The Cleric Quintet: The Chaos Curse

 

He couldn't hear the song of Deneir, he realized. And he could no longer hear Chaunticleer's singing, though the priest was likely closer now than when they were in the mountains. It seemed as if Deneir had flown from this place.

"What are ye thinking?" the always impatient Ivan asked.

Cadderly opened his gray eyes and looked at the dwarf.

"Well?" Ivan prompted. "What are ye thinking?"

This place has been desecrated," Cadderly replied, and it wasn't until he had spoken the words that he understood what he was saying.

"Been burned," Ivan corrected, looking to the tapestry, not understanding what Cadderly was talking about.

"Desecrated!" Cadderly yelled, the word echoing off the stone walls and filtering up the stairway. TTie significance of the word, and the weight with which Cadderly had shouted it sent shivers coursing through both brothers.

"What are ye talking about?" Ivan asked quietly.

Cadderly just shook his head vigorously and spun off, making all speed for the main chapel, the holiest place in this holy place. He expected he would find priests there, brothers of both host orders, praying to their respective gods, fighting to bring Deneir and Oghma back to this library.

The chapel was empty.

Thick soot covered the intricate designs on the massive, arching pillars closest to the doors, but little else seemed out of place. The altar across the way seemed intact, all the items, the bells, the single chalice, and the twin scepters atop it exactly where they belonged.

Their footsteps resounding, the three huddled close together and made their way toward the front

Ivan saw the body first, and pulled up to a quick stop, holding out a strong arm that bent Cadderly over at the waist and forced him to hold as well.

Pikel continued forward a step, came around when he realized that the others were not following, and used their stunned expressions to guide his own eyes.

"Oooo," the green-bearded dwarf muttered.

"Banner," Cadderly explained, recognizing the burned corpse, though its skin hung in flaps away from the bone, and its face was half skull and half blackened skin.

The eyes rotated in their sockets, settling on Cadderly, and a grotesque smile erupted, the remaining flaps of the body's lips going wide.

"Cadderly!" Banner cried excitedly, and he catapulted to a standing position, bones rattling, arms bouncing wildly, and head bobbing about

"Oh, Cadderly, how good of you to return!"

Ivan and Pikel gasped in unison and fell back. They had fought undead monsters before, alongside Cadderly in the catacombs of this very building. Now they looked to the young priest for support for this was his place, his chapel. Cadderly, stunned, overwhelmed, fell back, too, and grabbed his hat and, more particularly, the holy symbol set in its front

"I knew - I simply knew! - that you'd come back," the grotesque Banner rambled on. He clapped his hands, and one of his fingers, held by a mere thread of ligament, fell from the others and dangled in midair several inches from his hand.

"I keep doing that!" the exasperated thing wailed, and he began reeling in his dropped digit as though it were some empty fishhook.

Cadderly wanted to talk to Banner, to ask some questions, to get some answers. But where to begin? This was too crazy, too out of place. This was the Edificant Library, the sanctuary of Deneir and Oghma! This was a place of prayer and reverence, and yet, standing here before Cadderly was a creature that mocked that reverence, that made all the prayers sound like pretty words strung together for no particular purpose. For Banner had been a priest, a well-respected and high-ranking priest of Cadderly's own god! Where was Deneir now? Cadderly had to wonder. How had Deneir allowed this grim fate to befall one so loyal?

"Not to worry," Banner assured the three, as if they were concerned about his finger. "Not to worry. I've become quite good at putting the pieces back together since the fire, actually."

Tell me about the fire," Cadderly interjected, seizing that one important event and holding on to it like a litany against insanity.

Banner looked at him weirdly, the bulging eyeballs rolling this way and that. "It was hot," he replied.

"What started it?" Cadderly pressed.

"How would sleeping Banner know that?" the undead thing answered bruskly. "I have heard that the wizard..."

Banner paused and smiled widely, and began waggling his finger in the air before him, as though Cadderly had asked a question that was out of bounds. That waggling finger, like the one before it, dropped free, this one falling all the way to the floor.

"Oh, where did it go?" Banner cried in desperation, and he whipped himself to a crouched position and began hopping about the pews.

"Are ye wanting to talk to this one?" Ivan asked, and the dwarf's tone made it obvious which answer he preferred.

Cadderly thought for a moment. Banner had stopped short of an answer - and the hint he had offered did not settle well with Cadderly! But why had the wretched thing stopped? the young priest wondered. What had compelled Banner to hold back? Cadderly did not know exactly what Banner was. He was more than an unthinking zombie, Cadderly knew, though the young priest wasn't well versed in the various versions of undeath. Zombies, and others of the lowest form of animated undeath, didn't converse, were simply unthinking instruments of their masters, so Banner apparently ranked somewhere above them. Cadderly had once battled a mummy, but Banner didn't seem to fit that mold either. He seemed benign, almost, too foolish to be a threat

Yet, something, some impulse, had held Banner from answering.

Cadderly eyed the scrambling creature directly, presented his holy symbol, and in commanding tones^aid, "Banner! Spirit of Banner. I ask you again and, by the power of Deneir, demand an answer. Who started the fire?"

