Recent Posts For Tag: Chapter 5

A small door opened in the twenty-foot-tall white-stone walls and a tall, bearded priest stepped out, garbed in a gray skullcap. "The Crying God and St. Amahl welcome you to this humble friary!" he stated. "I am Brother Ottad yn... Hakam? I mean, yn Khiber, but... Brother Hakam, is that you?"

   Hakam nodded. "Yes," he answered in Alzhedo. "I am pleased to see you, Brother Ottad." Hakam was thankful that the man had introduced himself, because he had forgotten the Ilmatari friar's name. He did, however, recall the name of the head friar. "Is Father Rahimat available?"

   "He was just retiring to his chamber for the night, but I shall retrieve him. Come, follow me." Ottad led Hakam into the old caravanserai. The courtyard was mostly empty but for a single friar drawing water from the central well. "You surely must have an important matter to be returning to us!" Ottad continued. "I pray that all is well with you and your companions."

   "It is presently," said Hakam, "but the last year has not been a restful one. I am here on behalf of another."

   "I see that you have 'upgraded' your flying carpet for a flying boat!"

   Hakam nodded. The spelljammer was hovering low to the ground a distance from the friary, waiting for Hakam's return. "My god has indeed shown us favor on our quest," said the cleric.

   Ottad led them up the stairs on the wall to the upper level. This was where all the simple rooms were, where the friars lived. An elderly woman passed them on the wall, carrying a basket of laundry. "Brother Hakam!" she said. "Ilmater blesses us with your presence."

   "And Anachtyr bless thee also, Sister...."

   "Jasmal," she completed for him.

   "Is Rahimat still awake, Sister Jasmal?" asked Ottad.

   The old woman nodded. Ottad continued leading them around the walls to the room above the chapel and then knocked on the old, wooden door. Rahimat's voice answered, asking for a moment, and then shortly the door opened. Father Rahimat was much younger than many of the other friars, though still older than Hakam. The Calishite man had a teardrop tattoo beside his right eye. He was no longer dressed in his clerical robes but was still wearing the red skullcap that signified his station.

   "Brother Hakam, is that you?"

   "It is. I apologize for disturbing you."

   "Think nothing of it. It has been almost a year. I see that you have progressed in your order."

   "I am no longer assigned to Memnon," said Hakam. "My god has sent me into the greater world as a justiciar."

   "I congratulate you!" said Rahimat. "Come in, come in. How can I be of service?"

   Ottad left them, and Hakam entered the small room. "My companions and I have an acquaintance suffering from a powerful magical curse. We believe that the only solution is for him to leave this plane. He is not a human; he is a being of fire. I would like to send him to the Plane of Fire until the duration of the curse ends, but I know little about the planes. I know that such magic requires a focus to send one to the desired location. We were nearby, so I thought to stop here first."

   "A being of fire? Have you made amends with that efreeti your companions fought outside our walls last year?"

   "Not the efreeti, no. He violates Anachtyr's holy laws and it is him we seek as the next stage of my divine quest. The one we wish to help is the dragon that assisted us in that fight last year. The dragon is our ally and has been our eyes and ears in this desert in the past year, while we have dealt with matters elsewhere. He has been watching over your friary all this time, in case the mummy or the efreeti were to return."

   "Yes, the mummy. Are you aware that she has been active again?"

   "The dragon has informed us of this, yes, but what more can you add?"

   "About a tenday ago, Brother Hamash was on a prayer walk near Dashadjen, when he saw from a great distance a small army of skeletons emerging from the sand and heading to the south. Some of them were much larger than human skeletons. We have kept a friar on lookout ever since, but the skeletons never returned."

   "This confirms what the dragon himself has told us," said Hakam, "but the fact that you have not seen them return is useful. Thank you for this."

   "Ah, but about your dragon friend, you must know that we are simple folk here at the friary and know little about other worlds — except perhaps about the Seven Heavens and the House of the Triad — much less how to travel there. Have you sought out your superiors in Memnon?"

   "That is where I planned to head next, but we have a limited time in regards to this curse, so I thought to stop here first. I should depart then. It was pleasant seeing you again, and thank you for the news about El Sadhara."


"I have heard the voice of a messenger in my mind, as I have remembered you in my prayers."

   "What did the voice reveal?"

   "It told me that you have been chosen as a justiciar, for a special purpose," said Mualak yn Kurush el Anachtyr. "It seems that I am no longer your superior."

   "You are still a man whose advice I covet, rafayam," said Hakam.

   "I thank you. I shall do my best not to disappoint. I admit that I was not surprised, considering our last conversation," Mualak continued. "What more have you learned of this Samber?"

   "Anachtyr has divinely revealed to me Samber's purposes and the urgency needed in stopping him."

   Hakam was now in Memnon, in Anachtyr's temple, the House of Justice. He proceeded to update Mualak further on the happenings in the months since Eleasis, when last he had sent word to the older priest. Finally, he explained the matter with Sseth and the dracorage curse.

   "A planar tuning fork?" said Mualak. "If you already have the power to use such an item, you have already surpassed all of us here in your former home, including myself. Anachtyr has truly favored you, young Hakam. You would have made Hamdulah proud."

   "Is Abbot Mohad still here?" asked Hakam. "I recall that he told many stories of the wonders of the House of the Triad."

   "Abbot Mohad is still with us. His tales were from supposed visions that he had; I am certain that he has never left this plane. Nevertheless, the planes of existence were of great interest to him. I shall summon him."

   A half hour later, Hakam was sitting with an older priest, who had been woken from his sleep. Though it was nearly midnight, the man had seen fit to dress in his blue and purple clerical vestments for this brief meeting.

   "This is what I know of tuning forks," said the white-haired cleric. "Both the material of the fork and the note to which the fork is tuned are important. I do not know all of the 'rules' of how it works, but I can tell you that upper planes usually require gold forks; lower planes usually require iron ones. The inner planes all require specific metals, and the paraelemental planes are alloys of those metals. As far as tuning, the forks tied to the quasielemental planes are usually tuned sharp for positive planes and flat for negative planes. I have no idea what notes are required, however.

   "Most folk assume that one can only reach the first layer of any outer plane, but I have heard a rumor that, if one uses multiple tuning forks, ringing in just the right harmonies, one can bypass the first layer and reach others. For example, a major chord might take one to a second layer; perhaps a minor chord could take you to the third."

   "Do you not know the material of a fork tuned to the Plane of Fire?" asked Hakam.

   "I would guess brass," said Mohad, "since the infamous City of Brass is located in the Plane of Fire."

   "But brass is an alloy, is it not?" said Hakam.

   "True, true, so no, that cannot be — maybe zinc or copper then. Let me tell you this: if you truly wish to journey to the Plane of Fire, it seems to me that the Kossuthans would be the most help to you. As you must know, the Temple to Kossuth here is in Efreet's Drudach. I once knew the Eternal Flame there, Konal al Zalath. We once adventured together in my younger days. He grew to be much more powerful than I and also more fanatical. We agreed on the importance of a lawful society for Calimshan, but he began to believe that only a purification by fire could correct the ails of our nation. When I first came to this House of Justice, he joined up with the Shrine of Kossuth here. It has since grown into a full-sized temple.

   "I shall write you a letter to the Eternal Flame there, requesting his assistance. Perhaps he will grant a favor for his old friend. I must caution you, however. I am told that the Kossuthans of Memnon seek to restore its namesake to power and bring about a Second Memnonnar. Be careful with your words."


Hakam found his way along the drudach walls to Coastal Road Sabban in the west. Efreet's Drudach was simple for him to find without the daytime crowds, and like the House of Justice, the temple to the Lord of Fire was located at the intersection of the drudach walls, so he never even had to dirty his feet with city dust. The temple was a ziggurat, clearly constructed of the same strange black stone as the ancient outer walls of the genie-built city. A red glow came from within.

   Hakam entered the temple with caution and was stopped immediately by a bald monk dressed in a thin orange tunic. The man was unarmed, but Hakam suspected that he was trained in combat and had no need of weapons to guard the temple.

   "What do you want, al Anachtyr?"

   "I come bearing a message for your Eternal Flame, sadidrif," said Hakam, holding the rolled up and sealed letter in his palm.

   "At this hour?" The man whistled, and two other temple guards came over. "Stay here," said the monk, taking the letter, "and I shall find out if the Eternal Flame will see you."

   The two guards watched him with arms crossed over their chests. Hakam ignored their intimidating stance and looked to the center of the temple from the second floor. The ziggurat was open in the center, its highest floor supported by a single massive column of black stone. About this column burned an enormous bonfire, which filled the whole temple with heat and light. Lit torches also covered the walls every yard or so. Hakam already found himself sweating from the heat of the place.

   The first monk returned. "This way," he said.

   Hakam followed him around a bend which led them back outside, where they ascended the steps on the outside of the temple up to its highest level. "Enter," said the guard.

   Hakam obeyed and entered the single room at the top of the temple, the chambers of the so-called Eternal Flame. The room was ornately decorated in Calishite fashion and was quite warm from the heat of the immense bonfire below them in the main temple chamber.

   "Greetings, fellow seeker of order," said the single man in the room with Hakam. "I am Konal al Kossuth." He gave a little bow in Calishite manner, and Hakam returned the custom. Konal was dressed in a robe of red, embroidered with a pattern of crimson flames. About his neck was a magically glowing holy symbol of a stylized flame. The man himself looked Calishite in features, with a long, pointed black beard, but his skin was a deep red color. Hakam guessed him to be a genasi, but he kept the thought to himself.

   "I have read the letter from my old friend, Mohad," said Konal. "He tells me that you are seeking a way to the Plane of Fire, though he did not explain why. He claims I owe him a favor.... I owe him nothing."

   "If you owe him nothing, perhaps I could purchase what I need from you instead," suggested Hakam.

   Konal chuckled. "I have no need anymore of a tuning fork to travel to the realm of the Firelord," said Konal, as he walked from Hakam over to an ivory set of drawers on the other side of the room. "This is Memnon, the capital of Memnonnar, a city that was once a city of efreet. Efreet need no tuning forks." He brushed aside a large lizard that was blocking one of the drawers and then opened it. "We Kossuthans of Memnon have discovered a portal in the ruins across the river, the Great Brass Gate, which Memnon himself used to ferry soldiers from his home plane to aid in the war against Calim. It still functions. I would rather arrive at a known location in the City of Brass than chance appearing in a pool of magma." He turned toward Hakam and tossed him something that he had removed from the drawer.

   Embarrassingly, Hakam failed to catch it; it tumbled to the floor and rang in a pure solid tone.

   "Slow reflexes for an adventurer," said Konal.

