by Kate Novak
“Fine,” Holly replied. “I’m sorry I got a late start. I was hoping to see a friend before I left Sigil.”
“But it only took you a day to arrive. You made good time,” Aurora noted.
“I traveled mostly by riverboat,” Holly explained.
“Any adventures?” Aurora asked with a gleam in her eyes.
“I rescued a little girl’s doll that fell in the water,” Holly said, jokingly recalling her minor act of heroism.
Aurora smiled. “Anything else?”
“Before I reached the river port, I spent a while speaking with an asuras who was guarding a bridge over the river,” Holly said. She didn’t really think Aurora would find the encounter notable, but for Holly it had been most interesting. She’d never met one of the flame-winged, talon-footed asuras before, and the one at the bridge had been the finest figure of a man Holly had ever seen.
“It is said that those who face the examination of the asuras at the bridge are blessed for a short while with his gift to tell truth from lie,” Aurora said. “What did you talk about?” she asked.
“About the battle over the Hand of Bane,” Holly replied. “Do you know about that? Lathander sent me orders to get the hand and destroy it, but I couldn’t fight my friend Joel to take it away from him. His god wanted to trade it for his own stolen power, but the banelich they were dealing with betrayed them. They finally destroyed the banelich and the hand themselves.”
Holly’s voice wavered uncertainly as she explained. “Lathander sent me a vision telling me it was all right that I didn’t fight my friend for the hand. I would have lost anyway, but that wasn’t what stopped me. I owed my life to both Joel and his god. Bane was almost resurrected, which would have been a great evil, but then Walinda, a priestess of Bane, learned she couldn’t trust her own god. So not only wasn’t he resurrected, but Walinda also ceased worshiping him. So a greater good came out of not fighting Joel and Finder. Lathander said that it was more important to follow the spirit of his orders so that greater good is accomplished than to just follow the letter of the law.”
“But even though it served goodness, you still felt guilty that you couldn’t obey Lathander’s instructions to the letter,” Aurora guessed.
Holly nodded. “That’s what I had to explain to the asuras when he asked me if I felt guilty about anything. The riverboat captain told me that the asuras was barmy, that he asked everyone that question before he let them pass. The asuras helped me clarify how I thought and felt about it all, though,” the paladin explained.
“So an irrational asuras can also serve the cause of good,” Aurora suggested.
Holly smiled. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it’s true, isn’t it?”
Aurora took up Holly’s hands in her own. “You are a quick learner. That is good.”
The paladin’s blush was evident, even beneath her dark brown skin. She grinned again.
At Aurora’s bidding, they resumed walking, and Holly spoke in greater detail about her most recent adventure trying to thwart the resurrection of Bane.
The orchard gave way to a meadow, through which flowed a small stream. They crossed over the stream by way of an arched bridge. Birds twittered excitedly in the meadow, flying low over the grass to catch insects. From somewhere downstream came an odd hissing noise and an annoying clanging. Aurora directed Holly to travel in that direction.
There was a clearing where the stream intersected a second stream. In the clearing stood a great complex clockwork machine constructed of metal, marble, glass, and gemstones. The hissing came from steam escaping from a valve at the top of a huge brass barrel. Beneath the barrel burned a fire so hot its flames shimmered with white and blue. Attached to the barrel were pieces that moved up and down or back and forth, causing the clanking. The moving pieces disappeared into a giant sarcophagus mounted atop a pedestal. Rising from the sarcophagus were chunks of glass and crystals, which glowed and sparked.
“What is it?” Holly whispered to Aurora.
“My gift to the Morninglord,” a deep voice answered. The voice rang throughout the clearing, but its source became obvious when a figure stepped out from behind the sarcophagus. The figure was that of a tall man whose beard and hair were flames and whose robes shimmered with the colors of fire. Holly was a tall girl, as tall as some men, but the fiery-haired figure towered over her. He had piercing green eyes, which for some unknown reason made Holly feel uncomfortable.
