by Novak, Kate
“Then help me pull her off Walinda, and I’ll keep Walinda away,” he said.
Together the paladin and the bard managed to pull Jas from the priestess’s throat. Joel shoved himself between the two, holding back Walinda, trusting Holly to keep the winged woman from attacking him.
“I take it you two have met,” the bard said. He kept his voice calm, despite his worry that the noise of the battle might have awakened other cultists, or worse, alerted the eye tyrant.
“Murderess!” Jas hissed once Holly had helped her to her feet.
“Ah, Pigeon Girl,” Walinda taunted. She stood up and rubbed the bruises about her throat. To Joel, she said, “Is this the measure of your protection, Poppin?”
“Enough,” Joel snapped. “I made a pact with Walinda,” he explained to the winged woman.
“You’re a fool to trust her!” Jas growled. “You should kill her before she betrays us to the cultists.”
“She won’t do that,” Joel argued. “She was a prisoner, too. She helped me find Holly.” “How?” Holly asked suspiciously.
“I used a spell to detect goodness,” Walinda replied, addressing only Holly, ignoring Jas completely. “In this place, your quaint purity stands out like an ogre at a halfling picnic.”
“It’s some trick,” Holly insisted. “Bane is dead. She can’t call on him for spells.”
“For my part,” Walinda said, now speaking only to Joel, “I am prepared to include this winged deformity in our bargain, if only for expediency’s sake, even though I know I cannot trust her with my life.”
“You have no one but yourself to blame,” Holly retorted angrily. “You murdered her friends.”
“Cut it out!” Joel cried, and his voice echoed through the large room, startling all three women. “If you all don’t stop arguing, I’ll just go back to my cell, where at least there was some peace and quiet.” Joel couldn’t tell which made him more nervous, the glare of hatred Jas gave him or the mocking, chastened bow of Walinda’s head. “We are all going the same way,” he said. “We need to stick together for safety.”
Holly sighed and nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Walinda began climbing the stairs and the bard followed.
“You will have your chance to bring her to justice as soon as we escape,” Holly whispered to Jas.
Jas breathed out heavily, as if venting her fury and frustration. She gave the paladin a curt nod and motioned for her to go next. The winged woman took up the rear guard, her fists still clenched in rage.
The landing at the top of the stairs led to three other sets of stairs. An especially steep set led down into the darkness. A breeze wafted upward, laden with the odor of a menagerie.
“The griffons are stabled below,” Walinda explained.
“Yes, I’ve got my bearings now,” Joel replied.
“I can’t believe they haven’t posted any guards,” Holly muttered.
“They feel too secure in the unassailability of their flying fortress with their Zhentarim allies below,” Walinda noted. She pulled out her magical light gem and started down the steps. Joel pulled out his own magically lit stone and followed, careful to keep himself between the priestess and Jas. A push down these steps could result in more than a serious injury.
In the stable below, four griffons lay sleeping with their heads tucked beneath their wings. Each one was shackled by a chain running from a ring in the floor to a heavy iron band about one of its front legs.
Joel tiptoed past the beasts over to the hole in the floor that the griffon riders used as a doorway to the Temple in the Sky. He peered down. A few torches twinkled on the roof of the Flaming Tower, but it took his eyes some time to adjust to the rest of the dark landscape below. Far to the south, a dark ribbon glittered in the moonlight.
“That should be the River Tesh,” Holly said, pointing out the body of water to Jas. “We’ll want to head upstream, toward Daggerdale,” she explained.
An awful squawk rose from behind them, and they whirled around. Walinda had approached the griffons and awakened them. She held a bucket of chopped meat in her hands, but the creatures were too alarmed by her strangeness to accept food from her. They snapped at the priestess’s face with their beaks. Walinda backed away hurriedly. Were it not for the chains on their legs, the griffons might have torn her apart in moments.
