Finder's Bane

by Novak, Kate

  Joel remembered Holly’s story that Lord Randal’s ancestor and his entourage had died here. If the origin of the undead occurred to the paladin, she did not let it affect how she fought. She decapitated one walking corpse with a clean swing, which ended in the chest of a second zombie. She ducked the sluggish blow of a third monster, then reversed the arc of her blade, driving it into her attacker’s skull.

  Jas was holding her own by half leaping, half flying up, then coming down on the skeletons with a kicking attack. The ancient bones cracked and crumbled to the ground.

  Despite their successes, both women had received wounds, and it was obvious they were tiring. Yet the undead continued to rise from the ground.

  Joel fought his way toward the fire. A skeletal hand hanging from a tattered muscle tore a gash across his cheek just beneath his eye. It took one blow to send the creature’s bones back to the earth, but the cut on his face continued to burn like fire. Another zombie was armed with an ancient, rusty sword, which shattered into a hundred fragments when Joel struck it with his younger blade.

  “Where did they come from?” Joel shouted. Such creatures did not just rise from the earth of their own volition.

  “I can’t tell,” Holly replied. “They seem to be trying to drive us off the edge of the bluff. Where’s Jedidiah?” “Not far behind me,” Joel answered.

  “Already here,” boomed the voice of the elderly priest from the darkness just beyond the campfire’s light. He began a familiar-sounding chant that sounded more like a drumbeat than a song. A reddish haze surrounded him.

  The zombies and skeletons turned to face Jedidiah, the remains of their bodies twitching in rhythm with the priest’s chant.

  Joel’s worry that the creatures would do his mentor harm was soon dispelled. One by one, the skeletons saluted the old priest with a raised hand, then crumbled to dust. The closest zombies slumped in place, their animating energy gone. The zombies farthest from the old priest sank back into the earth, pulling rocks and dirt back over their retreating forms.

  Jas smashed at a few of these even as they fled. Then she sank to the ground, exhausted.

  The radiance about Jedidiah subsided as the last of the undead disappeared. He looked at Joel with surprise. “Why didn’t you try quelling the undead with a chant?” he asked.

  Joel winced, realizing now that Jedidiah had taught him the same chant in Berdusk. It was a common ritual to protect against the undead, to return them to their graves and eternal sleep. The chant was actually quite basic, Joel remembered, and the results were effective. It wasn’t the first time he’d forgotten he possessed priestly skills just when they would have been the most useful.

  The Rebel Bard hung his head. “I just started swinging my sword without thinking,” he replied.

  Jedidiah looked grim. “You are still uncomfortable using the gifts Finder has given you, ” he noted. “It’s early yet. You’ll get used to it. You’ll see.”

  The old man gave the breast pocket of his vest a pat. He patted the pocket again, then reached into it with his hand, an alarmed expression on his face. Jedidiah began patting his other pockets. His brow furrowed, then his expression grew angry.

  “What have you lost?” Joel asked.

  “That gemstone I had,” Jedidiah snapped impatiently. “I had it a moment ago, just before I came up the hill.”

  Holly moved up beside Joel, her face stricken with worry. “Joel?” she began.

  Joel held his hand up, signaling Holly to wait. “You never told me exactly what it was,” he said to Jedidiah.

  “It’s a relic, an artifact,” Jedidiah explained hastily, “a tool created by Finder when he was mortal. It’s half of the finder’s stone. Finder took half with him to the Abyss when he destroyed Moander and left the other half with the saurials in the Lost Vale. It’s a faultless locator, and it holds power, as you saw.”

  “Joel?” Holly tried interrupting again.

  “We’ll find it,” Joel assured Jedidiah, his eyes combing the ground around the fire circle. “We’ll start here and work our way back. Maybe one of the undead knocked it loose from your pocket.”

  “None of them got near me,” Jedidiah insisted with irritation. “I had to have dropped it on the way up the hill.”

  “Joel? Holly snapped.

  The Rebel Bard looked back at the paladin. Her eyes were wide with terror.

  “What is it, Holly?” Joel snapped.

  “It’s—it’s coming,” the girl whispered. “The evil in my vision. There’s something familiar about it … something horrible.”

  Jedidiah swung about with a feral growl.

