Albanon’s thoughts and feelings were a jumble as he followed Kri through the tumult caused by the demons’ attack on the Silver Unicorn. He found a rhythm in counting his footsteps, a stability in the steady beat of his boots against the cobblestones and packed dirt of the streets and alleys. Slowly, as Kri led him through Hightown, Albanon found a focus, a burning point of fury and hatred at the center of his mind’s storm. Kri had done something to him, something that shattered his mind and sapped his will. All the rest-thoughts of Nu Alin, memories of Shara and Quarhaun, the sudden recollection of Tempest-was fragmentary and uncertain, but he found comfort and stability in staring at Kri’s back and calculating the various ways his spells could tear the old man into tiny pieces.
Their winding path meant nothing to him until suddenly a tall tower came into view, limned with eldritch light in the night. The Glowing Tower, he thought. Moorin’s tower.
Blood. Blood everywhere, sprayed on walls and floor and ceiling in patterns of intricate geometry-angles and curvature danced through his mind, undergirded with formulas he had not noticed before. “It was a work of art, what I did to him,” the demon had said. “A masterpiece.”
Not art, Albanon realized. Mathematics. Magic.
His head spun as he contemplated the mystery that Nu Alin had woven from Moorin’s blood. The fabric of space and time was rent apart and woven back together, differently, subtly, intricately. He stumbled, overcome by a wave of nausea.
“Albanon!” Kri snapped.
Albanon made sure his face was blank before he looked up at the old priest. Kri stopped and searched his eyes as Albanon stared straight ahead.
“Perhaps Albric was right,” Kri said at last. “Your mind was stronger than I gave you credit for. It seems that Moorin was not a total idiot after all.”
A spark of anger flared in some shattered corner of Albanon’s mind, enough to make him realize that Kri was trying to provoke him, testing him.
“Did you see Shara back there, Albanon?” Kri asked. “Did you hear her call out to you?”
Another test. Albanon kept his face a mask and didn’t answer, didn’t even allow his mind to pursue the questions that surfaced in his mind. Who is Shara to me? Should I care about her?
“Come along, Albanon,” the Doomdreamer said, apparently satisfied. “We have work to do.”
Two hundred thirteen, Albanon thought as he started walking again. He had stopped counting steps as he contemplated Nu Alin’s mathematics of blood, and counting again was the only way he could keep his mind away from the madness contained in those formulas.
Two hundred and fifty-six steps-sixteen sixteens, the square of a square of a square-brought him to the threshold of Moorin’s tower. Crossing the threshold brought another wave of memory, the trepidation he felt entering the tower the night of Moorin’s death, seeing that the tower’s wards had been disabled. He pushed the memories away and counted the seventy-seven remaining steps up to the top of the tower.
“Be gone!” Kri shouted when he reached the top of the stairs.
Albanon looked past him and saw a squad of soldiers, staring wide-eyed at Kri.
“The defense of this tower is no longer your concern,” Kri said.
“But Captain Damar-” one of the soldiers began. Albanon recognized only that he should know the name-no further memory would come to mind.
“Tell your captain that the guard is no longer welcome in the Glowing Tower. We will deal harshly with trespassers.”
“Our orders-”
“Sergeant, if you utter another word you will become trespassers.” Albanon felt power gathering around the Doomdreamer, dark and dangerous.
The sergeant must have felt it, too. He nodded to the other soldiers, who immediately filed to the stairs, casting nervous glances at Kri and Albanon as they passed. The sergeant was the last to leave, and he dared a parting word of defiance as he started down the seventy-seven steps. “You’ll hear from the Lord Warden about this.”
“Be gone!” Kri roared, and the force of his voice seemed to drive the sergeant forward, making him stumble on the stairs. Only the quick reaction of the men in front of him kept him from tumbling down to his death.
“Now to work,” Kri said. “First, disable the ward on the teleportation circle.”
Albanon followed an arcing path across the room where, months ago, Moorin’s blood had traced a line of very precise curvature. He closed his eyes as he walked, seeing in his mind the spray of blood and feeling the flow of power that still followed that line. He sidestepped the table he knew lay in his path, but kept his hand in the flow of magic. What did Nu Alin create here? he wondered. And does Kri know it’s here?
He reached the teleportation circle and suddenly remembered arriving there with Kri just hours before. How did I forget that? he thought. The shimmering dome of the ward that kept them in until …
Disabling the ward was trivially simple, barely an effort of calculation. A guard had let it down before, so whoever established it-the High Septarch, he realized-must have created a control even a fool could use from outside the circle.
“Excellent,” Kri said, appearing behind him. “Your power has grown, quite dramatically, now that you’re free of Moorin’s fetters.”
You have not yet seen how my power has grown, Albanon thought. But you will.
Kri reached into the folds of his robes and withdrew a chunk of reddish crystal followed by a glass vial holding a tiny sample of the Voidharrow. He strode into the center of the circle and closed his eyes, reaching out to sense the magical energy that flowed through the patterns and sigils. Albanon did the same, his mind flooding with formulas and arcane syllables as he did. He bit his tongue to stop himself from giving voice to the magic he felt, not even consciously aware of what the spells would have done if he’d unleashed them.
