Holly reached down and touched the creature's neck. "He's been dead a long time," she said. "Unless-" Her voice trailed off.
"Unless what?" Joel demanded.
"Priests of Bane cast all sorts of chilling spells to torture their sacrifices. They say that during their evil ceremonies, Bane himself used to reach out and kill the victims with his chilling touch. Then again, this might not even be a warm-blooded creature. Is he a saurial, do you think?" Holly asked the bard.
Joel shook his head. "I doubt it. They're supposed to resemble large lizards. This looks like-well, certainly not like a lizard. I've never seen or heard of anything like this in all my readings and travels."
"Well, we can't leave him blocking the spring. Help me move him aside," Holly insisted.
The creature was over nine feet long, and it took a great deal of energy to roll him away from the shrine's entrance, Fortunately Holly seemed satisfied to stop moving the corpse once the spring-fed stream was no longer blocked
As Joel pulled his hands away, he realized they were covered with blood. At first he thought the creature was oozing blood from his pores, but closer inspection revealed that every inch of his thick, black hide had been punctured by something long and needlelike. The blood had been what had made his skin seem to shine when Joel had seen him tied to the Banites' ship. Joel recalled the pointed goad he'd seen in the hand of the priestess of Bane, and he felt his stomach churn in disgust.
"I wonder if they saved his corpse just to desecrate the shrine, or if the shrine was just a convenient drop site," Joel growled angrily.
"Probably the latter," Holly answered softly. "The followers of Bane like death, but like the rest of us, they don't care for its stench." From her knapsack, the paladin pulled out a shawl and used it to cover the creature's loins. "Men from the dell will come to bury him," she said "I'm going to say a prayer for him before we leave him."
Joel drew back along the streambed. Oddly enough, Jedidiah hadn't taught him any prayers to Finder for the dead. Somehow, though, he suspected this poor creature's gods were not known in the Realms.
Three
Beyond the shrine a wall of closely planted, long-needled pines lined the western side of the trail. Following Holly's example, Joel led his mount on foot directly toward the trees. Taking care of their horses' eyes, they pushed their way through the lower branches. The horses' hooves left hardly a trace in the thick blanket of pine needles. On the far side of the tree wall was a forest of pine trees, each about the same girth and height, planted in even rows. The effect was both eerie and lovely. Holly remounted and guided her horse between two rows. Joel did the same.
It was much darker beneath the pine than it had been on the Tethyamar Trail. The birds had quieted down considerably.
Joel started suddenly. To his left, he spied a flash of an orange light like a torch or a campfire in the woods. With reflexes that had been finely tuned in the past few hours, the bard gripped the hilt of his sword and whispered Holly's name. In the silent woods, it sounded like a shout. Without halting, the girl twisted about, leaning one hand leisurely on Butternut's rump. "What's wrong?" she asked. Joel nodded in the direction of the light. "I thought I saw a torch." To his dismay, he spied a second light on his right, then a third in front of Holly's horses. "We have company," he said.
Holly laughed, and the sound echoing through the pines startled the bard. It was a relaxed laughter, and all fears of Zhentilar and Banites retreated before it, but still it puzzled the bard.
"What are they? Are they people from the dell? How did they know we'd be coming?" he demanded.
"No," Holly said with a chuckle. "They're just piggy little firestars, hoping you'll light a campfire or cast a light spell."
One of the lights broke free of the woods and drifted within a few feet of Joel's face. It was a free-floating ball, about the size of his fist, glowing a radiant orange. Peering more closely, the bard could make out bands and sparkles of blue dancing across its surface.
Realizing he still held on to the hilt of his sword, Joel asked, "Are they dangerous?"
"Only if you attack them," Holly explained. "They have a shocking sting. Otherwise they're harmless. They're wild creatures that eat any light they can get near-firelight or magic light. They quench it somehow, They're more of a nuisance than anything else, except when they bother the Zhentilar. Then they're loyal allies of the people of Daggerdale."
Holly's tone was so serious Joel had to laugh. "Perform a lot of forays against the Zhents, do they?” the bard asked.
"They sting the Zhents a lot. The Zhents can't seem to get the hang of ignoring them," Holly explained. "The Zhents would attack a chipmunk if they caught it staring at them too long."
Feeling rather foolish, Joel released the hilt of his sword. A second firestar, this one lemon-shaded, drew close. The pair floated alongside him until a third, somewhat larger, reddish sphere, with glittering spangles of white, joined them. All three lights bobbed and zipped about one another, until the larger one left. A few minutes later the first two floated back into the woods.
Every few minutes new firestars swooped about the horses, then drifted off. Joel was reminded of the squirrels in the parks of Suzail, gorged on the bread crumbs of Cormyrean nobles and merchants, constantly begging from every passerby.
"Are they intelligent?" Joel asked curiously.
Holly shrugged. "Who knows?" she replied.
After half a mile, the pine forest ended as abruptly as it had begun. They now stood at the edge of a meadow. The last rays of the sun poked between two peaks of the Desertsmouth Mountains, but the rest of the sky was a blanket of dark blue, speckled with the earliest stars.
They rode side by side now, in the twilight, downward into the dell, through planted fields and well-tended orchards. Every few acres they passed a barn. The barns were so weather-beaten that from a distance they appeared abandoned. As he passed by one such structure, Joel could see that it was really quite sturdy. Farther on, he spotted a girl with a milking pail coming out of another barn.
The bard was just wondering if a hidden path and old buildings were all that kept the dell safe from intruders when something very large rustled in the rye grass off to his right, startling his horse to a bolt. It took several seconds to bring the beast under control. Holly trotted up to his side. "What was that?" Joel asked.
"It was just a guardian," Holly answered. "It knows better than to attack. The silly Zhent horse probably got a whiff of it. Keep moving."
"What sort of guardian?" Joel asked.
The sort that starts out as a cute cub and grows up to eat Zhents for dinner," Holly answered. Then she began telling him the history of the dell. Joel listened with one ear while the other remained alert for some sound of a guardian. The dell was named for the wizard Anathar, who had perished long ago protecting the local dwarves from a marauding dragon. That act apparently sealed the friendship of the humans and dwarves of the dell, and the small community had flourished ever since.
Joel couldn't see any mine entrances or other indications of dwarvish presence. No doubt, he thought, the dwarves of Daggerdale are just as insular and protective as the humans.
Finally they came to the heart of the dell, the center where people lived. It was dominated by a large stone manor, blazing with light from every window. Many small cottages surrounded the manor, a few with lamplight glittering in their windows, but most of them were dark. As they approached the manor, Joel could hear human voices. No doubt the larger building was the hub of the community. Outside its windows, firestars hovered like moths, blocked from entry by wire grates cunningly fashioned in intricate geometric designs Dwarven workmanship at its finest, Joel realized, both useful and lovely.