The Cleric Quintet: Canticle

The Puzzle

 
Danica knew by the approaching headmaster's expression, and by the fact that Kierkan Rufo shuffled along at Avery's heels, that Cadderly had done something wrong again. She pushed away the book she was reading and folded her arms on the table in front of her.
Avery, normally polite to guests of the library, came quickly and bluntly to his point. "Where is he?" the headmaster demanded.
"He?" Danica replied. She knew perfectly well that Avery was referring to Cadderly, but she didn't appreciate the headmaster's tone.
"You know ..." Avery began loudly, but then he realized Danica's objections and caught himself, looked around, and blushed with embarrassment.
"I am sorry. Lady Danica," he apologized sincerely. "I had only thought... I mean, you and ..."
He stomped hard with one foot to steady himself and proclaimed, "That Cadderly frustrates me so!"
Danica accepted the apology with a grin and a nod, understanding, even sympathizing, with Avery's feelings. Cadderly was an easily distracted free spirit, and, like most formal religious organizations, the Order of Deneir was firmly based on discipline. It was not a difficult task for Danica to remember just a few of the many times she had waited for Cadderly at an appointed place and time, only to eventually give up and go back to her chambers alone, cursing the day she ever saw his boyish smile and inquisitive eyes.
For all her frustrations, though, the young woman could not deny the pangs in her heart whenever she looked upon Cadderly. Her smile only widened as she thought of him now, flying in the face of Avery's bubbling anger. As soon as Danica turned her attention back to the present and looked over Avery's shoulder, though, her grin disappeared. There stood Kierkan Rufo, leaning slightly to one side, as always, but wearing a mask of concern rather than the normally smug expression he displayed whenever he had one-upped his rival.
Danica locked stares with the man, her unconscious grimace revealing her true feelings toward him.
She knew that he was Cadderly's friend-sort of-and she never spoke out against him to Cadderly, but in her heart she didn't trust the man, not at all.
Rufo had made many advances on Danica, beginning on her very first day at the Edificant Library, the first time the two had ever met. Danica was young and pretty and not unused to such advances, but Rufo had unnerved her on that occasion. When she had politely turned Rufo down, he just stood towering over her, tilting his head and staring, for many minutes with that same frozen, unblinking stare on his face. Danica didn't know exactly what it was that had caused her to rebuff Rufo way back then, but she suspected it was his dark, deep-set eyes. They showed the same inner light of intelligence as Cadderly's, but if Cadderly's were inquisitive, then Rufo's were conniving. Cadderly's eyes sparkled joyfully as if in search of answers to the uncounted mysteries of the world.
Rufo's, too, collected information, but his, Danica believed, searched for advantage.
Rufo had never given up on Danica, even after her budding relationship with Cadderly had become common talk in the library. Rufo still approached her often, and still she sent him away, but sometimes she saw him, out of the comer of her eye, sitting across the room and staring at her, studying her as though she were some amusing book.
"Do you know where he is?" Avery asked her, his tone more controlled.
"Who?" Danica answered, hardly hearing the question.
"Cadderly!" cried the flustered headmaster.
Danica looked at him, surprised by the sudden outburst.
"Cadderly," Avery said again, regaining his composure. "Do you know where Cadderly might be found?"
Danica paused and considered the question and the look on Rufo's face, wondering if she should be worried. As far as she knew, Avery was the one directing Cadderly's movements.
"I have not seen him this morning," she answered honestly. "I thought that you had put him to workin the wine cellar, by the words of the dwarven brothers."
Avery nodded. "So, too, did I believe, but it seems as if our dear Cadderly has had enough of his labors. He did not report to me this morning, as he had been instructed, nor was he in his room when I went to find him."
"Had he been in his room at all this morning?" Danica asked. She found her gaze again drawn to Kierkan Rufo, fearing for Cadderly and somehow guessing that if trouble had befallen him, Rufo was involved.
Rufo's reaction did not diminish her suspicions. He blinked-one of the few times Danica had ever seen him blink-and tried hard to appear unconcerned as he looked away.
"I cannot say," Avery replied and he, too, turned to Rufo for some answers.
The angular man only shrugged. "I left him in the wine cellar," he said. "I was down there working long before he arrived. I thought it fitting that I retire earlier than he."
Before Avery could even suggest that they go search the wine cellar, Danica had pushed past him and started on her way.
* * * * *
The darkness and the weight. Those were the two facts of Cadderly's predicament: the darkness and the weight. And the pain. There was pain, too. He didn't know where he was or how he had gotten to tins dark place or why he could not move. He was lying face down on the stone floor, buried by something. He tried calling out several times but found little breath.
