Kri felt his pulse quicken as Albric began his ritual in the heart of the Chained God’s abandoned dominion. He chanted invocations to Tharizdun, the Patient One and the Black Sun. He watched the shard of the Living Gate rise into the air and open the tiniest of portals, a narrow wormhole leading to the prison that held the Chained God bound. And he watched with a mixture of Albric’s elation and his own dawning horror as a red crystalline liquid seeped out through the portal.
You must understand your enemies if you wish to defeat them, Kri reminded himself.
Then the vision became more confusing. Kri felt the tug of two different desires. The Chained God wanted him to fuse the red liquid-the Progenitor, he called it-with the shard of the Living Gate, and thereby create the Vast Gate. The red liquid itself, the Voidharrow, wanted him to fuse itself with him. He-or, rather, Albric-tried to follow the Chained God’s will, and he guided the fusion of the Voidharrow and the Living Gate until it grew into the archway depicted in Sherinna’s mural. His acolytes, though, obeyed the Voidharrow, and he saw them transform into demons.
The Chained God, he realized, had been betrayed. He felt the distant echo of the god’s fury as he-as Albric-fought to carry out Tharizdun’s will … and failed.
He felt what Albric did as the Voidharrow claimed his body, transforming him from the legs up into a creature of liquid crystal. He felt the tiefling’s dagger slip into his side and end his body’s life.
But Albric was no longer just his body. His will had fused with the Voidharrow as much as his body had, and he became something else. He became the creature that Albanon had described, a serpentine creature of red liquid.
“I am Nu Alin,” Kri said aloud.
“Who are you talking to?” asked a voice in the room.
Kri’s mind was jolted out of the vision, but he grasped at one last fragment of knowledge and experience. “I am in the Tower of Waiting,” he said.
“Kri? What are you talking about?”
Kri saw the crystal fragment on the table in front of him. Sherinna’s workshop came slowly into focus, and he turned toward the voice, fully expecting to see nothing there.
Albanon stood in the archway, a look of concern on his face.
“It’s time for us to leave,” Kri announced. Nu Alin was the key, he realized. Nu Alin was present at the beginning of it all. He had tried to fight the Voidharrow’s will, to do instead what the Chained God wanted.
“What?” Albanon whined. “We’ve barely gotten started here!”
Kri turned his back to Albanon. “I’ve uncovered some new information,” he said. As he spoke, he lifted the crystal from the table and slid it into a pocket, keeping it out of Albanon’s view.
“So have I! I think I might be close to finding the dragon. I’ve been analyzing the flow of magical energy through the Feywild and the world alike. It’s like there’s a great vortex-”
Kri shook his head sharply. “We have another quarry now.” I have to find Nu Alin, he thought. If the demon can be turned against Vestapalk, together we might defeat the Voidharrow at last.
“What other quarry?”
Kri grimaced. The urge to blast the annoying young eladrin with so much holy fire that his entire body would be consumed filled him so suddenly that he almost gave in to it.
“I’ll explain later. Collect your belongings.”
“Now? It’s the middle of the night.”
Kri thought he heard lightning crackle around his head, reflecting his frustration. He clutched his temples and drew a slow breath.
“Kri, are you unwell? You’re acting very strangely.”
“Not enough sleep, clearly. I’m sorry. Let me try to explain. Come into the stairway.” He shooed Albanon out of the workshop and followed him onto the landing beyond, suppressing a sudden desire to push the young eladrin over the railing.
Instead, he put a fatherly hand on Albanon’s shoulder and forced a smile onto his face as he pointed to the mural on the dome.
“I know where Albric is-where Nu Alin is,” he said, pointing to the man in the mural above, standing before the Vast Gate with his legs already transformed into red liquid columns. “He is the key to all of this. He holds the knowledge we seek.”
Albanon’s eyes widened. “He left the Temple of Yellow Skulls on Vestapalk’s back. Where he is, the dragon probably is as well. But there’s no way he’s going to help us against Vestapalk.”
“Perhaps not,” Kri said. “But we are not the only ones opposing the Voidharrow. It may be that enough remains of Albric the Accursed to turn even Nu Alin against his master.”
“Well, where is he, then?”
“In Fallcrest.”
Albanon stared at him for a moment, then swore softly in Elven. “Shara and Uldane,” he said. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Albanon hurried into the workshop while he adjusted the straps on his backpack. He had decided to bring only the bare minimum of books from Sherinna’s library, things he really couldn’t do without while he and Kri went in search of Nu Alin, but that bare minimum had filled his backpack almost to bursting. And that was after he’d removed luxuries like rope, sunrods, and food.
“I can’t find Splendid,” he told Kri. “Have you seen her?”
“Not in days, now that you mention it. I thought it was pleasantly quiet around here.”
“I argued with her in the library last week and she slunk away. I think she must have left.”
“Whatever will we do without her wisdom and perspective?”
“Please, Kri. She was Moorin’s.”
“So let her go!” Kri said. “Along with the last remnants of your apprenticeship and your childhood. You’re not in training any more-if nothing else, the way you handled yourself at the Temple of Yellow Skulls proves that. Now you are a man-and more than a man, a wizard. Nothing remains to hold you back.”
Albanon stood a little taller, but then his face fell. “Except you ordering me around,” he muttered.
Kri turned away from the arch set in Sherinna’s workshop wall and put a hand on Albanon’s shoulder. “I don’t mean to order you around, Albanon, but we’re pressed for time. I will explain everything when I can, I promise you.”
Albanon forced a smile for his new mentor. “Thank you. I’ll hold you to that.”
“You’d better, because I’m sure to forget. The old mind’s not what it used to be, you understand?”
“Oh, I’ve noticed.”
Albanon cast a longing look around the workshop. During the week since they reached the tower, he had spent nearly every waking hour in the library, and felt as though he’d only scratched the surface of all there was to learn there. He’d had no time for the workshop, let alone all the other rooms of the tower-the room where Sherinna had displayed trophies from her adventuring life as if they were exhibits in a museum, or the greenhouse at the top of the tower, full of exotic plants. He had even wanted to spend time in the music room, with its dusty harp and collection of wooden flutes, maybe even learn to play those instruments. He’d felt, somehow, that it would bring him closer to the mysterious woman who had been his grandmother.
“Are you ready?” Kri asked over his shoulder as he made some final adjustments to the arch.
“Just a moment.” Albanon stepped out onto the landing and looked up and down the entry hall. “Splendid!” he called. “Splendid, I’m sorry for what I said. We’re leaving now, and if you want to come with us you have to come now. Please!”
He waited until he heard Kri clear his throat in the workshop, signaling his impatience.
“Splendid!” he called, one last time.
With no response, he turned and shuffled back into the workshop, ready for Kri’s journey.
“You’re better off, believe me,” Kri said. “Now, I’ve modified this arch so that it works more like a traditional teleportation circle. That means, among other things, that we’ll be able to use it come back here, without passing through the Moon Door and crossing the Plain of Thorns. After all, you never know when your father will tire of letting us walk across his lands. I have keyed the portal to the teleportation circle in Moorin’s tower.”