After his introduction, Jester told her that Greddark had instructed him to wait at the bar for her, and said that if he wasn’t back by the time she arrived, to head for the airship and he would meet them there. Then the dwarf had gone over and spoken at length with the dark-haired elf woman before leaving the enclave via the Maker’s Gate.
That piqued Sabira’s curiosity. Was the dwarf’s craving for tea really so strong he had to go seek it out right before they were scheduled to leave? He was worse than a pampered noblewoman in her eighth month!
She strode over to the elf, whose head was buried in her book. The elf woman looked up as she approached, and Sabira caught a glimpse of the book’s title: True Teachings on Death and Resurrection.
Ah. The elf was a Flamer. She should have guessed.
One of the newer religions on Khorvaire, worship of the Silver Flame revolved around a human paladin, Tira Miron, who, together with a couatl, had merged with a pillar of argent fire almost seven hundred years ago to stop a demon from escaping Khyber and destroying all of Eberron. Its worshipers believed that Miron had become immortal in that union and spoke to their leader-the so-called Keeper of the Flame, the one who’d summoned Elix, who was currently an eleven-year-old girl-through the silver fire that still burned beneath Flamekeep, their holy fortress in Thrane. They saw it as their mission to rid Eberron of all evil, though from what Sabira could tell, the exact nature of that evil varied from worshiper to worshiper.
Take, for instance, your average Stormreach Flamer. They saw nothing wrong with raising a fallen comrade from the dead, calling them back from their rightful place within the Flame to continue the battle against evil. On Khorvaire, though, Flamers would consider such an act to be the vilest form of sacrilege.
Sabira wasn’t a Flamer, but having grown up in Karrnath, where the honored dead were often brought back to a semblance of life to continue to protect and defend the homeland, she thought she’d probably side with the Stormreach faction on this one.
“Hail, brave wanderer. I am Inamil Mattor, and in the name of the Silver Flame, I welcome you to this place,” the elf woman said as she approached, giving her a wide, friendly smile.
“I understand my friend spoke to you before leaving the enclave,” Sabira replied, by way of introduction. “Any idea where he went? We’re sort of on a tight schedule here.”
“I speak to many lost souls here in Stormreach,” Inamil responded, her smile losing none of its shine at Sabira’s terseness. “And any who call evil an enemy is one whom I would call friend.”
Sabira sighed. What was it with the people in this enclave, anyway? She really didn’t have time for yet another philosophical debate.
She held her hand up at shoulder height.
“Dwarf. About this tall. Not much in the way of a beard, and he was probably asking if you knew of any taverns in the area that serve tea.”
“Ah. Master Gared. Yes, we did speak. And no, he was not interested in tea. Though, now that you mention it, they do serve a…”
Gared? Really? If the dwarf was going to continue using fake names wherever he went, Sabira was going to have to insist that they at least be a little more original. And he was going to have to give her note cards so she could keep them all straight.
“Yes, that’s wonderful; I’ll be sure to pass it on,” Sabira said, trying to hurry the woman up. “Now, where did you say he went?”
“I didn’t,” Inamil replied, her infuriating smile not slipping an inch, “because I don’t know. But Gared did ask me if the Church maintained a library in Stormreach. I of course mentioned the Sanctuary, which does have an extensive archival collection…”
The Sanctuary was, in theory, an asylum for worshipers of the Silver Flame whose struggles against evil had driven them past the brink of sanity. Better known to locals as “the Catacombs,” the asylum was an imposing domed structure crowned and flanked by great bowls of flickering argent fire. Sabira had been there a time or two to help out a Flamer friar with his wayward niece. But despite its orderly appearance and religious cast, the so-called Sanctuary wasn’t any different from a dozen other similar institutions throughout Khorvaire-it was a place to get rid of the inconvenient and incriminating without actually killing them; nothing more.
Which didn’t explain why Greddark had decided to pay the place a last-minute visit on their way out of Stormreach. But considering that the first of the four bells that marked the hour were beginning to echo throughout the enclave, it wasn’t an answer she was going to get right now.
Sabira thanked the elf woman for her time and then gestured for the others to follow her. Skraad had rejoined the group and Sabira outlined the basics of the expedition to the three of them as they headed through the Maker’s Gate and back out into the Marketplace. She kept it simple; there would be time enough for details when they were in the air.
The Sanctuary was just to the north of the Maker’s Gate in a small, oddly-shaped courtyard that housed only the asylum and a central fountain. The flagstone plaza had three obvious exits: The Maker’s Gate in the southeast and two other openings in the high walls that surrounded the courtyard, one in the west and one in the northwest. The western exit led to the ramshackle district known as Soulgate and the northwestern one opened up into the area of the Marketplace that housed the entrances to both the Kundarak and Jorasco enclaves.
Of course, in Stormreach, you’d be a fool to ignore the less obvious exits-namely, the ladders. For just as Stormreach was a city of many eras, cultures, and races, it was also a city of many layers.
There was the city proper, the only one that most people ever saw, where the more civilized races held sway-humans, elves, halflings, and dwarves. Sabira didn’t consider the half-orcs to be civilized, and after today, the idea of warforged holding anything resembling “sway” was clearly laughable, but Stormreach did have a sizeable population of both of those races, as well.
Then there was the city below. Consisting primarily of the sewers formed from remnants of the giants’ ancient plumbing system, this underground world housed tribes of kobolds and troglodytes, gang hideouts, and all manner of wandering creatures.
Finally, there was the city above, a series of rooftops, balconies, and wooden bridges accessed by the ladders that clung tenaciously to the sides of buildings and walls in every district of Stormreach. The domain of cutpurses and petty thieves who knew the Stormreach Guard was too lazy to follow them up into the heights, the city above also offered a way to cross most of any given district without ever touching the ground-as long as you were nimble of foot and immune to random attacks of vertigo, that was. Since Sabira was neither, she tended to steer clear of that part of the city almost as much as she did the sewers, and the Deneith and Kundarak enclaves. And the House Cannith enclave now too.
Though give her another week here and she’d probably find herself forced to travel the heights just to avoid all the people out for her blood. Good thing she wasn’t staying even another hour.
Since she wanted to avoid the Kundarak enclave, Sabira headed toward the Soulgate exit. As she led the group past the fountain, she spied Friar Renau on the other side. She paused, debating whether or not to ask the old man if he’d seen Greddark when the dwarf saved her the trouble by hurrying through the asylum gates, tucking something into his shirt. When he caught sight of Sabira, he jogged over to her. The last of the four bells was just beginning to ring.
“What are you standing around for? We’re going to be late!”
Sabira opened her mouth to respond and then thought better of it. He was right-even if his jaunt into the Catacombs was part of the reason they were behind schedule. It was just one more thing she would deal with once they were aboard the airship and headed out to the Menechtarun.