   "I am our party's healer, diviner, and judge," said Hakam, as he picked up the copper, two-pronged fork from the floor, "not our warrior."

   "Judge?" said Konal. "By what laws do you judge? The legal proceedings of you al Anychtyr are all a farce. You know as well as I that there is no law in Calimshan but for the word of whichever pasha holds the power."

   "There is a higher law," said Hakam, "and a strict cultural order is better than the alternative."

   "Yes," said Konal, "there is a higher law, and it shows this entire Caliphate is corrupt, is guilty. Do you not think that it is time for the purification of Calimshan? starting with the Syl-Pasha and working down the ranks until all of the chaff is burned away?"

   "To speak against the Syl-Pasha is traitorous," said Hakam.

   "Do you think that he came to power lawfully? The man is a murderer and a crime lord. How many sons does he have as puppet rulers in every city? A corrupt leader is no leader at all!"

   "Take no offense, but I did not disturb you to discuss politics or theology," said Hakam. "What do I owe you for this copper fork?"

   "You owe me nothing but to consider my words," said Konal. "Calimshan will one day pay for its sins."

   "I shall consider them," answered Hakam, "and I thank you for this gift. Shall I find my own way out?"

   "You will probably want one of these also, before you leave," said Konal. This time he reached over and handed the item to Hakam rather than tossing it. It was another fork, made of a cold metal. "This one is steel. You will need it if you ever wish to return to the Material Plane."

   Hakam thanked the Eternal Flame again and then departed from this very strange encounter. He returned to the western gate of the city and departed, then walked north over the fields to the banks of the Agis, where he had left the rowboat.


Szordrin and Solisar carefully walked through the museum of the brass dragon Sseth. Sseth, after talking to them both about happenings in the world for several hours in the the extradimensional space, had been happy to let them explore his library and "hall of historic atifacts." Having returned to the foyer with the nine Calishite columns, they stepped into a massive, high-ceiling hall that was large enough to be a noble's ballroom. Polished stone steps led to the floor of this large hall and also to a raised walkway large enough for a dragon to stroll that curved around the eastern wall. This wall was filled entirely with an enormous bookshelf. Strangely, the books themselves were sparse — no book was adjacent to another — and all of them were lying on their back covers. Solisar supposed that this was because it would be difficult for the dragon to remove one of the human-sized books from the shelves if they were packed together.

   Looking at the books, they did not seem to be tomes of magic or great historical epics; they seemed primarily to be popular works from different times. For example, there were several tourists' guidebooks to places that no longer existed, such as Jhaamdath, Valashar, or Meiritin, and a few copies of Intructions on Operating a Crossbow: A Guide for the Qysar's Soldiers and a few more of How to Dance Like a Jhasina: A Primer for Housewives. Mixed among these were several personal journals of persons of little to no historical significance. Sseth's library was the sort of place a historian of Calimshan would come to do primary research but not a place where a non-historian would come to learn.

   On the far side of the main chamber was another wide hall, the sides of which had on display many artifacts of long ago on marble podiums. These too were neither magical nor hugely signifcant artifacts in their own right; the hall was full rather of pots and pans, furniture, and everyday items.

   Szordrin, who had hoped to find information on the Rock of Bral was disappointed, but Solisar enjoyed seeing tools of human civilization from — in some cases — thousands of years ago.


   "We have returned!"

   "That is Hakam," said Solisar. "Hopefully he bears a tuning fork."

   It was the next morning, and Solisar and Szordrin, who had spent the night at Sseth's home, were once again conversing with him. In actuallity, Solisar and Sseth were the ones conversing — about languages — and Szordrin was studying his spellbook.

   Sseth poked his head out of the extradimensional space. "Were you successful, Hakam yn Hamdulah yn Hamdulah yn Hamdulah el Anachtyr yi Memnon? I must add that I do enjoy saying your name; it has a delightful rhythym to it as it rolls from patronym to theonym to toponym."

   "Yes, I was successful," answered the cleric. "I just completed my prayers to Anachtyr, and I am prepared. Whenever you are ready, I can send you to the Plane of Fire."

   "I am so excited!" said the dragon. "Is it obvious? I believe that I am ready. I wish that I could take along a book to read, but I do not think the pages will survive the environment. Give me room to hop down."

   Hakam and the others with him stepped back into the passage. The brass dragon then dropped out of the extradimensional space and landed on the cavern floor, shaking the ground.

   "Oh, already I feel the power of the curse," he said. "Send me quickly, if you can."

   "Do you know the name of any places there?"

   "Send me anywhere except the City of Brass, if you can control that," said Sseth.

   "I shall try." Hakam struck the forked copper rod against the wall and it began to ring.

   "Ah, a perfect A," said the dragon, "my favorite note." Sseth began humming the same note two octaves deeper.

   "Anachtyr send you to the Plane of Fire!" Hakam spoke boldly, waving his hands in a wide circle. Then he touched the dragon's thick-scaled arm, and just like that, Sseth was gone. The tuning fork instantly stopped sounding.

   "It looks like it worked," said Leokas.

   "Give me several minutes, and I can confirm that," said Hakam. He began praying silently while holding his holy symbol.

   Ten minutes later, he was ready to send Sseth a message. "Have you arrived safely? Please inform us of your status."

   "Yes, I have arrived in one piece. I appeared, quite fortuitously, atop a floating chunk of rock in a river of flowing magma and rode...," came Sseth's happy voice in Hakam's mind.

   "Sseth is healthy and safe," he told the others.

"I lair within a rocky pillar with four spires of varying heights. All true entrances face the east, so that the sun will warm the...."

   Hakam had just sent a magical message to the brass dragon Sseth for clearer details on how to find his lair. He shared it with the others. They were sailing in the sky due "east from the fifth minaret south of the place where one turns off to follow the stones to the" Friary of St. Amahl, as Sseth's directions the morning before had told them. It was over a hundred miles of sand from Teshburl to the Teshyllal Wastes of the Calim Desert. They had been flying for eight hours since morning, first north to where they spotted the monastery they had once visited, then south, and then east. Leokas was at the helm. The dragon had told them to go twenty miles from the minaret. They had about five miles left to go.

   Sseth's directions the day before were so straightforward, relatively speaking, that Szordrin was worried. "Ask him if he is being coerced?" the tiefling had said. He had had Hakam send a second message with a secret response to indicate if he was in any danger. The dragon had not returned the "secret word", but he did not indicate that all was well either. "I must warn you. I am not feeling well these days. I have awful headaches, and I want to eat everything. Do not bring Kamil!"

   The rest of that day had been spent buying and selling and in dealing with Oma's father. Kanar "the Ox" el Ehrat had sent Hakam a message by delivery boy early in the morning.

Hakam, Atiq will meet with you at highsun at the Roving Rune. Use the inn entrance, not the tavern entrance. I recommend coming in disguise. The others should stay on the ship until matters are resolved. Oadif has connections with el Amlakkar and will convince them that waiting to arrest you until you try to leave may give them more time to catch you in other criminal activities. I presume that your party has no intention of partaking in any actual criminal activities and trust that you will not correct this understanding of mine.

Hakam had complained about the disguise, but Szordrin had given him a beard and made him look older by graying his hair.

   The meeting with Atiq el Catahras had gone surprisingly well. "Why did she not tell her mother and me that she did not want to marry Hakamir?" the man had said. "If she had only spoken up instead of run off...." Atiq promised to drop the bounty immediately if Hakam would promise to deliver a letter to his daughter when next he saw her. Hakamir el Wisynn would be furious, but if Atiq cancelled the engagement, the man would no longer be able to keep his own bounty.

   They were still advised to lay low, just in case, so Leokas and Hakam did not leave the ship after that, as those two in particular might be recognized. Belvin, instead, had sold the camels and purchased food and water; Szordrin had sold the gems and the cursed cloak; and Solisar had purchased pearls for his magic and two hammocks, rope and pulleys, oars, and two rowboats for the spelljammer.

   After a second night berthed in Teshburl, to get safely out of the port, they had had to hire a pilot and sailors to take the ship a mile from the docks. Then they rowed the men back to shore.

   That had all been this morning. Belvin was now scanning the land ahead of them from the foredeck. They were only sailing about a half mile over the sand, but even at such a low flying altitude, the horizon was about 60 miles away. The problem was not in any way distance but recognition; there were many sandstone pillars ahead of them.

   Belvin pointed. "That structure, a bit to the north has three spires, each at a different height, but suppose there is a fourth on the east side that is lower, which we cannot yet see?"

   "How far away is that?"

   "I suspect about three or four miles. Leokas would be a far better judge."

   They sent word down to Leokas to adjust their course a small amount to the north. In about fifteen minutes, they had passed to the eastern side, and sure enough, there was a fourth, short spire on that side. As Leokas carefully lowered the vessel to the sand below them, Hakam began another sending prayer: "We believe that we have arrived. There seem to be no cave entrances on the eastern side. Will you come out to meet us?"

   "I do not want to come outside, dear friends. Find one of my sand-covered bolt holes. Follow the tunnels up to the center of the pillar."

   "What is a 'bolt hole'?" asked Szordrin, after Hakam had shared the message. The cleric did not know.

   "It is a place where a small animal like a rabbit hides," said Belvin. "It means that we are going to have to dig." He seemed excited by this prospect.

   "If Leokas takes us closer to the pillars," suggested Szordrin, "I can use this wire to communicate with him."

   "Unless he is standing near a cave opening," said Solisar, "such magics will not penetrate the stone. We have little choice but to find the entrance ourselves."

   So Leokas took the ship down to within a half dozen yards above the sand. Kytharrah then lowered everyone, except Ilthian and Leokas, down to the ground in one of the rowboats, using the pulley and winches that they had recently purchased. He followed after them down the rope. Belvin transformed into a large badger and began digging and sniffing at the base of the massive sandstone formation, and Szordrin sent Ferry, his weasel, to do the same. In the meantime, Solisar used his magic to fly about the pillars, scanning them for any magical auras.

   Tymora smiled upon them, and it was not long before Ferry scurried up Szordrin's leg to squeak into his ear. "Ferry has found an opening that leads much deeper," the wizard shared. Belvin continued digging at the site, and soon enough, he had dug out an opening large enough for them all to crawl through. He then shifted back into his elven form and began to get dressed again.

   "You are not coming with us?" Hakam asked, when Belvin began to climb the rope to the deck of their ship.

   "I stay with Kamil, of course," said Belvin. "Especially since Sseth threatened to eat him! I shall replace Leokas at the helm and take the ship into wildspace. I shall return to retrieve all of you in an hour."

