by Kate Novak
19
The Weapon
Held by four saurial mages, Alias could do nothing but shriek and cry as Coral chanted foul prayers over Akabar, declaring his blood the seed of Moander’s resurrection. As the Turmish mage was sucked into the rotting mess the saurials had built for Moander, the swordswoman began to shake uncontrollably. This was her worst nightmare—the one she forced herself to forget whenever she woke from it. In it, she inevitably watched her friend being absorbed by the Darkbringer just as she had been. Now, though, there was no waking up.
Akabar should have gone back to the cave as soon as they found out that he was the seed, she thought. She should have knocked him out and dragged him away. And Zhara never should have let him come north. There had to have been some way to prevent all this.
Suddenly the swordswoman’s arm began to burn as if it were on fire. The blue brands on her arm glowed brighter than lantern light. “No,” Alias whispered.
“Yes,” a voice said in saurial. Alias looked up into the face of the saurial who once was Dragonbait’s lover. Her duties with the seed complete, the priestess had moved to the swordswoman’s side. She studied Alias’s arm eagerly. “The symbol of Moander is returning to her arm,” she announced.
Dragonbait, who had nearly reached the top of the pile, didn’t need to hear the Mouth of Moander’s words to know what was happening to Alias. He could feel it himself in the brand on his chest that bound him to the swordswoman. There, reasserting itself in his own scales, he could see the tattoo of a blue glowing mouth of fangs set in a human palm.
When the pain had subsided, he finished climbing up the side of the pile of greenery. Crashing through the soggy, rotting vegetation, he cried out the trigger word to set his sword aflame. He stabbed one of the mages through the heart and the corpse fell into the pile. As if the pile had an insatiable appetite, the body was sucked into it almost instantly.
Before the paladin could attack again, Coral finished chanting another entanglement spell. A vine rose up from the pile, wrapped itself around Dragonbait’s waist, and pulled him away from Alias. A second vine lashed itself around his legs and held him fast. He couldn’t hack at the vines without slashing himself.
Coral stepped up to the paladin, a ceremonial dagger in her hand. “Champion,” she whispered, “you know what must happen now. Your sacrifice will bind the servant’s will to Moander.”
“Coral, no. You can’t do this. This isn’t you. Fight it, please,” the paladin urged.
“You have your sword,” the white saurial whispered.
Dragonbait held his sword beside Coral’s head. The flames of the blade were reflected in her white scales.
“Either I will kill you, or you will kill me,” Coral said.
Dragonbait watched as Alias struggled with the three remaining saurial mages. If he were the only one to die, he wouldn’t even consider killing Coral. He would let her take his life. But Alias was his sister, and Coral was the Mouth of Moander. He couldn’t let Moander have Alias. Still he hesitated.
Coral raised her dagger. Tears shone in her eyes, and the smoke-laden air was heavy with the scent of her grief. “How can you condemn me to be your murderer?” she growled at the paladin. “I thought you loved me.”
Dragonbait swung his blade, and Coral’s body and head tumbled into the pile. There was no bloodshed. Nothing but rotted vines and dust spilled out of the priestess’s severed neck. The pile didn’t even try to suck her into it for nourishment. There was nothing left of her.
Immediately the vines that held Dragonbait fell away from him as if the magic in them had been dispelled. The paladin presumed the magic had died with Coral and began to move cautiously toward the mages who held Alias. One began to chant a spell and gesture in the paladin’s direction, but the words died on his lips, and he tumbled forward with a dagger in his back.
Now held by only two people, Alias threw her weight to one side, knocking one of the mages to her knees. Dragonbait rushed the remaining mage and sliced him in two. Like Coral, this mage was nothing but dust and rotted vines inside. With her bare fists, Alias throttled the female saurial beside her until the mage fell at her feet.
“Dragonbait, your sword!” the swordswoman shouted. “Give me your sword!”
Confused, the paladin let Alias take his sword from his hands. She began to slice into the top of the pile, looking for Akabar.
A dark figure landed beside Dragonbait and wordlessly pulled the dagger out of the mage who had tried to cast a spell over the paladin. The figure stood up and sheathed his blade. It was Finder Wyvernspur.
