Tymora's Luck Read online

  Walinda shoved the burning incense into the hydroloth’s mouth. Smoke billowed from the corpse’s mouth and nose.

  “I command thee to answer my questions,” the priestess cried out. Her voice echoed throughout the canyon. Then, in a whisper, she asked, “What was the purpose of your mission in Sigil four nights ago?”

  There was no sound from the hydroloth, but Walinda seemed to be listening intently. Her eyes were closed and she nodded twice.

  That’s when the bard realized that the hydroloth, like the tanar’ri, was communicating by telepathy. Joel would have to rely on Walinda to give him an accurate report.

  Walinda looked up from the hydroloth. “He was to oversee the capture of Jasmine by Hatemaster Perr and some hired thugs. Then he was to return with Jasmine and Hatemaster Perr to the Bastion of Hate.”

  Joel nodded. Besides assuring Joel that Emilo had correctly identified the hydroloth, the answer revealed the name of the priest who had deliberately killed himself struggling in the razorvine.

  “What identity did he use in Sigil?” Joel asked.

  Walinda asked the question, listened, then told Joel, “He shapeshifted to a tall human form, but used no name. The hirelings and the priest called him Boss.”

  “Ask him to whom he was to deliver Jasmine.”

  Walinda repeated the question Joel had asked, then listened.

  “Tyrannar Neri,” she replied.

  Tyrannar, Joel knew, was the highest rank of clerics in the church of Iyachtu Xvim.

  “Does the tyrannar know he’s failed in his mission?” Joel asked.

  Walinda shook her head. “He has no way of knowing that for sure,” the priestess told Joel. “He will be forced to answer that he does not know. I will rephrase your question.… Have you or has anyone you know informed the tyrannar that your mission has failed?” she asked the corpse, then waited for the answer. “The answer is no,” she told Joel.

  “I want to try something more complicated,” Joel said. “What does he think would happen to someone else who brought Jasmine to the tyrannar to collect a bounty and also brought him news of the death of the hydroloth and Hatemaster Perr?”

  Walinda put the question to the dead hydroloth, then waited. Joel could see her smile slightly. Smoke ceased streaming from the corpse’s mouth and nose. The spell had ended. Walinda could ask no more questions.

  The priestess stood up. “The hydroloth said that if the tyrannar is sufficiently impressed by the bounty seeker, he will accept Jas as an offering to Xvim so that the bounty seeker can join Iyachtu Xvim’s faithful. He will not pay a bounty for his lord’s own property. If he isn’t impressed by the bounty seeker, he’ll simply have him enslaved.”

  “Is there a big difference?” Joel asked.

  “Probably not much,” Walinda replied. “So will you impersonate a bounty seeker? Do you think you can impress a tyrannar?” she asked.

  “I impress everyone,” Joel replied matter-of-factly, winking at Holly and Emilo.

  “You have always impressed me,” Walinda said, running one of her sharpened fingernails none too gently down the side of the bard’s throat.

  “Must be my bad luck,” Joel retorted as he drew away from the evil priestess’s touch.

  Walinda gave the bard a predatory smile.

  “So, if I go to the bastion now, how long can you postpone your attack?” the bard asked.

  “No more than half a day,” Walinda replied. “The bulezau grow agitated if they are not killing something, and I am loath to keep Beshaba waiting. No one knows when Iyachtu Xvim might return.”

  “I can’t say for certain what we can accomplish,” the bard said, “but if possible, we will attempt to learn the strength of the guard around Beshaba and weaken it. If we discover a way to destroy any cache of weapons, we will do that as well. After you begin your attack, we’ll try to open the gate. If I find Beshaba, I’ll try to use the finder’s stone to summon you. If you or Stentka Taran have any other suggestions, I’ll take them under advisement.”

  Walinda said, “I will speak with her.”

  “Fine. I’m going to speak with my associates. I’ll join you shortly,” the bard replied.

  Walinda nodded and walked off to her pavilion. Joel led Holly and Emilo to where Jas was waiting. The winged woman crouched behind the boulder.

