Pool of Radiance (30 page)

Ren pulled the mare around eyeball to eyeball with Cerulean and said in a loud falsetto, as if he were speaking for the mare. “Oh, yeah? How would you know, big fella? You got—” Ren stopped suddenly in midsentence and motioned for the others to keep quiet. In the stillness that followed, Shal and Tarl could make out what Ren had heard. From not far off came the sounds of something crashing and thrashing through the brush—and the unmistakable snorts and grunts of a party of orcs!

Shal didn’t wait for any word from Ren or Tarl. She spurred Cerulean around and headed for a nearby thicket. As the big horse charged, Shal let out an earsplitting war whoop, Tarl added a bloodcurdling cry of his own and leaned back away from Shal to swing his hammer through the air with a vengeance that made it hum. Five orcs burst from the thicket near where Ren waited. He caught the first of the orcs in his huge, bare hands, stuffed its head under one huge arm, and held tight. “Move and he dies!” Ren hissed to the other four.

Ignoring their companion’s plight, the orcs charged forward. Ren slit the creature’s thick, meaty neck with Left. As its body slumped to the ground, Ren drew one of his short swords with his free right hand and hacked straight down between the neck and shoulderblade of the nearest orc. Blood from the creature’s severed jugular spouted high into the air, and the beast danced crazily in its death spasms. By this time, Cerulean had come full around, and the remaining three orcs were hemmed in between the horses and the thicket.

“I know, Tarl. I know,” said Ren, spotting the cleric’s staying hand. “You want to talk to them, to parley, to find out what a couple of nice orcs like these would be doing in a place like this. Go right ahead. Ask ‘em anything you want.” To the orcs, he grunted a threat.

“Thanks. I will.” Tarl did not miss the fact that the orc’s eyes were glazed yellow, like those of the gnoll priests. “Ask them about Yarash. See if they know anything. Then ask them about the pool—where it is, what they know about the Lord of the Ruins.”

Ren snuffled, snorted, and clicked his tongue in the crude language of the pig-men, and they sniffed and snorted their responses. Ren interpreted. “They claim they don’t know anything about the river—they say it’s always been this way. Said they like the smell—what’s the problem, anyway? … They’re building some kind of tower—a templelike thing that will stretch the domain of the Lord of the Ruins from …

“From where, you big slug?” Ren slammed Left to the ground less than two inches from the nearest orc’s foot, then immediately called for the knife to return. The orc’s eyes widened as the knife floated through the air, and it blurted out its words in barely coherent clusters. Ren translated, trying to fill in the holes where the creature spoke nonsense. “The castle—the big one at the edge of old Phlan. Castle Valjevo, I think they call it. The oinker says the Lord of the Ruins lives there.”

“Tell them to tear down the tower,” said Tarl. “Threaten them with Shal’s magic … and the wrath of Tyr. And then let’s get out of here.”

As if on cue, the three orcs suddenly charged Cerulean with their pikes extended. Shal uttered the words of a spell so fast that she hardly had time to extend her arms. Bolts of energy shot from her fingertips, and orc screams filled the air. To the one that lived, Ren repeated Tarl’s demand that they tear down the tower. “And don’t even think about following us!” he added menacingly.

It was nearly noon on their fourth day of travel when they dismounted at a spot where the poisonous river widened into what looked almost like a broad, boggy lake. Equidistant from both shores stood an island, featureless except for a huge silver pyramid that protruded abruptly from the blackened sand. The three looked on in awe at one of the largest and most unusual structures any of them had ever seen.

To Shal, there was something oddly familiar about the silver pyramid. She scanned it once, twice, then a third time, trying to take in the total image. And then she knew. “The frogs!” she said. “Remember the frogs at Sokol Keep?”

“How could I forget?” Ren asked, shuddering at the thought of the slimy encounter. “But what—”

It was Tarl who answered Ren’s unfinished question. “The medallion. The medallion the frog wore—it was a picture of this very structure.”

