Rufo started to answer, but gagged instead and clutched his throat
"What have you done?" Druzil repeated loudly. "Bene tettemara\ Fool!"
Rufo gagged again, clutched his throat and stomach, and vomited violently. He staggered away, coughing, wheezing, trying to get some air past the bile rising in his throat.
"What have you done?" Druzil cried after him, scuttling along the floor to keep up. The imp's taifwaved ominously; if Rufo's misery ended, Druzil meant to sting and tear him, to punish him for stealing the precious and irreplaceable potion.
Rufo, his balance wavering, slammed into the door-jamb as he tried to exit the room. He stumbled along the corridor, rebounding off one wall, then the other. He vomited again, and again after that, his stomach burning with agony and swirling with nausea. Somehow he got through the rooms and corridors and half-crawled out the muddy tunnel, back into the sunlight, which knifed at his eyes and skin.
He was burning up, and yet he felt cold, deathly cold.
Druzil, wisely becoming invisible as they came into the revealing daylight, folIo""Qd. Rufo stopped and vomited yet again, across the hatuened remains of a late-season snowbank, and the mess showed more blood than bile. Then the angular man staggered around the building's corner, slipping and falling many times in the mud and slush. He thought to get to the door, to the priests with their curing hands.
Two young acolytes, wearing the black-and-gold vests that distinguished them as priests of Oghma, were near the door, enjoying the warmth of the late winter day, their brown cloaks opened wide to the sun. They didn't notice Rufo at first, not until the man fell heavily into the mud just a few feet away.
The two acolytes rusheol to him and turned him over, then gasped and fell back when they saw the brand. Neither had been in the library long enough to know Kier-kan Rufo personally, but they had heard tales of the branded priest. They looked to each other and shrugged, then one rushed back into the library while the other began to relieve the stricken man.
Druzil watched from the corner of the building, muttering "Bene tellemara" over and over, lamenting that the chaos curse and Kierkan Rufo had played him a wicked joke.
Perched high in the branches of a tree near that door, the white squirrel, Percival, looked on with more than a passing interest. Percival had come out of his winter hibernation this very week. He had been surprised to find that Cadderly, his main source of the favored cacasa nuts, was not about, and was even more surprised to see Kierkan Rufo, a human that Percival did not care for at all.
The squirrel could see that Rufo was in great distress, could smell the foulness of Rufo's illness, even from this distance.
Percival moved near his twig nest, nestled high in the branches, and continued to watch.
Different Paths Taken
The three bearded members of the company, the dwarves Pikel and Ivan Bouldershoul-der and the red-haired firbolg V ier, sat off to the side of the cave entrance, rolling bones, placing bets, and laughing among themselves. Ivan won a round, for the fifteenth time in a row, and Pikel swept off a blue, wide-brimmed hat, with an orange quill on one side and the eye-above-candle holy symbol of Deneir set in its front, and whacked laughing Ivan over the head.
Cadderly, seeing the move, started to protest. It was his hat, after all, simply loaned to Pikel, and Ivan's helmet was set with the antlers of a large deer. The young priest changed his mind and held the thought silent, seeing that the hat had not been damaged and realizing that Ivan deserved the blow.
The friendship between Ivan, Pikel, and Vander had blossomed after the fall of Castle Trinity. Gigantic Vander, all twelve feet and eight hundred pounds of him, had even helped Pikel, the would-be druid, redye his hair and beard green and braid the bushy tangle down his back. The only tense moment had come when Vander tried to put some of Pikel's dye in Ivan's bright yellow hair, something the square-shouldered, more serious Bouldershoulder did not like at all.
But the exchanges were ultimately good-natured; the last few weeks had been good-natured, despite the brutal weather. The seven companions, including Cadderly, Danica, Dorigen, and Shayleigh, the elf maiden, had planned to go straight from the victory at Castle Trinity to the Edificant Library. Barely a day's hike into the mountains, though, winter had come in full force, blocking the trails so that not even Cadderly, with his priestly magic, dared to press on. Even worse, Cadderly had fallen ill, though he insisted that it was simple exhaustion. As a priest, Cadderly served as a conduit for the powers of his god, and during the battle with Castle Trinity (and the weeks of fighting before that) too much of that energy had flowed through the young priest.
Danica, who knew Cadderly better than anyone, did not doubt that he was exhausted, but she knew, too, that the young priest had taken an emotional beating as well. In Castle Trinity, Cadderly had seen his past and the truth of his heritage. He had been forced to face up to what his father, Aballister, had become.
In Castle Trinity Cadderly had killed his own father.
Danica held faith that Cadderly would overcome this trauma, confident in the depth of Cadderly's character. He was devoted to his god and to his friends, and they all were beside him.
With the trails closed and Cadderly ill, the company had gone east, out of the mountains and their foothills, to the farmlands north of Carradoon. Even the lowlands were deep with a snow that the Shining Plains had not seen in decades. The friends had found a many-chambered cave for shelter, and had turned the place into a fair home over the days, using Danica's, Vander's, and the dwarves' survival skills and Dorigen's magic. Cadderly had aided whenever he could, but his role was to rest and regain his strength. He knew, and Danica knew, that when they returned to the Edificant Library, the young priest might face his toughest challenge yet.
After several weeks, the snows had begun to recede. As brutal as the winter had been, it was ending early, and the companions could begin to think about their course. That brought mixed feelings for young Cad-derly, the priest who had risen so fast through the ranks of his order. He stood at the cave entrance, staring out over the fields of white, their brightness stinging his gray eyes in the morning sunlight. He felt guilty for his own weakness, for he believed that he should have returned to the library despite the snows, despite the trials he had faced, months ago, even if that meant leaving his friends behind. Cadderly's destiny waited at that library, but even now, feeling stronger once more, hearing the song of Deneir playing in the background of his thoughts again, he wasn't sure that he had the strength to meet it.