  A red light issued from beneath the edge of the bluff, just like the light in Holly’s vision.

  Slowly, majestically, bathed in red like the sun, a great wooden vessel rose above the bluff. It was Jas’s ship, stolen from the illithids, now a floating shrine to Bane. Joel suddenly realized what, or rather who, had made the undead restless enough to rise from their graves.

  Walinda stood at the ship’s prow, a pair of lit iron braziers on either side of her. She still wore her shoulder protectors and bracers, but she had removed the rest of her armor. She was dressed now in a long, low-cut black velvet gown that seemed to shimmer red in the reflected fire from the braziers. Her hair hung loose about her shoulders like a maiden’s.

  “Well met, Poppin,” she greeted Joel, giving him a warm smile. Then she turned to face Jedidiah, holding out her hand. In it sat Jedidiah’s half of the finder’s stone, glowing with brilliant gold light. With a cruel smile, she asked, “Are you looking for this, old man?”

  The Essence Of Bane

  Joel could have easily predicted what happened next, but he just wasn’t quick enough to prevent it. Jas leapt high into the air. Then, with her sword in front of her, she dived toward the priestess of Bane.

  Walinda, as cool as ice, raised her hand and commanded, “Fall!”

  The winged woman’s body jackknifed in midair, and she plummeted downward. She landed hard, all in a heap, on the deck of her former ship.

  Holly cried out and made a move to rush forward, but Jedidiah had the presence of mind to grab the paladin and hold her back.

  “Let me go,” Holly cried. “She’s hurt!” “She’ll keep,” the older priest said brusquely. “You can’t help her if you’re hurt, too,” he warned. To Joel, he said, “I take it this is the infamous Walinda of Bane.”

  The younger priest nodded. “She cast a command spell. Do you think it was some trick?” he asked in a whisper.

  Jedidiah motioned uncertainty with his hands. “Introduce us,” he said calmly. Joel looked surprised for a moment, then nodded. If there was one thing Jedidiah knew, it was how to set the tone.

  “Jedidiah,” the young man said, “allow me to present to you Walinda of Bane. Walinda, this is Jedidiah of Finder.”

  Walinda bowed before the old priest. It hadn’t been lost on her that Joel had presented her first, implying Jedidiah’s rank was higher than hers. On the deck beside Walinda, Jas was recovering from her fall. She’d managed to sit up, but it was clear from the unnatural angle of her right leg that she wouldn’t be able to stand.

  Jedidiah bowed back at the priestess, even lower and more gracefully. “A very smooth extraction,” he complimented Walinda, indicating with a nod of his head the stolen finder’s stone in the priestess’s hand. “I don’t think I’ve encountered a lighter touch since the halfling Olive Ruskettle picked my pipe from my pocket. Done a lot of training with a thief’s guild, have you?”

  Walinda glared at the old priest. “You are very glib for a man who’s just lost a holy relic of his god,” she noted.

  “Well, glibness is a thing we priests of Finder are especially good at,” Jedidiah retorted. “Like priests of Bane excelling in sarcasm. You didn’t steal my stone and then make this appearance just to impress us with your flair for drama. What do you want, Walinda of Bane?”

  “I have a deal for you, priest of Finder. Won’t you co
me aboard so we might discuss it more comfortably? promise you and your party safe passage—providing,” she added with a glance at the winged woman who lay on the deck, moaning, “you can keep your pets in line.”

  “I need a moment, please, to discuss your offer with my colleagues,” Jedidiah replied politely, smiling up at the priestess.

  Walinda nodded graciously.

  Jedidiah turned about and pulled Joel and Holly close.

  “You can’t go aboard that vessel,” Holly insisted.

  “Young lady, I have no choice,” Jedidiah answered. “I must have the finder’s stone back.”

  “It’s some sort of trick,’-‘ Holly said. “There’s something else aboard that ship, something profoundly evil. The worst evil I have ever felt in my life. It’s so strong it’s painful to sense it.”

  “Is there, now?” Jedidiah asked. “How interesting. It doesn’t change anything, however. The finder’s stone is a relic of my god.”

  “Is it worth your life?” Holly argued. “Your soul?”

