remained, the enchantment he'd felt for her dissolved. 'Finder,' he gasped. He bowed formally, embarrassed at his behavior.
Finder chuckled. 'Somehow I suspect that was the first dryad you've ever met.'
'A dryad? That's some sort of tree sprite, right?' Joel asked.
The god nodded. 'In my youth, you could always find a tree sprite in the Realms if you knew where to look… and were fool enough to do so. These days they are far more rare in the Realms. The ladies of the oaks wield one of the most powerful enchantments known to men. They like to use it on men they find to their liking. And here in Arborea, where passions tend to run strong, it's even easier for their enchantments to succeed. Sorry, but I had to rescue you.'
Joel blushed. 'Thanks… I think,' he said with a sheepish grin.
'Fermata is less than a mile off,' Finder said. 'Wake your companions and bring them along. I'll see that breakfast is waiting.' The god winked, then disappeared.
Cautiously Joel approached the large oak.
'La,' Ada called out from above. The dryad sat in the crook of a branch, smiling down on the bard.
'Sorry, but I have to leave,' Joel said.
'Come back sometime,' Ada invited.
Joel took a deep breath. The memory of her caress was like a flickering shadow in his mind. 'I will,' he promised.
Ada giggled again and disappeared, melding into the oak branch.
Joel gave Jas and Emilo a gentle shake and called out their names. Emilo smiled cheerily upon rising. Jas was as grumpy when she awoke as Joel had always known her to be. When he told her that Finder had been there and promised them breakfast, her mood improved. Joel did not mention Ada.
They traveled through fields of oats and wheat and meadows of grass and wildflowers. Golden-fleeced herd animals somewhat larger than sheep dotted the meadows and viewed their passing without any apparent fear. They spotted a shepherd on a hilltop playing a flute. It was a tune Joel recognized, something from the Realms, but in a strange key. Several of the herd animals flocked about the hilltop as if they were an audience to their tender's performance.
Cedar trees began lining the road to their left. Then, between two especially large cedars, there appeared a road paved with cut gray stone. On either side of the road stood a man-sized pillar constructed of similar stone. Both pillars were marked with two symbols, Finder's white harp and the bird's-eye shape of the symbol for a Fermata.
'Finally,' Jas murmured.
They turned onto the road, which was lined on both sides with more cedar trees, forming a tunnel of green, A hundred paces beyond, the tunnel opened out onto a vast green blanket of short grass, at the end of which stood Finder's home. Joel stopped to admire it. The other two halted behind him.
In the nation of Cormyr, where Finder had grown up, the building would have been referred to as simply a manor house. Finder had built his new home, however, on a scale far larger than any manor house that Joel had ever seen, larger even than many castles. Two massive square towers flanked the central hall. The towers were four stories high, the hall only three, and built of the same gray stone as the road and the pillars, but the stone was merely a framework for the dozens of great glass-paned window that sparkled in the early morning sunshine. Joel counted twelve chimneys beyond the ornate stone parapet surrounding the roof.
'If it weren't for the sunlight, that place would look a bit forbidding,' Emilo noted.
'If it weren't for the invitation to breakfast, I don't think I'd go near it,' Jas declared. 'But it does remind CM of Finder, I've got to admit.'
'How so?' Emilo asked.
'It's very showy and, as you said, a trifle forbidding.'
'Finder's not forbidding,' Joel argued. For his own part he found the building much to his liking. It was grand, magnificent, inspiring. But then, that was how he felt about Finder. 'Just what is Finder a god of?' Emilo asked in a whisper.
'God of reckless fools,' Jas declared.
Joel shot Jas an annoyed glare. While Finder had at one time called himself that, it had been a joke. 'Finder is the patron to all those who seek to change and transform art, to renew art. He also has some limited power over the decay and rebirth of living things.'
'An eclectic sort of fellow,' Emilo noted.
'Yes,' Joel agreed. It was one of the things that he admired about Finder.
Joel strode up to the manor, with Jas and Emilo following a pace behind him. The doors to the front hall stood wide open. Joel stepped inside. The grandeur of the front hall was breathtaking. The floor was of polished marble, in hues of white, black, and gray. In the center of the room, Finder's harp symbol was inset into the marble floor. The walls and ceiling were painted with intricate floral designs that created an illusion of movement when anyone looked at them for very long. Two huge curved staircases of marble climbed up to the next floor; pairs of dosed doors on either side of the hall undoubtedly led to the rest of the manor. The only furnishings in the room were two carved marble benches.
The bard called out, 'Hello!' His words echoed throughout the building. For several moments there was no reply. Then, from somewhere behind the staircase, a young woman appeared. She wore a simple short-sleeved smock of pink covered with a thin film of white-gray dust and several black smudges. She had blue eyes and long, thick, light brown hair, which she wore pulled back in a blue ribbon. She was small and slender.
There was something vaguely familiar about the woman, but for the life of him, Joel couldn't recall ever having met her.
'Welcome to Fermata,' the woman said. 'I'm Rina. Lord Finder has asked me to bring you right in to the morning room.' Her voice was soft and husky.
They followed Rina through the doors on the right. She led them through several large empty rooms until they arrived in a room with windows on three sides. Chairs and settees covered with cushioning and pale yellow fabric were grouped about the room. In its center, on a small round table covered with a quilted cloth of shades of green and yellow, someone had laid out a breakfast worthy of a king. Ham and sausages, fish and fowl, bread and muffins, strawberries and raspberries, milk and cream, butter and cheese, tea and wine, custard and pies filled the table Three places had been set with shiny white dishes, cups, and saucers decorated with tiny blue flowers, silver tableware, linen napkins and shiny blue bowls filled with water and rose petals.
Finder rose from a chair by the window and crossed the room in long strides. 'Welcome, my Rebel Bard,' he greeted Joel as he embraced his priest.
'It's good to be see you again,' Joel said. He had been friends with Finder long before he'd known the older man was a god. He was comfortable in his god's presence and happy to be reunited with him.
Finder turned to Jas and Emilo. 'Jasmine,' he said with a nod. 'I'm glad you've decided to come. And Mi. Haversack, welcome to my realm.'
Emilo bowed low, sweeping the marble floor with his top knot. 'Pleased to meet you, sir,' he said, his brown eyes as wide as saucers.
Finder nodded. 'Thank you, Rina. You may go about your work now,' he said.
Rina bowed quickly and left.
Finder sat down at the table and said, 'Please be seated and help yourselves to breakfast. I'm a little short of all kinds of staff at the moment, let alone waiters. Don't much care for the magical kind.'
'Who's Rina?' Joel asked curiously as he took the seat to Finder's right and stabbed a slice of ham and a slab of bread. Jas and Emilo followed suit.
'She's a petitioner,' Finder replied.
'A what?' Emilo asked.
'A petitioner. Someone who worshiped me in her life, so she ended up here after she died.'
'You mean she's a ghost?' Emilo squeaked.
Finder shook his head. 'No. Ghosts are people who, for one reason or another, never come to the Outer Planes when they die. They remain undead. Rina is one of the only two petitioners who have come to Fermata so far. She was a potter in Tilverton, working on uncovering the secrets of how the Kara-Tur make porcelain. Her skill went beyond mere craft, however. She created works of art from porcelain, encouraged by a speech Joel gave to