  Holly gasped at the winged woman’s appearance. “Jas! Are you all right?” she asked

  Jas shrugged. Joel knew she’d never tell Holly how hopeless she felt. As far as Jas was concerned, Holly was still an innocent to be protected. “It’s just that we’re so close to Xvim’s realm,” she told the paladin. “When we leave, I’ll get better. So what’s the plan for getting into Xvim’s fortress?” she asked Joel.

  Hastily Joel explained his plan to his three companions. His original plan called for Emilo to stay with Holly, but Holly insisted the kender would be more useful, possibly even safer, with Joel and Jas. The paladin had also noted the kender’s gift for remaining unnoticed. If it worked in the Bastion of Hate as well as it worked in Walinda’s camp of tanar’ri, it would make Emilo the perfect saboteur.

  Jas, who hadn’t realized there was something unusual about the kender, was suddenly more curious. “I’ve never had any problem seeing you,” she said.

  “I think it’s because you’re different from everyone else,” the kender replied.

  Jas accepted that explanation without asking which difference Emilo meant.

  “How’d you get this gift?” Jas wanted to know.

  “I got it in the magical vortex that brought me to Sigil,” the kender said. “I don’t know why exactly. The last century of my life has been pretty confusing. I suppose it’s a destiny thing.”

  Holly was more concerned about Joel’s plan than the origin of the kender’s gift. She asked the bard, “How are you going to disguise yourself?”

  “I have a scroll,” Joel explained. “I thought I’d disguise myself as a tiefling. That should strengthen my story that I’m a native of Sigil, and not some clueless prime.”

  “Are you going to make yourself shorter?” Emilo asked with surprise.

  “Tieflings aren’t just another kind of halfling or kender,” Holly explained. “Tiefling are what Planers and Cagers call a person who has an ancestor from the Lower Planes. Not all tieflings are short.”

  Joel pulled out the appropriate scroll from the bundle he’d attached to his belt. As he read the scroll, he added a description to the spell words that served to reshape his form. He made himself a little taller, covered his skin with black scales, and grew long fangs. When he’d finished casting the spell, Holly drew back from him in shock.

  “You look awful,” the paladin said.

  “Yeah, you really do,” Jas agreed. “Perfect, actually. No one would ever suspect you’re really a nice young man who’s gotten in over his head in the affairs of the gods.”

  “You should put your hair up like mine,” Emilo suggested. “It will make you look even taller.”

  Joel bound his hair into a topknot.

  “It makes you look fierce,” Holly said, “It looks like the horse-tail crests on the helmets of the Tuigan warriors.

  Jas and Holly agreed it made him look quite fiendish.

  “Now what?” the winged woman asked.

  “I’m going to go get our backpack and take my leave of Walinda. I’ll be back soon,” Joel said.

  Joel found Walinda in the pavilion with the marilith, poring over a map.

  “Your tiefling features are most becoming, Poppin,” the priestess commended him.

  Without replying, Joel bent over and retrieved his backpack and Winnie’s. Then he turned to face Walinda. “I will do everything in my power to help free your goddess, but I don’t want you using Holly as if she were some tanar’ri meant to die in the Blood War,” he warned the priestess. “Don’t put her in a dangerous position.”

  “We agree completely,” Walinda assured him. “Someday, when she is much more powerful, I hope
to sacrifice Holly Harrowslough. Stentka Taran, on the other hand, is already plotting ways to corrupt her. So you can rest assured we will keep her safe … for now.”

  The bard glared at the priestess. “Any other suggestions about the sabotage?” he asked coolly.

  “As I mentioned before,” Walinda said, “Iyachtu Xvim’s realm is guarded by mercenary yugoloths. They are exceedingly greedy creatures. Stentka knows of a case in which a great deal of chaos was sown by leaving unclaimed money lying about.” The priestess handed the bard a small sack.

  Joel looked inside it. It was filled with small but rare gems. “Illusions?” he asked, slipping the sack into his shirt beside the finder’s stone.

  “You learn quickly, Poppin,” the priestess said, stroking the bard’s scaly cheek with a look of fascination.

  “I’ll be leaving now,” Joel said, stepping backward.

  “Give my regards to the pigeon girl,” Walinda said.

