Song of the Saurials

by Kate Novak

  The images of Grypht and Akabar began to blur and fade as the scrying spell cast on the pool of water wore off, but not before the Mouth of Moander had time to note that Grypht fled west from Shadowdale.

  “Kyre recruited other servants on her way to Shadowdale,” the Mouth of Moander said. “It will be a simple matter to send flyers to alert them to intercept Grypht and Akabar. The Turmishman will not escape the destiny the Darkbringer has assigned to him.”

  The two saurial priests who attended the priestess nodded.

  “The flyers are too weak to travel so far,” the priestess cried suddenly with vehemence.

  The two priests shifted uneasily. The priestess’s habit of arguing with herself frightened all her people who witnessed it.

  “They only need to fly away,” the priestess answered herself with a cooler tone of voice. “It matters not if they return.”

  The Mouth of Moander glared at her reflection on the dark surface of the pool of water. A female saurial with pearly white scales glared back up at her with disgust. Before Moander had possessed her, her name had been Coral, and she had served the goddess of luck. Then she had protected all her people, but now, because she had been too weak to resist Moander, there was no evil the god could not force her to perpetrate on even the smallest or most innocent saurial.

  For the moment, Moander had loosened its hold on her mind, as it always did after having used the priestess’s body to cast a powerful spell such as scrying. Coral fought against the control of the Darkbringer so strongly that the god was forced to withdraw so their battle of wills did not use so much energy that the tendrils of possession controlling the priestess were destroyed.

  Moander lurked in the back of Coral’s consciousness, though, ready to pounce on her thoughts should she try to act against the god. In the meantime, the god savored with a cruel delight the anguish and horror Coral felt at every action it forced her to perform. Most especially, the Darkbringer enjoyed controlling the priestess and forcing her to speak aloud its evil thoughts. Unable or unwilling to keep her emotional outbursts in check, Coral always argued aloud with what the god had made her say. Hence the priestess appeared to be arguing with herself.

  None of Coral’s people understood what was really happening. Although all the members of her tribe who had been captured by Moander were infected with its tendrils of possession, most were only controlled physically. The Darkbringer had no need to control the minds of ordinary saurials; however, the god had magically shackled the thoughts of any spell-casting saurials it caught. The ordinary saurials thought the priestess had turned evil and insane, while the spell-casters, who had been enchanted to love the Darkbringer, thought the priestess was merely insane.

  “If Grypht cannot be captured,” Moander said, addressing the priests through Coral’s mouth, “he must not be left alive. He might yet find allies to interfere with our plans. He searches now for Champion, the paladin whom people of this world call Dragonbait. If our servants discover Champion, however, they must bring him to me alive. In order to enslave the servant Alias to the master’s will, Champion must be sacrificed with special ceremony. Mine will be the hand that destroys the paladin.”

  “No!” Coral shouted with anguish. “I want no part of his destruction!”

  The priests shook their heads disapprovingly.

  With a complete sense of hopelessness, Coral envied Kyre her death. It was horrible enough to Coral that she was forced to slaughter sacrifice after sacrifice to further strengthen Moander’s new body. She didn’t wish to live to arrange the conquest of Grypht or the Darkbringer’s reunion with Akabar, but most especially the priestess would rather die than spill the blood of her former lover. “Lady Luck,” she called out to the goddess she had once served, “please let me die!”

  Moander’s tendrils of possession used the priestess’s mouth to argue with herself. “No,” Coral was forced to say. “I have something to live for: vengeance. Champion’s insults cannot be forgiven. I must see him humbled.”

  As the priestess spoke these words, the scent of roses and baked bread and mint all wafted from the glands at her throat. She felt anger and grief and shame, for she was not able to argue with Moander’s words. She had struggled to forgive the paladin for leaving her, but she had never really succeeded, and imagining him humbled was a source of perverse pleasure to her. Unfortunately this feeling was Moander’s foothold in her mind. The god had twisted and perverted it to seduce her from her natural feelings of compassion. Should Champion actually be brought before her, Coral feared that Moander would have little trouble goading her into harming the paladin.

