by Kate Novak
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.
“I’m 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 fac
t, 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.
While the Hulorn was thus occupied, Polly dropped the pearls down her blouse and drew out a leather blackjack from the pocket of her apron. With a quick, practiced motion Polly slammed the blackjack into the back of the Hulorn’s head. He went out like a light, sprawling at Polly’s feet.
With two pairs of long silk stockings pulled from another pocket, Polly bound and gagged the Hulorn. Then she took his keys from his pocket and retrieved her feather duster. Once she’d slipped from the exhibition hall, she locked the door behind her with the stolen key. After rebuttoning her blouse, she moved quite unhurriedly down the servant’s staircase and hung her feather duster in the appropriate cabinet. Taking up a broom, she swept her way through the kitchen, brushing the dirt out the kitchen door. She left the broom by the door and made her way unhurriedly along the garden path, pulling weeds from the onion beds. No one seeing her would suspect she was anything but a parlor maid, kitchen maid, or gardener.
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.
As she slipped out of Selgaunt’s harbor aboard her new ship, she breathed a sigh of pleasure. She was rid of this city of snobs forever.
“We’re being flagged by one of Selgaunt’s navy vessels, ma’am,” the captain of the ship reported. “They’re demanding to board us.”
“Ignore them,” Polly said.
“We may not be able to outrun them.”
“I have every confidence in you, Captain,” Polly said.
The captain left the ship owner to shout orders to the crew. Polly stood at the rail and once again called on her goddess. This time her request was more of a shout than a whisper. “Maid of Misfortune, pass by me; kiss my enemies.”
Polly had no doubt Beshaba would come to her aid. She had made all the right offerings. She imagined a snapped rudder or perhaps a fallen mast, but Beshaba manifested her favor in a far more powerful way.
The ship rose and fell as a great swell passed beneath it. The swell grew as it approached the land. It caught the Selgaunt navy vessel chasing Polly’s ship and carried it along on its crest. By the time it reached the city harbor, the swell had become a wall of water.
The water crashed down on Selgaunt, smashing the dockside buildings and depositing the navy vessel, plus several others, in the city streets. The Selgaunt docks were carried back out to sea.
Polly smiled wickedly.
“That’s that,” she said.
Then she heard a roar behind her. A second tidal wave, even more monstrous than the first, caught her ship on its gigantic crest and swept it inland at a breathtaking pace. Once more Polly called on Beshaba to take her enemies, but there were no enemies left. The water slammed into the Sembian peninsula two miles south of Selgaunt and heaved Polly’s vessel inland a hundred feet, dashing it against a cliff. The ship splintered like a child’s toy, and its crew and owner were scattered across the beach below. Their corpses were found mingled with the vessel’s rare cargo; the farmer who buried them was richly rewarded.
Attending the opera would be interesting in Menzoberranzan. During the overture, the audience could place bets on whether more drow will die onstage or off.
—Liriel Baenre
Act Three
Scene 1
“How will we get to Gehenna?” Emilo asked, clearly eager to add another Lower Plane to his list of places he’d visited.
“We go back to Brightwater and have Selune open a gate for us,” Joel said.
“Or I could take you back to Morning Glory with me, and Lord Lathander could open a gate for us,” Holly said. “There’s a portal at the top of this mountain that leads to his realm. There’s a staircase at the end of this hall that leads straight up to it.”
“That figures,” Jas said. “We come in by a portal near the bottom of the mountain and have to climb for miles. Holly comes in at the top of the mountain and merely has to walk down a few steps.”
“We can bring you back with us to Brightwater,” Joel said to Holly. “I need to talk to Finder about what we’ve discovered.”
Holly seemed to think a moment, then said, “Then we’ll go your way.”
The alu-fiend prisoner declared, “You will never make it out of here alive.”
“I don’t recall anyone asking your opinion,” Jas said.
“Then perhaps you should ask,” a woman’s voice said.
Out of the shadows behind them stepped five more alu-fiends. Eight more appeared in the doorway through which they’d been spying.
Jas and Holly whirled back to back with their swords drawn. Joel slapped himself in the forehead. “How could I forget? Alu-fiends communicate telepathically. All this time our prisoner has been screaming for help.”
Their former alu-fiend captive smiled at Joel and said, “Perhaps we will let you live a little while longer.”
Holly grabbed the alu-fiend around the neck and, using her as a shield, advanced on the line of fiends blocking their exit.
Joel put his hand on Jas’s arm. “The wish,” he reminded her.
Jas nodded. She held out the sword Winnie had given her and announced, “I wish Holly, Joel, Emilo, and I were back in Tymora’s garden in Brightwater.”
The alu-fiends and the dark halls of the Blood Tor faded around them, to be replaced by flowers and sunshine. Holly found herself without an alu-fiend for a shield and her sword pointed at Finder’s nose. Joel’s god sat on a wooden bench beside the uprooted birch tree. Finder’s eyebrow rose in amusement.
“Finder!” the paladin gasped.
“Welcome to Brightwater, Holly Harrowslough,” Finder greeted her, “but I don’t really need a shave,” he joked, carefully pushing the paladin’s curved blade away from his face.
Holly lowered her weapon, bowed her head, and said, “Excuse me, Lord Finder.”
“One day in Morning Glory and suddenly I’m ‘Lord’ Finder. Just call me Finder, Holly,�
�� the god said.
The paladin looked up at Joel’s god. “Not all gods are as informal as you,” she pointed out.
“Not all gods are as reckless as I am,” Finder replied, reminding the paladin of how she had chided him on her god’s behalf the last time they had met.
“None of the gods are as reckless as you,” Selune reprimanded. “Stop taunting the girl for having good manners, Finder. We have more important things to discuss.”
Holly whirled to address the speaker, but when she beheld Selune, she fell speechless.
“Yes,” the goddess said, as if in answer to Holly’s unspoken question. “I am Selune. Sit down, paladin. We need to decide what is to be done next.”
Selune sat on the bench beside Finder and Holly. Joel and Jas sat on the ground at the gods’ feet. Emilo paced behind them.
“Beshaba wasn’t at the Blood Tor,” the kender reported excitedly. “The winged lady said she went to—”
“Gehenna. Yes, we know,” Finder said. “Just as Selune said we would be, she and I were aware of everything occurring in the Blood Tor as soon as Joel arrived. Including what was going on in Beshaba’s court.”
“That’s a really neat trick,” Emilo said. “You never need to get a letter to know what’s going on in your friends’ lives, do you? But it must make it hard for them to surprise you. For birthdays and such.”
“I am constantly surprised by what’s in their hearts,” Finder said, smiling at Joel.
“We don’t know if the alu-fiend was telling the truth about the attack,” Jas said.
“She was,” Finder replied. “We sensed the attack on Beshaba.”
“Where’s Tymora?” Jas asked, having suddenly noticed that the goddess was not in the garden.
“Her minions have taken her someplace to keep her safe. It is probably best that you do not know where for now,” Selune explained.
