayleigh’s next arrow sank into the leonine head, ending its agony.

  Ivan turned to regard Cadderly and the others, his pupils rolling around their sockets independently of each other. Somehow, Ivan still wore his deer-antlered helmet, and somehow, Shayleigh’s splintered arrow had not been dislodged.

  “Who knowed?” Ivan asked innocently, giving a lame attempt at shrugging as he fell facedown on the path.

  FIVE

  TEST OF WILLPOWER

  Cadderly and Shayleigh broke for the stunned dwarf, but Danica rushed back to the ledge, grabbed Cadderly, and spun him around. Her lips crushed against his. She backed off suddenly, her features twisted with admiration and appreciation—and ecstasy.

  Her breath came in excited gasps, and her eyes darted wildly between the open air beyond the ledge, her enchanted feet, and the man who had saved her life.

  “I want to do it again!” she blurted, fumbling over the words as though she couldn’t help but say them.

  Cadderly seemed perplexed, until he realized that his love had just walked on air. What an incredible experience that must have been! He stared at Danica for a long moment, then remembering Ivan’s situation he looked at Pikel, who was happily munching on his roasted mutton once more. Apparently, Ivan was not too badly injured. Then Cadderly looked at the rock where Ivan and the chimera had ended their wild ride. Such apparent insanity in the midst of a desperate plan, the success of which could well determine the very existence of the realm of Erlkazar.

  And Danica’s sparkling brown eyes, so full of admiration, told Cadderly something more. He was coming to the forefront of it all, inevitably taking up the lead in his own crusade. He had grabbed at the responsibility—fully when he’d bent Dean Thobicus’s mind—but as the true weight of that responsibility became clearer to him, he was worried.

  Always before, Cadderly had depended on his powerful friends. He pointed the way, and they, through stealth and sword, facilitated the plans. But judging from the look in Danica’s eyes, Cadderly’s burden had increased. His mounting magical powers had become the group’s primary weapon.

  Cadderly would not shy away from his new role, would fight on with all his heart and all his strength. But he wondered if he could live up to his friends’ expectations, if he could continue to keep Danica’s eyes sparkling.

  It was all too much for the burdened young priest. What began as an embarrassed chuckle ended with Cadderly sitting on the stone ledge, laughing at the very edge of hysteria.

  The sight of Vander, up again and moving toward him, sobered Cadderly. Though Vander’s brutal wounds had already somehow begun to mend, the giant’s face showed his pain—and showed that the firbolg hardly saw anything humorous about their situation.

  “I told you we were too high up,” the firbolg said in a low, firm voice.

  Cadderly thought for a moment then began to explain to the giant that, while the strange, animated snow creature might have been natural to the area, both the chimera and the other winged beast, the mutated manticore, were magical in nature and not denizens of the cold and desolate peaks. Cadderly never finished his explanation, though, suddenly realizing the implications of his own thoughts.

  Magical creatures?

  What a fool I’ve been! Cadderly thought, and to Vander and his friends he offered only a sudden, confused expression. The young priest closed his eyes and mentally probed the area, sought out the magical eye of the scrying wizard—for someone had certainly guided the two monsters! Almost immediately, he felt the connection, felt the directed line of magical energy that could only be the probing of a scrying wizard—and promptly released a countering line to disperse it. Then Cadderly threw up magical defenses, put a veil around himself and his friends that would not be easily penetrated by distant, probing eyes.

  “What is it?” Danica demanded when he’d at last reopened his gray eyes.

  Cadderly shook his head then looked at Vander. “Find a sheltered area where we might set a camp and mend our wounds,” he instructed the firbolg.

  Danica was still staring at him, waiting for an explanation, but the young priest only offered another shake of his head, feeling positively foolish for not warding them all against scrying wizards much earlier in their journey.

  Again Cadderly wondered if he would disappoint those who had come to trust him.

  The chimera and the manticore were Aballister’s creatures, his children, brought into existence and nurtured to maturity by the magic of the powerful wizard. When they fell in the mountains, Aballister sensed the loss, as though a part of his own life-force had been stripped from him. He left his private quarters so abruptly that he didn’t even bother to close his spellbook, or to put up wards against intruders. The old wizard bounded down the hall to Dorigen’s room and pounded on the door, disrupting the woman’s studies.

  “Find them,” Aballister snarled as soon as Dorigen opened the door, pushing his way in.

  “What do you know?” she asked.

  “Find them!” Aballister commanded again. He grabbed Dorigen by the hand, pulling her to the seat in front of her crystal ball.

