Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [119]
Moander ignored her goading. No doubt the bard will have my servant Alias with him, the god informed Coral. And where Alias is, the paladin will be, too. They must be reeled in carefully. You will have that honor, Coral. Champion will be pleased to see you again… at first.
Coral looked down at the ground, far below the top of the god's new body. If I can make it close enough to the edge to jump, she thought, I could end this torment.
Curiously, Moander didn't seem to notice her thought or take control of her limbs. Whispering her former goddess's name, Coral dashed to the edge of the vast pile of greenery and flung herself away from it. She began to drift down as gently as a feather. On the ground beneath her, she could see a possessed magic-user staring up at her. Moander had used the mage's body to cast a feather fall spell on her. She had gained nothing by her suicide attempt.
But I have learned much, Moander's voice came to her. Now I know just how far you will go. I must keep you on a tighter leash, mustn't I? It is hopeless to defy me. You, and you alone, will be the one to sacrifice Champion, and no other-just as soon as you have planted the seed to resurrect me in the Realms.
Coral's tears splashed to the ground like rain. Some time later she landed beside them. Under Moander's control, she rose to her feet and strode off to make preparations to capture Dragonbait and Alias.
16
The Lost Vale
Finder's stone teleported the eight adventurers into the Singing Cave at the edge of the Lost Vale. They stood about twenty feet from the cave's mouth.
Sunlight poured in on the green carpet of moss and ferns just inside the cave's entrance. Condensation sparkled on the stone walls. Little red and yellow skinks skittered over the floor, walls, and ceiling, and orange swallows shot in and out of the cave carrying insects for their young, which twittered in nests in nooks and crannies at the back of the cave.
Olive pulled her hands away from Alias and Dragonbait. For the first time, the teleportation hadn't exhausted her. I must be getting used to it, she thought as she walked to the mouth of the cave, which faced a steep mountainslope to the south. Olive stared down the mountainside and her eyes widened. "What a mess!" she muttered.
The others came up beside the halfling to look out. Far below them, a vale nearly five miles wide stretched from the mountains to the east down into the foothills bordering on the Anauroch Desert to the west. The steeper slopes of the vale were covered with meadows, which sparkled with wild flowers, and woods carpeted with ferns and teeming with a great variety of trees. Many of the trees were laden with fruit and flowering vines. Crystal blue streams ran from the mountains through the meadows and woods.
The greenery on the gentler slopes and in the lowlands, though, had been devastated. Nearly a quarter of the vale's plants had been hacked to the ground and uprooted. Some larger trees still lay dying where they'd been cut down, but most of the vegetation had been hauled off, leaving the reddish brown earth bare. As the streams flowed lower into the vale, they, too, took on the color of the earth.
Breck Orcsbane whistled softly. "I've seen a flight of dragons cause less damage," he said. The ranger pointed to a great green butte nearly a thousand feet in diameter that rose several hundred feet straight up from the bottom of the vale. "Those specks moving around that hill must be the possessed saurials," the ranger speculated. "With all that activity around one spot, I'll bet Moander's new body is hidden in a cave somewhere in that hill."
Alias, Dragonbait, Akabar, and Olive exchanged nervous glances with one another.
"Who wants to tell him?" Olive asked.
Akabar put one hand on the ranger's shoulder. "That hill," the mage said slowly,
"is Moander's new body."
"What?" the ranger exclaimed.
"Moander's minions must have created the hill from all the plants and trees they've cut down in the vale," Alias said. "Moander grows on decaying things.
When I first released the god from its