Chapter Sixteen: The Spark

Kindle led Scanlan down a long hallway, but did not speak a word. Refused to even look at him, in fact. He kept his gaze fixed stonily ahead, his face set in hard lines, his posture arrow-straight and stiff. He walked with a stride so long Scanlan nearly had to run to keep up.

"Hey, can you slow down a tad?" Scanlan panted. "I got little legs here."

Kindle snorted condescendingly, but slowed his pace a fraction.

As he settled into the still slightly too-fast pace, Scanlan eyed his surroundings with a little bit of apprehension. Daystar had ordered him locked in a cell, but this didn't look like a prison. The hallway was warmly lit, with sturdy wooden doors every ten feet or so down both sides. Threadbare red carpet covered the floor, muffling their footsteps. He surmised that the doors must lead to the cultists' chambers. Surely they'd turn a corner into a dank dungeon at any moment, where he'd find the iron bars and thin straw pallet and leaky piss-pot that would serve as his accommodations for the evening.

He'd spent nights in worse places. But that didn't mean he had to like it.

Finally, he couldn't take the quiet any longer. "Look," he said to Kindle, "I know you're pissed that I lied to you. But it was only because I had to protect myself. You understand, right?"

"You made me look like a fool," Kindle growled. "You undermined Daystar's trust in me. I will be punished for allowing you into our sanctum under false pretenses, whatever your reason." He stopped in front of one of the wooden doors and flung it open. "This is your room for the night. You will remain here in meditation, and someone will retrieve you for your trial at dawn."

Peering inside, Scanlan found it resembled less a prison cell than a monk's cell—which made sense, in hindsight. Though smaller and more spare than he liked, it was clean and furnished comfortably enough. A proper bed lay along one wall, and a desk was pushed up against another with a simple wooden chair beside it. There was an oil lamp and a washbasin on the opposite side, and a chamber pot tucked under the bed. The lack of windows was a little off-putting, but it otherwise reminded Scanlan of a room in any decent inn. He nodded in approval and pleasant surprise as he entered, then turned back to Kindle. "Thank—"

The door swung closed and the lock engaged with a sharp metallic clack. He was alone.

And he could start to plan.

After giving Kindle a few minutes to leave the area, Scanlan tried the door. As he'd expected, the knob rattled but didn't turn. He inspected it as closely as he could, trying to determine what kind of lock it was, decipher the mechanism, find its weaknesses—but finally had to admit defeat, able to conclude only that the door was indeed locked. He was no Vax'ildan. Picking this thing open was simply not an option, even if he had the tools to do it. Which he didn't.

That wasn't to say he had no way out, of course. He had a Knock spell that could open this door with nothing but a few notes hummed under his breath. Trouble was, that one was noisy. No matter how quietly he cast it, it had the unfortunate side effect of causing a booming sound that could be heard for hundreds of feet around. He'd get out of the room, sure, but it would bring the entire cult down on his head in an instant. His chances of escaping the compound at all would be reduced to approximately nil, and he could certainly kiss those potions goodbye.

Plan B was at least quieter, if not without its own serious risk: he could simply Dimension Door out into the hallway. That could get sticky if there was anyone out there, and if there were, he would have no way of knowing until it was too late. But if he was quick enough, he might be able to cast Invisibility on himself long enough to give them the slip.

That plan was probably his best bet. His only other option was to just wait for dawn and let someone fetch him for this "trial," in which case he'd have no chance at getting his hands on the potions, and he would doubtless not be allowed back in until he'd killed Percy. And that simply wasn't going to happen. So he had to take matters into his own hands, and he had to do it tonight.

He would go in the wee hours of the morning, he decided. Stay here for the remainder of the day, lull the cultists into a false sense of security. Wait for everyone to go to sleep. Then make his move.

He looked up at the walls and frowned. Right. No windows. Fuck. That would make keeping track of the time very difficult, indeed. For worshippers of a sun god, these people sure didn't seem to like sunlight very much.

Well, he'd just have to go with his gut. Twelve hours, roughly, would bring him to about two or three in the morning, which seemed a good time to do this. In the meantime, he'd find something to do to keep himself occupied.

