The Eye of the Chained God

CHAPTER FOUR

They left Fallcrest the next morning. A week of Albanon dragging his feet had given the rest of them more than enough time to prepare for their eventual journey. Supplies were scarce in the crowded town, but horses were surprisingly easy to come by. Tempest suspected that many of the refugees who had brought them into Fallcrest found them to be more of a burden than an asset. Immeral, the most experienced among them in dealing with horses, very nearly had his pick of what was on offer.

“Some good mounts,” he said as he checked the tack of his chosen steed, “but the people here drive a hard bargain considering they may never have the chance to ride these animals again.”

“I don’t imagine they were thinking about riding them,” said Tempest. She put her foot in the stirrup and swung a leg over the back of her horse. “Food shortages haven’t really set in yet. In another week, maybe two, you would have paid a lot more.”

“That’s barbaric,” said Belen.

“Not as barbaric as starving to death.” Tempest shook the reins and urged her horse along the road.

They crossed the Nentir River above the falls and descended the steep switchbacks of the Trade Road down the bluff on the other side. All of them were alert. There might not have been plague demons in the lower town for some time-until the day before, at least-but the defenders of Fallcrest had all but abandoned the western shore of the river. The morning sun cast long shadows across the road and made pits of darkness in the hollows of the bluffs. The road was an ideal place for an ambush. They covered each other as they made their way down, but there was no hint of waiting demons.

Their morning’s ride passed in near silence. The sight of empty farms along the road, crops left to rot in the fields, drove the urge to talk out of them. Tempest studied each one they passed. She couldn’t help herself. It was like watching a public execution, only without the carnival atmosphere. Unlike Fallcrest’s lower town, few farm buildings had been destroyed. Some showed broken windows or doors, but in many the door simply swung loose on its hinges. If she looked closely, she sometimes saw bloody smears, but there were no bloated corpses in the farmyards, no bones in the long grass. The Abyssal Plague didn’t kill. Neither did the plague demons, at least not always. They wounded, they maimed, but more often than not, they left their victims alive to become demons themselves.

Sometimes, it seemed to Tempest, the creatures would rather have killed but were restrained from it as if by some greater power eager to see the plague spread. She knew the name of that power: Vestapalk.

They stayed on the road. The feeling that Albanon followed drew him somewhat west of north, not quite in the direction of the village of Winterhaven, but close enough that it seemed sensible to make that their destination. Winterhaven had been Uldane’s home before he-and Shara-had come south to Fallcrest, and he knew the area well. Sticking to the road meant faster travel and better visibility than cutting across country. By early afternoon they had passed beyond the farms. The trees of the Cloak Wood shadowed the road ahead of them. At another time they might have been in danger of an attack by the kobolds that made the forest their home, but Tempest would have been surprised if they’d seen one of the little creatures. If the demons hadn’t infected the kobolds, the kobolds were almost certainly hiding.

Still, Splendid, who had been curled across Albanon’s shoulder with one eye open like a wary cat, shook out her wings and leaped into the sky. She flew a little ways, then began to glide in wide circles, scouting the way ahead and the countryside around.

Tempest nudged her horse up so she rode alongside Albanon. “I suppose we’re lucky we haven’t encountered any flying plague demons yet,” she said.

“Yet,” echoed Albanon. “Every time we face them, we seem to find something new. Demons of the Abyss appear in every shape and size. Why not demons of the plague as well? Kri thought there was a connection between them. Legends say that Tharizdun created the Abyss-and demons-by placing a seed of corruption in the depths of the Elemental Chaos. We know he had a hand in creating the Voidharrow and that it turns living beings into demons. It’s probably only a matter of time before a victim of the plague grows wings.”

“That’s pessimistic.”

“We don’t have much to be optimistic about, do we? We’re trying to stop Vestapalk by following a gut feeling inspired by the god of madness and destruction.”

There didn’t seem to be much she could say to that. They rode a little further in silence, then Tempest asked him, “What was it like?”

The eladrin snorted softly. “Almost being turned into a plague demon by Vestapalk or being in thrall to Tharizdun?”

“Tharizdun.”

He looked at her. “What was it like being possessed by Nu Alin?”

The question was harsh. Probably harsher than it was meant to be-Tempest saw a flash of shame in Albanon’s eyes-but she didn’t give him a chance to apologize. When her friends had first freed her from the demon’s grip, she’d felt horrified by her experience. Now the memory of it just made her angry. “It made me feel violated. Unclean. I’m never going to let anyone or anything make me feel like that again.” She bared her teeth. “It was like being a puppet. I could feel him inside me, wrapped around my muscles and my bones. He sank right into my mind. I was a prisoner inside my own body, aware of everything but helpless.”

