Pool of Radiance

11 Valhingen Graveyard

The trip back, without the mare, was slow, in places arduous. Even with Cerulean carrying all their equipment, it was taking the three nearly twice as long to return to the city as it had to travel to the sorcerer’s island. No one was complaining, though. In fact, all three of the companions were lost in thoughts of their own.

Ren was thoroughly enjoying what was proving to be a quiet return journey. He realized that the victory against Yarash had been Shal’s, but as he watched the Stojanow’s waters begin to wash away the black poison from the sorcerer’s pyramid, he felt an unrivaled sense of achievement. He looked at the brown riverbanks and imagined what they would look like in another year, with healthy new grasses spreading across the now-barren earth and the first saplings poking their leaves above the ground. The recovery would be far from instantaneous, and the gray stumps would remain for years, ugly reminders of one man’s gross abuse against nature, but the healing growth would be a signature of hope.

Ren realized that an entire lifetime of thieving in the city wouldn’t give him half the sense of purpose he’d felt on the missions to Thorn Island and the gnoll stronghold, and contributing to the purge of the Stojanow had done more for his spirit than any loot he had ever stolen as a thief.

Ren was as ready as he would ever be to accompany Shal as she sought Cadorna’s punishment for the slaying of her mentor, and he had already made up his mind to ignore Tarl’s insistence that the young cleric face the vampire alone. But most of all, Ren was ready to face the Lord of the Ruins himself, whoever he was—the real murderer of Tempest.

In this quiet interlude as the cleric and his companions hiked the length of the rejuvenating Stojanow, Tarl meditated on the messages he had received from his god when he met him in the innermost sanctuary of the temple. In the same moment in which he comprehended that his healing powers would be greatly enhanced by the ioun stone, Tarl had also learned that Anton could not possibly recover until the master of the word embedded in his forehead was banished from this plane. The tremendous joy he’d felt when he healed Shal was nearly overshadowed by the fact that, try as he might, he could not heal Anton. Neither would Tarl recover the Hammer of Tyr and avenge the deaths of his brothers until he saw the destruction of the beast that ruled over the graveyard.

Tarl’s faith had carried him through Sokol Keep, and it had driven him through the gnoll encampment. He wanted very much to believe that Tyr would see fit to aid him against the vampire, but the memories of the sounds—the soul-rending shrieks of the horses and the agonized screams of his dying brothers—challenged his faith over and over again. Tarl had never known such fear, and as much as he wanted to destroy the vampire and its minions, he was also terrified of facing them.

Shal was still thinking about her confrontation with Yarash. The terror she had felt initially at confronting the powerful sorcerer had turned to exhilaration as her mastery of the weather challenged his and she was able to match him spell for spell in magical combat. She understood now that she had failed at her Weather spells earlier simply because it had not been important enough for her to succeed. She had learned the invaluable lesson that a spell’s intensity could be magnified many times over by the attitude of the caster. It had not been until she was able to channel her own raw fear and use it against Yarash that her power over the cyclone had become complete and she was able to cast spell after spell in rapid succession.

The fact that the Staff of Power was gone was just beginning to sink in. Without the staff for protection, Shal could no longer think of spell memorization as routine or idle. If she had faced Yarash without the staff, she would have been forced to cast a Lightning Bolt spell of her own. Her life and the lives of her friends would have depended on the spell’s success. She could never again afford to look at her magical studies as mere academic exercises. Every time she committed a new spell to memory, it would be in preparation—preparation to do whatever necessary to see to the conviction of Porphyrys Cadorna, preparation to aid Tarl in his quest at Valhingen Graveyard, and preparation to help Ren as he sought the beast responsible for the murder of Tempest.

They waited near the mouth of the Stojanow for a full day before the ferry finally arrived. All three of them felt relief when, two hours later, the small sailing vessel finally approached the docks of Phlan. Though Shal, Ren, and Tarl each called another place home, Civilized Phlan had become a home between homes for all of them, and the sight of the sturdy walls surrounding the civilized city was comforting. None of the three particularly sought fame or recognition, but they knew that they would soon receive the accolades of the city and the town council for their success in halting the pollution of the Stojanow River. The proof of their deed would be evident within a matter of days as fresh, untainted water would wash the last of the sorcerer’s black sludge into the Moonsea, where it would be diluted millions of times over, and finally come to rest deep in the great body of water.

As the ship’s captain maneuvered his vessel closer to the docks, Ren nudged Tarl and Shal and pointed toward the shore. A row of soldiers stood at ten-pace intervals the length of the shoreline and the docks. All were identically outfitted in black, with chain mail vests depicting an archetypal demon’s eye on a red crest. “The Black Watch,” observed Ren. “Cadorna must’ve convinced the council to replace the town guards with them.”

“Why such heavy protection along the docks?” asked Shal.

Ren shrugged. “There’s probably been quite an influx of riffraff since word got around that two new sections of Civilized Phlan have been opened up recently.”

The captain, who also served as crew, hurried back and forth as he first prepared the moorings on the port bow and stern, then expertly guided the ferry in toward the longest of the harbor’s piers. The four soldiers closest to the ferry approached hurriedly and made motions as if to help with the moorings, but just as the small ferry eased in alongside the dock, one of the four heavily armed soldiers shouted, “By order of Porphyrys Cadorna, First Councilman of the City of Phlan, prepare to boarded!”

