Harper Dispatch: Boareskr Bridge
| Sent | Hammer 4, 1489 |
|---|---|
| From | Hesk Amberlane, road-desk, Berdusk |
| To | Gootcha |
| Carried | New writing in Gootcha's Harper book, in a cramped, numbered hand |
Harper Dispatch: Boareskr Bridge — a road-desk report on Varram the White's latest sighting, received through Gootcha's Harper book.
On the fourth morning of the downtime at Nuts Deep, early Hammer 1489, new writing appeared in Gootcha's Harper book — not in the Archives' careful hand but in a cramped, numbered one, the ink gone thick in places where the writer had pressed too hard.
To the bearer, by way of the Archives' book, since they tell me that is how you take your post now.
1. Varram. The wyrmspeaker you asked after was seen at Boareskr Bridge in the last tenday of Uktar, so more than a month gone by the time you read this. I did not see her myself. A mule-drover named Pell Marrowick, who runs the Scornubel road, told the bridge-keeper he had shared a stable yard with a dwarf woman in white robes and an escort of six who did not talk, all of them lodged at the caravanserai on the south bank and paying well to be left alone. The bridge-keeper told our man, our man told me, and I am telling you, which makes this fourth hand. I cannot say why she was there or whether she is there still. I would not put coin on any part of it except that Marrowick has been right before about who crosses. This is newer than what the Council had from us in Eleasis and, for whatever it is worth, it is the same place.
2. The bridge, in case nobody has told you about it. It crosses the Winding Water on the Trade Way, four days' ride north of you. It is the place where Cyric killed Bhaal in the Time of Troubles, in 1358, and the river ran black below it for years after. The old fort's moat is poison still. There are shrines to both of them on the bridge and people leave things at both, which tells you what kind of place it is. The trading camp on the north bank has never had a lord and does not want one.
3. Thent. In 1450 High Overseer Tamal Thent of Elturel and her whole caravan vanished at the caravanserai on the south bank, the same house. Elturel sent riders. No bodies and no wreckage, and nobody who would say they had seen anything. Our file on it is two pages and one of them is the riders' lodging bill. I put it here because it is the same ground, and I would rather you heard it from me than from the keeper after dark.
I do not know that any of these three things has to do with the others. The bridge has a long habit of swallowing people and it may only be that. If you go, the keeper is called Ostrand and takes a copper a head to cross, two after dark. Ask him about the drover. Do not ask him about us.
Hesk Amberlane, road-desk, Berdusk
Post-script. The Archives want to know whether the caravanserai keeper still has the 1450 guest ledger. She would be very old now. Ask, if you have a spare hour and she is in a mood to be asked
See also
- Correspondence — the campaign's letters, gathered
- Harper Dispatch: A Source at the Bridge — the charge that followed it
- The Nightingales · Gootcha · Boareskyr Bridge