Azure Bonds

23 Akabar’s Recovery, Moander’s Offer, and the Second Rescue Attempt

When Akabar awoke it was dark, and the light of a nearby fire played across the ground. The firelight glittered on the scales of an immense dragon. The bulk of the beast lay in shadow, but Akabar could see Dragonbait napping, curled up on the great beast’s snout. The rune-marked lizard had a green bandage tied about one of his legs. Between the mage and the fire loomed a huge shadow. The towering form knelt before him, holding out a huge silver flask.

“Drink this,” Olive said, pushing the flask to his lips.

The draught tasted horrible, but Akabar let it slide down his throat. His mouth felt like he had been eating dirt, and his flesh crawled with a cold, clammy feeling, as if he had been immersed in water too long. He looked down and saw he was naked, save for a couple of halfling cloaks knotted around him for warmth.

“My … clothes?” the mage puzzled. His voice was reedy, as though he’d been singing or shouting for hours.

Olive motioned to the fire. “I’m afraid what was left wasn’t worth keeping. Dragonbait thought you were dead, so we didn’t bring any of your spare clothing.” Her eyes brightened. “I emptied your pockets, though, and I brought your spell books.” She pointed to a backpack near his feet.

“What happened—oh, gods,” the mage moaned as his memory came rushing back. There’d been a fight in Yulash, then something hulking and oppressive had sat in his mind like a spider in a web. He wondered if this was how Alias felt after being forced to try to kill a priest and then the Wyvernspur noble.

“Take it easy,” Olive said sharply. She was an impatient ministering angel. She put both her hands on his shoulders to hold him down, though the mage had made no effort to rise. “The short version is, after your little adventure in Yulash, Dragonbait came back to camp to get my help. When you three had gone, I was left alone to deal with Mist, who chose that moment to drop in. You remember Mist from Cormyr? Right. Anyway, I subdued her by the old codes, and the three of us went after you and Its Ooziness.”

Olive paused for breath and to let what she had said sink into the Turmish mage’s fevered brain. Then she started again, “Unfortunately, Its Ooziness mopped up the floor with us. Misty got slammed around pretty bad, but with me at the helm the old girl managed to damage the Abomination. It ran away from us, not the other way around. Though we did get knocked out of the sky. However, the luck of the halflings was with me, and I managed to land on a Red Plume mercenary’s corpse. You sliced up Dragonbait a little before he could rescue you.” She paused and then concluded reluctantly, “We didn’t get Alias.”

“Alias,” muttered Akabar, trying to rise against the pressure of the halfling’s hands. “She’s still prisoner!”

“Reign in your horses,” the halfling ordered. “You’ve been out for about eight hours. Another few won’t make that much difference in catching up to that slithering compost heap, but it will make us all stronger. Dragonbait needs his beauty sleep so he can finish healing you and Misty. She snapped some wing bones when she fell, and she needs to restoke her furnaces before going into battle again. You need to study your spells. Drink more.”

Akabar took another swig of the drink Olive offered and made a face. “Is this a healing draught?”

Olive shook the flask and giggled. “Some call it that. It’s spiked honey mead. Last of my stock, too.”

Akabar felt his empty stomach rise, then settle. So much for the halfling’s skill as a nurse. “You say Dragonbait healed us. He did that before, when we were running from the Abomination in Yulash.”

Olive nodded. “Yes. Turns out the little sneak’s a paladin among his own people. He’s been keeping it secret, but healing us when we weren’t looking. Seems I can’t trust anyone these days.”

“A paladin?” Akabar murmured. “How do you know?”

“He told me,” Olive said. She dropped her voice to a whisper before going on. “Not only did he keep his profession secret all this time, but he can communicate. He doesn’t use real words like you or me. He puts out scents, like a perfume shop. We can’t understand him because our little noses aren’t refined enough, but Mist can. He talks to her and she translates, and then he confirms what she’s said by nodding his head. So you see, he does understand everything we’ve been saying.”

Akabar shook his head to clear it. The halfling sounded angry, but the mage could not understand what had upset her. “So?” he asked.

