The Cleric Quintet: The Chaos Curse

 

She could not deny the truth, though, and if Dean Thobicus, too, had fallen to the darkness, then the library was doomed.

Danica took a deep, steadying breath, making no immediate move to resist, and the vampire smiled wickedly, revealing its fangs, only inches from Danica's face.

Danica's foot flashed up in front of her face, slammed Thobicus under the nose, and jerked his head back violently. The monk's arms worked in a fast circle, fists crossing in front of her chest, then going out and down over the dean's elbows. As strong as the vampire's grasp was, Danica's leverage pulled her free. Up came her foot a second time, again slamming the monster under the nose, doing no real damage, but buying Danica the moment she needed to break free.

She was back on the staircase and thought for a moment to go down, but Rufo was laughing, ascending the stairs behind her.

Up went Danica, to the third floor. A zombie stood silently in the stairway, but offered no resistance as Danica drove her fist into its bloated face, then heaved it down behind her to impede her pursuers.

She was free in the hallway of the third floor then, but where to go? She looked right, to the south, and then left, and found herself running north, toward Cadderly's room.

Rufo's feet made not a sound as he glided along the floor, but Danica heard his mocking laughter right behind her as she skidded into Cadderly's room and slammed the door in the vampire's face and dropped the locking bar into place. She found yet another zombie in the room, standing passively, and she hit it with a brutal barrage of kicks and punches that destroyed it in seconds. Its chest popped open as it fell to the floor, and Danica felt waves of nausea wash over her.

Those waves were stolen by fear when Rufo's heavy fist slammed the door.

"Where will you run, sweet Danica?" the vampire chided. A second slam rattled the bar, threatened to knock the door off its hinges. Purely on instinct, Danica threw her weight against the door, bracing with all her considerable strength.

The pounding stopped, but Danica did not relax.

She saw the green vapor then, Rufo's fog, wafting in under the door, and there was no way she could stop it. She staggered across the room, mesmerized by the vampire's transformation, thinking she was doomed.

The excited chatter of a squirrel cleared her thoughts. Cadderly's room was one of the few in the library that sported a fairly large window, which the young priest often climbed through to sit on the roof and feed cacasa-nuts to Percival.

Danica leaped over the bed.

"Where will you run?" the vampire asked again, resuming his corporeal form. Rufo got his answer in the form of stinging sunlight as Danica cracked and tore apart the boards blocking the window.

"Impudence!" Rufo roared. Danica growled in reply and tore another board free of its mounting. She saw Percival then, through the glass, hopping about in circles on the roof - dear Percival, who had saved her life.

The light felling on Rufo was indirect, for the window faced east, to the Shining Plains, and the sun was on its way toward the western horizon. Still, the vampire would not approach, would not dare chase Danica out into the daylight

"I'll be back for you, Rufo," Danica, remembering Dorigen, promised grimly. "I'll be back with Cadderly." She took a board and smashed out the glass.

Rufo snarled and took a step toward her, but was driven back by the light He ripped the door's locking bar from its supports and tore open the portal, and Danica thought he meant to flee.

Dean Thobicus stood in the hall. He brought his hand up defensively as soon as the door went wide and the weak daylight reached him.

"Catch her!" Rufo screamed at him.

Thobicus took a step forward, despite his mind's protests. He was a creature of the dark now and could not go into the light! He looked plaintively to Rufo, but there was no compromise in the master vampire's expression.

"Catch her!" Rufo growled again.

Thobicus felt himself moving forward against the pain, against his mind's protests. Rufo compelled him, as Cadderly had once compelled him. He had given himself to the dark and could not deny Rufo's will!

Thobicus knew he was a pitiful thing then. He had been dominated in life by Cadderly, and now in death by Rufo. They were one and the same, he decided. One and the same.

Only as he approached the window did Dean Thobicus realize the truth. Cadderly had been guided by morals; Cadderly would not make him jump out the window. Cadderly, Deneir, was the light

But Thobicus had chosen the dark, and Rufo, his master, was guided by no moral code, was compelled by nothing except his own desires.

"Catch her!" the vampire's voice, the vampire's will, demanded.

Danica had not broken enough glass to go safely through, and so she spun about and smashed the board over the approaching vampire's head.

Thobicus growled at her, and there was no joy in his apparent victory, for he knew then that he was a victim, not the victor.

Danica shoved the splintered remnants of the board at Thobicus's chest, thinking to drive the makeshift stake through his heart He got a hand up to deflect the blow, though, and the jagged wood sank deep into his stomach.

Thobicus looked at the monk, seeming almost surprised. For a long moment, they studied each other, and Danica thought the dean seemed somehow sad and remorseful.

Rufo's will shot through Thobicus's mind again, and his thoughts were not his own.

Danica and Thobicus moved together, both breaking for the window. They went through in a clinch, glass tearing at Danica's exposed arms.

