Song of the Saurials

19 The Weapon

Held by four saurial mages, Alias could do nothing but shriek and cry as Coral chanted foul prayers over Akabar, declaring his blood the seed of Moander’s resurrection. As the Turmish mage was sucked into the rotting mess the saurials had built for Moander, the swordswoman began to shake uncontrollably. This was her worst nightmare—the one she forced herself to forget whenever she woke from it. In it, she inevitably watched her friend being absorbed by the Darkbringer just as she had been. Now, though, there was no waking up.

Akabar should have gone back to the cave as soon as they found out that he was the seed, she thought. She should have knocked him out and dragged him away. And Zhara never should have let him come north. There had to have been some way to prevent all this.

Suddenly the swordswoman’s arm began to burn as if it were on fire. The blue brands on her arm glowed brighter than lantern light. “No,” Alias whispered.

“Yes,” a voice said in saurial. Alias looked up into the face of the saurial who once was Dragonbait’s lover. Her duties with the seed complete, the priestess had moved to the swordswoman’s side. She studied Alias’s arm eagerly. “The symbol of Moander is returning to her arm,” she announced.

Dragonbait, who had nearly reached the top of the pile, didn’t need to hear the Mouth of Moander’s words to know what was happening to Alias. He could feel it himself in the brand on his chest that bound him to the swordswoman. There, reasserting itself in his own scales, he could see the tattoo of a blue glowing mouth of fangs set in a human palm.

When the pain had subsided, he finished climbing up the side of the pile of greenery. Crashing through the soggy, rotting vegetation, he cried out the trigger word to set his sword aflame. He stabbed one of the mages through the heart and the corpse fell into the pile. As if the pile had an insatiable appetite, the body was sucked into it almost instantly.

Before the paladin could attack again, Coral finished chanting another entanglement spell. A vine rose up from the pile, wrapped itself around Dragonbait’s waist, and pulled him away from Alias. A second vine lashed itself around his legs and held him fast. He couldn’t hack at the vines without slashing himself.

Coral stepped up to the paladin, a ceremonial dagger in her hand. “Champion,” she whispered, “you know what must happen now. Your sacrifice will bind the servant’s will to Moander.”

“Coral, no. You can’t do this. This isn’t you. Fight it, please,” the paladin urged.

“You have your sword,” the white saurial whispered.

Dragonbait held his sword beside Coral’s head. The flames of the blade were reflected in her white scales.

“Either I will kill you, or you will kill me,” Coral said.

Dragonbait watched as Alias struggled with the three remaining saurial mages. If he were the only one to die, he wouldn’t even consider killing Coral. He would let her take his life. But Alias was his sister, and Coral was the Mouth of Moander. He couldn’t let Moander have Alias. Still he hesitated.

Coral raised her dagger. Tears shone in her eyes, and the smoke-laden air was heavy with the scent of her grief. “How can you condemn me to be your murderer?” she growled at the paladin. “I thought you loved me.”

Dragonbait swung his blade, and Coral’s body and head tumbled into the pile. There was no bloodshed. Nothing but rotted vines and dust spilled out of the priestess’s severed neck. The pile didn’t even try to suck her into it for nourishment. There was nothing left of her.

Immediately the vines that held Dragonbait fell away from him as if the magic in them had been dispelled. The paladin presumed the magic had died with Coral and began to move cautiously toward the mages who held Alias. One began to chant a spell and gesture in the paladin’s direction, but the words died on his lips, and he tumbled forward with a dagger in his back.

Now held by only two people, Alias threw her weight to one side, knocking one of the mages to her knees. Dragonbait rushed the remaining mage and sliced him in two. Like Coral, this mage was nothing but dust and rotted vines inside. With her bare fists, Alias throttled the female saurial beside her until the mage fell at her feet.

“Dragonbait, your sword!” the swordswoman shouted. “Give me your sword!”

Confused, the paladin let Alias take his sword from his hands. She began to slice into the top of the pile, looking for Akabar.

A dark figure landed beside Dragonbait and wordlessly pulled the dagger out of the mage who had tried to cast a spell over the paladin. The figure stood up and sheathed his blade. It was Finder Wyvernspur.

