Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 3: Dawnflower's Blessing

Lisavet loved the Dawnflower Library.

Peace and wisdom radiated from its sunlit shelves. Through the central dome’s great windows, she could glimpse the minarets on either side, reminders of how mortals could aspire toward the heights of heavenly perfection—and, despite falling short, achieve beauty and grace in the trying. In the center, sunlight streamed through those windows to fill the temple library’s stacks with the golden glow of enlightenment.

Lore from all across the world was gathered here. Not only lore, but stories: myths, legends, adventures that captured life’s essential meanings and wrapped them in vivid color, so that everything seemed both more exciting and more significant than her own real life ever was.

Not that her life was dull, precisely. But it was quiet, and sometimes she wondered if she’d ever find the kind of meaning that seemed to come so easily to people in books. In her faith, in her life, in her purpose.

That search had brought Lisavet to the Dawnflower Library. Though studying as an acolyte of Sarenrae had given her confirmation that many other people had discovered their answers, it seemed to Lisavet that she was still seeking hers.

She was alone in the library that afternoon, reshelving borrowed books, when a loud and startling knock sounded at the temple’s door.

The other acolytes were occupied with their own chores—tending to the temple gardens, drying medicinal herbs, or copying sacred texts—so there was no one else to answer. Sighing, Lisavet pushed one last book into place, then went to see who was banging so furiously at the door.

It was Eleukas, her sister’s friend. He was sweaty and distraught, and as Lisavet opened the door wider, she saw why.

Wendlyn was collapsed on the steps beside him. She looked awful. Her red hair straggled damp across her brow, and her blouse was soaked with blotchy patches of sweat. Heat radiated from her skin so intensely that Lisavet could feel the fever as soon as she stooped beside her sister.

“Bring her inside,” Lisavet said briskly, helping Eleukas carry the unconscious half-elf toward one of the treatment rooms. “What happened?”

“We fought some rats in the woods,” Eleukas said, setting Wendlyn gently on the cloth-draped table. He pulled up the sleeves of her blouse, showing Lisavet the inflamed scratches that swelled across both of her sister’s arms. “They wounded Wendlyn. At first it didn’t seem like much, but then she took a turn for the worse. This happened within a few hours. I’m worried she might be poisoned. Can you help her?”

“Yes.” Lisavet examined the injuries. In truth, Wendlyn’s wounds looked more serious than anything she’d faced in her training so far, but her teachers had always emphasized the importance of projecting calm and confidence to one’s patients.

She took a deep breath, drawing strength from the chimes of the metallic ornaments woven into her hair. Each of them was a tiny symbol of her goddess, and together they served as a constant reminder that Sarenrae was always with her, watching over all she did.

With her goddess’s presence ringing in her ears, Lisavet began her work.

First she washed the wounds with herbed water, then she made a careful incision along each scratch to drain the pus, then she washed them again. When she was satisfied that Wendlyn’s injuries were clean, Lisavet bandaged them carefully in balm-soaked cloth. As a final measure, she prayed over her sister, asking Sarenrae’s approval of her work more than the goddess’s direct blessing. Lisavet was devout in her faith, but Sarenrae had granted her actual magic only rarely—five times in her life, so far, and each of them a treasured memory.

Six, now. The presence of the divine flowered unexpectedly in her soul, bright as a sudden dawn bursting through storm clouds, and holy warmth flowed through her fingers into Wendlyn’s body, infusing her angry red wounds with a soothing golden glow. The scratches faded to pink, then to tender new flesh, only faint ridges marking where they’d been.

Eleukas sucked in his breath. “You’re a true cleric?”

Lisavet tried to conceal her own awe, and her flash of reflexive pride. It is the Dawnflower’s gift, not mine. “Only by Sarenrae’s grace. But I think Wendlyn will be well now.”

“Thank you.” Eleukas hesitated, then pulled something out of the bloodstained satchel Wendlyn had been wearing. “There’s another thing we need help with. Do you recognize this mark? This book?”

Lisavet canted her head curiously at the torn cover, then blinked. “Yes, actually. That looks like one of the books Vandy bought for the temple library a week or two ago. There was a whole set of them like that. They were stolen shortly thereafter, before we could get them properly cataloged. I’ve never seen her so angry. She really hates book thieves.”

“Do you remember what it was?”

