Pool of Twilight

Pool of Twilight

By James M. Ward and Anne K. Brown

Ebook version 1.0

Release Date: November, 7th, 2003

This effort is dedicated to my best friend, Mike Gray, The dude probably won’t even read this book, but he’s a good guy anyway.

-J.M.W.

For my grandmother, Adeline Dauska, the treasure in my past; and for my daughter, Emily, the treasure in my future.

—A.K.B.

The paladin stood before the shadowed archway, breathing air sharp and acrid with the stench of magic. The stone ruins about him were dark and strangely distorted. The walls of the dank chambers seemed to be undulating wildly, the leprous colonnades lurching at queer angles, as if the place had been designed by a madman.

The paladin gripped a heavy, combat-worn battlehammer firmly in one gauntleted hand, and in his other he held a white crestless shield. Before being granted a symbol of honor, a paladin had to prove his worth. This was his test.

He stepped through the archway.

Immediately he sensed it. Evil. It lingered on the air, coating him as he passed, leaving what felt like a thin, noxious layer of rancid oil on his skin. The paladin did his best to ignore it as he journeyed into the blackness. His shield gave off a faint azure radiance, lighting his way.

Yesss… Come to me, Hammerseeker.

The bubbling voice seemed to ooze out of the darkness from all directions, shrill and inhuman.

“Who are you?” the paladin called into the murk. The beating of his heart echoed loudly inside his steel breastplate.

Your doom!

Without warning, a pulsing crimson glow burst apart the darkness with violent light, revealing a chamber of monstrous proportions. Ponderous stone vaults, as huge and misshapen as giants, supported a ceiling lost in the crimson miasma. The walls were formed of what seemed at first to be huge oblong bricks. It was only after a moment that the paladin realized what they really were: coffins.

There were hundreds of them. No, thousands. Coffins of beaten gold and worm-eaten wood, of rune-carved stone and rotting wicker. Many were cracked and broken, their denizens hanging out of them in a thousand different states of decay, all leering at him with the ceaseless grins of death.

Come, youngling! Bow to me, before I rend your limbs apart.

Shadows swirled in the lofty nave of the huge chamber. The paladin approached almost against his will. He barely noticed the heaps of treasure scattered around him. Beaten silver urns shone like enormous hearts in the pulsing crimson light. Gold coffers lay broken open, their jeweled contents spilling out of them like guts.

Closer, youngling. Come gaze upon what you have given your brief and pitiful life to seek.

Blue radiance burst into life high in the nave. The paladin caught a glimpse of something hovering at the center of the diamond-hard brilliance, an object of wondrous power. Then the shadows swirled, cloaking the blessed light

And now, Hammerseeker, you die!

Something moved with terrible swiftness in the darkness of the nave. The paladin barely managed to lift his shield in time to meet the blow. He cried out as pain coursed like lightning up his arm. The white shield shuddered, then burst asunder in a spray of twisted shards. The denizens of the coffin-walls jeered at him in a horrid cacophony of teeth clattering and bone snapping.

The paladin fought down the panic clawing at his chest. “I will stand firm, Tyr!” he shouted to his god. He swung his battlehammer in a whistling arc toward the darkness.

But his footing was not secure.

His heel skidded on coins scattered across the stone floor. His blow went wild, the hammer spinning off into the darkness as he fell to his knees. Shrill laughter bubbled from the alcove as the coffin-walls erupted in a new chorus of gleeful rattling. The paladin hung his head in defeat. He was no hero.

No, you are not, youngling. You are a fool. And now you will die a fool’s death!

Midnight-dark claws slashed out of the darkness. They punched through the paladin’s steel breastplate as if it were parchment. Four streaks of searing fire streaked across his chest. His body arched backward in agony. Hot blood spattered the dark stone floor. A scream ripped from his lungs.

“No! Tyr, help me! It wasn’t supposed to end like this!”

There was no answer to his cry. His god had forsaken him. The shadow-shrouded being stirred again, readying its final blow.

“Kern, come back to us!”

A cry reached through the darkness. The voice was calm and reassuring, but faint, as if coming to him from across a vast distance.

“He can’t hear you, Shal.” This voice was deeper than the first, gruffer. Despite its faintness, there was a distinct edge of worry to it.

