Salvatore, R A - Cleric Quintet 5 - The Chaos Curse

VIP免费

2024-12-12 0 0 344.29KB 134 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

To Ann and Bruce,

for showing me a different way

of looking at the world.

THE CHAOS CURSE

All characters in Ihis book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This book is protected under (he copyright laws of the United States of

America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork

herein is prohibited without the express written permission ofTSR, Inc.

Random House and ils affiliate companies have worldwide distribution rights in

the book trade for English language products of TSR, Inc.

Distributed to the book and hobby trade in the United Kingdom by TSR Ud.

Distributed to the toy and hobby trade by regional distributors. Cover art by

Jeff Hastey.

FORGOTTEN REALMS is a registered trademark owned by TSR, Inc. The TSR logo,

all TSR characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof

are trademarks owned by TSR. Inc.

First Printing: June 1994

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Number 5&61469

987654321

ISBN: l-5607f»«We

TSR, Inc. P.O. Box 756

Lake Geneva, Wl 53147 U.SA

TSRUd.

120 Church End, Cherry Hinton Cambridge CB13LB United Kingdom

DUN %'A'V^A •) (Hill of the statts) X-. ";-5>;_-*'V:f

vNi&''8

i -- *}•-*•.* * i .'* sviimitcn '\ -^ -;- --V-C-i.W

Dean Thobicus drummed his skinny fingers on the hardwood desk before him. He

had turned his chair so that he faced the window, not the door, pointedly

looking away as a nervous and wiry man entered his office on the library's

second floor.

"You ... you asked ..." the man, Vicero Belago, stuttered, but Thobicus lifted

a trembling leathery hand to stop him. Belago broke into a cold sweat as he

stared at the back of the old dean's balding head. He looked to the side,

where stood Bron Turman, one of the library's headmasters and the highest

ranking of the Oghman priests, but the large, muscular man merely shrugged,

having no answers for him. "I did not ask," Dean Thobicus corrected Belago at

2 R. A. Salvatore

length. "I commanded you to come." Thobicus swung about in his chair, and the

nervous Belago, seeming small and insignificant indeed, shrank back near the

door. "You do still heed my commands, do you not, dear Vicero?"

"Of course, Dean Thobicus," Belago replied. He dared come a step closer, out

of the shadows. Belago was the Edi-ficant Library's resident alchemist, a

professed follower of both Oghma and Deneir, though he formally belonged to

neither sect. He was loyal to Dean Thobicus as both an employee to an

employer, and as a sheep to a shepherd. "You are the dean," he said sincerely.

"I am but a servant"

"Exactly!" Thobicus snarled, his voice hissing like the warning of an angry

serpent, and Bron Turman eyed the withered old dean suspiciously. Never before

had the old man been so animated or agitated.

"I am the dean," Thobicus said, with emphasis on the final word. "/ design the

duties of the library, not Ca—" Thobicus bit back the rest of his words, but

both Belago and Turman caught the slip and understood the implications.

The dean spoke of Cadderly.

"Of course, Dean Thobicus," Belago said again, more subdued. Suddenly the

alchemist realized that he was in the middle of a much larger power struggle,

one in which he might pay a price. Belago's friendship with Cadderly was no

secret. Neither was the fact that the alchemist often worked on unsanctioned

and privately funded projects for the young priest, often for the cost of

materials alone.

"You have an inventory document for your shop?" Thobicus asked.

Belago nodded. Of course he did, and Thobicus knew it. Belago's shop had been

destroyed less than a year before, when the library was in the throes of the

chaos

The Chaos Curse 3

curse. The library's deep coffers had funded the repairs and the replacement

ingredients, and Belago had promptly given a complete accounting.

"As do I," Thobicus remarked. Bron Turman still eyed the dean curiously, not

understanding the last statement. "I know everything that belongs there,"

Thobicus went on imperiously. "Everything, you understand?"

Belago, finding strength in honor, straightened for the first time since he

had entered the room. "Are you accusing me of thievery?" he demanded.

