Song of the Saurials

13 The Soul Song

Dragonbait rushed to Grypht’s side as Alias whirled around. Breck stood at the edge of the clearing, a second arrow already notched in his bow. He must have rediscovered Akabar and Grypht’s trail and tracked them right back to the camp, the swordswoman realized.

Dragonbait knelt beside the saurial wizard, cursing himself for having forgotten the ranger’s bloodlust.

Breck cried out, “Don’t touch him!”

Dragonbait ignored the ranger’s order and laid his hands on the larger saurial’s chest. He began to pray for the power to heal.

“Breck, you idiot!” Alias called out. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Breck approached them. “I thought I was saving your life,” he said. “That creature could have killed you in an instant. What does Dragonbait think he’s doing?”

“Healing him,” Alias explained.

“No!” Breck shouted, and shoved the saurial paladin away from Grypht. “Are you crazy? That’s the monster that killed Kyre!”

“No, he isn’t,” Alias said. “Grypht is a saurial like Dragonbait. He’s a friend of Dragonbait’s. He couldn’t have killed Kyre.”

“Well, actually,” Akabar said, “he did kill her.”

“See? I told you so!” Breck said, waving his finger in Alias’s face.

Alias shot Akabar a look of frustration. Even if the Turmishman didn’t want to lie, he could at least have had sense enough to keep his mouth shut.

“He had no choice, though,” Akabar explained. “Kyre was a minion of Moander. She would have enslaved both of us to the Darkbringer if Grypht hadn’t destroyed her.”

“How dare you speak such lies?” Breck growled at Akabar. “Kyre was a Master Harper! How dare you slander her like that? And with such a feeble story. Moander is dead.” The ranger turned his bow on the Turmishman. “You’re lying about Kyre. Admit that you’re lying!” he demanded.

Alias pushed Breck’s bow aside. Despite her anger with Akabar and Zhara and Dragonbait, she couldn’t let Breck shoot them full of arrows. “Lord Mourngrym said we were to capture Grypht, if we could, and bring Akabar back alive,” she reminded him sharply. “If we don’t do something for Grypht soon, he’s going to die, and if you don’t stop waving that bow at Akabar, your fingers are going to slip and we won’t be able to bring him back alive either.”

“All right,” Breck said, “you can heal Grypht, but I want him tied up first.”

“With what?” Alias asked. “Breck, he’s too big to tie up. He’s not going to run off anyway.”

Dragonbait signed something to Alias.

“Dragonbait says he guarantees Grypht’s good behavior,” Alias explained to the ranger.

“He’s going to guarantee the good behavior of a murderer?” Breck asked sarcastically.

“It was self-defense,” Akabar insisted.

“Kyre wouldn’t hurt anyone.” Breck retorted.

“She was possessed by Moander,” Akabar explained. “It’s true Moander was dead, but the evil god’s spirit is trying to return to the Realms. It can possess good creatures as well as evil.”

“Like the treants,” Alias pointed out. She shifted her position very subtly, blocking the ranger’s view of Grypht as Zhara bent over the saurial wizard.

“You saw the treants, then?” Akabar asked. “They were controlled by Moander the same way Kyre was,” the mage explained, motioning with his hands to keep Breck’s eyes away from his wife. “She might never have joined Moander willingly, but she was possessed by a vine of some sort, the same thing that possessed the treants. We had no choice but to destroy them. They tried to kidnap me and nearly killed Grypht. Why do you think a single arrow brought him down so easily? He received so many injuries from them that he passed out in our hiding place and slept for hours.”

Akabar put a hand on Breck’s shoulder. “I am sorry for the loss of your fellow Harper,” he said to the ranger. “She seemed to me a beautiful and clever woman, traits that Moander could not have made her mimic were they not already her own. I can understand your anguish. I share it with you.”

