"Can you levitate the stone?" the bard asked, holding out the finder's stone.

Grypht nodded and pulled out a tiny golden wire from the pocket of his robe. As he concentrated on summoning the magical power to him, the smell of fresh-mown hay began to fill the cave. "Rise," he said, shaping the wire into a scoop and lifting it into the air. The wire glittered and vanished as Finder's magical stone drifted out of the bard's hands.

From outside came the sound of splintering wood as Moander made its way through the forest below the cave, ingesting the trees into its body.

Finder tapped on his magical stone with the tip of his dagger until he had positioned it so that the long axis was perpendicular to the floor. "Olive," the bard said calmly, "I need your steady halfling hands and your sweet halfling voice. Are you still wearing that ring I gave you?"

"Yes," Olive said. "Do you want it back?"

"No. I want you to be wearing it for protection. Take this one, too, to keep the chill off." The bard slid a second ring from one of his fingers and slipped it on Olive's finger beside the one he'd given her earlier.

He looked up at Alias. "I need you to sing a high C," he said, "on cue. Hold it until I motion for you to stop."

Alias nodded.

"Olive, a high G for you, and hold it." Finder motioned for the two women to begin. As their voices blended in a chord, the bard began singing a series of random atonal notes. Then he motioned for the women to stop. He tapped his dagger on the side of the Finder's stone, and a tiny crack appeared at the center of the stone along the facet lines.

From outside, the sound of the toppling trees and the rumbling of the ground as Moander advanced grew so loud the adventurers had to raise their voices to be heard. They could hear Moander's cacophonous chanting of its name clearly now. Dragonbait moved to the cave entrance to keep an eye on the G.o.d's progress.

Handing his dagger to the halfling, Finder ordered her, "Hold it so the blade is level to the ground." Olive held the dagger out with both hands.

The bard lifted the top of his magical stone away from the bottom. A terrible cold filled the cave instantly, causing their breath to steam. The water droplets on the walls of the cave froze; the ferns on the ground turned gray and brittle, and the swallows nesting in various nooks and crannies began twittering in alarm. Alias's arms began to turn blue and she started to shiver uncontrollably. Grypht moved toward the mouth of the cave, where the air was warmer. Protected by Finder's ring of cold resistance, Olive didn't notice the chill. Finder simply ignored it.

"Alias, take this," the bard said, handing the swordswoman the top of the stone.

Alias took the piece of crystal gingerly, expecting it to be cold, too, but it felt as warm as Finder's hand.

Sticking out of the center of the bottom of the stone, like a needle in a pincushion, was a sliver of ice as clear as gla.s.s. Finder held his hands beneath the stone and ordered Grypht to release it from his levitation spell.

"Done," the wizard replied from the mouth of the cave.

Finder knelt down in front of Olive. He huffed once on the tip of the dagger blade to cover it with moisture. "Steady now, Olive girl," he said. He tilted the stone so that the tip of the ice needle touched the dagger's groove. As he slipped the stone away, the needle of ice fell into the groove, with the end of the needle hanging out over the tip of the dagger. Finder breathed on the blade once again to freeze the needle of para-elemental ice to the dagger's blade.

The bard stood up and tossed the bottom of the finder's stone in his hand. "There may just be enough power in this piece to light my way to Akabar" he explained to the swordswoman. "If I succeed in destroying Moander but fail to come out of the pile, you must try to use the top half of the stone to locate the mage."

"Can't you put both halves together again?" Alias asked.

Finder shook his head. "Never again," he said.

Suddenly Alias realized that Finder's immortality might not protect him from death at the hands of a G.o.d. He might never come back to her. She'd asked him to sacrificed his stone, but she didn't want him to sacrifice his life.

"Let me take the dagger," the swordswoman said. "Moander is as much my enemy as anyone's."

Finder shook his head. "No. This is my responsibility," he said firmly.

