James Ward - Pool of Radiance

Tarl looked briefly at Shal and then turned away. "I'll call on Tyr myself to heal her!" Tarl fought the pain that throbbed through his whole body as he tried to stand. "I'll go to the meditation chamber, to the innermost sanctuary. There can be no reason for her to suffer, too!"

"Few so young dare to attempt to enter the inner sanctuary, but like any of us, Brother Tarl, you're free to try. Cleanse yourself thoroughly first, though, and mind your attitude and your motives."

"Thank you, Brother Tern. I shall."

Tarl gratefully accepted his brother's help as he bathed his healing body and changed into full battle garb. But when he stood at the door of the meditation chamber, he stood alone.

Tarl knew from his earliest catechisms the nature of the meditation chamber. He would enter the first of four concentric squares clean of body, the second clean of extraneous thoughts, the third with a focus of purpose, and the final one with a focus on his god. While technically open to any worshiper of Tyr, few who were not grounded in the faith through years of clerichood and service bothered to enter, since a spiritual barrier prevented most from passing beyond the first or second square.

Tarl raised his hammer to the entrance of the first square. It glowed blue, and he passed through the curtain into the chamber. The space between the outer square and the inner one was only four cubits, and the ceiling was low and confining. Tarl could feel his breath constrict. He wondered for a moment if he was doing the right thing, but he proceeded as he had been taught. His hammer and shield bared, Tarl walked the inner perimeter of the square, speaking the words of a mantra designed to cleanse the mind of miscellaneous thoughts. After twice around the square, his breathing eased, and he could feel his head clearing. Another time around and he could feel a healing warmth, greater than that from the hands of his brothers, spreading through his body, mending even the soreness brought on by his wound.

After four more times around the square, his hammer glowed blue again, and Tarl entered the second square. This square was of course, smaller, and the distance between the walls of the squares was the same, but the ceiling was easily half again as tall as that of the previous chamber, which gave the second chamber an illusion of a greater size. Once more Tarl felt his breath constrict, and he experienced an intense pressure on all parts of his body, as though the walls of the room were closing in and the air had nowhere to go. Tarl found it impossible to think about the concerns he had planned to bring into the sanctuary. He remembered the advice Brother Tern had offered as he helped him with his robes and armor: "When you can go no further, fight. Find physical balance, and the rest will come. Tyr is God of War and Justice. He seeks focus of purpose and balance."

Tarl raised his shield and wielded his hammer, pushing and swinging, charging and parrying against imaginary foes that lined the narrow hallway. It was not until his body began to revel in the movement and Tarl found a familiar joy in the control of it that his focus returned. Unconsciously, almost as an afterthought to his physical action, he began to speak and re-speak the concerns that plagued him: Shal, Anton, the Hammer of Tyr. Every time he brought his shield up or swung his hammer, it was for Shal, or Anton, or for the return of the hammer. His focus was so strong, he didn't even think about the fact that he was now moving without pain.

Soon his hammer began to blaze a brilliant blue, and Tarl stopped, relaxed his shield and hammer, and passed through the curtain to the third square. The square of the inner sanctuary stood before him. It radiated an intense, bright blue.

Faith had never been difficult for Tarl. Tyrians practiced a hands-on kind of worship that made sense to him, and Tyr seemed infinitely believable. Pictures of him were always the same, a burly but gnarled, bearded old fellow with a hammer as big as his arm. The irony of references to his evenhandedness was that, from all accounts, he was missing one hand, and somehow that made him all the more approachable. Tarl's strong faith had already been rewarded with exceptional healing powers for one so young.

Only now, when two people he valued, perhaps as much as his standing as a cleric, lay filled by evil, did Tarl ever question his god or his faith.

"My thoughts of Shal, Anton, and the Hammer of Tyr I give up to you, and thoughts of you, great Tyr, Grimjaws, the Even-Handed, God of War, God of Justice. I offer up my fate to your hammer and to the balances." Tarl waited, continuing to meditate on his god.

Moments later, his hammer began to glow once more, and Tarl entered the innermost sanctuary. Each of the four walls and the vaulted ceiling were mirrors of highly polished silver. At the center of the small room was a cushioned kneeling stool with a small, covered platform before it. Tarl knelt and rested his hammer on the platform. He was surrounded by his own image-a warrior, armed and ready for battle, but completely submissive and vulnerable.

He stared at the hammer and continued to focus his thoughts on Tyr. The hammer began to radiate an even brighter light, and then it began to rise slowly from the platform as Tarl watched, his mind filled with the wisdom and thoughts of his god. The sensation was not like hearing spoken words, nor was it like the occasional shared thought between intimates. It was a flooding, a purging wave of guidance.

Tarl had no idea how long he'd been in the inner sanctuary. He had no memory of coming out. He knew only that he must find Ren immediately.

"Your daggers! We have to get them to Shal! Now!" Tarl hammered on the door and shouted to Ren again and again, but the big man was rummaging his way out of a deep sleep that had come from exhaustion, and he wasn't comprehending what all the ruckus was about. In fact, Tarl was lucky he was pounding outside the door because Ren probably would have killed him on instinct as an intruder if he'd managed to get into the room. As it was, Ren launched both Right and Left at the closed door.

"Tyr and Tymora!" Tarl leaped back as the two dagger points pierced through to his side of the door. "Wake up, man, before you kill somebody!"

It was Ren's own movement that finally woke him, and he slowly comprehended the source of the clamor. "Be right with you," he muttered.

It took Tarl only a few minutes to explain that he needed to use one of the ioun stones to increase his clerical powers in an attempt to heal Shal, yet it seemed to Tarl more like hours, and longer still before they were finally back at the temple.

The clerics could not keep Shal on a cot or bed. Her body jerked with nightmares and spasms induced by the poison, so she lay on a thick cotton quilt, a soft cotton blanket that was constantly being replaced crumpled over the lower half of her body. Tarl sat on the cool stone floor beside Shal and pulled her twitching body up close to his own. He clenched a blue-black ioun stone in one hand and his hammer in the other. Tenderly he wrapped his arms tight around Shal, then began to pray as he had never prayed before. Blue light like that he had seen in the inner sanctuary blazed from the stone and the hammer. For a moment, Shal's body jerked even more violently, and then a vile green vapor filtered up from the pores around Shal's collarbone and dispersed into the clear morning air. Her body quieted immediately, and Shal went limp in Tarl's arms.

"Shal? Shal!" Tarl pulled her even closer, praying to sense warmth and a firm heartbeat rather than clammy, cooling skin and silence. Suddenly strong arms wrapped around him and pulled him closer still, and he immersed himself in the passion of her grateful embrace.

"Glad to have you back, Shal," said Ren, and he pulled her from Tarl for a hug of his own.