"I guess you don't need me to rescue you, do you?" Joel asked, noting the paladin had already managed to arm herself.
Holly pulled away from the bard, suddenly uneasy. She peered at the cloaked figure behind him and glared at her. "Who is this?" she hissed.
"Urn, this is Walinda of Bane," the bard said, grabbing at the paladin's arm before she tried anything rash. "She's helping us escape. We've made a truce-just until we get out of here."
"Joel, how could you?" the paladin growled, raising her sword before the priestess. "This woman is a monster."
"Holly, she helped me find you," the bard explained. "I promised her you would honor the truce."
Holly drew back, never taking her eyes off the priestess.
"We have found your friend. Now we must hurry if we are to escape before dawn," Walinda whispered. "The griffon stables are that way," she said, pointing to a staircase.
Joel started moving toward the stairs, pulling Holly with him. He turned to watch Walinda's progress behind them.
"Joel, listen," the paladin hissed, jerking away from the bard. "There is another-"
Joel never heard the rest of Holly's words. He watched in horror as a harpy with a drawn sword came swooping down on the party.
The bard threw himself at Walinda, knocking her to the ground before she was skewered by their attacker.
Joel scrambled back to his feet and drew his sword. In the large, high-ceilinged room, the harpy had just enough space to swoop around in a circle and make a second attack run on them. Joel raised his weapon, but then he recognized the attacker. It was the winged woman Walinda had offered to the Banites.
Behind him, he could hear Walinda muttering a spell. Confused and uncertain, Joel nonetheless kept his vow and stood guard over the priestess. Blue lines of power streaked from Walinda's palms and arced about the winged woman's sword.
The winged woman cried out in rage and dropped her weapon. The blade made an alarming ringing sound on the stone floor. Joel lowered his own weapon, but the winged woman kept on coming, swooping past the bard and landing on the priestess. In an instant, she had wrapped her hands about Walinda's small throat.
With one hand, Walinda grabbed at her attacker's thumbs while the other hand clawed at her face, drawing blood.
Joel was about to put a sword to the winged woman's throat when Holly slammed into him. "No! Jas is an ally!" the paladin declared. Joel looked down at the two women brawling on the floor. Now he realized that it must have been Holly who had repaired the damage done to the winged woman. They needed to reach a compromise quickly.
"Then help me pull her off Walinda, and I'll keep Walinda away," he said.
Together the paladin and the bard managed to pull Jas from the priestess's throat. Joel shoved himself between the two, holding back Walinda, trusting Holly to keep the winged woman from attacking him.
"I take it you two have met," the bard said. He kept his voice calm, despite his worry that the noise of the battle might have awakened other cultists, or worse, alerted the eye tyrant.
"Murderess!" Jas hissed once Holly had helped her to her feet.
"Ah, Pigeon Girl," Walinda taunted. She stood up and rubbed the bruises about her throat. To Joel, she said, "Is this the measure of your protection, Poppin?"
"Enough," Joel snapped. "I made a pact with Walinda," he explained to the winged woman.
"You're a fool to trust her!" Jas growled. "You should kill her before she betrays us to the cultists."
"She won't do that," Joel argued. "She was a prisoner, too. She helped me find Holly." "How?" Holly asked suspiciously.
"I used a spell to detect goodness," Walinda replied, addressing only Holly, ignoring Jas completely. "In this place, your quaint purity stands out like an ogre at a halfling picnic."
"It's some trick," Holly insisted. "Bane is dead. She can't call on him for spells."
"For my part," Walinda said, now speaking only to Joel, "I am prepared to include this winged deformity in our bargain, if only for expediency's sake, even though I know I cannot trust her with my life."
"You have no one but yourself to blame," Holly retorted angrily. "You murdered her friends."
"Cut it out!" Joel cried, and his voice echoed through the large room, startling all three women. "If you all don't stop arguing, I'll just go back to my cell, where at least there was some peace and quiet." Joel couldn't tell which made him more nervous, the glare of hatred Jas gave him or the mocking, chastened bow of Walinda's head. "We are all going the same way," he said. "We need to stick together for safety."
Holly sighed and nodded. "You're right," she said. "Let's go."
Walinda began climbing the stairs and the bard followed.
"You will have your chance to bring her to justice as soon as we escape," Holly whispered to Jas.
Jas breathed out heavily, as if venting her fury and frustration. She gave the paladin a curt nod and motioned for her to go next. The winged woman took up the rear guard, her fists still clenched in rage.
The landing at the top of the stairs led to three other sets of stairs. An especially steep set led down into the darkness. A breeze wafted upward, laden with the odor of a menagerie.
"The griffons are stabled below," Walinda explained.
"Yes, I've got my bearings now," Joel replied.
"I can't believe they haven't posted any guards," Holly muttered.
"They feel too secure in the unassailability of their flying fortress with their Zhentarim allies below," Walinda noted. She pulled out her magical light gem and started down the steps. Joel pulled out his own magically lit stone and followed, careful to keep himself between the priestess and Jas. A push down these steps could result in more than a serious injury.
In the stable below, four griffons lay sleeping with their heads tucked beneath their wings. Each one was shackled by a chain running from a ring in the floor to a heavy iron band about one of its front legs.
Joel tiptoed past the beasts over to the hole in the floor that the griffon riders used as a doorway to the Temple in the Sky. He peered down. A few torches twinkled on the roof of the Flaming Tower, but it took his eyes some time to adjust to the rest of the dark landscape below. Far to the south, a dark ribbon glittered in the moonlight.
"That should be the River Tesh," Holly said, pointing out the body of water to Jas. "We'll want to head upstream, toward Daggerdale," she explained.
An awful squawk rose from behind them, and they whirled around. Walinda had approached the griffons and awakened them. She held a bucket of chopped meat in her hands, but the creatures were too alarmed by her strangeness to accept food from her. They snapped at the priestess's face with their beaks. Walinda backed away hurriedly. Were it not for the chains on their legs, the griffons might have torn her apart in moments.
The creatures' shrieks and cries echoed through the chamber, and no doubt rose up the staircase. Walinda held up an iron symbol of Bane's hand and intoned some unknown words, but the griffons' clamoring only increased. The priestess looked annoyed, but she continued chanting her spell just out of reach of the creatures' beaks.
Holly rushed to Walinda's side and yanked her away from the griffons. "Stop it," she ordered. "You're going to bring the whole house down on us!"
Walinda spun angrily on the paladin. "We need to subdue these creatures to escape," she retorted.
"No we don't," Holly argued. "Jas can carry us one at a time."
"She would drop me the first chance she had," Walinda said, tossing the bucket of meat at the griffons.
"Like that," Jas agreed, snapping her fingers.
Joel approached the winged beasts, singing the calming spell that had worked so well on Butternut, but to no avail. The griffons were immune to any magic that affected ordinary beasts. They continued shrieking. Joel stepped back. "We've got to get out of here fast," he murmured, "before they send someone to check on the griffons."