Bogo's blast struck it with fury, the lightning driving hard against the barrier, sizzling and throwing multicolored sparks, sending a spider web of green and orange energy across the breadth of Cadderly's field to burn at the door-jamb. When it had ended, a tiny pool of water lay at the base of the intact defensive field.
Wide-eyed, the frightened wizard began another spell, as did Cadderly.
Bogo pulled another component and began a fast-paced chant.
"Sneeze," Cadderly commanded.
Bogo complied, and his spell was disrupted.
The stubborn wizard growled and began again.
"Sneeze."
"Damn you!" Bogo cried, wiping the wetness from his face.
"You could not be farther from the truth," Cadderly replied calmly. "Shall we continue to play the game?
"Dispel!" Cadderly cried suddenly, his face twisting to an angry glare. The shimmering field in the doorway disappeared, and Danica and Pikel burst into the room.
Bogo realized his mistake; he should have continued to "play" as the young priest had called it, continued to force Cadderly into a defensive posture in the hopes that his spell repertoire would outlast the priest's.
Danica came straight ahead, dove, came up in a leap, and jolted forward with her landing, too fast for the surprised Bogo to react. He threw his arms out defensively, and the monk promptly wrapped them, bringing her arms up through the wizard's, then down and around, locking Bogo fast.
He did twist one wrist, though, cutting a line of blood on Danica's sleeve.
An invisible dagger!
Danica's foot shot up between her and the close wizard, crunching Bogo's nose. Dazed, Bogo offered no resistance as Danica released his other arm, cupped her free hand over the back of his clenched fingers and yanked his hand back toward his forearm, pulling his arm in the other direction at the same time.
The wizard's face contorted in agony. He tried to hold his only weapon, but Danica's foot came up again; her hand continued to pull.
Pikel joined her a moment later. "Oo," he said glumly, disappointed that the fun was already over. He heard the clang as the unseen dagger hit the floor, and he looked down for it, scratching his green-dyed hair curiously.
Cadderly walked to the bed and motioned for Danica to lead her prisoner to it. "You can let him go," the young priest offered.
Danica gave a quick, painful jerk as she released Bogo's arms, and she pushed the wizard, knocking him to a sitting position.
"Vft must talk, you and I," Cadderly demanded quietly.
Bogo glared up at him from the bed, an impotent threat, but Danica cuffed him anyway, on the ear.
She scowled and showed Cadderly her cut arm in answer to his surprised expression, and that seemed to satisfy the young priest's nagging conscience.
"Dorigen sent you," Cadderly said to the man.
"No."
Cadderly looked at him curiously. "I have ways of telling when you lie," he warned.
"Then you detect nothing," Bogo replied.
"You were with the Night Masks, but you are not a part of their guild," Cadderiy remarked.
"You will die," Bogo promised, drawing another cuff from Danica.
"Why have they come for me?" Cadderiy asked. With no answer forthcoming, he added, "I could speak with your corpse, if that would please you."
For the first time, Bogo seemed afraid. The sincere calmness of Cadderly's tone gave weight to the threat, the promise, Bogo knew and, because he wanted to grow to be an old wizard, he replied. "You got in the way," the young wizard stammered, "at the library and in the forest. You forced Abal - " Bogo stopped abruptly.
"Who?" Danica demanded, putting her face right up to Bogo's.
"Aballister," Bogo admitted, "Dorigen's mentor, my mentor."
Cadderly looked to Danica, concerned. Dorigen had been a powerful adversary. How strong might her mentor be?
"I came only to observe," Bogo went on, "as I was told."
"Oh?" Pikel cut him short, stepping past Danica, pushing her aside, and displaying the scorched hole in his leather tunic, the hole Bogo's lightning had made back at the Dragon's Codpiece.
The blood drained from Bogo's face, and his growing desperation forced him to a desperate act. He shoved his hand into a pocket, grabbed a handful of pebbles, and flung them to the floor.
A burst of minor explosions went off, blowing in rapid succession and shooting variously colored puffs of smoke into the air. The pops did nothing to the companions, other than distract them. With a quick chant, Bogo diminished to the size of a cat and slipped between Cadderly and Pikel.
Cadderly tried to call out but could not decide fast enough whether he should shout for his Mends to stop Bogo or cry out a warning to the wizard. Danica finally pushed past him and Pikel, following the wizard's expected path to the door.
They heard the door close - the smoke began to clear - and Bogo, outside the room and man-sized again, began a new chant.
