The Gates of Madness Page 4

  “The Elder Elemental Eye has three faithful followers here,” he said. “They await us in the Hive.”

  “Only three?” Gharik said. “That leaves us two short for the ritual.”

  “The Eye will provide more hands for his labor. Do not question, or we will be three short.”

  Gharik released his arm and trailed behind as Albric led the way to the labyrinth of wretched tenements called the Hive. Like a sewer of the universe, the Hive was a collection of the dregs of countless societies, the most miserable of every world and plane. Half dreaming, Albric drifted through its maze of alleys—even its thoroughfares couldn’t be called streets—following the inspiration of the Eye. He smiled as three figures detached themselves from the filth piled against a crumbling wall and took up positions before and behind them.

  Gharik shook his shoulder. “Albric,” he said, “we’re being robbed.”

  The three figures—an elf woman, a dragonborn man, and a one-eyed human man—shared a chuckle. “That’s right, Albric,” the one-eyed man said. “Somebody not paying attention?”

  Albric laughed with them, then produced the golden symbol of the Elder Eye from within the folds of his robe. The elf saw it and gasped. “You are the ones not paying attention,” Albric said. “The Elder Elemental Eye commands your obedience!”

  Behind him, the one-eyed man started to protest. “Look here, I don’t know who told you—”

  Albric spun to face the man and raised his arms. Dark lightning pulsed around the golden symbol like an extension of his heartbeat, and his voice filled with booming menace. “The Eye commands you! Heed his voice or die where you stand!”

  The dragonborn fell to his knees without a word, and Albric heard the elf behind him do the same. The one-eyed man hesitated, and Albric started drawing in power for the invocation that would strike the faithless one down. But the man sank to his knees as well, an ecstatic smile twisting his face, his single eye wide with awe.

  Albric smiled. Here was one who saw. The others followed blindly, but this man was a dreamer like himself.

  “What is your name?” he asked the man.

  The voice that came from the one-eyed man’s mouth was different. It rang out as deep as thunder in a vast chasm, and the whispers of the mad and the damned echoed in the empty air. “I am the Elder Elemental Eye,” he said. “I am the Chained God.”

  Now Albric fell to his knees, staring in awe at the apparition of his god.

  “My name is Tharizdun.”

  PANDEMONIUM

  Joy and fury warred together within the shadowy substance of the Chained God. The key to his prison was on its way to his former domain, the isle of madness in the Astral Sea, where it would open the doorway and welcome him home. Freedom had never been so close; not in countless thousands of years, stretching back almost to the dawn of time. He could taste it, feel it in the minds of his servants who were planning the ritual. He was so close to them that he could almost feel the dirt beneath his knees as he spoke through his servant: “My name is Tharizdun!”

  As close as his servants were, the other gods had servants of their own, who seemed determined to interfere. Pelor and Ioun, gods of the Bright City, were maneuvering their pawns into position. Ioun and Pelor knew the secret of the Living Gate, a secret that only he shared, of all living beings. Only the three of them had peered through the gate while its guardian slept, so long ago—back at the beginning of all things. Were they afraid that he would destroy the universe, as he had almost done before? Or did they fear the secret they kept?

  It didn’t matter. The Chained God roared, and the void of his prison echoed with the sound, sending ripples across the liquid surface of the Progenitor. When he was free, the streets of the Bright City would run with the blood of its gods.

  Nowhere entered the portal mere seconds after Brendis, but after he’d stepped through he found himself a hundred yards behind the paladin, racing along a crowded street in an unfamiliar city. Although the gentle rise of the street gave him a good view at least another hundred yards in front of Brendis, he couldn’t see the cultists they’d been chasing, No one was even running in the same direction, which probably meant they had left the main road and disappeared into an alley or side street.

  “Brendis!” he shouted as he slowed to a jog.

  The paladin shot a glance over his shoulder, but he didn’t seem to notice Nowhere in the crowd. He turned back and scanned the street ahead of him, and began to slow his pace. Nowhere turned to the street behind him, looking for any sign of Sherinna or the newcomers. No luck.

