A voice in Joel's head threatened, You will be killed if you do not hold still. The words caused an awful pain behind Joel's eyes. The bar-lgura was communicating with him telepathically. He wondered if it could read his thoughts.
Joel remained motionless, trying not to think of Emilo. The carpet hit the slope, and the bar-lgura jumped off with their prisoners in hand. The third creature grabbed the carpet to keep it from escaping, forcing Emilo to hop off beside Joel. The creature who had grabbed the carpet rolled it up, with their gear inside, and tucked it under his arm as if it were no heavier than a magical scroll.
The three bar-lgura herded Joel and Holly roughly down the slope to the floor of the canyon where they were quickly surrounded by another twenty of the creatures.
This, the bard decided, was a good time for a bluff.
"We are here to see your leader!" Joel announced. "We have important news for her."
The bar-lgura looked at one another, puzzled, as if expecting that one of them would be able to come up with a reply that challenged the bard's assertion. When none did, Joel heard a voice in his head again.
What news? the voice demanded.
"That is for her ears alone," Joel snapped, glaring frostily at the bar-lgura, who maintained his none-too-gentle grip on his wrists.
The bar-lgura holding the carpet nodded to another of its kind. The other went running off down the canyon.
Holly looked at Joel in surprise. The bard shrugged. Assuming the tanar'ri leader was female wasn't such a gamble. If Beshaba were here, she would most certainly be the leader. If Walinda were here, she would find a way to become the leader. The bard knew she was an imperious woman, given to ordering people around. If Walinda weren't the leader, Joel figured it didn't really matter what he said.
The bar-lgura began marching Holly and Joel down the canyon. Emilo trotted along beside them, taking care not to be tread upon by one of the hulking tanar'ri. Holly looked at Emilo with a puzzled expression, then looked at Joel. The bard shook his head to warn her, and the paladin looked away.
There was little light in the canyon, and most of what there was emanated from the hot lava that streamed down the small gullies in the side of the mountain and collected into bubbling pools on the canyon floor. Like the canyon where they'd last rested, the ground was covered with a black flinty ash. Broken, hexagonal-shaped columns that had sheered off the side of the mount above stood like rocky sentries. There were no trees or shrubs or plants of any kind anywhere. Only fiends from the lower planes could live and thrive in such a place.
The bar-lgura had marched them nearly half a mile through an encampment of hundreds of tanar'ri when Joel noted that the populace of the camp had begun to change, as had the atmosphere. The bar-lgura they had already passed had seemed content just to sit around, hardly giving the adventurers a glance. Now their guards led them through gangs of gaunt, filthy creatures who resembled minotaurs. Their behavior was aggressive and openly hostile. They fought with each other in vicious hand-to-hand combat, and several followed behind the guards, snarling at the adventurers.
"What are they?" Joel whispered, nodding to the minotaur-like creatures.
"Bulezau," Holly whispered back. "Tanar'ri pit bulls."
She was rewarded with a slap on her head for speaking.
As they continued on, they began passing tanar'ri troops, both bar-lgura and bulezau, drilling in attack formations. The bulezau who had been following gradually dropped behind. Joel could only assume their captors were approaching the army's headquarters. Soon afterward they came upon a large pavilion, lit all around the perimeter by torches. It was the only shelter in the canyon. Undoubtedly it had been erected for privacy, since it could hardly shelter anyone from the heat and stench of the plane. To one side of the tent stood a flag emblazoned with Beshaba's symbol-black stag horns on a field of red.
The bar-lgura pushed them toward the entrance of the pavilion and formed a semicircle around the prisoners, who were curious to see what would happen next.
A delicate hand moved the tent flap aside, and a small, graceful woman with long, silken black hair stepped out of the pavilion. A cold smile played across her lips.
"So, Poppin, we meet again," the priestess Walinda greeted the bard. Her eyes remained fixed on Joel like a viper's on its prey.
Joel bowed low before the priestess. Upon rising, he met her cold smile with a warmer one of his own. He realized he was mimicking the way Finder greeted women. "I have been searching for you," the bard explained. "You're looking well."
Indeed Walinda looked as lovely as ever, but there was something different about her, and Joel had to stare for a moment to realize what it was. She was wearing the same black plate armor she'd worn as a priestess of Bane. The ruby she'd worn on her forehead was gone, and over the blood-red tattoos on her cheek she had added Beshaba's stag-horn symbol. There was something else different, something even more remarkable. A dark aura surrounded Walinda, a pulsing, fluctuating dark shadow that silhouetted her slender figure. It made her appear more powerful, more forbidding, more seductive.
The bar-lgura holding the flying carpet dropped it at Walinda's feet.
Walinda acknowledged Holly's presence with no more than a glance. Like the bar-lgura, she did not seem to notice Emilo. She did, however, note Jas's absence. "So where is the pigeon girl?" she asked.
"Jas? Why do you ask?" Joel retorted evenly.
"The bar-lgura saw her fly off when you were captured," Walinda said.
"Oh, I imagine she's around somewhere," Joel replied, "inspecting the army you've got here. What does a priestess of Beshaba need with an army?" he asked.
That needn't concern you," Walinda replied. "The bar-lgura said you had news for me."
Joel was momentarily taken aback. It was unlike
Walinda not to brag of the might of her forces, whatever they might be. For some reason, she held this proclivity in check now. "The news is for Lady Beshaba's ears," the bard answered.
"I am Beshaba's proxy," Walinda said. "You may relay your news to me."
Joel glanced at the bar-lgura. Taking the hint, the priestess dismissed the guards with a wave of her hand. Joel sensed in the apelike tanar'ri a certain reluctance to depart. They stepped back several paces, but they did not leave entirely, nor did they turn their backs on their prisoners.
When the tanar'ri were out of earshot, the bard explained in a quiet but urgent voice, "We know of the problem Lady Beshaba is having controlling her power. Lady Tymora is plagued with the same problem. Lord Finder is anxious to discover the cause and do away with it. He bade me to ask Lady Beshaba to meet him at the base of the Spire so they might discuss the situation and determine the solution."
"Beshaba already knows the cause of her misery. It is Iyachtu Xvim," Walinda declared.
"And yet the problem continues," Joel noted, "despite her knowledge."
Walinda squinted her eyes in anger. "Lady Beshaba is a prisoner within the Bastion of Hate, isn't she?" Holly asked. Walinda glared at the paladin.
"Walinda, Lord Lathander has sent me to render you whatever aid you need to free Lady Beshaba," Holly explained. Her voice was tight in an effort to control her anger that she was forced to deal with this woman.
The priestess's eyes widened. Then she burst out laughing. Just as suddenly she stopped, as if she were plunging a dagger into her prey, twisting it, then withdrawing it.
"You?" Walinda exclaimed. "A paladin of light, here in Gehenna to aid Beshaba?"
"Lord Lathander is an ally of Tymora," Joel interrupted. "Since Lady Beshaba and Lady Tymora share the same problem, why should an alliance seem unusual?" Joel asked. "Furthermore, our own world is threatened by the goddesses' troubles. Who better to save the luck of the Realms than a paladin?"