"Maybe they just wanted to use it to find their seed," Finder argued.

"That's possible," Grypht said, "but it doesn't disprove the theory that the stone is the seed."

Finder scowled. "Moander traveled on land from Yulash deep into the Elven Woods. The G.o.d could have left its power anywhere. The seed could be practically anything."

Olive cursed herself for making the suggestion about the stone. The bard cherished the stone, and if the others insisted on destroying it. Finder would be furious. She wracked her brain for some way to convince the others that the idea was wrong. Fortunately Alias succeeded where the halfling could not.

"Moander would never have chosen the finder's stone to hold the seed," the swordswoman said. "The seed's casing has to break open for the seedling of possession to sprout, but breaking open the finder's stone would release the paraelemental ice at the center of the stone, and the seedling would die in the cold."

"Yes," Grypht agreed. "That's true."

Olive breathed a sigh of relief as Alias returned Finder's stone to him. The bard studied the gem thoughtfully.

"Well, if we can't find the seed," Breck said, "we're back to the first plan. We've got to destroy Moander's new body before the minions manage to find the seed and resurrect the G.o.d. Are you ready to take us to this Singing Cave?" he asked Finder.

"Just as soon as I take Alias somewhere safe," the bard said.

"What?" Alias exclaimed.

"Moander tried to use you once. It will try again," Finder said. "I don't want you anywhere near it."

"Finder, why did you bother to make me a swordswoman if it wasn't to fight?" Alias snapped.

"So you could defend yourself if you were in trouble," Finder said. "I didn't expect you to go looking for fights. And I most certainly never dreamed you'd run around trying to destroy evil G.o.ds."

"Be reasonable, bard," Breck said. "This is no time to be overly paternal. Alias is a good fighter. We need her."

Grypht added, "Her presence can protect us from the scrying of Moander's minions."

"So can Zhara's," Finder countered.

"But Alias might sing another soul song that could help us defeat the Darkbringer," Grypht persisted.

Finder glared at the wizard. "I won't have you using her to sing soul songs."

"Only you can use her to sing your songs, is that it, Finder?" Akabar asked.

"Stop it, all of you!" Alias shouted. "No one uses me! I choose to do things or not on my own." She turned to Finder and addressed him with her hands on her hips. "Dragonbait is my brother. His tribe is my tribe. You would do well to remember that, Father. I'm going to help the saurials, and you are not going to stop me. Grypht has scried the vale; he can teleport me there if you won't."

"An hour ago the thought of Moander filled you with terror," Dragonbait reminded her.

"It doesn't matter," Alias said stubbornly. "I'm not staying behind."

"Fine," Finder said coldly.

Alias looked as if the bard had slapped her in the face.

Olive knew exactly what the swordswoman was feeling and thinking. Alias was on the verge of considering some compromise, just as the halfling had found herself doing so often with Finder. I can't let that happen, Olive decided. She hurried to Finder's side and pushed the bard's hand into Alias's, saying, "Now that that's settled, let's get going."

Finder shot an annoyed look at Olive, but to his own surprise, he realized he'd grown too superst.i.tious about the half-ling's instinctive actions to defy them. He tightened his grip on Alias's hand and stole a glance at her.

Alias smiled at him shyly.

"I just don't want you to be hurt," he said.

"I know," Alias answered.

The others hastily formed a chain with their hands. Finder sang a series of notes, and the stone's glow of teleportation surrounded all of them.

The Mouth of Moander looked up suddenly from Moander's new body. With Moander controlling her, she shouted, "Gather the fliers. Cast a spell of invisibility on them. They must patrol the vale."

Several lesser minions hurried to obey the G.o.d's high priestess. They began to climb down from the immense mount of vegetation that Moander would soon inhabit.

Coral felt her heart sink. When her scrying on Xaran and the Nameless Bard had failed, she had been certain the swordswoman Alias had rescued the bard.

No, my priestess, Moander whispered in her head. I can sense the power of the seed. The bard has brought it to the vale. 1 told you he was possessed.

"Then why hasn't he brought the seed directly to you?" Coral asked defiantly. "Why do you need the fliers to search for him?"

Moander ignored her goading. No doubt the bard will have my servant Alias with him, the G.o.d informed Coral. And where Alias is, the paladin will be, too. They must be reeled in carefully. You will have that honor, Coral. Champion will be pleased to see you again ... at first.

Coral looked down at the ground, far below the top of the G.o.d's new body. If I can make it close enough to the edge to jump, she thought, I could end this torment.

