The Gates of Madness Read online

  A hand on her shoulder brought her gently awake. She opened her eyes to see the angel—a living angel, not the statue, wreathed in divine light—crouched beside her, his hand on her shoulder and compassion in his pale blue eyes.

  “Miri, get up.”

  As she stood, Miri saw the face of Ioun herself behind the angel, serene and severe. An excitement coursed through her like nothing she had ever known, a thrill that ran down her spine and brought tears to her sleepy eyes. Is this how Demas feels when he speaks with Ioun?

  “Come, child, we need to hurry,” the angel said. “We still have to find Brendis and the tiefling.”

  The divine light dimmed as Miri blinked and rubbed her eyes. The angel was smiling, though Ioun’s face remained impassive. Miri frowned.

  Angels can’t smile, she thought.

  “Demas?”

  The glow faded completely, and she saw Demas as he was. It was Sherinna who stood behind him, not Ioun. Miri threw her arms around him, her joy and relief at seeing him tempered by a vague disappointment.

  “Of course, child,” Demas said. He slowly, hesitantly, put his hands on her back. “Who did you think had found you?”

  I thought you were an angel. “I thought …”

  She clutched him tighter and closed her eyes so she couldn’t see Sherinna’s frown.

  I thought Ioun might speak to me too.

  The wind that howled around Albric was so fierce that for a moment he thought he was falling. He braced himself for impact, then one of the acolytes bumped into him in the darkness, he stumbled forward, and realized that his feet were planted on solid rock. He willed a shred of power into his holy symbol and made it glow with a sickly purplish light.

  The light glittered on flecks of mica scattered over the walls, ceiling, and floor of a tunnel. As he turned in a full circle, the rest of the acolytes appeared in the tunnel, with Jaeran bringing up the rear. Each one seemed to step through the solid rock wall, and once Jaeran was through there was no sign of the portal behind him.

  “How will we get back?” Niala, the elf woman from Jaeran’s band of thieves, asked. She had to shout to make herself heard over the wind.

  “I would kill you where you stand,” Albric growled, “but the ritual requires eight. When the Chained God walks free, will you ask him to carry you back to the slum you left behind? Remember why we are here, worm, and what sacred task lies before us.”

  Niala fell to her knees at Albric’s feet. “Forgive me,” she said. “I spoke without thinking.”

  The twin sisters cackled with a single voice, the sound mingling with the howl of the wind in the tunnel until Albric thought he heard a cacophony of voices. The maddening chorus reminded him of the unearthly voice he’d heard issuing from Jaeran’s mouth, as well as the howl of fury both men had unleashed to break the sisters’ minds. Tharizdun was calling him onward. He put his face to the wind and started down the tunnel.

  The tunnel coiled to the left, descended steeply, and then opened into a huge circular vault that could not have been natural in origin. The wind howled less insistently, and eight pedestals stood arrayed in a circle at the center of the room. Atop each pedestal sat a crystal orb the size of Albric’s clenched fist, glowing with purple light.

  Albric walked to the circle and stood behind one of the pedestals, facing the center. He watched with satisfaction as Jaeran and the others filed in, taking their positions without a word or a questioning glance. They knew what they were to do. Tharizdun was speaking to them all now.

  His head swam with the realization. They were in the heart of Tharizdun’s long-abandoned dominion, the home he had constructed for himself before the Dawn War, before he planted the shard of utter evil in the depths of the Elemental Chaos that gave birth to the Abyss. Had this vault with its eight pedestals been standing prepared for this moment since that most ancient time? Had Tharizdun foreseen his imprisonment and the need for eight acolytes to set him free?

  They stood like the points of a compass, with Jaeran facing him across the circle. Gharik and Haver stood on either side of Albric, while Jaeran’s thieves, Niala and Braghad, flanked their leader. That left the two sisters, the former guardians of the portal, facing each other. They all stood still and silent as the wind whipped around them.

