The Cleric Quintet: The Chaos Curse

 

"... 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.

As Cadderly expected, he found no charred logs of any significant size. The fire had been low. The young priest looked back to the consumed troll and nodded, his suspicions confirmed.

"Get yer fingers outta me neck!" Ivan bellowed, drawing Cadderly's attention to the side.

Pikel stood at the clearing's edge with his back to the young priest, facing Ivan as the yellow-bearded dwarf pulled himself free of the tangling bushes.

"Get yer fingers outta me neck!" Ivan bellowed again, though he was looking straight at Pikel, who stood with his hands out wide, one empty, the other holding nothing but the dwarf's tree-trunk club.

Ivan, finally realizing the truth of it, paused and scratched at his beard. "Well, if it ain't yerself..." he muttered suspiciously.

Ivan leaped and spun, expecting to find an enemy standing in the bush behind him. There was indeed an enemy grabbing at Ivan's neck, but the whole of it came around with his turn.

Cadderly swallowed hard and put a hand up to^hield his eyes.

"Ick," Pikel said, and gagged.

A troll arm, severed at the elbow but still alive, held on tight to Ivan, its claws clamped tightly on the back of the dwarf's neck.

"What?" Ivan asked and started to turn back. He blanched when he saw Pikel's heavy club arcing fast for him. All he could do was close his eyes and wait to be clobbered, but Pikel's aim was perfect. The green-bearded dwarf swatted the disembodied arm free of his brother and sent it flying across the way.

It collided against a tree and fell to the ground, then scrabbled away like some five-legged spider-thing, dragging the forearm behind it.

It was Ivan's turn to gag, and he grabbed desperately at his neck.

The troll arm scrambled under a bush, and Pikel started for it. The dwarf stopped abruptly when he noticed Cadderly, though, the young priest standing grim, one arm extended, his hand clenched in a fist.

"Fetel" the young priest cried, and from an onyx ring, which he had taken from Dorigen, there came a line of fire. It engulfed both the bush and the troll arm immediately. In mere seconds, the bush was no more than a blackened skeleton and the charred arm beneath moved no more.

To Cadderly's surprise, though, the line of fire dissipated sooner than he expected.

"Ick," Pikel said again, considering the remains.

Ivan, too, stared at the pile, his face scrunched up with disgust Cadderly used the distraction to turn his arm to the side, and again he commanded the ring to spew forth its fire.

Nothing happened. Cadderly understood then that the enchantment in the ring was a finite thing, and now had expired. Likely, the item would still serve as a conduit, so he could probably reempower it, or at least get Dori-gen or some other wizard to do it. He wasn't too concerned, though, for he believed that his future battles would be ones of will and not physical force.

By the time he came from his contemplations and looked up to the dwarves, they were arguing again, pushing and shoving. "Can I persuade the two of you to stop your fighting and help me search?" Cadderly asked angrily.

Both dwarves stopped abruptly and bobbed their heads stupidly.

"Our friends had this camp," Cadderly explained, "and defeated the trolls."

"Got 'em good," Ivan remarked, turning to Pikel. "Smart girls to use the campfire."

"They did not," Cadderly corrected, drawing a confused look from both brothers. "The fire was low when the trolls attacked."

Trolls look burned to me," Ivan said.

"It was Dorigen and her magic that won the day," Cadderly replied.

"Oo," Ivan and Pikel said together, and they looked at each other as they spoke.

"So ye was right," Ivan said.

Cadderly nodded. "So it would seem," he replied. "The wizard has found her heart, and it is more generous than I had dared hope." Cadderly looked to the southwest then, in the general direction of the Edificant Library. Ivan and Pikel read his thoughts in his serious expression; he was considering the nature and value of punishment.

"The ore is hid," Ivan remarked.

Cadderly, curious, looked at him.

"Dwarven saying," Ivan explained. "Ye find a lump o' stone that looks worthless, but ye can't be knowing that until ye've cracked it open. It's what's inside that counts. And it is so with Dorigen."

Cadderly smiled and nodded. "Let us be on our way," he offered, suddenly anxious to get back to the library.

To their relief, they fqund three sets of prints leading away from the encampment, close together.

The way friends would walk.

Danica and Dorigen found the first body in the small chapel to the side of the foyer. Romus Scaladi was mutilated.

"Get out," Dorigen whispered, and Danica nodded as she turned for the door, turned back toward the foyer.

The two women skidded abruptly.

Histra of Sune stood in the doorway, smiling, showing her fangs. "I am so glad you have returned," she said calmly. There were but three women in all the library, and so many, many men. Even I could not attend to them all."

The words, and Histra's appearance - the woman was obviously dead! - brought a hundred questions to Dan-ica's mind. She had one definite answer, though, one that concerned Histra's obvious intentions, and Danica, never one to be paralyzed by fear, was quickly in a crouch, ready to lash out She peeked out of the corner of her eye at Dorigen, and took comfort in the mage's subtly moving lips.

Histra saw the movement, too, and opened her mouth wide in a protesting hiss, then turned as if to flee. Danica didn't want to get in the way of Dorigen's forthcoming spell, but her reactions were instinctive.

She sprang ahead, quick as a hunting cat, and landed in a spin, one foot swinging wide to connect solidly against Histra's ribs.

The vampiress flew away several feet, but did not seem hurt, and came right back at Danica, arms flailing.

Danica brought a foot straight up in front of her, between Histra's arms, to smack the monster in the face. Histra's head snapped back violently, but again, if the blow had hurt the vampiress, she did not show it.

Danica smelled the stench of Histra's breath and responded by jabbing a straightened and stiffened finger deep into one of the woman's blood-red eyes.

That made Histra back off, but at the same moment, she snapped up her own hand and caught Danica by the forearm.

Danica could not believe the strength in that grasp; it was stronger than any grip she had felt from the huge, muscled Oghman wrestlers, stronger than any human grip could ever be. She tried to twist away, hit Histra with a rapid series of kicks and punches - all in vital areas - but the vampiress held on stubbornly.

Danica felt her adversary's hot breath again, too close.

Dorigen watched the fight intently. She had been forced to dismiss her first spell, a bolt of lightning, for it would have caught Danica in its path. Now the wizard was chanting again, concentrating on a more controllable and accurate attack.

She didn't hear the slight flutter of wings behind and to the side, and her surprise was complete when the bat shifted form in midair and Kierkan Rufo caught her suddenly by the throat, jerking her head back so forcefully that Dorigen nearly lost consciousness.

Histra's lusting expression revealed her supreme confidence that this mortal woman could not really hurt her.

She twisted harder on Danica's arm, taking obvious pleasure in the woman's pained face.