Albanon’s face twisted. “Then you’re lucky.” He turned away from her and stared straight ahead. “When Tharizdun has you, it doesn’t feel like you’re trapped. It feels like you’re perfectly sane and it’s the world that’s gone mad. I wasn’t even aware I was in his thrall. If Kri had exerted more power, I might not have been able to break free. I think I could only do it because we encountered you as we made our way through Fallcrest.”

His words brought a peculiar tightness to her chest. “Me?” she said.

Albanon flushed, red patches bright against his pale cheeks. “All of you, I mean,” he said quickly. Tempest didn’t believe him for a second. The tightness turned into a pleasant warmth and the lingering harshness in Albanon’s manner disappeared as he scrambled for words to cover his embarrassment. “Shara, Uldane. Roghar, I think. I’ll tell you this: if a follower of Tharizdun ever opens his mouth and screams at you, cover your ears. It’s like-”

“-someone pulled the ground out from under you?” Tempest finished for him. The wizard’s discomfort was charming, but drawing it out would have felt like teasing a puppy. It was kinder to play along with his effort to change the subject. “I’ve felt it. Roghar and I confronted a priest of the Chained God in Nerath and she tried the same thing.” She gave Albanon a smile. “I wonder how that scream would work against a plague demon.”

He hesitated for an instant, then returned the smile. “Maybe that’s what we’re going north to find out.” He wrinkled his nose. “Can you picture us screaming at Vestapalk?”

Tempest laughed. “It would take more than us, I think. We’d need an army.”

“How fast can you find one?” Splendid swooped down from above and resumed her perch on Albanon’s shoulder. This time, however, the little pseudodragon wrapped her wings tight around her body and coiled her stinger-tipped tail as if trying to present the smallest silhouette possible. She was trembling, her voice hushed. “There are plague demons watching us.”

“What? Where?” Albanon started to turn to look, but Splendid bumped his chin, closing his mouth and stopping the movement.

“Everywhere,” she said. “In the trees and the underbrush. They’re all around us.”

Tempest risked a glance at the forest lining the road. Autumn had stripped some of the branches bare, but the others wore cloaks of red and brown leaves. The forest floor was carpeted the same way. Good camouflage for the red crystal that sparkled on the hides of plague demons. She looked over her shoulder at the others. Belen, Uldane, and Roghar rode beside each other. That trio seemed no more than typically wary, but riding just a little behind them, Immeral sat strangely stiff in his saddle. The huntsman had the most woodcraft of them all. He’d probably spotted the demons long before. If there were as many as Splendid suggested, he may have decided to keep that information to himself. Once the demons knew they’d been spotted, there would be no further reason to remain hidden.

Without looking a second time at either the trees or her friends, she whispered her suspicion to Albanon. His brow creased. “You’re likely right,” he murmured back. “But what are the demons waiting for? They have us surrounded. Why don’t they attack?”

“I don’t know,” Splendid whimpered. “Just pray that they don’t. There are too many of them!”

Now that she knew the demons were there, Tempest started watching out of the corner of her eye. Over to one side, where a slow breeze stirred the leaves of a tree, she spotted something dark pressed against a branch. And on the ground, she caught sight of a misshapen head peering past a broken stump. A heap of leaves shivered when it shouldn’t have. She swallowed.

“Splendid’s right,” she said. “And Immeral has the right idea, too. We need to keep riding. Whatever reason they have for not attacking, we should make the most of it.” She bit her lip. “But Roghar and the others need to know or they could provoke an attack.”

“I can warn them.” Albanon twisted around in his saddle and reached for his saddlebag as if fishing for something. His gaze, however, went to their friends. Albanon’s eyes narrowed in concentration and one finger flicked back toward the others.

“Don’t react,” he whispered. “Plague demons are watching us. We’re going to keep riding unless they attack. Carry on as if nothing is wrong. Roghar, if you understand, start singing.”

It was all Tempest could do not to look back herself. She kept her eyes on Albanon and the next three heartbeats seemed to stretch on forever.

Then Roghar’s voice rolled along the road. “Oh, there was a knight of fair Belarn and a mighty knight was he-”

“They’re warned,” said Albanon. He pulled a small bundle from his saddlebag and sat upright. “I think Immeral figured it out, too. He nodded at me.”

Tempest looked at Albanon appraisingly. “You didn’t hesitate to use your magic.”

