Pool of Radiance

by James M. Ward

  From the shadows of a doorway, Gensor watched the two companions. He suspected that something, physical or verbal, had passed between them, but he hadn’t actually seen anything.

  Tarl bridled at Ren, no more aware than the guard of what was really transpiring between the two. With angry deliberateness, not uttering a word, he slapped down his hammer, his shield, his armor, and the treasure of the textile house without so much as a word. But when the young guard insisted he remove his sacred medallion, he said coldly, “You’ll have to kill me first.”

  “Come now, there’ll be no need for that.” Cadorna strolled into the courtyard. His gray eyes were glued to the gold bullion Ren had just removed from his pack.

  “What do you mean by having us arrested for doing your bidding?” Shal turned on Cadorna with a look not unlike the one she’d given the gnolls at the textile house before blasting them to dust.

  “No need to be so testy, young woman,” Cadorna replied smoothly. “Obviously these fine guards misunderstood my intent. I wanted them only to escort you here safely so that no one would have the opportunity to rob you of your treasure.”

  “ ‘No one’ meaning us?” Ren asked pointedly.

  “Naturally I wanted to see everything you brought back with you.”

  “Are you reneging on your promise to give a percentage of the treasure to the Tyrian temple?” asked Tarl.

  “Why, Brother Tarl! I’m offended that you would suggest such a thing. In fact, I just wanted to be sure your partners were honest in providing all the treasure so the temple would be sure to get its fair share.”

  “I trust my friends,” said Tarl.

  “I trust no one,” retorted Cadorna, his face growing cold. After examining everything carefully, the councilman assembled the treasure into one pile. A crooked, toothy smile pasted on his face, he handed a single gold brick and the coral and ivory brooch to Tarl. “For the temple. Quite generous, don’t you think?”

  Tarl clenched his teeth but nodded reluctantly. The portion was nowhere near fifteen percent of the treasure, but he knew he would receive no more and that the temple could do worse than inherit a gold brick and an emerald brooch.

  “You’re free to go now,” Cadorna said finally. “I do thank you all. You will help me out again if I need it, won’t you?”

  Assassination Weather

  All of Phlan and the entire Moonsea was awash in the tumult of a terrific thunderstorm. Lightning ripped through the sky in every direction, and deafening thunder reverberated for tens of miles. A person versed in weather and the natural pattern of things might have noticed that the lightning was almost perverse in its configuration, bolting upward and outward from one point and shattering the sky in an unnatural purple brilliance, but most people were undoubtedly more than content to huddle in their homes, hoping they were out of reach of what the next day they surely would refer to as “a demon storm.”

  Not far from the heart of the storm, at the northeastern edge of the ruins of Phlan, stood Valjevo Castle, a structure that even in its present decrepit state dwarfed the ruins that abutted it. Awe-inspiring despite its fallen walls and toppled turrets, the castle must once have been one of the largest in the Realms. No doubt fantastic works of magic had been required to move the gargantuan slabs of marble and granite used in its construction. Those few who had seen the castle since the Dragon Run were amazed that the dragons had been able to raze even portions of its great walls, and in fact, much of the castle and the fortress around it was still intact.

  Despite damage to parts of its structure, the castle stood several stories by any measurement and remained among the tallest buildings in the Realms. Its toppled turrets must once have reached one hundred feet or more. Now, almost that far beneath the castle, the great bronze dragon shifted in its resting place in the curve of the Pool of Radiance.

  “Shall I have no peace?” The beast’s voice boomed and echoed against the golden walls of the cave. “The ground shudders with magic that is not my own, power that is not mine! What say you, Quarrel? Where are my ioun stones?”

