Jedidiah nodded.
Joel let out his breath. He thought he'd been asked to join Finder's church by a charming old bard-priest, when all along it was Finder himself. "Why me?" he asked.
"Why did I ask you to be a priest?" Jedidiah inquired.
Joel nodded.
"Well, I wanted to get the best people I could find-people who already believed strongly in transforming art. I'd watched you in Berdusk, arguing with your teachers, trying to break the constraints of traditional music. You already understood what it took me centuries to understand. Also, you were well rounded, took an interest in everything. You reminded me a little of myself when I was younger, except you're modest."
"But why all the special attention? Why did you follow me? Didn't you think I could make it here on my own?" Joel asked. He felt like a failure, since he knew he would have died without Jedidiah's help.
"As I told you earlier, the journey wasn't a test to see if you could get here on your own. It was a measure of your desire to be part of my church. And I didn't actually follow you. One of my godly abilities is always knowing what's happening to any of my priests," Jedidiah explained. "I heard you call for my blessing in Daggerdale, but you took care of the Zhents without needing of my help. I considered stepping in when Bear betrayed you to the Xvimists, but Xvim keeps an eye on his priests, too. If I interfered with one of them, Xvim would interfere with me. I needed to be more subtle in my efforts to help you escape. I don't dare risk attracting Xvim's attention. To put it bluntly, Bear's god can beat up your god. When you were imprisoned in the
Temple in the Sky and called on me, I sent you the vision and a piece of magic, but you escaped, with your friend, on your own."
Jedidiah sighed. "I haven't been a god all that long. I still long for mortal things sometimes. As I explained to Copperbloom," he said, "I only began to travel with you because I got caught up in the adventure. I wanted to find out what a priestess of Bane was doing with a spelljammer. I wanted to watch you thwart the Xvimists. I wanted to be part of your journey. If I hadn't been such a fool, if I'd just returned to the Lost Vale after you escaped, the dark stalker would have lost you and you would have been just fine."
"But why all the special attention?" Joel asked again. "You must have better things to do with your time."
"Joel," Jedidiah said softly, "you're my priest. You are my strength. I told you that before."
"What about your other priests?" Joel asked.
Jedidiah looked up at Copperbloom. A vanilla scent rose from the saurial priestess as she clicked with what Joel was sure was laughter.
This is it," Jedidiah said, making a circling motion with his finger to indicate the occupants of the room. "You, me, Copperbloom. This is my only temple-so far. There are several little shrines, most of them set up by people you spoke to on your journey here. More than a few artists have seen fit to evoke my name, giving me a little more power. It's going to take some years, though, before our church gets much larger. For one thing, we have to proceed with caution. There are some gods, far more powerful than I, who don't like the competition I represent."
"Like Oghma and Milil," Joel guessed.
Jedidiah nodded. "The Lord of Knowledge and the Lord of Song are afraid I'll be poaching bards and artists away from their following. There's also the power I took from Moander. I have some control over the cycle of life-growth, rot, and rebirth. Chauntea, the Great Mother, and Lathander, the Morninglord, are both involved in rebirth and growth. Which leaves me control over rot-not something most people have a tremendous attraction to, unless you happen to be a former worshiper of Moander."
"So what will you do?" Joel asked.
"Well, I still plan to work with everything over which I've been given dominion," Jedidiah said. "But I need to proceed carefully. I need to build a strong framework for my church-one that other churches can't bring down easily. That's why I've searched out and set up two very strong supports." Jedidiah indicated Joel and Copperbloom with his hands.
Joel bowed his head humbly. Then he looked back up at Jedidiah. "Why didn't you tell me all this in Berdusk?" he asked. "Why the disguise as an old priest?"
"There's lots of reasons for the disguise. I can't really hide from other gods, but at least I can try not to attract their attention, or the attention of their churches. Also, I don't want a lot of people around me vying for my attention while I'm trying to get things done."
"But why didn't you tell me until now?" Joel asked, feeling cheated that he'd been left out of the secret. "Copperbloom knew, didn't she?"
"Copperbloom is a special case," Jedidiah explained. "I spent my first few years as a god roaming the planes, savoring my freedom and immortality. Copperbloom was one of my first worshipers. She called me to the Realms, pointed out that I had responsibilities to the few followers I did have. Without her encouragement and pestering, there would be no church of Finder. As for telling you, I just did."
"But you let me think you were someone else for a year," Joel complained, still feeling left out.
"Well, that's another one of those mortal things I still long for sometimes," Jedidiah said.
"What?" Joel asked, confused.
"Friendship," the god replied.
Joel lowered his eye, feeling ungracious.
"I genuinely enjoyed your company, our talks, our debates," Jedidiah explained. "I didn't want to spoil things by telling you my true identity right away. It would have changed our relationship. I should have told you as soon as I found out about the dark stalker sniffing out my power. Then you wouldn't have worried about me. But I was bitten by the adventuring bug, and I was happy traveling with a friend. So I came up with the half-cracked scheme of hiding most of my power in my half of the finder's stone, knowing full well how vulnerable it would make me."
"And the banelich discovered that vulnerability," Joel noted, "and intends to exploit it."
"Yes," Jedidiah replied with chagrin. "I should have teleported here to siphon off my power into the saurial's half of the finder's stone, then had Grypht teleport me back, but I got cocky. I sensed the banelich was approaching, but I thought I would be a match for it, even without most of my power. Unfortunately, the power I put in the stone included my godly ability to know everything that was going on around me. I could no longer sense the banelich's presence. I couldn't even sense Walinda when she picked my pockets. It never occurred to me that anyone could steal the stone so easily. I'm just too reckless sometimes." He looked down at his hands and sighed. Then he looked up with a foolish grin and asked, "How does it feel to discover that your god is a fool?"
Joel couldn't think of a fitting reply. Instead, he asked, "Isn't there some way to retrieve your half of the finder's stone from the banelich without handing over the Hand of Bane?" Jedidiah shook his head, but Joel argued on, irritated that the idea was being dismissed so quickly, "But you're a god. He's just the essence of a god."
"I'm still immortal and very strong. I can cast some simple spells. To a mortal, I may seem powerful, but to a banelich… we may just be evenly matched. And even if I could defeat the banelich in combat, I couldn't prevent it from breaking the stolen half of the finder's stone and destroying all the power within it."
"What about other gods?" Joel asked. "Wouldn't any of them help you?"
Jedidiah snorted derisively. "The other gods would be just as likely to take the power I stored in the finder's stone for themselves."
"Even Tymora? You said that she was Finder's-I mean your-ally."
Jedidiah said nothing for a moment, then muttered, "I really don't want to ask her. Not yet, at any rate."
Joel was about to ask, "Why not?" when it occurred to him that Jedidiah was embarrassed. He didn't want to lose face before the goddess by admitting how foolish he'd been.