"Who is Coral?" Akabar asked.

Alias looked at Grypht. "Coral was Dragonbait's lover, wasn't she?" she asked the wizard, though she was already certain of it from the soul link she'd just experienced.

Grypht nodded. "Once she was. She was also a priestess of the G.o.ddess of luck before Moander captured her. She's the Mouth of Moander now, the most powerful minion the G.o.d has in the Realms"

"The last part of the song came from her, not Dragonbait," Alias said. "Moander is keeping such a tight hold on her mind that her thoughts are hard to understand, but I know she doesn't want to live. She's begging for her G.o.ddess to release her from life beforea"" Alias gasped again. "Before Moander makes her kill Dragonbait! Moander plans for her to sacrifice Dragonbait to enslave my will! We have to free Dragonbait before it's too late!" Alias cried, rising suddenly to her feet.

"They can't sacrifice the paladin before Moander is resurrected," Finder said, standing and grabbing hold of Alias's arms before she rushed off and did something foolish. "And they can't perform the sacrifice without you. Stay put, and when Breck gets back from Shadowdale, we'll rescue Dragonbait."

"There isn't time to wait for Breck to get back!" Alias insisted. "They have the seed! They're going to resurrect Moander tonight! We have to stop them now!"

Akabar turned pale, and Grypht muttered an oath under his breath.

"How did they find the seed?" Olive asked. "Only this morning they expected Finder to go look for it."

"I don't know," Alias said, "but Coral told Dragonbait that Moander will be resurrected tonight. If we hurry, we have a chance of reaching Dragonbait before then. Coral's keeping Dragonbait in a hut warded with a glyph."

"Alias, there are only five of us against over a hundred saurial minions," Finder protested. "A lot of those minions are spell-casters. Even with Grypht's and Akabar's magic and the spells I have in the finder's stone, we don't stand a chance."

"We would if you used the piece of para-elemental ice in the finder's stone as Akabar suggested" Alias said. Her voice rose excitedly. "It could put most of the saurials into a torpor, and Grypht and Akabar could handle anyone it misses. Then we could just walk in and get Dragonbait. We could find the seed, too, and destroy it. It would be centuries before Moander could get back the energy to return to the Realms "

"Alias, I'm sorry about Dragonbait," Finder replied softly, "but it's not my fault he was captured. You've got to keep away from Moander so the G.o.d can't enslave you again."

Alias looked at Finder with astonishment. "What are you saying?" she asked suspiciously.

"I'm not going to destroy the finder's stone," Finder answered calmly. "Maybe the reinforcements Breck brings can manage to rescue Dragonbait."

"If we wait too long and give the minions a chance to resurrect Moander," Alias protested, "the G.o.d will suck Dragonbait into his body and we'll never be able to rescue him. We have to use that ice, Finder."

"No," Finder said determinedly.

"Finder, we're talking about Dragonbait!" Alias shouted. "How can you turn your back on him after all he's done for you?"

"Alias, try to understand. There's nothing like this stone anywhere in the Realms. I made it. If you destroy it, I can't make another."

"Give me that stone!" Alias demanded, lunging for Finder, The bard just barely managed to sidestep the swordswoman, and Alias fell into the ferns on the cave floor.

Akabar reached out to grab the bard, but Finder had drawn his dagger and thrust it out in front of him. The mage retreated hastily. "I curse your stone!" the Turmishman said hotly. "May it bring you no joy. May it be your death."

Olive shuddered. A curse was bad luck.

"Olive, over here!" the bard barked, pulling out the stone.

Olive shook her head. "I'm staying here. Finder," she said.

For a brief moment, the bard looked shocked and hurt. Then he snapped, "Fine. Have it your way" He sang out an E-flat and vanished in a yellow light.

Alias stood in the mouth of the cave watching the sun sink into the desert beyond the vale. Although there was no sign of movement from Moander's new body, she kept imagining Dragonbait being swallowed by it, lying trapped inside the G.o.d's body. In her mind, she pictured the cage Moander had used to imprison her last year, when the G.o.d had tortured her with its lies and tried to seduce her into its service with the promise of freedom. She didn't regret trying to take Finder's stone from the bard, and she was still furious with him for his selfishness, but she wished he'd come back. They could use him, with or without the stone.

Olive sat beside the swordswoman, idly throwing rocks at trees. She was regretting staying behind. It was a grand gesture, but if she'd gone along with the bard, she might have been able to talk some sense into him. Now he was no doubt feeling self-righteous and getting himself into some other trouble. She missed him already, and she was afraid she'd never see him again.

Akabar and Grypht were in the back of the cave. Grypht was rehearsing Akabar in the use of the saurial command word that triggered the wand of frost he'd given the mage.

The four of them had worked out a strategy to sneak into the vale, free Dragonbait, and hit as many saurials as possible with the cold magic they had at their disposal. Grypht would hide their forms and scents with magic. In order to disguise the warmth of their bodies from those saurials who could detect heat, Akabar had suggested that they go at sunset when the day's heat rising from the ground would mask their own warmth. They could have left ten minutes ago, but Alias had wanted to wait a few more minutes in case Finder changed his mind.

Finder had been gone for an hour. If he didn't return in the next few minutes, they'd have to leave without him.

"He's not coming back, Olive," Alias said.

Olive sighed and tossed another rock at a tree twenty feet off, hitting it dead center. "Not in time, anyway," the halfling said.

"I can't believe he wouldn't help us," Alias said. "Why won't he give up that stupid stone?"

Olive shrugged. She'd been trying to understand that herself. "Before you came along," she said, "the stone was Finder's crowning achievement. He can't really take all the credit for you, though, like he can for the stone. The stone is a little like his life. He can never make another one. It's one thing to say his songs and his daughter make him immortal, but in the end, his songs will change, and you aren't him. He's never going to get another chance to live."

Akabar joined the two women. "Grypht says we've got to leave in a few minutes," he said.

Alias nodded.

The Turmishman put his hand on Alias's shoulder. "Don't feel bad about Finder. He's not worth your grief," he said. "He's a selfish, arrogant man. He hasn't returned because he's too cowardly to join us."

"Akabar," Olive snapped angrily, "we're about to go into the camp of an enemy G.o.d. We may get possessed or killed. Aren't you afraid at all?"

Akabar looked down at Olive with a faint smile. "You forget that I was possessed by Moander before," he reminded the half-ling. "It's not an experience I'd care to repeat. But I must do all I can to fight Moander. I defeated the Darkbringer once. I must believe I will defeat it again."

"The last time we fought against Moander, we had a red dragon fighting alongside us. This time you might die," Olive pointed out.

"Then I'll die for a good cause," Akabar said.

"My mother used to say life is wasted on the young, that the young always believe they'll never die. You're not very old. Maybe you don't believe you'll ever die," the halfling suggested, "and that's why you're not afraid."

"I didn't say I wasn't afraid. All men are afraid. I'm prepared to die because my life has been full. I have lived with three beautiful wives and will leave behind four beautiful children. That was Finder's mistake. He was too interested in himself. He should have had a family."

"He has a family. He has Alias and me," Olive said. "Some people aren't as easily satisfied as you are. They want more out of life than to have children and die for a good cause."

"To get something more out of life, a man must live for others," Akabar replied. "No monument, no empire, no song or tale left to posterity will satisfy the soul the way bringing joy to another person will. Finder Wyvernspur will not learn this, so he could live another three and a half centuries and still not be satisfied, still be unprepared for death. Death will come, though, whether a man is prepared or not."

Grypht came up behind Akabar. "It's time to go," he said.

With the setting of the sun, the wind began to whistle into the cave.

Finder sat in the ruins of his old mansion, staring at the sun setting over the Desertsmouth Mountains and the moon rising over the Elven Wood. Beside him, courtesy of the finder's stone, sat an illusion of himself singing "The Tears of Selune" the way it was meant to be sung, the way he'd written it three centuries ago.

The first part of Akabar's curse seemed to be working. Finder had been listening to the song for hours without pleasure.

The bard ordered the stone to halt. He looked at his image seated beside hima"a young image with a charming smile, more sure of itself than the master beside it. The image was one of a man who'd thought he'd discovered the secret of cheating death. He'd deceived himself into thinking his music would be immortality enough. Now Finder realized that it wasn't. He wanted to live forever. "d.a.m.n!" he muttered.

"Sleep," he ordered the stone. Instantly the image beside him vanished.

Finder's mind began to wander. Unable to resolve the problem of death, he began to plan ways to improve the finder's stone. He should record Alias singing into the stone. He should record her singing some songs with Olive, too. Their voices blended well together.

Finder looked at the stone. It wouldn't be the same, though, he thought. The recording wouldn't be Alias and Olive. He couldn't teach the stone to compliment him when he was especially clever, or worry about him or tease or chide him the way Alias and Olive did. He couldn't get the stone to love him.

He wanted to be with Alias and Olive, he realized. Before he could change his mind, he sang to the stone to return him to the Singing Cave. The yellow light appeared, blocking out his vision of the ruined keep. When it faded again, he stood inside the Singing Cave.

The cave was empty. The wind whistled through it like an eerie voice. The four of them couldn't have gone alone to rescue Dragonbait, he thought. It would be suicide, yet he realized that was exactly what they'd done.

Finder stroked his beard, trying to decide the best way to help without risking the finder's stone. Some sort of diversion, perhaps, he thought.

As he brought his hand down from his chin, he noticed that his fingers were stained green, as if he'd been rubbing a leaf. He scratched at his beard with both hands. A moment later, he looked down at his fingernails with disgust. He'd scratched away great gobs of moss and lichen from his face.

Then he felt something sticky moving in his ear. Shuddering at the thought of earwigs and other gruesome bugs, the bard brushed at his ear. His fingers caught on something fragile and soft, but when he pulled on it, a stabbing pain shot across his temple.

He held up the finder's stone to look at his reflection. A small orchid hung beside his ear, its tendrils wrapped around his earring and other tendrils were sliding into his ear.

"No!" Finder gasped. He slipped his earring off and yanked harder at the orchid, ignoring the stabbing pain in his head. The flower snapped off in his fingers, and he threw it to the ground and crushed it under the heel of his boot.

He felt something trickle back down his ear ca.n.a.l, then tickle his ear again. Finder looked again at his reflection in the stone. Another orchid squeezed its way out of his ear and began to wrap its tendrils about his hair.

Breathing hard with fear, Finder reached up to pinch the second orchid away between his fingernails, but at that moment, a pain gnawed at his stomach. He doubled over with a howl. Something was inside him, growing and eating his insides.

The pain in his stomach subsided. With a sense of horror mixed with irony, the bard realized what had happened. The black spores that had burst from the burr that Xaran had thrown at him had indeed penetrated into his body. They must have been partially destroyed and greatly slowed down by the potions that had been in his blood. It had taken them a full day to grow. He'd been possessed by Moander all that time without even knowing it.

18.

The Seed

Olive clung to the little bit of wild grapevine Akabar had handed her to keep the group together. With the circle of invisibility that hid the group, they needed some way to keep together, and it had been Akabar who had suggested that each of them keep hold of the vine.

As the adventurers approached the camp, walking along the trails of devastation, they were surrounded on all sides by the possessed saurial workers, who wore ragged shifts with vine tendrils poking through holes out of their backs, which wrapped around the saurials' legs or waists or throats. Olive didn't care to look too closely at the vines or the holes from which they issued.

The workers all looked exhausted and numb. They stumbled frequently; their eyes were listless; no saurial emotional scents rose from their bodies. Even if magic and the ground's heat hadn't masked the adventurers' presence. Olive doubted they'd be noticed by these enslaved creatures.

The halfling counted three different kinds of saurials. A few were as small as halflings and had long slender necks and snouts and leathery wings hanging beneath their forearms. These flew into the clearing laden with nets of captured birds and fish and eggs and small forest creatures. Another large group of the saurials were approximately the size and shape of Dragonbait. They carried underbrush and small saplings or buckets of water. A third group, the largest.in number, were bigger than Dragonbait, a little taller than Akabar, but much more powerfully built, with sharp diamond-shaped blades running from their skulls and down their backs to the ends of their spiked tails. These creatures dragged great trees toward the pile. None of the saurials appeared to be as big as Grypht.

The adventurers stopped at the edge of the clearing. They watched as each saurial scrambled to the top of the pile and added his or her burden to the growing mountain. Saurial spell-casters in white robes stood waiting at the top of the pile to take the nets brought by the flying saurial workers and butcher the captured wildlife over the pile, tossing the corpses in with the fresh trees and splashing water over it all, chanting spells all the while.

As the sun sank beneath the horizon, the saurial workers climbing down from the pile headed to the huts that surrounded the pile. Each saurial slid into a separate hut and did not come out again. Some time later, by the light of the moon, the spell-casters climbed down from the pile and slipped into the huts nearest the pile.

"When exactly are they going to resurrect Moander?" Akabar whispered.

"I'm not certain," Alias answered. "Before moonset. They must be resting before the ceremony. Remember," she whispered to Olive, "it's the inner ring of huts. Dragonbait's hut has a rainbow-striped curtain on the door and Coral's has a golden one with the high priest of Moander's symbola""

"a"an eye in a fanged mouth. I know," Olive said.

Aside from knowing what huts to look for, Alias's soul song rapport with Dragonbait and Coral had warned the swordswoman that Coral had set an alarm to sound if Grypht, Akabar, or she entered the camp. The priestess either hadn't known about the halfling or hadn't considered her a threat and had neglected to mention Olive in her spell, so Olive was to be their advance scout.

As the halfling slid away, the saurial and the two humans became visible again. They crouched down in the shadows of the trees that hadn't yet been sacrificed to the G.o.d Moander's new body.

