The beast picked itself off the floor, leaning heavily on its staff, and lumbered from the courtroom and down the hallway.
Kyre stood up and turned to Morala. “Alert the guard!” the half-elf ordered. “I’m going after the monster!”
“Breck’s injuries are serious!” Morala called to her. “Alert the guard while I tend to him.” Morala looked up when Kyre did not reply. The half-elf was already chasing after the beast. “Kyre! Come back here!” the priestess shouted after her, but the half-elf did not return.
Morala set her jaw angrily. “Foolish girl,” she muttered. As the priestess of Milil laid her hands on the ranger’s pale face and began humming a healing spell, she noted a peculiar mixture of odors wafting through the room. The smell of burning cloth, she realized, was the result of Kyre’s burning hands spell. But where, Morala wondered, did the smell of fresh-mown hay and baking bread come from?
Olive stood at the door to Finder’s cell, fidgeting nervously. “I know what I heard!” she insisted. “Something roared out there.”
“Olive, this is the Tower of Ashaba,” Finder reminded the halfling. “The home of Mourngrym, Lord of Shadowdale. The guards aren’t going to allow any wild beasts to roam the halls.”
“How do you know? After all, they let me roam the halls,” Olive argued.
Finder grinned at the halfling’s indirect comparison of herself to a wild beast. “Come away from the door, Olive,” he said patiently. “We don’t want the guards to see you in here.”
“I’m just going to take a peek,” Olive insisted, opening the door a few inches more. She tried to slip out of the cell, but an invisible barrier across the threshold blocked her escape. “It’s blocked!” Olive hissed angrily. “It’s a one-way door. Why didn’t you tell me I was walking into a trap?”
Finder raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I didn’t know, Olive. Really.” He began to laugh.
“What’s so damned funny?” Olive demanded.
“The irony of it all,” Finder explained. “I thought Elminster trusted me, but he knew me well enough to take extra precautions. He must have made the door one-way to catch anyone who might try to help me escape from the cell.”
“I still fail to see any humor in it,” Olive said coldly.
“Olive, Olive, Olive. I told you. The finder’s stone can get past any barrier Elminster may have cast to try to prevent me from leaving this room. In his wildest dreams, the sage couldn’t have imagined you’d find the stone and bring it to me.”
“You could put my mind to rest by using the stone to get us out right now,” Olive said.
Finder shook his head from side to side. “We’ll leave after the Harpers have made their decision. Not a measure sooner or later,” he said. He laid the finder’s stone down on the table and picked up his chordal horn.
Olive leaned back against the wall beside the prison cell door and slumped to the floor. Finder began playing a soldier’s marching melody.
Olive sniffed the air. Although exit from the prison cell was magically blocked, the smell of fresh-baked bread wafted into the cell. The halfling’s stomach rumbled in response. “I should have eaten a bigger breakfast,” she muttered.
Something in the hallway clomped toward the door. “Would the guards be bringing you something to eat about now?” Olive whispered.
Finder lowered his horn from his mouth. “What are you talking a—” The bard halted in midword as the door of the prison cell flew open. A huge green lizard in charred robes bent low and squeezed through the doorway. The creature was dripping blood from a shallow wound on its head, and the scales on its hands were black and blistered.
Olive stood cautiously, trying not to attract the beast’s attention, while Finder grabbed the finder’s stone from the table and backed away from the door.
“Don’t come a step farther!” the bard ordered the beast.
The smell of baking bread was overwhelming. Olive gasped. A flicker of memory burst into enlightenment.
Alerted to the halfling’s presence by Olive’s gasp, the lizard turned to face her. It pointed a clawed finger at her.
“Don’t touch her!” Finder barked sharply. “Back away from it slowly, Olive,” he whispered to the halfling.
“It’s all right,” Olive said, showing more courage than Finder would have ever credited her with possessing. “At least, I think it’s all right,” the halfling added softly. She reached out slowly with one hand and touched the beast’s robes. “Are you a friend of Dragonbait’s?” she asked tentatively.
The beast looked down at the halfling as if it were concentrating on trying to understand her, but it made no reply.
Olive sighed. “Of course. Dragonbait could only understand us because of his link to Alias.” The halfling turned to Finder. “I don’t suppose you speak any Saurial, do you, Finder?” she asked.
Finder eyed the creature suspiciously. “What makes you think this monster’s a saurial? He doesn’t look anything like Dragonbait.”
The halfling raised her eyes to the heavens and muttered, “Humans!” She looked back at Finder with disappointment. “I don’t look anything like you, either,” she pointed out. “And you don’t look anything like Alias, yet we’re all from the Realms. What makes you think all saurials have to look like Dragonbait?”
Finder conceded Olive’s point with a slight nod. “I grant you that it could be a saurial. What makes you think it is?”
“Only two things smell as good as fresh-baked bread,” Olive explained. “Fresh baked bread and angry saurials.”
“Because that’s the smell they use to communicate their anger,” Finder said, recalling now all that Alias had told him about Dragonbait’s scents.
“He doesn’t smell quite so much like bread anymore. I hope that means he’s calming down,” Olive said.
“Yes, but what got him angry in the first place?” Finder asked. “And what’s he doing here?”
“It looks like someone tried to roast him,” Olive said, indicating the beast’s charred clothing and hands. “I imagine that could make him pretty mad.”
From the sleeve of his robe, the beast pulled out a silver medallion on a silk cord and handed it to Olive.
“For me?” Olive asked, her eyes glittering with delight.
The beast tapped the medallion with a claw.
Olive’s eyes widened in astonishment at the design inscribed into the shining metal. “Finder, the picture on this medallion—it’s Dragonbait!” Olive declared, holding out the medallion for the bard to see. “It looks just like him. And that’s his sword—well, the sword he had last year before Alias lost it in the battle with Phalse. This guy knows Dragonbait,” she added, poking a finger at the beast.
“Dragonbait’s at The Old Skull with Alias,” Finder said. “If this overgrown saurial is Dragonbait’s friend, why isn’t he down there raising a mug with Dragonbait? What’s he doing here with us?”
“Maybe Alias and Dragonbait sent him here to rescue you,” Olive suggested as she casually slipped the creature’s medallion into a pocket of her tunic.
Finder looked exceptionally doubtful. “Wait a minute!” the bard said, slapping himself in the forehead. “We don’t have to play guessing games. I have a tongues spell in the stone.” Finder laid his chordal horn on the table and held the finder’s stone out before him. He sang a scale in A-minor. Olive watched, fascinated, as the stone glowed in Finder’s hands and surrounded him with yellow light.
The bard and the lizard stood staring at one another for what seemed to Olive like an eternity, though it was actually no more than a minute. She could detect a collage of scents rising from both the beast and Finder, but she grew bored not knowing what they were discussing. “Well?” the halfling prompted, reminding the other two of her presence.