Foul Water

Kargun took them to the temple first.

Not because he thought the Song of the Morning would solve the camp. Ṛṣi understood that before they reached the gate. If Kargun had believed a priest could pour dawn over the mud and make it clean, he would have asked days ago.

He took them because one well could change a day.

And wells, like doors, needed someone with authority to open them.

The temple stood inside Beregost’s northern edge, pale stone bright against the working town around it. Its tower held Lathander’s rose-and-road sunburst up to the morning. On another day, Maeril might have called it beautiful.

With the camp’s stink still in her clothes, it looked like an answer that had arrived on the wrong side of the wall.

She stopped before the steps and looked back toward the road, where patched canvas and thin smoke showed beyond the town’s safer roofs.

“So,” she said. “We ask the dawn why it has been rising over here.”

“Maeril,” Ṛṣi said softly.

“I know.” Her jaw worked once. “I know.”

Kargun did not look offended.

“She is not wrong,” he said.

“No,” Ṛṣi answered. “Only sharp.”

Maeril glanced at him.

“That phrase is becoming very inconvenient.”

“It has many uses.”

“It has one use.”

“Still useful.”

She inhaled through her nose, held it, and let it go.

“Fine,” she said. “I will be usefully sharp.”

Kargun pushed the temple door open.

Inside, the air smelled of beeswax, warm stone, clean cloth, and exhaustion no incense could hide. Acolytes moved quickly between side chambers, carrying basins, folded linens, bowls of broth. Too many pallets had been laid along one wall. Children slept there, not enough of them. An old man breathed shallowly beneath a yellow blanket. A woman in a bloodstained shawl murmured a prayer over someone’s hand.

The temple was not empty.

That mattered.

It was also not enough.

That also mattered.

Dawnmaster Halver met them near the inner arch, frowning as if he had been called from three tasks and failed all of them by answering.

He was not old, but strain had made him look as if he had borrowed years against future rest. His vestments were clean only where someone had recently brushed mud from them. A faint gold glow still lingered around one hand, the last trace of some spent healing.

His eyes went first to Kargun, then to Ṛṣi’s red cords, then to Maeril’s horns and staff.

“Kargun,” he said. “If this is about more hands, I have sent what I can.”

His voice came out too hard.

He heard it.

A flicker of shame crossed his face before he could hide it.

Kargun bowed his head once. “Dawnmaster. This is Ṛṣiśūra of Lantern Hall. Maeril Greenward of Wyrm’s Crossing.”

Halver’s expression shifted.

Recognition, not familiarity.

“Lantern Hall,” he said. “Yes. We have had letters from Baldur’s Gate.”

His eyes moved to Maeril.

“Maeril Greenward,” she said. “Not in the letters, I assume.”

“No,” Halver said.

“Good. Then I can make a fresh poor impression.”

Halver almost smiled.

Almost.

Then the temple’s weariness returned.

“What can you spare?” Ṛṣi asked.

No greeting before it.

No accusation.

Only the question that mattered.

Halver closed his eyes briefly.

“We are not doing nothing,” he said.

Maeril’s gaze sharpened.

Halver winced as if he had stepped on his own foot.

“That came out badly.” He rubbed both hands over his face, then dropped them. “I know how it looks. Some of it is how it looks. Not all.”

“Then tell us the part we cannot see,” Ṛṣi said.

Halver looked toward the pallets.

“We have taken in the worst cases we can house. Children first. Then those too fevered to lift their heads. We send acolytes out when we can. We boil water until our fires threaten to eat the stores. We pray. We fail. Then we pray again.”

His voice stayed level because he forced it to.

“Folks are frightened. The town sees the camp and wants it gone. The camp sees our walls and thinks we are keeping dawn in a chest. The merchants complain that sick refugees scare caravans away. The townsfolk complain that their wells are watched, their bread is rationed, their temple is spending light on outsiders.”

Maeril’s hands tightened around her staff.

“So the camp gets the ditch because the town gets the walls.”

Halver flinched.

Ṛṣi gave Maeril a slight look.

Not to silence her.

To remind her where her sharpness needed to land.

She breathed out through her nose.

Halver’s eyes stayed on her, tired and honest enough not to look away.

“Yes,” he said. “Some days. Yes. That is what happens.”

That answer quieted her more than defensiveness would have.

He continued, rougher now.

“If I send more acolytes outside, the town says I have abandoned them. If I keep them here, the camp says the same. If I open the temple stores, they are empty by nightfall and tomorrow there is hunger on both sides of the gate. If I hold them back, I preserve strength by watching suffering continue.”

His mouth twisted.

“There are prayers for judgment. Fewer for arithmetic.”

Kargun shifted beside them.

The shovel handle over his shoulder knocked softly against his plate.

“We need clean water,” he said.

Halver looked at him.

“I know.”

“One well,” Kargun said. “The eastern reserve.”

Halver’s face tightened immediately.

“That well is for townsfolk.”

“For one day. Healthy carriers only. I choose them. I stand there. I answer for them.”

“That well is already a grievance.”

“Then let the grievance draw clean water before it grows teeth.”

Silence settled between them.

Somewhere behind the inner screen, a child coughed in sleep.

Ṛṣi spoke softly.

“If you cannot spare healing, spare permission.”

Halver looked at him.

“Permission is not nothing,” Ṛṣi said. “Sometimes it is the first bandage.”

The Dawnmaster’s gaze moved from Ṛṣi to Maeril, then to Kargun.

Maeril did not trust her first words. She let the second ones come instead.

“We can change the camp’s shape,” she said. “But not if people are washing bandages in runoff and cooking with ditch water. One clean day lets us move the worst of it.”

Halver’s eyes narrowed.

“You sound certain.”

“I am certain the current arrangement is killing them.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“No,” she said. “But it is enough to start.”

Halver looked down at his own hands.

Priest’s hands. Scholar’s hands. Healer’s hands.

Not enough hands.

At last, he nodded once.

“One day,” he said. “Eastern reserve. Healthy carriers. No fevered. No children. No pushing townsfolk away from their own buckets. Kargun stands responsible. If there is a riot, I close it.”

“There will not be a riot,” Kargun said.

“You do not command the town.”

“No,” Kargun replied. “But I can be large in the way.”

That did make Halver smile, faintly and against his will.

“Dawn help anyone who argues with that.”

Maeril inclined her head.

“Thank you.”

Halver looked surprised by the plainness of it.

“Do not thank me yet,” he said. “It is a small door.”

“Small doors are still doors.”

Ṛṣi looked at her.

She noticed.

“Do not look pleased,” she muttered. “I can be profound by accident.”

Kargun bowed.

They left with no miracle, no wagon of supplies, no line of priests following behind them.

Only one well.

One day.

And permission.