The dean's chuckle mocked the wiry man's firm stance. "Not yet," Thobicus

answered casually, "for you are still here, and thus, anything you might wish

to take would also still be here."

That set Belago back; his ample eyebrows furrowed.

"Your services are no longer required," Thobicus explained, still speaking in

an awful, cold, casual tone.

"But... but, Dean," Belago stuttered. "I have been—"

"Leave!"

Bron Turman straightened, recognizing the inflections and the weight of magic

in Thobicus's voice. The burly Oghman headmaster was not surprised when Belago

stiffened suddenly and fell back out of the room. With a look to Thobicus,

Turman quickly moved to close the door.

"He was a fine alchemist," Turman said quietly, turning back to the large

desk. Thobicus was again staring out the window.

"I had reason to doubt his loyalty," the dean explained.

Bron Turman, pragmatic and no real ally of Cadderly, did not press the point.

Thobicus was the dean, and as such, he had the authority to hire or dismiss

any of the nonclerical assistants that he chose.

"Baccio has been here for more than a day," Bron Tur-

4 R, A. Salvatore

man said to change the subject The man he referred to, Baccio, was the

commander of the Carradoon garrison, come to discuss the defense of the city

and the library should Castle Trinity strike at them. "Have you spoken with

him?"

"We will not need Baccio and his little army," Thobi-cus said with confidence.

"I shall soon dismiss him."

"You have word from Cadderly?"

"No," Thobicus answered honestly Indeed, the dean had heard nothing since

Cadderly and his companions had gone into the mountains earlier that winter.

But Thobicus believed that the army would not be needed, believed that

Cadderly had succeeded in defeating Castle Trinity. For, as the young priest's

power continued to grow, Dean Thobicus felt himself being pushed away from the

light of Deneir. Once, Thobicus had commanded the most powerful clerical

magic, but now even the simplest spell, like the one he had used to dispatch

poor Belago, came hard to his thin lips.

He turned back to the room to see Bron Turman staring at him skeptically.

"Very well," Thobicus conceded. Tell Baccio I will meet him this evening—but I

maintain that his army should hold a defensive posture and not go traipsing

through the mountains!"

Bron Turman was satisfied with that. "But you believe that Cadderly and his

friends have succeeded," he said slyly.

Thobicus did not respond.

"You believe that the threat to the library is no more," Bron Turman stated.

The burly Oghman headmaster smiled, a wistful look in his large gray eyes. "At

least, you believe that one threat to the library is no more." he added.

The Chaos Curse 5

Thobicus steeled his gaze, his crow's-feet coming together to form one large

crease at the side of each orb. "This does not concern you," he quietly

warned.

Bron Turman bowed, respecting the words. "That does not mean that I do not

understand," he said. "Vicero Belago was a fine alchemist."

"Bron Turman..."

The headmaster held up a submissive hand. "I am no friend of Cadderly's," he

said. "Neither am I a young man. I have seen the intrigue of power struggles

within both our sects."

Thobicus pursed his thin lips and seemed on the verge of explosion, and Bron

Turman took that as a sign that he should be leaving. He gave another quick

bow and was gone from the room.

Dean Thobicus rocked back in his chair and pivoted about to face the window.

He couldn't rationally call Turman on the outwardly treasonous words, for the

man's reasoning was undeniably true. Thobicus had been alive for more than

seven decades; Cadderly for just over two, yet, for some reason that the old

bureaucrat could not understand, Cadderly-had found particular favor with

Deneir. But the dean had come to his power painstakingly, at great personal

sacrifice and at the cost of many years of almost reclusive study. He was not

about to give up his position. He would purge the library of Cadderly's open

allies and strengthen his hold on the order. Headmaster Avery Schell,

Cadderly's mentor and surrogate father, and Pertelope, who had been like

Cadderly's mother, were both dead now, and Belago would soon be gone.

No, Thobicus would not give up his position.

Not without a fight.

The Promise of Salvation

Kierkan Rufo wiped the stubborn mud from his boots and breeches, and muttered

quiet curses to himself, as he always did. He was an outcast, marked by an

ugly blue-and-red brand of an unlit candle above a closed eye, which lay on

the middle of his forehead.

