Finder's Stone - Song Of The Saurials Part 9

Morala nodded. "Nameless taught you well," she said. For a few moments, she studied Alias's face. "You may look like Ca.s.sana, but there is nothing of her in you," she said.

"Did you know Ca.s.sana personally," Alias asked, "or are you merely comparing me to the character in the opera about her and her lich lover Zrie Prakis?"

Morala chuckled. "I knew her. I wrote that opera."

Alias's eyes widened. "You did? I... I didn't know. I've never heard it sung. Elminster told me about it. Why did you ever want to write an opera about Ca.s.sana?"

"At the time, Ca.s.sana's evil was a danger to us all," the priestess explained, "but she had many powerful friends, and the Harpers didn't have the strength to drive her from the north. The opera made the details of the sorceress's life common knowledge. Ca.s.sana couldn't stand ridicule. The gossip following the opera's performance caused her sufficient embarra.s.sment to leave the region," Morala said. A grin lit up her wrinkled face.

Alias grinned back. She found herself liking the foxy old woman, even if she was a priestess and one of Nameless's judges.

"I have something else I want to show you," the priestess said, holding out a lump of what appeared to be ordinary red mud. "I picked this up from the floor. Grypht held it when he first appeared. It's claya"of very high quality and rare color."

"Maybe this duke of the Nine h.e.l.ls is a potter," Alias joked.

Morala smiled gently. "The clay was glowing when Grypht first appeared ... as would a spell component," she explained.

"Don't creatures from the lower planes have a natural ability to cast magic without spell components?" Alias asked.

"That's what I've always been told," Morala answered. "Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Kyre knocked the clay out of the beast's hand and ruined its spell before it was cast, so we don't know what the beast intended. In clerical spells, clay is a component that affects stone, though I'm sure it has other uses in spells for wizards. Elminster might have been able to identify such spells for us. Could your friend Akabar Bel Akash do so?"

"Akabar's pretty clever," Alias replied. "When he recovers, we can ask him. So you think Kyre made a mistake?"

"In elvish, Kyre means 'flawless,'" Morala said, shaking her head. "She has a reputation for not making mistakes. I think it more likely she wanted us to believe that Grypht was something evil." Morala smiled slyly.

"You mean you think she lied?" Alias asked with surprise. "Why would she do that?"

"She may have put some personal goal ahead of her duties as a Harper," Morala suggested. "Kyre is a bard, after all."

"You think she planned Nameless's escape!" Alias guessed. "Grypht is just a smoke screen. Then Nameless is all right!" Alias said excitedly. "You don't have to scry for him!"

"But I do," Morala insisted. "Kyre might have made a foolish alliance. Grypht may not be from the Nine h.e.l.ls, but he still could be an evil wizard. He might be holding Nameless against his will, threatening his life."

"But suppose Nameless is all right?" Alias asked.

"He must still be brought back here for his trial," Morala said.

Alias's face fell. "Don't you think Nameless has suffered enough?"

"You misunderstand, child. The Harpers did not send Nameless to the Citadel of White Exile to make him suffer. We sent him there in order to protect other innocents from his reckless behavior"

"But you don't have to send him back," Alias insisted. "He's sorry about the apprentice who was killed and the one who was hurt. He wouldn't do anything like that again. Besides, now that he's done creating his singer, he's satisfied."

"Is he?" Morala mused. She leaned forward and stroked Alias's hair with a withered hand. "He would be a fool not to be pleased with you, child. Tell me, do you love Nameless?"

Alias lifted her chin and answered proudly, "Yes, I do."

"As a daughter loves a father?" Morala asked.

Alias nodded.

Morala pursed her lips together and shook her head sadly. Alias could see that the old woman's eyes were moist with tears. "He does not deserve your love," the priestess whispered.

"Love is something people give freely," Alias argued. "It's not a commodity to be earned or forfeited."

Morala sighed and clasped her hands together in her lap. "Yes. That's the problem, all right. It doesn't have to be earned, and it is not easily forfeited." Morala was silent for several moments. Then she said coldly, "Maryje loved Nameless, though not as a father. Maryje was one of Nameless's apprentices . . . the one who was wounded."

"She lost her voice, then she committed suicide," Alias recalled from Nameless's tale. "Is that why you can't forgive Nameless . . . because Maryje was a friend of yours?"

Morala took Alias's hands in her own and squeezed them hard. "I cannot forgive Nameless because he lied, and his lie bound Maryje to her wounds, and her wounds bound her to her shame, and her shame bound her to her death. The truth would have set her free, and she would not have killed herself."

"What lie?" Alias demanded. "What are you talking about?"

"Ask him," Morala demanded. "Ask Nameless to tell you the trutha"the truth he would not admit to Elminster, the truth he would not tell the Harpers, the truth about himself that even he is ashamed of. If he will do that, he will set himself free and even I will forgive him."