  “Champion despised me when I worshiped the goddess of luck,” Moander made Coral say aloud.

  “No,” Coral insisted, trying desperately to keep from growing angry with the paladin. “He merely disapproved. He never despised me.”

  “Now that I am Moander’s priestess, he will be horrified and repulsed by me. I will kill him gladly to wipe that look from his face,” Moander said through Coral’s mouth.

  The two priests nodded with approval.

  Coral thrust her hand over her mouth to stop the god’s hateful words. Inside her head, she heard the god think, And after you slay him, I’ll release your mind to relish your guilt and grief.

  Coral clawed at the fin on top of her head in a futile attempt to sweep Moander from her brain.

  You only live to serve and amuse me, priestess, he reminded her in her thoughts.

  Coral shrieked like a madwoman and crumbled to the ground, sobbing hysterically.

  The two priests stood beside Coral, annoyed at her peculiar behavior, unable to understand why someone who was insane had been granted the honor of serving as the Mouth of Moander. Why hadn’t one of them been chosen? they both wondered resentfully.

  Moander gathered up all the tendrils of possession inside Coral’s mind, like a rider taking up a horse’s reins, and drove her back to her duties as the Mouth of Moander.

  6

  The Old Priestess

  Morala the Harper, priestess of Milil, leaned over the table in the Harpers courtroom and stared into the silver basin she had filled with holy water. When she was satisfied that the water was completely still, Morala began singing a wordless melody. The silver basin and the surface of the water began vibrating with the power of the priestess’s voice and the magic she summoned with her spell.

  After several minutes, the water began to sparkle and shine from a source of magic beneath its surface. Morala ceased singing and concentrated on the colors swirling in the water. Gradually the colors coalesced into solid shapes.

  “I see him,” the priestess whispered.

  “Is he alive?” Breck Orcsbane asked eagerly, moving toward the priestess.

  Lord Mourngrym held the ranger back with a hand on his shoulder. Before Morala had begun her scrying spell, she had cautioned them not to distract her or touch the table on which the silver bowl rested. Breck was a veteran fighter, but too inexperienced with magic to realize the danger of disregarding the priestess’s warning.

  Morala squinted at the images that had formed on the surface of the water. The gangly figure with the flowing gray hair and beard was unmistakably Elminster, but Morala had never seen anything quite like the scenery in the field of vision afforded by her scrying spell. Blue-green ferns, lavender horsetails, and green-and-yellow-striped mushrooms towered over the sage. Great trees, their trunks bare but for a small crown of red and green fronds, waved behind the sage like grasses in the wind.

  Elminster stood in the strange forest, apparently alone and uninjured. His lips moved, but Morala’s spell did not allow her to hear what he said, or any other sound about him. The sage’s head was tilted back, and he gazed alertly at something high overhead. Morala brought her hands together over the surface of the water and then pulled them away. The view in the water widened to include more of Elminster’s surroundings. The sage appeared as a blot of gray on the water’s surface, but now the priestess cou
ld see what held his attention.

  Five winged creatures, as exotic to Morala as the plants, flew in a V formation over Elminster’s head. Each was as large as an ancient dragon and had a vaguely dragonlike silhouette. They were covered with frayed, almost featherlike scales, and they were as brightly colored as any bird. Their heads were bright scarlet, their throats orange, their long serpentine necks yellow, and their bodies hues of blue and green. As the group watched in horror, the creatures dove toward the sage.

  Elminster motioned with his hands, and a bright light flared from the surface of the water. Morala gasped.

  “What is it?” Breck demanded anxiously.

  “Elminster just cast a meteor swarm,” the priestess said. “He battles monsters such as I have never seen before!”

  The lead creature fell from the sky, knocking down several trees as it crashed to the earth. Its companions pulled up just as Elminster released a second meteor swarm.

  From her magical vantage point, Morala could see a great cat stalking the mage, sneaking up behind him. The beast was twice the size of a tiger, with a mottled orange and brown hide. It halted ten yards from Elminster. The muscles in its haunches tautened and twitched as the cat prepared to leap.