"Bene tellemara" whispered Druzil. A bat-winged, dog-faced, scaly creature

barely two feet tall, the imp packed more malicious evil into that tiny frame

than the worst of humankind's tyrants,

"What did you say?" Rufo snapped. He glared down at his otherworldly

companion. The two had been together for the last half of the winter, and

neither much liked the other. Their enmity had begun in Shilmista Forest, west

of the Snowflake Mountains, when Druzil had threat-

The Chaos Curse 7

ened and coerced Rufo into serving his wicked masters, the leaders of Castle

Trinity—when Druzil had precipitated Kierkan Rufo's fall from the order of

Deneir.

Druzil looked curiously at the man and squinted from the flickering light of

the torch Rufo held. Rufo was over six feet tall, but bone-skinny. He always

stood at an angle, tilted to the side, and that made him, or the world behind

him, seem strangely incongruent. Druzil, who had spent the last few months

wandering through the Snowflakes, thought Rufo resembled a tree on a steep

mountainside. The imp snickered, drawing another glare from the perpetually

scowling Rufo.

The imp continued to stare, trying hard to view the man in a new light. With

his stringy black hair matted to his head, those penetrating eyes—black dots

on a pale face—and that unusual stance, Rufo could be imposing. He kept his

hair parted in the middle now, not on the side as it had always been, for Rufo

could not, on pain of death, cover that horrid brand, the mark that had forced

him to be a recluse, the mark that made every person shun him when they saw

him coming down the road.

"What are you looking at?" Rufo demanded.

"Bene tellemara" Druzil rasped again in the language of the lower planes. It

was a profound insult to Rufo's intelligence. To Druzil, schooled in chaos and

evil, all humans seemed fumbling things, too clouded by emotions to be

effective at anything. And this one, Rufo, was more bumbling than most.

However, Aballister, Druzil's wizard master, was dead now, killed by Cadderly,

his son, the same priest who had branded Rufo. And Dori-gen, Aballister's

second, had been captured, or had gone over to Cadderly's side. That left

Druzil wandering alone on the Material Plane. With his innate powers, and no

wizards binding him to service, the imp might have

R. A. Salvatore

found his way back to the lower planes, but Druzil didn't want that—not yet.

For, on this plane, in the dungeons of this very building, rested Tuanta Quiro

Miancay, the chaos curse, among the most potent and wicked concoctions ever

brewed. Druzil wanted it back, and meant to get it with the help of Rufo, his

stooge.

"I know what you are saying," Rufo lied, then he mimicked "Bene tellemara"

back at Druzil.

Druzil smirked at him, showing clearly that the imp really didn't care if Rufo

knew the meaning or not.

Rufo looked back at the muddy tunnel that had gotten them under the cellar of

the Edificant Library.

"Well," he said impatiently, "we have come this far. Lead on and let us be out

of this wretched place."

Druzil looked at him skeptically. For all the talking the imp had done over

the last few weeks, Rufo still did not understand. Be out of this place?

Druzil thought. Rufo had missed the whole point. They would soon have the

chaos curse in their hands; why would they then want to leave?

Druzil nodded and led on, figuring that he could do little to enlighten the

stupid human. Rufo simply did not understand the power of Tuanta Quiro

Miancay. He had once been caught in its throes—all the library had, and nearly

been brought down—yet, the ignorant human still did not understand.

That was the way with humans, Druzil decided. He would have to take Rufo by

the hand and lead him to power, as he had led Rufo across the fields west of

Car-radoon and back into the mountains. Druzil had lured Rufo back to the

library, where the branded man did not want to go, with false promises that

the potion locked in these dungeons would remove his brand.

They went through several long, damp chambers,

The Chaos Curse 9

past rotting casks and crates from days long ago when the library was a much

smaller place, and mostly underground, when these areas had been used for

storage. Druzil hadn't been here in a while, not since before the battle for

Castle Trinity, before the war in Shilmista Forest. Not since Barjin, the evil

priest, ha'd been killed ... by Cadderly.