   "Before you go, can you at least use your magic to check for any natural traps in this tunnel?" asked Solisar. "Dragons often leave traps to protect their lairs."

   Belvin did so, but the way ahead was clear of any pits or snares, at least for the first 150 feet of the tunnel. So he and Leokas traded places, and the latter elf joined them. After the initial crawl through the sliding sand, they entered a sturdy, stone tunnel with walls from ten to twenty feet in width. At first the tunnel curved around to the north where it reached an intersection. To the left, west, the tunnel was plugged with sand — likely another bolt hole. This left two other paths, straight ahead and to the right, for them to pick.

   Kytharrah inhaled deeply through his nose. "Bad eggs!"

   "He must smell the sulfur from the dragon's breath," said Solisar. "Which way, Kytharrah?"

   "This way!" Kytharrah said, grinning and starting down the right path. The minotaur had his everburning torch in hand, while Hakam's shield was magically glowing.

   Ten yards farther, they reached a dead end.

   "Good job, Lunk," said Szordrin, sarcastically.

   "No, he chose correctly," said Leokas. "It is not a dead end; we have to climb." The elf motioned up. The ceiling of the passage was gaining significant height above them now, and 20 feet up, there was an opening in the wall in front of them.

   Kytharrah jumped up, grabbed onto the ledge and lifted himself up. Then he cast down his rope and helped pull the others up one by one — except for Leokas, who climbed. It would have been an easy hop for a dragon the size of Sseth.

   They continued onward, east into the heart of the desert rock formation. After 100 feet, the path turned sharply north, but Kytharrah shook his head. "No, up again." He jumped and pulled himself up, vanishing again in the darkness. Like before they climbed up after him.

   This higher passage continued roughly east, though it curved around in an ess shape to do so. By now, the ceiling was a full 50 feet above their heads, and the width of the tunnel was 20 feet. Then they came to the first of a line of nine columns. From here, the wall to the right was smooth and clearly had been carved. The ceiling, supported by the columns was not the natural ceiling any longer either, but the walls to the left were still natural. The passage widened considerably from here with a large opening farther ahead to the left.

   Solisar and Hakam examined the first column. "Calishite design," said Hakam.

   "Yet the carvings are Iokharic," said Solisar, "that is, Draconic runes."

   "Do I smell minotaur?" A deep voice echoed through the cavern, startling all of them.

   "Hello?" answered Kytharrah.

   "The minotaur is with me," Hakam called back, "with Hakam. We are coming to you."

   There was no further answer, but they advanced nonetheless. Passing the large opening to their left, they saw that there were wide steps descending into a massive chamber, but the dragon's voice had come from in front of them, where the tunnel became natural again and curved to the south. Szordrin went to the left to investigate further, but the rest continued on. They followed it and came to yet another wall with an opening up above. They waited for Kytharrah to leap up again, but he was looking down.

   "Shiny bottle!" The minotaur picked up a black bottle. It was polished pottery with a steel stopper.

   Solisar muttered some arcane syllables and then said, "It is magical, a conjuration aura."

   "It is Allu's bottle," said Hakam. "I recognize it."

   Leokas nodded and then began climbing. "Come," he said, "let us meet with the dragon."

   After they all were at the top, including Szordrin, who had returned from scouting, Hakam led the way down the twisting tunnel, which led them through a ten-foot opening into a huge chamber that was roughly square. There before them lay the dragon, resting on a large bed of coins.

   Even those who had seen Sseth before were wowed by the immense size of him. He was at least 60 feet from tail to serpent-like snout. It was impossible to estimate his wingspan at the moment, as his wings were folded close to his body. The dragon's head had the unique curved, bony frill of all brass dragons. Oddly, Sseth's huge eyes were closed. His head was resting on the ground and he covered his ear holes with his two foreclaws, as if he were trying to quench a very loud noise.

   "We thank you for returning the bottle to us, good dragon," said Hakam. "You seem unwell."

   Sseth opened one of his glowing, white eyes. "I have not been outside for many days," the dragon said, ignoring Hakam's comments. "Is there, by chance, a red comet in the sky?"

   "No," said Leokas. "There are no comets in the sky now. I am certain."

   Solisar was the only one of them who understood what the dragon was really asking. "The King-Killer Star can affect dragons even when not visible," he said.

   Sseth opened his second eye, but did not yet raise his head from the ground. "You are a sun elf," he stated simply.

   "Axun, ya vaecaesin aurix," said Solisar. "Arominak Solisar. Rasvim ekess wux."

   "Rasvim ekess wux, shar thric vethirasvim," answered the dragon. "Arominak Sseth. I apologize for my present condition. Were I myself, I would ask to hear your stories, old and new, but I suggest that none of you come any closer, tiny creatures as you are, to a grumpy, old dragon." Sseth at last lifted his massive head from the ground, exposing his two chin horns. "Where is Belvin? Where is Mythlos?"

   "Mythlos is somewhere near the High Forest," explained Hakam, "seeking further training from the elves. Since we last saw you, he has learned the power of his ancestral sword. Belvin could not come see you in person, but he regrets this and sends his greeting."

   "No play?" said Kytharrah.

   "Not today, little brother," said the dragon.

   The others expected Kytharrah to react to being called little, but the minotaur could not object to being called such by a being weighing over ten tons.

   "And what are you?" Sseth now looked at Szordrin and sniffed. "I smell fiendish blood."

   "He is a tiefling," answered Hakam, "but he is not evil."

   "Which is not to say that he is to be trusted," said Sseth, lowering his head to the ground again.

   "We do not trust him much either," said Hakam, "but he is useful to us."

   "I am Szordrin," said the tiefling, "but I must go back to your early question about comets. What is this 'King-Killer Star'? Does it have anything to do with the fact that it is now the Year of Rogue Dragons?"

   In answer, Sseth simply closed his eyes, as if drifting off to sleep.

   "It is certainly possible that a major dracorage would be the fulfillment of one of Alaundo's prophecies," answered Solisar. "However, the last full rage of dragons was in the Year of the Dracorage, which is numbered 1018 in the Dalereckoning. A minor rage, a flight of dragons, which occur when the King-Killer Star does not pass as closely to Toril, affected only the Moonsea and the kingdom of Cormyr in the Year of the Worm, which was only very recently, seventeen years ago, two years before the Time of Troubles. I do not have the cosmological path of the comet memorized, but the King-Killer Star could not possibly have returned to Toril in only seventeen years! Its orbit takes centuries. If this is another 'rage', it could not be caused by the comet.

   "Good dragon, were you alive in the Year of the Dracorage?"

   Sseth wobbled his head. "I have only heard tales from elder dragons of the curse," he said.

   "The curse should only last a tenday at most," said Solisar. "How long have you been feeling... ill?"

   "About half that time," said the dragon.

   "Curse? Comet? I am still confused," said Hakam.

   Solisar sighed as if embarrassed. "One of the unfortunate acts in ancient history for which my people are responsible is the creation of the Dracorage Mythal, an enormous magical effect covering all of Faerûn that is tied to the appearance of one of this crystal sphere's two largest comets. During the Time of Dragons, some 20 to 30 millennia ago, they created the mythal to curse all dragonkind anytime that the comet appeared in the sky. The dragons had recently made a truce with the giants of Ostoria, which meant that the dragons now turned toward the annihilation of the elven peoples instead. The mythal was created to cause all dragons of Faerûn to slowly drift into madness and fight among themselves. This prevented the dragons from ever unifying enough to destroy the elves or establish an empire and rule all the other free peoples of Toril. Were it not for the dracorages, our humanoid peoples would likely not exist on Toril today. On the other hand, the curse of the mythal effects noble dragons as well as evil ones, and since the population of dragons has diminished on this world, the dragons are less likely to fight among themselves and more likely to rage against other surface creatures. In my opinion, the choice to create the mythal has caused more evil to this world than good." Solisar turned to the dragon and offered a heartfelt apology in the Draconic tongue for his ancestor's actions.

   "Thank you for your apology," Sseth answered in Common. "You are innocent in the matter. Nevertheless, comet or no, I am afflicted. You have your bottle. You would be wise to leave."

   "Saer dragon," said Szordrin, in as polite a voice as he could muster, "I could not help but notice that you have a truly grand library with a vast collection of books. Might you permit us to explore its volumes?"

   "No!" The dragon's head lifted off the ground again as his voice boomed. Kytharrah was not the only one who could smell the stench of sulfur in the chamber. "No," he repeated, in a more typical calm voice. "You must understand that to a brass dragon, knowledge is treasure."

   "Perhaps it would be wise for us to leave," said Solisar. "We have the bottle. We cannot do anything to help him now. We can look into how we might help him and then return."

   "Before we leave," said Hakam to Sseth, "if I may be so bold, I was hoping that you might be able to tell us more about the skeletons that you saw marching toward Allu's palace."

   "It was a small army," said the dragon, "humanoid and minotaur skeletons, a force resurrected from Calim's own army. If they were indeed marching on the lair of the efreeti, they would have arrived by now."

   "What of the blue dragon?" asked Hakam. "Would they not have to face her if they entered her territory?"

   "If this is a dracorage curse, it would affect her more strongly than me, since she is already evil at heart. Perhaps she is raging elsewhere in Calimshan."

   This triggered an idea in Solisar's mind. "Noble dragon, in the history of your kind, how do the good dragons usually respond to the ten days of the rage?"

   "They leave Toril," said Sseth. "Or they hide away in their lairs and entrap themselves until passes, as I am doing."

   "This cannot be a normal rage," said Solisar. "Something else is going on. There is no guarantee that this will cease by the end of the tenday. Is there a way for you to leave Toril?"

   "I would need to find a tuning fork to an appropriate plane," said Hakam, "but my god could shift you elsewhere. Where would you be most content?"

   Sseth perked up his head, looking mildly happy for the first time during this visit. "I have always wanted to visit the Plane of Fire," said Sseth. "I hear that the swimming is most pleasant there."

   "Szordrin, do you have your rope spell prepared?" asked Solisar.

   The other wizard nodded.

   "Sseth," said Solisar, "Szordrin and I can grant you at least 24 hours of relief from the curse, if it is indeed caused by the mythal, by creating an extradimensional space for you, here in your lair. We can then seek out a tuning fork and return. Then Hakam can send you to the Plane of Fire. Would this please you? Szordrin, show him."

   Szordrin removed the required twisted loop of parchment and some powdered corn from his component pouch as the dragon's white orb of an eye faced him, watching his every move. The tiefling spoke the words of the spell while reaching for the rope about his shoulder. The corn extract and the tiny loop vanished from one hand, while the rope launched out of his other to hang from nothing.

