Tymora's Luck Read online

  “Isn’t mutton your favorite meat?” the kender shouted. “But tough to catch, I bet. Those sheep are smart. Why, their brains must be two, three times larger than the ones in your thick skulls.”

  The barghest moving toward Emilo growled.

  “I sure hope he knows what he’s doing,” Holly muttered. “That second one is sneaking off to come up behind him.”

  “Don’t forget, Jas is out there somewhere, too,” the bard said. He rolled over, sat up, and began wriggling toward the pool of lava.

  “Joel, be careful,” Holly whispered. “What are you doing?”

  “Most monsters agree that there’s no meat sweeter than kender,” Emilo said chattily. “Unfortunately kender are just about the cleverest game around, so there’s no chance you two will ever be able to judge for yourselves. Unless you find a dead one lying around somewhere. Not above eating carrion, are you?”

  The barghest howled and began scrambling up the slope toward Emilo.

  Joel sat with his back to the pool of lava and wriggled his hands and fingers until the knot in the bindings covered his left wrist. Then he leaned backward carefully. If he lost his balance, he’d be parboiled, ring of fire protection or no. Very slowly, he began lowering his wrists toward the molten rock a quarter of an inch at a time.

  The heat was almost more than he could stand, but the bard did not withdraw. He continued to lower his hands until he heard a sizzling sound. Not until a searing pain shot up his arms did Joel jerk forward away from the lava pool. He began tugging on his bindings, struggling wildly. The pain was excruciating.

  Suddenly he felt the bindings snap, and Joel jerked his hands forward. His left wrist was free, but flaming fabric still encased his right wrist. The bard grabbed the remains of his cloak, which the barghest had left by the pool, and used it to smother the fire. Whimpering from the pain, Joel used his teeth to tear the last bit of the blackened fabric from his burnt flesh.

  “You know, there’s a nice dead slasrath around here somewhere,” Emilo was saying to the barghest as it clawed its way up the steep slope. “It looks like a giant winged worm. A real gully dwarf treat, worms, and easy to catch, too. You might like it for breakfast.”

  With an enraged bellow, the barghest clamored up the last few feet of slope and lunged at the kender.

  Emilo glided backward, riding on the magic carpet, until he disappeared from view. The barghest teetered on the edge of the ridge, growling and snarling. At that moment, Jas soared out of the darkness, coming up behind the barghest with one of Winnie’s backpacks swaying beneath her. The pack hit the creature in the head with a thunk. The barghest stumbled, then tumbled down the other side of the ridge.

  For several long seconds, they could hear the monster’s anguished cries. Then the screams ceased abruptly.

  Emilo brought the flying carpet swooping down near Joel and Holly.

  “Hurry!” the paladin cried. “The other one could return any moment.”

  There was a shimmer in the air beside the pool of lava as a magical doorway opened onto the barghests’ campsite. The second barghest stepped out from the shining portal. Joel tossed his tattered cloak in the barghest’s face and raced toward the carpet.

  From the sky plummeted another backpack, which struck the barghest square in the head. Rocks spilled out of the pack as the creature fell to its knees, howling and clutching its head.

  Joel hurled himself onto the carpet, pulling Holly behind him. The paladin was armored in heavy plate mail, but the bard managed to drag her over the edge and onto the carpet. Joel could feel his injured wrists and hands throbbing. Holly rolled into the middle of the carpet, and Joel shouted, “Go! Go!”

  Quickly Emilo ordered the carpet to rise twenty feet.

  “Backward, quickly!” Holly shouted as the barghest took a leap into the air and levitated upward toward them.

  The barghest clawed at the carpet, managed to grab at the fringe, and found itself being pulled along by the retreating carpet. Jas swooped out of the darkness, flying alongside the creature. She hacked at the monster’s hand with her sword, and the barghest instinctively released his hold on the carpet.

  The barghest hung motionless in the air, growling at them.

  “It can levitate, but it can’t fly,” Holly said. “Better move away before it tries something else.”

  A howl echoed in the canyon as the first barghest also stepped from a magical door beside the pool of lava.

  “I wasn’t planning on hanging around, I assure you,” Emilo retorted. He slowed the carpet just enough for Jas to settle down beside them, then continued the ascent up the mountain.