The wizard blinked, then one side of his mouth crooked up in a smile. “It was only a cantrip, hardly a spell at all,” he said modestly, but she could tell he was pleased. He unwrapped the bundle to reveal some cheese. “Something to eat? We’re likely going to be riding for a while.” He broke off a chunk of cheese, but it slipped from fingers that betrayed his nervousness and tumbled to the ground. He cursed heavily, clenched his teeth for a moment, then tried again. “Why aren’t they attacking us?” he muttered.

This one sees them. Visions welled up of a party of travelers, a hundred images gathered from a hundred watching eyes. Eager hunger came with the visions, but it was a hunger suppressed at his command. Vestapalk held a tight grip on his gathered minions. He spun the images in his mind. A kind of triumph rose in him. He’d known his enemies couldn’t remain holed up in Fallcrest like rats in a wall.

He plucked their location from the bestial minds of the demons that watched them, not in words but in a sense of space and direction. He pictured it as if he were flying overhead. Here they are. He considered them for a moment, then swept across the Nentir Vale in his mind to hover over an insignificant village. This is where their road will lead them. Winterhaven. This one knows it.

Across the vast web that was the Voidharrow, another voice answered him. This one hears. Their road leads to death!

In the depths of the Plaguedeep, Vestapalk smiled. In the heart of the Cloak Wood, a hundred demons grinned and watched the travelers pass.

The remainder of their ride through the Cloak Wood became a seemingly unending march. When Roghar’s song finally ended, they rode in silence. The paladin didn’t start another. Even Uldane fell quiet.

Albanon thought about talking to Tempest, but attempting conversation felt forced and false. He tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. Even their earlier discussion, as uncomfortable as it had been for him, would have been preferable. The afternoon became a slow progression between trees that he dared not look toward, at a pace he dared not alter. Sweat gathered on his back and dripped down the curve of his spine.

One question kept returning: Why didn’t the plague demons attack? They had him and the others outnumbered. They had them surrounded. From the glimpses he caught out of the corner of his eye, the demons were moving with them. Several times, Albanon saw them shifting silently among the trees to take up new positions. He was certain there was one demon with a white scar across its misshapen face and a particular inability to hide itself as well as the others that he saw three or four times.

Why were they holding back? The demons were creatures of raw fury. Even when a greater demon commanded them, they didn’t show such discipline and silent patience. In fact, only once had he seen them so restrained-and that was at the Temple of Yellow Skulls when Vestapalk himself had been present. The tension in Albanon’s back crept up to his scalp. Vestapalk could project his awareness into any demon. He’d done it during the attack on Fallcrest to taunt them. He could be among the watching demons at that very moment. The dragon might be the reason they kept to the trees.

But why? Why?

He tried to force his mind to stillness. The rhythm of the horses’ hooves measured out the leagues, the slow passage of the sun as afternoon sank toward dusk. Clip-clip-clip-clip-clip. One, two, three-

Five. Seven. Eleven. Thirteen. Seventeen. Nineteen. Twenty-three. Prime numbers, the keys to unlocking unlimited arcane power if only he could wrap his thoughts around numbers large enough. Twenty-nine. Thirty-one-

He jerked in his saddle. Around his neck, Splendid hissed in alarm and dug needle claws through his robes and into flesh. Albanon yelped at the pain, but it brought his wandering mind back into focus.

It also brought a sharp look from Tempest.

“I’m fine,” he lied in answer to her unvoiced concern. He cursed himself for letting his guard down. Had he really been so proud of himself for casting a simple cantrip? He tugged gently on his reins. “Slow down,” he said. “Let the others catch up to us. I’ve had enough of riding apart.”

“We’ll present a more compact target if we’re all riding together,” said Tempest.

“I don’t care.”

It took a few moments-long, excruciating moments-for first Roghar, Belen, and Uldane, then Immeral, to join them. Albanon could see the tension in all of them. “How much farther?” he asked Uldane. The halfling knew the road better than all of them.

“You see that bend ahead? The trees continue for about a bowshot on the other side, then the countryside is clear on either side of the road.”

“It’s not that far,” said Belen. The woman’s voice was hoarse. The tension and the lurking presence of the demons seemed to have worn on her more than the others. Her hand was locked around the hilt of her sword and her lips were white where they pressed together. “We could run it. If nothing else, the horses are rested.”

“No.” Immeral shook his head. “That bend is too perfect for an ambush. They could already be waiting for us-and the ones around us now would only have to close in to cut off our retreat.” He looked to Albanon. “Stay the course, my prince.”

Albanon found the others looking at him as well, even Roghar. He tightened his jaw for a moment as he considered their options, then nodded. Belen cursed under her breath, but made no move to ride any faster.