The walls and floor of the cave began to shake from Moander's approach. The swallows in the cave abandoned their nests and swarmed outside, fleeing from the quaking mountain.

"Set the dagger down carefully, Olive," Finder ordered. "Then I'll have to ask for my ring of cold resistance back. Keep the ring of protection. As careless as you are, you need it."

Olive laid the dagger down in the frozen ferns. Finder took back the ring of cold resistance and slipped it on his finger. Hastily Olive pulled out the silver Harpers pin Finder had given her. As the bard bent over to pick up the dagger, Olive fastened the pin to his tunic, saying, "Wear this for luck."

"But I gave you that pin. It's yours," Finder objected.

"Then you'd better bring it back to me, hadn't you?" the half-ling said with a wink.

"Take care, little Lady Luck," Finder whispered, kissing her gently on the forehead. He stood and looked into Alias's eyes. "Remember, no matter what happens, I love you" he said. Touching the sigil of Moander on her arm, he promised, "I will rid you of this."

"Moander is starting to move faster!" Dragonbait shouted. "You must hurry!"

Finder kissed Alias's cheek and rushed to the mouth of the cave. The pile of greenery was only a hundred feet away, and the top of the pile was now level with the cave entrance. Eight long tendrils, tipped with tanged mouths, snaked out from the G.o.d's body toward the cave.

Grypht drew back into the cave and began chanting.

Dragonbait drew his sword, prepared to fend off the G.o.d, but Finder pushed the paladin back inside the cave. "Look after Alias," he shouted over the din.

Three of the tendrils snaked out and grabbed Finder, pulling him from the cave entrance. The remaining tendrils reached into the cave after Grypht and the others, but the slimy vines slammed into an invisible wall of force cast by the wizard. The saurials and the two women were safe for the moment, but they could only watch helplessly as the bard was drawn toward Moander's body.

As Moander constricted its tendrils around Finder's limbs and torso, the bard forced himself to remain calm. There was a protective enchantment on the sliver of para-elemental ice that helped insulate the ice. He still needed to dispel that enchantment. The tendrils drew Finder to the top of Moander's body, which now stood several hundred feet above the ground. The decaying greenery steamed about the bard, giving off a pungent, earthy smell. Hundreds of tendrils tipped with eyes and mouths waved over the surface of the G.o.d. One tendril, tipped with the eye of a deer, snaked toward him, studying him curiously. "You are possessed by my vines," its mouth declared. "Why don't you obey?"

Finder laughed. "Because I'm not your servant, Darkbringer! I'm your doom." The bard sang out a shrill note, dispelling the enchantment about the para-elemental ice, leaving it completely exposed to the air. Cold shot out from tip of Finder's dagger in a blast of icy wind.

The mouths shrieked as the tendrils supporting them froze and turned as brittle as gla.s.s. Finder slashed at the constricting vines with his dagger, and they shattered into pieces.

Moander realized immediately it had made a mistake. The G.o.d had instructed its minions to channel most of its power into protecting it from fire, leaving it vulnerable to freezing. The para-elemental cold emanating from the tip of the bard's dagger was a dangerous threat. The G.o.d abandoned the idea of capturing the bard. Survival had higher priority.

As Finder hovered above the G.o.d's body, holding out half of his magical stone, he thought of Akabar Bel Akash. The arguments the two of them had had over the finder's stone brought the Turmish mage's face readily to the bard's mind. A beam of bright light sprang out from the piece of the stone, aimed at the center of the the pile of rotting vegetation.

The eyes at the end of the tendrils blinked shut in the light. Without warning, a whole tree shot out from the G.o.d's body, aimed right at Finder. The bard dodged to one sidea"right into an ambush.

Finder suddenly found himself pelted with spears fashioned from the trunks of sapling trees. Several struck him glancing blows, then bounced away, but one pierced his thigh. The bard eased the spear out of his flesh. It was time to stop being a target. With his dagger held out before him, Finder plunged toward Moander, following the beacon light from the piece of magical stone.

