Finder lay on the stone floor of his ruined manor house, silent and motionless. Olive bent over the bard and shook him gently, whispering his name. The bard didn’t answer. He had a bolt in the back of his right shoulder and another in his left thigh. He was either very lucky, or the orcs were lousy shots, Olive thought. Very gently she eased the weapons from his flesh. Blood seeped from the wounds, but at least it didn’t gush out profusely. The wounds weren’t serious enough to have made him pass out.
It’s still the damned poison from the damned needle trap, Olive thought. The potion she’d given him wasn’t strong enough to counteract the poison. All she’d accomplished by pouring it in him was to prolong his dying for a few hours.
8
Grypht
As Alias was leading Dragonbait and Zhara from the Harpers’ courtroom to Nameless’s former cell, Dragonbait halted suddenly and sniffed the air. No doubt, the swordswoman realized, the saurial can smell Grypht. She turned around and explained to him. “Something teleported into the tower—some creature, probably a wizard—and kidnapped Elminster and Nameless, maybe Olive, too.”
Dragonbait shook his head as if confused, and his tail twitched with nervous excitement. Alias didn’t notice. Her attention was attracted to the sound of thumping coming from the corridor that led to Nameless’s cell. She hurried through the passages, anxious to see what was going on.
Lord Mourngrym and Breck stood outside the door to Nameless’s cell. Breck was hacking furiously at the door with a battle-axe, but for all the ranger’s strength and the weapon’s sharpness, the door wouldn’t give.
Alias heard Lord Mourngrym say, “It’s no good, Orcsbane. The door’s made of ironwood.”
“What’s wrong?” Alias asked as she and Dragonbait and Zhara hurried toward the two men.
“Akabar and Kyre aren’t answering,” Lord Mourngrym replied. He turned the door handle and pulled on it, but the door remained closed. “The door’s unlocked, but it won’t budge. It feels as if it’s being held shut by magic.”
Remembering Morala’s suspicion that Grypht could be an evil wizard and that Kyre may have made an alliance with him, the swordswoman suddenly felt nervous and foolish. She hadn’t believed the half-elf’s claim that Grypht was a denizen of the Nine Hells, yet she had been so eager for Kyre to break Zhara’s hold on Akabar and talk him out of his belief in Moander’s return that she had trusted the half-elf anyway. “Maybe Kyre and Akabar just don’t want to be disturbed,” Alias suggested hopefully, without believing it herself.
Breck lowered his axe and fixed her with a cold stare. “Kyre isn’t shy. If she wanted to be alone with a man, she’d have no qualms about telling us all to go away,” he replied. “Something is wrong,” he insisted. “We need a spell-caster to break in the door.”
Zhara pushed her way past Alias. “Stand back,” she ordered everyone. In her hand, she held a lump of clay fashioned just like the stone arch surrounding the door to Nameless’s cell. With her fingers, she pushed one side of the clay arch away, then touched the clay to the stone arch in front of them, whispering, “Sculpture.”
Alias gasped as the rock of the wall beside the door curled back like a potato peel, forming a gap large enough to walk through.
Zhara slipped into Nameless’s cell before anyone else could stop her. She looked around in confusion. “He isn’t here!” she whispered. “Where’s Akabar?” Turning to face Alias, she demanded angrily, “Where’s Akabar? What have you done with him?”
Alias slipped into the room and looked around, equally confused. Akabar and Kyre were nowhere in sight. The songhorn lying on the table was cracked and some of its keys were broken off. Bits of broken crystal lay on the table. Something crunched in the carpeting beneath her foot. Alias looked down. Walnut shells lay scattered about on the floor.
Then she spotted the ashes, and her face went pale. Gray ashes formed the unmistakable shape of a person. A pair of elven boots, a dagger, a sword, a belt, and a scabbard lay off to one side. Two gold rings, a silver ankle bracelet, and a Harper’s pin were on the other side of the ashes.
“Mourngrym!” Alias called back into the hallway. “You’d better come and see this.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Breck demanded, squeezing his way into the room. When he saw the ashes and equipment lying on the floor, his eyes widened in fury. “Kyre! No!” he shouted. “She’s dead! He killed her, didn’t he? That fiend Akabar killed Kyre!”
In the Harpers’ courtroom, Morala had grown bored scrying on Nameless and Olive Ruskettle beneath Finder’s keep. She abandoned her watch on the bard and his halfling cohort while the pair was still digging through the piles of rubble. Now the priestess stood over her silver scrying bowl a third time. It had occurred to her that she might learn more if she turned her attention to the creature who had been responsible for Elminster’s and Nameless’s disappearances. She drew out the piece of clay Grypht had dropped and envisioned the huge creature.
The colors in the water of Morala’s bowl swirled into Grypht’s shape. The beast was bent over beneath a monstrous oak tree, yanking a handful of oak seedlings out of the ground. He straightened and munched absentmindedly on the seedlings as he studied a yellow gem he held in his hand.
Suddenly a beam of light shot out from a facet in the gem. Morala gasped, recognizing immediately that Grypht held the finder’s stone. The Harpers had entrusted Elminster with the artifact’s safety, but somehow this scaly creature had gotten hold of it. Is that why Elminster and Nameless had been abducted? the priestess wondered. Just to obtain Nameless’s toy?
Grypht shook his head, and the first beam of light from the crystal faded away and a second beam burst out of another facet of the stone, aimed downward at the ground. Morala pulled her scrying view back until she could see more. At Grypht’s feet lay a dark-skinned, bearded man dressed in striped robes, with the blue dots of a southern scholar and mage tattooed on his forehead. The light from the finder’s stone struck the man’s eyes, but although his chest rose and fell, he did not move. Apparently he was unconscious. Morala’s brow furrowed. Who is he? she wondered.
Grypht nodded at the finder’s stone with satisfaction.
He’s experimenting with it, Morala realized.
Grypht shook his head, and the light on the southerner’s eyes faded. Then the creature closed his eyes, and the crystal stone began to glow all over, but this time no beam shot out. Grypht squeezed his eyes tighter, as if he were concentrating hard. The stone glowed even brighter, but it gave no indication of the location of the person the scaly creature was thinking of. Grypht sighed and opened his eyes; the stone ceased glowing.
“How deliciously ironic!” Morala muttered. “You’ve gone to all this trouble to steal the finder’s stone, and it can’t find whoever it is you’re looking for.”
Grypht bent over and began pulling more oak seedlings from the ground. Suddenly a beam of light shot out from the yellow crystal in the direction of the setting sun. Grypht started with surprise and straightened up. After scanning the horizon for a few moments, he bent over and shouldered the unconscious southerner.
“Who are you after?” Morala mused as Grypht straightened and began trundling away toward the setting sun.
Mourngrym looked over the ashes lying beside Kyre’s equipment and shook his head regretfully. “It doesn’t look good, Alias,” he said softly.
“I can’t believe Akabar would do such a thing,” the swordswoman said. “Something else must have attacked them.”
“Then why isn’t Akabar’s body in a pile of ash on the carpeting?” Breck snarled. He was shaking with anger and barely controlled grief.