by James Wyatt
“You have to keep your pawns in play as well,” Shara said. “I see.”
“They’re not my pawns,” Roghar protested.
“Of course they are,” Quarhaun said. “At least the priests of Lolth have the honesty to admit it.”
“This is their town!” Roghar said. “I’m just encouraging them to retake it for themselves.”
“Fine,” Shara said. “Then let them retake it while we go hunt down Vestapalk.”
“They need leadership,” Roghar said.
Quarhaun arched an eyebrow. “The silken words of every tyrant.”
“Tyrant?” Roghar got to his feet again, drawing the eyes of every soldier in the room—and a few cheers. Emboldened by the cheers, he gave up on arguing with the drow and turned to address the room. “People of Fallcrest,” he said, “the time to liberate our town from the demons is now!” He drew his sword and held it over his head, inspiring more cheers.
“Now it’s our town,” he heard Quarhaun mutter behind him.
Roghar ignored him. “Soldiers, take up your arms! Gather your comrades! We gather in the square to free Lowtown and drive the demons back to the pits that spawned them! For Fallcrest, for Bahamut, and for glory!”
A roar of cheers nearly deafened him. The soldiers and many of the citizens were on their feet and crowding out the door to the square, ready to begin their counterassault. Roghar’s heart was pounding in his chest in anticipation of the coming battle.
“Well, I guess that settles it,” Shara said.
Roghar turned back to the table. Uldane and Tempest were on their feet as well, both looking ready to follow him out the door. Shara and Quarhaun still sat at the table, their arms folded and their faces dour.
“You’re not coming?” he said.
“What have I been saying all this time?” Shara said. “Have you even been listening?”
“But I thought—”
“You thought your stirring speech would change our minds, or that we’d be too embarrassed not to accompany you when the rest of the town was on your side. Or you just got caught up in the excitement and didn’t think at all. It doesn’t matter.”
“Shara, listen to reason.”
“Good luck with the demons, Roghar,” Shara said. She looked at Tempest. “I hope you find Nu Alin, and kill him for what he did to you.”
Roghar scowled. “Well,” he said, “I hope you get your revenge on Vestapalk as well.”
Shara extended a hand, and he shook it. He nodded to the drow, who returned the gesture, and turned to the door.
“Uldane?” Shara said.
“Good-bye, Shara,” the halfling said, his words clipped.
“I still don’t—”
“Maybe this never occurred to you, caught up in the mad whirlwind of your love for Jarren, but I loved him, too. He was my friend—maybe my best friend. And he wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”
As he went out the door, Roghar looked over his shoulder and saw Shara stiffen. She stared at Uldane for a long moment, then nodded. “Good-bye, Uldane.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Albanon’s head spun and his stomach sank as a kaleidoscope of worlds appeared and disappeared within the frame of the Vast Gate. He felt magic flaring in the channels created by Moorin’s blood, drawn to the opening of the gate, tugging at the forces within the gate as if to channel them in a particular direction. Kri finally seemed to become aware of the additional magic at work in the tower, casting nervous glances around at the rest of the room even as he tried to concentrate on focusing the gate on a single destination—the prison of the Chained God.
“Chained God!” Kri called. “Ender and Anathema, Eater of Worlds, Undoer: Come and wreak destruction!”
Albanon’s stomach churned and he remembered finding Moorin dead in his tower, the blood and gore everywhere, the reek of the wizard’s spilled guts and acrid blood. This is all wrong, some part of his mind declared. We’re supposed to prevent this, to work against the killer of Moorin, not according to his purpose.
The chaos in his mind sent the image in the Vast Gate spinning dizzily from world to world. Albanon lurched out of the magic circle and emptied his stomach onto the floor, falling to his hands and knees as his gut contracted again and again until nothing remained to heave up.
When he looked up, the archway of the Vast Gate was filled with utter darkness. Kri stood transfixed before it, gazing into the void, a look of bliss on his weathered face.
“Tharizdun,” he whispered.
“No,” Albanon gasped. “Kri, wait!”
