Two smaller statues stood in the corners near the doorway—twin angels, majestic beings of fire and lightning, lifting their hands in adoration of Ioun, ready to receive the blessing of knowledge she dispensed. Was she supposed to adopt the same pose? She stepped closer to examine one of the angels more closely.
Its face was blank, just eyes and the suggestion of a nose. But the shape of it—the structure of the cheekbones, the chin, even the ill-defined nose—made her think of Demas. She fell to her knees beside the storm of fire that formed the angel’s lower body, her gaze fixed on the angel’s blank face.
“Demas,” she said. Tears welled in her eyes. “Demas, please hear me. I don’t know how to do what you do. Ioun won’t lead me the way she leads you. I don’t know how to find you in this city, and I don’t know what else to do.”
Sobbing, she leaned forward to rest her head on the statue’s cool stone. “Demas, please, just come find me. Let Ioun lead you—surely she can lead you to this, her house. I’ll be right here. Just come find me.”
Unsure of what else to say, Miri curled up on the floor before the angelic statue. With one last look up at the face she imagined to be Demas’s, she drifted to sleep.
A hand on her shoulder brought her gently awake. She opened her eyes to see the angel—a living angel, not the statue, wreathed in divine light—crouched beside her, his hand on her shoulder and compassion in his pale blue eyes.
“Miri, get up.”
As she stood, Miri saw the face of Ioun herself behind the angel, serene and severe. An excitement coursed through her like nothing she had ever known, a thrill that ran down her spine and brought tears to her sleepy eyes. Is this how Demas feels when he speaks with Ioun?
“Come, child, we need to hurry,” the angel said. “We still have to find Brendis and the tiefling.”
The divine light dimmed as Miri blinked and rubbed her eyes. The angel was smiling, though Ioun’s face remained impassive. Miri frowned.
Angels can’t smile, she thought.
“Demas?”
The glow faded completely, and she saw Demas as he was. It was Sherinna who stood behind him, not Ioun. Miri threw her arms around him, her joy and relief at seeing him tempered by a vague disappointment.
“Of course, child,” Demas said. He slowly, hesitantly, put his hands on her back. “Who did you think had found you?”
I thought you were an angel. “I thought …”
She clutched him tighter and closed her eyes so she couldn’t see Sherinna’s frown.
I thought Ioun might speak to me too.
The wind that howled around Albric was so fierce that for a moment he thought he was falling. He braced himself for impact, then one of the acolytes bumped into him in the darkness, he stumbled forward, and realized that his feet were planted on solid rock. He willed a shred of power into his holy symbol and made it glow with a sickly purplish light.
The light glittered on flecks of mica scattered over the walls, ceiling, and floor of a tunnel. As he turned in a full circle, the rest of the acolytes appeared in the tunnel, with Jaeran bringing up the rear. Each one seemed to step through the solid rock wall, and once Jaeran was through there was no sign of the portal behind him.
“How will we get back?” Niala, the elf woman from Jaeran’s band of thieves, asked. She had to shout to make herself heard over the wind.
“I would kill you where you stand,” Albric growled, “but the ritual requires eight. When the Chained God walks free, will you ask him to carry you back to the slum you left behind? Remember why we are here, worm, and what sacred task lies before us.”
Niala fell to her knees at Albric’s feet. “Forgive me,” she said. “I spoke without thinking.”
The twin sisters cackled with a single voice, the sound mingling with the howl of the wind in the tunnel until Albric thought he heard a cacophony of voices. The maddening chorus reminded him of the unearthly voice he’d heard issuing from Jaeran’s mouth, as well as the howl of fury both men had unleashed to break the sisters’ minds. Tharizdun was calling him onward. He put his face to the wind and started down the tunnel.
The tunnel coiled to the left, descended steeply, and then opened into a huge circular vault that could not have been natural in origin. The wind howled less insistently, and eight pedestals stood arrayed in a circle at the center of the room. Atop each pedestal sat a crystal orb the size of Albric’s clenched fist, glowing with purple light.
Albric walked to the circle and stood behind one of the pedestals, facing the center. He watched with satisfaction as Jaeran and the others filed in, taking their positions without a word or a questioning glance. They knew what they were to do. Tharizdun was speaking to them all now.
His head swam with the realization. They were in the heart of Tharizdun’s long-abandoned dominion, the home he had constructed for himself before the Dawn War, before he planted the shard of utter evil in the depths of the Elemental Chaos that gave birth to the Abyss. Had this vault with its eight pedestals been standing prepared for this moment since that most ancient time? Had Tharizdun foreseen his imprisonment and the need for eight acolytes to set him free?
They stood like the points of a compass, with Jaeran facing him across the circle. Gharik and Haver stood on either side of Albric, while Jaeran’s thieves, Niala and Braghad, flanked their leader. That left the two sisters, the former guardians of the portal, facing each other. They all stood still and silent as the wind whipped around them.
Albric drew the shard of the Living Gate out of the folds of his robe and stepped to the middle of the circle. He set it carefully in a slight depression that marked the circle’s center, then returned to his position. He raised his hands, and the others mirrored the gesture in perfect unison. Their will was gone, replaced by the will of the Chained God.
He opened his mouth, and eight voices chanted as one: “Tharizdun! God of Eternal Night, the Black Sun, behold us gathered in your darkness.” The wind seized their voices and scattered them throughout the vaulted cavern, turning eight voices into eight thousand.
“Tharizdun! Ender and Anathema, Eater of Worlds and Undoer, come and wreak destruction.”
The shard of the Living Gate rose slowly from the floor as if lifted by the wind, and it began to spin, first slowly, then wildly, wobbling and shaking as it whirled.
“Tharizdun! Patient One, He Who Waits, Chained God, your waiting is over and your freedom is at hand!”
The shard’s wobbling spin widened until it circled a point in space, about ten feet above the indentation in the floor. Its orbit grew slowly wider, and as it did, something took shape at the center, a pinprick of utter blackness in the dark chamber. The shard circled still wider and the pinprick grew to a marble’s size, then a child’s ball, and soon a king’s orb of perfect nothingness. The larger the blackness grew, the darker the room became, as if it were a void that drew all light into its emptiness.
The void doubled in size once more, and the shard of the Living Gate clattered to the chamber floor, skittering a few feet toward Gharik. Albric fell to his knees as a sensation of power, of presence, of malign majesty and terrible, terrible fury broke over him.
The rite worked! Albric was certain the void he had created led directly to the prison of the Chained God. He was in the presence of the divine.
Some of the acolytes cowered on the floor, covering their faces, not daring to lift their eyes to the face of their god. But Albric knew their work was not yet finished. The void was too small a passage for Tharizdun to use. But as Albric stared in awe, something came through.