Pool of Radiance

by James M. Ward

  Tarl didn’t notice, however. He was lost in a muttering conversation with himself over Shal’s behavior with Cerulean. “Right. Familiars do talk to their masters, I suppose. And their masters must talk to their familiars and not to their friends.” He followed almost aimlessly behind Ren, who was following Shal. It wasn’t until he felt the gentlest hint of a chill brush his back that he realized that the red robe was fluttering along behind him like some misplaced shadow. “By my oath, I wish I didn’t feel so powerless when I’m with this woman,” Tarl muttered, then shook his fist at the ghostly cloth. “Get back a few feet, will you? You give me the creeps. I’d gladly try some clerical magic beyond my means if I thought it would make you flap away.”

  The phantom obediently backed off a few steps, and Tarl felt a little better when he turned to resume following the others. Ren was already scouting the huge mess-style kitchen, examining the implements and foodstuffs left out on the cutting block and beside the great baking oven, silently opening doors to a pantry, a storage room, and a root cellar.

  “I think I’ve found the cook,” called Ren from the root cellar. “I need some light.”

  Cerulean’s glow was fading fast, and he wouldn’t have fit down the tight staircase anyhow, so Shal pulled out her light rod, which immediately began to glow with a constant blue-amethyst light. She held it high at the top of the stairs, then started down herself. “Here … can you see?”

  “I can see fine now,” answered Ren. “She was murdered, all right, about three days ago, I’d say. That’s a burn mark from a cord that was pulled taut around her neck. It’s the work of someone proficient, if not a pro.”

  Ren came up the stairs carrying the dead woman, a small figure with the dark coloring found in the far southwest reaches of the Realms. He laid her already stiff body on a long counter in the kitchen. “From what I can see, she was pushed down the stairs after she was killed. There’s still a ladle in her hand. My guess is she never even saw her murderer. We’re talking about a really brave assassin here.” Ren felt like spitting to clear the bile that rose in his mouth at the thought of the kind of vermin that would kill with so little cause.

  “From the way things are laid out there,” Ren went on, pointing to an assortment of dishes, cooking utensils, and foodstuffs, “I’d say she had already finished preparing a meal for her master and guests and was working on food for the servants, if that matters any.”

  Tarl spoke a prayer for the woman, soliciting Tyr’s aid in helping “… another victim of the darkness that rules the outskirts of this city” to find her peace.

  “The way those rope marks pull up on her neck doesn’t look to me like the work of a kobold or anything else that short,” Ren mused.

  “Whoever or whatever killed her, may Tyr help her find the solace of her patron god.”

  They left the woman, agreeing to return and bury her when they left. The door across the hall led to what were apparently servants’ quarters. There were two beds, and beside one they found a young man, dead. He’d obviously seen his attacker and struggled with him—or it. He had fallen victim to repeated stab wounds to the chest. Once again, Ren noted the nature of the wounds and suggested that the killer was tall, perhaps as tall as Tarl.

  “I grieved only for my teacher,” said Shal. “It never occurred to me that others died with him.” She was near tears and stood clenching and unclenching her fists as she stared down at the bloody corpse. She spoke to no one in particular, pausing between words. “When Denlor sent his message in the crystal, he was completely overwhelmed by monsters and humanoids. But Ranthor and this poor young man and the cook … you’re suggesting they were killed by another human being. I—I couldn’t see the attacker, you know—only an arm, stabbing over and over. I just—just assumed it was a hobgoblin or one of the other beasts that were attacking the towers.”

  “Shal, I’m not saying for sure that it was a man,” said Ren quietly. “I’m saying I think it was. But at any rate, they wouldn’t be any less dead if it was a hobgoblin or a kobold that killed them.”

  “I know that!” Shal shouted. “Don’t you see? Monsters and humanoids kill on whim alone. Men kill for reasons—however distorted. A kobold I could kill and be done with it, with no regrets. A man I’ll hate …”

  Tarl put an arm around Shal. “And you will probably be right in that feeling.”

  Shal gently removed Tarl’s hand from her shoulder, squeezing it firmly before letting go. “I need to find Ranthor.” She turned to leave the room.