Shal looked wide-eyed at Ren and Tarl. “First Councilman?”

Ren’s reaction was instant. “We’ve got to get this ship turned around.”

“But we have evidence against Cadorna,” argued Tarl in a low voice. “When we present it to the rest of the council, they’ll—”

Tarl stopped in midsentence as he saw Shal and Ren both shaking their heads. They knew there would be no council meeting, no hearing that would result in Cadorna’s conviction. In fact, with Cadorna now in the First Councilman’s seat, they knew that the only conviction would be their own. “Didn’t you read the sorcerer’s notes?” Ren hissed. “Cadorna knows about the ioun stones. He’s behind all of this!”

Ren didn’t wait for Tarl to agree. Quickly he turned away from Shal and Tarl, hurried to where the captain stood at the stern, and placed a knife tight against the man’s neck. “I don’t want any trouble. I don’t want to hurt you.” Ren spoke softly and smoothly. “I just want you to turn this boat around. Now!”

Tarl needed no more convincing. He loped to the bow and grabbed for the mooring rope the captain had tossed out. One of the soldiers of the Black Watch had hold of it, and the other three were approaching to help him haul it in. A fifth had joined the original four and was reaching for a gangplank.

“Ahoy on shore!” Shal shouted, facing the mercenaries and waving her arms in a circle to draw their attention. As soon as they all looked up, she tossed a handful of dust and hurriedly incanted the words of a Sleep spell.

The closest man was overcome immediately. He blinked, nodded, swayed forward and back, dropped his hold on the rope, and slumped forward off the pier and into the water. Two nearby mercenaries shouted an alarm to shore, and one of them bellyflopped onto the dock to grab for the mooring rope, which had been pulled into the water. The rope was still barely within reach, but just as he caught hold of it, he too was overcome by sleep. His eyes fluttered for a moment, and then his head drooped over the side of the pier.

Tarl continued to haul in the line, but the boat hadn’t turned yet. The captain wasn’t cooperating with Ren. Instead, the feisty sailor jerked his head down and away from the knife, jabbed his elbow hard into Ren’s ribs, and staggered forward. Ren lunged to gain a fresh hold on him, but as quick as a flash, the captain pulled a dagger from his belt. Ren quickly drew his own knives and was beginning to circle cautiously, when suddenly the captain spun and hurled his dagger toward the front of the boat.

Ren turned and watched the blade’s rapid flight. Poised on the end of the dock, a mercenary stood with a knife upraised, about to launch it at Ren. The captain’s blade lodged itself deep in his chest. Desperately he dropped his own knife and yanked the dagger from his chest. Blood gushed from the wound with each beat of his punctured heart, and he clutched his chest in a futile attempt to quell the flow of blood.

“You’re—you’re with us?” Ren asked wide-eyed.

“Aye. And if ye’d stopped to ask, ye’d have known a good deal sooner. Now get outta my way and keep those devils offa my ship so I can turn her around.”

Ren reached Tarl’s side at the bow just as the fourth and fifth soldiers began to charge up the gangplank. “Hold it right there!” Tarl shouted threateningly, his hammer raised.

But the soldiers ignored the warning. When they reached the end of the gangplank, they vaulted over Ren and Tarl, then pivoted immediately to face their adversaries. One wielded two short swords, as Ren did, and he and the ranger immediately faced off against each other, one mirroring the movements of the other. The other soldier faced Tarl. In his left hand, he wielded a dagger. In his right, he brandished a vicious-looking whip. Quickly he cracked the whip at Tarl. It smacked with the sharpness of close thunder a mere hairbreadth from Tarl’s shoulder, and Tarl instinctively jumped back. Once again the whip snaked out, this time at Shal, who was busy incanting a spell. She never finished it. She tried to dodge, but she wasn’t nearly as fast as the uncoiling weapon. The black leather cord of the whip whisked round and round her wrist. Its metal-tipped ends bit cruelly into the flesh of her hand. With one hard jerk, the mercenary yanked Shal off balance. She staggered to one side, and before she could recover, he retracted the whip and brought it down again. It ripped through the chimera leather of her sleeve, and the tips flayed the flesh of her shoulder.

At Shal’s cry of pain, Cerulean burst onto the deck, his nostrils flared wide, his ears pressed back flat against his head. The mercenary turned quickly to face the new threat and snapped his whip viciously at the big animal. But Cerulean was oblivious to the danger. He pawed the air with his great, sharp hooves. His muscles rippled as he reared to an awesome height above the man, and his hooves came down like hammers on the mercenary’s shoulders.

The man slashed up at the horse with his dagger, even as he toppled backward. His eyes bulged as he saw the huge horse rise up above him once more, and he scrambled and crab-crawled backward, terrified, searching desperately for any nook or cranny that would offer safety from the pummeling hooves. Again the horse’s hooves came down, this time on the man’s bent legs. They buckled under him, and he rolled to get away.

“Enough!” shouted Tarl, and he braved Cerulean’s wrath to try to help the soldier to his feet.

“Don’t … need … your … help!” The man’s eyes flared in rage as he screamed each word, slashing wildly with his knife. Tarl leaped back out of reach.

Cerulean reared and stomped on the soldier again, but his hooves did not stop the slashing motion of the soldier’s hand, and the big horse took a wicked cut that stretched from his cannon to his fetlock.

Before Cerulean could rear again, Tarl darted in once more. He slammed the knife from the man’s hands with one swing of his hammer, then cracked the man’s skull with his next swing.