"Bene telletnaral" the imp rasped, frustrated by the thought of the powerful

young cleric.

"I grow tired of your insults," Rufo began to protest.

"Shut up," Druzil snapped back at him, too consumed by thoughts of the young

priest to bother with Rufo. Cadderly, young and lucky Cadderly: the bane of

Druzil's ambitions, the one who always seemed to be in the way.

Druzil kept complaining, scraping and slapping his wide, clawed feet on the

stone floor noisily. He pushed through a door, went down a long corridor, and

pushed open another.

Then Druzil stopped, and ended, too, his muttering. They had come to a small

room, the room where Barjin had fallen.

Rufo pinched his nose and turned away, for the room smelled of death and

decay. Druzil took a deep breath and felt positively at home.

There could be no doubt that a fierce struggle had occurred in here. Along the

wall to Rufo and Druzil's right was an overturned brazier, the remains of

charcoal blocks and incense scattered among its ashes. There, too, were the

burned wrappings of an undead monster, a mummy. Most of the thing had been

consumed by the flames, but its wrapped skull remained, showing blackened bone

with tattered pieces of rags about it.

Beyond the brazier, near the base of the wall and along the floor, was a

crimson stain, all that remained as

R. A. Salvatore

testimony to Barjin's death. Barjin had been propped against that very spot

when Cadderly had accidentally hit him with an explosive dart, blasting a hole

through his chest and back.

The rest of the room showed much the same carnage. Next to Barjin's

bloodstain, the brick wall had been knocked open by a furious dwarf, and the

crossbeam supporting the ceiling hung by a single peg perpendicular to the

floor. In the middle of the room, beneath dozens of scorch marks, lay a black

weapon handle, all that remained of the Screaming Maiden, Barjin's enchanted

mace, and behind that were the remains of the priest's unholy altar.

Beyond that...

Druzil's bulbous black eyes widened when he looked past the altar to the small

cabinet wrapped in white cloth emblazoned with the runes and sigils of both

Deneir and Oghma, the brother gods of the library. The mere presence of the

cloth told Druzil that his search was at an end.

A flap of his bat wings brought the imp to the top of the altar, and he heard

Rufo shuffling to catch up. Druzil dared not approach any closer, though,

knowing that the priests had warded the cabinet with powerful enchantments.

"Glyphs," Rufo agreed, recognizing Druzil's hesitation. "If we go near it, we

shall be burned away!"

"No," Druzil reasoned, speaking quickly, frantically. Tuanta Quiro Miancay was

close enough for the desperate imp to smell it, and he would not be denied.

"Not you," he went on. "You are not of my weal. You were a priest of this

order. Surely you can approach ..."

"Fool!" Rufo snapped at him. It was as volatile a response as the imp had ever

heard from the broken* man.

The Chaos Curse

"I wear the brand of Deneir! The wards on that cloth and cabinet would seek my

flesh hungrily."

Druzil hopped on the altar, tried to speak, but his rasping voice came out as

only indecipherable sputtering. Then the imp calmed and called on his innate

magic. The imp could see and measure all magic, be it the dweomer of a wizard

or a priest. If the glyphs were not so powerful, Druzil would go to the

cabinet himself. Any wounds he received would heal—faster still when he

clutched the precious Tuanta Quiro Miancay in his greedy hands. The name

translated into "the Most Fatal Horror," a title that sounded delicious indeed

to the beleaguered imp.

The aura emanating from the cabinet nearly overwhelmed him, and at first,

Druzil's heart fell in despair. But as he continued his scan, the imp came to

know the truth, and a great gout of wicked laughter burst from between his

pointed teeth.

Rufo, curious, looked at him.

"Go to the cabinet," Druzit instructed.

Rufo continued to stare, and made no move.

"Go," Druzil said again. "The meager wards of the foolish priests have been

overwhelmed by the chaos curse! Their magic has unraveled!"

