Кейт Новак - Finder's Bane

“Irony?” Adenu asked.

“It’s not important,” Jedidiah replied. “Sir, any other time I’m sure this tour would fascinate me, but right now we are trying to track down a girl and her abductor. The girl is tall, dark-skinned. Her abductor is a small, slender woman dressed in black. We have reason to believe that the woman would have used your portal to the astral plane.”

“Oh, her! Bossy bit of fluff, the one in black was. Blew in here like she owned the place, demanding access as if she were the queen of the world. I thought that dollymop with her had too much of the bub.”

“Did they go through the portal?” Joel asked.

“Her Majesty handed me a huge sack o’jink. Said she had to see the dead gods immediately—had to show them to the girl. Didn’t see the harm in it. I guided them through to the astral side. Once we’re across, the woman says she doesn’t need a guide. She goes sailing off into the void with the girl in tow. I’m stepping back through the portal, and I’m nearly knocked over by some harpy who goes flying through.”

“Jas!” Joel muttered to Jedidiah, who nodded in reply.

As they passed between two long, low buildings to the rear of the temple, Adenu said, “All of ’em lucky it’s a good day for the portal.”

“A good day?” Joel asked.

“Portal’s getting unreliable,” Adenu explained. “Like everything the so-called gods created. Some days it’s no bigger than an egg. Other days it doesn’t open at all.”

Adenu led them through the front entryway to the ruined temple. The doors had burned away. Only their hinges remained. “Used to have caravans of people coming here to tour the temple,” their guide explained, “all eager for that big finale—seeing Aoskar’s body floating in the gray. Now that they know they may not see into the astral, they don’t flock here like they used to. Portal closes down entirely, we’ll be changing the tour itinerary. Can’t say as I’ll be disappointed. Thought from the beginning we should talk more about the tree.”

“The tree?” Joel asked.

“I’ve gone and given you a dark,” Adenu said. “Come back in a few weeks. The tree will be on the tour by then. Just working out some security problems. But the tree is proof there is a power greater than the gods.”

Adenu led them through a door to the first tower on the right. Within, a knee-high wall encircled an empty pool about five feet across. Once the portal must have filled the pool, but now a puddle of gray in the middle was all that was left of the gateway to the astral plane.

“Pop through there,” Adenu said, “and you’ll see ’em … all the dead gods. No better than they should be. That’s where they’ll all end up once we’ve revealed the truth about ’em to the multiverse.”

“Some even sooner then that,” Jedidiah murmured. He turned to the Athar guide. “We’ll find our way from here, thank you,” the former god said. “It’s been very interesting talking to you, Adenu. Farewell.”

“Suit yourselves.” He pulled back and watched them from the doorway.

Jedidiah stepped stiffly over the low wall. His face twitched, as if he were in pain.

“Are you all right?” Joel whispered.

“I sense I’m not wanted here,” the older bard said.

Joel smiled.

“Not wanted in the city, I mean,” Jedidiah explained. “Something or someone has sensed my presence and is not pleased. There’s an oppressive atmosphere all around me. We’re not leaving a moment too soon.”

Joel stepped over the wall and joined Jedidiah beside the gray puddle on the floor.

“Hold on to my cloak and step through with me,” Jedidiah said. “Stay relaxed, and don’t panic when we reach the other side. Ready … set … go!”

The two men hopped through the portal together.

They fell into an empty sky. There was no ground beneath their feet, yet they fell no farther. There was neither up nor down, nor any horizon, nothing. In the distance, the sky looked silver, but close up there was no color to the air. Joel looked upward. The portal through which they’d entered looked like a leather-brown disk floating in the sky. It flared with a white light, then shrank to the size of a melon.

Beside him, Jedidiah’s form looked pale, nearly translucent. Joel looked down at himself to discover that he, too, seemed less distinct. Yet when he patted his chest and legs, he felt as solid as ever, and the piece of Jedidiah’s cloak to which he clung still seemed made of good, stiff wool. He released his hold on the cloak.

“Welcome to the astral plane,” Jedidiah said. “The hallway to the multiverse. Don’t be fooled by the emptiness. There’s plenty here once you learn how to look for it. If you see any colored disks or snakelike tubes, avoid them. The disks are portals to other worlds, and the tubes are conduits between other worlds. With any luck, we won’t run into any githyanki. That’s a race of humans who worship a lich queen. They’re none too friendly to outsiders. We need to find a temporary haven to start. See that gray spot?” Jedidiah pointed into the nothingness.

Joel shook his head.

“No? Well, I’m going to think about moving toward it, and when I do, I’ll start to move in that direction. Just like floating down a river. You think about moving toward me and you’ll move along with me. Your mind does all the work. Watch.”

Jedidiah looked out over the void and started to drift in the direction he had pointed toward.

Joel watched him recede with a hint of nervousness. The silence that surrounded him was far more intense and thus much more eerie than the silence in the Shattered Temple. He longed to hear another voice. It took the young bard a few moments to focus on imagining himself moving toward the older man.

Suddenly Jedidiah appeared to move backwards, toward Joel, but soon Joel realized it was because he was moving toward Jedidiah. Without any landmarks, without even the hint of a breeze, movement was very deceptive.

After a few minutes following Jedidiah, Joel could see the gray spot Jedidiah had indicated. A few minutes later the gray spot became a gray statue of a potbellied, ram-horned satyr with a sullen expression on its face. As the men moved closer, the gray statue appeared to be a huge rock carving, larger than a ship.

Jedidiah settled on the satyr’s shoulder, and Joel landed beside him. The young bard felt only a slight sensation of weight holding him to the statue’s body.

“Is this …?” Joel let his voice trail off.

“A dead god? Yes,” Jedidiah replied. “I have no idea who it is. There are a great many of them out here. Some are newly arrived, while others have floated here for millennia.”

“Why are we stopping here?” Joel asked. While he was glad to feel something solid beneath his feet, the nature of the object he stood on made him feel uneasy.

“Now that we’re no longer in Sigil, I’d like to have my godhood back. Would you be so kind as to restore it?”

Joel pulled out the finder’s stone and held it out to Jedidiah.

The older man smiled and shook his head. “I can’t just take it back by myself. It requires a ritual that only a priest can perform.”

“What sort of ritual?” Joel asked.

“Well, it’s different for every god. In my case, it requires a song … one about the cycle of life.”

“The tulip song,” Joel said, realizing finally why Jedidiah had drilled him so assiduously in that particular song.

“Exactly,” Jedidiah said. He lowered himself until he was seated cross-legged. Joel sat across from Jedidiah and held out the finder’s stone. Then he sang, understanding much more about the song than he had before. As he sang, the process that had placed Finder’s remaining godly power and abilities into this half of the finder’s stone reversed itself. Mists of all colors of the spectrum streamed from the stone. The mists circled about Jedidiah’s form, then were drawn into him, like water into parched earth. When at last Joel had finished, Jedidiah heaved a deep sigh and relaxed.