Dean Thobicus drummed his skinny fingers on the hardwood desk before him. He had turned his chair so that he faced the window, not the door, pointedly looking away as a nervous and wiry man entered his office on the library's second floor.
"You ... you asked ..." the man, Vicero Belago, stuttered, but Thobicus lifted a trembling leathery hand to stop him. Belago broke into a cold sweat as he stared at the back of the old dean's balding head. He looked to the side, where stood Bron Turman, one of the library's headmasters and the highest ranking of the Oghman priests, but the large, muscular man merely shrugged, having no answers for him. "I did not ask," Dean Thobicus corrected Belago at length. "I commanded you to come." Thobicus swung about in his chair, and the nervous Belago, seeming small and insignificant indeed, shrank back near the door. "You do still heed my commands, do you not, dear Vicero?"
"Of course, Dean Thobicus," Belago replied. He dared come a step closer, out of the shadows. Belago was the Edi-ficant Library's resident alchemist, a professed follower of both Oghma and Deneir, though he formally belonged to neither sect. He was loyal to Dean Thobicus as both an employee to an employer, and as a sheep to a shepherd. "You are the dean," he said sincerely. "I am but a servant"
"Exactly!" Thobicus snarled, his voice hissing like the warning of an angry serpent, and Bron Turman eyed the withered old dean suspiciously. Never before had the old man been so animated or agitated.
"I am the dean," Thobicus said, with emphasis on the final word. "/ design the duties of the library, not Ca - " Thobicus bit back the rest of his words, but both Belago and Turman caught the slip and understood the implications.
The dean spoke of Cadderly.
"Of course, Dean Thobicus," Belago said again, more subdued. Suddenly the alchemist realized that he was in the middle of a much larger power struggle, one in which he might pay a price. Belago's friendship with Cadderly was no secret. Neither was the fact that the alchemist often worked on unsanctioned and privately funded projects for the young priest, often for the cost of materials alone.
"You have an inventory document for your shop?" Thobicus asked.
Belago nodded. Of course he did, and Thobicus knew it. Belago's shop had been destroyed less than a year before, when the library was in the throes of the chaos curse. The library's deep coffers had funded the repairs and the replacement ingredients, and Belago had promptly given a complete accounting.
"As do I," Thobicus remarked. Bron Turman still eyed the dean curiously, not understanding the last statement. "I know everything that belongs there," Thobicus went on imperiously. "Everything, you understand?"
Belago, finding strength in honor, straightened for the first time since he had entered the room. "Are you accusing me of thievery?" he demanded.
The dean's chuckle mocked the wiry man's firm stance. "Not yet," Thobicus answered casually, "for you are still here, and thus, anything you might wish to take would also still be here."
That set Belago back; his ample eyebrows furrowed.
"Your services are no longer required," Thobicus explained, still speaking in an awful, cold, casual tone.
"But... but, Dean," Belago stuttered. "I have been - "
"Leave!"
Bron Turman straightened, recognizing the inflections and the weight of magic in Thobicus's voice. The burly Oghman headmaster was not surprised when Belago stiffened suddenly and fell back out of the room. With a look to Thobicus, Turman quickly moved to close the door.
"He was a fine alchemist," Turman said quietly, turning back to the large desk. Thobicus was again staring out the window.
"I had reason to doubt his loyalty," the dean explained.
Bron Turman, pragmatic and no real ally of Cadderly, did not press the point. Thobicus was the dean, and as such, he had the authority to hire or dismiss any of the nonclerical assistants that he chose.
"Baccio has been here for more than a day," Bron Turman said to change the subject The man he referred to, Baccio, was the commander of the Carradoon garrison, come to discuss the defense of the city and the library should Castle Trinity strike at them. "Have you spoken with him?"
"We will not need Baccio and his little army," Thobi-cus said with confidence. "I shall soon dismiss him."
"You have word from Cadderly?"
"No," Thobicus answered honestly Indeed, the dean had heard nothing since Cadderly and his companions had gone into the mountains earlier that winter. But Thobicus believed that the army would not be needed, believed that Cadderly had succeeded in defeating Castle Trinity. For, as the young priest's power continued to grow, Dean Thobicus felt himself being pushed away from the light of Deneir. Once, Thobicus had commanded the most powerful clerical magic, but now even the simplest spell, like the one he had used to dispatch poor Belago, came hard to his thin lips.
He turned back to the room to see Bron Turman staring at him skeptically.
"Very well," Thobicus conceded. Tell Baccio I will meet him this evening - but I maintain that his army should hold a defensive posture and not go traipsing through the mountains!"
