Canticle

by R. A. Salvatore

  I will divert them if they get past the skeletons, Druzil assured the priest, but prepare your defenses!

  * * * * *

  Ivan knew he was running out of room. One hand raked at his shoulder, and all that he got for his retaliatory punch was a torn fingernail. The experienced dwarf decided to use his head. He tucked his powerful little legs under him, and the next time the pursuing skeleton lunged for him, he sprang forward.

  Ivan's helmet was fitted with the antlers of an eight-point deer, a trophy Ivan had bagged with a "dwarven bow"―that being a hammer balanced for long-range throwing―in a challenge hunt against a visiting elf from Shilmista Forest. In mounting the horns on his helmet, clever Ivan had used an old lacquering trick involving several different metals, and he only prayed that they would prove strong enough now.

  He drove into the skeleton's chest, knowing that his horns would likely be entangled, then he stood up and straightened his neck, hoisting the skeleton overhead. Ivan wasn't certain how much his maneuver had gained him, though, for the skeleton, suspended perpendicularly across the dwarf's shoulders, continued its raking attacks.

  Ivan whipped his head back and forth, but the skeleton's sharp fingers found a hold on the side of his neck and dug a deep cut. Others were advancing.

  Ivan found his answer along the side of the corridor, in an alcove. He could slip in there easily enough, but could the skeleton fit through, laid out sideways? Ivan lowered his head and charged, nearly bursting with laughter. The impact as the skeleton's head and legs connected with the arch surrounding the alcove slowed the dwarf only a step. Bones, dust, and webs flew, and Ivan's helmet nearly tore free of his head as the dwarf tumbled in headlong. He came back out into the corridor a moment later with half a rib cage and several web strands hanging loosely from his horns. He had defeated the immediate threat, but a whole corridor of enemies still remained.

  Cadderly saved Pikel. The dazed dwarf sat near the wall, with a ringing in his ears that would last for a long time, and with a host of skeletons swiftly closing.

  "Druid, Pikel!" Cadderly yelled, trying to find something that would shake the dwarf back to reality. "Think like a druid. Envision the animals! Become an animal!"

  Pikel lifted the front of his pot helmet and glanced absently toward Cadderly. "Eh?"

  "Animals!" Cadderly screamed. "Druids and animals. An animal could get up and away! Spring .. . snake, Pikel. Spring like a coiled snake!"

  The pot helmet went back down over the dwarf's eyes, but Cadderly was not dismayed, for he heard a hissing sound coming from under it and he noticed the slight movement as Pikel tensed the muscles in his arms and legs.

  A dozen skeletons reached for him.

  And the coiled snake snapped.

  Pikel came up in a wild rush, batting with both arms, kicking with both legs, even gnawing on one skeleton's forearm. As soon as he regained his footing, the dwarf scooped up his club and began the most vicious and frantic assault Cadderly had ever witnessed. He took a dozen hits but didn't care. Only one thought, the memory that his brother had called for him, rang clear in the would-be druid's mind.

  He saw Ivan coming out of the alcove and spotted Ivan's axe, caught fast in the tangle of two skeletons making their unsteady way toward Ivan. Pikel caught up to them long before they reached his brother.

  The tree trunk club smashed again and again, beating the skeletons, punishing them for stealing Ivan's weapon.

  "That'll be enough, brother," Ivan cried happily, scooping his axe from the bone pile. "There are walking foes still to smash!"

  Cadderly outmaneuvered the slow-moving skeletons to rejoin the dwarves. "Which way?" he gasped.

  "Forward," Ivan replied without hesitation.

  "Oooi!" Pikel agreed.

  "Just get between us," growled Ivan, blasting the skull from a skeleton who had ventured too near.

  As they worked their way down the corridor, Cadderly's tactics improved. He kept his spindle-disks flying for skulls only―less chance of getting them hooked that way―and used his walking stick to ward off the reaching monsters.

  Much more devastating to the skeletons were the two fighters flanking the young scholar. Pikel growled like a bear, barked like a dog, hooted like an owl, and hissed like a snake, but whatever sound came from his mouth did not alter his crushing attack routines with his tree trunk club.