  Albric drew the shard of the Living Gate out of the folds of his robe and stepped to the middle of the circle. He set it carefully in a slight depression that marked the circle’s center, then returned to his position. He raised his hands, and the others mirrored the gesture in perfect unison. Their will was gone, replaced by the will of the Chained God.

  He opened his mouth, and eight voices chanted as one: “Tharizdun! God of Eternal Night, the Black Sun, behold us gathered in your darkness.” The wind seized their voices and scattered them throughout the vaulted cavern, turning eight voices into eight thousand.

  “Tharizdun! Ender and Anathema, Eater of Worlds and Undoer, come and wreak destruction.”

  The shard of the Living Gate rose slowly from the floor as if lifted by the wind, and it began to spin, first slowly, then wildly, wobbling and shaking as it whirled.

  “Tharizdun! Patient One, He Who Waits, Chained God, your waiting is over and your freedom is at hand!”

  The shard’s wobbling spin widened until it circled a point in space, about ten feet above the indentation in the floor. Its orbit grew slowly wider, and as it did, something took shape at the center, a pinprick of utter blackness in the dark chamber. The shard circled still wider and the pinprick grew to a marble’s size, then a child’s ball, and soon a king’s orb of perfect nothingness. The larger the blackness grew, the darker the room became, as if it were a void that drew all light into its emptiness.

  The void doubled in size once more, and the shard of the Living Gate clattered to the chamber floor, skittering a few feet toward Gharik. Albric fell to his knees as a sensation of power, of presence, of malign majesty and terrible, terrible fury broke over him.

  The rite worked! Albric was certain the void he had created led directly to the prison of the Chained God. He was in the presence of the divine.

  Some of the acolytes cowered on the floor, covering their faces, not daring to lift their eyes to the face of their god. But Albric knew their work was not yet finished. The void was too small a passage for Tharizdun to use. But as Albric stared in awe, something came through.

  At first, Albric thought it was the blood of his god. It seemed to form on the surface of the black sphere before dripping down in viscous blobs, then pooling together in and around the depression in the floor. It was not blood, Albric realized, but rather some kind of liquid crystal, bending and reflecting the feeble light of the orbs. Streaks of silver writhed among flecks of gold inside the substance, and it pulsed and surged as it gathered together in a thick pool on the floor.

  Albric’s eyes found the shard of the Living Gate as the Chained God made his will known. Infused with the substance Tharizdun called the Progenitor, the shard would form a new Living Gate, a portal large and strong enough to shatter the walls of his prison and break his chains forever. Albric began to crawl toward the shard.

  But there was another voice in the chamber. “Touch the Voidharrow,” it whispered, and its voice was the voice of the howling wind, the voice that echoed from every surface of the vaulted hall. “Take it into you and let it transform you. It will grant you power beyond your imagining.”

  Albric hesitated. Was the whisper another expression of Tharizdun’s will?

  While he paused, he saw Haver, Niala, and both sisters scramble to the edge of the viscous pool, reaching hesitant fingers toward the liquid.

  “Wait!” he shouted, but the wind stole his voice.

  When flesh came close to the liquid, the substance rose to meet it, coiling around fingers, then engulfing hands. Serpents of liquid crystal wound up their arms, and found ears, nostrils, and screaming mouths as entrances to his acolytes’ bodies. The rest of the acolytes looked on, at first in horror, as
the bodies of the first four began to change.

  Albric snatched the shard of the Living Gate from the floor, then looked up to meet Gharik’s gaze. “Gharik, help me!” he ordered.

  Gharik nodded, then crawled over to Albric. “What is the will of the Eye?” he asked.

  “He wants us to fuse that substance—the Progenitor—with this shard to make a new Living Gate.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. But what the Eye desires and what the Progenitor wants do not seem to be the same thing. Come with me.”

  Albric cradled the shard of the Living Gate under one arm as he crawled awkwardly toward the Progenitor. Gharik followed, but Albric wasn’t sure whether he did so out of obedience or because he’d started listening to the liquid whispers.

