And then he saw the garden. The map had it marked "cook's garden," but instead of herbs and vegetables, there was only corruption and despoilment. Twisted, cracked plants, identifiable as cabbage only because of the color and vaguely overlapping leaves, sapped the soil in one corner of the garden. A tangle of brown, contorted vines, abominable mockeries of thyme and spearmint and other herbs, blighted another. Raised and trained as a ranger, Ren admired natural beauty above all else. The sight of the gnolls' crude and intentionally vile parody of a garden caused something to snap inside of Ren. It was as though the defiled garden somehow signified the corruption that had led to Tempest's death. What was wrong with the assassin was the same thing that was wrong with this garden, was wrong with the gnolls that planted and neglected it. Ren was filled with rage of an intensity he hadn't known since Tempest's death.
"Look at that!" he said, pointing, fury contorting his face, and then louder, "It's sick! It's sick, like everything else in this parody of a world!"
Tarl could appreciate that the garden looked strange, ugly even, and Shal recognized that all of the plants were distorted, but when Ren stalked off toward the nearest open door, they had to assume that he had seen something they didn't. In his rage, he moved with a speed they couldn't match.
When they slipped through the doorway behind him, Ren had already crossed the room to the other side of an elaborate set of yellow curtains. He was in the process of strangling a robed gnoll in the crook of his big right arm. With his left hand, he clasped the creature's hyena jaws so tightly that it couldn't even scream. At the same time, he mashed the monster's body downward so it couldn't flail or struggle. They watched in awe as the body quivered one last time, and Ren silently lowered it to the floor.
Before they had time to react, Ren had passed between two incense stands and through a second yellow curtain and was slitting the throat of another one of the gangling hyena-men. As with the first, he muzzled it, then forced it to the floor so it made less sound in death than it had in life. Shal and Tarl stood dumbstruck. Having no idea what had caused such rage to possess their companion, they followed mutely and watched as he passed through yet another yellow curtain and dispatched a third robed gnoll in a similar fashion.
It wasn't until Ren had slipped through the fourth curtain that he finally stopped short, and so did Tarl and Shal when they entered the cavernous golden room. Four more robed gnollish priests were kneeling before the dais of a shrine. A fifth, more elaborately attired, stood behind the shrine grunting an incantation over and over, which Ren realized was the same he had heard at Sokol Keep: "Power to the pool! Power to the pool!"
When the fifth figure, who was apparently the head priest, first saw the three, he stood stock-still for a moment, uncomprehending. Then he let out a squeal of warning to the others. The four scrambled to their feet and turned with surprising alacrity for creatures of their awkward proportions. Each produced a short, contorted staff, almost like a cudgel. Their faces were strangely pinched and yellow, almost jaundiced-looking. But their yellow eyes gleamed with fervor, and they charged forward with the conviction of religious fanatics, snorting monosyllabic gnollish equivalents of words like "infidel" and "heretic."
The burst of crazed anger that had propelled Ren past the first three gnolls was spent as quickly as it had come, but as the snarling, slavering gnolls pressed closer, it returned. Ren rushed the nearest attacker, both short swords drawn. Confronted with a form of worship more corrupt than any he had imagined possible, Tarl responded with a pent-up rage of his own, meeting the swinging club of one gnoll with his shield and slamming another with the broad side of the hammer he had recovered from Sokol Keep.
Shal shared neither man's sense of purpose. She called for her staff out of fear and used it only when the fourth gnoll crashed through the melee and toward her. Hell-bent on claiming the life of an infidel, the gangling creature charged forward, oblivious to Shal's extended staff. Even after it impaled itself, it continued to press forward, jaws snapping, club flailing, a yellow glaze burning in its eyes. It wasn't until the gnoll had pushed forward almost the length of the staff, its entrails pushing out behind it, that it finally jerked in the spasms of death. Shal had never once even moved. Slowly the gnoll's dead weight pulled the staff to the ground, and the monster started to slide back down the length of the staff. Shal dropped to her knees and covered her mouth to keep from gagging. Only when she heard Ren's voice saying something in the guttural language of the humanoids did she collect the wherewithal to pull her staff from the body of the dead gnoll.
The three other priests lay dead not far away. Tarl was holding the high priest in a hammerlock while Ren asked it questions. Shal stepped past the bodies and walked numbly toward the shrine. An upside-down T shape, the altar stood a little taller than waist-high. Its mahogany surface was polished to a sheen that struck Shal as highly unusual among the disgustingly dirty gnolls. At the crux of the T was a rounded gray mound. On either side of the altar stood embossed silver chalices, the work of dwarves, if Shal was any judge, but they were dark with rust and somehow corrupt in appearance. At first Shal couldn't grasp what made such carefully and ornately ornamented pieces seem repugnant, but as she came closer to one of them, she realized what was wrong. Its surface was covered with the contorted faces of the benevolent gods. The faces were those of the same gods carved in relief on Shal's Staff of Power, but like everything else in the gnoll village, they represented a grotesque permutation of what was natural and beautiful. In a subtly gruesome way, the chalice made a mockery of the staff Shal carried and of everything that was good in the Realms.
She started to reach forward to dash the hideous piece and its companion to the floor, but then she stopped short. The dreadful stink of rancid meat bit into her nostrils before she could lay a hand on the chalice. Mixed with it was the sickening sweet smell of blood, and she saw now, with shock, that the gray lump she had seen earlier was actually the days-old head of a human being, its skin livid and its eyes bulging as if from strangulation. The body stretched out behind it, excoriated as if from repeated blows with some heavy, abrasive object.
Shal slapped one hand to her mouth and drew the other tight against her abdomen to stave off the new wave of nausea that gripped her. Through clenched teeth, she stifled what would otherwise have been an earsplitting scream of horror and revulsion. Unconsciously she tipped her head back, as if that would clear her nose of the fetid stench. When it didn't help, she lurched forward wildly, slamming the gore-filled chalice nearest to her with the back of her hand and coming back deftly with her forehand to smash the other one. Blood splattered everywhere as the two chalices rocketed end-over-end into the golden walls on either side of the great room.
The captured priest shrieked hysterically and struggled in vain to free himself from Tarl's viselike grip. "No blood, no power! No blood, no power!" Again and again he repeated the pained cry, failing to stop even when Ren backhanded him hard against his hyena jaws.
"Animal!" Shal screamed, her rage driving her voice to a level loud enough to be heard over the shrieking gnoll.
"Animal!" she shouted once more, moving deliberately around the altar, her large hands outstretched toward the creature's throat.
"No! Stop!" Tarl pushed the gnoll to the floor with one hand and held out the other to stop Shal. "He's an abomination, and deserves to die, but we must not kill him."