  He scratched his jaw and scowled. Sherinna could take care of herself—she’d be all right. So why was he so distressed not to see her behind him?

  Nowhere couldn’t tell whether Brendis, who had come to a stop and was now gaping around at the city, was actually looking for the cultists or just admiring the sights. There was a lot to see. The architecture was eclectic, and people of every race thronged the street. Nowhere jogged until he caught up with the paladin.

  “What now, fearless leader?” he asked Brendis.

  Brendis creased his brow and looked up into the hazy gray sky. “Am I crazy?” he said. “Or is there more city up there?”

  Nowhere followed his gaze. He couldn’t make anything out through the haze, but as he let his eyes drift back down, he noticed that the street they were on rose gently and kept rising—there was no crest to its hill. Eventually it disappeared into the smoky haze, but Nowhere had the distinct sense that it continued up and around. Perhaps Brendis was right, and the city actually formed an enormous ring.

  A few of the people who passed them on the street glanced upward to see what Brendis and Nowhere were looking at, but most continued on without breaking stride. But as Nowhere tilted his head back to stare into the haze again, he heard a chuckle from a well-dressed dwarf woman.

  “Welcome to Sigil, boys,” she said. With a wink, she continued on her way, leaving Brendis gaping after her.

  “Sigil?” he said. “Where in the world is Sigil?”

  “The City of Doors, it’s sometimes called,” Nowhere said. “They say it’s not in the world at all, but it’s not in any other plane, either.”

  “So you should feel right at home,” Brendis said with a wry grin. “We’re nowhere.”

  Nowhere paid no heed. How many times had he heard similar jokes? Still, there was some truth to it. Sigil was a city unlike anything Nowhere had ever seen—bustling, alive, and evidently quite prosperous. It was supposed to be riddled with portals, connections to anyplace one could imagine in all the worlds of creation. If that was true, it offered unlimited access to anywhere Nowhere might want to go.

  More important, no one had given him and his horns a second glance since he arrived in the city. He’d seen more tieflings in five minutes of scanning the crowd than he’d ever seen in one place in his life. This was a city he thought he could learn to call home.

  “So what’s the plan?” he asked.

  Brendis drew a slow breath and let it out deliberately. “I think we need to assume that the others didn’t make it through the portal in time, and it’s up to us to stop those cultists.”

  “So we just abandon Sherinna and the others?”

  “I don’t see an alternative. Sherinna can take care of herself. For all I know of her magical talents, she could be opening another portal right now. Maybe she did make it through, and got lost in the crowd the way you almost did.”

  “I didn’t get lost. I came out in a different place than you did.”

  Brendis shrugged. “Whatever. She can handle herself. And if the Sword of the Gods is with her, then maybe he can lead them right to us.”

  “So we need to find those cultists.”

  “Right,” Brendis said. “We know they’re heading for Pandemonium.”

  “So we need to find a way from here to there. Do you think such a way exists in a place they call the City of Doors?”

  “I have to imagine that’s why the cult
ists came here.”

  Nowhere grinned. “Follow me, Brendis. This is my specialty.”

  Albric closed his eyes, quieting his thoughts so he could hear the voice of the Elder Elemental Eye. The voice of Tharizdun, he reminded himself, and a renewed thrill of excitement coursed through him. Each time he remembered how his god had spoken through Jaeran, the one-eyed leader of Sigil’s little cult of thieves, he shuddered with a joyful terror.

  Jaeran stood at his side now, holding Albric’s arm so he didn’t fall when the vision came. “Even in the City of Doors,” Jaeran said, “finding a way to Pandemonium is no easy task.”

  “The Eye will lead us true,” Albric said without opening his eyes. He still didn’t dare to speak the name of his god aloud. He spoke it in his mind, though, imploring the Chained God to lead him.

  Tharizdun! he called in his thoughts, and fire surged through his body. Tharizdun, lead me!

