Kern's heart seemed to be fluttering inside his steel breastplate like a frightened sparrow. Why was he the one destined to find the Hammer of Tyr?
Anton rose to his feet. "Kern Desanea," the cleric intoned ceremoniously, "will you accept the title of Hammerseeker and quest for the lost Hammer of Tyr?"
Kern nodded jerkily, his face pale. A year ago, on the day he had become a paladin-aspirant, he had sworn to serve Tyr to the best of his abilities. Now Tyr had given him the chance to save Phlan. "I'll do my best, Patriarch Anton," he managed to say.
Tarl grinned proudly at his son, while Listle laughed.
"Hammerseeker, eh?" the elf remarked. "Not bad, Kern. Not bad at all. For an ogre-brained oaf, that is."
"Thanks, Listle," Kern replied wryly.
The temple's sole surviving paladin, a tall, handsome man with steel-blue eyes, approached. "Patriarch Anton, we bow to your wisdom," Rialad began in his sonorous voice. "However…"
Anton raised a shaggy eyebrow in curiosity. "However what, Rialad?" The Patriarch knew Rialad to be a skilled warrior whose loyalty to the temple was beyond reproach. Yet the paladin had an exaggerated opinion of himself and a penchant for questioning Anton's authority.
"The prophecy of Bane has spoken clearly. Someone must quest for the hammer."
"Not someone," Tarl interjected. "The only one-"
The square-chinned paladin interrupted. "Yes, I know, Brother Tarl," he said graciously. "However, I am this temple's last paladin of Tyr and the natural candidate to take up the quest. Rest assured, I will choose four of the temple's best warriors to accompany me as the prophecy instructs. No foes will dare stand before us." Rialad clenched a fist dramatically. "The hammer will be ours!"
Anton and Tarl both opened their mouths to protest, but Listle was faster than either of them.
"But you can't deny the prophecy!" The elf was positively seething. She had never cared for Sir Rialad's lofty, self-important demeanor. "Kern is destined to be the Hammerseeker."
Sir Rialad smiled indulgently at Kern. "Ah, yes," the paladin said, putting a fatherly arm around Kern's shoulders. "Kern is a brave lad. I have nothing but confidence that one day he will prove himself a paladin of great worth." He turned to address the others. "But surely the consummate paladin Miltiades could not have intended that a mere stripling quest for the hammer while the fate of Phlan hangs in the balance."
For some reason Sir Rialad's expression made the paladin-aspirant shudder, and Kern had to fight the urge to squirm out of the knight's grasp.
"But we dare not disregard Miltiades' prophecy!" Tarl said angrily.
"So you would send an inexperienced puppy into the face of peril?" Rialad retorted. The paladin spun on Kern. "You understand, don't you, aspirant? We must place the good of the temple above our own ambitions for greatness. That is the first lesson you must learn as a paladin. You see as well as I how foolish it would be for you to seek the hammer, do you not? I have a strength and experience you could never hope to match."
Kern shook his head dizzily. Sir Rialad's words made sense. He didn't like being called a puppy, but he knew that he was young and sadly inexperienced. He opened his mouth to reply as the paladin watched expectantly.
"Kern, don't!" Listle hissed in his ear.
He ignored the elf. The word yes formed itself on Kern's tongue.
He never had the chance to utter it.
The enchanted stones of the temple's portico thundered a warning chant. "Beware! Foes approach! Stand ready, clerics of Tyr! Beware!"
Kern and Listle exchanged a look of surprise. Instantly the clerics around them jumped into action.
"Seal the gates!" Anton bellowed.
Four clerics shut and barred the main gates. Never in the temple's history had the gates been breached, for underneath the ornately carved wood were thick plates of forge-hardened steel. The clerics of Tyr themselves were every bit as hardened beneath their kind and courteous manners. Ever battle-ready, they wore chain mail concealed beneath their gray robes.
Kern dashed up the steps leading to the battlements above the gates, Listle hot on his heels. Already clerics were readying piles of heavy stones and lighting fires under waiting caldrons of pitch. Kern gazed down the street that led up to the temple's gates.