  A curious figure, lying prostrate before the dragon, lifted its head. Shimmering black hair parted to reveal the face of a half-orc woman. But for her piglike snout, she could have passed for human. Her eyes, mouth, and facial contours were flawless. Were it not for the blight at the center of her face, she might have been called attractive, even pretty. She stood to speak, flipping a charcoal-colored cape over her shoulders to reveal body-contouring chain mail and leathers that accentuated her lean, muscular, human form. Her voice was throaty. It had long ago lost its timbre, sounding now as if she had tossed back too many shots of hard liquor. “They’re not in Surd nor indeed in any part of Sembia. My assassin troops and I tortured and killed any who might have knowledge of the whereabouts of an ioun stone.”

  “And you found nothing? Two weeks gone from these parts, and you brought back nothing?”

  “I didn’t say that, master. I said I brought back no ioun stones. Blood ran freely for you and orc slaves carried it back to your temples.” The black-haired assassin gestured to a shimmering mound in front of the dragon. “Treasure such as few have dreamed of lies at your feet. And, as I said, you can rest assured that there are no ioun stones in any corner of Sembia.” She paused and let her cold, black eyes be mesmerized by the dragon’s blazing gold ones. “I am ready for my next assignment.”

  The dragon switched its giant tail into the pool. “Yesssss …” It hissed warmly as energy channeled from blood spilled in a dozen temples surged through the golden water, charging the beast with its power. “So you are, Quarrel.” The dragon shifted once more, lowering itself deeper into the burbling waters. The great wyrm grunted its satisfaction as the water’s powers continued to invigorate its lifeblood. “Three wretched humans have destroyed one of my temples, in the process slaughtering most of an entire gnoll encampment. Still another part of my city has been taken over by human scum because of their cursed interference. They are the same three I spoke to you of before.”

  Quarrel nodded, remembering her master’s fury after the party recovered Sokol Keep for Civilized Phlan. When she returned, she had expected to hear of the party’s demise at the hands of any of the thousands of creatures in the service of the Lord of the Ruins. Certainly none within range of his tremendous power had missed the message to kill the three on sight.

  “Yes, they still live,” the dragon snarled, as if reading Quarrel’s mind. “Cowards faced them and died at their hands. Now I’m trusting you, Quarrel, to either convert them to our cause—my cause—or kill them like worms. Unlike most of the creatures I control, you can pass freely into the civilized part of the city….”

  Quarrel clenched and unclenched her hand around the hilt of her favorite dagger. The Lord of the Ruins would never know how many had died because they harassed her or made some unflattering reference to her nose.

  “You have all of my resources at your disposal,” the huge dragon went on. “With two more ioun stones, I will be able to complete the figure of power.” Slowly the giant creature reached up and put a taloned appendage on the hexagon that already held an ioun stone in four of its six corners. “When these two last holes are filled, I will be able to control elves, dwarves, even humans. But in the meantime, you must learn what motivates those three. Promise them anything, but get them working for me—or bring me their miserable flesh and blood, and let it fill my pool. If you succeed, your reward will be—”

  Quarrel’s black eyes gleamed with a fresh intensity. “I already know the generosity of your rewards, master. And you also know the reward for which I work most anxiously.”

  “Yes … Yes, Quarrel, I know.”

  The moment she successfully completed the bidding of the Lord of the Ruins, Quarrel would receive the one thing murder and looting could never get her—a human nose, a small triangular-shaped nose that would not snuffle when she intended to be silent, that would not be an object of harassment and derision, that would not id
entify her as a half-breed … an object of contempt.

  The great bronze dragon enjoyed the surging warmth of the energy-giving pool for a few more glorious minutes after Quarrel departed. The giant amphibious body of the dragon was an impressive one—strong, vital, and impervious to most attacks, an excellent choice for possession by Tyranthraxus, the Great Possessor.