  Haver—or a creature that had once been Haver—stepped between Albric and the pool. Red crystals jutted from its hulking shoulders, and its arms were as thick as tree trunks. Its face was still mostly Haver’s, contorted in agony as it transformed, becoming something alien and terrible. Just as Albric tensed to fight the creature, it staggered away, racked with the pain of its transformation.

  “Gharik, hurry!” Albric shouted. “Take the shard, and touch it to the substance.”

  Gharik’s eyes grew wide with fear, but he knew better than to disobey or even question Albric. The shard trembled in his grip as he slowly stretched it toward the Progenitor liquid.

  The substance recoiled from the shard, and the whispers in the chamber grew louder, more insistent. “Touch the Voidharrow! Let it change you! Witness the power it grants!”

  Jaeran’s dragonborn acolyte, Braghad, was the next to succumb to the whispers. He tried to push Gharik away from the pool, but the big man held his ground and thrust the shard of the Living Gate into the liquid. The shard erupted in brilliant light that cast stark shadows all across the vault. At the same time, a snaky tendril of the substance wound its way up Gharik’s arm and into his mouth. Albric seized the shard from Gharik’s hand and pushed the screaming man away.

  Jaeran stood before him then, madness in his eyes. “Let me help you,” he shouted over the echoing whispers.

  Albric eyed him, unsure of his intent. “Help me do what?”

  “Open the gate! Free the Chained God!”

  Albric held out the glowing shard and Jaeran gripped it. The Progenitor substance was crystallizing around it, expanding it, fusing with it. Albric couldn’t tell where the original shard stopped and the hardened Progenitor began, or if they were really just one substance.

  Jaeran and Albric gently shaped it as it exploded in size. When it grew large enough, they set it down on the stone floor, and it began to form an arched gateway.

  The acolytes—still in the throes of transformation—were scattered throughout the chamber, writhing in pain. Haver, though, seemed to be reaching the final stages of metamorphosis—he stood still, hunched forward with massive claws resting on the ground in front of his feet. His face was no longer recognizable as human, let alone as Haver. As Albric’s eyes rested on him, he writhed in pain and grew visibly larger.

  The gate was finished. With one voice, Jaeran and Albric chanted another invocation to Tharizdun, the words forming in Albric’s mind without any conscious effort. The gate opened, and Albric saw an ever-changing landscape on the other side. It was a maddening procession of worlds, the far end of the gate flitting through them so quickly he could barely make out the details of any one: verdant forest to bare desert, rocky coast to mountain peaks, with no sense of reason or pattern.

  “We have to focus it,” Jaeran said.

  Albric bent his will to the gate, and the flickering landscape slowed ever so slightly. He saw a forbidding city towering over a desolate wasteland, then a city full of graceful towers with a fire-ringed galleon drifting through the sky above it. Faerie lights danced along a wooded seashore.

  As he watched, something wrapped around his ankle. It was warm and firm, more like flowing sand than an ooze. Its touch sent tiny pinpricks of pain across his skin as it coiled its way up his leg. He looked down and saw that the Progenitor pool had split into two long tendrils, one of which was writhing up his leg as the other did the same to Jaeran.

  Peering around the edge of the gate, he met Jaeran’s gaze and nodded. First things first—they must free the Chained God.

  VOIDHARROW

  What has happened?” The Chained God’s form became a dark whirlwind of fury, scattering the Progenitor into crystalline mist. “You betrayed me!”

  “Betrayed,” the Progenitor whispered, its echoes surrounding him.

  “They would have freed me!”

  “They freed us,” the whispers replied. “Now we spread, your will and my substance. The Voidharrow.”

  The Chained God began to see. “Like a plague,” he said.

  “Plague … A plague …”

  “Your substance and my will.”

  “Our will.”

  The Chained God’s fury diminished, and he reached his thoughts to his old dominion where the Voidharrow had taken root. Yes, his will was present there—the merest echo of his thoughts and desires. It was more of a foothold in the universe he’d left behind than he’d ever had, though.

  “It is enough,” he said.

  “Like a plague.”

  “I hate to interrupt this touching reunion,” Sherinna’s cold voice said, “but you agreed to help me find my companions once we’d found yours.”

