The Gates of Madness Read online

  “The Sword of the Gods drew on Ioun’s wisdom to lead us, first to Miri and then here,” Sherinna said. “His abilities really are uncanny.”

  “We could use those abilities,” Brendis said. “Are you still interested in chasing those cultists?”

  Demascus glanced at Miri. “Our mission has failed,” he said. “Ioun sent us to Bael Turath to destroy the Staff of Opening before it fell into evil hands, but we were too late. I would like to correct that failure.”

  Miri scowled and looked away from the group. For that matter, Sherinna didn’t look too pleased at his words.

  Brendis smiled, apparently oblivious to the two women. “We believe they’re on their way to put that staff to use. If Sherinna’s right, and I have no doubt that she is, the staff you seek incorporates a shard of the Living Gate. They plan to use that shard to open a doorway into the prison of the Chained God.”

  “They seek to free the Undoer,” Demascus said.

  Nowhere shuddered as a chill shot through him. He hadn’t heard that title before, but it brought to mind the sense of a dark god unraveling everything, reversing mortal achievements and bringing plans to ruin. He glanced at Sherinna and found her eyes on him. She looked distracted, and he gave her a quizzical smile. She looked away.

  “We believe they’re heading for Pandemonium to perform their ritual. So Nowhere has been asking around, trying to find out where you go if you want to get from the City of Doors here to the howling wastes there.”

  “Ioun will lead us,” Demascus said.

  Nowhere bit his tongue, fighting down the urge to say something pointed—or draw his dagger. He couldn’t deny that Demascus’s gifts were useful, but did he have to be so sanctimonious about them?

  The Sword of the Gods struck him as the worst kind of zealot—the kind of follower who never learned to stand on his own feet because he trusted the gods to hold him upright. And then had the gall to reproach others for not living as he did. He thought he understood why Sherinna didn’t look pleased that Demascus wanted to tag along on their adventure.

  Miri turned to Sherinna, though her eyes were fixed on the ground. “I—I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to chide.”

  So they had fought—that explained the tension in the air and the angry glances. Sherinna looked taken aback, but quickly regained her composure. “No, I’m sorry if I insulted you,” she said.

  “Together, then,” Brendis said, beaming around at his companions. “Demascus, lead on.”

  The Sword of the Gods closed his eyes and took one firm step. Then his eyes opened wide in shock. He clutched his hands to his ears and fell to his knees,

  “Demas!” Miri cried, rushing to his side. “What is it?”

  The Sword of the Gods stared blankly as if he hadn’t heard. Nowhere searched the street and what he could see of adjoining buildings, looking for a fleeing assassin or some other explanation for Demascus’s sudden collapse.

  “Demas!”

  “I’m all right,” he said at last. “I saw the doorway we seek, but I cannot lead us there.”

  “Why not?” Brendis demanded.

  “I … There was a scream, and …”

  Nowhere gaped at Demascus. He’d never seen the Sword of the Gods at a loss for words or appearing anything but supremely confident, but something had shaken him.

  “It’s all right,” Nowhere said. “I can get us to the portal.” He drew a silver charm from his pouch, a depiction of a bent spiral—the Elder Elemental Eye. “I even got us a key.”

  Pain convulsed Albric’s body, shattering his focus and making the image within the gate shift more rapidly. He looked down and saw the Progenitor completely covering his lower body, and he could feel it starting up his spine. He couldn’t feel his legs at all, and he realized that his left leg was liquified—a column of the silver-scarlet liquid supported his body.

  “Albric!”

  Jaeran’s voice jolted him out of his shock, and he forced his attention back to the gate. The image stabilized again, showing the gleaming streets of a celestial city. A moment later it shifted to a range of brooding mountains, then a castle with soaring spires, its walls fluttering with blue pennants.

  “Tharizdun!” he muttered through his pain. “Ender and Anathema. Eater of Worlds.”

  With each second, the gate revealed a new world to his eyes. The Chained God, once free, would tear through them all like a bulette scattering anthills when it burrowed up from the earth. He would consume them, and each life he extinguished would feed the furnace of his power.

