by Kate Novak
“But you would be freeing the saurials and preventing Moander’s return,” Akabar argued.
“I spent a decade searching for that stone, and another decade improving it at the risk of my own life,” Finder replied coolly. “The stone holds more powerful magic than most mages learn in a lifetime, and it can recall any one of my songs on command.”
“So can Alias,” Akabar snapped, “but you are ready to risk her life!”
“No, I am not,” Finder growled. “I asked her to stay behind, but she wouldn’t. She chose to risk her own life. If she dies, the stone will be the only record left of my music.”
“She is acting in a selfless manner to save her friend’s tribe,” Akabar said, his voice rising in pitch and volume. “How can you be so greedy as to save a stupid piece of magic instead of her life?”
“Akabar!” Alias said sharply. “Calm down, and leave me out of your arguments. Finder’s right. I chose to do this myself. As for the stone, it’s Finder’s stone. He may use it or not as he pleases.”
Grypht tugged on Akabar’s sleeve.
“Grypht says you should cast a spell so you can understand him. He wants to show you how to use the wand” Alias translated for the wizard.
Akabar shot Finder an angry look, but he allowed Grypht to lead him away from the bard. The two magic-users settled down near the cave entrance. Akabar pulled out his magic book to study the comprehend languages spell.
Alias sighed. “There’s nothing for us to do now but wait, is there?” she asked Finder.
“We could sing,” the bard suggested, “to pass the time.”
“I smell roses,” Olive said as she inspected a small golden apple and tossed it into her knapsack. Dragonbait was digging in the dirt nearby while she collected windfalls beneath a gnarled old apple tree. Dragonbait had discovered the tree by following his nose to the vinegary scent of the fruit rotting on the ground. “It’s a little late in the year for roses. Guess it’s that magical warmth of the vale.”
Olive hefted her knapsack with a groan. It was loaded. Dragonbait helped her slip it on over her shoulders. Then he shoved in a bunch of wild carrots and onions he’d dug up.
“Aren’t you going to carry anything?” Olive asked with a huff.
I’m going to hunt, the paladin signed. Go back to the cave.
“Alias wouldn’t want me to leave you alone,” the halfling protested.
I’ll be fine, Dragonbait signed.
Olive stood with her feet apart and her hands on her hips, scowling with stubborn disapproval.
Wouldn’t you like duck? Or wild pig? the paladin asked.
“You’re doing just what Finder does,” Olive said. “He gets around my better judgment with bribes. The last time I let him have his way, we got captured by orcs. I can’t believe I’m getting the same thing from you, too, of all people.”
Dragonbait hung his head sheepishly. Sorry, he signed.
“Apology accepted,” Olive said. “Now let’s go. We can do without meat for once.”
Dragonbait shook his head. I’m going to scout out the vale, he signed.
“What? Are you crazy?” Olive gasped. “It’s too dangerous!”
I have to do it, the paladin signed.
Olive sighed. “Fine. Go right ahead.” She waved a finger up at the saurial’s chest. “If you don’t come back, though, I’m never going to speak to you again.”
I’ll be back, the saurial’s hands promised. Tell Alias not to worry.
“I’ll tell her, but it won’t do any good,” Olive said. She turned around and stormed back up the mountain road to the Singing Cave.
Dragonbait watched her disappear around a bend, all the while sniffing the rose scent that came from the brush deeper into the vale. Olive had forgotten how similar the smell of saurial grief was to the flower’s perfume. Of course, not even the halfling’s sharp ears could discern the sound of a saurial weeping.
The paladin walked into the brush about fifty feet toward the scent and the sound. When he spotted the source of the grief, he froze. Twenty feet away from him stood another saurial, a female, very similar in size and shape to the paladin but with scales of pearly white. She wore a tattered black smock, and a circlet of wilted clover hung from her head fin. Otherwise she was unadorned and unarmed. She was picking apples off another apple tree and dropping them in a sack. Her work, however, did not interfere with her weeping.
