The Fallen Fortress Read online

  Cadderly understood the truth of that claim, felt his life-force slipping from his mortal coil, slipping into the world of the spirit, the realm of the dead. Looking down, he saw himself lying on the red ground, broken and smoldering. Then his spirit was bathed in divine light, the same sensation he’d felt tendays ago at the Dragon’s Codpiece when he’d gone in search of Headmaster Avery’s spirit.

  One, two, played the notes of Deneir’s song.

  He knew only peace and serenity, felt more at home than he’d ever felt, and knew that he’d come to a place where he might find some rest.

  One, two.

  All thoughts of the material world began to fade. Even images of Danica, his dearest love, were not tainted with regret, for Cadderly held faith that he and she would one day be rejoined. His heart lifted. He felt his spirit soar.

  One, two, came the song. Like a heartbeat.

  Cadderly saw his body again, far below him, and one finger twitched.

  No! he protested.

  One, two, compelled the song. Cadderly was not being asked, he was being told. He looked at Aballister, spellcasting once more, creating a shimmering doorway in the red air. Aballister would return to Castle Trinity, the young priest realized, and all Erlkazar would be plunged into darkness.

  Cadderly understood the plea of Deneir, and no longer did his spirit protest. One, two, beat his heart.

  When he opened his material eyes and looked upon Aballister, he was again flooded with the warm sensation of the images of childhood the wizard had conjured. Rationally, Cadderly understood that he’d been under an enchantment, knew that simple logic proved Aballister’s lies, but the lure of what the man had shown him couldn’t be easily overcome.

  Then another image came to the young priest, a memory he’d blocked out, packed away in a remote corner of his mind long, long ago. He stood in front of the doors of the Edificant Library, a young and not so fat Headmaster Avery facing his father before him. Avery’s face was blotched red from rage. He screamed at Aballister, even cursed the man, and reiterated that Aballister had been banned from ever again entering the Edificant Library.

  Aballister showed no sign of remorse, even laughed at the burly priest.

  “Then take the brat,” he cackled, and he roughly shoved Cadderly forward, tearing a handful of hair from the boy’s head as he pulled his hand away.

  The pain was intense, physically and emotionally, but Cadderly didn’t cry out. In looking back on that awful moment, Cadderly realized that he didn’t cry out because he was so accustomed to Aballister’s commonplace abuse. He had been the outlet for the wizard’s frustrations—as his mother had been before him.

  His mother!

  Cadderly was somehow standing, growling, and Aballister turned around, his eyes popping wide with surprise when he saw that his son still lived. Behind the wizard, the portal glowed and shimmered, sometimes showing an image of the anteroom to the wizard’s mansion within its magical borders. Aballister would abandon him again, as he’d abandoned him then, would go about his business and leave his son, “the brat,” to the whims of fate.

  More memories assaulted the young priest, as though he’d opened a box that he couldn’t close. He saw Aballister’s face, twisted demonically with rage, heard his mother’s pitiful cries and his own quiet sobs.

  The manifestation of a huge sword appeared in the red air before him, waving menacingly.

  “Lie down and die,” he heard the wizard say.

  That sword! Aballister had used it against Cadderly’s mother, had used the very same spell to kill her!

  “Oh, my dear Deneir,” the lost young priest heard himself whimper.

  The song thrummed in his head of its own accord, but Cadderly didn’t compel it to play. He barely heard the harmony of its sweet notes. He thought he heard Headmaster Avery’s voice at that moment, but the notion was lost when he saw the magical sword arcing his way, slicing for his unprotected neck, too close for him to dodge.

  The sword struck him then dissolved with a sharp sizzle.

  “Damn you!” the wizard, his father, cried.

  Cadderly saw nothing but his mother’s face, felt nothing but a primal rage focused on that murderer, that imposter. He heard a sound escape his lips, a burst of anger and magical energy too great for him to contain. It came forth as the most discordant note of Deneir’s song Cadderly had ever heard, a purely destructive twist of the precious notes.