  “Wait!” called Ren, quickly reaching for Shal’s arm. “Don’t you think it would be better for Tarl and I to lead? We can’t be sure that everything within these walls is dead.”

  “No, but we do know that almost everything within these walls is magical. Tarl was the right person to lead us at Sokol Keep. I’m the right person to lead us through the red mage’s tower.”

  Once again Shal left no room for question. She turned again and went through the meeting hall to the door from which the red robe had emerged. The horse, the two men, and the red robe followed.

  The door opened into a splendid, almost palatial landing at the foot of a great, broad soapstone staircase. The floor was inset with tourmaline, amber, amethyst, aventurine, and other semiprecious stones. A brilliant light beneath the stones shone through their translucent surface, creating a glorious speckling of many-hued rays that colored the walls in a dazzling display. The whole party stopped for a moment to admire it.

  When Shal finally started up the stairs, a ruby-colored cloud, in the image of the red mage himself, formed on the staircase.

  Tarl didn’t recognize Denlor. The only contact he’d had with such cloudlike visages had been with the wraiths that had killed so many of his brothers in the graveyard. He charged past Shal and would have challenged the ghostly vapors had not Shal caught hold of his armor and used all her recently acquired strength to stop him.

  “Poison! It’s poison, Tarl!” shouted Shal, hauling him back. “It’s a poison image of the master of this tower!” Tarl looked sheepish, and she softened her voice. “I’m sorry, but I must insist that you let me go first. I welcome your company, and I can use your help, but as I said to Ren, this is my mission.”

  Even as Shal spoke, the cloud expanded, spreading its deadly haze down the stairway. Both Shal and Tarl started to cough.

  Shal held her breath and concentrated, then spoke the words she’d heard from Denlor. “Lysiam calentatem, Denlor.”

  The cloud dissipated immediately, and the wide soapstone stairway once more stood vacant. Shal started up again but stopped when she heard Cerulean’s whimper inside her head.

  She spun around, very nearly bumping into Ren and Tarl, who were following close behind her. “What is your problem?” she exclaimed, her eyes blazing.

  Tarl and Ren, who were both feeling less and less comfortable about their roles in this venture, looked up at her and started stammering in unison.

  “No!” Shal shook her head furiously and pointed down the stairs in disgust. “Not you—him! He’s whimpering in my ear like some sick child!”

  Surely you can see that I could slip and kill myself on this treacherous staircase, Mistress!

  “Stairs don’t come any broader or shallower than these, Cerulean,” Shal answered in a tone that was decidedly lacking in patience.

  The horse continued to stand at the bottom of the stairs, shaking its head and whickering and stamping one front hoof. Bathed in the colorful lights from the stone floorway, he looked like some child’s giant stuffed toy.

  Shal pulled the indigo cloth from her belt and started down the stairs, holding it out in front of her.

  No, not that! Cerulean pleaded. You may need me. Just make me small and carry me up.

  Shal’s eyes glinted for a fleeting moment. “If I make you small, will your voice be small, too?” She didn’t wait for a reply. She concentrated for a moment and said the words for a Reverse Enlargement spell. A cat-sized Cerulean instantly app
eared, looking pathetic at the bottom of the stairs, overshadowed by the hovering robe. Shal strode down the stairs, slapped her hip a couple of times, and called, “Here, boy! Here, boy!” as if she were calling a dog.

  That’s low. That really hurts! came the first of the mental barrage Shal knew would follow. But at least the voice was small, an irritating buzz at best.

  Shal picked up the flailing miniature horse and climbed to where Ren and Tarl were still standing, looking more than a little bewildered.

  “Would you take him?” she asked Ren, holding out the kicking animal. “I need to keep my hands free to cast spells.”

  Ren’s mouth was open, but no words came out. Shal immediately headed back up the stairway.

  “I thought rangers liked horses,” said Tarl, jabbing Ren with one elbow.

  Ren leveled a gaze at Tarl that might have turned him to ashes, but the cleric only grinned more broadly.

  Ren stuffed Cerulean up under his left arm and clamped him against his side in a near rib-breaking grip. Of course, he had no way of hearing the horse’s hysterical complaints, and Shal wasn’t paying any attention.