It was only partly true. Tuanta Quiro Miancay was more than a simple potion;

it was magic driven to destroy. Tuanta Quiro Miancay wanted to be found,

wanted to be out of the prison the priests had wrapped about it. And to that

end, the concoction's magic had attacked the glyphs, had worked against them

for many months, weakening their integrity.

Rufo didn't trust Druzil (and rightly so), but he could not ignore the pull on

his heart. He felt his forehead's brand keenly in this place and suffered a

severe headache merely from being near a structure dedicated to

R. A. Salvatore

Deneir. He found himself wanting to believe Druzil's words; he moved

inevitably toward the cabinet and reached for the cloth.

There came a blinding electric flash, then a second, then a tremendous burst

of fire. Fortunately for Rufo, the first explosion had launched him across the

room, clear over the altar and into an overturned bookcase near the door.

Druzil shrieked as the flames engulfed the cabinet, its wood flaring brightly—

obviously it had been soaked with oil or enchanted by some incendiary magic.

Druzil did not fear for Tuanta Quiro Miancay, for that concoction was

everlasting, but if the flask holding it melted, the liquid would be lost!

Flames never bothered Druzil, a creature of the fiery lower planes. His bat

wings sent him rushing into the conflagration, eager hands pulling the

cabinet's contents free. Druzil shrieked from a sudden burst of pain, and

nearly hurled the bowl across the room. He caught himself, though, and

gingerly placed the item on the altar, then he backed away and rubbed his

blistered hands together.

The bottle holding the chaos curse had been placed in a bowl and immersed in

the clearest of waters, made holy by the plea of a dead druid and the symbol

of Syl-vanus, the god of nature, of natural order. Perhaps no god in the

Realms evoked more anger from the perverse imp than Sylvanus.

Druzil studied the bowl and considered his dilemma. He breathed easier a

moment later, when he realized that the holy water was not as pure as it

should be, that the influences of Tuanta Quiro Miancay were acting even upon

that

Druzil moved near the bowl and chanted softly^using

The Chaos Curse

one of his claws to puncture the middle finger of his left hand. Finishing his

curse, he let a single drop of his blood fall into the water. There came a

hissing, and the top of the bowl clouded over with vapor. Then it was gone,

and gone, too, was the pure water, replaced by a blackened morass of fetid and

rotting liquid.

Druzil leaped back atop the altar and plunged his hands in. A moment later, he

was whimpering with joy, cradling the precious, rune-decorated bottle, itself

an enchanted thing, as though it were his baby. He looked to Rufo, not really

concerned if the man was alive or dead, then laughed again.

Rufo had propped himself up on his elbows. His black hair stood on end,

dancing wildly; his eyes twitched and rolled of their own accord. After some

time, he rolled back unsteadily to his feet and advanced in staggered steps

toward the imp, thinking to throttle the creature once and for all.

Druzil's waving tail, its barbed end dripping deadly poison, brought Rufo to

his senses, but did little to calm him.

"You said ..." he began to roar.

"Bene te\[ iara\" Druzil snapped back at him, the imp's intensity more than

matching Rufo's anger and startling the man to silence. "Do you not know what

we have?" Smiling wickedly, Druzil handed the flask to Rufo, and the man's

beady eyes widened when he took it, when he felt its inner power throb within

him.

Rufo hardly heard Druzil as the imp raved about what they might accomplish

with the chaos curse. The angular man stared at the swirling red liquid within

the bottle and fantasized, not of power, as Druzil was spouting, but of

freedom from his brand. Rufo had earned that brand, but in his twisted

perception, that hardly mattered. All

R. A. Salvatore

The Chaos Curse

Rufo understood and could accept was that Cadderly had marked him, had forced

him to become an outcast.

Now, all the world was his enemy.

Druzil continued to ramble excitedly. The imp talked of controlling the

priests once more, of striking against all the land, of uncorking the flask

and ...

Rufo heard that last suggestion alone among the dozens of ideas the imp

spewed. He heard it and believed it with all his heart. It was as if Tuanta

Quiro Miancay was calling him, and the chaos curse, the creation of wicked,

diabolical intelligence, was indeed. This was Rufo's salvation, more than

Deneir had ever been. This was his deliverance from wretched Cadderly.