Breck took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Replacing his arrow in his quiver and shouldering his bow, the ranger nodded respectfully at Akabar. “Thank you,” he said. “However, you must realize I cannot accept your story without proof. There was nothing left of Kyre’s body. You will have to come back to Shadowdale, so Morala and Lord Mourngrym can judge whether you are telling the truth or not.”

Behind the ranger, Zhara finished her prayers to cure Grypht’s wounds.

Akabar looked up at the trees hesitantly, reluctant to agree with the ranger but equally reluctant to refuse him. He looked anxiously at Grypht, who was rising slowly to his feet.

“He hasn’t time to return to Shadowdale” Grypht said in Realms common.

Breck whirled around and discovered the saurial on his feet. The ranger reached for his sword, but Grypht caught his wrists. As burly as he was, the ranger was no match for the five-hundred-pound saurial.

“You’ve drawn my blood twice in as many days,” the wizard said to Breck. “Frankly, I’m getting a little tired of it. Now you will listen to me without attacking me.”

Breck’s body went limp and he glared at Grypht. “I’m listening, monster.”

“Good,” Grypht said, but he didn’t release the ranger. “In our world,” the wizard explained, “there are still fools who worship the Darkbringer and give his minions power to walk among us. Kyre came to our world as a visitor to study our music, and we welcomed her, but while she was among us, our tribe was attacked by minions of Moander. Kyre helped defend our tribe most heroically, but she was captured by the enemy. The Darkbringer made her one of its minions by possessing her body with its vines. Since she is native to this world, she can walk among your people without raising suspicion, so Moander sent her back here to prepare things for his return. In the meantime, my tribe has fought against the attacks of other minions of Moander for months now, until all but I and my apprentices and the Champion, the one you call Dragonbait, have been caught and enslaved. Moander has marched my tribe forcibly through the plane of Tarterus and into this world. The Darkbringer is using them to create a new body to use in the Realms. I came to your world seeking Champion’s help.

“Unfortunately I arrived in Kyre’s presence, and she used your ignorance to her own purposes and convinced you to attack me. When she’d cornered me in Nameless’s room, she imprisoned me in a soul trap. Akabar freed me, and I destroyed her before she could enslave us both. I would not have destroyed her if there was any hope she would live once Moander had dispossessed her, but there wasn’t. Moander’s possession had eaten away the inside of her body.”

“You kidnapped Elminster and Nameless, and you expect me to believe what you’re saying?” Breck said, tossing his head back haughtily.

“I didn’t kidnap Elminster or Nameless,” Grypht replied. “I used a transference spell on Elminster—”

“That agrees with what Lhaeo said must have happened,” Alias interspersed. “That strange place where Morala saw Elminster in her scrying bowl must be Grypht and Dragonbait’s home world.”

“Then why hasn’t Elminster returned home?” Breck demanded.

“I can only assume that somehow the Darkbringer has interfered with his returning,” Grypht answered.

“What did you do with Nameless?” Breck asked.

“Nothing,” Grypht replied. “As I already told Alias, the bard and Olive must have fled to escape from Kyre after she trapped me in her soul gem. I was tracking Olive with the bard’s magic stone, but I turned back when Akabar told me Champion was in Shadowdale.”

Unable to refute the wizard’s story, the ranger became less adamant, but he remained cautious. “I still need more proof,” he said. “Where’s the finder’s stone now?”

Grypht released the ranger and pulled from his robe the prize he had looted from Kyre’s body.

“All right,” Breck said. “Think of someone in your tribe whom Moander has enslaved and sent to the Realms,” he ordered the wizard.

Grypht held the stone and concentrated on a saurial he suspected would still be alive, despite the deprivations Moander put its slaves through. The finder’s stone sent a beam northwest by westward, toward the peaks of the Desertsmouth Mountains.

“Give Alias the stone,” Breck ordered.

Grypht tossed the stone to the swordswoman.

“Think about Nameless,” the ranger told Alias.

Alias did as the ranger asked. The first beam of light faded and a second one shot out to the southwest. Alias felt a sense of relief. Wherever the bard was, he was far from Moander’s saurial slaves.

