by Kate Novak
“Where is he?” Joel hissed.
“He walked down into the brush,” she answered, tossing her head in the direction of the bushes they’d crawled through to reach the top of the bluff.
“You know he was thinking of trying to lead Bear off our track. How could you let him leave? How could you be so selfish?” he demanded accusingly.
“It was just a call of nature,” Jas said, exasperated with the bard’s anxiety. “He went down there only a few minutes ago. If he had been gone much longer, I would have wakened you.”
Joel huffed. He snatched up his sword and tied it to his belt. “I’m going to check on him,” he said to the paladin. “You better stay with Jas.”
The young bard scrambled downhill through the brush, fighting the urge to shout out for the old priest, praying he was still nearby.
At the base of the hill was a tiny clearing that not too long ago must have been a pond. Cattails swayed about the edges, but the center was solid ground covered with meadow grass. Jedidiah stood in the center of the clearing. Joel sighed with relief, but then he was left to wonder what Jedidiah was up to.
The old priest had stripped to the waist; his shirt and tunic and cloak lay to one side of the clearing. Light flashed from something in his hands. Jedidiah held the object up over his head with both hands. It appeared to be a huge multifaceted yellow gemstone, with a jagged bottom, as if it had been broken from a larger piece. The light from the gem grew, not brighter but larger, turning the meadow grass to a soft golden color.
Jedidiah, too, turned golden. In the light, the priest didn’t appear so old. Joel could see the muscles in his arms and chest were not only tense but also well-toned, like those of a much younger man, and his face didn’t appear quite so wrinkled.
Jedidiah uttered some words Joel couldn’t quite catch, then sang a scale, up and down the notes, over and over again. Steam began pouring from the old priest’s body. Then Joel realized the steam had a radiance of its own. Blue light was seeping out of Jedidiah’s body. The blue light curled upward, drawn into the yellow stone just as the haze from Walinda’s dead followers had been drawn into the statue of Iyachtu Xvim.
Finally Jedidiah ceased singing. He spoke one more word, and the steaming blue light stopped pouring from his body. In another few moments all of it was sucked into the yellow stone. Jedidiah lowered the stone to his chest. The illusion of youth vanished. His face was wrinkled, his muscles sagging, perhaps even more than before. He staggered and fell to one knee.
Joel rushed forward and took the old man’s arm to help him rise. Jedidiah looked up, startled, but when he recognized the young bard, he grinned sheepishly. “I’ll be fine in a moment,” the old man said, grasping the younger man’s arm with two thin, bony hands.
“What did you do, Jedidiah?” Joel asked. “What is that stone?”
“Just a little sleight of hand,” the priest said, allowing Joel to pull him up. “Dark stalkers, transformed hunters like Bear, can only sense living power. So I siphoned a little of it off into this,” Jedidiah explained, holding up the stone. “A little gift from Finder.”
“It looked like you siphoned a lot of it off,” Joel argued. He scooped up the priest’s shirt and handed it to him. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Jedidiah nodded, pulling on his shirt, then taking his tunic from the young bard.
Just then Joel heard Holly scream. From the bluff overhead came the sounds of metal striking against metal and shouts of the paladin and the winged woman.
An icy fist gripped Joel’s heart, and he recalled Holly’s vision. Cursing himself for a fool, he raced back through the brush, shouting for Jedidiah to follow.
The climb up to the bluff in the dark seemed endless to Joel, knowing something threatened his friends. He was puffing by the time he cleared the brush. He pulled the sword from his belt.
Holly must have built up the fire in his absence, for the campsite was illuminated by leaping flames. The paladin and Jas both stood with their backs to the fire, peering out into the darkness. They were both bleeding from small cuts on their arms and faces. Dark shapes lay vanquished at their feet, but many more surrounded them. Joel could see only their silhouettes in the firelight, and he was unable to tell whether the shapes were men or beasts.
The bard gave a shout to distract the creatures. Suddenly a dark form loomed up on his left. Remembering Bear, Joel reacted instinctively, stabbing hard and fast.