“Local history, as I recall. But a rather macabre version. Legends about buried treasures and bloody tragedies. Haunted sites around Otari, mysterious ghosts, that sort of thing. As I said, the books were stolen before we could catalog them, so I never got the chance to read through them in any detail. No one did.” Lisavet looked up from the torn cover, raising her gold-streaked eyebrows. “Where’d you find this?”

“With a dead man not far from Giant’s Wheel. Where we fought the rats. There was someone—something—else with them too. Something monstrous.” Eleukas sighed, shaking his head. “Wendlyn might not want me telling you this.”

“I want to help.” Lisavet surprised herself by saying it, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she felt sure of her course. She did want to find the books that had been stolen from the Dawnflower Library. It was the right thing to do—the books had been stolen from Sarenrae, however indirectly, and that was an offense against the faith—and it would lift a worry from Vandy Banderdash’s shoulders.

People thought of the cheery halfling priestess as chatty and sunny, and didn’t always realize how deeply she could be wounded by something that they might account trivial, like a book theft. Lisavet knew better, though. Vandy didn’t want to believe that any of Otari’s people would steal from the Library, and she’d be glad to have the culprit caught.

But, even more than that, Lisavet wanted to solve the mystery for her own sake. Poisonous rats, a monster glimpsed by Giant’s Wheel, a corpse clutching the torn cover of a tome of legends—that sounded like adventure, the kind of adventure she’d only encountered in books until now. If something like that was actually happening, right here in Otari, then Lisavet didn’t intend to let it pass her by.

Lisavet knew that might annoy Wendlyn. She had always treated her adopted little sister as a nuisance to be brushed off—normal sibling conflict exacerbated by the fact that Wendlyn’s half-elven ancestry meant she felt the difference in their years more strongly than Lisavet did.

Well, too bad. Lisavet wasn’t about to let herself be brushed off now. She wanted purpose. This could be her chance.

“You owe me,” she told Eleukas. “For the healing. Well, this is what I want. I want to help get those books back to the Library. They’re rightfully ours, after all.”

Eleukas looked like he wanted to object, but couldn’t think of anything reasonable to say except: “All right. But you have to explain it to Wendlyn.”

“Explain what?” Wendlyn sat up groggily on the table. She winced in anticipation as she used her arms to push herself upright, then blinked in surprise. “It doesn’t hurt.” She patted both arms, astonished. “Nothing hurts.”

“By the Dawnflower’s grace,” Lisavet said, and tried not to be stung by the distaste that flashed across Wendlyn’s face before she could hide it.

“Thank you,” her sister said, begrudgingly, but honestly. “Now, what was it you had to explain to me?”

“That I want to come with you. I want to help.”

“Fine.”

Lisavet closed her half-open mouth. “You’re not going to argue about it?”

“No. We could use you.” Wendlyn flexed her arm again, then slid off the table with an acrobat’s effortless ease. “You know books, and you have Sarenrae’s blessing. Whoever killed the man by Giant’s Wheel, it wasn’t those rats, unless one of them knew how to wield an acid-coated axe. So if we do get lucky and find the killer, we might be in for a fight, and you might come in handy. And if we get even luckier and find the stolen books, you can tell us why they’re so all-fired important that somebody got killed over them.”

“Wonderful.” A warm glow filled Lisavet at Wendlyn’s words. She’d never expected to hear such praise from her sister. “What’s the next step?”

“Crook’s Nook. We have a gambling chit to cash in. Let’s see what kind of bet it made.”

Lisavet had never actually been inside Crook’s Nook, although she’d often walked across it. The tavern was built into the underside of a wooden bridge crossing the Osprey River, or maybe it was the bridge that was built over the tavern’s roof. Either way, it made Crook’s Nook the literal underbelly of Otari, a disreputable haven for thieves and smugglers that upstanding citizens like Lisavet pretended not to see.

There wasn’t much to see, anyway. River moss bearded the tavern’s girders, and rust streaked its weathered boards. Cataracts of grime clouded its windows, and damp-swollen wooden frames squeezed them shut. Because the bridge above it blocked the light, Crook’s Nook was cast in perpetual shadow, its door foreboding even on the sunniest day.
 
