We returned to Silas with the hides of the carvaloths, and he kept his word. The armor he had fashioned from them was rougher than anything made for ceremony, but strong, light, and well suited to those who expected to spend more time fighting than standing in court. There was something appropriate about it. We had come to Rivergate chasing answers, and increasingly those answers seemed to lead us into places where polished appearances mattered very little.
Amityria and Skara went to High Mage Ellandra in search of information concerning the Ashen Creed. Mori and I went to Captain Lyria, hoping that her knowledge of the city's underworld might lead us closer to the Ebon Syndicate. She directed us toward Zephyr Quay and the Golden Market, places where information changed hands more readily than coin. Alvaro, meanwhile, sought the counsel of Inquisitor Severin. I did not ask what passed between them. There are conversations between men of faith that belong to faith alone, and I have learned that not every silence needs to be broken.
Amityria spent some time with Lyria as well, looking into the various bounties and names circulating through Rivergate. That same night she found Marrik, one of the men she had been hunting, and killed him. She did not speak much about it afterward. I have begun to understand that there are things Amatyria carries inside herself that she does not yet know how to put into words. Perhaps that is why she prefers the certainty of a pistol. A gun does not ask what happened before the moment in which it is fired.
Our own investigation led us again toward the docks. We went there after dark and found a man named Njall, a dockhand who had survived the destruction of La Esperanza. His survival was strange enough, but what troubled us more was his condition. He had been sick, afflicted by the same corruption that had killed the crew, yet he was alive and apparently healed. According to Njall, the one who had saved him was the same mysterious figure we had come to know only as the Healer.
There was, however, something else inside him.
A parasite had taken root within Njall. It was not killing him. Quite the opposite: it seemed to be keeping him alive. We decided to spread word that the healing had failed. That Njall was deteriorating. That whatever had been done to save him was no longer sufficient and that he was dying, trying to goad the Healer to reveal himself.
Unfortunately, we had misunderstood the nature of the parasite.
The Healer knew that Njall was not dying because Njall knew it himself. Whatever passed between the two of them was enough for our deception to be exposed before it could accomplish anything. The bait failed. The Healer did not come.
Instead, we attracted a hungry mob.
Members of the Ashen Creed appeared, drawn by the rumours surrounding Njall and the supposed failure of his healing. What had been intended as a quiet attempt to lure one person into the open suddenly threatened to become something much uglier. There is little distance between religious conviction and violence when a crowd believes that it has found a cause worth defending.
Alvaro's convictions served us well. Rather than allowing the situation to descend into bloodshed, he managed to calm the crowd and prevent the confrontation from becoming a fight. I watched him as he spoke, and I was reminded that zeal and wisdom are not always enemies. Much depends on whether a man is capable of mastering the first long enough to exercise the second.
Before we left, High Mage Ellandra arrived to take Njall with her. She intended to study both his condition and the parasite within him, hoping that whatever had been done to him might reveal more about the Healer and the strange corruption spreading through Rivergate. I did not envy Njall. He had survived where others had died, but survival had not returned him to the life he had known. He was now a living question, and powerful people wanted to know the answer.
When we returned to the inn, we found another message waiting for us. Mara Veyr wanted to see us.
I could not help but notice the pattern.
The Ebon Syndicate had been involved with La Esperanza. The cursed plants had appeared again and again. The Healer had somehow cured Njall, while leaving behind a parasite that connected them. The Ashen Creed was becoming increasingly active. And now Mara, a woman who had already agreed to feed us information about the Syndicate, had come forward again.
Each thread seemed to lead toward another, yet I could not see the shape they formed.
In Heaven, before the gods died, I had lived in a universe that seemed to possess an order beyond question. There were mysteries, certainly, but mystery was not the same as uncertainty. There was always the assurance that somewhere above us stood beings who understood the greater design.
That certainty died with them.
Here in Etharis, I have learned to live without it. We follow signs, compare fragments, question witnesses, and hope that the pattern we discover is real. Sometimes we find answers. More often, we find another question waiting behind the first.
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