After a few more days of mostly unsuccessful searching in the Cheyth Wood, the party returned with what little Blind Man's Kiss they had, hoping it would be enough. In their absence, the pestilence had grown much worse: at least a full dozen people had now succumbed, and it showed no signs of slowing down. Resigning themselves to the idea that they would probably have to go Hyena hunting after all, they managed to get mounts from the village elders before setting out.
All except for Tanurendal, that is. Having missed the trip into the Cheyth Wood, he first attempted to recruit some of the town's ne'er-do-wells in order to form a hyena hunting expedition of his own. After this failed, Tanurendal left town (making a bit of side income for himself by working on the lands of Onerama the Bald in the interum) in order to avoid the pestilence. By the time he arrived back in Cheykor, the rest of the Company had already left the village heading west towards the open moors.
The party traveled for several hours towards the west before making camp for the night. It was only when the woman appeared among them that they realized they had been followed the whole time. She was tall, regal, middle-aged, dressed in the dark habit of the Well Priestesses except for a girdle of scarlet silk about her waist; that, and the fact that she wore more jewelry than would normally have been considered proper for one of her order. She introduced herself as Talarja, one of the Scarlet Sisterhood. The Scarlet Sisterhood, as she explained, was an order of Well Priestesses who preserved the original (or at least what they claimed was the original) religion of the Children of the Water before the kings of the Line of Sencan came and rewrote history. She informed the Company that the were on a fool's errand: the pestilence in Cheykor was caused by a desecration of the Sacred Well at the village's heart, and could only really be eradicated when the Well was purged.
This presented two difficulties: first, owing to the time of the Great Fast, the Well shrine was not only sealed--it was actually chained shut, and the entrance guarded at night. None were to enter it until the Fast was at an end, on pain of severe punishment. The second difficulty was that Cheykor had its own Well Priestess, Feiala, whom the company already knew and respected. If Talarja's story was true, why wasn't Feiala aware of the poisoning, and why hadn't she taken measure to cleanse the shrine before now? To this last question, Talarja would say only that Feiala was a very good and admirable woman, and a good priestess, but owing to no fault of her own she was unable to act in this particular instance.
Eventually, the party decided they could trust Talarja, and proceeded with her back towards Cheykor. On the road they encountered Tanurendal, and with the whole company finally back together, they debated how to get back into the village after the gates had already been closed for the night. Arriving at the dead of night, Tanurendal and Tengelbur made a distraction while the others scaled the stockade and entered the village. Unfortunately, Tengelbur's smooth-talking fell short of convincing the gate guards that the pebble he had picked up was actually the left eye of a Hyena, and he and Tanurendal were put in the stocks for the night, awaiting judgment by the village elders the next day.
In the meantime, the rest of the party sneaked up towards the Shrine, avoiding the guard at its entrance. Reiana scaled the rear wall in hopes of slipping in through the opening on top of the shrine, which luckily had not been shut. But looking down into the shrine, it was immediately apparent that all was not as it should be.
The place that should have been holy now smelled of decay. The water which should have been clear was now murky and brown. And wrapped around the Sacred Well, her fish-like face draining its holy waters, her fingers and toes ossified and dug in around the well like deep roots, was the old crone the party had encountered in Kor-Ikush the previous summer. Her head snapped back as she noticed Reiana, and she let out a mournful wail.
