Don Bassingthwaite - The Eye of the Chained God

Albanon rose and came around the fire to crouch next to him. “Kri, maybe you should go away for a little while,” he said quietly. He was trying hard to sound harsh, but to Kri he sounded almost sick-sick and weary. Kri leaned closer to him.

“Stop trying to resist,” he said, then he stood up. “It is time for my prayers. I’ll leave. I wouldn’t want my faith to… disturb you.”

Wrapping his borrowed cloak around him, he put his back to the fire and strode off into the darkness. He remembered seeing a little hollow below a thick stand of trees a decent distance from the campsite, and he headed for it. He would have brought the crystal lantern from the cloister, but some instinct told him that it belonged there, so he’d left it inside the shattered door. Besides, after two weeks in the dimness of the cloister, the pale moonlight seemed brilliant. He found the stand of trees and the hollow and settled himself into the shadows.

His visitor came sooner than he’d expected. Roghar crouched down in a creaking of leather and metal. The glint of distant firelight was visible on either side of the trees in the hollow, but the dragonborn was just a silhouette. “Kri,” he said. There was discomfort in his voice.

Kri could imagine his face, twisted and tight. He chuckled. “You don’t want to be here, do you, paladin of Bahamut? You don’t like the idea of begging aid from the Chained God. But the plague doesn’t give you a choice, does it?”

Roghar’s breath rasped in his throat. “How did you know?”

“Your insistence that Vestapalk’s creature found us by luck. Your unease when Uldane said there might be a plague demon. Your armor-what warrior retires to camp and doesn’t remove even his gauntlets?”

He knew by Roghar’s sharp inhalation that he’d struck a nerve. “How long has it been?” he asked. “How far has it progressed?”

“Since Winterhaven. The wound is on my wrist-it festers and my arm burns. Both arms. I pray and Bahamut slows the disease, but does not take it away.” A sob broke his voice. “Help me, Kri! You used the light of the gods to burn the Voidharrow out of Albanon. Burn the plague out of me!”

Kri smiled in the darkness. “There will be a price.”

Roghar stiffened. “Tell me,” he said. “I won’t betray Bahamut.”

“From the servant of one god to the servant of another, I will not ask you to do that,” said Kri. “But you will owe me obedience. Once only, but when I chose to call on you, you will obey me, no matter what I ask.”

Roghar didn’t relax. “I can’t do that.”

“Then the Abyssal Plague will consume you.” Kri rose.

Roghar’s gauntleted hand closed on his arm. “Wait.”

“Obedience,” said Kri. “Swear it. On your honor.”

Roghar swallowed, the sound audible. “I will obey you. Once only and I will not betray Bahamut, but I will obey you. I swear it in his name and upon my honor as his paladin.”

Triumph tingled up Kri’s neck and across his scalp. The contentment he’d felt earlier returned. He drew his arm out of Roghar’s grasp and put his hands on top of the dragonborn’s scaly head. “Then try not to scream,” he said. “The light I’ll be able to explain if anyone asks, but not screams.”

Once again, the Plaguedeep was silent, but this time it wasn’t Vestapalk’s doing. He had climbed out of the crystal pool and crouched next to it. The demons were hushed, huddled in groups and crammed into niches as if hiding might protect them. Even the slow, seething hiss as the bones of the world were transformed into the stuff of the Plaguedeep had stopped.

Dread consumed the Voidharrow. And because it consumed the Voidharrow, it consumed Vestapalk. And because it consumed Vestapalk, it consumed the plague demons-in the Plaguedeep most of all, but Vestapalk could sense unease and confusion in demons across the world. They wouldn’t understand why the Voidharrow was afraid, though.

Vestapalk only understood a part of it himself. Vestausan and Vestausir were gone. Simply… gone. When Roghar had killed Vestagix, Vestapalk had felt it. He experienced it through the Voidharrow. When Albanon and the priest had confronted his two-headed scion, however, the Voidharrow had recoiled. Vestapalk had seen the beginning of the priest’s invocation of the Chained God, had heard his proclamation: “What was once two shall be again. I divide you!”

He’d felt sudden agony, and then terror, a frantic wrenching that had torn him away from Vestausan and Vestausir and left him thrashing in an already silent Plaguedeep. The Voidharrow shuddered around and within him. When Vestapalk had recovered his senses and reached out to the pair again, he’d found nothing. No trace. No death echo. It was as if Vestausan and Vestausir had ceased to exist.

“What is it?” Vestapalk whispered. “What did they do?”

Tharizdun!

The name echoed through the Voidharrow and with it came a fresh surge of dread. The demons of the Plaguedeep moaned, a sound like someone dying a slow death. Vestapalk ground his teeth, and fought back the dread. “Tharizdun is nothing. This one no longer serves the Eye! Show me the source of this fear. Show me how they destroyed Vestausan and Vestausir.”

There was no response. Vestapalk growled, then roared “ Show Vestapalk! ”

The sound shook the walls of the Plaguedeep and provoked new shrieks of alarm from the plague demons. The surface of the Voidharrow pool shivered and drew back. Vestapalk didn’t let it retreat. He slid into the pool, diving down into its liquid crystal heart. Show Vestapalk! he commanded again, this time in silence but with no less force.

The Voidharrow shuddered once more-and opened itself to him. If there had been any lingering sense of where Vestapalk ended and the Voidharrow began, it vanished for several long moments. Then it pulled itself away. For some time, Vestapalk drifted in its embrace, contemplating what he had learned before allowing himself to rise.

When he surfaced, the demons of the Plaguedeep had gathered before the pool. Vestapalk reached through the Voidharrow and into them. Into all of the plague demons across the Nentir Vale.

Come, he ordered them.

They found the Tigerclaws’ camp undisturbed when they reached it the next day. Those left behind had glimpsed the two-headed dragon high overheard, but the beast had paid no attention to them. Forewarned by Hurn and the warriors who had gone on ahead, the camp greeted the returning heroes with a mix of joy-which was eagerly returned by warriors finding their loved ones safe-and grief for those who had died in the valley.

Uldane and the others kept themselves apart, but Belen was in thick with the Tigerclaws, apparently enjoying every brief taste of this side of her heritage. Maybe because of her knowledge of their traditions, the barbarians seemed to accept her. At least, most of them did. Uldane saw Turbull watching the woman from Fallcrest carefully. A large number of hostile glares were also directed at Kri, presumably for his manipulation of the Tigerclaws’ fears. Uldane had been on the receiving end of similar looks often enough to recognize trouble simmering on the edge of a boil. He nudged Albanon. “We shouldn’t stay long.”

The wizard nodded and went to talk to Turbull, who in turn called over Cariss. Soon joy and grief alike had turned into leave-taking, all of the humans and shifters of the barbarian tribe crowding around to say good-bye to Cariss. Belen, excluded once more, came back over and joined the others. Her face was set, but her eyes were sad. Uldane slipped his hand into hers. “Better that we go now,” he said. “They would have found out. Turbull already looked suspicious.”

“Maybe my mother taught me too well,” said Belen. She shook herself and stood straight. “Let’s get going. Vestapalk is waiting.”