Tarl glanced up to see six more soldiers storming the gangplank, headed straight for Shal, who had scrambled to her feet to face them. Tarl reached her side just as the first leaped toward her. The warrior-cleric released his hammer with a snap, and it slammed into the soldier’s forehead with explosive force that drove his head and neck backward. At exactly the same moment, Shal completed a Phantasmal Force spell, and the soldier and his companions were driven back as if by a tremendous gale. Two landed in the water, while the other four fell to the dock. At the same time, the captain was finally able to bring the ship around hard to starboard to catch the wind he needed to pull the vessel away from the pier.

Ren was within handshaking distance of his adversary, with sword pressed against sword. Suddenly the soldier gained the advantage, forcing Ren back against the cargo hold. Now the mercenary’s swords flashed with the speed of adders’ heads—in and out, in and out—jab, thrust, parry. It was all Ren could do to fend them off. At that moment, Cerulean, head down, with all the fury of the pain he shared with his mistress, charged. The horse thudded into the soldier’s side with enough force to send him staggering sideways, and Tarl hit him from the other side with his shield. Ren finished him off with a hard thrust through the ribs.

Tarl, Ren, and Cerulean stood still for a moment, and then they heard Shal, hissing the rapid breaths of a mantra for pain control. Sitting awkwardly, she was pressing a rag to the gashes on her shoulder, but blood was seeping through. Her wrist was already purpling where the tips of the whip had wrapped tight around it. Ren and Tarl rushed to her aid. Cerulean limped to her side, whinnying plaintively, blood welling the length of the slash on his lower leg.

“Look!” shouted Ren, pointing back at the pier. “More soldiers are coming!”

The captain had gotten the small ferry scudding along at a fair clip in the brisk breeze, but a small group of the Black Watch had commandeered a small schooner, and they were preparing to cast off the line.

“Can you outrun them?” Tarl hollered back to the captain. “I need time to heal these two!”

“I can try!” the captain shouted back. “How far are ye goin?”

“The other side of the river,” Ren called back quickly.

Tarl looked to Ren for some sort of explanation.

“No matter where we go, they’re going to come after us, but they’ll think twice about following us into the graveyard.” Ren paused. “That’s where we were planning to go next, isn’t it?”

For a moment, Tarl didn’t say anything. Then he nodded quickly and said, “Go help the captain. I’ll take care of Shal.” Tarl felt trapped. He was fleeing a boatload of pursuing soldiers to return to a place where he knew he would have to face an army of undead. He did his best to quell thoughts of Valhingen Graveyard and focus on what he must do right this minute for Shal.

He started to work on her shoulder first, cleansing her wounds with a wet cloth. Shal sucked in air through clenched teeth each time he dabbed at the stinging wounds. When he had cleansed her wounds, Tarl put his hands on her shoulder. The lacerations were inflamed and painful-looking, but they weren’t especially deep. The energy that flowed through Tarl’s fingertips was strong, and he could feel the skin beginning to heal at his touch. Then suddenly the smooth tingle of the healing force was interrupted. Tarl realized that one of the whip’s tips had bared an earlier wound of Shal’s. Tarl remembered it well: Sokol Keep … the axe wound. Tarl’s faith had not been so strong at that time, and neither were his skills. He had given his best effort, but he realized now that the wound had not healed completely.

Tarl withdrew his hands from Shal’s shoulder for a moment as he called for special power from Tyr. Then he placed his hands on her shoulder once more and held tight. Tingling energy surged between him and her as he focused on the deeper, older wound. He could feel the energy purging, expunging the decay, and then he could sense the mending, that wonderful warmth of regenerating tissue. As always, he felt a very special exchange of spirit with Shal. When he was done, the only sign of either the old wound or the new one was the rent leather of her tunic. He said a silent thank-you to Tyr for granting him the ability to heal Shal.

Because of the swelling and bruises, Shal’s hand and wrist looked bad, but the cuts appeared to be shallow, abrasions really. It was not until Tarl squatted beside Shal and clasped her wrist in his hands to heal it that he realized that the tails of the whip had buried grime and dirt beneath the skin for the length of the cuts. He said nothing to Shal. She smiled up at him as he worked. Tarl felt the exhilaration of healing one more time, but he also felt a slight drain from using his clerical powers twice in rapid succession.

What about me? Cerulean’s question jogged Shal’s awareness.

“Tarl, look!” Aghast, Shal pointed at the horse’s leg. A pool of blood had formed beside one hoof, and blood was matted the length of Cerulean’s foreleg. “Can you help him?” She stood up and put one arm around the big stallion’s neck, marveling at the speed and totality of her own recovery.

Without hesitation, Tarl cleansed the gash in the horse’s leg. Blood that had started to clot freed up, and fresh blood pulsed down the foreleg, adding to the puddle by Cerulean’s foot. Tarl pressed his hands over as much of the wound as he could. As healing energy left him for the third time, Tarl started to sway, and as the wound began to close over, he had to catch his balance with one hand to keep himself from slumping down onto the deck in a faint.

“Tarl!” Shal scrambled to his side. “What’s—what’s wrong?” she asked, anxiously steadying him with her strong arms before he swooned.

“Just … tired,” he said in a puff of breath. “Need rest … no time …”

“Shhhh.” Shal pulled Tarl close and whispered the words of a cantrip that would double the intensity of Tarl’s rest. Then she turned back to the horse. Are you okay? she probed.

