Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [112]
There was something worth retrieving from the beholder, though. Finder's dagger was still lodged in Xaran's central eye. Olive began to roll the beholder over so she could reach the dagger.
Grypht caught Dragonbait's eye and cocked his head. The paladin moved away from the others to join his fellow saurial.
"Well, Champion, what does your shen sight tell you about the bard?" Grypht asked quietly.
"The Darkbringer does not possess him," Dragonbait replied, but there was not much relief or pleasure in his voice.
"So he does not burn with the fires of evil," Grypht said with a shrug. "But you have not told me what your shen sight does reveal about him," the wizard said.
"He is much the same as before, High One," Dragonbait said. "A mountain of pride, wrapped in gray fog."
"Neutral… neither good nor evil," Grypht noted. "A man who walks the wall.
He does not lack the strength to abide by convictions. Why doesn't he have any?" the wizard growled.
"Perhaps" Dragonbait suggested, "convictions are not as interesting to him as he is to himself."
"Do you want your dagger, Finder?" Olive called out.
The bard looked in Olive's direction. "Of course I do, little Lady Luck," he said, winking at the thief.
Olive sniffed in mock disdain at the flattering nickname and turned away so no one could see her blushing. Leaning over Xaran's corpse, she pulled Finder's dagger from the beholder's central eye.
As Olive's leg brushed against the remains of her cloak, Grypht could see that the burr that Xaran had spit at the halfling still lay in the folds of the charred fabric. Alarmed, the wizard noticed that the magic seed pod had begun to swell. He rushed to Olive's side and lifted her from the ground by her arm, snatching her away from the seed.
"Hey!" she shouted. "Put me down!" she demanded. "You're hurting my arm!"
An explosive crack came from Olive's cloak as the burr split open, releasing a cloud of blue-black dust.
With his free hand, Grypht grabbed Akabar's robe and pulled the merchant-mage and his wife farther away from the cloud. "Use the stone!" the wizard ordered.
"Get us out of here! Now!"
Finder held up his magic stone with his good hand and took up Alias's right hand with his injured one. "Dragonbait, get over here," the bard shouted. The paladin leaped to Alias's side and grabbed her left hand.
As if it had a mind of its own, the black cloud drifted toward the halfling, tucked under the wizard's arm.
Dragonbait grabbed Zhara, and Zhara held onto Akabar. Grypht reached out for Akabar. Finder sang a note, and the party glowed a vivid yellow, then vanished.
The cloud of black dust swirled once around the spot where they'd stood, then sank to the floor, unable to sustain itself without a host.
When the light from the finder's stone's teleportation spell died out, the adventurers found themselves once again on the hillside outside the crumbling stone manor.
"We should be safe here for a while, at least," Finder said. To Olive, he added,
"You should be more careful, little Lady Luck."
"Me?" the halfling said increduously, thinking of all the risks Finder had taken in the past day alone.
Grypht set Olive down, and the halfling sank into the grass, exhausted by the teleportation and groaning from the pain in her injured shoulder.
Grypht waved a finger at the halfling, and the scent of honeysuckle rose from his body.
"Grypht says you should be more careful, too, Olive," Alias translated for the halfling. "You nearly became Moander's smallest minion."
Confused, Olive looked at Finder. "How come I didn't understand what he said?" she asked the bard, tapping meaningfully on the magical diamond earring he'd given her.
"The earring will only work for languages that are spoken in the Realms," the bard explained. Suddenly he turned to Alias. "How did you understand what Grypht said?" he asked.
"I cast the tongues spell from the finder's stone-your stone,"