  Ivan was no less furious. The dwarf accepted a hit for every that he gave out, but while the skeletons managed to inflict sometimes painful scratches, each of Ivan's strikes shattered another of their ranks into scattered and useless bones.

  The trio worked its way through one archway, around several sharp corners, and through yet another archway. Soon more of the skeletal host was behind them than in front, and the gap only widened as less and less resistance stood to hinder their way. The dwarves seemed to enjoy the now lopsided fight and Cadderly had to continually remind them of their more important mission in order to prevent them from turning back to find more skeletons to whack.

  Finally they came clear of the threat and Cadderly had a moment to pause and try to get his bearings. He knew that the door, the critical door with the light shining through, could not be too far from here, but the crisscrossing corridors offered few landmarks to jog his memory.

  * * * * *

  Druzil concluded from the sheer quantity of smashed skeletons that these invaders were not stupefied victims of the chaos curse. He quickly closed in behind the fleeing intruders, taking care, even though he was invisible, to keep to the safety of sheltered shadows. Never allowing Cadderly and the dwarves to get out of his sight, the imp used his telepathy to contact Barjin again, and this time he asked the cleric for direct help.

  Give me the commands for the skeletons, Druzil demanded.

  Barjin hesitated, his own evil methods forcing him to consider if the imp might be attempting to wrest control.

  Give the words to me or prepare to face a formidable band, Druzil warned. I can serve you well now, my master, but only if you choose wisely.

  Barjin had come out of his sleep to find danger suddenly close, and he meant to take no chances of losing what he had so painstakingly achieved. He still didn't trust the imp―no wise master ever would―but he figured that he could handle Druzil if it came down to that. Besides, if the imp tried to turn the skeletons against him, he could merely exert his own will and wrest back control of them.

  Destroy the intruders! came Barjin's telepathic command, and he followed it with a careful recounting of all the command words and phrases recognizable by his skeletal force.

  Druzil needed no prodding from Barjin; protecting the flask of his precious chaos curse was more important to him than it ever could be to the priest. He memorized all the proper phrases and inflections for handling the skeletons, then, seeing that Cadderly and the dwarves had stopped to rest in an out-of-the-way and empty passage, went back to retrieve the remaining undead forces.

  The next time the intruders met them, the skeletons would not be a disorganized and directionless band. "We will surround and strike in unison," Druzil vowed to the skeletons, though the words meant nothing to the unthinking monsters. Druzil had to hear them, though. "We will tear apart the dwarves and the human," the imp went on, growing more excited. The chaotic imp couldn't immediately contain his hopes there, pondering the possibilities of taking the skeletal host against Barjin. Druzil dismissed the absurd notion as soon as he had thought of it. Barjin served him well for now, as Aballister had done.

  But who could guess what the future might hold?

  Danica's Battle

  She found herself in the throes of repeated urges, building to overwhelming crescendos and then dying away to be replaced by other insistent impulses. Surely this was Danica's definition of Hell, the discipline and strict codes of her beloved religion swept away by waves of sheer chaos. She tried to staunch those waves, to beat back the images of Iron Skull, the urges she had felt when Cadderly had touched her, and the many others, bu
t she found no secure footholds in her violently shifting thoughts.

  Danica touched upon something that even the chaos could not disrupt. To fight the battle of the present, the young woman sent her thoughts into the simpler past.

  She saw her father, Pavel, again, his small but powerful frame and blond hair turning to white on the temples. Mostly, Danica saw his gray eyes, always tender when they looked upon his little girl. There, too, was her mother and namesake, solid, immovable, and wildly in love with her father. Danica was the exact image of that woman, except that her mother's hair was raven black, not blond, showing closer resemblance to the woman's partially eastern background. She was petite and fair like her daughter, with the same clear brown, almond eyes, not dark but almost tan, that could sparkle with innocence or turn fast to unbreakable determination.