  The very ground heaved before him, and he continued to scream. Like an ocean wave, the red soil rolled toward Aballister, a crack widening in its mighty wake.

  “What are you doing?” the wizard protested, and so weak and minuscule did his voice sound beneath the roar of Cadderly’s primal scream!

  Aballister lurched into the air, thrown by the wave. He flailed his arms as he descended, flapping futilely, and fell into the crack. The wave diminished as it rolled on, the ground becoming quiet once more.

  “I am your father!” came Aballister’s pleading, pained cry from somewhere not too far below.

  Another cry erupted from Cadderly’s aching lungs, and he threw his hands up before him and clapped them together. And following his lead, the crack in the ground, too, snapped shut.

  Aballister’s cries were no more.

  TWENTY-THREE

  WAR’S END

  An exhausted Cadderly stepped through the door Aballister had conveniently created—stepped through the wall, actually, which was no longer covered with mist—and into the room where he’d left Danica. A dozen enemy soldiers were there, milling around and grumbling to each other, but, oh, how they scrambled when the young priest suddenly appeared in their midst! They screamed and punched each other, fighting to get away from the mysterious man. In but a few moments, only six remained in the room, and kept their wits enough to draw their weapons and face the young priest.

  “Go to Dorigen!” one of them barked at another, and the man ran off.

  “Stay back, I warn you!” another man growled at Cadderly, prodding forward with his spear.

  Cadderly’s head throbbed. He had no interest in fighting them, or anyone for that matter, but he could hardly ignore his precarious situation. He accessed the song of Deneir, though the effort pained him, and the next time the man prodded ahead, he found that he was holding not a spear, but a writhing, obviously unhappy serpent. The man shrieked and dropped the thing to the floor, scrambling back away from it, though it made no move to attack.

  “We have your friends!” another man, the soldier who had ordered a companion to go for Dorigen, cried. “If you kill us, they too will be killed!”

  Cadderly didn’t even hear the second sentence. The news that his friends were being held prisoner, were not dead, sent his hopes soaring. He rested back against the wall and tried hard not to think of the fact that he’d just destroyed his own father.

  Danica raced into the room a moment later, slammed hard into Cadderly, and threw her arms around him, crushing him in a hug.

  “Aballister is dead,” the young priest said to Dorigen over Danica’s shoulder.

  Dorigen gave him an inquisitive look, and Danica, too, backed away to arm’s length and stared hard at her lover.

  “I know,” Cadderly said.

  “He really was your father?” Danica asked, her expression as pained as Cadderly’s.

  Cadderly nodded, and his lips went thin as he tried to firm up his jaw.

  “Ivan needs you,” Danica said. She regarded the young priest carefully then shook her head with doubt. She could she how exhausted he was.

  Dorigen led Cadderly and Danica back to the room they’d set up for the care of the wounded. Cadderly’s four friends were there—though Vander hardly seemed wounded anymore—along with a handful of Castle Trinity’s human soldiers. The orcs and other goblinoid creatures had followed their own custom of slaughtering their seriously wounded companions.

  Pikel and Shayleigh were both sitting up, though neither looked very steady. Their expressions bright
ened at Cadderly’s approach, and they motioned for him to go to Ivan, who lay, pale as death, on a nearby cot.

  Cadderly knelt beside the yellow-bearded dwarf, amazed that Ivan still drew breath given the sheer number of garish wounds he’d suffered. The young priest realized that Ivan, for all his toughness, didn’t have much time. Cadderly had to somehow find the strength to follow Deneir’s song to the sphere of healing.

  Quietly, Cadderly began to chant. He heard the music, but it was so distant. Cadderly reached for it, felt the pressure in his temples, and closed his eyes as he fell into its flow, guiding it along. He swam past the notes of the minor spells of healing, knowing they would be of little use in tending the dwarf’s most serious wounds. The song built to a thrumming crescendo in his thoughts, and moved at Cadderly’s demand into the realm of the greatest spells of healing.

  The next thing the young priest knew he was lying on the floor, looking up into Danica’s concerned face. She helped him back to a sitting position and he looked upon Ivan with little hope.

