“I wasn’t asking about your business in Fallcrest.” Shara sat back. “I want to know about you. You’re a wanderer. You’ve heard stories of my father. Where have you been? Would I have heard stories of you?”
“Not likely.”
“Then tell me some.”
Raid’s eyes narrowed as he studied the red-haired warrior. The storm in Albanon’s chest turned into a tickle. He started to open his mouth to say something, but Shara gave him a glance so hard he closed his teeth on his words. For once, even Uldane was silent.
Raid lifted his head. “Ask me what I am,” he said, “and I’ll tell you that I’m a hunter. That’s how I started. Name a creature and chances are I’ve tracked it. I’ve probably even killed it. With that kind of wandering, I think it was only natural I’d turn to an adventuring life. I practically fell into it. Between hunting and adventuring, I’ve probably been everywhere. The Dragon Coast and the Two Rivers Gulf. The ruins of Bael Turath. The cities of the south and the lands of the far west. Jungles, deserts, mountains. I had companions.” His gaze swept the table. “Until they were killed. Sole survivor, that’s me. After that, I left off adventuring—until now. One last adventure. One last mystery that I’ve spent years unraveling. It all comes down to this.”
Uldane looked like he might burst if he had to hold his curiosity in much longer. Questions buzzed in Albanon’s head, too, but Shara and Raid still held control of the table between them. Shara’s expression hadn’t changed. “You’re avoiding the question,” she said.
Raid drew a hard breath. “Maybe I don’t feel the need to open up to people I only know by reputation.”
“But you want us to do the same.” Shara tilted her head. “One question. Answer it square. Are you after treasure, secrets, or revenge?”
He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Treasure.”
“How much treasure?” Uldane asked. The words came out in an eager gasp. They brought a smile back to Raid’s face.
“Enough to get you out of Fallcrest and anywhere you want to go,” he said. “Enough to live like a noble when you get there.” He looked around at them again, then his eyes settled on Shara. “What do you say?”
She looked back at him. “No,” she said.
The storm inside Albanon dropped straight into his gut. He stared at Shara. So did Uldane, a little whine creeping up out of his throat. Shara, however, had her eyes solely on Raid.
The man with the twin axes sat perfectly still for a moment before repeating, “No?”
“No. We’re not the ones you want. Go try the Lucky Gnome Taphouse. It’s right off the Market Green.”
A dark look of anger flashed across Raid’s face. Before Albanon could say anything, he was on his feet. “I’m not used to having my offers denied,” he said.
“You didn’t offer us anything,” said Shara. “Consider it a frank assessment.”
Raid’s jaw tightened. “Then I thank you for your honesty. May your gods keep you.”
He turned and stalked off, sliding with angry grace through the crowd of patrons. Shara let out a long breath. Albanon rounded on her. “What are you doing?” he yelped. “That was what we wanted, wasn’t it?”
Eyes still on the crowd where Raid had disappeared, Shara shook her head. “No,” she said, “it wasn’t. I don’t think I’d go around the corner with Hakken Raid.”
“Are you insane?” demanded Uldane. “This was perfect!”
Shara’s lips pressed tight and a flush crept into her cheeks. “There was something about him I didn’t like,” she said. “He wouldn’t tell us where he wanted us to go.”
“You hardly gave him a chance to,” said Albanon.
“He traveled alone.”
Uldane slumped down his chair and crossed his arms. “Right now I can see why he’d want to.”
Shara looked between them. “Were you two that taken in? How much have you had to drink?”
“Not that much,” Albanon said hotly. “Maybe he didn’t want to tell a bunch of strangers all of his secrets straight out. What’s wrong with that? Why shouldn’t we have taken a chance with him?”
“For one thing, what would you have done if you’d agreed to help him, then didn’t like what he told you? Would you have walked away? Maybe keeping your word doesn’t matter that much to you, but it does to me.”
Her words stung. Albanon felt his cheeks flush. “I keep my word!” he protested, but Shara didn’t stop.