It still hurts. He didn’t quite finish, but it’s stopped bleeding—

“The schooner’s getting closer!” Ren’s shout carried from the other end of the boat. “Tarl! Shal! Can you help with that sail?”

“In a minute!” Shal shouted back. She laid Tarl down gently on the deck and removed her own healing potion from the Cloth of Many Pockets. Quickly she applied a drop to each of his temples in hopes that its powers extended to rejuvenation as well as physical healing.

In the meantime, Cerulean had made his way to the flapping sail Ren had pointed to and was trying to get hold of it by grasping the untied end with his teeth. He had probably pulled the stay loose when he tried to trample the mercenary, and now he was doing his best to make up for his clumsiness.

Not waiting for Tarl to respond to her treatment, Shal went to Cerulean’s aid. She was no whiz at knot-tying, but she did her best to secure the sail. Just as soon as she got it pulled taut into place, the whole sail filled with a gust of wind, and the small ship shot forward. Looking back, Shal could see that the Black Watch’s schooner had indeed gotten closer. In fact, it was rapidly approaching arrow range despite the ferry’s increased pace.

Shal glanced quickly at Tarl. He hadn’t moved. By the gods, she hoped he’d be all right—and soon. For the moment, she did her best to focus her thoughts on the approaching vessel and the magic she would need to stop it. The Weather spells were still the freshest in her mind. She let her body sway gently with the slight rocking motion of the boat. Then she let herself feel the uneven surging and gusting of the southern crosswind. Finally, with a gesture and the mouthing of a spell, she caught the unexpelled force within the gentle wind in the space between her two hands, expanding the force and channeling it away from herself. She directed it to push at the waters surrounding the approaching schooner. Restless waves rolled up from the calm surface of the water, and the entire expanse of sea between the schooner and the ferry began to roil and churn.

Shal pushed with her left hand and pulled with her right, pushed with her left hand and pulled back with her right, over and over again. She watched as the schooner began to spin involuntarily, in the beginnings of a whirlpool. A feeling not unlike electricity tingled up and down Shal’s spine, and she relished the sensation of power. Magical power, her magical power, was controlling the very wind and the waves, causing a whole boat to turn round and round. She continued to push with one hand and pull back with the other, push and pull back, faster and faster. She started to repeat the words of the spell, saying them even louder so she could hear herself over the whining wind and the distant screams of the men on the schooner.

Then she felt strong hands grab her from behind, and Tarl’s shout broke her concentration. “No! Stop!” He pulled her around to face him. “Don’t kill my brothers! There’s no need to kill them!”

Shal stared at him, taken aback by his regained strength, but not comprehending his message at all.

Cerulean nosed in and blocked the cleric, pushing him back with his body. Shal took up the spell where she had left off. The waters hadn’t stopped swirling. A few movements of her hands and the water was churning with renewed ferocity. The schooner swirled crazily and within minutes disappeared nose-first into the growing spiral. The whirlpool swallowed the boat like a giant maw gulping down an insect. Then the swirling stopped, but the water continued to froth and boil.

Shal spun around and quickly ran to Tarl, who was sitting on the deck behind Cerulean. She squatted beside him and held his face in her hands and made him look at her. “Are—are you okay, Tarl? Do you know where you are?”

“I’m … sorry,” said Tarl, rubbing his head with both hands. “I was dreaming … about the graveyard. It was so real…. The vampire was standing right there.” Tarl pointed at the rail along the stern, where Shal had been standing only moments before. He killed them … my brothers, one after another. He wouldn’t stop killing! I’m … sorry.”

“Hey, it’s all right, Tarl. Are you sure you’re okay now? Really okay?”

“I … I guess I am.” Tarl held his hand out to Shal and started to stand. “I feel completely rested, as if I hadn’t used my clerical powers in days. I’m just jittery from the nightmare. Is your shoulder all right?”

Shal didn’t get a chance to answer because both she and Tarl turned as one when the captain shouted, “Sail’s loose again!” and they leaped like a team for the wayward piece of cloth. Unfortunately the winds were wilder than they had been, stirred even at this distance from the whirlwind force Shal had generated, and the sail flapped high, slapping loudly against itself. It slipped teasingly down and then flapped up again before they could catch it.

It took several tries before Shal caught hold of the sail. Tarl retied the knot, and they went to the bow of the boat, where Ren was securing another guy wire at the captain’s direction. As before, once the sail was secured, it filled gloriously, and the small ship scudded forward at a brisk pace.

The captain had steered wide to avoid the still-blackened waters at the mouth of the Stojanow River, and now the ferry was finally approaching the opposite shore.

“You’ll be wantin’ to debark in a hurry,” said the captain, addressing Ren. “You can be certain if a ship of the Black Watch goes down, there’ll be more followin’. There’s no way I can anchor. I’m afraid that horse is gonna break a leg tryin’ to make it down to the water. How’d it get on here, anyhow?”

“The same way he’ll get off,” answered Shal, pointing to the cloth at her belt.

I’ll try the gangplank, the horse argued.

And what? Dive off it? Shal pursed her lips, stared him down, and pointed once more. With no further complaints, Cerulean dove in.

