by Kate Novak
Someone snarled a female voice, “Stupid eyewing, get away from here. Okim, Airdna, bat that beast out of here before it poisons my spell.”
A figure sat down beside the pool and tossed back a mane of snow-white hair, revealing the features of a beautiful maiden. She was quite tall, with a voluptuous figure and impossibly small waist. Her skin appeared red from the light of the pool, but Bors, whose catlike eyes could not be deceived by tricks of the light, could see that her flesh was as white as a corpse’s, but flushed about her cheeks and throat with the palest blue and violet color. She wore a gown of the darkest black, which fit her like a glove, and a tiara of black pearls. The goddess raised her head, and someone in the Sensate audience gasped softly. The deity’s eyes were rimmed with yellow and red and blazed with madness.
This, Bors realized, was the goddess Beshaba. No doubt Ayryn had been influenced by Chauntea’s suggestion to Lathander that he seek out one of Tyche’s daughters. Beshaba was known as Tyche’s “unpleasant” daughter. She was also known as the Maid of Misfortune. She had dominion over bad luck.
Ayryn’s projection of Beshaba was not gigantic. The form the goddess wore was human-sized. She was joined a minute later by two winged women of great beauty with demonic eyes. The women wore silken pants, silver breastplates engraved with the stag horns of Beshaba, and swords with serrated blades. Bors recognized the winged women as alu-fiends, creatures of evil from the Abyss, where Beshaba made her home.
An old man’s face appeared on the surface of the pool of red liquid.
“There he is,” Beshaba whispered with an evil smile on her lips.
The goddess was scrying on someone, just as they were scrying on her.
“Doljust,” Beshaba said, “it is time to pay for slighting me.”
The vision in Beshaba’s pool seemed to move away so that the goddess, and those Sensates who spied upon her, could see more of Doljust and the landscape around him.
Doljust was old, as evidenced by his gray hair and beard and wrinkled features, but he was by no means feeble. He rode straight and tall in the saddle of a prancing mare. A handsome pair of hunting hounds circled his mount, barking with excitement. He wore neither fancy armor nor noble velvets, but his clothing was well made and sturdy, and his mare was a fine-looking beast.
Doljust began to dismount.
Beshaba reached down and touched the surface of the pool.
At that instant, Doljust’s boot caught in his stirrup, and when he managed to free himself with his hands, he fell backward on his back. Doljust swore a common oath, not one that mentioned any god’s name.
One of the alu-fiends giggled; the other merely smiled. Beshaba was not yet amused.
Doljust rose and brushed himself off. He followed his dogs to a cave entrance. At one side of the entrance lay the corpses of two children, mere toddlers. Doljust tossed his cloak over the bodies. Then he started a fire at the cave’s entrance, drew his sword, and waited.
The dogs paced behind their master. Soon, forced from its lair by the smoke, a were-bat came hurtling toward Doljust with an awful shriek. The creature was in its hybrid form, with the wings and head of a bat but the torso of a man. It raked at Doljust with the claws at the ends of its wings. The man raised his sword and swung.
Beshaba touched the pool again.
Goaded by the goddess’s magic, one of Doljust’s hounds forgot its training and leapt toward the were-bat’s throat just as its master’s sword came swinging downward. The blade sliced across the hound’s ribs.
The dog gave a horrible howl, which echoed about the audience.
The were-bat flew clear of Doljust and landed on the mare’s saddle. With a cackling laugh, it kicked the horse in the ribs. Doljust hollered, but the mare was frenzied with fear and galloped off into the darkness.
There were tears in Doljust’s eyes as he examined his injured and apparently dying hound.
Beshaba touched the pool again.
The other hound whimpered behind him. Doljust whirled about, slicing his sword into a small were-bat as it flew from the cave.
The bat crashed to the ground, dealt a mortal wound. Then, before Doljust’s eyes, it transformed to a small child, a little boy with curly golden hair.
“Grandpa,” the boy gasped with his last breath.
Doljust’s screams rang out through the sensorium.
Beshaba laughed a horrible, maniacal laugh.
The darkness dispersed.
Ayryn’s crystal ball fell to the floor with a clunk and rolled toward the audience.
