Perhaps the Infiltrator is right. I don't like his narrow-minded outlook, and I do not agree that I did the wrong thing, but he is right in that, without trust, our order will fall apart. A lack of trust between us three could do far more damage than the death of any one of us.
Very late in the night, after hours of searching, the Empty Hand spotted a bloody footprint near an old, abandoned temple. The blood was dry and crusted over with dirt, but it was something. A trail of such footprints led towards the temple and stopped at a wall. I noticed a blood stain in the corner of a three-foot-wide grate.
It was unwise to enter that night, so the others decided to return to the temple. I insisted on staying behind, alone, to watch – this was too good an opportunity, after too long, to pass up. The winged woman immediately said she would watch with me. Besides her conspicuousness, I do not trust her. Her arrival was just too convenient, to appear out of the sky and land in the midst of a battle, to know just as much about our mission as was implied by the early pages of my journal, just as we were approaching a city of assassins, to claim me as her charge among all of us – the only one someone who read the journal could know enough about to appear honest. Then she disappeared just long enough for the assassin to find me and take me away, and, since the moment I mentioned it, has hovered about me like a fly around a pile of dung. She seems intensely interested in these murders for someone who is merely here to protect me, as if, like the leader of the thieves' guild, she has a personal interest. Her continued presence is both irritating and disturbing. It seems I can not even relieve my bowels without her standing over me, and I must constantly wonder what she is trying to discover, or whether she is merely trying to build up enough trust that she can kill me safely.
I tried to convince the woman to return to the temple and let me fend for myself, but soon, all of the others, except the priest, who had his own business to attend to, were committed to staying. Although I would be better concealed if alone, they did not want me to put myself in danger. I should be grateful, I suppose, that they care. We all kept watch together in a nearby abandoned cottage.
Late in the night, eight or nine armed men circled the temple and disappeared behind it. We saw nothing else, but even that minimal information proved quite helpful.
In the morning, the priest returned, with the foreign guardsman, who he had sent for. The man told us that he was forbidden from investigating this murder any further, and I could see the regret and even shame in his eyes when he heard about the trail of bloody footprints.
The Empty Hand and I thought as if with a single mind, and before I could speak, he mentioned the armed men who had entered during the night. The guardsman's eyes lit up. Clearly, he said, he had an obligation to investigate this blatant disregard of the town's law.
Everything I hear lately comes down to this town's law. Why doesn't the Infiltrator understand the importance of what we're here to do? The laws of this World of Man are artificial. He must realize that our mission transcends this law. He is concerned that some day, I will again defy the will of the others and jeopardize the mission. I am concerned that some day, he will choose the law of the land over our mission.
My writing is losing cohesion. The guardsman has no mission such as ours, that I know of at least. He swore to his superiors that he would not further investigate the murders, and even the excuse we gave him must have offended his honor. Honor is a word that seems frequently to escape his lips. Once or twice, our master mentioned swordsmen whose entire lives were devoted to the concept, but I can not remember what they were called.
We searched the back wall of the temple, but found no opening that the criminals may have used during the night. Lacking any better entrance, we opened the grate (which squeaked loudly), and climbed inside.
After the stories we had heard from the guardsman, it was surprising how easy it turned out to be to overcome our target. Finding him, however, was more difficult. The basement of the temple was old and dusty. Everything we found was rotting or rusting or broken, and the stench of vegetable decay pervaded the place. Soon after entering, we passed the coffins of “the Honored Dead,” as the lintel was inscribed, and skeletons burst out to attack us. The guardsman fought impressively, but in the end, the priest destroyed them all with his power. Our primary foes in this place, however, were not the undead monsters that inhabited it, but the physical barriers set all about. The first was discovered by the guardsman shortly after the skeletons. Walking down a narrow hallway, a tarp collapsed underneath him, dropping him twenty feet onto dozens of sword blades, affixed to the ground by their hilts. One impaled him, and he could no longer walk after the Infiltrator and the Empty Hand pulled him up. The priest's healing solved that problem, however, and the rest of us jumped or climbed across.
Shortly afterward, we found the armed men we'd seen the night before, one of whom was a half-orc. The battle that ensued quickly turned against them, and the last two surrendered. The guardsman and the Infiltrator took one of the men into the hall and closed the door, while the priest interrogated the other.
