Though his eyes remained closed, a landscape suddenly appeared to his senses. It was a realm of madness, where pulsating globules of liquid flesh floated in air, wreathed in blue and purple flames. Lightning flashed among them, forming fleeting connections from one to another as eyes and mouths bobbed to the surface and submerged. Shadows of geometric shapes drifted among the blobs, as if a weak and distant sun careened behind impossible structures erected somewhere beyond vision. A translucent tube stretched out before him, undulating slowly as lightning coursed past it, and Albric realized that its mouth opened right beside him. It was a path, the way he was meant to tread. Though it wasn’t revealed to his senses, he knew that the tube—which reminded him suddenly of a gullet, constricting in pulses that added to its waving motion—opened onto a doorway to Pandemonium.
He shook off Jaeran’s hand and walked into the mouth of the tube, which sprouted teeth like slabs of granite as he passed, ready to close down on any acolyte who proved unworthy.
He felt Jaeran close at his heels, but the others were beyond his awareness—they might have been among the floating orbs of flesh, for all he knew or cared. They were on their own. They would follow or they wouldn’t. Tharizdun would ensure that he had acolytes enough for the rite.
The tube carried him along without any conscious effort on his part. He had no idea what was happening to his body in the streets of Sigil, nor did he care. Perhaps he was walking along the path laid out for him by Tharizdun, or maybe he was traveling outside of space and time. Once or twice, globules of flesh drifted near the path, and lightning danced around him, but the tube seemed to insulate him, and the flesh-blobs couldn’t hinder his progress along the path. Then the tube came to an end, squeezing him out in front of a blazing ring of green flame. Albric opened his eyes.
The wretched tenements of the Hive were nowhere to be seen. He was in a back alley somewhere, but the surrounding buildings were large, clean, and in good repair. A short stairway up the side of a building led to a door, but the ring of fire corresponded not to the door, but to a decorative arch beside it, at the edge of the landing.
“The arch,” he said, pointing.
“How do we open the door?” Jaeran asked.
Albric frowned. “What?”
“Most of the portals in the City of Doors require a gate key, an object you need that will turn a mundane door or archway into a portal. Without a key, you step through that arch and you’re just falling six feet off the end of the landing.”
An armored woman opened the door at the top of the stairs and stepped out onto the landing. She held a halberd and took up a stance that clearly signaled her intent to block access to the arch. An instant later, another woman strode out onto a stone bridge that spanned the alley above them. This woman wore flowing robes and carried a slender staff, but her dark hair and eyes were twin to those of the first woman.
Albric climbed one stair, and the woman with the halberd shifted her stance ever so slightly. “We mean to make use of the portal behind you,” he told her.
The woman frowned. “I don’t know how you learned of it, but our sacred duty is to ward that portal.”
“Who appointed you to that duty?”
“I am sworn to Pelor’s service, my sister to Ioun’s.”
Albric couldn’t explain the rage that welled in his gut, nor was the howl that tore from his throat entirely his. Jaeran joined him an instant later, and Albric saw both women cover their ears, their faces wrenched in agony. Wailing cries that came from no mortal voice echoed in the alley around them, unearthly and haunting. For a moment, Albric saw the two women and his acolytes as more floating globules, and he saw lightning and fire sundering their minds.
Tharizdun’s howl of fury burned in his throat, sucking every last breath of air from his lungs until darkness began to swallow his vision. He fell to his knees, but the two women were already sprawled on the ground, utterly broken. The cry died in his throat and he drew a shuddering breath as Jaeran’s voice trailed off.
Slowly Albric got to his feet and climbed the rest of the stairs to the landing. The woman lay insensible, her wide eyes staring at nothing. He bent over her and spoke, his voice raw from screaming.
“Who is your god?”
A trail of spittle dribbled from the woman’s mouth as she answered. “The only god, the Chained God, the unknowable and invincible.”
“Rise and follow me,” Albric said. He turned to his acolytes and pointed up to the bridge. “Gharik, get the other one down from there. She will complete our circle.”
The woman on the landing managed to find her feet, and she stared at the golden symbol of the Elemental Eye that hung around Albric’s neck.
“What is the gate key that will open this portal?” he asked her.
“You wear it already,” she said. “The talisman of the Chained God is the key to his former home.”
Albric smiled. “The Eye has led us true.” He stepped closer to the arch, and darkness began to swirl in the opening.
He waited until Gharik had returned with the second sister, and then he stepped through the arch, off the edge of the landing, and into blackness.
Miri wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and cursed herself as she started walking down the bustling street. People washed around her like a river flowing both directions at once, sometimes bumping into her but mostly just passing too close.
How did I get so dependent on him? she wondered.
She knew the answer, though. She’d depended on Demascus since he first appeared at the dairy where she earned her living churning cream into butter, lifted her to her feet, and took her away. And before that, she had depended on the dairy’s owner, dear, harsh Carina, who cared for her after her mother was killed. It was no wonder Demas, as she’d grown to call him, thought of her as a child—she had never really grown up.
She let the flow of people carry her along the street, searching the crowd in the desperate hope of finding a familiar face. Each time she saw a tiefling—how was it possible that so many tieflings lived in this city?—she started, thinking it might be the man she had just met in the ruins of Bael Turath, the one who called himself Nowhere.
Miri chuckled to herself. Where has Nowhere gone? she thought. It’s an odd name. Where do you go when you’re looking for Nowhere?
Suddenly it struck her as less an amusing play on words than a hint of something profound. Searching for Nowhere seemed like a metaphor for a worthwhile spiritual pursuit. She wondered what Demas would say about it.
Another person in the crowd jostled her, and she realized she had stopped paying attention to her surroundings. The crowd had thinned a little. On her right was a shop displaying bolts of cloth in vibrant colors and exotic patterns, beautifully and carefully woven. Just past that was a tailor’s shop, its window sporting gowns and robes made from the same fabrics. She glanced across the street, to her left, and stopped in her tracks.
A small temple stood there, set back from the street and partially hidden by tables and awnings that extended from the sides of the shops that flanked it. Seven wide stairs led up to a narrow doorway between two graceful columns, and the entablature above the columns featured the stylized eye of Ioun.
It almost seemed impossible, but after all the time she had spent following Demas wherever his god led him, she had to believe that Ioun had guided her footsteps to the threshold of this temple. She hurried across the street, up the stairs, and between the columns into the chamber within.
The noise of the street faded when she entered, and she felt herself start to relax. A statue of Ioun dominated the small chamber, depicting her with one hand up in blessing, the other holding an open book. Garlands of wilting flowers were draped over the statue’s neck and arms, and Miri wondered if she should go find a fresh sacrifice to offer. She hesitated, realizing she had no idea what she was supposed to do, and turned to leave.