  Danica's images of her parents faded and were replaced by the wrinkled, wizened image of mysterious Master Turkel. His skin was thick, leathery, from uncounted hours spent sitting in the sun and meditating atop a mountain, high above the lines of shading trees. Truly he was a man of extremes, of explosive fighting abilities buried under seemingly limitless serenity. His ferocity during sparring matches often scared Danica, made her think the man was out of control.

  But Danica had learned better than to believe that; Master Turkel was never out of control. Discipline was at the core of his, their, religion, the same discipline that Danica needed now.

  She had labored beside her dear master for six years, until that day when Turkel honestly admitted that he could give no more to her. Despite her anticipation at studying the actual works of Penpahg D'Ahn, it had been a sad day for Danica when she left Westgate and started down the long road to the Edificant Library.

  Then she had found Cadderly.

  Cadderly! She had loved him from the first moment she had ever seen him, chasing a white squirrel along the groves lining the winding road to the library's front door. Cadderly hadn't noticed Danica right away, not until he tumbled headlong into a bush of clinging burrs. That first look struck Danica profoundly both then and now, as she battled to reclaim her identity. Cadderly had been embarrassed, to be sure, but the sudden flash of light in his eyes, eyes even purer gray than Danica's father's, and the way his mouth dropped open just a hint, then widened in a sheepish, boyish smile, had sent a curious warm sensation through Danica's whole body.

  The courtship had been equally thrilling and unpredictable.

  Danica never knew what ingenious event Cadderly would spring on her next. But entrenched beside Cadderly's unpredictability was a rock-solid foundation that Danica could depend upon. Cadderly gave her friendship, an ear for her problems and excitement alike, and, most of all, respect for her and her studies, never competing against Grandmaster Penpahg D'Ahn for her time.

  Cadderly?

  Danica heard an echo deep in her mind, a soothing but determined call from Cadderly, urging her to "fight."

  Fight?

  Danica looked inward, to those overwhelming urges and deeper, to their source, then she saw the manifestation, as had Cadderly. It was within her and not in the open room around her. She envisioned a red mist permeating her thoughts, an ungraspable force compelling her to its will and not her own. It was a fleeting vision, gone an instant after she glimpsed it, but Danica had always been a stubborn one. She summoned back the vision with all her will and this time she held onto it. Now she had an identified enemy, something tangible to battle.

  "Fight, Danica," Cadderly had said. She knew that; she heard the echoes. Danica formulated her thoughts in direct opposition to the mist's urging. She denied whatever her impulses told her to do and to think. If her heart told her that something was correct, she called her heart a liar.

  "Iron Skull," compelled a voice inside her.

  Danica countered with a memory of pain and warm blood running down her face, a memory that revealed to her how stupid she had been in attempting to smash the stone.

  * * * * *

  It was not a call heard by physical ears; it needed neither the wind nor open air to carry it. The energy emanating from Barjin's necromancer's stone called to a specific group only, to monsters of the negative plane, the land of the dead.

  A few short miles from the Edificant Library, where once there had been a small mining town, the call was heard.

  A ghoulish hand, withered and filthy, tore up through the sod, reaching into the world of the living. Another followed, and another, just a short distance away. Soon the gruesome pack of ghouls was up out of their holes, drooling tongues hanging between yellow fangs.

  Running low, knuckles to the ground, the ghoul pack made for the stone's call, for the Edificant Library.

  * * * * *

  Newander could only guess what inner turmoil racked the young woman. Sweat soaked Danica's clothes and she squirmed and groaned under the tightly binding vines. At first, the druid had thought her in pain, and he quickly prepared a sedating spell to calm her. Fortunately, it occurred to Newander that Danica's nightmare might be self-inflicted, that she might have found, as Cadderly had promised, some way to fight back the curse.

  Newander sat beside the bed and placed his hands gently but firmly on Danica's arms. While he did not call to her, or do anything else that might hinder her concentration, he watched her closely, fearful lest his guess be wrong.

  Danica opened her eyes. "Cadderly?" she asked. Then she saw that the man over her was not Cadderly, and she realized, too, that she was tightly strapped down. She flexed her muscles and twisted as much as the vines would allow, testing their play.