  As Shal reached the top of the staircase, the red robe swished ahead of her and stood beyond the stairway, waiting. Shal looked back toward her friends and shrugged. “I think we have a new guide.”

  The robe remained still, flitting nervously, till everyone got to the top of the stairs, which ended in the foyer to a large dining room. Like the meeting hall downstairs, the dining room was rhombus-shaped and appeared to serve as the hub of the second level. Set in walls to the right and left were two shiny brass doorways, both of which showed signs of recent battering. Straight ahead was another doorway that they could only assume led to the third level. But the red robe did not leave the room; instead, it whisked to the mammoth walnut table at its center and stopped over the high-backed head chair.

  “Look—ashes,” Shal said as she reached the chair. “Denlor must have died here.”

  “At the table?” asked Tarl.

  “While he was sitting down to a meal, apparently with two other people,” said Ren, pointing to the haphazard place settings.

  “Two? Who do you suppose—” Shal started to ask, but Tarl interrupted.

  “What could possibly turn a man to ashes in his chair?” he asked, watching the robe hover over the remains of its owner.

  Shal shrugged. “Denlor was terrified by the idea of having his body eaten by the creatures that swarmed around this place.” Shal paused, remembering once again the horror and helplessness Denlor had communicated through the crystal. She told how he had used every magical resource at his disposal, and how the monsters must have climbed over their own dead to press through his defenses.

  She went on. “When Ranthor reached Denlor, all kinds of snarling, slavering beasts had probably already entered the tower. Denlor and Ranthor must have stood side by side, casting spells till they had no more energy left, trying to purge this place of hundreds of monsters like we saw stacked outside the tower.”

  Tarl was moved by Shal’s explanation, especially her description of Denlor’s feelings as the beasts kept coming and coming, but he repeated his question. “But how was he turned to ashes? By what?”

  “By himself,” Shal answered. “I’m almost certain he set a spell into place to—” she hesitated to say the word—“to cremate himself at the instant of death so no beast would feed on his corpse.” The thought of the venerable wizard dying at his own dinner table and then bursting into flames like a body on some sacrificial pyre brought tears to Shal’s eyes. “The wizard locks and magical energies we encountered, the red gas on the stairway—those were probably all activated by Denlor’s death, too.”

  “Wouldn’t bursting into flames leave whatever killed Denlor in pretty rough shape?” Ren asked.

  “Perhaps,” Shal said. “I don’t know for sure.” She remembered that when the parchment Ranthor left for her burst into magical flames, no harm whatsoever came to the desk. “It would depend on Denlor’s intent. If he wanted the flame to burn the things around it, I think the chair and table would have caught fire, or at least they’d show some sign of damage.” She shook her head. “A wizard of his talents might be able to make the flame burn flesh and not objects. I just don’t know.”

  Tarl was still looking at the robe. “What about the robe?”

  “Like I said before, I suppose that his spell may have been designed to burn flesh only.”

  “No, I mean why does it stay there like that? What’s it waiting for?” Tarl pressed.

  “For us to finish our business and leave, I guess.”

  “Ouch!” Ren dropped Cerulean unceremoniously to the floor and shook his hand. “He bit me!”

  The cat-sized horse let out a tiny whuffle, struggled to its feet, and immediately began to complain in a high, squeaky voice. That giant ape nearly flattened me! Why he would’ve crushed my ribs if I’d stayed under his arm one more second! Cerulean clomped round and round the floor, like a child wearing new hard-soled shoes.

  “I’m sorry, Cerulean, but I’m sure Ren didn’t mean to hurt your ribs,” Shal reassured him.

  “I didn’t mean to carry a horse around, either,” Ren muttered.

  Cerulean continued to charge around the big room, galloping in steadily widening circles until he was running next to the walls. Each time he approached either of the two brass doorways, the door would glow red and the tiny horse would turn a brilliant shade of blue.

  “Wizard-locked, both of them!” exclaimed Shal, not waiting for the question she knew one of her friends would ask.