This potion was for him, and for him alone.

Druzil stopped talking the moment he noticed that Rufo had uncorked the

bottle, the moment he smelled the red fumes wafting up from the potion.

The imp started to ask the man what he was doing, but the words stuck in

Druzil's throat as Rufo suddenly lifted the bottle to his thin lips and drank

of it deeply.

Druzil stammered repeatedly, trying to find the words of protest. Rufo turned

to him, the man's face screwed up curiously.

"What have you done?" Druzil asked.

Rufo started to answer, but gagged instead and clutched his throat

"What have you done?" Druzil repeated loudly. "Bene tettemara\ Fool!"

Rufo gagged again, clutched his throat and stomach, and vomited violently. He

staggered away, coughing, wheezing, trying to get some air past the bile

rising in his throat.

"What have you done?" Druzil cried after him, scuttling along the floor to

keep up. The imp's taifwaved

ominously; if Rufo's misery ended, Druzil meant to sting and tear him, to

punish him for stealing the precious and irreplaceable potion.

Rufo, his balance wavering, slammed into the door-jamb as he tried to exit the

room. He stumbled along the corridor, rebounding off one wall, then the other.

He vomited again, and again after that, his stomach burning with agony and

swirling with nausea. Somehow he got through the rooms and corridors and half-

crawled out the muddy tunnel, back into the sunlight, which knifed at his eyes

and skin.

He was burning up, and yet he felt cold, deathly cold.

Druzil, wisely becoming invisible as they came into the revealing daylight,

folIo»"Qd. Rufo stopped and vomited yet again, across the hatuened remains of

a late-season snowbank, and the mess showed more blood than bile. Then the

angular man staggered around the building's corner, slipping and falling many

times in the mud and slush. He thought to get to the door, to the priests with

their curing hands.

Two young acolytes, wearing the black-and-gold vests that distinguished them

as priests of Oghma, were near the door, enjoying the warmth of the late

winter day, their brown cloaks opened wide to the sun. They didn't notice Rufo

at first, not until the man fell heavily into the mud just a few feet away.

The two acolytes rusheol to him and turned him over, then gasped and fell back

when they saw the brand. Neither had been in the library long enough to know

Kier-kan Rufo personally, but they had heard tales of the branded priest. They

looked to each other and shrugged, then one rushed back into the library while

the other began to relieve the stricken man.

Druzil watched from the corner of the building, mut-

R. A. Salvatore

tering "Bene tellemara" over and over, lamenting that the chaos curse and

Kierkan Rufo had played him a wicked joke.

Perched high in the branches of a tree near that door, the white squirrel,

Percival, looked on with more than a passing interest. Percival had come out

of his winter hibernation this very week. He had been surprised to find that

Cadderly, his main source of the favored cacasa nuts, was not about, and was

even more surprised to see Kierkan Rufo, a human that Percival did not care

for at all.

The squirrel could see that Rufo was in great distress, could smell the

foulness of Rufo's illness, even from this distance.

Percival moved near his twig nest, nestled high in the branches, and continued

to watch.

Different Paths Taken

The three bearded members of the company, the dwarves Pikel and Ivan

Bouldershoul-der and the red-haired firbolg V ier, sat off to the side of

the cave entrance, rolling bones, placing bets, and laughing among themselves.

Ivan won a round, for the fifteenth time in a row, and Pikel swept off a blue,

wide-brimmed hat, with an orange quill on one side and the eye-above-candle

holy symbol of Deneir set in its front, and whacked laughing Ivan over the

head.

Cadderly, seeing the move, started to protest. It was his hat, after all,

simply loaned to Pikel, and Ivan's helmet was set with the antlers of a large

deer. The young priest changed his mind and held the thought silent, seeing

that the hat had not been damaged and realizing

R. A, Salvatore

that Ivan deserved the blow.

