The Eye of the Chained God Read online

  He lowered his head until he glared into Churr’s eyes. “No.”

  Churr stumbled back, hopping from one stepping stone back to the next—then he stopped himself and met his master’s gaze for a second time. “Vestapalk says no,” he said, loud enough to make his words echo, “because Vestapalk is afraid.”

  A hiss and a stir swept around the watching plague demons. Vestapalk sensed their unease and their eagerness through the Voidharrow. In a hierarchy of raw power, no one was immune to being challenged. Denied the chance to advance himself by killing Nu Alin’s killers, Churr Ashin was prepared to take on the only other demon that outranked him.

  And in the instant it took Vestapalk to recognize that, he realized something else: Churr was more cunning than he’d believed. One of Churr’s thick hands had reached behind his back and jerked out something wedged under the crystal plates there.

  In the ruddy light of the Plaguedeep, a golden skull gleamed between his fingers.

  Vestapalk didn’t bother to glance to the corner of the shaft where the gold skulls that had once been the treasure of the Temple of Yellow Skulls sat heaped like so much trash. There was no doubt that Churr had stolen one of them, probably while Vestapalk’s mind had roamed across the world. Nor was there any doubt what he intended. Each gold skull contained the essence of a powerful demon of the Abyss, and was a source of great energy. Vestapalk had drawn on them to empower the transformation of his exarchs and again to create the Plaguedeep itself.

  Churr Ashin raised the skull swiftly to his mouth and drew a deep breath, sucking at the power within.

  Except nothing happened. Vestapalk gave Churr a moment to realize his ploy had failed.

  Then he lunged.

  Even without the power of the golden skull, Churr’s size, strength, and crystal armor made him dangerous. Vestapalk struck in a rush. His snapping jaws closed on Churr’s free arm and bit it off at the elbow. His shoulder slammed into Churr’s chest, knocking him back. Vast wings, glittering red with crystal and droplets of the Voidharrow, swept out and beat down, giving Vestapalk enough momentum to bowl his rebellious exarch onto his back.

  The golden skull flew from Churr’s hand, bounced off one of the stepping stones with a clang, arched over the Voidharrow pool, and landed spinning on solid ground. Plague demons nearby scattered as if the thing were poison.

  Churr tried to fight back. He punched with his remaining hand, a blow that might have put a hole in a stone wall. Vestapalk twisted and the punch slid past him. A foreleg raked down and severed the muscles of Churr’s shoulder and chest. His powerful arm flopped back uselessly. He tried to kick, but Vestapalk bent his lean body double—as if his bones had become as fluid as the Voidharrow—and gripped Churr’s legs with his hind feet. The weight of Vestapalk’s entire body resting on top of him brought a gasp even from the massive demon.

  Vestapalk turned his head to spit out Churr’s arm. “You are cunning,” he said, looking back to his struggling captive, “but not cunning enough. It takes strength greater than yours to draw on the skulls. Their power responds only to greater power. Vestapalk’s power.”

  Churr glared at him, rage blinding him to pain. “You are afraid.”

  Vestapalk roared into Churr’s face, his talons clenching the demon’s flesh. “This one fears nothing! Those who killed Nu Alin are of no concern. They will be overrun. They will be a part of the Voidharrow as everything will be a part of the Voidharrow!”

  Shrieking howls filled the Plaguedeep, the plague demons mimicking his fury as it spread through the connection between them. Even the pool of the Voidharrow grew agitated. He snapped his teeth in Churr’s face. “This world belongs to Vestapalk now,” he snarled, “and Vestapalk is the Voidharrow.”

  His tongue emerged from his mouth, wet and glossy. It darted across Churr’s face, leaving behind a smear of Voidharrow. Vestapalk smiled. “As are you.”

  He opened his mouth and, just as Churr had over the golden skull, drew breath.

  The demon convulsed as a glittering red mist emerged from between his lips and streamed up to Vestapalk’s muzzle. A thin scream went with it. The convulsions lasted only moments, then Churr fell back, his eyes dull and glazed. The scream faded away to nothing.

