The Cleric Quintet: The Chaos Curse

 

Rufo starting to hiss a response, but Cadderly froze the words in the vampire's throat, lifting again the symbol, the opened eye above a lighted candle. The sunlight brought new sparkles to the emblem, heightened its glory and strength.



In the face of that revealing glare, Rufo's dark shell melted away, and suddenly the vampire seemed not so powerful, rather a pitiful thing, a fallen man, a man who had chosen the wrong course and had spiraled down to the depths of despair.



Rufo hissed and clawed at the air. He reached for the holy symbol, meaning to engulf it as he had done inside, but this time the flesh on his skinny hand erupted into flames and curled away, leaving only whitened bone. Rufo howled in agony. He turned for the library, but Cadderly paced him, keeping that flaring symbol right in his face. And Cadderly began to sing the melodies of his god, a tune Kierkan Rufo could not withstand. Inside the library Rufo had gained the advantage, but out here, in the daylight, Deneir's song played strong in Cadderly, and the young priest opened himself up as a pure conduit for the truth of his god.



Rufo could not withstand the light of that truth.



"Oo," Pikel and Ivan muttered together, as Rufo fell back to the earth. Cadderly pressed low, singing with all his heart. Rufo rolled over and clawed at the ground to get away, like a desperate animal, but Cadderly was there in front of him, corralling him, forcing him to see the truth.



Horrible, wailing sounds escaped the vampire's throat. Somehow, Rufo managed to struggle back to his feet, to stare at the shining holy symbol in one last desperate act of defiance.



His eyes whitened, then fell back into his skull, and through the black openings wafted the red mist of the chaos curse. Rufo opened his mouth to scream, and from there, too, came the red mist, forced from his body into the open air, where it would diminish and cause no more pain.



When Rufo collapsed to the ground, he was no more than a hollow, smoking husk, an empty coil, and a lost soul.



Cadderly, too, nearly collapsed, from the effort and from the weight of the grim reality that now descended on him. He looked over his shoulder at the squat library. He considered all the losses he had witnessed, the losses to the order, the loss of his friends, of Dorigen. The loss of Danica.



Ivan and Pikel were beside him immediately, knowing he would need their support



"She did right in choosing death," Ivan remarked^, understanding that the tears rimming Cadderly's gray eyes were for Danica most of all. "Better that than fallin' in with this one," the square-shouldered dwarf added, motioning to the empty husk.



"... in choosing death," Cadderly echoed, those words striking a strange chord within him. She had killed herself, Rufo had said. Danica had willingly chosen death.



But why hadn't Rufo animated her? Cadderly wondered. As the vampire had animated so many of the others? And why, when he had gone into the netherworld, had Cadderly not been able to find Danica's spirit, or any trace of its passing?



"Oh, my dear Deneir," the young priest whispered, and, without a word of explanation, Cadderly ran off toward the northwestern corner of the library.



The dwarves looked to each other and shrugged, then chased off after him.



Cadderly scrambled wildly, crashed through roots and bushes, clawing his way around to the back of the building. The dwarves, better at trailblazing than the taller man, nearly caught up to him, but when Cadderly got into the open field between the library and the mausoleum, he left the brothers in his dust.



He hit the mausoleum door at full speed, never considering that Shayleigh and Belago might have found a way to lock or brace it. In it swung, and in spilled Cadderly, skidding hard to the floor, scraping his elbows.



He hardly cared about the minor wounds, for when he looked to the left, to the stone slab where the two had placed Danica, he saw the "corpse" under the shroud rising to a sitting position. He saw also that Shayleigh, with a terrified Belago beside her, was perched on the bottom of the slab, her short sword poised to plunge into Danica's heart.



"No!" Cadderly cried. "No!"



Shayleigh glanced at him, and she wondered in thai instant if Cadderly, too, had been taken by the darkness, if he had come to save his lover in undeath.



"She's alive!" the young priest cried, clawing to propel himself toward the slab. Ivan and Pikel rambled in then, wide-eyed and still not understanding.



"She's alive!" Cadderly repeated, and Shayleigh relaxed a bit as he arrived at the slab and pulled the shroud from fair Danica and wrapped his love in the tightest embrace they had ever shared.



Danica, back with the living again, returned it tenfold, and the day was brighter indeed!



"What of Rufo?" the elf asked the dwarves.



"Hee hee hee," Pikel replied, and both he and Ivan ran their fingers across their throats.



The four left Cadderly and Danica then, waited outside in the light that seemed brighter and warmer and more alive than any spring previous. Cadderly and Danica came out a few minutes later, the young priest supporting the injured woman. Already Cadderly had called for spells of healing to help the monk, particularly her ruined ankle, but the wound was sore and infected, and even with Cadderly's aid, it would take some time before it could support Danica's weight.



