Tymora's Luck - Kate Novak [75]
"The important thing is we're all right," Joel said. He looked at Jas and Emilo. "Thanks to you two."
Jas shook her head. "Thank Emilo. He's the one who had the foresight to fly off before I could wake up and get scared, too."
"Finder tried to warn me," Joel said. "I wasn't paying enough attention." "Finder warned you? How?" Holly asked.
, "In a vision, when I was sleeping. He said the barghests use fear. And before that, he said we had to find Beshaba and take her to the Spire."
"Oh, great," Jas muttered. "First Holly has visions. Now Joel's getting them. How do you know it wasn't just a dream?" the winged woman demanded.
"He knew about the barghests," Joel pointed out. Unable to argue with that fact, Jas threw up her hands. "Fine. We go find Beshaba, even if it takes us a century to find her in this hellhole. Then we take her to the Spire, presumably not against her will, since that's a little hard to do with goddesses."
"What's the Spire?" Emilo asked curiously. 'The Spire is the mount in the center of the Outlands," Holly explained. It lies just beneath the ring that holds the city of Sigil."
"Why do you think we're supposed to take her to the Spire?" the kender asked.
Joel shrugged. "It wasn't really clear in my dream. 1 asked, but Finder didn't have time to answer before Holly ran off and you woke me up."
"The Spire is a neutral ground for the gods to parley," Holly explained. "Rumor has it that even the most powerful of the gods are unable to cast magic there."
"Why do we have to take Beshaba there?" Jas wondered.
"Perhaps Selune has sensed that Iyachtu's magic has finally made Beshaba unconscious, like Tymora," Joel speculated. "Finder wouldn't have asked us to do something he knew would be impossible," the bard reasoned.
"Is this Finder, the god of reckless fools, we're talking about here?" Jas asked sarcastically.
"So we have to keep searching for Walinda," Holly said with a grim look.
Joel nodded. He took up the finder's stone from the jumble of gear on the carpet and thought once again of the evil priestess.
Once again the light arced upward, but now its beam curved back down to earth closer to their location.
"Not more than a few miles," Emilo judged. "Your friend Walinda isn't far off now." "She's not our friend," Jas snapped.
"Sorry," Emilo replied, chastened.
"We're lucky, though," Holly said. "While Chamada isn't infinite like most Outer Planes, scholars believe that it's still hundreds of miles high. We could have been traveling and searching for Walinda for days if Selune's portal hadn't transported us to where it did."
"Oddly enough, I don't feel lucky," Jas murmured.
Feeling more alert since he'd had some sleep, Joel was prepared to take over flying the carpet so Holly and Emilo could get some rest. Emilo had no trouble whatsoever falling asleep on the flying carpet, but Holly couldn't seem to get comfortable. She lay awake, staring up into the darkness, until she reminded Joel of an owl. "I'm so hot, she sighed.
As the carpet soared ever higher up the mountain slope, Joel started singing a silly lullaby about goblins who put ice on the toes of sleeping girls in the middle of winter.
"Are you crazy?" Jas asked. "Do you want everyone to hear us coming?"
"Why not?" Joel retorted. "I'm tired of creeping around like a mouse. A little whistling in the graveyard might do us good."
"Actually, that may not be a bad idea," the paladin said. They say a lot of creatures in Gehenna bluff their way to power. You just have to bluff better than they do."
"Bluffing," Jas gasped in mock shock. "Isn't that like lying? Are paladins allowed to do that?"
"Really, Jas, your notions of paladins are so old-fashioned," Holly said. "We're honest, not stupid. If some evil creature is prepared to believe I'm more powerful than he is, why should I disabuse him of the notion?"
"Especially when you're traveling in the company of the awesomely powerful, favored priest of the god of reckless fools," Joel said.
"Exactly," Holly agreed.
Jas snorted with amusement. "I'm