In any case, he cried out, then cried out again as the one entity that had dared defy all the others was shut away, his vast power chained. And the place where the Chained God was imprisoned was much like the darkness in which the man floated, but with one important difference: the Chained God was not alone. Tharizdun shared his prison with the very source of the imperfection he had planted in the world.
It called itself the Progenitor. Once there had been other things in that imprisoning darkness, an entire world and more. But soon there was only the Progenitor, infinite in scope, assimilator of what had been before, the sum of all things.
He passed eons in the blink of an eye. Both Tharizdun and the Progenitor hungered for release, but the gods had crafted well. The walls of the prison were unbreachable, the prison itself all but forgotten. Tharizdun could only cast his gaze upon the world to which he had given the gift of change and where he was remembered as nothing more than the god of madmen.
But mad is not powerless, murmured the man in the darkness.
No, it was not. The light that wasn’t light shifted and changed and the man saw more. Tharizdun accepted the worship that was offered to him by those who rejected the perfect lies of the gods’ creation. Tharizdun whispered truths to them in their dreams and under his guidance they scoured the world and beyond for the means to break the chains that bound their lord.
They found it in a forgotten fragment of the Living Gate, long shattered, through which Tharizdun had first brought the seed of imperfection into the world.
The man in the darkness shuddered as he felt the excitement of a god. If his mind was not already broken, such eagerness would have shattered it. The fragment was not large enough to permit the escape of Tharizdun and the Progenitor, but the Chained God saw that it might be empowered. He and the Progenitor joined a portion of their beings to create something that might be a vehicle for them both.
When the human priest Albric used the fragment of the Living Gate, the Voidharrow slipped from the Chained God’s prison into the world. But even the schemes of the most patient of gods do not always go as planned. As the product of the union of Tharizdun and the Progenitor, the Voidharrow shared the qualities of both. It had Tharizdun’s desire for escape, but also the Progenitor’s rapacious need for assimilation and dominance. Albric attempted to use the Voidharrow as it was meant to be used—to create a new gate with a reach vast enough to cross all existence and pierce the borders of Tharizdun’s prison—but the Voidharrow rebelled. It took Albric and his followers and made them a part of it. They became the first plague demons.
The Abyssal Plague would have started its spread that day if slaves of the other gods had not intervened. Of the newly created demons, only Albric, now called Nu Alin, survived. The Voidharrow was destroyed except for three small vials. But the other gods still kept their secrets. They would not reveal the nature of the Voidharrow and so their slaves stood guard over it, trying to find their own way over the centuries to the truth of its nature.
They could have asked you.
The Chained God didn’t answer the man in the darkness except with another shift of the lightless light. In his prison, Tharizdun meditated on the mistakes that had been made with the Voidharrow and decided a stronger servant was needed, one who might master the Voidharrow before it mastered him. He fashioned one with dreams and whispers, guiding a dragon along the paths of madness. When the time was right, he brought the dragon and the Voidharrow together. The slaves of the gods tried to stop the union again. They could not. Tharizdun’s plans were subtle, woven in layers upon layers of deception. A seemingly chance sword thrust was actually guided by the Chained God’s intent. The Voidharrow was joined with Vestapalk. He compelled the dragon to a source of greater power and once more the gods’ slaves tried and failed to stop his plans.
But Tharizdun failed, too. The draconic greed that he had inflamed to madness found kinship in the Voidharrow. Vestapalk turned from him, shunning the power offered by Tharizdun in favor of the transformation offered by the Voidharrow. He saw only the world, not what lay beyond. Still, there were layers to Tharizdun’s plans and another priest came closer than ever before to setting him free. Kri Redshal—the man floating in darkness knew the name, though he could not place it—had taken advantage of Vestapalk’s spread of the Abyssal Plague to reconstruct the Vast Gate and open the way for Tharizdun’s return.
Except that Tharizdun had been betrayed. In his moment of triumph, the Progenitor sought to assimilate him, laying a trap that would have bound them together if he’d succeeded in passing through the Vast Gate and back into the world. The substance that was the Progenitor could not survive in the world without binding to something. And what but the power of a god was great enough to permit the Progenitor to make that crossing? Perhaps that had been its secret plot down through all the ages of Tharizdun’s imprisonment: to use him to gain access to a new world and new opportunities for growth. Only ignoble defeat at the hands of a mortal had saved the Chained God.
In the isolation of their shared prison, Tharizdun could do little to avenge himself on the Progenitor. The weight of his gaze on the world beyond, however, had increased. Infinitesimally, perhaps, but it had increased. His vengeance could extend beyond his prison.
The man in the darkness understood. Destroy Vestapalk. Destroy the Voidharrow. More than anything else, that would hurt the thing that had betrayed Tharizdun by denying it the opportunity to expand. He trembled a little. But Chained God, your way to freedom will be destroyed, too. Without the Voidharrow, the Vast Gate can’t be reopened.
The light vanished and a hollow roar filled the darkness—a roar that had no sound, just as the light had no brilliance. Out of the roar came a voice so enormous it rolled through the man’s body like a blow.
Tharizdun might be a prisoner, but he will never be a thrall!