  “Elminster, behind you!” Morala cried out instinctively, though she knew the sage could not hear her.

  Something alerted the sage to the danger, though, for he spun about with his hands spread out before him, thumbs touching, and sent a fan of fire shooting from his fingertips.

  The cat twisted in midleap, trying, without success, to avoid the sage’s fiery barrage. One side of the beast burst into flame, and it fell to the ground and rolled in the dirt to smother the fire burning its pelt. Before the cat had a chance to rise to its feet, Elminster pointed at it, and the beast crumbled to dust.

  Elminster turned his attention back to the remaining feather dragons, who had circled and returned. As the dragons dropped down and soared over the sage, great plumes of sparkling dust shot from the maws of all four monsters, but when the dust had blown away, Elminster remained standing, apparently unaffected. The sage cast a wall of fire across the feather dragons’ flight path. Two of the beasts were unable to pull up in time to avoid passing through the curtain of flame. They plunged through it and immediately crashed to the earth like meteors.

  Watching the sage do battle while unable to hear any of the accompanying sounds felt unnatural and eerie to Morala, yet she kept her eyes fixed on the water. She wished the blessings of Milil on the sage, though she suspected her god might have little power over events in the strange world where Elminster was now.

  As the last pair of feather dragons came swooping down on the sage, talons extended, prepared to tear him to pieces, Elminster cast a forked bolt of lightning. Before the scorched bodies slammed into him, the sage winked through a dimension door, emerging some fifty feet away, where he could not be crushed in the monsters’ death throes. Witnessing Elminster’s unscathed emergence from the battle, the priestess breathed a sigh of relief. Elminster turned in Morala’s direction and seemed to look right at the priestess. His eyes twinkled with mischief, and he gave a little theatrical bow. Then he turned away again and walked off into the strange forest.

  The colors in the water began to swirl in a chaotic pattern and then fade. The water began to bubble; then, in a great burst of steam, it evaporated away. Morala stepped away from the table and swayed, exhausted from the effort of scrying.

  Lord Mourngrym stepped forward and helped the frail, elderly woman to a chair.

  Morala leaned back, her eyes closed. “Elminster is alive and well,” she said weakly. “The moment before my spell wore off, he had just defeated several monsters the likes of which I have never seen in the Realms. He appeared in no immediate danger. His instincts were sharp enough to note that he was being scried upon. He does not seem to be anyone’s prisoner.”

  “Then why doesn’t he return?” Breck asked.

  “I do not know,” the priestess answered. “He travels on foot in a strange world, and I couldn’t perceive his goal. Perhaps some other wizard has summoned the sage to perform some service and he cannot return until it is completed. Perhaps he does not realize we have need of him here.”

  Alias stood in the doorway to the Harpers courtroom. She had returned from speaking with Elminster’s scribe, Lhaeo, just in time to hear the priestess report what she had seen in her scrying.

  “What of Nameless?” Alias asked from across the room.

  Morala thrust out her neck and squinted, trying to focus on Alias. The priestess motioned for the swordswoman to come closer.

  Alias strode across the courtroom until she stood a few feet from the small old woman.

  “Your grace,” Mourngrym said to Morala, “this is—”

  “Alias of Westgate, Nameless’s singer,” Morala finished the introduction herself. “I could tell by her resemblance to Cassana. I am Morala of Milil, child.”

  “I know. I could tell by your garb,” Alias said. The priestess’s crimson robe, elaborately embroidered with gold dragons, was standard ceremonial garb among those who served the patron god of bards.

  “Alias, this is ranger Breck Orcsbane,” Mourngrym added, motioning toward a brawny young woodsman in leather armor. The ranger’s face was clean-shaven, but he wore his blond hair in a plait that reached his waist. Alias recognized his face; she had seen him in the Old Skull Inn last night listening to her sing.

  The swordswoman nodded briefly, then turned back abruptly to Morala. “Did you see Nameless?” she asked. Although her eyes shone hopefully, her heart pounded with fear.

