Temple Hill - Drew Karpyshyn [117]
Each time this happened, Lhasha would silently pick the tangled sheets up from the bed, and gently tuck them around Corin's body. Otherwise, the half-elf kept a silent vigil at his bedside, slumped forward in a chair by the bed, her elbows on her knees and her head resting in her hands as she fought to stay awake so she could watch over Corin.
Fendel knew she was exhausted. He was too. Neither of them had rested since they had found the unconscious man in the tunnels only yards clear of where the tunnel had collapsed.
Somehow they had managed to get Corin's unconscious form back to Gond's temple. But any faint hopes either Fendel or Lhasha might have harbored for their friend's quick salvation had been dashed immediately by the High Artificer. He had placed his hands on Corin's brow, then withdrawn them hastily, his nose crinkling in revulsion.
"The stench of death is on him, a curse so evil it burns at my touch," Elversult's ranking cleric of Gond had declared. "I am truly sorry, but I do not have the power to free him from its grasp."
With that, Lhasha had collapsed into the chair Fendel had brought into the room. She shed no tears, said no words. There was no point in crying or speaking. She was beaten, devastated. With no hope, she merely sat down to be with her friend when he finally succumbed, trying simply to make his last hours as comfortable as possible.
That was how Fendel left her. He gave her no explanation as he slipped away. There was no point in giving her false hope. He doubted she would even notice his absence, for the time being. There was one other place the gnome could go for help, an authority higher than the Artificer. Someone who might, just possibly, have the power to save Corin. But the gnome had no idea if she would even deign to hear the plea of a simple cleric of Gond.
Fendel weaved his way through the streets of Elversult, the early morning sun casting the shadow of Temple Hill across the sprawling city. The Churches of Lathander and Waukeen reflected the light of the dawn, shining like radiant beacons atop the mount.
The gnome turned his back on them and continued on his way. There was no help to be found there. The House of Coins was nothing more than a shrine to a dead god. They had no power to save Corin.
The Tower of the Morn seemingly offered some promise, but Corin's bitter experiences in the past with Lathander's church merely confirmed what the gnome would have suspected anyway. The Dawnbringer's priests werehealers, but they had little experience with the foul, sinister magic that had infected the one-armed man.
Fendel knew there were those who had fought against such dark sorcery for generations, those who had spent centuries defending Faerun against necromancy and similar evils.
The Harpers. They alone might be able to offer some remedy for Corin's affliction.
***
"You better make this quick," Vaerana Hawklyn snarled. "Just because I agreed to see you doesn't mean Fm in a good mood."
"Surely you weren't still sleeping?" Fendel replied, his tone mocking.
"I haven't slept a wink in nearly two days!" She seemed generally offended by the suggestion. "Something big is going down with the Cult of the Dragon, and our agents haven't been able to find out a thing! I don't have time to sit and chat with old friends who'd rather spend their days tinkering with foolish gadgets than serving the cause of justice. We haven't all retired, you know."
"This isn't a social call," Fendel snapped back. The brash ranger always brought out the worst in him-just one of the reasons he had left the life of a Harper behind, deciding instead to retreat to the peaceful confines of Gond's church and raise a young, orphaned half-elf "This concerns the Cult of the Dragon."
Suddenly, he