“He didn’t give us one piece of information of any significance. He dodged all of my questions, even when I gave him opportunities to answer openly. So he’s been a hunter and an adventurer. So he’s been to a lot of different places. He didn’t give us any specifics.”
“He said that he’d come to Fallcrest looking for treasure,” Uldane pointed out.
“And that’s all he said.” Shara looked straight at the halfling. “You should know that question, Uldane. It was one of my father’s favorites. Anyone who wanted to hire us, he’d ask that question. The answer doesn’t matter so much as what comes after it. Raid didn’t say anything about the treasure or why he wanted to find it—he just told us how rich it would make us.”
“Uldane asked how much treasure,” said Albanon. “Raid was just answering him!”
“What about how he reacted when I turned him down? He took it like a personal insult, as if I’d laughed in his face.”
“He came all this way looking for us and you said no. I’d be disappointed, too.”
“Would you be angry like he was?”
“Probably.” Albanon felt more than a little angry already.
“Trust me,” Shara said. “We’re better off staying right here.”
Albanon inhaled slowly and tried to call up the discipline that had kept him calm with Kossley Varn’s face shouting in his face. This time, however, it eluded him. A hot sense of disappointment burned in his belly. The feeling of isolation and displacement he’d managed to overcome only a short time before came crashing back over him. He looked back up at Shara.
“I don’t think we are,” he told her. “I think we need to get out of Fallcrest, but there’s nothing else to do unless we want to strike out on our own. You’ve just scared off our best chance at an ally.”
Shara scowled. “I don’t trust him,” she said curtly.
“Well, I liked him,” muttered Uldane. “I think Borojon would have felt the same. So would Jarren.”
Shara sucked air through her teeth and whirled on him. “You don’t know what my father or Jarren would have felt,” she said harshly. “You like everybody!”
Uldane flinched as if she’d struck him, but Shara had already turned to glare at Albanon. “And what do you know? You think being a wizard’s apprentice then falling in with a bunch of adventurers by chance makes you a good judge of anything? I know what I’m doing.” Shara thumped her chest. “My father taught me more than just how to swing a sword. He taught me what to look for when I’m choosing my allies.”
The declaration was too much. Albanon’s face burned hot. “I wish he’d taught me, then,” he said, “because I’ve clearly made a mistake in choosing mine.”
He stood up, his chair scraping across the floor. Shara finally winced in recognition of her harsh words, but it was too late. “Albanon, no—that’s not what I meant.”
“Really? I wouldn’t know. I’m not a good judge.” He turned away from her and from Uldane, curled down in his chair and watching them in sullen silence.
“Stop acting like a child!”
Albanon stiffened and looked back at her. A wide swath of the alehouse had gone quiet again, listening in on their argument. Shara’s face was taut and hard. Albanon raised his chin.
“Don’t bother coming back to the tower tonight,” he said. “I’m raising the wards behind me when I go in.”
He walked out through the staring crowd with his head held high and his heart beating like a running dog.
A steep bluff cut through the middle of Fallcrest, d
ividing the upper town from the lower and creating the high cascade in the Nentir River that gave the town its name. The Blue Moon was in the lower town; the tower that had been Moorin’s was in the upper. Many times over the years of his apprenticeship, Albanon had used the climb up the crooked road along the bluff’s face as an opportunity to sober up after an evening at the alehouse.
Sometimes sobriety and second thoughts came whether he wanted them or not. By the time he was halfway up the bluff, his anger was already ebbing.
By the time he’d reached the top, regret was a gnawing hollow in his gut.
Albanon paused at the brow of the bluff and leaned against the well-worn rail that had been set there long ago for just that purpose. Fallcrest spread out below him, a few windows still lit here and there by late-night candles, but most of the town’s buildings were dark and quiet shapes under the moonlight. The Nentir River made a shining ribbon that rolled past the town wall and on into the shadowed countryside beyond.
