Oath of Vigilance tap-2

by James Wyatt

  “There’s too many of them,” the halfling said as Shara found her feet.

  Shara roared and whirled in a complete turn, unleashing a hail of steel on the demons that had closed in for the kill, driving them back again. “We can’t just leave him,” she said.

  “Of course not.” Uldane didn’t sound convinced, but Shara knew the halfling would never abandon a friend. Or even a casual adventuring companion, or whatever the drow was.

  Shara scowled. She and Uldane were risking their lives for Quarhaun. Just a few moments earlier, Quarhaun had chided her as foolish because she hadn’t abandoned him to the demon. He was a drow, after all-born and raised in a society that exalted scheming and treachery as the highest virtues. She had no reason to believe that Quarhaun would even inconvenience himself for her benefit, let alone put his life at risk. Why should she do any more for him than he would for her?

  “Come on, Uldane,” she said. “We’re almost there.” Back to back, they fought their way to the hall, a raging storm of steel and fury cutting their path through the demons. Uldane held the sunrod up to light the passage where they’d last seen Quarhaun, a hall running straight, as far as the sunrod’s light could reach.

  Quarhaun was gone.

  “Now what?” Uldane asked.

  “We have to find him.”

  Uldane nodded, and Shara smiled grimly. He didn’t ask why. He knew, just as she did. They would risk their lives for Quarhaun, even if he wouldn’t do the same for them. They’d do it because it was the right thing to do.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tempest was silent as they walked, and Roghar recognized her expression-her brow creased, her eyes on the cobblestone beneath her feet, her lower lip caught between two sharp teeth, pinched almost tight enough to draw blood. He rested a big, gentle hand on her shoulder but left her to her silence. The past months had taught him that nothing he could say would be any greater help than that simple reminder of his presence and his concern.

  He’d thought at first that time would heal the wounds that her brush with possession had left on her soul. In those first weeks, though, she’d been haunted by constant reminders of Nu Alin, terrified that any stranger they met might be harboring him, ready to assault her again. At times she even looked at Roghar as though she thought he might be possessed and waiting for the right time to attack her. Finally he’d decided that she needed to leave the Nentir Vale, and they’d traveled together to Nera, where they first met. Somehow he’d thought that removing her from the scenes of their last adventures and immersing her in places that evoked happier memories might help her forget the ordeal.

  It stung his pride, fleeing the Vale like that. It felt like running from a battle, which Bahamut taught him was a sin to be shunned. But once Nu Alin had left Tempest’s flesh, it had ceased to be a battle he knew how to fight.

  So instead, he and Tempest had thrown themselves into fights they did understand, confronting extortionists, bandits, and a crazed necromancer in the streets of the fallen capital. In the hundred years since the emperor’s palace sank into the earth and the empire crumbled, Nera had gone from a bustling city with tens of thousands of residents to little more than a frontier town, leaving the manors and estates of the city’s vanished nobility to crumble into ruin around the crater that marked where the palace once stood. For its size, though, it had more than its share of crime and evil, from madmen working dark magic in ancient laboratories to bands of gnolls picking through the ruins and occasionally attacking families that lived too close to the decaying manors.

  Their work of the day seemed like something in the latter category. They had arranged to meet Travic, a cleric of Erathis, in a tavern near the ruins, and agreed to help him investigate some disappearances. Roghar had every expectation that they’d be fighting gnolls before the day’s end, and that suited him fine. Fighting gnolls was a bit like fighting demons by proxy, since the foul, hyena-headed humanoids revered demons and worshiped a demon lord as their god.

  He squeezed Tempest’s shoulder as they approached the tavern, and she seemed to shake herself out of a reverie. She glanced at Roghar’s hand on her shoulder as if noticing it for the first time, and she smiled up at him.

  “We’re almost there,” he said.

  “I know.” She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What do you suppose Travic has for us today?”

  “Gnolls, I expect.”

  “Filthy beasts.”

  “Indeed.”

