Aballister walked along Lakeview Street in Car-radoon, the wizard's black cloak wrapped tight against his skin-and-bones body to ward off the wintry blows whipping in from Impresk Lake. He had been in Carradoon less than a day, but had already learned of the wild events at the Dragon's Codpiece. Cadderly, his estranged son and neme-sis, had apparently escaped the assassin band Aballister had sent to kill him.
Aballister chuckled at the thought a wheezing sound from lips withered by decades of uttering frantic enchantments, channeling so many tingling energies into destructive purposes. Cadderly had escaped? Aballister mused, as though the thought was preposterous. Cadderly had done more than escape. With his friends, the young priest had obliterated the Night Mask contingent, more than twenty professional killers, and had also slain Bogo Rath, Aballister's second underling in the strict hierarchy of Castle Trinity.
All the common folk of Carradoon were talking about the exploits of the young priest from the Edificant Library. They were beginning to whisper that Cadderly might be their hope in these dark times.
Cadderly had become more than a minor problem for Aballister.
The wizard took no fatherly pride in his son's exploits. Aballister had designs on the region, intentions to conquer it given to him by the avatar of the evil goddess Talona. Just the previous spring, those intentions appeared easy to fulfill, with Castle Trinity's force swelling to over eight thousand warriors, wizards and Talonan priests included. But then Cadderly had unexpectedly stopped Barjin, the mighty priest who had gone after the heart of the region's goodly strength, the Edificant Library. The following season, Cadderly had led the elves of Shilmista Forest in the west to a stunning victory over the goblinoid and giantkin forces, chasing a sizable number of Castle Trinity's minions back to their mountain holes.
Even the Night Masks, possibly the most dreaded assassin band in the central Realms, had not been able to stop Cadderly. Now winter was fast approaching, the first snows had already descended over the region, and Castle Trinity's invasion of Carradoon would have to wait
The afternoon light had grown dim when Aballister turned south on the Boulevard of the Bridge, passing through the low wooden buildings of the lakeside town. He crossed through the open gates of the city's cemetery and cast a simple spell to locate the unremarkable grave of Bogo Rath. He waited for the night to fully engulf the land, drew a few runes of protection in the snow and mud around the grave, and pulled his cloak up tighter against the deathly cold.
When the lights of the city went down and the streets grew quiet, the wizard began his incantation, his summons to the netherworld. It went on for several minutes, with Aballister attuning his mind to the shadowy region between
the planes, attempting to meet the summoned spirit halfway. He ended the spell with a simple call: "Bogo Rath."
The wind seemed to focus around the withered wizard, collecting the nighttime mists in a swirling pattern, enshrouding the ground above the grave.
The mists parted suddenly, and the apparition stood before Aballister. Though less than corporeal, it appeared quite like Aballister remembered the young Bogo - straight and stringy hair flipped to one side, eyes darting inquisitively, suspiciously, one way and the other. There was one difference, though, something that made even hardy Aballister wince. A garish wound split the middle of Bogo's chest Even in the near darkness, Aballister could see past the apparition's ribs and lungs to its spectral backbone.
"An axe," Bogo's mournful, drifting voice explained. He placed a less-than-tangible hand into the wound and flashed a gruesome smile. "Would you like to feel?"
Aballister had dealt with conjured spirits a hundred times and knew that he could not feel the wound even if he wanted to, knew that this was simply an apparition, the last physical image of Bogo's torn body. The spirit could not harm the wizard, could not even touch the wizard, and by the binding power of Aballister's magical summons, it would answer truthfully a certain number of Aballister's questions. Still, Aballister unconsciously winced again and took a cautious step backward, revolted by the thought of putting his hand in that wound.
"Cadderly and his friends killed you," Aballister began.
"Yes," Bogo answered, though Aballister's words had been a statement, not a question. The wizard silently berated himself for being so foolish. He would only be allowed a certain number of inquiries before the dweomer dissipated and the spirit was released. He reminded himself that he must take care to word his statements so that they could not be interpreted as questions.
"I know that Cadderly and his friends killed you, and I know that they eliminated the assassin band," he declared.
The apparition seemed to smile, and Aballister was not certain whether the clever thing was baiting him to waste another question or not The wizard wanted to go on with the intended leading conversation, but he couldn't resist that bait
"Are all..." he began slowly, trying to find the quickest way to discern the fate of the entire assassin band. Aballister wisely paused, deciding to be as specific as possible and end this part of the discussion efficiently. "Which of the assassins still live?"
"Only one," Bogo answered obediently. "A traitorous fir-bolg named Vander."
Again, the inescapable bait "Traitorous?" Aballister repeated. "Has this Vander joined with our enemies?"
"Yes - and yes."
Damn, Aballister mused. Complications. Always there seemed to be complications where his troublesome son was concerned.
"Have they gone for the library?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Will they come for Castle Trinity?"
The spirit, beginning to fade away, did not answer, and Aballister realized that he had erred, for he had asked the apparition a question which required supposition, a question which could not, at that time, be positively answered.