  Jedidiah sighed. “Just before we were attacked, I put a large share of my own power into the finder’s stone so that the Xvimists’ dark stalker could no longer sense me from a distance. Finder needs my powers. I cannot just let Walinda fly off with the stone without trying to barter for it.”

  “When you barter with evil, evil grows stronger,” Holly said through clenched teeth. “If that’s not enough, you must know that you cannot trust her.”

  Jedidiah looked to Joel for support.

  The young bard could sympathize completely with the old priest. Arguing with the paladin was an uphill battle. Remembering how weakened the old priest had been when he finished siphoning his power into the stone, Joel had no qualms about helping him to regain it. He attacked Holly’s arguments with an appeal to her emotions that he knew she could not reject.

  “Holly, Walinda has Jas,” Joel pointed out quietly but firmly. “If we tell Walinda to leave without bartering, what do you think she’ll do with Jas—hand her back to us unharmed, or keep her to torture her some more?”

  The blood drained from Holly’s face, and she lowered her head.

  As if to emphasize the point, Jas fluttered her wings and tried to stand, then yelped in pain and crashed back to the deck of the ship.

  “Perhaps you should stay here,” Jedidiah suggested. “I will deal with this woman myself.”

  “No,” Joel said. “I’m going with you. You may need my help.”

  Holly looked up. “You may need mine as well to help with Jas,” she said.

  “If this evil gives you pain—” Jedidiah began.

  “I am not afraid of pain,” Holly answered softly. “I will accompany you.”

  “Very well,” Jedidiah said, respectful of the paladin’s courage. He turned around and stepped toward the edge of the bluff. Joel and Holly stood just behind him.

  “We will board your ship to parlay,” the old priest announced.

  The ship edged close to the bluff. First Joel, then Holly, leapt across to the railing and jumped down to the deck. Joel turned back to offer Jedidiah a hand, but the old priest made the jump just as easily as a boy.

  Holly hurried to Jas’s side. The woman’s leg was broken just above the ankle. “When I fix this, you have to lie still,” she whispered to the winged woman.

  “Just so Jedidiah can get his stupid rock back?” Jas snarled.

  “Because you are not thinking clearly. That attack was the clumsiest I have ever seen,” the paladin murmured. “You cannot let your hatred warp your reason.”

  Jas sighed. “Out of the mouths of paladins…” she muttered. “Right. I’ll keep my cool until the witch betrays us. Then I’m going for her throat.”

  Holly began a healing prayer for the winged woman’s broken leg.

  Watching the two women whispering, Walinda said to Jedidiah, “Keep a tether on your pigeon, or I will do more than clip its wings next time.”

  “Threats are uncalled for,” Jedidiah chided the woman. “You wanted to discuss a deal. I’m listening.”

  “Please, make yourselves comfortable,” Walinda said. She sat down on the only chair on the deck, a high-backed seat carved from the tusk of some colossal beast.

  If Walinda had hoped to put the old priest in his place

  by making him stand, her plan backfired. Jedidiah removed his cloak with a flourish and lay it on the floor near the priestess’s feet. He lowered himself to the deck and lounged there like a desert prince relaxing in a harem. He was near enough to the priestess that he could have reached out and touched her knee. Joel stood behind him, trying to convey the look of someone prepared to defend the old priest against any assaults. Behind Walinda, a dark doorway led to a cabin. Joel watched it warily, remembering Holly’s warning of something evil.

  “You are very bold for someone dealing from a position of weakness,” Walinda addressed Jedidiah as she held up the finder’s stone in the hand farthest from him.

  Joel wondered if it would be worth the risk to simply jump the woman and wrestle the stone from her hand. He looked again at the darkened doorway and decided it would probably be most unwise.

  “You and Poppin are very alike,” Walinda said. “I will look forward to subduing Finder’s priests if they are all like the two of you. You are really quite remarkable.”

  “It’s true,” Jedidiah said with an arrogant smile. “But you are remarkable as well. The hierarchy of the Black Lord’s church was never known for encouraging the ambitions of women, not even talented ones. Yet Joel tells me you are a Dreadmaster. Did you earn your title before or after Torm turned your god into so much dog food?”

