As he rolled his map up, Jedidiah addressed the saurial wizard. "We'll meet you in the temple tomorrow morning."

Back in the privacy of the cottage that he shared with Jedidiah, Joel confronted the god with his concern for the paladin. "How can you let Holly come along? She's in far greater danger from Walinda and the banelich than we are. They may despise us, but they hate her."

"I imagine Holly feels you are in far more danger because Walinda has taken a liking to you," Jedidiah replied.

Joel huffed. "This isn't her problem," he said. "How can you allow her to take such a risk on our behalf?"

"Joel, she's used to taking risks, especially on behalf of her god. No doubt she feels she can serve Lathander if she comes with us. She's a sensible girl, with a sensible attitude. If the banelich agrees to her presence, she can serve as a distraction, maybe even a big enough distraction to give us a chance to get the stone back."

"You're using her as a decoy?"

"The Hand of Bane is the decoy. Holly is the stalking horse," Jedidiah corrected.

"What if we find no other way of getting the stone back? Holly is never going to allow us to give Walinda the Hand of Bane."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Jedidiah replied. "Or burn it once we've crossed it." He sat on his bed and pulled off his boots. "Have a little faith, priest," he teased.

Once again Joel lay awake far into the night wondering about his god. Jedidiah had proven himself foolish

I enough to lose most of his godly power. Now he was preparing to use the young paladin in a deadly game against the church of Bane. The fact that Holly was willing to be used didn't ease Joel's mind any.

The young priest also couldn't stop worrying what would happen if they recovered the Hand of Bane and Jedidiah did hand it over to the banelich. Bane would be resurrected once more to plague the Realms. Or worse, what would happen if the banelich took the Hand of Bane and then found a way to betray them and keep the finder's stone? As weak as Jedidiah was, not only would Joel's and Holly's lives be at stake, but Jedidiah himself could end up taking Bane's place in the astral plane as a floating immortal corpse.

When sleep finally came to the Rebel Bard, his dreams were filled with barren deserts and blood-red sunsets.

Twelve

The next morning Joel and Jedidiah climbed the stairs to the Singing Cave together, lugging heavy backpacks filled with supplies. Copperbloom had seen to their provisioning as efficiently as a quartermaster from the Cormyrean army. She'd provided them with all they needed: food, water, tarps, blankets, fresh clothing, potions, even new scabbards for their weapons. Holly was already waiting at the entrance to the temple. Her face was drawn, her eyes bloodshot. She probably stayed up late speaking with Jas, and of course she would have been up at sunrise to pray to her god before she set off on her quest.

"I need to speak with Copperbloom in private," Jedidiah told Joel. "Call me when Grypht arrives, please."

Joel nodded and Jedidiah disappeared into the temple.

"Where's Jas?" he asked Holly.

"She gone off with the flyers," the paladin said. "She said she didn't want to see us off. She asked me to bid you farewell."

The news left Joel feeling disheartened. He might never see the winged woman again, and he had at least hoped to wish her well.

Grypht arrived a short time later. Once again he'd taken the trouble to cast a spell so he could speak their language. He wished them good morning, then spoke to Joel. "In case you had not noticed, your Jedidiah can be very reckless and thoughtless."

Joel flushed, unable to bring himself to gainsay the saurial wizard's analysis of his god. Grypht knew Jedidiah far better than he, and Joel had already reached the same conclusion.

"Any time you can influence him to show moderation or consideration, I advise you to do so," Grypht said.

Joel nodded, then went to fetch Jedidiah.

Copperbloom accompanied her god and her fellow priest out of the Singing Cave. She embraced Holly, then Joel. Her scales were warm and smooth to the touch, and the scent of honeysuckle rose from her throat. The priestess bowed very low before her god.

Jedidiah returned her bow with one of his own, then turned to Grypht. "We're ready," he said.

"Are you sure you want to go this early?" the wizard asked. "They are not expecting you for another day. They may not even arrive there themselves until tomorrow."

"I want to be there before they arrive, to check the lay of the land," Jedidiah explained, "in case they were considering some trick before we enter the Outlands, Check on Cat's Gate tomorrow evening, just in case we have to leave Holly behind."

"Or in case they do not show up?" Grypht asked hopefully.

"That's not likely," the god replied. "In that event, we will head for Sigil without them. If the Hand of Bane is ours, they will come to us."

Grypht nodded, then turned away from the others.

From the growls and clicks, Joel guessed that the wizard had begun an incantation in his own tongue. The smell of fresh-mown hay surrounded the huge saurial. The tip of his staff began to sparkle, and with it the wizard traced a door-sized ellipse in the air. The yellow-white sparks hung suspended by magic.

Light flared in the ellipse, and a blast of very hot, very dry air shot out from within. Inside the sparkling border, there appeared a wasteland of sand.

"You can step through now," Grypht said.

Jedidiah picked up a knapsack and jumped through the magical portal. They could see him sliding in the sand on the other side.

Joel grabbed the other knapsack and stepped through more carefully. He stood on the top of a huge sand dune. The air was scorching and completely still. It shimmered all about him. The morning sun was blinding. To the east, the Desertsmouth Mountains were a purple haze. The dunes reached every other horizon.

The bard turned back to watch for Holly. In the ellipse, he saw the paladin hug the saurial wizard. A moment later she dropped through the portal and tumbled down the sand dune past Joel until she came to rest beside Jedidiah in a hollow on the side of the sand dune. Back in the Lost Vale, Grypht motioned with his staff, and the ellipse blinked out.

Joel slid down the slope on his backside until he reached the old priest and the paladin. He stood up and shook the sand from his clothing.

Below the dune on which they stood, two monuments of worn stone poked out from the sand, rising some fifty feet in the air. Three sides of each monument rose vertically, but the fourth, outer side inclined like a pyramid. The monuments stood about fifty feet apart, with their inner sides parallel to one another. Their surfaces were covered with huge bas-reliefs of great cats-lions, tigers, leopards, panthers.

"Behold the pillars of Cat's Gate," Jedidiah said, motioning to the two stone towers. "Or rather, the tops of the pillars of Cat's Gate. The majority of the gate is

buried in the sand. According to old texts, the pillars rose higher than the Flaming Tower. When the kingdom of Netheril was in flower, there was a floating citadel here, one that made the Temple in the Sky look like a pebble. The wizards who built the gate commanded a strip of land along the Desertsmouth Mountains five hundred miles long and a hundred miles across. The Lost Vale was one of their outlying colonies. Not satisfied with what they had, the wizards set their sights on the Outlands. They bore into that plane with their magic, built the pillars to hold open the gate, then marched their armies through to conquer the lands beyond in their name."