The pile shifted suddenly, knocking Dragonbait and Finder to their knees. The massive heap wasn’t merely settling, the paladin realized; it was coming to life. He struggled to his feet as Alias began hacking at the vegetation more frantically, screaming out Akabar’s name.

As the paladin helped him to rise, Finder shouted, “We can’t stay here!”

Dragonbait was inclined to agree, but when he saw the wild-eyed look in the swordswoman’s eyes, he was sure he’d never convince her to leave. The smell of her grief for Akabar permeated the air.

“Akabar is gone!” Finder shouted. “There’s no hope for him! If you don’t help me get Alias away from here, she’ll die!”

Dragonbait nodded. He took the hand the bard offered him and moved toward Alias.

“Sister,” he called out, “give me your hand.”

Alias looked up at her saurial brother, confused. She didn’t question him; she simply reached up and grabbed his paw. Dragonbait clenched her fingers with all his strength. Then Alias saw Finder standing behind the paladin. The bard held the finder’s stone in his hand.

“No!” Alias shrieked.

Finder sang to the finder’s stone, and the three adventurers glowed brightly for an instant, then disappeared. When they reappeared in the Singing Cave, Alias was still shrieking. She jerked her hand away from Dragonbait’s and pointed the paladin’s flaming sword at the bard’s heart.

Finder dropped Dragonbait’s hand. “I’ll be back,” he said. Then he sang to his magic stone again and vanished.

By the time Olive reached the top of the pile, it was beginning to tremble alarmingly. She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or not, but it seemed to be moving toward the east side of the vale. The halfling looked around at the dead bodies and the shaking greenery and started to shiver.

Olive screamed out Dragonbait’s name, trying to discern in the darkness if he was one of the corpses. A vine sprang up from the pile right in front of the halfling. An eye was visible on the end of it, round and glassy, like a fish’s. Olive gasped and took a step backward. More vines began popping out of the surface of the pile all around the halfling, each tipped with some sort of eye—a saurial’s eye, or a wild cat’s eye, or a bird’s eye. Then more vines appeared with mouths on their ends—fanged lizards’ mouths, birds’ beaks, a beaver’s mouth. The mouths all began calling out Moander’s name in a cacophonous chorus that set the halfling’s heart pounding with fear.

Olive moved cautiously away toward the edge of the pile. She’d slide down somehow; even falling to the ground would be preferable to becoming part of those eyes and mouths. A feline-mouthed vine lunged toward her, and the halfling shrieked.

Before the vine could strike her, strong hands grabbed her and lifted her off the top of the pile.

Olive gasped from the shock, then sighed with relief. She swiveled her head, expecting to see Akabar or Grypht. Her eyes widened in astonishment at the sight of her rescuer.

“Didn’t I tell you that you had to be more careful, little Lady Luck?” Finder Wyvernspur said as he soared northward with the halfling wrapped in his arms.

Grypht looked up from the exhausted form of a small flying saurial at the cleric, Sweetleaf, who stood over him anxiously.

“Excuse me, High One,” the cleric said, “but we have a problem in the vale. The—”

“I’ll set a backfire soon to keep the fire from spreading,” Grypht said. “There’s time yet. Don’t worry, Sweetleaf.”

“It’s not the fire, High One,” the cleric explained. “It’s Moander. It’s been resurrected.”

Grypht stood up and looked into the vale. Sweetleaf was right. Moander had been resurrected, and it was heading eastward, straight toward them.

The wizard had never really believed that rescuing Dragonbait and recovering the saurial workers would halt Moander’s resurrection. If anything, he had realized, it would precipitate the event, but since the Mouth of Moander had the seed and intended to use it that night, there hadn’t seemed any reason to put off the inevitable. Grypht had hoped, however, that he would have had more time to get his people back on their feet.

The mountain of greenery slid slowly but steadily across the ground, pushed along by some unseen magical force. Grypht shuddered to think just how much power Moander expended on movement. As the god moved slowly over the fires set in the vale, the flames were instantly smothered by its damp mass. Boulders caught in its path were crushed into gravel. Whenever it came across an especially large tree that the saurials had cut down but had been unable to haul, Moander sucked it into its body, where it was immediately splintered into smaller pieces.

