James Wyatt - Oath of Vigilance

“But it didn’t get there?” Quarhaun asked.

“It started flowing into his mouth and nose,” Roghar said, making Tempest shudder slightly. “But I had noticed that it seemed particularly averse to divine radiance, so I blasted it and it withdrew long enough for Falon to hit it harder. That’s when it fled.”

The drow stroked his chin. “Divine radiance, you say? Well, we have you. I can muster some radiance, though it’s not exactly divine. Tempest, have you mastered the third invocation of Hadar?”

Tempest blinked at him. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said slowly.

“Perhaps you learned different terminology. Do you know the invocations of Hadar? The spells that draw on the light of the dying star?”

Tempest’s face showed no sign of recognition, and Roghar shifted uncomfortably.

“Gibbeth’s shadow, woman, did your teacher tell you nothing of the baleful stars?”

“I had no teacher,” Tempest said.

Quarhaun arched an eyebrow. “You made an infernal pact with no one to guide you?”

“Not everyone has the luxury of a life of study,” Roghar said, the hint of a growl in his voice warning the drow to back off.

“Certainly, but those without learning shouldn’t dabble with powers beyond their understanding.”

Tempest’s eyes smoldered with anger, and Roghar drew himself up in his seat. “She is no mere dabbler,” Roghar said. “I’ve fought alongside her for years, and I dare say her power surpasses yours.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Quarhaun said. “If I recklessly seized all the power I could without regard for the consequences, out of ignorance or desperation, I suspect I’d be more powerful than you can even imagine. But I choose a more moderate path. I’d like to survive long enough to enjoy my power.”

Shara looked between Quarhaun and Tempest, realizing for the first time how her experience of Tempest had colored her impressions of the drow warlock. They were different in many ways, starting with the eldritch blade Quarhaun wielded to channel his power. Tempest preferred standing back from her enemies, sending her spells coursing through her rod to blast them from afar. But some part of her, Shara realized, had figured that Quarhaun’s power was more or less accidental, the way Tempest’s was. To think that he had sought out the infernal power he wielded was a bit disturbing.

Tempest’s anger burst its banks and she stood up, leaning over the table to glare at the drow. “We are both thieves, Quarhaun, wielding power that isn’t ours. You can pretend you’re a wizard if you like, couching it all in the language of academic study, but it doesn’t change that fact. Sooner or later, our crimes will catch up with us.”

Quarhaun laughed in her face. “You’re right, of course. But I am a master thief, always staying one step ahead of the law, hiding myself behind layers of intermediaries and deception. And you? You’re a master of the smash and grab, utterly lacking in subtlety and technique. Which of us do you think will be caught first?”

Tempest fumed at him for a long moment, then turned and stormed out of the room. With a parting glare at the drow, Roghar followed her out. Left alone with Shara and Quarhaun, Uldane got up and left without a backward glance.

“So much for a plan,” Quarhaun said. He grinned at Shara. “Perhaps we should return to what we were doing before we were interrupted.”

Shara frowned, looking after her friends. What’s keeping me from storming out with them? she wondered. Shouldn’t I be outraged at the things Quarhaun said?

She smiled back at Quarhaun, weighing his suggestion. Not if he’s right, she thought. She stood up and held out her hand to him.

Glass crashed somewhere in the inn, and a scream pierced the quiet night. Shara hurried to the door of the common room and looked around. People were shouting both upstairs and outside on the street, but she couldn’t figure out the source of the commotion.

Then a living flame smashed open the door beside her, and a monstrous face formed of glittering red liquid leered at her from the midst of the fire.

Kri stood and looked down at Albanon’s limp body on the stairs. “Now you understand,” he said. The eladrin didn’t stir. Blank eyes stared upward, seeing nothing at all.

Kri bent his head and lifted Ioun’s holy symbol off his neck. “You taught me to pursue knowledge and understanding,” he said to the symbol. “And so I have.”

He twisted the bottom of the symbol, the crook that extended from the bottom of the stylized eye, and it opened. He slid out the tiny crystal vial that held his miniscule fragment of the Voidharrow. He closed his fist around the vial and felt the two wills at war within it-its own and the Chained God’s.

“I renounce you now,” he said quietly. He let the symbol fall, clattering to the stairs and tumbling down into the darkness below. “Your knowledge is vain and empty. Your understanding is futile. The will of the Chained God is my will.”

He reached into his robes and pulled out the jagged iron symbol he’d taken from the dead priest and put it around his neck.

“I will destroy the Voidharrow and finish what the Chained God commands.”

At last the eladrin moved.

He opened his eyes and tried to figure out who he was. The Doomdreamer stood looking down at him, grinning madly, surrounded by a wreath of leering spirits. The floor beneath him was hard, uneven-stairs, stone stairs.

“Rise, Albanon,” said the Doomdreamer.

He obeyed without thought, then decided that his name must be Albanon. He focused all his attention on the Doomdreamer, eager to learn more of his identity, eager to fulfill his next command.

“Follow me,” the Doomdreamer said, and started down the stairs.

Albanon followed, adding his quiet voice to the babble of spirits surrounding them, flowing in the walls and floor as well as hovering around the Doomdreamer. Seventy-two stairs they descended, eight nines, six dozens, two squares of six. Formulas flitted through his mind and fire danced across his fingers in response, and he emerged into a chamber at the bottom of the stairs.

“Ah, you have remembered your magic.” The Doomdreamer was pleased, and Albanon rejoiced. “Let me see you destroy that corpse.”

Albanon followed the Doomdreamer’s pointing finger with his eyes, and saw the body lying on the floor. Two cubed times three squared. With a flick of his fingers he filled seventy-two cubic feet of the room with roaring flames. A little pressure of his will kept the fires burning until the corpse was a smear of ash on the stone floor.

“Now you know the extent of your power,” the Doomdreamer said. “At last you understand.”

“Yes,” Albanon said. “I think I do.”

“He was a false servant,” the Doomdreamer said, nodding toward the ashes. “He failed, and his death was well deserved. His obliteration was required, so no memory of his failure remains. Together, you and I will succeed where he failed.”

Albanon nodded, but he was no longer sure he understood. He wanted to use his magic again, to turn the numbers and formulas over and over in his mind, to explore every permutation and calculation. Seventy-two was a mystic number to him now, a perfect inversion of exponents and primes, a source of power and an expression of a far greater power. What would it take to pierce the Doomdreamer with seventy-two arrows of pure magical force? He started toying with that calculation.

“We have one more task to complete in this place,” the Doomdreamer continued. “And then we must find Nu Alin.”

“What one task?” Albanon asked.

The Doomdreamer scowled at him. “Such impertinence,” he said. “Expected from the old Albanon, but not from the new.”