The vegetation on the surface of the G.o.d's body shriveled as the bard approached it and crackled like gla.s.s as he shot straight through it into Moander's interior. The bard could hear the mouths of the G.o.d's body shrieking in pain. As the pile shifted and tumbled, Finder was slammed about like a die rattling in a cup. With every tumble, he crashed through frozen branches and vines and corpses of wild animals.

Suddenly the tumbling stopped. Finder pulled himself together and began to follow the light from the finder's stone once again. The deeper he moved into the G.o.d's body, the warmer it became, so the cold from the para-elemental ice took longer to freeze the vines that tried to choke and entangle the bard. Finder was forced to expend more and more energy slashing and hacking with his dagger to clear his path.

The bard began to feel weak from exhaustion and the blood he'd lost from the wound in his leg. Just as he began to consider abandoning his quest, the beam from the piece of the finder's stone struck a patch of darkness it couldn't penetrate. Finder halted in surprise and fear.

The patch of darkness was shaped like a doorway, and Finder recognized it immediately. It was the gate between the Lost Vale and the plane of Tarterus, the gate that Moander had used to transport its saurial minions to the Realms. The entire body of the G.o.d had been built around the gate.

Moander's normal abode was the Abyss, but one could reach the Abyss from Tarterus. Moander must have sucked Akabar through the gate, through Tarterus, to its abode in the Abyss.

A small, brilliant gem near the base of the gate caught the bard's eye. He picked it up to examine it more closely. It was the shape and color of a drop of blood, and it felt warm in his hand. Very warm. It seemed to throb with great power. Could it be the seed that had resurrected Moander? Finder wondered. What would happen to the G.o.d's new body if it was separated from the seed by a gate?

The bard tried to toss the gem through the gate, but it bounced back. It would have to be carried through by a living person, he realized. Finder retrieved the gem and slipped it inside his boot. He approached the gate, but he hesitated before stepping through it.

In his youth, the bard had visited the ethereal and astral planes a number of times. As an older man, he'd investigated several of the elemental and para-elemental planes. As a prisoner of the Harpers, he'd been exiled to the region between the positive energy plane and a quasi-elemental plane. The thought of stepping through a gate leading to an outer plane, though, filled him with horrora"especially so fell a region as Tarterus, where, the sages said, creatures from the Abyss and from Hades constantly fought one another for control of the land, foul and poisonous as it was, and enslaved any beings they discovered.

Dragonbait had leaped through such a gate into Tarterus to stalk evil creatures; that was how the paladin had come to be captured by the fiend Phalse and brought to the Realms. The paladin had suffered greatly at Phalse's hands, but he had emerged from Tarterus alive. Moander's saurial minions had survived their forced march through the plane, as well. The bard chided himself aloud for his trepidity. "Surely Finder Wyvernspur can brave its dangers." It would be easier than facing Alias without Akabar at his side, he decided.

Finder took a deep breath and flew through the dark hole, following the light of the piece of finder's stone.

As Alias, Olive, Dragonbait, and Grypht watched Finder dive into Moander's body, they were filled with hope. The G.o.d cried out in agony and lost its balance on the mountain slope, tumbling down the slope into the vale, shedding great chunks of its body. Then it lay still. The adventurers emerged from the cave and for a long time continued their vigil over the G.o.d's fallen body, but neither Finder nor Akabar emerged from the ma.s.s of greenery.

Alias was beginning to consider climbing into the vale to do battle with the G.o.d herself, when suddenly she felt as if a burning brand had touched her sword arm. She looked down at her arm and shouted with joy, "It's gone! Moander's sigil is gone! The G.o.d is dead!"

Dragonbait clutched at his chest from the pain the disappearing sigil had caused him, then embraced the swordswoman.

"Finder's destroyed Moander!" Olive shouted with glee.

