Kierkan Rufo’s dreams were no longer those of a victim. He saw Cadderly, but this time it was the young Deneirian, not the branded Rufo, who cowered. This time, in this dream, Rufo, the conqueror, calmly reached down and tore Cadderly’s throat out.
The vampire awoke in absolute darkness. He could see the stone walls pressing in on him, and he welcomed their sanctuary, basking in the blackness as the minutes turned into an hour.
Then another call compelled Rufo; a great hunger swept over him. He tried to ignore it, consciously wanted nothing more than to lie in the cool black emptiness. Soon his fingers clawed at the stone and he thrashed about, overwhelmed by urges he did not understand. A low, feral growl, the call of an animal, escaped his lips.
Rufo squirmed and twisted, turning his body completely about in the crypt. At first the thrashing vampire thought to tear the blocking stone away, to shatter this barrier into a million pieces, but he kept his senses enough to realize that he might need this sanctuary again. Concentrating on the minute crack at the base of the slab, Rufo melted away into greenish vapor-it wasn’t difficult-and filtered out into the mausoleum’s main area.
Druzil, perched on the nearest slab, doglike chin in clawed fingers, waited for him.
Rufo hardly noticed the imp, though. When he assumed corporeal form, he felt different, less stiff and awkward. He smelled the night air-his air-about him and felt strong. Faint moonlight leaked in through the dirty window, but unlike the light of the sun, it was cool, comfortable. Rufo stretched his arms into the air, kicked off with one foot, and twirled around on the other, tasting the night and his freedom.
“They did not come,” Druzil said to him.
Rufo started to ask what the imp might be talking about, but, as soon as he noticed the two corpses, he understood. “I am not surprised,” the vampire answered. “The library is full of duties. Always duties. The dead priests may not be missed for several days.”
“Then gather them up,” Druzil ordered. “Drag them from this place.”
Rufo concentrated more on the imp’s tone than on the actual words.
“Do it now,” Druzil went on, oblivious to the fast-mounting danger. “If we are careful…” Only then did Druzil look up from the nearest corpse to see Rufo’s face, and the vampire’s icy glare sent a shiver along the normally unshakable imp’s spine.
Druzil didn’t even try to continue with his reasoning, didn’t even try to get words past the lump that filled his throat.
“Come to me,” Rufo said quietly, calmly.
Druzil had no intention of following that command. He started to shake his head, large ears flapping noisily; he even tried to utter a derogatory comment. Those thoughts were lost in the imp’s sudden realization that he was indeed moving toward Rufo, that his feet and wings were heeding the vampire’s command. He was at the end of the slab, then he hopped off, flapping his bat wings to remain in the air, to continue his steady progress.
Rufo’s cold hand shot out and caught the imp by the throat, breaking the trance. Druzil let out a shriek and instinctively brought his tail about, waving it menacingly in Rufo’s face.
Rufo laughed and began to squeeze.
Druzil’s tail snapped into Rufo’s face, its barbed tip boring a small hole.
Rufo continued to laugh wickedly and squeezed tighter with his horribly powerful grasp. “Who is the master?” the confident vampire asked.
Druzil thought his head would be popped off! He couldn’t begin to squirm. And that gaze! Druzil had faced some of the most powerful lords of the lower planes, but at that moment, it seemed to the imp that none was more imposing.
“Who is the master?” Rufo asked again.
Druzil’s tail fell limp, and he stopped struggling. “Please, master,” he whined breathlessly.
“I am hungry,” the vampire announced, casually tossing Druzil aside. Rufo strode for the mausoleum door with a graceful and confident gait. As he neared the door, he reached out with his will and it swung open. As he crossed through the portal, it banged closed once more, leaving Druzil alone in the mausoleum, muttering to himself.
Bachtolen Mossgarden, the library’s cook since Ivan Bouldershoulder had gone away, was also muttering to himself that night. Bachy, as the priests called him, was fed up with his new duties. He had been hired as a groundskeeper-that was what Bachy did best-but with winter thick about the grounds, and with the dwarf gallivanting in the mountains, the priests had changed the rules.