There were adventures to be had out there—did it matter if the Lord Warden assigned them a task or Hakken Raid had some crazy secret plan? He and Shara and Uldane were a team. They’d find something for themselves. They’d beaten Vestapalk together. And maybe Shara was right. What did he really know of judging people? He’d gone straight from his father’s estate in the Feywild to Moorin’s tower. And in the wake of his master’s murder, he’d joined forces with Tempest, Roghar, and the others almost by accident. Shara had experience, even if she didn’t have tact. She knew what she was doing. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so eager to listen to Raid.
He screwed up his face, though, wrinkling his nose at his own weakness. Just because Shara was right didn’t mean he had to let her insult him. Let her spend the night somewhere else. Maybe even outside. It wasn’t going to hurt her. They could apologize to each other in the morning. Albanon turned away from the sight of the lower town. Farther along the brow of the bluff, the reflected brilliance of moonlight on white stone showed how the Glowing Tower had come by its name. Albanon tried to put Shara out of his mind as he walked, but it was hard not to dream of the morning; Shara, damp with dew and sleep-deprived, stinking of some cowshed where she’d taken shelter. It was almost a pity that the night was cloudless. A light shower of rain to add to the warrior-woman’s discomfort would have—
Albanon’s hand was on the handle of the tower’s door before he noticed something was wrong. He turned sharply and squinted into the moonshadows, searching for the subtle traces of magic. There were none.
But there should have been. Moorin had woven arcane wards around the tower long ago. Albanon took care to speak the ritual words that raised them whenever he went out.
The last time he’d come home and found the wards unexpectedly dispelled had been the night Moorin had been killed.
He hesitated before pushing the door open silently. Whatever had brought down the wards was probably inside. Only one suspect came to his mind: Moorin’s killer, the creature Nu Alin. Granted, they’d beaten it—him, if Tempest was to be believed—back deep in the tunnels of Thunderspire Mountain, but what if he had lived and managed to make his way back to Fallcrest?
On the other hand, what if there was no one in the tower? What if he had simply forgotten to raise the wards tonight? Or what if they’d only lasted so long without Moorin’s influence to maintain them? He hadn’t considered that possibility before. Either way, if he raised an alarm that turned out to be for nothing, his already damaged reputation would be completely shattered. He’d be laughed out of town.
Just a quick look, he promised himself. Just a quick look to be sure there really is someone. Then I’ll go get help.
He stepped inside.
PROLOGUE
Vestapalk perched on the lip of the crater and stared down into the tumult below. A red glow from the bottom cast sickly shadows from the boulders and other debris that littered the slopes of the old caldera, but occasional lightning in the heart of the central shaft turned the rubble into stark silhouettes. Deep within the shaft, the Voidharrow was doing its work, slowly breaking the earth down into its component elements and infusing them with some distant echo of its malignity, creating a sinkhole of evil, a new Abyss that would spawn plague demons enough to overrun whatever was left of the world when its work was complete.
It was beautiful to Vestapalk, his creation as well as his source. He had poured himself into its genesis, vomiting forth so much of the Voidharrow that he was left little more than an empty husk at the rim of the volcano’s crater. He had lain there, spent, for weeks as the Voidharrow bored down toward the world’s core, birthing this maelstrom. Slowly, his exarchs and his minions had found their way to him, joining Nu Alin in keeping watch over him as he rested. As the new Abyss had grown, they had moved down into it, making it their home. They were its demons.
Vestapalk spread his leathery wings and leaped into the air. He circled the caldera a few times, riding the warm updraft from the sinkhole, then folded his wings and dived into the shaft.
His Abyss swirled and churned around him, bathing him in its chaotic surges. First lightning crackled and danced along his wings, then a jet of flame washed over the scarlet, crystalline scales that covered his head and neck. Mighty as it had been, the mortal body that was the dragon Vestapalk would have been destroyed if it had flown through the midst of the storm like this. Something akin to laughter rumbled in his chest.