“Well, I’ll be!” The captain looked in awe at Shal. “I thought that little storm ye whipped up was pretty fancy, but makin’ a horse disappear into your belt—well, that’s some magic!” He wagged a finger at the three of them and said, “Now, get off a my boat while the gettin’s good. The water here should be about ten foot deep, so its safe to dive.”

Shal quickly added some of their gear to the Cloth of Many Pockets, then she, Ren, and Tarl dived overboard and swam for shore.

The captain had already turned the ferry away and was well out in the water before the three even made it to the rocky beach.

“So what now?” Shal pulled off her soaked leather boots and stood in a sandy section of the boulder-strewn beach. “We got out of the city, but the captain was right. The Black Watch will be after us again. And you can be sure they’ll let Cadorna know we’re alive. We’re not accomplishing anything sitting on this beach.”

“You’re right. We need to get away from the beach,” said Ren. “We’ll go north and west, toward the graveyard. We’ll rest for the night, and then we’ll help Tarl get his hammer back.”

“No,” said Tarl softly.

“I understand,” said Ren. “If you aren’t ready, I have my own sights set on Valjevo Castle and that gutless monster that sends out assassins to murder women.” Ren wiped his salt-caked lips on his sleeve.

“No,” Tarl said again. “I’m ready. What I mean is that you won’t go with me. I’m the one who lost the hammer, and I’m the one who’s going to go get it.”

“Be realistic, Tarl,” Shal protested. “Just because you’re a cleric doesn’t mean you have to be a martyr!”

Ren walked around in front of Tarl, put his big hands on his friend’s shoulders, and gently pushed him back until he could sit him down on one of the boulders on the beach. “Shal’s right. Anyhow, we’ve been through all this before.”

The three argued heatedly until finally Tarl agreed to let Ren and Shal go with him. Since none of them wanted to sit in wet clothes with dusk setting in, waiting for soldiers to follow, they hiked inland, wide of the river, until they were a short distance from the graveyard, in a place with sufficient brush and cover to set up camp. Shal made a smokeless, arcane fire, but unfortunately it was heatless, too.

Ren volunteered to collect some wood. As he saw it, nobody from Phlan would attempt to come this way before morning, if at all. The creatures they had to worry about would more likely be repelled by a fire than drawn to it.

Alone together as they laid out their bedding and prepared a meager meal of dried fruits and meat, Shal and Tarl shared a brief few minutes of awkward silence.

Tarl cleared his throat and spoke hesitantly. “Shal, I really don’t know how to say this. I—I know you care for Ren—”

“It’s not the same,” Shal said softly.

Tarl looked straight into Shal’s green eyes. “Meaning?”

Shal held out her hands for Tarl’s. She had been so unsure of herself when they first met on the docks of Phlan that she was aware only of his tremendous kindness. Ren’s attraction to her had seemed justified somehow by her resemblance to Tempest, but Tarl’s she had not fully accepted. Even after he healed her in the temple, she’d felt he might simply be caught in the overwhelming emotion of the moment. But right now, as he grasped her hands and pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her, she knew that Tarl’s affection was both strong and genuine. “Meaning I love you, Tarl.”

As warm and wonderful as she had felt every time Tarl had healed her, she felt twice as good now. A special electricity, an uncanny awareness of his touch, coursed through her as she felt his fingertips ever so gentle on her neck and back, his soft kiss on her forehead, and then the warmth of his breath in her ear as he whispered, “I love you, too, Shal.”

There was a considerable thrashing in the brush nearby, and the two pulled apart instantly and drew their weapons just in time to see Ren returning to their makeshift campsite.

“You’re not very graceful for a ranger!” Shal jested, fighting her own embarrassment.

“Every bit as graceful as I want to be,” said Ren, smiling wistfully.

Tarl rushed over to help prepare the fire.

“There’s no sign that there’s been anything more fierce than skunks or snakes traveling through this stretch of woods any time recently,” said Ren. “I think we can sleep without worrying too much.”

Tarl still kept a late-night vigil, watching and listening for signs of anything, living or undead, nearby. It was as Ren said, quiet and still except for the lively dancing of shadows from their flickering fire. Tarl sat beside Shal and watched her as she slept, the red cascades of her hair aglow in the firelight. When all remained quiet, he silently pulled his bedroll next to hers and lay down. While the stars rose and fell in the sky, he prayed and communed with his god until he fell into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.

Ren feigned sleep the entire time Tarl kept watch. His mind was churning with thoughts of the morning. Tarl and Shal had both proved themselves as fighters, but Ren was convinced that neither would make it through the graveyard tomorrow. It was too easy to wake the undead, to make a move that would bring them springing up by the dozens as had happened at Sokol Keep. And the undead of Valhingen Graveyard weren’t former Tyrian clerics. His mind made up, he allowed himself a brief, restless sleep.

When Tarl and Shal awoke, Ren was gone. Shal’s first thought was that he somehow felt alienated because of what he had seen when he returned with the firewood, but Tarl shook his head firmly. “No. He’s told me more than once that I didn’t stand a chance of getting the hammer back. He believes that, with his rangering and thieving skills, he can get it. I think he went into the graveyard alone.”

Shal felt a chill was over her. She had heard Ren say as much yesterday—how the key to passing through a place filled with undead was stealth, and that Tarl’s presence, his aura, his medallion, everything about him offended the undead because he was a servant of a benevolent god.

