Tarl reached out to try to heal the man, but he was too late. The soldier’s last breath rattled in his throat, and his body hung limp in the thorny hedge. Beyond him lay a companion, another soldier of the Black Watch, also dead, lying facedown with his hand caught up high behind him in the hedge. Across from the two men, the hedge walls had been chopped wide open, wide enough for three or four men to pass through.
“Do you think he meant that Cadorna brought the Black Watch here?” Shal whispered.
Ren nodded. “I can’t think of anybody else paranoid enough to let men die just to get through a hedge. I’m sure he’s here somewhere. In fact, we might have a chance to get the Lord of the Ruins and Cadorna, because I don’t see any sign that anybody’s come back out through these bushes.”
There was no question now which route would lead to the heart of the castle grounds. A nearly straight swath had been cut through at least a half dozen walls of shrubbery, and the two soldiers had died cutting through the final one. Ren wondered how many others had died hacking their way through the hedges. From where he stood, he could see a boot protruding near one hedge wall and a hand sticking out near another.
“Follow me,” Ren declared. “Keep low and to the center of the path, as far away from the branches as possible.”
Once they emerged on the other side of the maze, they found themselves staring up at the central tower. Its lofty walls were of rarest white marble. At another time, Shal thought, the tower must have been beautiful and pristine-looking, a giant monument to all that was good in the land, but now its every feature reflected the same kind of corruption and defilement Shal and the others had been fighting since their first mission for the town council. Runes of the type often used by black mages marred much of the marble surface of the building’s exterior. Despite its light color, the tower appeared to be shrouded in shadow.
Part of the tower had tumbled in on itself. A scaffold had been erected halfway up the damaged portion of the tower, and two ogres lay dead beside it. “That’s one fight we missed,” whispered Tarl. Shal and Ren smiled. They were all feeling excited and obsessed with a growing sense of purpose, but at the same time, all three were as tense as stretched slingshot bands, so the levity, however brief, brought relief.
Tarl pointed to a huge doorway to the left of the scaffolding. Its monstrous wooden door stood wide open.
“I suspect Cadorna and any men he has left went in that way,” Ren said. “Let’s see if there’s another door.”
Cadorna was fit to be tied. The kill fee he would have to pay the Black Watch and the mercenaries’ guild was astronomical. Five soldiers of the Black Watch had been poisoned by the bushes, and four more had died facing a wizard who kept trying to pass himself off as the Lord of the Ruins. When Cadorna finally came face to face with the dragon, he didn’t have enough men left. The six remaining soldiers of the Black Watch had managed to weaken the dragon considerably before getting themselves killed, and Gensor had managed to make a couple of magical attacks, but in the end, Cadorna was forced to flee with Gensor to a nearby room to plan what to do next.
Shal and Tarl followed Ren cautiously as they circled the tower. There was a second door of more conventional size on the building’s opposite side. It was an ebony door with an elaborate carving of a dragon on it, but this door was shut. Shal cast a spell to detect magical traps. When a yellow aura glowed along the door’s perimeter, Shal summoned Cerulean from the Cloth of Many Pockets. As soon as the great horse touched the door with a hoof, a yellow mist puffed from the dragon’s mouth. “No!” Shal bit back a scream as Cerulean bolted backward, snorting loudly. Immediately Shal murmured a cantrip to disperse the poison gas, but the puff of wind did not come soon enough to keep the first of the poison from penetrating the big horse’s nostrils and lungs. Shal tried to calm Cerulean, but he was shaking his head furiously and snorting violently in an effort to get the toxic gas from his lungs.
Tarl pulled a pouch from his belt and tossed some dust at Cerulean’s nose. Immediately the horse began to sneeze, and he kept it up for several seconds. By the time the sneezing finally slowed, Cerulean’s eyes were bleary with water and his nose was running thick and yellow. He snorted once more, but then the fit was over. Shal wiped his nose and eyes with a cloth and patted his neck.
You okay, big fella? she asked silently.
Cerulean nodded. His breathing was still a little uneven, mixed with sniffles, but the poison was obviously no longer a danger.
Meanwhile, Ren had checked the ebony door for mechanical traps. Finding none, he eased it open. Peering inside the door, Ren could see that the chamber inside was completely open, from the full height of the tower to the depths of the subterranean cavern below. The door opened onto a roomy landing, fenced by an iron guardrail. A black grillwork stairway led down. The walls inside the tower and the cavern below all glowed a brilliant golden color.
“I’ve seen this somewhere before,” Ren whispered.
Behind him, Tarl answered softly, “In the gnoll temple … The model looked just like this. He’ll be here, all right. This must be the lair of the Lord of the Ruins.”
“Do come down,” called a warm, avuncular voice from somewhere below. “I enjoy company.”
The three exchanged surprised glances, but it was Ren who creeped out onto the landing and peered down into the great golden vault. He saw no sign of Cadorna or the soldiers of the Black Watch, but from the top of the stairway, he could see a crescent-shaped pool, a full-sized version of the model they had seen in the gnoll temple. It glistened with an unnatural intensity, as if it created its own light source. “The pool!” whispered Ren. “ ‘Tower to the pool.’ That’s it! The blood from the temples is channeled into that pool!”
Beside the pool, partially hidden from view by the landing, stood a great bronze dragon, identifiable by its metallic color as one of the good dragons of the Realms.
“Please come down,” the dragon repeated. Again the voice, which echoed through the golden chamber, seemed friendly and had a genuine warmth to it.
Ren had seen three dragons close up before. Each had seemed bigger than the one before, but this one was easily half again the size of any of them. Electricity crackled along the beast’s gums and teeth each time it exhaled, and its tail switched behind it nervously.
“A bronze dragon,” whispered Ren to Shal and Tarl, behind him. To the dragon, he said, “We seek the Lord of the Ruins.”
“Dead,” breathed the dragon, puffing a wisp of smoke into the air. “A puny man, but with tremendous magical powers of possession. As evil as anything I’ve seen in millennia.”
“Do you live here?” Ren questioned. He had never heard of a bronze dragon choosing a subterranean lair.
“Yes, honorable Ren o’ the Blade. This has been my lair for several of your lifetimes. Greetings to you and your companions, Shal Bal and Tarl Desanea.”
All three were startled that the dragon knew their names. Tyranthraxus, the evil possessor of the dragon’s mind, recognized their concern and immediately spoke to assuage their fears. “Now, now, there’s nothing to fear. You see, your reputation precedes you, and I must say that the length and breadth of Phlan is safer for your presence. In fact, it is your weakening of the power of the Lord of the Ruins that has allowed me to finally free myself of his control. For years, he held me captive here by means of mind control and a form of possession the likes of which I hope died with him. But his rotting body remains here in my lair. I would be indebted to you if you would remove it.”