The Cleric Quintet: The Fallen Fortress

 

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.

Cadderly looked over Bel ago's shoulder to Danica and gave her a helpless shrug, which she returned with a wink of an exotic brown eye and a wide, pearly smile.

"We heard that some killers came after you, my boy," Belago explained, putting Cadderly back to arm's length and studying him as though he expected to find an assassin's dagger protruding from Cadderly's chest. "I feared (hat you would never return." The alchemist also gave Cadderly's upper arms a squeeze, apparently amazed at how solid and strong the young priest had become in the short time he had been gone from the library. Like a concerned aunt, Belago ran a hand up over Cadderly's floppy brown hair, pushing the always unkempt locks back from the young man's face.

"I am all right," Cadderly replied calmly. "This is the house of Deneir, and I am a disciple of Deneir. Why would I not return?"

His understatement had a calming effect on the excitable alchemist, as did the serene look in Cadderly's gray eyes. Belago started to blurt out a reply, but stopped in midstut-ter and nodded instead.

"Ah, and lady Danica," the alchemist went on. He reached out and gently stroked Danica's thick tangle of strawberry-blond hair, his smile sincere.

Belago's grin disappeared almost immediately, though, and he dropped his arms to his sides and his gaze to the floor.

"We heard about Headmaster Avery," he said softly, nodding his head up and down, his expression clouded with sad resignation.

The mention of the portly Avery Schell, Cadderly's surrogate father, stung the young priest profoundly. He wanted to explain to poor Belago that Avery"s spirit lived on with their god. But how could he begin? Belago would not understand; no one who had not passed into the spirit world and witnessed the divine and glorious sensation could understand. Against that ignorance, anything Cadderly might say would sound like a ridiculous cliche, typical comforting words usually spoken and heard without conviction.

"I received word that you wished to speak with me?" Cadderly said instead, raising his tone to make the statement a question and thus shift the conversation.

"Yes," Belago answered softly. His head finally stopped bouncing, and his eyes widened when he looked into the young priest's calming gray eyes. "Oh, yes!" he cried, as if he had just remembered that fact "I did - of course I did!"

Obviously embarrassed, the wiry man hopped back across the shop to a small cabinet. He fumbled with an oversized ring of keys, muttering to himself all the while.

"You have become a hero," Danica remarked, noting the man's movements.

Cadderly couldn't disagree with Danica's observation. Vicero Belago had never been overjoyed to see the young priest before. Cadderly had always been a demanding customer, taxing Belago's talents often beyond their limits. Because of a risky project that Cadderly had given the alchemist, Belago's shop had once been blown apart

That had been long ago, however, before the battle in Shilmista Forest, before Cadderly's exploits in Carradoon, the city to the east on the banks of Impresk Lake.

Before Cadderty had become a hero.

Hero.

What a ridiculous title, the young priest thought He had done no more than Danica or either of the dwarven brothers. Ivan and Pikel, in Carradoon. And he, unlike his sturdy friends, had run away from the battle in Shilmista Forest, fled because he could not endure the horrors.

He looked down at Danica again, her brown-eyed gaze comforting him as only it could. How beautiful she was, Cadderly noted, her frame as delicate as that of a newborn fawn and her hair tousled and bouncing freely about her shoulders. Beautiful and untamed, he decided, and with an inner strength clearly shining through those exotic, almond-shaped eyes.

Belago was back in front of him then, seeming nervous and holding both his hands behind his back. "You left this here when you came back from the elven wood," he explained, drawing out his left hand. He held a leather belt with a wide and shallow holster on one side that sported a hand-crossbow.

"I had no idea that I would need it in peaceful Carradoon,'' Cadderly replied easily, taking the belt and strapping it around his hips.

Danica eyed the young priest curiously. The crossbow had become a symbol of violence to Cadderly, and a symbol of Cadderly's abhorrence of violence to those who knew him best To see him strap it on so easily, with an almost cavalier attitude, twisted Danica's heart

Cadderly sensed both the woman's gaze and her confusion. He forced himself to accept it thinking that he would probably shatter many conceptions in the days ahead. For Cadderly had come to see the dangers facing the Edificant Library in ways that others could not

"I saw that you had nearly exhausted your supply of the darts," Belago stammered. "I mean... there's no charge for this batch." He pulled his other hand around, producing a bandolier filled with specially crafted bolts for the tiny crossbow. "I figured I owed it to you - we all owe it to you, Cadderly."