“So!” Olive exclaimed, then dropped her voice to a whisper. “We have a lizard paladin who’s too haughty to try communicating with us until an evil dragon comes along. This paladin has been traveling with us and spying on us for two rides. Doesn’t that make you the least bit angry?”

“Saurial,” Akabar mumbled suddenly, letting the word linger in his memory. A dark shadow hovered there, the residue of the Abomination’s visit to his mind. “Moander said Dragonbait was a saurial.”

“Moander—that’s the creeping crud?” Olive asked.

Akabar hesitated like a swimmer hovering at the edge of cold water. He wanted to forget the evil that had been inside him and used him so vilely. But he needed the information Moander had inadvertently left in his mind. He plunged in.

“Moander is a god. Or a piece of god. An old piece, kept in storage beneath Yulash, until Alias let him out. He’s taking her to Westgate, via Myth Drannor.”

Akabar’s body began to shake violently.

“What is it?” Olive demanded. “What’s wrong?”

“Gods, it was like … like having some disease that rots everything but your mind and leaves your body shambling around. I was conscious, but I had no control. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t see. I could hear things in my head, Moander’s thoughts, and Alias speaking, but I was tied and gagged in the darkness. And … and …” He looked up at the halfling. “I stabbed Dragonbait, didn’t I? You said I did. I remember. I was trying to kill him.”

“Apparently, he doesn’t hold it against you. He carried you back here and used the shirt off his back to bandage you.”

Akabar felt along the bandage on his head, glancing at the lizard lying on the dragon’s snout.

“I wounded the dragon, too, didn’t I?” he whispered.

“Less said about that the better,” Olive suggested. “It took all my eloquence to convince Mist you were included in the bargain for our protection until Alias was freed. She only relented because we need all the firepower we can muster.

“So Its Ooziness is a god, eh? Another thing our lizard friend neglected to mention.”

“Saurial,” Akabar corrected again. “Why are you suddenly so annoyed with him? He’s saved our lives.”

“No. He’s saved your life. I can take care of myself.” Olive did not bother to mention that she’d be digesting in Mist’s stomach now if not for the lizard. “I don’t need a sneaky, spying, goody-two-shoes wheedling his way into my trust.”

“What makes you so sure he’s a spy?”

“Use your brain, greengrocer,” Olive snorted. “What else would a paladin be doing traveling with us? You’re a merchant, and I’m halfling scum. And Alias—think! She tried to murder a priest and someone she thought was the king of Cormyr and then she let loose an evil god. Dragonbait sneaked off just when we were in the most trouble, and now he’s dragging us along on a suicide mission. He says it’s to rescue Alias, but suppose he’s really just interested in killing Moander? His type doesn’t really care about our problems.”

“I suppose,” Akabar replied. His eyes were looking a little glazed, and Olive could see that he wasn’t really concentrating on her words.

“Akash, what is wrong with you? You aren’t listening to me at all.”

Akabar shook his head and spat. “Some mage I turn out to be. I can’t get us the information we need, I don’t even notice that a member of our party can heal, and I’m at my fighting best when I’m controlled by an insane abomination. You shouldn’t have bothered to rescue me.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Olive chided. “You have your health, your mind, and your money—all the blessings, as we halflings say. You can’t blame yourself for what happened. It’s not as though you were trained to fight old gods.”

“Or anything else, for that matter,” Akabar added. “You and Alias are right, I’m a greengrocer. This has been my first real adventure not tied to the logical, reasonable flow of trade and money and safe, secure routes, and I’ve botched everything. I thought that with all my learning I could take on the world, but I’ve failed. I’m useless.”

“Look, Akash, adventuring isn’t as logical as columns in an account ledger. You can’t learn about it from books. You have to experience it to know what to do. You’ll get the hang of it eventually. And you haven’t been completely useless. If it weren’t for you, Dimswart would not have known to send Alias after me, and she never would have met Mist, and then we’d be fighting this Moander alone.”

“That is a rather tenuous recommendation of my talents.”

“Well, then, consider the fact that you saved us all from being poisoned.”

“What?”