“Yes, he can. He can and will.” The voice seemed to grow louder, cutting through the darkness. “You’re having one of your dreams, Kern. Let it go. You have to come back to us.”

He struggled to break free, but the darkness was too heavy. It pressed down upon him. He couldn’t breathe. It was no use.

“Kern Miltiades Desanea, come back this instant!”

With all his might he struggled upward, toward a faint light that shone brighter and brighter as he rose. Just when he was about to give up, he broke through the surface, and a ragged, shuddering breath filled his lungs.

“Mother… Father …” His voice croaked like an old frog’s from a throat as dry as bone dust. “It was the dream again.”

He was lying in his bed in the comfortingly familiar chamber in Denlor’s Tower where he had slept every night of his twenty-two years. A beautiful middle-aged woman smiled down at him. Her hair formed a flame-colored corona around her face, and her green eyes were so bright as to put emeralds to shame. An aura of magic seemed to shimmer about her. But then, she was a sorceress.

“It’s all right now, Kern,” Shal said, smoothing his hair—red hair, just like hers—from his forehead. “You’re back with us now.”

He nodded and smiled, the expression suddenly turning into a grimace of pain.

“Shal, what is it?” Tarl asked in concern. A hale, broad-shouldered man, Kern’s father was still in his prime despite his snow-white hair. His sightless eyes stared blankly into the air as he reached out to lay a hand on his son.

Kern cried out in pain.

Shal’s brow furrowed as she threw back the woolen blanket that covered her son. A gasp escaped her lips.

“Kern, you’re wounded!”

Kern stared in astonishment. Four long gashes marked his white nightshirt. Crimson blood soaked the garment. His chest quivered as he drew shallow, painful breaths. The nightmare replayed itself in his mind. He remembered the shadow-filled nave. Something had lurked there, lashing out at him with midnight-dark talons.

“But… it was just a dream!” Kern protested. Instantly he regretted his shout as blood oozed from the gashes.

“How can this be?” Tarl asked. Gently, expertly, his fingers explored his son’s injury. Tarl had been a cleric of Tyr for over three decades and had seen and healed more wounds on the battlefield than he could ever have counted. “You’ve had the dream a dozen times, Kern, yet this has never happened before.”

Shal laid a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Can you heal him, beloved?” Her voice was calm and controlled, but urgency shone in her green eyes.

Tarl nodded, laying both of his strong hands on Kern’s chest. Briefly, the cleric shut his unseeing eyes. A prayer tumbled from his lips. “May Tyr grant me power in this time of need,” he finished. A sapphire nimbus sprang to life around his hands and spread over Kern’s wounds, radiating healing power.

Suddenly the magical glow vanished. Blue cobwebs drifted down in its place, covering Kern and the bed in a sticky web.

Shal frowned, glancing at her husband. “When was the last time one of your healing spells went awry?”

Tarl was dumbfounded. “When I was a neophyte, about thirty years ago. I don’t understand what happened. The spell was working fine, then something seemed to suck the magic right out of it.” Tarl pressed his hands against the four gashes on Kern’s chest, slowing the bleeding.

Kern gritted his teeth. Pain was nothing to a paladin, he reminded himself. But then, he wasn’t a true paladin yet.

“What’s going on?” a clear, crystalline voice asked.

A delicate young woman stood in the doorway of Kern’s chamber. Between her forest green tunic and short dark hair she looked almost like a pretty but mischievous boy. Listle, Shal’s apprentice, grinned impishly. “I heard something that sounded like an ogre’s courting call down here and thought I’d better investigate.”

She moved toward the others with a swift, smooth grace that belied her gray elven blood. Her ears were daintily pointed, her eyes silvery. Lamplight glimmered off a ruby pendant hanging from a silver chain around her throat She halted when she saw the blood oozing between Tarl’s fingers. “Kern! What happened?”

“Listle,” Shal said in her steady voice, “there’s a purple jar on the highest shelf in my spellcasting chamber. You’ll recognize it by the star-rune on the seal. It’s an ointment of healing. I want you to get it for me. Now!”

Listle nodded, her eyes wide. She spoke a few fluid words of magic, and silver sparks crackled around her feet The elf dashed out of the chamber so swiftly her outline seemed to blur.

“I wish she wouldn’t do that,” Shal said with annoyance. “A swiftness spell takes a year off your life every time it’s cast. True, elven lifespans are long, but not so long that Listle should squander a year every time she has the whim.”

