Tarl and Ren both looked at Shal skeptically as she repeated Cerulean's advice. Ren paused to collect his thoughts, then jumped toward Shal, but he stopped short before crashing into her, unconvinced that he could really pour himself into such a tiny space. Even Tarl, with his clerical skills, could not keep doubt from hindering his attempts to enter the cloth.

"Enough!" said Shal. "I don't know what I'll have left when I face Yarash, but I'm going to cast a Shrink spell."

Neither Ren nor Tarl had any opportunity to object. A moment later, they were mere fractions of their former size. A gigantic Shal stooped over, picked them up, and deposited them in the cloth. Another moment later, they were all on their way to the sorcerer's island with the aid of a Fly spell.

On the shore of the island, Shal pulled Tarl out. The Shrink spell wore off moments later, and he was back to original size and standing beside her. "Boy, it sure is black in there!" he exclaimed.

"So I've heard." Shal said Ren's name and reached for him, but nothing came within her grasp.

"Ren? Can you hear me?" Shal said excitedly. "Cerulean, is he in there with you?"

Suddenly the big man popped out of the cloth as if he had been shot from a gun. "By the gods, I've been to the Abyss and back! It's blacker than the Pit in there, and it's not all that easy to get out."

"Okay, okay! So it's dark in there. Can we get on with this?" Shal vowed silently to get Cerulean a lantern to take with him for future stays in the dark folds of the cloth.

To Ren's keen senses, the smells of lightning and charred cloth were still recognizable. Set flush with the pyramid and barely discernible even up close was a teleport platform. A smudged footprint was the only telltale sign that made the surface of the platform visible. Ren pointed the teleport surface out to Shal and Tarl, then explained, "This should take us to him."

They took position on the platform together, and immediately found themselves inside what they had to assume was the dark interior of the pyramid. An empty hallway stretched before them, but Yarash was nowhere in sight. "He's been here," said Ren, sniffing, his keen eyes darting from side to side. They walked the length of the long corridor, Ren as alert as a fox to any sight, smell, or sound. They passed doorway after doorway, but Ren didn't even pause. "There!" He pointed suddenly. "Another teleport platform!"

Ren led the way, and three teleports and a walk upstairs later, they came upon Yarash, sitting against the corner of a room filled with books and ledgers, obviously his personal study. His robes were seared to his body, and his flesh was horribly burned, but he was still able to summon another contingent of fish-men. With no water, the strange creatures gasped for air, their malformed gills heaving and collapsing with such effort it seemed they would drop, but instead they crowded forward as their counterparts had, threatening the adventurers with their bulk and poison spittle. This time, there were no surprises. Shal, Tarl, and Ren went straight for the creatures' oversized heads and gawking eyes. In moments, their flopping, twitching bodies and decapitated heads littered the floor. Shal knew the wizard's paltry effort signaled his defeat, but she did not anticipate his next move.

As the last of the creatures flopped and twitched on the floor in death, Yarash began to rant. "Killing my creations! All my research, gone! You can't carve my brain! You won't get my secrets! You'll never get my secrets!" And before they could reach him, he had disemboweled himself with his own dagger.

"Tyr and Tymorah!" Tarl pressed his hands against the spasming body to stop its grotesque twitching. "What do you suppose the sick fellow was thinking of?"

"It looks to me like the answer might be in those ledgers," said Ren. He wasted no time getting started on a search of the sorcerer's belongings. "Bloody divination!" he shouted as he rifled through one of the larger ledgers. "Look at these maps! He was going to try to contaminate the entire Moonsea and use those freaks of his to control things! He was sicker than-"

"Cadorna," said Shal, who had also started poring over the ledgers. "Yarash's notes are thorough. Cadorna knew everything. Look at this! The councilman didn't send us to check out a rumor or even to stop the pollution. He knew exactly where he was sending us. He did it to get the ioun stones."

Ren moved behind Shal and started reading over her shoulder. "Would you look at that? Yarash wasn't even going to give the stones to Cadorna. The Lord of the Ruins had offered a higher price!" Ren stopped cold and then began reading aloud. "'… I can't imagine what all the fuss is over a couple of rocks. The dragon has dispatched assassins to Waterdeep and beyond, looking for the stones, and now the councilman wants me to give them to him… '."

Ren's eyes were wide. "The Lord of the Ruins-he sent the assassin to kill Tempest!"

Shal reached out and patted Ren's arm soothingly. Then she pointed to an entry in another ledger and started reading it aloud. " 'Thank goodness Porphyrys has followed the instructions of the Lord of the Ruins this time and had those two interfering windbags killed. Between the red mage and that blue fellow, they were seriously depleting my supply of experimental stock…' " Shal could read no further.

"I've seen enough!" she said. "I wanted vengeance. Now I can get it. I want Cadorna to pay for this. Between these writings and what the three of us know already, I think we can convince the First Councilman of his guilt."

"If we can't," said Tarl, helping Shal load the ledgers into the Cloth of Many Pockets, "there's more than one bad apple on the council."

Outside, the pyramid still looked like a giant bauble protruding from the landscape, but Yarash's abominable creations had ceased forever. The conduit that had pumped the vile byproduct of his unnatural magical creations into the Stojanow was still, and the last of the black sludge had begun its slow journey downriver to the wide expanses of the Moonsea.

The trip back, without the mare, was slow, in places arduous. Even with Cerulean carrying all their equipment, it was taking the three nearly twice as long to return to the city as it had to travel to the sorcerer's island. No one was complaining, though. In fact, all three of the companions were lost in thoughts of their own.

Ren was thoroughly enjoying what was proving to be a quiet return journey. He realized that the victory against Yarash had been Shal's, but as he watched the Stojanow's waters begin to wash away the black poison from the sorcerer's pyramid, he felt an unrivaled sense of achievement. He looked at the brown riverbanks and imagined what they would look like in another year, with healthy new grasses spreading across the now-barren earth and the first saplings poking their leaves above the ground. The recovery would be far from instantaneous, and the gray stumps would remain for years, ugly reminders of one man's gross abuse against nature, but the healing growth would be a signature of hope.

Ren realized that an entire lifetime of thieving in the city wouldn't give him half the sense of purpose he'd felt on the missions to Thorn Island and the gnoll stronghold, and contributing to the purge of the Stojanow had done more for his spirit than any loo t he had ever stolen as a thief.

Ren was as ready as he would ever be to accompany Shal as she sought Cadorna's punishment for the slaying of her mentor, and he had already made up his mind to ignore Tarl's insistence that the young cleric face the vampire alone. But most of all, Ren was ready to face the Lord of the Ruins himself, whoever he was-the real murderer of Tempest.