They wasted no time and broke camp quickly. The sun wasn’t even completely over the horizon when they reached the gate to the cemetery. A huge lump caught in Tarl’s throat when Shal called for Cerulean, remembering the deaths of his brothers’ horses. Shal seemed to sense his thoughts and raised a hand to remind him that Cerulean was no ordinary horse.

Looking at the fence now, Tarl wondered how he and the others could ever have thought it was part of the city fortress. “We were country clerics from Vaasa,” he whispered. “Just a dozen country clerics from Vaasa.”

Shal looked at him questioningly, but Tarl didn’t explain. Instead, he squeezed her hand once and then lifted his hammer and shield high before they walked tentatively through the gate. His hammer glowed, and he could feel his holy symbol heavy and cool against his chest as they entered. To look at Valhingen Graveyard today, it could be a park. Asters and black-eyed Susans waved their brightly colored blooms above the tall grasses that grew untended over the gravestones. Purple bougainvillea and other less showy vines covered the handful of mausoleums interspersed here and there within the confines of the walls. Though less than three weeks had passed since Tarl had last stood on these grounds, he saw no sign of his brothers. He said a silent prayer for each of them, hoping that their spirits had managed to escape this place before their bodies were savaged by crude flesh-eaters.

Ren was nowhere in sight, but Shal and Tarl didn’t have to go far before they realized that Ren’s stealth did not get him across the graveyard unnoticed. Through a swath of parted grasses, they could see scattered skeleton bones forming a veritable pathway along the fence-line of the graveyard.

They followed the fragments, each hoping secretly that Ren had dealt successfully with all the skeletal warriors remaining in that portion of the graveyard. The path of bones was replaced at one point by a path of decayed body parts, the gruesome fragments of several zombies. The pall over the place was palpable, and despite their silent mantras and meditations, both Tarl and Shal were strung taut as catgut on a fiddle, waiting for something to happen.

Tarl took each step as though it meant his life, striving for silence even though he was sure his medallion and magical hammer couldn’t go unnoticed in this place of death. Shal followed suit, her Wand of Wonder raised before her. Cerulean was equally tense, stepping with the fluid, silent movements of a cat.

Tarl couldn’t help but think the vampire was taunting him with his silence, luring him and Shal ever closer to the heart of the graveyard before he unleashed every miserable creature under his control. One more step, he was sure, and the place would be alive with zombies, wraiths, and specters. The joke would be on him. He could picture the naked vampire, his bloodless skin draped over his emaciated frame. He could hear his skin-prickling voice, coaxing him closer. His sick, hateful laughter pounded against Tarl’s ears. No! Tarl raised one hand for Shal and Cerulean to stop. He could not let his fears or the silent persuasion of his foe get to him. He needed to pause a moment before going forward. Inhale the power of Tyr. Exhale the fear of Valhingen Graveyard. Inhale. Exhale. He touched his holy symbol and took another silent step, then another.

The tension shattered as a mutilated zombie bolted from the grass, sending clods of sod flying toward them. Instantly, responding completely on instinct, Tarl whipped his hammer hand forward with the full tension of a tightly wound spring packed behind it, decapitating the pitiful creature with the sheer force of his swing. A faint squeak came from Shal as she started at the sudden movement, and Cerulean’s entire coat jiggled for an instant as a jolt of fear charged through his body.

All three hesitated for a moment before going on. Tarl was once again caught up in the sensation that the horrors of the graveyard were being held back, stored up until he, Shal, Cerulean, and Ren, wherever he was, reached the point of no return—literally. Tarl prayed once more to Tyr and pushed ahead as before, moving with painstaking caution. Tarl approached the remnants of a wall that had long since turned to rubble. There were no more bones and no more dismembered body parts to follow. He could only assume that Ren had kept going in the same direction. He stepped gingerly onto the rubble and climbed over the wall as deftly and as quietly as he was able.

Shal and Cerulean were right behind him. It’ll be difficult for me to do this without slipping. Cerulean warned. Shal reached back to lead the big horse across, but it was she who slipped on the loose limestone fragments, sliding from the top of the rubble pile to the bottom, where her foot collided with the side of a granite mausoleum. Immediately the wooden door was flung open, slamming against the wall, and three horrible apparitions burst from the doorway.

“Wights!” yelled Tarl, charging forward to come to Shal’s defense.

Shal had never seen such creatures. Their long hair bristled with filth. Their faces were wild, like men turned beasts, with gaping canine mouths and glaring nocturnal eyes. Their arms were elongated, like an ape’s, and their gnarled hands bore claws long enough to inflict lethal damage. The wights separated right away, forcing Tarl and Shal and Cerulean to fight them one on one.

Tarl raised his shield against the wight nearest him. Talonlike claws flailed over and under his shield, and he found it all but impossible to get in a clean swing with his hammer. As fast as he was able to, he returned his hammer to his belt, smashed ahead with his shield, and did his best to splash holy water over the creature. It shrieked in pain and backed away, its flesh burning, but Tarl had not managed to hit any vital area, and much of the precious water went to waste. The creature charged again, and Tarl hurriedly uttered the words of a spell to raise the dead, the only thing he knew of that would stop a wight.

Shal backed up hurriedly, trying to keep enough distance between herself and the nearest wight so that she could utter an arcane command to activate the Wand of Wonder. As awkward as the creature appeared to be in the daylight, its big nocturnal eyes obviously pained by the sunlight, it charged forward, snarling and slavering and lashing out constantly with its yellow-taloned hands.