"No ... he has only destroyed the body Moander occupied in this world," Grypht reminded the others, and his words cast a shadow of foreboding on their elation.

20.

Finder in the Underworld

Once he'd pa.s.sed through the dark gate inside Moander's Realmsian body, Finder found himself hovering a few feet over a bog bordering a river. The soil from the bog glowed a dull red, bathing the surface of the plane about him in a h.e.l.lish light. The plants of the bog lay on their sides, withered and brown. He was grateful his flying spell hadn't worn off yet, for he would just as soon not touch the soil or the plants. The river was as black as night and flowed fast and smooth. Although the bard had never been to Tarterus, he knew enough about the plane to realize that the river was the Styx, and that to touch or drink from it would bring complete oblivion.

The air of the plane might have been warm before he arrived, but around his freezing dagger it remained chill. In the sky overhead, he could see a line of receding spheres, like pearls spread out on an invisible string, all glowing a dull red. There was a different sphere of Tarterus for every world in the prime material plane. He was on the sphere connected to the Realms, and somewhere out there was the sphere of Tarterus that was linked to the saurial's home world. There was air between the spheres, and he could fly from this sphere of Tar-terus to the saurials' sphere of Tarterus, but that was not his destination.

The light from his half of the finder's stone glowed much more dimly in this place, like a candle burning in a nearly airless room. The bard could just barely pick out the trace of the beam of light indicating Akabar's direction. Finder flew along its path. The light led to the river's edge and stopped.

He would have to take a boat, he realized. If he tried to travel by himself, he would attract the attention of the myriad of evil creatures that dwelled in this plane, creatures like Phalse, who captured fools like Dragonbait and himself who traveled where they shouldn't. Even if he could keep from the notice of such creatures, he could easily get lost in this place and wander for centuries.

He had only a vague idea of how one went about summoning Charon, the Boatman of the Styx. It required some magical spells that he didn't possess. In lieu of that, Finder decided to try the only other magic he had beyond the broken finder's stone and the dagger he might still need to use to wrest Akabar from Moander's grasp. He pulled the horn of blasting from his belt. If it failed to bring Charon, it might at least hail one of the lesser boatmen who carried pa.s.sengers along the river.

Finder didn't trigger the instrument's destructive magic, but blew into it as he would a normal horn. He blew a fanfare he'd once composed in honor of a legion of soldiers who had all been killed in a single day in battle. It seemed an appropriate tune for this place. Then he waited.

In less than a minute, the black water began to churn and froth; then a heavy, sparkling silver mist appeared upriver and drifted downstream with the current. As the mist drew closer, Finder could just barely make out the pointed bow of a boat shrouded within it. Then suddenly the boat, as black as the water of the Styx, emerged from the silver mist, and the mist dissolved into nothingness.

A single boatman stood in the back of the boat and steered it toward the sh.o.r.e with a pole. The boat halted beside Finder, and the boatman held it stationary without any apparent effort, despite the swift current that flowed around it. Finder's eyes widened at the sight of the boatman. It was Charon himself, not one of his helpers. The Lord of the Styx wore a full-length hooded cloak of black silk, trimmed with ermine. Beneath the hood, his face was haggard and his eyes glowed a fiery red. The hands that held the pole were nearly skeletal. The figure stood in the boat without speaking.

"I'm Finder Wyvernspur," the bard explained. "I'm seeking Akabar Bel Akash. He has been taken by the G.o.d Moander, who dwells in the Abyss."

Charon held out his palm.

"Will you take this horn in payment?" the bard asked.

Charon motioned for Finder to blow the horn again.

Finder repeated the fanfare for the dead legion of soldiers.

