Do Not Vanish

Maeril stopped one step inside Lantern Hall.

Rishi eased the door shut behind them. The latch clicked. Across the common room, a sleeper stirred on one of the cots, coughed twice, and settled again.

At night, the Hall had no noise to spare. Banked coals warmed the old wood. Lanterns burned low between the cots, leaving the altar in a small wash of dawn-colored light.

Rishi’s cloak was damp at the hem from the river mist. When he settled his staff beside his foot, the wood tapped the floor and sounded too loud.

Maeril pushed back her hood. Her yellow eyes found Lathander’s sun above the simple shrine, then moved to what lay below it: folded blankets, clean water within reach, an open path between the beds, and a drain cut into the floor.

“Beds first,” she murmured.

Rishi looked at her.

“Icons after.”

The tightness between Rishi’s shoulders eased.

“That was Elisa,” he said. “She wanted the light to fall on the beds first.”

Maeril glanced at the drain. “And you wanted somewhere for the blood to go.”

“Yes.”

“Practical pair.”

At the far end of the room, Elisa turned down a lantern beside the altar. Her sunrise pendant caught the light. Her hair had been pinned up badly after a long day, and loose strands clung to one cheek.

She had heard them come in. Rishi knew it by the stillness in her shoulders.

When she turned, her gaze found him first. It moved over his face, his stance, the set of his shoulders—the old count of whether he had returned whole enough to stand. Relief softened her.

Then she looked at Maeril.

The softness closed.

“Morninglord preserve me,” Elisa said. “You bring guests at this hour now?”

Maeril bowed her head. Not deeply. Not falsely.

“Maeril Greenward. Outer City witch. Soup-seller. Abjurer when the day is ambitious.” She kept her voice low for the sleeping room. “I hope I am not too late for courtesy.”

Elisa came down from the altar step, bare feet silent on the boards.

“Elisa Duskwhisper. Priest of Lathander. One of this Hall’s keepers.” Her gaze cut back to Rishi. “And sometime witness to monks deciding that ten days is sufficient warning before changing their lives.”

“I should have spoken sooner,” Rishi said.

“Yes.”

Elisa did not raise her voice. That made the word harder to meet.

At Maeril’s ankles, the tip of her tail went still. She watched Elisa, but she did not step into the silence.

Rishi moved farther into the Hall. “I wanted you to meet her before she became a rumor here.”

Elisa’s mouth tightened. “She already has.”

Maeril’s brows rose.

“Elisa,” Rishi said.

The priest held his gaze.

“Do you think a hawk can sit on my doorframe without being noticed? Or that ink stays only on your hands?” she asked. “You look toward the road every time you think no one sees you. This Hall hears things. So do I.”

She glanced toward the door.

“And when men start saying places like this stay open only because people allow it, I hear that too.”

Rishi’s hand tightened around his staff. He made his fingers loosen.

Maeril took one measured step forward.

“Then I am sorry,” she said.

Elisa looked at her sharply.

“For becoming a shape in your Hall before you saw my face.” Maeril folded her hands behind her back, one hand clasping the opposite wrist. She did not smile. “I asked for his time. His thoughts. His company, eventually, on a road.” Her gaze moved across the occupied cots. “I did not want you wondering whether I meant to become one more weight on a place already carrying too much.”

Elisa studied her. “You read that, did you?”

“Unless I have badly misunderstood this place.”

Rishi drew breath.

“Are you leaving?” Elisa asked.

The question stopped him before he could speak.

Then she added, more quietly, “And before you answer like a monk, understand which question I am asking.”

Rishi pressed his thumb against the worn wood of his staff.

“Whether I am leaving you,” he said. “Or leaving the Hall exposed.”

Elisa’s face did not change.

That was answer enough.

“I am going,” he said. “Not forever. Not tonight. Not before the book is ready. But yes. We intend to travel to Candlekeep.”

Elisa closed one hand around the sun at her throat.

“You choose a long road.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Her eyes moved to the cots. “Roads do not only take people away. They leave work behind.”

Rishi looked down at his wrapped hands.

Beside him, Maeril drew a breath through her nose. Two fingers pressed against the heel of her palm, then released. Her lips parted, but she closed them again.

Elisa looked from Maeril to him.