"Something tells me we'd better get ready for a fight," Listle noted as a horde of men clad in ebony armor marched toward the temple, snaking through the street like a vast, dark serpent.
"You don't say," Kern said sarcastically.
"May Tyr grant us his protection!" Kern heard Anton shout below. The patriarch's voice was instantly echoed by a score of others. Suddenly, a shimmering blue nimbus sprang to life about the gates. The holy wards infused the portals, strengthening them with magical power.
Listle rummaged through the countless pouches hanging from her belt, readying the mystical components necessary for her spells, while Kern hefted his battlehammer. From his vantage on the wall he could survey all the preparations. Half the temple's clerics had mounted the wall, ready to drop stones and fiery pitch through the machicolations when the enemy arrived. The remainder had gathered in the courtyard below, poised to fight hand to hand should the enemy somehow manage to breach the walls. A few of the older clerics, Tarl among them, sequestered themselves inside the temple's main hall. There they wove spells of protection around the temple's entrance, preparing a last stand in the event the clerics were forced to retreat into the temple itself.
A cleric, whom Kern recognized as Sister Briatha, approached. Before he could say anything, she touched him on the forehead and whispered a brief prayer. Suddenly Kern felt a warm wave of strength flow through his limbs, and a flame of courage ignite in his heart. He barely had time to react before Briatha had moved on to the preoccupied Listle.
The elf looked up in surprise as Briatha joined the other clerics along the wall.
"Why am I glowing blue?" she asked Kern in annoyance.
"It's a protection spell," he explained. "Be grateful. Tyr himself is watching over us this day."
"Really? Well, I can take care of myself," Listle replied haughtily. "Besides, blue isn't my color."
She drew out a pinch of powder from a small bag and sprinkled it over her head. Immediately, a silvery luminescence swirled about the elven mage. "There!" she said in satisfaction. "That's more like it."
Suddenly there was no more time for preparations. The attacking army was storming the walls.
"Loose the rocks!" Anton shouted as he sensed the first emanations of dark magic probing the holy enchantments that strengthened the gates.
Kern and the others atop the wall dropped a volley of rocks onto the throng of armored attackers below. Many raised their shields to deflect the heavy stones, but not all were swift enough. A score of enemy warriors fell to the ground, their black armor crushed, never to rise again.
An imposing figure stepped to the fore of the enemy horde. He was a huge man, and, though clad in the same smooth black armor as the others, he was the obvious leader. The heavy stones the clerics dropped had no effect on him. They flashed crimson as they struck him and exploded into harmless dust.
"Hear me, weaklings of Tyr!" the leader boomed in a deafening voice. "I am called Slayer, and I bring doom. Save yourselves an agonizing demise. Deliver unto me the tome called The Oracle of Strife, and I promise that your deaths will be swift."
"I guess they want the Hammer of Tyr, too!" Listle whispered.
Kern shook his head. "More likely the riches that are buried with it."
Slayer placed his gauntleted hands on his hips in an arrogant pose. "What is your answer, clerics of Tyr?"
"This is our answer!" shouted one of the clerics, the stone-faced Brother Edmorel. At his command a torch was thrust into a caldron of pitch, and a sheet of fire poured down on the attackers. Screams of agony rose up as a dozen warriors roasted alive inside their armor, but the burning pitch dripped off Slayer as if it were mere water.
"So be it," the huge
man proclaimed. He raised a gauntleted hand, and a sizzling bolt of sickly green color streaked directly toward Brother Edmorel, striking the cleric with terrible force. His cry of agony was cut short as he began to dissolve into green ooze. In a moment there was nothing left of the cleric but a dark stain on the stone where he had stood his ground. Both Kern and Listle stared in mute horror.
Slayer muttered a dread incantation. Inky black energy swirled around him, solidifying into a huge battering ram crowned with an ogre's head. A dozen of the ebony-armored men propelled the ram toward the gates. The soft wood veneer cracked, splinters flying in every direction. The hard steel beneath shuddered but stood strong.
Again and again the battering ram pounded the gates, but the spells of protection held. The blue nimbus did not even waver. With an angry jerk of his hand, the man called Slayer banished the battering ram back to the shadows from which it had been conjured.