Knowing that the way out of the woods was close didn’t make the bend in the road approach any more quickly, however. Albanon felt as if he were conscious of every sound their group made and equally conscious of the deep silence that surrounded them. Birds should have been calling as the sun sank lower and the shadows stretched out across the road. But all was quiet. Even the horses seemed to realize something was amiss. They became harder to control, their hoofbeats irregular as they danced and shied. Their nervousness brought back Albanon’s. He fixed his eyes on the bend in the road. It came closer. Closer. Closer…

Then they were around it and the late afternoon sun painted the road. A bowshot away lay open countryside.

Albanon glanced at Immeral. The huntsman took his time studying the trees ahead so that they’d covered a third of the distance before he twitched his head in the slightest of nods. Albanon’s stomach rose into his throat. He glanced around at the others and drew a deep breath. “Hold tight, Splendid,” he murmured-then he kicked his heels into his horse’s side and shouted, “ Hyah! Hyah! ”

All six horses leaped forward in unison and their hooves became thunder on the road. The edge of the woods swept toward them. Albanon leaned low over his mount’s neck, urging the beast to greater speed. He imagined plague demons pouring out of the trees in their wake and didn’t dare turn his head to look.

They burst out of the woods and sped along the road like bolts flung from a crossbow. No one suggested slowing down. They must have run ten or twelve bowshots before Albanon glimpsed Tempest, riding at the head of their pack, rise slightly in her stirrups and glance back. Her eyes widened slightly, and Albanon risked looking back himself.

Nothing moved between them and the dark blotch of the Cloak Wood. The demons had not pursued them. He looked to Tempest again. The tiefling only shook her head and he knew she felt the same confusion he did.

They rode on after the sun had set, pushing the horses as hard as they dared and trusting to the sharp low-light vision of Albanon, Tempest, and Immeral as darkness gathered. The demons were still somewhere behind them. No one was willing to trust that they would stay in the woods. Sometime around midnight, they found an old ruined watchtower a little way off the road and made camp without lighting a fire. When the sun broke the horizon again, they continued on their way.

There was still no sign of pursuit by the demons from the Cloak Wood. Albanon even caught himself wondering if they’d just imagined the lurking creatures, fashioning illusions out of fear and shadows. That only lasted as long as it took him to suggest the idea to Splendid. She gave him a withering glare. “It takes more than shadows to frighten me. Fool yourself if you want to. They were there.”

They reached Winterhaven in the middle of the afternoon. As at Fallcrest, the outlying farms had suffered the most. Unlike Fallcrest, however, the farms of Winterhaven did not look simply abandoned. Roghar studied them as they rode past, then left the group to take a closer look at one farmstead. Albanon and Tempest held spells on their lips, ready to defend the paladin if anything leaped out at him. Nothing did, and Roghar cantered back to them.

“This farm was looted,” he said grimly. “It’s been stripped of anything portable that might be of any use.”

“Survivors from Winterhaven scavenging what they could?” suggested Immeral.

“I don’t think so. There were a lot of footprints-human, not demon-but no hoofprints or cart tracks. Whoever carried goods away from here did it on foot.”

“The Winterhaveners will know more,” said Uldane, but he sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as them. Albanon worried about what they might find in Winterhaven itself. He’d visited the village once or twice during his apprenticeship to Moorin, but never for long. He had rough memories of it as a compact little community, snug behind a good stone wall. In his imagination, he saw that wall stained with soot and blood, its strong gates hanging loose.

His fears were unfounded. Winterhaven’s walls were unblemished, its gates scarred by deep claw marks but still whole and tightly shut. The buildings immediately outside of the walls were empty but they didn’t look like they’d been raided by plague demons or anyone else. From inside the wall, three or four plumes of white smoke rose cheerfully into the sky.

Uldane let out a sigh so deep it seemed like it should have come from a much larger body. “They’re all right,” he said, then he screwed up his face. “Although normally the gate stands open during the day.”

“Are you surprised they’re keeping it closed these days?” asked Roghar. He adjusted his shield so the symbol of Bahamut was more visible and rode closer. “Ho! Gatekeeper! Travelers wish-”

“I see you,” called a gruff voice from atop the wall. Sunlight glinted on the steel of a crossbow aimed at the paladin. On the other end of the crossbow, his head just visible over the parapets, was a dwarf. “What do you want?”

“Thair?” Uldane urged his horse closer to the gate. “Let us in! These are my friends.”

The dwarf lowered the crossbow and peered down, squinting. “Uldane, is that you?” His face broke into a wide, brilliant smile. “By Moradin’s hammer! How about that? Hold on. We’ll get the gate open for you.”

He disappeared from the wall and Albanon heard him calling out to someone. There were sounds of activity from the other side of the gate. Uldane turned back to Albanon and the others. Instead of the confident smile that Albanon expected to see, however, the halfling’s expression was taut.