“I saw it happening before you named it,” she said. “You came back from the bridge with your body here and the rest of you elsewhere. Then the papers. The ink. The way you looked at maps as if they had begun speaking.”

Rishi said nothing.

“You told me you did not know where the road led.”

“I didn’t.”

“And now?”

He looked at Maeril. She neither nodded nor looked away.

“Now I know the next step.”

Elisa closed her eyes for a moment.

“That is not as comforting as you think.”

“I suppose it isn’t.”

A cot creaked. Someone murmured in sleep and turned beneath a blanket. Elisa’s head moved at once. She waited until the sleeper’s breathing steadied before looking back.

Maeril followed her gaze. Her eyes went to the water by the beds, the clear aisle, the lanterns turned low enough for rest but not darkness.

“This Hall is beautiful,” she said.

Elisa looked at her.

“Not pretty. Beautiful. There is a difference. Pretty places can lie.” Maeril tipped her chin toward the cots. “This one doesn’t.”

Elisa searched her face and found no flattery there.

“Beds first,” Maeril said again. “Clean paths. Water near the weak. Light where frightened people wake. Someone thought about bodies before doctrine. I respect that.”

Elisa’s mouth loosened. The hurt remained.

“He helped me build it.”

“I know.”

“No.” Elisa’s thumb passed over the face of her holy symbol. “You know he serves here. That is not the same.”

Maeril inclined her head. “Then tell me.”

Rishi turned toward Elisa.

“Before Baldur’s Gate, there was Waterdeep,” she said. “We turned Trollskull Manor into a sanctuary—a place for children, for the frightened, for anyone who needed a morning.”

Her thumb stopped against the sun.

“My friend Firemind was captured by the Zhentarim. Tortured. Murdered. They wanted something we had, and they wanted Rika punished for leaving them. She had been one of theirs once. We protected her. We thought that meant she was free.”

Elisa’s voice stayed level. Her grip did not.

“Then they came for the manor. They attacked it, and they burned it.”

She looked past them, toward the door Rishi had just closed.

“Places like this are not protected by being good. Sometimes being good is what makes them useful to threaten.”

“Rika bought me enough time to run,” Elisa said. “She didn’t make it.”

Her shoulders drew in by the smallest measure.

“I fled to Baldur’s Gate with a cracked holy symbol and a sack of clothes. The Zhentarim followed. For a year, I learned not to sleep deeply, not to trust kindness, not to say my name in the wrong room.”

Her gaze moved from the door to the cots, the bandage cupboard, and the altar.

“I met him at a ruined shrine. I had camped there because I was tired, and because the place still remembered dawn.”

Rishi remembered dew in the cracks between the stones. Elisa had knelt beside her pack with the broken sun held between both hands.

“This man arrived and did not ask what was wrong,” Elisa continued. “He offered no salvation. No sermon. He sat where I could reach him if I wanted.”

Her mouth softened.

“He listened. Then he led me here. The Hall was still a ruin, but he said it could rise if enough hands believed in it.”

Rishi’s throat tightened.

Elisa looked at the repaired chairs, the cots, the old boards worn clean by feet.

“We made it from broken furniture, old stone, borrowed coin, and stubbornness. We found candles, relics, beds, volunteers. He stood by the door the first day we opened because I was afraid no one would come.”

She looked at him then.

“Too many came. He stayed.”

Rishi held her gaze.

“I thought Ilmater and Lathander might have been kind enough to give me someone whose pain ran deep enough that he would never need to leave.”

Rishi closed his eyes.

“That was not fair,” Elisa said before he could answer. “Fear is rarely fair before it is spoken.”

Maeril let out a slow breath. “No. It isn’t.”

Elisa gave her a tired, sharp look. “You would know?”

A small, edged smile touched Maeril’s mouth. “Dawn-priest, I live in a doorless hut because I decided a door was a poor substitute for being ready. I know something about fear pretending to be architecture.”

Elisa almost smiled.

Rishi stepped closer to the altar. The low light caught the red cord at his wrist.

“When I met you, I had nowhere to stand,” he said. “I knew battlefields, cells, roads, and rooms where suffering was currency or punishment. You gave me a place where pain arrived and was not worshiped.”