The pyramid’s perfectly matched, windowless sides shone as the medallion had, as though they were gilded in silver, though none could imagine how such a project could have been completed on an isolated island in the middle of a desolate wilderness. More striking than the building itself, though, was the fact that it was obviously the source of the black corruption that flooded the Stojanow River. From where they stood, Shal, Ren, and Tarl could see plainly that the water to the north of the island was clean and pure. Healthy, verdant trees towered up from the banks upriver from the structure, in jarring contrast to the gray and black stumps that littered the banks downstream to the Moonsea. Thick black sludge was spewing from a great pipe that ran from the southern base of the pyramid into the river. For days, they had ridden within smelling range of the river’s abominable stench. Now they were at its source, and the odor was even worse.

They had barely had time to take in the full scene, when suddenly the water to the north of the conduit began to stir. Before their eyes, a column of water rose from the river’s surface and began to spout high into the air like a fountain. As Shal, Ren, and Tarl watched, the tower of water took on almost solid form, gushing even higher and then collapsing in on itself to create the shape of a chair, the illusion of a glittering, translucent throne of water. Waves crested along the front, back, and sides of the water throne, gently pushing it, water atop water, toward the three. Though neither Shal, Tarl, nor Ren blinked, none could identify the moment when a grandiose figure, looking like a white wizard out of children’s lore, appeared on the eerie magical throne. His pure-white robes flapped in the breeze. His face was warm, benevolent even, and he made a gesture and shifted the wind so that the stench was no longer carried to their nostrils. “Ho, travelers and friends! Few find their way to my keep. I am Yarash, and I bid you welcome!”

Shal wanted to believe the fairy tale, but the lie was too obvious, the contradictions too many. “Back!” shouted Shal, extending her staff and gesturing toward the conduit. “No wizard of good intentions would allow such corruption to continue!”

Yarash showed no sign of being either offended or flustered by Shal’s words. Instead, he responded in the same cheery, lilting voice with which he had first greeted the three. “A product of simple experiments, my dear. My life’s goal is to create the ultimate sea creature, an intelligent being to communicate man’s messages to the myriad life forms of the ocean depths. Alas, surely you must realize that the biproducts of magic are sometimes not pretty,” said the wizard, shaking his head. His chair of water surged and receded, but continued to hover in one place.

“Experiments? Biproducts of magic? Are giant frogs perchance part of your experiments, or are they some of the ‘not pretty’ biproducts?” Shal challenged.

“Giant frogs?” With the suddenness of a flipped switch, the wizard’s voice completely lost its warmth. “You mean, you’re the ones? You’re the ones who murdered my beautiful creations on Thorn Island?” The wizard’s eyes blazed with crazed fury, and his face became contorted in anger. The watery throne splashed back to the surface of the river, and Yarash stood right on top of the now frothing and boiling water. He swept his arms high above his head and brought them down again. His robes instantly turned dark green, and in his hands he clutched an algae-covered rope. “You killed my frogs!” he shouted, and his voice thundered and reverberated across the river.

Suddenly the water began to rise, and the wizard along with it, as if some great tidal wave were about to swell from the depths. But the water parted to reveal the fishlike head, fins, and gaping maw of a huge, kelp-covered sea animal. Yarash was standing atop the flat of the creature’s massive brown-speckled head, pulling up on the slick green rope.

The monster reared high, its flagellating tail holding its body suspended above the water like a dolphin. With a sweeping gesture that reminded Shal of a circus showman, Yarash dropped the rope and waved his hands with a flourish. Again he shouted, this time in arcane words, unfamiliar even to Shal, and again his voice boomed across the water and back. A deafening hum filled the air, and all around where the wizard stood mounted on the dancing sea monster, torrents and eddies appeared in the river water, a dozen or more highly exaggerated versions of the rippling a bystander would notice as a trout came to the surface to gulp a fly. Carplike heads the size of men’s bobbed and poked out of the water, their wide brown lips gaping and closing. Yarash’s words continued to reverberate in the river valley, and the giant fish plunged forward across the river toward Shal, Ren, and Tarl.

“Halt!” shouted Shal, but the water near the shoreline churned and the fish heads appeared again, much closer.

This time, though, they rose straight up from the water. Mage, ranger-thief, and cleric took a frightened step backward as the fish heads’ bodies came into view. The creatures were neither fish, amphibian, nor humanoid, but a sick crossing of the biological classes. Awkward, overly long fins beat the air where arms should have been, and thick, scaly torsos ended in stunted, barely separated legs. As the creatures lifted themselves from the water, their breathing became a labored sucking through the gills, but Yarash kept up his conjuring, and the misfit fish-men slogged closer. The wind changed directions, and the stench from the creatures was staggering, like the stink from the Stojanow multiplied and remultiplied.