  “Undoer,” he grunted. “Come and wreak destruction.”

  “Wreak destruction,” Jaeran echoed, shouting through his own agony.

  “Destruction,” whispered a third voice. It was all around, and in Albric’s mind. It might have been his own voice. He recognized it as the voice of the Voidharrow—That’s its name, what Tharizdun called the Progenitor. Tharizdun doesn’t know.

  Doesn’t know? Tharizdun knows all!

  Jaeran screamed and staggered away from the gate, clutching his face. He dug his fingertips into his empty eye socket, trying in vain to pull the Voidharrow out.

  The gate flickered again, showing him a dozen worlds in the span of his glance. A dozen worlds that would all be destroyed by the coming of the Chained God.

  “Let them burn,” he growled, and he bent his will to steady the gate once more.

  Nowhere stepped through the arch first, the spiral symbol glowing slightly as it activated the portal’s magic. An oblivion of darkness and silence seized him, and he felt nothing—no wall within his reach, no ground beneath his feet, no breath of air on his skin.

  A presence appeared at his shoulder, invisible in the darkness, and a voice croaked in his ear, “You proceed to your doom.”

  Nowhere’s body went cold with terror as he recognized the voice of Tavet the Heartless, the night hag of Nera’s undercity. What is she doing here? he thought.

  “Have you tired of hunting this hydra yet, tiefling?” Tavet asked. Her voice set him on edge, reminding him of every unexplained noise that ever frightened him in the night.

  “The profit’s been small the last few days, I must admit.” Nowhere tried to sound more cavalier than he felt, but his voice sounded small and fragile in his own ears. Where are the others? he thought. They were right behind me.

  “And you’re about to lose it all. What a pity.”

  A hot flare of anger started to thaw his terror. “What are you doing here, Tavet? Aren’t you a long way from home?”

  “Not as far as you are, tiefling. I’m here to save you.”

  “Save me? Why?”

  “Silly child. You bring meat and blood—you’re one of my best customers. I’d be heartbroken if anything happened to you.” Her croaking laugh came from all around him.

  “I have no cow’s heart to pay you with now, Tavet. What price would you ask for saving me?” He knew the answer, but he had to hear her say it.

  “I told you before. I want Sherinna.”

  Nowhere thrust his dagger backward into the empty air where he’d thought the night hag stood. Her laugh grew louder and sharper, until it felt like a harsh winter wind buffeting him on all sides.

  “I told you before,” he said through clenched teeth, “I won’t hand her over to you. Not even to save my own life.”

  “Suit yourself. Perhaps I won’t be so heartbroken after all.”

  Tavet’s laughter became a howling wind and a stone floor beneath his feet, and his shoulder slammed into a rough wall. The faintest glimmer of light filtered up from somewhere below, just barely enough to trace the outline of a tunnel to his infernally enhanced senses.

  An instant later, bright light stabbed at his eyes, and he saw Demascus standing like a beacon, divine radiance shining from his staff and enveloping his body without casting a shadow. Miri appeared in the tunnel next, then Sherinna, and finally Brendis, in quick succession.

  “What took you all so long?” Nowhere
whispered.

  Looks of confusion flitted across every face, then Brendis laughed, dismissing the question as a joke.

  Nowhere swallowed hard. Tavet must have snared him somewhere in between the portal in Sigil and its destination, turning an instantaneous journey into an opportunity for that disturbing conversation. To his companions, no time had passed.

  A long, wordless howl echoed up the tunnel from somewhere below, carried on the rushing wind. It sounded like a tormented beast, and it did nothing to soothe Nowhere’s nerves.

  What am I doing here? he thought. This isn’t worth dying for.

  He let Brendis and the glowing Torch of the Gods lead the way down the tunnel, staying back near the edge of Demascus’s circle of light so he could duck into shadow at the first sign of trouble. The two of them set a pace that was more eager than safe as more howls, screams, and shouts filtered up the tunnel.

  “Albric!” someone cried. A bestial squeal answered the cry.

  Whatever the cultists were doing, it didn’t sound good. Nowhere wondered if their ritual had gone awry, or if it had succeeded in summoning a powerful being that failed to show the proper gratitude for its liberation. He realized he was clutching his dagger too tightly to use it, and he tried to relax his grip.

