by Kate Novak
A week of heavy summer storms following hard after a season of steady spring rains had created a sinkhole over thirty feet across and twenty feet deep just beneath the stables. The secret shrine's earthen roof, insufficiently supported by wooden beams, had collapsed, as had the stable above, revealing the vipers' nest below. The worshipers had been crushed and smothered by dirt, slate rock, and lumber.
The town guard, aided by Lauthyr's priests, were now sorting through the tangle of rubble and timbers to pull free the corpses of Beshaba's unfortunate followers. Apparently the collapse had occurred during a service to the Maid of Misfortune, for there were many human corpses. A dozen had been discovered in the top layer of the ruins, along with a those of half a dozen horses that had been quartered in the stable above. So far the rescuer had found only one survivor-a stallion. Lauthyr had ordered that it be dug out, lifted from the sinkhole, and healed. It was unlikely that he would accord similar kindness to any of Beshaba's worshipers, should any of them be found alive. Lauthyr was not the sort to show mercy to an enemy.
Any other priest might have credited Chauntea for the bountiful rain that had revealed the temple, but Lauthyr attributed the destructive rain in full to Tymora, since it had revealed the shrine of her hate-filled sister. It was a clear sign, in Lauthyr's mind, that Tymora had chosen Arabel as her own, which meant Daramos Lauthyr, High Lord Priest of the Lady's House, was the chosen prophet of Tymora's church.
Lauthyr looked up beyond the pit's walls to the new spires of the Lady's House, with their finely wrought golden domes perched atop turrets of white marble veined with sea-green jade. It had cost as much as the price of the marble to haul the stone from Impiltur, but Lauthyr considered the money well spent. The new construction, made possible by the donations of Tymora's followers, announced the wonders of Tymora and demonstrated that Tymora's church in Arabel was the most faithful in the world.
Lauthyr decided he would have to convince Myrmeen Lhal, the local lord, to cede this land to Tymora's church. Once the sinkhole had been filled in, it would serve well as the site for a church school, or perhaps a rectory-a place where Lauthyr himself could reflect upon the marvels his rule had created.
The High Lord Priest was shaken out of his daydreaming by the sound of someone clearing his throat. Lauthyr stifled the frown that came naturally to his face whenever he was interrupted. Lord Priest Doust Sulwood stood before him.
"We've uncovered thirty-seven bodies so far," Sulwood reported. "There's likely to be four or five times that number by the time we're through."
"An impressive display of Tymora's vengeance," Lauthyr replied, sagely concealing any pleasure he felt. Doust Sulwood was an annoyingly kind person, not the sort to revel in a foe's misfortune. "This should make a wonderful sermon for this evening's service and for many evenings to come."
"Are you planning to speak from the pulpit about the Marliir noble we found?" Sulwood asked with a hint of sarcasm in his tone.
"What?" Lauthyr growled.
"Among the bodies is one of the Marliir nobles. A lesser cousin," Sulwood explained.
Lauthyr frowned for a moment. House Marliir was much favored in Arabel. The noble family wouldn't appreciate a priest implicating any member of their family in a scandal. With a more impassive expression, the High Lord Priest replied, "Such a pity that poor Marliir noble was in the stables when Tymora chose to weaken the supports of the temple below."
Sulwood snorted contemptuously. Lauthyr's political machinations never ceased to annoy him.
From the ground level above them, a woman called out urgently to the High Lord Priest. Lauthyr and Sulwood looked up. A young priestess stood on the edge of the sinkhole, waving down at Lauthyr.
"What is it, my child?" Lauthyr asked calmly.
The priestess knelt down before Lauthyr, a ridiculous formality in Sulwood's opinion, especially in light of the fact she was twenty feet above the Lord High Priest. As far as Sulwood was concerned, a bow of the head showed respect enough for a mortal being who was, after all, only a servant to the goddess he worshiped.
