“No!” Coral insisted. “Xaran’s spores exploded hours ago, and the bard still shows no signs of possession. He has resisted your evil seeds.”
“No, he hasn’t,” Moander forced Coral to say. “The seeds are simply taking longer to grow within him because he is human and such a large man.”
“You lie!” Coral shouted in anger. “You lie to torture me!”
“Do I? We shall see,” Moander said via the priestess’s voice, and the Darkbringer made Coral laugh the high-pitched cackle of the insane.
14
The Rescue
Alias held the finder’s stone at arm’s length and thought of Nameless again. Once more the stone sent out a beacon of light to the southwest.
“You know these lands,” Akabar said to Breck Orcsbane. “What places where the bard might be fall along the beacon’s path?”
Breck whistled softly. “He could be practically anywhere—Spiderhaunt Woods, Shadow Gap, Gnoll Pass, Cormyr. They all lie in that direction,” the ranger replied. “If you or Grypht could teleport us to another place, we could use the stone to triangulate and get a better fix.”
Akabar shook his head. “I do not yet possess the power for such a spell, and Grypht is not familiar enough with this world to teleport us anywhere but Shadowdale. That is not far enough off the beam’s path to triangulate accurately.”
Alias rocked nervously on the balls of her feet. She had to find a way to reach Nameless quickly. Now that the swordswoman was finally conscious of her soul song link with the saurials whom Moander had enslaved, she could no longer deny that Moander was indeed returning to the Realms. She knew, too, with absolute certainty, that Nameless was in grave danger from Moander and that all the evil god’s attention was focused on the bard. There just wasn’t time to trek across country following the stone’s light beam. She peered anxiously into the stone. The longer she looked at it, the more she remembered of its powers. It held all sorts of spells for Nameless, including spells to teleport him to safe places if he ever found himself threatened.
Alias looked up from the finder’s stone with a hopeful look on her face. “There’s a teleport spell in the finder’s stone that can transport us to the Spiderhaunt Woods,” she said. “I’m going to use it.”
“Alias, we can’t just teleport all around the Realms,” Akabar said. “We have to think this through.”
“There isn’t time!” Alias said. “I’m going.”
“Can it transport all of us?” Breck asked.
Alias nodded. “I think so,” she said. “The stone is very powerful. All we need to do is hold hands,” she said, reaching for Dragonbait with her left hand.
Dragonbait translated the plan to Grypht and reached for the wizard’s hand. Grypht took Akabar’s hand, Akabar grasped Zhara’s hand, and Zhara held Breck’s.
Alias held the finder’s stone out in her right hand and sang out a clear musical note. Immediately a yellow glow surrounded her body. The glow slid from her arm to Dragonbait and then across the chain of Grypht, Akabar, Zhara and Breck. Within moments, the light grew so bright that Alias could see nothing but yellow. Then the light faded. She and her companions stood on a grassy hillside meadow.
Alias swayed dizzily and looked down at the finder’s stone with a sense of awe. She’d never thought much about the genius it must have taken to build her own body, but now that she’d actually cast such powerful magic with one of Nameless’s other creations she was far more impressed with the bard’s skills than she’d ever been before.
Grypht recovered first from the disorienting effects of teleporting and looked around with interest. He nudged the swordswoman and pointed behind her. Atop the hill stood the remains of a crumbling stone manor. Grypht approached the ruins and walked up the front steps and through the doorless doorway. Alias raced alongside him, holding out the finder’s stone and thinking of Nameless. A light shot out toward the back of the manor house. She followed it until she reached a doorway to a dark staircase that led downward.
The other adventurers hurried to catch up to her. Breck gave a low whistle. “Nameless is really here,” he said with astonishment. “Talk about luck.”
Grypht emitted the scent of warm tar, elated over their prospects for success. “We may actually reach him before Moander does.”
Alias had already started down the stairs with Dragonbait at her side. Akabar and Zhara followed. Grypht and Breck brought up the rear.
They hadn’t descended more than twenty steps when their way was blocked by a caved-in section of the ceiling. The finder’s stone pinpointed a tunnel, big enough for everyone but Grypht to crawl through, dug through the rubble. Once Dragonbait made it through to the other side, he whistled back the distance to Grypht, and the wizard summoned a dimensional door to carry him past the cave-in. Grypht’s head brushed the passageway ceiling, but he motioned them onward, unconcerned.
Both Grypht’s staff and the finder’s stone lit the darkness around them, glowing like torches, but the finder’s stone also sent out a bright beacon of light to indicate Nameless’s direction. The beacon led them to two more cave-ins. Each time Grypht circumvented crawling through them with dimensional doors, so that the huge lizard was the only one of them not covered with dirt when they reached the locked iron grate.
“Olive would be useful right about now,” Alias said to Akabar as she shook the door to test its strength.
Grypht motioned for everyone to back away from the grate. Lifting his robe like a grand lady crossing a puddle, the saurial wizard kicked one of his huge legs at the lock. The door flew open with a crash.
“Now, that’s a trick I’ve never seen Elminster do,” Breck said with a chuckle as he followed the others through the open grate.
The finder’s stone’s beam suddenly shifted direction, shining down a gap in the passageway’s lined stone walls. Beyond the gap lay a natural tunnel.
Dragonbait sniffed the air and hesitated.
“What is it?” Alias asked.
“Orcs,” the paladin said in saurial.
Alias whispered back to Akabar, Zhara, and Breck, “Dragonbait smells—”
“Orcs,” Breck finished the swordswoman’s sentence.
“How did you know?” Alias asked, surprised.
“I’ve smelled them many times before,” the ranger answered. “How do you think I got the name Orcsbane?” Breck moved to the front of the party and drew his sword. Anticipation gleamed in his eyes.
Alias held the ranger back. “Let Dragonbait look with his shen sight first,” she said.
“His what?” Breck asked.
“His shen sight,” Alias explained. “He can detect evil like a paladin in the Realms can, only he can detect more detail about what sort of evil.”
Dragonbait summoned his shen sight and concentrated on the passageway ahead of them. “There’s something else up there,” Dragonbait said to Alias after several moments. “Something even more evil than orcs.”
The swordswoman translated the paladin’s words for the others.
“There must be some other kind of creature leading them,” Breck said, stepping into the cleft. “Probably ogres.” He hurried down the passage.
“It is not ogres,” Dragonbait said in Saurial. “It is something much, much worse.”
Alias eyed the ranger’s hastily disappearing form. “Then we’d better hurry before whatever it is gets to Nameless,” she said, following the ranger. Akabar and Zhara hurried after her, leaving the two saurials behind momentarily.
“What is it, Champion?” Grypht asked the smaller saurial as he moved up beside him.
“I think—” Dragonbait hesitated.