Pool of Twilight (3 page)

Kern shuddered at the thought.

“We can’t blame the people of Phlan for being led astray, Listle,” Tarl said reprovingly. “It isn’t their fault. The influence of dark magic is everywhere now. I can feel it in my heart like a great black weight. Without the hammer, the clerics of Tyr no longer have the power to protect the people from evil or to banish the darkness from the city. But we should not despair. There are still a few folk in the city who seek the light and ask for the blessing of Tyr. Let us just hope that Patriarch Anton and the others have not solved Bane’s riddle too late. If the Hammer of Tyr can be found, the city might yet be saved.”

Looking at the grim scene around him, Kern was not so sure. He kept his free hand on the frayed leather grip of his battlehammer as they pressed on.

“By the way, Kern,” Tarl continued, “don’t let me forget to tell Patriarch Anton about this trait of yours, this unmagic as your mother calls it. I confess, I often wondered why I was never able to catch the slightest glimpse of you, even after placing that enchantment on your armor. Now it appears I have an explanation.”

Despite his blindness, Tarl had the peculiar ability to “see” magic. It was a talent that had developed gradually over the last several years. At first, Tarl had only been able to detect a faint glow each time Shal cast a spell near him. Eventually, he began to see magical auras as glowing clouds of light. Now his talent had grown to the point where he could not only detect all sorts of magical energies, he could discern their true natures as well.

So, Kern realized with a start, because of his magical resistance he would always remain invisible to his father. That saddened the young paladin. He gripped Tarl’s arm more tightly.

A sly look touched the cleric’s face then. “Listle, of course, glows with such a brilliant silver color that I can hardly bear to look at her sometimes. Though the hue is exceedingly lovely, of course.”

“Why thank you, Tarl,” Listle replied, positively beaming. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

The trio passed an unsavory-looking tavern, a place by the cheery name of The Bloated Corpse, if Kern read the peeling, weatherworn sign correctly. Raucous laughter drifted through the portal, along with the stench of cheap ale and blood.

“Next time, dog, if you can’t pay with gold, you can pay with your ears instead!” a coarse voice bellowed from inside the place.

Abruptly a small, scroungy man came flying out of the doorway, landing in a heap right at Kern’s feet. The young warrior nearly fell backward in an effort not to collide with him. Kern recovered his balance, then reached down to help the man, a mangy, cross-eyed fellow with a face like a rat’s, to his feet. He gazed at Kern with an expression of abject terror.

“Are you all right?” Kern asked him.

“By all the bloody gods of darkness, leave me be!” the scrawny man squealed. He squirmed from Kern’s grip and dashed away, disappearing down a side alley.

Kern stared in shock. He had never before heard the gods of evil invoked in Phlan.

“Pleasant fellow,” Listle noted dryly.

Kern shook his head. “I was only trying to help.”

“You can’t help him,” spoke a husky voice. Kern spun in surprise to see a barmaid leaning against the tavern’s doorway. “He sold himself to the gods of evil a long time ago,” the woman went on with a hoarse, throaty laugh. “Now he has nothing left to sell to pay off his gambling debts.” The barmaid might have been pretty once, but her weary face was smeared with dirt, and the grimy bodice of the ragged gray dress she wore had slipped disconcertingly low.

“I’m sorry,” was all Kern could think to say.

The woman eyed him calculatingly. “Well, if you’re so interested in helping someone,” she crooned, advancing on him, “perhaps you could help me, my handsome warrior.”

Listle glared at her. “Come on, Kern, let’s get out of here.” The elf jerked his arm viciously. Kern and Tarl were practically dragged down the street by the sorceress’s apprentice. “I don’t think you’d want to give her the kind of ‘help’ she’s looking for.”

Kern heard the barmaid cackle behind him, but there was no mirth in the sound.

“Listen to your little friend, warrior!” the woman called after him. “You’d better hurry on to your precious temple. This part of town is no place for the pure of heart. Then again, no part of this town is anymore!”

The three hurried on. Tarl had fallen silent, a pained expression on his face. The city’s degeneration wounded the cleric of Tyr deeply.

