Pool of Radiance
Page 30
But her revelry was short-lived as she saw the snout come up from the golden water, and the neck after it. The dragon’s jaw was no longer dangling. There were no frostbitten or charred scales, no gaping bloody wounds high on its neck. The dragon was whole once more, perfectly healed, and it was coming up out of the pool toward her. Shal screamed soundlessly. She had no spell, no words. But she heard Cerulean’s cry loud and clear: The ring! Wish it dead!
Shal closed her eyes and wished with everything in her. She wished the damnable creature dead.
With its next lumbering step, the dragon toppled to the ground. It was in the best of health, but its heart stopped cold, and the body was dead in the fraction of a second that it had taken Shal to wish.
When they saw the dragon fall, Cadorna and Gensor came out of their hiding place in the next room. They didn’t know what had killed the dragon, nor did they care. Cadorna would assume power over all of Phlan and more, and Gensor would practice magic to his heart’s content. “Be sure all three are dead,” Cadorna instructed quickly, and he walked up to the dragon to touch it and pay a moment’s respect to its legacy of power.
Before his fingers ever touched the creature’s cold hide, Cadorna screamed. It was the scream Tyranthraxus had heard through the millennia each time he entered a new body. The scream of a being possessed.
To Tyranthraxus, it was a glorious sound. He relished it for a brief moment as he pushed Cadorna’s thoughts of power from his mind and replaced them with his own, which were subtler, infinitely more interesting, and grounded in thousands of years of experience. Tyranthraxus’s immediate desire was to get himself out of range of the mage-woman who had just killed his previous body. If she could kill a dragon, she could undoubtedly kill a man, and Tyranthraxus could not afford to risk another possession so soon. As much as he hated to leave the power he had gathered here behind him, he knew the secret now of the Pool of Radiance and the ioun stones, and it would only be a matter of time before he could possess them again. Without so much as a nod to Gensor, who meant nothing to Tyranthraxus, the possessed Cadorna leaped into the golden waters of the Pool of Radiance, calling on its magical energies to teleport himself and his possessor to a place far away.
“No!” Gensor shouted. Gensor and Cadorna had both seen the power of the magical hammer. They had both watched as the dragon emerged from the waters completely healed, and Gensor was not about to let Cadorna take all the pool’s energy for himself. The mage threw back his hood and dived in after Cadorna. But where golden fluid had boiled with incalculable energy only seconds ago, there was only plain water … deep, icy water. Tyranthraxus had absorbed all of the pool’s magical energies.
Gensor knew nothing of Tyranthraxus. He didn’t even know what had happened to Cadorna. But he did know what was hidden from sight at the bottom of the pool. The mage came quietly to the surface of the pool and uttered a spell to make himself invisible before climbing out of the cold water.
Gensor watched silently as Shal slowly recovered enough to begin to function again.
She turned first to the charred body of the cleric. Tears streaming down her face, she poured the contents of two healing potions on the priest. Much of his flesh mended, but still he did not move. She retrieved his hammer and lifted it in her hands. She screamed her words: “You healed your servant at Valhingen Graveyard so he could die here? You told him to follow me so he could be killed by my enemy?” Shal pointed the hammer at Tarl and cried, “Heal him! Please, heal him!” She dropped her head, lowered her arms, and wept unashamedly. She didn’t even notice as the hammer began to glow. Instead, she felt her arms raise with its power, and then she saw the blue aura. It was a warm, almost turquoise shade, and it bathed the cleric in its gentle light.
Tarl’s first view was of Shal, tears running down her face, the dragon stretched out behind her, and the Hammer of Tyr glowing in her hands, and he knew she had won. He reached up, pulled her close, and held her tight. He closed his eyes to hold back his own tears as healing energy pulsed through him to her bruised body. The exhaustion from having pressed her spell-casting abilities to their limit slowly left Shal as she and Tarl shared a tremendous warming of flesh and spirit. It was several minutes before Tarl opened his eyes again. His eyes fell on Ren, still slumped against the wall behind the pool.