  “I don’t think so,” Joel said. “Good luck with your attack,” he wished the priestess and the marilith.

  “Misfortune take our enemies,” Walinda responded.

  Joel turned and hurried back to his companions. He embraced Holly. “Be careful,” he warned the paladin. Remembering the incident with the barghests, he reminded her, “Make sure you keep the little harp Finder gave each of us handy.”

  “You make sure you do, too,” Holly replied. Leaving the paladin behind in the camp of tanar’ri, Jas, Joel, and Emilo made their way up the canyon’s slope. Just before they reached the crest, they turned and waved good-bye one last time.

  Holly waved back.

  The bar-lgura who’d accompanied them up the slope suddenly disappeared. They’d become invisible, no doubt planning on following the bard and the winged woman as long as they could.

  The three adventurers made their way up to a high point on the ridge to skirt around the lava flow between the canyon ridge and the Bastion of Hate. It was the first time they’d traveled by foot in Gehenna, and it was far more difficult than Joel had imagined. It took them nearly an hour to get down to the ledge where Xvim’s fortress was located.

  They regrouped behind a boulder that shielded them from view. Joel handed Emilo the fake gems and explained Walinda’s suggestion to leave them lying about where they might cause discord among the yugoloths. After a moment’s thought, he also gave the kender the finder’s stone. If the tyrannar had him searched, the high priest might demand the stone to give to Iyachtu Xvim. In addition, the kender could use it to find Joel and Jas should they become separated. Jas gave the kender the lucky sword Winnie had given her. Since Joel was supposedly bringing her in as a prisoner, she had to be disarmed. With a short length of rope from Winnie’s backpack, Joel bound Jas’s hands in front of her so she looked like prisoner. Then he tied a lead rope to the bindings.

  Before the three adventurers could continue, Emilo said, “I don’t get it. If Iyachtu Xvim is like the other gods, he can sense what’s going on with nearby followers, right? Then he must sense us. He must sense Walinda. You don’t suppose this is all a trap, do you?”

  “I’ve thought about that,” Joel admitted. “I have another theory. If Xvim is stealing Tymora’s luck and Beshaba’s misfortune, he has more than enough power to seize some other realm, perhaps in some less unpleasant place. He could have already abandoned his fortress here and is only leaving it operating as a distraction for us.”

  “I don’t know which would be worse,” Jas muttered.

  They marched in near silence to the gate of Iyachtu Xvim’s fortress. The Bastion of Hate towered over them. Its walls were encased in plates of iron as thick as Joel’s thumb. The air shimmered with heat around the iron plates, and the rivets joining the plates together glowed like coal. Horn-shaped iron spikes decorated the parapets. The closed gate was an iron grid, bristling with spikes meant to keep visitors away.

  Joel could see no signs of life. He shouted out, “Hello the gate!”

  A voice from the wall called down, “Who goes there?”

  “My name is Marin the Red,” Joel shouted. “I’ve come to collect the bounty on Jasmine the Dark Stalker—that is, if Tyrannar Neri still wants her. Otherwise I have another buyer.”

  They waited several minutes, but there was no reply. Joel glanced over at Jas. Black feathers had regrown about her neck. The dark stalker’s presence was growing more and more prominent. It helped their story, but it was unsettling nonetheless.

  Joel moved close to Jas and whispered, “We can still flee.”

  Jas shook her head sharply, but Joel could see she was trembling. As long as she could keep it under control for a few more hours, the bard thought, everything would be fine.

  From somewhere overhead came the squeak of wheels, and the portcullis gate raised up just enough for them to enter the fortress. For show, he tugged on the rope that bound Jas until she drew up beside him. Emilo slipped in alongside Joel.

  They stood in a dark gatehouse, illuminated by a single smoky torch. A second spiked portcullis blocked their way. The portcullis behind them slammed back down to the ground. They were trapped inside the Bastion of Hate.

  Jas whirled about and hissed. Joel breathed in sharply, trying to hide his shock and fear.

  Feathers now completely covered Jas’s face and hands. Her hands had transformed into talons. She yanked the lead rope from Joel’s hands and flew at the closed gate with the frenzy of a wild bird. An inhuman screech came from her throat. It sounded to Joel like the cry of a snared hawk.