Finally the thick stone walls of the temple of Tyr hove into view. The massive temple was a welcome sight. It had been built several decades ago, the first step in an attempt to reclaim and civilize the monster-infested ruins that in those days was Phlan. As such, it was as much a citadel as temple. The high stone walls were dotted with arrow slits and topped by machicolations, openings located beneath the wall’s crenelations through which hot pitch or other unpleasant substances could be rained down onto attackers. Behind the walls rose the bulk of the temple, a square, utilitarian building of dark stone topped by a single gleaming dome of bronze. Kern allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief as he led the way toward the temple’s gates.

Suddenly, four raggedly clad men stumbled out from a side alley. They were laughing coarsely, as if they had just shared a particularly bawdy joke. The men lurched directly in Kern’s path. Their laughter vanished in a heartbeat, along with their drunken manner. All four were sober and quite well armed.

A big shaggy man with one eye leveled a rusted broadsword at Kern. “Give us all your gold, boy, and maybe you and your mates here will keep your heads.”

Kern moved swiftly in front of Listle to protect her, hefting his battlehammer.

“Kern,” the elf hissed in annoyance, “it’s nice that you’re such a gentleman, but I can’t cast a spell if you’re blocking my view.”

“Looky here,” sneered another of the robbers with a leer. “The puppy in the armor has a hammer. Maybe he wants us to use it to pound in some coffin nails.”

Kern raised his weapon, inwardly calling upon Tyr for strength. Four to one were bad odds, but he had to do his best to protect Listle and Tarl.

Before Kern could act, Tarl stepped past him.

“Why don’t you try me first, ruffian?” Tarl taunted in his booming voice. “Being blind, I can’t imagine I’d be much of a challenge for you.” Kern stared at his father in horror.

The leader of the cutthroats laughed. “Suit yourself, old man.” The robber raised his rusty sword.

With astonishing swiftness, Tarl reached out and grabbed the robber’s hand. Deftly, the blind cleric twisted the man’s arm behind him. The sword clattered to the cobblestones. Tarl gave a quick jerk and was rewarded with a sharp snap. The robber screamed in agony and slumped to the street, cradling his broken arm. A fierce grin broke across Tarl’s face.

“Next?” the white-haired cleric of Tyr inquired.

Apparently there was some confusion as to whose turn it was, for the remaining robbers collided with each other as they swiftly turned tail in order to flee.

“Hey, wait for me!” their leader cried out with anguish, scrambling to his feet to hurry after his confederates.

” ‘Old man’ indeed!” Tarl snorted, flexing his powerful shoulders. “I don’t need eyes to deal with curs like that. My nose works well enough. I don’t think that fellow has ever heard of the adage ‘cleanliness is next to holiness.’ “

Kern gazed at his father with pride. Sighted or not, Tarl was not a man to be trifled with.

They reached the temple’s gates without further incident. Two fully armored clerics standing guard allowed them to pass, and they crossed a vast courtyard to the temple proper.

A dozen marble columns supported a facade which was carved with friezes depicting a stern-faced Tyr. The god, who was missing his right hand, was dispensing justice to figures that knelt before him. The pleas of some were answered with riches, those of others with jagged lightning bolts.

“Tyr’s a rather gloomy-looking fellow, isn’t he?” Listle noted apprehensively as they ascended the temple’s steps.

“He’s the God of Justice, Listle,” Kern replied in annoyance. “Somehow I don’t think it would have the same impact on the unjust if he were a kindly old man with a sweet smile and pockets full of candy.”

“Maybe not,” Listle agreed. “But then, I’m all in favor of candy.”

The three passed through a columned portico and found themselves beneath the temple’s bronze-gilded dome in a great circular hall of gray stone. The floor was decorated with an intricate mosaic depicting Tyr’s symbol: scales resting on a warhammer, with which Tyr weighed the arguments for and against those seeking redemption.

“Tarl!” a deep voice boomed, resounding off the soaring andesite vaults. A burly cleric, with a grizzled, iron-colored beard and wearing a traditional white robe, came striding across the room. “I’m glad you could be here on this auspicious day, Brother.” Patriarch Anton, oldest and foremost of the temple’s clerics, gripped Tarl’s forearms warmly. “You also, Kern. I’m sure you will want to—”

“Ahem. Aren’t you forgetting someone, Patriarch Anton?” Listle piped up.

Anton glowered darkly at being interrupted, but after Listle shot a winning smile at the old patriarch, he let out a rumbling laugh despite himself. It was the elf’s dimples, of course. It was impossible to be angry at someone with dimples, and Listle’s were superior examples. They allowed her to get away with all sorts of impertinences.

