The Cleric Quintet: The Chaos Curse

 

Rufo laughed at him. He laughed at Deneir, and Cadderly knew it, knew that everything Kierkan Rufo had become mocked Deneir and all the goodly gods, mocked the value of, the very concept of, morality. And in Cad-derly's thinking, that, in turn, mocked the very purpose of life.

The young priest, gray eyes steeled against this instrument of perversion, began a slow chant, demanding that the song of Deneir come into his head. Fire, Cadderly knew. He needed a spell of fire to hurt this one, to burn wounds that would not regenerate. How he wished Dorigen's onyx ring still held its dweomer!

Cadderly dismissed that wasted, unproductive thought and focused on his call to Deneir. He needed fire to cleanse the perversion, fire given to him, channeled through him, by his god. Cadderly's head began that familiar ache, but Cadderly did not relent, sent his thoughts sailing into the main flow of the melody's stream.

"I have her," he heard cocky Rufo say, and Cadderly's heart fluttered at that moment, and his concentration, for all his sense of purpose, wavered.

Pikel gave a squeal and rushed out in front of Cadderly, waterskin tucked under his arm. He howled and pressed, and the skin responded with a flatulent burst. Pikel looked down at the empty thing, the last drops of water dripping from its end. Then the dwarf looked to Rufo, looked into the monster's angry scowl.

"Uh-oh," Pikel whimpered, and he was diving aside before Rufo's backhand even connected. He rolled through several tight somersaults, until he collided with a tree, then hopped up, dropped his club to the ground again, and began that same curious dance he had taken up in the corridor of the library.

Cadderly did not turn aside, did not, would not, retreat from Rufo this time. The reference to Danica had disrupted his concentration, had pushed him from the flow of Deneir's song, and he had no time to fall back into it. He had his faith, though. Above everything else, young Cadderly had his convictions and would not show fear in the face of the vampire. He planted his feet firmly and presented his holy symbol, crying with all the strength he could muster, "Get you back!"

Rufo staggered to a stop and nearly retreated a step before he found, within the evil swirls of the chaos curse, the strength to resist. There was no smile on the vampire's face, though, and where his expression had once shown confidence, now there was only determination.

Cadderly advanced a step, so did Rufo, and they stood facing each other, barely three feet apart.

"Deneir," Cadderly said clearly. How the young priest wanted to fall back into the song of his god, to find a spell of fire, or a most holy word that would send waves of agonizing discord through the vampire's skinny frame! He could not, though, not with Rufo so close and so very strong. This had become a contest of will, a test of faith, and Cadderly had to hold on to the ground he had found, had to present his symbol with all his heart, and all his focus, squarely behind it.

The very air seemed to spark between them, positive and negative energy doing battle. Both men trembled with the strain.

In the distance, a wolf howled.

Every second seemed an eternity; Cadderly thought he would burst from the pressure. He could feel Rufo's evil, a tangible thing, washing over him, denying his faith. He could feel the strength of Tuanta Quiro Mian-cay, a diabolical brew he had battled before, a curse that had almost defeated him and all the library. Now it was personified, stronger still, but Cadderly was older and wiser.

Rufo tried to advance, but his feet would not come to the call of his desires. Cadderly concentrated on merely holding his ground. He didn't hope that Pikel would come rushing in, as before. He didn't hope for anything. His focus was pure. He would hold Rufo here until the dawn if necessary!

Bolts of green energy slammed into the young priest's ribs. He gasped and recoiled, and by the time he straightened and regained the edge of concentration, Kierkan Rufo was upon him, clutching his wrist, holding Cad-derly's arm high to keep the symbol of Deneir out of his face.

"Allies have their places," Rufo chided.

Cadderly managed to glance to the side, to see Pikel hopping about and swinging his club desperately, chasing a teasing Druzil around the lowest branches of the nearest trees.

Rufo pressed forward, and Cadderly struggled helplessly. Ivan groaned on the ground behind him - Cad-derly was surprised that the dwarf was even close to consciousness. Ivan would be of no help, though, not this time.

"I have her," Rufo said again, confident of his victory, and despite the rage that welled within Cadderly, he was caught in such a disadvantageous position that he could do nothing against the vampire's terrifying strength. Rufo was bending him backward; he thought his backbone would snap.

The vampire jerked suddenly, then again, and Rufo straightened, easing the pressure on Cadderly's spine. Rufo jerked again and groaned, his features twisted in pain.