"I don't get it," Ivan stated, for all of them.



"Physical suspension," Cadderly answered for Danica. "A state of death that is not death. It is the highest mark in the teachings of Grandmaster Penpahg D'Ahn."



"You can kill yerself and come back?" Ivan balked.



Danica shook her head, smiling like she thought she would never smile again. "In suspension, one does not die," she explained. "I slowed my heart and my breathing, slowed the flow of blood through my veins, to where all who regarded my body thought I was dead."



"Thus you escaped the hunger of Kierkan Rufo," Shayleigh reasoned.



"And escaped my attention as well," Cadderly added. "That is why I could not find her when I entered the spirit realm." He looked at Danica and gave a wistful smile. "I was looking in the wrong place."



"I nearly killed you," Shayleigh said, stunned by the proclamation, her hand going to the hilt of her belted sword.



"Bah!" Ivan snorted. "It wouldn't be the first time!"



They all laughed then, these friends who had survived, forgetting for a moment the loss of the library, the loss of Dorigen, and the loss of their own innocence. And loudest among them was Pikel's "Hee hee hee."



Cadderly led them back into the library the next day, seeking any lesser vampires left in dark holes, and putting to rest any zombies they encountered. When,they came outside late that afternoon, the friends were certain the first two floors were clean of enemies. The next morning, Cadderly started his friends to work removing the most precious artifacts of the library, the irreplaceable artwork and ancient manuscripts. Danica was thrilled to find that all of Penpahg D'Ahn's notes had survived.



Even more thrilled was the monk, and all the others, when they found a single sanctuary within the darkness, a single spot of light that had somehow held out against the encroachment of Kierkan Rufo. Brother Chaunti-cleer had used his melodies as a ward against the evil, and his room had not been desecrated. Half-starved, his hair whitened from the terror he had endured, he fell into Cadderly's arms with sobs of joy and knelt upon the ground in prayer for more than an hour when the friends escorted him out.



Later that same day, a host of four score soldiers arrived from Carradoon, having received word of the attack on the merchant caravan. Cadderly quickly put this group to work (except for a band of emissaries he sent back to the town with news of what had occurred and warnings to beware any strange happenings), and soon the library was emptied of its valuables.



Their encampment was on the lawn to the east of the library, at the back end of the field, closer to the wild trails than the gaping doors. This was too close. Cad derly informed them, so they broke down their tents, gathered up supplies, and moved down onto the trails.



"What is this all about?" Danica asked the young-priest as the soldiers set up the new camp, A week had passed since the fail of Kierkan Rufo. a week in which the young priest had gathered his strength, had listened to the words of Deneir.



"The building is spoiled/' Cadderly replied. "Never again will Deneir or Oghma enter it."



"You mean to abandon it?" Danica asked.



"I mean to destroy it," Cadderly replied grimly.



Danica started to ask what Cadderly was talking about, but he walked past her, back toward the field, before she could figure out where to begin. The monk paused a while before following. She remembered the scene outside Castle Trinity, Aballister's bastion of wickedness, after the wizard's fall. Cadderty had meant to destroy that dark fortress as well, but had changed his mind, or had learned that he had not the strength for such a task. What, then, was he thinking now?



Gathering black clouds atop the cliff to the north bf the Edificant Library alerted all in the camp that something dramatic was going on. The soldiers wanted to secure their tents, pack their supplies tightly, fearing the storm, but Ivan, Pikel, Shayleigh, and Belago understood that this fury was well guided, and Brother Chaun-ticleer understood it perhaps best of all.



The group found Danica standing several feet behind Cadderly on the lawn before the squat stone structure. Silently, not wanting to disturb these obviously important happenings, they gathered about her. None but Chaunticleer dared approach the young priest. He regarded Cadderly and offered a knowing, confident smile to the others. And, though he was not a part of what was happening with Cadderly, he began to sing.



Cadderly stood tall, arms upraised to the heavens. He, too, was singing, at the top of his lungs, but his voice could hardly be heard above the roar of the wind and thunder from the black clouds, now swarming over the top of the cliff, edging their way toward the desecrated building.



A searing blast of lightning hit the library's roof. A second followed, then the wind tore in, launching shingles, then joists, to the south, across the mountainside.



More lightning started several small fires. The clouds came low, seemed to hover and gather strength, then a tremendous gust of wind lifted the edge of the roof and ripped it away.



Cadderly cried out with all his strength. He was a direct conduit for the power of Deneir. Through the young priest the god sent his fury, more lightning, more wind. Hie roof was gone.