  Walinda glowered at Jedidiah, but she didn’t react to his goads. “The Black Lord named me to his priesthood himself, before the Time of Troubles,” the priestess replied proudly. “After the Black Lord was killed in combat, I remained faithful, knowing that our lord would rise again. The night before the Cyricists began the Banedeath, destroying any true followers of Bane who would not convert to Cyric, a voice spoke to me. The voice warned me of what was to come and decreed what action I should take. I gathered those who were most faithful to Bane and led them away from Zhentil Keep. We traveled until we reached the Spiderhaunt Woods. There, in a cave, my lord’s spirit was waiting for his true followers.

  “When his avatar died in the Time of Troubles, Lord Bane’s spirit hid in that cave. We fed his spirit with our worship. Two weeks ago, the spirit brought down this ship from the sky, and we took possession of it in Bane’s name. The spirit took command of the ship, and we journeyed north to the Temple in the Sky. In the temple, which was once dedicated to Lord Bane, there were buried secrets that Lord Bane would need to regain his former power and glory. The price was high….”

  “Yes. Joel already told me how you paid for it. What secret could be so important that it was worth the lives of all those faithful people?” Jedidiah asked scornfully.

  “The location of the Hand of Bane,” Walinda said.

  “The Hand of Bane,” Jedidiah repeated.

  “Yes. Its location has been hidden for centuries, yet I was able to find it.” Walinda held up the sheets of paper she’d removed from the book in the Temple in the Sky. The edges were scabbed over with dried blood. “So my followers died for a great cause.”

  Jedidiah leaned forward. “Why would Bane need you to locate the Hand of Bane?” the old priest asked.

  “You do not know?” Walinda asked. “Allow me to explain. You will find this very interesting, Poppin,” she said, smiling up at Joel. “Gods are made of many elements. They have a physical body and mind Torm slew my lord Bane’s body, but it still exists. It floats in the astral plane beside the bodies of other long-dead gods. Gods also possess an essence—a personality, a spirit that binds them to their followers. They also possess power—huge amounts of raw energy, beyond the ken of mortals. If a god is destroyed, his followers can perform a complicated ritual to bind together these elements-body, essence, and power—and
resurrect the god. Some gods have the wisdom to create a magical artifact that will make the ritual simpler and more efficient, so that its performance does not require a year’s time, or hundreds of followers, or the blood sacrifice of a thousand innocent beings.”

  “And the Hand of Bane is such an artifact,” Joel guessed.

  Walinda nodded. “Your student is very apt,” she complimented Jedidiah. “Now you understand my sacrifice. With the Hand of Bane in my possession, I can return my lord to his rightful place as a god of the Realms.”

  Jedidiah waved a hand, as if to brush aside Walinda’s comments. “You misunderstood my question entirely. I did not ask why Bane would want you to recover the Hand of Bane. I asked why Bane needed you to locate it for him. Didn’t the old boy remember where he’d put it? Getting senile in his death, is he?”

  Walinda raised her head proudly. “Bane is not a simple god like your Finder. His plans are subtle and complex. Centuries ago he gave the hand to a loyal priest in the Temple in the Sky to hide where no god, not even Ao, could steal it. The priest was charged to keep the location of the hand a secret. On his deathbed, on Bane’s orders, the priest passed the information on to his successor. So it continued for centuries. When the beast cult took over the floating rock, the last priest hid in a secret temple and wrote down all the secrets in his keeping, so that Lord Bane might send me to discover the Hand of Bane when it was needed.”

  Jedidiah laughed heartily for a moment. “A good story,” he said. “I was beginning to think you had fallen prey to some elaborate ruse of Iyachtu Xvim, but now I realize it must be Cyric behind all this. A lie that good could only be his.”

  “It is not a lie!” Walinda snapped, clenching the finder’s stone as if she might crush it.

  “Of course, Cyric and Xvim could be in it together,” Jedidiah commented. He looked back up at the enraged Walinda and said, ‘Think for a moment, woman. Bane is dead. Iyachtu and Cyric both have an interest in seeing that he stays dead for all eternity. They want to be sure the Hand of Bane is destroyed, but first they’ve got to find it. They need someone who might know where to look. They look around for a likely target, and there you are, stubbornly persevering in your faith in Bane, keeping his faithful from worshiping either the Godson or the mad god. You’ve been a thorn in their side. They will have vengeance on you for defying them by getting you to give them the hand.