Ren gulped for air and charged forward, lunging at the first of the grotesque beasts to emerge from the water. He stabbed deep into its gut with one of his short swords and pulled straight up through the torso. By rights, the thing should have died, but no blood poured from the body. Instead, a dark, tarry ooze seeped from the wound like dirty pus. Worse, the creature showed no sign whatsoever of pain, and before Ren could distance himself for another attack, it began flailing his head and shoulders with its fins and ramming him with its putrid, scaly body. Ren swung for all he was worth, even as he fell backward, and his sword sliced a deep gash across the fishman’s pelvis.

By this time, more fish-men were closing in. Tarl charged with his shield and slammed with his hammer, but the creatures were impervious to his attacks. Not wanting to waste the Staff of Power’s charges on such mundane beasts, Shal put all of her strength behind her staff and jabbed and stabbed at the hideous creatures with its sharpened point, but it didn’t slow them, and now their gaping mouths were spewing a dark green fluid that seared and burned wherever it spattered against flesh. When she felt the scalding, searing acid eating through the skin of her neck and hand, Shal changed her mind about the degree of danger presented by the fish-men. She scrambled to gain enough distance from her foes to wield the staff.

Ren did his best, meanwhile, to recover his balance and continue his attack against the first of the fish-men, but others started circling. He wielded both short swords as furiously as he was able. He chopped a wedge out of the torso of one, and it bent on top of itself, but the creature still lived, still fought on. Chop and hack as he might, Ren could not stop the creatures from flailing and spewing forth their deadly poison.

“Get back!” Shal shouted to her companions, afraid that using the staff would threaten Ren or Tarl, who were nearly surrounded by the fish-men. But they could not retreat, and it was all Shal could do to keep the fish-men away from herself.

Tarl discovered he was able to push the fish-men off balance, and he was doing his best to do that in hope that either Ren or Shal would somehow be able to finish off the creatures. Push, swing. Push, swing. Again and again, Tarl slammed into their rubbery, scaly bodies with blows that would have pulverized a humanoid. Finally Tarl released his hammer with the smooth spring action Brother Anton had taught him. It caught one of the fish-men square in the eye. For the first time, fishy flesh and bone splattered and shattered. The carplike head caved in, and the fishman flopped to the ground, twitching and jerking in the throes of death. “Aim for their heads, their eyes!” yelled Tarl. “That’s where they’re vulnerable!” Even as he shouted, he wheeled to face another of the ghastly beasts.

Shal and Ren heard Tarl’s cry and acted immediately. Ren swung high and viciously with his swords. With the efficiency born of her impressive strength, Shal used the staff to skewer eyeballs. Fish heads rolled, and within a few moments, an unnatural calm reigned where chaos had been supreme just moments before.

From his vantage point high atop the giant sea monster, Yarash let out an anguished moan, a soul-piercing, pitiful cry, and began another incantation. At his command, more vaguely humanoid amphibians, frog-men gone awry, slogged through the water toward the three. Each creature seemed more horrible than the last, and all struggled under the burden of cruel deformities—distorted body parts, missing eyes and limbs, hideous appendages that appeared to have been added as an afterthought.

Shal commanded her own most powerful conjuring voice to speak to Yarash. “What manner of abominations do you send our way? If these tortured creatures are your creations, how dare you call yourself a wizard?”

“How dare you speak to me in such a tone, apprentice!” Yarash raised his hands skyward, and lightning crackled in the air. He spoke a sharp word of command and pointed at the three companions. With the movements of defective zombies, the river creatures closed in to attack.

“Don’t do it!” shouted Shal to the wizard.

Ren and Tarl raised their weapons, prepared to fight the approaching monsters, but Shal motioned them back, at the same time uttering four arcane syllables to the Staff of Power. Balls of flame rolled from the end of the staff, and Yarash’s creations ignited like so many giant torches. Their miserable existences ended in even more miserable screams, but it was Yarash’s scream that would stay forever etched in Shal’s memory. Every hair on her body bristled as he shrieked in a combination of rage, horror, and devastation that would have been no more terrible had it come from a mother watching her firstborn put to a slow and painful death.