“Travic?” Roghar said. “Progress?”
“I’m having some trouble concentrating.”
“Fine. Forget it.” Roghar backed up, crouched down, and ran at the glyph. At the last possible moment, he threw himself into the air, a strong jump that carried him almost all the way to the little altar. He braced himself, in case he hadn’t completely cleared the glyph, but nothing erupted around him when he landed.
“Had any second thoughts about surrender?” he said, scanning the nervous faces of the cultists arrayed before him.
“Kill him!” Gaele screeched, clawing at the slime that was blackening her skin, and half a dozen cultists surged forward, closing their semicircle around him.
“I didn’t think so.” Roghar blocked the first half-hearted swing with his shield, then swept his sword low to knock two cultists off their feet. He caught three more in a blast of dragonfire from his mouth, but the sixth one managed to get past his whirlwind of attacks and land a solid blow with a shout of triumph.
The cultist’s hammer hit his armor with a dull thud.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Roghar said, baring his teeth in the cultist’s face. The cultist was a middle-aged man clutching a blacksmith’s hammer in his one hand, the empty left sleeve of his tunic tucked into his belt to keep it out of the way. “Marcan, I presume.”
Marcan paled and swung his hammer again, this time aiming for Roghar’s unprotected face. Roghar knocked it aside with his shield and stepped to the side as another cultist stabbed at him from behind. The blade found a gap in the armor protecting Roghar’s arm and sliced a painful cut.
Roghar kicked at the man who had cut him, knocking the cultist to the floor, and smashed his shield into Marcan’s face. He brought his pommel down hard on the head of a cultist who was struggling to stand up, drove his knee into the groin of a man whose face carried fresh burns from his dragon breath, and cut the head clean off a man rushing in from his right.
It had been pure reflex, an attack without thought, and regret seized him before his sword even finished its swing. The dead man’s face was still twisted in hate and anger as it fell to the floor, a moment before the body followed it down.
“You’re all mad,” Roghar said.
One dead, four on the ground in varying states of agony, that left one-
Something hit him hard on the head from behind, and his vision went double. He spun around and away from his attacker, willing his eyes to focus. The last cultist stood clutching a wooden cudgel in both hands, looking at once surprised that his blow had landed and terrified that Roghar hadn’t fallen.
“That … hurt,” Roghar said. “But it takes more than that to bring me down.”
The cudgel clattered to the ground as the man turned and ran. Travic scrambled to his feet and drew his mace, placing himself between the fleeing man and the hallway.
“Let him go,” Roghar said, turning his attention to Gaele.
Travic stepped aside, but an inferno erupted around the man as he stepped onto the glyph. His tormented scream turned Roghar’s stomach.
“I guess Travic never managed to disable the glyph,” Roghar said as he stalked toward Gaele. “Looks like your trap only managed to kill one of your own.”
“You will never take me alive, paladin!” Gaele cried.
She didn’t have much strength left, save what her defiance lent her. Tempest’s fire and acid had left her scorched, scarred, and barely able to stand, but her eyes remained bright with madness and fury. She threw her head back, laughing maniacally, and just as Roghar reached her side the laugh turned into a howl.
Roghar’s ears rang with the thunderous sound and his head started to spin. Malicious whispers coursed beneath the sound at the edge of hearing and sense, filling his mind with thoughts he couldn’t follow, images of chaos and madness. The world disappeared from his view, and in its place was a starry void where chunks of ancient stone and pulsating globules of living flesh floated in graceful elegance. Wailing cries from no mortal throat echoed around him in the void as lightning and fire tore at his mind. He dropped his sword, which reverted to raw iron ore as it drifted away from his hand, and he clenched his ears, only to find that his body was no longer a body at all. Every atom of his substance floated apart, no coherence marking them as parts of a single being.
An anthem began somewhere in the void, whether near or far he could not tell. He heard it through a thousand tiny ears, and a thousand fractured minds heard the music of the Bright City, a hymn of praise to Pelor, Ioun, and Erathis.
Erathis. Travic. Somehow his shattered consciousness made the connection and recognized Travic’s voice. Slowly his mind started piecing itself back together, woven with the texture of the music, which was more than Travic’s single mortal voice. Just as the howling voices of the mad and the damned echoed Gaele’s maddening scream, angelic voices and instruments undergirded Travic’s hymn, growing in volume until they drowned out the scream and Roghar’s mind was whole again.
Gaele was on her knees before him, the howl sucking the last ounce of breath from her lungs. He slammed his mailed fist into the base of her skull and she fell, gasping for breath as her eyes fluttered and closed. Travic stood at Roghar’s side, shining with divine radiance, his face half hidden behind an angelic visage and his head thrown back in rapture.
“Enjoy your song,” Roghar said, shrugging out of his pack. He pulled out a coil of rope and started cutting pieces to tie up the cultists who had survived.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Welcome to the Whitethorn Spire,” Kri announced. “Your birthright.”
The old priest stood outside the open doorway and bowed, making a sweeping gesture with his arm to invite Albanon inside. Albanon stepped over a demon corpse at the threshold and entered the tower.
The entrance hall was grandly elegant despite at least a century of disuse and the recent intrusion of the demons. Slender columns ringed the circular hall, supporting a staircase that wound around the wall. Living ivy spiraled up the marble columns as if sculpted there. A scattering of rubble and a few brown leaves cluttered the floor, which was tiled in an intricate mosaic depicting the stylized eye of Ioun set within the sunburst of Pelor. Far above, the domed ceiling was carefully painted with an array of figures Albanon couldn’t identify at such a distance. One slender archway, directly opposite the entrance, led to a short hall with doorways on both sides. Similar arches led off from the stairway above it, granting access to the tower’s five higher floors.
“Where do we start?” Albanon asked.
“Wherever you like,” Kri said. “The tower is yours to explore now. Start at the bottom and work up. Start at the top and work down. Start in the middle and work randomly, following your instincts. It’s up to you.”
Albanon grinned, staring up at the stairway with its arches. Mine to explore, he thought. It’s my birthright.
Part of him wanted to race through the tower, peering through every door, learning his way around as quickly as possible before deciding what to explore in more depth. But another part wanted to savor the discovery of it all, to choose one room and explore every bit of knowledge it had to offer up to him, whether it took hours or weeks, before moving on to another room. He let the two parts argue in his mind for a moment, savoring the anticipation and uncertainty.
“I want to see the mural,” he announced at last. Without waiting for an answer, he walked to the stairs, stealing a glance down the ground-floor hallway as he went past. Three doors-two on the left, one on the right, all closed. He smiled, filing that knowledge away. Closed doors meant secrets awaiting discovery.
At each archway, he allowed himself no more than a furtive glance through, the merest hint of what lay beyond. More closed doors-three or even five on some floors, two on others. A large library full of dusty shelves, each shelf crowded with books and scrolls, was almost enough to make him stop and explore, but he stuck to his original plan, forcing his eyes back to the mural and his feet back to the stairs.