Cadderly so desperately wanted to close those eyes! He willed himself to go over to the dead priest and turn his head away, get that accusing stare off him, but it was an impotent command, and Cadderly knew it. He had not the strength to go anywhere near Barjin. He moved a few short steps to the side, to get to Danica, but looked back and imagined that the dead priest's eyes followed him still.
Cadderly wondered if they would forever.
He slammed his fist on the floor, trying to shake free of the guilt, to accept the priest's stare as a necessary price that he must pay. Events had dictated his actions, he reminded himself, and he determinedly told himself to foster no regrets.
He jumped defensively when a small form suddenly darted in through the opening beside the priest, then managed a weak smile as Percival climbed up him and sat atop his shoulder, cluttering and complaining as always. Cadderly patted the squirrel between the ears with a single finger-he needed to do that-then went to his friends.
Danica seemed to be sleeping quite peacefully. She would not wake, though, to Cadderly's call or shake. He found both dwarves in similar states, their thunderous snores complimenting each other in strange rock-grating harmony. Pikel's snores, in particular, sounded contented.
Cadderly grew worried. He had believed the battle won- finally-but why couldn't he wake his friends? How long would they sleep? Cadderly had heard of curses that caused slumber for a thousand years, or until certain conditions had been met, however long that might take.
Perhaps the battle wasn't yet won. He went back to the altar and examined the bottle. It seemed harmless enough now, to the naked eye, so Cadderly decided to look deeper. He moved his thoughts through a series of relaxation exercises that slipped him into a semimeditative trance. The mist was fast dissipating, that much he could tell, and no more was emanating from the stoppered bottle. That gave Cadderly hope; perhaps the slumber would last until the mist was gone.
The bottle itself, though, did not appear completely neutralized. Cadderly sensed a life, an energy, within it, a pulsating evil, contained but not destroyed. It might have been only his imagination, or perhaps what he thought was a fife-force was merely a manifestation of his own fears. Cadderly honestly wondered if the remaining flickers within that bottle were playing some role in the lingering mist. The evil priest had called the mist the Most Fatal Horror, an agent of Talona. Cadderly recognized the name of the vile goddess, and the title, normally reserved for Talona's highest-ranking clerics. ˆ this mist was indeed some sort of god-stuff, a simple stopper would not suffice.
Cadderly came out of his trance and sat down to consider the situation. The key, he decided, was to accept the evil priest's description of the bottle and not think of it simply as some secular, though potent, magic.
"Battle gods with gods," Cadderly mumbled a moment later. He stood again before the altar, studying not the bottle, but the reflective, gem-studded bowl in front of it. Cadderly feared what magic tins item might contain, but he chanced it without delay, tipping the bowl to the side and dumping out the water stained by the evil priest's foul hands.
He retrieved a piece of cloth, a piece of Barjin's own vestments, and wiped the bowl thoroughly, then found Newander's water skin, full as usual, out in the hallway beyond Pikel's impromptu door.
Cadderly consciously avoided looking at Newander as he reentered the room, meaning to go straight to the altar, but Percival delayed him. The squirrel sat atop the dead druid, still in his semitransformed state.
"Get away from there," Cadderly scolded, but Percival only sat up higher, clicking excitedly and displaying some small item.
"What have you got?" Cadderly asked, moving slowly back so as not to startle the excitable squirrel.
Percival displayed an oak leaf pendant, the holy symbol of Silvanus, dangling from a fine leather thong.
"Do not take that!" Cadderly started to scold, but then he realized that Percival had something in mind.
Cadderly bent low, studying Percival more closely and seeking guidance in the wise druid's face.
Newander's visage, so peaceful and accepting of his fate, held him fully.
Percival shrieked in Cadderly's ear, demanding his attention. The squirrel held out the pendant and seemed to motion toward the altar.
Confusion twisted Cadderly's face. "Percival?" he asked.
The squirrel danced an agitated circle, then shook his little head briskly. Cadderly blanched.
"Newander?" he asked meekly.
The squirrel held out the holy symbol.
Cadderly considered it for a moment, then, remembering the druids' creed concerning death as a natural extension of life, he accepted the oak leaf and started back toward the altar.
The squirrel shook suddenly, then leaped back up to Cadderly's shoulder.
"Newander?" Cadderly asked again. The squirrel did not answer. "Percival?" The squirrel perked up its ears.
Cadderly paused and wondered what had just transpired. His instincts told him that Newander's departing spirit somehow had used Percival's body to get a message to him, but his stubborn sense of reality told him that he probably had imagined the whole episode. Whatever it was, he now had the druid's holy symbol in his hand and he knew that the aid of Silvanus could be only a good thing.
