'Go,' Walinda ordered Joel, Jas, and Holly.
The paladin and the winged woman hurried to the trapdoor and rushed down the stairs, but Joel sat down on the magic carpet. He was unwilling to leave it behind.
'The stairway is wide enough to fly down,' he told the priestess.
'Is your leg still aching, Poppin?' the priestess asked in mock sympathy.
'Of course it's still aching. You're a lousy healer,' Joel retorted.
Walinda smiled tightly and knelt down beside the bard. Then she gave orders for the carpet to rise a foot and glide forward.
Stentka Taran and the hezrou followed behind them. Joel pulled out the finder's stone to light the way as Walinda maneuvered the carpet expertly down the stairs.
As they soared down the vast staircase, the magic that gave Joel the form of a priest of Xvim faded, having reached the limit of the spell's power. Walinda made no comment when the bard changed appearance. She seemed to be lost in thought, occasionally glancing back at Stentka Taran.
The bard sat very still, trying to compose himself. He was still furious with Walinda for abandoning Holly, but he knew he couldn't allow that emotion to color his dealings with Beshaba. Finder had told him to bring the goddess to the spire, and Joel was determined not to disappoint his god.
The throne room was just as Joel had left it. Walinda landed the carpet on the dais beside Beshaba's unconscious figure. The priestess bowed her head before her goddess and held her hands before her. She appeared to be praying silently. Joel rose to his feet and backed away.
'Is that you Marin?' Ratagar called from his cage. 'You've shed your scales, but I recognized the red hair. I knew you weren't a tiefling. I can't believe you came back. Are you nuts, kid?' he asked Joel.
The bard didn't reply. He was looking around anxiously for his friends.
He spied Holly standing at the base of the dais. The paladin was cradling her head in her hands. Either she was shocked by the death and destruction all around or overwhelmed by the tremendous sense of evil that pervaded the throne room. Probably both, Joel thought.
'You certainly have an eclectic group of friends, Marin the Red,' the imp noted. 'Paladins, mariliths, evil priestesses, pretty girls with wings…'
Jas landed just behind the bard.
'Where's Emilo?' Joel whispered.
'He's beside Holly,' Jas said.
Then Joel spotted the kender, who was standing on the third step of the dais. Emilo reached out and stroked the paladin's hair in a comforting gesture. Even more odd than the kender's gift of being overlooked was the way Jas could always spot him. The bard shook his head, unable to understand it.
'You really have no idea of the evil you're perpetrating,' Ratagar said to Joel.
Stentka Taran slithered up beside the paladin. Before Joel realized what was happening, the marilith wrapped two of her arms about Holly's waist, and with two more hands grabbed the paladin's wrists. With her third set of hands, the snake-woman manacled Holly's arms together. The marilith tossed the chain attached to the manacles to one of her hezrou lieutenants.
'No!' Joel shouted, leaping toward the stairs, but the marilith lunged forward and, with a single deft action, tossed him down the stairs. He landed on his uninjured leg, twisting his knee.
'Walinda!' Jas shrieked as she took to the air. 'Stop that snake creature, you bitch!'
Walinda looked up from her prayer, slightly annoyed.
'I'm sorry, Poppin,' she said, 'but I was forced to pay the yugoloths on the roof with all the gold that was meant for Stentka Taran. She has agreed instead to take the paladin in payment.'
'Ooooo! Betrayal,' Ratagar squealed with glee. 'What fun!' Unable to stand, his knee burning with pain, Joel was forced to plead from the floor. 'Walinda, think what you're doing.' He struggled for some argument, no matter how useless, knowing only that he had to stall for time. Still unnoticed by all the evil beings, Emilo was even now picking the locks on the manacles that bound Holly's wrists.
'Lathander offered his paladin to help your goddess,' Joel said fervently. 'If you let this creature take Holly, you will be offending the Morninglord, and he is far more powerful than Beshaba.'
'For all his goodness, Lathander has no interest in helping Beshaba,' Walinda countered. 'He only wants to know what she knows so that he might help Tymora. I care not whether he is offended.'
Emilo finally finished picking the locks on the manacles. Holly jerked the restraints from her wrist and let them fall to the floor with a clatter. She leaped backward and drew her sword, leveling it at the belly of the hezrou.
'Hey,' the imp cried out in surprise. 'How'd she do that?'
Jas landed beside Holly, her sword also drawn. 'You won't take her without bloodshed,' the winged woman snarled at the marilith.
Stentka Taran looked toward Walinda.
The priestess sighed. 'You will have to charge me interest on what I owe you,' she said to the marilith. 'We will settle accounts in a few days time.'
The marilith nodded. She slithered away, back up the stairs. The hezrou hopped behind her.
Walinda glared at Holly. 'You have cost me dearly,' she said accusingly.
Holly laughed, completely astounded by the evil priestess's selfishness.
That was an interesting trick. How did you do it?' she said, repeating the imp's question.
'Walinda, don't you think we should be getting on with reviving your goddess?' Joel asked, trying to keep the priestess from guessing at the presence of the unnoticed kender.
Walinda nodded. 'Yes, of course,' she agreed.
The priestess approached her goddess slowly and reverently. With an atypical tenderness, she reached out for one of the giant-sized hands, clasping it in both of her own. In a soft voice, she began to chant words Joel did not understand, but Walinda spoke them with joy in her face. She was smiling, and there were tears in her eyes.
Slowly the dark aura about Walinda faded away from her body as an even darker nimbus grew about Beshaba. Walinda began to look pale and haggard. She was giving more back to her goddess than the power her goddess had given her. Or perhaps her goddess was simply taking more.
'Nooo!' Ratagar shrieked. 'You've got to stop her, Marin! This is a bad thing. Trust me.'
Joel could not even stand up at the moment, let alone stop Walinda from restoring her goddess to power. Walinda's shiny black hair began to turn gray, then colorless. Lines etched themselves in her face, and her back grew stooped. Joel watched in horror as the goddess began to stir at the expense of her priestess's vitality.
Holly and Jas crept to the bard's side. Holly began a soft prayer to heal the bard's injured knee. Joel sighed with relief at the warm feeling that spread through him as Lathander's gift of healing passed through his paladin's hands. Jas and Holly helped the bard to stand.
Suddenly the goddess sat bolt upright, blinking in the light of the finder's stone. The whites of her eyes were shot with red, giving her a look of madness. The dark aura that surrounded her being seemed to spread throughout the whole room. The light from the finder's stone dimmed to the brightness of a single candle. Looking upon her, Joel felt an unknown fear grip at his heart.
Beshaba pulled her hand away from her priestess, and Walinda collapsed to her knees at her goddess's feet beside the imp's cage.
Seizing the moment, Ratagar lashed out with his tail, burying its tip in Walinda's back. 'That's for the death of my Noxxe!' the imp screamed. 'Your priestess for my priest, Beshaba!'
Walinda's body began to twitch with a violent seizure, poisoned by the imp's stinging tail. She looked up at her goddess, her mouth opening and closing, but no words came forth.
Beshaba slid her right hand through the bars of the cage, and with a single squeeze, crushed the life out of Ratagar Perivalious. She squeezed again until Ratagar was no more than a pulpy mass of red flesh and green ichor, then dropped his body on the floor of the cage.
The goddess turned her attention to Walinda. Without any trace of emotion, she watched as her priestess's body ceased twitching and lay still.
Holly ran toward the dais, clearly intent on trying to aid the very same woman who moments ago nearly made her slave to a fiend of the Abyss.
