Session Twenty-Seven --- 09/06/26
1832 AS --- Namal 28
The Well Beneath the Name
There are secrets, dear reader, and there are secret doors.
The distinction is largely architectural.
Yesterday I wrote that the Monastery of the Open Hand was keeping
secrets. Today we found the door.
I should learn to be more careful about what I put into writing.
We awoke with two purposes before us. First, we needed to speak with
Samuel about the Wells. Second, Bedrock's missing books remained very
much missing, and I have developed a particular dislike for books about
immensely powerful magical entities wandering away without permission.
Books should not wander.
People who carry them do.
Roon and I noticed two suspicious figures moving through the monastery.
One appeared to be an elf, and one of them carried books that looked
very much like those we had been seeking.
We followed.
I should mention here that among the monks I have been calling myself
Ishmel. There are circumstances in which introducing oneself as
Faban Colon is useful. There are other circumstances in which a less
memorable name is preferable. A monastery containing ancient secrets,
missing books, infernal history, and people whispering around corners
seemed increasingly to belong to the second category.
The two figures disappeared around a corner.
This was irritating.
We had been following them rather well.
A search revealed part of the wall slightly ajar.
A secret passage.
Of course.
I would like it recorded that yesterday I specifically suspected there
might be something literally beneath this monastery. I take no
pleasure in being correct about such things.
Very little pleasure.
Perhaps some.
Beyond the wall stretched a long dark corridor leading toward a spiral
staircase. Certain stones protruded strangely from the walls and floor.
There was an unfamiliar symbol above the stairs. Magic lingered there as
well, evocation by its nature and therefore unlikely to have been
installed for decorative purposes.
We reached the obvious scholarly conclusion.
Traps.
Then we entered.
There are moments when I wonder whether knowledge makes us wiser or
simply allows us to describe our mistakes more precisely.
Roon Demonstrates the Trap
Roon descended first.
He spotted two figures below.
Unfortunately, the figures also became aware of Roon. Plate armor
possesses many virtues. Subtlety is not among them.
Roon announced that we came in peace.
The corridor responded by shooting him with what I can only describe as
an argument against diplomacy.
An enormous bolt struck him and drove him backward into the wall,
pinning him there.
This was not a crossbow bolt in any civilized understanding of the term.
It was closer to siege equipment. I have seen smaller pieces of lumber
used in houses.
Roon survived.
Naturally.
We freed him and reconsidered the wisdom of pursuing people who knew the
traps through a passage in which we decidedly did not.
This is what scholars call acquiring evidence.
Adventurers usually call it getting shot.
We withdrew.
Samuel
Eventually we did what we had intended to do before secret doors,
suspicious elves, missing books, and siege weaponry complicated the
morning.
We spoke with Samuel.
We told him about the missing books. We told him about the people
carrying them. We told him about the passage beneath the monastery.
Then we asked about the Well.
Samuel told us we had already met him.
I dislike sentences that rearrange previous conversations.
Samuel is the Well.
His true name is Gustan.
He has concealed himself here beneath the identity of Samuel, and
suddenly a great many peculiarities about this monastery became
considerably less peculiar while simultaneously becoming far more
concerning.
Gustan believes the other Wells have been compromised.
Nearly all of them.
Korog may remain protected by the Feywoods, but otherwise the pattern we
have feared appears to be exactly that: a pattern.
The Wells are not merely threatened.
Someone has been reaching them.
One by one.
We spoke of Salazar and the Wand.
There are apparently ways into the Hells. This is useful knowledge in
precisely the same way that knowing there is a staircase into a volcano
is useful knowledge.
One can go there.
One should perhaps not.
If Salazar has the Wand and has taken it into the Hells, following him
there would mean confronting him upon ground of his choosing, surrounded
by powers inclined toward his interests and generally opposed to ours.
I am willing to do a great many foolish things in pursuit of knowledge.
I do attempt to maintain standards.
Gustan gave us something better than a road into Hell.
He told us the Wand leaves a trail.
Wherever the Wand of Wells travels, it leaves behind an arcane mark,
something beyond ordinary sight and apparently tied to the astral.
A footprint, perhaps, if footprints were made by immensely dangerous
artifacts moving through the fabric of magic.
If that trail can be perceived, perhaps it can be followed.
And if it can be followed, perhaps Salazar is not as lost to us as he
believes.
Then came the books.
The missing books do not simply describe the Wells.
