Finder's Bane - Kate Novak [94]
"Oh, there's just one more thing," Jedidiah called out.
The banelich turned and waited for Jedidiah to continue.
"You know you probably can't enter Sigil with us."
The banelich drew back as if it had been slapped.
"No gods can enter, remember? Some great power prohibits the entry of all gods. I'm willing to bet that holds true for a god's essence as well. You won't be able to pass through the portal."
“I had not forgotten," the banelich replied coolly. "My slave will act on my behalf and oversee the recovery of the hand."
"But, my lord," Walinda protested, "if I leave you-"
The banelich whirled with its skeletal arm raised as if to deliver a blow to his priestess. Walinda winced involuntarily and said nothing more. The banelich turned and strode back into the cabin. Walinda hesitated on the deck, obviously uncertain whether her god would welcome her presence.
"For the essence of a god, your lord seems pretty uninformed," Jedidiah noted. "It's common knowledge among travelers of the planes that you can't enter Sigil except by means of a portal. You know, it seemed to me your master forgot it couldn't come with us, too. I wonder if some of the magic holding it together isn't already being neutralized."
Walinda turned and scowled at the older priest "Perhaps my lord was just testing you," she retorted Then she hurried after the banelich.
The ship rose a few feet from the ground and glided in the direction Jedidiah had suggested.
"So does this mean you can't get into Sigil either?" Joel whispered.
"Not as I am," Jedidiah said. "But I think there's a trick I might be able to use to get in. It's reckless, but it just might work."
According to Grypht, Joel recalled, recklessness was Jedidiah's other major fault. "What is it?" he asked.
"I'll tell you later, when we can be sure of our privacy," Jedidiah promised.
The rest of that day Joel spent at the ship's rail, amazed by the geological oddities that made up the landscape-vertically stratified rocks resembling tomes on a wizard's shelf, a lake filled with multicolored geysers, a hand carved of granite rising from the earth, Clouds of all colors formed out -of nowhere and disappeared just as mysteriously. Although there was no sun to set, night came on gradually, the blue sky darkening to indigo, then black. No moon or stars shone in the darkness, but the land seemed to glow with its own pale light.
Sometime after dark, Jedidiah pulled out the finder's stone and held it out. A beacon of light shot out from the stone in a direction a few degrees to the left of their current heading.
"We're a little off course, but nothing that can't be corrected in the morning. Time to get some sleep."
If not for the ship being a shrine to Bane and the task that awaited them, Joel might have found the next two days of travel almost pleasant. The cruise was smooth, and he and Jedidiah had plenty of leisure time. When they weren't eating or sleeping, they watched the scenery, practiced spells, sang, or talked.
Except for checking up on them several times a day, the priestess avoided the two men. At first Joel felt relieved that Walinda was no longer showing any interest in him, but that left him to wonder why. Was the banelich forbidding her to communicate with the men as punishment, or perhaps out of fear that she might grow too close to them and betray her master? If keeping her distance was Walinda's idea, what did she hope to accomplish? Was she punishing herself? Was she hoping to prove her loyalty and thus curry the favor of her master?
The banelich had given them the run of the ship, save for the captain's chart room where the creature usually stayed and the crew quarters where Walinda slept. According to Jas, whom Jedidiah had questioned in the Lost Vale, the upper decks had been sheered off when Jas and her crew were escaping from the illithids. Joel explored all that was left of the ship-the lower deck, the cargo hold, and the roofless battle deck. Everything of value had been stripped away, no doubt by Walinda's followers. It was during their second night in the Outlands,