  Dorigen tore her hand free of Aballister’s grasp and eyed him dangerously.

  “Find them!” the older wizard growled at her for the third time, not retreating an inch from her threatening glare.

  Dorigen recognized the urgency in Aballister’s wizened face, knew that he would not have come there and treated her with such disrespect if he was not terribly afraid. She unco
vered the crystal ball and stared into the item for a long while, concentrating on reestablishing the connection to Cadderly. Several moments passed with the ball showing nothing but its swirling gray mist. Dorigen pressed on, commanding the mist to form an image.

  The ball went perfectly black.

  Dorigen looked up at Aballister, helpless, and the older wizard pushed her aside and took her place. He went at the crystal ball with all his magical strength, throwing his incredible willpower against the black barriers. Someone had warded them against scrying. Aballister growled and threw more magical strength into the effort, almost punching through the black veil. The power of the defenses told him unmistakably who the defender might be.

  “No!” Aballister growled, and he went at the barrier again, determined to force his way through those wards.

  The crystal ball remained inactive.

  “Damn him!” Aballister cried, slapping the sphere from its stand. Dorigen caught the crystal ball as it rolled off the table’s edge. She saw Aballister wince, though the wizard stubbornly did not grab at his already swelling hand.

  “Your son is more formidable …” Dorigen began, but Aballister cut her short with an animalistic growl. He leaped up from his seat and sent the stool bouncing away.

  “My son is a troublesome insect,” Aballister sneered, surely thinking of many ways that he might make Cadderly and his friends pay for the loss of his pets. “The next surprise that I will send to him will be a measure of my own power.”

  A shudder coursed along Dorigen’s spine. She’d never heard Aballister more determined. She was Aballister’s student, had witnessed many powerful displays of magic from the older man—and had known that those were just a fraction of what he was capable of.

  “Find them!” Aballister growled again between sharp, hissing breaths, and on as close an edge of uncontrollable rage as Dorigen had ever seen him, he swept from the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Dorigen nodded as though she meant to try, but as soon as she was convinced that Aballister wouldn’t immediately return, she replaced the ball in its support and draped a cloth over it. Cadderly had countered the magic, and the scrying device would not function for at least a day. In truth, she didn’t expect to find any more success the next day, either, for Cadderly was aware of her secret prying and would not likely let his guard slip again.

  Dorigen looked to the closed door and thought again that Aballister didn’t understand the power of his son. Nor the compassion, she realized as she clenched her still-mending hands and considered that, by Cadderly’s mercy alone, she was still alive.

  But neither did Cadderly understand the power of his father. Dorigen was glad that Druzil, and not she, had been sent out after the young priest, for when Aballister struck out at Cadderly the next time, it seemed to Dorigen that mountains would be leveled.

  When Danica awakened, the glow of the fire was low, barely illuminating the nearest features of the wide cave the party had found. She heard the comforting snores of the dwarves, Ivan’s grumbles complementing Pikel’s whistles, and could feel that Shayleigh was soundly resting near the wall behind her.

  Vander, too, was asleep, propped against a stone on the other side of the low fire. The night was dark and calm, and the snow had ceased, though the lessened wind continued a quiet, steady moan at the wide cave door. By all appearances, the campsite seemed quite serene, but the monk’s keen instincts told her that something was not as it should be.

  She propped herself up on her elbows and looked around. A second glow showed in the cave, far to the side and partially blocked by Cadderly’s sitting form. Cadderly? Danica looked to the wide cave entrance, to where the young priest should have been standing a watch.

  She heard a slight rattle, and some soft chanting. Silently, Danica slipped out of her bedroll and eased her way across the stone floor.

  Cadderly sat cross-legged before a lit candle, a parchment spread on the floor beside him, its ends anchored by small stones. Next to that was the young priest’s writing kit and The Tome of Universal Harmony, the holy book of Deneir, both opened. Danica crept closer and saw the young priest drop some ivory counters to the floor in front of him.

  He marked something on the parchment then tossed a fresh quill into the air before him, watching as it spun to the stone then making a note of its direction. Danica had been around priests long enough to understand that her love was engaged in some sort of divination spell.

  Danica nearly jumped and cried aloud when she felt a hand on her back, but she kept her wits enough to take the moment to recognize Shayleigh moving up beside her. The elf looked curiously at Cadderly, then back to Danica, who only shook her head and held her hands up wide.