The creatures’ shrieks and cries echoed through the chamber, and no doubt rose up the staircase. Walinda held up an iron symbol of Bane’s hand and intoned some unknown words, but the griffons’ clamoring only increased. The priestess looked annoyed, but she continued chanting her spell just out of reach of the creatures’ beaks.
Holly rushed to Walinda’s side and yanked her away from the griffons. “Stop it,” she ordered. “You’re going to bring the whole house down on us!”
Walinda spun angrily on the paladin. “We need to subdue these creatures to escape,” she retorted.
“No we don’t,” Holly argued. “Jas can carry us one at a time.”
“She would drop me the first chance she had,” Walinda said, tossing the bucket of meat at the griffons.
“Like that,” Jas agreed, snapping her fingers.
Joel approached the winged beasts, singing the calming spell that had worked so well on Butternut, but to no avail. The griffons were immune to any magic that affected ordinary beasts. They continued shrieking. Joel stepped back. “We’ve got to get out of here fast,” he murmured, “before they send someone to check on the griffons.”
Walinda tugged at his sleeve. “I cannot trust Pigeon Girl with my life. You vowed to help me escape from here,” she reminded him.
“Poor Banebitch,” Jas taunted. “She can’t get down from this rock.”
“You don’t get down from a rock, you get down from a goose,” Joel retorted automatically. Then he remembered his vision and the wings he’d found. He drew the golden talisman out of his tunic pocket and held it up for the others to see.
“Ahh … a feather token,” Jas said. “Haven’t seen one of those in a while.”
“What does it do?” Holly asked.
“You throw it to the ground,” Jas explained, “and you grow wings. You can use it only once.”
“I can carry you,” Joel said to Walinda, “and Jas can carry Holly.”
From somewhere above them came human shouts.
“To the hole! Hurry!” Jas shouted, grabbing Holly’s arm and pulling her in that direction.
Joel followed, with Walinda right behind. At the edge of the hole, he hesitated. “I just throw it to the ground?”
“The floor will do,” Jas explained. “It would take a little too long to get to the ground.
Joel threw the talisman to the floor. The wings shattered with a tiny flash. Then a golden light blossomed from the broken magic item, bathing Joel’s body in a rich radiance. When the glow had faded, Joel had a pair of great butterfly wings jutting from his back. They were yellow, with black striations, fully three times the size of Jas’s.
“There’s something else I should explain about these magical wings,” Jas said as she shouldered Walinda aside to stand before Joel.
“What?” the bard asked.
Jas put her hands on the bard’s chest. “You can use them to glide downward, but you can’t fly back up with them. Once you start down, there’s no coming back,” she said, and then she gave Joel a hard shove backward.
The bard fell through the hole and plummeted downward into the dark sky.
Joel started to scream, but the wings spread out from his body, controlled by some subconscious instinct. The magical appendages checked the speed of his descent, and he began drifting like a dandelion seed. After taking a deep breath and letting his air out, he regained his self-control.
The bard discovered that, by twitching his shoulders. he could control his direction, but just as Jas had said, he could not regain lost altitude. The winged woman had prevented him from honoring his vow to help the priestess of
Bane escape.
He craned his neck to see the hole in the floor of the Temple in the Sky. By the feeble light of the waning moon, he soon saw what he’d expected to seeJas soaring away from the flying rock, carrying Holly. There was no sign of Walinda.
Joel wondered if the giants on the tower would spot them, and if the cultists would mount the griffons and pursue the prisoners. He also began to worry that he might just end up landing on top of the tower, or so near it that he would be quickly recaptured.
Able to control her flight, Jas soon caught up to the bard. Holly’s arms and legs were wrapped around the winged woman’s neck and waist. Jas wasn’t able to hover beside Joel, but she flew under him and then up, trailing her legs.
“Grab hold,” Holly shouted.
Joel reached out and snagged the strap of one of Jas’s boots. He felt his stomach lurch backward, but his wings held and the rest of his body remained intact. Jas pulled him along as easily as a child played a kite on a string. The winged woman headed southwestward along the edge of the Border Forest, keeping the River Tesh to her left as Holly had instructed.