Olive grinned slyly. “If I had to do the cooking, we all would have died from indigestion.”

Akabar did not respond to her little joke, so the halfling rambled on. “Look, what I’m trying to say is that eventually you’ll learn to think like an adventurer. Then you’ll really be a force to be reckoned with. Who knows, you may even teach us a thing or two. Reason may make all the difference between our success or failure, and nobody else in this group has as much of it as you do.”

Akabar remained silent, and Olive worried that the mead might have been too strong for him. “Anyway,” she said with a shrug, “I sort of like having you around. I sort of like you.”

A tiny smile played across the Turmishman’s lips. He sighed deeply. “I sort of like you, too,” he replied. “Do you have any more of that mead?”

While Akabar took a long pull on the flask, Olive asked, “So, what about him?” Ruskettle jerked her head in the direction of the sleeping reptiles. “Dragonbait the Cereal.”

“Saurial,” Akabar corrected, yet understanding how Olive felt. Guilty, no doubt. It was one thing for Alias and himself to recognize the halfling’s pettiness, selfishness, and thievery, and overlook it in the interest of party unity. But it was quite another thing to have one’s actions silently watched and, no doubt, judged by the likes of a paladin. Akabar himself wondered with acute embarrassment what the lizard thought of him and his constant failures.

“Saurial,” Olive said, finally getting the pronunciation correct. “He’s kept a couple of major secrets from us. He could be hiding a lot more.”

Akabar caught the blue glimmer of the runes shining on Dragonbait’s chest. Unbeknownst to Olive, she was late trying to raise Akabar’s suspicions against the lizard. Since yesterday, the mage reflected, I’ve battled him twice, lost both times, and then discovered that he was trying to save my miserable hide. Something he’s rather in the habit of doing. And though the halfling was right when she pointed out it was highly unusual for a paladin to travel with an adventuring group with their … character, the Turmishman found it impossible to believe that the saurial meant them any harm.

“After he helps us get Alias back,” Olive said, ignoring Akabar’s pensive look, “I think we should find a way to ditch him. Alias won’t like it, but it’ll be for her own good.”

“No,” the mage said. “If he keeps his own counsel, that’s his business. If my account balances, then so does his.”

In Olive’s eyes Akabar saw the look of a merchant who had decided it would be in her best interest not to drive too hard a bargain. She shrugged. “You’re probably right. There’s nothing to worry about. You rest. We’ll be moving out in the morning, and this time we’ll squash Its Ooziness. I’ll be tending the fire, not that difficult a job considering all the deadfall Big Mo left in its wake. Been a dry summer, too—wood catches easy.”

“Ruskettle?”

“Yes, Akash?”

“Would you please hand me my books? I think I’d better start studying. Like you said, we’ll need all the power we can get. Even mine.”

Alias woke in a dim chamber deep beneath Moander’s surface. All around her, patches of slime gave off a sickly green light. The glow from her sigils was brighter and purer, and to study her prison she held her arm out as a lantern, for she was no longer bound by mossy shackles.

The chamber was round and lined mostly with moss, except where moisture ran down its surface, nourishing the patches of luminous slime. She dug into the side of the wall with her fingers, but beneath the spongy moss she discovered an impenetrable mesh of thick roots and tree branches. She tried pulling the moss away in other spots, but found no weaknesses in her cage. The air was close and heavy with the smell of rotting leaves but quite breathable.

She still wore her armor and her leather breeches, but her cloak had begun to disintegrate so badly that it could no longer be tied on. She had lost her sword somewhere in Yulash, and her shield and daggers were missing, probably stripped from her person by the tendrils while she slept—knocked unconscious by Moander’s sponge mosses.

Trapped like an alchemist’s mouse, she thought. Then she decided, no, more like a broken machine crated in a cushioned box for the journey back home. She remembered all that Moander had threatened would be done to her in Westgate. Her memories would be wiped out again, her spirit smothered somehow. She shuddered.

Then she snarled in defiance. But what could one do to a god? Spit in its eye before it crushed you?

