Tymora's Luck - Kate Novak [105]
Perr flicked his right hand backward at the wrist. "That is the signal Hatemaster Morr gives to open the gate," he said.
Joel imitated the signal. "Darkness falls," he intoned solemnly, imitating the greetings he had heard exchanged by other priests of Xvim.
"And darkness rises again," Perr responded.
Once Joel had crawled out of the gatekeeper's suffocating quarters, he began to shiver despite the warmth of the Gehennan air. He had the uncomfortable feeling he had been transformed into a priest of the god Cyric, Prince of Lies. He pressed his hand against the finders stone inside his shirt and was comforted by its warmth. Finder was still with him.
The yugoloth he'd spoken to earlier was staring at him. He stared back, debating whether or not to try to convince these creatures not to defend the fortress when the tanar'ri attack came. In the end, he decided not to try. It would be far more complicated than it had been to convince Perr to open the gate. The yugoloths would take their orders from a higher-ranking yugoloth, and Joel had no way of knowing which one that would be. Without actually lying, he had already suggested to them that Tymora was coming. Considering what had happened to their fellows when Beshaba had arrived, that deception might keep them from attacking Walinda, providing this yugoloth spread the rumor that Tymora was expected.
Joel knew better than to repeat the lie, though. It would look manipulative. Either the yugoloths gossiped or they didn't.
He strode off down the wall until he turned a corner. There were more yugoloth guards up ahead. He noticed another trapdoor at his feet. He opened it without a trace of furtiveness. The ladder leading down into the darkness below was scaled for a large yugoloth, but Joel managed to make his way down it without breaking his neck.
Joel pulled out the finder's stone. By its light, he could see that he was in a room with a window looking out over the courtyard. The room was empty save for him, a table and a chair, and a dead yugoloth, one of the short, lobster-like ones. It lay on its back, its carapace sliced down the center from its head to the bottom of its tail. Its entrails had been pulled out and stomped on.
From somewhere in the walls, Joel caught the muffled sounds of a battle with swords. He stood at the window and thought of Jas. The finder's stone sent a beacon of light up to another part of the wall. Joel hoped Jas was paying attention, for he didn't dare use the beacon for long. After only a few heartbeats, he slipped the magic crystal back into his shirt and stepped to one side of the window.
The bard counted to five hundred before returning to the window to resignal the winged woman, but Jas appeared in the window just as Joel was pulling out the finder's stone. She had Emilo with her.
'Sorry we took so long," Jas apologized. "We were just finishing up. Did you know that Walinda's troops are starting to mass outside the bastion?"
"She said she'd give me half a day," Joel replied.
"Well, apparently she got impatient," Jas retorted. She looked down at the dead yugoloth on the floor. "Your handiwork?" she asked.
Joel shook his head. "I take it isn't yours either."
"No," Jas replied. "Looks like one of the bigger yugoloths got tired of taking orders from this guy."
"We started the fighting going on down the hall," Emilo said excitedly. "And Jas has set up fifteen barrels of smoke powder to explode."
"You did what?" Joel gasped. "Do you know how dangerous that stuff is? It's been outlawed in fifteen cities in the Heartlands."
"Trust me," Jas said. "I know what I'm doing. It may be enough to knock a hole in the outer wall, and maybe not. At any rate, it