by Novak, Kate
“We’d better keep moving,” Joel insisted. He turned away hastily, making a show of tightening the strap on Butternut’s saddle.
“You don’t have to escort me,” Holly said. “The Zhents don’t usually bother me. It’s just that this patrol’s captain spotted me in Shadowdale last week, so he was overly suspicious. The other patrols won’t suspect me. And you’ll be safer if you aren’t seen cavorting with the natives.”
Joel’s forehead furrowed with concern. “Look, I know we’re perfect strangers, but I can’t just leave you here alone. I’m sure there must be a rule that forbids it. Thou shalt not abandon maidens in distress’ or some such.”
Holly laughed.
“Besides,” Joel continued hurriedly, “I could use someone who’s familiar with the area. I’m going north, and if it’s not out of your way, I’d appreciate your guidance.”
“Well, then, Rebel Bard, you’ve got yourself a guide,” the girl agreed with a grin.
Joel swung up into the saddle and offered Holly a hand. She swung up behind him easily. Butternut snorted with annoyance at the extra weight. “It’s just till we put some distance between us and them, girl,” the bard assured the horse, urging her forward with a nudge.
They had traveled all of a hundred yards when they heard the sound of horses on the trail behind them. Someone shouted something about spies. Joel kicked Butternut into a trot.
“Blast!” Holly muttered as she looked back.
“What is it?” Joel asked, his rear view blocked by the girl.
“A fresh Zhent patrol, mounted. And one of the ones we left behind in the clearing is waving them in our direction.”
Joel bit his lip, trying to formulate a plan. Butternut, he realized, could never outrun the Zhentilar loaded down as she was.
“I’m going to dismount and hold them off,” Joel said, kicking his foot out of the stirrup. “You keep going.”
“You can’t” Holly started to protest, but Joel had already swung his leg over the mare’s neck and fallen to the ground.
Joel rolled out of the way of the mare’s hind legs and leapt to his feet. Drawing his sword, he prepared to make a heroic last stand, but Holly had other ideas. She had turned Butternut about and ridden back to the bard’s side.
“You know,” Joel growled with exasperation, “there’s not much point in my trying to save your life if you insist on being killed with me,” he said.
“What kind of guide would I be if I lost you to the Zhents?” Holly retorted grimly as she loaded a bolt into her crossbow.
From a pocket of his tunic, Joel pulled out a tiny vial of holy water. Not even the urgency of the situation overcame the awkwardness he felt praying aloud. With his head bowed with embarrassment, he whispered his prayer. “Finder, help us through this peril.” He splashed the holy water first in Holly’s direction, then on his own feet. When he’d pocketed the empty vial, he raised his sword again. Even with the blessing, the sword felt uncomfortably heavy in his hand. He had only the most rudimentary training in its use in Berdusk. Since then he’d had little inclination to practice and few reasons to use it.
The Zhentilar were closing fast when Holly shouted, “Hey!”
Joel looked up at the girl. She was trying to bat away a bird that fluttered about her shoulder. The bird landed on Butternut’s head. Joel could see that it was a jackdaw, its purplish black wings glittering even in the shadow of the trees.
Joel froze with anticipation. Among the advice Jedidiah had given him before they had parted was to listen to the birds.
The bird looked straight at Joel and cocked its head. Turn the peril back at them,” the bird croaked. “Use the wand of their mage. With Lady Luck’s blessing, you cannot fail.”
Holly’s eyes widened with surprise, but she didn’t forget the approaching enemy. “Can you really use the wand?” she asked excitedly.
From his belt, Joel drew the wand he’d stolen from the Zhentilar mage’s corpse. It was fashioned from mahogany and polished smooth all around, save for a symbol engraved at the tip and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The symbol was an ancient rune signifying chaos. That could be the word that activated it, but what the wand did the bard couldn’t even guess. It was also entirely possible the wand wouldn’t respond to someone who lacked formal training and only dabbled in magic. He looked up questioningly at the jackdaw. The bird cawed loudly and fluttered off into the trees above.
“I don’t know if I can get it to work,” Joel whispered up to Holly, “but I can always bluff.” He took up a position in the center of the trail and held the wand out at arm’s length. The Zhentilar thundered down the trail single file.