Elisa’s thumb went still against the holy symbol.

“You gave me work that made sense. This Hall rooted me. I am not forgetting that.” Rishi ran his thumb over the smooth place on his staff. “If I walk south, it is because this place taught me that mercy can be built. Not only felt. Not only offered one wound at a time.”

Maeril lowered her eyes.

“The book is another kind of building,” he said. “Ink instead of mortar. A road instead of a wall. I am not leaving you behind, Elisa. I am carrying what we made here.”

He looked toward the cots.

“And I will not leave this Hall with a promise instead of a plan. Before I go, we settle the keys, the stores, the night watches. Who to send for. Which doors stick. Which volunteers know when to bar them and when to open them.”

Elisa’s breath trembled once.

“You should have said that sooner.”

“Yes.”

“You are very bad at knowing when people need words.”

“I am.”

Maeril made a small sound.

Rishi glanced at her. “What?”

“Nothing. I am admiring your spiritual growth.”

Elisa pressed her lips together. A breath escaped anyway, almost a laugh.

Then she sat on the nearest bench.

“I have been afraid,” she said, “that if you step away, the Hall will discover it has only been standing because you leaned against it.”

Her hand closed over the edge of the bench.

“And that people who already know how to push will notice the lean is gone.”

Rishi moved closer.

“It stands because you built it.”

“With you.”

“Yes. With me. But not only me.” He nodded toward the cots. “You made others part of it. Volunteers. Patients. Neighbors. They know where the blankets are. They know how to help.”

He waited until she looked at him.

“I belong to this Hall,” he said. “I am not all of it.”

Elisa held his gaze for a long moment.

“You will come back.”

Rishi could not answer for every mile between here and Candlekeep. He could answer for himself.

“Yes.”

Maeril shifted beside him. “I will do my best to bring him back with all necessary pieces attached.”

Elisa looked up at her. “All?”

“Most,” Maeril amended. “Travel is unreasonable.”

Elisa’s mouth twitched.

Maeril’s smile faded. “I mean it. He is not mine to take. I asked him for a road. I did not ask him to cut his roots.”

She looked across the cots, the altar, and the clean path between them.

“If this Hall needs paper, keys, names, and practical arrangements before the road can have him, then the road can wait.”

Elisa stood. “Good. Because if you had asked otherwise, I would have disliked you.”

“I assumed.”

“I may still dislike you slightly.”

“That seems healthy.”

Rishi bowed his head for one heartbeat, but not quickly enough to hide his smile.

“Do not look relieved yet,” Elisa said. “I am still cross with you.”

“I know.”

“With both of you, potentially.”

Maeril nodded. “Reasonable.”

Elisa drew a breath. “And I want wine.”

Maeril blinked.

Elisa crossed to the cupboard beside the altar and took out a small clay jug and three chipped cups.

“Pilgrim’s gift,” she said. “Rough, young, and probably better used for cleaning wounds.”

“Honest wine,” Maeril said.

Elisa poured. In the low light, the wine looked almost black.

She lifted her cup. “To what?”

Maeril considered. When she answered, there was no mischief in her face.

“To thresholds. The ones we guard. The ones we cross. The ones we pretend we have not already stepped over.”

Elisa’s smile came small but whole. “To thresholds.”

Rishi raised his cup. “To bonds carried.”

They drank.

The wine was terrible.

Maeril coughed once into her fist, then stared into her cup as if it had betrayed her.

“Dawn-priest, your god owes you better pilgrims.”

Elisa laughed. The nearest sleeper shifted at the sound, and all three of them went still until he settled.

Then they put the road beside the wine and spoke of what it required. Elisa named the volunteers she trusted with keys and the neighbor who would come if trouble reached the door. Rishi named the stores that emptied first and the hinges that needed mending. Maeril named the weather they could expect, safe camps, bad wells, stretches of the Coast Way best crossed in daylight, and shrines that were tended in more than name.

When she did not know, she said so.

Elisa listened.

At last, she set down her cup. “Come here.”

Rishi obeyed.

Maeril hesitated.

Elisa noticed. “What?”

“Will your god mind?”

“About what?”

Maeril made a loose gesture that took in her horns, her green skin, her tail, and everything else the city had learned to judge before she spoke.