  "Calm, dear lass," Newander said softly, sensing her growing distress. "Your Cadderly was here, but he could not stay. He set me to watch over you."

  Danica stopped her struggling, recognizing the man's accent. She didn't know his name, but his dialect, and the presence of the vines, told her his profession. "You are one of the druids?" she asked.

  "I am Newander," the druid replied, bowing low, "friend of your Cadderly."

  Danica accepted his words without question and spent a moment reorienting herself to her surroundings. She was in her own room, she knew, the room she had lived in for a year, but something seemed terribly out of place. It wasn't Newander, or even the vines. Something in this room, in Danica's most secure of places, burned on the edges of the young woman's consciousness, tortured her soul. Danica's gaze settled on the fallen block of stone, stained darkly on one side. The ache in her forehead told her that her dreams had been correct, that her own lifeblood had made that stain.

  "How could I have been so foolish?" Danica groaned.

  "You were not foolish," Newander assured her. "There has been a curse about this place, a curse that your Cadderly has set out to remove."

  Again Danica knew instinctively that the druid spoke truthfully. She envisioned her mental struggle against the insinuating red mist, a battle that had been won temporarily but was far from over. Even as she lay there, Danica knew that the red mist continued its assault on her mind.

  "Where is he?" Danica asked, near panic.

  "He went below," Newander replied, seeing no need to hide the facts from the bound woman. "He spoke of a smoking bottle, deep in the cellars."

  "The smoke," Danica echoed mysteriously. "Red mist. It is all about us, Newander."

  The druid nodded. "That is what Cadderly claimed. It was he who opened the bottle, and he that means to close it."

  "Alone?"

  "No, no," Newander assured her. "The two dwarves went with him. They have not been as affected by the curse as the rest."

  "The rest?" Danica gasped. Danica knew that her own resistance to such mind-affecting spells was greater than the average person's and she suddenly feared for the other priests. If she had been driven to slam her head into a block of stone, then what tragedies might have befallen less disciplined priests?

  "Aye, the rest," Newander replied grimly. "The curse is general on the library. Few, if any, have escaped it, your Cadderly excepted
. Dwarves are tougher than most against magic, and the brother cooks seemed in good sorts."

  Danica could hardly digest what she was hearing. The last thing she could remember was finding Cadderly unconscious under the casks in the wine cellar. Everything after that seemed just a strange dream to her, fleeting images of irrational moments. Now, in concentrating with all her willpower, she remembered Kierkan Rufo's advances and her punishing him severely for them. Danica remembered even more vividly the block of stone, the exploding flashes of pain, and her own refusal to admit the futility of her attempt.

  Danica did not dare to let her imagination conjure images of the state of the library if the druid's words were true, if this same curse was general throughout the place. She focused her thoughts instead on a more personal level, on Cadderly and his quest down in the dusty, dangerous cellars.

  "We must go and help him," she declared, renewing her struggles against the stubborn vines.

  "No," said Newander. "We are to stay here, by Cadderly's own bidding."

  "No," Danica stated flatly, shaking her head. "Of course Cadderly would say that, trying to protect me―and it seems I needed protecting, until a few moments ago. Cadderly and the dwarves might need us, and I'll not lie here under your vines while he walks into danger."

  Newander was about to question her on why she thought there might be danger in the cellars, when he recalled Cadderly's own morbid descriptions of the haunted place.

  "Have your plants let me go, Newander, I beg" Danica appealed to the druid. "You can remain here if you choose, but I must go to Cadderly's side quickly, before this cursing mist regains its hold on me!"

  Her last statement, that the curse might fall back over her, only reinforced Newander's logical conclusion that she should be kept under tight control, that her reprieve from the curse, if that was what this was, might be a temporary thing. But the druid could not ignore the determination in the young woman's voice. He had heard stories of the remarkable Danica from many sources since his arrival at the library and he did not doubt that she would be a powerful ally to Cadderly if she could remain clear-headed. Still, the druid could not underestimate the curse's power―the evidence was too clear all about him―and the choice to release her seemed a great risk.