   The dragon stood up unto his four limbs, coins falling from between his scales, and moved over to the rope in two enormous steps. They all backed away from him into the passage. Sseth looked up, and then, with a feline-like pounce, shot straight into the air and vanished.

   Several minutes passed with no sign of the dragon.

   "Did it work?" asked Szordrin. "Should one of us climb the rope and check on him?"

   Then the dragon's fifteen-foot neck shot out of the invisible hole above them. "Have you ever tried flying in an extradimensional space?" asked the dragon, voice full of excitement. "It is the most freeing feeling! You really must try it. Delightful! Good for the soul!"

   "I shall try it next time," said Solisar.

   "Now play?" said Kytharrah, sensing that the dragon was now less grumpy.

   In answer, more of the dragon's bulk emerged from the hole, and his neck snapped out. Before any of them could respond, Sseth's jaws had clamped around one of Kytharrah's horns. The dragon pulled himself back up, lifting the 700-pound minotaur off his feet and into the air. Then, both dragon and minotaur disappeared into the extradimensional space.

   The others looked around, not sure how to respond.

   "Do good dragons eat minotaurs?" asked Szordrin.

   Leokas went to the rope. "I shall check on him."

   Leokas' head emerged into the infinite whiteness at the top of the rope. The dragon was there before him, sitting like a dog and looking out into the distance. There was no sign of the minotaur.

   "What did you do, Sseth?" Leokas demanded.

   "I tossed him," said the dragon. "Ah, here he comes again!"

   Kytharrah was now visible, running toward them at his magically enhanced speed, horns down in a full-out charge. The dragon took a defensive stance and lowered his head. The minotaur slammed into the dragon's skull plate with a loud thud and then fell back on his rump. Using his head like he was shoveling sand, Sseth then scooped up the minotaur, and with a snap of his neck, launched the friendly beast into the air. Kytharrah was laughing in enjoyment, as he traveled out of Leokas' sight into the white emptiness.

   Sseth turned back toward Leokas. "Do not worry, my little elven friend. An extradimensional place like this often has subjective directional gravity and is spacially morphic and self-contained. He will be back.

   "So, tell me of all your adventures. Whatever happened to that nice lady who smelled like djinn?"

From below deck, Szordrin and Hakam heard Solisar's yell, and both were startled awake. Szordrin sprung out of his hammock and was on his way up the forward stairs immediately. Hakam picked up his sword and shield — he did not have time to put on his armor — and followed behind, touching his shield as he moved to make it glow in the darkness.

   As Szordrin came onto the deck, he saw Belvin moving in his direction while drawing his bow, the elf's skin looking like it was made of tree bark. Szordrin looked up over his shoulder to where Belvin was staring up onto the forecastle. There was Leokas, all but his right arm entangled in a fishing net. The stubborn elf had managed to nock an arrow anyway and was aiming at someone Szordrin couldn't see from his angle. He moved further out into the center of the deck, as Belvin also loosed an arrow. Now he could see one of the assailants, a masked man, dressed fully in red with two arrows in his shoulder. The elves loosed more arrows, but each missed, as the man was moving quickly, and Leokas was half-entangled. The man rushed at Leokas and pummeled him several times with what looked like a small sack. He then moved to put himself on the far side of Leokas, shielding himself from further shots from Belvin or any spell that Szordrin might cast.

   Szordrin heard Solisar nearby chanting spells, but he could not see him. Behind him, he heard Kytharrah grunting in frustration. Szordrin turned to see the minotaur leap into the air, reaching for the yard above him, but falling short and crashing back to the deck. A second assailant leapt down to the sterncastle beside Kytharrah and stabbed him with a rapier. Szordrin saw the sword pierce clear through the minotaur and emerge from his back. The tiefling turned to take aim with a spell. The masked fighter, springing back from Kytharrah and withdrawing his weapon in one smooth motion, drew a vial from his bandoleer with his left arm and was readying to throw it at Kytharrah. Despite the wound, Kytharrah lunged forward and tried to grab the man, taking advantage of his greater reach. The opponent skillfully ducked and avoided at first. Then Kytharrah caught hold of the man's extended wrist and immediately overpowered him, forcing the man to smash the vial against his own head. The strangest thing happened: both Kytharrah and the man with whom he grappled fell with a thud to the deck and did not stir.

   "What is happening?" Hakam had just reached the main deck.

   Szordrin motioned for the bow of the ship and rushed toward the stairs to the forecastle, while keeping his head low so as not to be seen. As his head came over the steps, he saw Leokas missing several shots; the man was too skilled at anticipating the ranger's shots at such close range. Belvin, however, had also come up the starboard side stairs. One of his two arrows did not miss.

   The man yelled out in pain and turned for a moment to observe his second attacker. Szordin took this opening an fired off two rays of fire from his open palms. The injured man was still quite mobile and avoided the first blast, but the second struck him, leaving a blackened mark on his leather chestpiece. He stumbled backwards toward the rail. With a scream of pain he yanked the arrows out and chugged a magic vial he had in his left hand.

   Then, as Leokas and Belvin raised bows, the man suddenly jumped backwards over the rail, tugging on the rope to Leokas' net at the same time and hoping to drag the elf off the boat with him.

   But the man's left foot failed to clear the railing. Unbeknownst to him or anyone else on the ship, invisible Solisar had cursed the man with bad luck. He plummeted ungracefully into the water with a slam, rather than the smooth dive intended, and lost the grip on the net's rope.

   Leokas drew his knife and began cutting himself free, as the others rushed to the railing. Belvin dropped his bow and started removing his clothes.

   "Hold!" commanded Hakam from the rail. The man in the water stopped swimming and began to sink.

   "Take them alive!" shouted Solisar from the aft of the ship. He was now visible and was waking up Kytharrah. There was no visible stab wound on the minotaur, nor any blood at all. "They have not been using lethal force!"

   Szordrin, also at the railing, ignored this and blasted a bolt of lightning from his fingers to the water.

   Hakam could see the chaotic aura of the man below the surface. Suddenly, he began swimming again and swam below the vessel. "He is under the boat," said the cleric, "swimming to our left." Leokas acknowledged this by moving to the port side and readying his bow.

   Hakam moved toward the foremast and began preparing his most powerful spell, but then he felt a stern warning in his mind. It was the phylactery on his forehead.

   "Stop!" he called out. "Anachtyr demands that we spare his life. Solisar was right."

   There was a splash as a naked Belvin dove into the water.

   "What is Belvin doing?" asked Szordrin.

   "Quiet!" said the cleric. "I am listening for the man's thoughts. He is below the mainmast moving to the rear of the boat. Now he is feeling intense fear."

   From the port side, Leokas saw a fin break the surface of the water. "Shark!" he said, with a smile.

   A large shark lifted its pointed head out of the water and tossed the man's body onto the dock.

   "I yield! I yield!" yelled the man.


Leokas and Belvin carried the nervous man back onto the ship. Leokas tied him up while Belvin got dressed again.

   Hakam and Szordrin approached the other assailant in the aftcastle. He was held tightly by Kytharrah. The minotaur had pulled off the man's mask, revealing a young face with dusky skin like Hakam's. Hakam noted that the man wore the turban of a rysal, apart from the red color. Was he some sort of pirate captain?

   "Where is Solisar?" asked Szordrin.

   "Ilthian," said Kytharrah. "Told me don't let friend go," he said, nodding to his captive.

   Leokas led the other prisoner over and then set to work tying up the man Kytharrah held.

   "Good jump!" Kytharrah said to the man, after releasing him. "Fun play."

   The unmasked man eyed him strangely.

   Hakam pulled the mask off the other man. This one was not a Calishite; his features were more elven. His ears were pointed but not as pointed as Leokas or Belvin's. Perhaps he was a half-elf.

   Solisar joined them again on the deck. Then, Szordrin spoke firmly with the Calishite man. "Tell us who sent you or we shall kill you!"

   "I am not afraid of the likes of you," he answered. "Nevertheless, I have nothing to hide. I was sent by Atiq el Catahras and Hakamir el Wisynn."

   The adventurers looked at each other. Most of them shrugged; the names were not familiar.

   "There must have been a mistake," said Hakam. "We do not know these names."

   Szordrin did recognize the name Catahras, but he could not place it. "For what purpose?" he asked the men.

   "There is a price on the heads of those who kidnapped Atiq's daughter," said the man.

   "There is only one woman in our number," said Hakam, "and I assure you that she is not a Calishite. She is from a distant island."

   "And why would you suspect us?" asked Szordrin. "We just arrived yesterday, and had we wanted to kidnap anyone, why would we have stayed in port for the night?"

   "She was kidnapped months ago, not yesterday," said the man, "in the month of Kythorn. In that same month, my partner here had been keeping an eye on a certain pasha in this town, one Syan al Derak. We have reason to believe that Pasha Syan has connections to a secret society active throughout the Lands of Intrigue. Men from Tethyr had been visiting him at night. Then, one day, a Calishite priest and a coppery elf with blonde hair wearing a Calishite aba visited him, under the guise of selling gems." He looked directly at Leokas and Hakam as he said this.

   "Yes, we were here in the month of Kythorn," said Hakam, "and yes, we sold gems, but I assure you as a cleric of Anachtyr that we have no connections to any secret society; we were simply on our way to Chult. And what does this have to do with the kidnapping?"

   The man continued, "Shortly after you departed, aboard a ship called The Daisy, we learned of the bounty placed on your heads by the girl's father. El Wisynn, the girl's betrothed, was calling for the kidnappers' capture and execution. They even took her pet cat, it was said. Raisa, the girl's mother, claims that some of the kidnappers stayed at their inn many nights. She describes a handsome man with red hair and strange glasses, a priest, a large orc, and... 'a coppery elf with blonde hair wearing a Calishite aba.'"

   "Curse that bard!" muttered Hakam. It was Oma.

   "He admits it," said the half-elf.

   "El Amlakkar received a report today that two elves were seen in town," continued the human man. "We caught wind of this and thought that your capture might provide us the evidence we need to bring down Pasha Syan. We did not expect you to have a minotaur aboard, however."

   "That is me!" said Kytharrah.

   "So that is our failed plan. Feel free to kill us now, if you wish, but while Pasha Syan has escaped this day, know that you have not, for el Amlakkar and el Nallojal will not allow your ship to sail."

   "We are innocent," said Hakam. "Why would we kill you?"

   The half-elf snorted a laugh. "Three potions, not your innocence, are the only reason I am alive."

   "I could have bitten you in half," said Belvin. "I did not."

   "You attacked us," said Hakam. "We had every legal right to defend ourselves with lethal force."

   "Yet we used no lethal force on you," said the human.

