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" 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.
Chapter Two
Rufo started to answer, but gagged instead and clutched his throat
"What have you done?" Druzil repeated loudly. "Bene tettemara\ 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 taifwaved 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, folIo""Qd. 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