Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [102]
"Nameless," the mouth called out. It spoke in the same grating, high-pitched voice as Xaran.
Finder rose to his feet and approached the vine carefully. "Is that you, Xaran?" he asked, halting a few feet from the mouth.
The vine twisted so that the mouth faced the bard. "You will do Moander's bidding whether you choose to or not. It is only a matter of time," the vine mouth said.
"You are mistaken," Finder said heatedly. "Moander tried to pervert my singer. I will never deal with the Darkbringer."
"In time, you will return even your precious singer to Moander," the vine mouth said.
"You can go to hell!" Finder snarled. He slashed out with Olive's sword and sliced the mouth off the end of the vine. The vine whipped around his sword arm.
Finder tried to pull it loose with his other hand, but twinelike tendrils flared out from the vine and lashed his hands together at the wrists.
Olive leaped forward, slashing with her dagger, and hacked through the vine near where it came out of the pile of rubble. What was left of the vine retreated back into the debris. The tendrils wrapped around Finder's arms went limp, but Olive had to help the bard free himself from them.
"Well, that was heartening," Finder said glibly.
"What was heartening?" Olive asked incredulously. "That Xaran is still alive waiting to grab you and turn you into a vegetable?"
"No," Finder said. "what was heartening was that Xaran used a tendril to slither in here, instead of simply disintegrating this pile of rubble. It must have injured its disintegrating eye."
"Great. Since you stabbed its central eye, now it has only nine more to use on us," Olive said.
"Eight. The eye that charms beasts will be useless against us," Finder reminded the halfling. "And I imagine both of us have the will to resist the eye that causes sleep."
"Oh… now I feel better," Olive said sarcastically. "There are only seven ways left for it to kill or capture me."
"Xaran doesn't have any hands to dig himself out, but we do," Finder said.
"But Xaran can put out another tendril and strangle us in our sleep," Olive protested.
"We'll just have to keep watch."
Olive heard a shout, as if from far away. She silenced the bard with a wave of her hand and listened hard. In a few seconds, there was another shout.
"Orcs!" the halfling said in panic. "There are still orcs alive out there!
They'll dig Xaran out, then come in after us! Then what?"
"A good question," the bard muttered. "A good question indeed."
*****
The Mouth of Moander peered into her scrying pool at the Nameless Bard and his halfling companion. It was only a matter of time before they were recaptured, but Moander didn't allow her to take her eyes off them. Last night, the high priestess had felt a rare moment of pleasure and hope when the bard's dagger had survived Xaran's disintegration ray and destroyed the beholder's central eye, and she had dared to gloat over her master's setback when the bard had felled the orcs and ruined their warren with his magical horn. Now the evil god kept the priestess's eyes fixed on the bard, savoring her fresh despair.
Coral wished fervently that she was standing at the top of the well with a rope to help the bard escape. Since the priestess had been unable to scry Akabar this morning, presumably because he'd rejoined the protected Alias, Moander was now relying on Nameless to locate the Turmishman. Without Nameless's help, the search for Akabar could go on far too long, increasing the risk that someone would find the hiding place of the god's new body, perhaps even someone with power enough to destroy the body and free the possessed saurials.
Moander forced Coral to speak the very words it used to taunt her. "Even if the bard could fly out of that trap, he cannot escape the Darkbringer now. The seeds of possession grow in him," the god declared through Coral's mouth.