The lemony scent of joy rose uncontrollably from Dragonbait’s body. He whispered in saurial, “Coral.”
The white saurial turned to face him. Her eyes widened in surprise, and the violet scent of fear wafted from her skin. “Champion!” she gasped. “Stay back!”
Dragonbait moved closer. “Coral, it’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”
“You fool,” Coral said. “What makes you think I won’t hurt you? I’m tainted. I’m under the Darkbringer’s power.”
“I can cure you,” the paladin said. He moved closer to Coral.
“Yes,” Coral said, “I remember. You can cure diseases with your touch.” A waft of lemon scent rose from her body as her hopes rose with it.
“You’d never hurt me,” Dragonbait said, hurrying to her side. “I know you could never hurt me.” A honeysuckle scent of tenderness mingled with the smell of woodsmoke as he began a prayer for power to destroy the tendril disease that controlled Coral. His hands glowed blue as he laid them on the white saurial’s shoulders. He felt the power flow from his soul into her body.
Coral gasped and stumbled against him.
“You did it!” she exclaimed. “You destroyed Moander’s tendrils of possession! I’m free again!” She leaned heavily on him though, as if she’d been injured.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I feel weak,” she replied.
“Lean on me.”
Coral threw her arms around the paladin’s neck and clung to him. Dragonbait wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close.
“I’m so sorry for all the things I did, for all the things I said. For leaving you,” the paladin whispered, emitting a minty smell of remorse.
“It’s all right now,” Coral answered. From her throat came the scent of cinnamon.
Dragonbait ran the tip of his muzzle along Coral’s neck glands, breathing in the reassuring scent of her love. “I insulted your goddess and your friends and tried to bully you into leaving them. I damned you and left you. How can you forgive me for all of that?” he wondered aloud.
Coral looked up at him. “You said you were sorry, and I know you meant it,” she answered. She stroked his throat with her fingers, and the scent of cinnamon wafted from him so strongly that it masked even the smell of the rotting apples on the ground about them.
He wanted to hold her longer, but Coral pushed him away. “You can’t stay here,” she said. “It’s not safe.”
“We have a hiding place,” Dragonbait said. “I’ll take you there. We’ll surprise the High One.”
“The High One!” Coral gasped. “Grypht is here? Where is he?”
“I’ll take you there. Come.” Dragonbait tugged on Coral’s arm.
“I … I can’t,” the white saurial said, holding her ground.
“You must,” Dragonbait said. “Now that I’ve cured you, you can’t fall under the Darkbringer’s power again.”
“I must go back, or the overlords will look for me in my hut, and they will find the egg.”
“What egg?” Dragonbait asked in surprise.
“My sister Lily’s egg. She died last week. Her mate was an overlord. I’m the only one left to hide the egg. The young can’t work, so the overlords don’t let us hatch our eggs. They break them into the pile to become one with the Darkbringer.”
The scent of baking bread rose from the paladin and his body shook, so great was his fury.
“Champion, wait here. I will get the egg and return,” Coral said.
Dragonbait shook his head. “I’ll go with you.”
“On
e minute,” Coral said. “If you are to pass unnoticed before the overlords, you’ll need to look as if some plant possesses you.” The priestess pulled a twig of ivy from the ground, fashioned it into a wreath, and laid it over the paladin’s head fin.
“Is there anything else I need to know to pass for one of the possessed?” the paladin asked.
“Hide your weapon in here,” Coral said, holding out her sack.
Dragonbait unfastened his sword and scabbard from his belt and slid them inside, amongst the apples.
Coral embraced him again. “I’m so glad you have come back to us,” she said.
Dragonbait ran his palm along the ridge of her head fin. “So am I,” he replied. “We have to hurry, though. The High One and my other friends will become worried if I’m away too long.”
Coral nodded. She released the paladin and motioned for him to follow her. She led him to a path that twisted down into the vale.
As Dragonbait followed Coral into the clearing at the bottom of the vale, he was reminded of the last verse of the song Alias had sung back at the inn in Shadowdale:
We hack the vines, we cut the trees,
We trample the roots and burn the seeds.