"There's something strange about him," Listle muttered. "I have an idea." Before Kern could stop her, she stood to hurl a tiny sphere of silver magic at the man.
Her aim was true. The glowing sphere shattered against Slayer's breastplate with a sound like breaking glass. He took a step backward in surprise, then grinned evilly, apparently unharmed.
Kern groaned. "That spell certainly didn't work, Listle."
"Is that so?" she asked archly.
Kern stared in wonder as tendrils of silver magic coiled around Slayer's form. Suddenly the huge man's visage began to warp and crack. His skin seemed to melt into a foul puddle at his feet, revealing dark scales. Slowly, black wings unfurled from Slayer's back; recurved talons sprang from his fingertips. A cry of fury came from a maw filled with teeth as sharp as knives. Listle's magic had dispelled the illusion that had been Slayer's disguise.
"It is a fiend!" Kern heard someone shout. "An abishai!"
A wave of alarm swept through the clerics. This was no mundane enemy. Only powerful wizards could summon and control such creatures. The followers of Tyr gripped their warhammers more tightly. This was not going to be an easy battle.
The abishai, Slayer, bellowed to the sky. Suddenly nine dark shapes swooped down from above.
The clerics atop the battlements swarmed for cover as the fiends dove overhead. The spinagons alighted on the street, each plunging two clawed fists into the wall. Their arms disappeared up to their shoulders as if they were thrusting into mud instead of solid rock. Then, their wings beating with effort, the fiends began to pull. There was a hideous sucking sound as the stones began to distort and bend. Gradually, with their massively muscled arms, the spinagons pushed the magically softened stones to either side until each had created a hole in the wall. As the holes became larger, the fiends crawled inside, using their wings to spread the stones farther and farther apart. In moments, each of the fiends had become a living archway supporting a man-sized opening in the wall.
The unthinkable had happened. The walls had been breached.
"Guard the gaps!" came Anton's bellow from below. Quickly, Listle, Kern, and the clerics scrambled down the stone stairs to the courtyard. There they helped the others confront the ebony warriors now streaming through the nine holes held open by the spinagons.
Luckily, the enemy could only come through the holes one at a time. Though clad in forbidding armor and wielding swords of dark steel, there was something clumsy about the attackers. They did not move with the strength and ease of warriors. Rather, their attacks were furtive and sloppy, and they held their swords awkwardly.
However, when one died beneath the crushing blow of a cleric's hammer, another was already slipping through the hole. More and more began to dodge past the clerics guarding the gaps. Soon the courtyard was awash in a sea of battle. Kern found himself swinging his hammer for his life, denting dark helms and breastplates with each blow. This was his first real battle, and he found his blood surging with a strange mixture of terror and exuberance, his training singing in his veins. Maybe he wasn't a true paladin like Sir Rialad, but he was holding his own.
Still more black-armored men poured through the spinagons' holes. Anton and the other clerics began chanting a war song. In truth, the hymn was more than a simple prayer to steel the hearts of the defenders. It also provided an unusual method of synchronizing attacks.
When the clerics came to a key phrase in the chant, all of them swung their weapons twice as hard and twice as fast. The effect was stunning. The enemy was taken completely off guard by the coordinated counterattack. Those that did not immediately crumple to the ground were driven back, and the clerics started the chant anew.
Then the fiend Slayer stepped through one of the gaps.
Listle, the first to respond, conjured a huge silvery wyvern. The magical beast spread its batlike wings and swooped at Slayer, claws outstretched, its cry piercing the air. The onyx warriors cringed in terror, but their fiendish leader simply batted the wyvern aside with a casual flick of its wrist. The beast was torn into ethereal tatters. The illusion had not fooled Slayer.
A band of hammer-wielding clerics tried to battle their way toward the huge abishai fiend, but they were repulsed by a phalanx of ebony swordsmen. The creature spread its sable wings. Harsh words of magic tumbled from its forked tongue. For a heartbeat Slayer's warriors were wreathed by a faint crimson light. Then each of them plunged into the melee with renewed ferocity. The clerics of Tyr defended valiantly, but they were outnumbered and tiring. Inch by inch, the dark warriors began to push the disciples of Tyr back toward the temple.