  From two side doors streamed twelve yugoloth guards armed with pikes. The guards were several inches taller than Joel and resembled horned crickets, their chitinous armor the color of dirty ivory. Without Holly to explain, the bard had no idea what breed of yugoloths they were.

  The guards separated Joel from his “bounty” and surrounded Jas. The inner portcullis opened. A human priest of Iyachtu Xvim stood on the other side. He was a small man, with a shaved head and an iron ring in his pierced lip. He looked younger than Joel.

  “I am Hatemaster Morr. If you will follow me, Marin the Red, I will arrange for you to meet with Tyrannar Neri.”

  Joel looked back at Jas. Her owl-like eyes were devoid of expression, but Joel sensed that Jas felt betrayed. The winged woman screeched once more as the yugoloths led her away through a side door. She spoke no words; the sounds she made were those of an enraged animal. A sinking feeling took hold of Joel. Perhaps he’d been wrong to bring Jas here. Perhaps here, in the Bastion of Hate, the dark stalker had finally destroyed her humanity.

  Act Three

  Scene 4

  In the empty stone chamber in the gate wall where Hatemaster Morr had instructed him to wait, Joel paced restlessly from wall to wall. The bard couldn’t get out of his head Jas’s screeches as she was dragged away. His only comfort was knowing that Emilo had followed Jas. The kender would find a way to calm her down.

  Ordinarily the bard would have used the time to sing or compose something on his birdpipes. He was certain he was being observed, however, and a practiced musician was not the image he wanted to project. He tried to guess what sort of thing a tiefling bounty hunter would do while he waited. He thought of practicing drills with his sword, but that might give away just how meager his skill with a weapon was. So he paced … and worried.

  After what seemed an eternity, Hatemaster Morr returned. “Follow me,” he ordered.

  Joel shouldered both Winnie’s backpack and his own and fell into step beside the priest of Xvim. The hatemaster escorted the bard past several yugoloth guards, beyond the bastion’s inner wall, into the courtyard of Xvim’s fortress.

  The courtyard was illuminated with lines of torches. To the right, a rectangular temple of black marble squatted atop a low hill. A great staircase, littered with human bones and skulls, climbed up to the temple.

  Yugoloths surrounded the temple, rank upon rank of the giant horned crickets. Drilling these cricket yugoloths in marching in formation were severa
l shorter yugoloths who resembled red lobsters with chicken feet. Joel did not spot any of the yellow froglike hydroloths.

  Across the courtyard from the temple stood a great tower, which rose several stories taller than the fortress walls. It was guarded by more hordes of the cricket creatures.

  At first Joel presumed the torches were lit for the benefit of Xvim’s human followers until he spied some of the small lobsterlike yugoloths carrying torches. Then Joel realized that at least some of the yugoloths were not gifted, as were the tanar’ri in Walinda’s camp, with the ability to see in the dark.

  Hatemaster Morr led Joel through the courtyard toward the temple. Joel followed the priest up the staircase and into the great marble building. There were no yugoloths within the temple. A few human priests scurried from rooms on one side of the hall to rooms on the other.

  Joel and the hatemaster walked the length of the great hall; at the other end, they passed into an audience chamber. There were no yugoloths in here either, only humans. Some twenty of these, armored in plate mail and armed with morningstars, served as guards. Over their armor they wore green stoles embroidered with Xvim’s symbol, green eyes set in the palm of a black hand. From the relative plainness of their stoles, Joel guessed they were low-ranking priests. Six other priests in robes of gray silk trimmed with green, serving as scribes and advisers, attended the tyrannar. Only two of the priests were women; both were serving as guards.

  The tyrannar was seated in a chair upholstered with human flesh. He was an ancient spider of a man, covered with liver spots, wearing robes made from an elaborate black and green brocade. From the tattoos on his cheeks, Joel could tell that he had once been a priest of Bane, the father of Iyachtu Xvim.

  “So,” the tyrannar croaked, “you’ve brought me the elusive Jasmine the Dark Stalker.”