Holly's eyes narrowed at Walinda's words, but then she smiled. "You should try it sometime, Walinda," the paladin suggested. "Exploring new sensations can be quite liberating. From what Jas told me about you, I suspect it might help you grow beyond your pathetic need to be abused and to abuse others in return."

Walinda stared daggers at the girl. "You are a fool," she replied.

"This is fascinating," Jedidiah interrupted before the conversation grew any more hostile, "but you haven't told us how you got here."

"Well, when I arrived I encountered Bors. He's a paladin from another world, but he's made Sigil his home. He's a Sensate. He brought me here. He and his friends have kept a lookout for your arrival."

Joel was more than a little impressed. He had never doubted that Holly was a remarkable girl. Now she seemed even more so. She was vibrant and completely self-assured. Joel also knew her well enough to know that she was being evasive about something.

"But how did you get to Sigil?" the young bard asked. "And what happened to Jas?"

"Jas is fine," Holly said. "I left her in good hands. I got here by a portal, one that brought me straight to Sigil. I can't imagine why you had to go all the way through the Outlands. Bors says that Sigil is full of portals to other worlds."

"The lich wanted to use Cat's Gate," Jedidiah said, "no doubt because it was large enough to accommodate the spelljammer."

"So where's the ship? And where's the lich?" Holly asked.

"We lost the ship," Jedidiah explained. "The lich is in the astral plane, searching for Bane's body. He still has my half of the finder's stone."

"So you're still looking for the Hand of Bane?" Holly asked.

Jedidiah nodded.

"You might have a little problem there," Holly said. "I'm afraid that when I arrived, I was less than discreet in my initial inquiries. Several of Bors's friends among the Sensates offered to help, since searching for an ancient artifact would be a new experience for them. They took to it a little too enthusiastically, though, and ended up creating a market for Hands of Bane. Now half the thieves of Sigil have at least one Hand of Bane in their inventory. Usually it's the hand of some poor unfortunate they've knifed in the alley."

"You did this to make our task more difficult," Walinda said icily.

"No I didn't," Holly retorted. "Can I help it if I'm just too open and trusting?" Then she smiled slyly. "But I couldn't have come up with a better stratagem if I'd actually planned it. I should warn you, I tried divinations to locate the hand, but had no luck. It must be protected by some special magic. Many of the Sensates who were helping me have given up because they became bored or frustrated with our lack of progress. They did discover an old tiefling who claims that several hundred years ago there was a temple to Bane in the Market Ward, but it's gone now."

"We have a way to track the hand," Jedidiah said. "In the meantime, since Sigil is full of portals, as you say, it would be useful if you could discover for us a portal to the astral plane."

Holly looked to Bors.

The Shattered Temple," the Sensate paladin said. "The Athar give tours featuring dead gods."

Holly chuckled. "The Athar are mostly disillusioned priests. They spend their time trying to prove the gods aren't divine. Amusing, no?"

"Hilarious," Jedidiah replied, rubbing his temples with his fingertips.

"So how are you tracking the Hand of Bane?" Holly asked. "With the other half of the finder's stone?"

Joel nodded. "Perhaps we should wait until night to continue," the young bard suggested to Jedidiah. "After people are asleep."

"There is no real night here," Holly explained. "Only a period where the smoke turns from light gray to dark gray. There will still be plenty of people out at night. They'll just be a different type."

"Well, we'll wait for the dark gray anyway," Jedidiah said, rising slowly. "Because right now I need some rest."

"I, too, require rest," Walinda said.

Bors showed the priest and priestess to rooms where they could lie down. Joel remained behind with Holly. "Jedidiah doesn't look well," the paladin noted. "He looks like something's sucked all the energy out of him."

"He was up late last night singing," Joel explained, although it was uncanny the way she had actually described exactly what had happened to Jedidiah.

"And Walinda?" Holly asked.

"Walinda had a little too much of some strong Kara-Turan drink," Joel said. He related to Holly their adventures since they'd left her, without, of course, mentioning Finder's loss of godhood. He also left out any mention of his previous evening's conversation with Walinda. Holly, in turn, described to him some of what she had learned about Sigil: its political factions, its geography, its primary places of interest.

Sometime near antipeak, the Sigil midnight, the four Realms adventurers set out with the finder's stone. The stone led them to an alley behind a bookshop on Copperman's Way.

"We're being watched again," Walinda said. "I can feel it."

"We're always being watched," Holly said. "This is Sigil. Watching is the city's favorite pastime, right up there with rat-baiting and cheating customers."

Joel used the finder's stone again in the alley. The beacon of light lanced from the stone straight down to the ground.

"Subterranean tomb, or perhaps a hidden shrine," Jedidiah guessed.

"Or it could have just been buried when they built the road," Holly suggested. "Bors said that they often just build the street up, making first floors into basements and basements into subbasements."

"I would prefer to keep our business out of the public eye," Jedidiah said. "Let's see if we can't find a more private means of excavation than digging in the street."

The four adventurers circled around to the front of the shop. A sign over the front door read, Dits's Books. They entered the front door. There were shelves and shelves of tomes of all sizes. At the moment, the shop was empty of customers.

The proprietor, Bits, was a bariaur, a creature with the body of a mountain sheep and the upper torso of a man, with a ram's horns on his head. He lowered his head and peered at them over the rims of a pair of blue-tinted eyeglasses. "Can I help you?" he inquired.

"Perhaps," Jedidiah said. "We, um, need to dig in your basement. We're willing to pay you for the privilege and for any inconvenience, of course."

"Indeed," the bariaur replied, as if there was nothing very unusual in the man's request. "Why?"

"It's a long story," Joel said.

The bariaur's eyes lit up. "Long stories are my specialty."

Surprisingly, they came to an agreement rather quickly after that. Bits consented to the excavation, provided they paid him a sizable sum of gold and related to him the story behind why they were digging in his basement.

"Why does he need to know the story?" Walinda asked suspiciously. "What difference does it make to him?"

"He's a bookseller," Holly said with a sigh of exasperation. "He probably writes books, too. A good hero's tale is worth a lot of money in Sigil. The populace eats them up, so to speak."

The bariaur led the group down an iron staircase. Jedidiah pulled out a light stone to reveal an empty, windowless basement with walls of fitted stone and a dirt floor. The finder's stone beacon pointed toward the base of the back wall. Just above the beacon was a black granite archway sealed with mortared red brick.

"I don't come down here often," Bits declared. "It's too damp to store books. Tried renting it to some Anarchists, but they said it was haunted and moved out. Never saw a ghost myself, though I sat here for a few nights waiting for one. Very disappointing."

"We'll need some tools to break through this wall," Jedidiah said.