  Vestapalk didn’t stop inhaling, however. If he were a mortal creature, his lungs would have burst. But he was far from mortality. The wisp of mist became thicker as the substance of Churr’s flesh—transformed and empowered by the Voidharrow—began to sift away. Vestapalk stepped back from his former exarch’s body and opened his jaws wider. His drawn breath became a gale, shredding Churr’s remains until they flowed into his maw like liquid. Like the Voidharrow itself.

  When the last traces of Churr Ashin’s existence were a few shards of red crystal, Vestapalk closed his mouth and let out a slow exhalation. He lifted his gaze to the demons around him.

  They fell silent instantly, their eyes dropping. Vestapalk snorted and slid back into the pool. Noise slowly returned to the Plaguedeep as the demons returned to their chitterings and brawlings, their primitive battles for meaningless supremacy.

  A wave of the Voidharrow washed from the pool over the floor of the shaft to pick up the fallen gold skull and carry it to Vestapalk like a piece of wood on the tide. He ignored it, his thoughts turning in another direction. Churr Ashin had shown him something valuable: Albanon, Shara, Kri, and the others who defied him were a distraction.

  He’d spoken nothing less than the truth when he told Churr his enemies were doomed. Their end would come whether he took a role in it or not. The idea of letting the Abyssal Plague take them in time didn’t sit well with him, though. It was too easy for those who declared themselves his enemies. He might task another of his exarchs with dealing with them, but they were scattered—and what was to say that they might not try to turn against him as Churr had?

  He might take control of another demon, seeing through its eyes, inhabiting its body, and using it to destroy his enemies. But no, Churr had been able to steal the golden skull while his mind flitted between demons. Something worse might happen if his focus was beyond the Plaguedeep for longer. Vestapalk needed something else. Some proxy he could trust that wouldn’t require his constant attention, but that would fill his need to have a hand in the destruction of those who had so thoroughly defied him.

  A wild squealing distracted him. Across the pool, a demon had claimed a red and knobby club almost bigger than it was: Churr’s severed arm had survived the destruction of his body. The creature waved the arm around like a trophy, occasionally beating it against the ground for the amusement of the larger demons. Churr’s fingers still grasped and clawed against the indignity as if life yet remained in the limb, much as Vestapalk’s own shed scales writhed when they fell.

  An idea sprang fully formed into Vestapalk’s mind. He raked a claw across his belly and plucked away an old loose scale. Voidharrow flowed to replace it, but Vestapalk watched the scale as it twisted for a few moments like a fat, red leech. In the back of his mind, he could feel its struggles as if it were an extension of his body. Of his whole being. He laughed out loud. “Yes,” he said to himself. “An avatar for Vestapalk, to walk the land and strike his blows.” The pseudo-life of the scale was temporary, though. An avatar would require true life, a complete form. He scooped the golden skull out of the Voidharrow and stared into its empty, gleaming sockets. “This one has need of your power.”

  The being imprisoned within the skull wailed in terror and despair as Vestapalk opened his mouth once more.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Six days after the attack, Fallcrest still smoldered. By day, thin quills of smoke streaked the sky. By night, red embers crept like worms through blackened beams, leaving more than one of the town’s defenders on edge with memories of the flaming demons that had ignited the devastation.

  The destruction could have been worse. When orc hordes had spilled over the Nentir Vale decades before, Fallcrest had been sacked and pillaged, reduced from a thriving cit
y to a frontier town. Its recovery had been slow. Many of its streets still had gaps and tumbled piles of rubble where structures had never been rebuilt—gaps that became natural fire breaks. In a more crowded town or village, entire blocks might have burned in the inferno. In Fallcrest, every third house—or more—had survived the demon-brought flames.

  Which wasn’t to say they were all still occupied. Those townspeople whose homes were still inhabitable sought out the safety of numbers. And of the buildings that stood in Fallcrest’s lower town, most were as empty as the ruins around them.

