“I wasn’t there, brother. If you’ll be all right alone for a moment, let me fetch the master and the prelate. They’ve been asking after you.”
Teron nodded weakly, and he heard sandaled footsteps depart the room.
He lay there for a while, trying to recollect his thoughts and memories, and inventory his known wounds. Then he realized that he was in no imminent danger and that his best course of action right now was simply to rest, so he tried … and failed, because after a few moments of calm, his brain started working on the memories again.
Soon he heard footsteps approaching. He opened his eyes just long enough to see Quardov, Keiftal, and one or two others enter the room. Most of the people stopped at Teron’ side. One person—Teron recognized master Keiftal, thanks to his shuffling step—went around his cot to the other side.
The imperious voice of the prelate split the air. “Tell me what happened.”
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” said Teron.
“I insist you tell us. Now.”
“My reverence,” said a voice that Teron recognized as the attendant, “he is very weak. He has lost a lot of blood.”
“Tell me what you know,” said Teron. “I’ll see if you’re right.”
The prelate sniffed, clearly annoyed. “One of the … brothers … claims that he saw you give the signal for invasion and then repair into the scriptorium below the cathedral. He went for assistance. While he was gathering others, he chanced to see a glowing, pulsating object shoot from the scriptorium window and arc over the rise.”
Teron raised one hand halfway, then let it drop.
“You wish to add some keen insight?” said Quardov, who, although he’d been annoyed at having to speak, now showed affront at being interrupted.
“I think … it was a bird familiar … with a light spell.”
“That would make sense, my reverence,” boomed Keiftal, his nasal voice swamping the room. “The flapping wings of a bird would seem to make the light flicker, would they not?”
“Enough,” said Quardov. “As the witness and the others exited the building, they saw a pair of thieves exit the scriptorium and flee up the same rise. They gave chase, but the pair chanced upon a quintet of horses and rode away.”
“Brought there … by the familiar,” said Teron.
“Yes, quite,” said Quardov. “I’m sure we were all aware of that.” He sighed. “Then the brothers searched the scriptorium and the catacombs. They found you and took you for dead. But… you were not. They also found other bodies. The thieves you killed?”
Teron nodded.
“One had a rather unusual injury—black burns upon his breast. Burnt through to the bone, I am told. Tell me, how did you manage that?”
Teron opened his eyes. Quardov loomed over him. On the opposite side of the bed, Keiftal gazed down on him with a look of grave concern. Teron closed his eyes again and let his head sink back on the pillow. “I don’t remember. One of the thieves probably had a torch, and I used it for a weapon.”
“A torch?” said Quardov. “We found no torch, but instead a bulls-eye lantern. Are you suggesting that the thieves took a torch, but left a lantern? Preposterous!”
“It could have been a wayward spell, my reverence,” said Keiftal.
“You will tell me what happened!” said Quardov.
Teron didn’t react. Instead, he paused for a heartbeat, and then started softly snoring. He twitched one hand for good measure.
“We should let him sleep, my reverence,” said the attendant.
Quardov growled and stomped from the room. As his steps faded, Teron popped his eyes back open and caught Keiftal’s sleeve as the old master shuffled his way around the bed.
“Keiftal,” he whispered. “How many bodies did you find?”
The old monk glanced down the hallway, then raised two fingers.
Teron scowled.
Quardov waited until Keiftal had left the hospice and shut the door behind him. “That was an utter waste of my time.”
“I apologize, my reverence,” said Keiftal. “He has been badly injured.”
Quardov closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. “And now we have nothing to do but wait.”
Praxle’s shrill scream echoed through the air.
Quardov snorted and began to walk down the hall. “At least such sounds are no strangers to this place.”
“My reverence,” said Master Keiftal, trotting around to be in front of the prelate, “We should not wait.”
“Don’t stand so close to me,” said Quardov.
Keiftal retreated a step or two.
“We must wait, Keiftal,” Quardov said. “What other choice do we have?”
“We must pursue!”
“With what?” asked Quardov. “The thieves fled on horseback. Magebred horses, no less, and five in number, so even if we did have a nag in the stable, they’d still get away! We could send a runner to alert the military, but what would they find? Nothing! We can give them no more than, ‘Watch for a large spherical object,’ and that is hardly helpful in matters such as this! By the Sovereign Host, we don’t even know what the thieves look like! What more would you have me do, you impudent wretch? This is all your fault anyway! You were to safeguard that Sphere!”
“Send Teron after them.”
Quardov laughed, a hysterical laugh of bitter grief and unbearable stress. “Do you really think that one monk is going to outperform the entire Aundairian military?”
“That’s what he does,” said Keiftal. “You said yourself that you didn’t think the military would find anything. He’s much more … unobtrusive than a battalion.”
“We cannot use him,” said Quardov. “The thieves fought him in the catacombs. They know what he looks like.”
“And he knows what they look like,” said Keiftal. “He’s the only one who does.”
Quardov opened his mouth to respond, but the words didn’t come. He saw the logic and found himself running out of energy. He chose to make a small concession and said, “You make some sense, Keiftal. For a change. But despite your reasoning, it will be too late. He will be too slow in recovering from his wounds.”
“You are right, my reverence,” said Keiftal. “It will take too long for him to recover naturally.”
“What are you saying?”
“I suggest that you lay your hands on Teron and petition Dol Arrah to heal his wounds.”
“What?” gasped Quardov. “Heal him? Heal that…that… that travesty? His kind weren’t even supposed to survive the war!”
Keiftal’s eyes widened. “What? What do you mean?”
“Don’t you understand?” The prelate lowered his voice to a hiss. “They are an embarrassment, an affront, a festering blight on the fair face of Dol Arrah! The Quiet Touch never should have been. We never should have allowed them to be!”
Quardov paced back and forth, turning like a wild dog on a short tether. He took a deep breath and continued. “Don’t you see? That’s why we sent them on their final missions. When the Treaty of Thronehold was being negotiated and peace was approaching, we sent them out on suicide missions. Remove key Thrane military personnel to advance our position in the coming peacetime and blot out their foul existence from our history! They should all be dead, gone, vanished from the face of Eberron, and he, he has the gall, the temerity, the cold vindictiveness to live!”
Keiftal stood, his mouth agape. Then he shook off his surprise, swallowed hard, and looked at Quardov with a cool, detached gaze. “Then, my reverence,” he said, “the Thrane Sphere is as good as lost.”
Praxle fought to lose consciousness, strove to dive into blissful blackness, but the broken rafters wouldn’t let him. The rafters dangled him like a fish on the line. They summoned the fingers. The fingers sent searing fire up and down his body, bouncing him back and forth between the abyss and the light. Praxle tried to remember, but he couldn’t. There was only pain and the dread of pain.