“So, Harper,” Finder said to Breck. “What’s your verdict? Are you hauling me back to Shadowdale in chains?”
“Considering the emergency, I have more important things to do than to escort prisoners around, sir,” Breck said to the bard. Briefly the ranger and the merchant-mage updated Finder on Elminster’s disappearance, Kyre’s death, Grypht’s flight from the tower with Akabar, Morala’s scrying visions, and the hunt for Grypht.
“According to Grypht,” Breck explained to Finder, “Moander turned most of his people into its minions and forced them from his world, through Tarterus, to the Realms. These minions are now building the god a new body.”
“How do you know all this?” Finder asked Grypht.
“I’ve been scrying on my people and watching their suffering for many months now,” Grypht explained.
“We have to find this new body and destroy it before Moander’s minions complete it,” Breck said. He slipped off his pack, and from it he pulled out a large parchment map and a thin stick of writing lead. He spread the map out on the grass in front of him.
“Nice map,” Alias said, impressed with the detailed attention to geography and scale. “Where’d you get it?”
“I made it,” Breck said with a shrug, though from his smile, it was obvious he was proud of his handiwork. “This is the clearing near Shadowdale where we met with Zhara and Grypht and Akabar,” the ranger explained, setting his stick of lead down on the map. “This is the direction the finder’s stone indicated when Grypht thought of a saurial whom Moander has possessed and brought to the Realms,” he said, drawing a line northwest by west on the map. “Was the saurial you thought of helping to build this body for Moander?” Breck asked Grypht.
The wizard nodded.
“So Moander’s new body must be somewhere along this line,” Breck said, tracing with his finger the line he’d drawn. He pointed to the region of the map representing the dales. “I can’t believe they could have been building a god’s body for three months anywhere in the dales without having been detected by Elminster,” he said. “The mountains would be a much more likely hiding place.” Breck slid his fingers across the individual peaks of the Desertsmouth Mountains. “They might be as far off as Anauroch, but there’s nothing in the desert for them to use to build Moander’s new body. There’s not enough to eat or drink there for a large party of adventurers, let alone a whole tribe.”
“Are you certain you’ve drawn your line accurately?” Finder asked. “You could be off by miles.”
Breck shook his head. “You bards have a boast that you never lose count of the measure. Well, we rangers have a boast of our own. We never get lost. I stood beside Grypht and watched the beam from the finder’s stone very carefully. It ran just between these two peaks—Mount Andria and Mount Dix.”
“Then Moander’s minions must be building his new body approximately here,” Finder said. “The Lost Vale.” He pointed to a spot on the line just to the south of a peak labeled “Mount Hans.”
“The Lost Vale is nothing but a myth,” Breck said. “Adventurers have been searching for it for centuries without finding a thing.”
“How quickly old Harper secrets are forgotten,” Finder said, chuckling. “You can’t search for the Lost Vale,” he explained. “Someone must take you to it magically. It makes perfect sense that Moander would choose the Lost Vale. It’s magically hidden and warmed, and there’s a gate to Tarterus nearby. Isn’t that how Moander got your people from Tarterus to the Realms?” Finder asked Grypht. “Through a gate?”
Grypht nodded.
“We can triangulate with the stone to be sure, but my money is on the Lost Vale. Care to make a bet, ranger? My hundred gold to your one says I’m right.”
“How could I resist?” Breck replied, gathering up his map.
“We’ll have a better view from the top of the hill,” Finder said, rising to his feet.
The other adventurers stood, except for the halfling. “I’ll just wait here until you get back,” Olive said, lying back in the grass.
Grypht looked thoughtfully at the halfling, then pulled out a small vial and handed it to Dragonbait. “Stay here with Olive,” he ordered the paladin. “See if this salve will help her injury any.”
As the others followed the bard up the hillside Dragonbait knelt beside Olive. The paladin hadn’t realized the halfling was injured. It was so unlike her to suffer in silence. Now, though, he could see what Grypht must have noticed earlier, the bloodstain on the shoulder of her tunic.
What happened to your shoulder? he signed.
“Xaran took a shot at me last night with its wounding eye,” Olive said. The halfling sat up suddenly, staring at the paladin in surprise. “You’re using a hand cant!” she squeaked. “How did you learn it? No one’s supposed to teach it to outsiders.”
Dragonbait pointed toward Alias’s retreating figure.
Olive rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. “That girl is nothing but trouble!” she exclaimed. “Just what the Realms needs—a paladin who understands the thieves’ hand cant! Lord of Shadows, is nothing sacred anymore?”
Dragonbait chuckled at the halfling’s rhetorical question. Grypht recommended we try this salve on your wound, he signed.
“I’m not hurt that bad,” Olive said, but when she tried to shrug, the pain made her grimace in spite of herself.
Let me see the wound, the paladin insisted.
Olive sighed and loosened the drawstring at the neck of her tunic and let the garment slip down her shoulder, revealing a blood-caked bandage.
Gingerly the paladin lifted the bandage from the wound. A honeysuckle scent of concern issued from the saurial’s neck glands. The halfling’s shoulder was in worse shape than Finder’s hand had been, yet she hadn’t said a word when he’d used all of his healing energies on Alias and Finder. Dragonbait poured Grypht’s salve onto the wound.
The sticky salve wasn’t a magical healing potion, but as Dragonbait pulled a spare shirt from his knapsack and fashioned it into a fresh bandage, Olive could feel the pain in her shoulder easing.
When the paladin finished tending her injury, Olive stood up, saying, “Let’s join the others, shall we?”
As Dragonbait walked up the hill beside the halfling, he signed, Are you coming with us to fight Moander again?
“I’m going with Finder,” Olive said. “Whatever he decides to do, I’ll do.”
Dragonbait’s brow furrowed slightly. He remembered Alias commenting once that Nameless was a good influence on Olive. The paladin wasn’t so sure that was exactly accurate. He suspected it was the bard’s reputation, more than the man himself, that influenced Olive. Like Alias, the halfling probably perceived the bard as a good man. Both women thought his brilliance made up for his vanity. Finder’s special attention to them made him seem to them less selfish and reckless than he really was. The paladin doubted he’d ever convince either woman of Finder’s true nature.
Then Olive surprised him by whispering, “Someone has to keep an eye on him in case he tries to do something especially stupid.”
I thought you liked him, Dragonbait signed.
“I love him,” Olive snapped, “but I’m not an idiot, you know.”
I know now, the saurial signed in reply.
In the ruins of the manor house atop the hill, Finder handed Grypht his magical stone. “Think of the same saurial you thought of before,” he instructed the wizard.
As the others watched, a beacon of light sprang out from the finder’s stone, heading northwest.
“We’re right here,” Finder said, pointing out on Breck’s map the position of his keep, “and the beam cuts to the right of that mountain—the one that looks like it’s been sliced in half.”