The wall across from her rippled. Chunks of moss dropped away, and a huge hand, palm upward, thrust into the chamber. It was woven, like wicker, of tree limbs. In the center of the palm a ball of light glowed with a swirl of gray and white. Alias thought it was some sort of eye, and she wanted to back away and hide from it.

Then the ball spoke. Two voices blended, one the highest alto, the other the lowest bass, with no middle range between the two. The essence of Moander’s voice.

Alias remembered the swirling gray and white that had covered Akabar’s eyes when the god had possessed him. She wondered if this ball was the true face of Moander.

“Hungry?” asked the voice. “Eat.”

The wall moss peeled in another spot, and a pair of tendrils thrust in her shield covered with half a dozen high-summer apples and a dead, uncooked yearling boar.

Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, Alias walked over to the shield. The hole it had been pushed through was already rewoven shut. Her stomach rumbled, but she waited until the tendrils retracted through the wall before she reached for the apples. She backed away from the boar. It looked like it had been throttled to death.

She strolled back over to the palm and crunched into an apple. Without really expecting an answer, she asked the glowing ball, “How long have I been asleep?”

“A day,” the ball replied, pulsing in rhythm with its words. “Going slow. Woods thicker than once were.”

“That’s a problem? Some god you are!” she mocked it.

“Only so much life energy. Must husband carefully. Could fly or teleport, but would hurt. Find more power Myth Drannor. Move slow till then.”

“You’re not as fluent,” Alias noted aloud, “without Akabar. Where is he?”

“Dead. See?”

A hole opened by her shield, and a pile of bones was thrust into the chamber. Alias dropped her apple. The bones sank into the floor again.

“And the others?” the swordswoman whispered.

“All dead.”

“Oh, gods.” Alias dropped to her knees.

“Just one. Me,” Moander’s light reminded her. “Have offer.”

Alias hugged her arms about her shoulders.

“If you slay other masters,” the voice said, “their sigils will erode and you will work for me alone.”

“Then I’ll have to kill you all,” Alias growled defiantly.

“Without me, no purpose, no life. Besides, cannot slay me. Have tried and failed. Think, I will help.”

“Go to hell.”

“Abode not hell—Abyss. Prefer it here.”

Alias laughed at the creature’s transparent bid for power. “Why should I help you get a monopoly on my … services?”

“You are now puppet of many. Can be servant of one. Serve me, greater rewards—wealth, freedom.”

Alias held her hands over her ears to block out the Abomination’s voice. The tips of her fingers touched the eagle-shaped barrette in her hair. Though muck-encrusted, the silver pin unsnapped without crumbling.

“Think. More freedom yours than others enjoy. Be my high priestess. Be my—” The voice stopped, and the chamber swayed, and the walls vibrated. “Will return,” the voice promised. Again the chamber swayed. “Think about offer.”

The woven wood palm began to retract into the wall.

Something’s attacking it, Alias realized. For a brief moment, she considered Moander’s claim that without her “masters” she could not exist. It didn’t matter, she decided. Despite the Abomination’s promise, she knew she would never be free while it lived, and her freedom was all she wanted. Better to be dead than its servant, and this could be my only chance to escape, she thought.

It was an outside chance, but having been held helpless and frustrated all through the last battle, she could not let the opportunity to injure the Abomination slip by. She plunged the pin of the barrette into the sphere.

The ball was as hot as a bonfire and singed Alias’s fingers. She yanked her hand back, but Moander’s “hand” lay still on the floor.

A high-pitched wail filled the chamber, followed by a deep rumbling. The swaying motion of the room turned to a severe rocking, like a ship in a storm. Alias, her shield, the apples, and the dead boar were tumbled from one side to the other. The swordswoman curled into a ball and wedged herself in tightly between the floor and the hand.

Spit in the god’s eye, she thought, sucking on her fingers, for all the good it will do you. The sickly glow of the slime grew dimmer until it was finally extinguished. She was left alone in the glittering sapphire light of her cursed brands.

“I think it knows we’re here,” Akabar declared.