Curiously, Moander didn't seem to notice her thought or take control of her limbs. Whispering her former G.o.ddess's name, Coral dashed to the edge of the vast pile of greenery and flung herself away from it. She began to drift down as gently as a feather. On the ground beneath her, she could see a possessed magic-user staring up at her. Moander had used the mage's body to cast a feather fall spell on her. She had gained nothing by her suicide attempt.

But I have learned much, Moander's voice came to her. Now I know just how far you will go. I must keep you on a tighter leash, mustn't I? It is hopeless to defy me. You, and you alone, will be the one to sacrifice Champion, and no othera"just as soon as you have planted the seed to resurrect me in the Realms.

Coral's tears splashed to the ground like rain. Some time later she landed beside them. Under Moander's control, she rose to her feet and strode off to make preparations to capture Dragonbait and Alias.

16.

The Lost Vale

Finder's stone teleported the eight adventurers into the Singing Cave at the edge of the Lost Vale. They stood about twenty feet from the cave's mouth. Sunlight poured in on the green carpet of moss and ferns just inside the cave's entrance. Condensation sparkled on the stone walls. Little red and yellow skinks skittered over the floor, walls, and ceiling, and orange swallows shot in and out of the cave carrying insects for their young, which twittered in nests in nooks and crannies at the back of the cave.

Olive pulled her hands away from Alias and Dragonbait. For the first time, the teleportation hadn't exhausted her. I must be getting used to it, she thought as she walked to the mouth of the cave, which faced a steep mountainslope to the south. Olive stared down the mountainside and her eyes widened. "What a mess!" she muttered.

The others came up beside the halfling to look out. Far below them, a vale nearly five miles wide stretched from the mountains to the east down into the foothills bordering on the Anauroch Desert to the west. The steeper slopes of the vale were covered with meadows, which sparkled with wild flowers, and woods carpeted with ferns and teeming with a great variety of trees. Many of the trees were laden with fruit and flowering vines. Crystal blue streams ran from the mountains through the meadows and woods.

The greenery on the gentler slopes and in the lowlands, though, had been devastated. Nearly a quarter of the vale's plants had been hacked to the ground and uprooted. Some larger trees still lay dying where they'd been cut down, but most of the vegetation had been hauled off, leaving the reddish brown earth bare. As the streams flowed lower into the vale, they, too, took on the color of the earth.

Breck Orcsbane whistled softly. "I've seen a flight of dragons cause less damage," he said. The ranger pointed to a great green b.u.t.te nearly a thousand feet in diameter that rose several hundred feet straight up from the bottom of the vale. "Those specks moving around that hill must be the possessed saurials," the ranger speculated. "With all that activity around one spot, I'll bet Moander's new body is hidden in a cave somewhere in that hill."

Alias, Dragonbait, Akabar, and Olive exchanged nervous glances with one another.

"Who wants to tell him?" Olive asked.

Akabar put one hand on the ranger's shoulder. "That hill," the mage said slowly, "is Moander's new body."

"What?" the ranger exclaimed.

"Moander's minions must have created the hill from all the plants and trees they've cut down in the vale," Alias said. "Moander grows on decaying things. When I first released the G.o.d from its prison in Yulash last year, it plunged into a refuse pit and soaked it up, ate some soldiers' corpses, and then headed for the elven wood to tear up a few hundred acres of trees."

"This body is a bit smaller than Moander was in the Elven Woods," Olive noted.

"You can't be serious!" Breck said.

"I have scried on my people for months as they built this new body, but I had no idea it was so huge" Grypht said. "I never attempted to view it all at once. I never imagined the scale they've built it to." From the hamlike smell the wizard emitted, Alias could tell that Grypht was extremely worried.

"Grypht didn't realize it was so large, either," Alias explained to the adventurers who couldn't understand saurial.

"If Moander's last body was bigger than this one, how did you ever destroy it?" Breck asked incredulously.

"We burned it... with the help of a red dragon," Akabar said.

Grypht shook his head unhappily. "That must be why the minions have been casting special enchantments on this new body to protect it from fire," he said.

"Grypht says this one's protected from fire," Alias translated. From the surprised look on Akabar's face, she could see the mage hadn't counted on this possibility.

"Well, what are we supposed to do with it, then?" Breck asked. Fear and frustration had begun to creep into his voice.

"Grypht could disintegrate it," Olive suggested.

"Perhaps," the wizard mumbled. "Given a thousand years."