Breck wore a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Nameless used the stone to cast a tongues spell so he could speak with Grypht,” Akabar explained. “I tried to tap into the stone’s magic last night, but it wouldn’t work for me except as a compass.”

“I’ll bet it would work for Alias,” Breck said.

“Me? I’m not a mage,” the swordswoman said. “What do I know about magic stones?”

“You’re Nameless’s heir apparent, so to speak,” Breck said. “Try the stone for something other than detecting someone,” he suggested.

Alias peered into the depths of the stone, remembering how cryptic Elminster had been on the night last year when he’d given it to her. He must have thought she could use it, too. Back then, when she hadn’t even known about Nameless, the magic object had seemed to her to be just another light stone. Now that she knew it had belonged to the bard, however, a whole new set of memories came to her—memories that Nameless must have implanted in her before she was “born”—memories of how to use the stone.

“Nameless triggered it with—” Grypht began.

“Music,” Alias interrupted.

Grypht nodded. “The bard cast a tongues spell with it. Since my own tongues spell will wear off shortly, it would be helpful if you could speak saurial. The bard sang eight notes. I’ll try to hum them—”

Alias waved to Grypht to be silent and closed her eyes. “I know what to do,” she said. It was almost as if she could hear Nameless instructing her: “To cast a tongues spell, sing an A-minor scale.…”

Alias sang the scale, at the same time concentrating on the strange saurial tongue. The stone glowed yellow in her hand; then the glow traveled up her arms and surrounded her whole body. Alias was suddenly aware of a myriad of scents wafting from both Grypht and Dragonbait. She could not only smell the scents, but also taste them as well. Then, unexpectedly, the air filled with noises, too—high-pitched whistles and clicks that complemented the scents.

“It seems to have worked. Tell me it worked,” Grypht said to Alias in saurial. He gave off a scent like chicken soup, which the swordswoman realized indicated impatience.

“But I don’t just smell you,” Alias said in saurial. “I hear you!”

“Smells merely convey emotions, emphasis, intonation—” Grypht began to explain.

“But the words are clicks and whistles!” Alias completed the thought for him. “Why couldn’t I hear them before?” she asked with puzzlement.

“Your ears normally don’t work as well as ours,” Grypht said with a shrug.

Dragonbait reached up and tapped Grypht’s elbow. “High One,” the paladin addressed the wizard, and Alias realized that the name “Grypht” was the closest human approximation to the saurial words for “High One,” though whether it was the wizard’s name or title she could not tell.

“I would like to speak with my sister,” Dragonbait said, issuing a scent like basil, which Alias realized indicated he desired privacy.

“Champion, there simply isn’t time,” Grypht replied. “We have much to discuss before the spell Alias cast wears off.”

“The tongues spell cast from the stone is permanent,” Alias said.

Grypht looked at the swordswoman in disbelief. “You must be mistaken. You do not understand magic. It takes a tremendous amount of power to make a spell permanent,” the wizard explained.

Alias shrugged. “You’re right. I don’t understand magic, but I know this spell is permanent.”

Grypht still looked doubtful. He nodded to Dragonbait. “Have your talk,” he said, “but speak quickly.” The saurial wizard turned away and walked off, taking Akabar and Zhara and Breck with him.

Alias was left alone with Dragonbait. The swordswoman looked down at the ground and shifted her weight nervously onto one leg. She could no longer shut out the paladin’s words now by turning her back on his signing fingers, and the memory of how she had done so filled her with embarrassment.

“Sister,” Dragonbait said, “will you accept my apology now, if I offer it in my own language?”

Alias could smell the saurial’s sadness and tenderness. She could smell and taste something minty, too, an emotion she’d never sensed in Dragonbait. It was remorse. He was really sorry, and there was no way she could deny it.

