fraction of a second, and then the cavern exploded with a riot of beating wings, as each droplet became a brilliantly colored butterfly. Under other circumstances, the sight would have been breathtakingly delightful, but now the thousands upon thousands of butterflies served only to reduce visibility to zero.
Ren continued to battle by feel alone, his magical daggers slicing through the dragon's thick scaly hide as if it were butter. He stabbed and sliced as fast and hard as his arms would move, scooting ever higher up onto the dragon's neck, hoping to find its jugular. Shal lowered her magical shield and cast another Burning Hands spell, aiming by memory for the dragon's abdomen, below where she had last seen Ren. Jets of flame shot from her fingers, and thousands of butterflies popped and burst, caught in the magical inferno. The dragon screamed, an almost inhuman scream, as the flames struck and spread across its chest. Just then one of Ren's daggers ripped through tendon and sliced through an artery in the creature's neck. It reared high on its hind feet, then pitched itself over in its agony, slamming Ren to the ground beside it. It clambered tentatively to its feet, flailing wildly with its tail at the smell and presence of the ranger. With all the force left within its pain-racked body, the dragon tail- slammed Ren against the nearest wall of its lair.
Shal could feel, could hear, the big man's bones shatter as his body thwacked hard against the stone wall, and she could see, even through the haze of the remaining butterflies, that he was not moving. She leveled her hands at the dragon again, even as it turned its head to attack her, and let loose with a fireball. Fueled by her fury, the fireball was huge and white. It burst square against the dragon's already injured face and neck, and flames raged from its snout down its torso.
The creature spun wildly, crazy and blinded from the pain. By instinct or luck, it caught Shal with the tip of its tail as it spun, and she was hurled back against Tarl's charred body. For a moment, Shal saw only blackness, and she couldn't catch her breath. She knew she needed to finish the dragon off now, before it finished her, but pain and fear froze her body even after her vision cleared. She remained paralyzed, literally waiting to die, but to her surprise, the hulking creature failed to take advantage of her helplessness. Instead, it scrabbled backward and slid into the crescent-shaped pool. Her heart leaped as she realized the dragon must be retreating, perhaps even dying.
But her revelry was short-lived as she saw the snout come up from the golden water, and the neck after it. The dragon's jaw was no longer dangling. There were no frostbitten or charred scales, no gaping bloody wounds high on its neck. The dragon was whole once more, perfectly healed, and it was coming up out of the pool toward her. Shal screamed soundlessly. She had no spell, no words. But she heard Cerulean's cry loud and clear:
Shal closed her eyes and wished with everything in her. She wished the damnable creature dead.
With its next lumbering step, the dragon toppled to the ground. It was in the best of health, but its heart stopped cold, and the body was dead in the fraction of a second that it had taken Shal to wish.
When they saw the dragon fall, Cadorna and Gensor came out of their hiding place in the next room. They didn't know what had killed the dragon, nor did they care. Cadorna would assume power over all of Phlan and more, and Gensor would practice magic to his heart's content. 'Be sure all three are dead,' Cadorna instructed quickly, arid he walked up to the dragon to touch it and pay a moment's respect to its legacy of power.
Before his fingers ever touched the creature's cold hide, Cadorna screamed. It was the scream Tyranthraxus had heard through the millennia each time he entered a new body. The scream of a being possessed.
To Tyranthraxus, it was a glorious sound. He relished it for a brief moment as he pushed Cadorna's thoughts of power from his mind and replaced them with his own, which were subtler, infinitely more interesting, and grounded in thousands of years of experience. Tyranthraxus's immediate desire was to get himself out of range of the mage-woman who had just killed his previous body. If she could kill a dragon, she could undoubtedly kill a man, and Tyranthraxus could not afford to risk another possession so soon. As much as he hated to leave the power he had gathered here behind him, he knew the secret now of the Pool of Radiance and the ioun stones, and it would only be a matter of time before he could possess them again. Without so much as a nod to Gensor, who meant nothing to Tyranthraxus, the possessed Cadorna leaped into the golden waters of the Pool of Radiance, calling on its magical energies to teleport himself and his possessor to a place far away.