“Hush, wife,” Tarl said gently. “She is only trying to help Kern.”

“I’ll be all right” Kern said weakly. “Really.”

“You be quiet!” Shal snapped.

Kern meekly clamped his mouth shut. The room was beginning to swim around him.

Moments later, Listle burst into the room like a silver comet “I’m sorry I took so long,” the elf gasped breathlessly. Her shiny hair was a raven-dark tangle, sticking out wildly in every direction. “You have a confusing variety of jars and vials, Shal.”

“Did you find the ointment?”

Listle nodded, handing Shal a small purple jar. The sorceress took it breaking the runic seal with a single word of magic.

“Now, Kern, I need you to listen to me very carefully,” Shal said. Her voice was stern but reassuringly calm. “I need you to open yourself to the power of the healing ointment. Imagine that you’re surrounded by a shining wall of white light, a wall that blocked your father’s spell.”

The young man closed his eyes and did his best to picture a shimmering wall enclosing him.

“All right, Kern, now I want you to lower the wall. Slowly. Don’t rush it. Let it drop, inch by inch, until it’s just a shining ring at your feet.”

Kern gritted his teeth with effort. It was hard, but gradually his will won out and the imaginary wall began to shrink. It dropped to his chest, then to his knees, and finally became nothing more than a glowing circle down around his feet.

“Is it gone?”

Kern nodded, not daring to speak for fear of breaking his concentration.

“Now, beloved,” Shal said to Tarl, placing the jar of ointment into the cleric’s hands. With deft, practiced fingers, Tarl spread a thin layer of the clear ointment over Kern’s oozing wounds. The pungent healing balm smelled of mint and juniper. Tarl set down the empty jar.

Nothing happened.

“Concentrate on the wall, Kern,” Shal warned.

With a groan of effort, he held the wall down. Suddenly he felt a cool tingling in his chest Then he could bear it no longer. He relinquished his willpower, and felt the imaginary wall spring back into place around him. But the pain in his chest was gone.

“You can open your eyes now, Son.”

Kern could hear the relief in his mother’s voice. Slowly he opened his eyes. He was almost surprised to see that, in truth, there was no wall of white light encasing him. He ran a hand over his chest. His bloodstained nightshirt was still in tatters, but the skin beneath was smooth and unbroken. The ointment had healed him.

He grinned weakly. “Thank you, Mother, Father,” he whispered hoarsely. “You too, Listle.”

The elf winked at him, beaming, but he didn’t notice. In the blink of an eye, Kern had fallen asleep.

“I just don’t understand it, Tarl!” Shal said, clenching her hand into a fist. The sorceress and her husband were alone in the main chamber of Denlor’s Tower. A fire burned in a vast marble fireplace. Kern was still sleeping upstairs, and the sorceress had sent Listle to her spellcasting chamber with a broom, hoping to keep her precocious apprentice occupied for a time.

“How, by all the gods, could he be hurt by a dream?” Now that she and Tarl were alone, Shal’s voice was trembling. She leaned her head against her husband’s broad chest, and he held her in his strong arms. She was a statuesque woman, taller even than Tarl—the result of an inadvertent use of a wishing ring years ago—but right now she felt small and afraid.

“All I can say is that it must be a very powerful creature that stalks his dreams,” Tarl said softly.

“You think it’s the warder of Tyr’s hammer, don’t you?”

Tarl nodded slowly. “Nothing else makes sense. Whoever plagues Kern’s dreams knows that it’s his destiny to find the lost hammer.”

Shal sighed. Twenty-two years ago, she and Tarl had confronted a magical pool of darkness with the help of several others—including the ranger Ren o’ the Blade, the sorceress Evaine, and an undead paladin named Miltiades, raised from the grave by Tyr for the purpose of the quest. Shal shivered. Even after all these years, the memory of the ordeal was still clear in her mind.

It all began when, with the help of the evil god Bane, the Red Wizard Marcus stole the entire city of Phlan, transporting it to a subterranean cavern beneath his tower. There he intended to feed the life-forces of Phlan’s people to a pool of darkness in an attempt to gain enough power to become a dark deity. But Shal, Tarl, and the others had different ideas, and after they had defeated the Red Wizard, Tarl cast the legendary Hammer of Tyr into the pool, destroying the dark waters forever.