That was easier said than done. There wasn't much to do here besides read, but the only two books in here were religious texts: a faintly glowing edition of The Light of Pelor, and a well-worn copy of In the Sun Father's Hand. Not exactly scintillating stuff.

Then again, he was here to gather intel on this cult, and Percy had said that Radiance's passphrase had come from one of these books. Maybe he could gain a little insight by skimming through them. At the very least, it would pass the time.

The Light of Pelor turned out to be pretty standard scripture: starting with a creation myth, it went on to recount Pelor's teachings to mortals, then told pf a rebellion that created the evils of the world. Not much different from the holy books of many other faiths, from what Scanlan understood. Of course, he'd never had much use for religion, so he continued flipping through the gilt-edged pages for what he guessed to be a few hours, searching for anything that looked useful. Nothing jumped out at him, so he eventually snapped the book closed and slipped it into his bag. Maybe Pike would be able to get more out of it.

The other book, In the Sun Father's Hand, was something different altogether. The work of a self-proclaimed prophet named Tephos, it described her works and particular beliefs. Tephos advocated for an almost anarchic society, in which all property was shared and government was unnecessary. Civilization beyond the most basic and primitive agricultural communities was seen as a curse—she even viewed organized religion with suspicion, insisting that the Dawnfather would intervene of His own accord if necessary, and that no cleric could claim a closer connection to Him than could any other person.

Aside from herself, of course. Naturally, Tephos had believed herself to be some kind of chosen one. She had performed numerous "miracles" to prove it, but nothing she described couldn't be attributed to any reasonably powerful and charismatic sorcerer. Scanlan decided she was probably either a charlatan or just crazy—and the fact that these people were eating it up said a lot about them, too.

But it went a long way toward explaining their motives. Scanlan could understand why a group that espoused Tephos's beliefs would have a problem with the whole concept of nobility, and why they'd want to tear down any semblance of a ruling family, or even a council. Not that he agreed with it. The kind of communal rule they wanted might work just fine on paper, but he knew how people could be. Greedy, selfish, and paranoid, if left solely to their own devices they would tear each other apart. He'd seen it happen, in the aftermath of the goblin raid that had razed his hometown and killed his—

Scanlan shook his head, scowling. Nope, not going there right now. He had a job to do, and now was not the time to wallow in long-past trauma.

Time. What time was it?

He stood and stretched, guessing by the stiffness of his spine and the numbness of his ass that he'd been sitting here long enough. It was time to get this show on the road. He tucked the second book into his bag, and took a deep breath. Here goes everything.

Pressing an ear to the door, Scanlan listened for any sound from the hallway. Hearing none, he sang a few notes to conjure a Dimension Door out of the room, and stepped through—

—to find himself face-to-face with two very surprised cultists.

"Shit!" Scanlan squeaked. He backpedaled as they reached for him, cast Invisibility on himself, and thanked whatever Gods might be listening for the carpeted floor that muffled his movements. The cultists sounded the alarm, shouting for their compatriots to get up and chase him down.

Fortunately, they kept their search confined to the corridor, at least at first. Using his size to his advantage, he managed to slip out of the gathering crowd and toward the main chamber. He left the commotion behind as he darted on silent feet toward the throne on the dais.

Reaching under the chair, he found the chest and dragged it out. Fuck, it was heavier than it looked. There was no way he was carrying this thing out of here That meant he had to get it open.

Shit, shit, shit!

Scanlan glanced over his shoulder. The cultists were still gathered in the hallway, shouting and flailing around for him. Under other circumstances, it might have been funny.

But they were making an awful lot of noise. So maybe, just maybe…

He cast Knock on the chest.

It was even louder than he'd expected, and he winced as the lid prang open with a booming sound of knuckles on wood. The cultists went silent for an instant, then a renewed shout went up as Scanlan saw his hands shimmer into visibility. Grabbing two vials from the chest, he shoved them into bag, stood, and ran toward the spot where he and Kindle had arrived.

One of the cultists shouted something in Celestial, and the ground shook violently. Scanlan stumbled and fell. Something crunched. But he surged to his feet and cast another Dimension Door, and threw himself out into the predawn streets of Whitestone.