scary. They told me not to resist when he cast his spell. If I didn't transform, then they'd kill me.' Jas shrugged. 'Maybe I resisted a little, and that's why I could partially control the transformation by keeping calm.'
Tymora exchanged a glance with Finder.
'I managed to transform Jasmine back to her true form,' Finder explained, 'but she can still sense the dark stalker within her.'
'I see,' Tymora said. Her brow furrowed with concern.
'But I suspect that since you're a far greater power than Iyachtu Xvim, you should have no trouble removing the curse from her soul,' Finder said to Tymora.
The goddess raised an eyebrow. 'Indeed,' she replied.
At that moment, the halfling priestess, Winnie, appeared, followed by two human servants carrying trays of food and drink.
'Winnie, your timing is excellent, as always,' Tymora said. 'Jasmine, drink some of the wine; it will make the ordeal to come easier to bear.' The goddess stood up. 'Winnie, Finder, I need to have a word with both of you,' she said. She led the halfling and the god some distance away from the bench beneath the birch tree.
The human servants set the trays of wine and food on the bench beside Jas, then left without a word.
Jas looked at the wine as if it might be poisoned. Joel laughed. He stood up and filled three goblets. He sampled the drink and sighed. 'Only the finest, as my grandfather used to say.' He handed goblet to Jas. 'To your happiness, lady,' he said.
Jas took a swallow from the goblet as if it were filled with water. A moment later she gasped and her eyes grew round. 'It is good,' she whispered.
Told you so,' Joel said. He turned around with a goblet for Emilo, but the kender wasn't there. 'Where did Emilo go?'
Jas looked about her, but not with much effort. 'Don't know,' she said. She took another deep swallow from her goblet, then held it out to Joel. 'More, please,' she requested.
Joel looked at the winged woman with surprise. He'd never seen her drink anything stronger than ale, and then she always nursed her drink carefully. It was possible that the quality of the wine was behind her current lack of self-restraint, but the bard suspected it had more to do with her anxiety. He filled her goblet halfway. Jas took another long swallow.
'I could learn to like this stuff,' the woman said. She smiled up at Joel. Her eyes already appeared unfocused.
An uneasy suspicion seized the bard. He knelt down before Jas and put his hand around her goblet. 'Jas, do you remember what you said about how Tymora reacted when you said you wanted to be able to fly. She gave you a sad little smile as if you were a kid who asked for cake for dinner? If it was a test, you failed, but she gave you what you asked for anyway.'
'Yes… so?' Jas replied, tugging her goblet away from Joel's hand and sloshing some of it on herself in the process. It looked like blood dripping down her leather vest.
'I was thinking of those drunken revelers last night- the ones we hid from on the road to the Gilded Hall. They were fighting over the wine, remember? Finder called them the bacchae. They travel in mobs, with no purpose but to drink. I'm wondering if they all had a dark stalker.'
'What are you talking about?' Jas asked, clearly confused by Joel's line of thought.
'Metaphorically speaking. They might all have something inside them that they can't get rid of. Maybe that's what made them more susceptible to the wine.'
Jas stared at the bard for several moments, seemingly without comprehension. Understanding, when it came, caused her to start. She set the goblet back down on the tray. Her body shook. At first Joel thought it was from rage, until he saw the tears in her eyes.
Joel set his goblet down as well. He took Jas's hands in his own. 'It's going to be all right. Tymora will get rid of the dark stalker.'
'It doesn't matter,' Jas sobbed. Her tears fell from her cheeks and mixed in rivulets with the wine on her vest. 'Arandes is dead. All the others are dead. I shouldn't even be alive. I should have died with my crew.'
'No,' Joel insisted. 'They wouldn't want you to feel that way. Your being alive means they'll be remembered.' Joel hesitated for a moment. Reminding Jas of Walinda might only encourage her to renew her futile quest for vengeance, but it was a risk the bard felt he had to take. He phrased his words carefully. 'Your being alive is a symbol of Walinda's failure to resurrect Bane. Fighting off the dark stalker as long as you have is a symbol of the failure of Iyachtu Xvim's priest to spread their darkness.'
Jas looked up at Joel and laughed in spite of herself through her tears. 'You bards are such smooth talkers. Everything's a symbol to you.'
Joel shrugged. 'After all those years of training at the bard college, I can't help myself anymore.'
'Can't help what?' Emilo asked, suddenly popping out from behind a weigela bush.
'The propensity to put reality into poetical context,' Joel said. He released Jas's hands and stood up. 'Where have you been?'
'I went to investigate something that caught my eye,' Emilo replied. He looked at Jas with surprise. 'You've been crying,' he noted. He pulled out an enormous baby blue handkerchief from one of the many pockets in his vest. 'Here, you can dry your eyes with this. It's clean. Unless you'd rather keep crying. That would be all right, too.' 'No, I'm finished now,' Jas said, taking the proffered cloth. She dabbed at her eyes, then wiped off her leather vest.
Emilo snagged a slice of melon from the tray of food on the bench and slurped at it noisily.
Tymora, Finder, and the priestess Winnie returned from their private conference. Jas stood as they approached. 'Will you help me now, please?' she asked the goddess. She held chin up and met Tymora's gaze, but there was only earnestness, not pride, in her tone.
'Of course I'll help you,' Tymora answered. She smiled warmly and placed both her hands on the winged woman's shoulders.
Joel stepped away from the pair to stand at Finder's side. Emilo took a position beside Winnie. He flashed the halfling priestess a cheery smile. Winnie eyed the kender with a look of indifference, but a tiny smile played across her lips when the kender looked away from her.
Tymora whispered a few words Joel couldn't hear. Suddenly blue light glowed about her hands; then the blue light began to turn white, like a poker in a fire. The light soaked into Jas's body. The winged woman began to glow, and her skin took on a translucent look, as if a gauze curtain were blocking the sun. A tiny sliver of black appeared in the light. It began to rise like a mist, expelled by Tymora's power flooding through Jas.
Something overhead rumbled in the sky. Joel looked up with surprise. A dark cloud had blocked the light from a patch of stars overhead. Then the ground shook beneath their feet. A moment later the ground moved like a wave of water. The bench beneath the birch tree toppled over, and the birch was uprooted from the ground by the violence of the tremors.
Joel was knocked from his feet. He tried to rise, but the heaving of the ground convinced him to remain down. When he looked up, the goddess was pushing the winged woman away from her. Tymora's head snapped up and her body arched back with a jerk. Sparks danced about her. She began breathing very quickly.
Finder cried out, 'Tymora!' at the same time as Winnie shrieked, 'My lady!' Finder leapt forward and wrapped his arms around the goddess's body. A bolt of lightning shot upward from Lady Luck straight into the darkness overhead. The goddess collapsed in Finder's arms, as limp as a doll.
The ground stilled, and the darkness overhead disappeared, leaving the stars twinkling above as if nothing had happened.
Jas lay on the ground, stunned. Winnie looked at her in alarm. 'You do have something inside you, don't you?' the halfling priestess whispered.
'No,' Tymora whispered. It seemed to Joel that in the silence that followed the upheaval, the goddess's soft voice could be heard throughout her realm. Finder lowered her gently to the ground, cradling her shoulders and head against his chest.
'Winnie, listen,' Tymora said. 'It was not Jasmine. Something caused me to lose control of my power. I sensed… I sensed…' The goddess's voice faded.
'Tymora,' Finder whispered urgently. 'What did you sense? Or was it a person?'
Tymora's eyes flew open wide. 'Beshaba!' she growled. Then her eyes closed again and she collapsed