The lizard, seated in front of the mage on the back of the great wyrm, growled in agreement. Pressed close beside him, Akabar caught a whiff of fresh-baked bread. Now that Dragonbait’s means of communication had been rubbed in his face, so to speak, the mage realized that he could catch the saurial’s more excited outbursts. The lizard had to, in effect, shout with his scent glands for a human to notice the smells. Akabar was beginning to piece together some sort of pattern between scents and sense. He berated himself for not having figured it out before—but then he hadn’t figured out anything else correctly either, so far.

Dragonbait had awakened them all before dawn. Previously clownish and servile, the saurial had been transformed by the crisis into a sergeant major. First he healed all the wounds about Akabar’s head. The mage noticed the woodsmoke scent that had surrounded them the last time Dragonbait had cured him.

“That’s the smell of your healing prayers, isn’t it?” the Turmishman had asked.

The lizard had nodded and given him a friendly squeeze on the shoulder. With a stern look he prompted Akabar to study his spells by jabbing his fingers at the mage’s tomes. He patted and pushed Olive into packing their meager gear, while he used his skill to reknit the cluster of bones that held Mist’s wing splayed out in flight. Lastly, he’d closed the gash Akabar’s dagger had put in his own leg.

Akabar watched guiltily as the saurial performed this last task—guilty both for having caused the damage, and for taking his concentration from his assigned task to watch it repaired. Dragonbait worked in the glow of the finder’s stone Alias had dropped. It was hard to see the glow of his hands as he healed his flesh, but now that Akabar knew what to expect, he would never miss it again.

Now, as they rode the dragon toward battle, Dragonbait held the finder’s stone in his lap, although the sun had already risen. He still wore a kilt of sorts about his loins and one of Alias’s cloaks wrapped around to keep out the wind, but he no longer bothered with a shirt. He left the runes on his chest exposed for the world to see.

Akabar wore one of the lizard’s shirts and the makeshift kilt the halfling had fastened together out of her own cloaks. Olive wore a bright yellow cloak and looked, seated on the dragon’s head like a flashy helmet.

When Olive had shouted a warning and they’d first beheld the Abomination, the monster-god was deep in the heart of the Elven Wood and still moving, albeit slowly. It had grown considerably though. The midden mound that had exploded out of its Yulash prison now stood seventy or more feet in height—a hill towering over all but the most ancient gnarled oaks and duskwoods.

Its composition had changed as well. Human rot no longer figured prominently in its make-up. Instead, huge trees and crushed shrubbery were rolled into the hill. It still had an oozy, wet appearance, but now the ooze came from extruded sap and damp underbrush.

The mound seemed to become aware of them as soon as they spotted it, for it began to speed up.

Mist circled from a safe distance. The forward edge of the moving hill was a sharp angle, literally plowing its way through the forest.

As they flew toward the front of the Abomination, a volley of black-barked trees shot out from the hill, trailing long streamers of vines. The god was trying the same tricks as before, only now he was using fifty-foot duskwoods instead of zombie soldiers to weight his snare vines.

The larger size of the missiles and the redundancy of the attack made it easy for Mist to dodge the assault. The catapulted trees fell in the tangle of woods, smashing down other trees and carving huge divots where they landed.

“Any sign of Alias?” Akabar shouted to Dragonbait.

The saurial shook his head. Just as Akabar suspected. If Alias was in the mess, she was probably well hidden beneath the surface, something they had discussed before they left camp, with Mist translating.

The dragon continued to circle Moander without attacking. The mound fired another volley of tree missiles. Once again, Mist dodged them with ease, until a particularly large one passed in front of her face. She pulled up suddenly, as if alarmed, and plummeted toward the ground. Moander lost sight of her behind the tree line.

Moander chuckled with the arrogance of a god. It might have considered telling Alias of the failure of her friends if only it had not bragged of killing them earlier. It trained some of its eyes in the direction the dragon had gone down, while it continued its crawling march south. Myth Drannor, and the powers held within, awaited it.

