Tymora's Luck - Kate Novak [47]
"Rotten luck," Emilo muttered, prepared to lunge after it, but Joel held him back by grabbing the kender's vest. "Careful," the bard said. "It would be worse luck if you went rolling after it and fell down a cliff."
"Sorry," the kender said. "I never drop things like that."
"The black stag is her symbol," Joel said, purposefully avoiding using Beshaba's name. Without Selune and Finder to shield them, using the goddess's name could attract unwanted attention.
Joel lowered Emilo down the slope with a rope attached to his belt so he could fetch the flask, then hauled him back up. The flask was more than half empty, but at least they had it back. If they were desperate enough, Joel could create water to fill it. The party traveled along the ledge on the sheltered side of the ridge. As the ridge climbed higher, the adventurers grew tired quickly and were forced to rest often.
"I feel old all of a sudden," Emilo noted with some surprise.
"The higher you go, the less air there is," Jas explained.
"Of course, here in the Abyss, it could just be there's less air as you approach dangerous powers," Joel suggested.
The ridge and the ledge ended abruptly at a deep gorge and continued on the opposite side. A towering stream of water poured down a cliffside nearly half a mile away. It was the longest waterfall Joel had ever seen, and he could hear the roar of the water in the distance. It was the color of the water, however, that made the sight so eerie. It was blood-red.
The water, Joel thought, must be why the mountain is called the Blood Tor. It looks like blood pouring from a wounded land. He wondered briefly why the water was red, then decided he didn't want to know.
The water surged down the gorge below them toward the sea, where the goddess Umberlee made her realm. There was a rope bridge over the gorge, but it wasn't sheltered by the ridge. Consequently the bridge had been battered by the wind with such violence that it was a knotted tangle of ropes and reeds that appeared completely uncrossable.
"You want to try unravelling the bridge, or should I just fly us across?" Jas asked Joel.
Joel watched the bridge flap about as the wind came ripping up the gully. "Do you think you can fly in that wind?" he asked.
Jas shrugged. "I trust my wings more than I trust that contraption."
"I knew a caravan guard who used to say all the luck in the world won't make up for willful stupidity. I'm thinking we should test the reverse of that rule. Perhaps some willful reasoning will make up for all the bad luck in this realm. We're not going to leave anything to chance."
Since Emilo was the smallest, and together Joel and Jas could bear his weight easily, they rigged up a harness for the kender to use while he tried to unravel the bridge. They attached the harness to two lines of rope. Joel held one line and Jas took the other. Should the bridge collapse, Joel would keep the kender from falling into the gorge and Jas would risk flying upward to keep him from slamming into the sides of the ravine.
Emilo started down the rope bridge, untangling it as he went with his dexterous hands. The moment the kender had gotten all of the reed walkway to lie flat, he dashed across the rest of the bridge like a startled rabbit. The whistling wind made communication impossible, so they weren't sure what had alarmed Emilo. The kender turned, and to demonstrate the bridge's unreliability, he gave a sharp tug on one of the old worn ropes.
The ropes snapped in the center of the bridge, and the bridge flopped sideways. Emilo removed both lines from his harness and attached them around a boulder. Joel held both lines on the opposite bank. With a lead rope attached to the lines, Jas flew across with the first knapsack. The winds buffeted her, but the lead rope held and kept her from losing control of her direction. She checked the lines Emilo had affixed before flying back for the second backpack.
Before Jas carried him across,