Aurora bowed respectfully toward the man, and Holly followed suit.
“My Lord Sirrion, allow me to present Holly Harrowslough,” the priestess said. “Holly, this is Sirrion of the Flowing Flame. He is an ally of Lord Lathander’s and a god of a people on a world in a sphere far from your own. Lord Sirrion is building a machine to help with a magical spell so that Lord Lathander can right an ancient wrong.”
“What will the machine do?” Holly asked the foreign god.
Sirrion’s fiery eyebrows raised in surprise. “Your people speak whenever they choose, don’t they?” he asked Aurora.
Holly felt her blood rush to her face as she realized she’d just addressed a god so blithely, but Aurora came immediately to her defense.
“Holly Harrowslough is an honored knight of the Order of the Aster, Lord Sirrion,” the priestess replied. “Lord Lathander encourages his followers to question what they do not understand that they might learn and so better serve the Morninglord.”
Sirrion grinned. “And what service can one so young and tender perform for the Morninglord?”
“You told Lord Lathander that you would need help in assembling the materials for your … spell,” Aurora answered.
“Yes. So?” Sirrion asked.
“Lord Lathander intends to assign Holly Harrowslough to the task,” Aurora said.
“Her?” Sirrion laughed. “She’s no more than a slip of a girl. I need warriors. Lots of warriors.”
“Lord Lathander has every confidence Holly Harrowslough can accomplish the task at hand,” Aurora replied calmly.
Holly could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Pride coursed through her every vein.
As he looked down upon the paladin, Sirrion’s green eyes glowed for a moment. Holly was struck with a chill and the feeling that she had seen those eyes before, but she couldn’t recall where or when.
“Well, since that’s the case,” Sirrion said, “I suppose she will do.”
“Good,” Aurora replied. She turned to the paladin and said, “Holly Harrowslough, it is the Morninglord’s wish that you collect such materials as Lord Sirrion instructs you to. When all is in readiness, Lord Lathander will come to aid in the spell, and you will receive his thanks.”
“I will serve faithfully,” Holly said, making a formal bow.
Aurora nodded. “May the joy of the dawn give you strength,” she said to Holly. She bowed to Lord Sirrion and turned to leave.
Lord Sirrion watched the priestess walk back upstream for several moments without a word.
“What does the machine do, Lord Sirrion?” Holly asked the god. “And what am I to fetch for you?”
Lord Sirrion looked down at Holly again and smiled. “Come closer, and I will explain all,” the god said. “The machine will help with a magical spell so that Lord Lathander can right an ancient wrong.”
Holly nodded slowly. Sirrion had repeated exactly what Aurora had told her, yet there was something different about the way he said it. Something rang false in Holly’s ears. It was possible that she simply mistrusted the god because he had offended her pride. Perhaps, though, it was true that her talk with the asuras had left her for a short while with the gift of telling truth from lie. Whatever the case, Holly was sure that Sirrion had just lied to her and that there was malice behind his falsehood.
Opera is the sound of nightingales sighing in sympathy over the tomb of a maiden whose ghost weeps of its broken heart, lamenting true love lost and wasted—except when it sounds more like cats on a still summer night, yowling in heat rig
ht outside one’s window.
—Storm Silverhand
Act Two
Scene 1
Joel awoke to a soft touch on his shoulder. In the dim light of the curtained room, he could just make out Jas’s winged silhouette.
“Jas? Are you all right?” he asked, still groggy with sleep.
“Can we talk?” Jas whispered.
“Yes. Sure. Open the curtains a little so I can see,” Joel said.
Jas pulled the curtains back. A stream of afternoon sun flooded the room.
The bard sat up and motioned for Jas to have a seat at the foot of the bed.
Jas perched on the edge of the mattress. She didn’t say anything for several moments. Instead, she simply looked down at her hands.
“Am I supposed to do the talking or you?” Joel asked, trying to humor the winged woman into a less somber mood.
“What do you think?” Jas asked.
“About what?” Joel replied.
“About going to see Tymora about my problem?”