  Once Jas had cut Holly free, the paladin laid her hands gently on Joel’s burned wrist and used her gift of healing to soothe the pain. The scars were terrible to look at, but at least the bard hadn’t lost the mobility of his wrists.

  “Your ring of fire protection didn’t do much good,” Jas noted.

  “The rings can only protect you from so much heat,” Holly said. “Joel nearly dipped his wrists in molten lava. If it weren’t for that ring, he wouldn’t have any hands left.”

  “The important thing is we’re all right,” Joel said. He looked at Jas and Emilo. “Thanks to you two.”

  Jas shook her head. “Thank Emilo. He’s the one who had the foresight to fly off before I could wake up and get scared, too.”

  “Finder tried to warn me,” Joel said. “I wasn’t paying enough attention.”

  “Finder warned you? How?” Holly asked.

  “In a vision, when I was sleeping. He said the barghests use fear. And before that, he said we had to find Beshaba and take her to the Spire.”

  “Oh, great,” Jas muttered. “First Holly has visions. Now Joel’s getting them. How do you know it wasn’t just a dream?” the winged woman demanded.

  “He knew about the barghests,” Joel pointed out.

  Unable to argue with that fact, Jas threw up her hands. “Fine. We go find Beshaba, even if it takes us a century to find her in this hellhole. Then we take her to the Spire, presumably not against her will, since that’s a little hard to do with goddesses.”

  “What’s the Spire?” Emilo asked curiously.

  “The Spire is the mount in the center of the Outlands,” Holly explained. It lies just beneath the ring that holds the city of Sigil.”

  “Why do you think we’re supposed to take her to the Spire?” the kender asked.

  Joel shrugged. “It wasn’t really clear in my dream. I asked, but Finder didn’t have time to answer before Holly ran off and you woke me up.”

  “The Spire is a neutral ground for the gods to parley,” Holly explained. “Rumor has it that even the most powerful of the gods are unable to cast magic there.”

  “Why do we have to take Beshaba there?” Jas wondered.

  “Perhaps Selune has sensed that Iyachtu’s magic has finally made Beshaba unconscious, like Tymora,” Joel speculated. “Finder wouldn’t have asked us to do something he knew would be impossible,” the bard reasoned.

  “Is this Finder, the god of reckless fools, we’re talking about here?” Jas asked sarcastically.

  “So we have to keep searching for Walinda,” Holly said with a grim look.

  Joel nodded. He took up the finder’s stone from the jumble of gear on the carpet and thought once again of the evil priestess.

  Once again the light arced upward, but now its beam curved back down to earth closer to their location.

  “Not more than a few miles,” Emilo judged. “Your friend Walinda isn’t far off now.”

  “She’s not our friend,” Jas snapped.

  “Sorry,” Emilo replied, chastened.

  “We’re lucky, though,” Holly said. “While Chamada isn’t infinite like most Outer Planes, scholars believe that it’s still hundreds of miles high. We could have been traveling and searching for Walinda for days if Selune’s portal hadn’t transported us to where it did.”

  “Oddly enough, I don’t feel lucky,” Jas
murmured.

  Feeling more alert since he’d had some sleep, Joel was prepared to take over flying the carpet so Holly and Emilo could get some rest. Emilo had no trouble whatsoever falling asleep on the flying carpet, but Holly couldn’t seem to get comfortable. She lay awake, staring up into the darkness, until she reminded Joel of an owl. “I’m so hot, she sighed.

  As the carpet soared ever higher up the mountain slope, Joel started singing a silly lullaby about goblins who put ice on the toes of sleeping girls in the middle of winter.

  “Are you crazy?” Jas asked. “Do you want everyone to hear us coming?”

  “Why not?” Joel retorted. “I’m tired of creeping around like a mouse. A little whistling in the graveyard might do us good.”

  “Actually, that may not be a bad idea,” the paladin said. “They say a lot of creatures in Gehenna bluff their way to power. You just have to bluff better than they do.”

  “Bluffing,” Jas gasped in mock shock. “Isn’t that like lying? Are paladins allowed to do that?”