“Halt!” he shouted, aiming the wand at the lead rider of the patrol. “Halt, or I’ll use the wand!”
The rider did not halt, and Joel thought he could see the man smiling.
“Fine. You asked for it,” the bard muttered. “Chaos!” he shouted.
A pulse of blue light issued from the tip of the wand and struck the Zhentilar’s sword. The weapon began to glow with a vivid blue light as the soldier closed on Joel. With a yell, the Zhentarim swung his blade downward. The bard raised his own sword to fend off the blow, but the blow never struck. The Zhentilar’s blade passed right through the bard’s weapon like a ghost. In the next instant, the enemy’s sword vanished entirely.
With unerring aim, Holly put a crossbow bolt through the rider’s chest. As his horse passed by, she grabbed the beast’s reins and pushed the soldier from the saddle.
Undeterred by the fate of their comrade, the other Zhentilar continued charging toward the bard and the girl.
“Some people never learn,” Joel said with a sigh. Once more he pointed the wand at the approaching foe and called out the command word.
A sphere of light, buttery yellow like bright sunshine, bubbled from the tip of the wand. When the sphere of light had grown as large as a pumpkin, a large butterfly fluttered forth. The insect was beautifully marked with orange and black spots and was as large as Joel’s hand. A second butterfly emerged, then a dozen, then hundreds of butterflies swarmed out of the sphere of light. The mass of beating wings blinded the bard and startled Butternut and the dead soldier’s horse into flight down the trail. Holly shouted as Butternut carried her away.
The Zhentilar patrol’s horses must have been equally startled, for Joel could hear them neighing in panic, and none of them came bursting through the cloud of orange and black. Joel backed away from the colorful swarm. The butterflies began spiraling upward toward the tree-tops, and Joel could see beyond their fluttering wings. The Zhentarim soldiers were getting their mounts back under control and moving in his direction.
Joel realized now the meaning of the command word etched on the wand. The wand’s magic was determined by chaos, completely random. He understood now what the jackdaw had meant about Lady Luck’s favor. To tip the odds in his favor, he needed luck.
“Tymora,” he whispered, invoking the goddess of luck, who had always been a friend to his own god, Finder. “Smile on this fool.” He aimed the wand for a third time and called out, “Chaos!”
Either the third use was truly charmed or the bard’s request of Lady Luck had fallen on sympathetic ears.
The wand spat out a glowing red sphere no bigger than a pea that streaked down the trail into the midst of the Zhentilar patrol. Then the pea burst into a fireball so powerful the force of the blast knocked Joel off his feet.
Complete silence fell over the woods as every living creature, seen and unseen, took a moment to wonder at the blast. Then the silence broke as the charred corpses of the Zhentilar patrol and their horses thudded to the ground. Birds in the trees overhead began twittering loudly, as if mistaking the fireball for a second sunrise.
Joel picked himself off the ground. He took a few steps toward his vanquished foes, but the sight of the carnage and the stench of burning flesh was too terrible to bear. He turned about and loped down the trail after Holly.
The Pilgrims
Still mounted on Butternut, the girl came riding back toward him with the first Zhentilar’s horse in tow. “I heard an explosion,” she said, “What happened?”
“They’re dead,” Joel whispered.
“All of them?” Holly asked. “All the ones who were chasing us,” Joel replied. He patted the side of the Zhentarim horse for a few moments, making sure the beast was steady, then swung himself into the beast’s saddle. “Are you all right?” Holly asked. “You’re not injured?” Joel shook his head from side to side, then studied the girl for a moment. Her arms and tunic were splattered with the blood of the last Zhentilar she’d killed and from the wounds she’d received from the first Zhent patrol, but she didn’t seem the least bit unnerved.
“I suppose this is all business as usual for you Daggerdale folk,” the bard commented dryly.