The undead thing stopped his frantic movements, froze perfectly still and stared at Cadderly, or, more particularly, at Cadderly's holy symbol.

Banner seemed to wince several times. "By the power of who?" he asked innocently, and then it was Cadderly who winced. What had happened to this place to push his god, so very far, away?

Cadderly lowered his arm, lowered the symbol of Deneir, knowing then that he would gain no useful information.

"Are ye wanting to keep talking to this thing?" Ivan asked.

"No," Cadderly said simply, and before the word had fully fallen from his lips, Ivan's axe went into a tremendous overhead arc, slicing down and taking Banner's left arm from his shoulder.

The undead thing looked curiously at that lost arm, as if wondering how he was supposed to reattach it. "Oh, have to fix that," his almost lipless mouth said matter-of-factly.

Even more devastating was Pikel's attack, the tree-trunk club slamming hard atop Banner's exposed skull, dropping the undead thing into a crumpled, broken pile of flesh and bones.

Both eyes popped from their sockets and rolled about on long, thin strands. "Now that hurt," Banner said, and all three companions jumped at the unexpected response. They realized then, to their horror, that the eyeballs were not rolling randomly, but seemed to be inspecting the damage!

"So much to do!" Banner whined.

The three slowly backed away, Pikel last, whimpering a bit and shaking his head in denial. Five feet from the broken monster, they found the courage to turn away, and started off, legs pumping to gain them full speed.

"Oh, Rufo will make me fix it alone!" Banner cried.

Cadderly skidded to a stop; Ivan crashed into him, and Pikel crashed into Ivan.

"Rufo?" Cadderly asked, turning back.

"Rufo?" Ivan echoed.

"Oo oi!" Pikel agreed.

"You remember Rufo, of course," said a calm and familiar voice from behind them.

Slowly and in unison the three turned back toward the exit of the chapel to see Kierkan Rufo standing at his usual angle, not quite perpendicular to the floor.

Cadderly noticed immediately that the brand he had given Rufo had been marred, clawed away.

"You do not belong in this place!" the young priest roared, finding his courage, reminding himself that this was his home, Deneir's home.

Rufo's laughter mocked him.

Cadderly moved inevitably closer, drawing the dwarves in his wake. "What are you?" he demanded, understanding that something was terribly amiss, that something stronger than Kierkan Rufo now faced him.

Rufo smiled widely, opened his mouth in a feral hiss, proudly showing his fangs.

Cadderly nearly swooned, then caught himself. He yanked his holy symbol free of the wide-brimmed hat, and plopped the hat awkwardly on his head in the same movement "By the name of Deneir, I banish - " he began.

"Not here!" Rufo roared back, his eyes flashing like red dots of fire. "Not here."

"Uh-oh," muttered Pikel.

"He's not a vampire, is he?" Ivan asked, and, like everything Ivan seemed to ask in here, it was obvious what answer he wanted - needed - to hear.

"If you could only understand the meaning of that word," Rufo answered. "Vampire? I am Tuanta Quiro Miancay, the Most Fatal Horror! I am the embodiment of the mixture, and in here, I rule!"

Cadderly's mind whirled along the terrible possibilities. He knew that name, Tuanta Quiro Miancay. He, above anyone else, understood the power of the chaos curse, for he had been the one to defeat it, the one who had put it in the bowl, immersed in holy water.

But he had not destroyed it; Rufo was proof of that. The chaos curse had returned, in a new and apparently more deadly form. Cadderly felt a warmth along his leg, emanating from his pocket It took him only a moment to remember that he had a pin in there, an amulet that Druzil had placed on Rufo in Shilmista. The amulet was tuned to the imp, so that its possessor and Druzil could be easily joined telepathically. It was warm now, and Cadderly feared what that might mean.

"Your god is gone from this place, Cadderly," Rufo chided, and Cadderly could not deny the truth of that statement "Your order is no more, and so many have come over willingly to my side."

Cadderly wanted to argue that, wanted to not believe it He knew of the cancer that had crept into the order of Deneir, and of Oghma, even before this newest incarnation of the chaos curse. He thought of his last encounter with Dean Thobicus. Even as he had left the Edificant Library in the early winter, Cadderly knew that he would have to return and battle the ways that had become so ingrained on this place, ways contrary to the brother gods.

Now there was Rufo, and the fall of the library seemed to make perfect sense.

The pause now, the proverbial calm before the storm, could not last long, not with two volatile and scared dwarves at Cadderly's side. Ivan shattered that calm, roared and charged forward, and hit Rufo full force with a sidelong swipe of his great axe.

The vampire lurched and flew half a dozen feet to the side, but came up straight and seemed unhurt - indeed, was even laughing!

Pikel lowered both his head and his club and charged, but Rufo casually slapped him aside, launching him end over end to crash right through two wooden pews.