The friendship between Ivan, Pikel, and Vander had blossomed after the fall of

Castle Trinity. Gigantic Vander, all twelve feet and eight hundred pounds of

him, had even helped Pikel, the would-be druid, redye his hair and beard green

and braid the bushy tangle down his back. The only tense moment had come when

Vander tried to put some of Pikel's dye in Ivan's bright yellow hair,

something the square-shouldered, more serious Bouldershoulder did not like at

all.

But the exchanges were ultimately good-natured; the last few weeks had been

good-natured, despite the brutal weather. The seven companions, including

Cadderly, Danica, Dorigen, and Shayleigh, the elf maiden, had planned to go

straight from the victory at Castle Trinity to the Edificant Library. Barely a

day's hike into the mountains, though, winter had come in full force, blocking

the trails so that not even Cadderly, with his priestly magic, dared to press

on. Even worse, Cadderly had fallen ill, though he insisted that it was simple

exhaustion. As a priest, Cadderly served as a conduit for the powers of his

god, and during the battle with Castle Trinity (and the weeks of fighting

before that) too much of that energy had flowed through the young priest.

Danica, who knew Cadderly better than anyone, did not doubt that he was

exhausted, but she knew, too, that the young priest had taken an emotional

beating as well. In Castle Trinity, Cadderly had seen his past and the truth

of his heritage. He had been forced to face up to what his father, Aballister,

had become.

In Castle Trinity Cadderly had killed his own father.

Danica held faith that Cadderly would overcome this trauma, confident in the

depth of Cadderly's character. He was devoted to his god and to his friends,

and they

The Chaos Curse

all were beside him.

With the trails closed and Cadderly ill, the company had gone east, out of the

mountains and their foothills, to the farmlands north of Carradoon. Even the

lowlands were deep with a snow that the Shining Plains had not seen in

decades. The friends had found a many-chambered cave for shelter, and had

turned the place into a fair home over the days, using Danica's, Vander's, and

the dwarves' survival skills and Dorigen's magic. Cadderly had aided whenever

he could, but his role was to rest and regain his strength. He knew, and

Danica knew, that when they returned to the Edificant Library, the young

priest might face his toughest challenge yet.

After several weeks, the snows had begun to recede. As brutal as the winter

had been, it was ending early, and the companions could begin to think about

their course. That brought mixed feelings for young Cad-derly, the priest who

had risen so fast through the ranks of his order. He stood at the cave

entrance, staring out over the fields of white, their brightness stinging his

gray eyes in the morning sunlight. He felt guilty for his own weakness, for he

believed that he should have returned to the library despite the snows,

despite the trials he had faced, months ago, even if that meant leaving his

friends behind. Cadderly's destiny waited at that library, but even now,

feeling stronger once more, hearing the song of Deneir playing in the

background of his thoughts again, he wasn't sure that he had the strength to

meet it.

"I am ready for you," came a call from inside the cave, above Vander and the

dwarves' continuing ruckus. Cadderly turned and walked past the group, and

Pikel, knowing what was to come, gave a little "Hee hee hee." The green-

bearded dwarf tipped the wide-brimmed hat

R. A. Salvatore

to Cadderly, as if saluting a warrior going to battle.

Cadderly scowled at the dwarf and walked past, moving to a small stone, which

crafty Ivan had fashioned into a stool. Danica stood behind the stool, waiting

for Cadderly, her beautiful daggers, one golden-hiked and sculpted into the

shape of a tiger, the other a silver dragon, in hand. For any who did not know

Danica, those blades, or any weapons, would have looked out of place in her

deceivingly delicate hands. She was barely five feet tall—if she went two days

without eating, she wouldn't top a hundred pounds—with thick locks of

strawberry blond hair cascading over her shoulders and unusual almond-shaped

eyes a light but rich brown. On casual glance, Danica seemed more a candidate

for a southern harem, a beautiful, delicate flower.

The young priest knew better, as did any who had spent time beside Danica.