  Morala shook her head. “No,” she replied. “He was not with Elminster. I shall have to scry for him separately.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?” Alias asked impatiently.

  Lord Mourngrym laid a hand on the swordswoman’s shoulder. “Scrying is a most difficult spell, Alias,” his lordship said softly. “Morala must rest for a while.”

  Alias clenched her fist. It was frustrating enough having to rely on spell-casters to find Nameless, but being forced to wait was maddening.

  Mourngrym sensed the swordswoman’s tension. As a fighter himself, he understood how she felt. She wanted to act, to hunt for Nameless, to kill anything that threatened him, to rescue him. She knew, though, that she couldn’t run off without an inkling of a direction to run in, but that realization didn’t make the waiting any easier. “What did the sage’s scribe say?” he asked the swordswoman, trying to keep her mind occupied.

  Alias huffed out some of her anger, then replied, “Lhaeo said Elminster’s evasion spell hadn’t been triggered, so the sage definitely wasn’t dead, wounded, mindless, or desperate to leave wherever he is, but you already knew that from scrying or him. Since Elminster hadn’t planned to leave, he didn’t give Lhaeo any instructions about how to contact him. Lhaeo said a few other things, too,” Alias added, glancing at Morala and Breck, uncertain how they would receive what she had to say.

  “What?” Mourngrym asked.

  “First off, from what Kyre said—that Elminster disappeared and Grypht appeared in his place—Lhaeo suspects that Grypht used a variation of a teleport spell called transference. By switching places with another mage who’s already standing in a safe place, it guarantees that a mage can teleport without ending up too high off the ground or inside a stone wall. It’s a rare spell. According to Lhaeo, you could count the mages in the Realms who know it on the fingers of one hand. According to Lhaeo, there aren’t any creatures from the lower planes that can use it. Lhaeo also said that there was no way anything from the Nine Hells or the Abyss could have gotten past Elminster’s wards on this tower. He’d bet his father’s sword that Grypht is a wizard, not a monster.”

  “If Kyre says Grypht is from the Nine Hells, then that’s where it’s from,” Breck insisted. “Kyre would never make a mistake about something like that. She’s very accurate.”

  “Just how well do you know her?” Alias ask
ed curiously.

  “She brought me into the Harpers,” Breck explained. “We’ve worked together often in the past.”

  “I see,” Alias said. If Kyre had been Breck’s sponsor for the Harpers, the swordswoman realized she’d never convince Breck that Kyre was capable of error. She looked to Mourngrym to support Lhaeo’s opinion.

  His lordship looked uncertain. “Grypht did break Elminster’s one-way spell on Nameless’s cell,” Mourngrym pointed out to Alias.

  “That’s not the same thing as a ward against evil creatures,” the swordswoman argued.

  “That’s true,” Morala agreed. “There are important differences. A protection ward is very cut-and-dried, but Elminster’s one-way spell required provisions so that the servants and guards and the sage could enter and leave Nameless’s cell unhindered. I suppose the spell would have also allowed Nameless to leave if the room was burning, say, or in the case of some other emergency that threatened the bard’s life. If Elminster’s wording had been ambiguous on some provision, the spell might have broken from the strain of determining whether or not the provision was met.”

  “Excuse me, your lordship,” a voice said from the hallway.

  Mourngrym turned toward the voice. A tower guard stood at the door to the Harpers’ courtroom.

  “Yes, Shend? What is it?” his lordship asked.

  “Captain Thurbal has finished checking the tower security. He said to tell you everything seems in order, except for two things. First, he can’t get into Nameless’s cell; the door’s locked.

  “Akabar Bel Akash felt unwell, so he’s resting in there,” Mourngrym said. “Harper Kyre is tending him. No need to disturb them. I’ll check with them later. What’s the second thing, Shend?”

  “When I was on guard duty early this morning, I let someone pass through the gate without announcing her. She said it wasn’t necessary. Now we can’t find her, and no one saw her leave the tower. Captain Thurbal thought it a little strange, so he wanted me to report it to you personally.”