  Though his eyes remained closed, a landscape suddenly appeared to his senses. It was a realm of madness, where pulsating globules of liquid flesh floated in air, wreathed in blue and purple flames. Lightning flashed among them, forming fleeting connections from one to another as eyes and mouths bobbed to the surface and submerged. Shadows of geometric shapes drifted among the blobs, as if a weak and distant sun careened behind impossible structures erected somewhere beyond vision. A translucent tube stretched out before him, undulating slowly as lightning coursed past it, and Albric realized that its mouth opened right beside him. It was a path, the way he was meant to tread. Though it wasn’t revealed to his senses, he knew that the tube—which reminded him suddenly of a gullet, constricting in pulses that added to its waving motion—opened onto a doorway to Pandemonium.

  He shook off Jaeran’s hand and walked into the mouth of the tube, which sprouted teeth like slabs of granite as he passed, ready to close down on any acolyte who proved unworthy.

  He felt Jaeran close at his heels, but the others were beyond his awareness—they might have been among the floating orbs of flesh, for all he knew or cared. They were on their own. They would follow or they wouldn’t. Tharizdun would ensure that he had acolytes enough for the rite.

  The tube carried him along without any conscious effort on his part. He had no idea what was happening to his body in the streets of Sigil, nor did he care. Perhaps he was walking along the path laid out for him by Tharizdun, or maybe he was traveling outside of space and time. Once or twice, globules of flesh drifted near the path, and lightning danced around him, but the tube seemed to insulate him, and the flesh-blobs couldn’t hinder his progress along the path. Then the tube came to an end, squeezing him out in front of a blazing ring of green flame. Albric opened his eyes.

  The wretched tenements of the Hive were nowhere to be seen. He was in a back alley somewhere, but the surrounding buildings were large, clean, and in good repair. A short stairway up the side of a building led to a door, but the ring of fire corresponded not to the door, but to a decorative arch beside it, at the edge of the landing.

  “The arch,” he said, pointing.

  “How do we open the door?” Jaeran asked.

  Albric frowned. “What?”

  “Most of the portals in the City of Doors require a gate key, an object you need that will turn a mundane door or archway into a portal. Without a key, you step through that arch and you’re just falling six feet off the end of the landing.”

  An armored woman opened the door at the top of the stairs and stepped out onto the landing. She held a halberd and took up a stance that clearly signaled her intent to block access to the arch. An instant later, another woman strode out onto a stone bridge that spanned the alley above them. This woman wore flowing robes and carried a slender staff, but her dark hair and eyes were twin to those of the first woman.

  Albric climbed one stair, and the woman with the halberd shifted her stance ever so slightly. “We mean to make use of the portal behind you,” he told her.

  The woman frowned. “I don’t know how you learned of it, but our sacred duty is to ward that portal.”

  “Who appointed you to that duty?”

  “I am sworn to Pelor’s service, my sister to Ioun’s.”

  Albric couldn’t explain the rage that welled in his gut, nor was the howl that tore from his throat entirely his. Jaeran joined him an instant later, and Albric saw both women cover their ears, their faces wrenched in agony. Wailing cries that came from no mortal voice echoed in the alley around them, unearthly and haunting. For a moment, Albric saw the two women and his acolytes as more floating globules, and he saw lightning and fire sundering their minds.

  Tharizdun’s howl of fury burned in his throat, sucking every last breath of air from his lungs until darkness began to swallow his vision. He fell to his knees, but the two women were already sprawled on the ground, utterly broken. The cry died in his throat and he drew a shuddering breath as Jaeran’s voice trailed off.

  Slowly Albric got to his feet and climbed the rest of the stairs to the landing. The woman lay insensible, her wide eyes staring at nothing. He bent over her and spoke, his voice raw from screaming.

  “Who is your god?”

  A trail of spittle dribbled from the woman’s mouth as she answered. “The only god, the Chained God, the unknowable and invincible.”

  “Rise and follow me,” Albric said. He turned to his acolytes and pointed up to the bridge. “Gharik, get the other one down from there. She will complete our circle.”