The silence that came after those words was so profound that the man in the darkness could hear his heart beating and the breath that rasped in his throat.
It took him a moment to realize that he could actually hear these things, that they weren’t just tricks of his imagination. Once he realized that, he was suddenly aware of other things as well. Weight. Cold. The slightly sour stink of his body. He was no longer lost in darkness. He’d returned to the world.
It was still dark, though. He tried raising his hands and found them blocked. Cold stone surrounded him at less than a finger’s length on every side. His heart beat faster and he threw himself against the sides of his rocky prison.
The stone answered with a hollow sound.
Something came back to him, some measure of discipline. He was intelligent. More would be gained by thinking through his problem than attacking it blindly. He forced himself to be calm, then began tapping the stone around him with fingers, wrists, elbows, knees—anything he could move. The same sound came back from all surfaces, as if he had somehow been placed in a shell. He experimented with his range of motion and found that twisting his torso offered the greatest possibility.
Taking a shallow breath of the already stuffy air around him, he slammed his shoulder against the stone. His prison shivered. He did it again, putting as much of his weight as he could into the blow. His shoulder ached, but he was rewarded with a faint cracking sound. He struck again. And again. The sound of the stone changed, becaming duller. The cracking noise followed every blow. It turned into a grating as stone scraped against stone.
Then abruptly the stone broke altogether and his shoulder breached open space. Fresh air flowed into his prison. He sucked it in, then focused and drove his entire body forward.
Stone splintered along hidden stress lines and the man tumbled out into freedom. The space beyond was lit only by distant light that peeped like moonglow from high crevices, but to eyes accustomed to utter darkness, it was merely a little dim. The man registered bulky, unmoving shapes around him, a musty odor in the air, the sharp pain of stone shards under his body—then realized he was no longer just “a
man.” He had a name.
Kri Redshal looked down at his hands, the dark, wrinkled skin broken by nicks and scrapes. He pushed himself onto his knees and looked behind him. The tall stone statue of a man, its chest broken and ruined to expose its hollow interior, stood over him. A deep cowl hid its face, but its hands were outstretched, the upturned palms carved in the pattern of two jagged spirals. Kri rose, his old bones and joints protesting.
The last thing he remembered—in the mortal world at any rate—was leaping through the Vast Gate and shattering it behind him so that Albanon could not follow. His destination had been random, his only glimpse of it empty darkness. Everything he had once learned as a priest of Ioun, the god of knowledge, told him that such a thing was not possible. Every gate led somewhere. Something had held him between worlds.
He put his hands on the palms of the statue. “Chained God,” he said. “I thank you.”
The voice that answered him was a faint echo of what it had been in the dark place. Destroy Vestapalk. Destroy the Voidharrow.
Kri bent his head. “How?”
You have the key. One comes who will help you turn it.
“How will I know him?”
There was no answer. Kri looked up into the cowl of the statue, but found it had been carved without a face. A blank oval of stone looked back at him. Kri removed his hands from those of the statue and went to explore his new surroundings.
CHAPTER FOUR
They left Fallcrest the next morning. A week of Albanon dragging his feet had given the rest of them more than enough time to prepare for their eventual journey. Supplies were scarce in the crowded town, but horses were surprisingly easy to come by. Tempest suspected that many of the refugees who had brought them into Fallcrest found them to be more of a burden than an asset. Immeral, the most experienced among them in dealing with horses, very nearly had his pick of what was on offer.
“Some good mounts,” he said as he checked the tack of his chosen steed, “but the people here drive a hard bargain considering they may never have the chance to ride these animals again.”
“I don’t imagine they were thinking about riding them,” said Tempest. She put her foot in the stirrup and swung a leg over the back of her horse. “Food shortages haven’t really set in yet. In another week, maybe two, you would have paid a lot more.”
“That’s barbaric,” said Belen.
“Not as barbaric as starving to death.” Tempest shook the reins and urged her horse along the road.
They crossed the Nentir River above the falls and descended the steep switchbacks of the Trade Road down the bluff on the other side. All of them were alert. There might not have been plague demons in the lower town for some time—until the day before, at least—but the defenders of Fallcrest had all but abandoned the western shore of the river. The morning sun cast long shadows across the road and made pits of darkness in the hollows of the bluffs. The road was an ideal place for an ambush. They covered each other as they made their way down, but there was no hint of waiting demons.
Their morning’s ride passed in near silence. The sight of empty farms along the road, crops left to rot in the fields, drove the urge to talk out of them. Tempest studied each one they passed. She couldn’t help herself. It was like watching a public execution, only without the carnival atmosphere. Unlike Fallcrest’s lower town, few farm buildings had been destroyed. Some showed broken windows or doors, but in many the door simply swung loose on its hinges. If she looked closely, she sometimes saw bloody smears, but there were no bloated corpses in the farmyards, no bones in the long grass. The Abyssal Plague didn’t kill. Neither did the plague demons, at least not always. They wounded, they maimed, but more often than not, they left their victims alive to become demons themselves.
Sometimes, it seemed to Tempest, the creatures would rather have killed but were restrained from it as if by some greater power eager to see the plague spread. She knew the name of that power: Vestapalk.