'No!' Gensor shouted. Gensor and Cadorna had both seen the power of the magical hammer. They had both watched as the dragon emerged from the waters completely healed, and Gensor was not about to let Cadorna take all the pool's energy for himself. The mage threw back his hood and dived in after Cadorna. But where golden fluid had boiled with incalculable energy only seconds ago, there was only plain water… deep, icy water. Tyranthraxus had absorbed all of the pool's magical energies.
Gensor knew nothing of Tyranthraxus. He didn't even know what had happened to Cadorna. But he did know what was hidden from sight at the bottom of the pool. The mage came quietly to the surface of the pool and uttered a spell to make himself invisible before climbing out of the cold water.
Gensor watched silently as Shal slowly recovered enough to begin to function again.
She turned first to the charred body of the cleric. Tears streaming down her face, she poured the contents of two healing potions on the priest. Much of his flesh mended, but still he did not move. She retrieved his hammer and lifted it in her hands. She screamed her words: 'You healed your servant at Valhingen Graveyard so he could die here? You told him to follow me so he could be killed by my enemy?' Shal pointed the hammer at Tarl and cried, 'Heal him! Please, heal him!' She dropped her head, lowered her arms, and wept unashamedly. She didn't even notice as the hammer began to glow. Instead, she felt her arms raise with its power, and then she saw the blue aura. It was a warm, almost turquoise shade, and it bathed the cleric in its gentle light.
Tarl's first view was of Shal, tears running down her face, the dragon stretched out behind her, and the Hammer of Tyr glowing in her hands, arid he knew she had won. He reached up, pulled her close, and held her tight. He closed his eyes to hold back his own tears as healing energy pulsed through him to her bruised body. The exhaustion from having pressed her spell-casting abilities to their limit slowly left Shal as she and Tarl shared a tremendous warming of flesh and spirit. It was several minutes before Tarl opened his eyes again. His eyes fell on Ren, still slumped against the wall behind the pool.
Tarl rushed to his friend. Ren's body was twisted. There were bends in his legs and arms where there were no joints. No simple laying on of hands would heal the big ranger. The cleric pointed to the hexagon with the ioun stones, and Shal rushed around the pool to get them. With two stones in each hand and the Hammer of Tyr before him, Tarl set out to heal his friend. Each and every healing was a miracle, but Tarl felt an overpowering sense of awe this time as bone melded to bone, tissue mended itself, and flesh and spirit healed, wholly, completely, flawlessly.
The three sat together silently in the cavern until Tarl finally asked what happened. Ren told the story as he had seen it, and then Shal took over, describing the dragon's final moments and Cadorna and Gensor's insane plunges into the pool. 'I looked for them when I brought you the ioun stones. There's nothing there. The pool's energy must have turned against them somehow. They're gone, and the pool is filled with ordinary water.'
Tarl and Ren went to the side of the pool and looked for themselves. The water was a quiet gray-blue. The surface was completely calm, except for an occasional ripple where a butterfly was struggling to lift itself out of the water. For a moment, Ren thought he felt something, a whisper of movement nearby, but he turned and saw only a whirl of butterflies rising from the cavern floor, as though disturbed by a gentle wind.
'Well,' said Ren, returning to Shal's side along with Tarl, 'are we ready to celebrate? I mean, the Lord of the Ruins is dead. You did it. You killed the real murderer of Ranthor and Tempest. Cadorna's gone. Tarl has the Hammer of Tyr. What do you say we find a way out of this place?'
'Cadorna and Gensor came from there.' Shal pointed to a doorway that blended into the cavern wall so inconspicuously that a person had to look hard to see it. 'But what about returning to Phlan? Aren't there going to be more Black Watch soldiers guarding the city?'
'Probably.' Ren nodded. 'But this time it will be different. Cadorna won't be there to keep our testimony from being heard. And remember, we still have all those documents from Yarash.'
'Plus the fact that one of my brothers, an elder from the temple, was promoted to Third Councilman when Cadorna became Second. When Cadorna rose to First Councilman, he probably rose to Second,' Tarl added.
'And now, with Cadorna gone, he must be First!' Shal concluded happily.
Tarl kept the four ioun stones from the hexagon for the temple. The hexagon itself was of pure gold, and Tarl and Shal agreed that Ren should take it, since he was no longer thieving for a living, but they found nothing else of value in the dragon's lair. When they left, the three discovered the body of the wizard Cadorna had killed,
