Don Bassingthwaite: The Eye of the Chained God

Still, it was better than doing nothing.

“Roghar!”

He turned at the call and saw Uldane skipping across the uneven top of the wall. The halfling moved with sure-footed agility, bounding lightly from stone to stone in spite of the waterskins that hung off him like swollen fruit. Without pausing, he shrugged off one of the skins and tossed it to Roghar. It hit the dragonborn’s palm with a wet smack and shimmied under his thick fingers. Roghar could feel the delicious cool and was, for a moment, sorely tempted to guzzle it down. He contented himself with pulling the stopper and taking a quick gulp before passing it on to the nearest worker. Uldane passed him a second, then a third, then a fourth skin. Roghar redistributed them all. Uldane shook his head.

“You’re just a paragon of virtue, aren’t you?” He held up the last waterskin. “This is mine. You can’t give it away. I’m only sharing it with you.”

Roghar smiled at that. “Bahamut doesn’t require his faithful to deny themselves.”

“Well, you look like you’re trying to.” Uldane passed the skin to him.

“I reward those who have earned it.” He aimed a stream from the neck of the skin into his waiting mouth-and nearly choked in surprise on wine instead of water. He spluttered and licked his blunt snout.

Uldane gave him a wide grin. “So do I. Don’t you dare give that skin back until you’ve drunk your fill, Roghar.”

The paladin took another drink, then paused. “Where did this come from?”

Uldane actually looked offended. “Do you really think I’d take something from someone in Fallcrest right now? That would be like stealing from a beggar’s bowl!”

“Where?”

“Buried in the stores of the Glowing Tower, so it practically belongs to us. Or to Albanon anyway.” He slouched back, his arms crossed. “And he’s not going to notice any more than he’s noticing anything right now.”

Roghar regarded Uldane thoughtfully as he directed another jet of wine down his throat. Then he wiped his snout and handed the skin to Uldane. “You’ve noticed it too?”

“It’s hard to miss, isn’t it? We were going to go after Vestapalk. We were going to cut the head off the snake and end the plague. Instead…” Uldane shrugged. “We’re building walls. I mean, not that it isn’t a fine wall, but why are we trapping ourselves behind it?”

A proverb of Bahamut’s priesthood rose to Roghar’s tongue: The shield is enough for many. Not everyone was capable of carrying the fight to the enemy. Building the wall was as useful as striking beyond it.

The proverb didn’t escape his mouth. Instead he said, “I know what you mean.” He took back the wineskin before Uldane had a chance to drink, swallowed, and looked down over the empty, smoking streets of the lower town spread out below. Down there on the Market Green, he, Uldane, the warlock Tempest, and the wizard Albanon had destroyed the ancient bodystealer Nu Alin, the very first of the plague demons created by the foul substance known as the Voidharrow.

The creature’s death had been the end of the attack-the end of the battle for Fallcrest as the remaining demons scattered without his command to drive them on. The four of them had returned to the upper town in triumph, filled with plans to strike out after Vestapalk. They even had a clue where to find Vestapalk, thanks to lingering collective memories held by Belen, a human defender of Fallcrest who had been possessed by Nu Alin before his destruction. Vestapalk, their ultimate enemy, had taken a lair in a volcano west of Fallcrest, beyond the Ogrefist Hills that formed one edge of the Nentir Vale, using his command of the Voidharrow to transform it into something he called the Plaguedeep. Belen had experienced the knowledge through her communion with Nu Alin and the rest of the plague demons while possessed. They could go after him and end the threat once and for all.

Except that only hours after their celebration, Albanon had pleaded for more time to study their enemy. Before the attack, he and his treacherous mentor, the old priest Kri, had only just returned to Fallcrest after venturing into the Feywild to a tower that had belonged to the founder of an order dedicated to countering the Voidharrow. Albanon had brought back books and scrolls. If he could take a day to study them, he said, maybe they could find some advantage over Vestapalk and his demonic forces.

One day had turned into two and then six. Enough time for Roghar to muster workers and build a gatehouse while they waited on the eladrin wizard. Enough time that they could have reached Vestapalk’s doorstep by already.

The longer they waited, the more obvious it became that Albanon didn’t want to go.

“When do you think he’ll be ready?” Roghar asked Uldane.

The halfling joined him at the edge of the wall. “He’s not studying.”

Roghar looked down at him sharply. “You mean right now or never?”

“Right now. He’s over that way,” Uldane gestured vaguely into the upper town, “helping Tempest distribute more useful stuff than wine to people who need it… I don’t know about never. Never is a long time.”

“Uldane,” Roghar growled.

“Not in the last couple of days, at least. I know he asked us to stay out of the study at the top of the tower, but I peeked in a couple of times. He wasn’t there but I don’t think anything has been touched since the evening before yesterday.” He looked up at the dragonborn. “Whatever he’s doing, he’s not looking for answers in those books and scrolls.”

Roghar clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth together. “We need to talk to him.”

“Do you think…” Uldane hesitated for a moment before pushing the words out. “Do you think it’s because of Shara?”

The paladin considered his answer before he spoke. Although she had stood shoulder to shoulder with him and the others in the past, the warrior Shara had not taken part in the final fight against Nu Alin. Instead, she had slipped away, turning from the defense of Fallcrest in pursuit of her own vengeance against Vestapalk. The murder of her friends and family-among them her father, Borojon, and her love, Jarren-by the dragon haunted her. She’d left at the side of her new lover, Quarhaun-a drow, as hard and cruel as the hatred Shara held for Vestapalk.

Roghar couldn’t find it in himself to support her decision. Nor did he think Albanon was particularly wracked by grief, certainly not to the point of delaying their departure from Fallcrest. The guilt that crept into Uldane’s eyes whenever Shara’s name was mentioned, however, was painful. He was one of her oldest friends and he’d been with her when Vestapalk had slaughtered their companions. He’d also been the last to speak with her. To argue with her, in fact. His harsh words, accusations that Shara dishonored the memory of Jarren by loving Quarhaun, had been the wedge that split their friendship.

“I think,” Roghar said carefully, “that none of us should let the choices Shara made hold us back. We have a greater duty now. Shara went looking for Vestapalk, too. If we’re looking for him, maybe we’ll find her along the way.”

“Just her?”

Uldane didn’t mention Quarhaun by name, but Roghar knew exactly what the halfling meant. Roghar had no love for the drow, either. He wrinkled his muzzle and looked back out over Fallcrest’s lower town. “There is no peach without a-”

Figures moved among the ruins, running hard along a rubble-strewn road. Roghar squinted, trying to make them out. “Uldane,” he said, “look there. Just where the Blue Moon Alehouse used to be.”

Uldane eyes were sharper than his. “I see them. And I see what’s chasing them!” He flung up an arm and Roghar looked where he pointed.