  Roghar spotted the tavern by its sign, a crudely painted basilisk’s head with glowing green eyes. At that hour of the morning, no boisterous crowd marked it as a tavern at all, let alone one of the busier gathering places in the city. “The Stony Gaze,” he announced. “Are you ready?”

  “Of course.”

  Roghar pulled the tavern door open and scanned the room inside, his senses alert for danger. Travic was there, a warm smile spreading across his weathered face as he recognized the dragonborn. A young woman with a mop glanced up at the doorway, looked back at Travic, and returned to her work. Otherwise, the place seemed deserted.

  “Roghar, thank you so much for coming.” Travic stood up and bobbed his head in greeting. A lock of salt-and-pepper hair fell into his eyes, and he brushed it aside.

  “Good morning, Travic.” Roghar stepped to the side and let Tempest enter before him, then followed her to Travic’s table.

  “Tempest, lovely to see you,” the priest said. “Thank you, as well.”

  Tempest took his outstretched hand and started to sit.

  “I have to apologize,” Travic said. “I planned to meet you here, buy you breakfast, and discuss the situation while we ate. I did not plan on this establishment’s excellent cook being abed at this hour.”

  Roghar laughed. “Fortunately, we have eaten already.”

  “I’m glad. And I believe it’s to our advantage to get an early start. I’ve heard a report of another couple gone missing, so perhaps we can look into that while it’s still fresh.”

  “Very well,” Roghar said. “Shall we leave right away?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s going on as we walk. Or at least as much of it as I understand.” He patted the mopping woman on the shoulder as he walked to the door. “Thank you, Jesi.” She returned his smile.

  Outside, Travic started walking in the direction of the ruins. “The cases I’ve looked into so far have had much in common, things that set them apart from the troubles we normally see near the ruined part of the city.”

  “Gnoll attacks and such?” Roghar asked.

  “Exactly. When gnolls raid the city, they leave an unholy mess behind them. Blood everywhere, bodies half eaten and mutilated, stores of food plundered, that sort of thing. It’s obvious there’s been an attack, and quite clear that gnolls were responsible-few other creatures are both so savage and so cunning.”

  “How common are gnoll raids like that?”

  “Actually rare. The watch patrols those neighborhoods pretty heavily, and when gnolls do attack, the watch strikes back fast and hard. Otherwise, no one would live in those areas.”

  “But you said these cases are different?”

  “Yes. No blood, no bodies, nothing missing or plundered. It’s like these people just disappeared-just got up and left, taking nothing with them.”

  “Maybe the gnolls have new leadership,” Roghar said. “Maybe they’ve started carrying victims back to their lair, making offerings or sacrifices or something.”

  “Anything’s possible, I suppose. But I’ve never heard of gnolls behaving like that.”

  “What does your god tell you?”

  Travic stopped walking and sighed. “Nothing clear. But the whole thing feels wrong to me. Dangerous and important.”

  Roghar closed his eyes for a moment, letting his thoughts settle and fall still. His spine prickled at once, and a sense of urgency rose in his chest. At the same time, a gnawing dread took root in his gut. He opened his eyes and nodded. “Lead on,” he said to Travic.
“Dangerous and important is about right.”

  Travic led them around a corner, and the ruins emerged into full view. The street, a broad thoroughfare that once must have carried carts and wagons to the city’s finest homes and markets, sloped gently upward and then suddenly dropped off into the crater that marked the site of the fallen palace. Majestic stone buildings lined the sides of the street, but the ones nearest the crater were only crumbling facades over ruined husks, the gutted interiors visible through gaping windows and empty doorways.

  “I dream about this street sometimes,” Travic said. “I see it as it once was, flowers and banners in a riot of color, the wealthy and powerful of the empire walking along its smooth cobblestones, the palace rising in majesty at the crest of the hill. Except instead of the emperor in his palace, I see Erathis, bathed in glory, the sword of her justice in hand and flames of inspiration around her head. Her eyes pierce me, and she commands me to rebuild.”