Onto the roof they rolled, Thobicus clutching tightly and Danica not daring to break the momentum, knowing that if they stopped moving, she was caught and would be dragged back in to face Rufo. Over and over they went; Thobicus tried to bite Danica, and she wedged her arm in his face, holding him at bay.

For both of them the world had become a spinning blur.

Percival's chattering became a scream of protest as Danica and Thobicus plunged from the roof.

Nowhere to Run

The vampire's fangs sought her neck, and Danica was too engaged in keeping the wild thing at bay to concentrate on landing properly. She jammed her elbow under the vampire's chin, pushing with all her strength, and twisted to put Thobicus beneath her. They flew apart under the weight of impact, to an accompanying snap that sounded like the breaking of a thick tree branch.

The vampire wasn't even dazed by the fall, but as he sprang back to his feet and rushed at Danica, compelled still by Kierkan Rufo's demands, Thobicus staggered, then looked about, as if confused. The light of day washed over him. Danica whimpered as she tried to stand, and found that her ankle had shattered, the bone tearing out through the skin. Pained by every movement, the stubborn monk got up on her good knee and launched herself forward, her hands grabbing tight to the vampire's ankle.

All she had wanted was to get away, but now it was Thobicus who wanted to flee, to get back into the dark comfort of the library. Danica didn't want that to happen. She could see the agony in his expression, and she knew from legends she had heard as a child that the daylight would peel the skin from his bones. Even in her intense pain, in her horrifying dilemma, the monk kept her wits enough to understand that destroying Thobicus now would be a good thing, would make the necessary trip back to purge the library that much easier.

Danica held on like a bulldog. Thobicus battered her about the head, kicked and screamed. One of Danica's eyes swelled and closed. She heard the crackle of cartilage as her nose shattered, and the pain in her ankle did not relent, even intensified to the point where she had to fight hard just to keep her senses.

Then she lay in the cold mud, in her own blood, holding nothing. Distantly she heard the retreating vampire's diminishing screams.

Thobicus ran straight for the library's front doors. Every muscle trembled from the strain, from the burn of the daylight, and he was a weakened and pitiful thing. He hurled himself against the wooden barrier and was repelled. He staggered backward and tumbled into the dirt. He could see the hole in the door where Danica had kicked, could see the cool dark beyond, beckoning to him.

A patch of skin above the vampire's right eye melted and drooped, blurring his vision. He went back for the doors, but swayed in his path and missed, falling hard against the stone wall.

"How could you do this to me?" he cried, but his voice was no more than a whisper. "How?"

The beleaguered vampire stumbled as much as ran along the wall, to the library's edge and down the side of the building. There was a tunnel somewhere to the south, he knew, a dark, cool tunnel.

He hadn't the time to find it. Thobicus realized he was doomed, cursed by his own weaknesses and by that wretch, Rufo, who had b'ed to him.

The sunlight was direct around the back of the building, and the vampire stopped as he began around the corner, then fell back against the stone. Where to go? Thobicus fought hard to clear his thoughts, sublimate the pain long enough to remember the mausoleum.

Cool and dark.

To get there, though, he would have to cross the sunny side of the library grounds. The fallen dean could hardly face that prospect of pain, but he understood that to stay here meant death.

With a scream of denial, Thobicus threw himself around the corner and ran with all speed for the mausoleum. The sun's fires licked at every inch of his body, burned into his very heart and pained him more than he ever believed possible. But he got there. Somehow he fell through the mausoleum's heavy door and felt the cool shade of the stone floor under his burning cheek. He crawled on his belly to the back corner, opened the crypt of headmaster Avery, and somehow found the strength to pull the fat corpse out and crawl into Avery's place.

Trembling with agony, the vampire curled into a ball and closed his eyes. Thobicus needed to sleep, to gather strength, and to consider his folly and his fate.

Kierkan Rufo had lied to him. He had lost the way to Deneir.

The shadows were long and slanted when Danica regained consciousness. She realized immediately that she had lost a lot of blood, and she grimaced when she mustered the strength to look down at her injury, her foot bloated and greenish, with the sharp edge of bone sticking out, caked with dried blood, a torn tendon hanging.

How could she hope to move, and yet, how could she remain in this place with the shadows growing long? Using all the concentration her years of training had given her, all the willpower that had guided her life, the monk managed to get up onto her good leg. Waves of dizziness washed over her, and she feared her change in posture would send more blood flowing from her wound.

She took a hopping step to the east, toward the main walk leading from the library.

Then she was facedown in the dirt once more.

Breathing hard, forcing air into her lungs so she did not pass out again - by the gods, she could not pass out again! - Danica ripped the bottom off of her shirt and bent over to reach her broken ankle. She found a stick nearby and shoved it between her teeth, biting hard as she tightly wrapped the wound, forcing the bone somewhat back into place.

She was lathered in sweat by the time she turned back to the path, but she chanted her einto, her mantra, and set off, first crawling, then hopping, faster and faster, away from the darkness.