   "The girl, Oma yr Atiq el Catahras," said Hakam, "was a traveling companion of ours. She was hired by a somewhat untrustworthy companion of ours, but it was no kidnapping; she went with us willingly. She is with him still. I can tell you where she is, if you will hold us innocent of the matter. Our dealings with this pasha you mention were purely business. We had gems to sell. We had no knowledge of his secret dealings."

   "As a cleric of Anachtyr, do you not have a duty to bring her back to her father and her betrothed?" asked the man.

   "I would, except that my god has given be a greater duty that involves saving the world."

   "Saving the world?" The man looked doubtful.

   "We have been tasked with preventing a mage of great power from upsetting the balance of the multiverse. Some of our number have literally been sent back from the Fugue Plane to stop this man. The only reason we are here in Teshburl again is to investigate one who may have connections to him."

   "That is a hard tale to believe," said their prisoner.

   "I shall drink a truth serum, if you desire it," said Hakam.

   "Not that we have the upper hand at the moment," said the man, "but I give my word that we shall not pursue you further if you release us and tell us the girl's location. I cannot do anything to remove the bounty on your heads, however."

   "She is on the island of Lantan, far west of here," said Hakam.

   "Tell us more of this secret society," Szordrin ordered.

   "They call themselves the Knights of the Shield," the man replied. "We think that they are trying to influence the politics of the new queen of Tethyr to the north, and worse than that, we believe that Pasha Syan may be trying to fund some of his efforts through the slave trade. It is hard to prove, however. They are a powerful, well-supported group, whose influence stretches as far north along the Sword Coast as Waterdeep."

   "Who are you?" asked Leokas.

   "I — tonight, we — are the Red Rysal," said the man.

   "I take it that you have not heard of him?" said the half-elf.

   "I think that one of the townsfolk may have mentioned you to Hakam and I when last we were in Teshburl," Leokas replied. "Something about blaming you for the lack of temples in town...."

   "The previous Red Rysal discovered that the Churches of Bane, Bhaal, and Cyric were kidnapping children," explained the half-elf. "When this was exposed, the populace revolted and burned every temple, good or evil, to the ground."

   "While I admit that we are not saving the world," said the human, "we do our part to end slavery, kidnapping, and corruption. The slavers have not been able to stay in business in this town for 45 years."

   "Why do we still have these good men tied up?" exclaimed Solisar. "They are telling the truth. This has all been a terrible mistake."

   Leokas and Szordrin immediately agreed to this, as slavery was an important matter to each of them.

   "Only if they do not resume attacking us!" insisted Hakam.

   "Agreed," said the large man. "Besides, I know that I cannot outmaneuver this minotaur of yours!"

   "More play?" asked Kytharrah, eagerly.

   Once Szordrin had untied the man, Kytharrah held up the sword. He had been trying to figure throughout the whole interrogation why he had felt the steel inside his gut yet there was now no hole and no blood. "Trick sword?"

   "Yes," the man smiled. "Trick sword."

   The man stared back in shock as Kytharrah stabbed the blade through his own bicep, grunting at the pain, but then grinning. He then lumbered over to Solisar, the rapier still embedded in his arm. "Look, I can do trick now like little sister. No blood." Then he stopped and put a hand over his mouth, looking embarrassed.

   "Give the man back his rapier," said Hakam. The cleric then turned to the half-elf and offered to heal him of any remaining wounds, as Szordrin handed him back his belt and bandoleer. (No one noticed that he kept two potions for himself.)

   "You said that slavery ended here 45 years ago?" asked Leokas to the human. "You do not look that old for a human."

   "I am the sixteenth Red Rysal," said the man. "The legacy passes through my family. My true name is Kanar yn Baral el Ehrat, but most folk know me as 'the Ox'."

   "Leokas," said the elf. He turned and offered his hand to the second man, who took it and stood up. "I apologize for striking you with one of my arrows," the elf said.

   "Forgotten," said the half-elf. "I am just thankful that we live in a time of magical healing. My real name is Oadif el Wajin. I admit that I am impressed by your skills. You were half-entangled in my net, yet still you unleashed six arrows at me in fifteen seconds!"

   "And your agility impressed me," said Leokas.

   "Until I tripped on the deck railing, I imagine."

   "That was probably my fault," said Solisar. "I cursed you." Then he asked, "How can we get this bounty of our heads?"

   "Again, I cannot do anything about that," said Kanar. "In fact, I request that no one learns that we were even here tonight. However, I sense that Atiq is a good man. Perhaps if you simply explained to him that his daughter left willingly,..."

   "I can certainly speak to him," said Hakam.

   "I am not sure that that is wise," said Szordrin. "If you fail to convince him,..."

   "I will not fail," said Hakam. "The man deserves to know what happened to his daughter. How can we set up the meeting?"

   "I have someone I know who can deliver a message to the Roving Rune for you," said Kanar. "As for you and your elven friend, the two of you should probably stay hidden for as long as you stay here, since you match the descriptions. As long as the bounty is still on your heads, someone else might spot you who does not attack with saps and enchanted rapiers!"

With a splash and a jolt to those on board, the spelljammer touched down on the water of the Shining Sea, the ocean south of Calimshan. Instantly, the magic bubble around them must have dissipated, because they immediately felt a breeze cooling them from an otherwise warm day. Having flown nearly 2,000 miles, they were reminded how much warmer it was in the south. The magic bubble had kept the temperature at the coolness of air of Silverymoon in winter.

   "It is good to be in the warmth of home," said Hakam with a sigh.

   There was a problem, however. When landed in the ocean, the spelljamming helm no longer seemed to provide thrust to the vessel. They were at the mercy of the winds, and the winds were blowing perpendicular to their sails.

   "I just realized another problem, beyond that of the wind," said Solisar. "When a vessel approaches a port, it communicates with the harbormaster by means of colored flags; we have no such flags, nor do I know more than a few of the universal signs, even if we had them."

   "I thought that you knew every language," said Szordrin.

   "Many, yes, but not all, and all of them are spoken languages."

   "We need sailors," said Szordrin, stating the obvious.

   "Before we can signal the harbormaster in the first place," said Leokas, who had abandoned the helm and come up on deck, "he needs to be able to see us. Unless they were looking up at just the right time and place in the sky, we probably reached the surface unnoticed, as desired, but we are still two miles from the shore; humans cannot make out flags from that distance anyhow. We need to find a way to sail closer."

   "They almost certainly have spyglasses and are scanning the horizon," said Solisar. "If we were fortunate to have not been spotted descending from the sky, even so, it will not take them long to spot us after that. Perhaps they have pilot vessels and will send one out for us, but even then, they would have to board us to provide sailors."

   "We planned this well," said Belvin sarcastically. "We may as well do the best we can. Kytharrah, help me with the ropes again."

   After 20 minutes, it was clear that they had been noticed. A large sailing vessel was approaching them now from the northwest, from the Sea of Swords side of the port town. After another fifteen minutes, they could see that the deck of the approaching ship was full of marines, armed with crossbows.

   "It is el Nallojal," explained Hakam, "the Calishite navy. If we stay calm and do what they say, I am sure that I can work things out favorably."

   Someone from the bow shouted in singsong Common, "Drop your anchor and prepare to be boarded."

   They had Kytharrah drop the anchor as ordered and told him to stay below deck with Ilthian in her cabin. The rest stood cautiously on deck.

   The Calishite vessel came around to the port side and ran parallel to them. "Keep your hands in the air!" shouted the man from the forecastle deck.

   "We are not hostile," shouted back Hakam in the language of Calimshan. "We are adventurers who formerly were trapped far from here. Anachtyr blessed us with finding this abandoned vessel and has guided us to your coast. Forgive us for not following common maritime protocol, but as you can see, we are not sailors, and we have no crew apart from our persons. We have no signalling devices. Only by Anachtyr's design have we made it thus far."

   Szordrin translated to the others what Hakam was saying.

   "Whence do you hail," called the man on the other ship, in Alzhedo, "that you speak our tongue?"

   "I am a Calishite, as you are," said Hakam. "I am Hakam yn Hamdulah el Anachtyr yi Memnon."

   There was a pause. They could see that the caller turned and was discussing matters with his captain, a man with a large and ornate turban.

   "Stand clear from the railing," came the reply, again in Common. "We are coming aboard."

   Several grappling hooks were tossed over, and the two vessels were hauled close together. A large wooden plank was laid across, and an amhir, with a smaller turban, came across, escorted by six naval soldiers.

   "You have four camels but no sailors?" the naval commander said to Hakam.

   "It is a long story," Hakam replied. He then took the man aside and the two of them talked things over in Alzhedo in quiet tones. Then the amhir turned toward one of his men and called out an order to search the lower deck.

   Two of the marines stepped over to the stairs to the lower deck. One gasped. "Rafayam, there is a dark cloud blocking the way!"

   "Ignore it," said the commander. "I am told that it is only a protective magic. Pass through, and it will clear."

   The two soldiers descended. They were only down there for half a minute before they ascended again.

   "The lower decks are completely empty but for bedding and personal effects," said one of the armed men.

   "As I have said," noted Hakam.

   "Shall we search the cabins and the lower decks?"

   "No," said the commander, "as strange as this man's tale is, he is a priest of Anachtyr; such men do not lie. Bring over a minimal crew to bring these lost souls to port."

   Soon, twenty sailors from the Calishite warship came aboard and set to work adjusting the sails. Five remained aboard to pilot the ship safely through the shallow waters to dock after the naval craft pulled away and they had raised the anchor again.

   So it was that they sailed into Anvil Sabban, into the same drudach where they had docked with The Daisy months ago, before their journey to Chult. Leaving Ilthian and Kytharrah once again aboard the ship with Belvin, the rest stepped onto land and entered the streets of the Calishite town. Once again, people stared at Solisar and Leokas strangely, as if they had never seen an elf before. Many likely had not. Little children pointed and giggled or gasped.

   "Not the same feel as Silverymoon, is it?" Leokas said in Elvish to Solisar, who had never been in a Calishite town.

   "I did not expect all human settlements to be as Silverymoon," said Solisar, "or even Hartwick. I do not sense hate in them, only unfamiliarity. The children are simply commenting on our ears."

   "I thought Alzhedo was one of the languages that you could not speak," said Leokas.

   "It is similar enough to Auran, from which it primarily derives, for me to decipher a few words here and there," said Solisar. Then he said to Hakam in Common, "Your culture requires women to veil their faces?"

   "It is done out of respect for their husbands or fathers," said Hakam.

   Solisar simply nodded, silencing the elven love of freedom that wanted to argue. Now was not the time.

