"... more than my body," came a whisper from the side. The three vampires stopped their macabre dance and song and turned as one to the broken priest, propped on his elbows, his head flopping weirdly.
"You are dead!" Rufo declared, a futile denial of the priest's words.
Scaladi promptly corrected him. "I have found Oghma."
And the man died, secure" in his faith.
Outside the library, Percival hopped excitedly from one branch to another, hearing the torment of those still alive inside. The squirrel was down to the ground, just outside the door, when Rufo slammed it shut before Scaladi.
Now Percival was high in the trees, as high as he could go, chattering frenetically and leaping from branch to branch, turning wide circles about the grove. He heard the screams, and from one window on the second floor, he heard, too, the song of Deneir, the prayer of Brother Chaunticleer.
The screams were louder.
The Nature of Evil
The trail meandered around a wide expanse of rock, but Danica was growing impatient. She went to the stone abutment instead, looked up its thirty-foot height, and carefully began picking her way up along a crack in the stone.
Dorigen came to the spot beneath her. The wizard was talking, but Danica, concentrating on hooking her strong fingers in cracks and picking rough spots where she could set her feet, wasn't listening. Soon after, the agile monk lifted her hand over the lip and felt about, finally grasping the thick base of a small bush. She tested her weight, then, convinced the bush was secure, used it to pull herself over. From that vantage point, Danica got her first look at the Edificant Library. It lay nestled atop a flat juncture in a climbing trail, a cliff to its northern side and a steep drop south of the place. It seemed just a squat block of unremarkable stone, not a particularly attractive piece of architecture, and from this distance Danica did not notice that the small windows (there were so few) had been covered by boards ajid tapestries.
All seemed quiet and calm, the way things usually were at the ancient library, and Danica, anxious to get this messy business about Dorigen's punishment over with, was relieved to see it again. She turned about on the stone, meaning to tell Dorigen that the library was very close, but was surprised to find the woman scaling the cliff, slower than Danica, of course, but making progress.
Danica fell to her belly and called out directions. She was proud of Dorigen at that moment, proud of the wizard's willingness to fight obstacles. The cliff was small and no real challenge to one of Danica's training, but she could appreciate how imposing it must seem to Dorigen, who had spent years with her face buried in books. Yet here was Dorigen, reaching for Danica's offered hand, climbing without complaint.
A hundred yards away, concealed in a copse of evergreens, Shayleigh was equally impressed. When Danica had been so obviously exposed on the cliff face, Dorigen could have taken any number of actions to ensure her freedom. But again the wizard had proven her heart, and Shayleigh, like Danica when Dorigen had aided in the troll fight, found that she was not surprised.
Suddenly the elf maiden felt foolish for her suspicions. She reached down, unstrung her long bow, and mumbled quietly that she should have gone straight to Shil-mista, as she had claimed, instead of following the two nearly all the way to the library.
They would be at the building within the hour, Shay-leigh knew, and she could have been well on her way to her forest home. She waited in the trees until Danica and Dorigen had moved off again, then she, too, went to the stony rise. With a natural agility that at least matched Danica's practiced skill, the elf scampered to the top. She went down to one knee and scanned the dark line of the trail ahead as it wove in and out of hollows thick with trees and around tumbles of great boulders. Finally she spotted Danica and Dorigen, walking easily some distance ahead, and, with the patience of a being that would live for centuries, Shayleigh marked their movements along the trails, all the way to the library's front doors. She was no longer looking for trouble from Dorigen, but rather, was saying farewell to her friends.
Percival greeted the two as they came onto the library's grounds, the white squirrel dancing wildly about the trees and squawking as if he had gone insane.
"I have never seen such a reaction," Dorigen remarked, for there was no missing the squirrel's frantic movements.
That is Percival," Danica explained, "a friend of Cad-derly's."
They watched curiously as the squirrel leaped down a dozen feet, ran to the end of the branch closest to them, and screamed at Danica so crazily that the woman wondered if he had contracted some disease.
"What is the matter?" Danica asked the rodent, and Percival kept hopping in circles and screeching as if he had been dropped into a kettle of boiling water.
"I have heard of a disease of the mind that affects such animals," Dorigen offered. "And once saw the result in a wolf. Look closely," she bade the monk. "If you discern foam at the creature's mouth, then you must kill the beast at once."