“If by business as usual, you mean, do we defy invaders to our lands whenever we can, then the answer is yes,” Holly replied coolly. “To do anything less would be inviting the fate of Teshendale, conquered by the Black
Network and now only an empty chair at the Dales Council. As it is, the Zhent soldiers harass our citizens, their orc mercenaries raid our herds, and their puppet rulers force our lord into exile. If you plan to travel through Daggerdale, you had best get used to our “business as usual.’ ” Having said her piece, the girl clucked her tongue at Butternut and rode off down the trail.
Joel sat still for a moment, stunned by the girl’s tirade, but after some reflection, he convinced himself he hadn’t really said anything that could give offense. There was more than the reputed Daggerdale unfriendliness behind Holly’s outburst. Her words had a defensive and rehearsed sound, as if Holly had said it before or had wanted to say it to someone else for a long time.
Joel dug his heels into the ribs of the Zhentilar horse and soon caught up with his guide.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” the bard said as his horse drew up alongside Holly’s, “but I sense I’ve just caught an arrow meant for someone else.”
The girl lowered her eyes, and Joel knew he’d hit the mark, but he also knew that wouldn’t necessarily gain him any points with her. It would be up to him to bring some civility back to the conversation.
“I didn’t mean to imply you or your people had no right to defend yourselves,” he insisted.
Holly looked up at him. “I know that. You’re right about my speech being meant for someone else. Someone I met said something that really made me angry, but I couldn’t think what to reply until the next day. I’ve been thinking about what I said to you for days now, repeating it over and over, wishing I could go back in the past and answer the person who made me angry. Pretty foolish, huh?”
Joel laughed. “Not really,” he replied. “We’ve all done that before. So who was this scoundrel who slandered the honor of the Daggerdale folk?”
“Some stupid Cormyte serving as an envoy to Shadowdale. He said we were a ruthless, mean-spirited people. Elminster and Lord Mourngrym didn’t pay any attention to him, but he made me terribly angry. I wasn’t sure how much respect he warranted, so I didn’t reply, Then I felt stupid because I’d lost the chance to show Shadowdale how loyal Daggerfolk are to their dale.”
“Elminster and Lord Mourngrym probably admired you all the more for your self-discipline,” Joel assured her
“Do you really think so?” Holly asked with surprise.
“Well, having never met the gentlemen, I can only guess based on what I’ve heard about them. Sharp words are never wielded so skillfully as silence. So what business did one so young have with such powerful men?” the bard asked curiously.
Holly grinned at him but said nothing.
Joel laughed. “Well, now that you’ve demonstrated your mastery of silence, perhaps you will deign to move on to the art of small talk. I’ll try another question. Where’d you get that curved blade of yours?”
“It was my father’s blade,” Holly explained. “He was from Zhakara. That’s far to the south.”
Joel nodded.
“When he was a young man, he put on a cursed ring and was teleported to the north, where the Zhents captured him. He was a slave of the Zhents for years. So was my mom’s brother, Burl. My dad helped Uncle Burl escape, so Uncle Burl brought dad to Daggerdale and introduced him to my mother.” Holly looked away into the woods and added, “They all died in an orc raid last yearmy mom, my dad, my Uncle Burl, my grandma Harrowslough.”
“I’m very sorry,” Joel said.
“Me, too,” Holly whispered.
They rode in silence for nearly a mile. Joel thought of his own mother and father. It would probably be years before he saw them again. He hoped his reunion with them would be more pleasant than his departure had been. His parents couldn’t understand his decision to leave the barding college in Berdusk to join Finder priesthood and go on a pilgrimage. Joel began humming a tune his mother and father often sang together.
The trail left the woods finally and headed out into rolling meadowlands covered with high grasses and wildflowers.
“Something’s coming,” Holly hissed in an urgent whisper. She slid down from Butternut’s back.
The bard dismounted beside her. “What is it?” he asked. “More Zhentilar?”
“I’m not sure,” the girl replied. Her brow was furrowed, and she looked more anxious than she had when she was surrounded by the Zhentilar. Holly pointed to a line of trees to the west. “We need to take cover,” she insisted.
Joel followed the girl into the tall meadow grass, tugging the confused horses behind him. Young saplings lined the edge of a shallow gully; Holly slid down the gully and Joel followed. Butternut balked until Holly splashed a stone in the small stream at the bottom of the wash. Eager for water, the mare picked its way to the bottom and began to drink thirstily. The Zhentarim mount soon followed. Joel could just pick out the trail they’d left behind, but for the most part, the grass had closed back up after they passed through.