Just as the wight came near striking distance, Shal finished the incantation for the wand. Instantly flowers sprouted where the wight’s claws had been—clean, white daisies with buttery yellow centers.

The wight swiped at Shal with its hands, fully expecting to rake her eyes from her face with one stroke and her bowels from her abdomen with the next. Instead daisies lightly brushed Shal’s face and stomach, and the creature recoiled in horror. Shal might actually have laughed if it were not for the wight’s furious response. Without wasting another second, it rushed at Shal with its great maw open like a mad dog. Shal couldn’t move out of its way fast enough. She just barely had time to blurt a command to activate the Wand of Wonder again. Immediately, so fast that Shal didn’t even see it happen, the wight’s flesh vanished, and its skeleton crashed against her body. The impact sent her sprawling backward, and she scrambled frantically to get out from under the pile of bones, but the skeleton wasn’t animated; the wight was no longer.

Cerulean was glowing purple with fury and magic. Three times he reared and stomped on the grotesque creature in front of him, and three times it managed to claw the flesh of his forelegs as his hooves came down. The magical nature of his attack protected Cerulean from the wight’s life-sapping force but not from the pain of the wounds.

Each time the wight’s claws combed Cerulean’s flesh, blood ran freely, and at the same time, brilliant violet sparks flew, singeing the wight and causing it to cry out in a ghastly screech. It wasn’t until Cerulean reared for the fourth time that he caught the wight square on the head and smashed the creature’s brains into the ground.

Tarl’s spell worked instantly. The spirit of the dead, trapped in the wight, burst from the creature’s chest like a great puff of steam. The spirit was free at last, and the wight’s hideous body crumpled in front of Tarl like a discarded shirt.

The three would have preferred to take a minute or two to recover. Tarl might even have had the opportunity to notice the blood trickling down Cerulean’s legs and do something about it. But the moment of silence following their small victory was broken by the muffled sound of shouts and chants. The voices were eerie, distant, and inhuman, painful and chilling to listen to. They also seemed to have no source. There were no people, no humanoids, no undead visible. Cerulean’s ears pricked up, and the horse whinnied and stepped forward past the vault that had concealed the wights. He stopped in front of a small wooden stake that marked a fairly large open area, when his coat began to glow again, this time a soft amethyst.

A trapdoor, Cerulean advised Shal, marked by Ren’s blood. I can smell it.

“No!” Shal gasped the word.

It’s fresh, Cerulean assured her. Very fresh. He may yet be alive.

“What is it?” whispered Tarl.

Shal could see the blood herself as she got closer, and she pointed it out to Tarl. “Ren’s down there, underground.”

There was no more to say. Carefully they removed the sod and canvas, which hid a narrow wooden stairway. The stairs were steep, almost ladderlike, and they led down into darkness. With no coaxing from Shal, Cerulean entered the Cloth of Many Pockets. Tarl clasped his holy symbol and started down the stairs. He whispered a prayer as he descended, a selfish wish that the bottom of the stairs would be unguarded. He met no guards. Yet, even had any been present, he wouldn’t have been able to see them, for he was in total darkness. He reached up to help Shal through the entry, and then they stood together in the blackness. Shal didn’t want to reveal their presence by using her light wand if she didn’t have to, so they waited for their eyes to adjust and find some source of light, however small.

They were guided only by the sound of voices, the same strange chanting and shouting they had heard from above, but it was much closer now. A door, the only one they came upon in the dark, opened to a huge underground cavern. There seemed to be precious little light there, as well, but Tarl and Shal could make out figures—scores of them—in the dim, blue, twilightlike rays of light that barely illuminated the room.

The rays were fractured as they were blocked by zombies, absorbed by the blackness of the wraiths, captured and held in the eerie cloudlike presences of the specters, or fragmented by the bones of skeletons. The effect was the surreal look of a nightmare of the kind in which the haunted dreamer runs and runs through bluish mists and suddenly plummets to terrified wakefulness. Smells of mildew, dust, decay, and death made the dank underground air almost unbreathable, and the devilish chanting of the scores of undead set Shal’s and Tarl’s teeth on edge.

Suddenly a murmur started rippling from the back of the room, quickly spreading to the front. Creatures began to stir and then turned around in waves, causing the bizarre cold, blue light to fracture in new directions, revealing the undead in the cavern in even more horrible detail. Nausea clutched Tarl’s stomach, and he was overwhelmed by unadulterated terror. He knew that Shal’s presence, let alone his own, could not be a secret to these creatures.

Suddenly the light shifted again as the roomful of graveyard horrors shifted and parted, leaving an aisle between the two human intruders and the front of the room. At the far end of the aisle stood the vampire. Tarl sensed as much as saw him. “Very goooood,” Tarl heard the creature say, and its spooky, condescending voice made his flesh crawl. The vampire lifted the source of the blue light high into the air. Tarl knew before he ever saw it that it was the holy Hammer of Tyr, but its power and its light had been subverted. Half the hammer radiated blackness, while the blue light that remained was barely a reminder of what it once had been. Tarl shuddered as another wave of nausea and fear passed through his body.

The vampire turned toward Tarl and Shal but didn’t acknowledge them in any way. He merely twisted the hammer so its dim light shone on the space directly in front of himself. Shal’s gut twisted with the hammer when she saw the figure illuminated by the light.