“Patient One. He Who Waits. Chained God.” Kri’s voice grew slowly louder as he intoned the appellations of Tharizdun.
Albanon’s throat burned and his head was pounding, but he staggered to his feet. “Kri, remember your oath! The Oath of Vigilance!”
“Your waiting is over and your freedom is at hand!”
The darkness in the Vast Gate changed subtly. It remained an inky black that repelled all light, but red liquid flowed behind and beneath it, too, gleaming here and there like tiny, dim stars in an awful night sky. Albanon had the fleeting sense of something poised and waiting in the darkness, ready to spring.
And then it erupted through the gate and emerged into the world.
First was a wave of sheer power, like a blast from a furnace but without light or heat, just raw energy that washed past him, overwhelmed him, battered him to the floor, and left him for dead. He was nothing to it, utterly insignificant, like an ant beneath the foot of a titan. It filled the tower and extended farther, probing into the world beyond.
Albanon’s mind reeled from trying to take it in, unable to comprehend the vastness of what he perceived and what was perceiving him. Somehow whatever was left of his mind understood that it was the eye of Tharizdun—the mere attention of the Chained God, extended from his prison in the void into the world on the other side of the Vast Gate. None of the god’s power or substance had yet passed through, but the simple fact of his glance passing over Albanon had left him wrecked and teetering at the brink of madness.
Kri had already plunged over that brink, and he babbled and wailed long strings of nonsense syllables as Tharizdun’s gaze seemed to focus upon him. He stood with his arms spread open to the gate, eyes open but rolled back in his head, his body arched in ecstatic torment in the sight of his god.
Next through the gate came a slow seepage of liquid red crystal, more of the Voidharrow probing through the gate. Albanon gasped as the first snaky tendrils surged out toward him, but they passed him by, coursing out along the pathways that Nu Alin had laid with Moorin’s blood.
Once more Albanon perceived the pattern of the whorls and arcs of blood, the channels that directed both the flow of magic and the movement of the Voidharrow. Arcane formulas gave structure to his thoughts again, and he understood what had escaped him until that moment, what Kri still had not grasped. The Voidharrow was forming a lattice, a net that would catch and bind whatever emerged through the Vast Gate.
Even the Chained God.
A moment before, Albanon would have found it impossible to conceive of anything worse than the Chained God emerging through the gate that he and Kri had opened. Then he tried to imagine a demon like Nu Alin, or like the monster at Sherinna’s tower, but infused with the power of the Eater of Worlds.
“No no no,” he murmured.
He staggered across the room to the place where Moorin’s body had lain, slumped on the floor against the far wall. Tears stung his eyes as he fell to the floor, just as he had done on the night of Moorin’s death. It had never before occurred to him to wonder who had cleaned the tower and what had become of the body, and he was stung with guilt as he realized that he should have ensured that Moorin was properly laid to rest. But he shook the feeling from his thoughts, putting himself in the position Moorin had occupied, the focus of all the lines and whorls of energy in the room.
He felt the Voidharrow coursing toward him along dozens of different pathw
ays. Hundreds of wordless, whispering voices pressed against his mind, overwhelming him with a sense of eager hunger. Terror set his whole body quivering. The red liquid of the Voidharrow gleamed like blood on the walls, floor, and ceiling.
Is this what Moorin saw as he died? Albanon wondered.
He fought back his terror and focused on the magic. Numbers and formulas danced in his mind. He felt power welling up in his heart like a sun, then his body started to glow. He spread his arms wide and felt the magic course out from him, sending light flowing like pure water back along the channels that laced the room to meet the approaching Voidharrow. Where the flow of light met the red liquid it flared into white fire, and in a moment the room was lit with a hundred stars where his light burned the Voidharrow.
The Voidharrow’s fury was a palpable pulse in the air of the room, but it was an impotent rage. The light burning out from Albanon filled the channels, and the Voidharrow seemed unable to flow outside the lines that had been prepared for it. All it could do was inch slowly back the way it had come, back to the Vast Gate, until the room was filled with an intricate lacework of Albanon’s light.