He spread his wings to arrest his fall and circled again, gazing down at the bubbling pool that was the Voidharrow, the origin of his own transformation as well as this new Abyss. Wisps of steam rose from it and shone in its red glow like an aurora of blood, and at the edges, where it slowly ate into the earth, it unleashed flashes of fire and lightning, rumbles of thunder and cracking ice. Vestapalk circled lower until his claws trailed across the surface of the liquid crystal. It lifted slender tendrils to meet him, brushing them against him as he passed over, sending electric tingles through his claws.
With a splash that sent waves of viscous liquid sloshing against the walls of the cavern, Vestapalk settled into the pool. The Voidharrow embraced him, rising around him in a thin film that slowly spread to cover every scale of his body, just as it had when it first infused his mortal body and began his transformation. It crept under his scales and flowed into his veins, coursing through him and reinvigorating him.
He looked down at his body, shining like a distant, crimson star. He was the Voidharrow now—the dragon’s mortal body and the fragment of its mind that persisted within his own were nothing more than a framework for his power. He was the lord of this Abyss, master of the plague demons that walked and crawled and flew among the swirling elemental forces. He closed his eyes and extended his mind throughout the liquid pool, sent out a call to all those he had infused with its power, his exarchs. He summoned them, and he felt them respond, turning their steps toward the Voidharrow.
He closed his eyes and settled into the pool to wait for them as the Plaguedeep grew around him.
The demons came quickly, gathering around the edges of the pool amid the churning entropy of elemental forces liberated from the earth. They prostrated themselves before Vestapalk, and he extended his mind to touch each of theirs, to ensure that no doubt or resentment or ambition had taken root in his exarchs. Satisfied, he lifted his head, sending a slow cascade of liquid running from his chin to splash back into the Voidharrow, and then he addressed them.
“Our time has come,” Vestapalk said, his voice filling the cavern and resounding from the walls. Beneath him, the Voidharrow whispered its echo of his words, and all around him his exarchs murmured their agreement. “The Plaguedeep has taken root in this place, and it grows with every passing hour. With it, our power grows, and the world’s destruction grows ever nearer.”
The murmurs around him grew louder with excitement, and he paused to let them quiet again.
“So now this one sends you forth to carry the seeds of annihilation beyond this place. You shall
carry the Voidharrow to every corner of the world. The demons at your command shall spread terror and destruction everywhere. Our plague will spread until the world is gone and only the Plaguedeep remains.”
Now the murmurs rose to eager shouts. Vestapalk cast his eyes around at his exarchs and the other demons capering grotesquely near the edge of the pool. He saw one of his exarchs, hulking Churr Ashin, lash out with a massive claw to take the head off a lesser demon that pranced too close. The demon’s headless body twitched and danced for a moment more before it tumbled into the viscous pool and the Voidharrow dragged it down to fuel the plague.
“Wherever you go, this one goes,” Vestapalk continued, roaring above the noise. “As you spread through the world, you spread my power. This one is the Voidharrow, the plague, and the Plaguedeep. Go forth and consume the world!”
More violence erupted around the edges of the pool, and Vestapalk felt a slow surge of power as demon blood spilled into the pool and flowed into his veins through the Voidharrow. He let the excitement rise to a fever pitch, let the ecstasy of power build within him, until he felt that his exarchs were sated. Then he roared once more, “Go!” and the demons hurried to disperse.
Vestapalk settled back into the pool, the blood eddying around him. He closed his eyes and drank in the intoxicating flows of power within the Voidharrow for a moment before turning his gaze to Nu Alin.
The body thief stood calmly at the edge of the pool, a stark contrast to the bestial demons that had thronged the shore moments earlier. He looked almost perfectly human, though he made no effort to conceal the red liquid that welled in his eyes like bloodstained tears. He must have seized a new vessel only recently, shedding the battered corpse of the drow he had taken at the Temple of Yellow Skulls. Now he wore the body of a strong, fair-skinned man, perhaps one of the Tigerclaw barbarians from the northern forest.
“What is it, Nu Alin?” Vestapalk murmured. The Voidharrow’s echoing whispers were indistinct, like a susurrus of wind.
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