  Shal knew the magical commands that would get her past the wizard locks, and she used them. Tarl and Ren followed, marveling once more at Shal’s cool confidence and command of magic. They followed her first through Denlor’s private chamber and the treasure room adjacent to it, and then the scroll chamber and the magical supply room adjacent to that. She instructed them not to touch anything.

  “Eventually I’ll have the skills to come back here and add part of Denlor’s magic to my own, but for now, so that his spirit can rest, we have to leave everything the way we find it. And above all, we’ve got to find Ranthor.”

  Cerulean once again galloped around the circumference of the dining room, clip-clopping his way to the doorway that led to the stairs. As he started to pass through the door frame, his tiny body blazed the brilliant blue hue for which he was named, in startling contrast to the shimmering crimson curtain of energy that appeared in the doorway.

  “The curtain will fight any negative energy you carry with you. To pass through it, you need to relax your thoughts and emotions,” Shal explained, then walked effortlessly through it, causing the curtain to glow brightly once again. As soon as she stood on the other side, the curtain all but vanished, giving the appearance of a few stray rays of sunlight reflected through a ruby.

  Ren turned one shoulder toward the barely visible curtain and tried to barge through, but he leaped back in pain as the curtain sizzled and crackled. Next he tried to run through, only to be jolted to the floor as if he had bounced off a piece of taut leather.

  Tarl reached down to help his friend up, but Ren shook his head in stubborn refusal and stood on his own. “I’ll lick this thing. Just give me a minute.”

  “Stay calm,” Shal reminded him. “The key is to stay calm.”

  “Let me try it,” said Tarl. “My clerical training might help me.”

  “Sure, be my guest,” Ren replied, still rubbing his stinging shoulder.

  Tarl began to speak the words of a traditional cleansing ritual intended to purify thoughts, “As Tyr controls the balances, may I measure the things that weigh upon my heart, and may they balance the sides of the scale equally that I may meet my god at peace.” Tarl’s words were correct, but he knew that the balances did not rest evenly within him. Thoughts of Anton, his dead brothers, and the missing hammer outweighed all else. When he tried to pass through the barrier, he was thrown to the
ground with every bit as much force as Ren had been.

  Tarl concentrated once more on the cleansing ritual, this time envisioning his successes at Sokol Keep and letting each small victory there offer balance against the horrors of the graveyard. When Tarl felt his inner being had reached a point of equilibrium, a point at which nothing could easily sway him off balance, he tried again … and passed easily through the shimmering curtain.

  “If he can do it, I can do it,” muttered Ren. The ranger-thief knew no cleansing ritual, no rite of concentration. But he did know how to steel his thoughts before trying to disarm a foe or to silently make his way down the length of a corridor unobserved. He imagined that the wall was a passage that he must slip through unnoticed. He thought of nothing but passing through, and that is what he did. The magical panel barely shimmered as he eased through the door.

  “Well done!” exclaimed Shal.

  Ren’s first reaction was one of anger. Why should she praise him for finally doing something that she and Tarl had accomplished so easily? But when he looked into Shal’s eyes, he saw that her words had been sincere. Shal dropped her gaze to where Cerulean stood beside her, picked up the miniature horse, and handed him to Ren once more. She caught the big man’s attention again with her green eyes and smiled—a playful, teasing look that Ren had never seen before from Shal—and then she turned and started up the stairs.

  Much steeper and narrower than the soapstone stairway, the staircase to the third floor was made of terrazzo, with sizable fragments of a deep burgundy-veined marble running through it. The stairwell was lit from above by some kind of arcane light. At the top of the stairway, they came to a bronze door, decorated with splendidly forged handiwork, obviously of dwarven design.

  Shal touched the outer edges of the door with her fingertips, incanting a different syllable as she touched each of the door’s four corners and the intricately embossed lion’s head at the door’s center. At her touch, each of the four corners shone a rich vermilion. When her fingers reached the lion’s head, it blazed the color of molten metal, opened its mouth, and roared loudly. When the roaring ceased, the mouth remained open, forming an opening into the room. Shal reached through the lion’s mouth and pulled on a latch, then removed her hand. Where no seam had shown before, the door parted vertically down the center, and the two halves disappeared into the pocket frame of the doorway.