Finder's Bane - Kate Novak [54]
Toward late afternoon they stopped to rest beside a stream. As Holly splashed in the icy water farther downstream, Joel and Jedidiah filled the waterskins.
"She's quite charming," Jedidiah noted, nodding in the direction of the paladin. "She sings with her whole heart."
Joel nodded in agreement. He looked up, hoping to spot Jas, but the winged woman was nowhere in sight. "I guess Jas doesn't care much for music," he said.
Jedidiah shook his head. "From what you've told me, HI wager she's hoping to spot her ship. A spelljamming helm is too rare to let slip away. Once you've got the wanderlust for the spheres, you don't return happily to being a groundling."
"What kind of helm?" Joel asked.
"Spelljamming," Jedidiah said. "It's what makes her ship fly. Any priest or mage can make it move, using the power of spellcasting. I don't know how she thinks she's going to get it away from your Banite priestess, though."
"She was planning to ask for Elminster's help," Joel explained.
"A priestess of Bane traveling around with a spelljammer… that just might interest the old sage," Jedidiah remarked. "It certainly piques my curiosity."
"So you think we could help her?" Joel asked. "Jas, I mean."
"I think you should finish your pilgrimage to the Lost Vale first, as you promised Finder you would," Jedidiah said. "Jas can wait."
"She's afraid the Banites will figure out how to take it outside the sphere, whatever that means," Joel said, "and strand her here."
"I can't imagine why they'd want to do that. They'd end up little fish in a very big pond. Still, if she's worried about that, why is she still with you? Why doesn't she take off and search for it?"
"She feels she owes Holly for saving her life, so she wants to be sure the paladin gets home safely. Do you think Walinda really does hear Bane's voice?" Joel asked.
"I hope not," Jedidiah replied.
Joel felt a breeze, and Jas landed beside the stream. She had glided down on them as silently as an owl.
"See anything?" Joel asked, half hoping that she hadn't.
Jas shook her head. "I was hoping that once the Bane witch got what she wanted from the Temple in the Sky, she'd head back to the Spiderhaunt Woods-to the village she came from-and I'd be able to spot my ship and find some way to get it away from her. I don't know why I bothered. Now that she's sacrificed most of her village's population, there's no point in her returning there. She could be anywhere by now."
The winged woman rode with the rest of the party until they stopped for the night.
They set up camp in the foothills on a bluff from which they could survey Daggerdale for miles to the north, south, and west. Jas left the horses to graze in a meadow below the bluff while Joel and Jedidiah collected firewood and Holly finished cleaning the pheasants she'd shot that morning. They had just finished their meal of pheasant, berries, and hard black bread from the Zhentilars' saddlebags when a howling rose from the dale to their north.
"Nine hells!" Jas cursed with fury. "We forgot to make sure he was dead this time," she growled at Joel.
"Well, we could hardly dig him out from beneath the rubble just to burn him," Joel argued.
"We don't know it's Bear," Holly said.
"It's him," Jas said. "I'd know that howl anywhere."
"Bear. That's the man the Xvimists transformed into a creature to track you, right?" Jedidiah asked.
"He said he could feel our power wherever our feet touched the earth," Holly explained.
"He also said he would have lost us but for the power of the fourth one traveling with us," Jas added. She glowered angrily at Jedidiah. "That was you, wasn't it? You've been following us."
Joel looked questioningly at the old priest.
Jedidiah looked up sheepishly