Dragonbait exchanged positions with the halfling and sat on Mist’s head. He kept the party waiting in the clearing where Mist had landed for a quarter of an hour. The lizard could sense the distance between them and the evil god. When he gave the signal, Mist rose and, skimming low over the trees, circled away until she had reached the tree break Moander had left behind. Along this trail she made her attack run, moving in on the god’s rear.

“They’re going to have to call this ‘Moander’s Road,’ ” Olive shouted to the mage as she took in the devastation.

Akabar nodded wordlessly, awed by the destruction around them. Moander apparently no longer needed to absorb more bulk; it just plowed up the great trees, pushing them aside and leaving them to die on the forest floor, half buried by the great mounds of dirt it also overturned.

The dragon flew on unfazed by the rape of the Elven Wood. She kept her eyes forward, ignoring the great trench beneath her and the shattered trees at her flanks.

The mage closed his eyes, trying to shut out the sound of the heavy wings beating, the rush of air on his face, and the rise and fall of the dragon’s back as she flew. He concentrated on his magic.

Olive nudged him and pointed. Akabar opened his eyes. Mist was less than twenty yards from Moander. No duskwood bombards fired from the hill. The god was oblivious to the dragon’s proximity. Akabar allowed himself a brief smile when he spied the mass of duskwood trees and deadwood woven into the Abomination’s mass, the perfect materials for their plans. His spell was prepared; he awaited only Dragonbait’s signal.

The lizard waved, and Mist rose above the hill, spouting a long, heavy stream of fire as she did so. Like an assassin’s knife, flames ripped into the greenery where the creature’s spine would be if it had one. Moander screamed just as Akabar triggered his pyrotechnic spell. The red streams of the dragon’s breath exploded in a further cavalcade of twisting yellows, spiraling oranges, and lancing azure blues. In the process of transforming the dragon’s fiery breath to explosive fireworks, Akabar’s spell snuffed the upper flames issuing from her maw, but the fireworks pierced deeper into the heart of the hill.

New shoots cropped up immediately to cover the scarred area, but Mist was not through. As soon as she crested the top of the hill, she twisted and spun about, her passengers tied and braced. As she dropped along the back of the hill, she breathed again, sending more flames into the open wound she had carved.

Though his stomach had risen to his throat when he’d momentarily hung upside down, the mage did not lose his focus. Another pyrotechnic spell speared the god.

Moander burned. The hill, now composed more of harvested wood than refuse and slime, blazed. Even better, Ruskettle and Akabar could spot great flames shooting up through the coarse outer mesh of trees and brush, flames that originated nearer the heart of the monster.

In her plant prison, Alias felt the air grow stuffy. The walls began to weep thick, yellowish tears through the moss. She rose to her feet, but was knocked back to the ground by a sudden sideways jerk of her enclosure. It seemed as if Moander had decided to move her prison.

Moander halted and flattened out in an effort to draw more material into its mass, perhaps in an effort to smother the flames. But as the halfling had noted to Akabar the evening before, the forest was quite dry. Whatever the god drew into itself just fed the fires more. And the duskwoods were renowned for their fine burning resins.

Next the Abomination tried to contain the fire by creating a firebreak in its body, splitting itself in two and leaving half of its mass behind. The pyrotechnics had done their job, though. The fire was everywhere; there was no escape from it. Flames curled out of the heart of the moving half of the hill and, like a fire that’s just been stirred, the blaze leaped higher and burned hotter.

Mist had retreated, circling high overhead to evade any return attacks, but when none seemed forthcoming, she swooped back to administer the final blow. Akabar felt the dragon’s chest swell with a mighty intake of air.

Before Mist had a chance to exhale, though, the top of Moander popped off like a cork in a bottle. Startled, Mist pulled up sharply, wary of some new type of attack. A pod twice the size of the dragon, but less than a tenth the size of the god before they’d attacked it, shot out from the hill. Egg-shaped, the missile tumbled end over end as it rose into the air. At the zenith of its flight it righted itself and then swept southeastward in a blur of movement.

“Gold lions will get you good lunch that our woman is in that thing,” Olive shouted.

Akabar nodded. “Along with whatever passes for the consciousness of Moander.”

Dragonbait gave the dragon a sharp prod, and Mist took off after the pod.