The pile shifted suddenly, knocking Dragonbait and Finder to their knees. The massive heap wasn’t merely settling, the paladin realized; it was coming to life. He struggled to his feet as Alias began hacking at the vegetation more frantically, screaming out Akabar’s name.
As the paladin helped him to rise, Finder shouted, “We can’t stay here!”
Dragonbait was inclined to agree, but when he saw the wild-eyed look in the swordswoman’s eyes, he was sure he’d never convince her to leave. The smell of her grief for Akabar permeated the air.
“Akabar is gone!” Finder shouted. “There’s no hope for him! If you don’t help me get Alias away from here, she’ll die!”
Dragonbait nodded. He took the hand the bard offered him and moved toward Alias.
“Sister,” he called out, “give me your hand.”
Alias looked up at her saurial brother, confused. She didn’t question him; she simply reached up and grabbed his paw. Dragonbait clenched her fingers with all his strength. Then Alias saw Finder standing behind the paladin. The bard held the finder’s stone in his hand.
“No!” Alias shrieked.
Finder sang to the finder’s stone, and the three adventurers glowed brightly for an instant, then disappeared. When they reappeared in the Singing Cave, Alias was still shrieking. She jerked her hand away from Dragonbait’s and pointed the paladin’s flaming sword at the bard’s heart.
Finder dropped Dragonbait’s hand. “I’ll be back,” he said. Then he sang to his magic stone again and vanished.
By the time Olive reached the top of the pile, it was beginning to tremble alarmingly. She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or not, but it seemed to be moving toward the east side of the vale. The halfling looked around at the dead bodies and the shaking greenery and started to shiver.
Olive screamed out Dragonbait’s name, trying to discern in the darkness if he was one of the corpses. A vine sprang up from the pile right in front of the halfling. An eye was visible on the end of it, round and glassy, like a fish’s. Olive gasped and took a step backward. More vines began popping out of the surface of the pile all around the halfling, each tipped with some sort of eye—a saurial’s eye, or a wild cat’s eye, or a bird’s eye. Then more vines appeared with mouths on their ends—fanged lizards’ mouths, birds’ beaks, a beaver’s mouth. The mouths all began calling out Moander’s name in a cacophonous chorus that set the halfling’s heart pounding with fear.
Olive moved cautiously away toward the edge of the pile. She’d slide down somehow; even falling to the ground would be preferable to becoming part of those eyes and mouths. A feline-mouthed vine lunged toward her, and the halfling shrieked.
Before the vine could strike her, strong hands grabbed her and lifted her off the top of the pile.
Olive gasped from the shock, then sighed with relief. She swiveled her head, expecting to see Akabar or Grypht. Her eyes widened in astonishment at the sight of her rescuer.
“Didn’t I tell you that you had to be more careful, little Lady Luck?” Finder Wyvernspur said as he soared northward with the halfling wrapped in his arms.
Grypht looked up from the exhausted form of a small flying saurial at the cleric, Sweetleaf, who stood over him anxiously.
“Excuse me, High One,” the cleric said, “but we have a problem in the vale. The—”
“I’ll set a backfire soon to keep the fire from spreadi
ng,” Grypht said. “There’s time yet. Don’t worry, Sweetleaf.”
“It’s not the fire, High One,” the cleric explained. “It’s Moander. It’s been resurrected.”
Grypht stood up and looked into the vale. Sweetleaf was right. Moander had been resurrected, and it was heading eastward, straight toward them.
The wizard had never really believed that rescuing Dragonbait and recovering the saurial workers would halt Moander’s resurrection. If anything, he had realized, it would precipitate the event, but since the Mouth of Moander had the seed and intended to use it that night, there hadn’t seemed any reason to put off the inevitable. Grypht had hoped, however, that he would have had more time to get his people back on their feet.