  “That’s not a calling you could easily ignore,” Roghar said.

  Travic sighed. “It makes me so tired. I’m just one man.”

  “Today we are three. And we’ll shine the light of the Bright City into this desolate street.” Erathis, the god of civilization and law, was said to live in a celestial realm called the Bright City of Hestavar.

  “Thank you, my friend. Bahamut’s work will be done as well.”

  Roghar noticed the cleric’s gaze wander, a little uneasily, to Tempest. Travic understood why Roghar was helping him-as a paladin of Bahamut, Roghar had a divine calling, just as Travic did, and the goals of their gods were aligned in many cases. But Travic didn’t know what to make of Tempest and had no idea why a warlock whose power ultimately came from the powers of the Nine Hells would participate in this work.

  Tempest wasn’t like them, it was true. Her power didn’t come with a divine mandate-it wasn’t granted on condition of service. In fact, as far as Roghar understood it, Tempest had stolen the power she wielded and used it without permission from the powers of Hell. And he had made it his mission to make sure she used it in ways that would infuriate the devils it came from, which brought him a perverse sort of pleasure.

  “It’s just up here,” Travic said, starting toward one of the more intact buildings. “This street’s not entirely desolate. Many of the poorer people of the city find homes here, living in buildings whose owners are long dead. It’s dangerous-between the gnolls and other creatures that haunt the ruins and the risk of collapsing floors or ceilings, there’s a lot that can kill you. But it’s better than a lot of the other options the city offers to the poor.”

  “I lived here,” Tempest said. Her voice startled them both-she hadn’t spoken since she entered the tavern. “For a little while.”

  Roghar studied her face, but couldn’t read any emotion in her expression. Her eyes were turned toward the crater at the top of the hill.

  Travic nodded. “Then you know what I’m talking about.”

  “I know.”

  Tempest fell back into silence, and Travic, apparently lost in his own reverie, led them off the street through a doorway draped with a tattered curtain.

  The space inside had once been a grand entrance hall for a stately home. The morning sun poured down through an open skylight, warming the ancient stone and illuminating every corner of the room. A graceful stairway swept halfway up the wall on one side before dissolving into rubble. A moldering tapestry that might once have been a carpet hung askew over another doorway opposite the stairs, the hinges of the original doors still visible at its sides. A pile of straw and rags in the far corner must have served as a bed, though it was too thin to offer much protection from the hard marble floor.

  As Travic had said, no sign of violence marred the scene. If gnolls had attacked this place, Roghar thought, they would have torn the curtain they came through, for starters. They would have killed the residents of the home, and gnolls prefer to kill in ways that leave blood all over the floor, the walls, and sometimes the ceiling.

  “Who lived here?” Tempest asked.

  “Their names were Marcan and Gaele. An older couple, humans in their fifties. Marcan was a cooper, but he lost his arm at the same time as they lost their children, about fifteen years ago. Gaele earns a pittance washing clothes and linens.”

  Roghar growled, a low rumbling deep in his throat. “So the weak become prey for the ruthless,” he said.

  “Indeed.”

  “That’s not what it looks like to me,” Tempest said. “Maybe they found a better place to live. I don’t see anything here that I’d take with me if I left.”

  “If they had simply moved, I’d have heard about it,” Travic said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I spend a lot of time with the people on this street. They know me and trust me. I was with Marcan and Gaele when they lost everything. They’d share the joy of a new home with me.”

  “Then I say we venture into the ruins and look around,” Roghar said. “Maybe we’ll find a threat other than gnolls lurking there.”

  “I’m confident we will,” Travic said. “The gods will guide us.”

  Travic led the way back out to the street and up toward the crater where the jewel of Nerath, the emperor’s glorious palace, had once stood. They passed more makeshift homes like the one Marcan and Gaele had claimed, marked by curtains hanging in empty doorways or clothes hung in broken windows to dry. Here and there, a potted plant lent a splash of color to the barren stone walls.

