Ivan hit the loose-swinging door with a terrific impact, jolting it free of one of its hinges.
Cadderly's fears were proved true, for several fiery explosions went off in rapid succession as Ivan crossed the threshold. If the door had stopped, or even delayed his charge, he would have been roasted.
As it was, Cadderly was not certain if the dwarf had survived. Ivan skidded into the room on his face, wisps of smoke rising from several points on his body. Cadderly rushed in right behind to get to his friend; he could only hope that no glyphs remained.
The young scholar didn't quite make it to Ivan, though. As soon as he entered the room, squinting in the brightness of the several torches and blazing brazier, he saw that he and Ivan were not alone.
"You have done well to come so far," Barjin said calmly, standing halfway across the room, beside the altar that held the ever-smoking bottle. Torches lined the wall to either side of the priest, but the brighter light came from a brazier along
the wall to Cadderly's right, which Cadderly correctly guessed was an interplanar gate.
"I applaud your resilience," Barjin continued, his tone teasing, "futile though it will prove."
Every memory came rushing back to Cadderly in clear order and focus when he saw Barjin. The first thought that crossed his mind was that he would go back up and have a few nasty words with Kierkan Rufo, the man who had, he believed, kicked him down the stairway from the wine cellar in the first place. His resolve to scold Rufo did not take firm hold, though, not when Cadderly considered the dangers before him. His eyes did not linger on the priest, but rather on the man standing next to Barjin.
"Mullivy?" he asked, though he knew by Mullivy's posture and the grotesque bend of his wrecked arm that this was not the groundskeeper he once had known.
The dead man did not reply.
"A friend of yours?" Barjin teased, draping an arm over his zombie. "Now he is my friend, too.
"I could have him kill you quite easily," Barjin went on. "But, you see, I believe I shall reserve that pleasure for myself." He removed the obsidian-headed mace from his belt, its sculpted visage that of a pretty young girl. Next, Barjin pulled on the conical hood hanging in back of his clerical robes. This fit over his head as a helmet might, with holes cut for Barjin's eyes.
Cadderly had heard about enchanted, protecting vestments and he knew that his nemesis was armored.
"For all your valiant efforts, young priest, you remain a minuscule thorn in my side," Barjin remarked. He took a step toward Cadderly but stopped suddenly when Ivan hopped back to his feet.
The dwarf shook his head vigorously, then looked about, as if seeing the room for the first time.
He glanced at Cadderly, then focused on Barjin. "Tell me, lad," Ivan asked, swinging his double-bladed axe up to a ready position on his shoulder, "is he the one who killed me brother?"
* * * * *
Aballister wiped a cloth over his sweaty brow. He could not bear to continue peering through his magical mirror, but he had not the strength to turn his eyes away. He had felt Barjin's urgency when first he sent his thoughts to the distant altar room, unable to hear his inability to contact his imp. Aballister worried for Druzil and for the cleric, though his fears for and of Barjin were double-sided indeed. For all of his ambiguity, though, for all of his fears of Barjin and the power gains his rival would enjoy, Aballister honestly believed he did not want to see Tuanta Quiro Miancay, the Most Fatal Horror, fail.
Then the enemies had revealed themselves-himself, for Aballister hardly took note of the stumbling dwarf. It was the young scholar that held the wizard's thoughts, the tall and straight lad, twenty years old perhaps, with the familiar, inquisitive eyes.
Aballister sensed Barjin's mounting confidence and knew that the evil priest was back in control, that Barjin and Tuanta Quiro Miancay would not be defeated.
Somehow that notion seemed even more disturbing to the wizard. He stared hard and long at the young scholar, a boy really, who had come in bravely and foolishly to face his doom.
* * * * *
Cadderly nodded at Ivan. The dwarfs eyes narrowed dangerously as he glared back at the evil priest. "Ye shouldn't have done that," Ivan growled in a low and death-promising tone. He held his axe high and began a steady advance. "Ye shouldn't have-"
Waves of mental energy stopped Ivan in midsentence and midstep. Barjin's spell broke the dwarfs thought patterns, holding him firmly in place. Ivan struggled with all his mental strength and all the resistance a dwarf could muster, but Barjin was no minor spellcaster and this was his evilly blessed altar room, where his clerical magic was at its highest. Ivan managed a few indecipherable sounds, then stopped talking and moving altogether.
"Ivan?" Cadderly asked, his voice shaky as he suspected his companion's fate.
"Do keep talking," Barjin taunted. "The dwarf can hear your every word, though I assure you that he'll not respond."
Barjin's ensuing laughter sent shivers through Cadderly's bones. They had come so far and through so much. Pikel had died to get them here, and Ivan had taken a terrible beating. And now to fail.
Looking at this evil priest, with gruesome Mullivy standing obediently at his side, Cadderly knew that he was overmatched.
"You battled through my outer defenses, and for that you deserve my applause," Barjin continued,
"but if you believed my true power would be revealed to you out in the empty and meaningless corridors, then know your folly! Look upon me, foolish young priest-" he waved a hand to the ever-smoking bottle"-and look upon the agent of Talona that you yourself brought to life. Tuanta Quiro Miancay, the Most Fatal Horror! "You should feel blessed, young priest, for your pitiful library is the first to feel the awesome power of the chaos that will dominate the region for centuries to come!"
At that awful moment, the threat did not sound so hollow in Cadderly's ears. Talona-he knew the name: the Lady of Poison, of disease.
"Did you expect to find the bottle unguarded?" Barjin laughed. "Did you think to stroll in here after defeating a few minor monsters and simply dose the flask that you yourself-" again the priest emphasized those painful words "-opened?"
Cadderly hardly heard the banter. His attention had gone to the bottle and the steady stream of pinkish mist that issued from it. He thought of loading his crossbow and putting an explosive dart into the bottle. Where would this Talona's agent be then? Cadderly wondered. But Cadderly feared that action, feared that to destroy the bottle would only release the evil agent, or whatever it was, in full.
His attention was stolen from the bottle suddenly, and he realized that the choice, if ever he had one, had passed. The evil priest strode casually toward him, his arm uplifted and holding a curious black mace, its head the image of a pretty young girl, an innocent face so very out of place atop a weapon, a face that strangely reminded Cadderly of Danica.
* * * * *
Aballister did not pause to consider his actions. His thoughts focused on the dwarf, standing rigid a few steps ahead of the young man. The wizard summoned all of his powers, sent a spell into the magic mirror and across the miles, tried to use the scrying device as a magical gate for his focused magical energies.
The mirror's own dweomer, not designed for such uses, resisted the attempt. It could be used to see distant places, to converse with viewed creatures, even to transport Aballister to those places viewed, but Aballister tried to carry that ability farther now, to send not only his thoughts or physical being but his magical energy flowing to the rigid dwarf.