The mountain of greenery slid slowly but steadily across the ground, pushed along by some unseen magical force. Grypht shuddered to think just how much power Moander expended on movement. As the god moved slowly over the fires set in the vale, the flames were instantly smothered by its damp mass. Boulders caught in its path were crushed into gravel. Whenever it came across an especially large tree that the saurials had cut down but had been unable to haul, Moander sucked it into its body, where it was immediately splintered into smaller pieces.
Now that the saurials were free from the god’s possession and no longer served him, the wizard had no doubt what use Moander would have for them now. Moander would consume the saurials whole. The wizard looked up and down the hillside for Alias, Dragonbait, Olive, and Akabar, but they were nowhere to be seen, despite the fact that they had agreed to meet him here. Grypht began to grow alarmed. What could have happened to them?
The sound of Moander’s approach, cracking trees and smashing rock and rumbling earth, now reached the wizard’s ears. Above all those sounds came a cacophony of singing from the hundreds of mouths that grew from the god’s body. The Darkbringer was chanting its own name over and over again in victory.
“High One, what should we do?” Sweetleaf asked nervously.
Grypht was about to scoop up as many of the small fliers as he could carry and teleport away with them and Sweetleaf when suddenly Moander changed directions and began heading northward, toward the mountain slope and the Singing Cave.
“It’s following that flier!” Sweetleaf cried, pointing to a dark shape moving northward through the air with the smooth movement of a mage using a fly spell. “Who is it, High One?” Sweetleaf asked.
Just before the shape disappeared into the Singing Cave, Grypht caught sight of the yellow glow the finder’s stone gave off in the dark. “Can it be … the bard?” Grypht asked uncertainly.
Suddenly Grypht remembered the dark shape he’d seen standing in the camp beside Coral when they’d begun their attack. Finder had returned in time for the battle after all. With his magical stone, the bard could have teleported to the Singing Cave. Could it be that he was deliberately leading Moander away from the saurials? Did he know what had happened to the others?
He had to discover what the bard was up to, the wizard decided. Perhaps Finder could help move the unconscious saurials. “Do what you can for our people, Sweetleaf,” Grypht ordered the cleric. “I’ll return as soon as I can.” The saurial wizard clutched his staff and teleported to the Singing Cave.
Finder drifted into the mouth of the Singing Cave and landed smoothly among the ferns.
“Don’t move!” Alias growled, waving Dragonbait’s sword at the bard’s chest.
Dragonbait knocked the swordswoman’s hand aside. “Alias, he’s holding Olive. You’ll skewer her,” the paladin warned. He could see the invisible halfling with his heat sight.
“What are you talking about?” the swordswoman demanded. “His arms are empty.”
“No, they’re not,” Olive piped up. She wished herself visible, and suddenly she was. She looked back up at the bard. “How come you could see me when I was invisible?” she demanded.
“When you get to be my age, Olive, no beautiful woman is invisible,” Finder said.
Olive began to smile at the bard’s flattery, but she caught sight of the flower in the bard’s hair and shuddered nervously.
Sensing her unease, Finder set the halfling down on the floor. Olive scurried toward Alias.
Grypht appeared behind the bard. He could smell the anger and the fear permeating the air around him. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
“Finder’s been possessed by Moander!” Alias declared. Her voice cracked with pain and sorrow.
“See the flower in his ear?” Olive chirped.
In the cave lit by Dragonbait’s flaming sword, the finder’s stone, and the magical blue sigils of Moander glowing on Alias’s arm and Dragonbait’s chest, Grypht had no trouble picking out the flower growing from the bard’s ear and the mossy growth on his chin.
“Champion can use his power to cure disease on him,” Grypht said.
“No!” Finder said, stepping back. “I don’t need to be cured. I know it appears as if I’ve been possessed, but I’m not. Alias, you didn’t see me do it, but I was the one who dispelled Coral’s entanglement vines earlier. I also rescued you and Dragonbait from Moander’s grasp. Would I have done all that if I was one of the god’s minions?”
“You kept me from rescuing Akabar!” Alias cried. “You let Moander swallow him!”
Grypht felt his heart sinking when he learned the mage’s fate. He had admired Akabar’s courage and been moved by his concern for the saurials, who weren’t even his own people.