   The main purpose that they had for visiting Teshburl again was to retrace their steps with Walker and see if they could learn more about the Interlink Consortium. So it was that they came to the warehouse where Szordrin had sat bored for eight hours at a stretch, guarding half of a shipment of what they later learned were portal parts for Samber. It only took them a short time to locate the warehouse owner, in his shop further from the docks, which was more like a shack built of three wooden walls against one of the eastern walls of the sabban.

   "How may I help you, rafayam?" The warehouse owner spoke only to Hakam, recognizing him for a priest of some respect, and ignored the presence of the others, yet he did not look Hakam in the eyes directly; instead, his eyes seemed to be focusing on the holy symbol about the cleric's neck.

   "I am Hakam yn Hamdulah el Anachtyr yi Memnon," Hakam replied in his native tongue. "Some time ago, in the months of Mirtul and Kythorn of last year, my traveling companion, Szordrin here, was employed as wizard-for-hire for a renter of one of your warehouses, who went by the name 'Walker'. We have urgent need to communicate with him."

   "I do not recall any such name," said the warehouse owner from his seat on the floor, "but even if I did, I do not discuss my customers with rifar, even to alimarif such as yourself."

   "The matter is one of legal importance to Szordrin's former employer," said Hakam. "As an employee of one of your customers, Szordrin was indirectly a former client of yours as well. Indeed, my group used the warehouse to store two statues during that time."

   "Yet you do not have the means to contact your former employer already?"

   "Szordrin was hired here in Teshburl; we had no contact with Walker afterward. We did not foresee that such a matter as ours with him would come up."

   When the warehouse owner still hesitated, Szordrin set a triangular coin of silver on the low desk. It had a moon shape pressed into one side. "Would this sefen change your mind?" asked Szordrin in Alzhedo.

   Hakam pretended not to hear Szordrin's words — and literally turned his eyes to the side — but the man clearly did. He took the coin without a word and pocketed it. He then rose, bowed, excused himself, and stepped through a curtain to another "room".

   The four adventurers waited for several minutes before the short man returned with a worn scroll. He sat back down on a pillow before his desk and spread the scroll out. "To the best of my knowledge," said the man in Alzhedo, "I have never had a customer going by the name 'Walker', and I certainly did not in either the month of Mirtul or Kythorn. What was the warehouse number?"

   "Fourteen," said Szordrin. "I know because I had little to do but stare at the number carved on the sign for a month."

   "That warehouse was rented to two men during that time, not one," said the owner. "I gave them the keys at the beginning of Tarsakh, not Mirtul. The keys were returned on the 26th of Kythorn."

   "That is about when we sailed from Teshburl," said Hakam. "Who returned the keys?"

   "They were dropped into the metal box outside," said the man.

   "Do you remember the two men?" asked Hakam.

   "Thinking back, I think that I do now. They were not Calishites; their skin was much too pale, and they were not dressed in our manner. One had a very strange way of cutting his hair. I do not know whence they had come; I do not ask questions of customers, especially when they pay in advance."

   "Do you have workers who might know more about them, what they did?"

   "Bakkar!" yelled the man. A large shirtless man with a keffiyeh entered the tiny room. "Bakkar, do you remember the two men who rented number fourteen in the summer of last year, the pale ones? One of them had his head shaved on each side with a strip of hair in the center."

   Bakkar ignored the visitors and looked and spoke only at his master. "Yes, rafayam. I remember them well, for it was very strange. They only spent about an hour in the room before they left. They did not store anything in the room at all. They did not even come back."

   "Who returned the keys then?" asked the owner.

   "A man with a cloak and a staff who arrived about a month and a half later. He had the key." The man glanced up quickly at Szordrin and then back down again. "This alimarif with a beard was one of his guards, as was an orcish sadidrif."

   "As you have just heard," said Hakam, "I have not lied to you."

   "Hakam," said Leokas in Common, "may we have a moment outside?"

   "Excuse us, please, for a moment," said Hakam. The four stepped outside. "What is it?" the cleric asked quietly.

   "Do you remember how neither Szordrin nor Nargroth saw the second crate delivered?" asked Leokas. "The two men must have done something to the room. Maybe they set up a portal within."

   "The room was empty when we arrived," said Szordrin. Then he made strange chirping noises. Ferry, his magic weasel, stretched around his neck as usual, squeaked back. "Ferry did not notice anything amiss when I turned him invisible and sneaked him into the room that one time either."

   "Maybe we can investigate the warehouse further," suggested Hakam. They reentered the "office" and requested such from the owner.

   "You press your time with me," said the owner.

   "We have our suspicions that the two men may have modified your property," said Hakam. "Would you not be concerned about this?"

   "A fair point, I admit, rafayam, but the warehouse currently has a new tenant."

   "Is he local? And if so, may we have his name?"

   "I do not usually give the names of tenants to rifar, even to alimarif such as yourself." The man was intentional in repeating his earlier statement nearly verbatim, and he at last looked at Szordrin directly.

   The tiefling set another silver piece on the desk. The man gave them the name of the new tenant, Feroz.

   It took a few hours to locate the tenant's home. One of the dockkeepers knew him and described him as the captain of a fishing vessel. The warehouse was being used to store crabbing equipment, since the season for catching crabs from the Shining Sea was ending. It was suggested that they search for his home in Mourners Sabban, where many of the local fisher captains lived.

   So they climbed uphill to Mourners Sabban, which was named after a monument in Cliff Drudach called the Mourning Mast. It was a mainmast embedded in the street at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean in the southeastern corner of the town. Within the crows' nest high above was a statue of a lookout peering anxiously to the sea. At the base of the mast was another statue of a woman who was clearly in deep anguish.

   Solisar stopped one of the passersby, who was dressed in minimal clothing like a laborer or sailor. "Excuse me, rafayam"

   "I am no rafayam, dahyarif! But what do you need?"

   "Can you tell me the story of this statue?"

   "The Lonely Widow? Stories say that she is not a statue! They say that she turned to stone from grief upon hearing that her husband was lost at sea. Such happens to the most of us sailors. That is our lot. Better die there than in a middle-of-no-where town as this!"

   Solisar went to thank the man, but he was already gone. They finally stopped another sailor who knew roughly where Feroz lived, north of the public well. At the well, one of the many veiled women was finally willing to talk to them. (All of the others ignored them, looking ashamed, and left the well when spoken to.) "I am friends with Abiya yr Feroz," she said. "I can point you to her home."

   So it was that they at last knocked on the door of the fisherman named Feroz shortly before dusk. Even though it was the hour of dinner and they were utter strangers to him, the man, introducing himself as Feroz yn Feroz el Danadaf, treated them as honored guests, offering that they join him at the table. Hakam took his companions aside and explained to them that it would be an insult to refuse and quickly told them a few other matters of custom. "Always use your right hand to eat. Do not refuse anything offered to you to eat or drink. Most importantly, do not look at any of the women in the household; pretend that they are not there."

   They all sat cross-legged on pillows at a low table. The dinner served by Feroz' wife and daughters was not in any way lavish — it was only a piece of bread, dried dates, and half a fish — but it was offered with generosity. When the women had departed, Feroz asked Hakam their business.

   "Tabarif, I am Hakam yn Hamdulah el Anachtyr yi Memnon," said Hakam in his usual formal way. "The fact that you have not offered us water with the meal is not lost to me; we do not need anything further from you except permission to visit the particular warehouse that you are renting in Anvil Sabban. We have reason to believe that a former tenant of the room stored something secretly there, and we would request your permission to investigate this."

   Feroz agreed to this, and after dinner, they found themselves back at the warehouse. The owner joined them, Feroz unlocked the door with his key, and they all stepped within. The room smelled heavily of seafood, and wooden crab traps filled the interior.

   Solisar was walking around slowly, staring at the floor, walls, and ceiling.

   "The second crate was there in that corner when I saw it," said Szordrin, pointing.

   "May we move these traps aside?" Hakam asked Feroz. The man agreed.

   Even before they had moved them, Solisar spoke. "Moderate conjuration aura, below the floor."

   "Bhaelros' spit!" said the owner with surprise.

   Szordrin gave the owner and Feroz each a triangular sefen. "To remove the floor panels," he said. Both men seemed quite satisfied and nodded.

   "Can you provide us a crowbar?" asked Hakam. "We have a beast with us who can do the work."

   Leokas left to retrieve Kytharrah, while the owner called for Bakkar again. When Leokas returned with the minotaur, Hakam explained that the monster was tame. Bakkar, very cautiously, handed Kytharrah the crowbar.

   After getting Kytharrah to focus on the task at hand, rather than sniffing the new smell of crabs, it took him no time at all to remove the strips of wood from the floor in the corner. The minotaur then heaved and lifted up a large stone or metal disk of black color, about a human's arm span in diameter and a couple inches thick. Kytharrah gently set the disk on its edge, and all the others came forward to examine it.

   "Again, Bhaelros' spit," cursed the owner. "What in the gods' names is it?"

   "The Interlink Consortium," said Szordrin, with satisfaction in his voice. His finger rested on the distinct symbol of four intersecting circles of decreasing sizes carved into the edge.

   "The Interlink Consortium?"

   "Your previous tenant's employers," explained Szordrin.

   "May we keep this as legal evidence?" Hakam asked. The owner and Feroz were happy to grant this request, and Kytharrah rolled it back to their ship at the docks, while Bakkar hammered the panels of wood back in place. They thanked Feroz and the owner for their assistance and returned to the ship themselves shortly thereafter.

   "It is a sort of 'portable portal destination'," explained Solisar to the others later that night. "It is not a portal itself, but somewhere there is a portal that leads to wherever this disk is placed."

   "Those two men must have also been agents of the Consortium," said Szordrin. "They came a month early and set things up so that the crate could be transported to Walker when it was ready."

   "What do we do with it?" one of them asked.

   "We could try to sell it here at one of the curio shops," suggested Hakam.

   "Who would want a five-foot metal disk?" asked Leokas. "It is useless without the portal, is it not?"

   "We should just bury it in the sand somewhere north of the town," said Szordrin. "That would be safer than having someone from the Consortium teleport onto our ship."

   "I find it highly doubtful that that would happen," said Solisar. "The disk has already served its purpose, and they have had months to recover the item and have not bothered to do so. In the grand scheme of things, the item must not be valuable to them."

   "Unless they have been teleporting into the warehouse to steal goods from other tenants all this time," suggested Szordrin.

   "You are thinking like a thief," said Solisar with a smile, "but a foolish one. The portal to the disk would be one way. The thieves would be stuck inside the warehouse."

   "Nor do I think that the Consortium needs crab traps," added Leokas.

   "What do we do next, then?" asked Hakam. "Do we retrace Szordrin's steps further to Tethyr, where he originally met Walker?"

