Sirrion grinned. "And what service can one so young and tender perform for the Morninglord?"
"You told Lord Lathander that you would need help in assembling the materials for your… spell," Aurora answered.
"Yes. So?" Sirrion asked.
"Lord Lathander intends to assign Holly Harrowslough to the task," Aurora said.
"Her?" Sirrion laughed. "She's no more than a slip of a girl. I need warriors. Lots of warriors."
"Lord Lathander has every confidence Holly Harrowslough can accomplish the task at hand," Aurora replied calmly.
Holly could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Pride coursed through her every vein.
As he looked down upon the paladin, Sirrion's green eyes glowed for a moment. Holly was struck with a chill and the feeling that she had seen those eyes before, but she couldn't recall where or when.
"Well, since that's the case," Sirrion said, "I suppose she will do."
"Good," Aurora replied. She turned to the paladin and said, "Holly Harrowslough, it is the Morninglord's wish that you collect such materials as Lord Sirrion instructs you to. When all is in readiness, Lord Lathander will come to aid in the spell, and you will receive his thanks."
"I will serve faithfully," Holly said, making a formal bow.
Aurora nodded. "May the joy of the dawn give you strength," she said to Holly. She bowed to Lord Sirrion and turned to leave.
Lord Sirrion watched the priestess walk back upstream for several moments without a word.
"What does the machine do, Lord Sirrion?" Holly asked the god. "And what am I to fetch for you?"
Lord Sirrion looked down at Holly again and smiled. "Come closer, and I will explain all," the god said. "The machine will help with a magical spell so that Lord Lathander can right an ancient wrong."
Holly nodded slowly. Sirrion had repeated exactly what Aurora had told her, yet there was something different about the way he said it. Something rang false in Holly's ears. It was possible that she simply mistrusted the god because he had offended her pride. Perhaps, though, it was true that her talk with the asuras had left her for a short while with the gift of telling truth from lie. Whatever the case, Holly was sure that Sirrion had just lied to her and that there was malice behind his falsehood.
Opera is the sound of nightingales sighing in sympathy over the tomb of a maiden whose ghost weeps of its broken heart, lamenting true love lost and wasted-except when it sounds more like cats on a still summer night, yowling in heat right outside one's window.
ACT TWO SCENE 1
Joel awoke to a soft touch on his shoulder. In the dim light of the curtained room, he could just make out Jas's winged silhouette.
"Jas? Are you all right?" he asked, still groggy with sleep.
"Can we talk?" Jas whispered.
"Yes. Sure. Open the curtains a little so I can see," Joel said.
Jas pulled the curtains back. A stream of afternoon sun flooded the room.
The bard sat up and motioned for Jas to have a seat at the foot of the bed.
Jas perched on the edge of the mattress. She didn't say anything for several moments. Instead, she simply looked down at her hands.
"Am I supposed to do the talking or you?" Joel asked, trying to humor the winged woman into a less somber mood.
"What do you think?" Jas asked.
"About what?" Joel replied.
"About going to see Tymora about my problem?"
"It sounds like a good idea to me," Joel replied.
Jas was quiet again. Joel sighed. "Jas, this beating around the bush just drives me crazy. Why don't you tell me about your history with Tymora, and then maybe I'll have some clue as to what's bothering you?"
"It's sort of complicated," Jas said.
"I'm a clever guy. I can handle complicated things," Joel said.
Jas took a deep breath and blew it out. Then she spoke. "My parents were adventurers, both paladins, like Holly. When I was just a girl, they were both murdered. They'd helped break up a ring of slavers, and in vengeance, the leader of the ring hired an assassin to kill them. A friend of my mother's fostered me. She was really nice, but I couldn't stand being in the city where my parents had lived. Everyone had known them and constantly reminded me about them. I loved my parents, but every time I remembered them, I remembered they were dead, and that just made me upset. So I ran away from Waterdeep."
Jas stared out the window as she spoke, never looking at the bard. There were streaks in the dust on her cheeks. They could have been from tears, but they might just have been from sweat. Joel could smell her perspiration across the bed. She'd flown until she'd worn herself out.
"I took a job as a hired sword with an adventurer named Carter," Jas said, continuing her tale. "He was a professional troublemaker. If you wanted to ruin a person's reputation or bankrupt a merchant firm or turn brother against brother, Carter was the guy you hired. He was good at what he did, and he didn't work cheap. He taught me a lot and paid me a lot… It took a while, but slowly I began to realize Carter wasn't such a nice guy, and the things he did weren't either. Still, I couldn't bring myself to simply leave him. I was far from my home and friends. Carter often told me I couldn't survive without him, and I believed him."
Jas pulled her feet up on the bed and hugged her knees. "Then one day," she said, "everything in my life changed. I was in the right place at the right time, I guess. I was keeping watch over an alley door for Carter, waiting for two priests to go through the door. While I'm hiding in this trash bin with a tiny peephole to look through, this thief runs into the alley and tosses a sack into the trash right on top of me. Then three other thieves come barreling into the alley. They corner the first thief and demand their share of the loot from Tymora's temple. The first thief tries to feed them some story about the heist not going off. In the meantime, I'm looking into the sack. The contents are worth a fortune. There's platinum coin and all this jewelry and a cape made of white feathers. Then I see there's something moving around among the feathers. It's about four inches long, slimy and writhing like a worm. Really ugly. Then I see there's this cracked eggshell. The slimy, writhing thing has just hatched, or maybe its shell broke when the thief tossed it into the trash.
"Outside, the thieves are still arguing, and one of them stabs the first one and the first one stabs him back. The pair of them fall down, trying to hold their guts inside their bodies. One of the thieves is a mage. He turns and shoots five magic missiles in the back of the last thief. When he's all alone in the alley, he starts searching for the sack. I know its only a matter of minutes before he looks into the trash. I come spilling out of the trash bin with the sack in hand and take off down the alley, but the mage is fast. He teleports himself into my path and blocks my way out of the alley. He doesn't look human anymore. He's changed into a shadow man with horns and bat wings and fangs. I hold the sack up in front of me like a shield, so he doesn't dare risk using his magic on me. He says if I give him the egg, hell let me have the rest of the loot.
"It wasn't that I was all fired up about protecting the egg thing. I'm not an idiot. I know I'm dead the moment this creature gets his hand on the egg thing. So I refuse his offer, and I draw my sword, still holding the sack in front of me like a shield. I don't really believe I can beat the shadow creature in a fight, but I'm not letting it kill me without one. Just then, two priests of Torm come into the alley. They're the two priests I was supposed to be watching out for when I was hiding in the trash. They see the shadow creature, and right away they start calling out to their god and casting bolts of light. "When the bolts of light hit him, the shadow creature howls like a dog someone stepped on and disappears. The two priests are all solicitous, making sure I'm all right. They're sure the shadow is some sort of sign, so instead of going into the building to which Carter had so carefully lured them, they go back to their temple to pray. I know Carter's going to be furious, so I'm not real eager to tell him about any of what just occurred. Instead, I go to the temple of Tymora to turn over the loot the thieves stole.