"Lathander offered his paladin to help your goddess," Joel said fervently. "If you let this creature take Holly, you will be offending the Morninglord, and he is far more powerful than Beshaba."
"For all his goodness, Lathander has no interest in helping Beshaba," Walinda countered. "He only wants to know what she knows so that he might help Tymora. I care not whether he is offended."
Emilo finally finished picking the locks on the manacles. Holly jerked the restraints from her wrist and let them fall to the floor with a clatter. She leaped backward and drew her sword, leveling it at the belly of the hezrou.
"Hey," the imp cried out in surprise. "How'd she do that?"
Jas landed beside Holly, her sword also drawn. "You won't take her without bloodshed," the winged woman snarled at the marilith.
Stentka Taran looked toward Walinda.
The priestess sighed. "You will have to charge me interest on what I owe you," she said to the marilith. "We will settle accounts in a few days time."
The marilith nodded. She slithered away, back up the stairs. The hezrou hopped behind her.
Walinda glared at Holly. "You have cost me dearly," she said accusingly.
Holly laughed, completely astounded by the evil priestess's selfishness.
That was an interesting trick. How did you do it?" she said, repeating the imp's question.
"Walinda, don't you think we should be getting on with reviving your goddess?" Joel asked, trying to keep the priestess from guessing at the presence of the unnoticed kender.
Walinda nodded. "Yes, of course," she agreed.
The priestess approached her goddess slowly and reverently. With an atypical tenderness, she reached out for one of the giant-sized hands, clasping it in both of her own. In a soft voice, she began to chant words Joel did not understand, but Walinda spoke them with joy in her face. She was smiling, and there were tears in her eyes.
Slowly the dark aura about Walinda faded away from her body as an even darker nimbus grew about Beshaba. Walinda began to look pale and haggard. She was giving more back to her goddess than the power her goddess had given her. Or perhaps her goddess was simply taking more.
"Nooo!" Ratagar shrieked. "You've got to stop her, Marin! This is a bad thing. Trust me."
Joel could not even stand up at the moment, let alone stop Walinda from restoring her goddess to power. Walinda's shiny black hair began to turn gray, then colorless. Lines etched themselves in her face, and her back grew stooped. Joel watched in horror as the goddess began to stir at the expense of her priestess's vitality.
Holly and Jas crept to the bard's side. Holly began a soft prayer to heal the bard's injured knee. Joel sighed with relief at the warm feeling that spread through him as Lathander's gift of healing passed through his paladin's hands. Jas and Holly helped the bard to stand.
Suddenly the goddess sat bolt upright, blinking in the light of the finder's stone. The whites of her eyes were shot with red, giving her a look of madness. The dark aura that surrounded her being seemed to spread throughout the whole room. The light from the finder's stone dimmed to the brightness of a single candle. Looking upon her, Joel felt an unknown fear grip at his heart.
Beshaba pulled her hand away from her priestess, and Walinda collapsed to her knees at her goddess's feet beside the imp's cage.
Seizing the moment, Ratagar lashed out with his tail, burying its tip in Walinda's back. "That's for the death of my Noxxe!" the imp screamed. "Your priestess for my priest, Beshaba!"
Walinda's body began to twitch with a violent seizure, poisoned by the imp's stinging tail. She looked up at her goddess, her mouth opening and closing, but no words came forth.
Beshaba slid her right hand through the bars of the cage, and with a single squeeze, crushed the life out of Ratagar Perivalious. She squeezed again until Ratagar was no more than a pulpy mass of red flesh and green ichor, then dropped his body on the floor of the cage.
The goddess turned her attention to Walinda. Without any trace of emotion, she watched as her priestess's body ceased twitching and lay still.
Holly ran toward the dais, clearly intent on trying to aid the very same woman who moments ago nearly made her slave to a fiend of the Abyss.
"Leave her be, paladin," Beshaba commanded. Her voice was soft and sweet, like a young girl's, but it echoed throughout the whole chamber. "She is among the honored dead now. I do not want her body defiled with Lathander's stench."
Holly pulled back, insulted and aghast, but she had the sense to choose her words carefully. "Is there nothing you can do for her, lady?" she asked the goddess.
"She has no need of aid. She had done her duty here. Her spirit is already returned to the Blood Tor, where it will serve as my petitioner."
Holly lowered her eyes to the ground so that her shock would not be so obvious. She was appalled that Beshaba did not value Walinda's life, but only the service the priestess rendered her goddess.
"So. The servants of Lathander, Finder, and my hateful sister Tymora have all come to my aid. How amusing," Beshaba said.
Joel bowed low, with a flourish of his hand, making sure his greeting was every bit as graceful as the one he'd first given Tymora. Beshaba was renowned for the jealousy she bore her sister. "Greetings, fair Beshaba," the bard said as he rose. "My lord, Finder, bids me to escort you to the spire, should you agree."
"The spire… aye," Beshaba replied. "There I might find sanctuary from this sickness. Then I can better plan how to avenge myself on the upstart Xvim."
"Forgive my impertinence, Lady Beshaba," Joel begged, "but how is it you are so certain Iyachtu Xvim is behind your sickness?"
"I read Xvim's name in the minds of the hydroloths who attacked me in my realm. He sent the creatures to goad me into using my power, and then I discovered I could not control the power. This is his doing, I am sure. No doubt Lathander can discover exactly what Xvim is up to. Come, we will leave this place finally. Bring your flying carpet. You may need it."
Beshaba rose with a goddess's grace and flowed down the stairs of the dais like a ghost. She drifted over the bodies of the dead Xvimlar she'd slain days earlier.
Joel, Holly, Jas, and Emilo hurried up the dais, slipping past the corpses of Walinda and Ratagar, and sat down on the carpet.
"Airheart," Joel whispered, giving the carpet a pat. "Carpet, rise and go forward slowly."
The carpet glided along behind the Maid of Misfortune. Beshaba stopped at the door to the tower. Joel halted the carpet beside her.
"Leave the bastion," Beshaba ordered, "and await me in the canyon where my proxy gathered her army. I will join you once I have taken care of some unfinished business." Beshaba knocked softly three times on the door. The bar holding the door fell away, the door's hinges snapped, and the door collapsed outward. The ground began to tremble. Beshaba stepped out of the tower, and Joel ordered the carpet to follow on her heels. He was eager to be out in the open before the quake grew stronger.
Yugoloth corpses, felled by the marilith's deadly cloud, littered the stairs to the tower door. In the courtyard, yugoloths and tanar'ri continued to fight, even though the battle no longer served any purpose beyond the fiends' desire to shed blood.
Joel ordered the carpet to rise far above the combat and soar toward the only exit from the fortress. Joel slowed as they approached the gate. The gatehouse was choked with bar-lgura keeping the passage open for their fellow tanar'ri.