"Forgive me, High Lord, but there is an emergency back at the Lady's House."
Daramos Lauthyr looked back up at the resplendent spires of Tymora's temple with alarm. "What's wrong?" he asked less calmly.
"Apparently the collapse of Beshaba's shrine changed the channel of one of the city's springs. The water is now pouring into the Lady's House."
The High Lord Priest sighed with relief. "No doubt Lady Luck wished us to have a more convenient source of water," he informed the priestess.
"But, High Lord," the priestess called down, "it's flooded out the scriptorium and the library. All our tomes and scrolls have been ruined."
Lauthyr paled. He had no insight into Lady Luck's motives for destroying the accumulated learning of her favored temple.
Sulwood gave Lauthyr a solicitous pat on the back "Don't worry, High Lord," he said. "I'm sure you'll find some good explanation before tonight's sermon "
It has been said that being turned into a drider is the worst punishment that can be exacted on one of Menzoberranzan's drow. Untrue. The high priestesses have perfected the art of uttering unintelligible shrieking sounds that burn the ears and send disrupting shivers through the spine, much like the famed "quivering palm" of some clerical warriors. They call it opera.
— Drizzt Do'Urden
INTERMEZZO
Walinda of Beshaba eyed the creeping lava with excitement. Less than a mile down the slope from the molten magma stood a fortress built of lumber. When the lava reached the building, it would burst into flame. If the lava pushed out a mere streamlet, the fortress would incinerate itself long before the wall of lava covered its current position, but should the lava come all at once, a wall of molten rock, the fortress would be torn from its foundations first and carried along with the lava as it burned.
Having already watched two other fortresses fall to the lava, Walinda knew that either sight would be impressive. The only thing to mar the priestess's amusement was the knowledge that the fortresses were empty. Watching inhabitants scramble about to save themselves, or their possessions, or perhaps even to attempt to save their fortress by digging a channel to divert the flow of the lava-that would have been much more entertaining. As it was, the priestess was able to appreciate the display of raw force, whether or not it made someone's life a misery.
She wore a magical ring that protected her completely from the heat of Gehenna, yet she walked carefully along the crust of cooling rock. Nothing could protect her from the tons of liquid rock that would bury her should she make a misstep through the crust and tumble into the flow of lava.
Walinda hugged herself with a feeling of satisfaction. She felt whole again. She needed a power to serve, a power greater than herself. Once she had seen Beshaba, she knew that she had made the right decision. She would serve Beshaba as she would have served Bane, had he not betrayed her.
Turning from all the more organized faiths had not come easily to the priestess. All her life self-discipline had been her greatest strength. When Cyric had seized Bane's power, Walinda had utterly rejected her superiors' demands that she join Cyric's church with them. Cyric was a mad and capricious god whom she could not possibly understand. She had remained faithful to Bane. She might even had resurrected The Dark One had he not betrayed her merely because she was a woman. That was when she had come to realize contracts and laws were meaningless to the gods. So when she went to seek out a new power to serve, Walinda did not confine her exploration to those religions that paid lip service to order.
However, she continued to reject Cyric. She had escaped the Banedeath-the campaign of destruction of the last of Bane's faithful in Zhentil Keep-but many of her friends had not. And she couldn't forget that Cyric had destroyed Zhentil Keep with his self-serving bungling. A decade ago, Cyric had been a mere mortal. She could never truly respect him or his clergy.
Some might have seen Bane's son, Iyachtu Xvim, as a logical choice.
One of Walinda's favorite paramours held a position of power in Iyachtu's church. But Bane was now her enemy and while Iyachtu had no love for his father, Walinda suspected the lesser god would prove just as deceitful and dishonorable. She had already been belittled and betrayed once by the priests of his church. She would not join them.