As the fourth sting hit him, Rufo hurled Cadderly backward to the ground and wheeled about, and Cadderly saw four long arrows sticking from his shoulder blades. A fifth bolt whistled in, slamming Rufo's chest, staggering him, his red-glowing eyes wide with surprise.

Shayleigh continued a steady walking advance, calmly putting another arrow to her bowstring and sending it unerringly into the vampire. From the side, Pikel, tired of the fruitless chase, came bobbing out of the trees, club held high as he bore down on Rufo. The dwarf skidded between Cadderly and the vampire, and readied the club.

Rufo spun about suddenly, his hand thrusting in the air, sending forth a wave of energy that froze Pikel momentarily.

"Come find your lover, Cadderly," the vampire spat, taking no heed of yet another arrow that dove into his side. "I will be waiting."

Rufo's form blurred, a green mist coming up about him, engulfing him. Pikel came from his trance, shaking his head vigorously, his generous lips flapping noisily, and wound up to swing, but stopped abruptly as Shay-leigh's next arrow passed right through the insubstantial vampire and thudded hard into the club.

"Oo," muttered the dwarf, considering the bolt.

"Is he going to keep doing that?" roared Ivan, and both Cadderly and Pikel swung about, surprised by the outburst.

Cadderly, back to his knees, stared hard at the tough dwarf - tough indeed, for Ivan's wounds, injuries the young priest had thought nearly fatal, did not seem so bad now!

Ivan noticed the stare and returned it with a wink, holding up his left hand to display a ring, a ring that Van-der had given him at their parting. Cadderly knew the item, an instrument of healing that could even bring its wearer back from the grave, and everything then made sense to him.

Everything concerning Ivan, at least. The young priest rose to his feet and looked back the other way, to Shayleigh. What was she doing here, and how much might she know of Danica's fate?

"I have just returned," Shayleigh greeted as she neared the three, as though Cadderly's impending stream of questions were obvious to her. "I left Danica and Dorigen yesterday, in a pass high from this place, and would be halfway to Shilmista."

"Except?" Cadderly prompted.

"I saw the smoke," Shayleigh explained. "And your friend, Percival, came to me. I knew then that there was trouble at the library, but..."

Cadderly's face gave her pause, the young priest leaning forward, eyes wide, mouth open in anticipation.

"But I know not of Danica's fate," Shayleigh finished, and Cadderly slumped back on his heels. Rufo had told him Danica's fate, and he found that now, with Shay-leigh's confirmation that Danica and Dorigen had reached the library, he could not deny the vampire's claim. Also, knowing the fate of the library, and the apparent probability that Danica and Dorigen had walked into its midst, Cadderly believed he now understood the source of the fire in the small chapel. Starting a conventional fire that would so consume a room in the stone library would not be easy, for there was little fuel to feed the flames. A wizard's fireball, though (and Dorigen was quite adept at those), would have sufficed.

"More than fire has attacked the library," Cadderly replied grimly to the elf. "Rufo has become something sinister."

"A vampire," Shayleigh said.

Cadderly nodded. "And there are others."

"One less," Shayleigh replied, to which the three friends looked at her curiously. "I found Dean Thobicus behind the library," the elf explained, "in the burial vault. He, too, was undead, but he was wounded by sunlight, I believe, and not so strong."

"And ye beat him?" Ivan asked, the dwarf neither sounding nor looking very hurt at all anymore.

Shayleigh nodded. She stepped near Pikel and pulled hard on the arrow embedded in the dwarfs tree-trunk club. It came out with a pop, and Shayleigh held its tip up for the others to see. Its sharp point glistened a bright gray in the moonlight.

"Silver-tipped," Shayleigh explained. "The purest of metals, and one that the undead cannot ignore. I have few left, I fear," she explained, indicating her nearly empty quiver. "We encountered some trolls ..."

"So we saw," said Ivan.

"I recovered some of those, and all the ones I used against Dean Thobicus," Shayleigh said. "But Kierkan Rufo just took a few with him, and I fear that my supply of arrowheads grows small." To emphasize her point, she reached down to a belt pouch and jiggled it.

"Me axe wouldn't hurt the things," Ivan huffed.

"Adamantine?" Shayleigh asked, nodding her head expectantly.

"That and iron," Ivan explained.

"Neither would my spindle-disks hurt Rufo," Cadderly added. "But my walking stick" - he held the fabulous ram's-headed baton up before him - "is enchanted, in addition to being silver. It struck Rufo a terrible blow."