Those delicate hands could break stone; that beautiful face could smash a

man's nose flat. Danica was a monk, a disciplined fighter, and her studies

were no less intense than Cadderiy's, her worship of the wisdom of ancient

masters no less than Cadderiy's of his god. She was as perfect a warrior as

Cadderly had ever seen; she could use any weapon, and could defeat most

swordsmen with her bare hands and feet

And she could put either of the enchanted daggers she now held into the eye of

an enemy twenty paces away.

Cadderly took his seat, pointedly facing away from the boisterous gamblers,

while Danica began to softly chant. Cadderly found a meditative focus; it was

vital that he remain absolutely still. Suddenly, Danica broke into motion, her

arms weaving intricate patterns in the air before her, her feet shifting from

side to side, keeping perfect balance.

The Chaos Curse

The impossibly sharp blades began to turn in her fingers.

The first one came around in a blinding flash, but Cadderly, deep in

concentration, did not flinch. He barely felt the scrape as the knife's edge

brushed his cheek, barely had time to smell the oiled metal as the silver

dragon whipped in under his nostrils and shot down to his upper lip.

This was a ritual that the two performed every day, one that kept Cadderly

clean-shaven and Danica's finely honed muscles at their peak.

It was over in a mere minute, Cadderiy's stubble swept away without a nick to

his tanned skin.

"I should chop this tangle away, too," Danica teased, grabbing a handful of

Cadderiy's thick, curly brown hair. Cadderly reached up and grabbed her wrist

and pulled her around and down, over his shoulder so that their faces were

close. The two were lovers, committed to each other for life, and the only

reason they had not yet been married in open vows was that Cadderly did not

consider the priests of the Edificant Library worthy of performing the

ceremony.

Cadderly gave Danica a little kiss, and both jumped back as a blue spark

flashed between them, stinging their lips. Immediately, both turned to the

entrance to the chamber on the cave's left-hand wall, and were greeted by the

joined laughter of Dorigen and Shayleigh.

"Such a bond," remarked Dorigen sarcastically. She had been the one to cause

the spark—of course it .had been the wizard. Once an enemy of the band, indeed

one of the leaders of the army that had invaded Shilmista, Dorigen, by all

appearances, had turned to a new way of life and was going back with the

others to face judgment at the library.

R. A. Salvatore

"Never have I seen such a spark of love," added Shay-leigh, shaking her head

so that her long, thick mane of golden hair fell back from her face. Even in

the dim light streaming in through the cave's eastern door, the elf's violet

eyes sparkled like polished jewels.

"Should I add this to your list of crimes?" Cadderly asked Dorigen.

"If that was the greatest of my crimes, I would not bother to return to the

library beside you, young priest," the wizard replied easily.

Danica looked from Cadderly to Dorigen, recognizing the bond that had grown

between them. It wasn't hard for the monk to discern the source of that

attraction. With her black hair, showing lines of gray, and her wide-set eyes,

Dorigen resembled Pertelope, the headmistress at the library who had been like

Cadderly's mother until her recent death. Pertelope alone seemed to understand

the transformation that had come over Cadderly, the god-song that played in

his thoughts and gave him access to clerical powers to rival the highest-

ranking priests in all the land.

Danica could see some of the same perceptive characteristics in Dorigen. The

wizard was a thinker, a person who weighed the situation carefully before

acting, and a person not afraid to follow her heart. Dorigen had turned

against Aballister in Castle Trinity, had all but gone over to Cadderly's side

despite her knowledge that her crimes would not be forgotten. She had done it

because her conscience had so dictated.

Danica had not grown to love, or even like, the woman over the weeks of forced

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

ToAnnandBruce,forshowingmeadifferentwayoflookingattheworld.THECHAOSCURSE©1994TSR.Inc.AllRightsReservedAllcharactersinIhisbookarefictitious.Anyresemblancetoactualpersons,livingordead,ispurelycoincidental.Thisbookisprotectedunder(hecopyrightlawsoftheUnitedStatesofAmerica.Anyreproductionorunauthorizedu...

展开>> 收起<<

Salvatore, R A - Cleric Quintet 5 - The Chaos Curse.pdf

共134页,预览27页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Salvatore, R A - Cleric Quintet 5 - The Chaos Curse

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: