'Somehow I don't suspect Lord Sirrion is in Elysium just to oversee tinker gnomes making omelets,' Finder said irately.
'Well, it does explain why Sirrion wanted Holly to fetch some chickens,' Emilo pointed out.
'But what were the other things for?' Jas asked. 'The luck charms and the rose and the coin and the crystal sphere?'
'Spell keys?' Kenda suggested.
'What?' Finder asked in surprise.
'What are spell keys?' Emilo asked.
'They're special requirements necessary for a wizard to cast magic in different planes,' Kenda explained. 'Spell keys vary greatly from plane to plane and spell to spell. Sometimes the wizard must perform a certain action, such as free a bird or sacrifice a goat or spit in the wind or sing a song. Other times the wizard need only possess a certain item, like a dagger or cat or a feather or some sort of gems tone.'
'Or something like the power key that Finder gave Joel?' Emilo asked.
'Well, similar to that, yes,' Kenda replied. 'But power keys are created by gods for their priests.'
'That's it!' Finder said excitedly. 'Lathander must know some of Tymora's major power keys. He may have guessed at some of Beshaba's.'
'Is that important?' Jas asked.
'A power key allows a priest to siphon off some of his god's power,' Finder explained. 'That's why they're kept secret, or made to be temporary, or made so they can only be used by one person. If they aren't, they can be used by the wrong person to drain a god's powers.'
Finder turned to Holly and asked sternly, 'So what is this ancient wrong Lathander intends to right, paladin?'
'I–I don't know,' Holly said, her voice trembling.
'But you suspect something,' Finder said. 'I can sense it. Tell me what it is,' he growled.
'Dawnbringer Aurora said Lord Lathander would right an ancient wrong, but when Lord Sirrion said the same thing, I knew he was lying. I didn't know how that could be… unless…'
'Unless Lord Sirrion has lied to Lord Lathander, and Lord Lathander and his priestess were taken in by the lie,' Finder suggested to the paladin.
'Yes,' Holly whispered.
'So perhaps Sirrion only intends to drain away the two goddesses' powers,' Bors suggested.
'But what's the ancient wrong that Lathander thinks he's righting?' Jas asked.
'Oh! I get it! He's going to put Tymora and Beshaba back together again!' Emilo cried out excitedly.
'What are you talking about?' Holly demanded.
'The kender has the dark of it,' Kenda said. 'Lathander wants to put Tyche back together as if she were a cracked egg.'
ACT FOUR SCENE 4
After discovering that their teleport, dimensional doorways, and magical portal spells all failed within the chamber, the bard and the two goddesses set about to explore their prison from top to bottom. The fusion chamber was filled with the chaotic matter that Tymora had said was very similar to that found in the plane of Limbo. Both goddesses could manipulate the matter into an organized form with a mere thought, and once they did so, the matter stayed fixed in place. With much concentration, Joel found that he, too, could manipulate the matter, but the moment he ceased concentrating on it, it reverted to a swirling chaos of earth, air, water, and fire that threatened to choke, drown, or burn him unless one of the goddesses re-formed it for him.
By forcing the chaotic matter to the side, forming vast spaces of air only, the prisoners puzzled out that the fusion chamber was actually a large pyramid nearly a hundred feet high, with a square base over a hundred feet on each side. The temple that Beshaba had created actually took up very little of the space within the fusion chamber. The boundaries of the chamber were silvery, shimmering magical walls of force. The prisoners could find no doors, so they began testing the nearest wall. They smashed at it with weaponry, magic missiles, lightning bolts, and fireballs. They rubbed at it with water and acid and lye created out of the chaos matter. They chanted ancient spells of disintegration at it and spells to dispel it. They cursed it and blessed it. Nothing they tried seemed to penetrate or even weaken the barrier.
Tymora and Beshaba began exploring every inch of the walls in greater detail, looking for a flaw they could work on. Because the bard was unable to travel safely through the Limbo-like chaos outside the region the goddesses had formed, they left him in Beshaba's temple. There Joel practiced manipulating the chaotic matter with his mind, feeling much like a child who'd been given a lump of clay to play with while his parents went about their adult business.
The bard found that fields of grass and groves of trees were the easiest to create, while rooms took a great deal more concentration. He challenged himself by creating rooms he remembered well, like his grandmother's parlor, the mess hall of the barding college he'd attended as a boy, and the tavern where he first met Finder and spent a long night discussing music and art.
His creations were nowhere near as organized or detailed as the goddesses'; nonetheless, it was an amazingly powerful sensation manipulating the chaos into order. Concentrating proved to be taxing work, however, and Joel was forced to retreat periodically to the temple so he could rest without thinking.
As he played with the Limbo matter, Joel began to recognize a certain common denominator in each the environments he created-the window. It appeared in each of the interiors Joel created, although he was certain there was no window in the real mess hall or the tavern. He tried hard to envision the space without the window, but it would not go away.
The temple Beshaba had created had a tunnel shaft, and the dungeon that Beshaba's mind had formed without even consciously thinking about it had a window. Joel concentrated on forming the hull of the spelljammer he'd ridden in, which definitely had no windows, but his creation was marred by a ragged hole in the hull. Something, or someone, was keeping the Limbo matter from completely surrounding him.
Joel could think of only one reason for the opening: Someone outside the fusion chamber wanted a window in order to watch the prisoners.
Joel imagined some sacks of sand along the hull of the imaginary spelljammer and climbed atop them so he could peer through the hole. A dim, rosy light shone through.
In the dim light, on the other side of the spelljammer hull, Joel could make out what looked like a stone altar, adorned with glowing crystals and sparking balls of glass. Strewn about the table were varying tokens of luck both good and bad-a horseshoe, a luck stone, a four-leaf clover, a broken mirror, a new knife, and a black cat curled into a ball, sleeping. Suspended magically above the table were three items: an old coin and a pink rose, both of which glowed as bright as a lightning flash, and a blue crystal sphere.
The space beyond the stone altar looked like a grassy clearing beneath a bright red tent large enough to hold a wedding party.
The hole in the hull seemed to Joel like a magical portal out of the fusion chamber. Joel tried to put his hand through the hole, but found his way blocked by an invisible magical barrier. Unlike the shimmering walls of the fusion chamber, the barrier that blocked the portal was not completely impenetrable. Joel poked at it with his dagger, and in doing so discovered that nonliving objects could penetrate through the magical opening. Standing this close to the hole, he became aware of a faint clanking sound. Then he heard voices, muffled, he suspected, by the magical barrier.
In his excitement, Joel's concentration on the hull ceased, and he was surrounded again by chaos. Staving off panic, he swam back through the swirling matter until he reached Beshaba's temple. He coughed up the water and dirt he had inadvertently breathed in and smacked out the tiny patches of flame dancing in his clothing and hair.
Once he'd caught his breath, the bard concentrated on the tunnel near the ceiling. He reformed the chaos matter so the shaft was considerably larger, reaching down to the floor. In doing so, he uncovered another magical portal through which he could look out of the fusion chamber. Oddly enough, this portal opened to the