Whatever comfort she took in putting the library out of sight was countered by the red sunset lining the

mountains at her back. She knew that Rufo would come after her; she was a prize that wretch had craved since the moment he had seen her.

This area was familiar to Danica, and though the going was much more difficult in the thick brush, she swerved from the main path, continuing straight to the east and knowing she could pick up the trail again later on, in the morning, perhaps, after hiding from Rufo in the deep woods through the night. She found a narrow trail through the brush, a ranger's trail or a druid's, she assumed, and the going was somewhat easier. Then, with twilight descending about her, her heart fluttered with hope as three forms made their way along the trail, heading back for the library. Danica recognized the Oghman garb and nearly shouted with joy to the priests.

Her face screwed up with curiosity as she realized that one of them was walking backward, that his head had been turned around on his shoulders. Danica's breath fell away, and her hopes as well, as the stiff gait of the three men, the three dead men, became apparent, and she thought then that she was doomed, for they had to have seen her.

Danica slumped against a tree trunk, knowing she could not fight them off. They were just ten feet away. Five feet away.

She lashed out pitifully and clipped one on the shoulder, but the zombie only staggered a foot to the side and continued walking, right past Danica!

Danica did not understand, and did not question her luck. She looked back only once at the retreating monsters, then started moving again, wondering if all the world had fallen under this darkness.

She was still moving after sunset, after twilight, when the dark grew thick and the night birds began to call out. She found a hollow and slumped, thinking she had to rest, hoping she would still be alive when the sun's first rays stretched across the Shining Plains. The hard remains of a snowdrift offered some relief as Danica packed the cold ice about her ankle. She scratched a V in the pile and secured her foot in place, then lay back, continuing her einto, trying to survive the night.

Sometime later, she heard music, not ominous, but gay, and she soon recognized the song as a bawdy merchant romp. After a moment of confusion, Danica remembered the season, remembered that merchants often came up from Carradoon to resupply the library after the long winter.

So all the world had not fallen, she realized, not yet, and she took hope.

Danica lay back and closed her eyes. She needed sleep.

But she could not allow herself to sleep, she understood a moment later, when she considered the larger picture. She could not remain here and let the merchant caravan roll past She could not let these unwitting men walk into Rufo's lair, and even worse, it seemed likely to her that Rufo, in his search for her, might find the caravan this very night!

Before she was conscious of her actions, Danica was up and moving again, stumbling through the brush. She saw the campfire almost immediately and made straight for it

She tripped before she got there and had no strength to stand up again, but crawled on, washed by dizziness and nausea.

"Here now!" cried a man at the edge of the encampment as Danica fell through the last line of brusji. She saw the flash of a sword as the man leaped for her, appar-

ently thinking her some thief, or even some wild animal.

The next thing Danica knew, she was sitting beside a canvas-topped wagon, her injured leg elevated before her and an old woman carefully tending the wound. Several men, merchants and their guards, surrounded her, all looking on worriedly, more than one biting his lip.

The old woman shifted the ankle slightly, and Danica cried out, then the woman turned to her companions and nodded her head grimly.

"You have to ..." Danica started, fighting for the breath to speak. "You have to run."

"Easy, lass," one of the men tried to comfort. "You're safe now."

"Run," Danica said again. "Run!"

The men looked to each other, each one of them giving a confused shrug.

To Carradoon," Danica managed to say. "Flee this - "

"Easy lass," the same man interrupted.

"A priest!" came a hopeful call from the side of the camp. "An Oghman priest!"

Hopeful smiles widened on the faces of those tending Danica, but Danica's face blanched even more.

"Run!" she screamed, and she pulled her leg free of the old woman's grasp and worked her way back along the wagon, walking her shoulders up its side until she stood once more.

The same man spoke again to comfort her.

He was the first to die, hurled clear over the high wagon to smash against the trunk of a tall tree, his neck snapped.

In a moment, the camp was in a frenzy. Two Oghman priests who had given themselves over to the dark, and a host of zombies, now had orders to kill.

The merchants fought valiantly, realizing the price of failure, and many zombies were hacked apart. But three vampires, including the master, cut into their ranks, tearing and breaking them.

Several merchants ran off screaming into the night. Three took up defensive stances around Danica and the old woman, who would not leave the injured monk's side.

Kierkan Rufo faced these three. Half-unconscious, Danica expected a fierce battle, but for some reason, amidst all the frenzy in the encampment, this group of men stood calmly.

She realized then that Rufo was talking to them, soothing them with a web of words, intruding on their minds with his will and making them see things that were not true.

"He is lying!" Danica screamed. "Block your ears and your minds! Deny him! Oh, by the light that is your god, whatever god, see the evil for what it is!"

She never understood where that sudden power came from, where she found the strength to yell to those three doomed men, but though they soon died at the terrible hands of Kierkan Rufo, they did not succumb to the dark. They heeded Danica's words and found the strength of faith to deny the vampire.