Yesterday, Alias thought, I told Morala that I would love Finder no matter what secret he told me, yet I would have left Dragonbait without even giving him a chance to explain. How could I be so cruel and unforgiving? The swordswoman put her hands on the paladin’s chest and started to weep.

“You are right to complain that I treat you like a child,” Dragonbait said, stroking the brand on her right arm. “I am over-protective and domineering. I was afraid you’d be angry, so I said nothing about Zhara, though I could smell that she was your sister immediately. Then I made matters worse by bringing Zhara along without asking you, because I did not want to argue with you. I just did what I thought should be done. I took your property and gave it to her without your permission. I am no better than a thief.”

“Much worse,” Alias said, looking up at the paladin. “A good thief wouldn’t get caught.”

Dragonbait looked startled, then caught the scent of mischief in Alias’s scent and realized she was teasing him. He smiled and brushed the tears from her face.

“I’m sorry about fighting with Zhara,” she said.

“As I said before, if you offend Zhara, it is Zhara you must apologize to,” the paladin reminded her.

“Right,” Alias said. “I still don’t trust her, though.”

“Alias,” the saurial said with an earthy scent of frustration, “she is your sister.”

“That’s why I don’t trust her,” Alias said. “Dragonbait, the spell Moander’s minions cast on me last year made me unleash Moander on the Realms without even realizing what I was doing. Phalse put a quest spell on me to hunt down Moander in the Abyss. It nearly tore me apart resisting it. I managed to break the spell only by killing Phalse. Zhara may think she’s working against Moander, but she could be working for Phalse.”

“Destroying Moander would not be an evil thing merely because some other evil being wishes it,” the paladin argued. “Besides, there is more at stake here, or had you forgotten what Grypht just said. The Darkbringer has enslaved my people. I must accompany Grypht and challenge Moander. Akabar and I destroyed the Darkbringer once. It is my hope we can do so again.”

“But you had Mist with you!” Alias declared, referring to the ancient red dragon who had helped Dragonbait and Akabar battle the Darkbringer.

“And now we have Grypht,” Dragonbait countered. “His apprentices often call him the old lair beast,” the paladin added with a smile. “That’s what we call Mist’s kind on our world.”

He could smell Alias’s fear and anxiety, and he understood why she was terrified of the evil god. Of all the masters who had tried to enslave her, Moander was the only one whose command she’d been unable to resist, the only one who had captured her unaided, the only one whose defeat she had not been a part of.

“Maybe you should find Nameless and stay behind with him,” Dragonbait suggested.

Alias lowered her head, ashamed of her cowardice, struggling to fight it. “No … I want to help you,” she said, but she began shivering in the warm sunlight, and her eyes began to glaze over.

Dragonbait grabbed the swordswoman’s shoulders, alarmed by her expression, afraid she might faint, but instead she seemed to fall into a trance and started repeating, over and over, the same words she had spoken last evening. “We are ready for the seed. Where is the seed? Find the seed. Bring the seed.” This time, though, her words were accompanied by a myriad of scents that rose from her body, communicating a plethora of conflicting emotions—excitement and fear, joy and anguish, impatience and dread, determination and resignation, pride and remorse. Dragonbait realized at once that it had all the earmarks of a true saurial song.

“High One,” Dragonbait shouted, “come quickly!”

Grypht came running up to the paladin. “What is it?” he asked.

“Listen to her song,” Dragonbait insisted.

Grypht stared at Alias and furrowed his brow, confused by her trance and the words she spoke. “What seed?” he asked. “What is she singing about?”

“Shh. There’s another verse,” Dragonbait said.

“Nameless is found,” Alias said in Saurial. “Nameless must join us. Nameless will find the seed. Nameless will bring the seed.”

“He will, will he?” Grypht muttered.

The scents rising from the swordswoman’s body sent an eerie shiver down Dragonbait’s spine, frightening him far more than the earlier songs of Nameless that Alias had twisted.

Suddenly Alias stopped her saurial chant. Then, just as she had done the night before, she held out her hand, with her forefinger pointing downward, and traced a circle parallel to the ground.

