The Chaos Curse Read Free Page A

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