A sour taste came into Albanon’s mouth. “But they were all people once. Can’t we bring them back? You burned the Voidharrow out of me.”
“You had just been turned. There was still time. The people that the plague demons were are dead. Could you bring back the dead from any other plague?” Kri held up the crystal lantern. “We feed the gods, Albanon.”
“Tharizdun is a god, too. Do we feed him?”
“Even Tharizdun-but the Chained God gives us a chance to fight. Without freedom and change, where would we be? Exactly where the other gods want us.”
Albanon stared at the old priest for a long moment, then asked, “Do you really believe that?”
“If I didn’t, I would still be Ioun’s pawn.” Kri looked directly into Albanon’s eyes. “Tharizdun wants the Voidharrow stopped. You want Vestapalk dead. Look into your heart. Has this ever been about the Abyssal Plague? Shara has sworn to kill Vestapalk for what he did to her friends and father. You have sworn to take revenge on Vestapalk for almost turning you into his exarch. If the only way to stop the plague required leaving Vestapalk alive, would you take it?”
Albanon wanted to say yes, but he couldn’t. All the dead of Fallcrest and Winterhaven. Immeral. Splendid. All those dead and lost beyond the Nentir Vale because of the Abyssal Plague. He laid them at Vestapalk’s feet.
“Will destroying the Voidharrow kill Vestapalk?” he asked Kri finally.
“He is its host. It imbues and empowers him. It’s part of him now. I don’t believe he could live without it.”
“Then I think that’s all I can ask.” Albanon looked at the old priest. “I’ll work with you-assuming we can figure out exactly how to separate Tharizdun’s will from the Voidharrow.”
“We’ll find a way. We worked well together before.” He held out his hand.
Albanon shook his head. “We worked well before you betrayed me,” he said. “Before you broke my mind. I’m not going to trust you again, Kri. Don’t act like you’re my mentor.”
Kri let his hand fall. “Fairly spoken,” he said. “We have a common interest, nothing more.” He sat back once again. “So where do we begin?”
Kri might have been mad and a traitor, but Albanon had to admit it was good to talk to someone who really understood magic again. Tempest was intelligent, but a warlock’s understanding of magic was different from a wizard’s, received through pacts and bargains with supernatural creatures rather than hard study. And while Kri was a cleric, drawing his magic from divine sources, he had served the god of magic and knowledge for most of his life. Changing his allegiance to Tharizdun had not taken away what he’d learned as Ioun’s priest. It was frighteningly easy to forget that Kri had tried to kill him and bring a banished god back into the world.
They began with generalities: what resources they had to work with, past instances each had read about that might be vaguely similar to their situation, spells and rituals that might aid in what they needed to accomplish. They moved to specifics: how could two intangibles such as will and hunger combine into a material form in the first place? Kri found chalk or something like it in the ruins while Albanon brushed aside rubble and conjured more light. Soon the floor of the chamber was covered with notations and sprawling diagrams, and Albanon had told Kri everything that he had seen and experienced, including Vestagix and even his own shame at Winterhaven. It reminded Albanon of the happy days of his apprenticeship and long conversations with Moorin-or even of the much shorter period when Kri truly had been his mentor.
None of it, however, got them any closer to an answer. There was always something missing. A gap in the diagrams. A hole in their knowledge. “If the will of Tharizdun is the key to destroying the Voidharrow,” Albanon said finally, “we’re fumbling for the lock like drunks in the dark.”
“To use the languages of alchemists,” said Kri, “we need a catalyst. Something to facilitate the magic.” The priest rose stiffly and bushed the dust from his hands. “We need elements of an exorcism. And, since the Voidharrow will surely resist having Tharizdun’s will drawn from it, an abjuration to hold the two apart. There has to be something else, though. A wedge to split them. A spindle to wind up Tharizdun’s will.”
Albanon stared at the complex swirls of the pale inscriptions that surrounded them. They were like the numbers and formulas that had unlocked his magic before. He could almost feel the madness pushing at his mind. For the moment, he let it be. It was strangely energizing. He felt more alive and alert than he had in days. In his mind’s eye, he could picture the threads of magic that Kri would weave, and which he would in turn pluck and twist, empowering the ritual. But it was exactly as Kri said: they needed something more. Something to turn the key.
He let out a long breath and scrubbed his hands over his face. His mind might have been alert, but his body was weary. Between the excitement of his discussions with Kri and the dark silence of the ancient cloister, it was almost impossible to tell how much time had passed, but his grumbling stomach told him it had been long enough.
“Do you have any eggs left?” he asked Kri. “Or should we go up and investigate the peryton carcass on the ledge? It looked at least partly cooked when we left it.”
The priest made a face. “I’m sick of peryton. I’d like a little change before we resort to it. Do you have a scrap of anything else in your pouches? Dry bread? Old cheese? Yesterday’s sausage?”
“I might.” Albanon dipped his hands into the pouches on his belt, digging through the esoteric bits and pieces that wizards tended to accumulate.
His fingers closed on something cold and hard, with edges sharp enough that they nicked him-and in his memory, he was standing again in the study at the top of Moorin’s tower as Immeral challenged him to confront Vestapalk and the Abyssal Plague rather than hiding from what that confrontation might do to him. He remembered thinking he needed a talisman, something to remind him of the importance of what he had to do. He’d chosen a remnant of the battle that had taken place in that very room.
Albanon drew his hand from his pouch and held out his talisman for Kri to see. A tapered oval of red stone-roughly broken, slightly crystalline, and no bigger than his thumb-rested on his palm. Kri’s eyes opened wide.
“When Tharizdun sought the seed of change,” the priest said reverently, “he reached through the Living Gate to retrieve it. When the other gods bound him, they forced him through the gate. When cultists of the Chained God summoned the Voidharrow to our world, they used a fragment of the Living Gate to open the Vast Gate. The founders of the Order of Vigilance shattered that gate but kept a piece of it to study, until I used it to open the Vast Gate again in Moorin’s tower.”
“And that was shattered, too,” said Albanon. He turned the stone between his thumb and forefinger. “A fragment of a fragment of a fragment.”
“That has known the touch of both the Chained God and the Voidharrow. In Sherinna’s tower, I think Tharizdun called to me through it.” Kri smiled. “Well done, Albanon. We have our catalyst.” He reached for the stone.
Albanon closed his fist around it. “No,” he said. “It stays with me.”
For an instant, Kri’s face twisted into a mask of fury, like a child throwing a tantrum. Then it was past as the priest forced himself to remain calm. “You don’t trust me?” he asked. “After what we’ve just accomplished? I’m not going to try anything. I still need your help to work the magic.”
“And if you find a way around that?” Albanon put the stone back into his pouch. “You said Tharizdun told you one would come who would help turn the key. I’m keeping this until that key has been turned and the Voidharrow has been destroyed.”
Kri’s expression turned cold. “As you will. The words of Tharizdun are fulfilled.” He raised his face to the shadows of the ceiling. “Chained God! Patient One! We are ready. Deliver us from this place!”