Alias pulled her hands away from the priestess and backed her chair away. Her heart was racing wildly, and despite her wool tunic, she felt chilled. "Suppose I don't want to hear this truth?" she asked.

"I thought you loved him," Morala said. "Would you have him bear the burden of his guilt to his grave?"

"All right, I'll ask him," Alias said defiantly, "and he'll tell me, and I won't love him any less, whatever it is he says."

"I did not think that you would," Morala replied.

"Why won't you just tell me what it is?" Alias asked with a growing sense of frustration.

"I intend this test to remind Nameless of what he has already taught you about love but seems unable to remember for himself," the priestess explained. Morala's mood became suddenly businesslike. She slapped her hands down on her thighs and said, "First, though, we must find Nameless. I am rested enough, now." She held her hand out.

Alias rose hastily to her feet and helped the old woman rise from her chair and return to the table. The swordswoman watched curiously while Morala cleaned out the silver bowl and refilled it with more holy water.

A growl came from across the room. Alias looked up. Dragonbait stood in the courtroom door with Akabar's wife, Zhara. The saurial paladin pointed at a spot on the floor directly before him. He wasn't in a patient mood.

"Excuse me," Alias said to Morala. "I have to see what my friend wants."

Morala nodded without looking up from her silver bowl. Alias hurried toward the lizard. Dragonbait thrust a dead, singed thistle at her and signed furiously.

"What do you mean, you were attacked by thistles?" Alias asked with annoyance. "What were you doing? Walking through Korhun Lherar's old pastures?"

Dragonbait signed again.

"In her room?" Alias asked. "Of course I didn't send them. What do I know about thistles?"

Where's Akabar? the saurial signed.

"Resting," Alias said. "He . . . uh, he wasn't feeling very well," she explained briefly, not wanting to give Zhara the details of Akabar's attack. She'd heard enough of the priestess's interpretations.

Take us to him, Dragonbait demanded.

"Morala is about to begin to scry for Nameless," Alias explained. "He's missing. He may have been kidnapped. Can't you wait?" she asked impatiently.

No. Immediately, Dragonbait signed.

Alias huffed angrily, but from the garlic scent the saurial emitted, she could tell he wasn't going to give in. "All right," she growled. Just in case Kyre hadn't yet made any progress in convincing Akabar of the folly of his priestess wife, Alias suggested, "Zhara, maybe you'd like to wait here."

Dragonbait shook his head.

"She'll be fine here," Alias said, signing to Dragonbait that Zhara must stay in the courtroom.

The saurial ignored her. He stomped his foot.

"Fine," Alias whispered angrily. "Have it your way." The swordswoman looked back at Morala. The elderly priestess had aleady begun her chant, so Alias didn't dare disturb her. "Follow me," she said, striding purposefully out of the courtroom.

Morala was vaguely aware that Alias had departed, but she was too wrapped up in her spell chant to find out where the swordswoman had gone. Several minutes later, the water in the silver bowl began to sparkle and shine, and the priestess ceased her chant.

Squinting into the water, Morala could just barely discern the features of the Nameless Bard. His face was illuminated by a flickering torch, but everything else about him was masked in darkness. The priestess sighed. The bard could be anywhere- in a cave somewhere on the same world as Elminster, in the tunnels beneath Waterdeep, in a closet in the tower of Ashabaa"anywhere.

Morala motioned over the water with her hands. Now she could see a second torch, held by a small figure walking beside Nameless. "Well, well. It must be our little halfling Harper," the priestess muttered. As she turned her attention back to Nameless, an angry look swept over the bard's face. "What's wrong, Nameless?" Morala mused aloud. "Where are you, and what are you up to?"

7.

Beneath Finder's Keep

Finder cursed under his breath as he and Olive turned a corner of the underground tunnels and were forced to another halt. Olive sighed with resignation. Their way was blocked by a wall of rocks, dirt, and mud where the ceiling had caved into the pa.s.sage. It was the fourth such obstacle they'd encountered. The first had been at the base of the stairs that led from the ruined manor house to the underground tunnels. It had taken them an hour to clear a hole through it. The second collapse hadn't been as severe, and within half an hour they'd wriggled their way through. When they came upon the third collapse, Finder had decided to backtrack to the stairs and try a different route through the maze of twisting tunnels. Now they had no choice but to start digging again.

"If I hadn't lost the stone, we could have taken a dimensional door into the workshop," Finder growled, kicking at the base of the pile of rubble.

Trying to keep Finder from dwelling on the loss of his stone, Olive remarked, "Unless the roof in the workshop collapsed, too. Then we'd be transported beneath a pile of rubble and dead."

"No," Finder replied, shoving his torch into the base of the rubble. "Then the dimension door would leave us in the astral plane. The workshop will be fine, though" he said. "Nothing could have gotten in there."