“The saurial sign of death,” Grypht whispered.

Alias screamed and began to shout in Realms common, “No! No! No!”

When Alias screamed, Breck Orcsbane, who had been seated by the fire toasting bread with Akabar and Zhara, leaped to his feet immediately. He ran through the clearing to the swordswoman’s side, his sword drawn and pointed at Grypht’s midsection. “What’s going on here?” he demanded. “Alias, are you all right? What have you done to her?” he shouted at Grypht.

Akabar and Zhara came up behind the ranger, equally concerned for the swordswoman, though less inclined to blame Grypht. Akabar stepped between the wizard and Breck’s sword.

Alias snapped out of her trance. She gasped and looked around in confusion.

“Alias? What is it?” Akabar asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I just had a … a bad dream,” she said. “It was something about Nameless.” She paused, concentrating hard, but whatever it was, she couldn’t remember now.

“First you walk in your sleep, now you dream when you’re wide awake,” Breck growled. “What manner of curse are you under?”

“I do not walk in my sleep,” Alias snapped.

“You did last night. Ask Dragonbait if you don’t believe me,” Breck replied.

Alias looked at Dragonbait, and the paladin nodded.

“It sounded as if you were singing a saurial soul song,” Grypht said. “But how can that be?” the wizard asked Dragonbait. “She’s not a saurial.”

“What’s a soul song?” Alias asked in saurial.

“Her soul and spirit are bound by magic to my own, High One,” Dragonbait explained to Grypht.

“But you haven’t received the gift of soul singing,” Grypht said, still confused.

“My mother had the gift, High One,” Dragonbait reminded the wizard.

“That’s right … so she did.” Grypht nodded, remembering.

“Would someone please tell me what a soul song is?” Alias asked again.

Grypht clapped his hands once and bounced on his heels. “This is marvelous—even better than the magic stone. If she sings what our people know, she will be our eyes and ears in the enemy’s camp.”

“What are they talking about?” Breck asked Alias. Although he was unable to follow any of the conversation in saurial, the ranger recognized Grypht’s excitement.

Alias waved Breck silent and shouted in saurial, “What is a soul song?”

“A song of our people that reflects our tribe’s state of being,” Grypht explained calmly. “When a singer of a soul song sings, her mind opens up to what is within the souls of her tribe, and she sings their song. Sometimes when she sleeps, she often dreams their dreams and wakes singing their song. The song will change as the tribe’s condition changes. It may be a song of joy or contentment, which we accept with pleasure, or it may be a song of grief, which we learn to bear. When it is a song of evil, though, we must act—fight the evil, whether it comes from without or within, until the song grows good again. Because our tribe is controlled by Moander, the tribe knows much anguish, but it also knows of the Darkbringer’s plans. You probably have just been singing of those plans. I hope you can do it again. Something opened your mind to the souls of our tribe and you began to sing. What was it? What were you thinking about before you went into the trance?”

Alias’s brow furrowed. “I … I don’t remember.”

“Your fear of Moander,” Dragonbait said.

Alias lowered her eyes, embarrassed, then it occurred to her that this soul-singing trance could explain her other problem. “That must be why I’ve been singing Nameless’s songs differently. I’ve been turning them into soul songs.”

“It is very likely,” Dragonbait agreed.

“Dragonbait, if you knew what was happening, why didn’t you try to tell me what was wrong?” Alias asked the paladin.

“I only started to suspect last night,” Dragonbait said, “when you sang in saurial. At least, you tried to sing, but your words had no feeling, since you hadn’t the power to produce scents. Just now when you sang, it was much more obvious that it was a soul song.”

“Would someone please explain what is going on?” Breck demanded, frustrated beyond endurance at not being able to understand the swordswoman’s conversation with the saurials.

Alias explained everything that Grypht and Dragonbait had just told her. “So,” she said in conclusion, staring pointedly at Akabar and Zhara, “I was right after all. I knew I wasn’t singing the songs wrong because of the gods.”

