James Ward: The Paladins

"One. You are to avoid all discussion of and involvement with the trade pact that the Lords of Waterdeep are negotiating with Kara-Tur. Your mission is to locate Lady Eidola, not to seek justice against those whose political motivations may well have prompted her kidnapping.

"Two. Your orders are to locate Lady Eidola and report her whereabouts, not reclaim her from the kidnappers. I do not-I repeat-do not want you to boldly go forth and fight for her freedom. If necessary, we have thousands of knights who can do that, but such an action on your part could get her killed! Should you be captured, the Lords of Waterdeep will not acknowledge your mission or your association with them.

"Three. Destroy the source of the magic inhibiting my scrying. If you're successful, I might be able to locate her, myself, and bring her back magically.''

"Agreed!" blurted Kern. "That is, if Miltiades has no objections," he added. The elder paladin nodded.

"Aleena Paladinstar, a wizardess of the first rank and our lord's daughter, joins this rescue attempt," continued Khelben. "I expect you to defer to her authority."

Miltiades rose to stress his words. "I agree this mission must be conducted discreetly. Hence, Kern, the four other followers of Tyr who came with us from Phlan, and I are all who should go. I am against including Lady Paladinstar. With all due respect, the members of my delegation can get the job done more efficiently without outside help or interference."

Khelben stared at Miltiades. "Outside help? Outside help! This is a Waterdeep matter! There's much more at stake here than your honor as followers of Tyr!"

"Indeed, my honor may not be the only thing at stake, Mage Lord Arunsun, yet my honor is sufficient to assure the mission will be undertaken with as much success as anyone of Waterdeep," replied Miltiades evenly.

"I don't think you've quite grasped the situation. You've been requested to aid Waterdeep agents in the recovery of Lady Eidola."

"Kern and I are to lead the team. Was that not what Lord Paladinson decreed? Did not Lady Paladinstar say so just moments ago? As a leader of the quest, I choose the team."

Khelben leaned over the table, his eyes flashing with magical fire. "Look! You're going to be surrounded, not by monsters or thugs but by smiling liars who may or may not be the kidnappers! You won't find necromancers in black robes or stinking ores standing against you! You probably won't even know the difference between someone who's trying to help you and someone who's leading you to your own death."

"If your simple three objectives are the whole of our quest, then Tyr will guide us surely and swiftly."

"Simple objectives!"

"Miltiades, Kern," interjected Aleena before Khelben exploded, "you are wise and courageous, both, yet will you deny me this quest? This matter involves my father and future stepmother. Waterdeep's interests should be represented, but my personal interests should be even more compelling."

Aleena looked deeply into Miltiades's eyes. "Please," she pleaded. "I love my father, and I can't simply stand by while his beloved is missing and he lies in a coma. For the sake of justice," she said, stressing the word, "let me offer my humble assistance in all things magical. I must do something to help or 111 go mad with worry. I am a talented spellcaster; I can help your group."

Miltiades gazed back at the beautiful spellcaster, and for a moment he spied a passion he often saw in the eyes of his own beloved Evaine. "All right, I wave my objection and you shall join the team."

Khelben quietly sighed in relief. At least one person he trusted would be there. "And you'll swear to strictly abide by my three conditions?" he prodded.

"Upon our honor as paladins of Tyr."

"Then good luck, all of you," concluded Khelben. "I just hope this isn't a mistake," he added under his breath.

"Let's gather the team!" cried Kern, beaming. "We're going to rescue a princess!"

"She's not a princess," said Aleena, glancing at Khelben with a slight grin and shaking her head.

Interlude 1

It's not whether you win or lose that counts, it's how much pain you inflict along the way.

Lightless fire shrouded the ground in a hypnotic, tumbling blur on the sixty-fifth level of the Abyss. It obscured jutting razors of flint, erect and barbed, like swarms of devil's-grass. Unwholesome blackness swallowed and choked the plane, and a constant echo of wind blew through the barren chasm, carrying upon it the distant wail of futile death. The reek of curdled blood hung like hot sewage in the bitter-cold air.

General Raachaak inhaled deeply and flexed his bony wings while the trace of a grin played across his toothy maw. The towering tanar'ri fiend crossed his muscular arms and tucked jagged claws under massive biceps, against his bare, crimson torso. A serpentine whip of manifold tails, studded with whetted shards of obsidian, coiled and hung from his belt of baatezu hide. Faintly glowing steam curled along his leathery red, oily skin, enveloping the pointed-eared balor in a miasma of evil.

Before him, three vulturelike vrock tanar'ri stood reluctantly, casting their avian gazes from side to side, as if they sought some escape. Their long, pointed talons sank into the hard stone, crushing flat the keen blades of Abyssal flint like crusty sand. A slime oozed from glands beneath their wings, spreading a film over their thick coats of black and gray feathers. Their wide collars of pinfeathers, shining with mucous, stabbed outward like filthy, curved needles. The skin of their scrawny necks and knobby heads folded and cracked like mildew-ridden leather, but their curved, pointed beaks were glossy and fierce. They hunched like scavengers devouring the dead, masking their thoughts from the telepathic greater fiend, concealing a desire to kill and consume him. The central vrock extended a hideous pair of shriveled hu-manoid arms from beneath his wings and wrung his craven hands together in a gesture of humility.

"You're to go to the Prime Material Plane," the general's bass voice boomed in their scaly heads, making them wince and flutter nervously. "To a feeble world called Toril by the miserable primes who live there- humankind and its ilk. There, in an ancient city newly resettled, the primes have unearthed a most delightful contrivance, one that conjures countless warriors out of thin air! When I acquire the dark of this device, this bloodforge, I'll raise an army large enough to overrun stinking Baator in a single roll of the Sisyphus Stone!"

The balor laughed aloud, filling the plane with terrifying glee as he spread his wings wide and unclasped his arms. The vrocks shrieked and capered in agony and delight. Abruptly, Raachaak stifled his merriment. His eyes widened, and he bared his pointed teeth, clenching his thick jaw while his amber eyes burned gold. His slimy lips curled into a sneer.

"But… there is a problem. The sniveling low-life berks who brought me this information first tried to take the prize for themselves, and they failed! Now, the primes have warded the city of the bloodforge against all tanar'ri. That's why I've summoned you."

General Raachaak glared at the servile creatures before him. "Shaakat, Rejik, Morbaat, obey or die as larvae in a swarm of ravenous chasme!" he bellowed into their sinister brains. "See the city and its place on that world as I picture it in my mind, and go! Discover a way into that city and return to me with the answer! A portal to Toril awaits on the third strand of Lolth's Web, on the next layer! Now go!"

"Shall we not capture this bloodforge… and bring it to you, General?" thought Morbaat, impulsively.

In a blur, Raachaak seized the vrock by the throat and lifted her over his head. "You dare turn stag on me?" he roared. He hurled Morbaat to the ground with crushing force, scattering Shaakat and Rejik, and drew forth his whip. With facile and wicked grace he unfurled the scourge, twirled it over his head with a long sweep of his burly arm, and brought its glistening, obsidian-laden strands down like tenebrous lightning. They rent the air and sliced through the lesser fiend's feathers, driving deep into her wretched body. Morbaat went rigid, convulsing in torment. She began to screech again and again, in an ever-rising pitch, dragging herself along the ground toward Raachaak's taloned feet as the whip rose and cracked. At last she crawled and screamed no more.