  Cadderly read something from the book then fumbled with his pack and produced a small, gold-edged mirror and a pair of mismatched gloves, one black and one white.

  Danica’s mouth dropped open. Cadderly had brought the Ghearufu, the evil three-piece artifact that the assassin had carried, the same powerful item that Dean Thobicus had insisted be turned over for inspection.

  The significance of the Ghearufu sent a myriad of questions hurtling through Danica’s thoughts. From what she’d seen, and from what Cadderly had told her, it was an item of possession—might Cadderly’s strange behavior, his hysterical laughter on the ledge, and his insistence that the group remain dangerously high in the mountains, be somehow linked to the Ghearufu? Was Cadderly himself fighting against some sort of possession, some evil entity that clouded his judgment while leading them all astray?

  Shayleigh again put a hand on Danica’s back and looked to the monk with concern, but a movement to the side distracted them both.

  Vander crossed the floor in three easy strides, grabbed Cadderly by the back of his tunic, and lifted the young priest from the floor.

  “What are you about?” the firbolg demanded loudly. “Do you stand your watch from inside …?” The words caught in Vander’s throat, and the blood drained from his ruddy face. There before him lay the Ghearufu, the evil device that had held him as a slave for many tragic years.

  Danica and Shayleigh rushed over to them, Danica fearing that Vander, in his surprise and horror, might hurl Cadderly across the cave.

  “What are you about?” Danica agreed with Vander, but as she spoke, she crossed in front of the firbolg and strategically placed her thumb against a pressure point in Vander’s forearm, quietly forcing the giant to release his grip.

  Cadderly scowled and straightened his tunic then went to gather his possessions. At first, he seemed embarrassed, but then, when he looked back at Danica’s resolute stare, he steeled his gray eyes.

  “You should not have brought that,” Danica said.

  Cadderly didn’t immediately respond, and the other three exchanged worried glances.

  “We have come for Castle Trinity,” Danica argued.

  “That is but one reason,” Cadderly replied. He seemed unsure whether he should tell them the truth or not.

  Danica felt Vander’s muscles tighten, and she leaned back more firmly against the firbolg to prevent him from leaping out and throttling the young priest.

  “Do you always keep such important secrets from those who travel beside you?” Shayleigh asked. “Or do you believe that trust is not an essential element of any adventuring party?”

  “I would have told you!” Cadderly snapped at her.

  “When?” Danica growled at him from the other side. He looked back between the two, and to Vander’s outraged expression, and seemed to be losing his nerve.

  “Has the Ghearufu found a hold on you?” Danica asked bluntly.

  “No!” Cadderly shot back at once. “Though it has tried. You cannot imagine the depth of evil within this artifact.”

  Vander cleared his throat, a pointed reminder that the firbolg had felt the Ghearufu’s sting long before Cadderly even knew the item existed.

  “Then what use might it be?” Shayleigh snarled.

  Cadderly bit his
lower lip, glancing one way then the other. He suspected that his companions would not agree with his priorities, would still consider Castle Trinity the most important of their missions. Again doubts about being in the forefront assaulted the young priest. He told himself that he owed his friends an explanation at least.

  But that was just a rationalization, Cadderly knew. He wanted to tell his friends, wanted them to line up beside him on his most dangerous of missions.

  “We have come out in search of Castle Trinity,” he explained, his conscience gnawing over every word. “But that is only one purpose. I have done much searching and have discerned that there are few—very few—ways in which the Ghearufu might be truly destroyed.”

  “This couldn’t have waited?” Danica asked.

  “No!” Cadderly retorted. At his suddenly explosive tone, the three doubters again exchanged concerned glances, and Danica virtually snarled as she regarded the Ghearufu.

  “If I had left the artifact at the library, we cannot even guess the extent of the disaster we would have found upon our return,” Cadderly explained, his voice even once more. “And if we take it with us all the way to Castle Trinity, our enemies might find a way to use it against us.” He, too, looked down at the item, his face flushed with fear.

  “But it will not get to that dangerous point,” the young priest insisted. “There is a way to end the threat of the Ghearufu forever. That is why we took the high trails,” he explained, eyeing Vander directly. “There is a peak near here, somewhat legendary in the realm.”

  “Fyrentennimar?” Danica balked, and Shayleigh, recognizing the dreaded name, gave an unintentional wheeze.

  “The peak is called Nightglow,” Cadderly continued, undaunted. “In decades past, it was said to burn with inner fires in the dark of night, a glow that could be seen from Carradoon and all across the Shining Plains.”