Tymora's Luck - Kate Novak [86]
The marilith ended the combat suddenly by sheathing her weapon. She must have spoken to Holly with telepathy, for the paladin replied, "Yes, I did," as she handed back the unsharpened blade the marilith had given her for the test.
The marilith bowed to the paladin and slithered off to Walinda's pavilion. The bulezau and bar-lgura cleared a wide path for her and the two toadlike hezrou warriors who followed in her wake.
Holly returned to Joel's side.
"What did she say to you?" the bard asked.
"She said I fought well for someone so young, and that I must have had an excellent teacher," the paladin replied, wiping the sweat from her brow with a handkerchief.
"Your father trained you, didn't he?" the bard asked.
Holly nodded. Her father, Joel recalled, had been a warrior from Zhakara who had settled in Daggerdale, far from his native land, after having fallen in love with Holly's mother. He'd died only a year ago, murdered by orc raiders along with his wife and in-laws. Holly still used the curved blade he'd brought with him from Zhakara.
"I must confer with Stentka," Walinda said.
"Just a minute. I have some conferring I need to do myself," the bard said. "I think Jas and I could manage to get into the fortress before your attack and perhaps sabotage a few of their defenses."
"Oh?" Walinda prompted the bard, obviously interested.
"It depends on whether or not you can speak with the dead," Joel explained.
"What dead?" Walinda asked.
Joel strode back to the edge of the pit. "Which one?" he whispered to the kender.
"The one on the right, with his right arm missing," the kender whispered back.
Joel turned back to face Walinda and motioned for her to join him. "That hydroloth," he said, pointing into the pit. "The one on the right, with the missing right arm. How did he come to be a prisoner?"
"As I mentioned before, Xvim will not allow anything to fly, teleport, or magically gate directly into his realm," the priestess explained. "His agents must teleport outside the walls of the Bastion of Hate and announce themselves at the gate to gain entry. The hydroloths teleport to the lava flows, where they delight in swimming before returning to their hired lord. The bulezau fished all three of these creatures out of the lava several hours before you arrived."
"The hydroloth I mentioned was stalking Jas in Sigil to bring her to Iyachtu Xvim. He was helped by a priest of Xvim who we defeated in combat. If I can find out more about his mission, I might get away with impersonating a mercenary hired by the priest and the hydroloth to bring Jas back," Joel explained.
Walinda nodded thoughtfully. She pointed out the hydroloth in question to the nearest bar-lgura. "Fetch that corpse from the pit," she ordered. "You… bring me a torch," she ordered a second bar-lgura.
Within a few minutes, a team of bar-lgura had hauled the dead hydroloth from the pit and laid it at Walinda's feet. The bar-lgura who'd been sent for a torch returned with a piece of tar-drenched fabric wrapped about a pike. Great clouds of smoke came from the torch, but it burned brightly enough to cast shadows in the dark canyon.
"What question shall I start with?" the priestess asked.
"Ask him what the purpose of his mission in Sigil four nights ago was," Joel suggested.
Walinda nodded. From a small pouch hanging from her armor, she drew out a stick of incense and lit it from the torch flame. She knelt beside the head of the stinking froglike corpse. Holding the incense in her left hand, she held it under the hydroloth's nose. With the fingers of her right hand, she stroked the emblem of Beshaba tattooed into her cheeks. Then she