To his shock and surprise, a staff did appear in his hands. But it was not his trusty Ironwood weapon. It was a long shank of what looked like black steel, and it was hot to the touch.
He had accidentally summoned forth the Firestaff.
"That's it!" the shorter man said from behind the first. "That's the Firestaff! Get him before he makes it disappear!"
He was a bit dismayed that he had blundered so monumentally, but he had to work with the situation. Retracting the Cat's Claws, he took up the Firestaff in an end-grip and set the end of the artifact towards the doorway. That move should have made the lead man a bit wary to enter the room, but the man suddenly screamed and backed up a good three steps, nearly about to dive out of the doorway. Tarrin realized that the man thought he was going to use magic on him!
He nearly dropped it himself when the entire length of the old artifact suddenly erupted into brilliant flame. He could feel its heat, but it did him no harm, and he could clearly hear the thing's unspoken voice in his ears. It was urging him to strike, to trust in the power of the Staff, to raise it up and use it to smite his enemies. It wanted him to use it, it wanted him to unleash its power. But Dolanna had said that it could only work on Gods Day!
It whispered to him, told him that it was capable of much more than just that, that he could use it to destroy those who threatened him. All he had to do was wish it, and it would be so. Its power would be his, all its power, and he could use it any way he wanted. Power like the magic they said he once knew, power to vanquish these three thieves, power to kill them with ease. It would be all his, and nobody else's. All his, all its power, the power to protect himself, the power to defend… the power to rule, the power to conquer. All its power would be his, the power that would make him a king. All he had to do was wish it, and it would be his…
Shaking his head, he realized that, free of its prison in the elsewhere, the Firestaff was trying to subvert him. The offer of power was very tempting, but his talk with Jula made him understand where the road for those who craved power usually ended. Its offer of power was a sincere one, but in the end he would end up being a slave to its will, and its will was only that it be used as it had been created to be used. And that would get everyone he cared about killed. It was a road that ended in a cliff.
Struggling to fight the Firestaff's mental temptations, he gritted his teeth and tried to remember how to make it go back where he had it. Will it, she said. He had to will it. Will it to go away, to be put in the elsewhere. He had to do it quickly, because the Firestaff was assaulting him with images of godhood, of him being the most powerful being on Sennadar, where he could fix all the things that were wrong with the world and create something that he would consider to be perfect. A world molded by his hands, a world shaped so that nobody was ever hungry or sick and everyone was happy. It would be a perfect world, a wonderful world, and everyone would love him and sing praises to him and-
"No!" he said with a gasp, nearly dropping the priceless artifact. He looked at the two men in the doorway, and saw that their eyes were glazed in a strange way. The Firestaff was tempting them too! He realized that just in time to see looks of utter determination stamp on their features, and they raised their swords almost in unison. The Firestaff had them, and they were going to come through that door and try to get it with no fear about getting injured!
They started in, struggling to get through the door at the same time, and Tarrin jumped back. He felt both relieved and very nervous when the taller one yanked a dagger out of his belt and stabbed the shorter one in the side, making him cry out and fold around the weapon. But he didn't fall, he just kept trying to push through the door. If they were going to fight each other over who was going to get to the Firestaff first, that was fine by him. It gave him a few more seconds to try to remember exactly what he did the last time he made it go, and he finally realized that he had to be holding it in one hand, his left hand. His other staff was attached to his right, Dolanna said that things in the elsewhere were arranged around his body, and that no two objects could go there that would be occupying the same space. He had to let go of the staff with his right hand, or it wouldn't disappear. He did so quickly and willed the Firestaff to go back into the elsewhere, where its infernal whispering and temptations could not reach him.
And just like that, it disappeared.
He was startled by the sudden cry of pain from the doorway. The shorter one, with the dagger still in his side, hunched over with a scream and fell into the room, clutching at the weapon in agony. When Tarrin put the Firestaff away, its whispering ended, and the pain-numbing mindless desire it had put into the two men stopped.
Now there was only one of them, and this time, Tarrin managed to call forth the right staff. His Ironwood staff appeared in his right hand, and he quickly hefted it into the end-grip and used its greater reach to jam the end into the man's mail-covered chest before he could get his sword within reach and before he recovered from the mind-influencing power of the artifact. A staff was a bludgeoning weapon, meant to deal damage with impact, and chain mail was not designed to absorb that kind of a blow. It did offer the man some protection, but not enough to matter. Tarrin's thrust hit him just at the base of the sternum, and the mail gave too much to prevent the man's breastbone from being broken. It was a killing blow, designed to shatter the breastbone and make the bone shards cut into vital organs, or at the very least severly hamper a man's ability to breathe. The strike didn't kill the man, but he doubled over and fell to his knees, his helmet sliding off his head, and blood absolutely poured out of his open mouth. But Tarrin was not in the mood to take any chances, not against men who were using poisoned weapons. He took up the staff in both hands and smashed it over the man's bare head, dropping him to the carpeted floor like a sack of meal. That blow was fatal, causing some of his brains to seep out of his ears after he came to rest on the floor. He didn't waste time standing over the man, he levelled his staff at the injured one who fell into the room, but he was already dead. He had vomited after falling, and Tarrin realized that the dagger with which he'd been stabbed was also poisoned. The eyes, wild and with the pupils so constricted that it looked like he had none, made it apparent that something other than a rather superficial stab wound to the side by a small dagger had killed him. Tarrin prodded him with his staff just to make sure, then rolled him over and watched to make sure he wasn't breathing. When he was satisfied the man was dead, he stepped out into the hallway and found the third one crumpled in the hall. He too was dead, and after Tarrin rolled him over, he saw why. When he fell into the other man, the man's sword had cut him on the upper arm, just under where his chain jack protected him, and the third had struck him in the other shoulder, which had penetrated his mail shirt and drawn blood. He too had been poisoned, but Tarrin doubted he would have managed to live very long with a punctured lung. If the poison hadn't have killed him, he would have drowned in his own blood. And if he had managed to survive that, he would have been no match for Tarrin, being both poisoned and with a lung full of blood.
Jenna had been right. She said that they'd start coming into the Tower to get at him. These three had snuck in pretending to be Tower guards, and Tarrin had had the misfortune of being caught alone and away from any help. He knew that he'd better not let that happen again. No matter how much it annoyed him, he knew that he'd have to have a companion or bodyguard with him from now on. If only to have another set of eyes watching his back if nothing else.