"Half a ton of rock doesn't need a key," Olive pointed out, setting her own torch beside Finder's.

"True" Finder said. "but these ceilings haven't collapsed from anything natural." He pointed to a portion of the arched ceiling that was still intact. It was lined with quarried stone, perfectly fitted. "We haven't found any of the quarried stone in the piles," he said.

"It would probably be at the bottom of the pile," Olive replied "We haven't dug that deep."

Finder shook his head. "Some of it would be on the edges. It's impossible for an arch to collapse unless some of the stone is removed." The bard pointed to the top of the collapsed portion. "It wasn't pried or chipped out, and it didn't fracture in a straight line. See how circular the collapsed parts area"making an arc right through the stones?"

"Yes," Olive said hesitantly, feeling a little nervous.

"It's been disintegrated," Finder explained.

"Oh, great!" the halfling muttered.

"Recently, too, I'd say, judging from the lack of water damage," the bard added. "Probably by the same person or creature who dispelled the continual light enchantments that used to be on the archway keystones."

"Marvelous," Olive replied sarcastically. "And we're digging our way right toward whoever did it. Did it ever occur to you that this person or creature might have blocked the pa.s.sages because he, she, or it wanted to be left alone?"

"I don't care," Finder snapped. "If it's there, it's in my home, and I'm going to get rid of."

"Right," Olive said without enthusiasm. "Suppose you get disintegrated first?"

"There's enough magic in my workshop to demolish an army. I created the finder's stone there," he said. He began pulling small boulders out of the rubble.

Olive scrabbled up the pile and began digging out dirt and mud with her tiny pack shovel. Finder had broken the handle using it as a wedge on a boulder in the first pile of rubble they'd dug through, so now only Olive could use it comfortably. "You mean," she corrected the bard, "that that's where you altered the stone's already magical nature with a piece of enchanted para-elemental ice."

Finder looked up at the halfling with a hint of surprise. "And where did you learn that?" he asked.

"Elminster was explaining it to the Harper tribunal when I... uh, pa.s.sed through," Olive said.

"He was, was he? Well, that stone was one of the most brilliant ideas of the century," Finder said, tossing more rocks into the pa.s.sageway behind them. "Para-elemental ice is far colder than ordinary ice," he explained as they worked. "It keeps the finder's stone from overheating no matter how much lore or how many songs or spells are stored inside it. The cold also helps the stone retrieve any information I've put into it as fast as a human mind could."

Olive recalled that Finder had once compared his own memory and voice to polished ice. "Did you use another piece of this magical ice in Alias?" she asked.

"Yes," Finder replied. "The most talented wizards of the era told me it couldn't be done, that it wouldn't work, but they were all wrong. Alias lives, and she will never forget anything I taught her. She's even better than the Finder's stone, since she can learn new things without my help. She amazes even Elminster," the bard boasted.

"I think Elminster likes her more than he's amazed by her," Olive said.

"Don't let the sage's grandfatherly act fool you. Alias is the most remarkable piece of craftsmanship Elminster has ever seen, and he knows it. She's a constant reminder that I was right and he was wrong. He'll always regret that he turned me down when I asked for his help trying to create the first singer."

Olive strongly doubted that Elminster felt any such thing. She was beginning to feel less tolerant of Finder and his vanity. She was hungry and tired and dirty and, quite frankly, afraid of whatever it was that had disintegrated the ceiling. Finder had failed to recognize the danger Kyre presented, and Grypht had paid the price. The halfling had no desire to become a casualty of the bard's scheme to recover his home. It was time, she decided, to p.r.i.c.k his ego, to bring him back to reality and get him to reconsider heading back to civilization.

"So" Olive said, "what went wrong with the first singer?" she asked casually.

"I was careless," Finder replied, rocking a large stone loose from the pile. "I inserted the enchanted ice too quickly, and it exploded."

"That's what you told Elminster. But what really happened?" Olive asked.

"Why would I lie to Elminster?" Finder asked, without denying that there was more to the story.

Olive grinned. "I'll know that when you tell me what happened," she replied.

"What do you know about it, Olive girl?" the bard asked with a light tone, but the halfling could tell she'd made him nervous.

"I know that Flattery came to life," Olive said, "but even though he looked just like you, he didn't turn out to be as dutiful a child as Alias. He didn't want to go into the family music business. He took up magic instead."

Finder stopped working and stepped away from the blockade, looking up at Olive with astonishment, perhaps even fear. "How did you know that?" he gasped.

Olive sat down on a boulder. She laid down her shovel, pulled off her gloves, and ran her fingers through her hair, trying to brush out the dirt. "It's nothing special. I just happened to run into hima"Flattery, that is."

Finder rolled his eyes to the ceiling, muttering, "Halfling luck!" He made it sound like a curse.

Olive laughed. "You don't believe in that silly superst.i.tion, do you?"