Cadderly nearly laughed aloud at the absurd proclamation, but he respectfully held his control and accepted the very expensive gift from the alchemist with a grave and approving nod. The darts were special indeed, hollowed out in the center and fitted with a vial that Belago filled with volatile Oil of Impact.

"My thanks for the gift," the young priest said. "Be assured that you have aided the cause of the library in our continuing struggle against the evil of Castle Trinity."

Belago seemed pleased by that remark. Head bobbing once more, he accepted Cadderly's handshake eagerly. He was still standing in the same place, smiling from ear to ear, as Cadderly and Danica walked out into the hall

Cadderly could still sense Danica's continuing unease and could see the disappointment etched in her features. The young priest's narrowing stare attacked that disappointment. "I have dismissed the guilt because it has no place in me," was all the explanation he would offer. "Not now, not with all that is left to be done. But I have not forgotten Barjin or that fateful day in the catacombs."

Danica looked away down the hall, but hooked Cadderly's arm with her own, showing her trust in him.

Another form, shapely and obviously feminine, entered the corridor as the pair moved toward Danica's room at the southern end of the complex. Danica tightened her grip on Cadderly's arm at the scent of an exotic and overpowering perfume.

"My greetings, handsome Cadderly," purred the shapely priestess in the crimson gown. "You cannot imagine how pleased I am that you have returned."

Danica's grip nearly cut off Cadderly's blood flow; he felt his fingers tingling. He knew that his face had blushed a

deep scarlet, as reddish as Priestess Histra's revealing gown. He realized, sensibly, that this was probably the most modest outfit he had ever seen the lusty priestess of Sune, the Goddess of Love, wearing, but that did not make it modest by anyone else's standards. The front was cut in a low V, so low that Cadderly felt he might glimpse Histra's navel if he got up on his toes, and though the gown was long, its front slit was incredibly high, displaying all of Histra's shapely leg when she brought one foot out in front of the other in her typically alluring stance.

Histra did not seem displeased by Cadderly's obvious discomfort or by Danica's growing scowl. She bent one leg at the knee, her thigh slipping completely free of the gown's meager folds.

Cadderly heard himself gulp, didn't realize that he was gawking at the brazen display until Danica's small fingernails dug deep lines into his upper arm.

"Do come and visit, dear young Cadderly," Histra purred. She looked disdainfully at the woman on Cadderly's arm. "When you are not so tightly leashed, of course." Histra slowly, teasingly moved into her room, the door's gentle click as she closed it lost beneath the sound of Cadderly's repeated swallowing.

"I - * he stammered, at last looking Dariica in the eye.

Danica laughed and led him on down the hall. "Fear not," she said, her tone more than a little condescending. "I understand your relationship with the priestess of Sune. She is quite pitiful, actually."

Cadderly looked down at Danica, perplexed. If Danica was speaking the truth, then why had little lines of blood begun their descent on his muscled arm?

"I am not jealous of Histra, certainly," Danica went on. "I trust you, with all my heart." Just outside her room, she stopped and faced Cadderly squarely, one hand brushing the outline of his face, the other tight about his waist

"I trust you," Danica said again.

"Besides," added the fiery young monk in very different, stronger tones as she turned into her room, "if anything romantic ever happened between you and that single-minded, over-painted lump of too-too quivering flesh, I would put her nose somewhere in back of one of her ears."

Danica abruptly disappeared into her room to retrieve the book of notes she and Cadderly had prepared for their meeting with Dean Thobicus. The young priest remained in the hall, considering the threat and privately laughing at how true it could be. Danica was fully a foot shorter than he, and easily a hundred pounds lighter. She walked with the grace of a dancer - and fought with the tenacity of a bee-stung bear.

The young priest was far from worried, though. Histra had spent all of her life in the practice of being alluring, and she made no secret of her designs on Cadderly. But she hadn't a chance; not a woman in the world had a chance of breaking Cadderly's bond with his Danica.

*****

A blackened, charred hand tore up through the newly turned earth, reaching desperately for the open air above. A second arm, similarly charred and broken at a gruesome angle halfway between the wrist and the elbow, followed, grasping at the mud, tearing at the natural prison that held the wretched body.

Finally the creature found enough of a hold to pull his hairless head from the shallow grave, to look again upon the world of the living.

The blackened head swiveled on a neck that was no more than skin shriveled tight to the bone, surveying the scene. For a fleeting instant, the wretch wondered what had happened. How had he been buried?

A short distance away, down a little hill, the creature saw the glow of the evening lamps of a small farmhouse. Beside it stood another structure, a barn.

A barn!