   "I do not think that we need to waste time tracking Walker any further," said Leokas. "We know that the Consortium is based in the Tears of Selûne, somewhere above our heads. I am sure that Samber interacted with the broader Consortium, not Walker in particular. I doubt that the two men ever met. Szordrin's research found that the Rock of Bral is not that large; surely we can track the company down once we arrive."

   "Which means that we need to ready ourselves for the journey into the Sea of Night," said Solisar. "We are going to need a crew. Leokas is superb at reading the land of Toril from the sky, but wildspace will be much different. I am able to learn about space navigation from my home in Evermeet, but I need time, and we need more hands to man the sails and such, as we learned earlier today."

   "Cannot we hire sailors here?" suggested Szordrin. "If we sell the camels and the poisons that we have collected on our journeys tomorrow, we can certainly aford to hire a minimal crew."

   "I am wary to hire sailors whom we do not know and trust," said Hakam. "Some of you have nearly gotten arrested in Calimshan before. Technically, two of you are wanted by the Syl-Pasha for 'stealing his omlar gem.' His agents could be here in Teshburl."

   "Let us rendevous with this bardic friend of yours, Jayce," said Solisar. "Is he not with a ship and a crew that you already know and trust?"

   "I agree," said Hakam, "but first, I still desire to meet with Sseth and retrieve Allu's 'genie bottle' from him. Tomorrow morning, let us sell and buy what we need to and then fly north into the desert to find his lair. I shall message him for clearer directions at dawn."

   "Yes," said Solisar. "I need to restock on pearls and other magic components for my spells."

   "We can probably rid ourselves of that cursed cloak too," said Szordrin.

   "I know that Ilthian was requesting a hammock, like Szordrin has," said Solisar. "She has not been sleeping well on the hard wood of the ship, and I share her discomfort."

   "For that matter, we might consider having cabins built for all of us," said Szordrin, "and buying furnishings. Is not Teshburl known for its shipbuilders?"

   "It is," said Hakam, "but do we have time for such luxuries?"

   "We need a rowboat at least, before we leave port," said Leokas. "We cannot rely on foreign navies to escort us to port every place we set down."

   "So we have a busy day tomorrow, then," said Hakam. "Excuse me while I go rest in my corner for the night."


There was little rest that night, however.

   Kytharrah had just relieved Szordrin from second watch. Solisar, who needed little rest because of his magic ring, was keeping the young minotaur company by asking him stories about his cavern home. Belvin and Leokas were trancing above deck under the stars, the former elf snuggled against Kamil, who was snorting in his dream-filled sleep.

   "What is your earliest memory of one of your mothers telling you a story?" asked Solisar of the minotaur as the two stood in the sterncastle.

   "One time, big brother and me played," said the minotaur. "He jumped on me so hard, food came out of my mouth. Very fun play!"

   "Fun?"

   "I got him good too!" said Kytharrah, proudly tapping one of his horns. "Both all tired and bleeding!"

   "What about mother's story?"

   "She tells of great minotaur, but smaller minotuar like me," Kytharrah replied. Then he clarified, "I was small minotaur then. Now, I am a big minotaur."

   "Yes, I know," said Solisar gently. "Go on about her story."

   "Small minotaur find food for family...," Kytharrah continued. Then he stopped suddenly, and his ears perked up. He had heard a sound above him. Just as he glanced up, a tiny object struck him in the forehead and splattered. He found himself covered in thick, tacky goo. His hooves were sticking to the deck.

   Solisar looked up. There, on one of the yardarms, balanced a figure in a uniform of Calishite fashion. He was clad in red leather with metal studs. Around his head was a red turban, and a scarlet cloth covered his whole face, except for the eyes. His arms were bare, and they were huge and muscular. His bandoleer and belt were full of many pouches, holders, and scabbards.

   Solisar yelled out in Elvish, "We are under attack." Then, he spoke several more ancient words and vanished.

Jayce removed a smokestick from Mythlos' pack and lit it to send a signal to the ship that Leokas could see.

   "They have changed course, I think," said Leokas. "They must have spotted us."

   "Douse the smoke, Jayce," said Hakam. "We do not want the dragon seeing our signal as well." Jayce tossed the fuming stick into the water.

   Thirty minutes later, they were at the side of the sailing vessel. It was a smaller ship that the one they had been on previously. The flag flying atop the mainmast was Tethyrian. The figurehead was a giant flower. A ladder was thrown down to them by two sailors on the deck.

   Leokas was the first to board the vessel. "Thank you for taking us aboard," he said. "Do you have a rope and pulley? We have two statues of great value to us."

   The men left to set up the pulley, and the captain of the ship stepped down from the poop deck and approached. Leokas didn't recognize him to be the captain at first, for he was as tall as a human child, a halfling.

   "Well met and welcome aboard my vessel," said the hin captain. "I am captain Ombert Stronghull, and this beautiful ship here is The Daisy. Who are you and wherever did you come from to be bearing two statues, a wolf, and... a parrot?"

   "I am Leokas Dusktracker," said Leokas. "Our tale is very long tale, but time is of the essence. I shall explain all to you later, but for now, please help us board as quickly as possible. Then, sail us as far to sea as you can. We shall pay you handsomely if you will do this for us."

   "You speak a language I understand," said Captain Ombert. "So be it. Martin, send our passenger to his quarters. Gren, call up our mercenary; he may be needed."

   The pulley system was quickly set up, and Rinald, Mythlos, Stormshadow, and Sseth were loaded on board, while the others climbed up the ladder. The row boat and oars were set adrift.

   "Helm, take us due southwest; full sails, everyone!" commanded Ombert. "These statues are amazingly lifelike," he then said, as he examined the new cargo.

   "They are our friends," said Jayce, "petrified by a gorgon from out of legends."

   "You are adventurers then?" asked the halfling.

   "We are indeed," said Jayce proudly, "and dragonslayers."

   "Yet you flee?"

   "We missed one," said Jayce.

   "Whoa! When you hinted at danger, I was not thinking dragons. That's another matter entirely!"

   "We have summoned powerful help," said Sseth. "We will defend your vessel; we promise you. You should take us aboard and do as we say... for free."

   Ombert looked surprisingly satisfied with this answer, despite the fact that it came from a caged bird. He was oblivious to the magical power of a brass dragon's suggestion.

   Ombert glanced at Hakam, sitting on a step and nursing his injured leg, then at Belvin, who was shaking the water off himself. "You look a group of misfits," said the halfling with a chuckle, "but I've seen stranger things."



The ship was on course for Teshburl, where it was to remain in port for close to a month. A rich passenger on board had hired The Daisy to deliver him and his package first to Teshburl, then to pick up a second package a month later, and finally to deliver them to Chult.

   Besides the halfling captain, four of the other crew members stood out noticeably from the rest. There was another halfling sailor, who's skill with the ropes and sails was immediately apparent. He was bald.

   Another sailor was a bulky half-orc. Unlike the halfling, he did not appear particularly skilled at seamanship; rather, he seemed to be in training, as he was always accompanied by human man who was explaining to him what to do.

   Another of the sailors was a short-haired blonde woman. She was shirtless like the men, with a bandeau wrapped around her chest, revealing her muscular and toned abdominal muscles and powerful forearms.

   All of the sailors had a daisy tattooed on their left biceps.

   The fourth crew member did not appear to be a sailor at all. He was a young man but had long jet black hair and a long, full beard. His skin was very pale. He wore a cloak that flowed in the breeze, and a large book and dagger sheath hung from a thick leather belt around his waist. He was clearly a wizard of some sort. He stood off to the side observing the new passengers silently.



Jayce sat down on the deck underneath Sseth. The half-orc and his teacher had used a crowbar to break the latter free from his cage, and now he perched on a rung of one of the rope ladders leading up the mainmast. The other adventurers sat nearby.

   "So Sseth," said Jayce, "now that we have a moment for stories, how did you find Allu's lair? And how did you become trapped by Yrevkethend? Are the two working together?"

   "I cannot say for certain, but I do not think they were working together, as I noted in the cave. My parrot ear holes are not as keen as my dragon ones by any means, but I never did hear any conversations in the lair from anyone other than Yrevkethend and her two spoiled children, once they arrived a few days ago. I think they generally lived with their father. She presented me as a gift to them. Can you imagine! They enjoyed mocking me, and they forced me to do silly bird dances for them in my cage. At least they fed me cactus. It reminded me a little bit of what it was like to be a dragon. I always enjoyed the taste of fleshy cacti. First, I would lick the dew of each needle one by one. Then,..."

   "What of Allu, Sseth?" said Jayce.

   "Oh, yes, sorry. As I just said, I do not think they are connected. The side passage about which I had told Hakam by his message spell, which we passed on the way out of the cave — I suspect that it indeed leads up to Allu's palace. I could not confirm this myself, as I could not fit my body through the passage, and the ground was too hard to burrow through. I entered the cave the very same way that we just exited it. I flew over the wide chasm into the large chamber where the two hydras reside.

   "I was pondering why Allu would keep two hydras and confused as to why I did not smell the scent of hobgoblins when Yrevkethend returned. Even if she had not surprised me as she did, I would not have been a match for her. Io did not bless us brass dragons with the same power as blues. Even so, I am thankful that she did not attempt to slay me outright. I think she sensed immediately that I did not intend to trespass on her territory, so she was not in a rush to kill me. She struck me with a bolt of her lightning, and I returned a blast of my fire. Then she simply polymorphed me. It happened so suddenly, it took me several moments to comprehend what had happened. Ordinarily, such magic is easy for me to resist, even if coming from a more powerful spellcaster. It was as if the gods were rolling dice and a one came up for me."

   "How did you locate that tunnel in the first place?"

   "Oh, I never did explain that to you, did I? I finally spotted another hobgoblin out in the desert as I glided overhead. I tracked him from far above, and he was oblivious to my presence. Eventually, he vanished. He must have taken a potion of invisibility or used some other such magic. You were asking earlier about what magic I can cast. In my humble opinion, I am a superb diviner. I opened my eyes to see through his magic and watched as he continued for another mile — it must have been a powerful potion for its effects to have lasted so long.

   "Anyhow, the hobgoblin came to three large boulders leaning against each other. He passed between them. I waited several minutes and then drifted down to the sand. As I suspected, the entrance to this cave was too small for me, but I did use my magic to observe deeper inside. There was a staircase and walls of stone; it was not simply a natural cave. I decided to hide and observe for a while. I flew off about 200 yards and buried myself in the sand. Sure enough, a day later, I saw another pair of hobgoblins exit. Three days after that, I saw them return.