Now that the saurials were free from the god’s possession and no longer served him, the wizard had no doubt what use Moander would have for them now. Moander would consume the saurials whole. The wizard looked up and down the hillside for Alias, Dragonbait, Olive, and Akabar, but they were nowhere to be seen, despite the fact that they had agreed to meet him here. Grypht began to grow alarmed. What could have happened to them?

The sound of Moander’s approach, cracking trees and smashing rock and rumbling earth, now reached the wizard’s ears. Above all those sounds came a cacophony of singing from the hundreds of mouths that grew from the god’s body. The Darkbringer was chanting its own name over and over again in victory.

“High One, what should we do?” Sweetleaf asked nervously.

Grypht was about to scoop up as many of the small fliers as he could carry and teleport away with them and Sweetleaf when suddenly Moander changed directions and began heading northward, toward the mountain slope and the Singing Cave.

“It’s following that flier!” Sweetleaf cried, pointing to a dark shape moving northward through the air with the smooth movement of a mage using a fly spell. “Who is it, High One?” Sweetleaf asked.

Just before the shape disappeared into the Singing Cave, Grypht caught sight of the yellow glow the finder’s stone gave off in the dark. “Can it be … the bard?” Grypht asked uncertainly.

Suddenly Grypht remembered the dark shape he’d seen standing in the camp beside Coral when they’d begun their attack. Finder had returned in time for the battle after all. With his magical stone, the bard could have teleported to the Singing Cave. Could it be that he was deliberately leading Moander away from the saurials? Did he know what had happened to the others?

He had to discover what the bard was up to, the wizard decided. Perhaps Finder could help move the unconscious saurials. “Do what you can for our people, Sweetleaf,” Grypht ordered the cleric. “I’ll return as soon as I can.” The saurial wizard clutched his staff and teleported to the Singing Cave.

Finder drifted into the mouth of the Singing Cave and landed smoothly among the ferns.

“Don’t move!” Alias growled, waving Dragonbait’s sword at the bard’s chest.

Dragonbait knocked the swordswoman’s hand aside. “Alias, he’s holding Olive. You’ll skewer her,” the paladin warned. He could see the invisible halfling with his heat sight.

“What are you talking about?” the swordswoman demanded. “His arms are empty.”

“No, they’re not,” Olive piped up. She wished herself visible, and suddenly she was. She looked back up at the bard. “How come you could see me when I was invisible?” she demanded.

“When you get to be my age, Olive, no beautiful woman is invisible,” Finder said.

Olive began to smile at the bard’s flattery, but she caught sight of the flower in the bard’s hair and shuddered nervously.

Sensing her unease, Finder set the halfling down on the floor. Olive scurried toward Alias.

Grypht appeared behind the bard. He could smell the anger and the fear permeating the air around him. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

“Finder’s been possessed by Moander!” Alias declared. Her voice cracked with pain and sorrow.

“See the flower in his ear?” Olive chirped.

In the cave lit by Dragonbait’s flaming sword, the finder’s stone, and the magical blue sigils of Moander glowing on Alias’s arm and Dragonbait’s chest, Grypht had no trouble picking out the flower growing from the bard’s ear and the mossy growth on his chin.

“Champion can use his power to cure disease on him,” Grypht said.

“No!” Finder said, stepping back. “I don’t need to be cured. I know it appears as if I’ve been possessed, but I’m not. Alias, you didn’t see me do it, but I was the one who dispelled Coral’s entanglement vines earlier. I also rescued you and Dragonbait from Moander’s grasp. Would I have done all that if I was one of the god’s minions?”

“You kept me from rescuing Akabar!” Alias cried. “You let Moander swallow him!”

Grypht felt his heart sinking when he learned the mage’s fate. He had admired Akabar’s courage and been moved by his concern for the saurials, who weren’t even his own people.

“Alias, there was no way you were going to reach Akabar,” Finder said. He took a step toward her with his arms extended.

Alias again pointed Dragonbait’s sword at the bard’s chest. “Don’t move!” she ordered him again.

“Moander is heading up the mountain even as we speak,” Grypht said, “led here by the bard—”

“I was trying to lead Moander away from your people,” Finder protested.

