Ivan roared in protest. The rat found them?" he bellowed incredulously.
Pikel slapped him on the back of the head.
"We have nothing better," Shayleigh reminded the volatile Ivan, trying to stay yet another fight between the brothers.
Cadderly wasn't even listening. He had been with Percival for three years and knew the squirrel was not a stupid thing. Far from it. Cadderly did not doubt Percival understood they were looking for Danica.
He followed Percival, and his friends followed him, around to the south wing of the library. Much of the wing showed damage from the fire, but the wall and windows near the back of the building did not. Percival moved gracefully along the gutters, then picked his way carefully down the rough and cracked stone. With a final leap, he landed on the sill of a small second-floor window.
Cadderly was nodding before the squirrel ever stopped.
"Danica's in there?" Ivan asked doubtfully.
The private room of Dean Thobicus," Cadderly explained, and it all made sense to him. If Rufo had Danica, a woman he had long desired, he would likely show her the most comfortable and lavish room in the library, and none was better suited than the dean's private chamber.
With Cadderly's confidence came a moment of sheer dread. If his logic was on track, and Percival was right, then Rufo did indeed have Danica!
"What's the quickest route through the building to that room?" Ivan asked, deciding not to continue his useless arguing.
"The quickest route is straight up," Cadderly remarked, drawing all their eyes skyward. Ivan grumbled for a bit, trying to figure some way to get them all up there. Finally he just shook his head, and when he looked back to the young priest to denounce the plan, the dwarf jumped in surprise. In place of his regular arms and legs, Cadderly now had the limbs of a squirrel, a white-furred squirrel!
Shayleigh, not so surprised, gave Cadderly the end of a fine cord, and up he went, easily scaling the wall to sit on the narrow ledge beside Percival.
The window was only a few inches wide, barely a squared crack in the wall. Cadderly peered in, the light from the disk on his hat casting a glow into the room. He couldn't see much of the chamber, though, for the window was more than a foot deep. He did see the bottom edge of the bed, though, and on it, under a satiny sheet, the outline of a woman's legs.
"Danica," he whispered harshly, straining to get a better angle.
"What do ye see?" Ivan called from below.
It was Danica. Cadderly knew it was Danica. He shifted back, willed his arms and legs to return to normal, and fell into the song of Deneir. He was too close now; he would not be stopped by simple stone.
"What do ye see?" Ivan demanded again, but Cadderly, lost in the song, the magic of his god, did not register the call.
He focused on the stone surrounding the window, saw it for what it was, saw its very essence. Calling to his god, he pulled his waterskin around from his back and squirted it in strategic locations, then placed his hands on the suddenly malleable stone and began to shape the material.
The window's thick glass fell out, past entranced Cad-derly's working hands, and nearly clobbered Ivan as he stood, hands on hips, on the ground below.
"Hey!" the dwarf yelled, and Cadderly, even in the throes of the song, heard him. He considered his handiwork and remembered his friends, and worked a spur in the stone, that he could loop Shayleigh's cord securely about it.
Then it was done, and the window was wide, and Cadderly crawled into the room. Deneir went away from him when he entered the unholy place; he would have recognized that fact clearly if he had concentrated. Even the glow of the lighted disk, fixed on the front of his wide-brimmed hat, seemed to dim.
This, too, Cadderly did not notice. His eyes, and his thoughts, were squarely on the bed, on the figure of Danica, lying too still and too serene.
Shayleigh practically ran up the rope, rushing into the room beside Cadderly. Ivan, and then Pikel, powerful dwarven arms pumping, came up fast behind, with Pikel pausing long enough at the sill to haul poor Belago up the fifteen feet to the window.
Cadderly stood beside the bed, staring down, not finding the strength to reach out and touch Danica.
She would be cold to his touch. He knew that. He knew she was dead.
Shayleigh couldn't bear the suspense anymore; she could not bear to see Cadderly in such awful torment. She bent low over the bed and put her sensitive ear to Danica's pursed lips. A moment later, she rose, staring straight at Cadderly and slowly shaking her head. Her hand moved as well, shifting Danica's tunic to reveal the puckered wounds on the monk's neck, the twin punctures of a vampire's bite.
"Oooo," Ivan and Pikel moaned together. Vicero Belago sniffled and fought back tears.
That tangible confirmation that Danica was gone, that Rufo had taken her, sent a ball of grief spiraling through Cadderly, a spiked ball that pained the young priest in every corner of his soul, that tore at his heart and all his sensibilities. Danica dead! His love taken from him!
This Cadderly could not tolerate. By all the power of Deneir, by all the edicts of callous fate, Cadderly could not allow this to be.
