Pool of Radiance (37 page)

Suddenly the dragon turned its lightning to the stairway and landing. The timbers immediately burst into flame. Flames shot up and smoke billowed as the exit was destroyed. Then the dragon roared and charged Shal and Tarl, forcing Ren to scramble to keep out of the way of its vicious tail. It was small consolation that the dragon’s lightning wouldn’t work against the hammer. The beast was huge. Its size alone could kill, and it was lumbering right toward them. Tarl hurled the Hammer of Tyr at the beast with all his strength as Shal hurriedly conjured up an ice storm. The dragon was nearly upon them when the hammer slammed into its chest. Blue energy crackled and arced from the point of impact, and the dragon reeled back, shrieking with the pain of the blow. A moment later, sheets of ice plastered over its chest, neck, and the exposed parts of its haunches. It scrabbled awkwardly on the ice, its movements hindered by the energy-sapping cold. It shook like a wet dog to rid itself of the bone-chilling cold and the nuisance pricking at its side, but it got rid of neither, and the glow from the blue hammer, now returned to Tarl’s hand, was piercing its remaining good eye.

The possessor, Tyranthraxus, struggled to keep the dragon reacting with intellect rather than instinct. Intimidation was critical. The attackers must not know the weakness of the body. Under his impetus, the great beast puffed itself up, roared, and launched itself forward again toward the source of its greatest pain. Tyranthraxus could feel and smell the terror of the two as he closed in with the dragon’s body. One more time, he thought—do it one more time, and then this fight will be fair.

Unwittingly, Tarl obliged. He launched the Hammer of Tyr at the dragon again. No sooner had the hammer left Tarl’s fingertips than the dragon thrust its great head forward. Brilliant yellow lightning and the hammer’s blue light shattered the stale air in the dragon’s lair. Even as the dragon staggered back from the hammer blow, Tarl was at the receiving end of a blazing yellow lightning bolt. The cleric’s body slammed backward as though hit by a giant hammer and was driven flat against the wall. The smell of his flesh smoking and burning filled the air, and the Hammer of Tyr fell to the ground as his body slumped limply against the wall.

Shal felt something snap inside her. She screamed loudly, but she did not look back at Tarl. She aimed her fingers straight for the creature’s mouth. Instantly flames jetted from her fingertips. The dragon’s head jerked back as the fire whooshed around its face, its lower jaw fried clear through. Shal cast a special Magical Shield spell and called for the Wand of Wonder even as the dragon shrieked and brought its head back down to launch more lightning.

Ren had never ceased in his attack with his short swords. Again and again, he stabbed deep into the dragon’s tough hide. When he saw Tarl hurled against the wall, his already frenzied attack became even more furious. Working his swords like a mountain climber’s picks, Ren scaled the dragon’s back. The gigantic tail slapped and flailed nearby, and when Shal’s flames sent the dragon’s head snapping back, it was all he could do to hang on and drag himself to the base of the dragon’s neck, where the tail was no longer a threat. His legs clinging to the beast’s broad neck, he used all his strength to plunge the two short swords deep into the tendons between the dragon’s shoulder blades.

The dragon shrieked and roared in agony and rage. Yellow lightning shot from its mouth, only to be reflected off Shal’s magical shield. An instant later, the dragon threw its head back as its own lightning returned and sizzled the flesh of its underbelly. It shrieked once more, flailing its tail and shaking its shoulders violently to try to rid itself of Ren, who had called for Right and was now stabbing with his two magical daggers.

Pain dictating its movements, the creature wagged its head, gulped a mouthful of fluid from the pool, and sprayed a jet of yellow acid breath at Shal through its drooping jaw. “Protect from poison!” Shal screamed, and she raised the Wand of Wonder. A million and more yellow droplets of poison hung suspended in the air for a fraction of a second, and then the cavern exploded with a riot of beating wings, as each droplet became a brilliantly colored butterfly. Under other circumstances, the sight would have been breathtakingly delightful, but now the thousands upon thousands of butterflies served only to reduce visibility to zero.

Ren continued to battle by feel alone, his magical daggers slicing through the dragon’s thick scaly hide as if it were butter. He stabbed and sliced as fast and hard as his arms would move, scooting ever higher up onto the dragon’s neck, hoping to find its jugular. Shal lowered her magical shield and cast another Burning Hands spell, aiming by memory for the dragon’s abdomen, below where she had last seen Ren. Jets of flame shot from her fingers, and thousands of butterflies popped and burst, caught in the magical inferno. The dragon screamed, an almost inhuman scream, as the flames struck and spread across its chest. Just then one of Ren’s daggers ripped through tendon and sliced through an artery in the creature’s neck. It reared high on its hind feet, then pitched itself over in its agony, slamming Ren to the ground beside it. It clambered tentatively to its feet, flailing wildly with its tail at the smell and presence of the ranger. With all the force left within its pain-racked body, the dragon tail-slammed Ren against the nearest wall of its lair.

Shal could feel, could hear, the big man’s bones shatter as his body thwacked hard against the stone wall, and she could see, even through the haze of the remaining butterflies, that he was not moving. She leveled her hands at the dragon again, even as it turned its head to attack her, and let loose with a fireball. Fueled by her fury, the fireball was huge and white. It burst square against the dragon’s already injured face and neck, and flames raged from its snout down its torso.

The creature spun wildly, crazy and blinded from the pain. By instinct or luck, it caught Shal with the tip of its tail as it spun, and she was hurled back against Tarl’s charred body. For a moment, Shal saw only blackness, and she couldn’t catch her breath. She knew she needed to finish the dragon off now, before it finished her, but pain and fear froze her body even after her vision cleared. She remained paralyzed, literally waiting to die, but to her surprise, the hulking creature failed to take advantage of her helplessness. Instead, it scrabbled backward and slid into the crescent-shaped pool. Her heart leaped as she realized the dragon must be retreating, perhaps even dying.

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, arid 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, arid 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.”