“Olive, check to see how close it is to us,” Alias told the halfling. Olive hurried to obey.

“We could use your help, but we can’t trust you unless you let Dragonbait cure the disease within you,” Grypht said to Finder.

“I cannot cure him, High One,” Dragonbait said. “I wasted my power trying to cure Coral. I have used my shen sight on the bard, however. I still sense no evil in him.”

Although Grypht realized that Finder was the sort of man who wouldn’t bow to any master, the saurial wizard had never seen anyone resist Moander’s possession once the Darkbringer’s disease had begun to manifest itself physically. “How is this possible?” he asked the bard.

“Xaran shot a burr of possession at me in the orc lair,” Finder explained. “It exploded its spores in my face, but nothing happened. I presumed its magic had failed. I’d forgotten that two hours before it happened I had swallowed magical potions that slow and neutralize poison. I believe the potions’ magic must have affected the spores so that they grew more slowly and altered the vines so Moander can’t use them to take hold of my body or mind.”

“Moander’s just reached the mountain slope,” Olive reported from the cave’s mouth. “The incline’s slowing it down some, but it’s still coming.”

“If you aren’t possessed, what were you doing in Coral’s hut?” Alias asked, unconvinced by Finder’s story. “Olive saw you there.”

“Trying to find the seed in order to destroy it. I was hoping that Coral and Moander would believe I was possessed. I got them to tell me where the seed was. I knew Olive was outside, looking into the hut. I made sure she heard that Akabar’s blood was the seed they were looking for, and I said it in Realms common so Olive was certain to understand me.”

“Olive heard you,” Alias admitted. Finally convinced that Finder had tried to help, she lowered Dragonbait’s sword from the bard’s chest and spoke the command word to extinguish the blade’s flame. “She told Akabar and me,” the swordswoman whispered.

“Then why didn’t you get Akabar away from here?” Finder demanded.

“He refused to leave,” Alias sobbed. “He insisted on fighting Moander, whatever the risk.”

“The fool!” Finder muttered.

Grypht shook his head. “Akabar did what he felt he must. If you aren’t possessed,” the wizard asked Finder, “why were you so anxious that Dragonbait not cure you? The vines of possession will eat away at your insides.”

“But the vines won’t kill me,” Finder said. “Their magic will make me immortal.”

Grypht shook his head, appalled at the bard’s acceptance of so bizarre a life. “We need Finder’s help to teleport my tribe out of the vale. For the time being, I’m prepared to trust him.”

“Moander has reached the uncut forest!” Olive said, hurrying back into the cave. “I think it’s time we got out of here.”

“I’ll teleport us all back to my keep,” Finder said. “We’ll be safe there for the time being.”

Anxious to leave before Moander got any closer, Olive forgot her earlier fear of Finder and was prepared to accept his offer immediately. She reached up to take his hand.

“What about the saurials?” Alias asked the bard angrily.

“I can make several trips back for them,” Finder replied. “The stone’s power is endless.”

“And what then?” Alias demanded. The rage that had been boiling up inside her ever since Akabar had disappeared into the pile spewed out at the bard. “What happens when we’ve all fled and Moander starts crossing the mountains? Do we begin to evacuate the dales?” the swordswoman demanded. “And after the dales, the Elven Woods? Cormyr? Can you take the Realms to a safe place, Finder?”

Tears began to stream down Alias’s cheeks as her voice rose. “Akabar is inside that creature, and it’s your fault. If you had used the para-elemental ice in your silly stone to put the saurials into a torpor, then Akabar would never have gotten near that pile. He’d be here with us now, and all the saurials would be safe. But your stone was more important than people. You never loved anyone but yourself. Now that you have your precious immortality and your magical stone, why bother to help us? You don’t need us. We mean nothing to you.”

“Alias,” Finder whispered, “that’s not true. I love you with all my heart.”

“No, you don’t,” the swordswoman declared. “You don’t understand the first thing about love.”

Finder was silent for a moment, too ashamed to argue further. All the things Alias had said were true except one. He did love her, even enough to admit he was wrong. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I should have used the stone before. It’s too late now, I know, but I’m sorry.”

“Prove it! Release the ice from the stone!” Alias replied vehemently. “Use it to stab Moander through the heart and freeze it to death! Then we can rescue Akabar!”