There was a stunned silence in the room.
Bors came forward quickly and put a hand on Ayryn’s shoulder.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes,” Ayryn replied. “I … I was shocked, that’s all.” There were tears in her eyes.
Montgomery came forward, holding out the crystal ball.
“We don’t have to continue,” she said softly.
Ayryn took her scrying tool and shook her head. “It would be a shame to end on such a sour note. Let me try again.”
Montgomery smiled and nodded. She returned to her seat.
Bors stepped back and examined the audience. Many of them looked as shocked as Ayryn, but most hid behind impassive masks. One guest, though, was smiling.
Bors felt his body stiffen. The guest was a woman, small of stature and slender, with long black hair. She was attractive and appeared quite young, but Bors knew her youth was a lie. The woman’s name was Walinda. Once she’d been a priestess of the evil, now-deceased god Bane. While the Sensates welcomed anyone who earnestly desired to be a member, Bors found himself thinking Montgomery must have temporarily taken leave of her senses when she invited Walinda into their midst, especially for so sensitive a performance. Walinda was, in Bors’s opinion, a viper in woman’s form. He could still feel the bump on the back of his head where she had clubbed him with his own frying pan. Had the paladin not sworn his undivided service as Ayryn’s bodyguard for the evening, he would have challenged the woman’s presence.
The room darkened once more, though only slightly. Two figures appeared in the center of the room, a young man with red hair and a slightly older raven-haired woman. The pair were seated at a table, drinking ale. They were the size of ordinary mortals, but the woman sported a pair of copper wings, and her face was covered with black feathers.
While the audience was busy trying to guess which gods they were seeing, Bors realized something had gone wrong with Ayryn’s scrying. These people were not gods. The man Bors recognized as a priest named Joel, a Prime from Toril, the same world whose gods they were currently spying upon. Bors had never met the winged woman, but from a description his friend Holly Harrowslough had given him, he guessed she was another Prime by the name of Jas.
“Jas, you’re being ridiculous about this,” Joel said. “Give me one good reason why you won’t come with me.”
“I don’t have to give you any reasons,” Jas retorted. “This is my business. Why don’t you just let me be?” The whites of her eyes flared, and her dark brown irises began glowing green.
“You don’t mean that,” Joel argued.
The vision quickly faded. Ayryn looked up, shaking her head. “Misdirected,” she whispered in Montgomery’s direction. “I’m going to try one more time,” she said.
The room dimmed somewhat. A god Bors recognized appeared in the center of the room. The deity was seated on a bench, strumming a lyre. He appeared as a handsome young man about ten feet tall with shoulder-length hair of spun gold. He wore a tunic of fine brocade with fur trim. Behind him was a great library, with shelves and shelves of books and scrolls. The god was Milil, Lord of Song.
Milil looked up from his instrument. “At last, an audience,” he said with a sly grin.
Bors’s body tensed.
“Welcome, prying eyes,” Milil greeted them. “I expect you to pay attention now. It’s the least you can do after peering into my realm without invitation.”
/> Milil began to sing “The Baker’s Daughter,” a love song about a silver dragon’s love for a mortal woman. His voice was deep and mellifluous. Several of the women in the audience sighed.
Next Milil sang “Pipeweed Dreams,” a halfling drinking song. Many members of the audience joined in, while others just hummed along softly.
Milil sang “The Seven Sisters,” a long ballad. Then he sang “Three Thayvian Roses,” a bawdy festhall tune that brought a blush even to Montgomery’s face. Finally he began, “The Purple Dragons of Cormyr,” another long ballad. A few members of the audience began to nod off. Milil woke them with a little shout. The concert continued. Milil began singing several old Torillian folk songs one about the weather, another about crops, and even one about milking cows.
Bors stole a glance at Ayryn. Surely she cannot keep scrying for much longer, he thought. She must be exhausted.
Ayryn’s blue skin was pale. There was a glazed look over her eyes. Although deities could not enter Sigil, somehow Milil had managed to get some charm through the crystal.
“And now,” Milil said, “I have a truly special treat. “The finale from the opera The Fall of Myth Drannor.”