  Those in the upper town, where the great bluffs that split Fallcrest formed one side of a strong defensive perimeter, were packed. Crowds spilled out of them and into the streets, finding shelter under tents or in rough shacks built from rubble. The crowds weren’t solely the folk of Fallcrest either. A trickle of refugees from the surrounding areas of the Vale had been arriving since the plague had taken hold, turning into a flood as the demons born of the plague swept across the countryside.

  Common wisdom said isolation was the best defense against a plague—but most plagues didn’t bring nightmare creatures searching out new victims to infect and transform, adding to their own numbers in an expanding wave.

  “More stones here!” called Roghar. “And more mortar, too!”

  Below the growing wall on which the dragonborn stood, townsfolk-turned-laborers leaped to follow the order. Although, Roghar considered on second thought, perhaps “leaped” wasn’t the right word. “Lurched” might be more appropriate, or maybe “struggled.” Six days of combing the ruins, cleaning the streets, and attempting to put a shattered town to rights had left the survivors exhausted. Every face was streaked with sweat and grime. Every step was a dragging shuffle. The euphoria of victory over the invading plague demons had given way to grim reality.

  One facet of that reality was the need to shore up Fallcrest’s defenses. The wall around the upper town was in good repair but the attack had showed that the roads up the bluffs from the lower town were a weak point. For decades, Fallcrest had depended on the steep ascent to deter enemies, but the plague demons were like no mortal enemy. Fearless and tireless, the steep road meant nothing to them. Some had even clawed their way up the sheer cliff itself. Fallcrest needed a new wall—an internal wall at the brow of the escarpment—and a new gate to hold the top of the road.

  With no special place in the town, no family or home of his own, Roghar had taken on Fallcrest’s need and started working. He’d set aside his sword and armor, commandeered a workforce, and in just a few days, had the rough beginnings of a stout gatehouse in place at the most commonly used road, the stubby wings of a low wall unfurling to either side of it. The other two roads were already sealed off. Fallcrest had provided the material in stout timbers and soot-blackened stones taken from ruined houses or from the old city walls toppled almost a century earlier. If the townsfolk were reluctant to scavenge their broken homes at first, they soon took pride in what rose out of their work and sweat.

  They also found pride, Roghar suspected, in the willingness of a paladin of Bahamut—one of the heroes who had fought off the plague demons—to labor alongside them. When workers were tired, it seemed like there were always fresh ones ready to take their places. For his part, Roghar tried to make sure he was always the first at the walls in the morning and the last to leave when the torches guttered low. He was larger than the largest of the townsfolk, an inspiring figure in burnished bronze, the fine scales of his leathery hide shining as he worked.

  Of course, it had only been six days. Whether he or the townsfolk could keep up the punishing pace was a question that pulled at the back of Roghar’s mind.

  Still, it was better than doing nothing.

  “Roghar!”

  He turned at the call and saw Uldane skipping across the uneven top of the wall. The halfling moved with sure-footed agility, bounding lightly from stone to stone in spite of the waterskins that hung off him like swollen fruit. Without pausing, he shrugged off one of the skins and tossed it to Roghar. It hit the dragonborn’s palm with a wet smack and shimmied under his thick fingers. Roghar could feel the delicious cool and was, for a moment, sorely tempted to guzzle it down. He contented himself with pulling the stopper and taking a quick gulp before passing it on to the nearest worker. Uldane passed him a second, then a third, then a fourth skin. Roghar redistributed them all. Uldane shook his head.

  “You’re just a paragon of virtue, aren’t you?” He held up the last waterskin. “This is mine. You can’t give it away. I’m only sharing it with you.”

  Roghar smiled at that. “Bahamut doesn’t require his faithful to deny themselves.”

  “Well, you look like you’re trying to.” Uldane passed the skin to him.

  “I reward those who have earned it.” He aimed a stream from the neck of the skin into his waiting mouth—and nearly choked in surprise on wine instead of water. He spluttered and licked his blunt snout.

  Uldane gave him a wide grin. “So do I. Don’t you dare give that skin back until you’ve drunk your fill, Roghar.”

  The paladin took another drink, then paused. “Where did this come from?”

  Uldane actually looked offended. “Do you really think I’d take something from someone in Fallcrest right now? That would be like stealing from a beggar’s bowl!”