  “Cadderly?” Danica asked, and the young priest could think of several questions reflected in that one word.

  “He’s too tired,” Dorigen answered, coming to kneel beside them both. The wizard looked into Cadderly’s hollowed gray eyes and nodded.

  “I must access the magic,” the determined young priest said, and he fell right back into the song and fought hard. But it seemed even more distant.

  A little while passed before he woke up the next time, and Cadderly knew then that he would need several more hours of rest before he could even attempt to get into the greatest levels of healing magic again. He knew, too, looking at the dwarf, that Ivan would not live that long.

  “Why do you do this to me?” Cadderly asked aloud, asked his god, and all those around him regarded him curiously.

  “Deneir,” he explained privately to Danica. “He has abandoned me in my time of desperation. I cannot believe he will let Ivan die.”

  “Your god does not control the minor fates of minor players,” Dorigen said, again moving close to the two.

  Cadderly shot her a derisive glance that plainly asked what the wizard might know of it.

  “I understand the ways of magic,” Dorigen replied against that arrogant expression. “The magic remains to be accessed, but you have not the strength. The failing is not Deneir’s.”

  Danica moved as if to strike out at the woman, but Cadderly grabbed the monk and held her back, nodding in agreement with Dorigen.

  “And so your magic is held,” Dorigen remarked. “Is that all you have to offer the dying dwarf?”

  At first, Cadderly took her unexpected words to mean that he should bid Ivan farewell, as a friend would do, but after a moment’s thinking, the young priest came to interpret the words in a different way. He motioned Danica away, and spent a long moment in contemplation, searching for some possible answers.

  “Your ring,” he said to Vander.

  The firbolg glanced quickly at his hand, but the initial excitement of the group died away when Vander explained, “It will not work. The ring must be worn while the wounds are received.”

  “Give it to me, I beg,” Cadderly said, not letting down a bit in light of the grim explanation. He took the ring from the willing firbolg and slipped it over his own finger.

  “There are two types of healing magic,” Cadderly explained to Vander and the others. “Two types, though I have called only upon the method that begs the blessing of the gods to mend torn skin and broken bones.”

  Danica started to inquire further, but Cadderly had closed his eyes and was already beginning to sing once more. It took him some time to catch up to the flow of the song. Again he felt the pressure in his temples as he followed its tiring current, but he kept heart, knowing that he would not have to go so far.

  The four friends and Dorigen gathered around the cot, and gasped in unison as Ivan’s severe throat wound simply disappeared, then gasped again as it reappeared on Cadderly’s neck!

  Blood bubbled from the young priest’s opened throat as he continued to force the words from his mouth. Another of Ivan’s wounds was erased from the dwarf’s body, to appear in a similar position on Cadderly.

  Danica cried out for her love and started forward, but Dorigen and Shayleigh held her back, reasoning with her to trust in the young priest.

  Soon Ivan was resting peacefully, and Cadderly, showing every brutal wound the dwarf had suffered, fell to the floor.

  “Oooo,” groaned an unhappy Pikel.

  “Cadderly!” Danica cried again, and she tore free of Shayleigh and Dorigen and ran to him. She put her head to his chest to hear his heartbeat, brushed his curly brown locks from his eyes, and put her face close to his, whispering for him to live.

  Vander’s laughter turned her angrily around.

  “He wears the ring!” the firbolg roared. “Oh, clever young priest!”

  “Oo oi!” Pikel squealed with glee.

  When Danica turned back, Cadderly, his head uplifted, gave her a peck of a kiss. “This … really … hurts,” he groaned, but he managed to smile as he spoke the words, his head drifting slowly back to the floor, his eyes slowly closing.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Ivan grumbled, sitting up and looking around the room with a confused expression.

  By the time his friends had pushed Ivan aside and lifted Cadderly into place on the cot, the young priest was breathing much easier, and many of his wounds were unmistakably on the mend.