Then the Voidharrow was gone entirely, but the attention of Tharizdun, which had diminished to a mere brooding presence in the room, surged outward again, as if it had been waiting for the Voidharrow to get out of its way. Albanon rehearsed the formulas in his mind, focused his power to keep his own lattice in place, thinking perhaps he could hold the Chained God back.
He quickly realized how foolish a hope that had been. With eagerness born of untold ages of imprisonment, a flow of shadowy slime began to pour out from the Vast Gate. A dark mist rose up from the slime, and Kri stood in a billowing cloud of it, breathing deeply as if to draw the Chained God’s power into himself. The dark slime flowed out into the channels of Albanon’s light, and all his exertion couldn’t stop its flow or even slow it down. It ran like a surging river along every channel at once, converging around him before he could move from his position on the floor.
Soul-numbing cold gripped him as the liquid shadow surrounded him on every side. His body convulsed with what would have been agony if the cold hadn’t deadened his every nerve. His mind reeled once again, driving away all sense of purpose, shattering his memory and robbing him of his power.
He watched dumbly as Kri drew in more and more of the shadowy mist, gathering it in a dark nimbus around himself. The old man seemed to grow younger, stronger, and even taller as the power flowed into him. He strode through the eddying mist to stand beside Albanon’s inert body, and Albanon stared up at him without managing to form a coherent thought.
Kri crouched down and seized Albanon’s shoulders, lifted him effortlessly from the floor, and stood him on his feet. Albanon’s head swam but his feet stayed under him somehow. Kri stared into his eyes and smiled, but there was no hint of humor or kindness on his face.
“The Chained God is chained no more, Albanon,” he said. “He emerges from his prison. And you are a witness. You will be my right hand in the new temple of Tharizdun.”
The words washed over Albanon without registering any meaning, but they left a foul taste behind. Billowing shadow loomed up around him, threatening, but Albanon could feel the promise of power beneath the threat—power that could destroy him or exalt him. Kri wielded that power already, and slowly Albanon understood that Kri was offering to share it with him.
Not offering, he realized—Kri presented him no option to refuse.
His mind grasped at the last word he’d heard, Tharizdun. Three syllables, nine letters, three threes. Each third was a microcosm of the whole, and the whole could be expanded into an ever-growing geometric formula …
Albanon’s body shook with building power and he let it out in a flash of lightning and roar of thunder that hurled Kri away from him and across the room, shook the Vast Gate, and even seemed to push back the billowing mist for a moment. In that moment, he threw himself at the gate.
A snaky tendril caught his ankle and sent him sprawling. Black slime crept toward him on every side, and he felt the full brunt of the Chained God’s awareness focused on him. That more than any physical restraint kept him pinned to the ground, straining to keep a hold on his fragile mind. The physical manifestation of the god, he realized, was just the tiniest extrusion of Tharizdun’s power, like a fingertip poked through the little hole between worlds created by the Vast Gate.
Then Kri was beside him again, looking down and shaking his head. “Albanon, you fool,” he said. “You could have become one of the mightiest beings in all the worlds. Instead, you will be the first thing destroyed when the Eater of Worlds makes his return. The first of many.”
Albanon felt himself lifted up, like an insect pinched between the fingertips of a mighty giant, and drawn toward the Vast Gate. Tendrils of black slime held him aloft, dangling upside-down, as wafting shadow swirled around him. With a jolt of fear, he realized that the tendrils holding him were part of Kri now—the old priest’s legs were gone, replaced or fused with the sickening mass of sludge that extended out to cover the room.
Albanon hung before the Vast Gate and stared into the void beyond. The vastness of nothingness threatened to unhinge his mind again, but he forced himself to consider the curvature of the gate’s archway and the crystalline structure of its substance, which he had helped Kri to form and to focus.
Focus. With the power of the Chained God still flowing through the gate, its focus was fixed in place, the connection between the world and the god’s prison firmly established. That didn’t mean it couldn’t be changed, though.