“I’m … not sure that will work,” Finder said hesitantly.

“It just might,” Grypht interjected hurriedly, “if we can attach the para-elemental ice to something that can withstand that much cold … a magical weapon or staff, perhaps.”

Dragonbait took his sword from Alias and offered it to the wizard, hilt first.

“Para-elemental ice on a magically flaming sword?” Grypht said dubiously. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Finder looked at Alias’s tear-stained face. Now he had some idea how she had felt when he had scolded her for the heresy of changing his songs. The bard struggled against an uncontrollable desire to make her smile again. In the end, he lost the struggle. He drew out his dagger. “This belonged to my grandfather,” he said. “It has certain power against evil creatures.”

“That should do nicely,” Grypht said. “Now, do we break the stone to get at the ice?” he asked.

“Can you levitate the stone?” the bard asked, holding out the finder’s stone.

Grypht nodded and pulled out a tiny golden wire from the pocket of his robe. As he concentrated on summoning the magical power to him, the smell of fresh-mown hay began to fill the cave. “Rise,” he said, shaping the wire into a scoop and lifting it into the air. The wire glittered and vanished as Finder’s magical stone drifted out of the bard’s hands.

From outside came the sound of splintering wood as Moander made its way through the forest below the cave, ingesting the trees into its body.

Finder tapped on his magical stone with the tip of his dagger until he had positioned it so that the long axis was perpendicular to the floor. “Olive,” the bard said calmly, “I need your steady halfling hands and your sweet halfling voice. Are you still wearing that ring I gave you?”

“Yes,” Olive said. “Do you want it back?”

“No. I want you to be wearing it for protection. Take this one, too, to keep the chill off.” The bard slid a second ring from one of his fingers and slipped it on Olive’s finger beside the one he’d given her earlier.

He looked up at Alias. “I need you to sing a high C,” he said, “on cue. Hold it until I motion for you to stop.”

Alias nodded.

“Olive, a high G for you, and hold it.” Finder motioned for the two women to begin. As their voices blended in a chord, the bard began singing a series of random atonal notes. Then he motioned for the women to stop. He tapped his dagger on the side of the Finder’s stone, and a tiny crack appeared at the center of the stone along the facet lines.

From outside, the sound of the toppling trees and the rumbling of the ground as Moander advanced grew so loud the adventurers had to raise their voices to be heard. They could hear Moander’s cacophonous chanting of its name clearly now. Dragonbait moved to the cave entrance to keep an eye on the god’s progress.

Handing his dagger to the halfling, Finder ordered her, “Hold it so the blade is level to the ground.” Olive held the dagger out with both hands.

The bard lifted the top of his magical stone away from the bottom. A terrible cold filled the cave instantly, causing their breath to steam. The water droplets on the walls of the cave froze; the ferns on the ground turned gray and brittle, and the swallows nesting in various nooks and crannies began twittering in alarm. Alias’s arms began to turn blue and she started to shiver uncontrollably. Grypht moved toward the mouth of the cave, where the air was warmer. Protected by Finder’s ring of cold resistance, Olive didn’t notice the chill. Finder simply ignored it.

“Alias, take this,” the bard said, handing the swordswoman the top of the stone.

Alias took the piece of crystal gingerly, expecting it to be cold, too, but it felt as warm as Finder’s hand.

Sticking out of the center of the bottom of the stone, like a needle in a pincushion, was a sliver of ice as clear as glass. Finder held his hands beneath the stone and ordered Grypht to release it from his levitation spell.

“Done,” the wizard replied from the mouth of the cave.

Finder knelt down in front of Olive. He huffed once on the tip of the dagger blade to cover it with moisture. “Steady now, Olive girl,” he said. He tilted the stone so that the tip of the ice needle touched the dagger’s groove. As he slipped the stone away, the needle of ice fell into the groove, with the end of the needle hanging out over the tip of the dagger. Finder breathed on the blade once again to freeze the needle of para-elemental ice to the dagger’s blade.

The bard stood up and tossed the bottom of the finder’s stone in his hand. “There may just be enough power in this piece to light my way to Akabar,” he explained to the swordswoman. “If I succeed in destroying Moander but fail to come out of the pile, you must try to use the top half of the stone to locate the mage.”