She had considered offering her services to Shar, Mistress of the Night, but Shar's church was veiled in too much secrecy. Walinda didn't want to waste time negotiating the twisted power structure. She belonged in the top echelon of any hierarchy. She flirted briefly with the church of Loviatar, but the priests of the Maiden of Pain were too willing to accept suffering; indeed, it was one of the requirements of their faith. In Walinda's opinion, suffering was for peasants.
In the end, she had chosen Beshaba. It was not a matter of settling for the least offensive of the evil gods. Walinda truly felt Beshaba suited all her needs, and she would suit Beshaba's. True, the Maiden of Misfortune was mad and capricious, but it was a madness born of spite, the sort of madness Walinda understood. The church's hierarchy was dominated by women, which would make her climb in rank more challenging, but also more certain. There would be no invisible wall blocking her progress to the seats of power.
Her quest to resurrect Bane had broadened her outlook considerably. Having traveled in the Outlands and Sigil and the Astral Plane, the priestess realized she needn't return to the Realms to some backwater underground temple in order to pledge her fealty to Beshaba. The Sensates of Sigil had made it possible for her to travel directly to Beshaba's realm, the Blood Tor.
The priestesses of the Blood Tor hadn't exactly welcomed the former priestess of Bane with open arms, but they had accepted her as a novitiate. It was also thanks to the Sensates that she had gained an audience with Beshaba. By betraying the information she possessed about the Sensates, Walinda had gained the goddess's direct attention. Interested to learn of the mortals who'd had the temerity to spy on her, Beshaba had Walinda summoned to her court to describe the Sensates' activities in detail. Walinda had arrived at a fateful hour.
She relived those moments over and over in her head. Beshaba, in all her glory, reclining on a divan, had just asked Walinda to describe the genasi scryer when hydroloths teleported into the goddess's court. Beshaba rose to destroy the evil amphibians with a simple spell. That was when the quakes began. The earth trembled, then heaved. Beshaba created a barrier to protect her court, but at that moment the cavern began caving in. The goddess could do nothing as her realm collapsed about her followers, crushing them to death.
As Walinda dealt a death blow with her goad to a hydroloth who was attempting to attack Beshaba, the goddess channeled her power into the resurrection of a favored priestess. The solid rock of the mountain grew more frenzied, shaking like a cart on a rough cobblestone road. The dead priestess revived, but like the realm around her, she went into a seizure. For some reason, Beshaba had lost control of her power.
Walinda had quickly concluded that since the hydroloths were not generally suicidal creatures, it could only be assumed that they were aware in advance that Beshaba would be so weakened. Although without control of her powers, Beshaba still had the strength of a goddess, and she seized one of the hydroloths and squeezed it by the throat with her bare hands and demanded to know who had sent it to her realm. The creature must have answered telepathically, for in the next instant the goddess cursed Iyachtu Xvim with words both foul and ancient.
Then, having hurled the hydroloth to the floor like a rag doll, Beshaba grabbed the nearest living priestess, who not coincidentally proved to be Walinda, and teleported away to Gehenna. There, on the fiery slopes of Chamada, the goddess of ill luck had given Walinda a ring to protect her from the fires and lava all about them. Then she had imbued Walinda with some of her power, making Walinda the goddess's newest proxy.
It was a gift that Walinda had never experienced before. It gave her a window into Beshaba's bitter heart. Suddenly Walinda understood Beshaba completely, and agreed with her completely. Her will had been subsumed by the goddess's desires. The gift had left Walinda with a feeling of complete ruthlessness. She would now do anything for Beshaba, even die for her.
Beshaba did not ask for her death, however-only her faithful patience. The goddess had perched her newly anointed priestess down on a portion of the mount that afforded her a view of the Bastion of Hate, the realm of the god Iyachtu Xvim. The goddess instructed Walinda to wait on the slope until Beshaba called to her. Then the goddess had flown off to the Bastion of Hate.
That had been hours ago, possibly as long as a day. It was impossible to tell in the dawnless land of Gehenna. Yet Walinda was not the least bit tired or bored. Waiting for Beshaba was the most important thing in the world to her now. And while she waited, she had the amusement of watching the lava flows destroy the abandoned fortresses.