“It sounds like a good idea to me,” Joel replied.
Jas was quiet again.
Joel sighed. “Jas, this beating around the bush just drives me crazy. Why don’t you tell me about your history with Tymora, and then maybe I’ll have some clue as to what’s bothering you?”
“It’s sort of complicated,” Jas said.
“I’m a clever guy. I can handle complicated things,” Joel said.
Jas took a deep breath and blew it out. Then she spoke. “My parents were adventurers, both paladins, like Holly. When I was just a girl, they were both murdered. They’d helped break up a ring of slavers, and in vengeance, the leader of the ring hired an assassin to kill them. A friend of my mother’s fostered me. She was really nice, but I couldn’t stand being in the city where my parents had lived. Everyone had known them and constantly reminded me about them. I loved my parents, but every time I remembered them, I remembered they were dead, and that just made me upset. So I ran away from Waterdeep.”
Jas stared out the window as she spoke, never looking at the bard. There were streaks in the dust on her cheeks. They could have been from tears, but they might just have been from sweat. Joel could smell her perspiration across the bed. She’d flown until she’d worn herself out.
“I took a job as a hired sword with an adventurer named Carter,” Jas said, continuing her tale. “He was a professional troublemaker. If you wanted to ruin a person’s reputation or bankrupt a merchant firm or turn brother against brother, Carter was the guy you hired. He was good at what he did, and he didn’t work cheap. He taught me a lot and paid me a lot.… It took a while, but slowly I began to realize Carter wasn’t such a nice guy, and the things he did weren’t either. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to simply leave him. I was far from my home and friends. Carter often told me I couldn’t survive without him, and I believed him.”
Jas pulled her feet up on the bed and hugged her knees. “Then one day,” she said, “everything in my life changed. I was in the right place at the right time, I guess. I was keeping watch over an alley door for Carter, waiting for two priests to go through the door. While I’m hiding in this trash bin with a tiny peephole to look through, this thief runs into the alley and tosses a sack into the trash right on top of me. Then three other thieves come barreling into the alley. They corner the first thief and demand their share of the loot from Tymora’s temple. The first thief tries to feed them some story about the heist not going off. In the meantime, I’m looking into the sack. The contents are worth a fortune. There’s platinum coin and all this jewelry and a cape made of white feathers. Then I see there’s something moving around among the feathers. It’s about four inches long, slimy and writhing like a worm. Really ugly. Then I see there’s this cracked eggshell. The slimy, writhing thing has just hatched, or maybe its shell broke when the thief tossed it into the trash.
“Outside, the thieves are still arguing, and one of them stabs the first one and the first one stabs him back. The pair of them fall down, trying to hold their guts inside their bodies. One of the thieves is a mage. He turns and shoots five magic missiles in the back of the last thief. When he’s all alone in the alley, he starts searching for the sack. I know its only a matter of minutes before he looks into the trash. I come spilling out of the trash bin with the sack in hand and take off down the alley, but the mage is fast. He teleports himself into my path and blocks my way out of the alley. He doesn’t look human anymore. He’s changed into a shadow man with horns and bat wings and fangs. I hold the sack up in front of me like a shield, so he doesn’t dare risk using his magic on me. He says if I give him the egg, he’ll let me have the rest of the loot.
“It wasn’t that I was all fired up about protecting the egg thing. I’m not an idiot. I know I’m dead the moment this creature gets his hand on the egg thing. So I refuse his offer, and I draw my sword, still holding the sack in front of me like a shield. I don’t really believe I can beat the shadow creature in a fight, but I’m not letting it kill me without one. Just then, two priests of Torm come into the alley. They’re the two priests I was supposed to be watching out for when I was hiding in the trash. They see the shadow creature, and right away they start calling out to their god and casting bolts of light.