He commanded the song of Deneir into his thoughts, forced its flow past the dullness of the evil veil that permeated this place. His head throbbed for the effort, but he did not relent. Not with Danica, his love, lying so pale before him.
Cadderly's thoughts careened into the flow, pushed open closed doors and rushed to the highest levels of power. He was gone from his friends, then, not physically, for his body stood very still beside the bed, but spiritually, his soul rushing free of its mortal coil into the realm of spirits, the realm of the dead.
So it was that Cadderly did not hear Shayleigh's shriek, and did not react as the strong hand shot out from under the bed to clasp the elf's ankle.
Cadderly could see the events in the room, but they were distant from him, somehow disconnected. Through a thick veil of smoky gray he saw his own body standing very still, saw that Shayleigh, for some reason, had apparently gone down to the floor and was being pulled under the bed.
Cadderly sensed the danger back in the room, sensed that his elven companion was in trouble. He should go to her, he knew, go to the aid of his friends. He hesitated, though, and stayed clear of his corporeal form. Shayleigh was among powerful allies - Ivan and Pikel were moving, he could see, probably rushing to her side. Cadderly had to trust in them now, for he knew that if he left this realm, he would not soon find the strength to return, not in the desecrated library. He was looking for a spirit, and spirits were fleeting things. If he hoped to get Danica back, he had to find her quickly, before she took her place in the netherworld.
But where was she? Cadderly had gone into the spirit world on several occasions, had gone after Avery Schell when he had found the headmaster lying dead, his chest torn wide, on a table in the Dragon's Codpiece tavern in Carradoon. Cadderly had gone into the spirit world after the souls of men he had killed, assassins who had been pulled down by shadowy things before the young priest could call out to them. He had gone into the spirit world after Vander, and had held back the malignant assassin Ghost while Vander found his way back to life through the enchantment of his regenerative ring.
The ring!
Cadderly saw it glowing clearly on Ivan's gnarled finger, the only distinctive thing in the room. He could use it, he believed, as a gate to get Danica back to the realm of the living. If he could somehow get Ivan to put the ring on Danica's finger, he might be able to find an easier way to usher her spirit back to her corporeal form.
But where was she? Where was his love? He called out to Danica, let the images in the room fade from his thoughts and sent his mind out in every direction. Dan-ica's spirit should be here; she could not have been dead for long. She should be here, or at least there should be some trail of her passing that Cadderly could follow. He would pull her from the arms of a god if need be!
There was no trail. There was no spirit. No Danica.
Cadderly weakened with the realization that she was lost to him. Suddenly there seemed no purpose in his life, no reason to even bother returning to his body. Let Deneir take him now, he thought, and be done with his torment.
He saw a flicker of clarity in the dull plane he had left behind, a movement within the room. Then he saw the vampire, as clearly as he had seen Ivan's ring, coming out from under the bed.
Baccio ripped at a dull form - Shayleigh, Cadderly knew - and leaped up to his feet He was undead, existing on both planes, as tangible to Cadderly in the spirit world as he obviously was to Ivan and the others in the material room. Yet the vampire took no note of Cadderly. Baccio's thoughts were squarely on the battle at hand, on the battle against Cadderly's friends!
Cadderly's focus became pure anger. His spirit shifted behind Baccio, his will narrowing like a spike.
Shayleigh was out of the fight before it ever really began. She hit the floor hard beside the bed and slid under, the vampire's strong hands slamming her shoulder as she tried to reach for her short sword.
The silver-tipped arrows had bounced free of Shayleigh's quiver with the impact, and that alone saved the wounded elf. Sheer luck brought her free hand atop one of those bolts and, without hesitation, Shayleigh whipped the thing around, sticking its silvery point deep into Baccio's eye.
The vampire went into a frenzy, battering Shayleigh, bouncing the bed up and down on its supports. Pikel lay flat on the floor by then, using his club like a billiard stick, poking it straight into Baccio's face to keep the vampire busy while Ivan yanked Shayleigh out into the clear.
Baccio came out, too, wailing and thrashing, most of his strikes landing squarely on poor Shayleigh. Pikel hit him good a couple of times, but the vampire was strong, and he accepted the blows and returned them tenfold.
Belago shrieked and cowered; Ivan rushed in with a vicious swipe, but his axe was useless against the vampire. Baccio had them on the defensive, had them dead.
The vampire lurched suddenly as if something had hit him from behind, and indeed, he had been struck, by Cadderly's spirit. He staggered forward, his trembling arms reaching behind him for some unseen wound.