Pool of Radiance (19 page)

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 appeared, 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.

“Neat trick,” Ren commented, still nervous about watching Shal reach into the lion’s mouth.

Shal felt relieved. She knew that if the words had been spoken incorrectly or if her concentration were broken, she could have lost her arm or worse. She knew from the cold knot wrenching ever tighter in her stomach that she was near the place of Ranthor’s death. The room behind the bronze door was obviously an equipment chamber, not unlike the one she had been working in when Ranthor sent his message through the crystal. Shal didn’t stop to look around the room but proceeded straight across it, knowing that Ren and Tarl would follow.

The door on the opposite side of the room, beyond the racks and shelves full of vials and beakers, was of plain wood. Shal knew it contained the most insidious death trap of all.

“Cerulean, I need your help on this one,” Shal said, working a spell of enlargement to return the horse to his original size. Then she backed away from the door and took position behind a row of shelving, motioning for Tarl and Ren to follow suit.

Cerulean didn’t need to be told what to do. He began to paw the floor and snort. Folding his ears tight against his head, his white coat began to glow, much as it had downstairs, but this time the glow radiated around him like a shield. Finally he moved up to the door, reared on his hind legs, and kicked the wooden door in with his front hooves.

Immediately the door burst into thousands of splinters, each tipped with red—poison, Shal knew. The splinters sparked crimson against the horse’s blue shield, creating flare upon flare of purple fire so intense the three could hardly look on.

When the flames finally died down, Cerulean stood immobile, looking spent, in the open doorway. Shal emerged from her hiding place behind the shelf and went to him quickly. She patted the horse’s withers gently, feeling an appreciation and affection for the big animal she had not felt before. “Well done, Cerulean! Ranthor would be proud of you.”

Ranthor is gone, Mistress. Cerulean nodded toward the room with his head. I hope you are proud of me.

Shal patted the familiar again, then stepped past him into the spell-casting chamber.

Ranthor’s body lay crumpled behind the casting stand. Crystal fragments littered the room, many glued to the floor in Ranthor’s blood. As Shal knelt beside her former master, her shoulders and then her whole body began to shake as she felt the tears come. She had held on to the faintest, most minute hope that what she had seen in the globe was a vision only and not reality, that the chill she had experienced at her teacher’s passing was only a reaction to a vivid nightmare. Now the truth lay before her. It was irreversible. And so she wept.

Tarl knelt behind Shal, encircling her in his arms, his head bowed. Silently he prayed, both for his friend and for the man he had not known. There were no words, he knew, to comfort Shal, any more than there were words that would make him feel better about Anton or Sontag or Donal or any of the others.