Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [69]
Olive sat down on the bench at the worktable without bothering to check for any secret compartment holding a sack of gems. It just didn't matter anymore.
Nothing mattered. She pulled her knees up to her chin, wrapped her arms around her legs, lowered her head, and wept uncontrollably.
*****
Finder awoke from his nightmare shouting in fear. It took him several moments to remember he was in the ruins of his manor house. He was still having trouble breathing, and he was drenched in a feverish sweat and shivering from the cooling air. The sun was beginning to set, and the moon was cresting the horizon.
The bard had been dreaming of Flattery, something he thought was long past him.
He'd told the lie of the creature's destruction so many times that he'd almost come to believe it himself. Leave it to Olive, he thought, a lying thief herself, to discover the existence of Flattery.
Finder had always believed that Tymora, Lady Luck, favored the halfling rogue, but now it seemed that Tyr Grimjaws, the Even-Handed, God of Justice, had made Olive his agent. If she told Elminster that she knew Flattery hadn't died, Elminster would know Finder had lied about the ice shard exploding in order to cover up a worse secret. If Olive knew anything about how he had treated Flattery and told Elminster, the bard's reputation would be ruined. Finder wondered whether Tymora had made Olive loyal to him because Lady Luck still favored him, or if Tyr was testing him somehow with the halfling's presence.
In his dream, Finder had opened the door to his workshop, just as he had two centuries ago, and discovered Flattery standing there, pointing a ringed finger at him, prepared to disintegrate him. In Finder's dream, though, it was Olive, not Kirkson, who leapt in front of him to save his life from the green death ray, but the halfling was too short, so the ray hit Finder anyway, and he died.
If Finder hadn't been feverish with poison, he might have chalked the dream up to memories brought on by the attempt to visit the scene of his failure. He might also have scoffed at the idea that the gods took any interest in him whatsoever. Finder, however, was feverish with poison, and his vivid imagination found other reasons for the dream. He thought it must be the gods' way of telling him he would die no matter what. "Why should I die?" he muttered to the sky. "Elminster hasn't. Morala hasn't."
The bard wondered what was taking Olive so long. He estimated she'd been gone over an hour. He had no doubt the halfling could handle the locks and the traps, and he grinned with pride at the memory of how easily she'd mastered the melody for the door lock. There was nothing in the workshop that could give her any trouble, he reassured himself. He dismissed the dream as having no basis in reality. After all, according to Olive, Flattery was dead.
Of course, he could have been wrong about the orcs. They may have decided to post a guard after all, and were lying in wait to grab Olive when she passed the tunnel that led to their lair. The longer the shadows lengthened, the more uneasy Finder grew. She'd saved his life twice already today, yet he'd had the nerve to convince her to go past an orc warren alone to save his life a third time. Here he was, a master bard, a Harper, a full-grown human male, relying on a tiny halfling female to pull his fat out of the fire. Female! Sweet Selune! He hadn't even considered what the orcs would do to her if they captured her.
Finder caught sight of the sun and the moon just as they were equally distant from the horizon, like Tyr's scales, balanced in the sky. Then the sun sank lower and the moon rose higher. The bard sighed. If Olive didn't return with a neutralize poison potion soon, he would die anyway. With a deep sense of shame, he realized there was no sense in letting her die, too. He twisted his tunic into a sling for his injured arm and forced himself to his feet. His head spun, and glittering