density-
He choked off the voice and concentrated on his hands. The flames flickered and went out. Albanon glared at Kri. “I’m not going to do that.”
“Disappointing. I would have thought you were capable of more. Tell me how your friends are then. Shara, Uldane, Quarhaun-I think we saw Tempest and Roghar back in Fallcrest briefly, too, or have they gone off again? How’s Splendid?”
The question tore open a wound. “Splendid’s dead. Vestapalk killed her with some kind of new plague demon that was smarter and faster than the others, almost like Vestapalk had merged himself with a plague demon.”
“Vestapalk is the Abyssal Plague. The Abyssal Plague is the Voidharrow. The Voidharrow is Vestapalk. When the Voidharrow has consumed enough of the world, there will be very little that Vestapalk isn’t capable of.” Kri leaned back. “I’m sorry to hear about Splendid. I liked her.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t even say her name.” New anger flashed in Albanon. He swallowed it as best he could. “Trying to get here killed her as certainly as Vestapalk did. I know that it was Tharizdun who put the urge to come here into me, but I would have thought even a banished god could come up with someone better suited to killing Vestapalk than you.”
Kri sat up sharply, eyes flashing. “Killing Vestapalk is only incidental to what Tharizdun wants. I told you, our mission is vengeance on the Voidharrow, and I hold the key to its destruction.”
“What’s that?”
Kri stalked up to him and leaned into his face. “I know what it is.” He stepped back. “I spent my life-yes, and the lives of others-in pursuit of true knowledge about the Voidharrow. That’s what drove me from the Order of Vigilance and Ioun to the worship of Tharizdun. He knows the value of change. He doesn’t keep secrets. After I passed through the Vast Gate and since I’ve been here, he’s shown me everything I need to know.”
He turned to gaze up at the cowled statue. “We are told that Tharizdun created the Abyss by planting a crystal of evil in the heart of the Primordial Chaos. That crystal wasn’t a seed of evil-it was a seed of change, drawn from another world where one force, one being, had consumed everything until it was the only thing in its world. It called itself the Progenitor. When the other gods discovered that Tharizdun had introduced change into their perfect world, they imprisoned him with the Progenitor in its world. But over the eons, Tharizdun and the Progenitor worked together. They merged part of their essences and found a way to send that merged essence back to our world.”
“The Voidharrow,” said Albanon.
“Yes,” said Kri, looking back at him. “And no. The Voidharrow was meant to be used with a fragment of the Living Gate-the same fragment we found in Sherinna’s tower in the Feywild-to forge a new gate, the Vast Gate, and set both Tharizdun and the Progenitor free. But the Voidharrow had been twisted by the Progenitor. It took on a life of its own and began to consume our world just as the Progenitor had consumed his. It only needed a suitable host and when it escaped after centuries as the prisoner of the Order of Vigilance, it found one in Vestapalk. The Abyssal Plague is only the beginning. Together Vestapalk and the Voidharrow will consume everything. Everything. That’s why it laid a trap so that it might consume Tharizdun when he tried to re-enter the world. Imagine Vestapalk enhanced with the power of a god.”
A chill had worked itself into Albanon. “So how do we stop it?”
Kri smiled. “The Voidharrow was created by merging the Progenitor’s hunger and Tharizdun’s mighty will. The Progenitor is alien to our world. It can’t exist here-the only reason it does is because Tharizdun’s will holds it together. Extract Tharizdun’s will from the Voidharrow, and it will be destroyed.”
“And how exactly do we do that?”
Kri’s smile faltered. “I have the key. Tharizdun said the one who came would help to turn it.”
“Me?” asked Albanon. “I don’t know anything about Tharizdun’s will. What am I supposed to do?”
“You have power,” Kri said.
“Fire. Lightning. If I want to use it. And it hasn’t exactly been predictable so far. How does that help us?”
“You can manipulate magical flows more directly than that. I’ve seen it. In Moorin’s tower, you fed power back into the prison ward that the Voidharrow formed around Tharizdun and burned the Voidharrow away.”
