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stones, and now the councilman wants me to give them to him.. . '."
Ren's eyes were wide. "The Lord of the Ruins he sent the assassin to kill
Tempest!"
Shal reached out and patted Ren's arm soothingly. Then she pointed to an entry
in another ledger and started reading it aloud. " 'Thank goodness Porphyrys
has followed the instructions of the Lord of the Ruins this time and had those
two interfering windbags killed. Between the red mage and that blue fellow,
they were se-riously depleting my supply of experimental stock....' " Shal
could read no further.
"I've seen enough!" she said. "I wanted vengeance. Now I can get it. I want
Cadorna to pay for this.
Between these writings and what the three of us know already, I think we can
convince the First
Councilman of his guilt."
"If we can't," said Tarl, helping Shal load the ledgers into the Cloth of Many
Pockets, "there's more than one bad apple on the council."
Outside, the pyramid still looked like a giant bauble protruding from the
landscape, but Yarash's abominable creations had ceased forever. The conduit
that had pumped the vile byproduct of his unnatural magical cre-ations into
the Stojanow was still, and the last of the black sludge had begun its slow
journey downriver to the wide expanses of the Moonsea.
11
Valhingen Graveyard
The trip back, without the mare, was slow, in places arduous. Even with
Cerulean carrying all their equip-ment, it was taking the three nearly twice
as long to re-turn 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 achieve-ment. 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 medi-tated on the messages he had received
from his god when he met him in the innermost sanctuary of the tem-ple. 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 tre-mendous 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
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grave-yard.
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
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