James Wyatt - Oath of Vigilance

Roghar glanced around the room. Soldiers and citizens alike were talking quietly among themselves, their initial fervor after his pronouncement fading quickly. “Listen,” he said. “A moment ago, half the people in this room were ready to charge out the door with me and drive the demons out of this town. With every second we spend bickering, that number drops. If we want to use their excitement, we have to act now.”

“You have to keep your pawns in play as well,” Shara said. “I see.”

“They’re not my pawns,” Roghar protested.

“Of course they are,” Quarhaun said. “At least the priests of Lolth have the honesty to admit it.”

“This is their town!” Roghar said. “I’m just encouraging them to retake it for themselves.”

“Fine,” Shara said. “Then let them retake it while we go hunt down Vestapalk.”

“They need leadership,” Roghar said.

Quarhaun arched an eyebrow. “The silken words of every tyrant.”

“Tyrant?” Roghar got to his feet again, drawing the eyes of every soldier in the room-and a few cheers. Emboldened by the cheers, he gave up on arguing with the drow and turned to address the room. “People of Fallcrest,” he said, “the time to liberate our town from the demons is now!” He drew his sword and held it over his head, inspiring more cheers.

“Now it’s our town,” he heard Quarhaun mutter behind him.

Roghar ignored him. “Soldiers, take up your arms! Gather your comrades! We gather in the square to free Lowtown and drive the demons back to the pits that spawned them! For Fallcrest, for Bahamut, and for glory!”

A roar of cheers nearly deafened him. The soldiers and many of the citizens were on their feet and crowding out the door to the square, ready to begin their counterassault. Roghar’s heart was pounding in his chest in anticipation of the coming battle.

“Well, I guess that settles it,” Shara said.

Roghar turned back to the table. Uldane and Tempest were on their feet as well, both looking ready to follow him out the door. Shara and Quarhaun still sat at the table, their arms folded and their faces dour.

“You’re not coming?” he said.

“What have I been saying all this time?” Shara said. “Have you even been listening?”

“But I thought-”

“You thought your stirring speech would change our minds, or that we’d be too embarrassed not to accompany you when the rest of the town was on your side. Or you just got caught up in the excitement and didn’t think at all. It doesn’t matter.”

“Shara, listen to reason.”

“Good luck with the demons, Roghar,” Shara said. She looked at Tempest. “I hope you find Nu Alin, and kill him for what he did to you.”

Roghar scowled. “Well,” he said, “I hope you get your revenge on Vestapalk as well.”

Shara extended a hand, and he shook it. He nodded to the drow, who returned the gesture, and turned to the door.

“Uldane?” Shara said.

“Good-bye, Shara,” the halfling said, his words clipped.

“I still don’t-”

“Maybe this never occurred to you, caught up in the mad whirlwind of your love for Jarren, but I loved him, too. He was my friend-maybe my best friend. And he wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”

As he went out the door, Roghar looked over his shoulder and saw Shara stiffen. She stared at Uldane for a long moment, then nodded. “Good-bye, Uldane.”

Albanon’s head spun and his stomach sank as a kaleidoscope of worlds appeared and disappeared within the frame of the Vast Gate. He felt magic flaring in the channels created by Moorin’s blood, drawn to the opening of the gate, tugging at the forces within the gate as if to channel them in a particular direction. Kri finally seemed to become aware of the additional magic at work in the tower, casting nervous glances around at the rest of the room even as he tried to concentrate on focusing the gate on a single destination-the prison of the Chained God.

“Chained God!” Kri called. “Ender and Anathema, Eater of Worlds, Undoer: Come and wreak destruction!”

Albanon’s stomach churned and he remembered finding Moorin dead in his tower, the blood and gore everywhere, the reek of the wizard’s spilled guts and acrid blood. This is all wrong, some part of his mind declared. We’re supposed to prevent this, to work against the killer of Moorin, not according to his purpose.

The chaos in his mind sent the image in the Vast Gate spinning dizzily from world to world. Albanon lurched out of the magic circle and emptied his stomach onto the floor, falling to his hands and knees as his gut contracted again and again until nothing remained to heave up.

When he looked up, the archway of the Vast Gate was filled with utter darkness. Kri stood transfixed before it, gazing into the void, a look of bliss on his weathered face.

“Tharizdun,” he whispered.

“No,” Albanon gasped. “Kri, wait!”

“Patient One. He Who Waits. Chained God.” Kri’s voice grew slowly louder as he intoned the appellations of Tharizdun.

Albanon’s throat burned and his head was pounding, but he staggered to his feet. “Kri, remember your oath! The Oath of Vigilance!”

“Your waiting is over and your freedom is at hand!”

The darkness in the Vast Gate changed subtly. It remained an inky black that repelled all light, but red liquid flowed behind and beneath it, too, gleaming here and there like tiny, dim stars in an awful night sky. Albanon had the fleeting sense of something poised and waiting in the darkness, ready to spring.

And then it erupted through the gate and emerged into the world.

First was a wave of sheer power, like a blast from a furnace but without light or heat, just raw energy that washed past him, overwhelmed him, battered him to the floor, and left him for dead. He was nothing to it, utterly insignificant, like an ant beneath the foot of a titan. It filled the tower and extended farther, probing into the world beyond.

Albanon’s mind reeled from trying to take it in, unable to comprehend the vastness of what he perceived and what was perceiving him. Somehow whatever was left of his mind understood that it was the eye of Tharizdun-the mere attention of the Chained God, extended from his prison in the void into the world on the other side of the Vast Gate. None of the god’s power or substance had yet passed through, but the simple fact of his glance passing over Albanon had left him wrecked and teetering at the brink of madness.

Kri had already plunged over that brink, and he babbled and wailed long strings of nonsense syllables as Tharizdun’s gaze seemed to focus upon him. He stood with his arms spread open to the gate, eyes open but rolled back in his head, his body arched in ecstatic torment in the sight of his god.

Next through the gate came a slow seepage of liquid red crystal, more of the Voidharrow probing through the gate. Albanon gasped as the first snaky tendrils surged out toward him, but they passed him by, coursing out along the pathways that Nu Alin had laid with Moorin’s blood.

Once more Albanon perceived the pattern of the whorls and arcs of blood, the channels that directed both the flow of magic and the movement of the Voidharrow. Arcane formulas gave structure to his thoughts again, and he understood what had escaped him until that moment, what Kri still had not grasped. The Voidharrow was forming a lattice, a net that would catch and bind whatever emerged through the Vast Gate.

Even the Chained God.

A moment before, Albanon would have found it impossible to conceive of anything worse than the Chained God emerging through the gate that he and Kri had opened. Then he tried to imagine a demon like Nu Alin, or like the monster at Sherinna’s tower, but infused with the power of the Eater of Worlds.