When the rain comes down, the soil floods away,
Leaving barren rock and heavy clay.
We wear chains of green, till our bodies rot,
The corpses keep moving, their minds without thought.
Soon the darkness will devour the Realms,
Death is the power that overwhelms.
The lyrics described exactly the conditions Dragonbait witnessed. A few members of the tribe, mages and clerics like Coral, wore only a token vine or flower about their heads. Most of the tribe members, though, those who were incapable of casting spells, wore vast tangles of slimy green vines about their legs or waists or throats. The vines grew out of holes in their backs. Dragonbait struggled to keep his face an impassive mask.
He sneaked a quick glance at the huge pile of rotting vegetation that the possessed intended to turn into Moander’s new body. Mages and clerics stood around the mountain of greenery chanting spells at it, while others moved back and forth between it and the forest, building it larger and higher with trees and brush.
Set in rings around the pile were several tiny huts made of pine boughs.
“Here,” Coral whispered, stopping at the entrance to one of the huts in the innermost ring. “The egg is buried under my blanket. I’ll keep watch at the door.”
Dragonbait slipped past the door curtain. The structure was so small he had to duck his head to keep from brushing the roof, and the blanket spread out against the opposite wall was only a pace away. There were no windows in the hut, so the only light was heavily filtered through the needles of pine in the roof and walls. Dragonbait pulled aside the blanket. He tried to use his warmth vision to detect exactly where the egg was buried, but he could see nothing warm in the ground. He began clawing quickly at the dirt, afraid that the egg might have gotten too cold buried in so dark a place.
Outside the hut, he heard Coral chanting a prayer. The woodsmoke scent of devotion drifted though the pine boughs. No doubt she was casting something to protect herself, perhaps even to make her less noticeable to the enemy all around them. Coral was a priestess of the goddess of luck. She would be a powerful addition to the attack the High One planned. He had to get her back to the Singing Cave. He began to dig with even more energy.
After several minutes, when he’d dug up nearly half the floor of the hut and still found nothing, Dragonbait finally realized there was no egg. Moander’s higher minions, the overlords, must have found it while Coral was out picking apples, The paladin swallowed hard, knowing the pain the priestess would suffer when he told her.
He began to slip past the curtain over the door, but as he did, a powerful electrical tingling ran down his shoulder, and he leaped back into the hut. Someone outside yanked the curtain aside. Dragonbait peered out. Several saurial mages and clerics stood outside the door, staring at him. The paladin looked around anxiously for Coral. Have they discovered her, or has she escaped? he wondered.
Then Coral stepped in front of the doorway, and his heart sank. The priestess wore a clean white robe. Painted in red in the center of the robe was an eye, surrounded by a mouth of fangs—the symbol of Moander’s high priest.
“Well, Champion,” Coral said, “you wanted me to give up my goddess for another. What do you think of my choice?”
Dragonbait was too shocked to reply. He could only manage to mumble, “But I cured you!”
Coral laughed. “You fool! Your feeble power can have no influence on the Mouth of Moander. The root of the Darkbringer was planted in me months ago. It grows strong in every limb, down my tail, and even in my brain. You are getting careless, paladin. There was a time when you never met anyone—friend or stranger—without using your shen sight. You were always keeping watch over our souls, judging us constantly. Yet how eagerly you came to me today, even after I warned you. I knew you’d never believe my warning.”
“I loved you,” Dragonbait said. “Coral, I’m sorry this happened to you.”
The priestess scowled. “You should be, paladin, for now I am your doom. While you were busy digging for Lily’s egg—which, by the way, went into the pile with my sister’s corpse—I traced a glyph of warding around this hut. You cannot escape. Moander’s root could never grow in anything as pure as you, but you will serve Moander in another way. Where you are, the servant can’t be far off. She will come to rescue you, and we will capture her. Then we will sacrifice you to bind the servant’s will to Moander’s.”