“Slop, slop, and more stinkin’ slop!” the dirty man grumbled, overturning a bucket of leftover cabbage down a slope behind the squat library. He moved to pick his nose, but changed his mind as the finger, reeking of old cabbage, neared the nostril.
“I’m even starting to smell like the stinkin’ slop!” he whined, and he banged on the metal bucket, spilling the last of its remains onto the slick, stained snow, and spun about to leave.
Bachy noticed that it had suddenly grown much colder. And quieter, he realized a moment later. It wasn’t the cold that had given him pause, but the stillness. Even the wind was no more.
The hairs on the back of Bachy’s neck tingled and stood on end. Something was wrong, out of place.
“Who is it?” he asked straightforwardly, for that had always been his way. He didn’t wash much, he didn’t shave much, and he justified it by saying that people should like him for more than appearance.
Bachy liked to think of himself as profound.
“Who is it?” he asked again, more clearly, gaining courage in the fact that no one had answered the first time. He had almost convinced himself that he was letting his imagination get the best of him, had even taken his first step back toward the Edificant Library, the back door of the kitchen only twenty yards away, when a tall, angular figure stepped in front of him, standing perfectly still and quiet.
Bachy stuttered through a series of beginnings of questions, never completing a one. Most prominent among them was Bachy’s pure wonderment at where this guy had come from. It seemed to the poor, dirty cook that the man had stepped out of thin air, or out of shadows that were not deep enough to hide him!
The figure advanced a step. Overhead, the moonlight broke through a cloud, revealing Rufo’s pallid face.
Bachy wavered, seemed as if he would fall over. He wanted to cry out but found no voice. He wanted to run, but his tegs would barely support him while standing still.
Rufo tasted the fear, and his eyes lit up, horrid red flames dancing where his pupils should have been. The vampire grinned evilly, his mouth gradually opening wide, baring long fangs. Bachy mumbled something that sounded like, “By the gods,” then he was kneeling in the snow, his legs having buckled underneath him.
The sensation of fear, of sweet, sweet fear, multiplied tenfold, washed over Rufo. It was the purest feeling of ecstacy the wretch had ever known. He understood and appreciated his power at that moment. This pitiful slob, this man he did not even know, couldn’t begin to resist him!
Rufo moved slowly, determinedly, knowing that his victim was helpless before the spectacle of the vampire.
And then he tasted blood, like the nectar he had drawn from the foolish Oghman priest inside the mausoleum before Druzil’s poison had tainted it. This blood was not tainted. Bachy was a dirty thing, but his blood was pure, warm, and sweet.
The minutes slipped past, and Rufo fed. He understood then that he should stop. Somehow he knew that if he didn’t kill this wretch, the man would rise up in undeath, a lesser creature, to serve him. Instinctively the vampire realized that this one would be his slave-at least until Bachy, too, had fully followed the path to becoming a vampire.
Rufo continued to feed. He meant to stop, but no level of thought could overrule the pleasure the vampire knew. Sometime later, Bachy’s husk of a corpse tumbled down the slope behind the other discarded garbage.
By the time the night began to wane, Kierkan Rufo had become comfortable with his new existence. He wandered about like a wolf scouting its domain, thinking always of the kill, of the taste of the dirty man’s blood. Dried brown remnants of the macabre feast stained the vampire’s face and cloak as he stood before the side wall of the Edificant Library, looking up to the gargoyles that lined its gutter system, and past the roof, to the stars of his domain.
A voice in his head (he knew it was Druzil’s) told him he should return to the mausoleum, to the cool, dark crypt where he might hide from the infernal heat of the coming sun. Yet there was a danger in that plan, Rufo realized. He had taken tilings too far now. The revealing light of day might put the priests on their guard, and they would be formidable opponents.
They would know where to start looking.
Death had given Kierkan Rufo new insights and powers beyond anything the order of Deneir had ever promised. He could feel the chaos curse swirling within his body, which he inhabited like a partner, an adviser. Rufo could go and find a place to be safe, but Tuanta Quiro Miancay wanted more than safety.
