Then he would claim the goddesses' worshipers as well. Beshaba's followers would turn to him readily, eager for the ruin he would bring to their enemies. Tymora's priests, of course, would balk, but they would be powerless without him. They would turn to Selune for protection, but they couldn't cower in Selune's temples forever. When they emerged, they would be captured and given a choice-join him or die. It mattered not to him which they chose.
It was the adventurers who followed Tymora that he coveted. Adventurers were a power to be reckoned with in the Realms, and many of them relied on Tymora's luck to survive the hardships of their professions. They wouldn't dare to risk his wrath. They would call on him for sustenance, and their strength would be his. And then, in time, the Realms would be his.
Opera is the one medium that provides a venue for the composer to express vastly differing emotions simultaneously through song. The many voices weave together to form a single tapestry of song that may reveal not only wrenching pain and darkest evil, but sublime joy, noblest sacrifice. Thus, music that is already beautiful and moving is further enhanced by chilling ironies and dramatic overtones. The enjoyment of opera is an acquired taste, but to my mind, those who put forth the effort to study it and appreciate it will be richly rewarded.
ACT FOUR SCENE 1
Jas landed on a rocky butte and folded back her wings, which here in the Outlands were reddish brown at the base and speckled with white and black flecks at the tips. After all the awful shapes and colors her wings had taken, Jas rather liked them they way they looked now-like a hawk's. Even better, her eyes had returned to normal, and she was slowly molting her feathers. She felt human again.
She peered out across the prairies, but she could see nothing for miles and miles but the spire. The infinite peak rose in the distance, seemingly no closer today than it had been yesterday. Jas did not hurry back down to the party, but sat for a few minutes to enjoy the peaceful solitude.
Traveling across Gehenna on foot would be preferable to traveling anywhere with Beshaba. Despite having shrunk to the size of a human, the goddess was still a giant terror. Although she made perfectly clear that she could destroy the party in an instant, the goddess was so exhausted by the drain on her power she rode on the carpet. Since the carpet couldn't take the weight of five persons, Jas was forced to fly alongside it, for which she might have been grateful. She was plagued, however, with the sensation that she was once again watching her friends being tortured, only this time by Walinda's goddess.
Beshaba never stopped complaining or criticizing or scheming. The magic carpet moved too slow. The light of the Outlands was too bright. Holly's smile was annoying. Joel's good manners were a pretense. Jas reeked of Tymora's magic. They'd been forced to introduce Emilo, to keep Beshaba from tripping over him, and the goddess had been especially aggravated by the kender's presence. Halflings and kender were vermin. On occasion, she would launch into a tirade about how Xvim would rue the day he tangled with her. She would see that he choked on his own tongue.
Then there was the bad luck that dogged not only the adventurers but Beshaba herself. A freak wind blew the magic carpet into a tree. In the collision, a branch tore a great hole in the rug so that it would no longer fly. Emilo had been crushed at the loss of so spectacular an item of magic.
The party was forced to walk. They passed too close to a burr bush and ended up picking prickles out of their clothes for hours. Their boots began to fall apart, and before long, they all had blisters, even the goddess, who also broke a nail trying to adjust the straps on her sandals.
When they set up camp for the night, Holly cut her hand cleaning a bird she had caught for them to eat, Joel hurt his knee breaking a branch to feed the fire to cook the bird, and Emilo burned his hand building the fire. Beshaba, who, as Holly pointed out, didn't really need to eat as did the humans, insisted on tasting the bird and burned her tongue. The injury soured the goddess's mood even further.
After spending half an hour fruitlessly searching for a holy symbol that was missing from her backpack, Holly threw herself, frustrated and tearful, to the ground to sleep. She was up again in only a few minutes, having lain on an anthill. She had to remove all her armor to get the ants off her, and she was badly bitten. While Joel sorted through their remaining magical scrolls, the wind whipped the pages away in the dark. Then, while Jas was on watch, the bard was beset with nightmares about children suffocating in a cave and cried out in his sleep, waking Holly and Emilo and alarming everyone.
Only Jas seemed immune to the problems besetting the party. Reeking of Tymora's magic apparently had a positive side. Ordinarily this many tribulations would have resulted in bickering, but no one was comfortable speaking in the goddess's presence except the goddess. The angry silence of the others was infinitely more wearying than any fight would have been, and Jas couldn't help but think the others resented her lack of misfortune.
During the second day's travel, Beshaba grew more suspicious and distrustful, not only of the surrounding area, but of her escorts as well. She demanded that Jas fly up ahead to scout, Emilo and Holly walk in front where she could see them, and Joel stay right at her side. She would become livid when she took her eyes off Emilo and didn't see him when she looked again. From some of her jewelry and a string, the goddess created a jangling collar for the kender, so that she could hear him and he wouldn't become "unnoticed" again. Emilo looked as mortified as a cat with a bell around the neck.
After having desired Walinda's death since the day she met her, Jas now regretted that the priestess wasn't here to suffer under her goddess's spiteful eye. Of course, Walinda was so perverse that she had thrived on the abuse her previous master had heaped on her, so there was no guarantee Beshaba would actually make Walinda miserable even were she still alive.
Now that her friends' murderess was dead and the dark stalker was just a phantom of her mind, Jas found the fires that had driven her had grown cold. She didn't want to go back on her promise to help Tymora, but the thought of traveling day after day with Beshaba was intolerable. And when they finally reached the spire, what would happen next? The uncertainty, the inability to plan her life beyond tomorrow was exhausting her. Suddenly, off in the distance, Jas caught sight of a beam of light. The beam looked familiar, a line of yellow just like the light from the finder's stone Joel had used to summon her when they were in Gehenna. There were two finder's stones, Jas remembered, or rather two halves of one stone. Joel had one half, and the other…
"Finder," Jas whispered. "It's about time you showed up."
The thought that Finder would soon be there lifted Jas's spirits slightly. Finder would deal with Beshaba, god to goddess. Jas flew back to the group to give them the good news.
Beshaba didn't seem pleased. She didn't trust any of the gods, and apparently she suspected Finder of some treachery. She awaited his arrival holding a dagger next to Joel's ribs so she would have the upper hand over Joel's god.
Soon it appeared as if a sun had blossomed on the horizon and was moving toward them. With Beshaba's attention fixed on the sky, Emilo sat down beside Jas and pulled out a piece of red glass from one of his many vest pockets. He held the glass up to his eye so he could view the approaching light without squinting. "It looks like a chariot of fire," the kender said excitedly. "Want to see?" he asked Jas.