“Alias, there was no way you were going to reach Akabar,” Finder said. He took a step toward her with his arms extended.
Alias again pointed Dragonbait’s sword at the bard’s chest. “Don’t move!” she ordered him again.
“Moander is heading up the mountain even as we speak,” Grypht said, “led here by the bard—”
“I was trying to lead Moander away from your people,” Finder protested.
“Olive, check to see how close it is to us,” Alias told the halfling. Olive hurried to obey.
“We could use your help, but we can’t trust you unless you let Dragonbait cure the disease within you,” Grypht said to Finder.
“I cannot cure him, High One,” Dragonbait said. “I wasted my power trying to cure Coral. I have used my shen sight on the bard, however. I still sense no evil in him.”
Although Grypht realized that Finder was the sort of man who wouldn’t bow to any master, the saurial wizard had never seen anyone resist Moander’s possession once the Darkbringer’s disease had begun to manifest itself physically. “How is this possible?” he asked the bard.
“Xaran shot a burr of possession at me in the orc lair,” Finder explained. “It exploded its spores in my face, but nothing happened. I presumed its magic had failed. I’d forgotten that two hours before it happened I had swallowed magical potions that slow and neutralize poison. I believe the potions’ magic must have affected the spores so that they grew more slowly and altered the vines so Moander can’t use them to take hold of my body or mind.”
“Moander’s just reached the mountain slope,” Olive reported from the cave’s mouth. “The incline’s slowing it down some, but it’s still coming.”
“If you aren’t possessed, what were you doing in Coral’s hut?” Alias asked, unconvinced by Finder’s story. “Olive saw you there.”
“Trying to find the seed in order to destroy it. I was hoping that Coral and Moander would believe I was possessed. I got them to tell me where the seed was. I knew Olive was outside, looking into the hut. I made sure she heard that Akabar’s blood was the seed they were looking for, and I said it in Realms common so Olive was certain to understand me.”
“Olive heard you,” Alias admitted. Finally convinced that Finder had tried to help, she lowered Dragonbait’s sword from the bard’s chest and spoke the command word to extinguish the blade’s flame. “She told Akabar and me,” the swordswoman whispered.
“Then why didn’t you get Akabar away from here?” Finder demanded.
“He refused to leave,” Alias sobbed. “He insisted on fighting Moander, whatever the risk.”
“The fool!” Finder muttered.
Grypht shook his head. “Akabar did what he felt he must. If you aren’t possessed,” the wizard asked Finder, “why were you so anxious that Dragonbait not cure you? The vines of possession will eat away at your insides.”
“But the vines won’t kill me,” Finder said. “Their magic will make me immortal.”
Grypht shook his head, appalled at the bard’s acceptance of so bizarre a life. “We need Finder’s help to teleport my tribe out of the vale. For the time being, I’m prepared to trust him.”
“Moander has reached the uncut forest!” Olive said, hurrying back into the cave. “I think it’s time we got out of here.”
“I’ll teleport us all back to my keep,” Finder said. “We’ll be safe there for the time being.”
Anxious to leave before Moander got any closer, Olive forgot her earlier fear of Finder and was prepared to accept his offer immediately. She reached up to take his hand.
“What about the saurials?” Alias asked the bard angrily.
“I can make several trips back for them,” Finder replied. “The stone’s power is endless.”
“And what then?” Alias demanded. The rage that had been boiling up inside her ever since Akabar had disappeared into the pile spewed out at the bard. “What happens when we’ve all fled and Moander starts crossing the mountains? Do we begin to evacuate the dales?” the swordswoman demanded. “And after the dales, the Elven Woods? Cormyr? Can you take the Realms to a safe place, Finder?”
Tears began to stream down Alias’s cheeks as her voice rose. “Akabar is inside that creature, and it’s your fault. If you had used the para-elemental ice in your silly stone to put the saurials into a torpor, then Akabar would never have gotten near that pile. He’d be here with us now, and all the saurials would be safe. But your stone was more important than people. You never loved anyone but yourself. Now that you have your precious immortality and your magical stone, why bother to help us? You don’t need us. We mean nothing to you.”
