“Yes, I think that is implied,” Diocate Temerlain confirmed tersely beside Barabus.
Barabus started to move onto the next question when the soldier spoke up again. “So if we get slain by a demon down here, how are our souls supposed to get to Tierhallon?” The room went deathly quiet for a few moments before utter pandemonium broke out.
Zargoffelstan set his empty mug on the bar of The Ripe Young Maiden’s Surprise and grimaced. He nodded to the bartender, the boy-demon Tut, to refill his mug. He really should not be drinking another. His purse was rapidly emptying; he had not been to Astlan much lately and so had been unable to snag things to sell in the Abyss for cash.
Tut set a new mug down and smiled at Zargoffelstan. “Zarg, I’ve been seeing a lot of you lately. Did you off your accursed master? I thought you liked him.”
Zargoffelstan frowned. “No, he’s still alive, but he’s trapped in Freehold on Astlan behind these anti-demon wards so he cannot summon me. Consequently, I have no work and no opportunities to snag stuff from Astlan to sell here, so I’m drinking my money away!”
Tut shook his head in sympathy. “Freehold? They still have the wards up all this time after expelling the demons?”
“No, they went down, and I got back in for a bit, but apparently one of the Councilors of Wizardry — Lenamare’s archenemy, Exador — was exposed as an archdemon pretending to be a wizard, and there was a big battle and Freehold put the wards back up. Sent me scrambling again!”
“An archdemon posing as a wizard? That is so bizarre!” Tut said.
Zargoffelstan nodded, it was unheard of and completely irrational.
“That greater demon has set off a whole chain of events,” Tut observed.
Zargoffelstan nodded. “Tell me about it. You know I’ve met him?”
Tut did a double-take. “You’ve met the greater demon that stole the knight?”
Zargoffelstan took a drink from his mug before replying. “Early on, I had to protect my accursed master from him.” He did not fail to notice the look of skepticism on the bartender’s face; he was used to it. “Yes, my accursed master works for the wizard Lenamare, who is the greater demon’s accursed master.”
Tut shook his head and suddenly seemed much more interested in Zargoffelstan’s story. “Oh, this is juicy. You need to tell me the whole story!”
Zargoffelstan smiled sadly. “I can tell you a bit, but as I said, I’m going broke quickly, so I can’t stay for too long.”
“Not a problem!” Tut said, grinning. “This is killer detail on the most talked-about thing in the Abyss in centuries! Drinks are on me!”
Zargoffelstan was surprised by the offer, but one didn’t look a gift basilisk in the face! He grinned and nodded, making a toasting gesture towards the bartender.
“Well, they don’t seem to be dead, just cut off,” Sentir Fallon told the others at their reconvened meeting several hours after their first hasty meeting on the new crisis.
“I’ve been tracing who I have left in Norelon and who is missing,” Hilda said. “As far as I can tell, all my remaining illuminaries and their flocks are still camped outside Freehold. The ones that are now missing are the ones that left on ships for parts unknown shortly after the demon expulsion.”
“Where did those ships go?” Moradel asked.
Baysir shook his head. “Not completely clear, but I suspect Oorstemoth.”
“Oorstemoth?” Beragamos asked.
“Once we began to suspect they were in the contingent that departed, I queried our saints with the most illuminaries in Justicia to see if there were any clues. We are still working on it, but there seems to have been a great deal of thought and prayer surrounding some agreement with Oorstemoth,” Baysir said.
“A deal with Oorstemoth? That seems exceedingly unusual,” Moradel said.
“Indeed,” Sentir Fallon agreed, frowning.
“Further,” Baysir continued, “the Arch-Vicar General of the Rod was apparently leading the team that left Freehold.”
“He has been confirmed missing as well,” Sentir Fallon said, nodding. “I have a long history of being a patron of the arch-vicar generals. In my prayer queue, I found a brief prayer for protection and guidance from Arch-Vicar General Barabus; it seems to have been but minutes before they were cut off.”
Hilda shook her head; this was not good. Their principal problem was that, unless a priest did a chant or ritualistic prayer, such as used in a blessing or benediction, they did not get clear messages. Ad hoc, silent prayers conveyed emotions; sentiment with no really solid details. Oddly, there had been no prayer rituals regarding whatever had happened; at least, none that they had identified so far. There were quite a few saints that still needed to report in.
“Have you been able to identify any illuminaries in Oorstemoth?” Beragamos asked. “It would be exceedingly unusual to find one of our priests there, so if we did, that would tell us where they went.”
“We suspect there are,” Baysir replied, “but you know how hard it is to track specific individuals and their location if they are not actively using mana. And at the moment, since we started looking this afternoon, we are seeing nothing other than minimal routine rituals in all of Norelon. Presumably, eventide or morningtide might present some opportunities.”
Moradel nodded. “Have everyone who had illuminaries with the Rod in Freehold keep a very close eye out. A morning worship service will be our next best opportunity.”
Sam finished hammering his most recent piton into the side of the cliff. As a rule, he preferred to use camming devices, which were non-destructive to the mountain face; however, there were some spots on a good climb, particularly in the Abyss, where only a piton would work, and this was one.
The few subordinates he had that were willing to speak their mind to him thought that his clean-climb philosophy was a bit superfluous in a plane like the Abyss, where there were essentially infinite numbers of mountains to climb and relatively few mountain climbers. Sam’s standard response was that he considered the Abyss his home, and he had no desire to deface and damage his home by pounding random, unnecessary giant spikes into the walls. That sort of destructive activity was, as he liked to point out, what the Planes of Man were for.
After attaching the carabiner to the piton and looping his rope through it, Sam paused to take a breath. He glanced down below his footing on the wall at the sheer five thousand foot drop he had been scaling. An incredible sight. Such views were so much more satisfying when secured to a cliff face by fragile ropes and climbing anchors, rather than simply flapping one’s wings in the air or using magic. Rope, muscle and metal — that was where the challenge was, where the sport came from.
As he rested, listening to the sound of his own breathing, Sam suddenly noticed a loud thrumming sound coming from overhead and behind him. He twisted his body and craned his head to get a view of where the sound was coming from. In doing so, he suddenly felt a vibration in the rock to which he was clinging. That vibration seemed keyed to the thrumming noise.
Sam blinked at the sight above and behind his position. There was a very large semi-cylindrical metal object floating through the sky above him. He phased his demon sight in to get a better look at this truly odd spectacle. The object was made out of metal; what appeared to be iron, steel, mithral and adamantite as well as a few others. Every inch of the surface was engraved with runes, pentacles and other arcane spellcraft. Many of the runes were glowing, throbbing with light and power in time to the thrumming noise.