Her companions didn’t seem to share her unease. Eleukas swaggered and Wendlyn stalked through the door, like a pair of mismatched but equally lethal predators. Lisavet edged in behind them, pulling her hood over her gold-streaked braids and hoping no one noticed her.

She watched quietly from an out-of-the-way table as Wendlyn sauntered to the bar, flipped a little disc of painted wood across the counter, and exchanged hushed words with the scarred, gnarled-looking woman on the other side. The woman casually flicked one of her bone-studded braids in the direction of a big man slumped over an ale-pooled table, and Wendlyn slipped her a coin before returning to Lisavet.

“Well?” Eleukas pulled out a chair and dropped into it casually, holding a mug of foul-smelling liquid that Lisavet supposed was meant to be ale. The river rushing beneath the tavern drowned out quiet conversations, ensuring that the patrons of Crook’s Nook were always safe from eavesdroppers.

“That’s our man.” Wendlyn took Eleukas’s mug, sniffed it, and pushed it back toward him with a grimace. She didn’t glance at the drunkard again. “Osgrath. Notice his axe.”
 
Lisavet stole a peek at the axe. It was a brutal-looking weapon, wickedly spiked, with a haft wrapped in green snakeskin. The axe’s head was cast into shadow beneath the table, but it seemed to be oddly discolored, yet sharp. A peridot gleamed brightly between the blade and back spike, although no light fell on the gem.

“Nice axe for a drunkard,” Eleukas said.

“Very,” Wendlyn agreed. “Though he apparently hasn’t been a drunkard for long. The bartender says he used to be a reliable hand, working security at the dock. A few months ago, he changed. Claims he’s being haunted by a ghost, and started drinking to forget it.”

“A ghost?” Lisavet echoed skeptically. She thought Vandy would surely have said something if there’d been a ghost haunting Otari.

“That’s what he’s been telling people. Doesn’t exactly seem like his perceptions are unclouded, but that’s the story.” Wendlyn shrugged. “Ideas?”

“Yes, actually. If he thinks there’s a ghost…” Lisavet summoned all the confidence she’d learned in her training, pushed back her hood, and pulled out her holy symbol of Sarenrae so that its golden rays gleamed proudly over her chest in the dim light. She strode to Osgrath’s table, Eleukas and her sister a few steps behind, and put a gentle hand to the man’s shoulder, trying not to flinch when he jerked up at her touch.

The reek of alcohol that emanated from the man could have felled an ogre. He looked up at Lisavet blearily, rubbing a stained sleeve across the half-dried drool on his chin. Now that she was close to him, Lisavet could see that, under the ale-sick sallowness, puffy eyes, and unshaved cheeks, Osgrath must have been a formidable warrior once. His strength was still there, in his shoulders and chest, though deeply buried beneath whatever troubles had driven him to hide in his cups. “Whuzzat? Whuryou?”

“My name is Lisavet. I’m a cleric of Sarenrae. I understand you’re having trouble with a ghost. Perhaps I—and my goddess—might help.” She pushed the holy symbol forward, so that it dangled in front of Osgrath’s nose.

He went cross-eyed trying to focus on it, but some of the bleariness in his demeanor did seem to clear. “You’re a cleric? A real cleric? With magic?”

“Sarenrae favors me so,” Lisavet said piously. It wasn’t untrue, although so far she had, admittedly, only managed a half-dozen successful spells. “And if your ghost should prove to need exorcising by some other method, my companions are quite skilled,” she added, gesturing to Eleukas and Wendlyn with a flourish.

“Uh-huh.” Osgrath eyed the three of them dubiously, then belched. “But—hells, I’ve got to do something. It’s killing me as it is. Maybe you’re the best chance I’ll get. Yeah. All right. Meet me at Lisli’s boarding house at sundown in two days. Got that? Sunset on the night of the new moon. It’s the Redfish Room.”

“We’ll be there,” Lisavet promised, as Eleukas nodded behind her.

“Right.” Osgrath belched again, staggering toward the bar and tossing another handful of small coins on the stained counter. Clearly he’d already dismissed them from his thoughts, and was well on his way to dismissing everything else, too, except whatever was in the mug that the bartender was handing him.

But he paused long enough in his drinking to add, with a surprisingly keen look at the three of them: “Bring your weapons. Any weapons you’ve got. Anything. This ghost’s a real bastard, and you’re only likely to get one shot. So don’t miss.”