  The closer they got to the crater, though, the more infrequent such signs of habitation became. Fewer buildings could boast four walls and a roof, and soon Roghar was helping Tempest clamber over rubble that choked the street. The few sounds of human activity faded, replaced with the scurrying noises of vermin and the occasional snarl of a larger scavenger picking through the ruins.

  “Look over there,” Travic said.

  Roghar shielded his eyes from the morning sun and followed Travic’s pointing finger. It took him just a moment to find what the cleric had seen-the mangy pelt of some beast, hung like a banner on a crumbling wall a few dozen yards away. “Gnolls,” he said.

  Travic nodded and slid his mace out of the loop at his belt. Roghar drew his sword and adjusted his grip on his shield, glancing over his shoulder at Tempest. She still seemed distracted, distant, but she held her rod resting on her shoulder, ready to blast any enemies that appeared out of the ruins.

  Roghar led the way, picking his way carefully through the rubble. Gnolls were not known for laying traps and deadfalls near their lair, not least because they’d be likely to stumble into their own traps in the madness of their hunting fury. Even so, the ruins could hide any number of dangers, from lurking scavengers to unsafe floors. As he neared the wall with its grisly banner, he slowed his steps in a futile attempt to move more quietly, but for all his efforts every step was a grating symphony of crunching gravel and clanking armor.

  Despite the noise, no gnoll appeared behind the wall, no spears or arrows shot out at him. With a glance over his shoulder to make sure that Travic and Tempest had kept up with him, he ran the last few yards and fell into a crouch at the base of the wall. He signaled the others and they froze in place, crouching low to take whatever cover the rubble afforded. Roghar cocked his head and listened.

  Wind stirred through the ruins, making the pelt rustle against the ancient stone. Claws or teeth, still attached to the pelt, clattered against the wall. Somewhere far off, he thought he heard a flute playing high and sweet. But nothing stirred behind the wall.

  Slowly, as quietly as his armor would allow, he rose from his crouch and peered over the crumbling edge of the wall. The building was a gnoll den, certainly. Filthy piles of furs and grisly trophies decorated the space defined by the broken ruins of four stone walls. Gore-stained bones, some gnawed and broken, littered the center of the space. Dried brown blood was smeared on what walls remained, in patterns he imagined the gnolls found artful or symbolic in some way. But he saw no gno
lls, and none of the fierce hyenas they preferred as pets.

  Gesturing the others forward, Roghar stepped around the crumbled wall. The stench of death assaulted his nostrils, and he silently thanked the wind that had carried it away from him earlier. He moved carefully about the den, peering around the other walls, straining his ears for any sign of life.

  “It’s abandoned,” Travic said.

  Roghar looked down at the gory mess in the middle of the room. Maggots writhed on the bones, fighting over what meat was left on them. He glanced around again, his eyes taking in details he’d missed the first time-shiny black beetles scurrying among the furs, a spider the size of his fist perched on an ornate web in one corner. He nodded. It was possible the gnolls were simply out hunting, but the place definitely gave him the sense that no one had been there for days, perhaps weeks.

  “Just like the house,” Tempest said. “Just like Gaele’s house.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Your father?” Kri said, his eyes wide.

  Albanon nodded slowly. “The Prince of Thorns, yes.”

  “You’re not smiling.”

  “You don’t know my father,” Albanon said. “Or do you?”

  “No, no. In all my years and for all my study, this is my first visit to the tower where the Order of Vigilance began. My first visit to the Feywild at all, actually. So what kind of reception should we expect?”

  Albanon frowned. “A very cold one. He was not pleased with my decision to study in the mortal world.”

  Splendid alighted on his shoulder. “He should have been proud,” the little dragon huffed. “Moorin was the greatest wizard in all the world.”

  “The world’s greatest wizard is not good enough for the Prince of Thorns,” Albanon said. “In his mind, even the lowliest eladrin mentor would have been preferable.”

  Kri stroked his beard. “Well, a cold welcome is better than an armed one, I suppose.”

  “Don’t insult him, or the one could turn into the other.”