They know where the Wells are.
They change.
They update.
They record the locations of the Wells as those locations change.
I have spent much of my life arguing that books are dangerous.
I did not expect one of the reasons to be that they might tell our
enemies where reality keeps its most vulnerable pieces.
Whoever stole those volumes did not steal history.
They stole a map.
The People Beneath the Monastery
Eventually we returned below.
This time the secret halls did not merely shoot at us.
They had occupants.
Six of them.
They were not monks surprised by our intrusion. They were armed,
organized, dangerous, and composed of enough different peoples to make
coincidence an increasingly ridiculous explanation. Human. Goliath.
Minotaur. Elf. Others.
Whatever bound them together, it was purpose rather than ancestry.
Then diplomacy ended.
The human moved with alarming speed and poison.
The Goliath came through a doorway with a scimitar and the sort of
confidence usually produced by being very large.
The Minotaur was a Minotaur, which is sufficient description when one is
in the same corridor.
Steel came out.
Magic followed.
So did blood.
I summoned the many blades of Melkior.
I have used that spell often enough that perhaps I should feel some
scholarly embarrassment at my continued enthusiasm for it.
I do not.
There is something deeply satisfying about presenting one's enemies with
a localized region of rapidly rotating cutlery and allowing them to
reconsider their decisions.
At one point I moved the blades across two of them at once.
The result was educational.
Mostly for me.
The Goliath fell.
The Minotaur fell.
The others followed.
I would like to offer some elegant account of the battle: a description
of formation, maneuver, bladework, spellcraft, and the precise moment at
which victory became inevitable.
There was no such moment.
There rarely is.
There was shouting. There was blood. There were people falling and
rising and trying very hard to make sure the people falling were the
other people.
We endured.
Five of them did not.
The sixth ran.
One Did Not Escape
The last of them ran.
He fled through the trapped corridor.
This was clever.
He knew where the traps were.
We did not.
Some of them triggered anyway.
For a moment it appeared he might actually get away.
I objected.
There are times when scholarship requires patience, careful observation, and the quiet accumulation of evidence.
There are other times when it requires Dimension Door.
I stepped through space and appeared ahead of him.
He had expected pursuit.
He had not expected me.
The surprise was apparently persuasive.
He surrendered.
I did what any responsible scholarly bard would do when presented with a living source of information.
I tied him up.
Very tightly.
Tightly enough that discomfort might encourage honesty.
There are ethical debates to be had about such methods.
I may have them later.
For now, six attackers entered that fight.
Five died.
One became a prisoner.
This is much better than one escaping.
Dead enemies keep secrets.
Prisoners, with sufficient incentive, occasionally answer questions.
Whoever sent these people may still discover that we found the passage.
They may still learn that we found the missing books' trail.
They may still learn that we spoke with Gustan.
But not from this man.
Not yet.
Ink Beneath the Open Hand
Yesterday I buried Bridget.
Yesterday I wrote that secrets whispered in the corners of this
monastery.
Today one of those corners opened.
Behind it we found traps, armed men, stolen knowledge, and evidence that
someone has been preparing for the same struggle we have only gradually
learned we are fighting.
I keep returning to Gustan.
Samuel.
Gustan.
A Well wearing a man's name.
There is something strangely appropriate about it.
I carry a book beneath another name.
I walk these halls as Ishmel.
Samuel walks them as Gustan.
All of us seem to be hiding truths inside smaller truths and hoping the
outer shape will be enough to keep the inner one safe.
Perhaps that is what this entire journey has become.
Salazar hides.
The Wand leaves a trail.
The Wells hide.
Books reveal them.
The monastery hides its history.
Someone scratches names from walls.
Gustan hides inside Samuel.
And Faban Colon walks through the Monastery of the Open Hand answering
to Ishmel.
I once believed secrecy was a form of protection.
I am less certain of that now.
The missing books were protected.
Gustan was protected.
The monastery was protected.
Bridget was protected by all of us.
Protection is not permanence.
So tonight I will write what we know.
Gustan is the Well of the Monastery of the Open Hand.
The Wand leaves a trail.
The books reveal the Wells.
Someone beneath this monastery wanted those books badly enough to kill
for them.
And one of those people is now tied up tightly enough to reconsider several of his life choices.
Yesterday I wondered whether the secrets kept in these halls were worth
the dead we carried here.
Today I have another question.
What are they willing to kill to keep secret?
