Bony arms stretched out toward Shal from every side. Her body seemed to go cold, refusing to function normally. Her breath came in constricted gasps, as it had in the boat, but this time the pressure was even heavier. She had to fight merely to breathe, and she struggled even harder to regain control of her arms and hands so she could lift up the medallion.

Ren was shaking his head violently. "They can see the medallion on my chest, and it's not stopping them! I'm getting me and Shal the hell out of here!"

Ren pushed the nearest of the skeletons back with one short sword. When a second skeleton started to wrap its bony hand around Shal's arm, he raised the other sword and brought it down swiftly, chopping the creature's hand off.

"Behind you!" Shal shouted. A large skeletal warrior, Ren's equal in height, was directly behind him, about to swing at Ren with a rusty long sword.

Ren spun and met the swing with both short swords, but when he tried to push the creature back, he momentarily lost his balance when he stepped in one of the holes from which the vile monsters had emerged. Instantly another skeleton burst partway out of the earth and grabbed Ren's legs from behind in its icy grip. Ren fell hard, but the skeleton did not release its grip. Instead, the bony fingers closed tighter and tighter, till Ren thought they would surely sever his legs.

Two more skeletal warriors had grabbed Shal, one by the right arm and one by the left. They were pulling in opposite directions.

Tarl was oblivious to Shal's predicament. He was overwhelmed by the terror these creatures must have experienced before they died. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of brothers had been slaughtered here but remained undead, their lives unfulfilled. Like Tarl, they'd had no chance to complete their mortal missions. Their screams were his screams. Their pain was his pain. His mind was barraged by dozens of messages unsent to loved ones, and an untold number of emotions ranging from panic and terror to remorse and relief assaulted his psyche. Tarl lifted his holy symbol high. "Rest, brothers!" he shouted firmly. "As Tyr is my witness, we mean no harm!"

Again arid again, he repeated the words as he turned slowly in a circle, letting the reflection from the holy symbol of Tyr shine in every direction, touching each undead warrior. One by one, the skeletons lowered their weapons to their sides. The three holding Ren and Shal released their grips. When the two of them held up their medallions as well, the rest of the skeletons closing in on the party halted their advance. They appeared to remain agitated and continued to move about, but it was obvious they were no longer interested in harming Tarl, Ren, or Shal.

"Whew!" Shal breathed quietly. "I've heard of clerics turning the undead, but I've never heard of anybody turning a whole army of them!"

Tarl heard Shal's words, but this was no time to celebrate. "Something or someone is keeping these men in motion, but I think we'll be able to explore in peace now," he said.

From where he lay on the ground, Ren did his best to quell a chill of revulsion at the word "men." He realized that Tarl was somehow seeing human characteristics in these rotting, maggot-covered creatures. "My legs and ankles feel as if they're frostbitten."

"I'm sorry, my friend," said Tarl, and he rushed quickly to the big man's side.

Shal beat him there by a step. Immediately she pulled Ren's leggings loose to reveal several white-yellow rings of nearly lifeless skin circling Ren's ankles. She didn't question Ren's self-diagnosis. Her own two arms had felt a biting, bone-chilling cold when the skeletons had grabbed her. When the cleric reached forward to lay hands on Ren, Shal stopped him. "No, Tarl, save your strength. I have just the thing." Shal pulled from her belt one of the healing potions she had helped Ranthor prepare. "We'll need your powers soon enough if one of us gets hurt badly. For frostbite, this should do nicely." Shal daubed the pasty liquid on the rings of whitened flesh. Within seconds, a healthy pink color began to return to the affected area.

Even after Ren was able to stand, the memory of the icy grip was still with him. He found walking among the skeletons unnerving, medallions or no, but he forced himself to lead the small group through the keep. Nothing but kindling remained of the first building on the left, probably once a storage shed. The roof of the second structure was totally burned off, but the base of the building was still intact. As they approached the building, the skeletons wandering in the courtyard converged from all directions. A number of the undead warriors followed the party of three, then assumed gruesome positions of death among what remained of the cots that lined the walls.

"What-what are they doing?" gasped Shal, sickened by the sight of the creatures.

"They are showing you… showing us… how they died," Tarl replied, once again feeling the men's anguish and frustration. "Many of them died here, in their beds. They never had a chance to prove themselves." Tarl tried to describe the myriad of sensations, from frustration to horror, that were somehow being communicated to him.

They moved on to the other end of the building, but found nothing new. As they passed the corner of the building, they noticed that they had gained a new entourage of earth- and fungus-covered companions. Without touching any of the three, the new group of skeletons seemed to be pushing them on to the next doorway in the complex. They entered the door cautiously and found themselves in a foyer. They peered through an open doorway off to the left, and as soon as they did, a dozen or so undead warriors brushed past them and began moaning and crying in an almost deafening dirge.

"The high clerics' quarters," said Tarl, as if his companions had requested an explanation. "The ghostly remains of these men suffer the most, because they were unable to protect the fledgling clerics they vowed to safeguard."

Ahead, still whole and beautiful, was an ornately carved double door that bore the hammer and balance of Tyr, the Even-Handed. Tarl felt compelled to enter the temple, but Ren was already stepping cautiously through an open doorway to the right.

Tarl and Shal followed. Just as the three companions entered, the tongue of a giant frog shot out, circled Ren's leg, and tripped the big man. Tarl rushed forward and slammed the man-sized creature's head hard with his hammer. The weapon merely glanced off the frog's wet, slippery skin. It took two more blows before Tarl's hammer connected solidly. When it did, the creature's flesh buckled and splattered under the force of his blow, and it fell to the wet floor, quivering. Ren hacked its encircling tongue off and leaped to his feet, just in time to face six more of the gigantic amphibians. He hurled a dagger at the frog closest to him. Like Tarl's hammer, the knife deflected off the tough, slimy hide of the frog.

Behind him, Shal was muttering something in the language of magic. As she finished her incantation, she tossed a handful of powder past Ren and extended her hand toward the lead frog. Immediately it shrank to normal size. Ren kicked it with his boot and sent it flying up at one of the waiting monster frogs. The creature shot its huge tongue out, and in an instant, it slurped the small frog down whole.

The remaining frogs, caught up in the prospect of a feeding frenzy, began to leap willy-nilly-up, sideways, backward-in a primitive, instinctive dance designed to freeze their victims in terror. In a frantic reaction to his own revulsion, Tarl lashed out again and again with his hammer, but it only slipped off the sides of the giant frogs. When one got too close, though, he bashed it with his shield with all his might and sent it slumping to the floor, where he finished it off with a blow from his hammer. A wave of nausea surged through him as he watched the frog's legs twitch wildly, independent of its pulverized head.