by Kate Novak
The road led through a grove of ancient oaks, and Jas tripped over a huge tree root.
"That's it," the winged woman said. "Time to make camp."
"But it can't be far now," Joel protested.
"Joel, I'm dead on my feet, and I'm willing to bet you've been overly optimistic about the distance we have to travel. Besides, in the dark we might miss the path to Fermata. I think we should rest here until dawn."
"I think she's right," Emilo said. "I'm beginning to feel stretched a bit thin."
Joel sighed. He was eager to see Finder again and excited about the prospect of visiting Fermata, but he knew Jas and the kender were right. It was too late to continue, He nodded in agreement.
Nestled between the roots of the largest oak tree in the grove and wrapped in their capes, Jas and Emilo were soon asleep. Joel, less tired than the others, sat up and kept watch. A trio of raccoons, a mother and her young, trundled past and climbed into their lair in a hole in a nearby tree, but otherwise the grove was peaceful save for Emilo's soft snoring.
As the sky began to lighten, Joel softly hummed a song to greet the dawn. Songbirds began to stir and chirp in the trees. Teasingly Joel began whistling back replies. He felt a gentle hand touch his shoulder.
"Good morning," he said, turning about, expecting to see Jas.
The hand did not belong to Jas, however, but to another woman. An elf maiden was Joel's first guess, until he saw that her curly hair was as deep green as the leaves on the oak trees that surrounded them. Still, she was very, very lovely, slender and graceful, with dark amber-colored eyes and skin as smooth as satin. She wore a gown pieced together of light, shimmering bits of fabric in a variety of colors, but mostly green, gray, brown, and pink.
"Greetings," the woman said in Elvish. Her voice was soft and deep, but there was a slight hint of disapproval in her tone.
"Soft light, sweet lady," Joel replied in the same tongue.
The woman drew back a step and giggled.
Joel stood and bowed. "My name is Joel. These are my companions, Jas and Emilo. If you make your home here, lady, please forgive our intrusion," he said. His words came slowly, since he was taxing his knowledge of the elves' language to its limit.
"I am Ada," the woman said. "Your Elvish is not very good," she chided.
"I have very little practice," Joel admitted. "But so sweet a voice as yours could teach me well."
Ada giggled again, lowering her eyes to the compliment. Then she slipped behind the tree and disappeared from view.
Joel circled about the tree, but the woman had vanished.
"Ada?" Joel called softly.
Jas moaned and rolled over in her sleep. Emilo snored on.
Something tugged away the strip of leather that held back his hair. The bard spun about. Ada stood behind him, appearing as if out of nowhere. Joel grinned. "How did you do that?" he asked.
Ada stepped closer to the bard. A sweet scent rose from her skin. She stroked Joel's long hair and smiled with pleasure.
Without thinking, Joel reached out and ran his hand through the green curls that crowned Ada's head. They were soft and warm.
Ada brushed her lips against the bard's, then quickly drew back. Giggling, she disappeared behind the tree again.
"Ada, come back," the bard called softly, circling the tree once more.
Ada appeared suddenly before him and wrapped her arms about his neck. Joel embraced her about the waist. As if in a dream, he felt no embarrassment whatsoever about kissing this perfect stranger. Her mouth was as sweet as her laughter, and her caresses made his heart pound. Joel couldn't understand why he should suddenly feel so enamored of this woman, unless he was indeed dreaming.
That was it, he decided. He was more tired than he thought, and he'd fallen asleep. He really should stir himself awake, he thought, but he had no desire to do so.
From the edge of the grove, a familiar voice called out in Elvish, "Hold, sprite! Release him."
Ada and Joel turned to the speaker. Finder stepped into the grove. The god wore the form he had possessed when he'd been mortal, that of an older man, but one still in his prime. His bearing was strong and regal, and his dark brown hair and beard held only the slightest streaks of gray. Joel found himself unable to speak but wishing he could tell his god that he didn't wish for Ada to release him, ever.