Images of walking skeletons and thick spiderwebs flitted about his consciousness as he lay there, but they had no real definition, nor any solid place in his memory. Somewhere-in a dream?-he had seen them, but whether that place had anything to do with this place, he could not guess.
Then he saw the flicker of torchlight, far away but coming down toward him, and as the shadows revealed tall and open racks, he at last recognized his surroundings.
"The wine cellar," Cadderly grunted, though the effort sorely hurt. "Rufo?" It was all a blur. He remembered coming down from the kitchen to join Rufo in his inventory, and remembered beginning his work, away from the angular man, but that was all. Something obviously had happened subsequent to that, but Cadderly had no recollection of it, or of how he might possibly have gotten in his current predicament.
"Cadderly?" came a call, Danica's voice. Not one, but three torches had entered the large wine cellar.
"Here!" Cadderly gasped with all his breath, though the wheeze was not nearly loud enough to be heard. The torches fanned out in different directions, sometimes disappearing from Cadderly's sight, other times flickering at regular intervals as they moved behind the open, bottle-filled racks. All three bearers-Avery, Rufo, and Danica, Cadderly realized- called out now.
"Here!" he gasped as often as he could. Still, the cellar was wide and sectioned by dozens of tall wine racks, and it was many minutes before Cadderly's call was heard.
Kierkan Rufo found him. The tall man seemed more ghastly than ever to Cadderly as he looked up at the shadows splayed across Rufo's angular features. Rufo appeared surprised to find Cadderly, then he glanced all about, as if undecided as to how to react.
"Could you ..." Cadderly began, and he paused to catch his breath. "Please get... me ... get this off me."
Still Rufo hesitated, confusion and concern crossing his face. "Over here," he called out finally.
"I have found him."
Cadderly didn't note much relief in Rufo's tone.
Rufo laid his torch down and began removing the pile of casks that were pinning Cadderly. Over his shoulder, Cadderly noticed Rufo tipping one heavy cask over him, and the thought came to him for just an instant that the angular man had tilted it purposely and meant to drop it on his head.
Then Danica came running up, and she helped Rufo push it away.
All the casks were cleared before Headmaster Avery ever got there, and Cadderly started to rise.
Danica held him down. "Do not move!" she instructed firmly. Her expression was grave, her brown almond eyes intense and uncompromising. "Not until I have inspected your wounds."
"I am all right," Cadderly tried to insist, but he knew his words fell on deaf ears. Danica had been scared, and the stubborn woman rarely bothered to argue when she was scared. Cadderly tried halfheartedly to rise again, but this time Danica's strong hand stopped him, pressing on a particularly vulnerable area on the back of his neck.
"I have ways of stopping you from struggling," Danica promised, and Cadderly didn't doubt her. He put his cheek down on folded arms and let Danica have her way.
"How did this happen?" demanded the chubby, red-faced Avery, huffing up to join them.
"He was counting bottles when I left," Rufo offered nervously.
Cadderly's face crinkled in confusion as he tried again to sort through the blur of his memories.
He got the uncomfortable feeling that Rufo expected his explanation to sound like an accusation, and Cadderly himself wondered what part Rufo might have had in his troubles. A feeling of something hard-a boot?-against his back slipped past him too quickly to make any sense.
"I know not," Cadderly answered honestly. "I just cannot remember. I was counting ..." He stopped there and shook his head in frustration. Cadderly's existence depended on knowledge; he didn't like illogical puzzles.
"And you wandered away," Avery finished for him. "You went exploring when you should have been working."
"The wounds are not too severe," Danica cut in suddenly.
Cadderly knew that she had purposely deflected the headmaster's rising agitation, and he smiled his thanks as Danica helped him to his feet. It felt good to be standing again, though Cadderly had to lean on Danica for support for several minutes.
Somehow Avery's supposition didn't fit into Cadderly's memories-whatever they might be. He did not believe that he had just "wandered away" to fall into trouble. "No," he declared. "Not like that.
There was something here." He looked at Danica, then to Rufo. "A light?"
Hearing the word triggered another memory for Cadderly. "The door!" he cried suddenly.
If the torchlight had been stronger, they all would have noticed the blood drain from Kierkan Rufo's face.
"The door," Cadderly said again. "Behind the wall of casks."
"What door?" Avery demanded.
