"You have no one but yourself to blame," Holly retorted angrily. "You murdered her friends."

"Cut it out!" Joel cried, and his voice echoed through the large room, startling all three women. "If you all don't stop arguing, I'll just go back to my cell, where at least there was some peace and quiet." Joel couldn't tell which made him more nervous, the glare of hatred Jas gave him or the mocking, chastened bow of Walinda's head. "We are all going the same way," he said. "We need to stick together for safety."

Holly sighed and nodded. "You're right," she said. "Let's go."

Walinda began climbing the stairs and the bard followed.

"You will have your chance to bring her to justice as soon as we escape," Holly whispered to Jas.

Jas breathed out heavily, as if venting her fury and frustration. She gave the paladin a curt nod and motioned for her to go next. The winged woman took up the rear guard, her fists still clenched in rage.

The landing at the top of the stairs led to three other sets of stairs. An especially steep set led down into the darkness. A breeze wafted upward, laden with the odor of a menagerie.

"The griffons are stabled below," Walinda explained.

"Yes, I've got my bearings now," Joel replied.

"I can't believe they haven't posted any guards," Holly muttered.

"They feel too secure in the unassailability of their flying fortress with their Zhentarim allies below," Walinda noted. She pulled out her magical light gem and started down the steps. Joel pulled out his own magically lit stone and followed, careful to keep himself between the priestess and Jas. A push down these steps could result in more than a serious injury.

In the stable below, four griffons lay sleeping with their heads tucked beneath their wings. Each one was shackled by a chain running from a ring in the floor to a heavy iron band about one of its front legs.

Joel tiptoed past the beasts over to the hole in the floor that the griffon riders used as a doorway to the Temple in the Sky. He peered down. A few torches twinkled on the roof of the Flaming Tower, but it took his eyes some time to adjust to the rest of the dark landscape below. Far to the south, a dark ribbon glittered in the moonlight.

"That should be the River Tesh," Holly said, pointing out the body of water to Jas. "We'll want to head upstream, toward Daggerdale," she explained.

An awful squawk rose from behind them, and they whirled around. Walinda had approached the griffons and awakened them. She held a bucket of chopped meat in her hands, but the creatures were too alarmed by her strangeness to accept food from her. They snapped at the priestess's face with their beaks. Walinda backed away hurriedly. Were it not for the chains on their legs, the griffons might have torn her apart in moments.

The creatures' shrieks and cries echoed through the chamber, and no doubt rose up the staircase. Walinda held up an iron symbol of Bane's hand and intoned some unknown words, but the griffons' clamoring only increased. The priestess looked annoyed, but she continued chanting her spell just out of reach of the creatures' beaks.

Holly rushed to Walinda's side and yanked her away from the griffons. "Stop it," she ordered. "You're going to bring the whole house down on us!"

Walinda spun angrily on the paladin. "We need to subdue these creatures to escape," she retorted.

"No we don't," Holly argued. "Jas can carry us one at a time."

"She would drop me the first chance she had," Walinda said, tossing the bucket of meat at the griffons.

"Like that," Jas agreed, snapping her fingers.

Joel approached the winged beasts, singing the calming spell that had worked so well on Butternut, but to no avail. The griffons were immune to any magic that affected ordinary beasts. They continued shrieking. Joel stepped back. "We've got to get out of here fast," he murmured, "before they send someone to check on the griffons."

Walinda tugged at his sleeve. "I cannot trust Pigeon Girl with my life. You vowed to help me escape from here," she reminded him.

"Poor Banebitch," Jas taunted. "She can't get down from this rock."

"You don't get down from a rock, you get down from a goose," Joel retorted automatically. Then he remembered his vision and the wings he'd found. He drew the golden talisman out of his tunic pocket and held it up for the others to see.

"Ahh… a feather token," Jas said. "Haven't seen one of those in a while."

"What does it do?" Holly asked.

"You throw it to the ground," Jas explained, "and you grow wings. You can use it only once."

"I can carry you," Joel said to Walinda, "and Jas can carry Holly."

From somewhere above them came human shouts.

"To the hole! Hurry!" Jas shouted, grabbing Holly's arm and pulling her in that direction.

Joel followed, with Walinda right behind. At the edge of the hole, he hesitated. "I just throw it to the ground?"

"The floor will do," Jas explained. "It would take a little too long to get to the ground.

Joel threw the talisman to the floor. The wings shattered with a tiny flash. Then a golden light blossomed from the broken magic item, bathing Joel's body in a rich radiance. When the glow had faded, Joel had a pair of great butterfly wings jutting from his back. They were yellow, with black striations, fully three times the size of Jas's.

"There's something else I should explain about these magical wings," Jas said as she shouldered Walinda aside to stand before Joel.

"What?" the bard asked.

Jas put her hands on the bard's chest. "You can use them to glide downward, but you can't fly back up with them. Once you start down, there's no coming back," she said, and then she gave Joel a hard shove backward.

The bard fell through the hole and plummeted downward into the dark sky.

Joel started to scream, but the wings spread out from his body, controlled by some subconscious instinct. The magical appendages checked the speed of his descent, and he began drifting like a dandelion seed. After taking a deep breath and letting his air out, he regained his self-control.

The bard discovered that, by twitching his shoulders. he could control his direction, but just as Jas had said, he could not regain lost altitude. The winged woman had prevented him from honoring his vow to help the priestess of Bane escape.

He craned his neck to see the hole in the floor of the Temple in the Sky. By the feeble light of the waning moon, he soon saw what he'd expected to see-Jas soaring away from the flying rock, carrying Holly. There was no sign of Walinda.

Joel wondered if the giants on the tower would spot them, and if the cultists would mount the griffons and pursue the prisoners. He also began to worry that he might just end up landing on top of the tower, or so near it that he would be quickly recaptured.

Able to control her flight, Jas soon caught up to the bard. Holly's arms and legs were wrapped around the winged woman's neck and waist. Jas wasn't able to hover beside Joel, but she flew under him and then up, trailing her legs.

"Grab hold," Holly shouted.

Joel reached out and snagged the strap of one of Jas's boots. He felt his stomach lurch backward, but his wings held and the rest of his body remained intact. Jas pulled him along as easily as a child played a kite on a string. The winged woman headed southwestward along the edge of the Border Forest, keeping the River Tesh to her left as Holly had instructed.

Joel looked back, scanning the sky for pursuit from the Temple in the Sky. He thought he saw dark specks issuing from beneath the great flying rock, but in the blackness, it was hard to be sure. Then the bard spotted something much larger, something he recognized without any trouble.

It was Walinda's floating ship, the one in which she'd traveled to the tower. Now, however, the ship was flying, moving upward toward the Temple in the Sky. Just as it drew near the base of the flying rock, Jas flew into a low bank of clouds, obscuring the bard's view.