  Later that night, the still weary priest rose from his bed and moved around the makeshift infirmary, singing softly once more, tending the wounds of his other friends, and those of Castle Trinity’s soldiers.

  He was my father,” Cadderly said.

  The young priest rubbed a hand across his wet eyes, trying to come to terms with the sudden explosion of memories that assaulted him, memories he’d buried away many years before.

  Danica shifted closer to him, locking his arm with her own. “Dorigen told me,” she explained.

  They sat together in the quiet darkness for many moments.

  “He killed my mother,” Cadderly said.

  Danica looked up at him, a horrified expression on her fair face.

  “It was an accident,” Cadderly continued, looking straight ahead. “But not without blame. My … Aballister was always experimenting with new magic, always pressing the energies to their very limits, and to the limits of his control. He conjured a sword one day, a magnificent glowing sword that sliced back and forth through the air, floating of its own accord.”

  Cadderly couldn’t help a slight, ironic chuckle. “He was so proud,” the young priest said, shaking his head, his unkempt sandy-brown locks flopping from side to side. “So proud. But he couldn’t control the dweomer. He’d overstepped his magical discipline, and before he could dispel the sword, my mother was dead.”

  Danica mumbled her lover’s name under her breath, pulled him tighter, and put her head on his shoulder. The young priest moved away, though, so that he could look Danica in the eye.

  “I don’t even remember her name,” he said, voice trembling. “Her face is clear to me again, the first face I ever saw in this world, but I don’t even remember her name!”

  They sat quietly again, Danica thinking of her own dead parents, and Cadderly playing with the multitude of rushing images, trying to find some recollection of his earliest years. He remembered, too, one of Headmaster Avery’s scolding, when the portly man had called Cadderly a “Gondsman,” referring to a particular sect of priests known for creating ingenious, and often destructive, tools and weapons without regard for the consequences of their creations. Having come to know Aballister, remembering what had happened to his own mother, Cadderly could better understand Avery’s fears.

  But he was not like his father, he silently reminded himself. He had found Deneir, found the truth, and found the call of his conscience. And he’d brought the war—the war Aballister had precipitated—to the only possi
ble conclusion.

  Cadderly sat there torn by a tumult of long-buried and confusing memories, assaulted by empty wishes of what might have been, and by a host of more recent memories that he could examine with a new perspective. A profound sadness that he couldn’t deny washed over him, a sense of grief that he’d never felt before, for Avery, for Pertelope, for his mother, and for Aballister.

  His sadness for his father was not for the man’s death, though, but for the man’s life.

  Cadderly repeatedly saw the red ground of that distant world closing over the fallen wizard, ending a sad chapter of wasted, misused potential.

  “You had to do it,” Danica said.

  Cadderly blinked at her in disbelief that soon turned to amusement. How well she knew him!

  His reply was a nod, and a sincere, if resigned smile. Cadderly felt no guilt for what he’d done. He’d found the truth as his father never had. Aballister, not Cadderly, had forced the outcome.

  The small room lit up as Dorigen entered, bearing a candelabra. “Castle Trinity’s soldiers are scattering to the four winds,” she said. “All of their leaders are dead—except for myself, and I have no desire to continue what Aballister has started.”

  Danica nodded her approval, but Cadderly scowled.

  “What is it?” the surprised monk asked him.

  “Are we to let them run free, perhaps to cause more mischief?” he asked.

  “There remain nearly three thousand of them,” Dorigen reminded him. “You really have little choice in the matter. But take heart, young priest, for the threat to Carradoon, to the library, to all Erlkazar is surely ended. And I will return with you to your library, to face the judgment of your superiors.”

  My superiors? Cadderly thought. Dean Thobicus? The notion reminded him that he had many things yet to accomplish if he was to follow the course Deneir had laid out before him. One battle was ended, but another was yet to be fought.

  “Their judgment will be harsh,” Danica replied, and from her tone it was obvious that she didn’t wish any serious harm to come to the repentant wizard. “They may execute …” Danica’s grim voice trailed off as Dorigen nodded her acceptance of that fact.