“When the bolts of light hit him, the shadow creature howls like a dog someone stepped on and disappears. The two priests are all solicitous, making sure I’m all right. They’re sure the shadow is some sort of sign, so instead of going into the building to which Carter had so carefully lured them, they go back to their temple to pray. I know Carter’s going to be furious, so I’m not real eager to tell him about any of what just occurred. Instead, I go to the temple of Tymora to turn over the loot the thieves stole.
“The priests at Tymora’s temple go nuts with joy when I show up with the sack of loot. They say that Tymora must have guided my hand. I know Tymora didn’t have anything to do with me hiding in that trash bin, but I keep my mouth shut. They hold this big party to celebrate the return of the loot, especially the hatchling. It’s a baby faerie dragon they had sworn to keep safe. I’m still not keen to go back to Carter, so I stay for the party. There’s this priestess at the party who takes me back into the temple to talk. There’s something familiar about her, but I can’t figure out what. The church wants to reward me. She challenges me to a game of cards … nothing complicated. Just a game of empress. If she wins, she’ll choose my reward for me. If I win, I get to pick my reward. Anything I want. I agree. She shuffles. I cut. She deals.”
Jas hopped off the edge of the bed and paced over to the window. She looked out across the fields of Finder’s realm for a few moments. Then she spun around and looked straight at Joel. “Well, I win the game, but figuring out what I want isn’t so easy. What I really want is for my parents not to be dead, but that’s not going to happen. I also want to leave Carter, but to do that I need something to make me independent. I don’t ask for money. Money can be stolen, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. I need a skill I can use. Suddenly this pigeon flies through a window of the temple up to a nest near the ceiling, and I say, ‘I want to be free like that bird. I want to be able to fly.’ The priestess gives me this sad little smile like I’m a kid who just asked for cake for dinner.
“I meant I wanted to be able to fly the way a mage does with a spell. I didn’t mean I wanted giant wings sticking out of my back, but the next thing I know, I look like an overgrown pixie. I ask the priestess to take the wings back, but she says they’ll serve as a reminder that I’m always flying away from my problems instead of dealing with them. When I learn to face my problems, she says, I’ll be blessed with all the luck I need. Then she vanishes.” Jas snapped her fingers. “Just like that. Gone. That’s when I realize she wasn’t a priestess. The reason she looked familiar is because she looked just like the statue of Tymora that’s on the altar in front of me. Now I’m really angry, but I’m not so stupid that I’m going to fight with a goddess, so I just leave.”
Jas turned back to the window and was silent for some time.
“Did you go back to Carter?” Joel asked curiously.
Jas turned around again. “He didn’t want me hanging around anymore,” she said. “He liked to keep a low profile wherever he went, and I was much too noticeable. After telling me for months that I can’t survive without him, he suddenly says I can take care of myself just fine. And I did.” She spread her wings out, then let them drop back down. “So now you know why I avoid having anything to do with gods. If they decide to judge and sentence you, there’s nothing you can do about it, and they can really make a mess of your life. Not that Finder hasn’t been a decent guy,” she added hastily.
“But you’re still afraid to face Tymora,” Joel said.
“Wouldn’t you be?” Jas asked with an exasperated tone.
“Well, the fact that you’re trying to get rid of the dark stalker in you shows that you aren’t flying away from your problems,” Joel said. “At least, that’s what it looks like to me.”
Jas tilted her head thoughtfully.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Joel asked. “After all, Iyachtu Xvim put a dark stalker in you and made you look like an owl.”
“Tymora could make me look like something else,” Jas said darkly.
“Something worse than an overgrown pixie? That would be bad,” Joel joked.
Jas glared at the bard. “She might say it serves me right and turn me down.”
“She might. If she does, we’ll leave. I don’t think she will, though,” Joel said. “She’s been a good friend to Finder.”
“So you think I should go to Brightwater to see Tymora?”
“Jas, it doesn’t matter what I think. It’s your decision.”
“Fine,” Jas said shortly. “Then I’ll go.”
“Good,” Joel answered.
Behind the Scenes
The little figures babbled with excitement as the dark servant entered the tent carrying a wooden box inscribed with ancient text.
