"We're going to have to walk into the wind," Joel said.
"What?" Jas shouted.
Joel repeated his words, shouting to be heard over the roar of the wind.
Jas nodded. Her wings, Joel noted, had altered once more. Now they were bat-shaped, but their color was bright scarlet with golden flecks. Ignoring the transformation, as she always did, Jas opened one of the backpacks Winnie had supplied for them and rummaged around until she found several kerchiefs made of some lightweight fabric. They wrapped the kerchiefs around their faces, shouldered their backpacks, and stepped out into the furious wind.
There was no trail that Joel could perceive, and the slope was treacherous. Rocks gave way beneath their feet and slid and rattled down the mountainside. Far, far below, the waves of a blood-red sea pounded at the mountainside and shot upward in frothy spumes. Overhead, the sky was completely overcast. Black clouds flickered with sheet lightning. It was unclear what illuminated Beshaba's realm, but it was bright enough on the mountainside for their shadows to pool at their feet. Nothing grew on the wind-blasted slope but the red and black lichen that covered the gray rocks all around. They traveled in silence, unable to make themselves heard over the wind.
Time was hard to judge, but it had to be at least an hour before they made it to a notch in the ridge. The climb had exhausted them, and the roar of the wind left them dazed. They passed through the notch. On the other side of the ridge, the slope was less steep, dropping gradually into a great sheltered bowl where a few stunted trees grew. A ledge just wide enough to serve as a trail traveled along the ridge on the sheltered side. There, out of the wind, it seemed almost quiet, and they rested and made a general inventory of the equipment Winnie had packed in the backpacks.
Jas pulled out a padded flask of water and took a few sips. As she handed the flask to Emilo, something large and dark leapt through the notch in the ridge. The creature, a great black stag with red eyes, bounded sure-footedly down the slope. Its rack might have gored an elephant with ease. The beast so startled Emilo that he dropped the water flask. The flask rolled down the hill, spilling its precious contents.
"Rotten luck," Emilo muttered, prepared to lunge after it, but Joel held him back by grabbing the kender's vest. "Careful," the bard said. "It would be worse luck if you went rolling after it and fell down a cliff."
"Sorry," the kender said. "I never drop things like that."
"The black stag is her symbol," Joel said, purposefully avoiding using Beshaba's name. Without Selune and Finder to shield them, using the goddess's name could attract unwanted attention.
Joel lowered Emilo down the slope with a rope attached to his belt so he could fetch the flask, then hauled him back up. The flask was more than half empty, but at least they had it back. If they were desperate enough, Joel could create water to fill it. The party traveled along the ledge on the sheltered side of the ridge. As the ridge climbed higher, the adventurers grew tired quickly and were forced to rest often.
"I feel old all of a sudden," Emilo noted with some surprise.
"The higher you go, the less air there is," Jas explained.
"Of course, here in the Abyss, it could just be there's less air as you approach dangerous powers," Joel suggested.
The ridge and the ledge ended abruptly at a deep gorge and continued on the opposite side. A towering stream of water poured down a cliffside nearly half a mile away. It was the longest waterfall Joel had ever seen, and he could hear the roar of the water in the distance. It was the color of the water, however, that made the sight so eerie. It was blood-red.
The water, Joel thought, must be why the mountain is called the Blood Tor. It looks like blood pouring from a wounded land. He wondered briefly why the water was red, then decided he didn't want to know.
The water surged down the gorge below them toward the sea, where the goddess Umberlee made her realm. There was a rope bridge over the gorge, but it wasn't sheltered by the ridge. Consequently the bridge had been battered by the wind with such violence that it was a knotted tangle of ropes and reeds that appeared completely uncrossable.
"You want to try unravelling the bridge, or should I just fly us across?" Jas asked Joel.
Joel watched the bridge flap about as the wind came ripping up the gully. "Do you think you can fly in that wind?" he asked.
Jas shrugged. "I trust my wings more than I trust that contraption."
"I knew a caravan guard who used to say all the luck in the world won't make up for willful stupidity. I'm thinking we should test the reverse of that rule. Perhaps some willful reasoning will make up for all the bad luck in this realm. We're not going to leave anything to chance."
Since Emilo was the smallest, and together Joel and Jas could bear his weight easily, they rigged up a harness for the kender to use while he tried to unravel the bridge. They attached the harness to two lines of rope. Joel held one line and Jas took the other. Should the bridge collapse, Joel would keep the kender from falling into the gorge and Jas would risk flying upward to keep him from slamming into the sides of the ravine.
Emilo started down the rope bridge, untangling it as he went with his dexterous hands. The moment the kender had gotten all of the reed walkway to lie flat, he dashed across the rest of the bridge like a startled rabbit. The whistling wind made communication impossible, so they weren't sure what had alarmed Emilo. The kender turned, and to demonstrate the bridge's unreliability, he gave a sharp tug on one of the old worn ropes.
The ropes snapped in the center of the bridge, and the bridge flopped sideways. Emilo removed both lines from his harness and attached them around a boulder. Joel held both lines on the opposite bank. With a lead rope attached to the lines, Jas flew across with the first knapsack. The winds buffeted her, but the lead rope held and kept her from losing control of her direction. She checked the lines Emilo had affixed before flying back for the second backpack.
Before Jas carried him across, Joel hammered a piton into the rocky ridge, slipped one line through the piton, and joined the lines into one. Jas had more trouble with the bard's weight. She lost altitude rapidly shortly after taking off. Joel's stomach lurched. Then the wind forced the winged woman back upward. When they reached the other side, she ducked behind the ridge and collapsed onto the ledge.
Joel untied the knot joining the two lines Emilo had affixed about the boulder. He tugged the rope through the piton. Somehow he'd forgotten to check the ends of the line before he began pulling. A knot near the end of the line caught in the piton. He tried yanking at the piton to no avail. Then he cut the rope and let it fall back into the gorge, where it hung forlornly from the piton until a gust of wind caught it and sent it flapping about until it was tangled with the useless rope bridge.
When they reached the mountain slope where the ridge ended, the finder's stone's light pointed to the right of the ridge, which meant walking once again into the wind. Wearily they started out again.
They'd only been traveling a short while on the new face when there was a tremor in the ground and a great thunderous rumble all around them. Small rocks tumbled down the slopes, pelting the adventurers until they took shelter downslope of a great boulder. All the while, Joel prayed that the boulder wouldn't suddenly start rolling. The tremor subsided. Then suddenly the wind died and they were encased in a thick gray fog.
"Are earthquakes followed by fog regular occurrences in the Abyss?" Jas asked Joel. "Or do you think it had something to do with you-know-who and her sister?"
Joel shrugged. It was possible that Tymora had released another burst of power, and Beshaba, unable to absorb it quickly, had to disperse it into her realm. It made sense, but it was mere speculation.