“I think this would be subtler than that.” Albanon sat down on a hunk of broken statue. “Why can’t we just burn the Voidharrow with fire or the light of the gods, though? Vestapalk is laired in something he calls the Plaguedeep. Belen-she’s a Fallcrest guard who was possessed by Nu Alin until Tempest and I drove him out-saw the place in Nu Alin’s memories. It’s the crater of a volcano west of the Vale, but Vestapalk has transformed it somehow with the Voidharrow. There’s a concentration of it there, a great pool that Vestapalk wallows in.”
Kri sucked in his breath. “Then he’s gone further in his consumption of the world than I thought.” He sat down, too. “Burning will only destroy the portion of the Voidharrow your fire or my radiance consumes. Some of it might escape. If Vestapalk has already turned it against the rocks and stones of the world, it could have reached into the Underdark already. We need to destroy it completely. Drawing out Tharizdun’s will should do that. Wherever the Voidharrow is, it will be affected.”
“What about the Abyssal Plague and the plague demons?”
“That’s harder to say. Without the Voidharrow’s power, the plague will lose much of its virulence, but the demons are creatures of both worlds now. If they survive the destruction of the Voidharrow, they may still be able to infect others. Though probably not as easily.”
Albanon blinked. “They won’t be cured?”
Kri gave him a blunt look. “Those infected have changed, Albanon. The Abyssal Plague has done its work on them. They are what they are now.”
A sour taste came into Albanon’s mouth. “But they were all people once. Can’t we bring them back? You burned the Voidharrow out of me.”
“You had just been turned. There was still time. The people that the plague demons were are dead. Could you bring back the dead from any other plague?” Kri held up the crystal lantern. “We feed the gods, Albanon.”
“Tharizdun is a god, too. Do we feed him?”
“Even Tharizdun-but the Chained God gives us a chance to fight. Without freedom and change, where would we be? Exactly where the other gods want us.”
Albanon stared at the old priest for a long moment, then asked, “Do you really believe that?”
“If I didn’t, I would still be Ioun’s pawn.” Kri looked directly into Albanon’s eyes. “Tharizdun wants the Voidharrow stopped. You want Vestapalk dead. Look into your heart. Has this ever been about the Abyssal Plague? Shara has sworn to kill Vestapalk for what he did to her friends and father. You have sworn to take revenge on Vestapalk for almost turning you into his exarch. If the only way to stop the plague required leaving Vestapalk alive, would you take it?”
Albanon wanted to say yes, but he couldn’t. All the dead of Fallcrest and Winterhaven. Immeral. Splendid. All those dead and lost beyond the Nentir Vale because of the Abyssal Plague. He laid them at Vestapalk’s feet.
“Will destroying the Voidharrow kill Vestapalk?” he asked Kri finally.
“He is its host. It imbues and empowers him. It’s part of him now. I don’t believe he could live without it.”
“Then I think that’s all I can ask.” Albanon looked at the old priest. “I’ll work with you-assuming we can figure out exactly how to separate Tharizdun’s will from the Voidharrow.”
“We’ll find a way. We worked well together before.” He held out his hand.
Albanon shook his head. “We worked well before you betrayed me,” he said. “Before you broke my mind. I’m not going to trust you again, Kri. Don’t act like you’re my mentor.”
Kri let his hand fall. “Fairly spoken,” he said. “We have a common interest, nothing more.” He sat back once again. “So where do we begin?”
Kri might have been mad and a traitor, but Albanon had to admit it was good to talk to someone who really understood magic again. Tempest was intelligent, but a warlock’s understanding of magic was different from a wizard’s, received through pacts and bargains with supernatural creatures rather than hard study. And while Kri was a cleric, drawing his magic from divine sources, he had served the god of magic and knowledge for most of his life. Changing his allegiance to Tharizdun had not taken away what he’d learned as Ioun’s priest. It was frighteningly easy to forget that Kri had tried to kill him and bring a banished god back into the world.
They began with generalities: what resources they had to work with, past instances each had read about
