Alias backtracked to the Shrine of Tyr the Just only to find her entry barred by two heavily armed guards. “Unless it’s life or death,” one informed her, “you’ll have to wait.” Apparently the church of Tyr had hired an adventuring party to deal with a dragon terrorizing the Storm Horn Mountains. The party’s dealings with the monster had been anything but successful. The priests of Tyr were all occupied with healing the survivors and resurrecting the bodies of their comrades who had not been incinerated.
Alias was feeling desperate by the time she screwed up her courage to enter the Towers of Good Fortune, the Temple of Tymora. At least there was no sign on its front gates. She jerked on the bellpull incessantly until a priest appeared, yawning but not cross. A corpulent, pasty-faced man, he waddled forward to unbar the gates.
“I must speak with your superior immediately,” Alias demanded. “This is an emergency.”
The priest bowed as much as his bulk would allow and stood up again, grinning. “Curate Winefiddle at your service. An improbable name for a priest, I know, but we must play the cards we’re dealt, right? I’m afraid, lady, that I’m all there is. His worship and the others are helping the minions of Tyr with healing and resurrecting the would-be dragon slayers. Unless, by my superiors, you meant to have a word with Lady Luck herself. It’s possible, but very costly, in more ways than one. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Alias shook her head. Before the curate could babble anymore, she burst out, “I need a curse removed.”
“Now, that does sound serious. Come in.” Winefiddle ushered her past the silver-plated altar to Tymora, Lady Luck, and into a private study for an audience. An oil lamp lit the musty chamber. Dark oak cabinets lined the walls. A single, high window framed the night sky. The curate offered her a seat and plopped down into a chair beside her.
“Now, tell me about this curse,” he prompted her.
Alias explained how she’d awakened after her unusually long sleep and discovered the tattoo on her arm. At a loss for any other theory, she told him the barkeep’s story that she was a drunk left on the doorstep of The Hidden Lady. Then, she related what had happened when the Turmish merchant-mage had cast a spell to detect magic on the tattoo. “I don’t remember getting it—the tattoo,” she concluded. “I would never have agreed to it, not even drunk. This has to be some sort of stupid prank pulled on me while I was unconscious, but I have no idea who would have done it.”
Alias did not bother to mention her hazy memory of the past few weeks—it was too embarrassing—and she omitted the incident with the lizard as inconsequential.
Curate Winefiddle nodded reassuringly, as if Alias had brought him nothing more troublesome than a kitten with earmites. “No problem,” he declared. “There remains only the question of how you would like to arrange payment?”
Alias knew from experience that her coins were an insufficient “offering.” She pulled out the only real valuable in her money sack—the small, greenish gem.
Winefiddle accepted the terms with a smile and a nod. “No. Don’t put it there,” he admonished her before she set it down on the desk. “Very unlucky. Drop it in the poor box as you leave.”
Alias nodded. Winefiddle began removing a number of tattered scrolls from a cabinet. “The one advantage to serving an adventurer’s goddess,” he yawned as he spoke, “is a steady stream of worshippers in need of your special services, worshippers willing to pay in magical items.”
The cleric stifled another yawn, and Alias gave him a blank look she bestowed on fools she needed to tolerate. As far as she was concerned, clerics were merely puttering quasi-mages who couldn’t cast spells without worrying about converts, theology, relics, and other nonsense. If they weren’t so useful when sickness, famine, and war struck, they would probably have died out altogether, Alias decided, taking their gods with them. Perhaps the gods knew that, and that’s why they put up with the fools.
Winefiddle pulled bundles of scrolls from the cabinet with all the grace of a fishmonger hoisting salmon. He hummed as he checked their tags. Alias sat there as quietly and patiently as possible, wishing she had stopped at another inn for a pouch of decent rum. Finally, the priest pulled two from the lot that seemed to please him.
Despite Alias’s warning of what had happened in The Hidden Lady, Winefiddle wanted to begin with a standard magical detection. He waved aside her objections, insisting, “I need to see this extreme reaction myself. Nothing to be afraid of since we know what to expect this time, right?”
Alias submitted with a grudging sigh. The cleric passed his silver disk of Tymora over her outstretched arm. The words he muttered were different from the Turmish mage’s, but the effect was the same. Alias shuddered as the symbols writhed beneath her skin, and she squinted in anticipation of the bright, sapphire radiance which soon lit every corner of the musty study.
Winefiddle’s eyebrows disappeared into his low hairline, amazed at the brilliance of the glow. Alias clenched her muscles involuntarily, and the rays swayed about the room like signal beacons, bouncing off the darkened window and the priest’s silver holy symbol.
The glow peaked and began to ebb slowly. Winefiddle cleared his throat nervously a few times before he reached for the larger of the two scrolls on the desk. In the blue light he looked less pasty and more powerful, but Alias was beginning to wonder if he knew what he was doing.
“You really think that piece of paper’s going to be strong enough?” she asked doubtfully. Maybe I should put this off until morning, she thought. The Shrine of Oghma or the Temple of Deneir might have more competent help.
“This scroll was written by the hand of the Arch-cleric Mzentul himself. It should remove these horrors without delay.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully and added, “It being such an old and irreplaceable scroll, perhaps you wouldn’t mind, should you come into further funds …”
Alias gave an impatient nod, and Winefiddle undid the scroll’s leather binding. With one hand on her arm and the other holding the scroll, he began to read.
“Dominus, Deliverus,” he intoned. A cold shudder ran down Alias’s spine, a feeling quickly overwhelmed by a burning sensation on her forearm. The pain was familiar, but she could not remember why. Is this how the magics felt that put the damned thing here?
The fire on her arm intensified, and she clamped her jaw shut to avoid crying out. She couldn’t have been in more pain if molten metal had been poured over her sword arm.
“Ketris, Ogos, Diam—” Winefiddle continued, breathing heavily, his teeth clenched. Alias wondered if he could feel the heat of her arm beneath his hand.
Light beams arced from Alias’s arm like water from a fountain, but instead of spilling to the floor, they wrapped around her until she was surrounded by blue light.
Suddenly, she wrenched her arm away from the cleric’s grasp and reached down to her boot for her throwing dagger. As if she was in some horrible nightmare her arm moved of its own accord, like a viper she could not control.
The priest had ignored the swordswoman’s arm jerking from his grasp. It wasn’t really necessary that he hold onto it, and he could not afford to lose his concentration and break off his incantation. “Mistra, Hodah, Mzentil, Coy!” he finished triumphantly.
Winefiddle looked up at his client. She was still bathed in a blue light from the symbols, and her face was a mask of rage. A low, feral snarl issued from her lips. He caught the flash of silver as Alias thrust the knife toward him. With an unexpected dexterity, he shifted sideways.
The weapon sliced through his robes and bit into his flesh, but it was stopped by his lowest rib.
Alias looked down in horror at her hand—it moved with its own volition. Blood from the dagger bubbled and burned as it dripped over the glowing tattoo.