Joel looked back, scanning the sky for pursuit from the Temple in the Sky. He thought he saw dark specks issuing from beneath the great flying rock, but in the blackness, it was hard to be sure. Then the bard spotted something much larger, something he recognized without any trouble.
It was Walinda’s floating ship, the one in which she’d traveled to the tower. Now, however, the ship was flying, moving upward toward the Temple in the Sky. Just as it drew near the base of the flying rock, Jas flew into a low bank of clouds, obscuring the bard’s view.
Joel puzzled over what he had just witnessed. Had Walinda summoned the vessel somehow? But if she could do that, then why make a pact with him, and why had she seemed willing to risk flying on the griffons?
Unless she hadn’t realized the ship would come for her. Was it possible, Joel wondered, that Bane had found another way to rescue her?
Seven
Hunted
Joel had no notion how far they traveled, but by the time Jas began to descend, the sky was beginning to lighten. Below them was a meadow adjacent to the Border Forest. Upon Jas’s instructions, Joel released his hold on the winged woman’s bootstrap when they were still a good twenty feet above the ground. Jas landed, dropped Holly, and sank to the ground. Between carrying Holly’s weight and towing me, she has to be exhausted, the bard realized. He was worn out merely from hanging on and being buffeted by the wind.
He drifted downward. The instant his feet touched the earth, the magical wings on his back dissolved, leaving only aching shoulder muscles as a reminder of their previous existence. From here on, he and Holly would have to walk. What Jas would do was up to her.
The bard strode up to the winged woman. “Look,” he said, looming over her, “I’m grateful for the help you’ve given us, but you shouldn’t have done that.”
“Done what?” Jas asked, not even looking up at him. “Pushed me out of the Temple in the Sky,” Joel retorted
Jas looked up at the bard as if he were a fool. She yawned.
“Well?” Joel prompted, expecting a reply.
“If you’re expecting an apology,” Jas said with a laugh, “you’re going to be disappointed.”
“You abandoned Walinda,” Joel growled. “You left her there to die.”
“What makes you think I didn’t run her through before I left?” Jas asked.
Joel’s eyes widened in shock.
“We didn’t harm her, Joel,” Holly reassured the bard. “We just shoved her aside and flew off without her.”
“And somehow that’s supposed to be better?” Joel argued.
“Depends how much the cultists make her suffer,” Jas said with a smirk. “A quick death would be too good for her.”
“We had a pact,” Joel snapped angrily.
Jas rose to her feet and stood no more than a foot from the bard. She was no taller than Walinda, but her body was tough and muscular. She’d seen some hard times there were scars on her shoulders, her throat, her jaw. She was Joel’s senior by a few years, at least, and the annoyance on her face made her appear even older.
Everything about herher strength, her toughness, her ageintimidated Joel. He thought of the priestess of Bane, who appeared so young and delicate and vulnerable, although he knew she was none of those things. “I promised Walinda my protection,” he added.
“I don’t give a damn what you promised,” Jas replied slowly and coolly. “She tortured and murdered the members of my crew one by one. She made me watch. There was nothing I could do or say to stop her. Then she began torturing me. If she thought it would please her god, she’d do the same to you. Your paladin friend saved my life. I owed her a rescue, and I pay my debts. If not for that, I might have stayed behind and risked being recaptured just for the chance to finish off your precious Walinda.” Joel hesitated, considering Jas’s words.
“Look, kid,” the winged woman added, “it was a stupid promise. You’re lucky I made it impossible for you to keep it. You’re welcome.”
Joel bristled at the woman’s patronizing tone. “She helped me find a way out of there, helped me find Holly,” he said. “I owed her a debt, too.”
“We would have found you without her,” Jas argued,
“A promise is a promise,” Joel insisted. He looked over at the paladin, who had remained silent the whole time. “Holly, surely you see my point. You’re a paladin. Your word is your honor.”