A solitary figure - it seemed as if one of the gargoyles lining the gutters had come to life - perched on the edge of that roof, shouting curses at Cadderly, invoking its own gods, denizens of the evil lower planes.



But here Cadderly was the stronger, Deneir the strongest by far.



A searing bolt of lightning hit the roof right beside Druzil, igniting a tremendous fire and throwing the imp far away.



"Bene tellemara," Druzil rasped, clawing his way toward the flames, realizing then that his time on this plane was at its end. He would leave now or be destroyed. He made it to the flames, blasts striking all about him, and uttered an incantation. Then he threw a bag of powder, which he had concocted in the library's deserted alchemy shop, into the fire.



The flames lifted and danced, blue then white-hot, and Druzil, after shouting one more curse Cadderly's way, stepped in and was gone.



The storm's fury intensified, bolt after bolt slamming the stone walls, diminishing their integrity. A darkness, funnel-shaped, reached down from the clouds. The finger of a god, it seemed, reaching down for the desecrated building.



Cadderly cried out, as if in pain, but Danica and the others resisted the urge to run to him, feared the consequences of disturbing what he had begun.



The storm crashed down in full, and the earth itself rolled to life, great waves of ground heaving at the library's foundation. The northern wall buckled first, fell inward, and, with it gone, both the front and back collapsed. Still the lightning blasted away; still the tornado grabbed at pieces of rubble and lifted them into the air, heaving them, like so much waste, far across the mountainside.



It went on unabated for many minutes, and the soldiers feared the very mountains would fall. Cadderly's friends knew better, though. They saw in their comrade a resolve and a glory beyond anything they had ever witnessed; they knew Cadderly was with Deneir fully, and that Cadderly's god would not harm him or them.



Then it was over, suddenly. The clouds broke apart so that shafts of sunlight shone down. One fell over Cadderly, outlining his form in silvery hues so that he seemed much more than a man, much more than a priest.



Danica approached him cautiously, Shayleigh and the dwarves right behind her. "Cadderry?" she whispered.



If he heard her, he did not show it.



"Cadderly?" she asked more loudly. She gave him a shake. Still there was no response. Danica thought she understood. She could appreciate the emotions that must be running through her lover, for he had just destroyed the only home he had ever known.



"Go," Pikel and Ivan, and even Shayleigh, muttered in unison.



But their sympathy was misplaced, for Cadderly felt no remorse. He remained with his god and was seeing now a new vision, the vision that had haunted his dreams for many years. Without a word of explanation, he moved toward the scarred, rubble-strewn area, his friends in tow. Danica continued to call to him, to shake him, but he could not hear.



The vision was all-encompassing. The young priest remembered the extradimensionai mansion that Aballis-ter had created in Castle Trinity, remembered how he had marveled at how similar were the properties of magically created material.



A specific spot on the ground, a place flat and smooth and devoid of rubble, beckoned to him. That single spot on the ground became the only clear thing Cadderly could see outside of his mind's eye. He went to it, feeling the power of Deneir keenly, knowing what he must do. He began to sing again, and the notes were much different than those he had used to bring down the Edificant Library, These were sweet and cumulative, a building song with a crescendo that seemed very far away. He sang for minutes that became a half hour, then an hour. The soldiers thought him insane, and Brother Chaunti-cleer merely shook his head, having no insight as to what his fellow Deneirian might be doing. Danica didn't know how to react, didn't know whether to try to stop Cadderly or just to stand back. In the end, she decided to trust her love, and she waited as the hour became two.



Long shadows filtered from the west, and Cadderly continued. Even Ivan and Pikel began to wonder if the storm and the earthquake had broken the man, had reduced him to a babbling idiot.



Danica held her faith, though. She would wait for Cadderly to finish - whatever he was doing - through all the next day if need be, even beyond that. She, all of them, owed the young priest at least that.



As it turned out, Danica did not have to wait through the night. With the western horizon pink with the last moments of the setting sun, Cadderly's voice lifted suddenly.



Brother Chaunticleer and many of the others ran near him, thinking that something grand was in store.



They were not disappointed. There came a sharp hissing sound, a crackle as if the sky itself were being torn asunder.



Then it appeared, on the ground before Cadderly, rising like a tree growing out of control. It was a tower, a decorated pillar of stone, an aerial buttress. It continued to grow, its tip rising into the air before Cadderly and the astonished onlookers.



Cadderly stopped his singing and fell back, exhausted, to be caught by his friends. The crowd murmured dozens of questions, most prominent among them, "What have you done?"



Danica asked that very question of Cadderly when she looked closely at his face, at the flecks of silver suddenly showing in his tousled brown hair, at the crow's-feet, the wrinkles that had not been there before, running out about his eyes.