  For more than a millennium, the dark-minded entity of Tyranthraxus had dwelled on the material plane. For more than a thousand years, Tyranthraxus had been hampered by the nuisance of mortality, forced to control the weakest or the most corrupt mind he could find and then to function within the confines of that creature’s physical resources, however limited. He had at times been forced to possess even creatures as mean as lizards and squirrels just to survive. Inevitably he drove their pathetic, inhibiting bodies to the breaking point as he searched frantically for a new vessel to contain his essence. He had possessed humans by the score, men and women overrun by such overwhelming greed that their minds had lost the capacity to reject his usurping presence. He preferred humans because they made his record-keeping so much easier. Since humans were themselves gifted with a capacity for language, maintaining accounts of his subversion and conquests was easier for Tyranthraxus when he inhabited a human body.

  But the dragon had been a good choice. Its mind had been subverted by a powerful wizard’s Mind Control spell at the time when Tyranthraxus had last been forced to leap to another host. The Great Possessor now found himself mental companion to a mind that, unlike most on this plain, had withstood centuries of life, a mind that had, over the years, acquired a tremendous capacity for magic. Tyranthraxus was, of course, obligated to keep pushing back the beast’s lawful good tendencies, and he was forced to cope with physical features that made writing difficult. But the ability to intimidate with a dragon’s body was a tremendous advantage. Then, too, the dragon had led him to the pool….

  What Tyranthraxus could never hope to achieve in his own plane, where he was merely a minor entity among giants, was finally within his grasp here on this plane of weak mortal minds. He already controlled the actions of a legion of creatures within his telepathic reach. By corrupting the Pool of Radiance, a magical body of water that had been created by the goddess Selune to purify her followers before arcane rites, and expanding its powers with the enhancing forces of a perfect hexagon of ioun stones, Tyranthraxus had found the means of becoming the supreme ruling being of an entire plane.

  Each drop of blood added to the pool gave Tyranthraxus new life energy. Each ioun stone added a measure of power to his own. For years he had researched the magical gemstones’ power, and he knew that the hexagon was the ultimate figure of control. With six stones, lined up perfectly, and his tremendous mental capacity, he would control the actions of every creature on this plane, and with the power of the pool, he would do it forever….

  “ ‘By proclamation of the Honorable First Councilman of the City of Phlan, Porphorys Cadorna is hereby declared Second Councilman.’ ”

  Cadorna bowed graciously before the First Councilman, members of the council, and the audience of onlookers assembled in the public chambers. An encampment of gnolls had been ousted from the uncivilized portion of the city, freeing up the old Cadorna property. Cadorna had immediately acted in the council’s name to employ the Black Watch, a band of exceptionally efficient mercenaries, to storm the adjacent library and slums and reclaim those properties for Civilized Phlan. At the same time, an unprecedented donation had been made to the Tyrian Temple in Cadorna’s name. Finally, a large number of coins had changed hands to ensure Cadorna’s ascension to the second most powerful position on the council. “Your honors, people of Phlan …” he began. “I thank you for entrusting me with this tremendous responsibility. I will, as before, work unrelentingly for the betterment and expansion of our fair city.”

  Cadorna descended from the dais, shook all the proper hands, smiled all the right smiles, spoke all the proper words—then slipped away to his private chambers, where Gensor was waiting.

  The councilman whisked past the mage and turned around to face him as he spoke. “You believe the three have kept something from me?”

  “Whether or not it is some part of your treasure they hide, I cannot say.” The mage lowered his hood as he approached Cadorna and looked straight into the councilman’s eyes. “But the bigger man, the one called Ren, no longer radiated the magic he once did, and I saw him make contact with the woman when they were unloading their goods on the table. I saw nothing pass between them, but he is very smooth, and her magic is strong. They may well have made an exchange, or he may have passed something to her for safekeeping.”

  “Scoundrels! Lying thieves! I’ll—What are you laughing at?”

  The mage snorted and then laughed again, a wheezing, hissing snicker. “Surely, Councilman, you’ve heard of the turtle calling the tortoise hard-shelled?”

  “Ingrate! There’ll be a day when you wish—”

  “Wish what? That I’d treated you better? Councilman, you and I both know this relationship will end the day it doesn’t serve one of us. In the meantime, let me remind you that I did contract the Black Watch as you requested, and they have completed their first assignment.”

