“No!” Coral shouted with anguish. “I want no part of his destruction!”
The priests shook their heads disapprovingly.
With a complete sense of hopelessness, Coral envied Kyre her death. It was horrible enough to Coral that she was forced to slaughter sacrifice after sacrifice to further strengthen Moander’s new body. She didn’t wish to live to arrange the conquest of Grypht or the Darkbringer’s reunion with Akabar, but most especially the priestess would rather die than spill the blood of her former lover. “Lady Luck,” she called out to the goddess she had once served, “please let me die!”
Moander’s tendrils of possession used the priestess’s mouth to argue with herself. “No,” Coral was forced to say. “I have something to live for: vengeance. Champion’s insults cannot be forgiven. I must see him humbled.”
As the priestess spoke these words, the scent of roses and baked bread and mint all wafted from the glands at her throat. She felt anger and grief and shame, for she was not able to argue with Moander’s words. She had struggled to forgive the paladin for leaving her, but she had never really succeeded, and imagining him humbled was a source of perverse pleasure to her. Unfortunately this feeling was Moander’s foothold in her mind. The god had twisted and perverted it to seduce her from her natural feelings of compassion. Should Champion actually be brought before her, Coral feared that Moander would have little trouble goading her into harming the paladin.
“Champion despised me when I worshiped the goddess of luck,” Moander made Coral say aloud.
“No,” Coral insisted, trying desperately to keep from growing angry with the paladin. “He merely disapproved. He never despised me.”
“Now that I am Moander’s priestess, he will be horrified and repulsed by me. I will kill him gladly to wipe that look from his face,” Moander said through Coral’s mouth.
The two priests nodded with approval.
Coral thrust her hand over her mouth to stop the god’s hateful words. Inside her head, she heard the god think, And after you slay him, I’ll release your mind to relish your guilt and grief.
Coral clawed at the fin on top of her head in a futile attempt to sweep Moander from her brain.
You only live to serve and amuse me, priestess, he reminded her in her thoughts.
Coral shrieked like a madwoman and crumbled to the ground, sobbing hysterically.
The two priests stood beside Coral, annoyed at her peculiar behavior, unable to understand why someone who was insane had been granted the honor of serving as the Mouth of Moander. Why hadn’t one of them been chosen? they both wondered resentfully.
Moander gathered up all the tendrils of possession inside Coral’s mind, like a rider taking up a horse’s reins, and drove her back to her duties as the Mouth of Moander.
6
The Old Priestess
Morala the Harper, priestess of Milil, leaned over the table in the Harpers courtroom and stared into the silver basin she had filled with holy water. When she was satisfied that the water was completely still, Morala began singing a wordless melody. The silver basin and the surface of the water began vibrating with the power of the priestess’s voice and the magic she summoned with her spell.
After several minutes, the water began to sparkle and shine from a source of magic beneath its surface. Morala ceased singing and concentrated on the colors swirling in the water. Gradually the colors coalesced into solid shapes.
“I see him,” the priestess whispered.
“Is he alive?” Breck Orcsbane asked eagerly, moving toward the priestess.
Lord Mourngrym held the ranger back with a hand on his shoulder. Before Morala had begun her scrying spell, she had cautioned them not to distract her or touch the table on which the silver bowl rested. Breck was a veteran fighter, but too inexperienced with magic to realize the danger of disregarding the priestess’s warning.
Morala squinted at the images that had formed on the surface of the water. The gangly figure with the flowing gray hair and beard was unmistakably Elminster, but Morala had never seen anything quite like the scenery in the field of vision afforded by her scrying spell. Blue-green ferns, lavender horsetails, and green-and-yellow-striped mushrooms towered over the sage. Great trees, their trunks bare but for a small crown of red and green fronds, waved behind the sage like grasses in the wind.
Elminster stood in the strange forest, apparently alone and uninjured. His lips moved, but Morala’s spell did not allow her to hear what he said, or any other sound about him. The sage’s head was tilted back, and he gazed alertly at something high overhead. Morala brought her hands together over the surface of the water and then pulled them away. The view in the water widened to include more of Elminster’s surroundings. The sage appeared as a blot of gray on the water’s surface, but now the priestess could see what held his attention.
Five winged creatures, as exotic to Morala as the plants, flew in a V formation over Elminster’s head. Each was as large as an ancient dragon and had a vaguely dragonlike silhouette. They were covered with frayed, almost featherlike scales, and they were as brightly colored as any bird. Their heads were bright scarlet, their throats orange, their long serpentine necks yellow, and their bodies hues of blue and green. As the group watched in horror, the creatures dove toward the sage.
Elminster motioned with his hands, and a bright light flared from the surface of the water. Morala gasped.
“What is it?” Breck demanded anxiously.
“Elminster just cast a meteor swarm,” the priestess said. “He battles monsters such as I have never seen before!”
The lead creature fell from the sky, knocking down several trees as it crashed to the earth. Its companions pulled up just as Elminster released a second meteor swarm.
From her magical vantage point, Morala could see a great cat stalking the mage, sneaking up behind him. The beast was twice the size of a tiger, with a mottled orange and brown hide. It halted ten yards from Elminster. The muscles in its haunches tautened and twitched as the cat prepared to leap.
“Elminster, behind you!” Morala cried out instinctively, though she knew the sage could not hear her.
Something alerted the sage to the danger, though, for he spun about with his hands spread out before him, thumbs touching, and sent a fan of fire shooting from his fingertips.
The cat twisted in midleap, trying, without success, to avoid the sage’s fiery barrage. One side of the beast burst into flame, and it fell to the ground and rolled in the dirt to smother the fire burning its pelt. Before the cat had a chance to rise to its feet, Elminster pointed at it, and the beast crumbled to dust.
Elminster turned his attention back to the remaining feather dragons, who had circled and returned. As the dragons dropped down and soared over the sage, great plumes of sparkling dust shot from the maws of all four monsters, but when the dust had blown away, Elminster remained standing, apparently unaffected. The sage cast a wall of fire across the feather dragons’ flight path. Two of the beasts were unable to pull up in time to avoid passing through the curtain of flame. They plunged through it and immediately crashed to the earth like meteors.
Watching the sage do battle while unable to hear any of the accompanying sounds felt unnatural and eerie to Morala, yet she kept her eyes fixed on the water. She wished the blessings of Milil on the sage, though she suspected her god might have little power over events in the strange world where Elminster was now.