Finder's Bane - Kate Novak [21]
Joel pointed the wand again at Bear, but he was too late. The huge man had already closed on him. He slammed into the bard, flattened him into the ground, then delivered blow after blow with his elbows to the bard's face.
From far off, Joel could hear Holly screaming. Then silence and blackness enveloped him.
Four
The Sacrifice
How long he remained unconscious Joel could not tell, but at some point he began to sense he was rolling from side to side. Somehow he knew he was on a ship bound for some far-off land. Through a gray haze, he saw the prow of the floating ship that had accompanied the pilgrim Banites. Standing on the deck over his prone form was the Banite priestess with her silver goad. She turned to face him, wearing a pitiless smile.
Instinctively the Rebel Bard tried to back away, but his hands and feet were chained. He shouted. A moment later when he opened his eyes, he realized he had been dreaming. The rolling had stopped, and the ship and the priestess of Bane were gone.
Holly hovered over him, surrounded by a rosy glow, which quickly faded. She'd been using her paladin's gift of healing to repair the damage done by Bear's beating. Her pretty features were darkened with concern. Joel raised an arm to ruffle her hair reassuringly, then realized the chains were not just part of a dream. He and the paladin both were shackled hand and foot, short chains linking the shackles and a slightly longer one attached to the chains at their wrists, linking them one to the other.
Joel squinted and blinked in the sunlight streaming over Holly's shoulder. The sun was westering over the mountains, but the brightness still hurt Joel's eyes. Holly shifted her position to shade his face. "Are you all right?" the girl asked.
"Just tell me the priestess of Bane was a dream," Joel croaked, his throat raw and parched.
"Why would you dream about a priestess of Bane?" Holly asked. "It's a priest of Xvim who's captured us. Don't you remember?"
"Priest of Xvim, a dozen Zhentilar, and one ugly Bear," Joel muttered, remembering now what had happened. With Holly's help, he sat up and looked around. He could see all the parties named seated beneath the shade of a tree. "What were you doing there?" he demanded of Holly.
"I took a detour from my route to check on Bear," Holly explained. "When I saw him throw you from your horse I tried to ride to the rescue."
"You should have ridden right to Lord Randal and let him know."
"I couldn't just let them keep beating you up," Holly argued. "With Bear there, I couldn't bluff them like you did, so I just attacked. It was the only thing I could think of."
Joel sighed. As much as he liked the paladin, subtlety, he realized, was not her forte. Trying to sound hopeful, the bard asked, "So where are we now?"
"You've been out since yesterday. We passed through Dagger Falls some time after noon today. They had you slung across the back of a packhorse. Now that you're awake, you'll have to march."
"What happened to Butternut?" Joel asked.
"She had the sense to bolt," Holly answered.
Joel thought of all the things in Butternut's saddlebags that were lost to him now, especially Kharva's beef stew pies. He felt his stomach growl.
"So Bear can't risk going back to Anathar's Dell,' Holly explained. "When your horse shows up there, riderless, there will be a great many questions asked."
"Well, that's a small blessing, at any rate. Where are they taking us now?" Joel asked.
"There," Holly said, motioning with both manacled hands over Joel's right shoulder.
The bard twisted about. They sat on a slope looking down over a vale. On the opposite side of the vale, where Holly had just motioned, was a squat black tower. Hanging in the sky over the tower was a huge chunk of rock shaped like a great hornet's nest.
"That's the Flaming Tower, and the flying rock above it is called The Temple in the Sky," Holly explained. "No one knows much about the rock except that it's supposed to be inhabited by a beast cult. The beast cult ha made an alliance with the people in the tower."
"And who's in the tower?"