Rufo was barely conscious that he had changed form, but the next thing he knew, his bat claws had found a perch on the edge of the library’s roof. Bones crackled and stretched as the vampire resumed his human form, leaving Rufo sitting on the roof’s edge, looking down on a window that he knew well.
He climbed headfirst down the wall, his strong undead fingers finding secure holds where in life he would have seen only smooth stone, past the third floor, to the second. To Rufo’s surprise, an iron grate had been placed over this window. He reached through the bars and pushed in the glass, then thought of becoming vaporous and simply wafting into the room. For some reason, some instinctive, animalistic urge, as though it occurred to him that the grate had been put there only to hinder his progress, he grabbed an iron bar and, with one hand, tore the grate free and sent it spinning into the night.
The entire library was open to him, he believed, and the vampire had no intention of leaving.
Those thoughts inevitably led Danica to Dorigen, sitting wrapped in a blanket across the fire from her. What of the wizard? she wondered. What if Thobicus, expecting what was to come from Cadderly, did not respect Danica’s rights as captor and ordered Dorigen executed?
Danica shook the disturbing thoughts from her mind and berated herself for letting her imagination run wild. Dean Thobicus was not an evil man, after all, and his weakness had always been a lack of decisive action. Dorigen was not likely in danger.
“The area remains clear,” said Shayleigh, pulling Danica from her thoughts. She looked up as the elf maiden entered the camp, bow in hand. Shayleigh smiled and nodded to Dorigen, who appeared fast asleep.
“The mountains haven’t awakened from the winter’s slumber,” Danica replied.
Shayleigh nodded, but her mischievous, thoroughly elven smile showed Danica that she thought the time for the spring dance was growing near. “Rest now,” Shayleigh offered. “I will take my reverie later in the evening.”
Danica eyed Shayleigh for a long while before agreeing, intrigued, as always, by the elf’s referral to her “reverie.” The elves did not sleep, not by the human definition of the word. Their reverie was a meditative state apparently as restful as true sleep. Danica had asked Shayleigh about it on several occasions, and had seen it often during her stay with the elves in Shilmista Forest, but though the elves were not secretive about the custom, it remained strange to the monk. Danica’s practice involved many hours of deep meditation, and though that was indeed restful, it did not approach the elven reverie. Someday, Danica determined, she would unlock that secret and find her rest as an elf.
“Do we need to keep a watch?” she asked.
Shayleigh looked around at the dark trees. It was their first night back in the Snowflakes, after a long trek south across the open fields north of Carradoon. “Perhaps not,” the elf replied. She sat at the fire’s side and took a blanket from her pack. “But sleep lightly and keep your weapons close to your side.”
“My weapons are my hands,” Danica reminded with a grin.
Across the fire, Dorigen peeked out from under half-closed eyelids and tried to hide her smile. For perhaps the first time in all her life, the wizard felt as if she was among friends. She had secretly gone out and placed magical wards about the encampment. No need to tell Danica and Shayleigh of them, though, for Dorigen had worded the spells so that the monk and the elf could not trigger the traps.
With those comforting thoughts in mind, Dorigen allowed herself to drift off to sleep.
Shayleigh came out of her reverie sometime before dawn, the woods still dark about them. The elf sensed something amiss, so she rose from her bed, shrugged off the blanket, and took up her longbow. Shayleigh’s keen eyes adapted quickly to the night. Towering mountains loomed as dark silhouettes all about her, and all appeared quiet and as it should be.
Still, the tiny hairs on the back of Shayleigh’s neck were tingling. One of her senses was hinting at danger, not so far away.
The elf peered hard into the shadows; she tilted her head at different angles, trying to discern an out-of-place sound. Then she sniffed the air and crinkled her nose in disgust.
Trolls. Shayleigh knew that foul odor; nearly every adventurer in the Realms had encountered a wretched troll at least once in his or her travels.
“Danica,” she called softly, not wanting to warn her enemies that she knew they were about.
The wary monk came awake immediately, but made no sudden movements.