Cadderly wished he had been more attentive in his mundane duties, the simple ceremonies required of the lesser priests of the Edificant Library. His hands trembling, he poured the water from Newander's water skin into the gem-studded bowl, and added to it, with a silent call to Newander's god, the holy symbol.
Cadderly figured that two gods would be better than one in containing this evil, and also that Newander's god, dedicated to natural order, might be the most effective in battling the curse. He dosed his eyes and recited the ceremony to purify the water, stumbling a few times over the words he had not spoken very often.
Then it was completed and Cadderly was left with only his hopes. He lifted the evil bottle and gently immersed it in the bowl. The water went cold and took on the same red hue as that within the bottle, and Cadderly feared that he had not accomplished anything positive.
A moment later, though, the red hue disappeared altogether, from the water and the bottle.
Cadderly studied it closely, somehow sensing that the pulsating evil was no more.
Behind him, Pikel's snore was replaced by a questioning, "Oo oi?"
Cadderly scooped up the bowl carefully and looked around. Danica and both dwarves were stirring, though they were not yet coherent. Cadderly moved across the room to a small cabinet and placed the bowl inside, closing the door as he turned away.
Danica groaned and sat up, holding her head in both hands. "Me head," Ivan said in a sluggish voice. "Me head." They exited the tunnel to the south side of the great library half an hour later, Ivan and Pikel bearing Newander's rigid body and both dwarves and Danica sporting tremendous headaches. The dawn, just breaking, looked so good to Cadderly that he considered it a sign that all had been put right and that the nightmare had ended. His three companions groaned loudly and shielded their eyes when they came out into the brightness.
Cadderly would have laughed at them, but when he turned, the sight of Newander stole his mirth.
* * * * *
"Ah, there you are, Rufo," Headmaster Avery said upon entering the angular man's room. Kierkan Rufo lay on his bed and groaned weakly, pained by the many wounds he had received in the last couple of days and by a pounding headache that would not relent.
Avery waddled over toward him, pausing to belch several times. Avery's head ached, too, but it was nothing compared to the agony in his bloated stomach. "Get up, then," the headmaster said, reaching for Rufo's limp wrist. "Where is Cadderly?"
Rufo did not reply, did not even allow himself to blink. The curse was no more, but Rufo had not forgotten all that he had suffered in the past couple of days, at the hands of both Cadderly and the monk, Danica. He had not forgotten his own actions, either, and he feared the accusations that might be brought against him in the coming days.
"We have so very much to do," Avery went on, "so very much. I do not know what has befallen our library, but it is a very wicked business indeed. There are dead, Rufo, many dead, and many more are wandering confused."
Rufo at last forced himself to a sitting position. His face was bruised and caked in several places with dried blood, and his wrists and ankles were still sore from the dwarves' bindings. He hardly thought of the pain at that moment, however. What had happened to him? What had caused him to so foolishly go after Danica? What had caused him to reveal his jealousy, in the form of outright hostility, so clearly to Cadderly?
"Cadderly," he breathed quietly. He had almost killed Cadderly; he feared that memory nearly as much as the potential consequences. His memories came to him as if from a dark mirror in his heart, and Rufo was not certain that he liked what he saw.
* * * * *
"Ws have been five days with no further incidents," Dean Thobicus said to the gathering in his audience hall a few days later. All the surviving headmasters, of both the Oghman and Deneiran sects, were present, as well as Cadderly, Kierkan Rufo, and the two remaining druids.
Thobicus shuffled through a pile of reports, then declared, "The Edificant Library will recover."
There was a chorus of somewhat subdued cheers and nods. The future might have looked bright again, but the recent past, particularly the wholesale slaughter of the visiting Ilmater sect and the death of the heroic druid, Newander, could not be so easily dismissed.
"We have you to thank for it," Thobicus said to Cadderly. "You and your nonsectarian friends-" he nodded an acknowledgment to the druids "-displayed great bravery and ingenuity in defeating the evil infection that came into our midst."
Kierkan Rufo subtly nudged Headmaster Avery.
"Yes?" Dean Thobicus inquired.
"I have been requested to remind us all that Cadderly, brave though he was, is not without responsibility for this catastrophe," Avery began. He cast a look at Cadderly that showed he was not angered by the young scholar, but that he indeed held Cadderly's actions against the invading priest in high regard.
Cadderly took no offense; after seeing the headmaster under the influences of the curse, he suspected he knew how Avery really felt about him. He almost wished that he could get the headmaster back under the influence of the curse and talking again about Cadderly's father and the young scholar's first days at the library.