"You are not dismissed!" the wizard cried, trying desperately to hold onto the less than corporeal thing. He reached out with hands that slipped right through Bogo's fading image, reached out with thoughts that found nothing to grasp.
Aballister stood alone in the graveyard. He understood that Bogo's spirit would come back to him when it found the definite answer to the question. But when would that be? Aballister wondered. And what further mischief would Cadderly and his friends cause before Aballister found the information he needed to put an end to that troublesome group?
"Hey, you there!" came a call from the boulevard, followed by the sounds of boots clapping against the cobblestone. "Who's in the cemetery after nightfall? Hold where you are!"
Aballister hardly took notice of the two city guardsmen who rushed through the cemetery gate, spotting him and making all haste toward him. The wizard was thinking of Bogo, of dead Barjin, once Castle Trinity's most powerful cleric, and of dead Ragnor, Castle Trinity's principle fighter. More than that, the wizard was thinking of Cadderly, the perpetrator of ail his troubles.
The guardsmen were nearly upon Aballister when he began his chant He threw his arms out high to the sides as they closed in and started to reach for him. A cry of the final, triggering rune sent the two men flying wide, hurled through the air by the released power of the spell, as Aballister, in the blink of an eye, sent his material body cascading back to his private room in Castle Trinity.
The dazed city soldiers pulled themselves from the wet ground, looked to each other in disbelief, and fled back through the cemetery gates, convinced that they would be better off if they pretended that nothing at all had happened in the eerie graveyard.
Cadderly sat upon the flat roof of a jutting two-story section of the Edificant Library, watching the sun spread its shining fingers across the plains east of the mountains. Other fingers stretched down from the tall peaks all about Cadderly*s position to join those snaking up from the grass. Mountain streams came alive, glittering silver, and the autumn foliage, brown and yellow, red and brilliant orange, seemed to burst into flame.
Percival, the white squirrel, hopped along the roofs gutter when he caught sight of the young priest, and Cadderly nearly laughed aloud when he regarded the squirrel's
eagerness to join him - a desire emanating from PercivaTs always grumbling belly, Cadderly knew. He dropped his hand into a pouch on his belt and pulled out some cacasa nuts, scattering them at Percival's feet
It all seemed so normal to the young priest, the same as it had always been. Percival skipped happily among his favorite nuts, and the sun continued to climb, defeating the chill of late autumn even this high up in the Snowflakes.
Cadderly saw through the facade, though. Things most certainly were not normal, not for the young priest and not for the Edificant Ubrary. Cadderly had been on the road, in the elven wood of Shilmista and in the town of Carradoon, fighting battles, learning firsthand the realities of a harsh world, and learning, too, that the priests of the library, men and women he had looked up to for his entire life, were not as wise or powerful as he had once believed.
The single notion that dominated young Cadderly's thoughts as he sat up there on the sunny roof was that something had gone terribly wrong within his order of Deneir, and within the order of Oghman priests, the brother hosts of the library. It seemed to Cadderly that procedure had become more important than necessity, that the priests of the library had been paralyzed by mounds of useless parchments when decisive action was needed.
And those rotting roots had sunk even deeper, Cadderly knew. He thought of Nameless, the pitiful leper he had met on the road from Carradoon. Nameless had come to the library for help and had found that the priests of Deneir and Oghma were, for the most part, more concerned with their own failure to heal him than with the consequences of his grave affliction.
Yes, Cadderly decided, something was very wrong at his precious library. He lay back on the gray, slightly pitched roof and casually flipped another nut at the munching squirrel.
No Time for Guilt
The spirit heard the call from a distance, floating across the empty grayness of this reeking and forlorn plane. The mournful notes said not a discernable word, and yet, to the spirit, they seemed to speak his name.
Ghost. Clearly it called to him, beckoned him from the muck and mire of his eternal hell Ghost, its melody called again. The wretch looked at the growling, huddled shadows all about him, wicked souls, the remains of wicked people. He, too, was a growling shadow, a tormented thing, suffering punishments for a life villainously lived.
But now he was being called, being carried from his torment on the notes of a familiar melody. Familiar?
The thin thread that remained of ghost's living consciousness strained to better recall, to better remember its life before this foul, empty existence. Ghost thought of sunlight, of shadows, of killing....
The Ghearuju! Evil Ghost understood. The Ghearuju, the magical item he had carried in life for so many decades, was calling to him, was leading him back from the very hellfires!
"Cadderly! Cadderly!" wailed Vicero Belago, the Edifi-cant Library's resident alchemist, when he saw the young priest and Danica at his door on the huge library's third floor. "My boy, it's so good that you have returned to us!" The wiry man virtually hopped across his shop, weaving in and out of tables covered with beakers and vials, dripping coils and stacks of thick books. He hit his target as Cadderly stepped into the room, throwing his arms about the sturdy young priest and slapping him hard on the back.