“Actually,” Dragonbait said, “our people believe that soul singing is a gift of the gods.”

Alias didn’t bother to translate the paladin’s correction. “You said I sang about Moander’s plans. What did I sing? I have no recollection of it whatsoever.”

Grypht quoted the lyrics of the first verse of Alias’s soul song. “ ‘We are ready for the seed. Where is the seed? Find the seed. Bring the seed.’ ”

“What seed?” Alias asked.

“We don’t know,” Grypht said. “Obviously it is something Moander wants very badly, and he thinks Nameless will bring it to him. The second verse of your song went, ‘Nameless is found. Nameless must join us. Nameless will find the seed. Nameless will bring the seed.’ ”

“And then you screamed,” Dragonbait interjected.

“Yes!” Alias exclaimed, suddenly remembering what had made her scream out in fear. “Nameless is in terrible danger! We must find him before it’s too late! Moander is trying to turn him into one of its minions!”

Olive shifted in her sleep from one uncomfortable position to another. Somewhere far overhead, birds started to chirp loudly. Olive came half awake, but from the back of her mind came a reminder that she didn’t want to be awake, so she kept her eyes closed and ignored the birds. A beam of sunlight struck her face. Olive drew her hood up over her eyes. Then her stomach rumbled.

“Damn!” the halfling grumbled. She glared up angrily at the well shaft overhead, which taunted her with its inaccessibility. If only it had been nearer a wall, they could escape. She was experienced at climbing walls. Unfortunately, she couldn’t hang from ceilings, and the well came out in the center of the ceiling. She sat up and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.

“Stupid well!” she muttered, rummaging through her knapsack. There wasn’t any fruit left. She and Finder had finished it off last night. Buried in the bottom of the knapsack, she found three stale sweet rolls. She left two for the bard and took one for herself, nibbling at it slowly as she studied the excavation Finder had begun last night.

The bard had climbed to the top of the passageway wall, where he had dug into the dirt and pounded at the stone with Olive’s broken shovel until he’d created a second shaft in the ceiling. It was all of four feet deep. He’d finally slipped down from the wall, frustrated and exhausted. In the morning light, Olive judged the old well shaft to be at least fifty feet deep. She estimated it would take about a week for one man and a halfling to dig that far straight up. Finder was trying to angle his shaft toward the well shaft, hoping to connect with it so they could climb out the rest of the way through the well. Since the well shaft was only twenty feet from Finder’s shaft, digging to it should only take days … days without water or food.

Olive crept over to the corner where Finder lay sleeping. He slept like the dead, heavy and still. Asleep, the power of his voice and the animation of his face were not apparent, and he looked far older. Once he’d been lord of the ruined manor house somewhere above them, commanding the respect of his peers and the worship of his apprentices. Now he was curled up like a corpse, buried alive by his own magical horn.

Olive studied his face and hands carefully. There were no signs of vegetation growing out of his ears or his wrists. There was no hint of green in his skin. Maybe Finder had been right and his clothing had protected him from whatever had burst out of the burr.

Something clattered in the passage behind Olive. The halfling swung around with her dagger drawn. Pebbles were rolling from the top of the fresh wall of dirt created when Olive had collapsed the ceiling. Something was shifting inside the pile.

Olive knelt beside the bard and shook his shoulder frantically. “Finder!” she whined.

Finder groaned and looked up groggily at the halfling. “Go ’way,” he growled.

“Finder, something’s trying to get in by digging through the cave-in!” Olive whispered urgently.

The bard sat up and reached for Olive’s sword, which he’d been using as a dagger.

A large rock tumbled down the pile, and a muck-encrusted vine as thick as Olive’s arm slithered out from where the rock had been. It rose up like an angry snake, and they could see that there was a mouth at its tip—a lipless maw full of rows of sharp fangs. Olive had seen just such a growth before on Moander’s body in the Realms.