  Miri released her hold on Demas, and his hands dropped from her back. Miri’s eyes stung as she realized that his half-hearted embrace was the most demonstrative expression of his care for her that he’d ever given. And she’d had warmer embraces from innkeepers. Something in Sherinna’s tone irritated her just enough that she turned her frustration to the eladrin wizard.

  “Is that all it is to you?” she said. “An exchange of services?”

  “Of course,” Sherinna said. “What else would it be?”

  “Aren’t you worried about them?”

  “They can take care of themselves.”

  Miri couldn’t be sure, but she thought that Sherinna put the slightest emphasis on the word “they”—as if to suggest a contrast between her competent companions and Miri, who had reacted to being separated from her companions by cowering in a temple.

  “Don’t you care about them?” she asked. “Don’t you think they might be worried about you?”

  “As my original statement conveyed, I am eager to find them. Brendis and Nowhere are my associates, and very valuable ones. However, I assure you I won’t greet them with a tearful embrace when we find them.”

  “Your associates?” Miri could hardly believe what she was hearing.

  “Of course. We cooperate together to accomplish specific tasks for which our particular skills are well suited. Each of us brings different strengths to the group, and we cover each other’s weaknesses. It’s a lucrative line of work, and we divide the profits equally. It’s not so different from a trading venture. I can’t imagine what else I would call them.”

  “Friends? You trust your life to them.”

  Sherinna shrugged. “The same is true of partners in any sort of high-risk venture.”

  “And what would they call you?”

  “The same thing, I imagine.”

  “Even Nowhere?”

  For the first time, Sherinna’s perfect composure slipped, just a fraction. “What do you mean?”

  Miri smiled. “The look in his eyes when you’re around doesn’t say ‘associate’ to me.”

  Sherinna’s face froze, and Miri felt the temperature in the temple drop. “Enough,” she said, and Miri could see the eladrin’s breath in the suddenly frosty air. “I have no need to be chided by a half-elf child with stars in her teary eyes. Demascus promised to help me find my associates, so they and I can continue the task set before us. As soon as he has fulfilled his end of the bargain, I shall take my leave and hope that our paths never cross again.”

  A sudd
en flare of light and warmth drove away Sherinna’s chill as Demas stepped between the two women, his face stern. “That’s enough, wizard. Miri may be young, but I have seen more proof of her valor and strength than I have yet seen from you. I am proud to call her a dear friend, and I can’t stand by and let you insult her.”

  Miri’s heart sang as the wizard’s frosty glare softened. “I am sorry,” Sherinna said. “Perhaps I am more concerned about my associates than I was willing to admit, and my concern has shortened my temper.”

  “Let us find them, then,” Demas said, “if only that we may part ways sooner.”

  Nowhere stepped out of the rowdy tavern, and a bottle smashed on the cobblestones by his feet. Without a glance back, he hurried out of the alley, smiling broadly. When he reached the thoroughfare where he was to meet Brendis, his eyes lit on the Sword of the Gods first. Even in the cosmopolitan streets of the City of Doors, Demascus stood out like a troll at a banquet. Sherinna and Miri walked beside him, one on each side.

  “Sherinna!” he called, and changed course to meet them. He saw Sherinna’s face brighten, then she brought it under control and shot Miri a dark glance. What was that about? Brendis emerged from an alley across the street, and Nowhere waved to catch his eye.

  “You found us,” he said as he drew near enough to be heard. The group met in front of a potter’s shop, but Miri stood a few paces away from the others, her gaze fixed on Demascus. “What happened?” he asked.

  “The portal was unstable,” Sherinna said. “As soon as the cultists had passed, it started to close. Before it did, though, the far end of the portal—the one in this city—started to slip. For each of you that went through, your destination fell back a significant distance. I suspect even Brendis never saw the cultists.”

  “That’s right,” the paladin said.

  “Sherinna and I used our magic to stabilize the portal and hold it open,” Demascus said. “Then we set about collecting our … associates.”