“Blessing a woman who argues with priests and feeds alley children under the table.”

Elisa looked up at Lathander’s sun.

“If he minds, he can take it up with me in the morning. Come.”

Maeril came to stand beside Rishi.

Elisa lifted both hands.

“Lord of the First Light, hear us.”

Rishi closed his eyes. Maeril’s shoulder touched his.

“You watched this place rise,” Elisa said. “Beds before icons. Candles before certainty. Two stubborn fools pretending they were not afraid.”

Her voice carried no farther than the cots.

“Now one of those fools walks a new road and brings another with him: a woman with the good sense to feed people and the questionable sense to invite monks into her plans.”

“Accurate,” Maeril whispered.

Elisa continued without pause.

“Let the road meet them with more dawn than darkness. Let change bring renewal, not ruin. Let the work begun here—in bandage, bowl, ink, and stubborn mercy—take root where it can.”

Her hands remained steady above them.

“Let those who remain not be made poorer by those who go. Remind them that bonds are not chains, and that departure is not betrayal.”

Rishi’s next breath caught high in his chest.

Elisa’s fingers trembled. She held them there.

“And if it would please you,” she said, much quieter, “send them back to me alive. Preferably with all necessary pieces attached.”

Maeril bowed her head. “Aye.”

“Let dawn hear it,” Rishi said.

Elisa lowered her hands. Maeril’s shoulder stayed against his for one more breath.

Then she sniffed. “Well. That was dangerously sincere.”

Elisa wiped one eye with the heel of her hand. “I can ruin it if needed.”

“I was hoping you might.”

As they moved toward the door, Elisa glanced from Maeril to Rishi. One corner of her mouth lifted.

Rishi knew that look.

“You know,” Elisa said, too casually, “I am empowered to bless unions as well. Weddings. Handfastings. Rituals people use to justify sharing blankets.”

Rishi stopped.

Maeril turned slowly. “Oh?”

“Elisa.”

The priest arranged her face into innocence. Badly.

“I only mention it because Candlekeep is a long road, and arrangements sometimes change on long roads.”

“Elisa.”

“I would hate for anyone to lack proper ritual support.”

Maeril’s grin spread bright and wicked. “As far as I know, your monk has taken no vow of chastity.”

Heat climbed into Rishi’s ears.

“I said that in confidence.”

Maeril blinked at him. “You said it to me over tea while trying very hard not to flirt.”

“I was not—”

Both women looked at him.

He stopped.

Elisa’s shoulders began to shake.

Maeril leaned toward her, solemn as a magistrate. “If I decide to marry your monk, Dawn-priest, I will send the request in writing. Triplicate. Proper seals. Candlekeep sounds fussy about documentation.”

Elisa laughed aloud.

Rishi covered his face with one hand. “You are both impossible.”

“Yes,” Elisa said.

“Deeply,” Maeril agreed.

“And now,” Elisa said, still smiling, “one of you is leaving my Hall before I regret being hospitable, and the other is going to bed.”

Maeril pulled her hood up. At the threshold, she turned back.

Her grin was gone.

“Thank you,” she said to Elisa. “For the blessing. For the Hall. For him, before I knew him.”

Elisa held Maeril’s gaze.

“Bring him back.”

“I will.”

Maeril stepped into the night.

Rishi watched until the mist took the edge of her cloak. Then he closed the door and turned back.

Elisa stood with her arms folded, lanternlight warm on her tired face.

“Well,” she said. “She is not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know. Someone softer. Or worse.” She glanced at the closed door. “She will keep you honest. And possibly alive through spite.”

“That seems likely.”

“You will write.”

“Yes.”

“And return.”

“Yes.”

Elisa stepped close and straightened the edge of his cloak at the shoulder, a small, familiar correction.

“Go to bed, Rishishura,” she said. “Dawn comes whether you are ready or not.”

He smiled. “Yes, Elisa.”

Rishi crossed the Hall, his staff touching the floor in soft, even beats. Behind him, Elisa turned down the final lantern. A low altar flame remained beneath Lathander’s sun, its light falling first on the beds.

The road to Candlekeep was still long. Leaving would still hurt.

But when the time came, he would not disappear by inches.

He would not vanish.