"It's Emilo!" Joel whispered excitedly. He craned his neck, trying to get a glimpse of the kender, hoping to warn him away.
Emilo stood alone on the ridge, the finder's stone shining at his feet. He held his thumbs up to his temples and wriggled his fingers at the barghests. "Why don't you go back to your doggie shapes? Then you could round up some sheep."
The barghests rose to their feet. One moved farther down the canyon, while the other began to move toward Emilo.
"Isn't mutton your favorite meat?" the kender shouted. "But tough to catch, I bet. Those sheep are smart. Why, their brains must be two, three times larger than the ones in your thick skulls."
The barghest moving toward Emilo growled.
"I sure hope he knows what he's doing," Holly muttered. "That second one is sneaking off to come up behind him."
"Don't forget, Jas is out there somewhere, too," the bard said. He rolled over, sat up, and began wriggling toward the pool of lava.
"Joel, be careful," Holly whispered. "What are you doing?"
"Most monsters agree that there's no meat sweeter than kender," Emilo said chattily. "Unfortunately kender are just about the cleverest game around, so there's no chance you two will ever be able to judge for yourselves. Unless you find a dead one lying around somewhere. Not above eating carrion, are you?"
The barghest howled and began scrambling up the slope toward Emilo.
Joel sat with his back to the pool of lava and wriggled his hands and fingers until the knot in the bindings covered his left wrist. Then he leaned backward carefully. If he lost his balance, he'd be parboiled, ring of fire protection or no. Very slowly, he began lowering his wrists toward the molten rock a quarter of an inch at a time.
The heat was almost more than he could stand, but the bard did not withdraw. He continued to lower his hands until he heard a sizzling sound. Not until a searing pain shot up his arms did Joel jerk forward away from the lava pool. He began tugging on his bindings, struggling wildly.
The pain was excruciating.
Suddenly he felt the bindings snap, and Joel jerked his hands forward. His left wrist was free, but flaming fabric still encased his right wrist. The bard grabbed the remains of his cloak, which the barghest had left by the pool, and used it to smother the fire. Whimpering from the pain, Joel used his teeth to tear the last bit of the blackened fabric from his burnt flesh.
"You know, there's a nice dead slasrath around here somewhere," Emilo was saying to the barghest as it clawed its way up the steep slope. "It looks like a giant winged worm. A real gully dwarf treat, worms, and easy to catch, too. You might like it for breakfast."
With an enraged bellow, the barghest clamored up the last few feet of slope and lunged at the kender.
Emilo glided backward, riding on the magic carpet, until he disappeared from view. The barghest teetered on the edge of the ridge, growling and snarling. At that moment, Jas soared out of the darkness, coming up behind the barghest with one of Winnie's backpacks swaying beneath her. The pack hit the creature in the head with a thunk. The barghest stumbled, then tumbled down the other side of the ridge.
For several long seconds, they could hear the monster's anguished cries. Then the screams ceased abruptly.
Emilo brought the flying carpet swooping down near Joel and Holly.
"Hurry!'' the paladin cried. "The other one could return any moment."
There was a shimmer in the air beside the pool of lava as a magical doorway opened onto the barghests' campsite. The second barghest stepped out from the shining portal. Joel tossed his tattered cloak in the barghest's face and raced toward the carpet.
From the sky plummeted another backpack, which struck the barghest square in the head. Rocks spilled out of the pack as the creature fell to its knees, howling and clutching its head.
Joel hurled himself onto the carpet, pulling Holly behind him. The paladin was armored in heavy plate mail, but the bard managed to drag her over the edge and onto the carpet. Joel could feel his injured wrists and hands throbbing. Holly rolled into the middle of the carpet, and Joel shouted, "Go! Go!"
Quickly Emilo ordered the carpet to rise twenty feet.
"Backward, quickly!" Holly shouted as the barghest took a leap into the air and levitated upward toward them.
The barghest clawed at the carpet, managed to grab at the fringe, and found itself being pulled along by the retreating carpet. Jas swooped out of the darkness, flying alongside the creature. She hacked at the monster's hand with her sword, and the barghest instinctively released his hold on the carpet.
The barghest hung motionless in the air, growling at them.
"It can levitate, but it can't fly," Holly said. "Better move away before it tries something else."
A howl echoed in the canyon as the first barghest also stepped from a magical door beside the pool of lava.
"I wasn't planning on hanging around, I assure you," Emilo retorted. He slowed the carpet just enough for Jas to settle down beside them, then continued the ascent up the mountain.
Once Jas had cut Holly free, the paladin laid her hands gently on Joel's burned wrist and used her gift of healing to soothe the pain. The scars were terrible to look at, but at least the bard hadn't lost the mobility of his wrists.
"Your ring of fire protection didn't do much good," Jas noted.
"The rings can only protect you from so much heat," Holly said. "Joel nearly dipped his wrists in molten lava. If it weren't for that ring, he wouldn't have any hands left."
"The important thing is we're all right," Joel said. He looked at Jas and Emilo. "Thanks to you two."
Jas shook her head. "Thank Emilo. He's the one who had the foresight to fly off before I could wake up and get scared, too."
"Finder tried to warn me," Joel said. "I wasn't paying enough attention." "Finder warned you? How?" Holly asked., "In a vision, when I was sleeping. He said the barghests use fear. And before that, he said we had to find Beshaba and take her to the Spire."
"Oh, great," Jas muttered. "First Holly has visions. Now Joel's getting them. How do you know it wasn't just a dream?" the winged woman demanded.
"He knew about the barghests," Joel pointed out. Unable to argue with that fact, Jas threw up her hands. "Fine. We go find Beshaba, even if it takes us a century to find her in this hellhole. Then we take her to the Spire, presumably not against her will, since that's a little hard to do with goddesses."
"What's the Spire?" Emilo asked curiously. 'The Spire is the mount in the center of the Outlands," Holly explained. It lies just beneath the ring that holds the city of Sigil."
"Why do you think we're supposed to take her to the Spire?" the kender asked.
Joel shrugged. "It wasn't really clear in my dream. 1 asked, but Finder didn't have time to answer before Holly ran off and you woke me up."
"The Spire is a neutral ground for the gods to parley," Holly explained. "Rumor has it that even the most powerful of the gods are unable to cast magic there."
"Why do we have to take Beshaba there?" Jas wondered.
"Perhaps Selune has sensed that Iyachtu's magic has finally made Beshaba unconscious, like Tymora," Joel speculated. "Finder wouldn't have asked us to do something he knew would be impossible," the bard reasoned.
"Is this Finder, the god of reckless fools, we're talking about here?" Jas asked sarcastically.
"So we have to keep searching for Walinda," Holly said with a grim look.
Joel nodded. He took up the finder's stone from the jumble of gear on the carpet and thought once again of the evil priestess.
Once again the light arced upward, but now its beam curved back down to earth closer to their location.
"Not more than a few miles," Emilo judged. "Your friend Walinda isn't far off now." "She's not our friend," Jas snapped.