The Promise of Salvation

Kierkan Rufo wiped the stubborn mud from his boots and breeches, and muttered quiet curses to himself, as he always did. He was an outcast, marked by an ugly blue-and-red brand of an unlit candle above a closed eye, which lay on the middle of his forehead.

“Bene tellemara” whispered Druzil. A bat-winged, dog-faced, scaly creature barely two feet tall, the imp packed more malicious evil into that tiny frame than the worst of humankind’s tyrants.

“What did you say?” Rufo snapped. He glared down at his otherworldly companion. The two had been together for the last half of the winter, and neither much liked the other. Their enmity had begun in Shilmista Forest, west of the Snowflake Mountains, when Druzil had threatened and coerced Rufo into serving his wicked masters, the leaders of Castle Trinity—when Druzil had precipitated Kierkan Rufo’s fall from the order of Deneir.

Druzil looked curiously at the man and squinted from the flickering light of the torch Rufo held. Rufo was over six feet tall, but bone-skinny. He always stood at an angle, tilted to the side, and that made him, or the world behind him, seem strangely incongruent. Druzil, who had spent the last few months wandering through the Snowflakes, thought Rufo resembled a tree on a steep mountainside. The imp snickered, drawing another glare from the perpetually scowling Rufo.

The imp continued to stare, trying hard to view the man in a new light. With his stringy black hair matted to his head, those penetrating eyes—black dots on a pale face—and that unusual stance, Rufo could be imposing. He kept his hair parted in the middle now, not on the side as it had always been, for Rufo could not, on pain of death, cover that horrid brand, the mark that had forced him to be a recluse, the mark that made every person shun him when they saw him coming down the road.

“What are you looking at?” Rufo demanded.

“Bene tellemara” Druzil rasped again in the language of the lower planes. It was a profound insult to Rufo’s intelligence. To Druzil, schooled in chaos and evil, all humans seemed fumbling things, too clouded by emotions to be effective at anything. And this one, Rufo, was more bumbling than most. However, Aballister, Druzil’s wizard master, was dead now, killed by Cadderly, his son, the same priest who had branded Rufo. And Dorigen, Aballister’s second, had been captured, or had gone over to Cadderly’s side. That left Druzil wandering alone on the Material Plane. With his innate powers, and no wizards binding him to service, the imp might have found his way back to the lower planes, but Druzil didn’t want that—not yet. For, on this plane, in the dungeons of this very building, rested Tuanta Quiro Miancay, the chaos curse, among the most potent and wicked concoctions ever brewed. Druzil wanted it back, and meant to get it with the help of Rufo, his stooge.

“I know what you are saying,” Rufo lied, then he mimicked “Bene tellemara” back at Druzil.

Druzil smirked at him, showing clearly that the imp really didn’t care if Rufo knew the meaning or not.

Rufo looked back at the muddy tunnel that had gotten them under the cellar of the Edificant Library.

“Well,” he said impatiently, “we have come this far. Lead on and let us be out of this wretched place.”

Druzil looked at him skeptically. For all the talking the imp had done over the last few weeks, Rufo still did not understand. Be out of this place? Druzil thought. Rufo had missed the whole point. They would soon have the chaos curse in their hands; why would they then want to leave?

Druzil nodded and led on, figuring that he could do little to enlighten the stupid human. Rufo simply did not understand the power of Tuanta Quiro Miancay. He had once been caught in its throes—all the library had, and nearly been brought down—yet, the ignorant human still did not understand.

That was the way with humans, Druzil decided. He would have to take Rufo by the hand and lead him to power, as he had led Rufo across the fields west of Car-radoon and back into the mountains. Druzil had lured Rufo back to the library, where the branded man did not want to go, with false promises that the potion locked in these dungeons would remove his brand.

They went through several long, damp chambers, past rotting casks and crates from days long ago when the library was a much smaller place, and mostly underground, when these areas had been used for storage. Druzil hadn’t been here in a while, not since before the battle for Castle Trinity, before the war in Shilmista Forest. Not since Barjin, the evil priest, had been killed ... by Cadderly.

“Bene telletnaral” the imp rasped, frustrated by the thought of the powerful young cleric.

“I grow tired of your insults,” Rufo began to protest.

“Shut up,” Druzil snapped back at him, too consumed by thoughts of the young priest to bother with Rufo. Cadderly, young and lucky Cadderly: the bane of Druzil’s ambitions, the one who always seemed to be in the way.

Druzil kept complaining, scraping and slapping his wide, clawed feet on the stone floor noisily. He pushed through a door, went down a long corridor, and pushed open another.

Then Druzil stopped, and ended, too, his muttering. They had come to a small room, the room where Barjin had fallen.

Rufo pinched his nose and turned away, for the room smelled of death and decay. Druzil took a deep breath and felt positively at home.