Danica stopped, wisely not going through the portal.
From behind the door they heard Bogo cry out in terror. The friends heard a shuffle of feet, a sickening thud, then something heavy slammed against the door.
Cadderly shook his head and looked away. The tip of Ivan's double-headed axe protruded through the door, dripping crimson. As if that weren't macabre enough, Bogo's fingers, grasping helplessly and twitching, reached through the circular hole Pikel's club had made in the door. Pulled by the unbalancing weight, the door slowly creaked open.
Pikel walked past Danica and opened the door the rest of the way, peeking around it and saying, "Oo" as he regarded the hanging wizard.
"I telled ye ye couldn't trust a wizard," Ivan, standing a dozen feet down the hall with his hands on his hips, asserted. He strode up to the door and motioned for the group to come out of the room.
The young priest couldn't help but look over at the dead young wizard, a man probably not even as old as Cadderly. "Wfe never asked his name," Cadderly remarked.
Ivan kicked the door closed, spat in his hands, and put one boot up beside Bogo for leverage. "Wandering what to put on his stone?" he asked gruffly.
Danica watched the young priest closely, looking for any signs of weakness. This time, though, Cadderly appeared to control his emotions and accept the guilt.
"Just wondering," he answered Ivan, giving a resigned shrug as though he had pushed the incident from his mind. "Get the body back in the room," Cadderly instructed the dwarves. He shook his head at the irony of one of his earlier statements, which he had made merely to scare his prisoner.
He could indeed speak with Bogo's corpse.
There was only the lake and the empty street. Carra-doon quieted considerably as twilight neared, and the interest in the outrageous events at the Dragon's Codpiece had dissipated quickly. Only a few guests had remained at the battered inn, and with Cadderly and his companions out of the building, the place was quiet - too quiet for Kierkan Rufo.
The angular man stood in front of his room's small window, the tilt of his stance making him appear almost like a diagonal crosspiece to the glass. Many minutes passed; Rufo did not move.
He had gone too far this time, he realized, had crossed the line to the dark side of his nature. He doubted he could ever step back. He stood in reflection now, trying to follow the course that had led to this horrible position. It had begun in the library, when he had met evil Barjin and, on the priest's command, had sent Cadderly tumbling down the stairs to the hidden catacombs.
Rufo could excuse himself of that indiscretion, and all of the other members of his order, including Cadderly, had excused him as well. In the elven forest, Rufo had betrayed his companions once more, but he had redeemed himself, had come through in the end to provide his companions with the information they needed to ultimately win out. As in the library, the efforts of Cadderly and the others had averted disaster, had helped to cover Rufo's weaknesses.
Now Avery lay dead downstairs. Rufo had put the headmaster in the path of an assassin band. Rufo had stepped over, had crossed the line.
He tried to justify his actions, told himself repeatedly that he had been given no choice, that the assassins would have killed them all if he had not cooperated.
The facts did not support his excuse. Cadderly, Danica, and the dwarves (where had those two come from, anyway?) had won, had chased off the band. If Rufo had gone to them soon after his initial meeting with the young wizard, their victory would have been more swift.
Avery would be alive.
The angular man whimpered and turned from the window, suddenly feeling very vulnerable. "He deserved his fate," Rufo muttered grimly, reminding himself of the way Avery had treated him since the trouble in Shilmista. Avery would have held him back in his ascension through the Order of Deneir; the headmaster had even threatened to have him removed from the library! That was not justice, Rufo's sensibilities argued, not when the headmaster held all the power and Rufo could only stand and let Avery's whims determine his fate.
By the time Rufo had crossed the small room and collected his pack, anger had replaced his guilt. He had struck back at Avery in the only way he could, and now it was done. No one suspected him; the conspiring wizard had already fled, and Rufo had easily deflected the city guards' questions. Even more comforting, Cadderly apparently had taken the guards' conclusions for truth, for the priest hadn't asked Rufo a single question concerning the tragic events.
Rufo had to hide his smile as he paid Fredegar (from Avery's purse) for the time spent in the inn. He explained to the hospitable innkeeper that he had to return at once to the Edificant Library and report the tragic loss.
It was getting dark outside when he exited the Dragon's Codpiece, dark like the path Kierkan Rufo had stumbled down.
The four friends left the other inn a short while later, Cadderly tossing the fearful innkeeper a bag of coins to cover the damages and the cost of disposing of Bogo's body.