“Nice try,” said Belen, readying her sword.
Then white light surged past them in an expanding ring, searing every demon it touched and holding the horde back for just a few moments more. Tempest felt a presence familiar from years of adventuring move through her, strengthening her and renewing her resolve. She smiled at Roghar as the paladin stepped beside her and Quarhaun took up a place on the other end of their defensive wall.
“Like old times,” she said.
“If there were old times like this,” he said, “I’m surprised we’ve lived as long as we have.”
The ring of white light faded and the tide of plague demons came at them.
Albanon heard the shrieks of the plague demons. He saw his friends fighting them, a weak wall of steel and flesh and magic against a horde of monsters. But it was as if he saw and heard through layered panes of hazy glass. Everything beyond his body moved at a snail’s pace. The magic had him, moving him with the speed of thought. There was nothing he could do but watch and remind himself that what his friends were doing, they were doing for him.
“Focus!” hissed Kri.
Albanon tried to put his friends out of his mind and lose himself in the patterns of the spell. It was like wading in mud or following a single thread through a tapestry. Nothing Moorin had taught him had prepared him for the magic Kri dragged him into. Divine forces mixed with arcane techniques. The power of gods and mortals reached out and tugged at something that was neither. Albanon was certain it hadn’t been like this when they’d drawn Tharizdun’s will out of Vestausan and Vestausir. It had seemed so easy then. So clear. He and Kri had both known it would be more difficult in the Plaguedeep.
He didn’t think either of them had expected it to be like this. The Voidharrow hadn’t just corrupted the land around the Plaguedeep, it had corrupted the flows of magic. Where normally Albanon might have seen the flow of magic like streams in his mind’s eyes, in the Plaguedeep they were a flood, all mingling together. Simply casting a spell was as easy as dipping a cup into the flood. Trying to pull power through the nodes of Kri’s spellweaving, into the gate fragment, and back out again was like dipping a cup into water and expecting to find it filled with wine.
There was also too much Voidharrow. In the valley, there’d been only one source: Vestausan and Vestausir. Within the Plaguedeep, the Voidharrow was everywhere: bound to plague demons, bound to the land around them, and most importantly bound to Vestapalk. Albanon might have been able to unravel it-if he’d known where to start.
“Albanon, more power!”
“I’m trying!” he snapped.
There was one more thing. In the valley, he’d still been in the Chain God’s thrall, magic and madness flowing through him together.
But the voice that wouldn’t stop whispering inside him was gone, and he had to ask himself if he wanted it back. It had been so easy to draw on the power. No limits except what he could conceive. No restrictions except what he dared. But that had led to problems, too, hadn’t it? He only needed to think of Winterhaven and the desire for power shriveled inside him.
Winterhaven or the look on Tempest’s face when he’d emerged from Tharizdun’s cloister. At the time he hadn’t thought much of it. Now it broke his heart. The disappointment. The fear. Could he do that to her again? Could he do it to himself?
But if he didn’t do it, she would die. All of them would die.
“ Albanon! ” Kri’s voice was strained. Albanon could feel the priest’s power running into the fragment between their hands. It was stretched to the limit, on the verge of tearing like rotten cloth.
No more hesitating. He plunged down into himself.
The whispering voice, his mad self, was waiting. I knew you’d come.
“Show me what I need to do,” Albanon told it.
Accept me. I am you. Accept me, serve Tharizdun, and I will show you what you need to do.
In spite of himself, in spite of the strain he felt in Kri, in spite of the demons that might overwhelm his friends in instant, Albanon hesitated just once more. Accept his madness. Serve Tharizdun.
And in that moment, everything changed. Out beyond the layered glass of the magic, something came spiraling down through the Plaguedeep to land on the outstretched spire of rock. Vestapalk roared and snapped at a figure on his back. Albanon saw Shara slide down his other side, swinging herself away down the spire in an attempt to reach safety. He saw Vestapalk, one crystal wing dragging, try to snap at her and miss. Then the dragon narrowed his eyes.
He saw the ripple in the Voidharrow as the dragon exerted his will and a pack of the plague demons turned to meet Shara.
The Voidharrow was Vestapalk and Vestapalk was the Voidharrow-and the answer to Albanon’s dilemma. He and Kri had been so rapt in their exploration of the Voidharrow as the fusion between the alien substance of the Progenitor and the divine will of Tharizdun that they’d ignored its mortal host. There weren’t two parts to the Voidharrow. There were three.
Deep inside Albanon, his mad self cried out. It clutched at him, but Albanon brushed it aside. He reached out through the flood of magic and touched the nexus of flows that was Vestapalk.
Ruddy molten light burst out between his hand and the priest’s as power flowed through the gate fragment. Kri gasped and Albanon knew that he understood the truth as well. He joined in Kri’s chant, the words rising to a crescendo and a command.
“What was once three shall be again. We divide you!”
Shara saw the pack of plague demons break away from the horde and come racing up the spire. She slid to a stop on the stone. Beyond the teeming demons, she could see her friends still trying to buy Kri and Albanon the time they needed. But she could also see something the others couldn’t.
Kri’s face was drawn into a deep frown. Albanon’s was contorted as if in pain. There was no sign of the brilliant light that had preceded Vestausan and Vestausir’s destruction. Their spell wasn’t working.
They’d failed.
Hope died inside her and she knew with a certainty that this was the end. Was this what Jarren had felt when he had faced Vestapalk alone? Shara drew her greatsword from over her shoulder. The plague demons were still clambering up the stone spire, but they weren’t her enemy. She looked at Vestapalk, so completely transformed from the green dragon her father and his band had been hired to track down. Vestapalk looked back at her, then let out a slow hiss. He turned his left forelimb so she could see the inner surface. Twelve lines had been carved into the scales. A mark for each adventurer Vestapalk had killed in his life, the dragon had bragged when they’d first faced him.
The last three represented Borojon, Jarren, and a dwarf named Cliffside. Not taking his eyes off Shara, Vestapalk reached up and dragged a talon through his scales, adding a thirteenth mark.
Shara didn’t need to look over her shoulder to see that the plague demons had fallen back. She was alone on the spire with Vestapalk. She raised her sword and Vestapalk flinched. His crystal eyes flashed past her. “No!” he roared.
Ruddy light flared behind Shara. She turned, following Vestapalk’s gaze.
Light like molten metal dripped between Albanon and Kri’s joined hands. The priest and the wizard both gazed at Vestapalk. Their voices rose together.
“What was once three shall be again. We divide you!”
A tremor passed through the Plaguedeep. Not like the shudders that had broken and rearranged the passage while they’d been inside it, but an actual trembling of the world. Vestapalk roared again. Kri and Albanon’s voices returned to the chant and the light began to run even more freely between their fingers.
The plague demons surrounding them paused in their attack. Some of them tried to pull back, but the press of bodies held them in place.