T.H. Lain - Oath of Nerull

Ember shook her head. "And I completely missed it. I took the message at face value."

Kairoth touched her shoulder. "You deciphered the message when you needed to."

The elder continued his story. "That night, there was an attack. Fully ten of the fifteen instructors and three of the quorum of five elders turned on the rest. Vobod led them, though he referred to some mysterious, greater power. I escaped because I was already on my guard from Vobod's earlier theatrics. The attacks were constrained to the instructors' wing-no students or novices were involved. They may not know that the order is now in the hands of a malevolent force."

"How can they not know?" asked Hennet.

"Because the students, while they might be curious about the terrible ruckus in the night, would never dishonor an instructor with questions about things that were not their business."

"Who were the elders you spoke with, Ember?" asked Hennet. He worried to think of her having set foot in the place, if what Kairoth said was true.

Ember shuddered. "Vobod himself. You see, I knew he had lied to me."

Brek said, "Could Vobod's uprising have anything to do with what happened in Ember's chapter? There, it was red-masked cultists who serve Nerull."

"Yes, red-masked cultists who seemed strangely proficient in martial crafts," mused Ember.

"Unsettling. Why is the Order of the Enabled Hand consuming itself from the inside?" questioned Kairoth.

"I'll help you find out," promised Ember.

Brek nodded his aid.

"Kairoth, how did you end up below the city?" asked Nebin.

"Ember and I discovered those doors years ago. The designs I remembered on the entrance to the temple matched the symbols carried by Vobod on his ring. I thought it would be profitable to examine them more closely. I didn't expect to be attacked down there. Had I known that evil was awake in that old sanctuary of death, I would have chosen a safer place for Ember and I to rendezvous."

Ember sighed. "What can we do now?"

"Because Vobod is a respected elder, he can deny any claim we make concerning his illegitimacy," said Kairoth. "It will be our word against his."

Hennet steeled himself and said, "Then we must find out the truth. It is up to us to see justice done."

"Us?" asked Ember. "This is not your fight; you have your duel. You've already aided us more than is right. I feel bad enough for that, though without your help Kairoth could well be dead."

Hennet shook his head. "I'd like to think that we have all become friends. As friends, let Nebin and I help. We have a few days before the final rounds of the Duel Arcane."

Nebin gulped. Hennet shot him a raised eyebrow. The gnome nodded slowly, seeming to agree reluctantly. But Hennet knew that if the gnome really didn't want to help, nothing he did could convince Nebin otherwise.

Ember paused, then said with a glad voice, "We accept!"

She rewarded Hennet with another smile, and Hennet felt his eyes glaze over just a little.

Nebin fixed Kairoth, then Ember, with a penetrating look, and said, "All right, what's the next step? Back down into the catacombs, or do we spy out the Order to learn what Vobod's up to?"

Kairoth said, "Ember, Brek Gorunn, and I were just discussing that very question. I am loath to return to the catacombs so quickly. I believe we should enter the Order in secret, this very night. Perhaps we can learn what motivates Vobod and what foul force is aligned with him. Perhaps, as Brek Gorunn suggested, the cult of Nerull is active in all this, but 1 don't know how. I thought those cultists were all purged and gone. We must find out the truth, and the Order is the place to start."

Hennet said, "But, after all, maybe the old temple truly is the source of the evil. Those unquiet corpses were once in service to a death god, perhaps Nerull. And now that I think on it, what did you mean when you mumbled 'the Oath' as we rescued you?"

Kairoth looked uncertain.

"I vaguely recall it," he admitted, "but it eludes me now. It was something the death priest wanted me to repeat, but I wouldn't do it. All I know is that the words themselves were hideous, ghastly syllables."

Feeling as if he had scored a point, Hennet continued, "Then we should consider going back down there first."

Kairoth shook his head. "You may he right. But my instinct tells me that those unquiet dead are only a side effect. They are not the source of our troubles. They are only a symptom, one that must eventually be dealt with, too. If the catacombs in truth become our final destination, we shall only learn that by dealing first with Vobod."

Hennet couldn't argue with Kairoth's logic. Plus, he was tired.

He said, "If we're going tonight, we should rest. Nebin and I expended much of our arcane strength at the duel, and we need sleep. And, pardon me for saying so, you still look a little pale. It's only middle afternoon now. We could be rested and up again before the night is spent."

"Good," Kairoth said. "We will rouse three hours into the middle night. I will lead us into the Order via a secret route. The Order's traitors are not the only ones who know the ways of guile."

If the red masks or traitor monks somehow detected the intruders, Hennet argued, they could mount a stronger defense by concentrating in a single room, not by spreading into several rooms. As usual, Nebin disagreed and put forward his own theories. When Hennet and Ember left the room to see about getting more cots, Nebin approached the dwarf cleric. Brek Gorunn still sat at the room's one small table, sorting through a small collection of interesting items that included several closed leather cases of the kind traditionally used to protect spell scrolls. The dwarf was cataloging each item in the pile.

"Anything interesting?" asked the gnome.

"Yes," Brek replied. "These are the items we salvaged from the catacomb. As far as I can tell, they bear no taint of evil. We might find them useful. Some bear the imprint of spells arcane. Have a look. They'll do me little good-my power flows from Moradin."

The gnome was delighted. He shuffled through the documents. Many were nonmagical, or at least imprinted with a power he couldn't identify, and covered in an alphabet he couldn't decipher.

"I have no idea what these are."

He handed them back to Brek Gorunn, who rolled and stuffed the parchments into his satchel.

The gnome turned to the other documents. His fingers twitched in anticipation as he picked up the remaining two scrolls. One of his chief pleasures in life was the discovery of new spells that he could pen into his spellbook. He was a collector, and his collection was magic itself. He spread the scrolls wide open, gazing intently at the dancing glyphs. The inscriptions slowly ceased their movement, resolving into an arcane alphabet that was intimately familiar. The first was a spell that would allow one to fall from a great height without taking harm. That, Nebin thought, could be useful, in the right situation. He stuck that scroll in his belt, intending to inscribe it into his spellbook later.

The second spell would cause a creature to grow larger. Though it seemed disappointingly dull, he hated to waste any magical formula. Nebin read through the spell of enlargement again. It was fairly complex, and the more he studied it, the more he realized how much power was subtly woven into the spell. If he called on that power, he could be a giant! Nebin chuckled, imagining casting it on Hennet while he was sleeping, then watching his friend grow so large that he crushed his cot.

That gave Nebin an idea. He tucked the second scroll into his belt, also. Even if there wasn't enough time to scribe the complex spell into his book, he could cast it directly from the scroll. That would destroy the scroll, unfortunately, but it could well be worth it.