"I am ready for you," came a call from inside the cave, above Vander and the dwarves' continuing ruckus. Cadderly turned and walked past the group, and Pikel, knowing what was to come, gave a little "Hee hee hee." The green-bearded dwarf tipped the wide-brimmed hat to Cadderly, as if saluting a warrior going to battle.
Cadderly scowled at the dwarf and walked past, moving to a small stone, which crafty Ivan had fashioned into a stool. Danica stood behind the stool, waiting for Cadderly, her beautiful daggers, one golden-hiked and sculpted into the shape of a tiger, the other a silver dragon, in hand. For any who did not know Danica, those blades, or any weapons, would have looked out of place in her deceivingly delicate hands. She was barely five feet tall - if she went two days without eating, she wouldn't top a hundred pounds - with thick locks of strawberry blond hair cascading over her shoulders and unusual almond-shaped eyes a light but rich brown. On casual glance, Danica seemed more a candidate for a southern harem, a beautiful, delicate flower.
The young priest knew better, as did any who had spent time beside Danica. Those delicate hands could break stone; that beautiful face could smash a man's nose flat. Danica was a monk, a disciplined fighter, and her studies were no less intense than Cadderiy's, her worship of the wisdom of ancient masters no less than Cadderiy's of his god. She was as perfect a warrior as Cadderly had ever seen; she could use any weapon, and could defeat most swordsmen with her bare hands and feet
And she could put either of the enchanted daggers she now held into the eye of an enemy twenty paces away.
Cadderly took his seat, pointedly facing away from the boisterous gamblers, while Danica began to softly chant. Cadderly found a meditative focus; it was vital that he remain absolutely still. Suddenly, Danica broke into motion, her arms weaving intricate patterns in the air before her, her feet shifting from side to side, keeping perfect balance.
The impossibly sharp blades began to turn in her fingers.
The first one came around in a blinding flash, but Cadderly, deep in concentration, did not flinch. He barely felt the scrape as the knife's edge brushed his cheek, barely had time to smell the oiled metal as the silver dragon whipped in under his nostrils and shot down to his upper lip.
This was a ritual that the two performed every day, one that kept Cadderly clean-shaven and Danica's finely honed muscles at their peak.
It was over in a mere minute, Cadderiy's stubble swept away without a nick to his tanned skin.
"I should chop this tangle away, too," Danica teased, grabbing a handful of Cadderiy's thick, curly brown hair. Cadderly reached up and grabbed her wrist and pulled her around and down, over his shoulder so that their faces were close. The two were lovers, committed to each other for life, and the only reason they had not yet been married in open vows was that Cadderly did not consider the priests of the Edificant Library worthy of performing the ceremony.
Cadderly gave Danica a little kiss, and both jumped back as a blue spark flashed between them, stinging their lips. Immediately, both turned to the entrance to the chamber on the cave's left-hand wall, and were greeted by the joined laughter of Dorigen and Shayleigh.
"Such a bond," remarked Dorigen sarcastically. She had been the one to cause the spark - of course it .had been the wizard. Once an enemy of the band, indeed one of the leaders of the army that had invaded Shilmista, Dorigen, by all appearances, had turned to a new way of life and was going back with the others to face judgment at the library.
"Never have I seen such a spark of love," added Shay-leigh, shaking her head so that her long, thick mane of golden hair fell back from her face. Even in the dim light streaming in through the cave's eastern door, the elf's violet eyes sparkled like polished jewels.
"Should I add this to your list of crimes?" Cadderly asked Dorigen.
"If that was the greatest of my crimes, I would not bother to return to the library beside you, young priest," the wizard replied easily.
Danica looked from Cadderly to Dorigen, recognizing the bond that had grown between them. It wasn't hard for the monk to discern the source of that attraction. With her black hair, showing lines of gray, and her wide-set eyes, Dorigen resembled Pertelope, the headmistress at the library who had been like Cadderly's mother until her recent death. Pertelope alone seemed to understand the transformation that had come over Cadderly, the god-song that played in his thoughts and gave him access to clerical powers to rival the highest-ranking priests in all the land.
Danica could see some of the same perceptive characteristics in Dorigen. The wizard was a thinker, a person who weighed the situation carefully before acting, and a person not afraid to follow her heart. Dorigen had turned against Aballister in Castle Trinity, had all but gone over to Cadderly's side despite her knowledge that her crimes would not be forgotten. She had done it because her conscience had so dictated.
Danica had not grown to love, or even like, the woman over the weeks of forced hibernation, but she did respect the wizard, and did, to some extent trust Dorigen.
"Well, you have been hinting at this for many days," Dorigen said to Cadderly. "Is it time for us to be on the roadf?"
Cadderly instinctively looked back to the door and nodded. "The passes south to Carradoon should be clear enough to travel," he replied. "And many of the passes back into the mountains will be clear as well, the snow fallen from them." Cadderly paused, and the others, not understanding why the mountain passes should be of any concern, watched him carefully, looking for clues.
"Though I fear that the melt might bring some avalanches," the young priest finished.
"I do not fear avalanches," came the firbolg's voice booming from the door. "I have lived all my life in the mountains, and know well enough when a trail is safe."
"Ye're not going back to the library," piped in Ivan, eyeing his giant friend suspiciously.
"Go," added Pikel, apparently not too happy about it.