“Nameless,” the mouth called out. It spoke in the same grating, high-pitched voice as Xaran.

Finder rose to his feet and approached the vine carefully. “Is that you, Xaran?” he asked, halting a few feet from the mouth.

The vine twisted so that the mouth faced the bard. “You will do Moander’s bidding whether you choose to or not. It is only a matter of time,” the vine mouth said.

“You are mistaken,” Finder said heatedly. “Moander tried to pervert my singer. I will never deal with the Darkbringer.”

“In time, you will return even your precious singer to Moander,” the vine mouth said.

“You can go to hell!” Finder snarled. He slashed out with Olive’s sword and sliced the mouth off the end of the vine. The vine whipped around his sword arm. Finder tried to pull it loose with his other hand, but twinelike tendrils flared out from the vine and lashed his hands together at the wrists.

Olive leaped forward, slashing with her dagger, and hacked through the vine near where it came out of the pile of rubble. What was left of the vine retreated back into the debris. The tendrils wrapped around Finder’s arms went limp, but Olive had to help the bard free himself from them.

“Well, that was heartening,” Finder said glibly.

“What was heartening?” Olive asked incredulously. “That Xaran is still alive waiting to grab you and turn you into a vegetable?”

“No,” Finder said. “what was heartening was that Xaran used a tendril to slither in here, instead of simply disintegrating this pile of rubble. It must have injured its disintegrating eye.”

“Great. Since you stabbed its central eye, now it has only nine more to use on us,” Olive said.

“Eight. The eye that charms beasts will be useless against us,” Finder reminded the halfling. “And I imagine both of us have the will to resist the eye that causes sleep.”

“Oh … now I feel better,” Olive said sarcastically. “There are only seven ways left for it to kill or capture me.”

“Xaran doesn’t have any hands to dig himself out, but we do,” Finder said.

“But Xaran can put out another tendril and strangle us in our sleep,” Olive protested.

“We’ll just have to keep watch.”

Olive heard a shout, as if from far away. She silenced the bard with a wave of her hand and listened hard. In a few seconds, there was another shout.

“Orcs!” the halfling said in panic. “There are still orcs alive out there! They’ll dig Xaran out, then come in after us! Then what?”

“A good question,” the bard muttered. “A good question indeed.”

The Mouth of Moander peered into her scrying pool at the Nameless Bard and his halfling companion. It was only a matter of time before they were recaptured, but Moander didn’t allow her to take her eyes off them. Last night, the high priestess had felt a rare moment of pleasure and hope when the bard’s dagger had survived Xaran’s disintegration ray and destroyed the beholder’s central eye, and she had dared to gloat over her master’s setback when the bard had felled the orcs and ruined their warren with his magical horn. Now the evil god kept the priestess’s eyes fixed on the bard, savoring her fresh despair.

Coral wished fervently that she was standing at the top of the well with a rope to help the bard escape. Since the priestess had been unable to scry Akabar this morning, presumably because he’d rejoined the protected Alias, Moander was now relying on Nameless to locate the Turmishman. Without Nameless’s help, the search for Akabar could go on far too long, increasing the risk that someone would find the hiding place of the god’s new body, perhaps even someone with power enough to destroy the body and free the possessed saurials.

Moander forced Coral to speak the very words it used to taunt her. “Even if the bard could fly out of that trap, he cannot escape the Darkbringer now. The seeds of possession grow in him,” the god declared through Coral’s mouth.

“No!” Coral insisted. “Xaran’s spores exploded hours ago, and the bard still shows no signs of possession. He has resisted your evil seeds.”

“No, he hasn’t,” Moander forced Coral to say. “The seeds are simply taking longer to grow within him because he is human and such a large man.”

“You lie!” Coral shouted in anger. “You lie to torture me!”

“Do I? We shall see,” Moander said via the priestess’s voice, and the Darkbringer made Coral laugh the high-pitched cackle of the insane.