Though I realize that torture is occasionally necessary, I was surprised to see the fervor with which the priest conducted it. After a few angry threats, he pushed the man against the wall and used a powerful spell to fuse him to the stone. The man was certainly willing to talk after that. He told us that they entered the temple through a trap door in an abandoned cottage. Their leader was the man we sought – tall and blond-haired, with eyes that glowed red on occasion, and he had hired them months before as bandits. The bandits feared for their lives in his presence, which made me wonder why they worked with him. The one the priest was interrogating told us where to find their leader.
Leaving the one bandit fused into stone and the other tied up, we explored down the hall, as directed by the bandits. Thought it appeared to be a long corridor, we soon discovered that it was really a very short one, painted at the end to create the illusion of depth. The Infiltrator searched ahead with the guardsman, wary of traps, but immediately after they passed, an enormous slab of stone fell smoothly from the ceiling, trapping the two of them in a dead end. The Empty Hand, who was close behind them, barely escaped being crushed. The stone sealed off a cramped alcove, reaching from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling.
I thought there had to be a release mechanism somewhere, for it would have foolish to put so much effort into such a trap without being able to use it more than once, and I wanted to search for it, but as the Empty Hand reminded me, it would have been foolish to run off in a dangerous place without the guardsman and the Infiltrator. As usual, he and the others chose a path that depended more on strength than on intellect. They began to chip away at the base of the stone.
As I estimated it, the stone was about four feet deep, five wide and eight high, making it weigh on the order of twenty-five thousand pounds. I was shocked when I saw the Empty Hand and the winged woman insert their fingers into the holes they had made and lift it six inches off the ground. With the help of the Tracker and the guardsman, they lifted it three feet, which was enough for them to escape. I should have realized, however, that whatever mechanism was in place to lower the stone must have been strong enough to lift it. No doubt the pulleys and gears hidden above the wall worked in our favor.
Somewhat shaken, we continued on our search. We passed by a statue which spoke through the use of magic. I remember precisely what it said, since we passed it many times, and each time, it made the same demand. “Welcome supplicants, and may you bow before the might of the bitch queen.” According to the priest, this queen is supposed to be the goddess of that abandoned temple.
There were only two remaining items of interest, before we encountered the murderer. First, we found a room full of spider webs, though the webs did not expand at all into the surrounding areas. An enormous spider had made its nest there, and had indiscriminately trapped whatever creatures happened by, including an undead ghoul, who I would have thought was totally inedible, even for such a creature as that. We dealt with both the ghoul and the spider without much difficulty.
We then cleared a path through the webs, and followed several long, winding tunnels, each of which led to an open coffin in the town's graveyard. Soon, we discovered who had been using the tunnels. We saw what looked like a group of human corpses eating other corpses. These were more ghouls, and disgusted, the priest used his power against them, and they shriveled into dust.
I suppose there was one more event to describe, though it was of little importance. There was a room three feet deep in garbage, where we found another of the creatures with stinging tentacles that we encountered when fighting the orc tracker. This one was small, and gave us little trouble. The reason it is worth mentioning at all is that after the Empty Hand killed the beast, and the Infiltrator returned from searching the room, the guardsman stepped away and stopped just short of leaving us, as if those who would wade through garbage were far beneath his station. I have the impression that earlier in his life, perhaps quite recently, he was well above the rank of guardsman. As a courtesy to him, I used a simple spell to clean the filth and the odor off of the others.
Soon, our search was at an end. We found a room with a casket, and, while many of the others searched out the room, the priest and I stayed near the doorway. The murderer then made his appearance, leaping down from the ceiling onto the priest. He matched the description we had been given, right down to his eyes, which flashed red.
Expecting a climatic battle, I was a bit surprised when the priest turned this creature into dust. If he was indeed a vampire, as the others suggested, the abilities of this priest far exceeded my expectations. Though it is not the time yet, I must at least consider the possibility that he might aid us in our final battle.
The casket radiated healing magic, which seemed odd. I do not know why a vampire would need such a power, and I suppose it unlikely that I will find out, since the guardsmen, who were waiting for us outside, took the casket from us.