“Can’t you put both halves together again?” Alias asked.

Finder shook his head. “Never again,” he said.

Suddenly Alias realized that Finder’s immortality might not protect him from death at the hands of a god. He might never come back to her. She’d asked him to sacrificed his stone, but she didn’t want him to sacrifice his life.

“Let me take the dagger,” the swordswoman said. “Moander is as much my enemy as anyone’s.”

Finder shook his head. “No. This is my responsibility,” he said firmly.

The walls and floor of the cave began to shake from Moander’s approach. The swallows in the cave abandoned their nests and swarmed outside, fleeing from the quaking mountain.

“Set the dagger down carefully, Olive,” Finder ordered. “Then I’ll have to ask for my ring of cold resistance back. Keep the ring of protection. As careless as you are, you need it.”

Olive laid the dagger down in the frozen ferns. Finder took back the ring of cold resistance and slipped it on his finger. Hastily Olive pulled out the silver Harpers pin Finder had given her. As the bard bent over to pick up the dagger, Olive fastened the pin to his tunic, saying, “Wear this for luck.”

“But I gave you that pin. It’s yours,” Finder objected.

“Then you’d better bring it back to me, hadn’t you?” the halfling said with a wink.

“Take care, little Lady Luck,” Finder whispered, kissing her gently on the forehead. He stood and looked into Alias’s eyes. “Remember, no matter what happens, I love you,” he said. Touching the sigil of Moander on her arm, he promised, “I will rid you of this.”

“Moander is starting to move faster!” Dragonbait shouted. “You must hurry!”

Finder kissed Alias’s cheek and rushed to the mouth of the cave. The pile of greenery was only a hundred feet away, and the top of the pile was now level with the cave entrance. Eight long tendrils, tipped with fanged mouths, snaked out from the god’s body toward the cave.

Grypht drew back into the cave and began chanting.

Dragonbait drew his sword, prepared to fend off the god, but Finder pushed the paladin back inside the cave. “Look after Alias,” he shouted over the din.

Three of the tendrils snaked out and grabbed Finder, pulling him from the cave entrance. The remaining tendrils reached into the cave after Grypht and the others, but the slimy vines slammed into an invisible wall of force cast by the wizard. The saurials and the two women were safe for the moment, but they could only watch helplessly as the bard was drawn toward Moander’s body.

As Moander constricted its tendrils around Finder’s limbs and torso, the bard forced himself to remain calm. There was a protective enchantment on the sliver of para-elemental ice that helped insulate the ice. He still needed to dispel that enchantment. The tendrils drew Finder to the top of Moander’s body, which now stood several hundred feet above the ground. The decaying greenery steamed about the bard, giving off a pungent, earthy smell. Hundreds of tendrils tipped with eyes and mouths waved over the surface of the god. One tendril, lipped with the eye of a deer, snaked toward him, studying him curiously. “You are possessed by my vines,” its mouth declared. “Why don’t you obey?”

Finder laughed. “Because I’m not your servant, Darkbringer! I’m your doom.” The bard sang out a shrill note, dispelling the enchantment about the para-elemental ice, leaving it completely exposed to the air. Cold shot out from tip of Finder’s dagger in a blast of icy wind.

The mouths shrieked as the tendrils supporting them froze and turned as brittle as glass. Finder slashed at the constricting vines with his dagger, and they shattered into pieces.

Moander realized immediately it had made a mistake. The god had instructed its minions to channel most of its power into protecting it from fire, leaving it vulnerable to freezing. The para-elemental cold emanating from the tip of the bard’s dagger was a dangerous threat. The god abandoned the idea of capturing the bard. Survival had higher priority.

As Finder hovered above the god’s body, holding out half of his magical stone, he thought of Akabar Bel Akash. The arguments the two of them had had over the finder’s stone brought the Turmish mage’s face readily to the bard’s mind. A beam of bright light sprang out from the piece of the stone, aimed at the center of the the pile of rotting vegetation.

The eyes at the end of the tendrils blinked shut in the light. Without warning, a whole tree shot out from the god’s body, aimed right at Finder. The bard dodged to one side—right into an ambush.