"I'm sorry, Ada," Finder said, "but you cannot keep him, He is mine, and I have far more important things for him to do than fetch you honeycombs and weave clover crowns for your hair."
"You should have to ransom one so fair and sweet," Ada said, tossing her head saucily.
Finder held out his hand. In his palm rested a large golden acorn carved from an amber so dark it seemed to have blood mixed into it. "To match your eyes," the god said.
Ada kissed Joel once more on the lips and stroked his stubbly cheek. Then she ran to Finder's side and snatched the acorn gem from his hand. With a laugh as thick as honey, she ran back toward the largest oak and disappeared like a ghost into the tree's trunk.
Finder moved toward Joel and set his right hand on the bard's chest, just over his heart.
Joel felt a sudden shock, as if someone had splashed cold water on him. Although the attraction to Ada remained, the enchantment he'd felt for her dissolved. "Finder," he gasped. He bowed formally, embarrassed at his behavior.
Finder chuckled. "Somehow I suspect that was the first dryad you've ever met."
"A dryad? That's some sort of tree sprite, right?" Joel asked.
The god nodded. "In my youth, you could always find a tree sprite in the Realms if you knew where to look… and were fool enough to do so. These days they are far more rare in the Realms. The ladies of the oaks wield one of the most powerful enchantments known to men. They like to use it on men they find to their liking. And here in Arborea, where passions tend to run strong, it's even easier for their enchantments to succeed. Sorry, but I had to rescue you."
Joel blushed. "Thanks… I think," he said with a sheepish grin.
"Fermata is less than a mile off," Finder said. "Wake your companions and bring them along. I'll see that breakfast is waiting." The god winked, then disappeared.
Cautiously Joel approached the large oak.
"La," Ada called out from above. The dryad sat in the crook of a branch, smiling down on the bard.
"Sorry, but I have to leave," Joel said.
"Come back sometime," Ada invited.
Joel took a deep breath. The memory of her caress was like a flickering shadow in his mind. "I will," he promised.
Ada giggled again and disappeared, melding into the oak branch.
Joel gave Jas and Emilo a gentle shake and called out their names. Emilo smiled cheerily upon rising. Jas was as grumpy when she awoke as Joel had always known her to be. When he told her that Finder had been there and promised them breakfast, her mood improved. Joel did not mention Ada.
They traveled through fields of oats and wheat and meadows of grass and wildflowers. Golden-fleeced herd animals somewhat larger than sheep dotted the meadows and viewed their passing without any apparent fear. They spotted a shepherd on a hilltop playing a flute. It was a tune Joel recognized, something from the Realms, but in a strange key. Several of the herd animals flocked about the hilltop as if they were an audience to their tender's performance.
Cedar trees began lining the road to their left. Then, between two especially large cedars, there appeared a road paved with cut gray stone. On either side of the road stood a man-sized pillar constructed of similar stone. Both pillars were marked with two symbols, Finder's white harp and the bird's-eye shape of the symbol for a Fermata.
"Finally," Jas murmured.
They turned onto the road, which was lined on both sides with more cedar trees, forming a tunnel of green, A hundred paces beyond, the tunnel opened out onto a vast green blanket of short grass, at the end of which stood Finder's home. Joel stopped to admire it. The other two halted behind him.
In the nation o
f Cormyr, where Finder had grown up, the building would have been referred to as simply a manor house. Finder had built his new home, however, on a scale far larger than any manor house that Joel had ever seen, larger even than many castles. Two massive square towers flanked the central hall. The towers were four stories high, the hall only three, and built of the same gray stone as the road and the pillars, but the stone was merely a framework for the dozens of great glass-paned window that sparkled in the early morning sunshine. Joel counted twelve chimneys beyond the ornate stone parapet surrounding the roof.
"If it weren't for the sunlight, that place would look a bit forbidding," Emilo noted.
"If it weren't for the invitation to breakfast, I don't think I'd go near it," Jas declared. "But it does remind CM of Finder, I've got to admit."
"How so?" Emilo asked.
"It's very showy and, as you said, a trifle forbidding."