Charon nodded and held out his hand. Finder laid the horn in the boatman's palm, taking care not to touch his flesh. Charon set the horn down at his feet and motioned for Finder to come aboard. The bard floated over the boat and took care to settle himself down into it gently, but he was still surprised that the boat didn't rock at all from his weight. The boat was completely dry inside and empty save for him, the boatman, and the horn. Finder sat facing forward so he wouldn't be forced to stare at Charon, whose eyes made him feel uneasy. The sensation of bobbing on the water or of air flowing by was completely absent, even as Charon pushed the boat away from the river's edge into the faster-moving water in the middle of the stream. The boat seemed so still that Finder began to feel as if he'd seated himself in a coffin buried in the earth.

The river steamed around them, in the chillness of the air Finder created with his sliver of para-elemental ice. The bard glanced back at Charon to see if the cold made the boatman uncomfortable. Charon seemed completely oblivious not only to the cold, but to the bard's presence as well. Finder recalled then that the boatman traveled through regions of the outer planes that would make Icewind Dale seem temperate.

The bard turned his attention to the scenery, but the bogs which stretched out from both banks of the river were a depressing sight. Dead, brown marsh gra.s.ses covered the ground as far as the eye could see, and the monotony of the flatland was broken only occasionally by stunted, leafless bushes. Despite the warmth and moisture of the soil, nothing grew. Only after great storms, when the rain had temporarily washed away the poison of the soil, could any plant survive in this region of desolation.

In an effort to take his mind off the bleak scenery around him, Finder tried to think of Alias and Olive. He tried to remember their faces and how they had sounded when they sang together in the Singing Cave and the feel of their hands on his own, but the memories wouldn't come to him. The river Styx, he recalled, drove away memories of the living.

The bard found himself dwelling instead on memories of Flattery and Kirkson and Maryje. It seemed he thought of nothing else for hours as Charon steered his boat through twisted paths of the river. A desire to throw himself in the river, so that he could forget the evils of his past life, grew stronger with every pa.s.sing minute.

Finder shook himself with sudden alarm, remembering that the river would rob him of all his memories, good as well as bad. He would forget his songs . . . Olive . . . even Alias. Whether the allure of oblivion was due to some enchantment of the dark water and depressing landscape or his own weakness, the bard knew he had to fight it off somehow. A song, he thought. I should sing a song.

Uncertain how the boatman would react to any other music, Finder began by humming "The Tears of Selune." When Charon gave no indication of annoyance or displeasure and nothing leaped out at the boat from the banks, the bard began to sing the words. Halfway through the song, he began wondering if Olive had been right, that Selune's Shards sang it as a duet. He started the song from the beginning, and for the first time since he'd written them three centuries ago, he began changing the lyrics so that they would work better as a duet. By the time Charon pulled his boat over to the opposite sh.o.r.e, the bard felt as though he'd changed his whole life. He thanked the boatman for the ride, though he had paid for it with the horn, and Charon acknowledged the bard's grat.i.tude with a nod.

Finder hovered out of the boat and flew the few feet to solid ground. While he'd been concentrating on his music, he hadn't noticed the change in scenery, but now he surveyed the new landscape with repulsion. The bogs of Tarterus hadn't been half as horrible as his first sight of Moander's realm in the Abyss. The sh.o.r.eline was encrusted with slimy brown muck; the banks were heaped with piles of rotting carca.s.ses and decaying vegetation, and a noisome odor filled the air. Finder turned back to Charon, uncertain if he really wanted to journey any farther into this oppressive region, but the boatman and his boat were gone.

Grateful yet again that his fly spell hadn't worn off, the bard held out the broken finder's stone, which put out a feeble light pointing away from the river. The stench beyond the banks of the river was unbearable, but he had no choice. Flying over the fields strewn with debris and the mountains of refuse, Finder wondered if Moander's realm was the repository for all the garbage of the other six hundred and sixty-five layers of the Abyss.