“Thair is a blacksmith,” he said. “He shouldn’t be watching the gate.”

Belen shook her head. “If Winterhaven is anything like Fallcrest, they’ll have pressed anyone who can hold a weapon into watch duty. Any regular garrison will be exhausted-or dead.”

Half of the big gate swung open and a human man dressed haphazardly in piecemeal armor waved to them. “Inside, quick. We don’t like to keep it open for long.”

It seemed to Albanon that he looked at them and their weapons longingly as they rode past, not with greed or desire so much as with desperation. He gave Albanon and Tempest especially long looks. “Spellcasters?” he asked. Albanon nodded. The man’s eyes opened wide. “A priest?” he added hopefully.

“A paladin,” said Tempest, nodding at Roghar.

The man looked positively giddy as he pushed the gate closed and lowered a massive, ingeniously counterweighted beam across it. Albanon leaned a little closer to Tempest. “I think the people here will be disappointed when we say we’re not staying long.”

“Is our destination still beyond Winterhaven?”

Albanon nodded. He didn’t even have to think about it.

Thair shouted down. “Uldane, go to Wrafton’s! I’ll meet you-my shift is done soon. You’ll find everybody there anyway.”

Uldane answered him with a salute, then gestured for the others to ride with him. “Wrafton’s is Winterhaven’s inn,” he said. “We’ll find answers there. It’s the busiest place in the village.”

Albanon doubted that even the busiest place in Winterhaven was all that busy. After the crush of refugees in Fallcrest, Winterhaven seemed deserted. The smoke they had seen from the other side of the wall rose from only a handful of more than a dozen buildings. There were few people abroad and those who were stared as if frankly surprised that anyone had come to their village. All of them went armed. There were no children and no noises that might have suggested children at play in any of the buildings. In fact, the entire village was eerily quiet.

Even Uldane looked unsettled. He pointed across at a market cart that stood abandoned on one side of a wide square of beaten earth. Spiderwebs had gathered in the corners of the cart’s frame and patchy grass grew around its wheel. “That’s Delphina Moongem’s stall. She sold wildflowers out of it. She’d never let it look like that.”

None of them had anything to say in response.

Wrafton’s Inn was a long stone building with a high slate roof. No stableboy emerged to take their horses. Uldane showed them to the stables himself. Somewhat to Albanon’s surprise, there were several other horses in the stalls, a curious mix of good riding mounts and big beasts of burden. Uldane’s uneasy expression deepened. “I know these horses,” he said. “This one belongs to a farmer who lives just outside the walls. This one belongs to the local lord. Both of them have their own stables.”

“They could have ridden them here,” said Immeral.

“Both of them live within easy walking distance.” Uldane shook his head and led them out. “Come inside-we need to talk to whoever’s here.”

The interior of the inn was as grim as Albanon had imagined it would be. The big common room was as silent as a tomb and nearly as dark, the windows shuttered and the shutters secured with heavy bolts, the latter a recent addition by the look of them. There were people present, but nearly all of them lay asleep across benches or draped over tables. Early in the day to be passed out drunk, Albanon thought, then he realized that the sleepers wore various forms of armor and slept with weapons close to hand. The inn had become a kind of barracks.

The only conscious people huddled in a small knot around the bar, deep in discussion. Several moments passed before one of them looked up and noticed that the newcomers weren’t Winterhaveners. He nudged an older woman next to him. She practically jumped at his touch, then saw them and came over. “How can I help you, travelers-”

Her voice died as she laid eyes on Uldane and for an instant she froze. Then she rushed forward, dropping to her knees and wrapping her arms around the halfling, hugging him and crying. Uldane, a little smothered, did his best to soothe her. “Easy, Salvana,” he mumbled. “Easy. It’s all right.”

“I can’t help it,” said the woman over his shoulder. “It’s just that with so many people gone, seeing someone I know again-” She broke into a fresh round of sobs.

The door behind them opened. Albanon looked back to see Thair coming through. The dwarf’s eyes fell on Uldane and Salvana and he winced.

“Aye, sorry,” he said. “I should have warned you. Things can get a little emotional around here. You should have seen her when Shara came by.”

He might as well have pulled out a bucket of water and drenched them. Albanon blinked and stared at him. So did Roghar, Tempest, and Belen. Uldane pulled himself out of Salvana’s hug to turn and face Thair. “Shara’s been here? Recently?” he asked, his voice cracking a little bit.

Thair’s eyebrows rose. “Just three days ago.” He looked around at all of them. “You mean you didn’t know?”