Pool of Twilight - James M. Ward [9]
"Tyr's a rather gloomy-looking fellow, isn't he?" Listle noted apprehensively as they ascended the temple's steps.
"He's the God of Justice, Listle," Kern replied in annoyance. "Somehow I don't think it would have the same impact on the unjust if he were a kindly old man with a sweet smile and pockets full of candy."
"Maybe not," Listle agreed. "But then, I'm all in favor of candy."
The three passed through a columned portico and found themselves beneath the temple's bronze-gilded dome in a great circular hall of gray stone. The floor was decorated with an intricate mosaic depicting Tyr's symbol: scales resting on a warhammer, with which Tyr weighed the arguments for and against those seeking redemption.
"Tarl!" a deep voice boomed, resounding off the soaring andesite vaults. A burly cleric, with a grizzled, iron-colored beard and wearing a traditional white robe, came striding across the room. "I'm glad you could be here on this auspicious day, Brother." Patriarch Anton, oldest and foremost of the temple's clerics, gripped Tarl's forearms warmly. "You also, Kern. I'm sure you will want to-"
"Ahem. Aren't you forgetting someone, Patriarch Anton?" Listle piped up.
Anton glowered darkly at being interrupted, but after Listle shot a winning smile at the old patriarch, he let out a rumbling laugh despite himself. It was the elf's dimples, of course. It was impossible to be angry at someone with dimples, and Listle's were superior examples. They allowed her to get away with all sorts of impertinences.
"Yes, Listle Onopordum, you are welcome as well," Anton rumbled amiably. "Though I wonder if I would be able to keep you away even if you were not."
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