His blade sunk deep into the creature’s chest. For all the resistance Joel felt, the body might have been an old weathered sack. The blade made a sound like an axe driven into rotten wood. Joel yanked his weapon back, and a taloned hand lashed at his face but missed. Then the creature fell at Joel’s feet, nothing more than a collection of ancient, shattered bones encased in sun-dried flesh.
It was a zombie, Joel realized, and the creatures surrounding Holly and Jas were zombies and skeletons. The firelight glinted on blackened bones and yellowish flesh as the undead creatures rallied for another attack. More of the creatures were pulling themselves out of the ground.
Joel remembered Holly’s story that Lord Randal’s ancestor and his entourage had died here. If the origin of the undead occurred to the paladin, she did not let it affect how she fought. She decapitated one walking corpse with a clean swing, which ended in the chest of a second zombie. She ducked the sluggish blow of a third monster, then reversed the arc of her blade, driving it into her attacker’s skull.
Jas was holding her own by half leaping, half flying up, then coming down on the skeletons with a kicking attack. The ancient bones cracked and crumbled to the ground.
Despite their successes, both women had received wounds, and it was obvious they were tiring. Yet the undead continued to rise from the ground.
Joel fought his way toward the fire. A skeletal hand hanging from a tattered muscle tore a gash across his cheek just beneath his eye. It took one blow to send the creature’s bones back to the earth, but the cut on his face continued to burn like fire. Another zombie was armed with an ancient, rusty sword, which shattered into a hundred fragments when Joel struck it with his younger blade.
“Where did they come from?” Joel shouted. Such creatures did not just rise from the earth of their own volition.
“I can’t tell,” Holly replied. “They seem to be trying to drive us off the edge of the bluff. Where’s Jedidiah?”
“Not far behind me,” Joel answered.
“Already here,” boomed the voice of the elderly priest from the darkness just beyond the campfire’s light. He began a familiar-sounding chant that sounded more like a drumbeat than a song. A reddish haze surrounded him.
The zombies and skeletons turned to face Jedidiah, the remains of their bodies twitching in rhythm with the priest’s chant.
Joel’s worry that the creatures would do his mentor harm was soon dispelled. One by one, the skeletons saluted the old priest with a raised hand, then crumbled to dust. The closest zombies slumped in place, their animating energy gone. The zombies farthest from the old priest sank back into the earth, pulling rocks and dirt back over their retreating forms.
Jas smashed at a few of these even as they fled. Then she sank to the ground, exhausted.
The radiance about Jedidiah subsided as the last of the undead disappeared. He looked at Joel with surprise. “Why didn’t you try quelling the undead with a chant?” he asked.
Joel winced, realizing now that Jedidiah had taught him the same chant in Berdusk. It was a common ritual to protect against the undead, to return them to their graves and eternal sleep. The chant was actually quite basic, Joel remembered, and the results were effective. It wasn’t the first time he’d forgotten he possessed priestly skills just when they would have been the most useful.
The Rebel Bard hung his head. “I just started swinging my sword without thinking,” he replied.
Jedidiah looked grim. “You are still uncomfortable using the gifts Finder has given you, “he noted. “It’s early y
et. You’ll get used to it. You’ll see.”
The old man gave the breast pocket of his vest a pat. He patted the pocket again, then reached into it with his hand, an alarmed expression on his face. Jedidiah began patting his other pockets. His brow furrowed, then his expression grew angry.
“What have you lost?” Joel asked.
“That gemstone I had,” Jedidiah snapped impatiently. “I had it a moment ago, just before I came up the hill.”
Holly moved up beside Joel, her face stricken with worry. “Joel?” she began.
Joel held his hand up, signaling Holly to wait. “You never told me exactly what it was,” he said to Jedidiah.
“It’s a relic, an artifact,” Jedidiah explained hastily, “a tool created by Finder when he was mortal. It’s half of the finder’s stone. Finder took half with him to the Abyss when he destroyed Moander and left the other half with the saurials in the Lost Vale. It’s a faultless locator, and it holds power, as you saw.”
“Joel?” Holly tried interrupting again.