“You can’t bind Alias to Moander as long as Moander isn’t in the Realms,” Dragonbait protested.
“Moander will take possession of its new body before the moon sets tonight,” Coral announced.
Dragonbait shivered. The minions must have recovered the seed somehow. He couldn’t believe how badly things were going, nor could he believe he’d been fooled so easily. “I don’t understand. Coral, you were so different on the mountain. Why were you weeping?”
Coral sneered. “To attract your attention, of course,” she replied. “One of our fliers spotted you from the air. I teleported to a spot nearby and feigned tears until you came to me. You were incredibly easy to fool.”
“I smelled your grief, your hope, your love. What I smelled was true,” Dragonbait said.
“You have deceived yourself. I felt none of those things,” Coral snapped. “The only truth I told was that I was glad you had returned to us. Now I can slay you in the name of the Darkbringer. Yours will be the first blood Moander tastes in its new body.”
17
Finder’s Secret
As Olive approached the cave, she could hear Alias singing. Though she couldn’t quite make out the swordswoman’s words, the halfling recognized the melody. Alias was singing “The Tears of Selune,” one of Finder’s most haunting love songs. Something didn’t sound quite right, however. Olive halted to listen more carefully. It took her a moment to realize what was wrong—Alias was singing the song in the wrong key.
Olive heard a shout, and the singing stopped suddenly in the middle of a verse. She could imagine what had happened. Finder had ordered Alias to stop. Why the swordswoman had sung the song in the wrong key, Olive couldn’t imagine. Alias knew how Finder hated anyone altering his tunes, and it wasn’t like her to goad the bard. Olive crept to the mouth of the cave and peered in.
Alias sat on the floor of the cave, her head hanging like an embarrassed child. Finder sat nearby, glowering at the woman. Akabar and Grypht sat opposite the bard and swordswoman. Both spell-casters stared at Alias anxiously.
Olive could hear Alias whispering, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be a fool, Finder,” Akabar said. “She was just expressing what the saurials are feeling by turning your song into a soul song.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were changing my songs to sing these saurial things?” Finder
demanded of Alias.
“I thought it might upset you,” Alias said softly.
“If you’d let her finish,” Akabar said, “we might learn something.”
“She was singing gibberish,” Finder protested.
Grypht must have begun speaking to the bard in saurial, for Finder turned his attention to the wizard for a moment. The bard answered Grypht in Realms common. “We’ve learned enough about Moander. We don’t need to hear any more.” Finder turned and snapped at Alias, “How dare you change my songs?”
“I can’t help it,” Alias whispered. “It just happens.”
“Nothing just happens,” Finder said. “If I meant as much to you as the saurials do, you’d be able to control it. If you can’t control it, don’t bother to sing my songs anymore.”
The swordswoman blanched, and Olive could detect the smell of violets in the cave. Alias was frightened and was communicating her fear through the saurial scent.
Grypht and Finder glared at each other, and now Olive could also smell baking bread, the scent of anger. Meanwhile, Akabar leaned toward Alias and tried to encourage her to ignore Finder and resume her singing.
After listening to Grypht for a short time, Finder had had enough. As the bard rose to his feet and turned away from the others, his blue eyes flashed red in the sunlight streaming into the cave. “Go ahead and sing their songs if you want,” he said coldly to Alias. “It makes no difference to me what you do.”
Alias swallowed, licked her lips, and took a deep breath. It was obvious she wanted to sing, but from the way the swordswoman trembled, Olive could see that she was too frightened to rise to her father’s challenge.
“Careful, bard,” Akabar taunted Finder. “She might just improve on your song. Then what would you do? Go ahead and sing, Alias.”
Akabar’s goading of the bard wasn’t helping to encourage Alias any. Akabar didn’t understand how desperately she wanted to please Finder. Olive understood it all too well.
Alias began rocking back and forth, clutching her knees to her chest and whimpering softly with a glazed look in her eyes. Grypht and Akabar hovered over her, trying unsuccessfully to comfort her. Finder stood stubbornly with his back to his daughter.