Finder suddenly found himself pelted with spears fashioned from the trunks of sapling trees. Several struck him glancing blows, then bounced away, but one pierced his thigh. The bard eased the spear out of his flesh. It was time to stop being a target. With his dagger held out before him, Finder plunged toward Moander, following the beacon light from the piece of magical stone.

The vegetation on the surface of the god’s body shriveled as the bard approached it and crackled like glass as he shot straight through it into Moander’s interior. The bard could hear the mouths of the god’s body shrieking in pain. As the pile shifted and tumbled, Finder was slammed about like a die rattling in a cup. With every tumble, he crashed through frozen branches and vines and corpses of wild animals.

Suddenly the tumbling stopped. Finder pulled himself together and began to follow the light from the finder’s stone once again. The deeper he moved into the god’s body, the warmer it became, so the cold from the para-elemental ice took longer to freeze the vines that tried to choke and entangle the bard. Finder was forced to expend more and more energy slashing and hacking with his dagger to clear his path.

The bard began to feel weak from exhaustion and the blood he’d lost from the wound in his leg. Just as he began to consider abandoning his quest, the beam from the piece of the finder’s stone struck a patch of darkness it couldn’t penetrate. Finder halted in surprise and fear.

The patch of darkness was shaped like a doorway, and Finder recognized it immediately. It was the gate between the Lost Vale and the plane of Tarterus, the gate that Moander had used to transport its saurial minions to the Realms. The entire body of the god had been built around the gate.

Moander’s normal abode was the Abyss, but one could reach the Abyss from Tarterus. Moander must have sucked Akabar through the gate, through Tarterus, to its abode in the Abyss.

A small, brilliant gem near the base of the gate caught the bard’s eye. He picked it up to examine it more closely. It was the shape and color of a drop of blood, and it felt warm in his hand. Very warm. It seemed to throb with great power. Could it be the seed that had resurrected Moander? Finder wondered. What would happen to the god’s new body if it was separated from the seed by a gate?

The bard tried to toss the gem through the gate, but it bounced back. It would have to be carried through by a living person, he realized. Finder retrieved the gem and slipped it inside his boot. He approached the gate, but he hesitated before stepping through it.

In his youth, the bard had visited the ethereal and astral planes a number of times. As an older man, he’d investigated several of the elemental and para-elemental planes. As a prisoner of the Harpers, he’d been exiled to the region between the positive energy plane and a quasi-elemental plane. The thought of stepping through a gate leading to an outer plane, though, filled him with horror—especially so fell a region as Tarterus, where, the sages said, creatures from the Abyss and from Hades constantly fought one another for control of the land, foul and poisonous as it was, and enslaved any beings they discovered.

Dragonbait had leaped through such a gate into Tarterus to stalk evil creatures; that was how the paladin had come to be captured by the fiend Phalse and brought to the Realms. The paladin had suffered greatly at Phalse’s hands, but he had emerged from Tarterus alive. Moander’s saurial minions had survived their forced march through the plane, as well. The bard chided himself aloud for his trepidity. “Surely Finder Wyvernspur can brave its dangers.” It would be easier than facing Alias without Akabar at his side, he decided.

Finder took a deep breath and flew through the dark hole, following the light of the piece of finder’s stone.

As Alias, Olive, Dragonbait, and Grypht watched Finder dive into Moander’s body, they were filled with hope. The god cried out in agony and lost its balance on the mountain slope, tumbling down the slope into the vale, shedding great chunks of its body. Then it lay still. The adventurers emerged from the cave and for a long time continued their vigil over the god’s fallen body, but neither Finder nor Akabar emerged from the mass of greenery.

Alias was beginning to consider climbing into the vale to do battle with the god herself, when suddenly she felt as if a burning brand had touched her sword arm. She looked down at her arm and shouted with joy, “It’s gone! Moander’s sigil is gone! The god is dead!”

Dragonbait clutched at his chest from the pain the disappearing sigil had caused him, then embraced the swordswoman.

“Finder’s destroyed Moander!” Olive shouted with glee.

“No … he has only destroyed the body Moander occupied in this world,” Grypht reminded the others, and his words cast a shadow of foreboding on their elation.