Bors slipped up to Ayryn and yanked the crystal ball from her hand.
Mercifully, Milil’s image disappeared.
The audience shook themselves from their stupor. Montgomery laughed.
“My, but wasn’t that interesting,” the Sensate leader said.
I’ve heard that people commit murders at the operas and no one notices because everyone on stage is bellowing at the top of his lungs.
—Olive Ruskettle
Act One
Scene 1
Joel stood at the end of his last song and bowed to the audience. His long red hair fell forward and brushed the floor. The applause was loud and long and spiced with a few shouts of “More!” Joel made an exit, stage left. Though a very young man, he had been a bard long enough to know the three main rules of the entertainer. Don’t turn your back on your audience. Don’t upstage the act that follows. Always leave the audience wanting more.
“And that was Joel, the Rebel Bard, at the end of his exclusive engagement here at Chirper’s Seawind Theater,” the master of ceremonies announced. “Coming up in ten minutes, our next performer, the renowned juggling act of Shar Nova.”
One of the stagehands slipped Joel a note.
The bard perused the writing quickly. “Finally,” he muttered. He slipped through the dressing room, tied back his hair, retrieved his sword and knapsack, and stepped out into the theater. Nonchalantly he followed a few members of the audience who were taking advantage of the break to leave the theater.
Chirper’s Seawind Theater emptied into Chirper’s dining room. At this hour, the dining room was still very busy, so it wasn’t easy picking out the author of the note. A woman with wings didn’t stand out from the crowd in a place like Chirper’s. As one of the most popular inns in Sigil, the City of Doors, Chirper’s catered to a clientele as diverse as the multiverse. More than a few of the guests possessed wings, not to mention tails, horns, talons, and antennae.
The native population of the Cage, as Sigil was called locally, was comprised mostly of humans, the humanlike githzerai; the half-ram, half-human bariaurs; the half-human, half-fiend tieflings; and a few elves and dwarves. The transient population outnumbered the natives by two to one. Creatures from every known world and plane were represented, and they all seemed to visit Chirper’s. Evil fiends from the lower planes who stood several feet taller than an average human dined beside halflings no taller than human children. Creatures that looked like giant frogs argued across the dinner table with women with six arms and snake tails instead of legs. Beings whose bodies seemed to burn with fire broke bread with foxes and bears who walked upright and wore clothing.
The only way to enter or leave Sigil was through one of the city’s innumerable magical portals. Many of the visitors were stranded there, having stepped through a one-way portal and been unable to locate a portal that led home or been unable to find the right key to a portal that led home. Other, more worldly, visitors had come through one of the two-way portals as tourists to the city. Some came to negotiate with their enemies in the neutral city. And since, for some mysterious reason, the portals would not admit beings of godly power, a few came to do their god’s bidding here, while others came to escape the gods.
Joel had come to Sigil the first time searching for an artifact for his god. He returned to use the city’s portals to disperse the pieces of that artifact throughout the multiverse, and to fulfill a bargain made with one of the city’s natives. Both tasks completed, the bard was anxious to leave Sigil, but not without at least saying good-bye to Jasmine of Westgate, one of his companions on his last adventure. After fruitlessly scanning the crowd, Joel pulled aside the maître d’ to ask where he’d seated the winged woman who’d sent the note. The maître d’ directed Joel to a small table by the bar.
Joel found Jas sipping an ale just where the maître d’ said she’d be. She was not bothering to cover up her gargoyle-like wings of patina-tinged copper or the black feathers on her face. She wore a new outfit, consisting of leggings and a jerkin of black leather that clung to her slender, well-muscled frame. A short sword in a scabbard and an azure cloak hung on the back of her chair. Her dark black hair was cropped close to her skull, and it shone nearly blue in the amber light of the lantern hanging over the table.
“Where have you been?” Joel demanded, taking the chair opposite her. He set his pack and weapon beneath his chair. “Holly and I were worried about you.”
“I hate just banging around,” Jas explained. “So while you were away, I took some work as a private courier for a high-up. Blood wanted to have me at her beck and call. So I left Dits’s to stay at her case.”
