Брюс Корделл - Oath of Nerull

“Something strange is going on there. With your indulgence, I’d like to tell you.”

Hennet said, “Of course!”

He saw the gnome hide a smirk behind his book, but he didn’t care. If Ember wanted to tell him a story, he wouldn’t deny her.

Ember spoke, telling of the visit to the Motherhouse. She related how the elders assured her that the threat to the order was eliminated, though she could scarcely credit the news. She further explained how her old friend, Kairoth, was lost to that same threat, on the Day of Fasting.

“So,” continued Ember, “I have a difficult time explaining this. I didn’t show the letter to the elders, or even mention it; caution warned me against revealing my knowledge.”

Everyone clustered close around Ember as she opened her satchel and extracted a leather parchment sleeve, of the variety used by couriers to send messages overland.

She said, “I received this letter from Kairoth after the Day of Fasting. And look—” She pointed to the wax seal on the leather sleeve. The seal was broken, but the date pressed into the wax could still be read. “See the date? This letter was sent three days after the Day of Fasting, but according to Elder Vobod, he found Kairoth’s body on the Day of Fasting. Kairoth isn’t dead, or wasn’t, yet the elders lied about it.”

Hennet felt a surge of excitement over the mystery and treachery revealed by the date on the letter. He loved puzzles; of course, never before had he dealt with a puzzle that involved murder.

“If they lied about this, what else did they lie to me about?” concluded Ember.

Nebin shrugged and said, “You know your own order better than we. Perhaps a simple mistake is to blame?”

Hennet, seeing Nebin’s tack, said, “Or perhaps the message is incorrectly dated?”

Brek Gorunn cleared his throat, then said, “Could it be that, denied your vengeance against those who destroyed Volanth chapter, your mind seeks enemies in the shadows where there are none?”

“I would like to believe any of those explanations,” replied Ember, “but it is not in the nature of an Enabled Hand elder to mistake the date of the death of a member, or for an elder to mistakenly date a letter. Something rings false.”

So saying, she removed a single piece of parchment from the leather sleeve. Neat script covered the parchment, apparently the last message of Elder Kairoth.

“But, it does no good,” she continued. He mentions no enemies of the Order, Nerull, or anything out of the ordinary.”

Hennet reached for the letter and asked, “May I?”

Ember handed the letter to him. Hennet read it aloud.

Sister Ember,

It has been too long since you last visited the Motherhouse. The gardens are in full summer bloom. The Day of Fasting is three days past, and we missed your presence. Sometimes the smell of the flowers is so strong it puts me in mind of the old days. Remember when we explored below the city, looking for that old temple? We spent three (3) whole days down there; I wonder if you remember? Well, it hardly matters, I suppose. Things go on much as they ever have. The Motherhouse is training a new crop of novitiates, though I fear some of the class are less then apt to the lessons of the order.

Most sincerely,

Hennet read the letter through twice. Random letters were smudged along the bottom of the paper, apparently thoughtlessly scribbled letters as one might make when distracted, but still holding the quill. They seemed out of keeping with the neat script of the rest of the letter.

He pointed them out to Ember and asked, “Do these mean anything to you?”

“Merely doodles, I think,” she said. She ran a hand through her cropped, curled hair. Hennet wished it was his hand, and the thought so distracted him that he almost missed what she said next. “But something else is odd. I didn’t give this letter a second thought, because I wasn’t looking for anything strange. On second glance, it seems odd for Kairoth to mention that old adventure. We have talked of it often enough, but it was long ago. It’s an old story, and out of context. We spent less than a day looking for the temple below the city, as well he knows. Certainly nothing like three days.”

Nebin volunteered, “Is he getting old and forgetful?”

Ember replied, “No, his mind is as sharp as ever. I can’t imagine why he would make such a special point of incorrectly recalling the number of days.”

“Maybe three is somehow important?” ventured Hennet.

Nebin, who was sitting at the table, said abruptly, “Maybe it’s part of a cipher. Gnomes often use ciphers. Some of the oldest writings inscribed by our ancestors are in the form of ciphers. That’s how they’re kept safe from being read by the wrong people. Without the key, they’re incomprehensible.”

“The key?” asked Brek Gorunn, uncertain about the gnome’s tack. “Wouldn’t a simple spell do the trick?”

“No,” answered the gnome. “Magic can be broken by magic, revealing the hidden message even it it’s in a language the reader doesn’t understand. But if a mundane cipher is used to encode a deeper meaning within the letters, there is no magic to dispel. The letters are merely letters. They have a double meaning only for the person who knows the key.”

The gnome reached for the letter, which Hennet surrendered.

“Now, even the simplest cipher must have a key,” continued Nebin, pontificating. “Once you know the key, you can apply it to the cipher and read the hidden message. Maybe ‘3’ is the key to a quick cipher Kairoth came up with. He expected Ember would take special notice of the number three because it is incorrect, as he well knew. So, what is the simplest cipher he could have used? I think a substitution cipher.”

The gnome fell silent. Hennet flushed with mild jealousy—he was the one who liked puzzles, yet Nebin was apparently well versed in such things. Hennet had never heard of a substitution cipher.

Growing more excited as he was drawn into the puzzle’s challenge, Nebin continued, “A popular cipher uses only the first letter of each sentence to spell out a secret message. But every gnome child knows that one. Perhaps the message is secretly polled out using every third letter of each sentence? Hmm ...” He quickly ran his finger along the text and read, “She…emmso…lie…osi.”

“Gibberish,” said Brek Gorunn, and Hennet had to agree.

“Wait, maybe it is the third letter from the end of each sentence!” The gnome began reading backward, but quickly came up with the same sort of nonsense.

Brek Gorunn shook his head. Nebin’s face fell. They all stood glumly looking at the letter.

Hennet cleared his throat and offered, “Does the number three have any meaning if you apply it somehow to the doodles?”

He still felt the random letters were important, but this whole business of ciphers was new to him.

Nebin ran his fingers along the smudged letters. He said, “The letters are ‘ phhwphlqwkhwhpsoh.’ If it is a substitution cipher, it should be that each letter here is actually three letters farther along in the alphabet of the language used for the coded message. I would assume that’s the same language used in the rest of the letter.”

The gnome hunched over the table, grabbed an inked quill from those he was using earlier, and muttered under his breath as he wrote on the back of the letter.

“Right, that would give us ‘ skkzskot znkzksvrk.’” The gnome scratched his beard. “Still nothing.”

Ember broke in, “Try it the other direction.” She leaned forward, eager to see the gnome’s handiwork.

Nebin paused, then slowly wrote, one letter at a time, “ mee tme int het emp le.”

Hennet drew in his breath quickly. Despite his feeling about the doodles, he was surprised when he was vindicated. There was a secret message!