Once again, the Plaguedeep was silent, but this time it wasn’t Vestapalk’s doing. He had climbed out of the crystal pool and crouched next to it. The demons were hushed, huddled in groups and crammed into niches as if hiding might protect them. Even the slow, seething hiss as the bones of the world were transformed into the stuff of the Plaguedeep had stopped.
Dread consumed the Voidharrow. And because it consumed the Voidharrow, it consumed Vestapalk. And because it consumed Vestapalk, it consumed the plague demons-in the Plaguedeep most of all, but Vestapalk could sense unease and confusion in demons across the world. They wouldn’t understand why the Voidharrow was afraid, though.
Vestapalk only understood a part of it himself. Vestausan and Vestausir were gone. Simply… gone. When Roghar had killed Vestagix, Vestapalk had felt it. He experienced it through the Voidharrow. When Albanon and the priest had confronted his two-headed scion, however, the Voidharrow had recoiled. Vestapalk had seen the beginning of the priest’s invocation of the Chained God, had heard his proclamation: “What was once two shall be again. I divide you!”
He’d felt sudden agony, and then terror, a frantic wrenching that had torn him away from Vestausan and Vestausir and left him thrashing in an already silent Plaguedeep. The Voidharrow shuddered around and within him. When Vestapalk had recovered his senses and reached out to the pair again, he’d found nothing. No trace. No death echo. It was as if Vestausan and Vestausir had ceased to exist.
“What is it?” Vestapalk whispered. “What did they do?”
Tharizdun!
The name echoed through the Voidharrow and with it came a fresh surge of dread. The demons of the Plaguedeep moaned, a sound like someone dying a slow death. Vestapalk ground his teeth, and fought back the dread. “Tharizdun is nothing. This one no longer serves the Eye! Show me the source of this fear. Show me how they destroyed Vestausan and Vestausir.”
There was no response. Vestapalk growled, then roared “ Show Vestapalk! ”
The sound shook the walls of the Plaguedeep and provoked new shrieks of alarm from the plague demons. The surface of the Voidharrow pool shivered and drew back. Vestapalk didn’t let it retreat. He slid into the pool, diving down into its liquid crystal heart. Show Vestapalk! he commanded again, this time in silence but with no less force.
The Voidharrow shuddered once more-and opened itself to him. If there had been any lingering sense of where Vestapalk ended and the Voidharrow began, it vanished for several long moments. Then it pulled itself away. For some time, Vestapalk drifted in its embrace, contemplating what he had learned before allowing himself to rise.
When he surfaced, the demons of the Plaguedeep had gathered before the pool. Vestapalk reached through the Voidharrow and into them. Into all of the plague demons across the Nentir Vale.
Come, he ordered them.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They found the Tigerclaws’ camp undisturbed when they reached it the next day. Those left behind had glimpsed the two-headed dragon high overheard, but the beast had paid no attention to them. Forewarned by Hurn and the warriors who had gone on ahead, the camp greeted the returning heroes with a mix of joy-which was eagerly returned by warriors finding their loved ones safe-and grief for those who had died in the valley.
Uldane and the others kept themselves apart, but Belen was in thick with the Tigerclaws, apparently enjoying every brief taste of this side of her heritage. Maybe because of her knowledge of their traditions, the barbarians seemed to accept her. At least, most of them did. Uldane saw Turbull watching the woman from Fallcrest carefully. A large number of hostile glares were also directed at Kri, presumably for his manipulation of the Tigerclaws’ fears. Uldane had been on the receiving end of similar looks often enough to recognize trouble simmering on the edge of a boil. He nudged Albanon. “We shouldn’t stay long.”
The wizard nodded and went to talk to Turbull, who in turn called over Cariss. Soon joy and grief alike had turned into leave-taking, all of the humans and shifters of the barbarian tribe crowding around to say good-bye to Cariss. Belen, excluded once more, came back over and joined the others. Her face was set, but her eyes were sad. Uldane slipped his hand into hers. “Better that we go now,” he said. “They would have found out. Turbull already looked suspicious.”
“Maybe my mother taught me too well,” said Belen. She shook herself and stood straight. “Let’s get going. Vestapalk is waiting.”
The sun was halfway down in the western sky before they had their gear gathered and the supplies provided by the Tigerclaws loaded on their horses. No one suggested staying with the barbarians for the night, however, even though smoke from Tigerclaws’ fires was still visible in the distance as the sun set and they made camp.
“Sleep well tonight,” Cariss told them. “Our patrols still guard this area. We’ll be protected. After this, the journey will be more dangerous.”
Except that it wasn’t. In fact, if there was anything remarkable about their journey south and west from the Tigerclaw camp, it was the relative tranquility of it. When they had headed north from Winterhaven, there was no sign of plague demons either. At the time, Uldane had assumed that was due to Albanon’s routing of the horde in the village. But there had still been a sense that they were around somewhere. This time there was nothing. The land was quiet. For the first couple of days, Uldane enjoyed the peace. Then it started to wear on him. Where were the demons? They stayed west of the remains of Winterhaven as they passed from the Cairngorm Peaks into the rolling hills of the Gardbury Downs. The camps and farms in the valleys of the Downs had experienced the first ravages of the Abyssal Plague. If there were any places the demons might have been lurking, Uldane would have expected them to be hiding there. Instead, it seemed even the demons had abandoned the valleys.
He wasn’t the only one to feel that way. The others grew irritable, as well. Cariss was the worst. “Pah!” she grumbled. “Why did I even bother to come? There’s nothing to hide from.”
“There will be,” Roghar said cheerfully. “Don’t doubt it. When we reach the Plaguedeep, there will probably be so many demons, we’ll need to carve our way through.”
The dark cloud that had hung over the dragonborn had melted away overnight. By the time they’d arrived in the Tigerclaw camp that first day after their battles in the valley, Roghar had been back to himself again. Uldane wasn’t exactly sure what to make of that. On the one hand, it was good to see Roghar happy again. On the other, it was odd how quickly his mood had reversed. After a day or so spent exchanging glances and shrugs with the others, Uldane raised the subject of the change with Roghar himself.
“A clean fight,” the paladin had said. “A simple victory. In Winterhaven, we won the battle but lost the village. That affected me more than I realized. In the valley, we triumphed. We killed the perytons, then Vestausan and Vestausir, and we came away with the means to destroy Vestapalk. Bahamut shows us his favor.”
“But we almost lost Albanon and now that Turbull knows about Tharizdun’s cloister, he doesn’t want the Tigerclaws in the valley,” Uldane had pointed out.
“If we hadn’t discovered the cloister, they would have lived under the Chained God’s gaze without knowing it. Another triumph!”
Uldane had almost forgotten how relentlessly optimistic Roghar could be-but then, that was another sign that he was back to normal. On the whole, Uldane was just happy to have the paladin in a good mood again. Roghar was a bright spot in the tension that had settled over the rest of them, a reminder that optimism was still possible when things looked bleak.