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."

Sephris stopped, took a deep breath, and gathered himself.

Jak and Magadon stared at him, too dumbfounded to speak.

"But my wants in this matter are secondary, First of Five," Sephris said softly to Cale. "And two and two are and always shall be four. What is, is."

Cale could think of nothing to say. Sephris had allowed himself to return from the dead when his high priest had called because he had thought it his duty as a priest, as a Chosen. The latter realization made Cale squirm in his chair. But he reminded himself that he had made no promises to the Shadowlord.

Sephris smiled at him, then asked in a conspiratorial tone, "You see it, don't you?" The smile was not friendly. "It is an ugly truth, what we bear. What you will bear is uglier than most. Prepare yourself."

Cale decided to let the reference to "we" pass. Instead, he said, "You know why we've come, Sephris. Tell us what we want to know and we will leave you be."

Sephris replied, "Of course I know why you've come. Do you?"

Cale shook his head. "I do not understand."

"You are a variable in a larger equation. I am looking through you, through all of you, trying to solve for the darkness behind you." After a pause, he added, "In all permutations one thing always occurs: Many will die because of you, First of Five."

Cale's skin went gooseflesh. He could not look at Magadon or Jak, not then.

"You do not know that," he said to Sephris, and his words sounded empty even to him.

"Do I not?" asked the loremaster.

"Then help us," Jak said to Sephris. "We don't want that to happen."

"Wants are secondary," Sephris said with a nasty smirk.

Cale could take no more of Sephris's self-pity and deliberate obfuscation. He stared daggers at the loremaster.


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