'Amberlee,' a sensuous, husky voice whispered through the crypt. The wyvern shadow that had destroyed the two orcs reappeared on the wall. The dark silhouette swayed back and forth above the children's heads. 'Hello, guardian,' Amber replied. 'You have gotten yourself cornered,' the guardian noted.
'But the kobolds and the orcs have fled,' Cory said. 'The kobolds still lurk on the stairs to the catacombs, and the orcs still wait on the stairs to the mausoleum,' the guardian replied. 'I can hear them. The orcs know you must come out eventually. The kobolds are praying to Beshaba to bring you ruin.'
'We'll just have to wait here,' Amber said. 'Wait!' Toran complained. 'Wait for what?' 'When Uncle Giogi gets back and finds out we haven't come home for supper, he'll look for the wyvern's spur so he can turn into a wyvern to search for us. When he sees the spur is gone, he'll guess we took it and know where to look for us,' Amber said. 'Then he and Uncle Sam and Aunt Cat can fight off the orcs and free us.'
'She's right,' Cory agreed.
'I'm not sitting around here waiting all day,' Tavan said. 'We made a sacrifice to Tymora. If we attack the orcs, we'll be lucky and break through.' He pulled out a dagger from his belt.
'No,' Toran said. 'We should attack the kobolds and try to find the exit from the catacombs into the woods.'
'We'll flip for it,' Tavan said. 'I call heads.'
Toran pulled out a coin and tossed it in the air, but he didn't manage to catch it. The coin hit the floor of the crypt and spun about on its side like a top. When it stopped spinning, it did not fall over. Instead, it remained balanced on edge, neither heads nor tails.
'Interesting,' the guardian hissed. 'I'd take that as a sign.'
'We stay here,' Amber growled to Tavan and Toran.
From the catacombs, the kobolds began shrieking loudly. The clamor upset the children.
Suddenly a terrible rumbling noise came from the catacombs, and the whole crypt began to shake. Pieces of stone from the arched ceiling of the crypt began to tumble to the floor.
'If we stay here, we'll be crushed!' Toran shouted.
Now not only Pars, but also Ferrin and Heather, began to cry and scream as well. Dust filled the air as more stone and dirt collapsed around them.
'Tymora,' Cory called out, 'we need your help!'
The other children took up the call, shouting out Lady Luck's name. Amber bent over her young brother to shield him from the falling stone. She whispered a prayer to Selune, since the goddess of the moon was the patron of shapeshifters.
The ground ceased moving as suddenly as it had started. In a few minutes, the dust cleared enough for them to survey the damage. The ceiling of the crypt had collapsed on either side of them, so that both the entrance to the catacombs and the exit to the mausoleum were both completely blocked off.
Amazingly, the ceiling over their heads remained intact. They were safe from the orcs and kobolds, but they were now sealed alive in the crypt of their ancestors.
BEHIND THE SCENES
The looming figure hovered over the altar of stone and stroked the gold coin and the pink rose. Swollen with the power of two goddesses, they glowed with a light so bright it was painful for mortals to behold. The figure coveted that power, but it was not yet time to claim it. Soon, very soon, Beshaba and Tymora would be no more. Then their power would be his, and no one could stop him from claiming it.
Then he would claim the goddesses' worshipers as well. Beshaba's followers would turn to him readily, eager for the ruin he would bring to their enemies. Tymora's priests, of course, would balk, but they would be powerless without him. They would turn to Selune for protection, but they couldn't cower in Selune's temples forever. When they emerged, they would be captured and given a choice-join him or die. It mattered not to him which they chose.
It was the adventurers who followed Tymora that he coveted. Adventurers were a power to be reckoned with in the Realms, and many of them relied on Tymora's luck to survive the hardships of their professions. They wouldn't dare to risk his wrath. They would call on him for sustenance, and their strength would be his. And then, in time, the Realms would be his.
Opera is the one medium that provides a venue for the composer to express vastly differing emotions simultaneously through song. The many voices weave together to form a single tapestry of song that may reveal not only wrenching pain and darkest evil, but sublime joy, noblest sacrifice. Thus, music that is already beautiful and moving is further enhanced by chilling ironies and dramatic overtones. The enjoyment of opera is an acquired taste, but to my mind, those who put forth the effort to study it and appreciate it will be richly rewarded.
ACT FOUR SCENE 1
Jas landed on a rocky butte and folded back her wings, which here in the Outlands were reddish brown at the base and speckled with white and black flecks at the tips. After all the awful shapes and colors her wings had taken, Jas rather liked them they way they looked now-like a hawk's. Even better, her eyes had returned to normal, and she was slowly molting her feathers. She felt human again.
She peered out across the prairies, but she could see nothing for miles and miles but the spire. The infinite peak rose in the distance, seemingly no closer today than it had been yesterday. Jas did not hurry back down to the party, but sat for a few minutes to enjoy the peaceful solitude.
Traveling across Gehenna on foot would be preferable to traveling anywhere with Beshaba. Despite having shrunk to the size of a human, the goddess was still a giant terror. Although she made perfectly clear that she could destroy the party in an instant, the goddess was so exhausted by the drain on her power she rode on the carpet. Since the carpet couldn't take the weight of five persons, Jas was forced to fly alongside it, for which she might have been grateful. She was plagued, however, with the sensation that she was once again watching her friends being tortured, only this time by Walinda's goddess.
Beshaba never stopped complaining or criticizing or scheming. The magic carpet moved too slow. The light of the Outlands was too bright. Holly's smile was annoying. Joel's good manners were a pretense. Jas reeked of Tymora's magic. They'd been forced to introduce Emilo, to keep Beshaba from tripping over him, and the goddess had been especially aggravated by the kender's presence. Halflings and kender were vermin. On occasion, she would launch into a tirade about how Xvim would rue the day he tangled with her. She would see that he choked on his own tongue.
Then there was the bad luck that dogged not only the adventurers but Beshaba herself. A freak wind blew the magic carpet into a tree. In the collision, a branch tore a great hole in the rug so that it would no longer fly. Emilo had been crushed at the loss of so spectacular an item of magic.
The party was forced to walk. They passed too close to a burr bush and ended up picking prickles out of their clothes for hours. Their boots began to fall apart, and before long, they all had blisters, even the goddess, who also broke a nail trying to adjust the straps on her sandals.
When they set up camp for the night, Holly cut her hand cleaning a bird she had caught for them to eat, Joel hurt his knee breaking a branch to feed the fire to cook the bird, and Emilo burned his hand building the fire. Beshaba, who, as Holly pointed out, didn't really need to eat as did the humans, insisted on tasting the bird and burned her tongue. The injury soured the goddess's mood even further.