There could be no doubt that a fierce struggle had occurred in here. Along the wall to Rufo and Druzil’s right was an overturned brazier, the remains of charcoal blocks and incense scattered among its ashes. There, too, were the burned wrappings of an undead monster, a mummy. Most of the thing had been consumed by the flames, but its wrapped skull remained, showing blackened bone with tattered pieces of rags about it.

Beyond the brazier, near the base of the wall and along the floor, was a crimson stain, all that remained as testimony to Barjin’s death. Barjin had been propped against that very spot when Cadderly had accidentally hit him with an explosive dart, blasting a hole through his chest and back.

The rest of the room showed much the same carnage. Next to Barjin’s bloodstain, the brick wall had been knocked open by a furious dwarf, and the crossbeam supporting the ceiling hung by a single peg perpendicular to the floor. In the middle of the room, beneath dozens of scorch marks, lay a black weapon handle, all that remained of the Screaming Maiden, Barjin’s enchanted mace, and behind that were the remains of the priest’s unholy altar.

Beyond that...

Druzil’s bulbous black eyes widened when he looked past the altar to the small cabinet wrapped in white cloth emblazoned with the runes and sigils of both Deneir and Oghma, the brother gods of the library. The mere presence of the cloth told Druzil that his search was at an end.

A flap of his bat wings brought the imp to the top of the altar, and he heard Rufo shuffling to catch up. Druzil dared not approach any closer, though, knowing that the priests had warded the cabinet with powerful enchantments.

“Glyphs,” Rufo agreed, recognizing Druzil’s hesitation. “If we go near it, we shall be burned away!”

“No,” Druzil reasoned, speaking quickly, frantically. Tuanta Quiro Miancay was close enough for the desperate imp to smell it, and he would not be denied. “Not you,” he went on. “You are not of my weal. You were a priest of this order. Surely you can approach ...”

“Fool!” Rufo snapped at him. It was as volatile a response as the imp had ever heard from the broken man.

“I wear the brand of Deneir! The wards on that cloth and cabinet would seek my flesh hungrily.”

Druzil hopped on the altar, tried to speak, but his rasping voice came out as only indecipherable sputtering. Then the imp calmed and called on his innate magic. The imp could see and measure all magic, be it the dweomer of a wizard or a priest. If the glyphs were not so powerful, Druzil would go to the cabinet himself. Any wounds he received would heal—faster still when he clutched the precious Tuanta Quiro Miancay in his greedy hands. The name translated into “the Most Fatal Horror,” a title that sounded delicious indeed to the beleaguered imp.

The aura emanating from the cabinet nearly overwhelmed him, and at first, Druzil’s heart fell in despair. But as he continued his scan, the imp came to know the truth, and a great gout of wicked laughter burst from between his pointed teeth.

Rufo, curious, looked at him.

“Go to the cabinet,” Druzit instructed.

Rufo continued to stare, and made no move.

“Go,” Druzil said again. “The meager wards of the foolish priests have been overwhelmed by the chaos curse! Their magic has unraveled!”

It was only partly true. Tuanta Quiro Miancay was more than a simple potion; it was magic driven to destroy. Tuanta Quiro Miancay wanted to be found, wanted to be out of the prison the priests had wrapped about it. And to that end, the concoction’s magic had attacked the glyphs, had worked against them for many months, weakening their integrity.

Rufo didn’t trust Druzil (and rightly so), but he could not ignore the pull on his heart. He felt his forehead’s brand keenly in this place and suffered a severe headache merely from being near a structure dedicated to Deneir. He found himself wanting to believe Druzil’s words; he moved inevitably toward the cabinet and reached for the cloth.

There came a blinding electric flash, then a second, then a tremendous burst of fire. Fortunately for Rufo, the first explosion had launched him across the room, clear over the altar and into an overturned bookcase near the door.

Druzil shrieked as the flames engulfed the cabinet, its wood flaring brightly—obviously it had been soaked with oil or enchanted by some incendiary magic. Druzil did not fear for Tuanta Quiro Miancay, for that concoction was everlasting, but if the flask holding it melted, the liquid would be lost!

Flames never bothered Druzil, a creature of the fiery lower planes. His bat wings sent him rushing into the conflagration, eager hands pulling the cabinet’s contents free. Druzil shrieked from a sudden burst of pain, and nearly hurled the bowl across the room. He caught himself, though, and gingerly placed the item on the altar, then he backed away and rubbed his blistered hands together.

The bottle holding the chaos curse had been placed in a bowl and immersed in the clearest of waters, made holy by the plea of a dead druid and the symbol of Syl-vanus, the god of nature, of natural order. Perhaps no god in the Realms evoked more anger from the perverse imp than Sylvanus.

Druzil studied the bowl and considered his dilemma. He breathed easier a moment later, when he realized that the holy water was not as pure as it should be, that the influences of Tuanta Quiro Miancay were acting even upon that.

