"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 aksed, "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 1 fear some of the class are less then apt to the lessons of the order.
Most sincerely,
Kairoth of the Enabled Hand
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. Hennett 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!
Nebin said, "Hennet, we should have listened to you right off.
It says, 'Meet me in the temple.' Kairoth didn't want anyone to read this but you, Ember!"
Ember clapped Hennet and the gnome on the back and said, "I have been traveling with masters of secrets all this time. How did you know?"
Hennet shrugged and smiled.
Nebin absorbed the praise and responded, "As I said, gnomes like ciphers. We learn them as games in our childhood. Now you know our secret. Well, actually, only gnome children would use ciphers as simple as this, but humans have to start somewhere."
The gnome laughed and twirled his inked quill.
"Kairoth can only mean the temple he talked about in the main message," said Ember.
"Then let us prepare to venture below the city," declared Brek Gorunn, ever practical.
7
"When Baron Dammeral founded New Koratia four hundred years ago, I wonder if he knew about the ancient city that once stood here?" wondered Nebin.
Hennet, Ember, Brek Gorunn, and Nebin trudged through a sewer tunnel. They had prepared and rested for most of the previous night, then started before dawn. Even though Hennet and Nebin had a free day before the first round of the Duel Arcane, Ember wondered if the two shouldn't be practicing their magic. She felt guilty for asking them along. She suspected that Hennet had something of a crush on her, and she hoped she wasn't trading on that affection. On the other hand, Ember presumed that Nebin tagged along on the jaunt into the sewers because of his relentless overconfidence.
"What ancient city, Nebin?" asked Ember.
The wizard enjoyed showing off his knowledge and she didn't mind indulging him.
"The city of New Koratia was established when the original city of Koratia burned in The Conflagration of Tael."The ruins of Old Koratia still sat, fifteen miles to the south, where the River Delnir emptied into the Southern Sea. "Actually, even back then the ancient city was a ruin, its name lost," continued Nebin, a pedantic edge creeping into his voice. "It was only discovered because of a few surface collapses when Dammeral began building, revealing an old tunnel system. Dammeral thought the tunnels would provide a perfect foundation for a 'modern' sewer."