  “Yes … the mercenaries did well with the recovery of the gnoll embattlement. But what of the second task?” Cadorna clenched and unclenched his hands, eager for the news that would confirm his ascension to the position of First Councilman.

  Gensor grinned, his ashen lips pulling so thin they almost disappeared. “Everything is in place for them to take over as guards of the city. Per your instructions—” Gensor stopped when he saw a mix of fury and terror rise in Cadorna’s eyes. “Per my instructions,” Gensor corrected, “they have prepared an orcish arrow for the First Councilman. I saw it myself. Everyone will assume the murderer is an assassin from outside the walls. Your plan is a good one.”

  Cadorna nodded his acknowledgment. “I thought so….” For a moment, his eyes gleamed in anticipation, and then they darkened. “But what of the treasure taken by those three? Can you recover it for me? Are you mage enough to acquire the stolen items from that hulking woman?”

  “Brawn is not common to magic-users, I’ll admit, but don’t assume that our skill grows in proportion to our frailty. I wouldn’t choose to go one-on-one against her….”

  “You mean you won’t do it?” Cadorna fairly snarled the words.

  “I will. I’ll use my full resources to try to recover your treasure. I meant only that I wouldn’t go looking for it while she was in her room. And, remember, there may not be any more treasure. I didn’t actually see anything.”

  Cadorna scowled, then snapped at the mage: “You’ll bring back anything that may be of use to me!”

  “Of course.” Gensor pulled up his hood and turned toward the door.

  “Go, then, but bring back word this evening. Understand?”

  “I think so. Oh, before I forget … what of the Lord of the Ruins?” asked Gensor.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What have you done to satisfy his inquiries about the gnoll encampment? He must be furious.”

  “As soon as I meet with his next messenger, I’ll explain that I was forced to take action but that I’ll see that those parts quickly fall back into his hands.”

  “Interesting.” Gensor scrutinized Cadorna with a look. “Is that really your intent?”

  “Is that really your affair, mage?”

  “I suppose not. But I’ll know soon enough, in any event.” Gensor turned and slipped through the door. Cadorna just barely made out the mage’s parting words: “See you too soon.”

  Slate-colored thunderheads billowed and churned in a circle directly over Shal’s head. Lightning bolts raged out in every direction above her. Shal extended her well-muscled arms skyward and flexed her taut fingers at precisely the right moment as she incanted yet another Weather Control spell. The bit of moistened earth she’d been holding vanished into th
e gray sky, and the bottom of the nearest thunderhead immediately became like so many bowls of gray dust, swirling first in one direction and then another.

  The largest of the bowls swelled and bulged as if the cloud’s mists were fighting against themselves and the confines of the bowl. Moments later, a snake of curling, writhing vapor broke free from the thunderhead and spiraled down, bringing with it the dragon winds of a fierce tornado. In a triumphant gesture, Shal dispatched the descending cyclone out to sea, where it became a waterspout filled with fury, vacuuming the Moonsea’s waters into its hungry vortex and spewing them high into the air.

  When the twister did not dissipate as she had intended but continued to rage across the bay, Shal beat the air with her fists and exhaled through clenched teeth. “Damn!” She watched in despair as the waterspout changed direction and surged back toward the docks of Phlan, which were lined with boats whose captains had chosen not to risk travel during such a violent storm. Shal spoke the words of a simple cantrip, one she had tried only on much smaller, less volatile subjects, and did her level best to push the tornado away. It held and came no closer, but she had to channel all her energies and repeat the cantrip three times to finally get it to turn back to sea. For several minutes, the twister darkened the waters of the bay. Finally it slowed, began to dissipate, and spewed its last. Shal slumped down on the rooftop of the inn, exhausted.

  Her nose and mouth buried in her steepled hands, her windblown red hair spilling down her back and arms, she spoke quietly to Cerulean, who stood, shimmering a rich amethyst color, beside her. “I did it, Cerulean. I mastered the weather.”