"Sorry," Emilo replied, chastened.
"We're lucky, though," Holly said. "While Chamada isn't infinite like most Outer Planes, scholars believe that it's still hundreds of miles high. We could have been traveling and searching for Walinda for days if Selune's portal hadn't transported us to where it did."
"Oddly enough, I don't feel lucky," Jas murmured.
Feeling more alert since he'd had some sleep, Joel was prepared to take over flying the carpet so Holly and Emilo could get some rest. Emilo had no trouble whatsoever falling asleep on the flying carpet, but Holly couldn't seem to get comfortable. She lay awake, staring up into the darkness, until she reminded Joel of an owl. "I'm so hot, she sighed.
As the carpet soared ever higher up the mountain slope, Joel started singing a silly lullaby about goblins who put ice on the toes of sleeping girls in the middle of winter.
"Are you crazy?" Jas asked. "Do you want everyone to hear us coming?"
"Why not?" Joel retorted. "I'm tired of creeping around like a mouse. A little whistling in the graveyard might do us good."
"Actually, that may not be a bad idea," the paladin said. They say a lot of creatures in Gehenna bluff their way to power. You just have to bluff better than they do."
"Bluffing," Jas gasped in mock shock. "Isn't that like lying? Are paladins allowed to do that?"
"Really, Jas, your notions of paladins are so old-fashioned," Holly said. "We're honest, not stupid. If some evil creature is prepared to believe I'm more powerful than he is, why should I disabuse him of the notion?"
"Especially when you're traveling in the company of the awesomely powerful, favored priest of the god of reckless fools," Joel said.
"Exactly," Holly agreed.
Jas snorted with amusement. "I'm tempted to say, You'll learn better when you're older,' but with that attitude, you aren't likely to get much older."
Joel began singing "The Circle Song," a folk song about a boy who grows to be a man who woos and wins his true love, then has lots of children who all grow up to woo and win their true loves. He sang just loudly enough to entertain Holly, but quietly enough so as not to disturb Emilo. When he began the lullaby again, Holly finally drifted off to sleep.
Jas took over flying the carpet while Joel prayed for new spells. When the bard was finished praying, he read through the new scrolls Winnie had packed for them. Since they'd lost a backpack during Jas's attack on the barghest, Joel repacked their equipment, leaving out some of the equipment they would be less likely to use, such as blankets and tarps. He wrapped all the scrolls in a scarf, which he fastened to his belt. The healing potions he slipped into a vest pocket.
They began to fly over more violent sections of the slope. Steam and rock and ash, even molten lava, spewed up from secondary cones on the mountain slope. They had to stay especially vigilant to avoid these hazards. While dodging one eruption, the carpet jerked upward suddenly, and Holly sat bolt upright. At first Joel thought she'd been wakened by the jolt, but then he saw she was drenched in sweat and shaking uncontrollably. "Another vision?" he asked her softly. The paladin nodded, but she didn't look happy. She stared out over the violent land beneath them without speaking.
"What's wrong, Holly?" the bard whispered anxiously. "What did Lathander say? Is Tymora worse? Is it about Beshaba? What?"
"No," the paladin said shaking her head. Tears ran down her cheeks. "Lord Lathander said that in order to bring Beshaba to him, I'm supposed to offer my aid to that… that woman," she spat.
"You mean Walinda?" Joel asked. Holly nodded wordlessly.
"Oh." Joel put an arm around Holly's shoulders and held her gently.
"I don't understand," the paladin sobbed. "I've always served Lathander well. Why do I have to work with that awful woman? She makes me sick. She's horrid. I should have let Jas kill her when she had the chance. She betrayed her people. She betrayed us. She betrayed the Sensates."
Joel sighed. "Well, fortunately, she also betrayed Bane."
Holly sniffed. "Do you think she might betray Beshaba?"
Joel shrugged. "When she was a priestess of Bane, she pursued power with a vengeance. That was her religion. If she's still in that frame of mind, she could just be using Beshaba. It's food for thought anyway," he said.
As if the mention of food had disturbed his sleep, Emilo rolled over, yawned, and asked, "What's for breakfast?"
Everything in the pack was warm-the water, the bread, the fruit-which would have been fine were the adventurers not already sweltering. Joel tried to conjure an image in his mind of a crisp, cool apple plucked from a tree on a frosty fall morning, but the apples in the pack were closer to becoming apple sauce. Even the magical berries had become the consistency of jam, though they still left one feeling nourished.
Joel held out the finder's stone again and thought of Walinda. The beam of light shot into a canyon somewhere above them. Joel estimated they would reach it within the hour. He slid the stone back inside his shirt.
They were all nervous now except for Emilo, who hung his head over the carpet, wide-eyed at the sight of towering sprays of lava and boulders being tumbled about in rivers of magma.
When they reached the mouth of the canyon, they hovered for a few moments to decide the best way to proceed.
Holly reached out with her paladin sense to detect evil. Not surprisingly, she sensed many evil things in the canyon. Far ahead, shadows and light played across the floor of the canyon in a curiously orderly pattern. At first Joel thought it might be another lava flow, but Jas had another idea.
"It's an army," she said with certainty, "bivouacked in the canyon."
"How can you know that?" Joel asked.
"She's right," Emilo agreed. "That's just what they look like. They're drilling in formation."
Joel didn't dare use the finder's stone again to search for Walinda for fear of being spotted by whoever was in the canyon. If Beshaba was with Walinda, the goddess would surely have sensed them by now. If Walinda was alone, however, they were better off approaching with stealth.
They floated over the canyon at an altitude that prevented them from being noticed, but which also kept them from spying out anything of use. When they came to the opening of the canyon they dropped down slowly, keeping an eye out for any signs of detection.
There were no signs, yet detected they were. Without warning, the flying carpet heaved and began to lose altitude. Jas flew off faster than a bird disturbed by a cat. Holly screamed, and Joel felt something grab at his wrists.
The air about them shimmered as their invisible attackers appeared before them. The attackers were shorter than Jas and looked like some sort of hairy apes, with reddish brown fur and long, sharp claws. At first there were only two of them; then a third appeared on the side of the canyon and leaped across the ten-foot gap to the carpet with amazing ease. The magical carpet drifted downward, unable to bear the extra weight of the attackers.
Aside from being great leapers, the creatures were amazingly strong. One swept Joel up in a bear hug, making it impossible for him to move. Another held Holly's wrists together over her head as if she were a doll.
"They're bar-lgura," Holly warned Joel. "One of the lesser tanar'ri." The creature holding the paladin gave her a vicious shake. Holly quieted instantly.
The tanar'ri, Joel recalled, were creatures from the Abyss who fought the endless Blood War with the baatezu from Baator. They sometimes fought outside of their home planes, which could explain what they were doing here.
The bar-lgura seemed not to notice or challenge Emilo. The kender, very much awake now, sat very still in the center of the carpet, not making a sound.
Joel recalled all the times Emilo had seemed to surprise people with his presence, even the goddess Selune. Finder was right-there was something very strange about the kender. The bard looked away from Emilo to avoid attracting attention to him. Perhaps whatever it was that shielded him from notice could be used to their advantage.