“We’ll find it,” Joel assured Jedidiah, his eyes combing the ground around the fire circle. “We’ll start here and work our way back. Maybe one of the undead knocked it loose from your pocket.”
“None of them got near me,” Jedidiah insisted with irritation. “I had to have dropped it on the way up the hill.”
“Joel!” Holly snapped.
The Rebel Bard looked back at the paladin. Her eyes were wide with terror.
“What is it, Holly?” Joel snapped.
“It’s—it’s coming,” the girl whispered. “The evil in my vision. There’s something familiar about it … something horrible.”
Jedidiah swung about with a feral growl.
A red light issued from beneath the edge of the bluff, just like the light in Holly’s vision.
Slowly, majestically, bathed in red like the sun, a great wooden vessel rose above the bluff. It was Jas’s ship, stolen from the illithids, now a floating shrine to Bane.
Joel suddenly realized what, or rather who, had made the undead restless enough to rise from their graves.
Walinda stood at the ship’s prow, a pair of lit iron braziers on either side of her. She still wore her shoulder protectors and bracers, but she had removed the rest of her armor. She was dressed now in a long, low-cut black velvet gown that seemed to shimmer red in the reflected fire from the braziers. Her hair hung loose about her shoulders like a maiden’s.
“Well met, Poppin,” she greeted Joel, giving him a warm smile. Then she turned to face Jedidiah, holding out her hand. In it sat Jedidiah’s half of the finder’s stone, glowing with brilliant gold light. With a cruel smile, she asked, “Are you looking for this, old man?”
Nine
THE ESSENCE OF BANE
Joel could have easily predicted what happened next, but he just wasn’t quick enough to prevent it. Jas leapt high into the air. Then, with her sword in front of her, she dived toward the priestess of Bane.
Walinda, as cool as ice, raised her hand and commanded, “Fall!”
The winged woman’s body jackknifed in midair, and she plummeted downward. She landed hard, all in a heap, on the deck of her former ship.
Holly cried out and made a move to rush forward, but Jedidiah had the presence of mind to grab the paladin and hold her back.
“Let me go,” Holly cried. “She’s hurt!”
“She’ll keep,” the older priest said brusquely. “You can’t help her if you’re hurt, too,” he warned. To Joel, he said, “I take it this is the infamous Walinda of Bane.”
The younger priest nodded. “She cast a command spell. Do you think it was some trick?” he asked in a whisper.
Jedidiah motioned uncertainty with his hands. “Introduce us,” he said calmly.
Joel looked surprised for a moment, then nodded. If there was one thing Jedidiah knew, it was how to set the tone.
“Jedidiah,” the young man said, “allow me to present to you Walinda of Bane. Walinda, this is Jedidiah of Finder.”
Walinda bowed before the old priest. It hadn’t been lost on her that Joel had presented her first, implying Jedidiah’s rank was higher than hers. On the deck beside Walinda, Jas was recovering from her fall. She’d managed to sit up, but it was clear from the unnatural angle of her right leg that she wouldn’t be able to stand.
Jedidiah bowed back at the priestess, even lower and more gracefully. “A very smooth extraction,” he complimented Walinda, indicating with a nod of his head the stolen finder’s stone in the priestess’s hand. “I don’t think I’ve encountered a lighter touch since the halfling Olive Ruskettle picked my pipe from my pocket. Done a lot of training with a thief’s guild, have you?”
Walinda glared at the old priest. “You are very glib for a man who’s just lost a holy relic of his god,” she noted.
“Well, glibness is a thing we priests of Finder are especially good at,” Jedidiah retorted. “Like priests of Bane excelling in sarcasm. You didn’t steal my stone and then make this appearance just to impress us with your flair for drama. What do you want, Walinda of Bane?”
“I have a deal for you, priest of Finder. Won’t you come aboard so we might discuss it more comfortably? I promise you and your party safe passage—providing,” she added with a glance at the winged woman who lay on the deck, moaning, “you can keep your pets in line.”
“I need a moment, please, to discuss your offer with my colleagues,” Jedidiah replied politely, smiling up at the priestess.
Walinda nodded graciously.