Joel grinned at the amount of Sigilian slang the woman had managed to pick up after only two weeks in this foreign place. Of course, that was to be expected. Jas was an experienced traveler. She knew how to make herself fit in anywhere.
“So, did you and Holly unload all the pieces of the hand?” Jas asked.
Joel nodded. The artifact whose pieces he had dispersed throughout the multiverse had been known as the Hand of Bane. He’d done it to help a paladin, Holly Harrowslough. Holly’s god wanted to be sure the hand could never be made whole and used to resurrect the evil god Bane.
“Holly’s friend Bors showed us several portals to other planes where we could hide the pieces,” the bard explained to Jas. “Holly spilled the pieces into the void out over the edge of the city. Then she was summoned to Elysium to give the ring finger of the hand to her god.”
“What’s Lathander going to do with a stone finger?” Jas asked.
Joel shrugged. “Use it for a paperweight? Who knows? Anyway, Holly was thrilled. She waited around for two days, hoping to see you, but she couldn’t keep her god waiting. She left for Elysium this morning. She’s not sure when she’ll be back.”
The bard nodded as Jas’s waiter set a mug of ale down in front of him and a fresh one in front of Jas.
“She’s probably secretly hoping Lathander will ask her to serve in his court or something,” Jas said.
Joel nodded in agreement. That was his suspicion as well. As a paladin of the Order of the Aster, Holly lived to serve the god Lathander. “She said she’d send word back if she wasn’t returning soon,” Joel explained. “So we could return home.”
“Joel, you mean you’re not keen to stay in the Cage?” Jas asked with a grin, using the slang term for Sigil.
Joel gave a quick glance at the tables nearby to be sure he didn’t offend any eavesdroppers. “No, not really. This city has more political intrigue than Waterdeep, the people are more arrogant than Westgate merchants, and the air’s more foul than a Zhentil Keep sewer,” he answered.
“But that’s all part of its charm,” Jas replied.
Joel studied the winged woman’s expression carefully, trying to determ
ine if she was serious. Jas came from the same world as Joel and Holly, a place Joel called the Realms, but which Jas referred to as the world of Toril in the sphere of Realmspace. Jas had traveled through the void to worlds in other spheres in a magical ship called a spelljammer. Joel found it hard to believe she was now prepared to settle down in this awful city, but their last adventure had changed Jas. Perhaps she had decided to give up her wandering.
Jas grinned. “It does have one thing in its favor,” Jas said.
“What?” Joel asked.
“I don’t stick out like a sore thumb here,” she said.
“You don’t stick out all that much,” Joel said.
“Ha!” Jas retorted. “Back on Toril, it was bad enough when I just had wings. Wizards were always trying to capture me to study me. People in the Realms would mistake me for a succubus or an erinyes and run me out of town. Once there was this kid who thought I was a were-eagle and tried to get me to attack him so he would contract lycanthropy and become a were-eagle, too. One crazy lich tried to put me in his harem just because of my wings. Gods only know what would happen if I went back to Realmspace now.”
“If you’d stay in one place long enough for people to get to know you, they’d feel differently about you,” Joel pointed out.
“Joel, you’re too nice. Your friendship has made you blind to what I am,” Jas declared. “Look at me … No, don’t look away. Really look at me. I have black down and feathers all over my flesh and a crest of green feathers sticking out of my forehead. If I don’t stay calm, my eyes glow like an owl’s. Yesterday some snotty Taker tried to tax me twice in one hour, and I got so angry that one of my hands changed into a claw again. If that Taker hadn’t been spry, he’d be missing an eye instead of just the tip of his nose. I’m more animal than human now. If I go back to Toril, there isn’t anyone who’s going to welcome me, except of course all those priests of Iyachtu Xvim.”
Joel took a sip of his ale, debating whether he should continue arguing with the woman. The priests of the evil god Iyachtu Xvim had transformed Jas with a curse, trying to make her a dark stalker—a hunter they could use for their own foul purposes. Jas had managed to fight the transformation and retain part of her humanity, a testament to her willpower. If she were to kill someone, however, Jas would transform completely and forever into a creature of evil. There was a way for her to overcome the curse, however.
