Listle thought about that for a moment. "Probably not," she decided.
The patriarch led the three to a group of white-robed clerics clustered about a long mahogany table. It looked as if all the temple's clerics were there, about thirty altogether. Five years ago there would have been three score clerics and a half-dozen young men and women besides Kern wearing the white tabard of the paladin-aspirant. Few new disciples had taken the places of the clerics of Tyr who had been struck down, one by one, over these last years.
"This way, Brother Tarl." Anton led the blind cleric to the table. "Come, hear what we've learned."
In the center of the table, a huge book rested on a cushion of black velvet. Kern had seen it on several prior occasions: a tome five handspans across, bound in the dusky, scaly leather of some unnameable beast. Within its crackling pages of ancient, yellowed parchment were thirteen terrible prophecies written by the dark god Bane himself over a thousand years ago. Its pages foretold in horrible detail some of the suffering and misery that Bane would bring to Faerun. Kern had heard the story of the book, called The Oracle of Strife, and how it came to the temple, many times.
Legend held that long, long ago, the god Bane wished to know how much of the world would one day fall under his evil dominion. He went to his wicked sister, the goddess Shar, mistress of the dark. Shar concocted a potion from the fabric of midnight, the very moment of time between one day and the next, when magic is at its most powerful and the future most easily deciphered. Bane drank the potion, but such was its power that the god was plunged into a delirium. It was in this fevered state that Bane penned the thirteen prophecies included in The Oracle of Strife.
For long centuries, the book was lost to the world. Then, some three hundred years ago, an itinerant cleric of Tyr happened upon the tome in the ruins of a temple of Bane deep in the primeval forests west of the Moonsea. Eventually the book was delivered to the custodianship of the temple of Tyr in Phlan. It was a relic of fearsome evil, and the clerics locked it away under powerful wards to keep it out of the hands of those with sinister intentions.
During the last century, the book had been all but forgotten. But after Bane had heinously usurped the Hammer of Tyr, one of the temple's sages remembered the tome. The book was brought out for study. It was then that the temple's sages discovered that one of the thirteen prophecies concerned the theft of the hammer as well as its subsequent hiding place. After that, long, frustrating years of studying the prophecy ensued. Years that- apparently-had now finally come to an end.
"It was only recently we realized that not all of the prophecies in the tome pleased Bane," Patriarch Anton explained. His gaze moved to a wizened woman with eyes as dark and shining as obsidian. "Why don't you tell them what you have learned, Sister Sendara?" Sendara was the temple's auguress, and an expert on the matter of prophecy.
The ancient cleric nodded. "The key lies in the Time of Troubles," Sendara began. "It has been thirteen years now since that great conflagration shook Faerun, when Bane was destroyed, along with his brethren, the dark gods Myrkul and Bhaal. I now have reason to believe that Bane predicted his own demise in The Oracle of Strife."
A murmur of surprise rippled about the table.
Sendara continued in her rich, strong voice. "As we know, Bane was in a deep trance when he penned the prophecies. I think it is conceivable that he had no control over what emerged. Thus it was that he could not help but foresee his failures as well as his victories. Everyone who has studied the tome knows that the last prophecy is almost illegible. It looks as if Bane crossed it out in anger after he recovered from his delirium. I had always assumed that it was simply because he wasn't pleased with his poetic achievement on that one." Sendara gave a sharp-edged smile. "Bane was quite puffed-up about his poetry, despite the fact that it's dreadful stuff. But from the few words I am able to decipher, I feel certain that this prophecy concerns Bane's downfall. Apparently that is why he tried to deface it. Bane thought if he obscured the prophecy, such a fated thing wouldn't come to pass."
"He was very wrong about that!" Listle whispered to Kern with a snort.
"Hush!" he hissed back, elbowing her for emphasis.
Brother Dameron, a young, round-faced cleric with a rather expansive paunch, joined in the explanation. "Sister Sendara's insights gave me an idea," he told the others. "If Bane had attempted to deface one prophecy that displeased him, wouldn't he have tried the same with others? Perhaps he might even have changed small details that annoyed him. To answer that query, I performed a modest experiment on the prophecy concerning the hammer."
Here Brother Dameron reached out and opened the book on the table to a place marked by a black silk ribbon. Kern noticed that silver holy symbols stood at each corner of the table-wards to keep the evil of the book from tainting those who studied it. Dameron turned to the last page of the prophecy of the hammer.
"If you look very closely, you can just make out a series of fine scratch marks in the parchment, along with a few tiny flecks of ink. They're so faint we did not notice them earlier. Now that I've studied it, there's no mistaking the conclusion." The sage paused dramatically. "Several lines have been scoured from the parchment with erasing sand. There's no reason to believe that it was anyone but Bane himself who did this. And that means the missing lines must say something Bane did not want revealed."
"The hiding place of the Hammer of Tyr?" Tarl asked intently.
"Exactly."
Caught up in the excitement, Kern blurted out without thinking, "But if Bane scrubbed out the lines a thousand years ago, how can we use them to learn where he hid the hammer?"
Immediately Kern realized that he, a mere paladin-aspirant, had interrupted one of the temple's most august clerics. His cheeks flushed crimson.
"I think Brother Dameron has found a solution to that dilemma, my impatient young paladin." There was a note of kindly humor in Anton's voice. "If, of course, you would be so good as to permit him the opportunity to indulge us with the news."
"Of course," Kern managed to sputter despite his mortification. Listle glanced at him smugly.
"Thank you," Dameron said, winking at Kern. He drew a small jar from his pocket. Unstoppering it, he took out a pinch of colorless powder and sprinkled it carefully over the page. Gradually, a faint shine began to creep across the cracked and yellowed parchment. The shimmering grew brighter, forming spidery lines and swirling whorls. Kern gasped. The magical glow had outlined a dozen lines of cryptic-looking runes.
"Bane erased the true ending of the prophecy," Dameron explained. "But as any apprentice scribe copying tomes for his or her master knows, no matter how hard one scours, traces of ink always remain on the paper."
Listle grimaced, nodding. Shal was always giving her stacks of magical books to copy, and the elf's mistress was nothing less than a perfectionist. A stray drop of ink usually meant she had to recopy the entire page.
"The powder I sprinkled on the parchment causes those remaining, almost invisible, flecks of ink to glimmer," Dameron concluded. "And thus we are able to read a part of the prophecy we never knew existed."
"I, too, can read it!" Tarl said in wonderment. Kern looked at his father in surprise. Then he understood. The runes on the page were glowing with magical light. They would be vivid to his father.