“Trolls,” Shayleigh whispered, “not far away.”
Danica looked to the fire, no more than glowing embers by this time, with all the wood fully consumed. Trolls hated fire, and feared it, if they feared anything at all.
Danica called quietly to Dorigen, but the wizard did not stir. A look to Shayleigh sent the elf maiden sliding gently around the side of the fire, near enough to prod Dorigen with her bow.
Dorigen grumbled and started to come awake, then popped her eyes wide when Danica yelled out. An explosion went off to one side, one of Dorigen’s wards taking down a monster in flaring blue flames. But three more trolls rushed past their burning companion without regard for its terrible fate and crashed into the clearing, eyes glowing a fierce red, their stench nearly overwhelming the companions. The monsters’ long, thin frames towered over the group-one had to be nearly eleven feet tall-and, as they came into the light, their rubbery skin showed as putrid grayish green.
Shayleigh’s bow was up and firing in the blink of an eye, three arrows blasting into the closest troll. The monster jerked with each hit, but came stubbornly on, its skinny arms waving its hands awkwardly in wide, arcing swipes.
Shayleigh did not gain confidence from the awkward movements; the three fingers on those hands ended in long, sharp claws that could easily tear the hide from a bear.
A fourth arrow hit the monster squarely in the chest, and Shayleigh hopped away, thinking it better to pummel this creature from a distance.
Two flashes, one silver, one gold, went past the elf as Danica led with her daggers. The monk leaped up and spun head over heels over the fire, following the shots (both solid hits on the next troll) at full speed. She barreled in, jumped, and spun, her trailing foot flying about to slam hard into the troll’s midsection.
Danica winced at the sickly, squishy sound of that impact, but she didn’t dare hesitate. She spun again for a second kick, then came up straight and landed a one-two punch on the lurching troll’s jaw.
“Dorigen!” she screamed, seeing the third troll bearing down on the sitting wizard. To Danica’s knowledge, Dorigen had no weapons, and few, if any, components for spellcasting-not even a proper spellbook that she might have studied. The monk, too engaged with this monster, and with Shayleigh still battling the first troll, thought her new companion doomed as the troll reached down at the blanketed woman.
There came a bright flash, and the troll fell back, holding the blanket and nothing more. That blanket flared suddenly with fire, scorching the monster’s arms, causing it to scream out in pain.
Danica had no idea where Dorigen had come up with that spell, but she had no time to ponder the issue now. The troll swiped at her repeatedly, and she did a fair, twisting dance to keep clear of its deadly arms. She came in close, inside the monster’s reach, thinking to wriggle out the backside and score a few hits before the lumbering thing turned, but the troll proved faster and more resourceful than she believed, and she nearly swooned as the monster opened its wide, horrible mouth. The long, pointy teeth came within an inch of Danica’s face-she could smell the thing’s disgusting breath!-and the troll would have had her, except that the incredibly agile monk snapped her foot straight up before her, lifting it right in front of her face, though she had only a few inches to spare between herself and the troll.
Her kick caught the troll on its long nose and drove the proboscis up and back with a loud crackling noise. Danica was down in a crouch in an instant, dodging the flailing arms, and out she slipped, under the troll’s armpit, around the back, where she exploded with fury, launching a barrage of heavy punches.
Shayleigh continued to backpedal, firing arrow after-arrow into the pursuing troll. She knew that this would not do, though, for the troll’s initial wounds were already on the mend. Trolls could regenerate, their rubbery skin binding of its own accord, and could take an incredible amount of punishment before falling dead.
No, not dead, Shayleigh realized to her horror, for even a dead troll, even a troll that had been cut into little bits, would come back to life, whole again, unless its wounds had been completely burned. That notion led the elf’s gaze to the fire, but the embers promised little help. It would take some time to coax that glow back into any sort of flame, and Shayleigh and her companions had no time at all. The elf looked to the side of the encampment, but found that the troll that had been consumed by the explosion (which Shayleigh did not fully understand) had fallen into the snow, and already the fires that had destroyed the thing were nearly extinguished. Shayleigh muttered an elven curse.
