Tymora's Luck - Kate Novak [78]
The bar-lgura began marching Holly and Joel down the canyon. Emilo trotted along beside them, taking care not to be tread upon by one of the hulking tanar'ri. Holly looked at Emilo with a puzzled expression, then looked at Joel. The bard shook his head to warn her, and the paladin looked away.
There was little light in the canyon, and most of what there was emanated from the hot lava that streamed down the small gullies in the side of the mountain and collected into bubbling pools on the canyon floor. Like the canyon where they'd last rested, the ground was covered with a black flinty ash. Broken, hexagonal-shaped columns that had sheered off the side of the mount above stood like rocky sentries. There were no trees or shrubs or plants of any kind anywhere. Only fiends from the lower planes could live and thrive in such a place.
The bar-lgura had marched them nearly half a mile through an encampment of hundreds of tanar'ri when Joel noted that the populace of the camp had begun to change, as had the atmosphere. The bar-lgura they had already passed had seemed content just to sit around, hardly giving the adventurers a glance. Now their guards led them through gangs of gaunt, filthy creatures who resembled minotaurs. Their behavior was aggressive and openly hostile. They fought with each other in vicious hand-to-hand combat, and several followed behind the guards, snarling at the adventurers.
"What are they?" Joel whispered, nodding to the minotaur-like creatures.
"Bulezau," Holly whispered back. "Tanar'ri pit bulls."
She was rewarded with a slap on her head for speaking.
As they continued on, they began passing tanar'ri troops, both bar-lgura and bulezau, drilling in attack formations. The bulezau who had been following gradually dropped behind. Joel could only assume their captors were approaching the army's headquarters. Soon afterward they came upon a large pavilion, lit all around the perimeter by torches. It was the only shelter in the canyon. Undoubtedly it had been erected for privacy, since it could hardly shelter anyone from the heat and stench of the plane. To one side of the tent stood a flag emblazoned with Beshaba's symbol-black stag horns on a field of red.
The bar-lgura pushed them toward the entrance of the pavilion and formed a semicircle around the prisoners, who were curious to see what would happen next.
A delicate hand moved the tent flap aside, and a small, graceful woman with long, silken black hair stepped out of the pavilion. A cold smile played across her lips.
"So, Poppin, we meet again," the priestess Walinda greeted the bard. Her eyes remained fixed on Joel like a viper's on its prey.
Joel bowed low before the priestess. Upon rising, he met her cold smile with a warmer one of his own. He realized he was mimicking the way Finder greeted women. "I have been searching for you," the bard explained. "You're looking well."
Indeed Walinda looked as lovely as ever, but there was something different about her, and Joel had to stare for a moment to realize what it was. She was wearing the same black plate armor she'd worn as a priestess of Bane. The ruby she'd worn on her forehead was gone, and over the blood-red tattoos on her cheek she had added Beshaba's stag-horn symbol. There was something else different, something even more remarkable. A dark aura surrounded Walinda, a pulsing, fluctuating dark shadow that silhouetted her slender figure. It made her appear more powerful, more forbidding, more seductive.
The bar-lgura holding the flying carpet dropped it at Walinda's feet.
Walinda acknowledged Holly's presence with no more than a glance. Like the bar-lgura, she did not seem to notice Emilo. She did, however, note Jas's absence. "So where is the pigeon girl?" she asked.
"Jas? Why do you ask?" Joel retorted evenly.
"The bar-lgura saw her fly off when you were captured," Walinda said.
"Oh, I imagine she's around somewhere," Joel replied, "inspecting the army you've got here. What does a priestess of Beshaba need with an army?"