“Yes, Listle Onopordum, you are welcome as well,” Anton rumbled amiably. “Though I wonder if I would be able to keep you away even if you were not.”

Listle thought about that for a moment. “Probably not,” she decided.

The patriarch led the three to a group of white-robed clerics clustered about a long mahogany table. It looked as if all the temple’s clerics were there, about thirty altogether. Five years ago there would have been three score clerics and a half-dozen young men and women besides Kern wearing the white tabard of the paladin-aspirant. Few new disciples had taken the places of the clerics of Tyr who had been struck down, one by one, over these last years.

“This way, Brother Tarl.” Anton led the blind cleric to the table. “Come, hear what we’ve learned.”

In the center of the table, a huge book rested on a cushion of black velvet. Kern had seen it on several prior occasions: a tome five handspans across, bound in the dusky, scaly leather of some unnameable beast. Within its crackling pages of ancient, yellowed parchment were thirteen terrible prophecies written by the dark god Bane himself over a thousand years ago. Its pages foretold in horrible detail some of the suffering and misery that Bane would bring to Faerun. Kern had heard the story of the book, called The Oracle of Strife, and how it came to the temple, many times.

Legend held that long, long ago, the god Bane wished to know how much of the world would one day fall under his evil dominion. He went to his wicked sister, the goddess Shar, mistress of the dark. Shar concocted a potion from the fabric of midnight, the very moment of time between one day and the next, when magic is at its most powerful and the future most easily deciphered. Bane drank the potion, but such was its power that the god was plunged into a delirium. It was in this fevered state that Bane penned the thirteen prophecies included in The Oracle of Strife.

For long centuries, the book was lost to the world. Then, some three hundred years ago, an itinerant cleric of Tyr happened upon the tome in the ruins of a temple of Bane deep in the primeval forests west of the Moonsea. Eventually the book was delivered to the custodianship of the temple of Tyr in Phlan. It was a relic of fearsome evil, and the clerics locked it away under powerful wards to keep it out of the hands of those with sinister intentions.

During the last century, the book had been all but forgotten. But after Bane had heinously usurped the Hammer of Tyr, one of the temple’s sages remembered the tome. The book was brought out for study. It was then that the temple’s sages discovered that one of the thirteen prophecies concerned the theft of the hammer as well as its subsequent hiding place. After that, long, frustrating years of studying the prophecy ensued. Years that— apparently—had now finally come to an end.

“It was only recently we realized that not all of the prophecies in the tome pleased Bane,” Patriarch Anton explained. His gaze moved to a wizened woman with eyes as dark and shining as obsidian. “Why don’t you tell them what you have learned, Sister Sendara?” Sendara was the temple’s auguress, and an expert on the matter of prophecy.

The ancient cleric nodded. “The key lies in the Time of Troubles,” Sendara began. “It has been thirteen years now since that great conflagration shook Faerun, when Bane was destroyed, along with his brethren, the dark gods Myrkul and Bhaal. I now have reason to believe that Bane predicted his own demise in The Oracle of Strife.”

A murmur of surprise rippled about the table.

Sendara continued in her rich, strong voice. “As we know, Bane was in a deep trance when he penned the prophecies. I think it is conceivable that he had no control over what emerged. Thus it was that he could not help but foresee his failures as well as his victories. Everyone who has studied the tome knows that the last prophecy is almost illegible. It looks as if Bane crossed it out in anger after he recovered from his delirium. I had always assumed that it was simply because he wasn’t pleased with his poetic achievement on that one.” Sendara gave a sharp-edged smile. “Bane was quite puffed-up about his poetry, despite the fact that it’s dreadful stuff. But from the few words I am able to decipher, I feel certain that this prophecy concerns Bane’s downfall. Apparently that is why he tried to deface it. Bane thought if he obscured the prophecy, such a fated thing wouldn’t come to pass.”

“He was very wrong about that!” Listle whispered to Kern with a snort.

“Hush!” he hissed back, elbowing her for emphasis.

Brother Dameron, a young, round-faced cleric with a rather expansive paunch, joined in the explanation. “Sister Sendara’s insights gave me an idea,” he told the others. “If Bane had attempted to deface one prophecy that displeased him, wouldn’t he have tried the same with others? Perhaps he might even have changed small details that annoyed him. To answer that query, I performed a modest experiment on the prophecy concerning the hammer.”