Olive crept through the camp, threading her way among the huts of the possessed saurials. She set up trip wires in front of the entrances to the huts of the spell-casters in the inner circle, bypa.s.sing only the gold-curtained hut of the Mouth of Moander and the rainbow-curtained one that imprisoned Dragonbait. When she finished, she moved to the rainbow-curtained hut and whistled the first four notes of "The Tears of Selune."

The curtain drew back immediately. Dragonbait stood in the doorway, looking out warily.

"It's me, Olive," the halfling whispered. She pulled a light stone out of her pocket, keeping its light carefully covered with a rag, since her circle of invisibility could not hide a light. She pushed the stone down in the dirt and covered all but a small portion of it, so that a narrow beam of light shone up into the darkening sky. The light stone had been Akabar's idea; it was to serve as a beacon for Grypht so the wizard could locate Dra-gonbait's hut. When Grypht dispelled the light, it would signal the others that they should begin their a.s.signed tasks.

"In a hundred breaths, Grypht's going to cast a dispel magic spell," Olive whispered. "It will knock out this light and the ward around you. That's sure to set off all sorts of alarms, so the plan is for you to run straight toward the trees to meet the others. Alias says if you don't come straightaway, if you stop for any heroic deeds, she's going to make herself a new armor shirt out of your scaly hide. Got all that?"

Dragonbait nodded soundlessly.

Olive slipped away from Dragonbait's hut and returned to the golden-curtained hut of the Mouth of Moander. It was eight huts away from Dragonbait's, but if Coral stood in the hut's doorway, she had a clear view of Dragonbait's huta"undoubtedly so she could direct a spell at the hut should Alias or any of the others try to sneak into the camp to rescue the paladin.

Grypht had warned the halfling that Coral was powerful enough that she might detect Olive despite her invisibility, so Olive wasn't taking any chances. She wasn't going to attempt to sneak into Coral's hut. Instead, she crept up to the back of it and pressed her eye against a gap in the pine boughs.

Mingled with the scent of the pine boughs was the scent of roses. Moander's high priestess wasn't too exhausted to emit emotional scents, Olive noted, though it surprised the halfling that the scent was one of grief. Once her vision had adjusted to the hut's interior darkness. Olive could see a white saurial curled up on her side on a blanket in the center of the hut, facing the back of the building. Olive could see her face. The saurial's eyes were closed, but little snarling sounds came from her mouth, and her nostrils flared from her heavy breathing. Dragonbait's sword and scabbard lay on another blanket beside her. The tip of her tail lay across the sword's hilt.

Olive gritted her teeth in frustration, repressing an urge to growl. Rotten luck, she thought. Roll over, Coral. You don't want to sleep all night with a stupid sword.

Just then something glowed momentarily at the front of the hut, shining through the golden curtain and lighting up the interior. Coral rose quickly, pushed aside the curtain, and stepped outside. Without hesitating. Olive reached through the gap in the pine boughs, grabbed the edge of the blanket, and began to tug it toward the back of the hut, dragging the paladin's sword with it. As soon as she could get her fingers on the sword. Olive pulled the weapon through the gap in the wall. The scabbard slid off the blade and flopped back on the blanket.

Deciding that the paladin wouldn't need his scabbard in the battle to come, the halfling let it lay. She opened the invisible sack she'd been carrying on her shoulder. As she slipped the sword into the sack, the weapon vanished from sight.

Olive was just about to hurry back to the edge of the woods when a familiar voice stopped her in her tracks.

"Nice hovel you have here. Not much profit in resurrecting dead G.o.ds, is there?"

Finder! Olive thought excitedly. She turned around and pressed her eyes back against the gap in the pine boughs.

Coral stood inside her hut with the bard. The saurial sat down on the blanket, not seeming to notice that it was in a different position. Her tail fell across Dragonbait's scabbard, but she didn't notice the missing weapon. Finder sat down opposite her. Though he did not speak aloud, the bard was gesturing with his hands. Olive realized he was speaking with Coral in saurial.

Sweet Selune! Olive thought. He's not trying to make a deal with her like he tried to do with Xaran, is he? He can't be!

In a loud, surprised voice, the bard said in Realms common, "Akabar's blood? You mean that's the seed you've been looking for?"

Then Olive saw the flower in Finder's ear, its tendrils wrapped around his hair. She pulled away from Coral's hut as if it had scorched her and took off for the forest where Alias, Grypht, and Akabar were waiting.

Alias touched Grypht's arm and pointed at the light stone beacon the moment after Olive placed it in front of Dragonbait's hut. Grypht nodded and began to move off so he could get a better view of the hut. He disappeared into the darkness. Alias and Akabar waited anxiously for Olive to return. A few minutes later, though they couldn't see her, they heard her running toward them. They could also hear her sobbing.