Holly spoke softly. “I went along with you, but I did not give my word as you did. I could not. She was a priestess of Bane, Joel, a sworn enemy to my lord, Lathander. Besides, you could have been enchanted. I think you must have been. I can see no reason otherwise for you to make so foolish a vow. And a vow that is made under the duress of magic is not valid.”
Joel remembered the urge he’d felt to accept Walinda’s first offer. He was certain he had overcome whatever power the priestess had used. “I was not enchanted!” he insisted.
“Maybe not magically,” Jas said with a smirk. “You could have been seduced in the usual way. The bitch Las more than her share of curves under that armor, even if she’s rotten at the core. I saw her bat her eyes at you and cling to your sleeve, Poppin.”
“You’re mad,” Joel said.
“No. Just realistic,” Jas retorted.
“I made a vow in the name of my god to aid her until we escaped,” Joel said.
Jas huffed with exasperation. “Fine,” she cried, and she pointed back toward the northeast. “Go back and rescue her. I won’t stop you. The cultists have probably already chopped her up for dinner, but maybe you’ll get lucky and find a piece or two.”
Joel blanched with anger. Then he remembered the flying ship. He sighed. He was wasting his time arguing about his honor. Neither Jas nor Holly would concede. Still, for the insult Jas had given him, the bard couldn’t resist the temptation to tell the winged woman what he’d seen. At the very least, it would wipe the smug look off her face.
“That won’t be necessary,” he explained. “I saw her flying ship approaching the Temple in the Sky. Whoever summoned it up there has probably already rescued her.”
It was Jasmine’s turn to go pale. “Bloody hell,” she whispered, “Now I may never get it back.”
“Get what back?” Joel demanded.
“The flying ship,” Holly explained. “It was Jas’s. It can flyurnall sorts of places.”
“Whoever or whatever is at the helm is learning how to use it faster than I thought,” Jas said. “If they figure out how to go beyond the sphere, I’ll be stranded here, and they’ll have the run of space.”
“Well, there’s not much you can do about it now,” Joel said. He tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn. “We should all get some rest for a few hours before we press on.”
Jas yawned, too. “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since we’ve met,” the winged woman noted. Wrapping her tattered cloa
k around herself, she lay down on the ground.
Joel looked over at Holly.
“You rest first,” the paladin said. “I’ll keep watch.”
The bard’s chivalry collapsed beneath the weight of his fatigue. He nodded in agreement. He unloaded all the weaponry he’d taken from the cultists’ armory before he lay down. He fell asleep without another thought.
The sun had risen and climbed a good two hours into the sky when Holly woke Joel to take watch. Jas was still sleeping. The paladin had shot a couple of rabbits with the crossbow and skinned and cleaned them with Joel’s dagger. She left them by a tiny fire for Joel to cook.
While he worked, the bard’s mind reviewed all that had happened the night before, pondering if there was anything he should have done or could have done differently. By the time the rabbits were finished roasting, Jas woke up. The two shared the first rabbit in an uncomfortable silence.
Finally Joel said, “I’m sorry for the loss of your crew. I understand how you feel about Walinda.”
Jas nodded an acceptance of his condolence. “You didn’t know her like I did,” she said.
“Well, I knew enough,” Joel admitted. “But I wasn’t charmed, like you thoughtmagically or otherwise. There was something else that made me trust her. She risked everything to do her god’s bidding. She was completely faithful to him. When she swore an oath in his name, I knew she would keep her word. And she did. She helped me find Holly, and she didn’t betray us.”
“She got herself caught. She didn’t deserve your help,” Jas countered. “She would never have made a deal with you if she didn’t think she had more to gain from it than you did. That’s how priests of Bane think Everything is a power play to them. Especially the faithful ones. People don’t call them evil because they wear black. It’s because they hurt people and think it’s all right because they do it in their god’s name.”
“Suppose Bane really did tell her to do those things. What choice would she have?”
“She could find herself a new god,” Jas said, his voice rising in exasperation.
“Would you do that? Leave your deity?” Joel asked.