   "Still curious, and since I had not heard from you yet, I decided to seek out if there might be another entrance. I had taken a good look at all three hobgoblins and had kept their images in my mind. After that, I just needed to find a forked twig — which is not an easy task in the desert, mind you! With the twig in hand and a little of my magic, I flew out in different directions. While flying over the desert, the twig always pointed me toward wherever the hobgoblins happened to be walking. Over the next several days, I mapped out a good portion of how the tunnels of the palace are arranged underneath the sand. (If I had claws again, I could scratch a map out for you.) I recognized that a side tunnel that the hobgoblins sometimes used, led out close to the ocean and that this side tunnel curved in a more 'natural' way than the straight hallways that I presumed were part of the 'palace'. So logically, I began to suspect that there might be another way into the palace, perhaps from the sea cliffs nearby. My magic twig soon confirmed this. Thinking I had nothing to fear from a hobgoblin scout I might encounter, I went in what I thought was the back door, and you know the rest of the story now."

   "So you think Yrevkethend knows nothing of Allu at all?"

   "I cannot say that for sure, but the tunnel leading from the sea to the palace is at least a mile long. The palace may technically be in her claimed territory, but it may be far enough from her cliff entrance that she has never chanced to look that way when a hobgoblin has entered or exited. Also, as I noted, they use invisibility from a mile out when coming and going. Moreover, I know Yrevkethend steals sheep and goats, for which she must fly south. The palace lies a bit to the north. As for the back tunnel, neither she nor her children could ever fit through it, so I suspect that she thinks nothing of it. I do not even know that the hobgoblins ever exit out of it. So, I would not be surprised if the palace was hidden to her as well."

   "After we rest, then," said Leokas, "we will have to return to this back door and invade his palace."

   Sseth squawked. "What? No, no, that would be far too dangerous on many levels, even if you had not just slain a powerful dragon's two children."

   "Why do you think we sent you to find the palace in the first place, Sseth? Since we have left you, we have actually learned a lot more about the Omlar gem we have recovered. We have reason to believe that the gods themselves have chosen us to stop him from bringing an army of efreeti upon Faerûn through a portal from the Plane of Fire." Leokas and the others filled him in on the details of their last few adventures.

   "I will not go so far as to use my magic to convince you otherwise," said the polymorphed dragon, "but even so, I strongly argue against this plan of action. You still lack the power to overcome an outsider like Allu, and you still know nothing about this Samber individual. I would seek him out first, before staging an assault against the efreeti and his army of hobgoblins. As far as Yrevkethend, do you think you can go anywhere near her territory now? I believe that Hesjingvaerix and I can protect you from her and grant you a safe escape, but I cannot promise that it will be safe for you to return near Yrevkethend's lair. Nor can I promise that she will be defeated or even that Hesjingvaerix and I will survive."

   "We did not rescue you for you to go off and die fighting for us, Sseth!" Jayce protested. "Besides, you never did give me that promised flight."

   "I have no intent to die, little bard, but this is a matter for dragons now, not for humans and elves. We did trespass on Yrevkethend's territory, and while it was not just for her to have imprisoned me, it was not a fitting retribution to her to have lost her children. Things are... complicated now — and well outside your control."

   "A mermaid! A mermaid! I spotted a mermaid!" One of the human sailors was yelling. "Starboard side."

   The sailors rushed to the right side of the craft.

   "What are you babbling about?"

   "At the rum again, eh? It's not even sunset."

   "No, I saw her tail fins, like a dolphin. Thought she was a dolphin at first, but then her head pops out of the water, and she has long hair floating all over the place in the waves. See! There she is again! She's waving."

   "By Valkur, he's not drunk. I see her too."

   "She's swimming toward us!"

   "Helm, steer us around," said Ombert from the stern.

   They came alongside the "mermaid" and a rope ladder was tossed down to her.

   "She's naked as Eilistraee!" shouted one of the sailors excitedly, as the woman began climbing the ladder they had lowered for her.

   "That's no mermaid;" said another, "she's got legs!"

   "Get away from the railing, bastards!" yelled Loreene, the woman sailor. "Give the lady her privacy!"

   "Niff, bring one of the blankets," ordered the halfling captain.

   The woman from the water climbed over the railing onto the deck, seemingly unconcerned with or oblivious to her lack of clothing. Loreene wrapped her quickly in the blanket, then led her below deck while everyone wondered what was going on.

   A few minutes later, the two women emerged again. The stranger was now wearing some of Loreene's clothes; she was unusually tall for a human woman, standing well over six feet, and the borrowed wool pants and shirt looked amusingly short or her, exposing her shins and belly. Her hair was long and a bronze shade of red, and she had striking green eyes. She wore a single pearl on a cord around her neck, and elegant rings on two of her fingers.

   Sseth spoke from his perch on one of the yards, "Vae! It is so good to see you again."

   "Sseth? Is that you?"

   "They know each other?" asked one of the sailors.

   The woman bent over and began laughing. "What has happened to you, Sseth?"

   The parrot responded in Draconic, and she laughed again. She then turned to Ombert and greeted him. "Forgive me for intruding on your vessel, and I thank you for heeding me and allowing me to board. You may call me Vaerix."

   Sseth flew over to land on her shoulder. She laughed again. "If you excuse me, this parrot and I have much to discuss." She walked away from the crowd of crewmembers and passengers and began a long conversation in Draconic with Sseth, giggling occasionally.

   "Aren't you going to find out where she came from, Captain?"

   "It seems she has business with the parrot," replied Ombert. "We'll leave them be. She clearly is more than she appears; beautiful women don't just appear out of nowhere in the middle of the ocean unless there is powerful magic about, despite how much you men may wish it to be true. It's best we don't meddle in such matters I think. I do not foresee she will bring any harm to us or our shipment.

   "Helm, put us back on course for Teshburl!"

   The "misfits", as Ombert had called them, stood to the side during most of this excitement, also confused as to what was going on. "She looks odd," said Hakam, "as if she has never actually seen a real human woman."

   "You suspect she is doppelganger?" said Jayce.

   The tall woman motioned for them to join her and Sseth. As they approached, she stood at the side of the ship, held her palm below her mouth as if she were blowing a kiss, and spoke messages into the wind in Draconic. "I have sent word to Martivirgix and Hysvearkarif. If they are at home, they will heed my summons," she said, turning back to them.

   "Friends," said Sseth, "this is my ally of whom I spoke. She is Hesjingvaerix. Folk usually call her 'Hesjing' or 'Vaerix' but I like to shorten it to 'Vae' or 'Hess' — but never 'Jing'!"

   "...because he is self-conscious about having a one-syllable name," said the woman.

   Sseth continued, "Vae, these are Leokas Dusktracker, Jayce of Lantan, Belvin Boarcharger, Mythlos Moonspinner — that petrified elf over there — and Hakam yn Hamdulah el Anachtyr, brave adventurers, the ones who rescued me."

   Jayce asked her, "Milady, do you have the power, and would you be so kind, if so, to return our friends here to flesh?"

   "I regret that I do not have such skill," she answered.

   "What about our friend, Sseth? Surely you can return him to his true form."

   "It is likely that I can," she said.

   "Will you, please?"

   "I am not sure that would be wise at this time, Jayce," answered the polymorphed dragon. "You do realize that I weigh some ten tons? I am not sure the deck planks could support my weight in my natural form."

   "Even if they could hold you," said Vaerix, "I am not sure I would want to change you back yet, thurirl; I find you to be quite cute in your current feathered state."

   A gentle breeze blew, and Vaerix sniffed the air. "You smell of... Bruntutalephion," she said to Jayce suddenly.

   "Of course!" said Sseth. "That was the smell I could not place when I first met him."

   "Come again?" said Jayce.

   "An old friend of ours," said Vaerix. "Smells bring back strong memories sometimes. Is this not true for you humans?"

   "Who was Brun...tu...?"

   "She comes," said Vaerix sternly and suddenly, interrupting Jayce's question and turning to the east.

   "We leave you now, little friends," said the parrot. "Worry not yourselves about us. You have already done the impossible and rescued me. Had Hakam not sent me that message by magic, it could have been years before anyone else noticed my absence and sought for me. (We dragons sense the passage of time differently than you.) I will pass on stories of your bravery to all of the brass dragon youth who come to my library to study."

   "You have disciples now, Sseth?" asked Vae, surprised.

   "No, alas, not yet, but I am sure that someday soon word will get out about my impressive collection, and it will be the place all young dragons long to visit to study history."

   "I am sure," said Vae, and she laughed.

   "In any case," said Sseth, "you have my highest thanks. Do not try to come to our aid. As I said, it is a matter for dragons among dragons now, and it need not concern you further. Remain under sail as fast as you can as far away as you can from this place. Vae will send word to you of how we fare."

   Leokas and Belvin, who had each been straining their eyes, trying to see what Vaerix claimed to have seen, at last spotted a blue dot approaching.

   Vae raised her hands to the sky. "Kepesk!" she cried out. Storm clouds gathered almost instantaneously in the distance and some sort of precipitation began falling between them and the approaching dragon.

   "Rain?" asked Hakam.

   "Hail," said Leokas, who's elven vision was far clearer. "She is delaying the blue's approach."

   "Goodbye, humans. Sweet water and light laughter, elves." The parrot Sseth flew off Vae's shoulder, flapping frantically and clumsily to gain elevation. Vae pointed and spoke a word of command, and the bird morphed into his true form, a hulking brass dragon, wings rippling in waves as he flew gracefully toward the approaching blue. Then, with three fluid motions, the tall woman pulled off her borrowed shirt, dropped her pants, and dove over the deck railing with a perfect dive into the water.

   "Did you see that fine rump?" said one of the sailors crudely and excitedly.

   "Too skinny for me," said another.

   "Not for me," said the first.

   "I don't think she'd 'ave gone for you, being human and all."

   "Where do you think half-dragons come from?"

   "Not from you!"

   Seconds later, 100 yards from the boat, a bronze-colored dragon erupted from the water into the air.

   In the distance, Yrevkethend was close enough that even the humans could make her out. Everyone, even the pilot at the helm, rushed to the port side for a better view. They saw Sseth breathe a 100-foot plume of dragonfire, which struck Yrevkethend, before he banked to avoid being bitten by her. Hesjingvaerix came up below the blue dragon and struck her with her rear claws, flipping Yrevkethend into a tailspin before she recovered.

   Then, two more bronze dragons burst out from below the surface to join the aerial battle. Yrevkethend sped away to the east toward the coast with the four metallic dragons in pursuit. The passengers on The Daisy watched them fade into the horizon, until they could no longer see the sun sparkle in reflection off their scales.