"Finder's not forbidding," Joel argued. For his own part he found the building much to his liking. It was grand, magnificent, inspiring. But then, that was how he felt about Finder. "Just what is Finder a god of?" Emilo asked in a whisper.
"God of reckless fools," Jas declared.
Joel shot Jas an annoyed glare. While Finder had at one time called himself that, it had been a joke. "Finder is the patron to all those who seek to change and transform art, to renew art. He also has some limited power over the decay and rebirth of living things."
"An eclectic sort of fellow," Emilo noted.
"Yes," Joel agreed. It was one of the things that he admired about Finder.
Joel strode up to the manor, with Jas and Emilo following a pace behind him. The doors to the front hall stood wide open. Joel stepped inside. The grandeur of the front hall was breathtaking. The floor was of polished marble, in hues of white, black, and gray. In the center of the room, Finder's harp symbol was inset into the marble floor. The walls and ceiling were painted with intricate floral designs that created an illusion of movement when anyone looked at them for very long. Two huge curved staircases of marble climbed up to the next floor; pairs of dosed doors on either side of the hall undoubtedly led to the rest of the manor. The only furnishings in the room were two carved marble benches.
The bard called out, "Hello!" His words echoed throughout the building. For several moments there was no reply. Then, from somewhere behind the staircase, a young woman appeared. She wore a simple short-sleeved smock of pink covered with a thin film of white-gray dust and several black smudges. She had blue eyes and long, thick, light brown hair, which she wore pulled back in a blue ribbon. She was small and slender.
There was something vaguely familiar about the woman, but for the life of him, Joel couldn't recall ever having met her.
"Welcome to Fermata," the woman said. "I'm Rina. Lord Finder has asked me to bring you right in to the morning room." Her voice was soft and husky.
They followed Rina through the doors on the right. She led them through several large empty rooms until they arrived in a room with windows on three sides. Chairs and settees covered with cushioning and pale yellow fabric were grouped about the room. In its center, on a small round table covered with a quilted cloth of shades of green and yellow, someone had laid out a breakfast worthy of a king. Ham and sausages, fish and fowl, bread and muffins, strawberries and raspberries, milk and cream, butter and cheese, tea and wine, custard and pies filled the table Three places had been set with shiny white dishes, cups, and saucers decorated with tiny blue flowers, silver tableware, linen napkins and shiny blue bowls filled with water and rose petals.
Finder rose from a chair by the window and crossed the room in long strides. "Welcome, my Rebel Bard," he greeted Joel as he embraced his priest.
"It's good to be see you again," Joel said. He had been friends with Finder long before he'd known the older man was a god. He was comfortable in his god's presence and happy to be reunited with him.
Finder turned to Jas and Emilo. "Jasmine," he said with a nod. "I'm glad you've decided to come. And Mi. Haversack, welcome to my realm."
Emilo bowed low, sweeping the marble floor with his top knot. "Pleased to meet you, sir," he said, his brown eyes as wide as saucers.
Finder nodded. "Thank you, Rina. You may go about your work now," he said.
Rina bowed quickly and left.
Finder sat down at the table and said, "Please be seated and help yourselves to breakfast. I'm a little short of all kinds of staff at the moment, let alone waiters. Don't much care for the magical kind."
"Who's Rina?" Joel asked curiously as he took the seat to Finder's right and stabbed a slice of ham and a slab of bread. Jas and Emilo followed suit.
"She's a petitioner," Finder replied.
"A what?" Emilo asked.
"A petitioner. Someone who worshiped me in her life, so she ended up here after she died."
"You mean she's a ghost?" Emilo squeaked.
Finder shook his head. "No. Ghosts are people who, for one reason or another, never come to the Outer Planes when they die. They remain undead. Rina is one of the only two petitioners who have come to Fermata so far. She was a potter in Tilverton, working on uncovering the secrets of how the Kara-Tur make porcelain. Her skill went beyond mere craft, however. She created works of art from porcelain, encouraged by a speech Joel gave to some artists in a tavern once."
"She looks familiar, but I don't remember her," the bard said.