  Brendis and Demascus paused as they reached the end of the tunnel, and Nowhere tried to peer around them to get a clear view of the vaulted chamber beyond. An archway formed of scarlet crystal stood in the center of the room, shedding a dim red light around it. Through the arch, Nowhere could just make out an unfamiliar city with a tall black tower rising above it. One man stood beside the arch, gripping the crystal with two hands while wailing in evident pain. His lower body was covered with a substance that looked like a liquid version of the crystal that formed the arch, shot through with flecks of gold and veins of silver. One tendril of the liquid stretched up his spine.

  Seven other figures were spread across the large chamber, none of them fully human. One was a six-armed hulk with red crystal formations jutting from its back and shoulders. Another was a pain-wracked elf face at the center of a teeming mass of crystalline spiders. A dragonborn man clutched his own wrist and, as Nowhere watched, exhaled a cloud of fire to engulf his crystal-covered hand. The fire clung to his hand, drawing a scream of pain and fear from the dragonborn’s mouth.

  “Minions of the Chained God!” Demascus shouted. His voice filled the huge chamber and echoed through it, silencing even the wind for an instant. “You stand under the judgment of all the gods, and the Sword of the Gods has come to execute that judgment.”

  “And I didn’t think he could get any more arrogant and self-righteous,” Nowhere muttered.

  Sherinna heard him and smiled. “Shall we?” she said.

  Nowhere frowned. No pile of gold waited to be claimed in the chamber—in fact, what gold he could see, gleaming around the neck of the man by the arch, was in imminent danger of being swallowed by the liquid crystal. Nowhere was pretty sure he didn’t want to touch that stuff. Tavet’s warning stuck in his mind: You proceed to your doom.

  Why? he wondered. Why should I die here?

  Sherinna didn’t wait for his answer. Stepping into the mouth of the tunnel, she stretched out her hands and hurled waves of fire into the chamber ahead of Brendis’s charge.

  That’s why, he thought. Damn it.

  He drew a deep breath to steady his nerves. As he slipped past Sherinna and into the chamber, he rested his hand on her shoulder for a moment. She shot him a puzzled smile even as gleaming bolts of magical energy shot from her fingertips to plunge into the six-armed monster that was lumbering toward her.

  The cultists and monsters were in confused disarray, especially the ones who were still caught in the transformation from one to the other. Brendis intercepted the hulking thing, ensuring that it kept its distance from Sherinna, while Miri charged around to the left and attacked a creature with human legs, plated in armor, and the forequarters of a pantherlike monster, sleek and predatory. Demascus drew the sword from his back as he rushed straight toward the arch. As he moved, a column of divine fire roared down over the archway and the three nearest cultists.

  Nowhere scowled. Brendis and Miri wore heavy armor, and each of them had picked out one foe to deal with. Demascus wore chainmail beneath his ornate robes, but he was heading for the thickest concentration of foes and seemed most likely to need Nowhere’s help. Keeping to the shadows, he circled slowly around the outside of the chamber, his eyes fixed on the nearest cultists.

  A cultist whose left hand was covered with the scarlet liquid moved to intercept Demascus. He held a sword and swung it wildly at the cleric, who blocked it with an easy parry.

  “You,” Demascus said. “I saved your life in Bael Turath.”

  The cultist didn’t answer, but his left hand moved to his throat as if of its own volition.

  “And this is how you respond to the grace of the gods, freely given to you?” Demascus said.

  The liquid crystal that swathed the man’s hand extended a snaky tendril and found his mouth. He started to scream, but the liquid choked the sound off. His lips twisted in disgust, Demascus cut the man’s head from his neck with one clean stroke of his sword. A spray of blood and droplets of red crystalline liquid trailed from the edge of his sword.

  Across the room, Miri killed the pantherlike creature before it fully completed its transformation. An orb of greenish goo hurtled from Sherinna’s hand and splashed into the six-armed hulk as Brendis’s glowing sword whirled around it in a deadly dance, wearing down its defenses.