He had no time for thought, not with the Chained God’s eye fixed on him. Swinging in the grasp of Kri’s snaky tendrils, he planted a hand on the crystal of the Vast Gate and exerted his will to change its destination.
Kri yanked him away from the gate and the smooth crystal fell away from his hand, but too late. The blackness within the arch blinked and vanished, and the power and will that had filled the room was gone. Slimy tentacles still writhed everywhere, and a cloak of misty shadow still surrounded Kri like a manifestation of the power that churned within him, but the Chained God was cut off. Where there had been inky blackness and roiling malice on the other side of the portal, now there was only a dry plain.
“Damned fool,” Kri said. “You are wasting my time. I will kill you, then, and refocus the Vast Gate myself.”
Another inky tendril wrapped around Albanon’s neck, and Kri began to pull from both ends of his body, as if to tear him apart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Roghar stepped out of the Silver Unicorn and was greeted by a cheer—a handful of ragged voices raised in his honor after too much to drink in the local public house. Their acclamation had seemed much louder in the confined space of the inn’s common room, and their numbers had looked greater as well. He looked around the cluster of soldiers and counted about a dozen, all clutching torches and weapons, stamping their feet and clanging steel against their shields.
“What in the Nine Hells was I thinking?” he muttered to Tempest.
“Hush,” she said. “These people need leadership, and they know a hero when they see one.”
“That certainly explains the welcome we received on the bridge.”
“You promised them what they need. Now give it to them.”
He glanced down at Uldane and saw the halfling beaming up at him, the anger of the last hour and the bitterness of his final exchange with Shara apparently forgotten in the excitement of the moment. “You raised an army, Roghar!” Uldane said. “Well, it’s more people than we had when we fought the demons on the bluffs, anyway.”
Somebody set a wooden crate on the cobblestones in front of him and he stepped onto it, looking out over his little army. A line of vermilion across the eastern horizon marked the approach of dawn, though a few stars still burned brightly overhead, shining through chinks in the cloud and smoke that draped the sky. He drew his sword to more cheers, and lifted it high over his head.<
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“People of Fallcrest!” he said.
Slowly the cheering diminished as the soldiers quieted to listen to him. He let his eyes range over the crowd—he counted fourteen this time—and tried to size them up. A couple were professional soldiers, judging by the quality of their arms and armor, but most were militia, ordinary folks who had risen to the defense of their homes. That was perhaps the only advantage he could claim in the battle ahead. His soldiers would be dedicated to protecting their town. That would have to suffice.
“We face a foe unlike any you have faced before,” he said when the cheers had quieted. “These are not orcs from the Stonemarch, come to sack and burn the way they did ninety years ago. These are not bandits united under some warlord, come to plunder and pillage. You’ve seen them. These are demons, spawned in the dark pit of the Abyss with just one purpose—to destroy everything we know and love. The farms of our neighbors are burning, the Nentir Inn is aflame. Lowtown has become their haunt, and the forests across the river are silent.”
Roghar looked at each soldier gathered there—now he had eighteen—and saw fear in every eye. Good, he thought. They should be afraid.
“But they can be fought,” he went on. “You saw that tonight. Some of them are creatures of living fire, others are nightmare made manifest. But they’re all still flesh and bone that sword and spear can pierce and break. Their greatest weapon is fear. Ours is hope—hope that casts out fear, hope that strengthens our arms to protect our homes, hope that shines light into the darkness!” He lifted his sword again and it began to glow, growing stronger until it was a blazing sun, a beacon of divine light shining across the square.
The little army erupted in cheers again, and at that moment the sun broke over the horizon, sending beams of light into the clouds.
“For Fallcrest!” Roghar shouted over the cheers. “For Bahamut, and for glory!”
Twenty-four soldiers stood before him now, cheering and rattling their weapons. His army had doubled in strength in the time he had taken to speak to them. He wondered how much larger it might grow if he spoke longer, but he shook off the thought. His soldiers were ready to fight, and there would be no better time to strike.