Behind them on the ground below, the burning pile of trees that had once been the Abomination of Moander spewed out a black column of smoke high enough to be spotted in Shadowdale, Hillsfar, and Yulash.

Mist began to strain, flapping her wings faster to keep pace with the escape pod. Akabar concentrated, then barked the harsh syllables of another spell and pressed his hands against the back of the dragon. Summoned energies flowed from his hands into the great wyrm.

Mist lunged forward at twice the speed. Her wings beat the air as gracefully and as quickly as a bird’s. The ground blurred in their vision, and they began closing the distance between them and the pod.

“What did you do?” Olive gasped, her words torn from her mouth by the wind.

“Haste,” Akabar explained. “Dangerous for humans—ages them a year. Can’t hurt this creature, though. She sleeps longer than that after a meal.”

Moander spoke again to Alias, but now with just a bass voice, rumbling against a garbling background chatter that was almost unintelligible.

“Flying,” he said after a garble. “Life energies low. Must gate.” Another long garble, then the bass voice surfaced. “Prepare for transport. Damaged goods.”

The last phrase struck Alias as something that Akabar might say, and she fancied that some part of the mage’s mind must have entered into Moander’s being and not just the other way around. Perhaps it was the mage’s spirit warning her to keep herself safe. The further deterioration of Moander’s communication skills gave her a burst of hope. Things apparently weren’t going well for the god. Maybe an army had attacked it, or a horde of powerful adventurers.

The circular shell of her prison wall began to shrink. Mouths surfaced all over the walls. Alias feared that Moander had decided to eat her rather than see her rescued, but the walls began to spit out streams of thick, moist silken strands. She was being cocooned.

Instinctively, she tried to beat back the rising mass, afraid it would suffocate her. Would her “masters” find a way to make her breathe again, she wondered. She was soon overwhelmed by the fiber. Covered from head to toe, she could still breathe through the wrapping, but the air was stuffy, and she felt as though she’d been buried alive.

The egg-shaped pod flattened till it looked more like a giant pumpkin seed. It tore through the sky. Along its trailing edge, half a hundred eyes opened at once to watch the advancing dragon. Moander had husbanded its energies carefully. But either the god had miscalculated or dragons had become faster during its imprisonment. Moander weighed its options. Its last desperate bid for escape was to use magic—the most costly method of travel.

They were still far from the ruins of Myth Drannor, but Moander could sense the siren song of the old city’s dormant power, still humming away deep beneath toppled buildings and battle-scarred halls. With its godly abilities, Moander reached out and began syphoning off the magical energies of the dead elven kingdom.

The god channeled this energy directly into its spell. At the forward point of the pumpkin seed a blur of purple appeared, then stretched about the seed like a thin mist.

Mist, the dragon, was close enough for her passengers to make out the crawling glow that began to envelop the pod carrying Alias. Akabar was trying to figure out what it could be. A protection device, perhaps? Or—

He never finished his thought, for once the glow completely covered the pod, it began to shrink. Like a street magician’s trick, there was nothing left in the purple cloak Moander had wrapped itself in, nothing to keep the cloak from collapsing in on itself.

A Turmish curse escaped Akabar’s lips before he explained, “That’s a gate between worlds.”

Olive looked around in a wild-eyed panic.

“We’ve got to pull up,” the mage insisted. “If we pass through that cloud, we could end up anywhere.”

Both halfling and mage began to thump the sides of the dragon, trying to get her attention. When she turned back to look at them, they mimed pulling back on imaginary reins to symbolize their need to halt.

Mist turned her head forward again. Dragonbait kept his head turned to watch Akabar and Olive signaling him to stop the dragon. Dragonbait shook his reptilian head. He leaned over Mist’s forehead and made some motion Akabar and Olive could not see. When he sat back again, Dragonbait held the finder’s stone over his head.

Mist sped toward the purple cloud that dotted the sky low over the Elven Wood and dove in. Like the god preceding them, they were obscured from view. The shouts of the mage and the bard died away. The cloud dissipated slowly, as though reluctant to give up its form.