Emilo snagged a slice of melon from the tray of food on the bench and slurped at it noisily.
Tymora, Finder, and the priestess Winnie returned from their private conference. Jas stood as they approached. "Will you help me now, please?" she asked the goddess. She held chin up and met Tymora's gaze, but there was only earnestness, not pride, in her tone.
"Of course I'll help you," Tymora answered. She smiled warmly and placed both her hands on the winged woman's shoulders.
Joel stepped away from the pair to stand at Finder's side. Emilo took a position beside Winnie. He flashed the halfling priestess a cheery smile. Winnie eyed the kender with a look of indifference, but a tiny smile played across her lips when the kender looked away from her.
Tymora whispered a few words Joel couldn't hear. Suddenly blue light glowed about her hands; then the blue light began to turn white, like a poker in a fire. The light soaked into Jas's body. The winged woman began to glow, and her skin took on a translucent look, as if a gauze curtain were blocking the sun. A tiny sliver of black appeared in the light. It began to rise like a mist, expelled by Tymora's power flooding through Jas.
Something overhead rumbled in the sky. Joel looked up with surprise. A dark cloud had blocked the light from a patch of stars overhead. Then the ground shook beneath their feet. A moment later the ground moved like a wave of water. The bench beneath the birch tree toppled over, and the birch was uprooted from the ground by the violence of the tremors.
Joel was knocked from his feet. He tried to rise, but the heaving of the ground convinced him to remain down. When he looked up, the goddess was pushing the winged woman away from her. Tymora's head snapped up and her body arched back with a jerk. Sparks danced about her. She began breathing very quickly.
Finder cried out, "Tymora!" at the same time as Winnie shrieked, "My lady!" Finder leapt forward and wrapped his arms around the goddess's body. A bolt of lightning shot upward from Lady Luck straight into the darkness overhead. The goddess collapsed in Finder's arms, as limp as a doll.
The ground stilled, and the darkness overhead disappeared, leaving the stars twinkling above as if nothing had happened.
Jas lay on the ground, stunned. Winnie looked at her in alarm. "You do have something inside you, don't you?" the halfling priestess whispered.
"No," Tymora whispered. It seemed to Joel that in the silence that followed the upheaval, the goddess's soft voice could be heard throughout her realm. Finder lowered her gently to the ground, cradling her shoulders and head against his chest.
"Winnie, listen," Tymora said. "It was not Jasmine. Something caused me to lose control of my power. I sensed… I sensed…" The goddess's voice faded.
"Tymora," Finder whispered urgently. "What did you sense? Or was it a person?"
Tymora's eyes flew open wide. "Beshaba!" she growled. Then her eyes closed again and she collapsed against Finder.
The ground gave one last tiny rumble, as if Tymora's realm was shuddering from the name the goddess had just uttered.
"Who's Beshaba?" Emilo asked curiously.
"Her sister," Finder replied.
"Her enemy," Winnie answered.
BEHIND THE SCENES
"I am having a problem harnessing Tymora's power," the looming figure growled. "She is too generous with it. It leaks away whenever her followers call upon her. Worse, when she casts a spell, my power conduits cannot contain the energy bursts, and they overload and spew the power back out. It has attracted the attention of her allies."
"So what is to be done?" the summoner asked with concern.
"She is greatly weakened. If we can capture her and bring her here, her allies will not be able to investigate the power drain and trace it back to us. Should she regain consciousness and cast another spell, we will not have to rely on the energy conduits-the fusion chamber can absorb the power. Then it will not be wasted. More importantly, if she is within the circle of darkness, she will not sense her followers calling upon her, and her power will not leak away when she shares it with them. Can your forces capture her?"
"I will make it so," the summoner said.
"Good," the looming figure replied. Then, the figure thought, no more of her power will be squandered on her foolish followers. It will all be mine.
ACT TWO SCENE 3
In the earthquake-ravaged garden, Finder had cast all the spells he could think of to help revive Tymora, but the goddess remained in a swoon. Joel had never seen Finder so pale and grave, not even when the god had returned to mortality to enter Sigil and his own life was threatened.
Joel realized his god was not just reacting in fear of anything that could so injure a power as great as Tymora. When Joel had first met Finder, Finder had assumed the identity of an old priest named Jedidiah and told Joel about Finder's life and transformation into a god. Jedidiah had told Joel how much Finder owed to Tymora, how grateful the god was to the goddess for her help. He'd also spoken of Tymora's grace and charm with so much passion that Joel had wondered if Jedidiah were speaking of his own feelings or those of Finder. Later, when Finder revealed that Jedidiah was only a ruse, Joel realized that his god had revealed his heart. Finder was smitten with Lady Luck.
Now Finder found himself powerless to help the patroness he cared for. As a mortal Finder had always been a man of action. As a god, he would feel no less frustrated by his helplessness.
Tymora's priestess, Winnie, faced a critical dilemma. As Finder had pointed out to her, any spells she cast on her mistress would ultimately draw from her mistress's power, so it was perhaps best for her to take a different role in the crisis. At the god's advice, the halfling priestess had hurried off to arrange security for the area and to request the aid of Tymora's oldest ally, the goddess Selune. Finder, Joel, Jas, and Emilo had formed a circle about Tymora, anticipating an attack, perhaps from Beshaba, perhaps from some unknown enemy.
"How is it," Emilo asked, "that Tymora and her sister are enemies?"
"Joel," Finder said, "tell Emilo the story of Tyche."
"Tyche?" Joel asked, his mind fixated on danger, not old tales.
"Yes, Tyche. They still teach her tale at that fancy barding college in Berdusk, don't they?" the god snapped at his priest.
"Yes," Joel said, realizing that his god was far more worried than he let on. The bard paused for a moment, trying to remember the traditional beginning to the tale of Tyche.
"Feel free to improvise," Finder said with a more even humor.
"Right. A long time ago," Joel began, "even before the fall of Myth Drannor, there was a great war between the gods of Toril over who would be their leader. It was known as the Dawn Cataclysm because it was started by Lathander when he decided that he should be that leader. Lathander is the god of beginnings," Joel added for Emilo's benefit. "Births, spring, and dawn are all his purview. Also called the Morninglord, he's a god of good. At the time of the Dawn Cataclysm, Lathander was favored with the love of Tyche, the goddess of all luck, good and bad, but Tyche wanted no part in the conflict Lathander had begun. She kissed Lathander with misfortune and left him to his war.
"Tyche wandered about the Realms for some time. As she rested on a snow-capped mountain surveying the land all about her, a rosebud burst through the snow at her feet. The bud showed no sign of damage from the harsh setting in which it had grown. It was just on the verge of opening its petals and promised to be perfect in every way. Because of the circumstances of the rose's appearance, Tyche took it to be an overture of peace from Lathander.