Ivan charged again, and Rufo spun to the side, snapped his hand out in the air. Some force emanated from that hand, some mighty energy that slammed Ivan and sent him flying off as wildly as if he had run into the edge of a tornado. The dwarf grunted, his breath blasted from his lungs, and flew off. He hit the edge of an arch with a sharp, sickening retort, rocketed head over heels to the floor, and skidded and bounced along, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

Cadderly feared that the blow had killed Ivan. He wanted to rush to his friend's side, to call upon Deneir*s healing gifts and take away Ivan's pain. Not yet, he realized. He could not go to Ivan yet. He kept his holy symbol high in the air, presented with all his faith, as he steadily approached the vampire. He was chanting, praying, demanding that Deneir hear his call and come back to this place.

Rufo winced, and seemed pained by the presented symbol, but did not back down.

"You do not belong here," Cadderly said through gritted teeth, and the symbol, flaring with a silvery flame, was barely a foot from die vampire's snarling visage.

Rufo reached out and clenched his hand over the eye above candle, closed his fist upon it. There came a hiss, and wafts of smoke rose, and Rufo was obviously pained. But the vampire held on stubbornly, proving that this was his place and not Deneir's, that Cadderly's holy magic was no good, not in here.

Gradually straightening, the vampire widened a smile, his free hand, in a clawing position, rising up to his ear, ready to strike, ready to lash out for stunned Cadderly's throat.

Pikel hit the vampire from the side, and, though his club did no real damage, the jolt saved Cadderly, pushing him and Rufo far apart.

Rufo and Pikel engaged in a wrestling and slugging match, but the vampire was too strong, and Pikel was soon hurled away. Rufo turned immediately on Cadderly, the prized prey of this group, who had staggered back many feet.

A tremendous, inhuman leap brought Rufo flying up to block Cadderly's way. Perched atop a pew, the vampire raised his arms wide and leaned forward, meaning to fall over Cadderly.

Up came Cadderly's holy symbol, and this time, the quick-thinking young priest enhanced the presentation. He pulled out his light tube, popped off the end cap, and put the beam right behind the forward-thrusting symbol.

Rufo recoiled, struck and pained by the sudden glare. He spun away, his robes flying defensively as a dark barrier against the burning beam, and wailed an ungodly, unearthly wail that resounded off every wall in the library, that fell upon the ears and tugged at the heartstrings of the many minions the evil vampire had fashioned.

The building itself seemed to rise in answer to that call, responding wails and moans coming into the chapel from every direction.

Rufo melted away, transforming suddenly into a bat, and fluttered about the wide hall. Another bat came in hard through the open door, and then something bigger than a bat, but with batlike wings.

Cadderly recognized Druzil, and the imp's presence answered many questions indeed.

They heard the shuffling of stiff-legged zombies in the hall outside; they heard those of the dark rising to Rufo's side.

They had to get out - Cadderly knew they had to flee this place. Pikel, obviously thinking along the same lines, staggered to the young priest's side and together they turned for Ivan, neither of them knowing how they were supposed to carry the battered dwarf out of there.

But Ivan wasn't down. Somehow, he was standing and seemed to have shaken off the terrific hit

The three joined and ran for the door, Rufo's laughter echoing in their ears every step. They cascaded down the hall and plowed into a jumble of zombies congregating in the foyer.

Ivan and Pikel cut through the throng like the prow of a ship through water, scattering bodies and limbs in every direction. Ivan's axe cleaved monsters in half or took limbs with every tremendous swipe, and the dwarf lowered his head and gored like a charging elk, ripping wide holes in zombie chests. Pikel flanked his brother, knocking zombies aside with his club, and Cadderly came right behind them, ready to strike, and yet, with the dwarves so efficient, the young priest had nothing to strike at!

For all their progress, though, Rufo was right behind, and a horrible, scarred vampire - Histra! - was beside him, along with that wretched imp. v

Bolts of energy launched from Druzil's fingertips, scorching Cadderly's back. Rufo's mocking laughter and Histra's hungry hissing licked at the young priest's sensibilities.

"Where will you run?" Rufo cried.

Ivan's axe cut a zombie in half at the waist and the way to the open door (open to the twilight) was clear before them.

The doors swung closed with a bang that sounded like a nail in Cadderly's coffin.

"Where will you run?" Rufo cried again, and another barrage of Druzil's energy stung the running priest so badly that he nearly tumbled.

Cadderly thought to run past those doors, knowing that Rufo had closed them, that the vampire had placed a spell on them that would keep them closed.

Ivan and Pikel were never that subtle, or that quick-thinking, especially on those few occasions when they were truly terrified. They cried out together, lowered their heads together, and hit the doors together, and no enchantment Rufo or anyone else could have placed on the doors would have held the portal against that charge.

The two dwarves rolled outside amidst flying splinters. Cadderly, running full out behind them, tried to jump clear of the tangle, but hooked his foot on Pikel's chin and went flying headlong to the ground.

Even that evasive, if unintentional, maneuver did not save the young priest from yet another of Druzil's volley's. Pain raced along Cadderly's razed spine. Ivan and Pikel each hooked him under one arm and ran along, dragging him with them. Ivan kept the presence of mind to scoop up the young priest's dropped light tube and holy symbol.

The slow zombies ambled out in pursuit, but the vampires did not, for the night had not fallen in full. Twenty paces down the path, Cadderly and the dwarves were running free.

But for how long? all three wondered. The, sun was out of sight; the library was lost.