In a lightninglike move, Ren rolled and disemboweled the man who had rammed him from behind. Tarl reacted with equal speed, bludgeoning the two warriors closest to him before they could pull their swords from their scabbards. But it was Cerulean who reacted with the greatest ferocity. Before Shal's silent cry was finished, he had burst forth from the cloth, trampling everything between his mistress and the assassin. The half-orc never stood a chance. The huge horse reared and stomped, reared and stomped, again and again, pulverizing her with his sharp hooves, smashing her piglike snout deep into her crushed face, so that not even the greatest mages of the Lord of the Ruins would stand a chance of fixing it.
But killing Quarrel did nothing for Shal, who continued to jerk and writhe from the spasms caused by the deadly green poison. Nor did it help Tarl with the last of the warriors, who had just sliced up under the cleric's ribs with his sword. It was Sot who finally clubbed the man to death with the cudgel he kept hidden behind the bar.
Ren ran immediately to Shal and cradled her head and shoulders in his arms. "No! No! Not again!"
"The temple…" Tarl clutched his side and spoke in desperation. "Get us to the temple!" He tried to work some healing on himself, but he passed out before he could finish the incantation.
Sot stuffed a bar rag against Tarl's wound and started shouting orders at the confused patrons still standing around in the inn. "What're ya gawkin' at? Get a wagon hitched up! Now! And, you, hand me a fresh cloth from behind the bar there! Move!"
Ren carved at Shal's wound and sucked and spit the poison as fast as he was able to, but he could see the vein of green pushing its way toward her heart, and he wept openly as he carried her to the waiting cart, where Sot had already laid Tarl. Cerulean whinnied and whickered and stamped furiously, and none but Ren dared to hitch him to the cart, but the moment the harnesses were secure and Ren had clambered aboard, the great horse bolted away and galloped with a speed no other horse could match.
"Make way! Make way!" Ren shouted at the top of his lungs as they reached the temple gates. "Wounded aboard!"
The clerics at the gates hurried to lift the latch as priests in their studies flocked outside to see what the commotion was about. Cerulean charged through the gates and straight toward the central temple. He didn't slow until he reached a circle of priests waiting at the temple stairs.
Ren spoke so rapidly that he jumbled his words, and it was only the clerics' experience in dealing with distraught people that helped them to catch the words "poison" and "bleeding." Two of the brothers held Ren as the others carried Tarl and Shal inside the temple.
"Our brothers will do everything they can for them. There is nothing more you can do, ranger. Go, find your peace where you can, and return in the morning."
Ren stared at them numbly, tears still welling in his eyes. "You can't let them die! If there's anything I can do… anything at all… I'll be… I'll be at the Laughing Goblin Inn, or maybe… maybe at the park, the one by the wizard's tower on that end of town." Ren pointed absently and walked dejectedly toward the gates.
"Don't forget your horse!" one of the clerics called.
But Ren only muttered, "No. It's hers," and walked on.
Ren didn't remember passing anything between the temple and the park. He didn't even have any idea how much time had passed. He had been at one place, some time ago, and now he was at another. The storm had cleared before Shal left the rooftop of the Laughing Goblin, but the sky was still cloudy, and it was now pitch dark, the kind of night when only rangers and elves saw well. Ren walked without hesitation through the annonwoods and into the center of the park, where a huge evergreen towered into the darkness.
He gathered pinecones till his hands could hold no more and laid them gently before the tree. Then he piled needles on top of those. Finally, he picked violets that had folded their flowers for the night and laid them atop the pile. He faced the tree and spoke softly. "I want desperately for my new friends to live, and I need somehow, Tempest, to finally accept your death… You know there's no one like you. Even Shal, as much as she looks like you, isn't really like you at all. I'm not… I'm not going to look for your replacement anymore, Tempest. There isn't one. But you're going to have to forgive me if I go on now with my life."
Ren clenched his teeth to hold back tears, then tossed the flowers and the needles and the pinecones, a handful at a time, around the tree. "What is it they say, Babe- 'from the earth to the earth'? You loved trees and the outdoors, like me, so this is my way of… of…" Ren's voice cracked, and he stopped until he could speak again. Then he gazed skyward and continued. It seemed fitting that the nearly full moon had broken through the clouds and was shining down on the little park. "This is my way of leaving you where you'd like to be. Okay?"
There was nothing more to say, so Ren simply stood for a while, staring into the night. After several minutes, his melancholy was interrupted by an ear-piercing shriek.
Ren made his way stealthily to the edge of the park closest to the fortress wall. The sounds were coming from the opposite side of the wall. Ren launched his grappling hook high into the air. It caught, but when he tugged, it fell back to the ground. On his second try, the three-pronged hook held firm, and Ren hauled himself steadily to the top of the fortress wall.
Below, a lone warrior was lashing out furiously at an attacking troll. Two other warriors lay nearby, probably dead, the area around them a scrap heap of troll parts. From where he crouched atop the wall, Ren could see the hands, legs, even heads, and other miscellaneous bits of troll beginning to move together, regenerating.
Few creatures in the Realms were as hideous as trolls. Their bodies, even whole, were nightmarish-elongated parodies of giant, emaciated humans-and their faces were morbid caricatures from every child's worst dreams, with long, wart-covered noses and black, seemingly empty eye sockets. Worse yet, their mutilated bodies refused to die. Even if a fighter were lucky enough to slice a troll to ribbons, its detached hand might claw at his leg and pull him to the ground, or the rolling, moss-covered head might bite and gnaw at his exposed flesh. Given enough time, the pieces would actually scuttle together and eventually form a whole new troll.
But it was the troll's skin that bothered Ren most. He had seen trolls in daylight, and he knew that their skin was always decaying and rotting, even as the creatures lived-just so much slime, mold, and fungus troweled onto greenish, tarlike flesh. Relieved that the night's filtered moonlight prevented him from seeing more clearly, he wasted no time dropping his rope over to the other side and swinging down to aid the valiant fighter.
He started by slopping oil from his fire flask on all the troll parts he could see. Flames shot up instantly as the magical fluid made contact with the arms, hands, and legs, and Ren was nearly overcome by the putrid smoke from the burning of wet flesh. Hunched over, fighting a cough that would not stop, Ren pivoted just in time to face the knees of the troll, which was now directing its attention to him. He thrust his short sword out between the troll's knobby legs and pulled straight up with all the strength he could muster. He ripped through flesh he did not want to think about, then staggered back and fell to the ground, just out of immediate reach of the troll's gargantuan hands. The nearly bisected creature bellowed with rage and lurched forward toward Ren.
It would have killed him on the spot were it not for the quick action of the warrior, still behind the troll, who swung a huge broadsword, low and level with the creature's pelvis. Razor-sharp metal, powered by the strength born of terror, ripped through skin and bone, and the troll's upper body flopped back onto the warrior's extended arms. Four-fingered hands, tipped with vicious, aquiline claws, reached by instinct alone and began tearing into the fighter's upper arms. Ren crab-crawled to avoid the amputated legs that were still stalking his way, and then rolled, stood, and dodged beyond them. He leaped forward and immediately began hacking at the creature's upper body, which was clinging to the shoulders of the enraged warrior. The troll didn't loosen its grip until Ren severed its arms from its hands, and even then Ren had to yank the clawing hands from the fighter's shoulders. Again he threw oil, and again there was a terrible stench as the troll flesh burned and smoked.