“I suspect some were born, lived, and died here. I’ll show you their tombs. They’re very well preserved.” He started down the stairs again, but Albanon grabbed him.
“How did they get in and out?” the eladrin asked.
“I don’t think they did,” said Kri with a smile. “The ledges are the only way to the outside world that I’ve found. I suspect the cloister was largely self-sufficient and self-contained. The dwarves were devoted to Tharizdun.”
“How do we get out?” Albanon’s voice actually cracked in panic. Kri smiled wider and patted Albanon’s cheek.
“Tharizdun will show us the way when it’s time.” He paused and considered another option. “Unless it’s possible for us to bring about his vengeance against the Voidharrow from in here.”
“No,” Albanon said tightly. “No, it can’t be. We know already where Vestapalk is. After we’d come here, we were going to take whatever we found to fight him.”
“Then maybe the Chained God has already sent us a message. You have found me. It can only be a matter of time before he sends us on our way.” He thrust the lantern into Albanon’s hands. “Carry that. Hold it up so I can see.”
Albanon looked down at the lantern-and almost dropped it as he stared at the blasphemous carvings on the crystal globe. Kri grabbed his hands and wrapped them tight around the lantern. “Study them later. You might learn something,” he told the wizard. “Do you read Davek?”
“Only a little.”
“Moorin neglected your training shamefully. If we’re here long, I’ll teach you. There are fascinating inscriptions on the walls here.” He set off down the stairs.
“Kri,” said Albanon, “how long have you been here?”
“How long has it been since you sent me through the Vast Gate?”
“About two weeks.”
“Is that all?”
Albanon paused, then added, “What have you been… eating all that time?”
Kri froze, then swung around and glared at him. With the purple light of the lantern shining up under his face, Albanon looked even paler than normal. His eyes were wide and frightened. Kri could guess immediately what the wizard had thought. He grimaced in disgust. “You think because I mentioned the dwarven tombs that I’ve turned into some kind of bone-gnawing ghoul? I may serve the Chained God, but I’m not a monster.” He jerked his head back toward the hidden door. “Tharizdun showed me the way to the ledges. Perytons lay eggs like birds. I haven’t eaten well, but I’ve eaten enough.”
Albanon swallowed. “The perytons are dead. We ambushed them in the valley. The one you just killed was the last of them.”
Kri gave him a cold smile. “Then maybe you should reconsider praying to Tharizdun.”
The forgotten cloister of Tharizdun stank of madness. Albanon wouldn’t have considered such a thing possible, but it was true. There was something in the air, oozing from the stone and the shadows, that assaulted his nostrils. It couldn’t have been real. Try as he might, he couldn’t identify the odor. Whenever he tried to, it changed. It smelled like dung or ashes or wet stone or roses. It had to have been his imagination.
It was there, though. Every time he convinced himself that it wasn’t real, it returned with some new and visceral stench so powerful he could feel it sinking into his skin. If he escaped the cloister, he would burn his robes and scrub his skin with sand until it stung.
When he’d ventured into the lonely Tower of Waiting in Fallcrest with Kri in search of the demon Nu Alin, it had seemed like he was descending into an abyss of madness, where insanity lurked just out of sight. In the dwarven cloister it was on full display everywhere he looked. The farther he followed Kri down the long, ever- circling stairs, the more it seemed to emerge.
He might not have been able to read the characters of the inscriptions written on the walls, but sometimes there were drawings with them. He tried to avoid looking at them. He tried to avoid looking at the carvings high in the shadows along the sloping ceiling: every kind of creeping, crawling, and writhing beast he could imagine. All carved in flawless detail. All represented mouth to tail as if consuming the one in front and birthing-or excreting-the one behind. He was fairly certain that Kri, with his weak human sight, wasn’t even able to see them beyond the lantern’s purple light.
The lantern was the worst. Albanon had never considered himself particularly religious, but the scenes of feasting gods carved into the crystal were vile. Even if he didn’t look at the lantern itself, it seemed to him that the carvings caught the light and reproduced themselves in its glimmers. No matter where he looked, ghostly images projected by the lantern floated in the air. Avandra, the wanderer’s god, gnawed on the feet and legs of screaming travelers. Erathis, god of civilization and the cities, ground men and women in a great mortar and pestle. Noble Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon, buried his snout in his worshipers’ entrails. Melora, god of the wilderness and the sea, boiled them in a soup.
And the whispering voice in his head had returned. Look, it urged him. Look and learn. This is how the gods truly are, devouring the lives of mortals while their worshipers offer themselves up. This is the world, everything prey for everything else. Why do you try to deny it? Embrace it. Embrace the power you have and use it to put yourself at the top of the dung heap.
“No!” he spat out loud.
The word echoed along the stairs, crashing back and forth. Kri looked back at him. “Tharizdun’s gaze lies upon this place. You feel it.”
Albanon ground his teeth and said nothing. He lowered the lantern and conjured his own magical light in the palm of his hand.
It flashed and dimmed like a dying ember.
The whisper in his head laughed. You could make it as bright as the sun, you know. Numbers flickered in his mind, equations for volume and brilliance.
He pushed them away and cupped his fingers around the ember-dim light. “It’s enough for me to see by,” he said to Kri.
The old priest shrugged and took the purple lantern from him. If he saw the ghostly images, he gave no indication of it. “As you wish. We’re stopping here anyway.”
Albanon looked up and stared around at a broad chamber full of broken statuary. Dim golden daylight filtered in from high crevices that seemed filled with crystal-dwarven light pipes. In that light, the madness seemed to ebb. Albanon took a slow breath and allowed the light to wink out between his fingers. Kri went over and sat down beneath a statue of a cowled man that looked as if something had broken out of a hollow space within it. Tharizdun’s symbol of a jagged spiral was marked on the palms of the statue’s outstretched hands. Albanon kept his distance. Kri just shrugged and settled himself more comfortably.
“So, my apprentice,” he said. “Tell me the news of the Nentir Vale. Has the Abyssal Plague overrun it yet?”
“I’m not your apprentice,” Albanon said harshly.
“No? It seems to me you’ve grown more in skill and power under my mentorship than with Moorin as your master. I was impressed with your manipulation of the flow of magical energy during our battle.”
A part of Albanon took pride in the praise. He braced himself against it. “That’s not skill, it’s madness. That kind of power is uncontrollable.”
“By which you mean you can’t control it. That’s just weakness. Embrace the madness and you’ll find that the power answers to you.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want me to do?” Albanon asked angrily. “It seems to me that when I did, I was able to swat you around like a moth. And right now, old man, you don’t have the dark power the Chained God’s presence gave you!”
Kri threw back his head and laughed. “Yes! Yes! There you go, that’s exactly what you need to do. Get angry. Let go of your control. Burn something. Melt something.”
A weird flickering light danced across the cleric’s face, as if Kri sat before a fire. It took Albanon a moment to realize that the fire came from him. Flames he didn’t remember summoning licked around his clenched fists. He held his hands up in front of him and the flames flared like torches.
Melting something, thought the voice in his head. That’s new. Focused fire, not increased in volume but in