Druzil moved near the bowl and chanted softly, using one of his claws to puncture the middle finger of his left hand. Finishing his curse, he let a single drop of his blood fall into the water. There came a hissing, and the top of the bowl clouded over with vapor. Then it was gone, and gone, too, was the pure water, replaced by a blackened morass of fetid and rotting liquid.

Druzil leaped back atop the altar and plunged his hands in. A moment later, he was whimpering with joy, cradling the precious, rune-decorated bottle, itself an enchanted thing, as though it were his baby. He looked to Rufo, not really concerned if the man was alive or dead, then laughed again.

Rufo had propped himself up on his elbows. His black hair stood on end, dancing wildly; his eyes twitched and rolled of their own accord. After some time, he rolled back unsteadily to his feet and advanced in staggered steps toward the imp, thinking to throttle the creature once and for all.

Druzil’s waving tail, its barbed end dripping deadly poison, brought Rufo to his senses, but did little to calm him.

“You said ...” he began to roar.

“Bene telletnaral” Druzil snapped back at him, the imp’s intensity more than matching Rufo’s anger and startling the man to silence. “Do you not know what we have?” Smiling wickedly, Druzil handed the flask to Rufo, and the man’s beady eyes widened when he took it, when he felt its inner power throb within him.

Rufo hardly heard Druzil as the imp raved about what they might accomplish with the chaos curse. The angular man stared at the swirling red liquid within the bottle and fantasized, not of power, as Druzil was spouting, but of freedom from his brand. Rufo had earned that brand, but in his twisted perception, that hardly mattered. All Rufo understood and could accept was that Cadderly had marked him, had forced him to become an outcast.

Now, all the world was his enemy.

Druzil continued to ramble excitedly. The imp talked of controlling the priests once more, of striking against all the land, of uncorking the flask and ...

Rufo heard that last suggestion alone among the dozens of ideas the imp spewed. He heard it and believed it with all his heart. It was as if Tuanta Quiro Miancay was calling him, and the chaos curse, the creation of wicked, diabolical intelligence, was indeed. This was Rufo’s salvation, more than Deneir had ever been. This was his deliverance from wretched Cadderly.

This potion was for him, and for him alone.

Druzil stopped talking the moment he noticed that Rufo had uncorked the bottle, the moment he smelled the red fumes wafting up from the potion.

The imp started to ask the man what he was doing, but the words stuck in Druzil’s throat as Rufo suddenly lifted the bottle to his thin lips and drank of it deeply.

Druzil stammered repeatedly, trying to find the words of protest. Rufo turned to him, the man’s face screwed up curiously.

“What have you done?” Druzil asked.

Rufo started to answer, but gagged instead and clutched his throat

“What have you done?” Druzil repeated loudly. “Bene tettemaral. Fool!”

Rufo gagged again, clutched his throat and stomach, and vomited violently. He staggered away, coughing, wheezing, trying to get some air past the bile rising in his throat.

“What have you done?” Druzil cried after him, scuttling along the floor to keep up. The imp’s tail waved ominously; if Rufo’s misery ended, Druzil meant to sting and tear him, to punish him for stealing the precious and irreplaceable potion.

Rufo, his balance wavering, slammed into the door-jamb as he tried to exit the room. He stumbled along the corridor, rebounding off one wall, then the other. He vomited again, and again after that, his stomach burning with agony and swirling with nausea. Somehow he got through the rooms and corridors and half-crawled out the muddy tunnel, back into the sunlight, which knifed at his eyes and skin.

He was burning up, and yet he felt cold, deathly cold.

Druzil, wisely becoming invisible as they came into the revealing daylight, followed. Rufo stopped and vomited yet again, across the hatuened remains of a late-season snowbank, and the mess showed more blood than bile. Then the angular man staggered around the building’s corner, slipping and falling many times in the mud and slush. He thought to get to the door, to the priests with their curing hands.

Two young acolytes, wearing the black-and-gold vests that distinguished them as priests of Oghma, were near the door, enjoying the warmth of the late winter day, their brown cloaks opened wide to the sun. They didn’t notice Rufo at first, not until the man fell heavily into the mud just a few feet away.

The two acolytes rushed to him and turned him over, then gasped and fell back when they saw the brand. Neither had been in the library long enough to know Kierkan Rufo personally, but they had heard tales of the branded priest. They looked to each other and shrugged, then one rushed back into the library while the other began to relieve the stricken man.

Druzil watched from the corner of the building, muttering “Bene tellemara” over and over, lamenting that the chaos curse and Kierkan Rufo had played him a wicked joke.

Perched high in the branches of a tree near that door, the white squirrel, Percival, looked on with more than a passing interest. Percival had come out of his winter hibernation this very week. He had been surprised to find that Cadderly, his main source of the favored cacasa nuts, was not about, and was even more surprised to see Kierkan Rufo, a human that Percival did not care for at all.

The squirrel could see that Rufo was in great distress, could smell the foulness of Rufo’s illness, even from this distance.

Percival moved near his twig nest, nestled high in the branches, and continued to watch.