Tarl rushed to his friend. Ren’s body was twisted. There were bends in his legs and arms where there were no joints. No simple laying on of hands would heal the big ranger. The cleric pointed to the hexagon with the ioun stones, and Shal rushed around the pool to get them. With two stones in each hand and the Hammer of Tyr before him, Tarl set out to heal his friend. Each and every healing was a miracle, but Tarl felt an overpowering sense of awe this time as bone melded to bone, tissue mended itself, and flesh and spirit healed, wholly, completely, flawlessly.
The three sat together silently in the cavern until Tarl finally asked what happened. Ren told the story as he had seen it, and then Shal took over, describing the dragon’s final moments and Cadorna and Gensor’s insane plunges into the pool. “I looked for them when I brought you the ioun stones. There’s nothing there. The pool’s energy must have turned against them somehow. They’re gone, and the pool is filled with ordinary water.”
Tarl and Ren went to the side of the pool and looked for themselves. The water was a quiet gray-blue. The surface was completely calm, except for an occasional ripple where a butterfly was struggling to lift itself out of the water. For a moment, Ren thought he felt something, a whisper of movement nearby, but he turned and saw only a whirl of butterflies rising from the cavern floor, as though disturbed by a gentle wind.
“Well,” said Ren, returning to Shal’s side along with Tarl, “are we ready to celebrate? I mean, the Lord of the Ruins is dead. You did it. You killed the real murderer of Ranthor and Tempest. Cadorna’s gone. Tarl has the Hammer of Tyr. What do you say we find a way out of this place?”
“Cadorna and Gensor came from there.” Shal pointed to a doorway that blended into the cavern wall so inconspicuously that a person had to look hard to see it. “But what about returning to Phlan? Aren’t there going to be more Black Watch soldiers guarding the city?”
“Probably.” Ren nodded. “But this time it will be different. Cadorna won’t be there to keep our testimony from being heard. And remember, we still have all those documents from Yarash.”
“Plus the fact that one of my brothers, an elder from the temple, was promoted to Third Councilman when Cadorna became Second. When Cadorna rose to First Councilman, he probably rose to Second,” Tarl added.
“And now, with Cadorna gone, he must be First!” Shal concluded happily.
Tarl kept the four ioun stones from the hexagon for the temple. The hexagon itself was of pure gold, and Tarl and Shal agreed that Ren should take it, since he was no longer thieving for a living, but they found nothing else of value in the dragon’s lair. When they left, the three discovered the body of the wizard Cadorna had killed, and Shal gathered up his spellbooks and notes as she had Yarash’s. A handful of butterflies followed them out, then disappeared into the brightly lit afternoon.
On a whim, Ren went past the two dead ogres they had seen earlier and made sure the door with the dragon head was open. A brigade of butterflies—orange, yellow, blue, and green—flew out through the open door and followed the others into the light of a warm afternoon.
As they passed through the castle and then through the ruins of Phlan, they found signs everywhere of kobolds, orcs, gnolls, and other creatures, but left to their own devices, without the dominating influence of the Lord of the Ruins, the humanoids and monsters were not unified in their efforts, and even the few that did see the three passing had enough memory to know that they didn’t want to mess with the party that even now they still called simply “those three.”
As cleric, mage, and ranger made their return, they talked of the expansion the city would see with the artifacts of Tyr in their rightful place, the Lord of the Ruins vanqui
shed, and the river flowing clean and pure into the bay. Shal hoped to return to Cormyr, to Ranthor’s keep, for things she had left behind. Tarl promised to accompany her on the journey if she would just wait until he was sure Anton was healed, and she spoke earnestly of the possibility of returning to Denlor’s tower and starting up his school again. After all, there was that huge library in the ruins that she had yet to explore….
Shal and Tarl walked hand in hand, and Ren spoke wistfully of Jensena. Ren had asked Sot to keep an eye on her while she continued to recover and to be sure to find out where she was headed if she left. The innkeeper had agreed and even threatened to make Ren stay and scrub tables forever if he didn’t hook up with her. “The woman needs your company,” Sot had reasoned, “what with her friends gone and all.” Ren hadn’t disagreed. And, he felt certain, neither would Jensena….