Kri was right, he realized-his power had grown. In the Feywild, he’d been struck by how easy it was to access the magic that flowed through everything there. Now, the same power-no, even more power-was at his fingertips in the world, practically leaping from his fingers and spilling from his tongue without his conscious effort.
But can I control it? he wondered.
He opened his eyes again and saw Kri’s brow furrowed in concentration. Now he sees Nu Alin’s magic, too, Albanon thought. Will he fathom its purpose?
Kri opened his eyes and looked down at the items in his hands. “Just as Albric did, so we now do. Together, the Voidharrow and the fragment of the Living Gate will open a portal like none ever seen before in this world.”
“The Vast Gate,” Albanon said. Words echoed dimly in his mind-a new Vast Gate, construction and opening. To guard against it, he remembered suddenly. The Oath of Vigilance.
Kri frowned. “You remember,” he said.
“I remember,” Albanon blurted. “Alak tashar-”
“That’s enough,” Kri said. “I can’t decide if your mind is too whole to be safe or too broken to be useful.” His eyes dropped to the fire still dancing across Albanon’s fingertips. “Or perhaps too broken to be safe.”
Kri had asked no question so Albanon gave him no answer, but he let the fire that had sprung up unbidden fade from his hands.
“But I need you,” Kri continued. “I can’t kill you, and I can’t risk shattering your mind completely. So as long as you remain … pliable, I suppose we will carry on as planned.”
With a last searching look at Albanon, Kri lowered himself to his knees in the center of the circle. He laid the chunk of crystal on the floor. “Chained God, guide me,” he breathed. He lifted the tiny vial and strained at the stopper with a visible effort. He thrust the vial at Albanon and growled, “Open this. Carefully!”
The stopper was stuck fast. Peering into the vial, Albanon noted that the glass had fused together somehow, as if the substance within had heated like a furnace and shaped a new orb around itself. Albanon formed his finger and thumb into a ring around the neck of the vial and concentrated for a moment, creating a thin plane of magical force within the ring that made a clean cut through the glass.
The substance within surged up the sides of the vial and out the mouth, defying gravity as if thrilled to be free, and splashed onto his hand. It was cool and slick, and it spread quickly into a thin film covering his whole hand.
“No, you fool!” Kri shouted. “Get it onto the shard!”
Albanon stared, transfixed, at his red hand and wrist. A distant memory surfaced in his mind-a serpent of red crystal snaking out of Tempest’s dying body, surging onto Falon’s flesh, reaching for the young cleric’s face and forcing itself into his mouth. Like the demons he’d fought, the red liquid was a dark snarl in the fabric of magic, out of place even in the more tangled weave of magic in the world.
Kri was on his feet now, clutching the crystal and holding it up near Albanon’s hand as if its mere proximity would draw the substance away from Albanon’s flesh. Sure enough, a drop of the Voidharrow fell onto the shard. A flash of brilliant light cast stark shadows all around the chamber, and Albanon imagined that he saw the trails of Moorin’s blood in the darkness.
A more recent memory fought its way into his awareness. The thing that had been Vestapalk, the dragon that was now a demon, looming over him and drooling the Voidharrow onto his forehead, infusing him with the substance of its corruption. Then Kri tending to him before the red substance took him completely, purging his body clean with divine light.
A formula took shape in his mind and rolled off his tongue, and his hand began to glow. First red light shone in an orb around his hand, but then the liquid began to burn away and the pure white light shone through, growing steadily brighter.
Kri snatched the crystal away before the light could sear it, shouting, “No! You’re destroying it!”
Albanon allowed the light to die and examined his hands. None of the substance remained, either on his skin or in the vial.
Then Kri’s fist slammed into his jaw, knocking him backward and jumbling his thoughts. He felt like he’d been on the cusp of an important realization or insight, but it was gone, like a word that vanished from the tip of his tongue.
“I would kill you where you stand,” the Doomdreamer said, “but now is the moment I need you.”
The Voidharrow had fused with the shard and expanded around it. Albanon closed his eyes and extended his other senses, and he felt and understood the crystalline structure forming around the shard, matching its internal structure, channeling magical energy in a precise pattern. He also noted that the liquid was replicating itself, like a living creature, forming more of its substance from nothing.
Kri thrust the shard toward him again, holding it in both hands as it slowly expanded. “Place your hands on the Vast Gate with me and help it grow, shape it with me.”
The liquid slithered over the surface of the crystal, expanding it and fusing with it so Albanon couldn’t tell where the original shard ended and the new substance began. He was hesitant to touch it, for fear the liquid would try to fuse with him again, but he didn’t want to-no, he couldn’t disobey the Doomdreamer. He placed both hands on the crystal and felt the magic surging through it.
Kri stared at him and spoke in a tone of firm command. “We are shaping the Vast Gate, forming an archway, creating a pathway between worlds. Keep those thoughts in mind and no others.”
As they guided its growth, the crystal expanded into a slender column that they soon had to rest on the floor. They shaped it up and over into a curving arch, then-with agonizing slowness as the amount of liquid flowing over the surface diminished almost to nothing-back down to touch the floor again.
Albanon heard the soft pop of air as an unknown landscape, a dark and forbidding castle on a high promontory, appeared in the archway. The scene then disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by a foam-washed seashore.
The Vast Gate was open.