  “Really, Jas, your notions of paladins are so old-fashioned,” Holly said. “We’re honest, not stupid. If some evil creature is prepared to believe I’m more powerful than he is, why should I disabuse him of the notion?”

  “Especially when you’re traveling in the company of the awesomely powerful, favored priest of the god of reckless fools,” Joel said.

  “Exactly,” Holly agreed.

  Jas snorted with amusement. “I’m tempted to say, ‘You’ll learn better when you’re older,’ but with that attitude, you aren’t likely to get much older.”

  Joel began singing “The Circle Song,” a folk song about a boy who grows to be a man who woos and wins his true love, then has lots of children who all grow up to woo and win their true loves. He sang just loudly enough to entertain Holly, but quietly enough so as not to disturb Emilo. When he began the lullaby again, Holly finally drifted off to sleep.

  Jas took over flying the carpet while Joel prayed for new spells. When the bard was finished praying, he read through the new scrolls Winnie had packed for them. Since they’d lost a backpack during Jas’s attack on the barghest, Joel repacked their equipment, leaving out some of the equipment they would be less likely to use, such as blankets and tarps. He wrapped all the scrolls in a scarf, which he fastened to his belt. The healing potions he slipped into a vest pocket.

  They began to fly over more violent sections of the slope. Steam and rock and ash, even molten lava, spewed up from secondary cones on the mountain slope. They had to stay especially vigilant to avoid these hazards. While dodging one eruption, the carpet jerked upward suddenly, and Holly sat bolt upright. At first Joel thought she’d been wakened by the jolt, but then he saw she was drenched in sweat and shaking uncontrollably.

  “Another vision?” he asked her softly.

  The paladin nodded, but she didn’t look happy. She stared out over the violent land beneath them without speaking.

  “What’s wrong, Holly?” the bard whispered anxiously. “What did Lathander say? Is Tymora worse? Is it about Beshaba? What?”

  “No,” the paladin said shaking her head. Tears ran down her cheeks. “Lord Lathander said that in order to bring Beshaba to him, I’m supposed to offer my aid to that … that woman,” she spat.

  “You mean Walinda?” Joel asked.

  Holly nodded wordlessly.

  “Oh.” Joel put an arm around Holly’s shoulders and held her gently.

  “I don’t understand,” the paladin sobbed. “I’ve always served Lathander well. Why do I have to work with that awful woman? She makes me sick. She’s horrid. I should have let Jas kill her when she had the chance. She betrayed her people. She betrayed us. She betrayed the Sensates.”

  Joel sighed. “Well, fortunately, she also betrayed Bane.”

  Holly sniffed. “Do you think she might betray Beshaba?”

  Joel shrugged. “When she was a priestess of Bane, she pursued power with a vengeance. That was her religion. If she’s still in that frame of mind, she could just be using Beshaba. It’s food for thought anyway,” he said.

  As if the mention of food had disturbed his sleep, Emilo rolled over, yawned, and asked, “What’s for breakfast?”

  Everything in the pack was warm—the water, the bread, the fruit—which would have been fine were the adventurers not already sweltering. Joel tried to conjure an image in his mind of a crisp, cool apple plucked from a tree on a frosty fall morning, but the apples in the pack were closer to becoming apple sauce. Even the magical berries had become the consistency of jam, though they still left one feeling nourished.

  Joel held out the finder’s stone again and thought of Walinda. The beam of light shot into a canyon somewhere above them. Joel estimated they would reach it within the hour. He slid the stone back inside his shirt.

  They were all nervous now except for Emilo, who hung his head over the carpet, wide-eyed at the sight of towering sprays of lava and boulders being tumbled about in rivers of magma.

  When they reached the mouth of the canyon, they hovered for a few moments to decide the best way to proceed.

  Holly reached out with her paladin sense to detect evil. Not surprisingly, she sensed many evil things in the canyon. Far ahead, shadows and light played across the floor of the canyon in a curiously orderly pattern. At first Joel thought it might be another lava flow, but Jas had another idea.

  “It’s an army,” she said with certainty, “bivouacked in the canyon.”

  “How can you know that?” Joel asked.

  “She’s right,” Emilo agreed. “That’s just what they look like. They’re drilling in formation.”