Danica turned a wary and knowing eye on Dorigen, and when the wizard noticed the look, she straightened and wondered what she might have said to evoke so strong a reaction.
"Percival is Cadderly's friend," Danica said again. "Perhaps Cadderly's closest friend. If you think the squirrel is mad, you would be overwhelmed by Cadderly's madness if ever he learned that we killed the animal."
That settled Dorigen. Danica eyed Percival squarely and told him to go back into the trees.
The two women turned for the door then, and Danica knocked loudly. Percival raced along the branches, higher into the boughs, following a course that allowed him to leap to the library's gutter system atop the lowest edge of the front roof. The white squirrel hopped along to a point just above the doors, meaning to leap down onto Danica and stop her progress, but by the time Percival got to the spot, Danica and Dorigen had grown tired of waiting for an answer to their knock and Danica had pushed open the unlocked doors and entered the foyer.
It was dark and quiet. Danica looked behind her and saw a heavy blanket stretched across the small windows above the doors.
"What is this?" Dorigen asked. She had never been in the library, but she surmised that this atmosphere was not normal for the place. Where were all the priests? she wondered. And why were the hairs standing up on the back of her neck?
"I have never seen the library like this before," Danica answered. The monk wasn't as suspicious or nervous as Dorigen, though. She had spent the last few years in the Edificant Library; the place had become home to her.
"Perhaps there is some ceremony going on," Danica reasoned, "one I do not understand."
Unsuspecting Danica could not begin to appreciate the truth of her statement.
"Phooey!"
Pikel scrunched up his little nose and waggled his head at the terrible stench. He turned suddenly and let fly a tremendous sneeze, showering his dour brother with spittle.
Not surprised (not after so many decades beside Pikel), Ivan didn't say a word.
Troll stench," Cadderly remarked.
"Burned troll," Ivan replied, wiping his face.
Cadderly nodded and moved cautiously down the path. They were only three days from the library, moving easily along the same trail Danica and the others had used. The path went up a short rise, then around a bend and some gnarly bushes, and into a clearing that had been used as a campsite.
Cadderly's heart beat wildly as he came near that camp. He felt certain that Danica had been here, and, it would seem, had encountered some wretched trolls.
The smell nearly overwhelmed the young priest as he clambered around the bushes, skidding to a stop in front of the gruesome remains of the battle.
Three large forms, three lumps of blackened flesfe, lay about the small clearing.
"Looks like they got 'em," Ivan remarked, coming in more confidently behind Cadderly.
Pikel started to chant "Oo oi!" but sneezed again instead, just as Ivan turned back to face him. Ivan answered by punching Pikel in the nose, to which Pikel responded by poking the end of his club between Ivan's knees, then diving to the^side, tripping his brother. In a moment, the two were rolling about the ground.
Cadderly, on his hands and knees, searched around to determine exactly what had transpired, paying the two bouncing dwarves no heed. They had fought a dozen times over the last few weeks, and neither of them ever seemed to get hurt.
The young priest inspected the closest troll, quickly surmising that Shayleigh had hit this one with a barrage of arrows before flames had consumed it. The next troll he went to, lying across the way, far from where the campfire had been, showed no signs that it had been downed or even wounded before flames engulfed it. Cadderly searched carefully, even shifting the charred corpse to the side. He found no brand, though, no trace that any torch had been brought out to combat the troll.
He rose and turned back toward the stone circle that had held the campfire, hoping to discern how much of a fire had been burning when the trolls attacked.
Ivan and Pikel rolled right across the ashes and scattered the rocks, too absorbed in their wrestling to notice the young priest's movements. They crashed into the body of the third troll, and the blistered skin popped open, pouring forth the creature's melted fat.
Tuck!" Pikel squealed, hopping to his feet.
Ivan hopped up, too. He grabbed his brother by the front of the tunic and heaved Pikel headlong into a bush, then coiled his muscled legs and sprang in after him, burying Pikel as he tried to stand once more.
Cadderly, worried for his absent friends and trying to confirm something important, fast grew impatient with the two, but still said nothing. He simply stormed over to the broken firepit and began his inspection.
He suspected that the fire could not have been high at the time of the attack, or the trolls, fearful of flame, would have lain in wait. He also knew that his friends would not have remained in this area after the fight - the stench would have been too great. And Danica, and particularly Shayleigh, who so revered nature, would not have left the camp with the fire burning.