OFFSTAGE
Somewhere else in the Prime Material Plane known as Realmspace, Polly Thax unfastened the top four buttons on her blouse and put her hand on the doorknob of the palace's exhibition hall.
"Maiden of Misfortune, pass me by, kiss my enemies," Polly murmured as she turned the doorknob. The door was not locked; it opened noiselessly. Polly slipped into the exhibition hall and closed the door behind her.
The room was well lit from hundreds of magical lanterns suspended from the ceiling. Polly did not spy anyone else in the room. Wielding her feather duster over a row of nude statues, Polly made her way toward the center of the room.
"What do you think you're doing here?" a stern male voice demanded.
Polly started and whirled around. The Hulorn himself, the hereditary mayor of Selgaunt, stood there. Polly's eyes widened.
Once upon a time the Hulorn's blue eyes and curly black hair and boyish charm had attracted more than his share of women. But that was twenty years ago. Now he was a plump middle-aged man of average height. He was still a man of power, however.
"Well?" the Hulorn prompted.
Tm dusting, sir," Polly replied in a quivering voice. "I'm sorry if I disturbed you, sir. I'll come back later."
The Hulorn put his arm out, resting his hand on a glass cabinet containing several ivory carvings of sea mammals, effectively blocking Polly's exit. "No one is to be in this hall without the presence of a guard," he said. "I suppose they forgot to tell you," he suggested with a grin that made clear he supposed no such thing.
"I don't know, sir," Polly replied. "I forget things sometimes."
The Hulorn licked his lips and gave Polly a thorough examination with his eyes. Then he tilted his head to one side and said, "I don't suppose you'd like to see the Eyes of the Sea Queen."
Polly's eyes widened with wonder. "Oh, yes, sir," she replied. "I would love to see them." The look the Hulorn had given her did not distress her in the least. In fact, she'd been counting on it.
The Hulorn led her to a glass case in the center of the room. There, on a white velvet pillow, shining softly like full moons, were two pearls the size of oranges. They were the largest ever discovered in the Realms.
"They're beautiful," Polly gasped.
"Nearly as lovely as your eyes," the Hulorn said, taking a step closer. "Though I suppose men say that sort of thing to you all the time."
Polly smiled, and her eyes met the Hulorn's gaze without a trace of modesty. "Those that have the courage," she replied.
"Would you like to hold them?" he asked.
"May I?" Polly asked.
The Hulorn whispered a brief incantation, and the glass case popped open with a whoosh. The Hulorn reached in and withdrew both pearls. He held them out, Polly tucked her feather duster under one arm and took a pearl in each hand. She held the smooth-surfaced gems to her cheeks and smiled with ecstasy. The feather duster under her arm clattered to the floor.
"Oh!" Polly exclaimed.
"Allow me," the Hulorn said. He knelt down, but instead of scooping up the feather duster, he slid his hands beneath her skirt and rested them on her calves.
At the garden gate, she retrieved a sack containing a guard's leather jerkin and a helm, and slid the pearls into a hidden pocket in the leather jerkin. Then she slipped off her apron and skirt and donned the leather jerkin and helm. She hung the skirt on a line behind the laundry. At the castle gate, one of the guards gave her a saucy wink and she winked back.
She was strolling through the busy city streets when a horn sounded in the castle yard. Polly turned and looked as surprised as the other pedestrians as troops of guards charged down the street, stopping any woman dressed as a servant. For a while she leaned against a wall and watched the interrogations. As the guards moved down the street, she followed them, blending in with the guards, helping to search some poor, luckless women who looked like her in the most superficial of ways. Then she slipped down a side street and made her way to the dock, where her buyer awaited with payment-the papers that transferred ownership of a Selgaunt carrack and its load of rare cargo to her name.