  Joel didn’t dare use the finder’s stone again to search for Walinda for fear of being spotted by whoever was in the canyon. If Beshaba was with Walinda, the goddess would surely have sensed them by now. If Walinda was alone, however, they were better off approaching with stealth.

  They floated over the canyon at an altitude that prevented them from being noticed, but which also kept them from spying out anything of use. When they came to the opening of the canyon they dropped down slowly, keeping an eye out for any signs of detection.

  There were no signs, yet detected they were. Without warning, the flying carpet heaved and began to lose altitude. Jas flew off faster than a bird disturbed by a cat. Holly screamed, and Joel felt something grab at his wrists.

  The air about them shimmered as their invisible attackers appeared before them. The attackers were shorter than Jas and looked like some sort of hairy apes, with reddish brown fur and long, sharp claws. At first there were only two of them; then a third appeared on the side of the canyon and leaped across the ten-foot gap to the carpet with amazing ease. The magical carpet drifted downward, unable to bear the extra weight of the attackers.

  Aside from being great leapers, the creatures were amazingly strong. One swept Joel up in a bear hug, making it impossible for him to move. Another held Holly’s wrists together over her head as if she were a doll.

  “They’re bar-lgura,” Holly warned Joel. “One of the lesser tanar’ri.” The creature holding the paladin gave her a vicious shake. Holly quieted instantly.

  The tanar’ri, Joel recalled, were creatures from the Abyss who fought the endless Blood War with the baatezu from Baator. They sometimes fought outside of their home planes, which could explain what they were doing here.

  The bar-lgura seemed not to notice or challenge Emilo. The kender, very much awake now, sat very still in the center of the carpet, not making a sound.

  Joel recalled all the times Emilo had seemed to surprise people with his presence, even the goddess Selune. Finder was right—there was something very strange about the kender. The bard looked away from Emilo to avoid attracting attention to him. Perhaps whatever it was that shielded him from notice could be used to their advantage.

  A voice in Joel’s head threatened, You will be killed if you do not hold still. The words caused an awful pain behind Joel’s eyes. The bar-lg
ura was communicating with him telepathically. He wondered if it could read his thoughts.

  Joel remained motionless, trying not to think of Emilo. The carpet hit the slope, and the bar-lgura jumped off with their prisoners in hand. The third creature grabbed the carpet to keep it from escaping, forcing Emilo to hop off beside Joel. The creature who had grabbed the carpet rolled it up, with their gear inside, and tucked it under his arm as if it were no heavier than a magical scroll.

  The three bar-lgura herded Joel and Holly roughly down the slope to the floor of the canyon where they were quickly surrounded by another twenty of the creatures.

  This, the bard decided, was a good time for a bluff.

  “We are here to see your leader!” Joel announced. “We have important news for her.”

  The bar-lgura looked at one another, puzzled, as if expecting that one of them would be able to come up with a reply that challenged the bard’s assertion. When none did, Joel heard a voice in his head again.

  What news? the voice demanded.

  “That is for her ears alone,” Joel snapped, glaring frostily at the bar-lgura, who maintained his none-too-gentle grip on his wrists.

  The bar-lgura holding the carpet nodded to another of its kind. The other went running off down the canyon.

  Holly looked at Joel in surprise. The bard shrugged. Assuming the tanar’ri leader was female wasn’t such a gamble. If Beshaba were here, she would most certainly be the leader. If Walinda were here, she would find a way to become the leader. The bard knew she was an imperious woman, given to ordering people around. If Walinda weren’t the leader, Joel figured it didn’t really matter what he said.

  The bar-lgura began marching Holly and Joel down the canyon. Emilo trotted along beside them, taking care not to be tread upon by one of the hulking tanar’ri. Holly looked at Emilo with a puzzled expression, then looked at Joel. The bard shook his head to warn her, and the paladin looked away.

  There was little light in the canyon, and most of what there was emanated from the hot lava that streamed down the small gullies in the side of the mountain and collected into bubbling pools on the canyon floor. Like the canyon where they’d last rested, the ground was covered with a black flinty ash. Broken, hexagonal-shaped columns that had sheered off the side of the mount above stood like rocky sentries. There were no trees or shrubs or plants of any kind anywhere. Only fiends from the lower planes could live and thrive in such a place.