The banelich remained silent for several moments. Then he asked Jedidiah, "So how do you propose we enter Sigil?"
"Like everyone else does… via a portal. We make our way toward the Palace of Judgment, where I have some modest contacts who can arrange for us to use one of their portals. If we are where I think we are, not far from the city of Bedlam, we can reach the palace by keeping the spire on our starboard bow."
"For how long?" the banelich asked.
Jedidiah shrugged. "For as long as it takes. It's impossible to judge something like that in this plane. It could be a few days, or it could take a month. The sooner we get moving, the sooner we'll get there."
The banelich studied Jedidiah in silence for several long moments, as if trying to detect any hints of treachery or falsehood. At last he nodded. "We will attempt entering Sigil your way." He turned to head back to the cabin. Walinda followed behind him.
"Oh, there's just one more thing," Jedidiah called out.
The banelich turned and waited for Jedidiah to continue.
"You know you probably can't enter Sigil with us."
The banelich drew back as if it had been slapped.
"No gods can enter, remember? Some great power prohibits the entry of all gods. I'm willing to bet that holds true for a god's essence as well. You won't be able to pass through the portal."
“I had not forgotten," the banelich replied coolly. "My slave will act on my behalf and oversee the recovery of the hand."
"But, my lord," Walinda protested, "if I leave you-"
The banelich whirled with its skeletal arm raised as if to deliver a blow to his priestess. Walinda winced involuntarily and said nothing more. The banelich turned and strode back into the cabin. Walinda hesitated on the deck, obviously uncertain whether her god would welcome her presence.
"For the essence of a god, your lord seems pretty uninformed," Jedidiah noted. "It's common knowledge among travelers of the planes that you can't enter Sigil except by means of a portal. You know, it seemed to me your master forgot it couldn't come with us, too. I wonder if some of the magic holding it together isn't already being neutralized."
Walinda turned and scowled at the older priest "Perhaps my lord was just testing you," she retorted Then she hurried after the banelich.
The ship rose a few feet from the ground and glided in the direction Jedidiah had suggested.
"So does this mean you can't get into Sigil either?" Joel whispered.
"Not as I am," Jedidiah said. "But I think there's a trick I might be able to use to get in. It's reckless, but it just might work."
According to Grypht, Joel recalled, recklessness was Jedidiah's other major fault. "What is it?" he asked.
"I'll tell you later, when we can be sure of our privacy," Jedidiah promised.
The rest of that day Joel spent at the ship's rail, amazed by the geological oddities that made up the landscape-vertically stratified rocks resembling tomes on a wizard's shelf, a lake filled with multicolored geysers, a hand carved of granite rising from the earth, Clouds of all colors formed out -of nowhere and disappeared just as mysteriously. Although there was no sun to set, night came on gradually, the blue sky darkening to indigo, then black. No moon or stars shone in the darkness, but the land seemed to glow with its own pale light.
Sometime after dark, Jedidiah pulled out the finder's stone and held it out. A beacon of light shot out from the stone in a direction a few degrees to the left of their current heading.
"We're a little off course, but nothing that can't be corrected in the morning. Time to get some sleep."
If not for the ship being a shrine to Bane and the task that awaited them, Joel might have found the next two days of travel almost pleasant. The cruise was smooth, and he and Jedidiah had plenty of leisure time. When they weren't eating or sleeping, they watched the scenery, practiced spells, sang, or talked.
Except for checking up on them several times a day, the priestess avoided the two men. At first Joel felt relieved that Walinda was no longer showing any interest in him, but that left him to wonder why. Was the banelich forbidding her to communicate with the men as punishment, or perhaps out of fear that she might grow too close to them and betray her master? If keeping her distance was Walinda's idea, what did she hope to accomplish? Was she punishing herself? Was she hoping to prove her loyalty and thus curry the favor of her master?
The banelich had given them the run of the ship, save for the captain's chart room where the creature usually stayed and the crew quarters where Walinda slept. According to Jas, whom Jedidiah had questioned in the Lost Vale, the upper decks had been sheered off when Jas and her crew were escaping from the illithids. Joel explored all that was left of the ship-the lower deck, the cargo hold, and the roofless battle deck. Everything of value had been stripped away, no doubt by Walinda's followers. It was during their second night in the Outlands, while he was poking around the ruined battle deck, that Joel discovered the spy hole.
There was a square of floorboards that was cleaner than the rest of the deck, as if someone had pried up a bench or a storage box. In the center of the square, a bottle cork filled an eye-sized knothole in a floorboard. Curious, Joel pulled at the cork. Beneath the knothole, someone had drilled through the subflooring and the ceiling of the cabin below. Cautiously Joel got down on his stomach and put his eye to the hole.
Some mechanism or magic gave the bard a panoramic view of the whole room below. He found himself staring into the captain's map room, where the banelich sat in state on a throne of iron and silver. From his discussions with Jedidiah, Joel realized that the throne had to be the ship's spelljamming helm, the magical artifact used to power the ship. The banelich looked up at the ceiling, seemingly straight at Joel.
With a sharp intake of breath, Joel pulled away from the hole and froze. After a few moments' thought, Joel realized the undead creature couldn't possibly have seen him. He peered back down the spy hole.
The banelich held the stolen half of the finder's stone in its lap, stroking the yellow gemstone greedily The gem sparkled in the light given off from a nearby brazier.
Walinda stepped forward. The priestess wore the same black velvet gown she'd worn the night she'd stolen the finder's stone. Her hair hung down her back, loose and shining. She set a golden bowl down in the brazier. The banelich set the finder's stone in the bowl. Walinda rolled up the sleeve of her left arm.
Taking the priestess's arm, the banelich ran its fingertips along her veins. Black marks appeared where the banelich touched her. Walinda winced and clenched her teeth, but she didn't utter a sound. Like a snake striking out, the banelich sunk its teeth into Walinda's wrist and tightened its jaws into her flesh until blood began to flow from her arm. Walinda's body jerked, but once again she didn't make a sound.
The lich sat up straight again, licking the blood from its teeth with its black tongue. It held Walinda's bleeding arm over the golden bowl in the brazier. Walinda's blood poured over the finder's stone and hissed in the bottom of the warmed bowl. The bowl began to fill with bubbling, congealing blood. Joel thought he could smell the stench through the floorboards, though it could have been his sickened imagination.
Walinda began to swoon. The banelich released her arm. The priestess sank to the floor and collapsed in a heap.
The banelich fished the finder's stone out of the blood-filled bowl and positioned the gem back into the hole in its skull. With both hands, the undead creature smeared the congealing blood over the stone and his skull. The blood began to glow. When the banelich had finished, new flesh appeared around the hole in its skull, and the finder's stone was covered with a transparent layer of skin that held it more firmly in place.