  Demascus advanced on the next cultist, but he hesitated as he realized that the man was too wracked with agony to even acknowledge his presence. Nowhere stalked out of the shadows to approach the cultist from the other side, and saw that the man was clawing at an eye socket that was filled with the liquid substance. The Sword of the Gods was reluctant to kill a man who posed no immediate threat, but Nowhere felt no such compunctions.

  As the tiefling thrust his dagger forward, the man’s body jerked out of the way as if yanked away by some unseen hand. His good eye, wide with fright, focused on Nowhere as he stumbled through the arch. With a flash of crimson light, the man disappeared into a desert landscape under a dark red sun.

  Nowhere paused, not sure whether he should try to follow. He glanced at Demascus, who seemed uncharacteristically hesitant. As he looked back to the archway, though, he realized that his decision had been made for him. In place of the desert landscape, he now saw a dark forest, with a wooded island of earth and stone floating in the air above it.

  Another creature swept in, this one no longer recognizable as the cultist it had been. Its body was formed of shadow, though crystalline structures extended from its back like wings and swirled around its legs in long, twisting tendrils that lifted it off the ground. As it moved closer, Nowhere felt a pressure on his mind, as if the monster were sifting through his thoughts. He threw a dagger at the creature, but the blade flew wide and clattered on the stone. Then he heard the croaking cackle of Tavet the Heartless, and turned to see the night hag standing right behind him, tearing her claws into Sherinna’s lifeless corpse.

  “No!” he screamed, recoiling from the hag’s bloody grin.

  Then he heard a grunt of pain from the direction of the shadow creature, and Tavet seemed to flicker. For a moment, in place of Tavet he saw a smear of darkness in the air, and he glanced around to see Sherinna standing several paces behind Demascus, launching another arcane barrage at the creature. Demascus, too, looked like he was pulling himself out of his own nightmarish vision, and he was visibly shaken.

  Nowhere growled his rage. The creature had dredged his mind and woven his worst nightmares into a weapon to use against him. Even as he rushed toward the monster, he felt the pressure on his mind again, but he honed his fury to drive the nightmare weaver’s tendrils out of his thoughts, and the pressure faded completely as his dagger slashed into the creature’s shadowy substance. A blast of fi
re from Sherinna’s fingers engulfed the creature, stopping inches from Nowhere’s face and bathing him in waves of heat as it roared over the nightmare creature’s body. With a shout and a flash of light, Demascus drove his sword deep into its shoulder.

  With the last of his anger, Nowhere pushed the smoldering body as it fell, sending it tumbling through the arch and into the dark forest of another world.

  He looked around to get a sense of the tide of battle. It seemed to be going in their favor: Brendis had toppled the four-armed hulk, and he and Miri were locked in battle with a creature formed of fire, with a pulsing core of liquid crystal at its heart. The dragonborn cultist whose fiery breath had given birth to the creature was dead on the floor nearby. Near the archway, only one cultist remained—the human with crystalline legs, who looked like he was still trying to manipulate the portal. As Nowhere looked at the gate, though, he saw the cultist-monster he’d forgotten: the chittering swarm of spiders was in the process of forming itself into a single creature, forming a sheath of black chitin around itself and shaping it into spindly legs and a bulbous body.

  While the swarm-creature was still gathering its strength, Nowhere stepped forward to deal with the cultist at the arch. He moved up behind the man, who had somehow remained completely focused on the arch as battle erupted around him. He saw the liquid crystal pulsing on the man’s spine and undulating where his legs had once been. He struck out with his dagger in hatred and revulsion, driving the blade up beneath the man’s ribs. The man’s head and shoulders slumped, but the quivering column of liquid crystal kept the corpse upright. Nowhere stepped back, but the liquid lashed out at him.

  The pain had all but stopped as the Voidharrow fused with Albric’s spine. He was so intent on tuning the portal to free the Chained God that even the destruction of half his body failed to deter him, and though there was a brief battle of wills, he had bent the Voidharrow to his own purpose.

  Then the dagger slipped into his side, piercing a lung and his heart, and Albric’s mortal body died in the span of three heartbeats.