Tarl drew himself up to his full height. "Then may I formally remind my brothers and sisters of the prophecy of Miltiades, that most noble of Tyr's paladins?"

Murmurs of ascent followed Tarl's request Kern wondered what his father was referring to. All he knew was that Miltiades was a legendary paladin Tyr had once raised from the grave to help save Phlan.

"Before Miltiades was called back to Tyr's halls, he spoke of one destined to be called Hammerseeker."

Kern leaned forward, anxious to hear the lucky cleric's name.

"And who is to be the Hammerseeker?" Patriarch Anton intoned ceremoniously.

Tarl drew in a deep breath. "The name of the Hammerseeker is Kern Miltiades Desanea!" His deep voice reverberated about the temple.

Listle's silvery eyes nearly popped out of her head.

Tarl smiled proudly at his son.

Kern gaped at his father in utter astonishment as all eyes turned expectantly toward him.

"Who?" he blurted in an unexpectedly squeaky voice. "Me?"

3

The huge assassin called Slayer strode into the smoky subterranean hall and surveyed the gathered throng with cruel eyes, his lips curling back from his strong white teeth in a feral grin. It looked as if every last member of Phlan's guild of thieves had answered the call, from the scroungiest cutpurse to the deadliest killer. Over three hundred men and women stood before Slayer, and all of them were his to command. The old fools of the temple of Tyr had seen their last sunrise.

"I have a gift for you, thieves of Phlan!" Slayer proclaimed in his booming voice. "From Guildmaster Sirana herself. You would do well not to refuse it."

He gestured to a huge, misshapen heap before him, covered with a rough cloth the color of old blood. At his signal, a trio of thieves leaped forward to pull back the cloth, revealing a pile of ebony armor. Next to it was a stack of long swords as dark and polished as onyx.

"With these weapons, we will crush the wretched clerics and seize the tome that points the way to the Hammer of Tyr-and the riches Bane is said to have buried with that relic. Clad yourselves in this armor and take up these swords, thieves of Phlan, and I promise you, you will fight as you never have before!"

The thieves eyed Slayer hesitantly. He had been second-in-command of the thieves' guild for no more than three moons, and many were still wary of him.

Slayer watched them scornfully. "Now!" he thundered, drawing himself up to his full seven feet. The soot-covered rafters shook with the force of his voice, and his dark eyes blazed with menace. Clad all in black leather, he was a commanding figure.

The resistance of the thieves broke. Swiftly they pressed forward, grabbing breastplates as smooth as beetle carapaces and swords as sleek as adders. Most of them were at a loss as to how to don the armor, and they stared at the weapons in confusion. Thieves were usually creatures of stealth and trickery, not warriors.

"We're cutthroats, Slayer, not bone-brained fighters!" a voice sneered over the din. "Or did you forget that, just as you and your foul mistress have forgotten so many of our other traditions?"

Slayer turned his dark gaze toward a wiry man with a shaved head and an eye lost in a mass of scar tissue. Kankorlin. He had been loyal to Bercan, the guildmaster Sirana had murdered three months before. Kankorlin had been whispering against Sirana ever since she seized command of the guild. Now he had finally summoned the courage to speak out.

"I for one won't wear this junk!" Kankorlin tossed down a breastplate in disgust and turned to the assembled thieves. "We can't lumber up to the temple in these. Fine targets we'll make for the spells of those idiot clerics."

Murmurs of agreement drifted through the hall.

"Is that so, Kankorlin?" Slayer replied, his voice as smooth as oil. "Well, if you don't care to wear the armor, you certainly don't have to."

Kankorlin smiled at his easy victory. However, his pleasure was short-lived.

With an idle flick of his black-gloved hand, Slayer sent an inky sphere of magic hurtling toward Kankorlin. It struck the wiry thief directly in the chest. There was a sizzling sound and a smell of burning flesh as the thief was propelled backward and crushed against a granite wall. The other thieves stared in shock as the remnants of Kankorlin's body slid to the floor, still smoking.

"Who else prefers not to don the armor?" Slayer inquired.

Three hundred thieves less one scrambled to strap on the onyx breastplates.

With a flourish, Slayer raised his own suit of black armor in one hand. Fiery sparks sped from his fingertips to engulf the ebony armor. In the blink of an eye the suit magically melded to his body. The metal conformed tightly to his muscles, fitting him like a second skin.

As the thieves strapped on the black armor, they noted the slippery, greasy quality of the metal. As the form-fitting metal covered each wearer from neck to ankle, a subtle transformation took place. Each thief suddenly became a little bulkier, more muscular. Faces grew harder and coarser; brutish gleams ignited in every pair of eyes. Slayer stroked his well-oiled beard, most pleased. Sirana's enchanted armor seemed to be everything she had promised it would be.

Suddenly the torches dimmed as a chill gust of wind coursed through the hall. Slayer sensed Sirana's shadow minions approaching. His mistress must have finished her incantations in her nearby spellcasting chamber.

The torches guttered and died, plunging the hall into darkness. The sound of wings echoed like heartbeats. Suddenly nine pairs of feral red eyes appeared in the dim surface of the west wall. The burning eyes drifted toward the armored thieves.

Several of the thieves produced flares, and the resulting green glow revealed fiends such as the onlookers had never imagined existed. Spinagons on clawed feet strode boldly into the hall, moving with a queer reptilian grace, their leathery wings flapping lazily behind them. There were nine of the fell beasts, each bearing a long, wickedly barbed spear. The weapons sizzled with flame, sparks flying from their steel tips, scorching the air with the reek of burned hair. Had the beasts appeared ten minutes before, the thieves would have fled in terror. But the magical armor had hardened their hearts as well as their bodies. The thieves showed no fear of Sirana's otherworldly minions. The fiends snarled at the green flares, thick drool oozing from serrated fangs.

"We have been summoned from our plane of existence," the fiends hissed in unison. "Who are we to kill?"

"Whom I tell you to kill," Slayer spat.

Their eyes flared with hatred, but the spinagons bowed their heads in submission. They had no choice; Sirana controlled them with her powerful magic.

"All of Tyr's clerics must die!" Slayer bellowed to the crowd. "And we must capture the book that reveals the way to Tyr's hammer. Our reward will be untold riches." The huge man raised a fist on high. "Are you with me, thieves of Phlan?"

As one, the magically armored thieves raised their dark swords, eyes gleaming with curiously blank ferocity as they shouted their battle cries.

Anton and Tarl had sat Kern down on a hard marble bench. The young paladin was still dazed. Listle hovered nearby with an expression that was an equal mixture of concern, wonder, and amusement.

"I'm sorry you had to hear of Miltiades' prophecy like this, Son." Tarl gripped Kern's shoulder tightly. "Shal and I had planned to tell you next year."

Anton spoke in his rumbling baritone. "I'm afraid these dark times will force him to become a man a little sooner than you had wished, Tarl." The big cleric knelt to look directly in Kern's eyes. His shaggy mien was solemn. "I will not lie to you, Kern. The search for Tyr's hammer will be a perilous quest. Should you accept your destiny as Hammerseeker, there is a chance that you might never return to Phlan." Anton took a deep breath. "Never has a paladin-aspirant been given such a momentous task. But Tyr himself has chosen you, lad."