Tymora's luck

INTERMEZZO

Walinda of Beshaba eyed the creeping lava with excitement. Less than a mile down the slope from the molten magma stood a fortress built of lumber. When the lava reached the building, it would burst into flame. If the lava pushed out a mere streamlet, the fortress would incinerate itself long before the wall of lava covered its current position, but should the lava come all at once, a wall of molten rock, the fortress would be torn from its foundations first and carried along with the lava as it burned.

Having already watched two other fortresses fall to the lava, Walinda knew that either sight would be impressive. The only thing to mar the priestess's amusement was the knowledge that the fortresses were empty. Watching inhabitants scramble about to save themselves, or their possessions, or perhaps even to attempt to save their fortress by digging a channel to divert the flow of the lava-that would have been much more entertaining. As it was, the priestess was able to appreciate the display of raw force, whether or not it made someone's life a misery.

She wore a magical ring that protected her completely from the heat of Gehenna, yet she walked carefully along the crust of cooling rock. Nothing could protect her from the tons of liquid rock that would bury her should she make a misstep through the crust and tumble into the flow of lava.

Walinda hugged herself with a feeling of satisfaction. She felt whole again. She needed a power to serve, a power greater than herself. Once she had seen Beshaba, she knew that she had made the right decision. She would serve Beshaba as she would have served Bane, had he not betrayed her.

Turning from all the more organized faiths had not come easily to the priestess. All her life self-discipline had been her greatest strength. When Cyric had seized Bane's power, Walinda had utterly rejected her superiors' demands that she join Cyric's church with them. Cyric was a mad and capricious god whom she could not possibly understand. She had remained faithful to Bane. She might even had resurrected The Dark One had he not betrayed her merely because she was a woman. That was when she had come to realize contracts and laws were meaningless to the gods. So when she went to seek out a new power to serve, Walinda did not confine her exploration to those religions that paid lip service to order.

However, she continued to reject Cyric. She had escaped the Banedeath-the campaign of destruction of the last of Bane's faithful in Zhentil Keep-but many of her friends had not. And she couldn't forget that Cyric had destroyed Zhentil Keep with his self-serving bungling. A decade ago, Cyric had been a mere mortal. She could never truly respect him or his clergy.

Some might have seen Bane's son, Iyachtu Xvim, as a logical choice. One of Walinda's favorite paramours held a position of power in Iyachtu's church. But Bane was now her enemy and while Iyachtu had no love for his father, Walinda suspected the lesser god would prove just as deceitful and dishonorable. She had already been belittled and betrayed once by the priests of his church. She would not join them.

She had considered offering her services to Shar, Mistress of the Night, but Shar's church was veiled in too much secrecy. Walinda didn't want to waste time negotiating the twisted power structure. She belonged in the top echelon of any hierarchy. She flirted briefly with the church of Loviatar, but the priests of the Maiden of Pain were too willing to accept suffering; indeed, it was one of the requirements of their faith. In Walinda's opinion, suffering was for peasants.

In the end, she had chosen Beshaba. It was not a matter of settling for the least offensive of the evil gods. Walinda truly felt Beshaba suited all her needs, and she would suit Beshaba's. True, the Maiden of Misfortune was mad and capricious, but it was a madness born of spite, the sort of madness Walinda understood. The church's hierarchy was dominated by women, which would make her climb in rank more challenging, but also more certain. There would be no invisible wall blocking her progress to the seats of power.

Her quest to resurrect Bane had broadened her outlook considerably. Having traveled in the Outlands and Sigil and the Astral Plane, the priestess realized she needn't return to the Realms to some backwater underground temple in order to pledge her fealty to Beshaba. The Sensates of Sigil had made it possible for her to travel directly to Beshaba's realm, the Blood Tor.

The priestesses of the Blood Tor hadn't exactly welcomed the former priestess of Bane with open arms, but they had accepted her as a novitiate. It was also thanks to the Sensates that she had gained an audience with Beshaba. By betraying the information she possessed about the Sensates, Walinda had gained the goddess's direct attention. Interested to learn of the mortals who'd had the temerity to spy on her, Beshaba had Walinda summoned to her court to describe the Sensates' activities in detail. Walinda had arrived at a fateful hour.

She relived those moments over and over in her head. Beshaba, in all her glory, reclining on a divan, had just asked Walinda to describe the genasi scryer when hydroloths teleported into the goddess's court. Beshaba rose to destroy the evil amphibians with a simple spell. That was when the quakes began. The earth trembled, then heaved. Beshaba created a barrier to protect her court, but at that moment the cavern began caving in. The goddess could do nothing as her realm collapsed about her followers, crushing them to death.

As Walinda dealt a death blow with her goad to a hydroloth who was attempting to attack Beshaba, the goddess channeled her power into the resurrection of a favored priestess. The solid rock of the mountain grew more frenzied, shaking like a cart on a rough cobblestone road. The dead priestess revived, but like the realm around her, she went into a seizure. For some reason, Beshaba had lost control of her power.

Walinda had quickly concluded that since the hydroloths were not generally suicidal creatures, it could only be assumed that they were aware in advance that Beshaba would be so weakened. Although without control of her powers, Beshaba still had the strength of a goddess, and she seized one of the hydroloths and squeezed it by the throat with her bare hands and demanded to know who had sent it to her realm. The creature must have answered telepathically, for in the next instant the goddess cursed Iyachtu Xvim with words both foul and ancient.

Then, having hurled the hydroloth to the floor like a rag doll, Beshaba grabbed the nearest living priestess, who not coincidentally proved to be Walinda, and teleported away to Gehenna. There, on the fiery slopes of Chamada, the goddess of ill luck had given Walinda a ring to protect her from the fires and lava all about them. Then she had imbued Walinda with some of her power, making Walinda the goddess's newest proxy.

It was a gift that Walinda had never experienced before. It gave her a window into Beshaba's bitter heart. Suddenly Walinda understood Beshaba completely, and agreed with her completely. Her will had been subsumed by the goddess's desires. The gift had left Walinda with a feeling of complete ruthlessness. She would now do anything for Beshaba, even die for her.

Beshaba did not ask for her death, however-only her faithful patience. The goddess had perched her newly anointed priestess down on a portion of the mount that afforded her a view of the Bastion of Hate, the realm of the god Iyachtu Xvim. The goddess instructed Walinda to wait on the slope until Beshaba called to her. Then the goddess had flown off to the Bastion of Hate.

That had been hours ago, possibly as long as a day. It was impossible to tell in the dawnless land of Gehenna. Yet Walinda was not the least bit tired or bored. Waiting for Beshaba was the most important thing in the world to her now. And while she waited, she had the amusement of watching the lava flows destroy the abandoned fortresses.