"She was a shy thing. Sat in the back, listening quietly but intently."
"How did she die?" Jas asked.
"She worked late at her master's shop every night to do her designs," Finder explained. "An enemy of her master's, intent on his murder, poured smoke powder into a chunk of coal that fired the shop's kiln. Rina was the only one in the shop when it exploded."
"That's horrible," Jas said.
Finder nodded. "Fortunately she doesn't remember it. Petitioners don't remember anything about their previous lives, but she's still an artist. When I don't need her to greet visitors, she's working with the kiln she's built."
"Did Rina make these?" Emilo asked, holding up one of the white dishes. "It's so light, and look, the sun shines right through it." The kender tapped the dish with his spoon and it rang like a bell. "Did you hear that? That's real pretty."
Finder nodded. "Rina made all the dishes, pottery, jewelry, statuary, anything porcelain you find here. The other petitioner was a painter named Springer who died of old age. He painted the front hall. He's around here somewhere, painting one of the other rooms."
Joel remembered Springer. The old man had gotten into an argument with an Iriaeban merchant over what should be painted in the merchant's hall. Springer had walked off the job and promptly offered his services at a cut rate to paint the hall of one of the merchant's rivals. The painted hall, and thus the rival, had become renowned throughout the region.
"So if you only have two petitioners, who cooked breakfast?" Jas asked.
"I've hired some local help for a while," Finder explained. "I'm not expecting many petitioners in the near future. With any luck, my worshipers will remain healthy and alive for years to come." The god snagged a strawberry and stood up. "I have something I'm working on at the moment, so I'm going to leave you to your meal. When you finish, climb the staircase beyond that door." He pointed to a smaller door than the one by which they'd entered. "I'll be in the room at the top of the tower," he explained. Then he vanished.
"He just disappeared, like a wizard," Emilo noted. "I guess gods can do all sorts of tricks, can't they? Your Finder seems like a splendid fellow."
"He is," Joel assured the kender.
"One of the nicest reckless fools you'll ever meet," Jas added, serving herself a helping of raspberries. "God or no god."
They proceeded to dine in earnest, speaking now and then only to comment on how good the meal was. Joel, anxious to speak with Finder, hurried through his meal Then he excused himself from the table, insisting the other two not rush on his account. He received no a
rgument from either of his companions. Jas was busy playing with the custard, and Emilo was creating a very artistic sandwich far too large to fit into his mouth. Joel hurried up the tower stairs.
The room at the top of the tower was nearly empty. Several books were spread out on a table on one side of the room. There was a single wooden chair in which Finder sat. The god was pondering a yellow crystal that hung suspended in midair in the middle of the room.
The crystal, an artifact known as the finder's stone, could locate just about anything or anyone even slightly known to the bearer. Once upon a time it had also contained spells, like a wand. The spells could be cast by any member of Finder's family. Included in the spells were illusions of Finder singing any of the many songs he had composed in his life as a mortal man. Finder had cleaved the stone in two, however, to get at the shard of para-elemental ice within. He'd used the ice to destroy the evil god Moander, after which he claimed Meander's power and godhood for his own. Each half of the finder's stone still worked as a magical locator, but the stone no longer held any spells.
Finder gestured with one hand, and blue fire engulfed the gem. Joel could feel heat radiating from the stone.
"Have you put it back together?" the bard asked excitedly.
Finder lowered his hand and the blue fire faded. The god shook his head. "I haven't quite figured out how to do it," he explained. "Any power great enough to reintegrate the crystal's structure is equally likely to destroy the magical properties the stone already has." He lifted the top half of the crystal from the bottom and tossed it to Joel.
Joel caught it. It felt warm, but not hot. "What will you do if you do get it back together?" he asked, admiring the stone's sparkle.
"Try to do what I did before. Put another shard of para-elemental ice in the tiny flaw in the heart of the stone, and then see if I can store magical spells in it, and music- mine and the songs of others."
Joel set the top of the stone back down on the bottom half. The two halves fit together perfectly. "Do you know why we've come here?" he asked.