We parted company with the guardsman and returned to the temple to rest. Although I, like the others, was thoroughly exhausted from the battles and the poor night's sleep, I told them I wished to purchase a scroll, and left. Although I did indeed acquire the scroll, my main purpose was to seek out the thieves' guild. The murderer had been killed, and I was anxious for the information promised. I waited in the tavern where I had met the assassin, but after two hours of waiting I was falling asleep at my table, so I returned to the temple. Word of our victory had not yet spread to the guild.
At night, I attempted to leave again, claiming I had business to attend to in town, but the winged woman stopped me and insisted that, whatever my business (for I would not disclose it), she would accompany me. It is still a mystery to me why she felt this necessary. Perhaps she realized that there would only be one assassin waiting for me, and wanted to shift the balance against me. Perhaps she assumed I would be abducted, and did not want to be in the temple when the others found out. And I must admit the third possibility, that she actually does have some mysterious interest in protecting me.
Regardless of the woman's motivations, I eventually managed to sneak away. She heard me an followed, but within minutes, I had successfully evaded her.
I waited outside the tavern for some time, and only found the assassin when I entered. I asked her for the promised information, and she said she would provide me with a name and location. The note she passed me before she disappeared had only a location, however. It read “Daggershark Island.”
When I told the others what I had learned, the Infiltrator was furious, and the others were none too pleased, except the Empty Hand, who remained largely silent. The Infiltrator was shocked that I would leave on my own to retrieve information, not because he thought it foolish to risk myself (which, thinking back, it very well may have been), but because I had dealt with thieves – because I had ignored a single law of a single town which even the townspeople regularly and unrepentantly disobey, and because I had made a decision on my own, disregarding his advice from days before.
At one point I became angry. He said that there were three of us, and the three of us must make decisions together – that my opinion was not more important than the two of theirs combined. Something about the way he said it made me jump at him, and I said that if my opinion had been considered more carefully in the past, there would still be four of us, that the town could have defended itself against the drow. I regret saying that; it was unfair of me. The Infiltrator bears no blame for the Tracker's death for which I don't hold an equal share.
Soon our argument became repetitive. I will always choose what is best for our mission. Though I will consult with the others, there are rare times when something has to be done, and I will do it. The Infiltrator spent a long time trying to convince me that I was untrustworthy, that to disobey a law of the town was worse than losing information about the mission, and that to do anything against the will of himself and the Empty Hand was worse yet than both. I regret that I had to consort with thieves, and I regret that I had to do what the Infiltrator saw as wrong, but there is nothing more important than our mission.
It is unfortunate that our argument occurred in front of the priest and the woman. Both continually offered advice and scolding of their own. The priest was shocked that I had put myself in danger, or that I would do anything against my companions' wishes, and the woman put on a good show of feigning concern, and of struggling to mend our differences. In the end, my emotions got the better of me, and I foolishly admitted to the woman that I thought she was an assassin, telling her that our business with the was finished, and she should return to her guild. That will only make things more difficult.
In the end, the Empty Hand said that our argument could not be resolved tonight. I agreed, though it took a few more minutes for the Infiltrator to give up. He wanted to take some sort of action, though neither he nor the Empty Hand could not decide what – our experience on such conflicts is far too limited. I told him that I would accept whatever penance he required, though he did not think this sufficient to restore trust, and I suppose I agree. Trust is not gained through punishment. Nevertheless, whatever judgment they pass will be acceptable to me.
Many things that the others said had their effect. It was indeed foolish to put myself in such clear danger. It was possible, even likely, that the thieves would kill me now that I had done their work for them, and it is also possible, as the Infiltrator suggests, that the thieves are merely directing me to another of their own enemies, and that “Daggershark Island” has no bearing on our mission at all. And it is true that trust is essential to our mission. Our master said as much, though in a different context. He said that we should gather together people we trust, to help us in our mission. If we can not trust each other, how can we ever trust others?
The Infiltrator has scaled the temple, and sits atop the roof, meditating. I took a moment from my own musings to notice that. The Empty Hand sleeps soundly, finding in dreams what the rest of us must struggle through awake. I have ruined my flute through careless, harsh strokes with the knife, and it is beyond my ability now to tune it properly. I am in a poor state of mind to carve an instrument that can produce beauty.