  The woman on the landing managed to find her feet, and she stared at the golden symbol of the Elemental Eye that hung around Albric’s neck.

  “What is the gate key that will open this portal?” he asked her.

  “You wear it already,” she said. “The talisman of the Chained God is the key to his former home.”

  Albric smiled. “The Eye has led us true.” He stepped closer to the arch, and darkness began to swirl in the opening.

  He waited until Gharik had returned with the second sister, and then he stepped through the arch, off the edge of the landing, and into blackness.

  Miri wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and cursed herself as she started walking down the bustling street. People washed around her like a river flowing both directions at once, sometimes bumping into her but mostly just passing too close.

  How did I get so dependent on him? she wondered.

  She knew the answer, though. She’d depended on Demascus since he first appeared at the dairy where she earned her living churning cream into butter, lifted her to her feet, and took her away. And before that, she had depended on the dairy’s owner, dear, harsh Carina, who cared for her after her mother was killed. It was no wonder Demas, as she’d grown to call him, thought of her as a child—she had never really grown up.

  She let the flow of people carry her along the street, searching the crowd in the desperate hope of finding a familiar face. Each time she saw a tiefling—how was it possible that so many tieflings lived in this city?—she started, thinking it might be the man she had just met in the ruins of Bael Turath, the one who called himself Nowhere.

  Miri chuckled to herself. Where has Nowhere gone? she thought. It’s an odd name. Where do you go when you’re looking for Nowhere?

  Suddenly it struck her as less an amusing play on words than a hint of something profound. Searching for Nowhere seemed like a metaphor for a worthwhile spiritual pursuit. She wondered what Demas would say about it.

  Another person in the crowd jostled her, and she realized she had stopped paying attention to her surroundings. The crowd had thinned a little. On her right was a shop displaying bolts of cloth in vibrant colors and exotic patterns, beautifully and carefully woven. Just past that was a tailor’s shop, its window sporting gowns and robes made from the same fabrics. She glanced across the street, to her left, and stopped in her tracks.

  A small temple stood there, set back from the street and partially hidden by tables and awnings that extended from the sides of the shops that flanked it. Seven w
ide stairs led up to a narrow doorway between two graceful columns, and the entablature above the columns featured the stylized eye of Ioun.

  It almost seemed impossible, but after all the time she had spent following Demas wherever his god led him, she had to believe that Ioun had guided her footsteps to the threshold of this temple. She hurried across the street, up the stairs, and between the columns into the chamber within.

  The noise of the street faded when she entered, and she felt herself start to relax. A statue of Ioun dominated the small chamber, depicting her with one hand up in blessing, the other holding an open book. Garlands of wilting flowers were draped over the statue’s neck and arms, and Miri wondered if she should go find a fresh sacrifice to offer. She hesitated, realizing she had no idea what she was supposed to do, and turned to leave.

  Two smaller statues stood in the corners near the doorway—twin angels, majestic beings of fire and lightning, lifting their hands in adoration of Ioun, ready to receive the blessing of knowledge she dispensed. Was she supposed to adopt the same pose? She stepped closer to examine one of the angels more closely.

  Its face was blank, just eyes and the suggestion of a nose. But the shape of it—the structure of the cheekbones, the chin, even the ill-defined nose—made her think of Demas. She fell to her knees beside the storm of fire that formed the angel’s lower body, her gaze fixed on the angel’s blank face.

  “Demas,” she said. Tears welled in her eyes. “Demas, please hear me. I don’t know how to do what you do. Ioun won’t lead me the way she leads you. I don’t know how to find you in this city, and I don’t know what else to do.”

  Sobbing, she leaned forward to rest her head on the statue’s cool stone. “Demas, please, just come find me. Let Ioun lead you—surely she can lead you to this, her house. I’ll be right here. Just come find me.”

  Unsure of what else to say, Miri curled up on the floor before the angelic statue. With one last look up at the face she imagined to be Demas’s, she drifted to sleep.