Ivan's head bobbed in agreement, then both he and Cadderly looked curiously at each other. Together they slowly turned their heads to regard Pikel, who sheepishly slipped his club behind his back.

"Just a club," Ivan remarked, sliding over to his brother and pulling the huge weapon out from behind Pikel. "I seen him take it from the trunk of a dead tree meself!"

"Just a club," Cadderly agreed. "Yet it hurt Rufo."

Pikel leaned over and whispered something into Ivan's ear, and the yellow-bearded Bouldershoulder brightened with understanding.

"He says it's not a club," Ivan explained to Cadderly. "Me brother calls it a ..." Ivan turned a questioning glance back at Pikel, who hopped back to his toes and whispered again into Ivan's ear.

"Calls it a Sha-lah-lah," Ivan explained happily.

Cadderly and Shayleigh echoed the curious word together, and then Cadderly figured it out. "A shillelagh," he said, and for a moment it made perfect sense, a shillelagh being a magical cudgel often used by drujds. Such a weapon would certainly harm a vampire. A moment later, of course, it made no sense at all - where in the world did Pikel get a druid's enchanted cudgel?

"And the water?" Cadderly asked Pikel.

The proud dwarf jumped up on his tiptoes to put his lips to Ivan's ear.

Ivan's look soured as he, too, began to figure it all out, began to digest the impossibility of it all. "Druid water," he said dryly, his voice even-toned.

"Doo-dad!" Pikel squealed.

Again came the curious stares, all three wondering what in the world was happening with Pikel. Shayleigh and Ivan had seen Pikel tame a snake in Castle Trinity, but that, unlike the club and water, could be explained in other ways. But these events ... What explanation might there be except that Pikel had found some measure of druidic magic?

With everything going on, though, this wasn't the time to press the issue, or to question their apparent good luck. Cadderly, Shayleigh, and even Ivan silently realized that if they told Pikel firmly enough that dwarves could not become druids, he might just believe them. That would do nothing except give them fewer weapons to use against Rufo.

Then we do indeed have the means to strike Rufo," Cadderly stated firmly, ending the debate. "We have to get back into the library."

Pikel's smile went away, and Ivan was shaking his head before Cadderly ever finished the proclamation.

"On the morrow," Shayleigh put in. "If Danica and Dorigen are there, and we do not know that they are, there is nothing we can do for them this night. Trust in them. Rufo is strongest in the hours of dark."

A wolfs howl cut the night, answered by another, then a third and a fourth.

"And the vampire is mustering his forces," Shayleigh went on. "Let us be far from this place. In the night, movement is our only ally."

Cadderly looked back toward the library. Despite what Shayleigh had said, he did know, in his heart, that Danica was in there. Dorigen was in there, too, though the young priest had a terrible feeling that the wizard had met her end. Shayleigh's words about Rufo were true enough, though. This was Rufo's hour, and his allies would soon be all about them. Cadderly could not defeat Rufo, not at night, not inside the library.

He agreed and followed the elf maiden's lead as she led them off into the woods, Pikel pausing long enough to refill his skin with the clear water of a nearby stream.

Every Weapon

The howls erupted from every corner of shadow, from every bit of Rufo's night. Cadderly had known there were wolves in the Snowflakes, many wolves - everyone knew that - but none of the four friends suspected there were so very many so close!

Shayleigh kept the group on the move, shifting at unexpected angles through the mountain night, knifing between high lines of stone, along the very rim of deep gorges. The elf could see in the dark, and so could the dwarves, and Cadderly had his light tube, its beam kept very narrow, half concealed under his gray traveling cloak so as not to attract too much attention.

As the wolves inevitably closed in, their howls sounding like one long, mournful keen, the young priest was forced to cap the light and put the tube away. He stumbled along as best he could in a night that had grown darker still, with Pikel supporting him on one side, Ivan on the other, and Shayleigh trying hard not to get too far ahead.

At one point, it seemed as if they had been cut off, with a group of wolves howling farther along the same path they were traveling. Shayleigh looked back to the other three, her violet eyes shining clearly, even to Cad-derly's poor night vision, and her expression revealing that she was fast running out of answers.

"Looks like we're fighting again," Ivan grumbled, and it was the first time Cadderly had ever seen the sturdy dwarf so obviously upset with that prospect.