Joel trusted the girl’s instincts, but he was unable to squelch his curiosity. Leaving the horses and Holly behind, the bard crawled back the way they’d come until he could peer through the tall grass at the trail beyond.
Whatever was coming had frightened more than just Holly. The woods that he and Holly had just exited erupted with an alarmed chatter. A moment later flocks of birds soared out of the trees and flew overhead. Five deer bounded down the trail and into the grass, the lead buck settling only a few feet from the ravine where Holly and the horses were hidden.
A minute later a great procession of people emerged from the woods. There had to be a hundred at least, peasants mostly, their heads bowed down, mumbling incoherently, their feet shuffling in the dirt, kicking up clouds of dust. Four young men and two young women in poorly tailored acolytes robes of red and black carried banners of crimson, emblazoned with a black hand They chanted, louder and more clearly than the peasants, so that Joel could make out their words.
“Lord Bane conies. Fear him always. To defy him is to die. Lord Bane comes. Fear him always. To defy him is to die.”
Joel buried his head in his arms and worked hard to stifle his laughter. It was a group of Banites, still worshiping their dead god. Their capacity for self-deceit was unbelievable. The black lord of hatred and tyrann had perished nearly a decade ago, yet he still had worshipers who refused to accept the fact. With their god’s death, even Bane’s priests were magically impotent, yd here they were, parading about and declaring their god’s power.
It was then that Joel noticed the ground was rumbling. He peered down the road, guessing the rumbling might be caused by elephants, or perhaps a captured dragon.
It was no living thing that shook the earth, however, but something far more diabolical. Floating along the trail, its keel hovering inches from the ground, was the strangest-looking ship Joel had ever seen. The hull was fashioned of gigantic tree trunks, bound together with iron bands. Engraved in the iron bands was a script Joel was sure did not
originate in the Realms. The hull was nearly a hundred feet long, with a fifteen-foot beam. Charred bits of wood on the lower deck led Joel to guess the upper decks had been destroyed by fire. Three of the bound tree trunks thrust outward from the lower deck, entwined together to form a three-pronged ram. ship’s broken rudder plowed through the earth, creating a great furrow in the trail and making the ground shake.
Bound to the ship’s bow, looking as if it were standing on the ram, was a giant ebon figurehead of a creature Joel had never seen before. It looked like a great pig or a small elephant with a mushed-in snout, only it stood upright like a human. Its arms were bound to either side of the bow. The statue wore no clothing, and its black skin had a sheen as if it were highly polished.
Behind the figurehead, on the lower deck, stood a small, slender woman in black plate armor, with a black cape. She held a silver goad, its spiked point honed to a needlelike sharpness. Her long, silky black hair was fastened in a single plait that reached her waist. It was her face, though, that captured Joel’s attention. On her cheeks and her chin were diamond-shaped tattoos the color of fresh blood, and set into her forehead was a huge ruby, worth a king’s ransomthe telltale markings of one of Bane’s chosen priests. Her features might have been attractive, but now they were frozen into a stern, bored expression. She looked no older than Joel, but the bard knew such priests often used their powers to appear youthful.
For a moment the priestess seemed to look right at the spot where Joel hid in the grass. Her lips curled into the slightest hint of a smile. Joel could have sworn he’d been detected, that in the next minute she’d order her minions to flush him out like a bird. Then the bow of the boat reached the trail just in front of where he lay in hiding, and the bard lost sight of the priestess. The boat rumbled past and continued on. A few more peasants straggled behind the floating ship, but they did not stop.
Joel rolled on his back and breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t seen him. If she hadn’t seen him, though, why had she smiled? the bard asked himself. Perhaps she had seen him, but in her pride, she had ignored him, smiling at the way he cowered. Joel felt annoyance churn in his gut. As priestess to a dead god, she was unable to cast even a simple healing spell, yet there she stood, proud of her power and position, and here he lay, priest to a living god, lying low like a snake in the grass.