"It's simply too big," Akabar replied. "It would take hundreds of wizards working years and years."

"Then gate it into another dimension," the halfling said.

"It would take the power of a G.o.d to create a gate large enough" Akabar said.

"As long as the seed isn't brought to it, the body isn't important. Right?" Zhara declared. "Without its minions, Moander is helpless. Somehow we must free the saurials from the Darkbringer's possession."

"Is that possible?" Alias asked.

"There are ways to free those who haven't been possessed too long," Grypht replied. "Those who were possessed first, at the same time Kyre was, harbor too many tendrils of possession. Even if we succeeded in destroying all the tendrils in their bodies, so much of their flesh is rotted away that they would die anyway. But those are blessedly few. Most of our people could be saved by a cure disease spell. That will destroy the tendrils that possess them. If we cannot get near them easily, we can cast cold spells on them instead. That will also destroy the tendrils."

After Finder had translated Grypht's words into Realms common, Akabar said, "But cold spells could kill the saurials."

"No," Dragonbait said. "We saurials don't react to cold the same way you humans do." The paladin turned to Alias. "Remember what happened to me last winter in Shadowdale when I was watching you skate on the duck pond?"

"You fell asleep, and we couldn't get you to wake up until we brought you back inside the inn," Alias recalled.

The paladin nodded. "Cold doesn't harm saurials the way it harms you humansa"damaging your flesh and hurting your lungs, pulling so much heat from your bodies that you could die. Instead, our scales protect the flesh. We fall into a torpor so we breathe less cold air, and we stop moving, which conserves heat. The larger we are, the less p.r.o.ne we are to the effect, but we can't control it. Even the High One," Dragonbait said, nodding in Grypht's direction, "would fall into the cold sleep if he stayed outdoors in Shadowdale in winter for more than an hour or so."

Alias translated all this for Akabar.

"Well, maybe we'll get lucky and the vale will have an early frost," Olive said.

Finder shook his head. "Part of the vale's magic keeps it especially warm in the winter," he said.

"There are over a hundred of my people down there," Grypht said. "We will need the help of warriors to capture them without harming them and priests who can cast spells to cure diseases and mages who know magical cold spells."

Alias translated Grypht's words.

"If Finder can teleport me back to Shadowdale," Breck said, "I'll muster a force of fighters and spellcasters."

"I can take you to Elminster's tower," Finder said, "but I can't wait for you. If Morala discovers I've returned, she may insist I be returned to prison. I refuse to risk leaving my daughter to face Moander without me."

Breck nodded in agreement. Finder was righta"Morala could be aggravatingly stubborn. She might refuse to recognize their need for Finder's help.

"If you can't find mages to teleport you back here to this place by tomorrow noon," Finder said, "I'll return for your forces then."

"He should take Zhara with him," Akabar said. "If she is with him in Shadowdale, Moander won't be able to detect them as they raise the forces we need to combat its minions."

Zhara frowned. "I don't want to be parted from you, husband," she said.

"It's only for a day," Akabar replied.

For a moment, Zhara looked as if she might argue further, but instead she said to Alias, "You will look out for my Akabar?"

"He'll be fine" Alias said, surprised that Zhara would entrust the mage to her care.

"That is not what I asked," the priestess said.

The swordswoman stole a glance at Akabar; he looked embarra.s.sed by Zhara's request.

Zhara stepped closer to Alias and whispered to her, "Please. It is not true, what you said, that he does not care for you. He once destroyed Moander to save you. I know you care for him as well."

Alias sighed. She didn't approve of the way Akabar shared his love with so many women, and she couldn't believe his marriage to Zhara had nothing to do with Zhara's resemblance to herself, but she couldn't deny the priestess's words. Akabar had risked his life to save her because they were friends, and she still cared deeply for him.

"Yes ... I'll look out for him," she promised. She could see Dra-gonbait looking at her expectantly. He didn't need to speak or even sign for her to know what was on his mind.

"I'm sorry I hit you and for the things I said," the swords-woman apologized to Zhara. "I guess you aren't so bad, as priestesses go."

A smile flickered across Zhara's face. "And you aren't so bad for a northern barbarian who smells of wet wool," she said.

Alias laughed. She held out her arms wrists upward.

Zhara laid her own arms over Alias's, and they both clasped their hands over the other's forearm in an adventurer's embrace. The magical brand on Alias's arm tingled, just as it did when Dragonbait touched it, and Alias realized Zhara must feel the same sensation from the brand Phalse had put on her.