They stayed on the road. The feeling that Albanon followed drew him somewhat west of north, not quite in the direction of the village of Winterhaven, but close enough that it seemed sensible to make that their destination. Winterhaven had been Uldane’s home before he—and Shara—had come south to Fallcrest, and he knew the area well. Sticking to the road meant faster travel and better visibility than cutting across country. By early afternoon they had passed beyond the farms. The trees of the Cloak Wood shadowed the road ahead of them. At another time they might have been in danger of an attack by the kobolds that made the forest their home, but Tempest would have been surprised if they’d seen one of the little creatures. If the demons hadn’t infected the kobolds, the kobolds were almost certainly hiding.
Still, Splendid, who had been curled across Albanon’s shoulder with one eye open like a wary cat, shook out her wings and leaped into the sky. She flew a little ways, then began to glide in wide circles, scouting the way ahead and the countryside around.
Tempest nudged her horse up so she rode alongside Albanon. “I suppose we’re lucky we haven’t encountered any flying plague demons yet,” she said.
“Yet,” echoed Albanon. “Every time we face them, we seem to find something new. Demons of the Abyss appear in every shape and size. Why not demons of the plague as well? Kri thought there was a connection between them. Legends say that Tharizdun created the Abyss—and demons—by placing a seed of corruption in the depths of the Elemental Chaos. We know he had a hand in creating the Voidharrow and that it turns living beings into demons. It’s probably only a matter of time before a victim of the plague grows wings.”
“That’s pessimistic.”
“We don’t have much to be optimistic about, do we? We’re trying to stop Vestapalk by following a gut feeling inspired by the god of madness and destruction.”
There didn’t seem to be much she could say to that. They rode a little further in silence, then Tempest asked him, “What was it like?”
The eladrin snorted softly. “Almost being turned into a plague demon by Vestapalk or being in thrall to Tharizdun?”
“Tharizdun.”
He looked at her. “What was it like being possessed by Nu Alin?”
The question was harsh. Probably harsher than it was meant to be—Tempest saw a flash of shame in Albanon’s eyes—but she didn’t give him a chance to apologize. When her friends had first freed her from the demon’s grip, she’d felt horrified by her experience. Now the memory of it just made her angry. “It made me feel violated. Unclean. I’m never going to let anyone or anything make me feel like that again.” She bared her teeth. “It was like being a puppet. I could feel him inside me, wrapped around my muscles and my bones. He sank right into my mind. I was a prisoner inside my own body, aware of everything but helpless.”
Albanon’s face twisted. “Then you’re lucky.” He turned away from her and stared straight ahead. “When Tharizdun has you, it doesn’t feel like you’re trapped. It feels like you’re perfectly sane and it’s the world that’s gone mad. I wasn’t even aware I was in his thrall. If Kri had exerted more power, I might not have been able to break free. I think I could only do it because we encountered you as we made our way through Fallcrest.”
His words brought a peculiar tightness to her chest. “Me?” she said.
Albanon flushed, red patches bright against his pale cheeks. “All of you, I mean,” he said quickly. Tempest didn’t believe him for a second. The tightness turned into a pleasant warmth and the lingering harshness in Albanon’s manner disappeared as he scrambled for words to cover his embarrassment. “Shara, Uldane. Roghar, I think. I’ll tell you this: if a follower of Tharizdun ever opens his mouth and screams at you, cover your ears. It’s like—”
“—someone pulled the ground out from under you?” Tempest finished for him. The wizard’s discomfort was charming, but drawing it out would have felt like teasing a puppy. It was kinder to play along with his effort to change the subject. “I’ve felt it. Roghar and I confronted a priest
of the Chained God in Nerath and she tried the same thing.” She gave Albanon a smile. “I wonder how that scream would work against a plague demon.”
He hesitated for an instant, then returned the smile. “Maybe that’s what we’re going north to find out.” He wrinkled his nose. “Can you picture us screaming at Vestapalk?”
Tempest laughed. “It would take more than us, I think. We’d need an army.”
“How fast can you find one?” Splendid swooped down from above and resumed her perch on Albanon’s shoulder. This time, however, the little pseudodragon wrapped her wings tight around her body and coiled her stinger-tipped tail as if trying to present the smallest silhouette possible. She was trembling, her voice hushed. “There are plague demons watching us.”
“What? Where?” Albanon started to turn to look, but Splendid bumped his chin, closing his mouth and stopping the movement.
“Everywhere,” she said. “In the trees and the underbrush. They’re all around us.”
Tempest risked a glance at the forest lining the road. Autumn had stripped some of the branches bare, but the others wore cloaks of red and brown leaves. The forest floor was carpeted the same way. Good camouflage for the red crystal that sparkled on the hides of plague demons. She looked over her shoulder at the others. Belen, Uldane, and Roghar rode beside each other. That trio seemed no more than typically wary, but riding just a little behind them, Immeral sat strangely stiff in his saddle. The huntsman had the most woodcraft of them all. He’d probably spotted the demons long before. If there were as many as Splendid suggested, he may have decided to keep that information to himself. Once the demons knew they’d been spotted, there would be no further reason to remain hidden.
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