  “Where?”

  “Buried in the stores of the Glowing Tower, so it practically belongs to us. Or to Albanon anyway.” He slouched back, his arms crossed. “And he’s not going to notice any more than he’s noticing anything right now.”

  Roghar regarded Uldane thoughtfully as he directed another jet of wine down his throat. Then he wiped his snout and handed the skin to Uldane. “You’ve noticed it too?”

  “It’s hard to miss, isn’t it? We were going to go after Vestapalk. We were going to cut the head off the snake and end the plague. Instead …” Uldane shrugged. “We’re building walls. I mean, not that it isn’t a fine wall, but why are we trapping ourselves behind it?”

  A proverb of Bahamut’s priesthood rose to Roghar’s tongue: The shield is enough for many. Not everyone was capable of carrying the fight to the enemy. Building the wall was as useful as striking beyond it.

  The proverb didn’t escape his mouth. Instead he said, “I know what you mean.” He took back the wineskin before Uldane had a chance to drink, swallowed, and looked down over the empty, smoking streets of the lower town spread out below. Down there on the Market Green, he, Uldane, the warlock Tempest, and the wizard Albanon had destroyed the ancient bodystealer Nu Alin, the very first of the plague demons created by the foul substance known as the Voidharrow.

  The creature’s death had been the end of the attack—the end of the battle for Fallcrest as the remaining demons scattered without his command to drive them on. The four of them had returned to the upper town in triumph, filled with plans to strike out after Vestapalk. They even had a clue where to find Vestapalk, thanks to lingering collective memories held by Belen, a human defender of Fallcrest who had been possessed by Nu Alin before his destruction. Vestapalk, their ultimate enemy, had taken a lair in a volcano west of Fallcrest, beyond the Ogrefist Hills that formed one edge of the Nentir Vale, using his command of the Voidharrow to transform it into something he called the Plaguedeep. Belen had experienced the knowledge through her communion with Nu Alin and the rest of the plague demons while possessed. They could go after him and end the threat once and for all.

  Except that only hours after their celebration, Albanon had pleaded for more time to study their enemy. Before the attack, he and his treacherous mentor, the old priest Kri, had only just returned to Fallcrest after venturing into the Feywild to a tower that had belonged to the founder of an order dedicated to countering the Voidharrow. Albanon had brought back books and scrolls. If he could take a day to study them, he said, maybe they could find some advantage over Vestapalk and his demonic forces.

  One day had turned into two and then six. Enough ti
me for Roghar to muster workers and build a gatehouse while they waited on the eladrin wizard. Enough time that they could have reached Vestapalk’s doorstep by already.

  The longer they waited, the more obvious it became that Albanon didn’t want to go.

  “When do you think he’ll be ready?” Roghar asked Uldane.

  The halfling joined him at the edge of the wall. “He’s not studying.”

  Roghar looked down at him sharply. “You mean right now or never?”

  “Right now. He’s over that way,” Uldane gestured vaguely into the upper town, “helping Tempest distribute more useful stuff than wine to people who need it … I don’t know about never. Never is a long time.”

  “Uldane,” Roghar growled.

  “Not in the last couple of days, at least. I know he asked us to stay out of the study at the top of the tower, but I peeked in a couple of times. He wasn’t there but I don’t think anything has been touched since the evening before yesterday.” He looked up at the dragonborn. “Whatever he’s doing, he’s not looking for answers in those books and scrolls.”

  Roghar clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth together. “We need to talk to him.”

  “Do you think …” Uldane hesitated for a moment before pushing the words out. “Do you think it’s because of Shara?”

  The paladin considered his answer before he spoke. Although she had stood shoulder to shoulder with him and the others in the past, the warrior Shara had not taken part in the final fight against Nu Alin. Instead, she had slipped away, turning from the defense of Fallcrest in pursuit of her own vengeance against Vestapalk. The murder of her friends and family—among them her father, Borojon, and her love, Jarren—by the dragon haunted her. She’d left at the side of her new lover, Quarhaun—a drow, as hard and cruel as the hatred Shara held for Vestapalk.