She looked back to the buttress, a tiny portion of the cathedral of which Cadderly had oft spoken, and then back to her love, who had obviously aged with the effort. Danica grew worried, and still more with the serene look that had come over the tired and suddenly not-so-young priest



Shayleigh had gone to Shilmista, and had come back in high summer to view the progress on Cadderly's new cathedral. She had expected a virtual army would be hard at work on the place, and was amazed at how few people were actually about, just Cadderly and Danica, Vicero Belago and Brother Chaunticleer, the BouldershouSders, and a handful of sturdy men from Carradoon.



Progress had been made, though, and Shayleigh realized she should have expected no less. This was a construction- of magic, not of physical toil, and it seemed as if Cadderly needed little help. Many areas were clear now of rubble, a tribute to the dwarves and the men from Carradoon, and three of the aerial buttresses were set in a line along the northern edge of what would be the new library. Twenty feet from them, to the south, Cadderly had begun construction on the wall, a delicate-looking structure.



Shayleigh gasped when she saw what the priest was now working on, a huge, arching window of multicolored glass and black iron that would fit into the wall in clear sight of the spaced buttresses. Cadderly paid attention to every detail as he worked over the rough design, flaring the dps of iron symmetrically, forming patterns with varying colors of the pieces of glass.



The elf was a creature of the forests, of the myriad beauties that nature offered and that men could not replicate, but vShayleigh found her heart lifted now, felt her spirit soaring as her imagination pictured this finished cathedral. There were too many fine details, too many intricate designs, for her to even appreciate them. It was like a wide-spreading elm, she thought, and CaoMeriy was painstakingly placing every individual leaf and twig.



Shayleigh found Danica along the eastern edge of the library's grounds, intently looking over a pile of parchments. Brother Chaunticleer was close by, singing to his god, calling up spells of preservation and protection as he watched over the piles of artwork and priceless manuscripts that had been brought out of the old library. Belago was close by him, inspecting the piles and singing, too. Apparently the wiry alchemist had at last found his way to a specific religion. And who could blame him? Shayleigh thought, and she smiled as she considered the man. Given the wondrous sights Belago had witnessed, most marvelous among them the construction continuing every day right in front of him, how could he not find his way to Deneir?



Danica's face brightened when she saw that her friend had returned. They exchanged warm greetings and hugs, and perceptive Shayleigh knew at once that Danica's smile hid much that was not so bright.



"He does that ail day," the monk offered, pointedly looking to Brother Chaunticleer, though Shayleigh understood she was referring to Cadderly.



Shayleigh, trying to subtly change the subject, looked to the parchments on the ground before Danica.



"Lists," she explained. "Lists of men and women who will accompany me to Nightglow and the dragon's treasure. I have already sent emissaries to Shilmisla."



"I passed them on the trails," Shayleigh remarked. "They probably have met with King Elbereth already, though I suspect they will tell my king nothing he does not already know."



"They will invite Shilmista to join the expedition," Danica said.



"That was expected," Shayleigh replied with a calm smile. "We understand and appreciate the friendship you and Cadderly have begun."



Danica nodded and, despite her resolve, could not help but look at her lover at the mention of his name. Cadderly was still full of energy - brimming with energy  - as he worked on his vision, but he no longer appeared as a man in his early twenties. Despite the toil, his body had thickened somewhat; his muscles were broader and still strong, but not quite as sharp and hardened as they had once been.



"The construction takes a toll," Shayleigh remarked.



"The creation," Danica corrected. She sighed deeply, commanding the elf's full attention. "It was a choice," Dantca began, "a choice between Deneir, this course, this purpose that Cadderly has found in his life, and ..."



"And Danica," Shayleigh interjected softly, placing a sympathetic hand on the sitting monk's shoulder.



"And Danica," the monk admitted. "A choice between Deneir's calling and the life that Cadderly, as a man, truly desired."



Shayleigh looked hard at the monk and knew that Danica truly believed her words. The generous young woman understood that Cadderly had chosen a higher love, a love that no mortal could ever match. There was no jealousy in Danica's tone, but there was indeed a sadness, a profound pain.



The two sat in silence, watching Cadderly and the dwarves. Ivan and Pikel had marked off another area, and were apparently discussing the next logical step to support the structure's already-standing towers.



"He will complete the cathedral," Danica said.



"A new Edificant Library."



"No," the monk replied, shaking her head and lifting her almond-shaped eyes to regard Shayleigh. "Cadderly never liked that name, never thought it fitting for a house of the god of literature and art and the god of knowledge. The Spirit Soaring1 will be the name he gives this cathedral."



"How long?" Shayleigh asked.