“Ren!” The name choked in Shal’s throat as she saw her friend, prostrate before the gruesome creature of Tarl’s nightmares. Even from where she and Tarl stood at the opposite end of the room, they could tell that Ren’s clothing and armor were in tatters and that his blood was spilling on the ground.

“Welcoooome, huuumans,” said the vampire, and then he laughed the sick, uncontrolled cackle of a maniac amused by his own unthinkable deeds. An uncountable number of bony fingers suddenly began prodding Tarl and Shal, nudging and pushing them forward. Tarl fought the gut-wrenching sensation that there was no way out of this pit now that they were inside. He tried desperately to concentrate on the sacred hammer, tried to visualize how and when he could snatch it from the hands of the blasphemous creature at the front of the room.

When more skeletal fingers touched Shal, she incanted the words to a spell and began touching every bony hand, wrist, or arm with which she could make contact. Electricity surged from her hands, splintering and shattering every skeletal arm she grabbed, and she charged forward, trying to reach Ren. Before the skeletons could regroup, she cast another spell, and frigid wind blasted through the room as sheet upon sheet of sleet showered down on almost half of the room. The undead caught in the storm were blinded by it, and Shal could hear the age-old elbows and hips of countless skeletons shattering as they lost their footing and slipped on the ice-coated limestone. Zombies and wraiths shrieked and swore as well, as they, too, slipped and fell on the treacherous coating of ice.

Shal plunged forward through a break in the bodies and was almost to Ren when dozens more undead stepped over their fallen counterparts and pressed closer to her and to Tarl, who had followed close behind. The skeletons were no longer prodding and poking gently. Now swords and other weapons glimmered in the dull light.

Tarl lashed out with his hammer, slamming at every creature within his reach, trying to create an opening so he and Shal could get through. When he managed to find some room to spare, he raised his holy symbol. “Leave us, undead vermin!” he shouted. “In the name of Tyr, leave us!” A blue light flashed. Creatures that looked at it dropped to the ground, screaming.

Shal lifted her hands and began the incantation to another spell.

“Enough!” The vampire’s devil voice echoed in the room. “I will have no more of this!”

Shal extended her fingers in his direction and cast a Lightning Bolt spell. A brilliant bolt of electricity X-rayed the room, blinding many of the undead and forcing even the vampire to raise one arm over his eyes as a shield from the awful light. But the bolt never reached its target, the vampire’s chest. Instead, the energy of the lightning bolt was deflected by the subverted hammer. Shal never knew what hit her. In the same fraction of a second it took for the bolt to reach the hammer, it also returned and caught her solid. Her body jolted into the air like a tossed sack of flour and came down with the same sick thwack.

“No!” Tarl screamed. “No!” He was horrified. He would gladly have died ten times to save Shal.

The vampire roared in delight. “It’s just you and me now, booooy!” He gloated over the words. “I’m going to have your blood—and theirs—for dinner!”

Tarl could barely see. Tears of rage, fear, and pain burned in his eyes. He ripped his holy symbol from his neck and held it up while he charged toward the vampire like a man possessed. The medallion’s blue light shimmered rich and strong—until Tarl flashed it at the vampire. Then, with one turn of the defiled Hammer of Tyr, the light from the holy symbol was extinguished, absorbed by the black light of the hammer. The vampire drew his icy lips in a pucker, as if to spit, and puffed one noxious breath of air from the putrid depths of his lungs. Tarl was forced to stagger backward.

“Now, now. There is noooo reasonnnnnn to be soooo testy. Deny that foooolish god of yours. Jooooin my army, and I’ll see that your friends are given safe passage oooout of here.”

“So they can be living vegetables like Anton? No way, devil spawn!” Tarl took a precious few seconds to collect his thoughts so he could attempt to turn the undead vampire. He spoke a hurried prayer, calling for the force of Tyr to rise up against the creature. But Tarl’s effort was strangled, stifled by the hammer, just as the light from the medallion had been.

The vampire tipped his head back and laughed, a grating, wicked laugh. “Fooool! I grow tired of these games. Jooooin my army, now, or die!”

“Never!” shouted Tarl.

“Kill … him!” The vampire said the two words separately, distinctly, and each reverberated the length, breadth, and height of the cavern.

Before Tarl could lift his holy symbol or cast another spell, a dozen wraiths and twice that many specters circled him. Just one touched him, and he felt his body freeze up as though he’d spent hours naked on the great glacier. He tried desperately to lash out with his hammer, to run, to move, anything, but his body had lost its ability to react. All around him, the wraiths’ deadly nonmaterial fingers were reaching toward him. If he could force himself to move, he could stop one, two, maybe more before they killed him, but he could never hope to stop them all.

The vampire’s laughter rang out again, and Tarl did the only thing he could do. In one stiff movement, he dropped to his knees and called on the full power of Tyr. In less than the time required for a simple prayer, he had to accomplish what had taken him hours at the temple—a complete cleansing and baring of his innermost self to his god, the purging of all fear in exchange for total confidence. In one mental picture, he had to devote his entire being to selfless concern for Shal, Anton, Ren, and the Hammer of Tyr.

On bended knee, Tarl did not even see the workings of his faith. The Hammer of Tyr erupted with the light of the sun. One horrible, bloodcurdling scream escaped the blue lips of the vampire before he and his light-hating minions turned to dust. And then the brilliant light from the hammer bathed the room, shedding the pure, healing power of Tyr on Tarl, Ren, and Shal.