The bard hadn't flown far when, from the corner of his eye, he thought he spied a huge gem, but when he landed and bent over to pick it up, it proved to be a piece of rotten fruit. Likewise, his eyes were deceived into seeing a silvered sword, which turned out to be the slime-encrusted bone of some great beast. When he tried to salvage a gilded, leather-bound tome and found himself holding a rotted log alive with larvae, the bard realized that all these illusions were calculated to keep him from his quest. He flew on, ignoring all the other riches he imagined he saw, no matter how enticing they looked.

As he continued on, following the light of the broken finder's stone, Finder pa.s.sed several of Moander's minions. Although most of the minions looked like humans or elves, some appeared to be beastsa"elephants, horses, cats, rats, hounds, deer, hawks, sparrowsa"or magical creatures like dragons and treants. A few must have once been creatures from other worlds, for Finder didn't recognize their kind. Yet every minion had in common the tendril vines growing from its body, controlling its actions and making it subject to the Darkbringer. Finder realized that if it hadn't been for his possession by the vines, he wouldn't be pa.s.sing through this realm without being challenged.

The light of the finder's stone led the bard to a great hill, as large as the mound on which the city of Yulash stood. At first Finder thought the hill might be Moander's stronghold. As he drew closer, however. Finder realized that the hill was in fact Moander's true body, the one that held the very essence of the G.o.d's being. Unlike all the other sh.e.l.ls it possessed in all the worlds of the prime material plane, if this body were destroyed, the Darkbringer would cease to exist completely and forever.

Moander's Abyssal form was another pile of rotting vegetation, but it was easily five times the size of the body the G.o.d had possessed in the Realms. Thousands of tendrils ending in eyes and mouths waved from the pile, and orange rivers of poisoned water flowed down its slopes. Yet for all its vast size, the true body of Moander seemed to tremble from the cold coming from the dagger Finder carried.

At the foot of the hill that was Moander stood Akabar Bel Akash. He was tethered about his ankles with slimy tendrils, and his wrists were likewise bound. His eyes were closed, and he did not speak.

"Hold, Nameless Bard!" a chorus of voices cried from the mouths of Moander.

Finder halted.

"You were a fool to come here," the mouths of Moander declared. "For destroying my body in the Realms, you have earned my everlasting enmity. Yet despite your crimes against me, I must admire your resourcefulness. I think that I will let you live on as my servant. Now, hand over the seed of power that you stole from my Realmsian body."

Finder slipped the broken half of the finder's stone into his boot and drew out the tiny blood-red gem he'd discovered lying before the magical gate inside Moander's Realmsian body. Apparently, by stepping through the gate and separating the gem from the Realms, he had indeed robbed the G.o.d of its power to exist in that world. The gem, Finder suspected, held not just power but some attribute that made it possible for Moander to return to the Realms.

If he smashed the gem, Moander might never regain that power, and the Realms would be safe from the Darkbringer forever. Yet if he gave the gem to Moander, it might take years for the G.o.d to find a way to build yet another body in the Realms, and the people of the Realms would have all that time to prepare some other defense against the Darkbringer.

"I'll give you the seed, Moander" Finder said, "in exchange for Akabar Bel Akash and safe pa.s.sage from your realm. I'll even let you keep your everlasting enmity." He grinned maliciously.

"Arrogant fool! I could slay you where you stand," Moander's mouths snarled.

"I suspect not," the bard said. "If you could, you would have killed me the moment I stepped into your realm, but you can't, can you? You've been using too much of your power these past few months, possessing saurials and forcing them to do your bidding. You must be feeling a little weak. Your true body is also susceptible to cold, isn't it? I can see your tendrils shivering from the icy air that surrounds my dagger. I, on the other hand, could crush your precious seed in a moment. Release Akabar now, and I will return the seed," Finder ordered.

"No," a voice said, a voice that sounded like Akabar but couldn't have been, for the mage's lips never moved. Finder watched with surprise as a white mist slid from Akabar's body and drifted over toward him.

"No!" Moander's mouths shouted.

The mist coalesced into a translucent form shaped like Akabar.