With an ominous sucking sound, the spinagons detached themselves from the wall. Now that the gaps were no longer needed, they were free to join the battle. Slayer hissed foully to two of the fiends, and the pair began threading their way through the melee-directly toward Kern.
"They intend to capture the Hammerseeker!" Kern heard someone cry.
The fiends brought out a net lined with heavy lead weights, and Kern tried to lunge out of the way, hoping he would be able to move fast enough to escape entanglement.
Then the fiends stopped abruptly, staring in confusion. So did the young warrior. Suddenly there were a half-dozen Kerns standing in the courtyard, each identical to the other, all looking equally dumbfounded. The fiends hesitated, not certain which was the real Hammerseeker. When they finally cast the net over one, the image vanished in a puff of smoke.
Kern didn't waste the second chance.
"Scatter!" he shouted to his mirror images. He dashed through the throng as five replicates of him did likewise. Luckily, the fiends chased after one of the fakes. Kern breathed a sigh of relief, casting a look of gratitude in Listle's direction. The elven mage was deep in concentration, preparing another spell.
"Fall back!" Anton's baritone boomed out over the courtyard. "To the temple!"
Fending off blows as he went, Kern retreated up the steps of the temple and into the columned portico. Sir Rialad was the last one inside the protective aura Tarl and several other clerics had cast to guard the entrance. A score of ebony-clad warriors dashed toward the temple, but when they reached the steps, they were instantly immolated by crackling fire. In moments, nothing was left of them but charred husks.
Slayer hurled a ball of jet-black magic against the aura. The dark magic was dissipated harmlessly, but the blue glow dimmed alarmingly for a moment. When it shone forth again, it was not as bright as before.
"I'm afraid the protections won't hold for long," Tarl said grimly. "That fiend must be a powerful sorcerer."
"Then we'll have to rely on our hammers," Sir Rialad said bravely. "We cannot let it capture The Oracle of Strife."
Another dusky sphere struck the shimmering ward that guarded the entrance. The aura wavered, then disintegrated in a shower of azure sparks. With cries of blood-lust, the armored warriors surged up the temple's steps, their black swords clashing in a deadly cacophony with the hammers of the clerics of Tyr.
Kern saw the abishai, Slayer, wade through the fray. As it drew closer to the temple the f
iend brought out a golden ring and slipped it over a clawed finger. Suddenly the abishai blinked out of sight. Kern drew in a hissing breath. How could they fight an enemy they couldn't see?
The nine spinagons joined the fray, and the battle took a dire turn. The clerics of the temple were fighters of courage and skill, but the otherworldly fiends had tipped the odds.
Kern watched in horror as Sister Briatha, the cleric who had blessed him before the battle, died screaming, impaled on the recurved talons of one of the spinagons. The monster shook off the woman's limp form, advancing on Kern, who barely fended off its cruel swipes with the whistling arc of his hammer. The clerics around him were in similar predicaments. Either the warriors or fiends alone they might have been able to handle, but both… Kern didn't allow himself to finish the gloomy thought. He gritted his teeth, sweat pouring from his brow, as he swung his hammer again and again.
"I think it's time to do something about those fiends," Listle said to nobody in particular. She called the words of a spell to mind, then murmured an arcane incantation. Suddenly a tiny, brilliant point of light appeared in her hand. She lifted her palm, and the sparkle of magical light fluttered through the air like a bumblebee toward its target. It was such an innocuous sight that the spinagon did not even notice it until the light buzzed around the fiend's head and flew inside its pointed ear.
Suddenly, the spinagon's eyes went wide. It let out a terrible, gurgling scream, and lashed out with its claws, striking at some unseen enemy.
Listle allowed herself a smile of satisfaction at the deadly spell she had cast. Though the battle was entirely in the fiend's imagination, the consequences would be very real and quite fatal.
In its frenzy, the fiend did not see the ebony warriors- its own allies-who died screaming under its clawed feet. Soon another of the fiends began to shriek in terror, lashing out wildly with its talons. The others soon followed suit. In seconds, all nine spinagons were whirling about the courtyard, slicing onyx-armored warriors to ribbons with their blind flailings.
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