Кейт Новак: Finder's Bane

“I’m very sorry,” Joel said.

“Me, too,” Holly whispered.

They rode in silence for nearly a mile. Joel thought of his own mother and father. It would probably be years before he saw them again. He hoped his reunion with them would be more pleasant than his departure had been. His parents couldn’t understand his decision to leave the barding college in Berdusk to join Finder’s priesthood and go on a pilgrimage. Joel began humming a tune his mother and father often sang together.

The trail left the woods finally and headed out into rolling meadowlands covered with high grasses and wildflowers.

“Something’s coming,” Holly hissed in an urgent whisper. She slid down from Butternut’s back.

The bard dismounted beside her. “What is it?” he asked. “More Zhentilar?”

“I’m not sure,” the girl replied. Her brow was furrowed, and she looked more anxious than she had when she was surrounded by the Zhentilar. Holly pointed to a line of trees to the west. “We need to take cover,” she insisted.

Joel followed the girl into the tall meadow grass, tugging the confused horses behind him. Young saplings lined the edge of a shallow gully; Holly slid down the gully and Joel followed. Butternut balked until Holly splashed a stone in the small stream at the bottom of the wash. Eager for water, the mare picked its way to the bottom and began to drink thirstily. The Zhentarim mount soon followed. Joel could just pick out the trail they’d left behind, but for the most part, the grass had closed back up after they passed through.

Joel trusted the girl’s instincts, but he was unable to squelch his curiosity. Leaving the horses and Holly behind, the bard crawled back the way they’d come until he could peer through the tall grass at the trail beyond.

Whatever was coming had frightened more than just Holly. The woods that he and Holly had just exited erupted with an alarmed chatter. A moment later flocks of birds soared out of the trees and flew overhead. Five deer bounded down the trail and into the grass, the lead buck settling only a few feet from the ravine where Holly and the horses were hidden.

A minute later a great procession of people emerged from the woods. There had to be a hundred at least, peasants mostly, their heads bowed down, mumbling incoherently, their feet shuffling in the dirt, kicking up clouds of dust. Four young men and two young women in poorly tailored acolytes robes of red and black carried banners of crimson, emblazoned with a black hand. They chanted, louder and more clearly than the peasants, so that Joel could make out their words.

“Lord Bane comes. Fear him always. To defy him is to die. Lord Bane comes. Fear him always. To defy him is to die.”

Joel buried his head in his arms and worked hard to stifle his laughter. It was a group of Banites, still worshiping their dead god. Their capacity for self-deceit was unbelievable. The black lord of hatred and tyranny had perished nearly a decade ago, yet he still had worshipers who refused to accept the fact. With their god’s death, even Bane’s priests were magically impotent, yet here they were, parading about and declaring their god’s power.

It was then that Joel noticed the ground was rumbling. He peered down the road, guessing the rumbling might be caused by elephants, or perhaps a captured dragon.

It was no living thing that shook the earth, however, but something far more diabolical. Floating along the trail, its keel hovering inches from the ground, was the strangest-looking ship Joel had ever seen. The hull was fashioned of gigantic tree trunks, bound together with iron bands. Engraved in the iron bands was a script Joel was sure did not originate in the Realms. The hull was nearly a hundred feet long, with a fifteen-foot beam. Charred bits of wood on the lower deck led Joel to guess the upper decks had been destroyed by fire. Three of the bound tree trunks thrust outward from the lower deck, entwined together to form a three-pronged ram. The ship’s broken rudder plowed through the earth, creating a great furrow in the trail and making the ground shake.

Bound to the ship’s bow, looking as if it were standing on the ram, was a giant ebon figurehead of a creature Joel had never seen before. It looked like a great pig or a small elephant with a mushed-in snout, only it stood upright like a human. Its arms were bound to either side of the bow. The statue wore no clothing, and its black skin had a sheen as if it were highly polished.

Behind the figurehead, on the lower deck, stood a small, slender woman in black plate armor, with a black cape. She held a silver goad, its spiked point honed to a needlelike sharpness. Her long, silky black hair was fastened in a single plait that reached her waist. It was her face, though, that captured Joel’s attention. On her cheeks and her chin were diamond-shaped tattoos the color of fresh blood, and set into her forehead was a huge ruby, worth a king’s ransom—the telltale markings of one of Bane’s chosen priests. Her features might have been attractive, but now they were frozen into a stern, bored expression. She looked no older than Joel, but the bard knew such priests often used their powers to appear youthful.

For a moment the priestess seemed to look right at the spot where Joel hid in the grass. Her lips curled into the slightest hint of a smile. Joel could have sworn he’d been detected, that in the next minute she’d order her minions to flush him out like a bird. Then the bow of the boat reached the trail just in front of where he lay in hiding, and the bard lost sight of the priestess. The boat rumbled past and continued on. A few more peasants straggled behind the floating ship, but they did not stop.

Joel rolled on his back and breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t seen him. If she hadn’t seen him, though, why had she smiled? the bard asked himself. Perhaps she had seen him, but in her pride, she had ignored him, smiling at the way he cowered. Joel felt annoyance churn in his gut. As priestess to a dead god, she was unable to cast even a simple healing spell, yet there she stood, proud of her power and position, and here he lay, priest to a living god, lying low like a snake in the grass.

Healing. He’d forgotten about that. He was so self-conscious about revealing his priesthood he hadn’t even offered to heal the wounds on Holly’s arms. She was a tough little thing, but the gashes from the Zhentarim swords must hurt badly.

Joel crawled back through the grass to the wash where Holly and the horses were hidden. He was rehearsing what he would say—“I’m not just a bard. I’m a priest, too. Of Finder. I don’t expect you’ve heard of him”—when he spied Holly by the wash. The bard froze in place and stared.

Holly sat cross-legged in the grass, her arms raised over her head, softly singing a chant to Lathander Morninglord, god of the dawn. Her singing was off-key, but apparently that was no impediment to her prayer being answered. An aura as rosy as the dawn sky gathered about her head and upraised arms. She lowered her arms and wrapped them about herself. The aura contracted about her as if it were sinking into her flesh, then vanished. The cuts on her arms were now nothing more than pale lines scarring her dark brown skin.

So much for my usefulness as a priest, Joel thought. Now, though, he understood this girl who wielded a sword with the skill of a veteran mercenary, who sensed Banites approaching, who could heal her wounds with a prayer.

“You’re a paladin, aren’t you?” he asked Holly, though he was quite sure of it already.

Holly looked up at him and nodded. “Order of the Aster,” she explained, “protectors of Lathander’s church.”

It felt odd meeting someone with such great responsibilities and so skilled who was even younger than he. For a moment Joel had the unpleasant sensation that he was growing old at twenty.