Bron Turman was satisfied with that. "But you believe that Cadderly and his friends have succeeded," he said slyly.
Thobicus did not respond.
"You believe that the threat to the library is no more," Bron Turman stated. The burly Oghman headmaster smiled, a wistful look in his large gray eyes. "At least, you believe that one threat to the library is no more." he added.
Thobicus steeled his gaze, his crow's-feet coming together to form one large crease at the side of each orb. "This does not concern you," he quietly warned.
Bron Turman bowed, respecting the words. "That does not mean that I do not understand," he said. "Vicero Belago was a fine alchemist."
"Bron Turman..."
The headmaster held up a submissive hand. "I am no friend of Cadderly's," he said. "Neither am I a young man. I have seen the intrigue of power struggles within both our sects."
Thobicus pursed his thin lips and seemed on the verge of explosion, and Bron Turman took that as a sign that he should be leaving. He gave another quick bow and was gone from the room.
Dean Thobicus rocked back in his chair and pivoted about to face the window. He couldn't rationally call Turman on the outwardly treasonous words, for the man's reasoning was undeniably true. Thobicus had been alive for more than seven decades; Cadderly for just over two, yet, for some reason that the old bureaucrat could not understand, Cadderly-had found particular favor with Deneir. But the dean had come to his power painstakingly, at great personal sacrifice and at the cost of many years of almost reclusive study. He was not about to give up his position. He would purge the library of Cadderly's open allies and strengthen his hold on the order. Headmaster Avery Schell, Cadderly's mentor and surrogate father, and Pertelope, who had been like Cadderly's mother, were both dead now, and Belago would soon be gone.
No, Thobicus would not give up his position.
Not without a fight.
Kierkan Rufo wiped the stubborn mud from his boots and breeches, and muttered quiet curses to himself, as he always did. He was an outcast, marked by an ugly blue-and-red brand of an unlit candle above a closed eye, which lay on the middle of his forehead.
"Bene tellemara" whispered Druzil. A bat-winged, dog-faced, scaly creature barely two feet tall, the imp packed more malicious evil into that tiny frame than the worst of humankind's tyrants,
"What did you say?" Rufo snapped. He glared down at his otherworldly companion. The two had been together for the last half of the winter, and neither much liked the other. Their enmity had begun in Shilmista Forest, west of the Snowflake Mountains, when Druzil had threatened and coerced Rufo into serving his wicked masters, the leaders of Castle Trinity - when Druzil had precipitated Kierkan Rufo's fall from the order of Deneir.
Druzil looked curiously at the man and squinted from the flickering light of the torch Rufo held. Rufo was over six feet tall, but bone-skinny. He always stood at an angle, tilted to the side, and that made him, or the world behind him, seem strangely incongruent. Druzil, who had spent the last few months wandering through the Snowflakes, thought Rufo resembled a tree on a steep mountainside. The imp snickered, drawing another glare from the perpetually scowling Rufo.
The imp continued to stare, trying hard to view the man in a new light. With his stringy black hair matted to his head, those penetrating eyes - black dots on a pale face - and that unusual stance, Rufo could be imposing. He kept his hair parted in the middle now, not on the side as it had always been, for Rufo could not, on pain of death, cover that horrid brand, the mark that had forced him to be a recluse, the mark that made every person shun him when they saw him coming down the road.
"What are you looking at?" Rufo demanded.
"Bene tellemara" Druzil rasped again in the language of the lower planes. It was a profound insult to Rufo's intelligence. To Druzil, schooled in chaos and evil, all humans seemed fumbling things, too clouded by emotions to be effective at anything. And this one, Rufo, was more bumbling than most. However, Aballister, Druzil's wizard master, was dead now, killed by Cadderly, his son, the same priest who had branded Rufo. And Dori-gen, Aballister's second, had been captured, or had gone over to Cadderly's side. That left Druzil wandering alone on the Material Plane. With his innate powers, and no wizards binding him to service, the imp might have found his way back to the lower planes, but Druzil didn't want that - not yet. For, on this plane, in the dungeons of this very building, rested Tuanta Quiro Miancay, the chaos curse, among the most potent and wicked concoctions ever brewed. Druzil wanted it back, and meant to get it with the help of Rufo, his stooge.
"I know what you are saying," Rufo lied, then he mimicked "Bene tellemara" back at Druzil.
Druzil smirked at him, showing clearly that the imp really didn't care if Rufo knew the meaning or not.
Rufo looked back at the muddy tunnel that had gotten them under the cellar of the Edificant Library.
"Well," he said impatiently, "we have come this far. Lead on and let us be out of this wretched place."