Back at the pool, Gensor had materialized quickly after the three departed, and his thin, pink lips were turned up in the biggest smile of his lifetime. In the depths of the pool he had found the dragon’s hoard—gold and jewels that would fund his magical endeavors for a lifetime, magical items beyond his wildest imaginings, and spellbooks enough to keep him studying forever—and all magically protected from damage by the water. Who needed Cadorna?
EPILOGUE
“You realize your name doesn’t fit you anymore, don’t you?” asked Shal.
Why? Because I no longer glow blue? I told you, I don’t distinguish colors, so it doesn’t matter.
“Well, it matters to me. I think Mulberry would be an appropriate name.”
Mulberry? Cerulean hunkered his head down and plastered his ears tight beside his forelock. Mulberry?
“It’s a little less pretentious, don’t you think?” Shal pursued.
A lot less pretentious. Milbert or Herbert would put me in the same arena.
“Now, now. Mulberry’s a beautiful color, and a splendid name. And if you’re good, I won’t even call you Mully for short.”
Mully? Gads! Ugh! Kill me first. That’s a cheap and dirty way of getting me to agree to the name Mulberry….
“Oh, good, you like it! Then it’s settled.”
Shal reined “Mulberry” up to the hitching post before the seamstress’s shop and dismounted. Before she was up the stairs, the spry woman was at the doorway.
“Your leathers could stand a little mendin’, miss,” she said critically.
Shal looked down at the velvety chimera-skin garments. They were so comfortable, she hardly remembered she had them on. “I guess they could at that, but actually I’m here about something else. I’ve been meaning to bring you something—a gift—ever since you sent me that beautiful nightgown. You can’t imagine what it did to lift my spirits.”
The woman cocked her head back almost to her back and broke out in unrestrained laughter. “Lass, you’re more naive than I took you for! Sure as I’d love to give each and every customer a free garment, I’d not be in business long if I did that, now, would I?”
“You mean you didn’t—?”
“No. ’Twas the lad that brought you, that young cleric fellow who had to be reminded to keep his eyes in his head. Truth is, he’s got me makin’ somethin’ else for you right now. I asked him to get you here for a fitting, but he said it’d have to wait until you were ready. Well, as far as I’m concerned, this’d be as good a time as any. What do you think?”
Shal stood in open-mouthed astonishment. She might never have answered if her familiar hadn’t nudged her from behind. What are you waiting for, Mistress?
“Tarl? Tarl had you make that nightgown? I never … I never …”
“Never suspected? Now you’re puttin’ on a show, miss! Get in here and try on this wedding gown before the price of lace goes up. I daresay it’ll take a few yards to do you.”
Shal stood motionless for a minute, and then waltzed up the stairs. “Take as many yards as you need! I’m not getting any smaller, you know!”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JANE COOPER HONG resides in Burlington, Wisconsin, with her husband Tsong-Ming, whom she met in a laundry in Taiwan, and her daughter, Aleta, whom she wishes she’d met the same way. For the last several years, Jane has made a living doing publicity and writing promotional copy, so her editor was advised to watch out for excessive words like “new” and “exciting” in this novel. Jane has edited books in the DRAGONLANCE® series, among others, and written two short game pieces for TSR. Pool of Radiance is her first novel.
JAMES M. WARD was born on May 23, 1951. He started out reading Hardy Boys and lorn Swift books and has since become a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy. When asked about becoming a writer, he always replies, “If you aren’t witty, brilliant, and insightful, you have to be persistent, dogged, and not shy. I will leave it to the world to figure out which one I am.”
Jim has three genetically perfect male children—9, 18, and 19—and a charming wife. They live in a perfect twostory red brick home in a pleasant rural community.
Jim got his start in role-playing with the design of METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA, the first science-fiction role-playing game. He has been designing games and helping others to design them ever since.
Jim credits his start in gaming to learning to play poker with his dad and brothers. It wasn’t long before he learned not to try for inside straights or to try bluffing his dad, he states rather ruefully.
When asked what he would like to do when he grows up, Jim always replies, “Commanding the starship Enterprise would be nice.”
Jim has written, or collaborated in writing, numerous books for TSR.
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