Unexpectedly, the wolf pack up ahead ran on its way, across the trail and not down it at the companions. The wolves howled excitedly into the night, as if they had found some new quarry to pursue.

Shayleigh asked no questions about their good fortune. She spurred her friends ahead at full speed and came to a grove of fruit trees. Shayleigh would have preferred evergreens, where dark needles might offer some cover, but the pursuing pack was not far behind and these trees were easy to climb, even for short-limbed dwarves. Up the four went, as high as the branches would allow, Shayleigh finding a secure nook and stringing her bow immediately.

The dark shapes of the large wolves came into the clear area to the side of the grove, their fur bristling silver and black in the meager light. One came to the tree right below Cadderly and Pikel, sniffing the air, then loosing yet another terrifying howl.

It was answered by all its dozen companions 4 the grove, and then by a larger group, the group that had been ahead of the four companions, somewhere off to the east. The cries to the east continued, heightened, and though this group had the four treed, they could not ignore the thrill of the chase. Off the pack ran, but Shayleigh and the others did not come down, the elf explaining that this might be the best defensible spot they would find for miles.

The howling continued for many minutes, frantic, as if the wolves were indeed on a fresh trail. Cadderly's heart fluttered at every cry - might it be Danica the beasts were chasing?

Then the howls lessened and became mixed with resonating snarls, and it seemed to the companions that whatever the wolves had been chasing was trapped.

"We must go help," Cadderly announced, but none of the others seemed ready to leap to the ground behind him. He looked at them, particularly at sturdy Ivan, as if he had been deceived.

Three dozen wolves," the yellow-bearded dwarf remarked, "maybe more. All we'll be doing is giving them more to eat!"

Cadderly didn't flinch as he picked his way down to the next lowest branch.

Ivan huffed and shuffled in his own roost, moving close enough to slap Pikel and get him, too, moving. Agile Shayleigh was already on the ground, waiting for them.

Cadderly smiled secretly, glad to confirm once more that he was blessed by brave and righteous friends. The young priest's grin went away, though, and all four of the companions froze (except for Pikel, who was knocked from his perch and fell hard to the ground), when a tremendous explosion rocked the very ground under their feet and a ball of fire rose into the air in the east, accompanied by the cries of many wolves.

"Dorigen?" both Cadderly and Shayleigh asked together, but neither of them moved, not knowing what they should do.

Pike! groaned and regained his footing, shaking the twigs out of his green beard. Above, high in the tree, a small form skittered along, verily flying from branch to branch.

Ivan, in the highest perch, let out a shout and turned about, lifting his axe, but Shayleigh's call stopped him in time.

"Percival," the elf maiden explained. "It is only Percival."

Cadderly scrambled as high as he could go, meeting his squirrel friend. Percival chattered excitedly, hopping in circles on the branch, and Cadderly understood that the squirrel had been more than a casual observer in all of this, when, a moment later, he heard the frantic cries of a man, and the howls of the remaining wolves in pursuit

Shayleigh and Pikel went back up into the tree, and all four, and the squirrel as well, fell silent, watching to the east. Shayleigh caught the movement first, and up came her bow, an arrow streaking off unerringly to take down a wolf that was nipping at the fleeing man's heels.

The man, startled and not believing he had any allies in this dark place, cried out as the bolt flew past. Cadderly recognized the voice.

"Belago," the young priest muttered.

Ivan dropped down branch by branch until he was at the lowest limb, Pikel joining him there. Both looked to the running man, figuring the angle of approach, and they shifted side by side to put themselves in line. Pikel braced Ivan's feet as the dwarf rolled under the branch, hooking his knees, his arms hanging down.

On came Belago, blindly, more wolves nipping at his heels. Another arrow sliced past him, the elf's aim perfect, but the frightened man seemed to not even register that fact. He seemed oblivious to everything except his belief that he was alone and helpless in a dark night and was about to be eaten by wolves.

He ran under the tree, only because that course was straightest, for he knew he had no time to climb.

Then he was caught, and he screamed as he went up suddenly, hoisted by powerful dwarven hands. Not knowing Ivan for an ally, he squirmed and lashed out, connecting on the dwarf's face with several solid hits. Ivan just shook his head and muttered curses against "stupid people."

Belago wasn't beginning to break free, but his squirming was preventing Ivan from getting him high out of harm's way. Finally the dwarf heaved Belago as high as he could and butted the man right in the face. Belago went limp in his arms, and Ivan, with Pikel's help, tugged him up to the branch.