Cadderly paused and thought for a moment but had no answers. His considerable willpower subconsciously battled Barjin's memory blocking spell, but all he could remember was the door, some door, somewhere. And wherever that portal might have led, Cadderly could only guess. He resolved to find out again, as soon as he rounded the casks and opened it.
It was gone.
Cadderly stood for a long while, staring at the dusty bricks of the solid wall.
"What door?" the impatient headmaster asked again.
"It was here," Cadderly insisted with as much conviction as he could muster. He moved closer to the wall and felt it. That, too, proved futile. "I remember. .." Cadderly started to protest. He felt an arm reach under his shoulder.
"You have been hurt in the head," Danica said quietly. "Confusion is not unexpected after such a blow, nor usually lasting," she added quickly to comfort him.
"No, no," Cadderly protested, but he let Danica lead him out.
"What door?" the flustered Avery asked a third time.
"He has hurt his head," Danica interjected.
"I thought ..." Cadderly began. "It must have been a dream-" he looked at Avery directly "-but what a strange dream."
Rufo's sigh was audible. "He is not hurt too badly?" the tall man asked embarrassedly when curious expressions turned toward him.
"Not too badly," replied Danica, the tone of her voice indicating her suspicions.
Cadderly hardly noticed, too engrossed was he with trying to remember. "What would be below here?"
he asked on impulse.
"Nothing to concern you," Avery replied sharply.
Skeletons walked intangibly through Cadderly's subconscious again. "Crypts?" he asked.
"Nothing to concern you!" Avery answered sternly. "I grow tired of your curiosity, brother."
Cadderly, too, was annoyed, not enjoying the puzzles within his own mind. Avery's glare was uncompromising, but Cadderly was too upset to be scared off. "Sssh!" he hissed sarcastically, putting a finger to his pursed lips. "You would not want Deneir, whose edict is the seeking of knowledge, to hear you say that."
Avery's face turned so red that Cadderly almost expected it to burst. "Go and see the healers "
the headmaster growled at Cadderly, "then come back to see me. I have a thousand tasks prepared for you." He spun about and stormed away, Rufo dose on his heels, though all the way to the stairs, Rufo kept glancing back over his shoulder.
Danica gave Cadderly a forceful nudge-and a painful one against his sorely bruised ribs. "You never know when to hold your tongue," she scolded. "If you keep talking so to Headmaster Avery, we will never find the opportunity to see each other!" With her torch in one hand and her other wrapped about Cadderly's back, she pulled him roughly toward the distant stairs.
Cadderly looked down at her, thinking that he owed her an apology, but he saw that Danica was biting back laughter and he realized that she hadn't truly disapproved of his sarcasm.
* * * * *
Barjin watched the steady stream of reddish smoke rise from the opened flask and slip into cracks in the ceiling, making its way up into the library above. The evil priest still had several ceremonies to perform to complete the formal ritual, as agreed upon back in Castle Trinity, but these were merely a formality. The Most Fatal Horror had been released, and the chaos curse was under way.
It would take longer to exact a toll here, Barjin knew, than it had with Haverly back at Castle Trinity. According to Aballister, Haverly had taken a concentrated dose right in the face.
Producing the elixir was far too expensive to duplicate those effects on enemy after enemy, thus the mixture in the ever-smoking bottle had been greatly diluted. The priests here would absorb the elixir gradually, each hour bringing them closer to the edge of doom. Barjin held no reservations, though. He believed in the powers of the elixir, in the powers of his goddess-particularly with himself serving as her agent.
"Let us see how these pious fools behave when their truest emotions are revealed," he snickered to Mullivy. The zombie did not respond, of course. He just stood very still, unblinking and unmoving.
Barjin gave him a sour look and turned his gaze back to the ever-smoking bottle.
"The next days will be the most dangerous," he whispered to himself. "Beyond that, the priests will have no power to stand against me." He looked back to Mullivy and grinned wickedly.
"'We will be ready," Barjin promised. He already had animated dozens of skeletons and had enacted further spells upon Mullivy's corpse to strengthen it. And, of course, there was Khalif, Barjin's prized soldier, awaiting the priest's command from the sarcophagus just outside the altar room door.
Barjin meant to add new and more horrible monsters to his growing army. First, he would uncover the necromancer's stone and see what undead allies it might bring in. Then, taking Aballister's advice, he would open a gate to the least of the lower planes, summoning minor monsters to serve as advisers and scouts for his expanding evil network.
"Let the foolish priests come after us," Barjin said, taking an ancient and evil tome, a book of sorcery and necromancy, out of the folds of his robes. "Let them see the horror that has befallen them!"