Jedidiah turned about and pulled Joel and Holly close.
“You can’t go aboard that vessel,” Holly insisted.
“Young lady, I have no choice,” Jedidiah answered. “I must have the finder’s stone back.”
“It’s some sort of trick,” Holly said. “There’s something else aboard that ship, something profoundly evil. The worst evil I have ever felt in my life. It’s so strong it’s painful to sense it.”
“Is there, now?” Jedidiah asked. “How interesting. It doesn’t change anything, however. The finder’s stone is a relic of my god.”
“Is it worth your life?” Holly argued. “Your soul?”
Jedidiah sighed. “Just before we were attacked, I put a large share of my own power into the finder’s stone so that the Xvimists’ dark stalker could no longer sense me from a distance. Finder needs my powers. I cannot just let Walinda fly off with the stone without trying to barter for it.”
“When you barter with evil, evil grows stronger,” Holly said through clenched teeth. “If that’s not enough, you must know that you cannot trust her.”
Jedidiah looked to Joel for support.
The young bard could sympathize completely with the old priest. Arguing with the paladin was an uphill battle. Remembering how weakened the old priest had been when he finished siphoning his power into the stone, Joel had no qualms about helping him to regain it. He attacked Holly’s arguments with an appeal to her emotions that he knew she could not reject.
“Holly, Walinda has Jas,” Joel pointed out quietly but firmly. “If we tell Walinda to leave without bartering, what do you think she’ll do with Jas—hand her back to us unharmed, or keep her to torture her some more?”
The blood drained from Holly’s face, and she lowered her head.
As if to emphasize the point, Jas fluttered her wings and tried to stand, then yelped in pain and crashed back to the deck of the ship.
“Perhaps you should stay here,” Jedidiah suggested. “I will deal with this woman myself.”
“No,” Joel said. “I’m going with you. You may need my help.”
Holly looked up. “You may need mine as well to help with Jas,” she said.
“If this evil gives you pain—” Jedidiah began.
“I am not afraid of pain,” Holly answered softly. “I will accompany you.”
“Very well,” Jedidiah said, respectful of the paladin’s courage. He turned around and stepped toward the ed
ge of the bluff. Joel and Holly stood just behind him.
“We will board your ship to parlay,” the old priest announced.
The ship edged close to the bluff. First Joel, then Holly, leapt across to the railing and jumped down to the deck. Joel turned back to offer Jedidiah a hand, but the old priest made the jump just as easily as a boy.
Holly hurried to Jas’s side. The woman’s leg was broken just above the ankle. “When I fix this, you have to lie still,” she whispered to the winged woman.
“Just so Jedidiah can get his stupid rock back?” Jas snarled.
“Because you are not thinking clearly. That attack was the clumsiest I have ever seen,” the paladin murmured. “You cannot let your hatred warp your reason.”
Jas sighed. “Out of the mouths of paladins …” she muttered. “Right. I’ll keep my cool until the witch betrays us. Then I’m going for her throat.”
Holly began a healing prayer for the winged woman’s broken leg.
Watching the two women whispering, Walinda said to Jedidiah, “Keep a tether on your pigeon, or I will do more than clip its wings next time.”
“Threats are uncalled for,” Jedidiah chided the woman. “You wanted to discuss a deal. I’m listening.”
“Please, make yourselves comfortable,” Walinda said. She sat down on the only chair on the deck, a high-backed seat carved from the tusk of some colossal beast.
If Walinda had hoped to put the old priest in his place by making him stand, her plan backfired. Jedidiah removed his cloak with a flourish and lay it on the floor near the priestess’s feet. He lowered himself to the deck and lounged there like a desert prince relaxing in a harem. He was near enough to the priestess that he could have reached out and touched her knee. Joel stood behind him, trying to convey the look of someone prepared to defend the old priest against any assaults. Behind Walinda, a dark doorway led to a cabin. Joel watched it warily, remembering Holly’s warning of something evil.
“You are very bold for someone dealing from a position of weakness,” Walinda addressed Jedidiah as she held up the finder’s stone in the hand farthest from him.