Another arrow thudded into the troll, hitting the creature in the face. Still the stubborn thing advanced and Shayleigh looked down to her half-empty quiver doubtfully. She thought of running into the woods then, of leading this monster away, but one look at Danica told her that she could not, that her friend would not be able to follow.
The troll that had gone unsuccessfully after Dorigen was after the monk now, it and its gruesome companion circling fast to find an exposed flank. Danica worked hard to keep up her guard against attacks from all angles, for with their long arms the trolls could simply reach around any straightforward defense.
“Where did she go?” Danica cried to Shayleigh, obviously referring to the missing wizard.
Shayleigh sighed helplessly and fired another arrow into the pursuing troll. Where indeed had Dorigen gone? she wondered, and she suspected that the wizard had determined this was a good time to escape.
Danica’s powerful punch landed heavily against the side of a bending troll’s head with a sickly splatting sound. When she retracted the hand, she found a bit of the monster’s skin on her knuckles, along with some strands of the thing’s hair. Danica groaned in revulsion when she noticed the mess, for the troll hair was writhing of its own accord.
She turned that revulsion into anger, and as the troll came about to swipe at her again, she stepped in close and pounded it repeatedly. Then she wisely fell to her knees and rolled fast to the side as the second troll came rushing at her back. Both monsters were on her as she sprang up to her feet, and up snapped her foot, knocking a lunging hand aside.
“They heal as fast as I hurt them!” the tiring monk cried in frustration.
Danica’s statement wasn’t quite true, as Shayleigh found out when her next arrow, her sixteenth shot, dropped the troll to the ground. She looked to her quiver, to the four arrows remaining, and sighed again.
Danica went left, was forced back to the right, and backpedaled frantically as both trolls suddenly rushed ahead. An angled log at her back, a dead tree that had toppled to lean against another tree, ended her running room.
“Damn!” she spat, and she leaped high, kicking out with both feet, scoring two hits on one of the trolls and knocking it back several steps. She realized that the other would hit her, though, and she twisted as she came down to protect her vital spots.
As the troll started its attack, an arrow slammed into the side of its head. The monster’s momentum flew away in its surprise, and though the swinging arm did indeed hit Danica, there was little strength behind the blow.
Danica spun completely to regain her balance, then she quickly lashed out, her flying foot slamming the monster several times in succession.
“And when I’m finished with you,” she called defiantly, though of course the beast could not understand what she said, “i’ll hunt down a certain cowardly wizard and teach her about loyalty!”
At that moment, as if on cue, Danica noticed a small sphere of fire appear in the air over the closest troll’s head. Before she could ask, the hovering sphere erupted, sending a shroud of hungry flames down over the troll’s body.
The monster shrieked in agony and flailed wildly, but the flames would not let go and would not relent. Danica did well to slip away from the waving inferno. She kept her wits enough to concentrate on the second monster as it came around its burning companion (giving the flaming troll a wide berth), and she met the monstrous thing with another flying double-kick.
Danica had the devious notion of herding the troll into its flaming companion, but the cunning monster wanted no part of that. It staggered back from the kick, then came around again, pointedly putting Danica between it and the burning troll.
An arrow thudded into its side; it turned its ugly head to regard Shayleigh.
Danica flew into it again before it turned back, and the monster stumbled and toppled. Danica was up quickly, thinking to leap atop the monster, but she skidded to a stop, seeing another flaming sphere come to life in the air above the prone troll.
An instant later, that troll, too, was shrieking in agony, engulfed by the biting magical flames.
Shayleigh held her next shot, sensed movement to the side, and spun and fired-into the troll she had already dropped. The thing went down in a heap again, but stubbornly writhed and squirmed, trying to rise.
Danica was on it at once, pounding wildly. Shayleigh joined her, sword in hand, and with mighty hacks, cut off the troll’s legs.
Those severed limbs began to wriggle immediately, trying to reattach to the torso, but Danica wisely kicked them away toward the glowing remnant of the campfire.