Riven had trouble keeping his expression hostile.
"You've done well," Riven said, and it was the best show of appreciation he could manage. He left unstated the fact that he would have killed the scribe without hesitation had he done any less. "I will be leaving again soon. But I will be back for them. Until I am, keep doing as you have. You have enough coin?"
"Of course," the scribe said.
Riven had paid him enough previously to care for the dogs for a year or more.
"Good. Go, now." Riven waved him back to his shop. "Be about your business. I want to check on my garret in privacy."
The scribe looked to Riven, to the dogs, and almost smiled. He was wise enough to keep a straight face, however, and melted back into his shop.
Riven watched him go, then gathered the three buckets and entered the garret with the girls.
The moment he shut the door behind him, he sank to the floor and put the buckets before him.
"Eat, girls," he said.
They seemed more interested in him than the food, so he accommodated them with stomach rubs and head scratching. Finally, he coaxed them into eating. As always, they shared space around the bucket rather than squabbling for position as most dogs would.
"No rivalry for First and Second, eh?" he said. The older bitch turned to regard him with a question in her brown eyes and scraps dangling from her jaws. He only smiled and she returned to her meal.
Afterward he spent a few hours with his girls, doing nothing more than playing or petting them. He wondered what they did all day, and the wondering made him worry. They could run afoul of a wagon cart, a horse, or some petty bastards like the pirates Riven had left dead on the streets of Skullport.
His girls were gentle creatures-he had no idea why-but he did know that gentleness was not rewarded on the street. He had learned that lesson often in his youth. But somehow his girls had managed to survive without becoming vicious.
He watched as they ran circles around the room, barking, nipping playfully at each other, licking him, tackling each other. They were friends, inasmuch as dogs could be friends.
"Friends," he said softly, and pondered.
* * * * *
The bearded priest who had called down from the top of the stairs awaited them just outside the temple's double doors.
"Welcome to the Sanctum," he said to Cale, Magadon, and Jak, though the hardness of his voice belied his words.
Engraved characters from a dozen or more Faerunian alphabets covered the verdigris-stained copper double doors of the Sanctum of the Scroll. Cut into the smooth stone lintel above the doors was a phrase in the common tongue that captured the pith of Oghma's doctrine: Strength can move only mountains. Ideas can shake worlds.
Magadon nudged Cale, nodded at the inscription, and said, "Can you mark that?"
Cale nodded, read it for the guide.
"True, that," Magadon said, as they entered the temple.
The double doors opened directly onto a small foyer beyond which stood the worship hall itself. Cale welcomed the shelter from the late afternoon sun. Once within the foyer, the priests uttered a short invocation and removed the masks they wore.
Within the worship hall, small wooden desks stood in a circle around a lectern on a raised dais. Acolytes in unadorned black vests sat at a third or so of the desks, copying manuscripts, scrolls, even entire books. They did not look up from their work. Wooden shelves taller than Cale and stuffed with sheaves of parchment and scrolls covered much of the walls. A small dome composed entirely of glass capped the ceiling. Sunlight poured in through it. Several doors led out of the worship hall.
Cale knew the services in Oghma's temple were often as much a classroom lesson as a sermon. The priesthood frequently offered lectures on subjects as broad as the history of the Creator Races and planar mechanics, and as narrow as brick making, leather working, and literacy. Oghmanytes served Oghma the Binder by encouraging creative thought and disseminating knowledge and ideas. Cale wondered if they maintained a lending library, like the Temple of Deneir.
"I will inform High Loremaster Yannathar of our visitors," the middle-aged priest with the beard said to Sephris.
"Of course you will, Hrin," Sephris said dismissively. "Tell him also what you suspect, for it is truth-these are the men who were indirectly responsible for my death. Tell the High Loremaster that they, like Undryl Yannathar himself, questioned my spirit after my body's death. But unlike him, they at least had the good grace to let me sleep again after they'd had their answers."
Hrin flushed at that. Sephris continued. "Tell him, too, that I am in no danger from them, or at least no more than the entirety of this realm is in danger from them."
Cale flushed at that. Sephris went on. "And tell him finally that I am tired but that I serve the Binder and this temple still. Do you understand all that I just said?"
Hrin nodded curtly. He and his fellow priests stood around for a moment, embarrassed.
"His heart will fail him in five hundred thirty-two days," Sephris muttered as he watched Hrin walk away. He came back to himself and said to Cale and his comrades, "Follow me."
The loremaster led them away from the priests, into the worship hall, and through one of several doors that lined the walls. He did not speak as they went. They walked dim, windowless corridors lined with framed maps until they came to a small conference room. A large slate hung from one of the walls and five chairs sat around a rectangular table set before it. A shelf against one wall held sheaves of papers and bound scrolls. Sunlight leaked through a small window to provide light. Cale avoided the beams.
"Sit," Sephris ordered, and they did. The loremaster did not sit; instead, he went to the slate on the wall, took a piece of chalk in his hand, looked at it, and . . . closed his fist over it without writing anything. He turned to the table and looked at Jak, at Magadon, at Cale. His eyes were not friendly.
"Darkness follows you three with the certainty that night follows day. A storm dogs you all. Do you sense it?"
"You do not even know me, priest," Magadon said.
Sephris laughed, a barking, derisive sound. "No. But I know of you."
"You are mistaken," Magadon said.
Sephris grinned evilly and said, "Would you like a number, Magadon devilspawn? There are Nine Hells. Your father rules-"
"You close your mouth," Magadon said, flushing red. He rose from his chair, his pale eyes ablaze. The guide's hands were fists.
Cale put a hand on Magadon's arm to calm him.
"Who is he, to speak of me?" Magadon said angrily to Cale, but sat back down at Cale's and Jak's urging.
"I am a dutiful servant of my god, devilspawn," Sephris said, his tone bitter. "Nothing more. But nothing less. You have come, so you must listen."
"What have they done to you, Sephris?" asked Jak. "You are . .. bitter."
"They've done naught but what you did, Jak Fleet," Sephris answered. "Use me for your own ends, as you hope to now."
Cale understood it then, and the words came out before he could stop them.
"You did not want to come back."
Sephris stared at Cale for a moment, then slammed the chalk against the slate so hard it splintered in his grasp.
"Of course I did not want to come back! Bitter?" He glared at the little man. "I have every right to be bitter, Jak Fleet. What once was a gift is now a curse. My mind is filled with numbers and formulae, whether I am awake or asleep. The seven words you just spoke, the number of buttons on your tunic, the number of steps it takes me to reach the market, the number of worshipers in the hall, the number of priests in this .. . prison." He looked at the three companions. "Numbers haunt me. Answers torment me. Do you see, mindmage?" he spat at Magadon. "That is who I am and why I speak to you of your lineage. I know. There is no rest for me except in death, and even that is denied me."